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A Muslim view of radical Islam

April 5, 2016

A Muslim view of radical Islam, Washington Times, Mark Christian, April 4, 2016

(Nothing really new or exceptional here beyond that the article is by a former Muslim imam and appeared in a more of less “mainstream” newspaper. — DM)

Eye on IslamIllustration on the core problem with Islam by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

Few issues divide the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates as starkly as their view of Islam. Republican front-runner Donald Trump claims flatly that “Islam hates us” while Sen. Ted Cruz, suggests we should begin patrolling Muslim neighborhoods in search of terrorist plots birthed by “radicalized” Muslims.

Meanwhile, President Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spend an inordinate amount of their time praising Muslim-Americans, citing the enormous contributions they’ve made to our country and way of life. Mrs. Clinton argues that what Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz have said and propose are offensive and “dangerous,” while Mr. Obama refuses to admit that today’s terrorists are in any way motivated by their religion.

At the same time, the Muslim community is deafeningly silent, and the radicals among them couldn’t be happier. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are, in essence, enabling their cause by encouraging us to embrace Islam uncritically while turning a blind eye to the radical jihadists within its ranks. They are helping those who wish to lull us into complacency in the face of the threat they pose.

They reject Mr. Trump’s claim that there is something about Islam that “hates us” without asking whether it might be true, why it might be true and what can be done about it if it is. The Council on American-Islamic Relations says it is because we are Islamophobic, profiling Muslims and discriminating against them socially, politically and economically. These “reasons” play to the leftist sense of guilt, but the question remains: Why the repeated Muslim attacks? Is it because the “radicalized” Muslims are feeling disenfranchised and frustrated by a lack of opportunity? Paris attacker Najim Laachraoui had an engineering degree and the San Bernardino shooter, Syed Farook, held a good job in environmental health. The Chattanooga shooter who, last year, killed five U.S. servicemen, had a degree in electrical engineering. These men didn’t turn to terror because they couldn’t find work or were economically disadvantaged.

It’s time to end the argument about whether some Muslims have hijacked and perverted their faith. That is for the Muslims to work out among themselves. The fact is, these acts are being committed in the name of Allah and unless we understand that, we will never be able to deal with it.

Judeo-Christianity requires us to forgive and to accept responsibility, as we did for the Crusades and the Inquisition. Our inclination is to own up to our past mistakes rather than blame others.

Contrast that with Islam, and what the Koran and the Hadiths teach. When Allah calls on his followers to kill those who will not submit to Islam, does he sound like the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition? When Allah then tells them that killing themselves in acts of murderous barbarity against the infidel is the only path to redemption from the condemnation of sin, does he sound like the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? When Allah demands all of this to ensure his kingdom can be established on earth, does this sound like the God who taught us to “love our enemies”?

Christians and Muslim follow very different religions, and we must not equate one with the other. The men who blew up the airport terminal in Belgium were pictured calmly pushing their bombs through the terminal. They didn’t look particularly evil or nervous. They were devout Muslims, earning redemption in the only way possible.

We are dealing with a dangerous religious and sociopolitical system that won’t vanish just because we pretend it doesn’t exist. Muslims who want to live in peace with their neighbors must deal with their problems through a heartfelt reformation of a religion hostile to non-believers. Jihad is the core element of the Islamic mindset and we are living through a true clash of civilizations.

We will not win if we don’t open our eyes to the reality of who we are facing. While we blame ourselves for what is happening, Muslims are continuing to protect their own, even those who have committed terroristic acts they would never dream of committing themselves. They protect and enable those who are living out their faith according to the Koran. I know because I was once one of them until I walked away from my faith years ago. If I ever return to my native Egypt, I would be killed as an apostate by the followers of this religion of peace.

Muslims hid Osama bin Laden for nearly 10 years. One of the Paris jihadists, Salah Abdeslam, escaped to his home in Brussels where, hiding in plain sight, he eluded arrest for four months. His neighbors had to know he was there, but no one blew his cover.

We are dealing with something more sinister, more devious and much more destructive than restless young men who are treated unfairly; we are dealing with jihadists who are protected by non-militants who believe in their hearts the jihadists are right.

We may not like it, but we have to face the ugly truth: Islam hates us — because Allah tells his followers they must.

• Mark Christian is the president and executive director of the Global Faith Institute. A former Muslim Sunni imam, he converted from Islam to Christianity.

Categories: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Islam and Christianity, Islamic immigration, Islamic terrorism, Islamic tolerance, Obama and Islam, Ted Cruz
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Patrol Muslim Neighborhoods or Jewish ones

March 29, 2016

Patrol Muslim Neighborhoods or Jewish ones, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 29, 2016

leiby-home

When I go to the synagogue on Passover, there will be a police officer at the door. There will be an NYPD officer in front of every synagogue. Police brass will make the rounds of each synagogue to check security and alertness. Local precincts will be on alert anticipating a Muslim terrorist attack.

As they are on every Jewish holiday.

In France, there are heavily armed soldiers outside synagogues. In Israel, the soldiers are more likely to be found inside the synagogues.  That is what Jewish life is like under the shadow of Muslim terrorism.

The ADL, which was not outraged when Bernie Sanders posed with members of anti-Semitic hate groups such as SJP and CAIR, put out a press release denouncing Ted Cruz for calling for heightened police scrutiny of Muslim neighborhoods. But the alternative to a police presence in Muslim areas is a police presence in Jewish areas. If you can’t stop Muslim terrorism at the source, then you have to try and secure all the potential targets. That means police officers in front of synagogues and TSA agents checking your shoes. It means police forces that look like armies and soldiers in the streets.

The ADL denounced Cruz for calling for a return to the NYPD’s old tactics for breaking up Muslim terror plots. One of those “controversial” methods led to the breakup of a Muslim terror plot to blow up a synagogue in Manhattan. Ahmed Ferhani had been interfaith enough to also consider blowing up a church, but he settled on plotting to plant a bomb and then open fire inside a synagogue.

The same left that is now outraged by Cruz’s statement fought for Ferhani. They fought for a Muslim terrorist who boasted at his sentencing, “I intended to create chaos and send a message of intimidation and coercion to the Jewish population of New York City.” In the zero sum game of civil rights, the left fights for the civil rights of Muslim terrorists and against the civil rights of their Jewish victims.

Muslim civil rights is not a matter between the government and Muslims. It is a zero sum game in which protecting the “rights” of Muslims to plan terror attacks takes away the right of their victims to live. It’s a choice between having police informants in a mosque or police officers in front of synagogues. Both send a chilling message. But the former sends a chilling message to terrorists. The latter to their targets.

Liberal groups protesting the idea of Muslim surveillance are offering a false and dishonest choice.

The choice is not whether there will be government surveillance and a police presence. The choice is where will it be? Will it be at a mosque run by the Muslim Brotherhood that terror preachers visit to spread their hate? Or will it be at every church and synagogue that Muslim terrorists might target.

None of the above is not an option. It stops being an option after the first, second and third terror attacks. France tried to ignore Muslim violence against Jews for as long as it could. But even a left-wing government was forced to station armed soldiers in front of Jewish schools and synagogues.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s new boss, whines that “special patrols of Muslim neighborhoods” will make Muslims “more vulnerable, more frightened”. What exactly does he think that police patrols of Jewish neighborhoods do? What message does it send to Jewish children going to synagogue that there is a cop at the door because a Muslim terrorist might try to kill them?

Why isn’t Greenblatt more concerned about how those children feel than how their killers do?

