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

• Catholic Herald
• Telegraph and Argus
• Image: Catholic Herald

Pope Francis praised Mrs Ibrahim for her steadfast witness to Christ, in refusing to renounce her faith, despite facing a death sentence for apostasy against Islam.

The Pontiff spent 30 minutes with Ibrahim, her husband Daniel Wani and their two small children.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, told journalists that the encounter in the Pope's residence was marked by "affection" and "great serenity and joy".

They had "a beautiful conversation", during which the Pope thanked Ibrahim for "her steadfast witness of faith," Fr Lombardi said.

Ms Ibrahim thanked the Pope for the Church's prayers and support during her plight, he added.

The Vatican spokesman said the meeting was a sign of the Pope's "closeness, solidarity and presence with all those who suffer for their faith".

Italy's foreign ministry led negotiations with Khartoum for her to be allowed to leave Sudan.

She arrived in Rome on July 24 aboard an Italian government plane accompanied by her family and Italy's deputy foreign minister, Lapo Pistelli.

Among those organisations which helped with her exit from Sudan was the Italian human rights NGO Italians For Darfur.

Although brought up as a Christian by her Orthodox mother, a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law argues that she is still a Muslim since her father was a Muslim.

A Sudanese court ruled that she had committed apostasy when she married her American husband in 2011.

When she refused to deny her faith in court, she was sentenced to a flogging and death for the crime of "adultery".

During her imprisonment, Ms Ibrahim was forced to give birth to a child while chained to a prison table.

After being released following an appeal, Ms Ibrahim was further detained when trying to leave Khartoum with her family.

Authorities claimed there were problems with travel documents.

Ms Ibrahim planned to travel to New York with her family after a few days in Rome.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Irish Times
• Image: Independent

On June 24, an appeals court overturned Ms Ibrahim's death sentence and she was freed from prison.

But Ms Ibrahim and her family were apprehended at Khartoum Airport and detained, reportedly over issues with travel documents.

Her husband had told media they were trying to get to the United States.

Ms Ibrahim, who had a Muslim father and an Ethiopian Orthodox mother, had been convicted of apostasy and adultery after marrying a Christian man.

She was sentenced to be flogged and hanged.

Ms Ibrahim gave birth to her second child while in prison.

Sudan had come under intense international pressure to have her released.

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They did this in a letter to the Sudanese ambassador to New Zealand His Excellency Mr Abd Al Rahim Al Siddig Mohamed Omer, who is resident in Jakarta, Indonesia.

In the letter the Bishops say that the situation of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, the Christian Sudanese mother recently sentenced to 100 lashes and to death was a matter of grave concern to us and to all New Zealanders.

"A young mother of two children was sentenced to lashing and hanging when provision for the charges brought against her should not exist in the Constitution and are specifically ruled out by Sudan acceding to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

They have expressed relief that the charges against her have been overturned and that she is free,

But they say the government of Sudan should to remove the charge of apostasy from its penal code in order to align the code with its Constitution and international commitments.

Ms Ibrahim and her family were briefly re-arrested while trying to leave the country for the US before being released again.

Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the US State Department, said the Sudanese government had informed American officials that Ms Ibrahim and her family were "temporarily detained" over issues relating to their travel documents.

Read Archbishop Dew's letter

Source

• Supplied by the New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference
• The independent
• Image: The Independent

Meriam Ibrahim would be "freed within days in line with legal procedure that will be undertaken by the judiciary and the ministry of justice", said Abdullah Alazreg.

But Mrs Ibrahim's lawyer, Mohanned Mustapha, told Al Jazeera that the final decision rested with an appeals court.

This was also the position taken in a foreign ministry clarification.

Mr Mustapha said Mr Alazreg's statement was an attempt to take the heat out of the international coverage of Ms Ibrahim's plight.

It was not so much a genuine reflection of what might happen, the lawyer said.

Ms Ibrahim gave birth to a girl last week in prison, her second child.

The 27-year-old was raised as an Orthodox Christian by her Christian mother.

But a Sudanese judge ruled last month that she should be regarded as Muslim because that had been her father's faith.

Her father abandoned her family when she was a child.

Ms Ibrahim was convicted of adultery and apostasy for marrying a Christian.

She was sentenced to hang, under the Islamic law that has been in place since 1983 and outlaws conversions under pain of death.

Her husband is Daniel Wani, who is a United States citizen.

The court also sentenced her to 100 lashes before she is executed.

The court previously said Ms Ibrahim would be allowed to nurse her baby for two years before the sentence was carried out.

Her case has sparked international outrage and there has been growing pressure on Sudan's government to have her sentence overturned.

An Amnesty International petition attracted more than 200,000 signatures and more than 600,000 people added their name to a separate petition on change.org.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron called Ms Ibrahim's treatment "barbaric" and said it had no place in the modern world.

Her case has sparked debate in the UK as to whether the British government should cut off aid to Sudan.

Sources

• Al Jazeera
• The Guardian
• BBC
• Image: The Telegraph

Contrary to what many believe, the Spanish Inquisition did not target Protestants or people who had been Jewish or Muslim from birth. Rather, it was concerned with the issue of heresy and apostasy in Spain. According to the Catechism, "Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith." (CCC 2089) In the 1300s there were many Jews in Spain who had converted to Catholicism, called "conversos," who were believed to have committed apostasy by returning to the practice of Judaism. James Michener points this out in his book Iberia:

"So far as I was able to ascertain, no Jew was ever executed by the Inquisition. If a man under investigation could say simply, ‘Yes, I'm a Jew and have never been otherwise,' his gold and silver were confiscated and he was banished from Spain, but he was in no way subject to the Inquisition and certainly he was never burned. The Jews who did suffer, and in the thousands, were those who had at one time been baptized as Catholics, had been legal Catholics and had committed apostasy by reverting to Jewish practices. These were rooted out with great severity, but when they were burned, it was as Catholics, not as Jews."(1) Continue reading

Sources

• Vassallomalta
• Image: Firmus et Rusticus