Imagine a place where every single person in your community is on high alert, watching you and trying to understand whether you have left your family’s religion and embraced a new one… Once they realize you are no longer a Muslim and now a convert to Christianity, your life will never be the same again.
If you are a woman, you could be abducted, forcibly married, expelled from (or forced out of) home, or incarcerated by your family (house arrest) and subjected to physical and sexual violence.
If you are a man, you could experience economic harassment at your business or access to your place of work, fines, imprisonment, military or militia conscription even if you are a conscientious objector, travel bans or restrictions on your movement, and physical and psychological violence.
This is the life of pressure and persecution of Christian converts across the region of Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
On August 24, Open Doors, a human rights organization, reported on the baptism of a Muslim man in a Central Asian country whose family rejected and disowned him due to his conversion:
Muhat’s baptism is the most exciting day of his life. It’s also the most dangerous. He has to get baptized in total secrecy – knowing that if he were discovered, he could face even worse persecution than he’s already received.
Muhat lives in Central Asia. That’s not his real name and it would be too dangerous to share which Central Asian country he’s in. Like almost everyone in his country, Muhat grew up as a Muslim in a Muslim home. He had no thoughts of leaving his faith until his close friend, Zinnat, invited him along to an underground church meeting.
Zinnat had recently left Islam to follow Jesus. He hadn’t told Muhat at first, because it had to be kept a secret, but Muhat had seen some significant changes in Zinnat’s life. He was now much more respectful to women, and always ready to admit when he was wrong. He spoke about forgiveness and having a close relationship with God. Muhat was intrigued and wanted to know more.
At the underground church meeting, Muhat realized he had lots of questions that no Muslim had ever been able to answer. The Christians seemed to have a real connection with God, and with each other. Muhat kept returning to the group, again and again. And one day, he knew: it’s time to choose; it’s time to give my life to Jesus and become His follower.
It was the start of a new life, but also the start of persecution. At the underground church meetings, persecution had been a regular topic of conversation. Muhat heard how hostile people in their country were to Christians, particularly converts from Islam. But he also saw that it didn’t deter people. One of the group members even said: “It is an honor to be persecuted, just like Jesus. Surely it is normal to experience persecution as followers of Jesus!”
When Muhat’s family discovered his secret, they were furious. Muhat’s father was particularly angry. “You are no longer my son,” he told Muhat. “You are no longer worthy to be a son.” Eventually, Muhat was disowned by his family and thrown out of home.
In all Central Asian countries, Christian converts from Islam bear the brunt of persecution. If indigenous (Muslim) citizens convert to Christianity, they experience immense pressure, and in many cases, physical violence at the hands of their families and the local community who force them to return to their former faith. Their families could lock the converts up, beat them and even expel them from their communities. Local Islamic leaders preach against them, adding pressure.
Local authorities monitor and raid unregistered churches after making official registration extremely difficult for those churches. They threaten, fine, or detain members of those churches for illegal religious activities. As a result, most converts do their best to hide their faith.
Open Doors ranks Uzbekistan at number 25 on its World Watch List, which tracks countries where Christians face severe persecution and restrictions. Uzbekistan remains a highly authoritarian state under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s control since 2016, with opposition movements and independent media effectively banned:
All Christians in Uzbekistan face varying degrees of pressure and violence based on their faith identity. Russian Orthodox churches encounter minimal interference from authorities as they rarely engage with the indigenous Uzbek population. However, Muslim-background converts face severe violations from state actors, family members, and local communities, with persecution intensifying in rural areas compared to urban centers. Unregistered churches are particularly vulnerable to police raids, arbitrary arrests, threats, and financial penalties.
Traditional Islamic culture and patriarchal norms place women lower than men and subservient within the family context. Women are not free to choose their own religion and face severe opposition to conversion. Incarceration by a convert’s family remains a common and socially accepted form of putting female converts under pressure. Access to social networks, specifically Christian networks, is restricted in the hope that the convert will return to Islam. Abduction and forced marriage are risks, with sexual violence (including within marriage) often unacknowledged and normalized. Shame and stigma prevent many from ever reporting crimes against them.
