"Are you not ashamed that your son became Christian?" the founder of a mosque here reportedly asked Ruhul Amin Khandaker, father of a 32-year-old businessman who went to Australia earlier this year to court a Philippine Catholic woman, converting to her faith in April.
"Why did you not sacrifice your son like cattle before telling the news to us,?" Christian news agency Compass Direct News quoted the mosque as saying. Khandaker said he has become a social outcast and that his family members live under threat from their fellow Muslims.
His son, Rashidul Amin Khandaker, has reportedly applied for protection from Australian immigration officials as he believes police in 88 percent-Muslim Bangladesh would do nothing to protect him from Islamists threatening to kill him.
DEATH THREATS
"They will try to kill me anywhere, any time in Bangladesh, and the police and the authority will not protect me," Rashidul Khandaker wrote in his plea to Australian authorities, published by Compass Direct News. "There are records that show a converted person is not protected by the police, authority and society."
Muslim leaders in Dhaka also ordered Khandaker’s 65-year-old father to “disown his son” and exclude him from his wealth and property. “If he comes to Bangladesh, you must hand him over to us and we will punish him,” the founder of the mosque allegedly told the elder Khandaker.
Khandaker, who operates an oil lubricant refining business in the Kutubkhali area under Jatrabari police jurisdiction in central Dhaka, told reporters pg the grief he experienced when his son informed the family from Sydney that he had become a Christian.
"My other sons and relatives informed it to the nearby cleric of the mosque so that the cleric could console me," he said. “Unfortunately the cleric was so furious . . . [He] told me that, ‘You cannot keep any relationship with your son. A man of a noble Muslim family cannot be a Christian, and the society cannot accept it."
MARKETING DIRECTOR
When Rashidul Khandaker, who worked as director of marketing in his father’s business before going to Australia to pursue a relationship with a woman he met over the Internet, telephoned friends in Dhaka about his conversion, some eight of them allegedly broke into his house to loot his computer, scanner, printer, documents, sofa and other valuables.
"They told me, ‘We will return everything when your son comes back. Whenever he will come back, you must hand him over to us – we will take revenge for his activities. Until he comes, don’t mix with the people in the society and stay in your house,’" the father was quoted as saying.
He has been reluctant to report the case to police, after apparently receiving death threats. Khandaker said he does not want to deprive his son of his property and wealth. “If all of my property and wealth is destroyed, I can tolerate that, but one thing I cannot tolerate is to carry the coffin of my son on my shoulders,” Khandaker said in a statement published by Compass Direct News.
Officials have been under pressure to protect the family as religious rights are protected under the country’s constitution, but it was unclear Thursday, October 16, when and if local police would intervene. The latest case comes after a series of threats against Christians and former Muslims converting to Christianity in the country, BosNewsLife monitored.
Bangladeshi Christians constitute about 300,000 of the 140 million people in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, according to estimates.
