Two weeks of conflicts over proselytism, from Central Asia to Nigeria. In Kazakhstan, nine alleged Tablighi Jamaat members are tried on hidden-camera evidence; in Uzbekistan, a Shia faces prison for laments posted on Telegram; Pakistan’s top court upholds the ban on the Ahmadiyya founder’s writings. The Muslim World League plans to supply Islamic sources to AI companies, Yad L’Achim reissues an outreach booklet in Russian and Arabic, and Nigeria’s bishops warn of “neo-paganism”. Our analysis follows enforcement from the book to the channel to the private conversation, and asks why a return to ancestral religion is “homecoming” in one place and regression in another.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 21–29 August 2026
Maharashtra’s anti-conversion law took effect on 28 August, and congregations across the state have begun asking worshippers to sign statements that they attend of their own free will — evidence manufactured in advance of an allegation nobody has made. In Palghar, twenty-two women were charged under the ordinary criminal code a week before the statute existed. Russia has designated a children’s evangelism agency an “undesirable organisation”. In Kiribati, an Adventist official explains that broadcasting evades not the state but rival pastors. Also: indigenous missionaries sent to Canada’s First Nations, a Catholic mission in Turkmenistan defining success as remaining, and Indonesian work on “algorithmic piety”.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 7–18 August 2026
The convert, not the missionary, is the figure the law now reaches. An Acehnese court jailed a former Muslim for explaining his conversion on TikTok; a Nigerian federal court told Kano’s Hisbah it has no jurisdiction over a woman who left Islam; ten Catholics walked free in Rajasthan after 104 days in jail for defending their own Mass. In Moscow, a hostel was fined 100,000 roubles for “unlawful missionary activity” because migrant guests kept prayer mats. In Abuja, Nigeria’s Salafi da’wa movement signed peace protocols with northern Christian leaders under Muslim World League patronage.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends- 31 July – 7 August 2026
This week’s briefing opens on a paradox: Nigeria’s Senate has criminalised bus preaching — not under a religion law but under a road-safety act, and defends itself by noting the ban has sat quietly in traffic regulations since 2007. Elsewhere three traditions moved to police their own missionaries: Indonesia’s MUI certified a 49th cohort of preachers, Thailand’s overseas dhammaduta office met in Ulaanbaatar to map legal obstacles, and the IMB deployed physiotherapy where preaching is unwelcome. Plus Yad L’Achim confronts the IDF, and lay Christians outpace their pastors into AI.