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No Refuge for the Victims of Jihadist Genocide

June 3, 2016

No Refuge for the Victims of Jihadist Genocide, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, June 3, 2016

christian-syrian-refugee-900

President Obama sharply criticized the suggestion that persecuted Christians be given preference for admission as refugees. He said that “when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted… that’s shameful.” Obama added: “That’s not American, it’s not who we are.”

The Obama-Trudeau policy of opening doors widely to Muslim refugees, while allowing hardly a crack to open for the Christian and Yazidi victims of jihadi-inspired genocide, is risky, to be sure. It is also immoral.

*********************

The Obama administration is rapidly accelerating its admission and resettlement of Syrian refugees. The administration is well on its way to meeting its target of taking 10,000 Syrians into the country by the end of the current fiscal year on September 30th. In the first five months of 2016, 2,099 Syrian refugees have been admitted, compared with 2,192 for the whole of 2015, according to a report by CNS News. However, only a very tiny percentage are Christians, a beleaguered minority who are facing genocide in their home country. The Obama administration is immorally discriminating against Christian Syrian refugees.

“Out of the 2,099 Syrian refugees admitted so far this year, six (0.28 percent) are Christians,” CNS reported. Ten (0.3 percent) are Yazidis. Over 99 percent are Muslims. And the trend line is worsening as the year progresses. Last month, only two Christians (0.19 percent) were admitted compared to 1,035 Muslims.

Christians are estimated to have made up approximately ten percent of the total Syrian population at the outset of the conflict in Syria, according to the CIA Factbook. As Christians have come under attack by both the regime and jihadist groups, including ISIS, the Christian population in Syria has declined.

Patrick Sookhdeo, the founder and international director of the charity group the Barnabas Fund, which has worked to rescue Syrian Christians, said: “In Aleppo, to give you one illustration, there used to be 400,000 Christians four years ago. Today there may be between 45,000 and 65,000.”

Yet, according to data compiled by the U.S. State Department Refugee Processing Center, only 47 Syrian Christians have been admitted to the United States in all that time – slightly over 1 percent of the total number of Syrian refugees admitted. The current rate of Christian admissions is running far below even that miniscule level.

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

After receiving significant pressure, the Obama administration finally yielded to the obvious. Secretary of State John Kerry declared last March that the Islamic State has been committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other minorities in the Middle East.

Note that while Kerry included Shiite Muslims on his list of ISIS’s genocide victims, Sunni Muslims were not included. Nor should they be, considering the fact that ISIS jihadists are themselves Sunni Muslims. Al Qaeda jihadists are Sunni Muslims. The ideology of Wahhabism fueling the jihadists’ reign of terror, exported by Saudi Arabia, is of Sunni Muslim origin.

Therefore, one would think that Christians and other targeted minorities would receive preference for refugee status in the United States, not Sunni Muslims. Think again. Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, approximately 96% of the Syrian refugees admitted to the United States by the Obama administration have been Sunni Muslims.

President Obama sharply criticized the suggestion that persecuted Christians be given preference for admission as refugees. He said that “when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted… that’s shameful.” Obama added: “That’s not American, it’s not who we are.”

It is President Obama’s Syrian refugee policy that is both “shameful” and “not American.” It has amounted to what is in effect a “religious test,” vastly favoring the one group of migrants from Syria who needs refugee protection the least– Sunni Muslims. Moreover, some of these Sunni Muslims are bringing their Wahhabi jihadist ideology with them.

Whatever self-righteous statements Obama, Pope Francis and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon make regarding the moral responsibility of Western nations to admit many more refugees, there is no moral imperative to commit cultural suicide. That is perhaps why the Dali Lama warned a German newspaper this week that “too many” refugees from the Middle East and North Africa are heading into Europe. He knows of the problems Buddhists have been having with their own Muslim populations. He is also aware of the history of many Buddhist countries that were converted to Islam, including Afghanistan where invading Muslims overran the native Buddhist and Hindu populations.

We don’t even have to look as far as Europe to see what can happen to a culture under the increasing influence of Islamization. For example, the Muslim population in Canada is growing faster than that of any other religion. A majority of Muslims already living in Canada have favored being able to live under some form of sharia law, and a number of local governments have made accommodations in that direction.

Now enters the Barack Obama of Canada, Justin Trudeau, as Canada’s new prime minister. His Liberal government is hoping to admit 50,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016. 25,000 Syrian refugees have been admitted in just four months. Trudeau also appointed Member of Parliament and senior adviser Omar Alghabra, a sharia law supporter who has denied that Hamas is a terrorist group, as Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Alghabra was born in Saudi Arabia, but emigrated to Canada from Syria several decades ago.

While Trudeau’s predecessor Stephen Harper had prioritized the admission of persecuted Christians, Yazidis and Kurds, Trudeau said that he will “absolutely not” continue that practice. He and Obama are in sync that saving persecuted Christians from an ongoing genocide is less important than reaching out to Muslim refugees as proof of the country’s diversity and inclusiveness. When the two leaders met at the White House last March, they were effusive in mutual admiration for each other’s compassion towards the refugees. However, they are oblivious to the enhanced security risk to both countries they have created.

For example, some of the recently arrived refugees in Canada were welcomed last February with a call for jihad by the Imam of a Muslim congregation in Edmonton, Alberta, who was previously a “scholar” at al-Azhar theological school in Egypt:

“O Allah! Strengthen the mujahideen [jihad fighters in the path of Allah] everywhere, make their hearts firm and strong, let them hit their targets, give them victory over their enemies.

“O Allah! Destroy the oppressors.

“O Allah! Destroy your enemies, the enemies of religion (Islam).”

The Obama-Trudeau policy of opening doors widely to Muslim refugees, while allowing hardly a crack to open for the Christian and Yazidi victims of jihadi-inspired genocide, is risky, to be sure. It is also immoral.

Categories: Islam and Christianity, Islamic immigration, Islamic integration, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Islamists in Canada, Kurds, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's America, Yazidis
Tags: Islam and Christianity, Islamic immigration, Islamic integration, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Islamists in Canada, Kurds, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's America, Yazids

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An In-Depth Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam and the Defense of Western Civilization

June 1, 2016

An In-Depth Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam and the Defense of Western Civilization, The New Criterion via YouTube, June 1, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqXVdiT7pdY

The blurb beneath the video states,

For The New Criterion, Ben Weingarten, commentator and Founder & CEO of ChangeUp Media sits down with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ardent defender of Western civilization and individual liberty against Islamic supremacism, New York Times bestselling author of ‘The Caged Virgin,’ ‘Infidel’ and ‘Nomad’ and ‘Heretic,’ former Dutch MP, fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, founder of the AHA Foundation Ayaan Hirsi Ali and recipient of The New Criterion’s fourth annual Edmund Burke Award for Service to Culture & Society for an in-depth interview. During their discussion, Weingarten and Ali discuss America’s inability under both Presidents Obama and Bush to recognize and defend against Islamic supremacism as the totalitarian existential threat of our time, the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West and the ideology of the global jihadist movement, the Islamization of Europe, how the West can defend its freedoms from a subversive global jihadist movement seeking to use those freedoms against us, the war on free speech in the West being waged by Islamic supremacists with the help wittingly or unwittingly of many on the Left and more. For more from The New Criterion’s April 2016 ‘Edmund Burke Award’ gala and other compelling content, check out The New Criterion’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/TheNewCri….

Categories: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Europe, Freedom of speech, Hijrah, Islam - submission, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and human rights, Islam and Jews, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic tolerance, Islamisation, Islamism, Islamist moral values, Islamophobia, Mecca Islam, Medina Islam, Obama and Islam, Saudi Arabia
Tags: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Europe, freedom of speech, Hijrah, Islam - submission, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and human rights, Islam and Jews, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic tolerance, Islamisation, Islamism, Islamist moral values, Islamophobia, Mecca Islam, Medina Islam, Obama and Islam, Saudi Arabia

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Christians Beheaded and Slaughtered on Easter – Muslim Persecution of Christians, March 2016

May 29, 2016

Christians Beheaded and Slaughtered on Easter – Muslim Persecution of Christians, March 2016, Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, May 29, 2016

♦ In Pakistan, a Muslim suicide bomber murdered 74 people — mostly Christians — and injured nearly 400 more, on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016.

♦ The U.S. and British governments knew the exact location of many of the Nigerian Christian girls captured by Boko Haram, but failed to launch a rescue mission, according to Andrew Pocock, the former British high commissioner to Nigeria.

♦ In Uganda, Amina Napiya’s 13-year-old daughter was raped while fetching firewood near their home. The rapist told the girl, “this is the second warning to your mother for disgracing the faith of the Muslims.” Napiya, a 42-year-old widow, converted to Christianity in 2014.

