Islamic Attacks on Christians - Where's the News?

[Teddy Bear]

Your frustration by the sickening cowardly traitorous mindset of the BBC for their own perceived advantage is understood and shared Steevo.

[Teddy Bear]

The murder of 12 Christians by Islamic extremists is simply not news for the BBC.
Now if 12 Islamic extremists would have been injured by Christians, that would have hit the headlines in a flash.
It's not that the BBC really care for Muslims any more than anybody else but themselves, but they want to be seen as if they do.

Happy New Year everybody - except BBC staff. For you I wish you to be put out in the real world and see how long you last.

Extremists kill 12 in Nigerian Christian villages
Monday, December 30, 2013

By:
Associated Press

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Witnesses say suspected Islamic militants killed 12 civilians in weekend attacks on two Christian villages in Muslim-dominated northeast Nigeria. One attack targeted a wedding party.

The witnesses said eight victims died when extremists attacked a wedding reception at Tashan-Alede village in Borno state late Saturday night, and four in neighboring Kwajffa village on Sunday.

A security official confirmed the attacks but said they did not yet have casualty figures. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The leader of a 4-year-old Islamic uprising that has killed thousands in northeast Nigeria recently threatened to target Christians. Village attacks have become common with many more Muslims than Christians killed this year.

The attacks have continued despite a state of emergency and the deployment of thousands of troops since May.

[steevo]

For you I wish you to be put out in the real world and see how long you last.

May that real world be the places in particular their agenda has had influence.

[Teddy Bear]

I reckon that would cover most of it.
But having to bear the consequences of their influence, and seeing them have to change to try and survive, would be really satisfying.

You made 600 Steevo - a seasonal time to reach it

[steevo]

Heh, anytime I can get a word in

[Teddy Bear]

By coincidence, this post that begins the new year is a perfect example that exactly highlights what we mean.

[Teddy Bear]

Every month we run Raymond Ibrahim's accounts of the Christians persecuted for their faith around the Islamic world, and show just how few of these are reported by the BBC. Here we can see that when another major news agency, Reuters, does draw attention to this, yet still the BBC is ignoring it, there is a dynamic involved.

The organisation that made these figures public, Open Doors, has been going since 1950, and operates in 60 countries. It is inconceivable that the BBC wouldn't be aware of them, and that they wouldn't have tried to have reached as many sources as possibly to air their findings. But for the BBC - it's not anything to concern them.

Reported Christian 'martyr' deaths double in 2013: report
BY TOM HENEGHAN, RELIGION EDITOR

(Reuters) - Reported cases of Christians killed for their faith around the world doubled in 2013 from the year before, with Syria accounting for more than the whole global total in 2012, according to an annual survey.

Open Doors, a non-denominational group supporting persecuted Christians worldwide, said on Wednesday it had documented 2,123 "martyr" killings, compared with 1,201 in 2012. There were 1,213 such deaths in Syria alone last year, it said.

"This is a very minimal count based on what has been reported in the media and we can confirm," said Frans Veerman, head of research for Open Doors. Estimates by other Christian groups put the annual figure as high as 8,000.

The Open Doors report placed North Korea at the top of its list of 50 most dangerous countries for Christians, a position it has held since the annual survey began 12 years ago. Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were the next four in line.

The United States-based group reported increasing violence against Christians in Africa and said radical Muslims were the main source of persecution in 36 countries on its list.

"Islamist extremism is the worst persecutor of the worldwide church," it said.

WAR AGAINST THE CHURCH

Christianity is the largest and most widely spread faith in the world, with 2.2 billion followers, or 32 percent of the world population, according to a survey by the U.S.-based Pew Forum on religion and Public Life.

It faces restrictions and hostility in 111 countries, ahead of the 90 countries limiting or harassing the second-largest faith, Islam, another Pew survey has reported.

Michel Varton, head of Open Doors France, told journalists in Strasbourg that failing states with civil wars or persistent internal tensions were often the most dangerous for Christians.

"In Syria, another war is thriving in the shadow of the civil war -- the war against the church," he said while presenting the Open Doors report there.

About 10 percent of Syrians are Christians. Many have become targets for Islamist rebels who see them as supporters of President Bashar al-Assad.

Nine of the 10 countries listed as dangerous for Christians are Muslim-majority states, many of them torn by conflicts with radical Islamists. Saudi Arabia is an exception but ranked sixth because of its total ban on practicing faiths other than Islam.

In the list of killings, Syria was followed by Nigeria with 612 cases last year after 791 in 2012. Pakistan was third with 88, up from 15 in 2012. Egypt ranked fourth with 83 deaths after 19 the previous year.

The report spoke of "horrific violence often directed at Christians" in the Central African Republic but said only nine deaths were confirmed last year because "most analysts still fail to recognize the religious dimension of the conflict."

NORTH KOREA

The report had no figures for killings in North Korea but said Christians there faced "the highest imaginable pressure" and some 50,000 to 70,000 lived in political prison camps.

"The God-like worship of the rulers leaves no room for any other religion," it said.

There was now "a strong drive to purge Christianity from Somalia," the report added, and Islamist attacks on Iraqi Christians have been increasing in the semi-autonomous Kurdish north, formerly a relatively safe area for them.

Veerman, based near Utrecht in the Netherlands, said that killings were only the most extreme examples of persecutions. Christians also face attacks on churches and schools, discrimination, threats, sexual assaults and expulsion from countries.

Open Doors, which began in the 1950s smuggling Bibles into communist states and now works in more than 60 countries, estimated last year that about 100 million Christians around the world suffered persecution for their faith.

[charmbrights]

Jan 8, 2014 15:46:05 GMT Teddy Bear said:

Every month we run Raymond Ibrahim's accounts of the Christians persecuted for their faith around the Islamic world, and show just how few of these are reported by the BBC. Here we can see that when another major news agency, Reuters, does draw attention to this, yet still the BBC is ignoring it, there is a dynamic involved.

The organisation that made these figures public, Open Doors, has been going since 1950, and operates in 60 countries. It is inconceivable that the BBC wouldn't be aware of them, and that they wouldn't have tried to have reached as many sources as possibly to air their findings. But for the BBC - it's not anything to concern them.

It is noteworthy that the BBC even used "More Or Less" (a programme devoted to statistical analysis) on Radio 4 to attempt to denigrate these figures.

[Teddy Bear]

Not for the first time Charm.
On an earlier post in this thread, from last November, I commented on the BBC article Are there really 100,000 new Christian martyrs every year? in which they do their best to minimise the goings on against Christians throughout the Muslim world.

At the very end of this article they write: "The truth is two thirds of the 2.3 billion Christians in the world today live… in dangerous neighbourhoods. They are often poor. They often belong to ethnic, linguistic and cultural minorities. And they are often at risk.

"And ultimately I think making that point is more important than being precise about the death toll."

So nothing to do with Muslims.

[thehighlandrebel]

Sadly it's not just al Beeb who's downplaying Christian persecution. Our own so called 'Christian' churches are aiding and abetting those who call for Christians to be anhaiallated and Christianity to be eradicated.

My heart goes out to the REAL Christians out there in foreign lands who hold on to their faith despite relentless persecution and indifference from the phoney Christian church we have in this country.

cifwatch.com/2014/01/10/a-wall-is-not-equivalent-to-a-suicide-bomber-denis-maceoin-responds-to-bethlehem-unwrapped/

[Teddy Bear]

I understand completely why you capitalised 'real', as opposed to the dhimmified...(picture speaks a thousand words)

Here's a perfect contrast to highlight how the BBC has complete disregard for the fate of Christians suffering under the Islamic mindset.
Anybody who has followed Raymond Ibrahim's monthly accounts above will be well aware of the murders and persecution of Christians in Nigeria. Not only does the BBC avoid reporting it in its true context, but as I showed in my comment above to Charmbright, will actually try to diminish the real damage.

So today I read this story in the Jihad Watch daily account Sharia in action in Nigeria: Dozens arrested for being gay
A sense that if I searched the BBC website I would be sure to find reference to it. I mean Christian suffering is no problem for the BBC, but GAYS?

So I ran a search on the BBC website of 'Nigeria Gays', and for contrast 'Nigeria Christians'. Compare them yourself, and read the sentence below the headline.
Just this alone shows the real agenda and mindset of the BBC

[Teddy Bear]

This would be one of the best articles in which to understand the real statistics behind Christian persecution in the world today, and compare it to the BBC output to see clearly their agenda in distorting the facts.

As we noted above in an earlier post, there is no reference at all on the BBC website to the Open Doors organisation, the people who produced these figures, and have been in existence since 1950.
On running a search on the BBC website for 'Open Doors Christians' they have nothing for them, but under 'Elsewhere on the Web' they link to this story:
The World's War on Christianity
Huffington Post / 15 January 2014
… at Christians. The worst killings may be in Northern Nigeria. According to the watchdog agency Open Doors, more Christians were killed in Northern…

So just why isn't the BBC covering it? Perhaps because these Christians are not gay.

{many links available on webpage below}

The Existential Elephant in the ‘Christian Persecution’ Room
By Raymond Ibrahim on January 17, 2014 in Muslim Persecution of Christians
Print Friendly

2014 World Watch List global map of Christian persecution (darker colors more severe).

CBN News

Open Doors USA recently released its widely cited 2014 World Watch List—a report that highlights and ranks the 50 worst nations around the globe persecuting Christians.

The one glaring fact that emerges from this report is that the overwhelming majority of Christian persecution around the world today is being committed at the hands of Muslims of all races, languages, cultures, and socio-political circumstances: Muslims from among America’s allies (Saudi Arabia) and its enemies (Iran); Muslims from economically rich nations (Qatar) and from poor nations (Somalia and Yemen); Muslims from “Islamic republic” nations (Afghanistan) and from “moderate” nations (Malaysia and Indonesia); Muslims from nations rescued by America (Kuwait) and Muslims claiming “grievances” against America (fill in the blank __).

A common denominator, a pattern, exists, one that is even more extensive than Open Doors implies. According to that organization’s communications director, Emily Fuentes, “of the 50 worst nations for persecution, 37 of them are Muslim,” or 74%.

In fact, while this number suggests that the other 13 countries making the top 50 are not Muslim—for example Kenya and Ethiopia—those doing the persecution there are.

In other words, those persecuting Christians in 41 of 50 nations are Muslims; that is, a whopping 82% of all persecution around the globe is being committed by the adherents of Islam—sometimes in Christian majority nations; for example, the Central African Republic which, after the 2013 Islamic takeover, now ranks #16, “severe persecution” (the Christian-majority nation did not even appear in the previous year’s top 50).

As for the top ten absolute worst nations, where, according to the 2014 World Watch List, Christians suffer “extreme persecution,” nine—that is, 90%—are Muslim. (Indeed, Open Doors’ global map of Christian persecution can easily be confused with a global map of the Islamic world, with the exception of China (ranked 37, “moderate persecution”) and some sporadic countries dominated by crime and godless tyranny, Columbia, North Korea, etc.)

Similarly, a recent Morning Star News report listing 2013’s ten most horrific anecdotes of Christian persecution around the world finds that nine out of ten—again, 90%—were committed at the hands of those professing Islam.

Still, considering that the 2014 World Watch List ranks North Korea—non-Islamic, communist—as the number one worst persecutor of Christians, why belabor the religious identity of Muslims?

Here we come to some critically important but blurred distinctions. While Christians are indeed suffering extreme persecution in North Korea, these fall into the realm of the temporal, the aberrant, even. Something as simple as overthrowing the North Korean regime would likely end persecution there almost overnight—just as the fall of Communist Soviet Union saw religious persecution come to a quick close.

In the Islamic world, however, a similar scenario would not alleviate the sufferings of Christians by an iota. Quite the opposite; where dictators fall—Saddam in Iraq, Mubarak in Egypt, Qaddafi in Libya, and ongoing attempts to oust Assad in Syria—Christian persecution rises.

The reason for this dichotomy is that Christian persecution by non-Muslims (mostly communists) is often rooted to a temporal regime or ideology. 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.

Still, the significance of all this is often overlooked. Thus, “Dr. David Curry, CEO and president of Open Doors USA, told The Blaze ‘Not every circumstance is the same. For example, in North Korea, you have a quasi-Stalinist government that is the most difficult place to call yourself a Christian on the planet — and has been for the last 12 years,’ he noted. But while North Korea’s government is the real culprit, in places like Iraq, ‘roving extremist groups’ are waging attacks against Christians, while government officials are seemingly powerless to stop the carnage, he explained.”

True; but atheistic Stalinism/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, “roving extremist groups” (also known in other contexts and countries as “Islamists,” “terrorists,” “mujahidin,” “mobs,” “radicals,” “people-with-grievances,” etc.) attacking and killing “infidel” Christians have been around since the dawn of Islam. It is a well-documented, even if suppressed, history.

To further understand the differences between temporal and existential persecution, consider: Russia, once a staunch Orthodox Christian nation, led the communist movement and persecuted its own Christians; yet today, a century later, it is becoming more orthodox again, prominent among Western nations for showing support for persecuted Christians.

North Korea—where its leader, Kim Jong-Un, is worshipped as a god and the people are shielded from reality, including outside their borders—seems to be experiencing what Russia did under the Soviet Union and thus living in a delusional state.

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, ranked #15, “severe persecution,” and Turkmenistan, ranked #20, also “severe persecution.”)

Time, however, is not on the side of Christians living amid Muslims; quite the opposite. Since the 7th century, when Islam came into being, Muslims have been invading and conquering Christian lands, so that more than half of the territory that was once Christian in the 7th century—including all of North Africa and the Levant—are today the heart of the “Muslim world.”

Muslim persecution of Christians exists in 41 nations today as part of a continuum 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. The facts speak for themselves.

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 (hence the “aberrant” persecution); conversely, the other nine nations are not dominated by any “cults-of-personalities” and are ruled under a variety of governance, including parliamentarian democracies (Iraq), republics (Maldives, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen), Islamic republics (Afghanistan, Iran), and monarchies (Saudi Arabia).

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, Islam will still be here and—short of a miraculous “reformation”—still treating Christians and other “infidels” like it did for centuries.

Confronting this understandably 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 to come crashing down.

[steevo]

Sure is an excellent written article giving perspective. I'm reminded of the non-defensive angle emphasized and taught concerning the Crusaders. The West has been utterly disgraceful not only perpetuating ignorance but a culpable enabler.

[Teddy Bear]

It's sure not difficult to imagine the Islamists must be feeling 'God on their side' with most of the West folding before them.
Scum = Succumb

[Teddy Bear]

Raymond Ibrahim gives his explanation for why he feels the media avoids reporting about Christian persecution in Islamic regimes.

Why the Media Doesn’t Cover Jihadist Attacks on Middle East Christians
By Raymond Ibrahim

“To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace”—Hebrews 6:6

The United Nations, Western governments, media, universities, and talking heads everywhere insist that Palestinians are suffering tremendous abuses from the state of Israel. Conversely, the greatest human rights tragedy of our time—radical Muslim persecution of Christians, including in Palestinian controlled areas—is devotedly ignored.

The facts speak for themselves. Reliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations. In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is.

In one week in Egypt alone, where my Christian family emigrated, the Muslim Brotherhood launched a kristallnacht—attacking, destroying, and/or torching some 82 Christian churches (some of which were built in the 5th century, when Egypt was still a Christian-majority nation before the Islamic conquests). Al-Qaeda’s black flag has been raised atop churches. Christians—including priests, women and children—have been attacked, beheaded, and killed.

