Coercion

The Spanish Inquisition was authorized by the Pope in 1478 and abolished only in 1834. It first targeted Jews who had converted to Catholicism (conversos), suspecting them of secretly keeping their old faith, and later also converted Muslims (moriscos), Protestants, and others. Its tribunals used torture, such as the rack and water torture, and held public ceremonies (autos-da-fé) in which the accused were paraded and sentenced. An estimated 150,000 people were prosecuted, and an estimated 3,000–5,000 were executed, mostly by burning at the stake.

During his decades-long wars against the pagan Saxons, Charlemagne ordered in 782 the execution of some 4,500 Saxon prisoners at Verden. His law for the conquered Saxons, the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, decreed (chapter 8): “If any one of the race of the Saxons hereafter concealed among them shall have wished to hide himself unbaptized, and shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan, let him be punished by death.”

The Alhambra Decree of March 1492 gave the Jews of Spain four months to convert to Christianity or leave the country forever, under penalty of death. Between 40,000 and 100,000 left; many others converted to stay. Many of the refugees fled to Portugal, where in 1497 King Manuel I declared the Jews Christian by royal decree, and had those who tried to leave forcibly baptized, after separating them from their children.

On November 11, 1675, Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh guru, was publicly beheaded in Delhi on the orders of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, after three of his companions were tortured to death before his eyes. According to the Sikh tradition, he had taken up the cause of Kashmiri Hindus who were being pressured to convert to Islam, and he himself refused to convert to save his life (Mughal sources give political reasons for his execution). Sikhs commemorate his martyrdom every year, and the Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib stands at the site of his execution.

From at least the 15th century until the early 18th century, the Ottoman Empire practiced the devshirme (“collection”): every few years, officials took Christian boys, typically between the ages of 7 and 20, from families in the Balkans — about one boy for every forty households. The boys were taken to Istanbul, forcibly converted to Islam and circumcised, and trained as soldiers in the elite Janissary corps, or as officials in the sultan’s service. Contemporary accounts describe the despair of the parents, some of whom married off their sons at age 12, or even maimed them, to prevent their being taken.

In 1858, in Bologna, then part of the Papal States, police took six-year-old Edgardo Mortara from his Jewish parents. A Catholic servant claimed she had secretly baptized him years earlier, when he was ill as a baby, and according to Church law, a baptized child could not be raised by non-Christians. Pope Pius IX refused all pleas, including international protests, to return the boy to his family. Edgardo was raised as a Catholic, and became a priest.

For over a century, about 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada were taken from their families and placed in residential schools, funded by the government and mostly run by churches — Catholic, Anglican, United, and Presbyterian. The last school closed in 1997. Children were forbidden to speak their languages and practice their culture, and at least 4,000 of them died, mostly from disease linked to poor conditions. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called the system a “cultural genocide”, designed to “kill the Indian in the child”. In 2022, Pope Francis apologized, and acknowledged it as genocide.

The Peace of Augsburg (1555), which ended the wars between Catholics and Lutherans in the Holy Roman Empire, established the principle of cuius regio, eius religio: each prince determined the religion of his subjects, and those who did not conform could, at best, leave their homes. Other Protestant groups, such as Calvinists and Anabaptists, had no protection at all. As late as 1731, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg expelled about 20,000 Lutherans from his territory.

From 1681, King Louis XIV of France used the Dragonnades against the Protestant Huguenots: dragoons (mounted soldiers) were billeted in Huguenot homes, with implied permission to mistreat the inhabitants, until they converted to Catholicism or fled; households that converted were exempted. In 1685 the king revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted Protestants tolerance, and hundreds of thousands of Huguenots fled France.

In Portuguese Goa, in India, Christian rule came with the destruction of hundreds of Hindu temples, and decrees in 1567 that prohibited building or repairing temples and public Hindu worship, forbade Hindu priests to officiate at weddings, and compelled Hindus to attend church periodically for instruction in Christian doctrine. The Goa Inquisition, active from 1561 to 1812, tried about 16,000 people; most of those sentenced were charged with secretly practicing Hinduism after converting to Christianity.

Hindu nationalist organizations in India run ghar wapsi (“homecoming”) campaigns to “reconvert” Muslims and Christians, on the premise that all Indians are ancestrally Hindu. In December 2014, activists in Agra announced that some 200 poor Muslims had been converted to Hinduism in a ceremony; many of them later said they had been lured with promises of ration cards and money, and did not know what the ceremony was about.