♦ Approximately 700 Christian girls are kidnapped and forced into Islamic marriages every year in Pakistan.

On Easter Sunday in Pakistan, March 27, a suicide bombing took place near the children’s rides of a public park, where Christians were known to be celebrating the resurrection of their Lord. At least 74 people — mostly women and children — were killed and nearly 400 injured. “There was human flesh on the walls of our house,” a witness recalled.

“We claim responsibility for the attack on Christians as they were celebrating Easter,” said a group affiliated with the Taliban. In a media statement, the group’s spokesman said it had “deliberately targeted the Christian community.” “We had been waiting for this occasion,” he said.

Click here, here, here, here, and here, for more examples of lethal attacks, worldwide, on Christians celebrating their holidays who also “had been waiting for this occasion.” Even “the terror cell that struck in Brussels in March, killing 34 was planning to massacre worshippers at Easter church services across Europe, including Britain, intelligence chiefs believe, according to a report.

In Scotland, a Muslim man stabbed another Muslim man to death for wishing Christians a Happy Easter. Asad Shah had posted messages on Facebook that said “Good Friday and very happy Easter, especially to my beloved Christian nation” and “Let’s follow the real footstep of beloved holy Jesus Christ and get the real success in both worlds.” Police said a 32-year-old Muslim man was arrested in connection with Shah’s death, and confirmed that the attack was “religiously prejudiced.” Islamic law (Qur’an 5:52) forbids Muslims from participating in or congratulating non-Muslims for their religious holidays as doing so implicitly validates other religions.

A Muslim nanny in Russia beheaded a 4-year-old girl, Anastasia, whom she had been taking care of for the last three years. Gulchehra Bobokulova, a Chechen, went to a Moscow metro station and, for 20 minutes, waved the child’s severed head while screaming “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is Greatest”]. After her arrest, she said the murder “was what Allah ordered.” In the months before the slaughter, Bobokulova was said to have become “more religious.” She began wearing a hijab, and telling her son to pray five times a day and live in accord with Sharia [Islamic law]. Authorities concluded that, as she is “insane,” she will not face a murder trial.

“ISIS carries out Good Friday crucifixion of Indian Catholic priest in Yemen after he was kidnapped three weeks ago in attack on old people’s home where four nuns were shot,” the Daily Mail reported. Father Thomas Uzhunnalil, a 56-year-old Indian Catholic priest, was seized by Muslim gunmen who attacked an old people’s home in Aden. According to the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Uzhunnalil had been crucified. Most recently, a report appeared indicating that Fr. Thomas was likely still alive and “that talks between the Indian government and Yemeni rebels to ensure his release were continuing.”

The rest of March’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Unknown Middle Eastern Nation: Islamic radicals killed four workers of a Christian organization that translates and publishes Bibles. Wycliffe Associates issued a statement saying that the attackers shot and destroyed all the equipment in the Bible translators’ office, but failed to note the name of the country where the attack occurred. Two workers were apparently killed by gunshots, while two others lay over the head translator and died while “deflecting bludgeoning blows from the radicals’ spent weapons,” They saved his life. Several other people were also injured in the raid. The organization explained that the remaining team has vowed to redouble their efforts to translate, publish and print the Gospel.

Bangladesh: Two attackers with sharp weapons killed 68-year-old Hossain Ali, who converted to Christianity from Islam in 1999. ISIS claimed responsibility for the murder of the apostate from Islam in a tweet:

“A security detachment from the soldiers of the Caliphate was able, by the grace of Allah the Almighty, to kill the apostate (Ali), who changed his religion and became a preacher for the polytheist Christianity.”

The statement added that the murder was “a lesson to others.” In recent months ISIS has claimed being behind a series of attacks on religious converts and minorities in Bangladesh.

Yemen: Four Muslim gunmen attacked an old people’s home in the port of Aden, killing at least 15 people, including four nuns who were Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa. Two of the nuns were from Rwanda, one from India, and one from Kenya. Another nun survived by hiding inside a refrigerator in a storeroom. The gunmen, who initially told the guard they were at the old people’s home to visit their mother, stormed into the home with rifles and opened fire. The dead included two Yemeni women working at the facility, eight elderly residents, and a guard. The motive of the gunmen was not known. After the attack, they fled.

Ivory Coast: A squad of boatmen shouting “Allahu Akbar!” — “Allah is Greatest!” — leapt onto a beach in the resort town of Grand Bassam and proceeded to round up and kill Christian tourists. By the time security forces killed the terrorists, 14 tourists and two special forces personnel were dead, “all of them presumably Christians,” noted the report. At some point, witnesses said the gunmen captured a pair of children, one five-years old. A gunman “with a long beard” threatened them. Both boys fell to their knees in prayer, and begged for their lives. The first boy knew an Islamic prayer by heart, so he was spared, but the five-year-old, a Christian, had no hope, and was shot dead. Images of the aftermath showed bodies strewn across the beach, several of them believed to be French tourists. Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, via social media, claimed responsibility for the attack. According to the report, “Ivory Coast is becoming a target for Islamic extremists who want to spread Islam around the globe. Previously confined to the desert regions of the Sahara, Muslims have recently started a campaign of aggressive, militant expansion into West and Central Africa. ”

Nigeria: According to a March report, since 2000, some 12,000 Christians have been slaughtered for their faith and 13,000 churches destroyed, and not just by the Muslim terrorist organization, Boko Haram: “Northern Muslim political and religious elite are also major actors of targeted violence towards the Christian minority.” From mid-February to mid-March alone, 500 Christian farmers were butchered by Muslim herdsmen.

Pakistan: A Muslim man shot dead a Christian boy and threatened to rape his sisters, after their mother rejected his advances in the town of Qayum. The Muslim suspect, 57-year-old Tahir Jutt, who had a “known long-term infatuation” with 42-year-old Shazia Tahir, tried to intervene in a family argument. Tahir rebuffed his offer to help. Later that day, he returned to the Tahir family home and started shooting at family members, killing 17-year-old Noel Tahir, and wounding several others, including the husband and wife. Although initially detained by police, Jutt was eventually set free, only to continue threatening and terrorizing the Christian family. According to a rights activist:

“This family are in desperate need for [sic] help, the perpetrator of violence has shown no remorse for the violence he meted out on this poor family and has increased their tension by stating he will repeat the violence if they dare to challenge him through the courts. Local police are being extremely slow and sluggish with this case, allowing Mr Jutt to exhort [sic] great pressure on the family who have already had to suffer the surprising ignominy of the murderer of their son being set free on bail.”

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

United States: Three Christian statues at St. Margaret Parish, a Catholic church in Massachusetts, were vandalized. Two statues had their hands severed and multiple sets of rosary beads removed and scattered on the ground. The third statue, located near the rectory and depicting the Virgin Mary, had its head severed and both hands removed. Although the identity of the vandals is unknown, Robert Spencer, an expert on Islam, correctly observes that

in light of the curious fact that the head and hands were severed, the perpetrators could have been Muslims acting upon this Qur’an verse: “When your Lord inspired to the angels, ‘I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.'” (Qur’an 8:12).

Turkey: Late one night, four Muslim men went to the Agape Church in the Black Sea region and began banging and kicking at the front door. The church caretaker and a few members of the congregation were inside but refused to open the door. After they noticed they were being videotaped by a security camera, the assailants destroyed it and fled. (Image of the men kicking the door appears here.) According to the church’s pastor, Pıçaklar,

“They attacked us knowing that they would get caught – they even looked at the security camera and smiled. Later they went to the police and turned themselves in, and today they were set free. So what should I do [in response] to these guys who drink until they get drunk, and when they get caught [attacking the church building], instead of fear and sadness, yell, ‘Allahuu Akbar!’? [“Allah is Greatest”]

Pastor Pıçaklar said the incident was not just a “kick the door and go. These guys wanted the door open and to go inside and hit someone or attack in some other way.”

Greece: The Church of All Saints in Kallithea, Athens region, was set on fire. The kitchen was completely destroyed, but thanks to the fire department’s quick response, the fire was contained. According to witnesses, “Arabic speakers” were behind the arson attack.

Dhimmitude (Non-Muslims’ Status of Inferiority in Islam)

Uganda: After several threats and attacks — including the rape of her 13-year-old daughter — a mother with her five children, who had left Islam for Christianity, fled their village. Amina Napiya, a 42-year-old widow, converted to Christianity in 2014, after her husband, Mohammed Dongo, died. She and her family remained secret believers until the beginning of 2016, when relatives discovered they were followers of Christ. Attacks started soon after: two motorcycles that had belonged to her late husband were stolen in January, apparently by Muslim relatives. They left an unsigned note:

“We have taken the motorcycles, and soon we are coming for your life if you continue embarrassing the religion of the family. You have become an embarrassment to the family as well as the Muslim family.”