Nor is such persecution of Christians limited to Egypt. From Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east and from Central Asia to the north to sub-Saharan Africa to the south; across thousands of miles of lands inhabited by peoples who do not share the same races, languages, cultures, and/or socio-economic conditions, millions of Christians are being persecuted and in the same exact patterns.

Muslim converts to Christianity and Christian evangelists are attacked, imprisoned, and sometimes beheaded; countless churches across the Islamic world are being banned or bombed; Christian women and children are being abducted, enslaved, raped, and/or forced to renounce their faith.

Far from helping these Christian victims, U.S. policies are actually exacerbating their sufferings. Whether in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, or Syria, and under the guise of the U.S.-supported “Arab Spring,” things have gotten dramatically worse for Christians. Indeed, during a recent U.S. congressional hearing, it was revealed that thousands of traumatized Syrian Christians—who, like Iraqi Christians before them are undergoing a mass exodus from their homeland—were asking “Why is America at war with us?”

The answer is that very few Americans have any clue concerning what is happening to their coreligionists.

Few mainstream media speak about the horrific persecution millions of people are experiencing simply because they wish to worship Christ in peace.

There, is of course, a very important reason why the mainstream media ignores radical Muslim persecution of Christians: if the full magnitude of this phenomenon was ever know, many cornerstones of the mainstream media—most prominent among them, that Israel is oppressive to Palestinians—would immediately crumble.

Why? Because radical Muslim persecution of Christians throws a wrench in the media’s otherwise well-oiled narrative that “radical-Muslim-violence-is-a-product-of-Muslim-grievance”—chief among them Israel.

Consider it this way: because the Jewish state is stronger than its Muslim neighbors, the media can easily portray Islamic terrorists as frustrated “underdogs” doing whatever they can to achieve “justice.” No matter how many rockets are shot into Tel Aviv by Hamas and Hezbollah, and no matter how anti-Israeli bloodlust is articulated in radical Islamic terms, the media will present such hostility as ironclad proof that Palestinians under Israel are so oppressed that they have no choice but to resort to terrorism.

However, if radical Muslims get a free pass when their violence is directed against those stronger than them, how does one rationalize away their violence when it is directed against those weaker than them—in this case, millions of indigenous Christians?

The media simply cannot portray radical Muslim persecution of Christians—which in essence and form amount to unprovoked pogroms—as a “land dispute” or a product of “grievance” (if anything, it is the ostracized and persecuted Christian minorities who should have grievances). And because the media cannot articulate radical Islamic attacks on Christians through the “grievance” paradigm that works so well in explaining the Arab-Israeli conflict, their main recourse is not to report on them at all.

In short, Christian persecution is the clearest reflection of radical Islamic supremacism. Vastly outnumbered and politically marginalized Christians simply wish to worship in peace, and yet still are they hounded and attacked, their churches burned and destroyed, their women and children enslaved and raped. These Christians are often identical to their Muslim co-citizens, in race, ethnicity, national identity, culture, and language; there is no political dispute, no land dispute.

The only problem is that they are Christian and so, Islamists believe according to their scriptural exegesis, must be subjugated.

If mainstream media were to report honestly on Christian persecution at the hands of radical Islamists so many bedrocks of the leftist narrative currently dominating political discourse would crumble, first and foremost, the idea that radical Islamic intolerance is a product of “grievances,” and that Israel is responsible for all Jihadist terrorism against it.

[Teddy Bear]

Last Friday, 4 Coptic Christians were attacked and killed in Egypt by Muslim Brotherhood supporters. This included the horrific murder of a young Coptic woman.
No mention of this so far by the BBC.
It's inconceivable that if even one Palestinian would be killed by Israel that it wouldn't immediately appear on the BBC website, even if a retaliatory action.

Here's the graphic story the BBC prefer to ignore. (Many links available on webpage itself)

Muslim Brotherhood Slaughter Christian Woman
By Raymond Ibrahim on March 30, 2014 in Islam, Muslim Persecution of Christians

On Friday, March 28, in Ain Shams, a suburb of Cairo, rioting Muslim Brotherhood supporters attacked the Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael Coptic Orthodox Church, including by opening fire on it and setting parked cars aflame. Four people died.

One of the slain, a young Coptic woman, was savagely mauled and molested before being murdered—simply because her cross identified her as a Christian to the Brotherhood rioters.

According to an eyewitness who discussed the entire event on the Egyptian program, 90 Minutes, Mary Sameh George was parking by the church to deliver medicine to a sickly, elderly woman:

Once they saw that she was a Christian [because of the cross hanging on her rear view mirror], they jumped on top of the car, to the point that the vehicle was no longer visible. The roof of the car collapsed in. When they realized that she was starting to die, they pulled her out of the car and started pounding on her and pulling her hair—to the point that portions of her hair and scalp came off. They kept beating her, kicking her, stabbing her with any object or weapon they could find…. Throughout [her ordeal] she tried to protect her face, giving her back to the attackers, till one of them came and stabbed her right in the back, near the heart, finishing her off. Then another came and grabbed her by the hair, shaking her head, and with the other hand slit her throat. Another pulled her pants off, to the point that she was totally naked.

The eyewitness, as well as many others who have since appeared on videos, complained about Egyptian State Security and how it did not intervene—just like under Morsi, when St. Mark Cathedral was besieged, even as security stood by—how it knows exactly who the murderers are, and how one of Mary’s murderers, whom “everyone reported to Security,” was simply relaxing in his home, not even hiding.

Added the eyewitness: “Let me tell you, here in Ain Shams, we [Christians] know that every Friday is a day of death; that the day after Friday, Saturday, we’ll be carried to the morgue!”

In fact, the overwhelming majority of attacks on Egypt’s Christians occur on Friday—the day when pious Muslims meet in mosque for prayers and to hear sermons.

The significance of this fact can only be understood by analogy: what if Christians were especially violent to non-Christian minorities on Sunday—right after they got out of church? What would that say about what goes on in Christian churches?

What does it say about what goes on in Muslim mosques?

A video of Mary’s family members has one woman screaming out the following words—which may be of interest to some Americans:

A message to [U.S. President Barack] Obama, who is calling for the Brotherhood to return to power again. I want to tell him, have mercy, enough is enough! His brother is in the al-Qaeda organization! Why do you want to destroy Egypt?….Egypt will remain whether you, the Brotherhood, or anyone else likes it or not!

She was referring to something that is as well known in Egypt as it is little known in the United States: that the Obama administration is a sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood, which itself is connected to al-Qaeda.

The rest of the video portrays some of Mary’s other family members—many in tears and near hysteria—prompting one to wonder: where is the U.S media? I have not seen a word on this latest Islamic attack on a church and Christians on BBC, CNN, or any of the so-called “mainstream media”? Why is that? They had no problem constantly showing us (over and over again) a video clip of a hysterical female relative of a member of Malaysian flight MH370.

Mary’s family members mourn during church funeral

The mainstream media is silent because Muslim persecution of Christians in general—Obama-sponsored Muslim Brotherhood in particular—throws a huge wrench in their narrative.

After all, how many Americans ever heard of the largest massacre of Syrian Christians by U.S.-supported Islamic rebels?

Responding to this latest murder of a Christian, Coptic Bishop Raphaeil wrote:

Oh how lucky you are, Mary, you who are beloved of Christ. They tore your body because of the Cross. Yet they offered you the greatest service and gave you a name of honor as one who has attained the crown of martyrdom.

More poignantly, the bishop quoted Christ in the Bible, “Yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service” (John 16:2)—a reference to the fact that the Muslims slaughtering the followers of Christ all around the world quite often believe they are doing God’s (or Allah’s) work.

Hence why anecdotes such as Friday’s are becoming immensely regular in the Muslim world. Indeed, only a few months ago, two other Coptic Christian girls — both also named “Mary” — were slain when Brotherhood supporters opened fire on yet another church.

Such is the dramatic, eye-opening, and medieval world outside U.S. borders that the “powers that be” do not want you to know about—for only their well-crafted, self-serving narratives must prevail.

Reading today on the BBC Mid-East website the story that the UK government will be conducting a review of Muslim Brotherhood UK activity, it would have been a perfect place to show recent activities of this group in Egypt, but the BBC prefer to only tell us what's been done to them since they were ousted.

The BBC also have another article related to the trial of those Al-Jazeera journalists accused of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, which the BBC quote one of them as saying this charge is 'preposterous'.

I would say the BBC better watch out, they're likely to find themselves on trial for the same.
If only!

Read again what these vile scum did to this lovely Coptic woman to understand just who the BBC sees worthy of support by concealing their real nature.

[Teddy Bear]

Raymond Ibrahim continues his monthly series of accounts of Christian persecution in the Islamic world. This one on last Christmas.

‘They Are Slaughtering Us Like Chickens’: Muslim Persecution of Christians, December 2013
By Raymond Ibrahim on April 8, 2014 in Muslim Persecution of Christians

Gatestone Institute

As happens at Christmas every year throughout the Muslim world, Christians and their churches were especially targeted—from jihadi terror strikes killing worshippers, to measures by Muslim authorities restricting Christmas celebrations. Some incidents follow:

Iraq: “Militants” reported the Associated Press, “targeted Christians in three separate Christmas Day bombings in Baghdad, killing at least 37 people, officials said Wednesday. In one attack, a car bomb went off near a church in the capital’s southern Dora neighborhood, killing at least 26 people and wounding 38, a police officer said. Earlier, two bombs ripped through a nearby outdoor market simultaneously in the Christian section of Athorien, killing 11 people and wounding 21.”

Iran: Five Muslim converts to Christianity were arrested from a house-church during a Christmas celebration. Plain clothes Iranian security authorities raided a house where, according to Mohabat News, “a group of Christians had gathered to celebrate Christmas on Tuesday, December 24.” Before arresting the five apostates, authorities “insulted and searched those in attendance, and seized all Christian books, CDs, and laptops they found. They also took the Satellite TV receiver.” The original report received by Mohabat stated: “These Christians had gathered to worship and celebrate [the] birth of Jesus.”

Indonesia: Muslims in the Aceh province protested against Christmas and New Year celebrations and called on authorities to ban them. Days earlier, an influential Islamic cleric organization, the Ulema Consultative Assembly, issued a fatwa, or edict, “prohibiting Muslims from offering Christmas wishes or celebrating on New Year’s Eve,” said the Associated Press. Aceh is the “only province in predominantly Muslim Indonesia that is allowed to implement a version of Islamic Shariah law.”

Kenya: “Youths,” reported Reuters, “threw petrol bombs at two Kenyan churches on Christmas day … in the latest bout of violence against Christians on the country’s predominantly Muslim coast.” The attacks occurred “in the early hours of December 25 after churchgoers held services to usher in Christmas.” The churches were located in Muslim-majority regions. One church was “completely destroyed.”

Somalia: The more “moderate” government—as it is often portrayed in comparison to Al Shabaab (“The Youth”) opposition—banned Christmas celebrations. Hours before Christmas Day, the Ministry of Justice and Religious Affairs released a directive banning any Christian festivities from being held in the east African nation. In the words of one ministry official: “We alert fellow Muslims in Somalia that some festivities to mark Christian Days will take place around the world in this week. It is prohibited to celebrate those days in this country.” All security and law enforcement agencies were instructed to quash any Christian celebrations.

Pakistan: During Christmas Eve services, “Heavy contingents of police were deployed around the churches to thwart any untoward incident.” In some regions, “prayer service at major churches focused on remembering the Pakistani Christians who lost their lives in terror attacks.” For example, three months earlier, Islamic suicide bombers entered the All Saints Church compound in Peshawar following Sunday mass and blew themselves up in the midst of some 550 congregants, killing some 130 worshippers, including many Sunday school children, women, and choir members, and injuring nearly 200 people.

Even in Western nations like Denmark, Christmas Eve witnessed Islamic demonstrations and cries of “Allahu Akbar” (or “Allah is greater”).

Also in December, Syria’s Greek-Catholic Church declared that it had three “true martyrs”—men from the small town of Ma’loula, an ancient Christian site where the inhabitants still spoke the language of Christ. According to Asia News, “When the town fell [in September, to al-Qaeda linked rebels], a climate of fear was imposed… When three men refused to repudiate their religion, they were summarily executed in public, and six more were taken hostage. This was followed by a failed attempt by Syrian government forces to retake the town.” In the words of Patriarch Gregorios III to Pope Francis in a meeting: “Holy Father, they are true martyrs. Ordered to give up their faith, they proudly refused. Three others however gave in and were forced to declare themselves Muslim, but later returned to the faith of their ancestors.” According to the families who fled from Ma’loula, “some of their Muslim neighbors took part in the attack that devastated this historic village where people still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Muslims are approximately one third of the population of the village…”

The rest of December’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Islamic Attacks on Christian Places of Worship

Egypt: After a Coptic Christian priest from the village of Tarshoub, Upper Egypt, left to service a new location and a new priest was sent to Tarshoub, Muslim Brotherhood supporters rioted and attacked the village Christians, including by throwing stones at their homes, burning property, and calling for the closure of the village church, which has been in existence for 40 years. The church was subsequently closed and the priest prevented from entering the village. The Christian Post reported that Christian villagers were “getting close to the New Year celebrations and Christmas, and yet they are not able to open the church…. security authorities have not arrested the aggressors, while Copts were forced to close the church for fear of more attacks, especially in light of continued incitement by the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Indonesia: Five more churches were closed by authorities, leaving thousands of Christians without a place of worship. First, claiming that the existence of a Protestant church in North Sumatra was illegal, hundreds of Muslims belonging to the Islamic Defenders Front attacked and disrupted its Sunday services, creating so much havoc that police had to escort Christians home. Then, two new churches—one in West Java, the other in South Sulawesi—were sealed off. The Sulawesi church was subsequently demolished by authorities. A few days later, two more churches near Jakarta were forced to stop holding services. According to International Christian Concern, “The reason behind this month’s rash of church closures, especially after seven months of relative quiet, is not exactly clear. It may be that the coming Christmas holiday has ignited always simmering anti-Christian sentiment among radical groups. In 2000, 16 were killed by bomb attacks on churches over the Christmas holiday.”

Russia: In December it was revealed that seven Christian churches were torched in 2013 in a Muslim-majority republic in Russia, according to Asia News: “Churches burned, attacks foiled and increased pressure on Christians to convert to Islam. In Tatarstan—autonomous republic of the Russian Federation, with a Muslim majority—the extremism alarm is increasing.” Although the culprits setting fire to churches are “unidentified extremists,” Father Dmitri Sizov, pastor of Pestrechinsky, said that “the whole community knows that it is the work of the Wahhabis [Islamic literalists]” who “roam, inviting the faithful to convert to Islam.” But “the priests remain silent because they are afraid of being accused of incitement to religious hatred,” added Fr. Dmitri.

Syria: Islamic rebel forces fired multiple mortar shells on a church in the southern province of Daraa, killing 12 people and injuring many others, including church volunteers who were there distributing charity aid to the locals. Separately, five young children were killed when rebels fired two rockets at a Christian school. According to the Patriarch of the Church of Antioch, more than 450,000 Christian Syrians have been displaced from the conflict, and more than a thousand have been killed.

Islamic Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Proselytism, and Dhimmitude

Cameroon: David Dina Mataware, a Christian missionary, was slaughtered by neighboring Nigeria’s Islamic group Boko Haram. On the same day and in the same area that the missionary’s murder took place, a French priest, Father Georges Vandenbeusch, was also kidnapped. The slain missionary, whose throat was slit, had worked in a Nigeria-based mission agency in Cameroon for some fourteen years, bringing the Gospel to remote tribes.