Muslim terrorism is not a matter between Muslims and an abstract state. The victims of Muslim terror are not abstractions. They are real people who suffer and bleed. After every Muslim terror attack, the media rushes the victims off the stage to make way for Muslims whining about an imaginary backlash after someone gave them a dirty look on the bus, because it wants us to forget who the real victims are.

The real victims are not in the mosque. They are in the church, the synagogue and the Hindu temple. They are in a New York office building shuffling their papers at 8:45 AM on a Tuesday morning. They are at a Christmas party in California. They are near the finish line in Boston watching the runners pass.

Muslim civil rights violate their civil rights. Muslim civil rights violate their bodies. Muslim civil rights drive nails and ball bearings into their arms and legs. Muslim civil rights lead them to stagger through the smoke and then plummet one hundred stories headfirst into the New York cement. Muslim civil rights force non-Muslims to walk in fear to their own houses of worship waiting for the next attack.

Muslim terrorism forces us to choose between the civil rights of Muslims and those of everyone else.

How we handle Muslim terrorism will define who we are as a people. Will we side with the victims or the perpetrators? Anyone who speaks of the civil rights of the perpetrators instead of those of the victims has chosen the side of the perpetrators. The ADL, like Obama and the media, stands with the perpetrators. It would rather see police in front of synagogues than in front of mosques.

That is a choice. And it is a choice that says a great deal about what the ADL’s real values are.

Liberals used to pride themselves on standing with the oppressed, not with the oppressors. Today, they stand unambiguously with the oppressors. They stand with hate groups and synagogue bombers.

Dutch journalist Elma Drayer complained about Muslims throwing stones at Jews leaving the synagogue after September 11. The police told her not to talk about it because the Muslims were “already being stigmatized”. It wasn’t the stigmatism of the Jewish victims being stoned that the police were concerned with, but the stigmatism of the Muslims who were throwing the stones at them.

This is Muslim civil rights.

We can be concerned about the “stigmatism” of the Muslims whose mosques are being used to plot attacks. Or the stigmatism of their victims. We can worry about how “vulnerable” and “frightened” Muslims feel at the extra police scrutiny or how vulnerable and frightened non-Muslims are because instead of proactively fighting terrorism, they have to reactively hope to stop the next terrorist attack.

The NYPD brass that attacked Ted Cruz’s proposal is reactively deploying police officers to potential targets because it has been prevented from fighting Islamic terrorism proactively by investigating mosques and other Jihadist coordinating hubs. And so there are police officers in front of synagogues and heavily armed ESU tactical teams hanging around high traffic areas hoping that will be enough.

Under Bill de Blasio, New York made a choice between proactively targeting Muslim neighborhoods and reactively deploying everywhere that Muslim terrorists might strike. It was the wrong choice.

In Europe, those same choices were also made. Synagogues were turned into fortresses with bulletproof windows and armored doors. Jews were told not to wear religious clothing outside. Worshipers travel in fear to prayer, passing armed soldiers outside, entering one at a time to avoid becoming bigger targets.

While politicians wrung their hands over Muslim feelings, their victims were left frightened, vulnerable and stigmatized. And now the same pattern is repeating itself in the United States all over again.

The fundamental moral question of every crime, every atrocity and every act of violence against the innocent is do we concern ourselves with the pain of the victims or do we make excuses for the killers. The answer to that question defines who we are, individually and as a people. It also determines whether we will defend ourselves or go on making excuses for the killers even as they are killing us.

When we choose the killers over their victims, we not only betray them, but we betray ourselves.

Categories: ADL, CAIR, Human rights, Islam and Christianity, Islam and human rights, Islam and Jews, Islamic immigration, Islamic jihad, Islamisation, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, SJP
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ISIS Observes Easter By Reportedly Crucifying Indian Catholic Priest and Massacring Christian Women and Children At Playground

March 28, 2016

ISIS Observes Easter By Reportedly Crucifying Indian Catholic Priest and Massacring Christian Women and Children At Playground, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, March 28, 2016

Crucified priest

ISIS-linked extremists in Yemen has reportedly carried out their threat to crucify a captured priest, Father Thomas Uzhunnalil, 56, after he was taken hostage during a massacre at a Catholic home. Some 15 people were killed on March 4th after four Islamic extremists posed as visiting family members and then murdered the occupants, including four Indian nuns, two Yemeni female staff members, eight elderly residents and a guard. Also, in Pakistan, at least 70 people are dead in an ISIS attack during the Easter holiday that targeted a playground filled with mothers and children. A Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which has sworn allegiance to ISIS, took “credit” for the Easter bombing — using bombs loaded with ball bearing to maximize the killing of the children and mothers gathered in the park for the holiday. Islamic extremists who are willing to riot and kill for any slight of their religion have little problem with targeting religious buildings and holidays of other faiths. While such inconsistencies are hardly surprising for a group willing to crucify priests and shoot elderly nuns, the belief that such grotesque acts please Allah remains inconceivable to most people.

Father Uzhunnalil was kidnapped by ISIS gunmen in Yemen three weeks ago. Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn told a congregation gathered in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the Austrian capital that the priest had been crucified. The location is a refuge for the elderly operated by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in main southern city Aden.

What is equally disturbing with the violence in Pakistan is that, rather than forcing a period of reflection on the rise of Islamic extremism, thousands took to the street to praise the murderer of a moderate politician who was killed by his bodyguard for criticizing the blasphemy laws. The streets were filled with Muslims demanding the adoption of medieval Islamic Sharia laws, including the death penalty for those who insult or defame Islam.

Categories: Crucifixion of priest, Islam and Christianity
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U.S. at Easter: When Christians Are Slaughtered, Look the Other Way

March 27, 2016

U.S. at Easter: When Christians Are Slaughtered, Look the Other Way, Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, March 27, 2016

♦ “Over 500 Christian villagers were slain in one night.” — Emmanuel Ogebe, Nigerian human rights lawyer, March 2, 2016.

♦ What Christians in Nigeria are experiencing is a live snapshot of what millions of Christians and other non-Muslims have experienced since the seventh century, when Islam “migrated” to their borders: violence, persecution, enslavement, and the destruction of churches.

♦ The Obama Administration refuses to associate Boko Haram — an organization that defines itself in purely Islamic terms — with Islam, just as it refuses to associate the ISIS with Islam.

♦ In all cases, the Obama Administration looks the other way, while insisting that the jihad is a product of “inequality,” “poverty” and “a lack of opportunity for jobs” — never of Islamic teaching.

Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamic extremist group, has killed more people in the name of jihad than the Islamic State (ISIS), according to the findings of a new report. Since 2000, when twelve Northern Nigerian states began implementing or more fully enforcing Islamic sharia law, “between 9,000 to 11,500 Christians” have been killed. This is “a conservative estimate.”

In addition, “1.3 million Christians have become internally displaced or forced to relocate elsewhere,” and “13,000 churches have been closed or destroyed altogether.” Countless “thousands of Christian businesses, houses and other property have been destroyed.”

The report alludes to a number of other factors that connect the growth of the Nigerian jihad to the growth of the global jihad. The rise of anti-Christian, Islamic supremacism

“did not emerge in Northern Nigeria until the 1980s, when Nigerian scholars and students returned from Arabic countries influenced by Wahhabi and Salafist teaching. Each year, thousands of West African Muslims get free scholarships to pursue their studies in the Sunni Arab countries; this has had a major impact on Nigerian culture.”