A month later, Napiya’s daughter was raped while fetching firewood near their home. The rapist told the girl, “This is the second warning to your mother for disgracing the faith of the Muslims.”

Finally, Napiya received an anonymous text, saying, “We have warned you several times, and our warnings are falling on deaf ears. We are on the way coming for you and your children.” The Christian woman and her children fled and were last reported living in dire straits.

Separately in Uganda, a Muslim youth who converted to Christianity was attacked and ostracized by his family. After Mohammed Nsera graduated from high school last year, his Muslim family built a small house for him on their homestead. A week after he converted to Christianity, his Muslim family burned it down. According to the convert,

“I could not deny Christ when my father asked me whether I had joined Christianity. With a lot of joy I answered him affirmatively, with a yes. My uncle, who had a walking stick, hit me on my back, and my father tried to get hold of my shirt, but I managed to escape with a tattered shirt and a bleeding back.”

While recovering at the home of a Christian 13 miles away, he learned that his family had burned his house down. “I received reports that my parents, uncle and some other Muslims were looking for me. I have lost my entire valuables, especially my academic certificates.” He has since taken refuge in an undisclosed village more than 60 miles from his home.

Pakistan: A 30-year-old Christian mother of three who was kidnapped and forced into an Islamic marriage. When she escaped months later, she was returned to her abductor by her own family, in hopes that it will spare other family members from persecution and arrest. Fouzia Sadiq, whose entire family works as bonded laborers in Pattoki, was abducted last July by her Muslim landlord, Muhammed Nazir. He told her family to forget about her as she “was now his property.” With her family’s aid, the women eventually escaped back to them. Her abductor-husband sent the police after her. They threatened her family, and suggesting that they might seize and deliver her younger sister to Muhammad as a “consolation” gift. According to a human rights activist:

“This family has gone through a torturous decision making process. They have not wanted to deliver their daughter back but the threats on their family were so extreme, including potential blasphemy law allegations and kidnap charges against Paris the brother of Fouzia, that they felt there was no other way out.”

Fouzia is one of approximately 700 Christian girls who are kidnapped and forced into Islamic marriages every year in Pakistan.

Belgium: The council of Belgian imams rejected an initiative to pray for the souls of the victims of the Brussels terror attacks on the grounds that it is forbidden to pray for the souls of non-Muslims — “infidels.” The Koran states:

“It is not for the Prophet and those who have believed to ask forgiveness for the polytheists, even if they were relatives, after it has become clear to them that they are companions of Hellfire.” (9:113)

Instead, the Muslim scholars recommended the use of tawriya — using words that mean one thing to listeners and another thing from the speaker. One Muslim cleric said: We cannot pray over the souls of non-Muslims, but if we do this, we don’t have to call it a prayer. We can call it something else: ‘solidarity with the families of the victims.’ We can stand by them and support them.”

Another Muslim cleric suggested: “Since this was a general event, in which Muslims as well as non-Muslims [were hurt], we address all of the victims, and wish them peace, mercy, and health.”

Italy: According to Archbishop Matteo Maria Zuppi, recently appointed to head the archdiocese,

“I really think it’s time for a mosque in Bologna. Some people think otherwise but they are wrong. … I also wish Islamic celebrations to be welcomed in schools… We shouldn’t be carried away by hateful generalizations, like the comparison between Muslims and terrorists.”

However, according to the report,

“Zuppi’s reflections are far distant from those of his predecessors. Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, once warned the faithful to be wary of the West’s current integration project of Middle-Eastern, largely Muslim migrants. The late Cdl. Giacomo Biffi, archbishop of Bologna before Caffarra, was a respected theologian known for being ‘extremely politically incorrect,’ and some note that his prophecies about Europe either returning to Christianity or surrendering to Islam were prescient for Italy today….”

Zuppi also seems to overlook the historic fact that, whenever a region was conquered by Islam, one of the first signs of consolidation was the erection of a mosque on top of the sacred sites of the vanquished: the pagan Ka’ba temple in Saudi Arabia was converted into Islam’s holiest site, the mosque of Mecca; the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, was built on top of the ruins of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem; the Umayyad mosque in Damascus was built on top of the Church of St. John the Baptist; and the Hagia Sophia in Turkey was converted into a mosque upon the conquest of Constantinople.

Sudan: Pastor Ayoub Tilian, moderator of the Sudanese Church of Christ in the Khartoum area, was arrested at his office and taken to an unknown location. He was later released, but ordered to report daily for interrogation to the security officials of Sudan’s National Security and Intelligence Services, which is staffed by hardline Islamists. They are reportedly upset that he may have spoken about the Sudanese government’s persecution of Christians. Discussing this incident, an area source said, “Things are very difficult here in Sudan as time after time we hear that a church leader is arrested.”

Iran: A pastor and three other Christians, all of whom appear to be converts from Islam, were sentenced to serve one year in prison, and banned from holding or attending any church services for two years. They were arrested earlier during a picnic in Daniel-e Shoosh, in southern Iran. The plainclothes secret police came to them with guns drawn, threatening and beating some in the group. The report does not mention what the alleged crime is. Most likely, if this case is like other allegations against non-Muslims, they were sentenced under the pretense that they are a “security threat to the nation.”

US and UK: Despite all the widespread attention and international condemnation given to the kidnapping by Boko Haram of nearly 300 (mostly Christian) Nigerian girls — recall First Lady Michelle Obama holding a sign saying “bring back our girls” — the US and British governments knew exactly where many of the girls were, but failed to launch a rescue mission. According to Dr. Andrew Pocock, the former British high commissioner to Nigeria: “A couple of months after the kidnapping, fly-bys and an American eye in the sky spotted a group of up to 80 girls in a particular spot in the Sambisa forest, around a very large tree, called locally the Tree of Life, along with evidence of vehicular movement and a large encampment.” He said the girls were there for at least four weeks but authorities were “powerless” to act.

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About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by Muslims is growing.

The report posits that such Muslim persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place in all languages, ethnicities, and locations.

Categories: Islam and Christianity
Tags: Islam and Christianity

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Muslim reformers vs. Islamists

May 26, 2016

Muslim reformers vs. Islamists, Dan Miller’s Blog, May 26, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Whether Islam will eventually be reformed is an open question. The topic is much discussed by Muslims, a few of whom favor reformation and more of whom oppose it. The issue is important for America, and indeed the free world in general. There is little that non-Muslims can do to assist a reformation beyond recognizing the substantial differences between moderate and radical (mainstream) Muslims, supporting the former and purging the latter. Please don’t conflate the cops with the killers.

Reformation of Islam

Here’s are comments by an American Muslim reformer, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser

In the following December 2015 video, the Fox News host misrepresented Donald Trump’s position as banning “all” Muslims, apparently permanently. Trump’s proposal was to ban Muslims until we can vet them adequately. Dr. Jasser agreed that Muslims advocating Islamist political ideology should be banned and that we should temporarily ban them all until we can distinguish moderate Muslims from “radical” Muslims. His suggestions for vetting Muslims included cessation of reliance on the Council on American – Islamic Relations (CAIR), et al, which are on the side of the Islamists.

An article by Raymond Ibrahim delves into Muslim perceptions of moderate vs. “radical” (i.e., mainstream) Islam and posts these views, as articulated by Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim Khadr, an Islamist. Dr. Khadr stated,

“Islamic researchers are agreed that what the West and its followers call ‘moderate Islam’ and ‘moderate Muslims’ is simply a slur against Islam and Muslims, a distortion of Islam, a rift among Muslims, a spark to ignite war among them. They also see that the division of Islam into ‘moderate Islam’ and ‘radical Islam’ has no basis in Islam — neither in its doctrines and rulings, nor in its understandings or reality. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Among the major distinctions (translated verbatim) made in Khadr’s article are:

Radicals want the caliphate to return; moderates reject the caliphate.

Radicals want to apply Sharia (Islamic law); moderates reject the application of Sharia.

Radicals reject the idea of renewal and reform, seeing it as a way to conform Islam to Western culture; moderates accept it.

Radicals accept the duty of waging jihad in the path of Allah; moderates reject it.

Radicals reject any criticism whatsoever of Islam; moderates welcome it on the basis of freedom of speech.

Radicals accept those laws that punish whoever insults or leaves the religion [apostates]; moderates recoil from these laws.

Radicals respond to any insult against Islam or the prophet Muhammad — peace and blessing upon him — with great violence and anger; moderates respond calmly and peacefully on the basis of freedom of expression.

