Haaretz reports:
Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest Monday, claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will.
The small but noisy demonstration showed the increasingly desperate situation facing the tiny minority.
Protesters banged on a church bell and chanted, “With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus.”
However, the Government says that the individuals converted of their own free will:
Gaza police say the two are staying with a Muslim religious official at their request, because they fear retribution from their families converting to Islam. Two mediators said the two – a 25-year-old man and a woman with three children – appeared to have embraced Islam of their free will. Forced conversions have been unheard of in Gaza before.
…
The two converts, Al-Amash, and Hiba Abu Dawoud, 31, could not be reached for comment. Abu Dawould took her three daughters with her, further enraging the community.
On Monday, groups of men and women stood in groups in the square of the ancient Church of Saint Porphyrius, angrily chanting,” Bring back Ramez!” One man angrily hit the church bell.
“People are locking up their sons and daughters, worried about the ideas people put in their head,” said Al-Amash’s mother, Huda.
Haaretz adds:
Since the Islamic militant Hamas seized power five years ago, Christians have felt increasingly embattled, but have mostly kept silent.
There are growing fears among Gaza Christians that their rapidly shrinking community could disappear through emigration and conversions.
Their numbers appear to have shrunk from some 3,500 to about 1,500 in recent years, according to community estimates. They are a tiny minority among 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza, most conservative Muslims.
“If things remain like this, there’ll be no Christians left in Gaza,” said Huda Al-Amash, mother of one of the converts, Ramez, 25. She sat sobbing in a church hallway alongside her daughters, Ranin and Rinad, and a dozen other women. “Today it’s Ramez. Then who, and who will be next?”
All reports I can see, bar this AFP sourced one, trace back to an Associated Press report.
Gaza’s Hamas government on Tuesday denied claims that a Christian man had been forced to convert to Islam, saying he had willingly changed religion.
The statement came a day after the Orthodox Church in Gaza accused an unnamed Islamist organisation of “kidnapping” 24-year-old Ramez al-Amash, along with a woman and three girls.
“Through contacts with some officials, the Christian youth Ramez al-Amash met with his family in a friendly meeting held at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights,” Hamas health minister Bassem Naim said in a statement.
“The young man insisted that he converted to Islam without pressure on him to do so, and that he attended the meeting (with his family) without the presence of armed men before, during or after it,” the statement said.
Naim said the government had not received any official report on the alleged kidnapping and conversion of Amash and the four others.
He accused the church of “pure baseless fabrications which contain no truth.”
“Such accusations lack credibility and push an atmosphere of peaceful coexistence towards tensions, which does not serve the Palestinian people.”
On Monday evening, Gaza’s Orthodox Church issued a statement accusing an unnamed Islamist group of “kidnapping Ramez al-Amash on Saturday along with a woman and three girls who were abducted from their homes last Wednesday.”
“This Islamist movement uses dark and dirty methods, sowing fear and using intense pressure, blackmail, and dishonest means including using chemical substances to control and terrify those who have been kidnapped,” the statement said.
The church organised a demonstration on Monday evening to protest the alleged kidnapping, with several dozen protesters participating at the Gaza City location.
If there’s more information, let us know.
My guess, and it is just a guess, is that this wasn’t a forced conversion.
UPDATE
Hurriyet reports:
Health minister Bassem Naim, a Hamas leader in Gaza, denied the allegations.
“Through contacts with some officials, the Christian youth Ramez al-Amash met with his family in a friendly meeting held at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights,” he said in a statement.
“The young man insisted that he converted to Islam without pressure on him to do so,” the statement said, adding that no official report had been submitted on the alleged kidnapping and conversion of Amash and the four others.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights confirmed it had met with both Amash and the woman involved, 32-year-old Heba Abu Dawud.
“We held separate meetings with Ramez al-Amash and Heba Abu Dawud and her daughters at the centre, and they confirmed their desire to embrace Islam,” PCHR legal unit director Iyad Alamy told AFP.
He stressed that there was “no truth at all” to claims that Amash, Abu Dawud or her daughters were kidnapped.
He said Amash had met with his parents at the centre, and his father had accepted the conversion and asked him to move back home, though his mother continued to reject her son’s apparent decision.
“We’re working to try to solve this issue so the young man can live with his family normally,” he said.
Abu Dawud also met with workers from the centre along with her daughters, and said she had converted “of her own free will,” Alamy said.She expressed willingness “to allow her husband to see his daughters, but said she considers herself divorced on the basis of her understanding of Islamic law which does not allow a Muslim woman to marry a Christian,” he added.
