Residents in a Serbian village have threatened to convert to Islam if authorities fail to take any action to save their church, which had been damaged by a recent storm, BBC reported quoting a Serbian news site, Alo.
Parish members in Sopic, near Serbian capital Belgrade, made the warning in a letter to Patriarch Irinej, head of Serbia’s Orthodox Church,
In the letter, the congregation called upon Patriarch Irinej to back their campaign. If he fails to do so, the letter said, the parish members “will be forced to to collectively go over to Islam in order to get better protection for facilities under Serbian law.”
The letter also compared the move with “martyrdom,” although it stresses that the converts would “keep Jesus Christ in their heart.”
The row began last July, when a powerful storm blew the roof off the 150-year-old church tower.
The local priest, Mirko Tesic, made arguments that the old church should be pulled down and replaced with a new building, as its foundations are threatened by a landslip.
But the man who penned the letter, Predrag Lazarevic, tells Radio Sarajevo that as a professional geologist, he knows there’s no landslip. Lazarevic – a descendant of one of the church’s founders – also added that the villagers are not against building a new church, as long as the old one is preserved.