Author Topic: Stories of Conversion (Read 88395 times)

Persto · « **Reply #165 on:** August 08, 2026, 07:06:59 AM »

https://grokipedia.com/page/Abdul_Rahman_(convert)

The Conversion of Abdul Rahman
Abdul Rahman was born in 1965 in Kabul, Afghanistan, into a Muslim family.  His mother, Ghul Begum, raised his children during periods of his absence from the family home.  Details of Rahman's early childhood and education remain sparse in available records, with no verified accounts of his schooling or formative influences prior to adulthood. He married and had at least two daughters, who later described family tensions stemming from his prolonged absences, including an eight-year period without returning home.  By his early thirties, Rahman had relocated temporarily to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he began working with international aid groups assisting Afghan refugees amid the country's civil conflicts.

Abdul Rahman converted from Islam to Catholicism around 1990, while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian organization.  During this time, Rahman encountered Christian teachings through his professional environment, leading him to abandon Islam and convert to Catholicism, reportedly after engaging with the faith's doctrines.  He kept his conversion private for over a decade, possessing a Bible but not publicly practicing until family disputes in Afghanistan brought it to light in 2006.

Abdul Rahman, aged 41, was arrested in Kabul in February 2006 by Afghan police on charges of apostasy after his family reported his conversion to Christianity during a custody dispute over his two daughters, then 13 and 14 years old. The daughters had lived with their grandparents throughout their lives while Rahman resided abroad, and he sought custody upon returning to Afghanistan in 2002; his estranged family, including relatives who had divorced him over his faith change, denounced him to authorities amid the conflict, prompting police to seize a Bible from his possession.  The arrest highlighted tensions between personal family matters and enforcement of Islamic law in post-Taliban Afghanistan, where apostasy from Islam carries severe penalties under sharia interpretations predominant in the judiciary.  Rahman, who had converted approximately 16 years earlier while working in Pakistan, faced immediate detention without formal charges initially, as prosecutors prepared a case based on family testimony and recovered Christian materials.

Abdul Rahman was formally charged with apostasy (riddah) an act deemed a direct affront to Islamic principles under Afghan law.  The legal foundation for the apostasy charge derived from Article 130 of Afghanistan's 2004 Constitution, which mandates application of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence in cases not covered by the Penal Code, treating apostasy as an offense punishable by death for adult males who fail to recant after a "grace period for repentance."   Prosecutors, led by figures invoking Sharia interpretations, argued that Rahman's refusal to revert to Islam constituted ѕєdιтισn against the faith and society, warranting execution to deter similar conversions, as apostasy was viewed not merely as a personal belief change but as a threat to communal order.  Afghan Penal Code Article 1 explicitly deferred such religious offenses to Islamic law, absent codified statutes on apostasy.

During the trial, presided over by Judge Abdul Raoof, Rahman openly affirmed his Catholic faith, stating he would not return to Islam even under threat of death, and presented a Bible as evidence of his beliefs.   On March 23, 2006, the court sentenced him to death by hanging, prompting an automatic appeal to higher courts due to the severity of the penalty, which required review and presidential approval under Afghan procedure.  The proceedings drew criticism for procedural irregularities, including limited access to defense counsel and reliance on religious rather than secular evidentiary standards.

During Abdul Rahman's apostasy trial in Kabul in March 2006, the primary legal defense centered on assertions of his mental incompetence, which provided a procedural escape from enforcing the death penalty under Sharia law for renouncing Islam.  A state prosecutor first raised the possibility on March 22, 2006, stating that Rahman, aged 41, might be mentally unfit to stand trial due to observed instability during proceedings.  This claim was echoed by Rahman's relatives, who alleged he had exhibited mental problems for years, potentially dating back to the early 1990s amid personal hardships including family disputes and time abroad.  The court responded by ordering a psychiatric evaluation to assess Rahman's competency, suspending the trial on March 26, 2006, pending medical findings from Afghan doctors. Prosecutors explicitly conditioned the apostasy case's continuation on these results, framing mental unfitness as a potential bar to conviction.

Despite this, Rahman personally rejected the mental health allegations, insisting during questioning that his condition was normal and his conversion to Catholicism was a deliberate act of faith rather than delusion.  These mental fitness claims ultimately facilitated Rahman's release from Pol-e-Charkhi Prison on March 28, 2006, after the court dismissed charges citing insufficient evidence alongside doubts about his sanity, avoiding a direct confrontation with apostasy enforcement. Afghan officials described the decision as grounded in his deemed unfitness for trial, though critics noted it served as a pragmatic workaround amid international pressure, preserving judicial deference to Islamic penal codes without execution.  Rahman later reiterated his soundness of mind upon fleeing to Italy for asylum, underscoring the claims' role more as a legal technicality than substantiated diagnosis.