Tajikistan ranks number 27 on the Open Doors World Watch List:
Only state-controlled institutions are allowed in Tajikistan. Pressure from the authorities has increased since 2015, causing a rise in the number of raids on meetings, Christian materials confiscated and an increase in Christians being fined and interrogated.
When a parent converts to Christianity, family members will try to take custody of the children to raise them according to Islamic principles.
Christian children experience slander from community members, and Muslim children are often kept from having contact with them. All children are required to study the ‘History of Religions’ at high school, which is taught from a Sunni Muslim perspective.
There are restrictions on foreign Christians visiting Tajikistan. They need a special visa, which is very difficult to obtain.
Turkmenistan ranks number 35 on the Open Doors World Watch List. According to Open Doors research, there is no freedom of religion in the country and Christians are closely monitored:
Turkmenistan is a totalitarian country where state agents constantly monitor individual Christians and religious groups (and the rest of society) and impose restrictions. Even Russian Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches may experience monitoring of Sunday services. The printing or import of Christian materials is restricted.
Prevalent Islamic culture places women in a subordinate position to men, and women and girls face serious restrictions on their autonomy and dignity. Female converts are particularly vulnerable to beatings, house arrest, verbal abuse, threats, sexual abuse, abduction and forced marriage. A country expert explains: “pregnant Muslim-background Christians and other women can be beaten violently by their husbands in order to cause a miscarriage. Women and girls rarely report violent incidents due to stigma and shame, and impunity is regularly granted to perpetrators.”
The hostility of Turkmen society towards Christians is supported by a large and antagonistic state apparatus that seeks to compel social, and therefore, religious unity on the population. The regime censors Christians, controls the media and prohibits opposition parties.
Kyrgyzstan ranks at number 40. Muslim communities in the country exert pressure on Christian converts, and the government imposes many restrictions:
Traditional Islamic culture places women at a level subservient to men within the family context. Women and girls are excluded from decision making processes and exposed to violence in a breadth of forms, including domestic violence, bride kidnapping, child marriages and physical abuse. They are not free to choose their own faith and will face persecution upon conversion to Christianity. Converts further risk home detention, forced marriage, rape and being denied custody of their children. The practice of bride-stealing persists in Kyrgyzstan.
Christian men face daily discrimination, be it in the workplace, army or local community. Pressure is highest in rural areas. Christian businessmen may face boycott or hinderance. If a Christian man loses his job, it harms the whole family as he is the main provider. Converts face harassment, job loss, disinheritance, home detention and social exclusion. Pastors are targeted with fines and attacks for conversions as Muslims hold church leaders responsible for those conversions.
The Christian burial of converts frequently provokes opposition from Muslim villagers.
Kazakhstan ranks at number 45:
The daily life of indigenous people in Kazakhstan is based on traditional Islamic culture, which disadvantages women and requires total submission. There are few effective measures to address gender-based violence, polygamy, child and forced marriages, bride kidnapping, and pervasive domestic violence. Female converts risk greater levels of physical and verbal abuse, harassment, threats and house arrest. Forced marriage to a Muslim is a possibility and occasionally linked to abduction. It is difficult for women to escape these pressures due to high unemployment and limited financial independence.
Pressure on Christian men comes from the State as well as family and community spheres. They risk interrogation, fines, detention and imprisonment.
It is important to note that Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan are all officially secular republics, according to their national constitutions.
Seventy years of atheism during the Soviet era have also left its mark on these countries, keeping radical Arab and Turkish influences largely at bay. However, these countries are still majority-Muslim, and their populations follow the Islamic religion, which dehumanizes Christians and other non-Muslims. According to Islam, the punishment for apostasy (leaving the religion) is death. And culture is often more powerful than law because unwritten social norms and shared beliefs shape human behavior from the subconscious level, while laws rely on external enforcement.
