Forty illegal migrants being housed on the Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge in Dorset are reportedly converting to Christianity. That amounts to almost one in seven of those said to be on board.
But officials fear that migrants are faking conversions simply to have their asylum claims accepted, and are considering limiting the role of the Church of England in the approvals process. Allison Pearson, columnist at The Daily Telegraph, asked “how stupid and craven is the Church of England” to believe that all of these claims are genuine.
Contentious conversions have gained attention following a London chemical attack on a mother and her two daughters linked to Abdul Shokoor Ezedi. Ezedi arrived in the UK illegally in 2016 in the back of a lorry and was allowed to stay in the country—despite being a convicted sex offender—after a Christian minister said he had converted to Christianity.
A government source now claims that the minister was a Baptist from a church local to Ezedi. “The one that really made a difference was from the Baptist church,” the source told the Daily Mail. “One personal written submission talked of knowing Ezedi for four years, he had been attending church and they thought he was a genuine convert.”
The source also said the Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle was involved, although the diocese claims it had no involvement in the asylum application.
Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick said that evidence of Ezedi’s faith “may well be spurious or insubstantial.” Friends of the alleged attacker—now at the centre of a nationwide manhunt—described him as a “good Muslim.”
Church officials have been questioned on this subject for a number of years now, including over the approved conversion of Liverpool bomber Emad Al Swealmeen who later detonated a homemade explosive device outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Remembrance Sunday, 2021.
Al Swealmeen was baptised at Liverpool Cathedral in 2015, one year after his first asylum claim was rejected, and was confirmed in 2017, though the Cathedral says it “lost contact” with him the following year and the bishop who carried out the confirmation service had “no specific recollection” of him.
Reporting Al Swealmeen’s case, The Daily Mail said people smugglers are understood to be “pushing migrants to convert to Christianity to improve their chances of gaining British citizenship.” Some claim they would face persecution for their newfound Christian faith if Home Office officials sent them back to the country from which they came. Others are told to lie about their age too.
A church leader says the latest conversions on the Bibby Stockholm barge are sincere, though this has done little to dispel fears that migrants are abusing the system to win themselves the right to stay in Britain.