Radicals respect and revere every deed and every word of the prophet — peace be upon him — in the hadith; moderates do not.

Radicals oppose democracy; moderates accept it.

Radicals see the people of the book [Jews and Christians] as dhimmis[barely tolerated subjects]; moderates oppose this [view].

Radicals reject the idea that non-Muslim minorities should have equality or authority over Muslims; moderates accept it.

Radicals reject the idea that men and women are equal; moderates accept it, according to Western views.

Radicals oppose the idea of religious freedom and apostasy from Islam; moderates agree to it.

Radicals desire to see Islam reign supreme; moderates oppose this.

Radicals place the Koran over the constitution; moderates reject this [assumption].

Radicals reject the idea of religious equality because Allah’s true religion is Islam; moderates accept it.

Radicals embrace the wearing of hijabs and niqabs; moderates reject it.

Radicals accept killing young girls who commit adultery or otherwise besmirch their family’s honor; moderates reject this [response].

Radicals reject the status of women today and think that the status of women today should be like the status of women in the time of the prophet; moderates oppose that women should be as in the time of the prophet.

Radicals vehemently reject that women should have the freedom to choose partners; moderates accept that she can choose a boyfriend without marriage.

Radicals agree to clitorectomies; moderates reject them.

Radicals reject the so-called war on terror and see it as a war on Islam; moderates accept it.

Radicals support jihadi groups; moderates reject them.

Radicals reject the terms “Islamic terrorism” or “Islamic fascism”; moderates accept them.

Radicals reject universal human rights, including the right to be homosexual; moderates accept them.

Radicals reject the idea of allying with the West; moderates support it.

Radicals oppose secularism; moderates support it. [Emphasis added.]

Dr. Jasser’s views on what American Islam should be are remarkably similar to the perceptions of moderate Islam set forth by Dr. Khadr, albeit with contempt as “a slur against Islam and Muslims, a distortion of Islam, a rift among Muslims, a spark to ignite war among them.” Mr. Ibrahim concludes his article by suggesting that “the West may need to rethink one of its main means of countering radical Islam: moderate Muslims and moderate Islam.” I agree. What is being done now is actually furthering “radical” Islam.

The former president of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University called, rather amorphously, for reform in the Islamic religious discourse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIQnQjcdsWw

Here’s an address to the Canadian Parliament by a moderate Muslim journalist. Please watch the whole thing, because it sets forth quite well the differences between Islamists who want to overpower us and moderate Muslims who support freedom and want to eliminate Islamism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=condC3PQfIg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urCxNJpZoKM

Moderate Islam is not mainstream Islam

Germany’s largest Muslim organization recently had a moderate Muslim theologian fired from the University of Munster.

Islamic apologists routinely claim that violent Qur’an verses have no validity beyond Muhammad’s time, but this story illustrates that this is not the mainstream view in Islam. The persecution of Mouhanad Khorchide also shows the uphill battle that genuine Muslim reformers face: branded as heretics and/or apostates, they’re often shunned (or worse) by the very community that needs their ideas the most. [Emphasis added.]

The author, Robert Spencer, quotes a May 23rd article by Susanne Schröter in a German periodical:

When the theologian Mouhanad Khorchide, who teaches at the University of Münster, published “Islam Is Compassion” in 2012, he received a variety of diverse reactions. Many non-Muslims celebrated the work as the revelation of a humanistic Islam: an Islam that no one needs to fear. This feeling arose in part because the author created a picture of God that is not “interested in the labels of Muslim or Christian or Jewish, believer or nonbeliever.”

Korchide threw out the idea that Koran verses that appear violent or hostile toward women or non-Muslims may be valid for all eternity. He wanted them to be viewed as the words of a bygone era.

It seemed that the professor, with the swoop of his pen, managed to brush aside all those reservations that made people wonder whether Islam really “belonged to Germany,” as former President Christian Wulff said famously in a 2010. One might even have thought that Muslims would offer Khorchide a pat on the back.

On the website for DITIB, Germany’s Turkish Islamic union and the country’s largest Muslim organization, one can read that Khorchide’s statements were a “rejection of the teachings of classical Islam” and an “insult to Muslim identity.” For this reason, the professor was removed from his post at the university.

Canadian journalist Tarek Fatah, the moderate Muslim in a video provided above, wrote

In November 2014, while testifying before the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, I raised the issue of Islamic clerics using mosque sermons to attack the foundational principles of Western civilization and liberal secular democracy.

The Senate Committee session referred to is the one presented in the video referenced above.

Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell was outraged by my testimony that at most Canadian mosques, the Friday congregation includes a ritual prayer asking, “Allah to give victory to Muslims over the ‘Kufaar’ (non-Muslims).” In a heated exchange with me, the senator suggested I wasn’t telling the truth, implying I was motivated by Islamophobia. Sadly, Sen. Mitchell is not alone in such views.

But neither is there any let-up in the attacks on Canadian values emanating from many mosque pulpits and Islamic conferences hosted by radical Islamist groups.

For example, in a sermon on Friday, May 6, delivered at a mosque in Edmonton, an imam invoked the memory of Prophet Muhammad to whip up hatred against Israel. He declared peace accords with Israel are “useless garbage” and vowed that Jerusalem will be conquered “through blood.”

In February, the same cleric predicted Islam would soon conquer Rome, “the heart of the Christian state.”

The Edmonton mosque diatribe was not isolated.

On May 13, just north of Toronto, an Islamic society hosted a celebration of Iranian mass murderer, Ayatollah Khomeini. The poster promoting the event described Khomeini as a, “Liberator and Reformer of the Masses.”

On Saturday, the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, banned in some countries, hosted a conference to discuss the re-establishment of a global Islamic caliphate.

Here are excerpts from an article about the Hizb-ut-Tahrir meeting referenced by Mr. Fatah.

The first speaker was Brother Mostafa, of Arabic roots. Mostafa started by calling nationalism and sectarian conflict the main reasons for division in the Ummah (Islamic nation). He reminded Muslims that they are obligated to implement Allah’s demands that fulfill the Islamic State. It is “not permissible for us to choose, ” he said. He cited the verse: [Emphasis added]

“It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should [thereafter] have any choice about their affair. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly strayed into clear error.” — Surat-Al-Ahzab (33), verse 36. ]Emphasis added.]

. . . .

As the event started late, Naeema [a woman in the audience] began a conversation. We talked about our origins and how long we had been in Canada. She said she had been here 40 years, so I asked about the disconnect between enjoying 40 years of democracy, yet trying to end it. I mentioned a book published by Hizb-ut-Tahrir:

“Democracy is Infidelity: its use, application and promotion are prohibited.”

“الديمقراطية نظام كفر، يحرم أخذها أو تطبيقها أو الدعوة إليها”

Naeema said she was not qualified to debate the topic, but that democracy had done nothing good for people, so she and other believers would follow the rule of Allah. [Emphasis added]

The meeting participants are comparable to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood – Hamas affiliated organization which, along with similar groups, provides Obama and His “fighting violent extremism” cohorts their marching orders on fighting, not Islamist jihad or Islamisation , but “Islamophobia.”

Conclusions

America would fare better in fighting “violent extremism” if the principal enemy were named: it is political Islam — Islamism. Presently, naming it is forbidden and those engaged in “fighting” it — supposedly on our behalf — are Islamists dedicated to the Islamisation of America.

Suppose that, instead of relying on CAIR, et al, as representative of “peaceful” Islam, our government rejected CAIR and its Islamist colleagues favored by Obama and instead supported and relied upon Dr. Jasser’s moderate group, American Islamic Forum for Democracy.

A devout Muslim, Dr. Jasser founded AIFD in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States as an effort to provide an American Muslim voice advocating for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. Dr. Jasser is a first generation American Muslim whose parents fled the oppressive Baath regime of Syria in the mid-1960’s for American freedom. He is leading the fight to shake the hold that the Muslim Brotherhood and their network of American Islamist organizations and mosques seek to exert on organized Islam in America. [Emphasis added.]

Perhaps, if our next president is neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders, we will do that. If we don’t, the Islamists will continue to win, the Islamisation of America will continue and American principles will go down the toilet. We cannot permit that to happen.

In an 1886 Fourth of July address to the citizens of the Dickinson Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt said,

We only have the right to live on as free men, so long as we show ourselves worthy of the privileges we enjoy. We must remember that the republic can only be kept pure by the individual purity of its members, and that if it once becomes thoroughly corrupt it will surely cease to exist.

. . . .

All American citizens whether born here or elsewhere, whether of one creed or another, stand on the same footing; we welcome every honest immigrant, no matter from what country he comes, provided only that he leaves behind him his former nationality and remains neither Celt nor Saxon, neither Frenchman nor German, but becomes an American, desirous of fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship. [Emphasis added]

When we thus rule ourselves we have the responsibilities of sovereigns not of subjects. We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way – by making the proper use of them.