Hence, unsurprisingly, the main sources of persecution and discrimination in all these Central Asian republics are Islamic oppression and dictatorial paranoia. These authoritarian regimes view independent religious activities as potential threats to state control. They permit only state-approved religious institutions to operate legally, with all others subject to surveillance, infiltration and suppression.
True transformation for those nations depends on their citizens leaving Islam to embrace non-Muslim faiths, ideally Biblical values. The people embracing Judeo-Christian values would profoundly challenge the authoritarian structures in those countries and promote individual liberty, human dignity, and intellectual pluralism.
Billy says
Islam is a Criminal-Terrorist-Gang Enterprise. Plus, Islam is the deceitful, daily practice of Islamic Law by Muslims, and Allah rewards his Muslim believers, Criminal-Genocidal-Terrorists of Allah, with a Garden Paradise when they kill and are killed in Jihad for Allah as war against the enemies of Allah, the Non-Muslims, using MUSLIM MONEY and MUSLIM LIVES to make Islam, Islamic Law, supreme(Qur’an 2:191; 4:89, 91, 95; 9:5, 29, 41, 111; 49:15, etc.). Hence, Public Funding is a privilege that should not be granted to organizations like Islam and its Muslim Organizations which are fundamentally against the US Constitution and Western Constitutions.
Allah in Qur’an 49:15 teaches, “Surely the believers[Muslims] are only those who believed in Allah and his messenger. They do not doubt, and they performed JIHAD with their MONEY and their LIVES for the sake of Allah. Those are the truthful.” See also Qur’an 2:191; 4:89, 91; 8:60; 9:5, 29, 111; 47:4; 48:29, etc. Ultimately, Allah desires to fill hell with Non-Muslims(Qur’an 7:18; 11:119; 32:13; 98:6, etc.).
somehistory says
All of those “stans” are stains on humanity.
Jesus knows His sheep and His sheep know His voice.
jerry glenn says
Their countries their rules. But why oh why do we keep inviting them into ours?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I have fingers crossed on these countries. In those countries, freedom of conscience – great as it is – would be double edged swords. Sure, people like Muhat would be free to discover Jesus, or Buddha, or Zarathustra or Tengri. But similarly, people like Mirza would be as free to discover Muhammad
The authoritarian regimes that Uzay is critical of are also the regimes that have for 34 years managed to keep those countries from becoming like Afghanistan. Take Uzbekistan, for instance. In medieval history, it was the country that contained Samarqand – the capital of the jihadist conqueror Timur/Tamerlane, as well as Buqhara – the city that Mohammed al Buqhari – the author of the leading Hadith – were from. Those 2 cities were pretty much the capitals of islam in the Middle Ages, when Turks, rather than Arabs, were the main islamizing forces from Bengal to the Balkans. Yeah, Turkistan got overrun by the Romanovs and secularized by the Soviets, but when you have a history in which your cities were the main centers of an activity – in this case islamization – it is impossible to ignore. In fact, it’s a wonder that Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are not Afghanistan (north)
In fact, in the above story, it was Muhat’s family that disowned him for apostatizing from islam: it was not driven by any of the regimes in Tashkent, Astana or anywhere else. That is something that even the most dictatorial government can’t control: I have never read nor heard about any regime, no matter how totalitarian, controlling the relations b/w family members (okay, maybe KGB and Stasi). So this is something that even the most well meaning of Central Asian regimes can do nothing about
abu taleb says
A Malaysian native told me that he lost some of his right as a native (Malay) citizen because he had converted to Christianity. Malaysia is a very discriminatory, its law discriminates its citizens based on religion and race. Even a Malaysian native citizen said there was discrimination against her because she was not a Malay, but a Borneo native.
Considering the non native citizens (mainly Chinese and Indians) is about 30-35% of the total population, and yet such blatant discrimination takes place, imagine if the muslims have more power by the population, military or economy, the discrimination will certainly much worse.