This “major impact” is not limited to Nigeria. Saudi Arabia annually spends over $100 billion disseminating “Wahhabi and Salafist teaching” — or what growing numbers of Muslims refer to as “true Islam”. They also do so through European mosques and those in the United States. Behind the radicalization of ISIS, Boko Haram, and Lone Wolf Muslims, stand America’s best Muslim friends and allies.

Another important finding from the report is that,

“Not just radical Islam, Boko Haram being the most notable example, but also Muslim Hausa-Fulani herdsmen and the Northern Muslim political and religious elite are also major actors of targeted violence towards the Christian minority.”

Most recently, on March 2, Nigerian human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe sent an email saying: “I arrived Nigeria a few days ago to investigate what appears to be the worst massacre by Muslim [Hausa-Fulani] herdsmen… Over 500 Christian villagers were slain in one night.”

Similarly, according to a West African source, “Once Boko Haram is defeated, the problem will not be solved. Christians living under Sharia law are facing discrimination and marginalization and have limited to no access to federal rights.”

The report finally finds that much of the anti-Christian violence derives from the historical “migration of Muslims into non-Muslim territories in northern Nigeria to promote the Islamic religious and missionary agenda in all parts of northern Nigeria.” In other words, what Christians in Nigeria are experiencing is a live snapshot of what millions of Christians and other non-Muslims have experienced since the seventh century, when Islam “migrated” to their borders: violence, persecution, enslavement, and the destruction of churches.

All of these findings contradict the Obama Administration’s official narrative concerning the unrest in Nigeria. For years, the administration refused to list Boko Haram — which has slaughtered more Christians and “apostates” than even ISIS — as a terrorist organization. It finally did so in November 2013, after several years of pressure from lawmakers, human rights activists, and lobbyists.

1529For years, the Obama Administration refused to list Boko Haram — which has slaughtered more Christians and “apostates” than even ISIS — as a terrorist organization. It finally did so in November 2013, after several years of pressure. Pictured above: Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau (center).

Even so, the Obama Administration refuses to associate Boko Haram — an organization that defines itself in purely Islamic terms — with Islam, just as it refuses to associate the ISIS with Islam. Although Boko Haram and its allies have yet to miss a year when they do not bomb or burn several churches during the Christmas or Easter celebrations, on Easter Day, 2012, after the organization had murdered 39 Christian worshippers, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said: “I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence” in the Muslim-majority north.

So what is? The administration attributes to Boko Haram the same motivation it attributes to the Islamic State — or as President Bill Clinton once memorably put it in a reference to Boko Haram’s murder campaign: “inequality” and “poverty” are “what’s fueling all this stuff.”

That assessment is similar to the Obama Administration’s claim that “a lack of opportunity for jobs” is what created ISIS; or CIA John Brennan’s claim that the jihadi ideology the world over is “fed a lot of times by, you know, political repression, by economic, you know, disenfranchisement, by, you know, lack of education and ignorance, so there — there are a number of phenomena right now that I think are fueling the fires of, you know, this ideology.”

Appeasing the jihadis has been the administration’s policy, or in the words of Clinton’s advice to the Nigerian government: “[I]t is almost impossible to cure a problem based on violence with violence.” Countless decapitated Christian heads later, when Nigerian forces killed 30 Boko Haram members in a particularly powerful offensive carried out in May 2013, Reuters reported that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “issued a strongly worded statement” to the Nigerian president: “We are … deeply concerned,” he said, “by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism” from Boko Haram.

Christian life in Muslim-majority areas of Nigeria is merely a microcosm of Christian life in Muslim-majority nations around the world. Christians are being persecuted and killed, their churches banned, burned or bombed. Thanks to Saudi petrodollars, the men behind the persecution are almost always “influenced by Wahhabi and Salafist teaching,” and include not just “extremists,” but also the “political and religious elite.” In all cases, the Obama Administration looks the other way, while insisting that the jihad is a product of “inequality,” “poverty” and “a lack of opportunity for jobs” — never of Islamic teaching.

Categories: Islam and Christianity, Islamic slaughter, Islamophobia
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Syrian Refugees a Threat to the West?

March 18, 2016

Syrian Refugees a Threat to the West? Religious Freedom Coalition, Editors, March 15, 2016

Syrian immigrants

“Europe is a basket case” and “it is going to get worse in 2016,” stated former House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra at a February 29 Center for a Secure Free Society (CSFS) panel in Washington, DC, on Middle East refugees.  He and his fellow panelists gave critical analysis of various dangers faced by Western societies responding to the humanitarian crisis caused by sectarian violence in a disintegrating Iraq and Syria.

Center for a Secure Free Society Senior Fellow J.D. Gordon introduced the panel by noting that four million Syrians, about half the country’s population, have fled the country.  Such numbers placed in perspective the 10,000 Syrian refugees President Barack Obama’s administration intended to resettle in the United States, as mentioned in the event literature.  Center for a Secure Free Society International Fellow for Canada Candice Malcolmsimilarly noted that Canada had fulfilled the very day of the panel a campaign pledge by recently elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees.

Yet the panel focused on Europe, where an estimated 900,000 Syrian refugees had entered Germany alone, as noted by panel moderator and Daily Caller opinion editor Jordan Bloom.  American career diplomat Ambassador Alberto Fernandez described this human stream by which Europe voided its own entry rules as a “massive, unplanned exercise in virtue signaling by the European Union.”  Bloom worriedly noted the recent announcement by German authorities that they had lost track of 130,000 refugees.

“Germany is lying,” Hoekstra responded to Bloom amidst audience laughter, “there is no way that they are still tracking 770,000, that they have only lost 130,000.  They only know that they have lost 130,000.”  Hoekstra described television coverage during a recent Europe vacation of thousands of refugees in the Budapest train station where he and his wife had just transited.  He speculated that perhaps another 50-70,000 refugees had entered Germany without any official knowledge.

“If you don’t think that they are seeded with ISIS [Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] people, you are crazy,” Hoekstra said of these refugees while predicting for Europe as well as Canada a “security nightmare.”  “We have no idea who these people are.  The Canadians have no idea who these people are,” he stated while suggesting that half the refugees entering Europe actually came from Afghanistan.  Fernandez discussed a Syrian friend living in Belgium who went to visit 90 supposed Syrian refugees in her community but only discovered five; the rest of the individuals hailed from various places like Afghanistan or Eritrea.

Malcolm cited worrying statistics such as those of a British polling firm that found 20 percent of Syrians in general and 13 percent of Syrian refugee camp residents in particular having a positive view of ISIS.  A Lebanese cabinet minister had estimated that two percent of Syrian refugees were ISIS sympathizers/members, approximating nonetheless 20,000 dangerous individuals among Lebanon’s 1.2 million Syrian refugees.  Yet for Syrian refugees “Europe has absolutely no selection criteria whatsoever.  It is a first come, first served free-for-all.”

Malcolm described strict Canadian security controls similar to America’s designed to screen such dangers among refugee resettlement applicants.  Canada only accepted Syrian families, no single men, from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) camps and applicants could not have infectious diseases or criminal records.  Any inconsistency in an applicant’s story immediately stops security checks involving an interview.

Nonetheless, Malcolm noted that ISIS had seized passport production facilities in Syria’s failed state, a factor among others like stolen identification that would stymie even Canada’s precautions.  Reliable Syrian officials for local background investigations no longer existed, she noted, while Hoekstra observed that “by definition, trying to get information from a failed state means you are going to get failed information.”  While Canadian intelligence has already identified Islamic terror cells in every major Canadian city, Malcolm stated, ‘it just takes one to get through to create a national security threat.”  This should also concern Canada’s American neighbor across a basically open border.

