‘Forced’ Conversions in the British Sikh Diaspora

[Asiansoul]

Interesting document:

Introduction
In August 2007, The BBC Asian Network broadcast a live discussion about ‘so
called’ ‘forced’ conversions of Sikh (and Hindu) ‘girls’ to Islam following an article
claiming that the police denied this was happening with no evidence or record of a
single case to date.1
The debate involved various people phoning in many of them
recalling stories from a friend of a friend they knew who had been coerced into
converting to Islam and one girl recalled her own experience of being ‘lured’ away
from Sikhism by a Muslim boy who tried to ‘groom’, ‘manipulate’ and ‘entrap’ her
within the folds of Islam. This story is all too familiar within the Sikh community,
such a narrative has been persistently reproduced to warn ‘vulnerable’ Sikh ‘girls’
about the ‘dangers’ of ‘predatory’ Muslim men, a tale which has become so deeply
embedded within the Sikh imagination, a myth which continues to resurface within
the public eye, readily consumed by the diaspora.
One must question, for what reasons does this particular story remain so
integral within the Sikh community? Why are Muslims thought to pose such a threat
to the Sikh identity? And why has this narrative remained so prominent and
subscribed by so many Sikhs in the absence of police or other evidence to support
such claims?

https://cers.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/...ery-echoes.pdf