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With uncovered faces and open hearts, Rashid and Mustapha are finally relieved, speaking about their secret religion. Interviewed by AFP news agency and visited at their appartment in Agadir, the two Christian and Moroccan men spoke about what it feels like to be Christian in a Muslim country.
Rashid, son of a religious father, explained that he converted to Christianity after spending years as a Muslim. The 40 year-old man who is also father to two children, got interested in the religion in 2004. «When I was 24, I was baptized in an apartment in Casablanca», said Rashid while sitting next to a group of friends who have also become Christian. «I read the entire thing, studied the word of God and took courses», Rashid told the reporters of AFP.
AFP
Next to Rashid, was sitting Mustapha, a 49 year-old man who embraced Christianity in 1994, «tired of contradictions», the clerk who is originally from Taroudant stated. «I became interested in Christianity through a long correspondence with a religious center in Spain in the late 1980's», Mustapha revealed to the French news agency.
Tired of hiding their faith
«We demand the right to give our children Christian names, to pray in churches, to be burried in Christian cemeteries and to marry according to our religion», claimed Mustapha while seated next to Rashid. Finally speaking out loud about their faith, the two friends along with a group of other Moroccans converted to Christianity are no more willing to let go of their rights.
In April, converts submitted a request to the National Council of Human Rights (CNDH), urging the organization to put an end to the «persecution against them». Some of them have come out about their religious identity on social media, like Mustapha, who revealed his faith on a YouTube video a year and a half ago. «My kids got bullied at school for that, and my family turned its back to me», he declared.
AFP
What Rashid and Mustapha know perfectly is that religious conversion in Islam is forbidden. For Islam, converting to another religion is considered as «apostasy». Although, Morocco has been working on spreading tolerance among religious minorities it is still implicitly punishable by law to shake the faith of a Muslim.