While Trudeau’s refugee pledge initially helped him on the campaign trail, Canadian public opinion has “totally flipped” on further refugee resettlement, Malcolm observed.  “After the [November 2015] Paris attacks, people in Canada started to realize that there was a threat” and overwhelmed Canadian refugee aid organizations want a pause in admitting refugees.  While Trudeau has called for resettling another 25,000 refugees, 70 percent of surveyed Canadians disagree with his policy and 43 percent want no more.

Fernandez noted that security concerns can extend beyond the first generation of resettled Muslim refugees.  “Second generation immigrants are an at risk population,” as unlike the parents who show gratitude towards asylum countries, the children “grow up confused, they grow up with identity issues.”  As an example he cited the 2013 Boston marathon bombers, the offspring of Chechen asylum seekers, while Malcolm mentioned Ottawa’s 2014 Parliament Hill shooter, a Canadian-born man whose father was involved with Libyan jihadists.

Himself a Cuban refugee, Fernandez worried about Muslim refugee assimilation in a Europe now having an “acute crisis of identity.”  He emphasized the necessity of a “confident, clear-minded culture, society, and state who understands who they are, what they are, what their values are, what they stand for, to be able to assimilate others.”  The demand to assimilate foreign-born individuals into a society begs the question “assimilate into what?”

Amidst all these concerns, Fernandez noted in Syria the “tremendous irony that the countries that are not responsible for this debacle are the ones being called upon to do much” to help.  Iran, Qatar, Russia, and Saudi Arabia had given the most aid to the Syrian conflict parties, yet the single largest humanitarian donor to Syrian refugees was the United States, a non-Muslim-majority country.  Malcolm meanwhile noted that 90 percent of Syrian refugees originally offered sanctuary in Canada refused, demonstrating how many refugees wanted to stay in the region.  Many things would be simpler for all concerned if only they could satisfactorily fulfill this wish.

Categories: Canada, Europe, Islam and Christianity, Islamic invasion, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Obama and Islam, Obama's America
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State: Kerry Needs More Evidence to Determine Genocide by ISIS and Assad

March 16, 2016

State: Kerry Needs More Evidence to Determine Genocide by ISIS and Assad, Washington Free Beacon,  , March 16, 2016

(Kerry is big on evidence. Just look at the Iran scam and nuke inspections. — DM)

 

 

State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday that his boss, Secretary of State John Kerry, needs more evidence to determine if the Islamic State has committed genocide with its slaughter of thousands of innocents throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Congress had set Kerry a deadline of March 17 to officially determine whether atrocities committed by ISIS constitute genocide, but Toner told reporters during the State Department’s daily press briefing that the department will not have a decision by that date.

“Determining these kinds of legal definitions, such as genocide and crimes against humanity, require a very detailed, rigorous legal analysis,” Toner said. “[Kerry] is a lawyer, and, of course, that’s going to weigh into [how he makes his decision].”

“There are a lot of lawyers on [Captiol] Hill, too,” Associated Press reporter Matt Lee said in response, referring to the House of Representatives unanimously voting 393-0 on Monday to pass a resolution labeling the barbarity ISIS has perpetrated against Christians and other religious minority groups in the Middle East as “genocide.”

Toner clarified that his “only point is that he [Kerry] wants to base his decision on the best evidence available, and he has requested additional evidence, information, in order to [do so].”

“It just seems like there is a lot of evidence already out there,” Lee said in response.

The international community has decried ISIS’ slaughter and enslavement of anyone who does not submit to its uncompromising brand of Sunni Islam, killing Muslims as well as other religious and ethnic groups.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum determined last year in a report that ISIS is guilty of carrying out genocide against the Yazidi religious minority in northern Iraq, a term the museum rarely uses.

“We believe Islamic State has been and is perpetrating genocide against the Yazidi people,” the report says. “Islamic State’s stated intent and patterns of violence against Shia Shabak and Shia Turkmen also raise concerns about the commission and risk of genocide against these groups.”

The jihadist group has also carried out brutal violence against Christians and other groups, with Muslims making up the highest number of its victims.

The European Parliament voted last month to describe ISIS’ atrocities in Iraq and Syria as genocide.

There has been some debate as to whether using the term “genocide” with ISIS in an official capacity would legally obligate the U.S. to take further action against the jihadist group, which some people have argued is why the Obama administration is reluctant to do so.

Toner made clear at Monday’s press briefing that no legal requirement comes with using the term, but he stressed the international community has an obligation under the United Nations to stop crimes against humanity and other such atrocities like the ones being committed by ISIS.

In addition to the resolution on genocide passed Monday, the House also voted 392-3 to pass a measure calling for the creation of an international tribunal to try the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for war crimes.

Assad triggered the Syrian civil war in 2011 by slaughtering his own people for peacefully protesting his authoritarian rule. He has since waged a war against the Syrian people who formed an opposition in response, resulting thus far in about 400,000 deaths and the displacement of millions of others.

Assad has received help from Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Russia to stay in power.

Categories: Assad, Genocide, Islam and Christianity, Islamic State, Kerry, Obama and Islamic State
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U.S. Policy Made 2015 the Worst Persecution of Christians “in Modern History”

March 15, 2016

U.S. Policy Made 2015 the Worst Persecution of Christians “in Modern History” Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, March 15, 2016

♦ In 35 nations Islamic extremism “has risen to a level akin to ethnic cleansing” of Christians.

♦ Something else stands behind this rise of genocidal “Islamic extremism”: U.S. foreign policy. In every Muslim nation where the U.S. has intervened in the name of “freedom and democracy,” Christian life has exponentially worsened.

♦ For years the Obama administration has refused to list Boko Haram as a terrorist organization, and has argued that its violence had nothing to do with Islam and was a result of poverty and grievances. Instead, the U.S. pressured the Nigerian government to make concessions.

♦ The primary achievement of U.S. foreign policies, apart from wasted American blood and treasure — is the unprecedented rise in Muslim nations of Islamic forces outspokenly bent on destroying America.

2015 was the “worst year in modern history for Christian persecution,” according to Open Doors, a human rights organization that has been documenting the persecution of Christians since 1955.

According to its latest data, more than 7,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2015 — almost twice as many as in 2014. In addition, more than 2,400 churches were attacked, damaged or destroyed — again, more than double the number of the previous year.

In the words of Open Doors’ CEO, David Curry:

The 2016 World Watch List [which ranks the 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted] documents an unprecedented escalation of violence against Christians, making this past year the most violent and sustained attack on Christian faith in modern history. … This research has concluded that after the brutal persecution of Christians in 2014, 2015 proved to be even worse with the persecution continuing to increase, intensify and spread across the globe. … The level of exclusion, discrimination and violence against Christians is unprecedented, spreading and intensifying.

Who or what is behind these unprecedented levels of persecution? Some of it is related to the tendency of non-Western nations to associate Christianity with the “hated West.” Four are Communist nations — Vietnam (ranked #20), Laos (#29), China (#33), and North Korea (#1), where “Christianity is not only seen as ‘opium for the people,’ as is normal for all communist states, it is also seen as deeply Western and despicable,” notes the report. Three are reclaiming their religious heritage in contradistinction to what is portrayed as a depraved West — Hindu India (#17), Buddhist Bhutan (#38) and Myanmar (#23). And two — Mexico (#40) and Columbia (#46) — are fueled by organized crime and drug cartels.