In Pakistan, Hindu and Christian girls, many of them underage, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and married to their abductor or one of his associates. A 2014 report by the Movement for Solidarity and Peace estimated that about 1,000 girls a year suffer this fate, and noted that the true number is likely much higher, as many cases are never reported. In October 2020, 13-year-old Arzoo Raja, a Christian girl from Karachi, was abducted by a 44-year-old neighbor, converted, and married to him. A court initially ruled that she had converted and married of her own free will, and gave her into his custody; only after a public outcry was she removed from his custody.

In the 12th century, the Almohad rulers of North Africa and Muslim Spain abolished the protected (dhimmi) status of Jews and Christians, and gave them the choice of conversion, exile, or death. Many Christians fled north; the family of Maimonides fled Córdoba, and he later wrote the Epistle on Martyrdom to Jews who had outwardly converted under duress. Because the authorities doubted the sincerity of the converts, the caliph al-Mansur required them to wear distinctive clothing, marking them as unreliable Muslims.

In 1839, in Mashhad, Iran, a mob attacked the Jewish community after a false accusation, killing about 35 people. The survivors — about 150 families — were forced to convert to Islam. Known as Jadid al-Islam (“new Muslims”), they took Muslim names and practiced Islam in public, while secretly keeping Judaism at home for generations, until most of them emigrated after World War II.

In 2004–2005, cadets at the US Air Force Academy complained of evangelical Christian pressure by officers, staff, and fellow cadets. In a survey, almost one in five cadets reported unwanted religious proselytizing, and at a Protestant service, chaplains urged cadets to proselytize their roommates, warning that those who did not turn their lives over to Jesus would burn in hell. An Air Force investigation found a “perception of religious bias” at the academy, though it did not find systemic discrimination. In a military hierarchy, “invitations” from a superior are hard to refuse.

Deuteronomy 13:6–10 commands that anyone — even “thy brother … or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom” — who entices others to “serve other gods” must be killed: “thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die”.

In his code of Jewish law, Maimonides (12th century) rules that non-Jews should not be forced to accept the Torah and its commandments. But he adds (Laws of Kings and Wars 8:10): “Moses was commanded by the Almighty to compel all the inhabitants of the world to accept the commandments given to Noah’s descendants. If one does not accept these commands, he should be executed.” These seven Noahide laws include the prohibition of idolatry.

Quran 9:5, known as the “Sword Verse”, says: “kill the polytheists ˹who violated their treaties˺ wherever you find them … But if they repent, perform prayers, and pay alms-tax, then set them free” (the bracketed words are the translator’s interpretation). Quran 9:29 says about Jews and Christians: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day … from among those who were given the Scripture, until they pay the tax, willingly submitting, fully humbled.” At the same time, the Quran also says “there is no compulsion in religion” (2:256).

In June 2014, the Islamic State proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate, claiming religious and political authority over all Muslims worldwide — a claim rejected by the vast majority of Muslims. In the territory it controlled, it enforced its interpretation of Islamic law with public executions, and it inspired and directed terror attacks around the world.

In 2009, Asia Bibi, a Christian farm worker in Pakistan, was accused of blasphemy after an argument with Muslim co-workers, and in 2010 she was sentenced to death by hanging. In 2011, Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, who had defended her and criticized the blasphemy law, was assassinated by his own bodyguard; two months later, Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, was killed as well. In 2018, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted her, citing contradictions in the witnesses’ testimony. She had spent eight years on death row, and had to leave the country for her safety.

In Ireland, Catholic religious orders ran the Magdalene laundries: institutions where about 30,000 women — unmarried mothers, and others deemed “fallen” or morally at risk — were confined and made to do unpaid laundry work, sometimes for many years. The last one closed only in 1996. In 2013, the Irish Prime Minister formally apologized, calling the laundries “the nation’s shame”.

Since the Islamic Revolution, Iranian law has required all women — including non-Muslims and foreign visitors — to cover their hair and wear loose clothing in public. The penal code sets punishments of prison, fines, or up to 74 lashes (Hijab by country), and since 2006 the Guidance Patrol (“morality police”) has stopped and detained women on the streets. In September 2022, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly, and died in custody three days later. A UN fact-finding mission concluded that her death was caused by physical violence she suffered in custody. Her death sparked the largest protests in Iran in years, under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”.

