A UK man has been seriously assaulted by a gang as a result of his converting from Islam to Christianity.
Father-of-six Nissar Hussain from Bradford was left needing surgery after the group broke his kneecap and hand on Wednesday.
A pickaxe handle was used by one of the assailants.
Mr Hussain, 49, is recovering in hospital after the attacks.
This is the latest in a long line of incidents following his family’s conversion to Christianity over a decade ago.
Mr Hussain has said that he and his family are virtual prisoners in their home as a consequence.
He said he had “three cars written off” and “regular drive-by bricks thrown through the window. Kids couldn’t play in the back garden for five years”.
Police, he said, told him: “Stop trying to be crusader and move out of your area.”
He told the Bradford Argus: “We are under the cosh and classed as blasphemers.”
“The Muslim community are largely decent people but because of the taboo of converting to Christianity we are classed by them as scum and second-class citizens.”
He said most of the Muslim community has turned a blind eye to his family’s suffering.
Before the attacks, Mr Hussain said that despite his persecution he had received little help from police or churches.
Bradford police are treating the latest attack as a religious hate crime.
Mr Hussain, his wife Kubra and their six children converted to Anglicanism over a decade ago and have suffered a campaign of intimidation ever since.
The harassment and intimidation intensified after 2008 when they appeared in a television documentary about the mistreatment of Muslim converts.
Mr Hussain, who had to give up his job as a nurse because of the stress of the campaign, has said the family will have to move to a white English area to escape the intimidation.
Wilson Chowdhry from the British Pakistani Christian Association told the Catholic Herald that “apostasy crime” – committed against Muslims who convert to Christianity – needed to be more widely recognised in Britain.
Sources