The Freedom to Choose a New Faith

ASHLEY SAMELSON

At tomorrow's Easter Vigil, I and hundreds of thousands of other catechumens around the world -- converting from other churches and faiths -- will be baptized, confirmed and received into the Catholic Church. Each of us is invited to take the name of a saint or other biblical figure as our confirmation, or "Christian," name. This name represents a biblical or Christian historical figure of particular meaning to the convert's faith and prayer life. I will take the name Esther.

Corbis

Esther, one of the Bible's daredevils.

As a girl in Sunday school, I had a particular curiosity about the daredevil ladies of the Bible: Rahab the prostitute spy, Deborah the prophetess judge, Ruth the audacious pursuer of romance. But Esther was my favorite -- a daredevil defender of religious freedom.

As a young Jewish woman living in the capital of the Persian Empire, Esther was chosen for her beauty to become the new queen for King Xerxes (485 to 465 B.C.). At the time, Jews in the kingdom were eyed warily for their foreign customs and their refusal to follow certain edicts, such as bowing to government officials. It was a dangerous time to be a Jew, and so in order to accept the queenship, Esther was forced to hide her faith.

But when Esther discovered a plot by the king's vizier to slaughter all the Jews, she boldly marched into the king's court without being summoned -- an offense punishable by death -- and pleaded for her people. The king looked favorably upon her request. The Jews were not only saved from kingdom-wide annihilation; by the revelation of Esther's faith and courage, they were raised from a position of second-class citizenry to full participation in society. The story is told by Jews on the holiday of Purim. What is less known is that Esther's actions led to a wave of conversions of Persians to the Jewish faith, as the Jews were filled with "light, and gladness, and joy, and honor" (Esther 8:16).

Today, around the world, religious persecution is still lamentably common. The right to convert is often threatened along with the right to practice a particular religion. Take the case of Lina Joy, born Azlina binti Jailani, a Malay woman who converted from Islam to Catholicism in 1990 at the age of 26. In order to marry her Catholic fiancé, which, according to Malaysian law, Muslims are forbidden to do, Ms. Joy petitioned the Malaysian government in 1998 to remove "Islam" from her national identification card. The Malaysian Federal Constitution defines ethnic Malays as Muslim by birth, which erects a de facto bar against their conversion from Islam. Her petition was denied unless she obtained an order of the Sharia courts officially labeling her an apostate. She took the issue to court, and after a series of trials, the state declined to alter her identification card. Nineteen years after her conversion, Ms. Joy is still in hiding, afraid her children will be taken from her because they would be considered Muslim and born of an illegitimate marriage.

Ms. Joy is not alone. In 2006, Abdul Rahman was arrested and put on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity in Afghanistan. The Afghani high court that heard his case, dominated by judges sympathetic to Sharia law, gave him a death sentence. After enormous international pressure, the government stayed his execution and allowed him to flee to Italy. The Afghan constitution still criminalizes converting from Islam, and the crime is still punishable by death.

In India, several states ban "forced" conversion, defined so broadly as to encompass charitable works done by humanitarian religious organizations, but such bans are enforced only against those converting from Hinduism. There have been a growing number of converts from the Dalit "untouchable" castes, the lowest in the Hindu system. In recent years, attacks against these converts are on the rise. In the state of Orissa alone, reports of international human-rights organizations have documented some 4,500 houses and churches destroyed, 50,000 people displaced, and over 18,000 injured as a result of violent mobs instigated by Hindu nationalists.

Last year in Sri Lanka, an evangelical pastor was killed by Buddhist extremists for his role in a citizen's conversion to Protestantism. The Buddhist Nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya Party has introduced a bill that would criminalize conversion: Violators would face a fine of 500,000 Sri Lankan rupees -- about three times the per-capita gross domestic product -- and up to seven years in prison.

As I light my candle from the flame of the Easter Vigil bonfire, I will be thinking of Esther's bravery. And I will recall those converts who remain trapped by the shackles of antiapostasy laws, hiding in fear for their lives. I will think about those who must keep the flame of their religious convictions trapped in the shadows of their consciences.

Ms. Samelson is the director of development at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty