Poor and Desperate, Pakistani Hindus Accept Islam to Get By. Drawn by jobs or land offered by Muslim groups, some Hindus, facing discrimination and a virus-ravaged economy, are essentially converting to survive.

New York Times ^ | August 4, 2020 | Maria Abi-Habib and Zia ur-Rehman

[karpov]

The Hindus performed the prayer rituals awkwardly in supplication to their new, single god, as they prepared to leave their many deities behind them. Their lips stumbled over Arabic phrases that, once recited, would seal their conversion to Islam. The last words uttered, the men and boys were then circumcised.

Dozens of Hindu families converted in June in the Badin district of Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Video clips of the ceremony went viral across the country, delighting hard-line Muslims and weighing on Pakistan’s dwindling Hindu minority.

The mass ceremony was the latest in what is a growing number of such conversions to Pakistan’s majority Muslim faith in recent years — although precise data is scarce. Some of these conversions are voluntary, some not.

News outlets in India, Pakistan’s majority-Hindu neighbor and archrival, were quick to denounce the conversions as forced. But what is happening is more subtle. Desperation, religious and political leaders on both sides of the debate say, has often been the driving force behind their change of religion.

Treated as second-class citizens, the Hindus of Pakistan are often systemically discriminated against in every walk of life — housing, jobs, access to government welfare. While minorities have long been drawn to convert in order to join the majority and escape discrimination and sectarian violence, Hindu community leaders say that the recent uptick in conversions has also been motivated by newfound economic pressures.

...

At independence in 1947, Hindus composed 20.5 percent of the population of the areas that now form Pakistan. In the following decades, the percentage shrank rapidly, and by 1998 — the last government census to classify people by religion — Hindus were just 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s population. Most estimates say it has further dwindled in the past two decades.

[karpov]

It is unwise for non-Muslim countries to allow large-scale Muslim immigration.

[wastedyears]

islam is a scourge upon the Earth and must be expunged.

[TigersEye]

In India’s case the muslim invasion started about 800 years ago and they didn’t really “allow” them to immigrate. It was more a case of the muslims allowing the Indians to keep their heads if they surrendered.

[shanover]

We had all of the momentum right after 9/11 and how insane is it that Islam has become STRONGER as has the left?

[Starcitizen]

Hindus do the exact same thing to Muslims and Christians. Hinduism is a trash religion that we are importing into the USA, including its extreme racism and caste system.

[left that other site]

I’d rather die.

[ronnie raygun]

Thank you georgie bush