Muslim asylum seekers may be converting to Christianity to avoid being deported, a senior Church of England cleric has claimed.
According to the Dean of Liverpool, Rev Pete Wilcox, "mixed motives are not unheard of" when it comes to asylum seekers choosing to be baptised.
Liverpool Cathedral has baptised some 200 asylum seekers over the past four years. Wilcox told The Times: "Holding a baptism certificate significantly enhances the strength of their claim for asylum. Once you are a baptised Christian it is really not conceivable that you would be deported to a Muslim country."
In a number of countries conversion to Christianity is punishable by harsh penalties, including the death penalty.
However, Wilcox also insisted that it is not as simple as an individual simply turning up for a baptism service. The Cathedral holds a mandatory five-week course for candidates, and they are expected to attend services.
He also said it was a similar situation to parents who baptise their children to secure a place at a Church school.
"God alone knows the person's heart and we try to be consistent about that and not to set the bar at one height for middle-class aspiring parents seeking the best for the education of their children and the bar at another height for converts from Islam looking for asylum," Wilcox said.
"Refuse Jemima baptism and she goes to school somewhere else. Refuse Mohammed baptism and he gets deported."
The Times spoke to a number of churches across England which confirmed that they had also baptised hundreds of Muslims over the past few years.
Rev Lionel Canter, pastor of the Liverpool Iranian Church, part of the Elim Pentecostal movement, said around 300 Muslims had been baptised since 2010, a third of of whom used their baptism to gain asylum in the UK.
"I can understand people questioning how genuine it is because they can be integral to being able to stay in the country. It's a valid question," he said. However, he also added that his church had "quite a good grip on that".
The Home Office told The Times: "A document such as a baptism certificate would not automatically lead to a conversion claim being accepted as genuine but is given appropriate weight when considering all the evidence."
The Church of England told the newspaper that baptism is "open to all of whatever background, class, nation, sexuality or age."
Last week, allegations were made that Christian asylum seekers are being rejected from the UK if they can't answer Bible trivia questions such as reciting the Ten Commandments.
A report by the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion and belief into how refugees' religious claims are assessed said immigration officials lack a basic understanding of religion and so questions intended to judge the genuineness of someone's faith revolve around trivia rather than probing what an individual actually believes.
One asylum seeker said he was asked what colour a Bible was in his interview for asylum in the UK. Mohammed, an Iranian Christian convert, told the BBC: "I knew there were different colours. The one I had was red. They asked me questions I was not able to answer – for example, what are the Ten Commandments. I could not name them all from memory."
Mohammed is now fighting to stay in the UK after his claim for asylum was refused.
"The problem with those questions is that if you are not genuine you can learn the answers, and if you are genuine, you may not know the answers," said Baroness Berridge, the head of the parliamentary group behind the report.
"When the system did move on to ask about the lived reality of people's faith, we then found that caseworkers, who are making decisions which can be life or death for people, were not properly supported and trained properly."