“Islamic extremism” is cited as the source of persecution for the remaining 41 nations that make the list of 50 worst persecutors of Christians. North Korea aside, the rest of the eight nations where Christians experience the worst form of persecution (“extreme persecution”) are all Islamic. In 35 nations, Islamic extremism “has risen to a level akin to ethnic cleansing” of Christians.

A close examination of the report indicates that something else stands behind this rise of genocidal “Islamic extremism”: U.S. foreign policy. In every Muslim nation where the U.S. has intervened in the name of “freedom and democracy,” Christian life has exponentially worsened. Put differently, among those who most despise “freedom and democracy” — radical and jihadi Muslims — tend to be the ones most empowered by U.S. foreign policies.

Iraq today, according to the report, is the second worst nation in the world in which to be Christian. Afghanistan is fourth, Syria fifth, and Libya tenth. A decade ago, none of these countries even made the top 10 list. Syria and Libya — when they were ruled by secular autocrats who were eventually demonized by U.S. politicians and media, and then underwent U.S. intervention — did not even make the top 20.

In 2004, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was ranked 32 and scored only 35.5 (out of 100). After a decade’s worth of American lives and treasure were wasted, Iraq is now scores 90 and is the worst Muslim nation in which to be Christian. The situation is the same in those other Muslim nations that the U.S. government brought “freedom and democracy” to — and with Syria, which it continues trying to bring “freedom and democracy” to:

  • Syria: A decade ago it was ranked #47 and scored only 24.5. A nation must score at least 50 to count as containing “sparse persecution.” Today it is ranked #5 and scores 87 , or “extreme persecution.”
  • Libya: A decade ago it was ranked #22 and scored 41; today it ranks #10 and scores 79.
  • Afghanistan: A decade ago it ranked #11 and scored 53; today — a decade after the U.S. declared “victory” over al-Qaeda and the Taliban — it is ranked #4 and scores 88.

Even in nations where U.S. intervention is not obvious, Christian persecution has reached unprecedented levels. In Nigeria, Boko Haram — an Islamic group possibly more savage than ISIS — slaughtered more Christians in 2015 than any other terrorist group. Yet for years the Obama administration has refused to list Boko Haram as a terrorist organization, and has argued that its violence had nothing to do with Islam and was a result of poverty and grievances. Instead, the U.S. pressured the Nigerian government to make concessions, including by building more mosques — the very structures, as the Nigerian lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe said, where Muslims are radicalized and recruited for the jihad.

In May 2013, soon after Nigerian forces killed 30 Boko Haram members in a particularly strong offensive, Reuters reported that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “issued a strongly worded statement” to the Nigerian president: “We are … deeply concerned by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism” from Boko Haram.

Those many Americans indifferent to all this persecution “over there” would do well to connect the dots: Globally empowering forces hostile to Christians is synonymous with globally empowering forces hostile to America. Those Muslims who hate and persecute Christians alsohate, and seek to persecute, Americans for exactly the same reason: Westerners all are hated non-Muslim infidels.

In short, the primary achievement of U.S. foreign policies, apart from wasted American blood and treasure — is the unprecedented rise in Muslim nations of Islamic forces outspokenly bent on destroying America.

Categories: Christians, Islam and Christianity, Obama and Christianity, Obama and Islam
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UK Megamosque Backs Persecution of Christians in Pakistan

March 8, 2016

UK Megamosque Backs Persecution of Christians in Pakistan, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 8, 2016

UK megapreacher

When Muslim leaders in the UK make it clear that they want to see the persecution of Christians in Pakistan, what do they intend for the Christians and other non-Muslims in the UK? It’s a very good question that we all ought to think about.

Asia Bibi is a defenseless Pakistani Christian woman who was maliciously accused of “blasphemy” by her Muslim neighbors. They did this to settle a score after she committed the other “crime,” as a non-Muslim, of drinking water from the same cup as them. Asia was sentenced by Pakistan’s courts to death by hanging in 2010. She languishes in jail awaiting execution until this day. So far, so obscene.

Five years ago, Asia must have thought she had been given a lifeline. Imagine the delight felt by this powerless woman—for Christians are a tiny and discriminated against minority in Pakistan—when the governor of Pakistan’s largest province, the flamboyant secular Muslim, Salmaan Taseer, publicly took up her case…

In 2011 Salmaan Taseer was gunned down by his own bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri… Qadri came to be regarded as a hero by many Barelwi Pakistani Sufi Muslims for “defending” the “honor” of the Prophet Muhammad.

Blasphemy laws in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world exist to lock in Muslim authority over non-Muslims. The Bibi case is typical. When Muslims speak of defending the honor of Mohammed, they really mean defending their own honor and their subjugation of non-Muslims. And in the UK, there’s plenty of support for Qadri.

One of Europe’s largest mosques, the Barelwi Sufi managed Ghamkol Sharif in Birmingham, UK, held a wake “in honor of the lover of the Prophet, Warrior Mumtaz Qadri, the martyr.”

Another Barelwi Imam, Muhammed Asim Hussain, whose verified Facebook page has been liked nearly 137,000 times, posted his position openly:

“A dark day in the history of Pakistan; the day Ghazi [warrior] Mumtaz was wrongfully executed and martyred in the way of Allah, when he did what he did in honor of the Prophet.”

A mainstream conservative Barelwi leader, Muhammad Masood Qadiri who presents a weekly show on Ummah TV, available on the Sky TV platform, doubled-down after hailing “warrior” Qadri as a “martyr”:

“This does not make me a terrorist sympathizer as I, along with millions of fellow Muslims do not accept that Gazi Mumtaz Qadri was a terrorist in the least. I have always been the first to condemn terrorism wherever in the world it takes place. I am also an Islamic religious minister. I therefore have a duty to express an opinion on fundamental matters concerning Islam and on this occasion, the crime of blasphemy.… As for having travelled to the funeral of Gazi Mumtaz Qadri, along with hundreds of thousands of others who also attended, I am not at all ashamed of this.”

If you believe in killing people in the name of Islam… you are a terrorist. It’s that simple. Any supporter of Qadri should be treated as a supporter of Islamic Supremacist terrorism.

Ghamkol Sharif is one of the UK’s megamosques. It can fit in 5,000 people. It’s one of those “moderate” megamosques though. And doesn’t at all want its support for murdering anyone who defends Christians to be viewed as “extremism”.

“Some are equating honouring Mumtaz Qadri to extremism. The issue must be holistically understood before any judgements are made,” the megamosque posted on Facebook.

Because when you shoot someone. You should understand that holistically.

The victim who was murdered for trying to protect a Christian woman, “while being aware of the strong religious sentiments of the Pakistani Muslims, he said the law- regardless of how it was applied- was a ‘Black Law’ and compared it to his excrement.” And so naturally his Jihadist killer, “is being hailed a hero not just for standing up to what he believed in but as a victim of a system that should have been fair. Comparing this case to terrorism and extremism is an absurdity.”

Sure. It’s absurd to compare terrorism to terrorism.

This is the Islamofascist infrastructure that has set up shop in the UK that justifies murder for blasphemy. Under these conditions, freedom of speech and religion becomes structurally impossible. The UK must choose between these and Islamic supremacism.

Categories: Islam and Christianity, Islamisation, Multiculturalism, Pakistan, UK
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Muslims Responsible for ‘Worst Year in Modern History of Christian Persecution’

March 7, 2016

Muslims Responsible for ‘Worst Year in Modern History of Christian Persecution’ Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, March 7, 2016

ws

Open Doors, an organization that advocates for persecuted Christians, recently released its latest World Watch List—a report that highlights and ranks the 50 worst nations to be Christian.  It found that 2015 was the “worst year in modern history for Christian persecution.”

