Turkey: Jewish prisoner says ‘I fear for my life. They want me to convert to Islam.’

The Qur’an says “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). However, what constitutes “compulsion” is in the eye of the beholder. The institutionalized subjugation of the dhimma, with its regular humiliation and harassment, from which one can be freed for the simple price of converting to Islam, is not considered compulsion. Remember Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, the journalists who were kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam — even though their conversions were obviously coerced, their captors made them say that they were converting freely, and the captors probably believed that themselves. After all, the journos could have chosen to be killed instead.

“Jewish prisoner in Turkey: ‘I fear for my life. They want me to convert to Islam,’” Arutz Sheva, April 16, 2021 5:53 PM
Share

“I cry and pray every day for a miracle,” Fabian Azoulay, a French Jew, wrote to his family after being imprisoned in the Gerson prison in Turkey for a drug offense. “I can not imagine myself here for another 16 years and eight months.”

According to a report in Israel Hayom, Azoulay was sentenced in 2017 to 16 years and eight months in prison. His case has recently attracted significant attention as his lawyers and family members push to have him extradited to France.

Israel Hayom reports that Azoulay, 43, has been incarcerated for the past four years. He is gay, and claims that he is harassed and threatened both because of his sexual orientation and because of his religion. He came to Turkey four years ago, like many Israelis do, for a hair transplant. He bought GBL, a party drug, for $300, from a website in Lithuania with delivery to his hotel in Turkey, and claimed he did not know that its use was banned in the country. Turkish customs seized the shipment and arrested the recipient….

“The situation is terrible,” one of his lawyers, Carol-Olivia Montano, told France 24. She said, “He is harassed by other prisoners who tell him to convert to Islam and pray five times a day, as well as because of his sexual orientation.”…