Algeria's tiny Catholic community is in trouble with the authorities because of a mistaken belief that it wants to convert Muslims, the country's Roman Catholic archbishop said on Wednesday.Archbishop of Algiers Henri Teissier said increased activity by evangelical Christians in the overwhelmingly Muslim country had led to periodic "serious difficulties" for Catholics even though the church had clearly explained it was not involved.
"For the last two years, we have serious difficulties made for us by the Algerian administration every two or three months," he said.
"I think it's due to the fight against the proselytising by evangelical groups."
"We are not responsible for this evangelism. But the administration continues to take measures against us," he said.
"(Evangelicals) ... have arrived in Africa. And the first to have suffered from the actions of these groups are Catholics."
Teissier was commenting on the case of French priest Pierre Wallez, given a suspended one year prison sentence last month.
Wallez was convicted under a two-year-old law that limits non-Muslim public worship to specific buildings approved by the state.
The law, which also forbids non-Muslims from seeking to convert Muslims, was prompted by what officials have described as an increase in the activities of Christian evangelical sects.
Complaints by government officials about the alleged conversion efforts have reached a crescendo in recent weeks.
The Arabic-language Algerian press has for some weeks run a protest campaign at what editorialists call the "evangelisation" of Algerians in the northwest, around the coast city of Oran, and in Kabylie in the northeast, heartland of the indigenous Berber people.
The papers mainly blame priests from evangelist churches in the United States, whom they accuse of trying to bribe young people away from Islam with gifts of money and promises of visas for Europe if they turn to Christianity.
The ministry of religious affairs puts the number of Christians in the north African country at about 10,000, said for the most part to be expatriates.
Jordan deports expats for 'missionary activities'
Jordan said on Wednesday it has deported several expatriates for carrying out Christian missionary activities in the Muslim kingdom under the guise of charity work.
"Some foreign groups have come to Jordan under the cover of doing charity, but they broke the law and did missionary activities," acting foreign minister Nasser Judeh told a meeting of the lower house of parliament.
"The government has been following up on their illegal work and decided to deport them."
Foreign missionary groups in Jordan are not permitted to seek converts.
Jordan’s 110-member lower house of parliament insisted on Thursday that "Christians in Jordan are an integral part of the society," holding posts in parliament, the government and the armed forces and "living in peace and harmony with their Muslim brothers."
But the deportees, it said in a statement, aimed to undermine these ties.
"After the kingdom opened its doors to some groups to do charitable work, they began missionary activities in cheap ways that feed religious feuding and threaten national security," it said.
Compass Direct News, a Christian news agency, said in January that authorities in Jordan deported or refused residence permits to at least 27 expatriate Christian families and individuals in 2007.
It quoted some deportees as saying that intelligence officers had questioned them over "evangelism of Muslims."
Last week the Council of Churches in Jordan, representing the country's Christian community, warned about what it called 40 "sects" in the kingdom.
It said the actions of the sects, which it did not identify, "threaten the security of the country" and "create religious discord at the heart of the Christian community and between Muslims and Christians."
Jordan's Christian community is estimated to number around four percent of the 5.8 million-strong population and comprises Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Armenian Catholics and Latins.
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