Egypt: “The nation’s most well-known convert from Islam” to Christianity was arrested, including for allegedly inciting “sectarian strife,” and “is likely being tortured,” reported Morning News. Bishoy Armia Boulous, 31—popularly known by his former Muslim name, Muhammad Hegazy—was arrested while in a café. Authorities claim that he was working with a Coptic satellite station to create a “false image” of violence against Christians in Minya, Upper Egypt, where attack on Copts are most common. However, human rights activists close to Bishoy say “his arrest had nothing to do with any reporting work but constituted retaliation for becoming a Christian” and possibly for evangelizing to Muslims.

Iran: While raiding their home, the Islamic republic’s feared secret police assaulted the wife and children of jailed evangelical Pastor Behnam Irani. According to a source assisting the family with advocacy, “They confiscated her laptop computer and Christian materials… While the secret police were in her home they were yelling at her and doing their best to scare her. This really frightened the children, Rebekah and Adriel” and was apparently meant to create enough “fear to silence them.” The raid came after the imprisoned evangelical leader—and former Muslim—was told by a court to remain behind bars because he “did not change.”

Syria: The anti-Christian strictures of Sharia, or Islamic law, continued to be applied onto Christians by Islamic rebels. According to Agenzia Fides, “Kanaye has been invaded by Islamist militants that terrorize the population, threaten a massacre and have imposed the Islamic law… This has become a pattern that repeats itself and that in recent weeks has focused on a number of Christian villages: armed guerrillas penetrate into the village, terrorize civilians, commit kidnappings, kill, sow destruction.” Father George Louis of the village of Qara, which has been devastated and burned, explained: Maalula [the aforementioned Ma’loula], Sednaya, Sadad, Qara and Deir Atieh, Nebek: armed jihadists target a village, they invade it, kill people, burn and devastate it.”

Turkmenistan: Police and Secret Service agents in Dashoguz, a northern city, raided a group of believers of the Church of the Light of the East, a Protestant community. Forces raided two houses of prayer, seizing religious materials, including Bibles. An official of the Department of Religious Affairs, who is also an imam at the local mosque, went on to inform the pastor that his faith “is wrong” and warned him to convert to Islam, adding “Christianity is a mistake … it’s not a religion, but a myth.” Moreover, Christians practicing hymns for Sunday service were told by officers that “the songs of praise to God are banned here.” Adds Asia News: “Meanwhile, an increasing number of people are being incarcerated for crimes of opinion and defense of religious freedom.”

Carnage of Christians

Central African Republic: In just two days of violence, at least 1,000 people were killed in Bangui, CAR’s capital, following the chaos that has engulfed the nation after Seleka, a coalition of Muslim militia, whose members include many foreigners, ousted the Christian president—the nation is Christian-majority with a significant Muslim-minority—and installed a Muslim ruler. Because some Christians tried to resist with violence, killing some 60 Muslim males in combat, the Islamic group “retaliated on a larger scale against Christians in the wake of the attack, killing nearly 1,000 men over a two-day period and systematically looting civilian homes. A small number of women and children were also killed,” reported Amnesty. Tens of thousands of Christians fled from machete-wielding Muslims, many now living in desperate conditions around churches and bishoprics. “They are slaughtering us like chickens,” said one Christian. “We have had enough of Seleka killing, raping and stealing,” said another, adding that he was not sure whether he could ever go back and live among Muslims. “We are angry,” he said. “The Muslims should go back where they came from.”

Nigeria: Islamic Fulani herdsmen killed at least 205 Christian farmers in the latter half of 2013, while ten thousand more Christians were displaced and many of their churches destroyed or closed. As for motive, Christian leaders, “had no doubt the Muslim assailants aimed to demoralize and destroy Christians,” said Morning Star News. Several of the attackers appear to be mercenaries from outside the area, explaining how the Fulani farmers became so heavily armed. “Life has become unbearable for our church members who have survived these attacks, and they are making worship services impossible,” said a Roman Catholic bishop. Another area Christian leader said that “Many of our Christian brethren have been killed. The Muslim gunmen that are attacking our Christian communities are numerous; they are so many that we can’t count them. They are spread across all the communities and unleashing terror on our people without any security resistance.”

[Teddy Bear]

While following the kidnap of over 200 Christian girls by Boko Haram in recent weeks the world has began to give it some attention, if only to make themselves appear concerned, one would still have a hard job to find any BBC article that actually spells out that these foul Islamist terrorists purposefully chose Christian girls, let alone refer to the rampant persecution of Christians throughout the Islamic world.

Raymond Ibrahim with the account for January. Numerous links available on the webpage itself.

U.S. Becomes Chief Enabler of Christian Persecution: Muslim Persecution of Christians, January 2014
By Raymond Ibrahim on May 14, 2014 in Muslim Persecution of Christians

Gatestone Institute

Human rights organization Open Doors published its 2014 World Watch List in January, highlighting and ranking the top 50 nations that persecute Christians. The overwhelming majority of countries making the list—and nine of the top ten worst offenders—are Muslim, and include nations from among America’s allies (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) and its contenders (Iran); from among economically rich nations (Qatar) and poor nations (Somalia and Yemen); from among “Islamic republic” nations (Afghanistan), “democracies” (Iraq), and “moderate” nations (Malaysia and Indonesia).

The report also indicates that every Muslim nation that the U.S. has helped “liberate,” including in the context of the “Arab Spring,” has become significantly worse for Christians and other minorities. Previously moderate Syria is now ranked the third worst nation in the world to be Christian, Iraq fourth, Afghanistan fifth, and Libya 13th. All four receive the worst designation in the ranking process: “extreme persecution.”

Three of these countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya—were “liberated” in part thanks to U.S. forces, while in the fourth, Syria, the U.S. is actively sponsoring “freedom fighters” against the regime, many of whom have been responsible for any number of atrocities—including massacres, beheadings, and the crucifixion of Christians and others.

Despite this track record of interfering in Islamic nations only for the human rights of minorities to plummet, and despite the fact that Syria has gotten dramatically worse for Christian minorities, Secretary of State John Kerry declared in January that, if only Bashar Assad goes away, “I believe that a peace can protect all of the minorities: Druze, Christian, Isma‘ilis, Alawites—all of them can be protected, and you can have a pluralistic Syria, in which minority rights of all people are protected.”

The same was predicted of Iraq over a decade ago, yet today, well more than half of the Christians are either dead or fled, after years of constant attacks on their churches and persons once Arab dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted.

Libya offers a more recent precedent. Since U.S.-backed “rebels” overthrew Qaddafi, Christians—including Americans—have been tortured and killed (some for refusing to convert), their churches bombed, and their nuns threatened.

January’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Attacks on Christian Churches

Egypt: Christian churches were severely targeted during the first month of 2014. Among other incidents, during New Year Eve church services, Muslim Brotherhood supporters attacked St. George Church in Ain Shams; one young Coptic man died from a bullet wound to the head. International Christian Concern reports that on Friday, January 3, Muslim Brotherhood supporters also attacked an Evangelical Church in the Gesr El Suez area of Cairo, “pelt[ing] stones on the church and chanting slogans against Christians,” in the words of a local. Reports indicate that “there was no security for the church building and that the attackers operated with impunity.” On Sunday, January 5, security forces in Suez disrupted a terrorist cell belonging to the “Supporters of Jerusalem,” which was plotting to attack a nearby church during January 7 Orthodox Christmas celebrations. Among other things, a bomb was found in the bathroom of the Three Saints Church in Beni Suef city, which was diffused by police. On January 10, security forces “arrested a bearded person in possession of four hand grenades in a handbag next to the Church of two Saints,” according to a local Christian. (In 2011, a suicide attack on the same church on New Year’s Eve resulted in the killing of over 20 Christian worshippers). On January 24, authorities found explosives inside a car parked behind the Al Malak church, which was targeted, “to be exploded,” sources told International Christian Concern. On Saturday, January 25, Security forces in Ismailia Security directorate found 26 Molotov Cocktails inside a bag next to the church of St. Bishoy in Ismailia city. Witnesses say that the person in possession of the bag of explosives was sitting in a car next to the church and that “he fled when he saw the policemen.” On January 28, “A group of armed men,” reported Asia News, “attacked the Coptic Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary in the governorate of Giza. Police responded to gunfire and one officer died in the shootout, while two others were injured.”

Indonesia: In the province of Aceh, where Sharia law holds sway, Christians, who make up 1.2 percent of the population, continue to be denied permits to build churches. According to Agenzia Fides, “There are only three churches in the provincial capital Banda Aceh (one Catholic and two Protestant), and even though the Christian population in Aceh is increasing, the requirements to obtain permits and the pressures of radical Islamic groups on the civilian authorities have made it extremely difficult for non-Muslims to build new places of worship. Moreover, the current governor of the province, Zaini Abdullah, who was elected in 2012, promotes a declared program of islamization of society.” A human rights leader was reported as saying that the laws that appear within Sharia districts “limit the freedom of minorities to practice their faith and are not coherent with the Indonesian Constitution.”

Malaysia: An unidentified assailant hurled two petrol bombs at a shrine fronting the Church of the Assumption. Only one bomb ignited, causing minor damage to the structure. This came in the context of anger at Christians using the word “Allah” to refer to the biblical God. “But the incident,” said Sky News, “stirred memories of a wave of such attacks on places of worship—mostly churches—four years ago during an earlier bout of divisions over the dispute in the Muslim-majority country…. Conservative Muslims have raised pressure in recent weeks for Malay-speaking Christians to stop using the word ‘Allah.’”

Nigeria: On a Friday in the Muslim-majority north, gunmen suspected of being members of the Islamic organization Boko Haram burned down a church and the house of a National Assembly member. Separately, in the midst of several Sunday morning raids by Muslim Fulani herdsmen, at least fifteen Christians killed.

South Sudan: During clashes between rebel groups and the recently formed government of South Sudan, Catholic and Protestant churches were attacked, priests forced to flee for their lives, and the whereabouts of a bishop who disappeared remain unknown. Some 600,000 people, most of them Christian, have also fled their homes amid reports of mass slaughters and ongoing attacks on churches.

Zanzibar: More than 100 Muslims stormed a church following an evening worship service and beat the visiting preacher. According to a church elder, “These rowdy Muslims were shouting and yelling, saying, ‘We are looking for the bishop of the church to slaughter him—we are tired of the existence of this church near our mosque and the noise they are making.’” The Islamic mob fled when police arrived—but not before tearing the visiting pastor’s coat and shirt, and causing him to suffer multiple contusions requiring medication. According to another church member, the “congregation has been living in fear for their lives… At the moment we cannot worship freely because we are being threatened. The Muslims are accusing us of making a lot of noise while they themselves make a lot of noise.”

Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism

Algeria: Ali Touahir, a 52-year-old Muslim convert to Christianity, is paying the price for apostasy: his Muslim wife has left him, taking their seven-year-old daughter, and is divorcing him in court. One of his wife’s brothers has openly threated to kill him. According to court documents, the wife’s lawyer wrote: “It is not possible that my client [the Muslim wife] still remain under the same roof with a man who has renounced his religion, as he became apostate; and we are not ignorant of the punishment that is due an apostate under sharia [death].”

Israel: Christians were warned against “slandering” Allah. A large billboard was posted in Nazareth featuring a picture of an Israeli stop sign, along with Koran 4:171 which reads: “O people of the Scripture [Christians]! Do not exceed the limits of your religion. Say nothing but the truth about Allah (The One True God). The Christ Jesus, Son of Mary, was only a Messenger of God and His word conveyed to Mary and a spirit created by Him. So believe in God and His messengers and do not say: ‘Three gods (trinity).’ Cease! It will be better for you. Indeed, Allah is the One and the Only God. His Holiness is far above having a son.”

Kazakhstan: A court fined two Protestant Christians for possession of Christian publications, which were defined as “extremist material.” According to a note sent to Agenzia Fides, a “tough system of religious censorship imposed by the state” prevails in the nation. Earlier, in October, 2013, Bibles and icons in a small shop were seized by police and the owner indicted for the sale of religious material without the permission of the state. Similarly, a 67-year-old Christian Presbyterian Pastor has been under arrest since May 17, 2013, on charges of distributing “extremist material,” that is, leaflets on the Christian faith.

Lebanon: After blasphemy allegations saying that a decades-old library owned by a Christian and church leader possessed “material deemed insulting to Islam and Muhammad,” the building was torched in an arson attack; two-thirds of its 80,000 books and manuscripts were destroyed.

Malaysia: Christians using the word “Allah” for worship were again attacked by Muslim groups. Similarly, the portrait of one Fr. Andrew Lawrence, Director of the Catholic weekly Herald, was burned, and threats to his life continue. Msg. Murphy Pakiam, the region’s Archbishop Emeritus, in a letter asked authorities to “take the necessary measures to prevent further provocative acts of intimidation against minorities,” and concluded by saying “let us not forget to pray for our enemies, who have misunderstood our faith.”

Pakistan: Asia Bibi, a Catholic Christian wife and mother who has been on death row for over four years without trial for allegedly blaspheming Islam and/or its prophet Muhammad, sent a message to Pope Francis saying that “only God will be able to free me…. I also hope that every Christian has been able to celebrate the Christmas just past with joy. Like many other prisoners, I also celebrated the birth of the Lord in prison in Multan, here in Pakistan… I would have liked to be in St. Peter’s for Christmas to pray with you, but I trust in God’s plan for me and hopefully it will be achieved next year.”

Dhimmitude and Murder

Bangladesh: Ovidio Marandy, a young Christian and brother of a Catholic priest, was murdered. According to his brother and family, “Muslim radicals wanted to punish the young man, a well-known figure in the local Catholic community, because he had recently organised a demonstration in his village against Islamist violence,” and more generally was speaking for Christian rights in the Muslim majority nation. According to the local Christian priest, “We are shocked by what happened. Christians have the right to vote. Why are Islamists attacking us? We want peace.”

Egypt: Yet another Coptic Christian child was kidnapped in Egypt. Thirteen-year-old Cyril Rif‘at Fayiz was abducted in the Minya district by “unknown persons” who later called the child’s parents demanding one million Egyptian pounds, nearly the equivalent of $150,000 USD, an exorbitant sum for Egyptian villagers.

Syria: Two Armenian families were compelled to convert to Islam at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and one man, Minas, a young Armenian, was killed for refusing. According to iNews, “Minas and his father were held in ISIL’s prison for 115 days, according to one activist, and his accusation was that he refused to submit [to Islam, i.e., convert].” The same report mentions other Christian Armenians killed, including one who reportedly had “his head chopped off and placed in a biscuit box.” Separately, another Christian man, Fadi, was beheaded and his body stabbed with his own crucifix, which exposed him as a Christian to “rebels” who had stopped his car.

Turkey: Protests against Christmas and New Year celebrations were described as “unprecedented” by Al-Monitor. The campaign was led by the Anatolian Youth Association (AYA), the youth branch of the pro-Islamic Felicity Party. In one instance, members displayed posters in various Istanbul neighborhoods that pictured a Muslim man punching Santa Claus with the slogan “No to New Year’s and Christmas celebrations.” The group also distributed flyers stating, “We are crying out that the New Year’s and Christmas celebrations held in our country are wrong and constitute a blow dealt to our Muslim identity. “ On 26 December at Beyazit Square in Istanbul, the AYA stabbed an inflatable Santa while chanting against Christmas and New Year celebrations. One Christian bishop expressed concerns that the Santa parody was “like a rehearsal” for attacks on real people: “A handful of Christians are left in this country, and such incidents naturally cause fear… The savage murders of missionaries took place in the wake of similar hate campaigns.”