After retaking Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban ordered in May 2022 that women cover their faces in public, preferably with the full-body burqa. In August 2024 they issued the “Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice”, which requires women to cover their entire bodies and faces outside the home, and even forbids their voices to be heard in public, enforced by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The UN human rights office said that the law is “effectively attempting to render them into faceless, voiceless shadows”.

For decades, Saudi Arabia’s religious police (the mutaween) enforced strict dress codes, including the black abaya and face veil for women. On March 11, 2002, a fire broke out at a girls’ school in Mecca, and 15 girls died. According to witnesses cited by the Saudi press and by Human Rights Watch, the religious police prevented girls from escaping because they were not properly covered, and hindered male rescuers from entering (2002 Mecca girls’ school fire). A government inquiry denied that the religious police had worsened the death toll, but control of girls’ education was taken away from the religious authorities. In 2016 the powers of the religious police were sharply curtailed.

In some ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) neighborhoods in Israel, “modesty patrols” (mishmarot tzniut) use threats and violence to enforce their dress code, especially on women. In Beit Shemesh, extremists put up street signs calling for men and women to walk on separate sidewalks, and harassed the girls of a nearby religious school for their “immodest” dress. In December 2011, the story of 8-year-old Naama Margolese, whom Haredi men had spat on as she walked to school because her arms were exposed, shocked the country and led thousands to protest against religious extremism.

On dozens of Israeli public bus lines serving Haredi neighborhoods, known as “mehadrin” lines, women were made to board through the back door and sit at the back of the bus, and those who refused were sometimes harassed and assaulted. In January 2011, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that such segregation is allowed only if it is voluntary, and ordered signs on the buses stating that every passenger may sit wherever they wish. Yet the ruling has been widely ignored, and de facto segregation has continued on many lines.

For years, Haredi residents of Jerusalem held demonstrations to close Bar-Ilan Street, a main road through their neighborhoods, to traffic on Shabbat. The demonstrations often turned violent, with protesters throwing rocks at passing cars and assaulting police — coercing secular drivers into observing a religious law they do not accept.

There is no civil marriage in Israel. Marriage can be performed only by the religious community that the couple belongs to, and for Jews this means the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate, applying Orthodox Jewish law. As a result, a Jew and a non-Jew cannot marry in Israel, same-sex couples cannot marry in Israel, and some Jews are forbidden by Jewish law from marrying each other — for example, a kohen (a descendant of the priestly line) may not marry a divorcee. Many Israelis fly abroad to marry in a civil ceremony (famously, in Cyprus), which the state then recognizes. Divorce between Jews is likewise possible only through the rabbinical courts, which is what traps women as agunot (see Dogma), and see also Restricting love, relationships, and marriage.

In most of Israel, public buses and trains do not run on Shabbat, from Friday evening to Saturday evening (Unpacked) — leaving people without cars stuck at home or dependent on taxis. In 2018, the Knesset passed, by a vote of 58 to 57, a law giving the Interior Minister the power to reject municipal bylaws allowing shops to open on Shabbat. The minister at the time, Aryeh Deri of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, soon rejected the bylaws of five cities.

• The Pig-Raising Prohibition Law (1962) bans raising pigs, except in a few specified Christian Arab areas.
• The Chametz Law (1986) forbids businesses to publicly display leavened bread and other chametz products for sale during Passover (though in practice it is rarely enforced).
• The Meat and Meat Products Law (1994) bans the import of non-kosher meat.

For decades, Jewish Israelis could in practice be buried only by Orthodox burial societies, according to Orthodox religious rites — whatever their own beliefs. In 1996, the Knesset passed a law giving every citizen the right to a free secular burial. But its implementation has been stalled for years, and the Supreme Court has had to intervene again and again to force local authorities to carry it out (Hiddush). To this day, secular burial is unavailable in many parts of the country.

Section 173 of Israel’s Penal Law makes it a crime, punishable by up to a year in prison, to publish anything “liable crudely to offend the religious faith or sentiment of others”, or to say such things in public (Israel Democracy Institute). There is no parallel protection for non-religious beliefs. It is, in effect, a mild version of the blasphemy laws described above.