On March 27, 2006, an Afghan court dismissed the apostasy charges against Abdul Rahman, citing insufficient evidence and procedural irregularities in the prosecution's case.  The following day, March 28, Rahman was released from custody in Kabul after spending over two weeks in detention, with officials attributing the decision in part to doubts about his mental competency to stand trial.  Afghan authorities, including the attorney general, emphasized that the dismissal stemmed from a lack of prosecutable evidence rather than any substantive ruling on the apostasy law itself, which remained enforceable under Sharia principles incorporated into the Afghan constitution.  The release occurred amid mounting international scrutiny, though Afghan officials downplayed external influence, insisting the outcome was determined by domestic legal processes.  Rahman, who maintained his Christian faith publicly, was immediately placed under protective custody by U.S. and Afghan forces due to credible death threats from hardline clerics and protesters demanding his execution.  No formal pardon was issued, and the court avoided a direct confrontation with Islamic jurisprudence by framing the dismissal around Rahman's alleged mental instability—a claim his supporters disputed as a pretext to resolve the impasse without challenging religious penalties.

Following his release from custody on March 28, 2006, Abdul Rahman was transferred to an undisclosed secure location within Kabul amid immediate and severe threats to his life, including public fatwas from Afghan clerics demanding his execution for apostasy and warnings from Islamist groups that they would kill him upon sighting.  These threats stemmed from widespread public outrage and protests in Afghanistan, where conservative religious leaders and segments of the population viewed his survival as an affront to Islamic law, prompting Afghan officials to prioritize his evacuation to prevent vigilante violence. Rahman was granted political asylum by Italy on March 29, 2006, and departed Afghanistan that day via a flight arranged with international assistance, marking the resolution of his immediate relocation amid diplomatic pressures from Western nations.  Italian authorities provided him with protected status, citing the incompatibility of Afghanistan's apostasy enforcement with human rights norms, though details of his integration, such as residency permits or name changes for anonymity were not publicly disclosed to safeguard his safety.  As of 2006, Rahman resided in Italy under ongoing security measures, with no subsequent verified public statements, interviews, or appearances from him, indicative of a deliberate low-profile existence to mitigate residual risks from transnational Islamist networks capable of targeting exiles.  No credible reports confirm changes in his location or status beyond Italy in the intervening years, reflecting the effectiveness of asylum protocols in shielding high-risk converts from retaliation, though experts note that such individuals often forgo visibility to avoid drawing attention from groups like the Taliban, who regained influence in Afghanistan by 2021.

Persto · « **Reply #166 on:** August 08, 2026, 07:07:35 AM »

Persto · « **Reply #167 on:** August 09, 2026, 07:11:50 AM »

https://dungiljan.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-conversion-of-gary-cooper.html
The Conversion of Gary Cooper

In his role as Lou Gehrig in 'Pride of the Yankees.'

I share with you the touching story of one of the silver screen starts of the 30, 40s and 50s. Gary Cooper was born on May 7, 1901, and was known for his integrity and honesty. He never acted the part of a delinquent or a killer, because he felt it would go against the strength of his character. After a career that spanned 35 years in Hollywood, featuring in 84 films, word spread around that he was converting to the Catholic faith. He was very close to Bing Crosby and Irene Dunn, who had a mission of bringing Christ into the Hollywood scene.

Cooper was a Hollywood icon, known for such classics as Sergeant York (1941), Pride of the Yankees (1941), and High Noon (1952). Naturally, women flocked to him, which was not always the best thing for his soul, nor for his marriage after he wed beautiful New York socialite Veronica “Rocky” Balfe on December 15, 1933, whose uncle Cedric Gibbons was MGM’s art director.

Perhaps it was because of Veronica’s faith that the couple’s marriage had endured so long, despite Cooper’s many, and at times public, infidelities. One of these affairs nearly destroyed their marriage. When Cooper had finished working on The Fountainhead (1949), he seriously considered leaving his wife for his then co-star, Patricia Neal.

Meanwhile, God brought good out of evil. After separating from his family in May 1951, Coop came to see the emptiness in his life. “While he enjoyed his bachelor life,” Maria writes, “my father realized this was not really making him happy.” His character Will Kane in High Noon, filmed in the fall of 1951, reflected perfectly the moral conflict he was feeling.

Just as he was coming to terms with his own deeper needs, the family traveled to Europe in June 1953 for a High Noon publicity tour, which included a visit to the Vatican. (Though separated, they continued visiting and traveling together, and Coop stayed in touch through letters and phone calls.) On June 26, they met Pope Pius XII, which made a lasting impression on Cooper, still years away from his conversion. At that time Cooper was not religious, never mind Catholic; but his wife, Veronica “Rocky” Balfe, was a devout Catholic.