It has been my observation (and to a substantial extent that of the Canadian journalist and moderate Muslim in a video embedded above) that the principal loyalty of many Islamists is not geographical or to a state. Rather, it is to their version of Islam, be it Shiite, Sunni or some variation thereof. For example, Hezbollah members fight, not to help Lebanon or Syria, but to support the Iranian version of Shiite Islam — an apocalyptic vision in which the hidden iman will return and bring the world to an end. It is reasonable to assume that the principal loyalty of mainstream Muslims (Islamists) in America is, and will continue to be, to Islam, not to America.

American origins and views are very different and perhaps uniquely so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArgMK2kAjzw

This land was made, not for Islamists but for immigrants who leave behind their former nationalities and remain “neither Celt nor Saxon, neither Frenchman nor German, but become an American, desirous of fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship.” How many of America’s current crop of immigrants do that?

We have had little of this thus far. How much do we want? It’s pretty much up to us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRlHcnHM6C4df

Categories: CAIR, Canada, Free world, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and human rights, Islam and Jews, Islam in America, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic jihad, Islamic reformation, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamism, Islamist moral values, Islamists in America, Islamists in Canada, Islamophobia, Obama and Islam, Obama's America
Tags: CAIR, Canada, Free world, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and human rights, Islam and Jews, Islam in America, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic Jihad, Islamic reformation, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamism, Islamist moral values, Islamists in America, Islamists in Canada, Islamophobia, Obama and Islam, Obama's America

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Has the Pope Abandoned Europe to Islam?

May 26, 2016

Has the Pope Abandoned Europe to Islam? Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, May 26, 2016

♦ In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name and never mentions the word “Islam.”

♦ Pope Francis does not even try to re-evangelize or reconquer Europe. He seems deeply to believe that the future of Christianity is in the Philippines, in Brazil and in Africa. Probably for the same reason, the Pope is spending less time and effort in denouncing the terrible fate of Christians in the Middle East.

♦ “Multiculturalism” in Europe is the mosque standing on the ruins of the church. It is not the synthesis requested by Pope Francis. It is the road to becoming extinct.

♦ Asking Europe to be “multicultural” while it experiences a dramatic de-Christianization is extremely risky. In Germany, a new report found that “Germany has become demographically a multi-religious country.” In the UK, a major inquiry recently declared that “Britain is no longer a Christian country.” In France, Islam is also overtaking Christianity as the dominant religion.

To scroll the list of Pope Francis’s apostolic trips — Brazil, South Korea, Albania, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Cuba, United States, Mexico, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines — one could say that Europe is not exactly at the top of his agenda.

The two previous pontiffs both fought for the cradle of Christendom. Pope John Paul II took on Communism by toppling the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. Benedict XVI took on “the dictatorship of relativism” (the belief that truth is in the eye of the beholder) and bet everything on re-evangelizing the continent by traveling through it (he visited Spain three times) and in speeches such as the magnificent ones at Regensburg, where he spoke bluntly about the threat of Islam, and the German Bundestag, where he warned the gathered politicians against declining religiosity and “sacrificing their own ideals for the sake of power.”

Pope Francis, on the contrary, simply ignores Europe, as if he already considers it lost. This former Argentinian Cardinal, a representative of the “global South” Christianity, made spectacular trips to the migrants’ islands of Lampedusa (Italy) and Lesbos (Greece), but never to the heart of the old continent. Pope Francis has also made it difficult for Anglicans to enter into the Catholic Church, by downplaying the dialogue with them.

Most importantly, however, in his important May 6 speech for the Charlemagne Prize, the Pope, in front of European leaders, castigated Europe on migrants and asked its leaders to be more generous with them. He next introduced something revolutionary into the debate: “The identity of Europe is, and always has been, a multicultural identity,” he said. This idea is questionable.

Multiculturalism is a specific policy formulated in the 1970s. and it was absent from the political vocabulary of Schuman and Adenauer, two of Europe’s founding fathers. Now it has been invoked by the Pope, who spoke of the need for a new synthesis. What is this all about?

Today, Christianity appears marginal and irrelevant in Europe. The religion faces an Islamic demographic and ideological challenge, while the post-Auschwitz remnants of Jewish communities are fleeing from the new anti-Semitism. Under these conditions, a synthesis between the old continent and Islam would be a surrender of Europe’s claim to the future.

“Multiculturalism” is the mosque standing on the ruins of the church. It is not the synthesis requested by the Pope. It is the road to becoming extinct.

Asking Europe to be “multicultural” while it is experiencing a dramatic de-Christianization is also extremely risky. In Germany, a new report just found that “Germany has become demographically a multi-religious country.” In the UK, a major inquiry recently declared that “Britain is no longer a Christian country.” In France, Islam is also overtaking Christianity as the dominant religion. You find the same trend everywhere, from Protestant Scandinavia to Catholic Belgium. That is why Pope Benedict was convinced that Europe needed to “re-evangelized.” Pope Francis does not even try to re-evangelize or reconquer Europe. Instead, he seems deeply to believe that the future of Christianity is in the Philippines, Brazil and Africa.

Probably for the same reason, the Pope is spending less time denouncing the terrible fate of Christians in the Middle East. Sandro Magister, Italy’s most important Vatican observer, sheds light on the Pope’s silences:

“He remained silent on the hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram. He remained silent on the young Sudanese mother Meriam, sentenced to death solely for being Christian and finally liberated by the intervention of others. He remains silent on the Pakistani mother Asia Bibi, who has been on death row for five years, because she too is an ‘infidel’, and [He] does not even reply to the two heartrending letters she has written to him this year, before and after the reconfirmation of the sentence.”

In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensburg lecture, said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name, and never mentions the word “Islam.” Pope Francis also recently recognized the “State of Palestine,” before it even exists — a symbolic and unprecedented first. The Pope also might abandon the Church’s long tradition of a “just war,” one regarded as morally or theologically justifiable. Pope Francis always speaks of the “Europe of peoples,” but never of the “Europe of Nations.” He advocates welcoming migrants and washes their feet, while he ignores that these uncontrolled demographic waves are transforming Europe, bit by bit, into an Islamic state.

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In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI (left) said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis (right) never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name and never mentions the word “Islam.” (Image source: Benedict: Flickr/Catholic Church of England | Francis: Wikimedia Commons/korea.net)

That is the meaning of Pope Francis’ trips to the islands of Lampedusa, Italy, and Lesbos, Greece — both symbols of a dramatic geographical and civilizational boundary. That is also the meaning of the Pope’s speech for the Charlemagne Prize.

Has the head of Christianity given up on Europe as a Christian place?

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Europe, Free world, Islam and Christianity, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Pope Francis
Tags: Clash of civilizations, Europe, Free world, Islam and Christianity, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Pope Francis

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Pope Embraces Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar

May 24, 2016

Pope Embraces Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, May 24, 2016

pope_francis_malacanang_6

This Pope is a disgrace to the Church, to Judeo-Christian civilization, and to the free world.

******************************

AP reported breathlessly Monday that Pope Francis “embraced the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the prestigious Sunni Muslim center of learning, reopening an important channel for Catholic-Muslim dialogue after a five-year lull and at a time of increased Islamic extremist attacks on Christians.”

Why has there been this “five-year lull”? Because “the Cairo-based Al-Azhar froze talks with the Vatican to protest comments by then-Pope Benedict XVI.” What did Benedict say? Andrea Gagliarducci of the Catholic News Agency explains that after a jihad terrorist murdered 23 Christians in a church in Alexandria 2011, Benedict decried “terrorism” and the “strategy of violence” against Christians, and called for the Christians of the Middle East to be protected.

Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam, Ahmed al-Tayeb, whom Pope Francis welcomed to the Vatican on Monday, was furious. He railed at Benedict for his “interference” in Egypt’s affairs and warned of a “negative political reaction” to the Pope’s remarks. In a statement, Al-Azhar denounced the Pope’s “repeated negative references to Islam and his claims that Muslims persecute those living among them in the Middle East.”

Benedict stood his ground, and that was that. But in September 2013, al-Azhar announced that Pope Francis had sent a personal message to al-Tayeb. In it, according to al-Azhar, Francis declared his respect for Islam and his desire to achieve “mutual understanding between the world’s Christians and Muslims in order to build peace and justice.” At the same time, Al Tayyeb met with the Apostolic Nuncio to Egypt, Mgr. Jean-Paul Gobel, and told him in no uncertain terms that speaking about Islam in a negative manner was a “red line” that must not be crossed.

