Persecution of Ex-Muslims (Italy)

Converts from Islam to Christianity are exposed to threats, even in the West, revealing why it is difficult to ascertain specific data on the number of converts from Islam

Christianity and Islam: two religions with different kinds of converts: books and magazine articles recount challenges faced by converts in the West from Islam.
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Two Italian journalists presented a book that recounts the testimony of converts from Islam to Christianity, while at the same time “Time” magazine ask why fundamentalism is growing among converts to Islam.
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According to Paolucci, converts to Christianity have many problems and challenges including that of getting others to know about their experiences, unlike that which occurs to Westerners who convert to Islam. In fact, the author confesses that the first obstacle they faced in writing the book was in finding people willing to offer their testimony without fear. This caution explains, also, why it is difficult to ascertain specific data on the number of converts from Islam.

Converts from Islam: unseen and unheard
Spero News, October 3, 2006

Moroccan immigrant hangs himself after his Muslim family bitterly opposed his decision to convert to Catholicism, threatening and savagely beating him

Prosecutors are probing the death of a 22-year-old Moroccan immigrant who wanted to convert from Islam to Catholicism. Said Bouidra was found hanged in the central Italian port city of Civitavecchia outside Rome late Wednesday.

Bouidra's family was reported to have bitterly opposed his decision to convert to Catholicism and to had threatened and beaten him.

Earlier on Wednesday he had tried to drown himself in the sea but had been saved by Italian paramilitary 'Carabinieri' police and port officials, news reports said.

Prosecutors will investigate why he was allowed to discharge himself from a local psychiatric hospital where he was admitted after he tried to drown himself.

They will also look at claims by Bouidra's friends that he had told them members of his family had threatened and savagely beaten him over his planned conversion.

"Said was terrified of his father, who under no circumstances wanted a Christian for a son," said Civitavecchia's local councillor for social services, Chiara Guidoni

Italy: Moroccan would-be convert 'hangs himself'
AKI, December 3, 2009

Teenager at the centre of a prostitution probe says her father threw a pan of boiling oil over her when she was 12-years-old after she told him she wanted to convert to Catholicism

The Moroccan teenage nightclub dancer at the centre of a prostitution probe involving Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday she'd been raped as a child by two uncles and had boiling oil poured over her.

"When I was nine years old, I was raped by two of my uncles - my father's brothers," Karima El Mahgroug said in an interview on one of Berlusconi's TV channels.

"The only person who I dared to talk to about what happened, my mother, said - keep quiet, because if your dad finds out you're not a virgin, he'll kill you," said El Mahroug, who is more often known by her stagename Ruby.

After she was raped, she invented a 'parallel world' to shut out the horror. "I told my schoolmates I had a marvellous family, and I pretended I was Wonderwoman."

But her immigrant father was violent towards her and when she was 12, he threw a pan of boiling oil over her after she said she wanted to become a Catholic, El Mahroug claimed.

After that incident, El Mahroug said she first ran away from the family home in the eastern Sicilian coastal town of Letojanni, and stole a woman's handbag before being found by police.

Italy: Berlusconi teen makes shocking new revelations
AKI, January 19, 2011

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