[Teddy Bear]

Raymond's latest offering with numerous links available on his webpage.

Christians ‘Most Persecuted Group in World’: Muslim Persecution of Christians, February 2014
By Raymond Ibrahim on June 23, 2014 in Muslim Persecution of Christians
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Gatestone Institute

The most historic and emblematic sign of Muslim persecution of Christians returned in February: Christians in Raqqa, Syria, under the occupation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, which has since consolidated more territory), were given the three classic choices of Islam: 1) convert to Islam or 2) pay jizya (tribute or extortion money, via Koran 9:29) and uphold every condition stipulated in the medieval Conditions of Omar—which include heavy restrictions on Christian worship—or 3) the sword.

According to the BBC, ISIL issued a directive:

citing the Islamic concept of “dhimma”, [which] requires Christians in the city to pay tax of around half an ounce (14g) of pure gold in exchange for their safety. It says Christians must not make renovations to churches, display crosses or other religious symbols outside churches, ring church bells or pray in public. Christians must not carry arms, and must follow other rules imposed by ISIS (also known as ISIL) on their daily lives. The statement said the group had met Christian representatives and offered them three choices—they could convert to Islam, accept ISIS’ conditions, or reject their control and risk being killed. “If they reject, they are subject to being legitimate targets, and nothing will remain between them and ISIS other than the sword,” the statement said.

And a PEW study confirmed that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world and that their persecution is occurring primarily throughout the Islamic world. In the category on “Countries with Very High Government Restrictions on Religion,” Pew lists 24 countries—20 of which are Islamic and precisely where the overwhelming majority of “the world’s” Christians are actually being persecuted.

February’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Attacks on Christian Churches

Nigeria: Among other church-related atrocities, the Islamic terror group, Boko Haram, attacked a church during Sunday services in the Muslim majority northeast of the nation. According to Christian Today, “They locked the doors before the end of the service and shot at the congregation, slitting the throats of those who tried to escape. They also detonated bombs before going on a four hour rampage, burning houses and taking hostages from the village.”

Sudan: “In what Sudanese Christians believe is part of a campaign by Islamist President Omar al-Bashir to rid the country of Christianity,” reported Morning Star News, “bulldozers accompanied by local police and personnel from the National Intelligence and Security Services destroyed the Sudanese Church of Christ building in the Ombada area of Omdurman, across the River Nile from Khartoum.” According to a local Christian: “The government has confiscated the land where the church was built—please pray for the church to get a place for worship. We had not any prior indication from the officials that the church would be destroyed; they have not even warned us.” The only reason officials gave for demolishing the 300-member church was that it was located in a “Muslim area” and so “not wanted there,” reported one church member. The police officer in charge of demolition reportedly said: “We have orders from above to demolish this church building. We do not want any church in this area.”

Zanzibar: Several churches were attacked in the Muslim majority islands. A bomb that was detonated remotely rocked the entrance of Christ Church Cathedral. The day before, Sunday, February 23, another bomb exploded near the door of the Evangelistic Assemblies of God Zanzibar Church, right before the end of service, causing minor injuries to several worshippers. Earlier, a mob invaded the Sunday service of a Pentecostal Evangelism Fellowship of Africa with the intention of killing the senior pastor; after failing to find him, they beat a visiting clergyman. According to local activists, “Additionally at least 20 churches have been looted and either burnt or demolished by mobs in recent months.”

The Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: One Mahmoud Muhammad Ali went on a rampage near Aswan in Upper Egypt, attacking several Christians, including employees of two Coptic-owned pharmacies and two female students who were walking nearby. One woman was stabbed in the neck and killed and another severely wounded. According to the brother of the slain woman, Madline, 30, “He killed her because she is a Christian. There was nothing else. He was targeting Christian pharmacies. He went and tried to attack a Christian, and when he failed, he went to the next Christian pharmacy.” Human rights activists and Copts also warned that authorities and others were trying “to shift blame away from Ali and establish the groundwork for his defense,” namely, that he is “insane or somehow otherwise mentally incompetent to stand trial, allowing him to escape punishment. The tactic has been employed all too frequently in clear-cut cases of violence against Copts. And because of it, the impunity with which people can attack Christians in Egypt without punishment encourages other attacks.”

Kenya: Lawrence Kazungu Kadenge, 60, a church leader in Mombasa, was killed near his church, Glory of God Ministries Church, for reportedly sharing his faith near a mosque where jihadis were being trained. During the slaying of the pastor, a witness heard one of two suspects say, “Make sure you have killed him—he has been promoting his religion near our mosque.” According to another church leader, “We as the pastors in Mombasa are living in fear because pastors are being eliminated one by one. We need prayers that the church will survive these attacks as we are being targeted by the radical Muslims.” And according to a Mombasa police official, “This is not a mosque for prayers but a base for recruiting Muslim youths to engage in terrorist activities.”

Libya: After Ansar al-Sharia—which appears connected to Egypt’s now ousted Muslim Brotherhood—offered a reward to any Benghazi resident who helps round up and execute the nation’s Coptic Christian residents, seven Copts were identified as Christians, forcibly seized from their homes by “unknown gunmen,” taken out and executed some 20 miles west of Benghazi (graphic pictures appear here). A few days later, another Coptic Christian, Salama Fawzi, 24, was shot in the head while unloading food in front of his grocery stand in Benghazi, again, by several “unknown gunmen.” And the day after that, another corpse was found, believed to be that of a Copt—due to the small cross tattooed on his wrist traditionally worn by Egyptian Christians.

Nigeria: Chanting “Allah is great,” reports the AP, “suspected Islamic militants gunned down dozens of Christian villagers and slit the throats of others” in a Saturday night raid on Izghe village in Borno state, a primarily Christian village in a Muslim majority region of the nation. Over 100 were slaughtered in the attack, including an elderly woman. A local farmer who escaped said the attackers, whom authorities suspect are affiliated with Boko Haram, had gone door-to-door looking for those hiding in their houses: “The attackers came around 9:30 pm in six trucks and some motorcycles. They were dressed in military uniform. They asked men to assemble at a place, and began hacking and slaughtering them.” Gunmen also attacked a fishing village on Lake Chad on Saturday, killing an unspecified number of residents. A survivor said several people drowned in the lake while trying to escape the Islamic gunmen. Separately, more “suspected Islamic militants,” reports the Daily Mail, “killed 43 students in a pre-dawn attack Tuesday on a northeast Nigerian college… The terrorists, thought to be from Boko Haram, set a locked hostel on fire, before shooting and slitting the throats of those who tried to climb out the windows. Some were burned alive.”

Pakistan: A 24-year-old Christian husband and father of two was arrested by police on the false charge of theft and, during the all night interrogation process, “tortured to death” at the police station, according to Asia News. Police tried to conceal their crime, insisting that he had committed suicide by hanging himself. But autopsy results revealed that he died from “serious internal injuries.” Afterwards, the Catholic Church of Pakistan and civil society groups staged a protest against police brutality, adding that, while police brutality in Pakistan is widespread, if a Christian is detained, he “usually is treated worse by police or when he is in prison.”

Dhimmitude

Indonesia: In South Sumatra province, hundreds of armed Muslim men, led by local Islamic leaders, stormed and forcibly occupied two acres of land owned by the small Christian community. The raid was prompted after local Muslims realized that Christians were planning to build a place of worship; days earlier the ceremony of laying the first stone was held, amid protests from local residents. According to Asia News, “The process for building a church in Indonesia—Catholic or Protestant—is quite complicated and may take five to ten years to obtain all permits required by law… permission must be obtained from a number of [Muslim] residents in the area where the building is to be constructed… And even if the permission is granted ‘unspecified reasons’ can come into play that will lead officials to block the projects. Often, this occurs after pressure from the Muslim community or radical Islamic movements.” And in the Indonesian province of Aceh, a new bylaw appeared mandating that Islamic laws (Sharia) be extended to non-Muslims, the majority of whom are Christian. Elements of Sharia had already been in force but were applied only to Muslims. The new behavior-governing bylaw (Qanun Jinayat) was approved by Aceh’s legislative council and signed by Governor Zaini Abdullah, who said “The qanun [law] does indeed oblige everyone in Aceh to follow sharia without exception. It would be unfair if Muslims were punished while non-Muslims were not, just because sharia violations are not stipulated in the Criminal Code.” Since then, non-Muslim women have been harassed by police for not wearing veils, and men for wearing shorts. Three-time violators of the dress rules could be publicly caned.

Iraq: Reflecting the growing lack of religious freedom and pressures to convert to Islam, “the leaders of the Christian churches in Iraq,” reported News VA, “hope that the right to freely choose one’s own religion when they reach adulthood is guaranteed to all citizens. The Christian leaders issued a document that “asked to explicitly guarantee, at a legal level, the right to freely choose one’s religion, also modifying the existing legislation on the civil status of the child with regards to religious matters.”

Lebanon: Foreign al-Qaeda affiliated jihadis recruiting among Lebanon’s Palestinian camps were “planning to start targeting Lebanese Christians with suicide bombings,” said Mahmoud Abdul-Hamid Issa, the former top security official for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon. Also, since the proclamation of Lebanon’s independence, the land belonging to Christians has been reduced by half. According to Agenzia Fides, “The drastic decrease in landed properties belonging to Christians … is also connected with the strong emigration tendencies that characterize the Christian portion of the Lebanese population”—Christian emigration being a growing phenomenon in the Islamic world in recent years. And due to several estate policies, “almost all of the lands sold during those years increased from Christian owners to Muslim owners. Several legislative proposals have been presented in parliament to try to block the erosion of the land ownership of Christians in Lebanon.”

Malaysia: A Christian cemetery was attacked and desecrated in the middle of the night by unknown persons in the Muslim majority nation. “Local witnesses said that some gravestones were completely smashed, and some crosses were broken. Flowerpots and other stone markers were also broken. It seems that perpetrators used a heavy tool to do the damage,” reports Asia News: “The cemetery attack is the latest in a series of incidents against the Catholic community in Malaysia, where religious tensions have been on the rise.”

Nigeria: A Muslim man kicked his wife of 16 years out of their home after he learned that she had converted to Christianity and was attending church on Sunday—and the local court agreed with his actions. According to the judge, Alhaji Lawal Munir, “Islamic legal system (Sharia) provided that a mere denouncement [or “renouncement”] of Islam by any of the parties automatically dissolved a marriage.”

Pakistan: After Christians refused to sell their properties to local Muslim businessmen, the Muslims “hatched a plan to drive out Christian families residing there by alleging blasphemy.” Sawan Masih, of the Christian Joseph Colony, was first to be scapegoated. The businessmen put up banners accusing him of blaspheming the Muslim prophet Muhammad and announcements were made in local mosques that “a Christian man had committed blasphemy.” According to the Christian, “They played on religious sentiments of the neighbours… registered a case against me and set the colony [including 200 houses] on fire.” Masih also said the police were involved: “Police caused alarm among the Christians who were advised to leave the colony to save their lives.” And in a note to Agenzia Fides, the Anglican Bishop of Karachi signified the deteriorating condition of non-Muslim minorities in the country: “Religious minorities in Pakistan, and especially Christians, have become the constant target of masses of extremists…. Over the last few years religious minorities have been targeted, their villages burned, accused in false cases of blasphemy, victims of intimidation, forced marriages and forced conversions…. When a Christian is accused of blasphemy, the people of a neighborhood gather to punish the culprit, burning him alive or lynching him. The police and the government have never punished such acts.” The Bishop also pointed to “a new, subtle form of psychological pressure: the extremists target Christians and try to extort money from them by threatening a fatwa against them, using the Islamic religion to blackmail.”

Sudan: Authorities seized a Christian pastor as he was preaching during Sunday service and threatened that he would “face justice” unless he resigned his position. “They arrested me in a very shameful way and threw me in the car,” said the pastor. According to Morning Star News, this move is “part of a government plan to take over properties of the church’s denomination, the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC).” Earlier, for example, “plain-clothes police officials raided the offices of the SPEC in Omdurman in what church leaders called a bid to take over the property. Without permission from government authorities, the officers entered the church compound and chased SPEC pastors and others out of the offices, a Christian leader said… Since April 2012, a SPEC compound in Khartoum has been subject to attempted takeovers and attacks by Islamic extremists.”

[Teddy Bear]

Isn't it strange that the attacks against Christians in the Islamic states detailed by Raymond Ibrahim each month continue to the extent they do, and still no outcry from our politicians, media, or far worse, from the Church itself?

So how do you account for that?

Here's the March 2014 account. (numerous links available on webpage)

Obama Administration Suppresses Talk of Muslim Persecution of Christians: March 2014
By Raymond Ibrahim on July 14, 2014 in Muslim Persecution of Christians

Gatestone Institute

Along with an especially egregious list of atrocities committed against Christian minorities throughout the Islamic world, March also saw some callous indifference or worse from the U.S. government.

President Barack Hussein Obama was criticized by human rights activists for not addressing the plight of Christians and other minorities during his talks with leaders in Saudi Arabia, where Christianity is banned.

According to the Washington-based International Christian Concern (ICC) advocacy group, Obama did not “publicly broach the subject of religious freedom” during talks on March 28 with Saudi King Abdullah, despite a letter from some 70 members of Congress urging him to “address specific human rights reforms” both in public and in direct meetings with Abdullah and other officials.

“This visit was an excellent opportunity for the president to speak up on an issue that affects millions of Saudi citizens and millions more foreign workers living in Saudi Arabia,” said Todd Daniels, ICC’s Middle East regional manager, adding that it was “remarkable that the president could stay completely silent about religious freedom” despite pressure from Congress “to publicly address the issue, as well as other human rights concerns, with King Abdullah…”

U.S. officials reportedly responded by saying that “Obama had not had time to raise concerns about the kingdom’s human rights record.”

Separately, after the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) brought together the governors of Nigeria’s mostly Muslim northern states for a conference in the U.S., the State Department blocked the visa of the region’s only Christian governor, Jonah David Jang, an ordained minister, citing “administrative” problems. The USIP confirmed that all 19 northern governors were invited, but the organization did not respond to requests for comments on why they would hold talks without the region’s only Christian governor.

According to Emmanuel Ogebe, a Nigerian human rights lawyer based in Washington, the Christian governor’s “visa problems” are due to anti-Christian bias in the U.S. government: “The U.S. insists that Muslims are the primary victims of Boko Haram. It also claims that Christians discriminate against Muslims in Plateau, which is one of the few Christian majority states in the north. After [Jang, the Christian governor] told them [U.S. authorities] that they were ignoring the 12 Shariah states who institutionalized persecution … he suddenly developed visa problems… The question remains—why is the U.S. downplaying or denying the attacks against Christians?”

March’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

The Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: During pro-Muslim Brotherhood riots, a young Coptic woman named Mary was murdered—simply because her cross identified her as a Christian to Brotherhood rioters. According to an eyewitness who discussed the entire event on the Egyptian program, 90 Minutes, Mary Sameh George was parking by the church to deliver medicine to an elderly woman: “Once they saw that she was a Christian [because of the cross hanging on her rear view mirror], they jumped on top of the car, to the point that the vehicle was no longer visible. The roof of the car collapsed in. When they realized that she was starting to die, they pulled her out of the car and started pounding on her and pulling her hair—to the point that portions of her hair and scalp came off. They kept beating her, kicking her, stabbing her with any object or weapon they could find…. Throughout [her ordeal] she tried to protect her face, giving her back to the attackers, till one of them came and stabbed her right in the back, near the heart, finishing her off. Then another came and grabbed her by the hair, shaking her head, and with the other hand slit her throat. Another pulled her pants off, to the point that she was totally naked.”