Who claims the lion’s share of this unprecedented persecution?  Muslims—of all races, nationalities, languages, and socio-political circumstances: Muslims from among America’s closest allies (Saudi Arabia #14 worst persecutor) and its opponents (Iran #9); Muslims from economically rich nations (Qatar #21) and from poor nations (Somalia #7 and Yemen #11); Muslims from “Islamic republic” nations (Afghanistan #4) and from “moderate” nations (Malaysia #30 and Indonesia #43); Muslims from nations rescued by America (Kuwait #41) and Muslims from nations claiming “grievances” against the U.S. (fill in the blank __).

The report finds that “Islamic extremism” is the main source of persecution in 41 of the top 50 countries—that is, 82 percent of the world’s persecution of Christians is being committed by Muslims.  As for the top ten worst countries persecuting Christians, nine of them are Muslim-majority—that is, 90 percent of nations where Christians experience “extreme persecution” are Muslim.

Still, considering that the 2016 World Watch List ranks North Korea—non-Islamic, communist—as the number one worst persecutor of Christians, why belabor the religious identity of Muslims?  Surely this suggests that Christian persecution is not intrinsic to the Islamic world but is rather a product of repressive regimes and other socio-economic factors—as the North Korean example suggests and as many politicians and other talking heads maintain?

Here we come to some critically important but rarely acknowledged distinctions.   While Christians are indeed suffering extreme persecution in North Korea, these fall into the realm of the temporal and aberrant.  Something as simple as overthrowing Kim Jong-un’s regime could lead to a quick halt to the persecution—just as the fall of Communist Soviet Union saw the end of religious persecution. The vibrancy of Christianity in South Korea is suggestive of what may be in store—and thus creates such fear for—its northern counterpart.

In the Islamic world, however, a similar scenario would not alleviate the sufferings of Christians by an iota.  Quite the opposite; where dictators fall (often thanks to U.S. intervention)—Saddam in Iraq, Qaddafi in Libya, and ongoing attempts against Assad in Syria—Christian persecution dramatically rises.  Today Iraq is the second worst nation in the world in which to be Christian, Syria fifth, and Libya tenth.  A decade ago under the “evil” dictators, Iraq was ranked 32, Syria 47, and Libya 22.

The difference between Muslim and non-Muslim persecution (e.g., communist) of Christians is that the latter is often rooted in a particular regime.  Conversely, Muslim persecution of Christians is perennial, existential, and far transcends this or that regime or ruler.  It is part and parcel of the history, doctrines, and socio-political makeup of Islam—hence its tenacity; hence its ubiquity.

Moreover, atheistic communism is a relatively new phenomenon—about a century old—and, over the years, its rule (if not variants of its ideology) has greatly waned, so that only a handful of nations today are communist.

On the other hand, Muslim persecution of Christians is as old as Islam. It is a well-documented, even if suppressed, history.

To further understand the differences between temporal and existential persecution, consider Russia. Under communism, its own Christians were persecuted; yet today, after the fall of the USSR, Russia is again reclaiming its Orthodox Christian heritage.

North Korea—where Kim Jong-un is worshipped as a god and the people are shielded from reality—seems to be experiencing what Russia did under the Soviet Union.  But if the once mighty USSR could not persevere, surely it’s a matter of time before tiny North Korea’s walls also come crumbling down, with the resulting religious freedom that former communist nations have experienced. (Tellingly, the only countries that were part of the USSR that still persecute Christians are Muslim, such as Uzbekistan, #15, and Turkmenistan, #19.)

Time, however, is not on the side of Christians living amid Muslims; quite the opposite.

In short, Muslim persecution of Christians exists in 41 nations today as part of a continuum—or “tradition”—that started nearly 14 centuries ago.  As I document in Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, the very same patterns of Christian persecution prevalent throughout the Muslim world today are often identical to those from centuries past.

A final consideration: North Korea, the one non-Muslim nation making the top ten worst persecutors list, is governed by what is widely seen as an unbalanced megalomaniac; conversely, the other nine nations are not dominated by any “cults-of-personalities” and are variously governed: including through parliamentarian democracies (Iraq), parliamentarian republics (Pakistan and Somalia), one-party or presidential republics (Eritrea, Sudan and Syria), Islamic republics (Afghanistan and Iran), and transitional/disputed governments (Libya).  Looking at the other Muslim nations that make the top 50 persecutors’ list and even more forms of governments proliferate, for example monarchies (Saudi Arabia #14).

The common denominator is that they are all Islamic nations.

Thus, long after North Korea’s psychotic Kim Jong-un has gone the way of the dodo, tens of millions of Christians and other “infidels” will continue to suffer extreme persecution, till what began in the seventh century reaches fruition and the entire Islamic world becomes “infidel” free.

Confronting this discomforting and better-left-unsaid fact is the first real step to alleviating the sufferings of the overwhelming majority of Christians around the world.

Unfortunately, however, while some are willing to point out that Christians are being persecuted around the Muslim world—why that is the case, why 82% of the world’s persecution is committed by Muslims from a variety of backgrounds and circumstances—is the great elephant in the room that few wish to address.  For doing so would cause some long held and cherished premises of the modern West—chiefly the twin doctrines of religious relativism and multiculturalism—to come crashing down.

Categories: Islam and Christianity
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Bombed, Burned, and Urinated On: Churches Under Islam Muslim Persecution of Christians, January 2015

March 2, 2016

Bombed, Burned, and Urinated On: Churches Under Islam Muslim Persecution of Christians, January 2015, Gatestone Institute, by Raymond Ibrahim, March 2, 2016

(“Nothing to do with religion.” — DM) 

♦ When Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for U.S. military efforts against ISIS, was asked about the status of Christians in Iraq soon after the monastery’s destruction, he replied “We’ve seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting toward Christians.”‘

♦ ‘Kuwait lawmaker Ahmad Al-Azemi said that he and other MPs will reject an initially approved request to build churches because it “contradicts Islamic sharia laws.” He added that Islamic scholars are unanimous in banning the building of non-Muslim places of worship in the Arabian Peninsula.’
‘
♦ “We have little hope left that there can be a future for us, Aramean Christians, to stay in the land of our forefathers.” — Fr. Yusuf, head the last Christian family to flee Diyarbakir, Turkey.
”
♦ Yet another Christian girl in Pakistan was abducted by a group of Muslim men, forced to convert to Islam, and, at the age of 15, marry one of her kidnappers.’
‘

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Iraq: The Islamic State blew up the country’s oldest Christian monastery, St. Elijah’s. The 27,000-square-foot building had stood near Mosul for 14 centuries. For several years, prior to 2009, U.S. soldiers protected and sometimes used the monastery as a chapel. “Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled,” reported a Roman Catholic priest in Irbil. “We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, [and] eliminating and finishing our existence in this land.” Yet, when Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for America’s military efforts against ISIS, was asked about the status of Christians in Iraq soon after the monastery’s destruction, he replied, “We’ve seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting toward Christians.”

Kosovo: Muslims urinated in an Orthodox Christian church in Pristina, the capital. Deputy Prime Minister Branimir Stojanovic condemned the desecration of the Temple of Christ the Savior: “Urinating in a sanctuary is shameful, uncivilized, vandalism.” (Last year in Italy, Muslims broke a statue of the Virgin Mary and also urinated on it.) Stojanovic added that, “The quiet observation of the demonstrators by the police, as they entered the temple and urinated is also shameful.” Serbian [Christian] sanctuaries in Kosovo are constantly desecrated,” the deputy prime minister said.

