Source: Jubilee Campaign, December 31, 2020<\/p>\n
On December 29,<\/a> it was revealed that lawyers and government officials of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have approved The Freedom of Religion Bill of 2020 which has raised many concerns among the nation\u2019s religious minorities. This new legislation, according to Reuters, \u201cwould make pressuring a woman to convert to their husband\u2019s religion a crime punishable with imprisonment.\u201d<\/p>\n Just a month prior<\/a>, the Indian state Uttar Pradesh passed a similar law, the Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance. In both Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, officials claim that the legislation is aimed at \u201ccurb[ing] religious conversions using misrepresentation, allurement, force, threat, undue influence, coercion, marriage or any other \u2018fraudulent means.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n However, though there is no specific religion mentioned in the bill, critics believe it may indiscriminately target the nation\u2019s Muslim and Christian communities. For some time, radical Hindu nationalists have accused\u2014without credible evidence\u2014India\u2019s Muslims of engaging in a \u201cLove Jihad\u201d campaign by which they coerce Hindu women to convert to Islam with the promise of marriage. Similarly, politicians in Madhya Pradesh have repeatedly criticized and condemned Christian missionaries, who they claim make promises of education and financial support to Hindu women in exchange for their conversion to Christianity.<\/p>\n \u00bb Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00bb Morning Star News reports the arrest of a Korean Christian and several other suspects<\/a> under the new anti-conversion law in Uttar Pradesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Jubilee Campaign, December 31, 2020 On December 29, it was revealed that lawyers and government officials of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have approved The Freedom of Religion Bill of 2020 which has raised many concerns among the nation\u2019s religious minorities. This new legislation, according to Reuters, \u201cwould make pressuring a woman to … Continue reading INDIA: States Ratify Anti-Conversion Laws<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9795,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9794\/revisions\/9795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}