Nigeria: A Muslim father allegedly slaughtered or had someone else slaughter his daughter with a machete, wounding a pastor and four others in the attack, because she had earlier converted to Christianity. According to police reports, “the suspect allegedly sneaked into the church premises and inflicted machete cuts on the four persons” seriously wounding them and killing his daughter. Prior to that, the father had threatened his daughter to return to Islam or else, and she had taken refuge in the church. Police had not made clear if it was the father or an accomplice who committed the assault. Separately, Muslim Fulani herdsmen launched another night raid into a Christian majority region, massacring over 150 people, including a pastor, his wife and children; some 200 homes were torched. A surviving eyewitness said that attackers were about 40 in number and were armed with knives, guns and other unidentifiable equipment. They came in the night and began by setting fire to the homes, burning dozens of Christians alive: “Those that tried to escape were butchered or gun down.”

Pakistan: “A young Christian girl was killed by the Pakistani Taliban in the northern region of Pakistan,” reported Agenzia Fide: “The girl had spent a few months on the run and in hiding with her cousin, a Muslim who converted to Christianity a few years ago. Since the conversion, the man is considered an ‘apostate’ and since then he has been the target of the Taliban. In past days, some militants discovered where the two were hiding: the girl in the escape was reached by a bullet and was killed, while the man managed to escape.”

Somalia: Members of the militant Islamic group, al-Shabaab, publicly beheaded a mother of two girls and her cousin after discovering they were Christians. According to local sources, the Islamists “called residents to the town center to witness the executions of the 41-year-old mother, Sadia Ali Omar, and her 35-year-old cousin, Osman Mohamoud Moge.” Before slaughtering the two women, an al-Shabaab member announced, “We know these two people are Christians who recently came back from Kenya—we want to wipe out any underground Christian living inside of mujahidin [jihadi] area.” The two daughters of one of the women, ages 8 and 15, “were witness to the slaughter, sources said, with the younger girl screaming and shouting for someone to save her mother. A friend helped the girls, whose names are withheld, to relocate to another area,” saying “We are afraid that the al-Shabaab might continue monitoring these two children and eventually kill them just like their mother.”

Attacks on Christian Churches

Egypt: After numerous death sentences were handed out to convicted Muslim Brotherhood members, their supporters protested and rioted in the streets. According to Spero News, “Violence spilled over from demonstrations in the Cairo suburb of Ain Shams when Muslim protesters attacked a Coptic Orthodox Christian church on March 28. Four people were killed in the attack on the church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael. Among the dead are a 25-year-old journalist and a Coptic Christian worshipper. When Egyptian security forces intervened, violence spread throughout the surrounding neighborhood. Muslim radicals are frequently whipped up into frenzy by their religious leaders on Fridays when they gather for prayer.”

Kenya: During Sunday worship service, two heavily-armed gunmen entered the Joy in Jesus Church in Monbasa—a region which according to authorities has a mosque with ties to the Somali Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab—and “sprayed the congregation with bullets, killing at least seven Christians and leaving several others in critical condition,” including the assistant pastor, reports Morning Star News: “As the attackers fled Joy in Jesus Church, a box holding 26 bullets dropped outside the church,” indicating that they intended for even more carnage. According to one church leader, “We as the church feel that what happened is a retaliation for the attack [by police] that took place in Masjid Musa Mosque recently. When the Muslims are attacked, there is a false generalization that the Christians are the ones doing it. We as the church became a scapegoat for the recent attack on the mosque.” (This logic is very similar to the barrage of church attacks the Coptic Christians of Egypt suffered in “retaliation” after the Muslim Brotherhood and former president Morsi were ousted during the June 30 revolution.)

Pakistan: One day after Christians placed a cross on a partially constructed church that was being built on a fellow Christian’s land, a Muslim mob “damaged the building and the land by ploughing the ground with the help of a tractor” and “desecrated” the cross, reported The Express Tribune. The chairman of the Human Liberation Commission Pakistan added that “the Christian community was not protected in Pakistan and that they face discrimination at every level.” Discussing this incident Agenzia Fides reports that “when a large group of Islamic extremists saw the Christian symbol [the cross] they arrived unexpectedly with bulldozers and started demolishing the building…. the perpetrators were not arrested, thanks to the political clout they have. Christians in the neighborhood who have asked for protection to civil authorities, on the other hand have received threats and have to abandon the idea of the project to build a church.”

Uganda: In the predominantly Muslim districts of the Christian-majority African nation, “Islamic extremists burned down two church buildings of the Free Church of Christ in February and the home of a church leader” in March, reported Morning Star News. Bishop James Kinyewa, 47, recounted the atrocity: “While I was preaching, I heard loud noise, people saying, ‘Fire! Fire!’ coming from nearby neighbors.” He found “rowdy Muslim youths with clubs and machetes” who prevented him and others from trying to put out the fire from his house. “They were shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar [Allah is greater],’” he said. “Now the same militant group is hunting for my life. My family and I are now hiding ourselves, homeless and waiting for God’s intervention.” Everything inside the two razed church buildings, which served a total of 240 people, was destroyed, leaving the bishop to lament, “My church members have no place to worship.”

Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism

Brunei: A new penal code in the Muslim majority nation threatens school principals and schoolteachers with five years’ imprisonment and up to $20,000 in fines if they teach or speak to a Muslim child of religions other than Islam. (Future punishments may include amputation and even execution.) According to the new law, which is based on Sharia, or Islamic law, it is a crime “to persuade, influence, incite, encourage a child with non- Islamic teaching.” It is also a crime to “expose the child to any ceremony or act of worship which is not Islamic or allow the child to participate in activities for the benefit of other religions.” The new law is of especial concern to private Christian schools, where Muslim students attend.

Iran: Vahid Hakkani, a Christian man who was imprisoned and sentenced to 44 months jail-time, after being found guilty of “attending a house-church, spreading Christianity, having contact with foreign [Christian] ministries” and “disrupting national security,” began a hunger strike in prison to protest the rejection of his conditional release appeal by the Revolutionary Court, despite concerns over his health. Far from rethinking his sentence, according to his family, “prison authorities will transfer him to solitary confinement because he refuses to stop his hunger strike.” Separately, eight more Christians were detained, blindfolded, and interrogated by security forces over their “Christian activities,” said rights activists. Some members of the group had their personal items, including cell phones, confiscated.

Kazakhstan: Christian preaching is “extremely harmful to mental health of the people”: such was the ruling of a law court which led to the sentencing of a Christian pastor, Bakhytzhan Kashkumayev, to four years in prison. According to Agenzia Fides, “the [67-year-old] Pastor, who is responsible for the Grace Church in the Kazak capital Astana was found guilty of ‘causing serious mental disorder’ to a presumed victim Lyazzat Almenova. The Pastor will also have to pay a heavy fine … for the ‘moral damage’ inflicted.” The pastor’s lawyer said that this is one of the “strangest cases he has ever come across, in terms of legality.”

Pakistan: Last March, 2013, after a Christian man was accused of maligning the prophet of Islam he was arrested by police. Nonetheless, thousands of Muslims attacked Christian colonies, burning churches and homes; protesting Christians were attacked by the police, while not one of the thousands of rampaging Muslims was convicted. Now, one year later, the blasphemer, Sawan Masih, has been sentenced to death at a hearing held in the prison cell of the Christian, “out of fears that Masih might be attacked on his way to court.” Separately, two other Christians, a paralyzed, sickly man and his wife, also accused of “blasphemy via sms”—that is, blaspheming via text messaging—remained in prison. According to “World Vision in Progress,” the “judges of the High Court were initially convinced of what was said by the defense. But after pressure from Muslim religious leaders and the threats of extremists in Gojra, the judges denied bail, saying the case will be completed within two months. Radical Muslims had already threatened defense lawyers many times.” Concerning the aforementioned Christian man sentenced to death, Fr. James Channan OP, Director of the Peace Center in Lahore, Pakistan, said the following: “It was a dispute over a matter concerning property. But the Muslim took advantage, finding a shortcut and accused Sawan of blasphemy. The whole world knows what happened next. Over 100 Christian homes of Joseph Colony, a Christian neighborhood in Lahore, were destroyed, 2 churches burned, Bibles desecrated and Crosses destroyed by an angry mob of more than 3,000 fanatics. The Christians of Joseph Colony still live in danger and fear that the mob might attack again at any time…. After Sawan’s death sentence, I ask myself: where is justice? Why is nothing done against these innocent Christians who have been attacked and have lost their possessions? What about the churches which were desecrated, Bibles burned and crosses destroyed? Is this not blasphemy?”

Uganda: when a 23-year-old Muslim woman converted to Christianity and a neighbor informed her father, “My father began beating me with clubs and blows, and I started screaming in great pain,” she said. “While I was down on the floor bleeding, my father went looking for a knife to kill me. A neighbor named Saleem arrived and helped me escape.” She found lodging from a nearby church and was taken to a hospital the next day.

Dhimmitude

Bangladesh: The home of a Catholic family was torched and destroyed during the night, and the culprits, according to residents, “could be Islamic fundamentalists.” The family, two women and two children, managed to escape the blaze. According to one of the women, “Three days before the fire we saw some people unknown to us behind our house. They asked around if we were Christians. We feel that this attack was premeditated by them. We have lost in [sic] everything, including our Bible and the crucifix. All we have left are the cloth[e]s on our backs.” A local priest adds: “This is an attack against the minority, and could be the hands of Islamic extremists. They are very powerful in the area.”

Iraq: A Christian politician and member of the Assyrian Democratic Movement “denounced some officials of the Nineveh province after collecting documented evidence on the corrupt system where many properties—land and houses—belonging to Christians change hands in an illegal and secret manner, without any mandate on behalf of their legitimate owners.” He also called on Iraqi Christians who fled their homeland to check the status of the property they left in Iraq and reaffirm their full rights on them.

Pakistan: A March report by Agenzia Fides offers a glimpse of the endemic rape and sexual abuse of Christian girls at the hands of Muslims: “The rape of girls belonging to religious minorities is a very common phenomenon in Pakistan. Christian women are a prime target, because the most vulnerable and defenseless. The majority of cases are not even reported to the police and, when it happens, the perpetrators of violence often go unpunished. The Christian community is still shocked by the recent case of Sumbal, a 5-year-old Christian girl, raped by a group of Muslim men on a street in Lahore…. Another recent case … concerns a Muslim man from Lahore who attempted to rape two Christian girls, sisters, aged 1 and 3…. A few months ago another case aroused indignation: that of a 9-year-old Christian girl who suffered a gang rape by three young Muslims. Violence against children are committed with ease, explains a source of Fides that assists victims, especially because the perpetrators remain unpunished: injustice fuels the vicious cycle of violence. In 2004, a case that caused uproar around the world was the brutal rape of a-two-year old child Neha Munir raped because her father, Munir Masih, a Christian, refused to convert to Islam.”

Syria: Al-Qaeda linked Islamic jihadis crossed into Syrian territory from the Turkish border and launched a jihad on the Christian/Armenian town of Kessab. Among other things, “Snipers targeted the civilian population and launched mortar attacks on the town and the surrounding villages.” Reportedly eighty people were killed. The jihadis later made a video touring the devastated town. No translation is needed, as the main phrase shouted throughout is Islam’s triumphant war cry, “Allahu Akbar” (which, according to Sen. John McCain, simply means “thank God”). About two-thousand Armenians were evacuated to neighboring areas. While occupying Kessab, the jihadi terrorists desecrated the town’s three Armenian churches.

Turkey: Five men held in prison as suspects in the 2007 “Malatya Massacre”—when three Christian missionaries were tortured to death—were released. The five walked free from their high-security prison because their time in detention while on trial exceeded new legal limits. “It is deeply disturbing to hear that the five men responsible for these brutal murders have been freed on bail, including three who were arrested at the crime scene,” said Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s chief executive Mervyn Thomas: “We urge the Turkish authorities to take every necessary measure to ensure they remain in the country to face justice, which has been exceedingly long in coming. This trial has been ongoing for six years with no indication of a conclusion in the near future. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the victims, to whom the release of these men has dealt yet another blow, no doubt leaving them with a deepening sense of uncertainty as to whether they will ever see justice for their loved ones. For their sakes, the Turkish authorities must ensure that justice is served as a matter of urgency.”

[Teddy Bear]

One can only wonder how much worse must it get before our society really starts to take notice of what is going on in the Islamic world, and instead of making excuses for it and looking the other way, addresses it.

(Numerous links on article itself)

Raped and Slaughtered: Muslim Persecution of Christians, April, 2014
By Raymond Ibrahim on September 1, 2014 in Muslim Persecution of Christians

Gatestone Institute

From one end of the Islamic world to the other, the abduction and rape of Christian girls at the hands of Muslims—both terrorists and laymen—was a dominant theme in April.

On Easter Sunday Morning, for instance, four Muslim men raped a 7-year-old Christian girl named Sara in a Punjabi village. Last reported, the child was in an intensive care unit in “critical.” According to Asia News, “the police, instead of arresting the culprits, helped the local clan to kidnap the girl’s father; Iqbal Masih was taken and hidden in a secret place to ‘force the family not to report the story, to reach an agreement with the criminals and to avoid a dispute of a religious background.’”

According to a human rights lawyer involved in the case: “Such cases are frequent: abuse against women and girls by Muslim men are examples of how the minorities in Pakistan live under constant fear of persecution. We believe that many cases of violence go unreported.” Similarly, a new report appearing in April by the Solidarity and Peace Movement—a coalition of NGOs, associations and institutions including the “Justice and Peace” Commission of the Pakistani Bishops—confirmed that “an estimated 700 cases per year involve Christian women, 300 Hindu girls.” Even so, “the true extent of the problem is probably much bigger, since many cases are not reported.” (Click here for a better understanding of the extent of this tragedy.)

The biggest story, however, came from Nigeria, where the Islamic terrorist organization known as Boko Haram abducted nearly 300, mostly Christian, teenage schoolgirls. The group justified its actions in Islamic terms; its leader declared on video that “I abducted your girls. I will sell them on the market, by Allah….There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell.”

The so-called mainstream media, which generally downplays or ignores Boko Haram’s terror campaign, actually reported on this particular atrocity, prompting Western authorities—who are much more accustomed to, and comfortable with, pretending these sorts of things don’t exist—to respond in awkward, hypocritical and, in a word, foolish, ways.

Thus, Secretary of State John Kerry, saying the U.S. had been in touch with Nigeria “from day one” of the crisis, asserted “I think now the complications that have arisen have convinced everybody that there needs to be a greater effort. And it will begin immediately. I mean, literally, immediately.”

It is not clear whom Kerry was referring to when he said “convinced everybody”—unless he was referring to himself. After all, there might not have been any need for “greater effort,” the need to act “immediately. I mean, literally, immediately” had Kerry only let the Nigerian government do its job one year ago, when they were waging a particularly strong and successful offensive against Boko Haram in the very same region that the schoolgirls were recently kidnapped.

Back then, in May 2013, soon after Nigerian forces killed 30 Boko Haram members, Reuters reported that “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a strongly worded statement [to the Nigerian president] saying: “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.