Algeria: On January 7, unknown vandals damaged, robbed, and wrote jihadi slogans on a church. Furniture, ritual objects, and money worth about U.S. $8,000 was stolen from Light Church in Tizi-Ouzou, around 62 miles from Algiers. According to Pastor Mustapha Krireche, “Thieves broke into the inside of our church through the window, because we installed a reinforced door very hard to force open. … They took the music equipment like guitars, synthesizer, percussion, and sound equipment, plus a printer, the trunk of tithes, a sum of money, and other material.” The assailants left Islamic supremacist graffiti on the church walls including “Allah Akbar [“Allah is Greater”].” The church was targeted at least twice before: in 2009, “about 20 Islamist neighbors tried to block the congregation … from meeting for worship”; in 2010, a group of Muslims rampaged through the church building, trying to burn it down and damaging Bibles and a cross.

Kuwait: Lawmaker Ahmad Al-Azemi said that he and other MPs will reject an initially approved request to build churches because it “contradicts Islamic sharia laws.” He added that Islamic scholars are unanimous in banning the building of non-Muslim places of worship in the Arabian Peninsula.

Mongolia: Days after a church celebrated Christmas, explosives were thrown into the stove chimney of a Kazakh house-church. As a result, “Believers decided not to come together for a while. They [are] afraid of a repetition of the explosions in the homes of believers,” said a church leader. Large numbers of people had attended the church’s Christmas services and local Christians believe that this turnout had “angered some of the local Muslims and led them to carry out the attack.”

Pakistan: Three churches were attacked:

1) Apostolic Church was burned in the Punjab. The church building was torched a day after a prayer vigil for Epiphany on Jan. 6. Pastor Zulfiqar of the Apostolic Church said Bibles and sacred vessels were also lost in the blaze. An earlier dispute between Muslims and Christians is believed to be behind the arson attack. Locals accused police of being negligent, as usual. According to a local resident: “All the local Christians are now in great fear, the fire illustrates that Christians are not wanted in the local area.”

2) Akba Azhar, a 26-year-old Muslim man, broke into the Victory Church in Kasur and burned copies of the Bible and other sacred books. Although he was captured and detained by a group of Christians who handed him over to police, and although any act of blasphemy against any religion is punishable in Pakistan by death, police claimed that he was mentally unstable and therefore could not be tried. Local Christians disagree, insisting that he is of sound mind. Several Christians are on death row in Pakistan due to accusations of blasphemy against Islam.

3) A group of Muslims illegally seized a church property. The Christian congregation eventually gave up trying to reacquire its church building and a reconciliation meeting was held by police: “the Muslims instead armed themselves with guns and machetes and attacked the Christians’ family members in their homes,” said local Christian, Bashir Masih. After the church seizure, Muslims in the area “made it almost impossible” for church members to worship even in their own homes. “We obtained written approval from the district police chief, Rai Ijaz, to hold a three-hour prayer meeting in the private courtyard of a Christian…” But when the congregation of about 30 Christians began worshipping, Rashid Jutt, a Muslim in his late 20s, appeared and disrupted the service. A young Christian in attendance stepped forward in an effort to stop the Muslim’s harassment. A fight started, but the congregation separated the two men. The Muslim vowed to “teach all of us a lesson” as he left, said Masih. Apparently the Muslim’s revenge was to tell police that the Christian congregation tied him up and tortured him. The Christian congregation “immediately reached the police station and told the inspector in-charge what had really happened.” A police officer advised them to drop the matter and instead try to “reconcile with the Muslim youth.”

The Christians agreed to a reconciliation meeting, but the Muslim never showed up. Instead, they found him “and some 30 other men armed with guns, machetes, and batons storming through our houses and beating up our boys.” The Christians instantly called police, who arrived slowly and “did not arrest any of the Muslims. … We feel that the entire Muslim community has turned against us for standing up against their aggression. … Even the local police, are on the Muslims’ side,” Masih concluded, “as raids were being conducted to arrest Christian boys while no effort is being made to arrest Jutt and his accomplices, whom we have named in our police complaint for attacking our homes and beating up our boys.”

South Sudan: Muslims “sent” from the Muslim majority in Sudan, a country in which Sharia law is enforced, are suspected of burning down a church building in its southern neighbor where there is a Christian majority. On January 16, members of the Sudanese Church of Christ in the refugee settlement of Yida awoke in the morning to find their place of worship in flames. “I learned that those who set our church on fire were sent from Sudan purposely,” reported an anonymous church leader. The fire burned both the exterior and interior of the structure, destroying all of the chairs, a pulpit, and some copies of Bibles in Arabic. The following week his congregation of nearly 200 people held their prayer service in the open air in the remains of the charred church building, an adobe structure.

Egypt: A makeshift bomb was found near a church on January 22. Father Paul of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt found what he described as a “foreign object” next to the garbage can outside of the Church of the Virgin Mary in Aswan. He took it to the authorities for analysis, and it was discovered to be a makeshift bomb. Separately, security forces arrested 10 Coptic Christians for trying to build a wall around a piece of vacant land in order to expand their current church into the territory or possibly even build a church. A church already exists in the village of Abu Hannas in Samalout, Minya but it is too small to serve the village’s large Christian population. So the church purchased an unused piece of land next to it in the hope of expanding the current church or building another.

Iran: Authorities from the Islamic Republic are trying to convert the Assyrian Christian church in Tehran into a mosque. The church was illegally confiscated two years ago, when church leaders were told that an Islamic prayer hall would be built there.

1490Left: The Assemblies of God Assyrian church in Tehran, Iran. The church was illegally confiscated two years ago by the regime, which now wants to convert it into a mosque. Right: On January 7, vandals damaged, robbed, and wrote jihadi slogans on the Light Church in Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria.

Indonesia: Authorities in the Sharia-governed province of Aceh plan to remove tents built by Christians in which to worship after their churches were torn down late last year by authorities in response to Muslim violence against churches. The attacks left one dead and thousands of Christians displaced. The government claims that the removals were agreed to, as the tents were built only for Christmas services — a claim that Christian leaders reject. When Sharia police and other officials arrived in early January to remove the tents, the congregation resisted. “Mothers, children, and youths blockaded them. They made their objections clear,” said a pastor. Two church tents were torn down.

Turkey: A Syriac Orthodox Church in Diyarbakir, considered to be a “unique heritage site,” is believed to have been destroyed during fighting between the Turkish army and the Kurdish PKK. According to the last Christian family to flee the area, Fr. Yusuf and his wife: “My wife and I managed to escape the Church just moments ago with great difficulty… A few days ago, we already sent our children away in order to put them in safety. My wife and I, however, could not leave this ancient-old Church,” which symbolizes the last living presence of the Arameans in this once flourishing Aramean city.

“We heard the fighting coming closer to us and we felt the ground shaking more and more. Especially my wife got terribly afraid and then we both decided that we had to run for our lives. … Not even at home or church we were safe. Our psychology has been greatly impacted by what we have experienced lately. … We don’t know what has happened to our Church, because we didn’t dare to look while we were running for our lives. Now we have little hope left that there can be a future for us, Aramean Christians, to stay in the land of our forefathers.”

Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Pakistan: At least three Christians were raped and/or tortured to death by Muslims:

1) A group of Muslim men went into a Christian district, abducted a 7-year-old boy, and took turns gang-raping him before finally strangling him to death with a rope. Locals found the child’s body the next day dumped in a field: “[T]he body was sent for post-mortem examination which revealed that the 7-year-old was killed after being brutally raped,” a local said. “The suspects belonged to rich families and were drunk when they kidnapped the child, took him away and they raped him.”

