Christian converts seeking asylum in Britain rejected for failing to recite Ten Commandments correctly
As more Christian converts seek asylum in Britain, officials try to determine if their faith is genuine by asking them to recite the Ten Commandments from memory.
With the growing number of Christian converts entering Germany, the British government attempts to address doubts that some Christian converts may be faking their newfound faith in order to claim asylum in Britain. And one of the ways officials do this is by testing their knowledge on the Ten Commandments.
Those who fail to correctly recite these important laws of Christianity are rejected.
However, this method has sparked an outcry from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom, which claims that this is an unfair treatment for Christian converts. Many questions, the group said, focus on Bible trivia instead of faith, and this could lead to the rejection of genuine believers.
"The problem with those questions is that if you are not genuine you can learn the answers, and if you are genuine, you may not know the answers," said Baroness Berridge, head of the parliamentary group, according to BBC.
She added that the caseworkers assessing the asylum seekers' cases are not properly trained, yet they are allowed to make "decisions which can be life or death for people."
Mohammed, one of the refugees who has sought asylum, was rejected because he failed to enumerate the Ten Commandments during the interview.
He said one of the questions asked of him was to identify the color of the Bible's cover. He found the question "very strange" because he knew that Bible covers have different colors, and his own Bible had a red cover.
"If you've come to faith in an underground house church, where you've been able to borrow a New Testament for a week and have encountered the risen Lord Jesus, you're not going to know when the date of Pentecost is," he said.
Mohammad said officials should be able to distinguish between people with a "head knowledge" of Bible trivia and those who know have "heart knowledge" about their faith.