So Pope Benedict condemned a jihad attack, one that al-Azhar also condemned, and yet al-Azhar suspended dialogue because of the Pope’s condemnation. Then Pope Francis wrote to the Grand Imam of al-Azhar affirming his respect for Islam, and the Grand Imam warned him that criticizing Islam was a “red line” that he must not cross. That strongly suggests that the “dialogue” that Pope Francis has now reestablished will not be allowed to discuss the Muslim persecution of Christians that will escalate worldwide, especially since an incidence of that persecution led to the suspension of dialogue in the first place.

What’s more, his dialogue partner, al-Tayeb, has shown himself over the years to be anything but a preacher of peace, cooperation and mercy: he has justified anti-Semitism on Qur’anic grounds; and called for the Islamic State murderers of the Jordanian pilot to be crucified or have their hands and feet amputated on opposite sides (as per the penalty in Qur’an 5:33 for those who make war against Allah and his messenger or spread “mischief” in the land. Al-Azhar was also revealed to be offering free copies of a book that called for the slaughter of Christians and other Infidels.

Will the Pope during al-Tayeb’s visit to the Vatican again affirm his respect for Islam and contempt for Christianity? Will he convert to Islam before al-Tayeb, or just offer his submission and a jizya payment?

The Times of Israel opined that Monday’s Vatican meeting was a “sign of improved ties between Catholic Church and Muslim world.” Really? Where? Muslims have massacred, exiled, forcibly converted or subjugated hundreds of thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria. Have these “improved ties” saved even one Christian from suffering at the hands of Muslims? No, they haven’t. All they do is make the “dialogue” participants feel good about themselves, while the Middle Eastern Christians continue to suffer. In fact, the “dialogue” has actually harmed Middle Eastern Christians, by inducing Western Christian leaders to enforce silence about the persecution, for fear of offending their so-easily-offended Muslim “dialogue” partners.

Has the Pope welcomed any of the persecuted Christians to the Vatican? Or is that honor reserved only for this man, who will allow for “dialogue” only when his Christian “dialogue” partners maintain a respectful silence about Muslim massacres of Christians?

This Pope is a disgrace to the Church, to Judeo-Christian civilization, and to the free world.

“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

Categories: Al Azhar University, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic jihad, Islamic reformation, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Pope Francis
Tags: Al Azhar University, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic Jihad, Islamic reformation, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Pope Francis

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Archbishop Outside Whose Cathedral Cologne Women were Raped, Defends Islam

May 23, 2016

Archbishop Outside Whose Cathedral Cologne Women were Raped, Defends Islam, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 23, 2016

archbishop-of-cologne

It’s important to remember that the Cologne sexual assaults took place outside its cathedral.

In a crowd of 1,000 men, hundreds of Muslim refugees prowled, assaulting and robbing any woman they could find. A police officer described seeing crying women stumble toward him after midnight. He managed to rescue one woman whose clothes had been torn off her body from a group of her attackers, but could not save her friends because the mob had begun hurling fireworks at him.

The provost of the Cologne Cathedral had warned anti-Islamist protesters, “You’re supporting people you really don’t want to support.” But it was the provost and pro-refugee activists who had supported people they really didn’t want to support. There is no way to know whether any of the smiling young people holding, “I Love Immigration” banners had fallen victim to those refugees they loved so much.

And the cathedral itself came under attack.

Barbara Schock-Werner, who served as cathedral architect between 1999 and 2012, was present at the well-attended religious service along with several thousand other worshippers. Shock-Werner told the German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine, that the cathedral experienced an unprecedented and massive rocket and ‘banger’ fireworks barrage that lasted the whole service.

“Again and again the north window of the cathedral was lit up red, because rocket after rocket flew against it,” she said. “And because of the ‘bangers’, it was very loud. The visitors to the service sitting on the north side had difficulties hearing. I feared at times that panic would break out.”

Cardinal Rainer Woelki, who presided at the New Year’s mass, also complained about the “massive disruptions.”

“During my sermon loud ‘bangers’ could be heard,” Woelki said in the paper, Die Welt. “I was already annoyed beforehand about the loud noises that were penetrating into the cathedral.”

But Woelki is attacking anti-Islamists.

Rainer Woelki posted a video where he ridiculed the right-wing party’s claim that Islam is incompatible with the German constitution. The archbishop’s intervention comes after the anti-immigration party said it would press for bans on minarets and burqas.

“Anyone who denigrates Muslims as the AfD leadership does should realise prayer rooms and mosques are equally protected by our constitution as our churches and chapels,” he said.

“Whoever says ‘yes’ to church towers must also say ‘yes’ to minarets.”

And then they have to say “yes” to sexual assaults and “no” to women walking the streets.

Categories: "Far right hate groups", Cologne, Germany, Hijrah, Islam and Christianity, Islam and colonialism, Islam and girls, Islam and women, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Islamisation, Islamophobia, Leftist perspectives
Tags: Cologne, Germany, Hijrah, Islam and Christianity, Islam and colonialism, Islam and girls, Islam and women, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Islamisation, Islamophobia, Leftist perspectives

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CAIR’s Dawud Walid: Civil Rights Champion or Radical Hiding in the Open?

May 23, 2016

CAIR’s Dawud Walid: Civil Rights Champion or Radical Hiding in the Open? Gatestone Institute, M. Zuhdi Jasser, May 23, 2016

(Dr. Jasser is a Muslim, active in efforts to reform Islam. — DM)

♦ With his March 25 Facebook post, CAIR’s Dawud Walid cemented his position as a preacher of hate and radicalism. He has already become known to many Muslims as an extreme figure, who bullies anyone who disagrees with him, maligns dissidents, harasses gay Muslims, and foments anti-American sentiments.

♦ It is beyond denial to ignore the fact that Muslims such as Walid are leading radicalizers of American Muslims, and their efforts are dedicated to pushing vulnerable Muslims away from integration and reform against Islamist movements.

Dawud Walid is the longtime executive director of Michigan’s chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). His Twitter profile currently bills him as a “human rights advocate and political blogger,” and his blog sells him as an imam who lectures on topics such as how to maintain your manners when dealing with hostile people (the irony of this will soon become abundantly clear), and how to address the very real problem of anti-Black racism within the Muslim community.

To anyone less familiar with Walid’s persona — especially online — he could easily appear to be a champion of civil rights, a man before his time in terms of addressing intra-community problems as well as hostilities between Muslims and non-Muslims. A more comprehensive review of his activities — or even just a cursory review of his commentary on one of the days he has chosen to lash out at anyone with whom he disagrees — reveals a more sinister, even cruel, man. Further, his true aim seems not to be civil discourse and community cohesion, but rather the furtherance of a particularly malignant, vicious strain of political Islam.

I have seen Walid demean, bully, and slander other Muslims for years. He has actively worked to silence discussion of critical issues, by working to shut down screenings of Honor Diaries, a film addressing the mistreatment of women in the name of “honor” culture; instigating online hate campaigns and witch hunts against dissidents — women in particular — and pushing Muslims to ostracize those with whom he disagrees. While this behavior has been abhorrent and has brought significant distress and even potential danger to those he has targeted, the broader public has paid little mind.

His most recent tirade on social media, however, may — and should — wake the public up to his real agenda.

On March 25 of this year, Walid took to social media to talk about the Easter holiday, and how he believes Muslims should treat Christians on this day. Rather than using the opportunity to offer best wishes to Christians and condemn the slaughter of Christians by ISIS, Walid urged Muslims not to “encourage infidels” by wishing Christians a “Happy Easter.” His comments were at best hateful, at worst incitement. His is the kind of thinking that leads to attacks such as the one against Christians in Pakistan over Easter, or when the Pakistani Taliban blew up a crowd of mostly women and children of Ahmadi Muslims, or when Asad Shah, stabbed 30 times, was assassinated recently in his store in Glasgow, Scotland, for wishing Christians a Happy Easter.

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On March 25 of this year, Dawud Walid (left), executive director of Michigan’s CAIR chapter, posted in Facebook, urging Muslims not to “encourage infidels” by wishing Christians a “Happy Easter.” This kind of thinking leads to attacks such as the stabbing murder this year of Asad Shah (right) in Glasgow, Scotland, who was killed by a fellow Muslim who claimed Shah “disrespected” Islam by wishing Christians a Happy Easter.

Dawud Walid wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post:

“Being respectful of others’ rights to observe and practice religious holidays doesn’t mean welcoming or celebrating them.

“‘Good Friday’ and Easter Sunday symbolize the biggest theological difference between Christians and Muslims. The belief of ‘original sin’ needing a human sacrifice of Jesus (peace be upon him) who is believed by Christians to be the son of Allah the Most High is blasphemous according to Islamic theology.