As for Kerry’s predecessor, Hillary Clinton, who publicly bemoaned the lot of the kidnapped girls—saying it’s “abominable, it’s criminal, it’s an act of terrorism and it really merits the fullest response possible”—when she was Secretary of State and in a position to help offer “the fullest response possible” she repeatedly refused to designate Boko Haram as a “foreign terrorist organizations,” despite the countless atrocities it had already committed, despite the fact that under her tenure Boko Haram had boasted it would “strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women,” and despite urging from the CIA, FBI, Justice Department, and several congressmen and senators.

Her logic was once voiced by her husband, former U.S. president Bill Clinton. Back in February 2012, Clinton declared that “inequality” and “poverty” are “what’s fueling all this stuff”—a reference to Boko Haram’s terror—and warned the Nigerian government that “It is almost impossible to cure a problem based on violence with violence.”

The rest of April’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Afghanistan: Three Americans were shot and killed at a Kabul hospital funded by an American Christian charity. The murderer was a policeman employed as a security guard at the hospital. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for similar attacks this year, but issued no comment. Those killed were a doctor and a father and son visiting the hospital. “As they were walking out of the hospital, the security guard opened fire on them, killing three and wounding another one,” said the Interior Ministry. The attack comes amid growing attacks against Christians and Westerners in the country. Three weeks earlier, Associated Press photographer Anja Niedringhaus, 48, was killed and reporter Kathy Gannon, 60, wounded while they were sitting in the back of a car in the east of the country. Also in March, a gunman shot dead Swedish journalist Nils Horner, 51, outside a restaurant in Kabul.

Central African Republic: Father Labbe Christ Formane Willbona was slaughtered by Muslim herdsmen believed to be close to the Islamic rebel organization, Seleka. Local security sources reported that the corpse was mutilated before being buried.

Egypt: A Coptic Christian teacher in Marzouk prep school in Minya province was shot in the head by a student belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. Eyewitnesses said that the student was caught smoking in class and was reprimanded. Apparently he decided to show his “infidel” teacher his place, and so shot him in the head while he was returning home. Two more Christian Copts were killed due to, according to Agenzia Fides, “sectarian clashes” which broke out in villages near Asyut over land disputes between a Coptic family and local Muslims. On the same day of the Coptic funeral, a young Coptic entrepreneur, Mohsen Morris, was also kidnapped near Asyut. The kidnappers extracted a ransom of 250,000 Egyptian pounds from his family.

Libya: Three more Coptic Christians—all cousins—were targeted in post “Arab Spring” Libya. One was slaughtered and brought back to Egypt to be buried in a Coptic cemetery; another was carried back home in an ambulance, half dead with a bullet lodged in his skull; another cousin disappeared and is believed to have been killed by Islamic militants. Islamic enmity for Christians has been expressing itself regularly in Libya after the U.S. supported “Arab Spring” came there: Christians—including Americans—have been tortured and killed (including for refusing to convert) and churches bombed. It’s “open season” on Copts, as jihadis issue a reward to Muslims who find and kill Christians. This was not the case under Gaddafi.

Pakistan: A Muslim security guard is accused of murdering a Christian worker who refused to convert to Islam. According to Morning Star News, “Sunny Masih, a father of two, was working as a cleaner at a branch of Bank Islami under construction on Nisbat Road in Lahore. On Wednesday morning (April 16), the bank security guard informed police that Masih had shot himself in the forehead with a pump-action shotgun that the guard had left unattended before going to the washroom. The guard, Omar Farooq, of Khushab District in central Punjab Province, told police that Masih ‘looked depressed’ when he arrived at the bank.” However, all close family members insist that Sunny was, far from depressed, lively and happy. According to the father, “On April 15, my son told me that Farooq [the guard] had mocked his Christian faith and had asked him to ‘embrace’ Islam. He told my son, ‘You are a good-looking boy, and I don’t like to see you sweeping floors and cleaning the washrooms. If you embrace Islam, I’ll connect you with people who will take good care of you, provide you with a decent job and even get you married into a wealthy Muslim family.’” Sunny told Farooq that he was satisfied with his Christian faith, and that he should stop nagging him. “My son told me that when he snubbed Farooq, the guard had threatened him that he would have to face the consequences for refusing the Dawaat [an invitation to accept Islam] said the grieving father. I took the matter lightly and told my son not to worry, as being Christians we have to face such people every second day. I told Sunny to avoid discussing religion with Farooq even if he brought up the matter and keep distance from him, and everything would be alright. Little did I know that my son would end up in a mortuary a day later.” According to a Christian activist involved in the case, Sunny “was hit on the forehead just above his eyes, and his skull and brain were completely blown away by the impact at point blank range. The doctor said he found it hard to believe that Masih could have shot himself in the head with a big weapon such as a shotgun. This is what we want the police to find out, but instead they are trying to cover up the matter. We believe the police are showing bias in its probe because it involves a ‘righteous Muslim’ who was trying to convert a Christian.”

Syria: Frans van der Lugt—a 76-year-old Jesuit priest from the Netherlands who had established a community center and farm near the city of Homs where he had worked for over forty years for the betterment of people with disabilities and for Christian-Muslim harmony—was shot dead in the garden of the community center. After the Islamist-led siege of Homs, the priest continued to care for the sick and the hungry. In early 2014 he made a number of YouTube videos, asking the international community to help the besieged city. Yet he chose to remain in Homs, struggling with the daily bombings and the lack of food, until he was slain.

Uganda: The teenage daughter of a Muslim man managed to attend one church service after converting to Christianity before her father killed her. Abdul Hakim Ibanda severely beat his 17-year-old daughter and her 19-year-old sister with a blunt instrument after learning that they had attended a church service on April 6. The surviving sister said, “On Sunday morning we arrived at the United Believers Church… After prayers we then went to church, where the pastor introduced us to the church and that we were new members of the church. The church faithful were cheerful to receive us.” However, local Muslims who saw them enter the church immediately reported it to the father. He gathered a group of 32 “youths” to attack the church but the mob was eventually dispersed without incident. When the girls returned home, the father, described as “furious,” began questioning and eventually beating them with a blunt object, killing the girl. According to the pastor of the majority-Christian nation, where Muslims make some 11.5 percent, “The girl [surviving sister] is still traumatized as a result of the death of her sister and needs prayers and counseling.” Said the girl: “I know I cannot go back to my father because I have become a Christian. I am grateful to the church for welcoming me and taking me as their child. I now have a new home.”

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Austria: After reportedly listening to Muslim chants, a man, known only as Ibrahim A., went on a church vandalizing spree, desecrating four churches. According to the Vienna Times, “the attack left Lazaristenkirche with all of its statues and side altars largely destroyed as well as statues damaged at St. Stephen’s, the Breitenfeld church in Josefstadt and the Neuottakring church in Ottakring.” The Archbishop of Vienna described the attack on churches as “so far the worst act of vandalism in my time as Archbishop…. I am shocked by the devastation in the churches. I hope that the perpetrator or perpetrators did not know what they were doing.” Ibrahim A., 37-years-old, was caught in the act of vandalizing St. Stephan’s but was released at the time because police did not realize it was one of many attacks that that had been carried out that day. Police have since been unable to find him.

Nigeria: According to AP, “Witnesses and an official say angry Muslim youths set ablaze a Catholic church and tried to destroy an attached school in northern Nigeria over an alleged insult to the Prophet Muhammad. Witness Tukur Musa says soldiers on Monday stopped the mob from setting ablaze the school in Funtua town in Katsina state, but they arrived too late to save St. Rita Catholic Church. He says the town was in an uproar about an examination question last week which they considered an insult to the Prophet Muhammad. They reported the matter to district authorities. When no action was taken, young Muslims attacked. Deputy Police Superintendent Aminu Abubakar Saddiq confirmed the church was burned and school damaged but said no one was injured. Religious strife is common in central and northern Nigeria.” Also, during early Easter Sunday morning, unknown gunmen, later attributed to the Islamic terrorist organization, Boko Haram, launched an attack on the Christian-majority regions of Taraba State. The Christian Church of Nigeria was burned down, as well as many Christian homes. Some 15 corpses were seen littered on the streets.

Syria: Gregorios III Laham, Greek-Melkite Catholic patriarch of Antioch, visited some of the dozens of Christian churches hit by Islamic rebels, particularly those in the historic town of Ma‘aloula, where the Christian inhabitants still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and where some were executed for refusing to convert to Islam. (Click here for several pictures of the types of desecration that churches undergo if they fall into the hands of the Islamic terrorists. In St. Mary’s Greek Catholic Church alone, icons had their faces scratched out, church pews broken, statues of the Virgin Mary and Christ smashed, and Bibles burned.) In the prelate’s words: “An apocalyptic spectacle presented itself. Other churches have been destroyed in Syria, but I have never seen anything like this. I cried and I sought in vain a moment of solitude to pray. I am heartbroken. Ma‘aloula's four historic churches were hit. Our parish church, dedicated to Saint George, is riddled with bullets. The convent’s dome was damaged in two places. The walls were ripped open by cannon fire. Some parts of the convent is in danger of collapsing and must be rebuilt. The icons are scattered on the floor, dirty, or stolen. It is currently completely uninhabitable.” The patriarch further described the wanton destruction of churches as a “war crime.”

Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism

Malaysia: An Islamic organization known as Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia accused a Christian church of trying to evangelize to Muslims, simply because they used Bahasa Malaysia, the national language, for an Easter pageant. The organization’s website said that while freedom of religion for non-Muslims was guaranteed by the Federal Constitution, the open use of Bahasa Malaysia to promote the event outside the church compound was an abuse of this liberty. The organization also called on Muslim officials “to closely monitor this Easter Musical.” It further declared that “the notion of Easter was against Islam.” In Malaysia—which is regularly portrayed in the West as an example of a moderate Muslim nation—any attempt to promote religions other than Islam is illegal.

Pakistan: Eight days after a court in Lahore sentenced Sawan Masih, a Christian man, to death for allegedly insulting Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, another illiterate Christian couple in Punjab Province was sentenced to death for allegedly sending blasphemous text messages. Along with Asia Bibi, a wife and mother incarcerated since 2010, the number of Christians on death row in Pakistan for blaspheming Islam and/or its founder is now four. Also, a Muslim landlord almost beat to death his Christian tenant and employee, Saleem Masih, for observing Easter. According to Mushtaq Gill, a Christian activist and lawyer, because Saleem took time off to observe Easter, “the landlord became furious and beat him severely. He was eventually rescued and saved by some other villagers, otherwise he could have been beaten to death.” Gill added that many other Christian field workers “are forced into bonded labour, denied minimum wages and harassed and implicated in fake cases if they try to resist the oppression of their influential masters.” As for Mushtaq Gill, the Christian lawyer who is representing the aforementioned Christians, he is facing death threats. In his own words: “On April 2, a stranger came to the Lahore Court and warned me that I might be attacked or involved in some fake criminal cases or even killed.” Nor are such threats limited to “extremists,” as he received information that he could also be expelled and barred from practicing law. Said Gill: “What am I supposed to do, stop? Psalm 118 says: ‘The Lord is with me, I have no fear of anything. What can man do to me?’ My other colleagues and I have been threatened and attacked several times by strangers because of our work for human rights in Pakistan. But we are not afraid. We know that we could be killed because we support the campaign for the abolition of the blasphemy law. But this will not close our mouth and will not stop our work on human rights. The Lord tells us to have courage.”

Uganda: Muslim relatives of a convert to Christianity tried to poison him to death. Hassan Muwanguzi converted to Christianity in 2003. Soon thereafter, his wife left him and he was fired from his job as a schoolteacher. Most recently, he was hospitalized after an aunt put insecticide in his tea. According to Hassan: “After eating and taking tea, I started feeling stomachache, then I realized that she was the one responsible for it—and I believe she did not do it alone, since they have been hunting for me directly and indirectly, because when I left them and converted to Christianity it pained them so much. The reason they want to kill me is very clear—it is because of being a convert to Christianity; above all, to them it is like I brought shame by converting…” During the family meeting, when he started to feel ill, he telephoned a local Christian bishop, who advised him that he should leave secretly. “I knew if he were to mention to them that he was getting sick, they would harm him more,” said Bishop Kinyewa.

Uzbekistan: Christians are being prevented from burying their dead in the state cemeteries of the Muslim-majority nation. There have been three known cases so far this year. Most recently, the family of Gayrat Buriyev, who died on 9 April, was told by officials, “The cemetery is state property, but is under the management of the local mosque, and if the imam is against the burial then it will not take place.” And the local imam said he was “acting in accordance with sharia law,” even though Uzbekistan is officially a secular state. The imam also cursed the family for being Christians, calling them “unclean and defiled infidels.” Although they took the matter to local authorities, officials refused to intervene, siding with the imam. (According to Islamic teaching, being buried next to an “infidel” could cause the Muslim corpse to suffer the “torments of the grave.”)

[Teddy Bear]

Raymond with the May account of Muslim persecution of Christians.

He also specifically recalls an incident which we also covered on this site at the time, where a Christian woman doctor facing a death penalty in Sudan, ended up being freed because of the publicity afforded her by the media, though I read recently that her lawyer has now been imprisoned, but don't expect to read that in the MSM, and certainly not from the BBC.

Point is it is the media which begins the pressure that can be levelled at many of these foul regimes to create some change. As it is, these regimes are given a free hand to continue, so any wonder we are faced with scum like Islamic State?

Expect it to get worse, far worse!

Muslim Persecution of Christians, May 2014
By Raymond Ibrahim on October 8, 2014 in Muslim Persecution of Christians

Published by the Gatestone Institute

The deplorable state of religious freedom in the Islamic world came to the fore in May when news of the arrest, imprisonment, and death sentencing of a pregnant Christian wife and mother on the accusation that she had left Islam for Christianity reached the world. On May 15, Meriam Ibrahim of Sudan was sentenced to flogging followed by hanging for apostasy after she repeatedly refused to convert to Islam.

During her 6-month imprisonment with her one-year-old son by her side, she gave birth to another child. The baby girl was reportedly born with disabilities due to the harsh conditions of the prison cell she was delivered in and because her “apostate” mother was still shackled with chains when she gave birth to her.

However, because Meriam Ibrahim’s plight made it to the mainstream media, international outcry was heard all around the world, prompting Sudan to release her in June.

Prior to her release, Islamic clerics were often sent to her cell where they repeatedly pressured and threatened her with death to convert to Islam. In a recent interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News, Ibrahim said: “My faith was the only weapon that I had in these confrontations with imams and Muslim scholars because that’s what I believe. Faith means life. If you don’t have faith, you’re not alive.”

When Kelly asked her why she didn’t simply do what the clerics wanted and convert to Islam in the interest of freedom, Ibrahim replied:

If I did, that would mean I gave up. It’s not possible because it’s not true. It’s my right to follow the religion of my choice. I’m not the only one suffering from this problem. There are many Meriams in Sudan and throughout the world. It’s not just me; I’m not the only one”…. With regard to the situation of Christians, this is a well-known fact that they live under difficult circumstances and they are persecuted and treated harshly. They are afraid to say they are Christian out of fear of persecution. Sometimes imprisoned Christians with financial difficulties are told that the government will pay off their debts if they convert to Islam…. If you are a Christian and you convert to Islam it will become hard to leave Islam because if you do so you will be subjected to the death penalty.

