Authorities have expelled five Christian female missionaries from Morocco on the grounds that they were illegally inciting Muslims to convert, the Interior Ministry said Sunday. The missionaries were caught Saturday during an assembly with Moroccan Muslims in Casablanca, the North African kingdom's economic capital, and have been sent to Spain by boat, the Interior Ministry said in a statement carried by the official MAP news agency.
"Numerous pieces of evangelical propaganda material were also seized," including video cassettes in Arabic that advocated conversion to Christianity, the statement said.
A senior Interior Ministry official said the missionaries were four Spaniards and a German woman. He insisted Morocco has nothing against the Christian faith, but that authorities felt the missionaries had gone too far. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with Interior Ministry rules, said the missionaries were expelled without being officially arrested or charged. He could not specify the Christian denomination to which they belonged.
Several Evangelical Christians have been charged or detained in recent months in neighboring Algeria, and authorities throughout North Africa have become increasingly wary of an apparent push by some Protestant churches in this overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim region.
No comments:
Post a Comment