Lecture
Lyn Julius
Thursday 8.01.2026
Lyn Julius
Forced Conversion under Islam
Thursday 8.01.2026
How to watch
This lecture starts on 8 January at 5:00pm (UK).
Summary
As People of the Book, Jews and Christians were permitted to practice their religion under Muslim rule—but there were exceptions. We look at instances in history when Jews were forced to convert to Islam. The Jews of Mashhad, Iran, were forced to convert in 1839, but remarkably, managed to secretly maintain their Judaism.
Lyn Julius
Lyn Julius was born in the UK and educated at the French Lycée in London and the University of Sussex. The daughter of Jewish refugees from Iraq, she is a journalist and founder of Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (www.harif.org). Lyn blogs daily at Point of No Return (www.jewishrefugees.org.uk). Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Huffington Post, Jewish News, and Jerusalem Post. She has a regular column in the Times of Israel and JNS News. Her book Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight has been translated in to Norwegian, Portuguese and Arabic, and a Hebrew version is in progress.