In February 1954, when Maria was sixteen, her father returned home just as he finished filming Return to Paradise (1953), about a father who returns home to love and nurture his sixteen-year-old daughter. He missed his “dear girls” while he was oceans away, filming on location. Moreover, Rocky had “found her own self” in those years of separation. She socialized, gained a reputation as a fabulous host and, “impressed my father,” Maria writes, “with her own glamour, spunk, and verve”—exactly the elements that “were important for him in a woman.”

After settling back into married life, he strayed again at times, gallingly going for less-refined women—his affair with the Swedish actress Anita Ekberg a salient example. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he sheepishly told his wife with that classic boyish innocence. She wasn’t amused.

After Sunday Mass together, Maria said, they would joke about “the very erudite, funny” Fr. Harold Ford—“a real man,” whom her father called “Father Tough Stuff.” Cooper was intrigued by what he had to say, and said, “Oh, I’d like to hear him some day.” So Rocky said, “Well, come along.” So he did—this time, outside the ordinary Christmas and Easter routine.

Though he never talked about it, Maria senses that, after her father returned home, “he probably was looking for some more stability than he found personally.…” Father Ford’s sermons made him think, she said. Everything was coming together. “I know he realized in the last five years of his life,” said Maria, “with incredible gratitude all the blessings he’d been given,” and he wanted to “acknowledge it externally.… And, I think having a living, active connection to a spiritual structure, which he had never had… was part of the appeal.”

And, so, some fifteen years after making Sergeant York—Cooper’s favorite and most memorable role, for which he won his first Oscar—he was walking in York’s footsteps, spiritually. Contrary to some accounts, Rocky did not engineer her husband’s conversion. “It wasn’t knocking him over the head,” Maria said. “Because, believe me, no one made my father do what he didn’t want to do.” However, she did invite Fr. Ford to their home, thinking the two men might share some spiritual reflections. Instead, they shared their mutual interest in guns, hunting, fishing and scuba diving. “Father Ford,” writes Maria, “became a scuba buddy and joined us diving in the large marine land of the Pacific tank where we all cavorted with its inhabitants.”

In the midst of cavorting, the talk occasionally began to drift toward religion. As Alvin York said, “A fellow can’t go looking for it; it’s just got to come to a fellow.” Fr. Ford and Cooper began getting together for longer discussions about faith on drives up to Malibu and elsewhere. Gradually, Cooper evidently concluded, in Ma York’s famous words, “a little religion wouldn’t do him no hurt” and, in fact, could do him great good. As he told Hollywood reporter Ruth Waterbury:

"Last winter, when I began trying to find out how to be less of a bum, I saw that religion is a sort of check up on yourself, a kind of patterned way of behaving. As I saw it, if a fellow goes to church, any church, and tries to straighten out his mind, it sure helps. After I digested that idea, I began thinking how our family had always done everything together. Therefore, I figured if I was trying to change from the careless sloppy sort of guy I am, it seemed silly to go to a different church from the one my girls attend."

On April 9, 1959, Gary Cooper was formally admitted into the Catholic Church. Close family friend Shirley Burden, himself a convert, served as Cooper’s godfather at his baptism, and Dolores Hart was his godmother. Burden—Cornelius Vanderbilt’s great-great-grandson, whose wife was Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s niece—met with Cooper several times beforehand to help him understand this new role. It would be the role of a lifetime and Cooper knew it would not be easy. A few months after his conversion he met the pope again with his wife and daughter.

He reflected in the same interview with Waterbury shortly after his conversion:

"I’d spent all my waking hours…doing almost exactly what I, personally, wanted to do and what I wanted to do wasn’t always the most polite thing either.… This past winter I began to dwell a little more on what’s been in my mind for a long time (and thought), “Coop, old boy, you owe somebody something for all your good fortune.” I guess that’s what started me thinking seriously about my religion. I’ll never be anything like a saint. I know. I just haven’t got that kind of fortitude. The only thing I can say for me is that I’m trying to be a little better. Maybe I’ll succeed."

He told his doctor, ‘I’ve lived long enough to have the courage to confront the trials of life. “I know,” announced Cooper as he lay dying, “that what is happening is God’s will. I am not afraid of the future.” My hope is not in this world anymore. I have a strong enough faith that convinces me that the future does not lie here, but in the hereafter.’

He frequently received the sacraments during his illness. During the last few days of his life, while he was receiving his third Oscar, he followed the ceremony from home on TV, and was heard saying ‘I’ve had many blessings in my life – I have one wish left – to die a peaceful death.’ He received the last rites and whispered his last words ‘Thy will be done. Lord, help me die without fear.’ Gary Cooper died at the age of 60, of prostate and colon cancer on May 13, 1961, Feast of Our Lady of Fatima,

Persto · « **Reply #168 on:** August 09, 2026, 07:19:51 AM »

Persto · « **Reply #169 on:** August 10, 2026, 07:50:55 AM »

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Author Topic: Stories of Conversion (Read 88395 times)

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