Ibrahim’s story is in fact the tip of the iceberg of Muslim persecution of Christians. The fundamental difference, the reason she was eventually released, is that the mainstream media reported her story—a story which countless untold Christians throughout the Islamic world experience daily.

Some, far from released, are killed for being Christian and refusing Islam. Thus, around the same time the world was hearing about Ibrahim’s plight, a prominent, underground church Christian leader was killed by Muslims from the al-Shabaab group in Somalia. “Sadness and grief has befallen our community when our dear brother Abdishakur Yusuf was mercilessly murdered in Mogadishu by unknown gunmen,” said a local source: “He was found outside his house lying in a pool of blood… He was shot in the head multiple times, so that his face is barely recognizable.” Yusuf leaves a widow and three children, ages 11, 8 and 5.

Weeks before this, al-Shabaab Muslims publicly beheaded a mother of two girls and her cousin after discovering they were Christians. According to local sources, the Islamists “called residents to the town center to witness the executions of the 41-year-old mother, Sadia Ali Omar, and her 35-year-old cousin, Osman Mohamoud Moge.” Before slaughtering the two women, an al-Shabaab member announced, “We know these two people are Christians who recently came back from Kenya—we want to wipe out any underground Christian living inside of mujahidin [jihadi] area.” The two daughters of one of the women, ages 8 and 15, “were witness to the slaughter,” sources said, with the younger girl screaming and shouting for someone to save her mother.

In the context of Meriam Ibrahim, many Americans wondered why the Obama administration was not saying or doing much, even though her toddler that was imprisoned with her was an American citizen from his father’s side. Speaking of Ibrahim’s ordeal, Sen. Ted Cruz said: “There is urgency, a dire need for U.S. leadership. President Obama should speak out publicly and call upon the government of Sudan to free Meriam Ibrahim. Sec. of State John Kerry should speak out loudly and forcibly and call up on.”

Members of Congress are increasingly urging Obama to speak up on behalf of persecuted minorities throughout the Islamic world. A few weeks earlier, human rights activists criticized the president for not addressing the plight of Christians and other minorities during his talks with leaders in Saudi Arabia, where Christianity is banned.

According to the Washington-based International Christian Concern advocacy group, Obama did not “publicly broach the subject of religious freedom” during talks on March 28 with Saudi King Abdullah, despite a letter from some 70 members of Congress urging him to “address specific human rights reforms” both in public and in direct meetings with Abdullah and other officials.

“This visit was an excellent opportunity for the president to speak up on an issue that affects millions of Saudi citizens and millions more foreign workers living in Saudi Arabia,” said Todd Daniels, ICC’s Middle East regional manager, adding that it was “remarkable that the president could stay completely silent about religious freedom” despite pressure from Congress “to publicly address the issue, as well as other human rights concerns, with King Abdullah…”

Another story appearing in May further highlighted the U.S. government’s indifference. A Christian teenage girl told of how Boko Haram in Nigeria came to her household and slaughtered her father and brother because they refused to convert to Islam. After abusing her, they tied her up and left her in a state of shock between the two corpses. Emmanuel Ogebe, the human rights attorney who helped Peters come to the United States, said that visa requests filed on Peters’ behalf were denied “multiple times” in 2013 with the State Department citing no family ties in the U.S. as the reason. After legal appeals, she was finally allowed to come to the United States and testified in congress last April after Boko Haram abducted 300 schoolgirls, including her cousin, from her village.

Similarly, about a month earlier, the United States Institute for Peace brought together the governors of Nigeria’s mostly Muslim northern states for a conference in the U.S., but the State Department blocked the visa of the region’s only Christian governor, an ordained minister, citing “administrative” problems.

The rest of May’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Iran: Plainclothes security authorities raided an Easter service in a house-church in southern Tehran, arresting and hauling off all those in attendance. Neighbors said that security authorities were “very disrespectful to those in the house-church as well as to the neighbors.”

Malaysia: Two Catholic nuns in the Muslim-majority nation “were viciously attacked on the grounds of the Church of Visitation in Seremban in what is believed to be a robbery attempt early this morning,” reported the Malaysian Insider. Sister Juliana Lim was hospitalized in critical condition and on a respirator, while Sister Mary-Rose received treatment for various injuries. “Both nuns from the Infant Jesus Convent, were left bruised, bleeding and in shock following the attack, said Fr Chan in his Facebook posting, adding: ‘As I anointed them [two nuns], tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t help it. How wicked it is to do this to our nuns, who have given their whole life to God.’” In response, the Council of Churches of Malaysia said: “The voices of antagonism and hatred have been on the increase in the country and it would be no surprise if the attack on the nuns were not conspired by those out to cause inter-religious conflict in the country.”

Nigeria: Seven churches were attacked and 29 Christians slaughtered. On Sunday, May 25, during worship service, Islamic terrorists from Boko Haram killed 21 Christians of a congregation of the Church of Christ in Nations in Gwoza town. The next day Boko Haram Muslims burned down six more churches and slaughtered eight more Christians in the area.

Palestinian National Authority: St. George’s Orthodox Church in Bethlehem was attacked by Muslims during its annual St. George’s Day services on May 6, leaving one Christian stabbed, several injured, and the building damaged. According to Leila Gilbert, “Some local Muslims either tried to park a car too close [to] the church and/or tried to enter the church during a service honoring St. George—the initial instigation isn’t clear. But when the intruders were asked to leave, one of them stabbed a Christian man who was outside the church serving as a guard. He was hospitalized. Several then started throwing stones at the church. 7 or 8 Christians were injured and some physical damage was done—broken windows etc. The police didn’t show up for an hour.”

Tanzania: Two churches were attacked. As Christians were gathered for overnight prayers in the Assemblies of God church, around 80 Muslim men armed with arrows and knives attacked the church building while shouting “death to apostates.” They set fire to the church, leaving its interior in ruins, and then went looking for its pastor, a Muslim convert to Christianity, presumably to slaughter him. Separately, a homemade explosive device in a plastic bag left inside the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania exploded in the face of a female worker who found it, causing serious injuries to her face and legs and leaving her in critical condition.

Turkey: At least one Turkish church was labeled “pornographic” and blocked from computers at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, prompting one legislator to demand an investigation. When asked, the speaker for the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) said it was likely a technical glitch, but Aykan Erdemir, the legislator who discovered it, said “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some malicious intent.” Umut Ṣahin, general secretary for Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches, said the ban was “horrible… It’s a shame. It really pains us at having this kind of accusation when we have a high moral standard.”

Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytization

Egypt: A Coptic Christian teacher, Bishoy Camille, was sentenced to four years in prison and fined 10,000 Egyptian pounds. He was found guilty of sharing cartoons of Islamic prophet Muhammad on Facebook, which prompted Muslim riots against the Copts.

Iran: A May report by Morning Star News said that “Iran’s secret police and Revolutionary Guard are subjecting Christians to a continuing wave of arrests, and increased torture and brutal beatings, in an effort to crush the house-church movement, activists said. Human rights activists confirmed that there has been a noticeable increase this month in the number of reported assaults against Christians imprisoned in Iran. The assaults, which are taking place against converts who lead house churches, are meant to send a message to Christians in the country, said a Middle East Concern (MEC) researcher who focuses on Iran.” On May 5, for example, internal security agents arrested Silas Rabbani, a leader with the Church of Iran in Karaj. Rabbani, a former Muslim, has been “informally charged” with apostasy and was accordingly beaten while in custody. “He was then transferred to Gohardasht Prison, also known as Rajai Shahr, where the torture has continued.”

Kenya: Three weeks after converting to Christianity, Hassan Hussein Mohammed, a 26-year-old former Muslim, was severely beaten in a mosque. Although he was training to become a Muslim leader, he met some Christians, discussed religion, and eventually converted. According to Morning Star News, “Mohammed later went to the mosque only to collect his identification papers, but leaders ordered him to stay and conduct evening prayers. After some hesitation, he agreed. A voice within, he later told church leaders, told him not to lead the prayers, and when he tried to say them his mind blanked. He then admitted that he had accepted ‘Isa,’ Jesus. Those in the mosque beat him with a blunt object, kicked him and struck him until he was unconscious, he told church leaders. When he regained consciousness a few minutes later, he said, ‘I am ready to die for Isa, and I forgive you for what you have done to me.’” He managed to escape, but after news of his conversion spread, Mohammed began receiving threatening phone messages and texts. One said: “You will regret why you left the prophet’s religion.”

Pakistan: When a Muslim religious leader discovered that four Christians, a married couple, and two women, were handing out Christian pamphlets, he immediately informed police who arrested the Christians, taking them away from a growing crowd of angry Muslims. According to Fr. Arshad John of the Archdiocese of Karachi, who is engaged in the protection of minority rights: “The claims that the religious minorities are free to practice and preach their religion, is clearly evident from this act. Although the act of distributing the religious material and preaching in such areas is not very wise, in the past such cases have produced unfortunate results. We pray for the group and hope they will be released soon.” Separately, the Pakistan Christian Post reported that Dr. Nazir S Bhatti, President of Pakistan Christian Congress, was concerned about a recent example of double standards concerning the implementation of blasphemy laws. He said that when any Muslim commits blasphemy on electronic media watched by millions, he or she is pardoned after a simple apology note, but when a Christian or Ahmadiyyia community member is accused of blasphemy by one Muslim wittiness, then he faces death sentence even if he swears that he did not insult the name of prophet Muhammad: “All Christian victims of blasphemy laws after arrests have publically denied committing blasphemy but not any court or complainant have pardoned them but when a Muslim cleric or any Muslim very openly defiles name of Prophet Mohammad then uproar of Islamic decrees appear to Pardon these Muslims.”

Sudan: In the town of al-Gadarif on Sudan’s eastern border with Ethiopia, another Christian woman, much like Meriam Ibrahim, was incarcerated on the accusation that she had apostatized from Islam. Immigration/Citizenship arrested Faiza Abdalla, 37, when she responded to officers’ questions about her religion that she was Christian. They immediately arrested her based on her Muslim name. (Her family had converted to Christianity before she was born but kept their former name.) As happened with Meriam Ibrahim and others, a court went on to annul Faiza’s marriage to her husband, a lifelong Catholic from South Sudan, on grounds that she had committed “adultery” by allegedly having left Islam and married a Christian.

Dhimmitude: Generic Hostility, Abuse, and Discrimination

Egypt: Lawyers of a Muslim man who attacked Christian properties and persons—stabbing one Coptic woman to death—maintain that he is innocent by reason of insanity, even though psychiatric evaluations found him sane and fit to stand trial. Last February, Mahmoud Mohamed Ali went on a violent rampage, attacking three Christians with a knife. His intended victim, a male Coptic pharmacy clerk, fought him off, and Ali fled. Next, Ali stabbed Demian, a Coptic shopkeeper in another Christian-owned pharmacy, severing an artery in her neck; she fell to the floor bleeding to death. Soon after, Ali stabbed a female Coptic high school student, who barely managed to escape with her life. But according to Morning Star News: “Confirming fears of human rights activists who said attorneys for Mahmoud Mohamed Ali would use a tactic that has freed other Muslims from punishment for premeditated, religiously motivated murder, the lawyers are challenging results of the evaluation.” Some Islamic teachings state that the life and worth of a Muslim is greater than that of an “infidel” and so they should not be punished, or should receive the minimum punishment when they kill non-Muslims. Egyptian human rights activist Osama Wagdy said the “insanity” plea is a tactic commonly used in Egypt by those who have violently targeted Christians: “They are pretending, because that is how they get out of cases… Nobody thinks he is mentally ill. He went from one place to another knowing what he was doing and told one of the victims, ‘You deserve it.’” Separately, five “unidentified persons” kidnapped a Coptic Christian pharmacy owner at gunpoint in Sohag, Upper Egypt. Soon after Friday mosque prayers, a car pulled up in front of the pharmacy and opened fire on it before the assailants raided it and drove off with the kidnapped owner, one Mr. Marcos, a 52-year-old Copt, at gunpoint.

Eritrea: Five Christians of the Evangelical Lutheran Church were arrested after their church announced that they were set to be ordained for pastoral ministry. “The arrests clearly show how even government recognized churches, namely the Catholic, [Eritrean] Orthodox [Church] and Evangelical Lutheran churches, are not free from government control,” said an Open Doors source on condition of anonymity. “The arrest of these pastoral candidates reminds us of one of the greatest challenges churches in Eritrea face…. Due to the constant turnover of pastors due to arrest or threats, continuous and biblically consistent pastoral care for Christians is hampered.” A further “1,500 Christians are languishing in prison for their faith.” In 2010, an estimated 3,000 Christians were incarcerated for their faith; most were held in shipping containers in desert camps and others in underground cells; some were tortured to death while others perished in the desert trying to escape.

Germany: A Turkish man being treated in a hospital attacked his nurse because there were too many crosses on the wall. According to Mainpost, a German publication (as translated by Nicolai Sennels for Jihad Watch), “A 34-year-old went to St. Joseph Hospital early on Saturday morning due to a ‘gastro-intestinal flu.’ Suddenly he refused to be treated, because he thought there were too many Christian crosses on the wall. Because of the crosses, the man started insulting the nurse, calling her a bitch, fascist, and the like. Then the man, according to police report, also started becoming physically aggressive. The hospital called the police. The officers seized the man in front of the hospital and checked him.”

Pakistan: Five Christian families that, according to Agenzia Fides, were “kidnapped and enslaved by their Muslim employers” in the Punjab were released after nearly three decades of slavery. After the release, one of the families told their suffering: they were victims of forced labor and were treated as slaves for over 25 years. One of the women, Safia Bibi, began working at the furnace along with her husband, Anwar Masih, right after her wedding. When their nine children were old enough they also started to work in the same place. They lived in the factory complex with no toilets and often did not receive compensation. If they tried to leave their job, they were beaten and tortured, left days without food. In 2013, Safia’s husband died due to illness and weakness, and no doctor was called. Her children could not attend his funeral—nor go to prayer meetings or celebrate Christmas—because they were forced to work. Nasir Saeed a human rights activist said: “It is sad to see that even in the 21st century slavery continues to exist in Pakistan. The owners of furnaces are often wealthy and influential and are rarely prosecuted. The workers, often Christian, work a life in slave-like conditions to pay their debts, that last generations. Sometimes they are sold from one furnace to another. The government is aware of the situation, but has never taken serious measures.”

Turkey: According to ANSamed, “Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government plans to turn Istanbul’s Hagia Sofia Basilica into a mosque in the afternoon and evening and a museum in the morning. The historical monument, which draws millions of tourists every year, will have the Byzantine [Christian] frescoes covering its walls cast into shadow by ‘dark light’ so as to avoid offending Islam. The government would thus like to turn what is today seen as a symbol of Christianity back into a place of worship for Muslims, as it was after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.” A campaign to turn the Hagia Sofia back into a mosque has been brewing for quite some time now, raising alarm among Christian communities in the east. Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I said that “we and all other Christians will oppose it.” And Athens called it an “insult to the religious sensibilities of millions of Christians.” Even so, the Islamist party submitted a formal motion in parliament to transform Hagia Sofia into a mosque.

[Teddy Bear]

The silence from the BBC on most of these incidents is deafening. Even the story of the NHS Christian woman in the UK, suspended for 9 months because she convinced a Muslim woman to pray with her is ignored by the BBC.

Given all the attacks perpetrated by Muslims against Christians throughout the world in recent years, and the way the BBC has avoided making it an issue we should be very concerned about, it appears it is only when the violence comes to their doorstep will they rethink their dhimmi agenda.