“There’s no original sin for humans to atone for since ‘no soul bears the burden of another’ according to the Qur’an. Regarding the crucifixion, ‘they killed him not’ and it was only a ‘likeness of him’ is stated in the Qur’an. And of course, ‘He begot none, nor was He begotten’ meaning Allah didn’t have a son is also a primary belief of monotheism articulated in the Qur’an.

“Be respectful, and don’t pick theology debates with your Christian family members and friends this weekend. However, avoid wishing them ‘Happy Easter’ greetings.

“Avoid giving the remote appearance of passively affirming shirk [polytheism] and kufr [disbelief].”

In the above post, Walid is referencing blasphemy — a crime in places such as Pakistan, where Christians and even minority Muslims are marked for death under archaic “blasphemy” laws, perceived insults to Muhammad or Islam. He further suggests that he believes Christianity to be a polytheistic religion, again asserting his belief in the doctrine of blasphemy. Finally, he instructs Muslims to self-isolate from both family and friends, by not extending the normal human kindness of a “Happy Easter” greeting, lest they seem to be affirming “shirk” (idolatry, polytheism) and “kufr” (disbelief; related to kafir, often used to mean “infidel”). Where blasphemy laws exist, and where this mentality takes hold, the punishment for what he calls “kufr” is death — sometimes by the state, sometimes by mobs tacitly endorsed by the state.

With this post, Walid cemented his position as a preacher of hate and radicalism. He has already become known to many Muslims as an extreme figure, who bullies anyone who disagrees with him, maligns dissidents, harasses gay Muslims, and foments anti-American sentiments. The above post could have been written by Anwar al-Awlaki, an imam who preached violence. In fact, when blogging about Awlaki’s long overdue assassination by an American drone in 2011, Walid’s few comments were not reserved for the opinions of Awlaki, who had radicalized countless Muslims who have massacred countless innocent Americans, but instead he referred to yours truly as “the lone wolf.”

For years he has advocated for every radical Islamist he could get away with defending. For example, Detroit’s radical Islamist imam Luqman Abdullah has long been the focus of Walid’s innumerable grievances against local police and FBI. He continues to this day to portray this armed militant imam, who led a separatist “Ummah” (or Islamic State) group (long before ISIS), as the “victim” of an overly aggressive FBI shooting, despite every investigation having shown otherwise and despite Abdullah’s core anti-American separatist militant ideology.

It should raise many alarms that his social media posts, such as the one this Easter (which he deceptively took down), was written not by a known radical in Yemen, but by a man employed as a leader of the self-appointed “representative” of American Muslims, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in one of the regions of the United States most densely populated by Muslims. It is beyond denial to ignore the fact that Muslims such as Walid are leading radicalizers of American Muslims, and their efforts are dedicated to pushing vulnerable Muslims away from integration and reform against Islamist movements.

_________________

M. Zuhdi Jasser is the President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Arizona and co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement. He is author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam.”

Categories: CAIR, Islam and Christianity, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic reformation, Islamic tolerance, Islamisation, Islamism, Islamists in America, Zuhdi Jasser
Tags: CAIR, Islam and Christianity, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic reformation, Islamic tolerance, Islamisation, Islamism, Islamists in America, Zuhdi Jasser

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Pakistan: “Blasphemy” for Ethnic Cleansing

May 22, 2016

Pakistan: “Blasphemy” for Ethnic Cleansing, Gatestone Institute, Lubna Thomas Benjamin, May 22, 2016

♦ After the attack, some villagers gathered and started threatening other Christians, demanding they either convert to Islam or move out of the area. Then an Islamic religious decree was issued, to hand over Masih to the local Islamic clerics so that he could be burned alive for blasphemy.

♦ Why was only Masih (a Christian) accused of blasphemy, when Bilal (a Muslim) had obviously watched the video in question?

♦ The Christians who are left are searching to find an alternate place to live, and are now facing hatred in the guise of a boycott. No one is selling them food or any daily essentials.

♦ In Punjab, harassing Christians has become a norm; a way of getting rid of them. Every time Christians are threatened and forced to leave the area, the charge is always blasphemy.

It started as a normal day in the remote Pakistani village of Chak-44 for Imran Masih, a Christian man, and Bilal, his Muslim friend, in mid-April. Masih had revealed to Bilal that the woman he had fallen in love with was a Muslim.

According to media reports, Masih was called away urgently and left his phone with Bilal, who apparently came across a video that appeared in Masih’s Facebook feed, which allegedly contained content against the Muslim Prophet Mohammad. Bilal’s accusation that Masih had viewed that video became the reason to charge Masih with blasphemy.

You start asking questions, such as: Wait a minute, who has committed blasphemy?

No one will probably ever even know what was on that video or whether Masih even watched it. But even if Masih did watch it, he was not the only one: Bilal also watched it. However, in a country where might is right, Bilal, a Muslim with the support of fellow villagers, is always right.

In an instant, a friend had become not only a stranger, but a liar.

Bilal called in two other Muslims to help beat up his Christian friend. A doctor who appeared at the scene to save Masih from the angry men was apparently also a Muslim clergyman. He asked Imran for an apology.

After the attack, some villagers gathered and started threatening other Christians, demanding they either convert to Islam or move out of the area. Then an Islamic religious decree was issued, to hand over Masih to the local Islamic clerics so that he could be burned alive for blasphemy.

What had those Christian residents done to infuriate the local Muslims? They had merely lived in this remote region of Punjab.

Why was only Masih (a Christian) accused of blasphemy, when Bilal (a Muslim) had obviously watched the video in question?

The news reports also indicate that three quarters of the area’s Christians have already abandoned their homes. The Christians who are left are searching to find an alternate place to live, and are now facing hatred in the guise of a boycott. No one is selling them food or any daily essentials.

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Left: Imran Masih’s house in the village of Chak-44, Pakistan. Right: The Catholic Church in the village. (Images source: World Watch Monitor)

The history of Punjab brims with violence and the torching Christian homes. All these horrific incidents illustrate an intense hatred for Christians. Religion here is a force that could divide any friendship.

The government and human rights organizations are well aware of this hatred and violence. Here, harassing Christians has become a norm; a way of getting rid of them. Every time Christians are threatened and forced to leave the area, the charge is always blasphemy.

A few years ago, I covered the story of Rimsha Masih, an underage Christian girl charged with the blasphemy in the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. As one talked to the shopkeepers and her neighbors, their eyes would fill with hate. “We want to get Christians out of here,” the residents would say. Using a young Christian girl and getting her charged with blasphemy seemed like the perfect plan.

In Pakistan, under the guise of blasphemy laws, the Muslim citizens have been getting rid of the Christians for years.

Categories: Islam and Christianity, Pakistan
Tags: Islam and Christianity, Pakistan

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Germany: Christian Refugees Persecuted by Muslims

May 15, 2016

Germany: Christian Refugees Persecuted by Muslims, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, May 15, 2016

♦ Thousands of Christians in German refugee shelters are being persecuted by Muslims, sometimes even by their security guards, according to a new report by the NGO Open Doors.

♦ “A major obstacle to the survey was that many victims were afraid to participate. … Their concern was not only on the possible consequences for them personally and for their families in Germany, but also for their relatives who continue to live in the countries of origin.” — Open Doors report.

♦ “I came to Germany after fleeing my own country in the hope my life would be safer in the face of growing dangers. But in Germany I’ve been threatened more.” — Christian refugee in Germany.

♦ “Despite increased reports about this problem by the media, charities, human rights organizations, church leaders and Christian organizations, German authorities and politicians have hardly ever launched an investigation. Instead, we believe that incidents are deliberately downplayed and even covered up. … Even in police stations, religiously motivated attacks on Christian refugees are not documented as such.” — Open Doors report.

Thousands of Christians in German refugee shelters are being persecuted by Muslims, sometimes even by their security guards, according to a new report, which asserts that in most cases German authorities have done nothing to protect the victims.

The study alleges that German authorities and police have deliberately downplayed and even covered up the “taboo issue” of Muslim attacks on Christian refugees, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

The report, “Religiously Motivated Attacks on Christian Refugees in Germany” (Religiös motivierte Übergriffe gegen christliche Flüchtlinge in Deutschland), was produced by the German branch of Open Doors, a non-governmental organization supporting persecuted Christians, worldwide.

The study — which confirms a Gatestone Institute analysis about Muslim-Christian violence in German refugee shelters — documents more than 300 incidents in which Christian refugees in Germany have been physically and sexually assaulted, and even threatened with death, because of their faith.