2) A week later, another group of reportedly “rich and drunk” Muslims in a car accosted three Christian girls walking home from work. They sexually harassed them, saying “Christian girls are only meant for one thing, the pleasure of Muslim men.” When the girls tried to run away, the Muslims chased them down in their car and ran them over, killing one 17-year-old girl.

3) A Christian man was brutally tortured to death by police in an attempt to get him to confess to stealing from his Muslim employer. Khurram, the son of Liaqat Masih, the 47-year-old slain Christian, was also tortured by police for the same reason; he shared his eyewitness testimony of the beating his father endured before expiring. Police stripped him naked, made him stand on a chair, tied his hands behind his back, and hung him from the ceiling, causing Liaqat’s shoulders to become dislocated. Each time the captive’s feet hit the floor, a police officer would pull the rope to lift him up again and continued applying tension to his arms and dislocated shoulders. Because both Khurram and Liaqat adamantly maintained their innocence during the ordeal, the officers continued to beat his tied-up father with wooden logs until he eventually died. About an hour into the beating, the guards noticed that Liaqat was no longer breathing. The officers then released the tension on the rope and laid the father’s beaten body down in a pool of his own urine, said the son who watched. At the autopsy, doctors concluded that Liaqat died of a heart attack and failed to record the numerous injuries and bruises suffered during the beating.

Bangladesh: ISIS claimed responsibility for the murder of an 85-year-old Muslim man for reportedly converting to Christianity. He was found lying in a coffin-like structure with blood on his chest. It is believed that he was stabbed to death while working at his homeopathic practice. According to the report, “Soldiers of the caliphate were able to eliminate the apostate, named ‘Samir al-Din’, by stabbing him with a knife.” Although al-Din’s son claims that his father never converted to Christianity and frequently prayed facing Mecca, One Way Church disagrees, stating that he was just “in a meeting of the church at Gopinathpur village on Jan 3” and that he had told others that his life was in danger. “The local church has shown us papers confirming his conversion to Christianity in 2001,” said local police.

Syria: A bomb attack on a mostly Christian neighborhood killed three people and wounded 10 others, all Christians. The attack occurred on January 24 in the Kurdish city of Qamishli. While rumors began that ISIS was behind it, according to one Christian leader, “So many people think that behind the bombing there could also be Kurdish masterminds and executors. It is another disturbing factor of this war: there is terrorism, but sometimes we do not know who really terrifies us.”

Dhimmitude

Germany: In a letter to the Federal Minister for Special Affairs, Hegumen Daniil, Father Superior of St. George the Victorious Monastery in Gotschendorf and a member of the Integration Committee at the German Federal Chancellery, wrote:

Christian refugees from Syria, Eritrea, and other countries are exposed to humiliation, manhunts, and brutal harassment at the camps for refugees by their Muslim neighbors. This also relates to the Yazidi religious minority. The cases when humiliation turns to injuries and death threats are frequent. … According to the Islamic tradition, they [former Muslims, who are at special risk] should be punished, because they moved away from Islam. They are exposed to great pressure and are afraid for their lives, because “renegades” lose any right to it as far as radical Muslims are concerned. … Many Christians who came from the Middle East are suffering from such great harassment that they want to return home, because their situation there seems to them to be a lesser evil as compared with the circumstances in the German refugee accommodation centers.

Egypt: “The tombs of the Copts [Egypt’s indigenous Christians] are being turned into garbage dumps.” This was the message from Fr. Ayoub Yousef, who heads the Coptic Catholic church of St. George in the village of Dalga, in Minya, Upper Egypt. According to the priest, local Christian cemeteries are in a “piteous state,” and all types of sewage and waste are being dumped into them to the point of filling the tombs. He has filed numerous complaints with the prime minister and many other officials “to no avail, to the point that the situation has become unacceptable” and urged “immediate intervention.”

Separately, during a televised Egyptian talk show that aired on January 18, Ahmed ‘Abdu Maher, a lawyer, denounced Al-Azhar, the Islamic world’s oldest and most prestigious university, for continuing to radicalize its students. By way of example, he said: “There is a book in Al-Azhar that calls for the forceful shaving of the heads of the Copts, placing a sign on their homes [so Muslims know where the ‘infidels’ live], and refusing to shake hands with them.” As it happens, the Islamic State and similar Muslim groups all make it a point not to shake hands with “unclean” Christians — one Egyptian cleric said he finds Christians utterly “disgusting” — and that Christian homes should be distinguished with signs, as ISIS did when it placed the Arabic “N” (nun) letter on their homes in Mosul and elsewhere. Even forced head-shaving is being practiced. Back in 2013, jihadi groups in Libya abducted around 100 Copts and abused them—including shaving their heads.

Turkey: Out of almost 2 million Syrian refugees within Turkey’s borders, 45,000 are Christian and are finding that “life is only slightly better at best.” Many have to pretend to be Muslims in public in order to avoid being attacked. They restrict their Christian worship to the privacy of their tents and homes. According to the report, “Another group of refugees in Turkey that was attacked is the Armenians. Zadig Kucuk reportedly found his 85-year-old mother murdered in December 2012, even though she was living in a large Armenian community in Istanbul. When her body was found, a large cross had been carved into her chest. There have also been incidences of refugees being beheaded.”

Iran: Instead of receiving much needed medical treatment, a Christian prisoner was instead given five additional years in prison. Ebrahim Firouzi was first arrested by agents of the Islamic Republic in 2013. He was later condemned by a court of law to one year in prison and two years’ exile. After his sentence ended, Firouzi was kept in prison when new charges of “acting against national security” were levied against him. He remains in prison even though he has been suffering acute pain in the left side of his chest for over a year, and his condition has continued to deteriorate in the last three months.

Kazakhstan: After he appealed the decision, a court in Astana, the nation’s capital, increased the sentence originally handed to Yklas Kabduakasov, a convert from Islam, from seven years’ house arrest to two years at hard labor in a prison camp. The father of eight was arrested last year on charges of “inciting religious hatred.” He was convicted last November and allowed to go home to begin his seven years of house arrest. Local Christians believe the real reason behind the arrest of Yklas Kabduakasov is his conversion from Islam to Christianity and that he was sharing his Christian faith with Muslims.

Mali: A Swiss Christian missionary, who was abducted for 10 days in 2012, has been kidnapped again in Timbuktu. On January 8, Beatrice Stockly, a woman in her 40s, was taken from her home before dawn by armed men who arrived in four pickup trucks. Militant Islamic groups are active in the area in which she lives and had launched two attacks in the previous weeks, one of them on a Christian radio station just before Christmas, which left 25 people dead. In 2012, when the jihadis ruled the area, they outlawed the practice of Christianity and desecrated and looted churches and other places of worship.

Pakistan: Yet another Christian girl was abducted by a group of Muslim men, forced to convert to Islam, and marry one of her kidnappers. The girl, 15-year-old Saima Bibi, was alone in a village in the Kasur district when she was seized. The family filed a complaint with police against her captors. Her parents hope that providing a birth certificate verifying her underage status will prove useful in the case, as the legal age for marriage in Pakistan is 16. Police, however, already confirmed that Saima has converted to Islam and officials have documents proving the marriage.

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by Muslims is growing. The report entitled “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some — though by no means all — of the instances of the Muslim persecution of Christians that surface each month.

It documents what the mainstream media often fails to report.

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

Categories: Islam and Christianity, Islamic perversions
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