STEPHEN GLOVER: It’s proper the Church cares about asylum seekers…

As a religious Hindu, Rishi Sunak might typically ponder whether the Church of England has obtained it in for him.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has emerged as one of many ringleaders within the House of Lords who wish to emasculate the Government’s Bill to pack off asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Justin Welby, who enjoys supporting fireplace from a bevy of like-minded Anglican bishops, isn’t one to drag his punches. 

He mentioned final week that the Rwanda scheme was ‘damaging Britain’s status and the rule of legislation’. He had beforehand steered that it’s the ‘opposite of the nature of God’. An enormous declare.

Now accusations are piling up that, in frequent with different church buildings, the C of E has been conducting mass conversions of Muslim asylum seekers to Christianity that facilitate their purposes to stay on this nation. This course of has been dubbed ‘Pray to Stay’.

Suella Braverman wrote over the weekend that in her latest stint as Home Secretary she ‘became aware of churches around the country facilitating industrial-scale bogus asylum claims’. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel has weighed in with related objections.

The spark that ignited this outrage was the revelation that Abdul Ezedi, suspected of finishing up a dreadful chemical assault final week in Clapham, south London, had been granted asylum on the premise that he had transformed to Christianity. 

This was even supposing he had been convicted of a intercourse crime three years earlier. Two earlier purposes had been rejected.

You would possibly assume the C of E authorities would say one thing alongside the traces of: Ezedi might have been responsible of deception and, if he was, they’re very sorry about this appalling case.

Not a little bit of it. According to a Church spokesman: ‘It is the role of the Home Office, and not the Church, to vet asylum seekers.’ Nor was it conscious of any hyperlinks to Ezedi. This could also be true, because it now seems Ezedi had dealings with the Roman Catholic and Baptist church buildings.

Nonetheless, the C of E’s response sounded indifferent and lofty. Disingenuous, too, given its position within the conversion of asylum seekers. Nor was it very Christian.

The truth is that over latest years our Established Church has purposely transformed Muslim asylum seekers — definitely many a whole bunch and doubtless 1000’s of them — to Christianity as a part of its so-called Presence & Engagement programme.

A clue to the C of E’s official pondering is in a doc known as ‘Supporting Asylum Seekers — Guidance For Church Of England Clergy’. It means that in responding to accusations that asylum seekers might opportunistically convert to Christianity, ‘the anti-immigration rhetoric of a number of media outlets must be acknowledged’.

In brief, it’s all obtained up by components of the media, which ‘support a broader political narrative about British identity, rights and values, as was particularly evident in the run-up to the EU referendum’. 

This is bare anti-Brexit propaganda, which is shared by most bishops and plenty of clergy however not (in line with persuasive analysis) by a majority of worshippers.

Now in fact there may be nothing improper with the C of E changing individuals from any religion or of none. That is central to its mission. I, for one, would rejoice if our typically fairly defeatist nationwide Church boosted its dwindling numbers by making real conversions.

But is that what is occurring? The query society has a proper to ask — and which the C of E refuses to reply — is whether or not some, and even many, of those asylum seekers are cynically pretending to embrace Christianity with a view to make it well-nigh unimaginable to ship them again to the nations from which they’ve come.

A Muslim who converts to Christianity is within the eyes of Islam an apostate, and there are a lot of nations — Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, to call however a couple of — the place apostates might face mortal hazard.

That Muslim asylum seekers are present process conversion on a substantial scale can’t be doubted. At Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, round 200 asylum seekers transformed to Christianity over a four-year interval. About 200 Iranian asylum seekers had been baptised over a five-year interval in a parish church in Stockton-on-Tees close to Middlesbrough.

Were these converts all real? I’ve little doubt a few of them had been. Yet it appears odd that so many Muslims, who simply occur to be asylum seekers, ought to abruptly be queuing as much as be transformed, having not beforehand proven the slightest curiosity in Christianity.

There are some instances, akin to that of Abdul Ezedi, the place the insincerity of the conversion is subsequently illuminated. For instance, in 2021 an Iraqi asylum seeker known as Emad Al Swealmeen blew himself up exterior a maternity hospital in Liverpool. Four years earlier he had been confirmed as an Anglican on the metropolis’s cathedral.

In 2018, a 38-year-old Iranian asylum seeker who raped a teenage lady was spared deportation though a choose believed that his conversion to Christianity was a ploy to beat the system. The choose dominated that he would nonetheless be liable to persecution if despatched again to Iran after serving 5 years in jail.

In 2020, two Glasgow-based Iranian Muslims claimed to have transformed to Christianity, although considered one of them had fairly just lately been on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. The different’s declare that he was gay was disbelieved by the choose, who thought he needs to be deported. Yet in the long run each males had been allowed to remain.

There is little doubt that, aided by canny immigration attorneys, and facilitated by Church authorities which can be at greatest credulous and at worst conniving, some asylum seekers are utilizing the pretence of conversion to allow them to remain within the United Kingdom.

The newest supporting proof is offered by occasions on the Bibby Stockholm, a barge in Portland, Dorset, the place about 300 asylum seekers are kicking their heels whereas their purposes collect mud.

According to studies, 40 of these on board are changing to Christianity. So says somebody described as a ‘church elder’, who might effectively characterize a distinct denomination from the Church of England.

It’s preposterous to suppose that multiple in seven of these on board ought to instantly be real converts. We don’t know their earlier non secular affiliations, if any. We do know — and so they know — that if they will persuade immigration tribunals that they’ve grow to be Christian, their probabilities of remaining on this nation will vastly enhance.

By the best way, I ponder whether the Roman Catholic Church, regardless of its potential hyperlinks to Ezedi, is such a simple contact because the C of E. I doubt it, because it shows a way of rigorous inquiry in the direction of potential converts, together with Christians, that’s absent in our extra versatile nationwide Church.

It’s not solely the Church of England that’s at fault. Platoons of attorneys have noticed a loophole, and a few immigration judges are too accommodating. Nor is it any good for ministers and ex-ministers merely to grouse about our wayward Church. They might do one thing.

But I do assume the Church of England — whose Primate, Justin Welby, is so free in his ethical condemnation of the Government — ought to look at itself extra critically. It’s proper that it ought to care in regards to the welfare of asylum seekers. But it isn’t proper for it to facilitate sham conversions that subvert the legislation of the land.