The report is based on the interviews of 231 Christian refugees conducted between February and April 2016. More than 80% of those interviewed were male and more than half were younger than 30. Most of those questioned came from Iran, Afghanistan and Syria. Nine out of ten of those participating in the survey were Christians with a Muslim background. Of these, the majority had already converted to Christianity in their home countries.

Of those interviewed, 86 said they had been physically assaulted at the hands of Muslim refugees and shelter security staff, many of whom are also Muslim. More than 70 said they had received death threats, 92 had been insulted for their Christian faith and 62 had been subjected to “very loud religious music or prayer,” presumably of the Islamic variety. Others said they had been subjected to physical attacks in the form of punches, spitting, pushing and sexual abuse. Around 75% of those interviewed said that harassment from Muslims is a “frequent” problem.

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Representatives of the NGO Open Doors, along with other NGOs, hold a press conference to present the Open Doors report “Religiously Motivated Attacks on Christian Refugees in Germany,” in May 2016.

According to Open Doors, the report “only shows the tip of the iceberg” because “many Christian refugees are frightened of facing more difficulties if they report incidents.” Others fear that “the information could get into the wrong hands and cause danger for relatives still living in their home countries.” The report states:

“A major obstacle to the survey was that many victims were afraid to participate. They feared negative consequences in the event that their personal information were to fall into the wrong hands. Their concern was not only on the possible consequences for them personally and for their families in Germany, but also for their relatives who continue to live in the countries of origin.

“Another major obstacle was that many women are reluctant to report sexual assaults because of feelings of shame which are often more pronounced among Middle Eastern women than those in the West.

“To make matters worse, many refugees have had negative experiences with the authorities and police in their countries of origin because of their Christian faith. They are used to being treated as second-class citizens. Now they see that things are no different in many refugee shelters in Germany — a country with freedom of religion — and they not even once received help.

The report includes testimonies from Christian refugees who describe a “constant climate of fear and panic” in German shelters:

“I came to Germany after fleeing my own country in the hope my life would be safer in the face of growing dangers. But in Germany I’ve been threatened more.”
“At this point I must say that I really did not know that by coming Germany, and only because of my faith, that I would be harassed here as much as in Iran.”
“The Muslims paint crosses and underline them with an X to insult us. They throw their garbage in front of our door. They listen to the adhan (Muslim call to prayer) and the reading of the Koran at high volume. We had to abandon our last refugee shelter because of death threats.”
“In our refugee shelter, the security guards do not enforce the rules. Every morning at 5AM we are woken up to the sound of the adhan. The situation is getting worse. When you complain, they say this is the Muslims’ right. Also, they insult us with impunity. In our shelter, two of my friends have received death threats. Muslims tore a cross chain from his neck. None of us dares to wear a cross anymore.”
“When we collect our welfare stipend, we are pushed to the end of the line. Also in the kitchen, we are the last to eat. After midnight, when we are asleep, they knock on the window and we can no longer go back to sleep because of fear. And the next day during language classes we cannot learn well. Muslims call us mortad (apostates) and steal from the kitchen. They have stolen so much of our food that every room now has a refrigerator.”
“I was insulted and physically assaulted by Muslims in our shelter several times. Every time the police had to intervene. The memory of these incidents still weighs on me and I have serious psychological problems, I even attempted to commit suicide. Security guards have insulted our religion and attacked us. I testified as a witness to police. After receiving death threats, we went to police with our pastor and filed a complaint.”

The report includes an account from Gottfried Martens, a pastor in Berlin, who describes incidents of Muslim harassment that occurred in early May — incidents which the police have still not bothered to investigate:

“A Christian couple from Iran was increasingly being bullied by the Afghan leader of an asylum shelter in Berlin. As ‘infidels’ they were not given a bed and were forced to sleep on the floor for months. It finally got to the point that the Afghan devastated their sleeping area and personally destroyed their Christian objects (Easter candle, Bible, parish newsletter).

“Another Christian was harassed by Muslim refugees who chanted the Koran around the clock because of his conversion. Yesterday evening, he tried to kill himself with a razor blade. Fortunately, he was rescued in time.

“Two weeks ago we had to accommodate eight refugees from another shelter. They were threatened with death because they refused to participate in the Muslim ritual prayer in the gymnasium. When the security guards were called for help, they joined together in prayer with those who had threatened the Christians. When the Christians fled the hall as the Muslims were shouting ‘Allahu Akbar‘ [Allah is Greatest], the Muslim security guards banned them from the shelter on the grounds that the Christians had attacked the Muslims.”

According to Open Doors:

“It is alarming that Christian refugees and other religious minorities increasingly are facing the same persecution and discrimination as in their Muslim countries of origin, and not even in Germany can they get the expected protection.

“Despite increased reports about this problem by the media, charities, human rights organizations, church leaders and Christian organizations, German authorities and politicians have hardly ever launched an investigation. Instead, we believe that incidents are deliberately downplayed and even covered up. During confidential discussions with researchers from Open Doors, it has become known that even in police stations, religiously motivated attacks on Christian refugees are not documented as such.”

“As a result, many cases of sectarian violence are not statistically recognized and are not classified correctly in terms of their severity and frequency. This means that a large number of religious-related human rights violations against Christians and other religious minorities are treated as irrelevant.

The report concludes with a number of recommendations for the German government to help ease the burden on Christian refugees:

The religious affiliation all migrants should be recorded at the very beginning of the process of registering refugees and that data should be forwarded throughout the process of assigning refugees to accommodations.
Religious minorities should be pooled so that the percentage of Christians and other religious minorities in relation to Muslims in refugee shelters is approximately equal.
Christians and other religious minorities who are victims of persecution and discrimination should be separately accommodated.
The non-Muslim component within the ranks of the security personnel should be increased.
Employees and the security staff in refugee shelters should receive regular sensitivity training regarding the causes of religious conflict and the protection of religious minorities.
Persecuted Christians should be provided with a list of the names of other Christians to whom they can call upon for help.

Some institutions close to the German government openly dispute Open Doors’s assertions and have provided political cover for the authorities to do nothing to help persecuted Christians.

In March 2016, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), a center-right think tank that is independent of, but closely tied to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, published an analysis entitled, “Christians under Pressure?” (Christen unter Druck?). The report argues that Muslim persecution of Christians in Germany and elsewhere in the world is being exaggerated and in any case cannot be proven:

“In the world context, as in Germany, reliable information on attacks against Christians is difficult to obtain. Reports are mostly subjective and empirically not seriously provable…

“There are probably a number of different reasons for the violence in the refugee shelters: A large number of people are living together for a long time in a confined space without privacy and in stressed conditions. Psychology may also be a contributing factor: worries about the future, language and cultural barriers and the processing of recent memories of flight from their home country. As if this were not already stressful enough, there are situations in which persecutors and persecuted in their countries of origin meet up again at refugee shelters in Germany.

“In addition to sectarian clashes, ethnically motivated conflict situations, for example, repeated clashes between Afghans and Iraqis. Striking is also the large numbers of conflicts involving converted Christian refugees. Only very little is known about hostility against Arab Christians who were already Christians in their country of origin.”

The KAS report advises against separating refugees according to their religious affiliation because it would “send the wrong signal” to newcomers regarding Germany’s commitment to religious liberty: “In Germany there are no cultural or religious exceptions to our understanding of civil liberties… Germany guarantees the freedom of religion… In Germany there is no reason for a person to feel they need to conceal their religious affiliation or that they are not able to convert to another religion.”

The KAS report does not offer any recommendations for eradicating the sectarian violence in German refugee shelters.

At a press conference marking the release of the Open Doors report, Volker Baumann, director of a group called Action for Persecuted Christians and the Needy (AVC), said that up 40,000 refugees in German shelters are being persecuted due to their religious beliefs.

According to Gottfried Martens, the pastor from Berlin, the German government has lost control over the situation. In an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he said that most Christians who are being persecuted in German shelters dare not file a formal complaint due to fears for their own safety. In those cases where complaints are filed, Muslims file counter-complaints. Moreover, it is hardly ever possible irrefutably to prove incidents of harassment. Thus the vast majority of refugees decide not to complain in order not to aggravate their situation.

Thomas Müller, an analyst with Open Doors Deutschland, concluded:

“Christian refugees from many different countries are trying and failing to find safety in Europe and it is likely that the report only shows the tip of the iceberg. It is clear that many Christian refugees — especially those who are converts to the Christian faith — live in fear of persecution from Muslim refugees who make up the majority of residents in the refugee hostels set up throughout Europe. It is sobering to hear persecuted Christians telling a Western country that they recognize the very same persecution patterns in operation as in their home countries.”

Categories: Germany, Islam and Christianity, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion
Tags: Germany, Islam and Christianity, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion

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