ISIS Snuffs Out Ancient Christianity: Muslim Persecution of Christians, June 2014
By Raymond Ibrahim

Gatestone Institute

During the Islamic State’s June invasion and consolidation of Mosul, Iraq–where Christians have been present since the first century—numerous atrocities against them were committed. Accordingly, the region is now reportedly empty of Christian presence.

Among other things, the Islamic State reinstituted the collection of jizya, the tribute conquered Christians (and Jews) were historically required to pay in order not to be killed in accordance with Koran 9:29. In one instance, three Islamic State members burst into the home of a Christian family, demanding the jizya-money. When the father of the house pleaded that he did not have the money, the intruders raped his wife and daughter in front of him. The man was reportedly so traumatized that he committed suicide. Four other Christian women were killed for not wearing the Islamic veil.

Soon after taking over Mosul, the Islamic State also announced that it would destroy all Christian places of worship. Several churches were burned, including the Armenian church near the Al Salam hospital and the Church of the Holy Spirit, which was first looted and desecrated. A large Virgin Mary statue disappeared.

Among the many Christians missing are two nuns from the Daughters of Mary Order, who managed an orphanage for girls in Mosul. It is believed they have been kidnapped.

The rest of June’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Church Attacks and Slaughters

Indonesia: Another Catholic community was attacked in the world’s largest Muslim-population country. The Parish of the Sacred Heart in Pugeran, in the South of Yogyakarta, was targeted by three different groups of unknown assailants riding motorcycles during the first morning Mass. The incident coincided with the start of Ramadan, Islam’s holy month, which often sees a rise in hostility for religious minorities. The attackers, who were dressed in black and covered their faces with masks, broke through the parish gates shouting “Allah is great,” Islam’s historic war-cry. They attacked some Christian objects and posters placed by members of the local Catholic community. Weeks earlier, on May 30, “Islamic extremists attacked a group of Catholics gathered in prayer, beating up the community leader; a week later, Pastor Niko, leader of the Protestant Christian community, was targeted by extremists ‘accused’ of having set up an ‘illegal’ house of prayer without permission,” reports Asia News: “Indonesia is the most populous Muslim nation in the world. Increasingly however, it has become the scene of attacks or episodes of intolerance against minorities, whether they are Christians, Ahmadi Muslims or belong to other faiths.”

Kenya: Approximately 50 militants from Somalia’s Islamic Al Shabaab (“the youth”) network attacked two hotels, a police station and other buildings in Mpeketoni, a predominantly Christian town on Kenya’s coast during the night of Sunday June 15. They chanted “Allahu Akbar” and killed whoever could not recite verses from the Koran. The militants reportedly also went door-to-door asking residents their religion and killed them if they answered “Christian.” More than 57 people were killed. Among them were six children of church pastors.

Nigeria: Suspected Boko Haram jihadis killed nine Christians during June 1 Sunday church service, hours before a bombing of a Christian area in neighboring Adamawa state resulted in nearly 50 deaths. At least 10 gunmen attacked the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria during worship in Attagara village. The jihadis killed nine Christian members who were volunteering as security for the rest of the congregation during service. Another Christian church in Central State Plateau was set ablaze by armed men who also killed at least eight Christian worshippers. According to the Italian news agency, AGI, “The police made their statement, saying that for now they have not assigned the blame for the action, even though the MO and the aims of the attack lead to presuming it was the work by the Boko Haram Islamic Fundamentalists, who have killed thousands of people since 2009.” Speaking about the June 1 church attack, one area Christian leader said the attackers were a small part of 200 assailants who have invaded Attagara and other predominantly Christian villages around Gwoza the past two weeks, destroying homes and churches: “Our church in Attagara was attacked also on Sunday,” said Dr. Rebecca Dali. “There have been 24-hour-a-day attacks on Christian communities of Attagara, Hawul, and Gwoshe around the Gwoza mountains…. The Boko Haram Islamists have destroyed 36 churches in Gwoza area, including that of Attagara attacked on Sunday. We now have only two churches that have not been affected.”

Sudan: Authorities in North Khartoum demolished another church building, that of the Sudanese Church of Christ. Bulldozers came and demolished the church just one day after authorities gave verbal notice of the decision during the congregation’s Sunday worship service the previous day. Congregation members stood by watching their church razed to the ground. About 70 security personnel armed with guns and tear gas stood by threatening anyone who dared to interfere or protest. “They wanted to beat us or throw tear gas on us,” said one congregation member. Authorities gave no clear reason why the church, which has stood since 1983 and which has all the legal paperwork, was being destroyed. According to Rev. Kwa Shamal, the church’s pastor who questioned the commissioner, “They did not want us to ask many questions on why they were demolishing our church.” Because the government refuses to grant the church any compensation, “We will have to pray in a makeshift tent next Sunday” along the road, said the pastor.

Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy and Blasphemy

Afghanistan: The New York Times told the story of “Josef,” a Muslim convert to Christianity who is on the run from Afghani family members looking to slay him. The apostate from Islam lives in a 10-by-10 dilapidated room, his few worldly possessions a tattered Bible and wooden cross with the Sermon on the Mount written on it: “Josef’s brother-in-law Ibrahim arrived in Kabul recently, leaving behind his family and business in Pakistan, to hunt down the apostate and kill him. Reached by telephone, Ibrahim, who uses only one name, offered a reporter for The New York Times $20,000 to tell him where Josef was hiding. ‘If I find him, once we are done with him, I will kill his son as well, because his son is a bastard,’ Ibrahim said, referring to Josef’s 3-year-old child. ‘He is not from a Muslim father.’” Earlier, when Ibrahim first discovered Josef’s conversion to Christianity, he and his family attacked the convert, tied his hands and feet and were going to slaughter him until the father intervened calling for time to investigate matters, which Josef used to escape. Having had a long spiritual journey and closely studying all religions, the Christian convert says that “Even if I get killed, I won’t convert back.”

Egypt: Islamic vindication against Coptic Christians accused of “blasphemy” and “apostasy” was in the air all throughout the month of June in President Sisi’s not so “new” Egypt. First, Kerolos Shouky Attallah, a young Coptic Christian man accused of blaspheming Islam for simply “liking” an Arabic-language Facebook page administered by an anonymous group of Christian converts, was sentenced to six years in prison. According to Attallah’s attorney, the Copt did not make any comments on the site, share any of the postings or upload anything to it, and removed his name from the page once he realized that it might offend Muslims. In the hours preceding the sentencing, a rioting mob burned down several Christian-owned shops in the area near Luxor. Safwat Samaan, chairman of Nation Without Borders, a human rights and development group headquartered in Luxor, said “The sentence today was a shock not just to Kerolos but to everyone who uses Facebook in Egypt. Any person who uses Facebook in Egypt and presses ‘Like’ on any page … can be put into prison for six years.” Also, An Egyptian appeals court upheld a blasphemy conviction against Dimyana Abdel-Nour, a Coptic Christian teacher, and sentenced her to six months, overturning an earlier ruling that only imposed a fine. The appellate court in Luxor ruled that the elementary school teacher had insulted Islam in front of her pupils. Last year, three 10-year-old Muslim children complained to their parents that the Coptic teacher showed disgust for Islam when discussing it in class. And Bishoy Armia Boulous—more notoriously known as Mohammed Hegazy, the first Egyptian ever to try legally to change his religious identity from Muslim to Christian on his official ID—was sentenced to five years in prison. (Years earlier, when he first tried to change his ID, he was also imprisoned and tortured.) The judge cited “disturbing the peace by broadcasting false information” as the reason for sentencing the apostate, who in the weeks before was documenting political unrest in Egypt brought on by numerous Muslim extremist attacks on Christians. The exact section of the nation’s criminal code that Boulous allegedly violated was not released. According to Boulous’ lawyer, the real reason he was charged and sentenced is because he abandoned Islam and became a Christian: “The officer who arrested him, when he found that he hadn’t committed a crime, made up things to keep him in prison so he could be sentenced,” said the lawyer.

Uganda: After Muslim family members tried to poison a relative who converted to Christianity, and failed, he was attacked again by Muslims who killed his young daughter. On June 16, four men barged into the home of Hassan Muwanguzi—a former sheikh who converted to Christianity in 2003—with one shouting, “Today we shall kill you—you have been a trouble-maker and are not respecting our prophet’s religion.” He fled into a room, thinking they would not hurt his daughter, Grace Baruka. But then he heard the 12-year-old girl’s cries, as the Muslim invaders were strangling her. When he came out of the room they seized him: “They hit me with a blunt object, and I fell down. I just woke up and saw neighbors surrounding me while wailing, saying that my daughter is in critical condition.” Neighbors took Grace to a clinic but she was declared dead upon arrival. Muwanguzi has suffered greatly for embracing Christianity: first he lost his wife and job as a schoolteacher after his conversion; then an aunt tried to poison him by putting insecticide in his tea; and now his 12-year-old daughter has been killed. Lamented the former Muslim in tears to Morning Star News: “I am regretting why I survived the poisoning. God could have allowed me to die. My daughter has died, and I am now mourning for her death as well [as] have pain all over my body.”

Dhimmitude

Lebanon: The Abra Municipality, a predominantly Christian suburb in the coastal city of Sidon, released a memo urging all citizens—the majority of whom are Christian—to respect observant Muslims during Ramadan and abstain from eating in public. In his memo, Mayor Walid Nicolas al-Mchantaf stressed the importance of showing consideration during the holy month and refraining from dining at restaurants and cafes during the fasting period, which begins at sunrise and ends at sunset. A large Muslim community exists in the town and has been in the spotlight since last year’s violent clashes between Islamic gunmen and the Lebanese Army.

Germany: Muslims were granted their own section at the cemetery in the Hessian town of Seligenstadt. And they have been allowed to conduct Islamic ceremonies, in which the corpse is wrapped in cloths and buried facing Mecca. Now these same Islamic communities, including Ahmadiyyas, are demanding that Christian symbols and crosses in the cemetery be removed or covered up during Islamic funerals.

United Kingdom: The National Health Services suspended a Christian health worker on full pay for nine months for praying with a Muslim colleague. Victoria Wasteney, a senior occupational therapist, was also accused of “bullying” the colleague after giving her a book about a Muslim woman who converts to Christianity. According to Wasteney, her relationship with the Muslim woman was friendly and sometimes intimidate, as the Muslim female often came to her for support; the Christian health worker did not think that she was behaving coercively or disrespectfully. Andrea Williams, the chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said the case demonstrated that “the NHS is increasingly dominated by a suffocating liberal agenda that chooses to bend over backwards to accommodate certain beliefs but punishes the Christian.”

[Teddy Bear]

Consider how long reports have been coming in from all over the world about the Muslim persecution of Christians and other minorities, and so little reported about this by our media, much less our Church leaders, for fear of 'offending Muslim sensibilities'. Now Prince Charles has summoned enough courage to make a statement about it. Whatever next?

‘We Need Your Head’: Muslim Persecution of Christians, July 2014
By Raymond Ibrahim on November 5, 2014 in Muslim Persecution of Christians

Gatestone Institute

The purge of ancient Christian communities throughout Iraq that started in June culminated in a show of great intolerance in July.

Among other things, a Christian church that had stood on the ground of Iraq for 1,800 years—a church that was erected less than 200 year after Christ—was reportedly torched by the Islamic State, according to numerous news agencies, including Al Arabiya.

Islamic State jihadis also stormed and took over an ancient monastery in northern Iraq and expelled its few monks, telling them “You have no place here anymore, you have to leave immediately.” The monks plead to be allowed to save some of the monastery’s ancient relics but the jihadis refused and ordered them to walk many miles along a deserted road with nothing but their clothes. (St. Behnam monastery had stood since the fourth century and was one of Iraq’s best-known Christian landmarks. It was built by an Assyrian king as a penance for executing his children Behnam and Sarah for converting to Christianity.)

The Islamic State issued a July 19 deadline for Mosul’s remaining Christians either to convert to Islam or face execution. Islamic State members also singled out Christian homes by placing the Arabic letter for “N”—based on the Arabic word Nasara, or “Nazarenes,” the Koran’s pejorative for Christians—on the sides of their homes. The result, in the words of Patriarch Louis Sako, is that “For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians.”

In response to the Islamic State’s latest atrocities against Iraq’s Christian minorities, the Syriac Orthodox bishop of Mount Lebanon and Tripoli, George Saliba, denounced not just the Islamic State but Muslims in general for their long “history of violence and oppression against Christians”:

What is happening in Iraq is a strange thing, but it is normal for Muslims, because they have never treated Christians well, and they have always held an offensive and defaming stand against Christians…. We used to live and coexist with Muslims, but then they revealed their canines [teeth]…. [They don’t] have the right to storm houses, steal and attack the honor of Christians. Most Muslims do this, the Ottomans killed us and after that the ruling nation-states understood the circumstances but always gave advantage to the Muslims. Islam has never changed…

Islamic organizations responded by denouncing the Syriac bishop’s words as “hateful” and Islamophobic, demanding an apology.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also made some telling remarks concerning the plight of Christians, especially in those Mideast countries the U.S. is involved in. When asked if he was “troubled” by the Presbyterian Church USA’s decision to withdraw $21 million worth in investments from Israel on behalf of the Palestinian people, the prime minister said:

You know I would suggest to these Presbyterian organizations to fly to the Middle East, come and see Israel for the embattled democracy that it is, and then take a bus tour, go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, and see the difference. And I would give them two pieces of advice, one is, make sure it’s an armor plated bus, and second, don’t say that you’re Christians.

The rest of July’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Muslim Attacks on Churches and Carnage

Afghanistan: according to BosNewsLife, the central Asian nation’s “tiny Christian community was left in shock Friday, July 25, after two Finnish Christian aid workers were shot dead.” The attack “underscored the dangers faced by Christian aid workers.” The two women were slain by motorcycle riding gunmen in the western city of Herat, “the latest in a series of attacks targeting Westerners, including Christian believers. The Christians, who represented International Assistance Mission (IAM), had been working in Afghanistan since the 1990s… They both spoke Dari well and knew and respected the culture of Afghanistan.” Among those the aid workers were helping were people with mental disabilities and illiterate women.

Central African Republic: At least 27 Christians were slaughtered during a July 7 attack on the St. Joseph’s Cathedral compound in Bambari, where thousands of people, mostly Christian, were receiving sanctuary. The attackers were fighters from the Islamic Seleka rebel movement and Muslim civilians. The armed attackers entered the grounds at around 3pm and began shooting indiscriminately. Women and children were among those killed; over 20 people were injured. The Islamic attackers burnt down 20 buildings within the church compound, set fire to three cars, and stole two others as well as a number of motorbikes. Weeks earlier, on May 28, another attack on a church compound in Bangui, the capital, left around 20 people dead.

Kenya: On July 5, Muslims attacked the Covenant Church, three kilometers north of Hindi, just as Bible study was closing. As the Bible study participants fled, two men opted to hide inside the church building—and were burned alive after the Islamic attackers set the building on fire. On the same night, a Catholic church building in the village of Gamba, in neighboring Tana River County, was also destroyed by attackers. Two days earlier, 15-20 assailants armed with guns and knives attacked Gamba and the village of Hindi, killing at least 13 people, including a 12-year-old student and a 30-year-old man “who was found in a pool of blood with a Bible on his back,” reports Morning Star News. One survivor of the attacks said the invaders were heard “saying non-Muslims should get out, and if not they should convert to Islam.” Another survivor said, “I was removed with my daughter from the house while the attackers tied my husband to the bedside before setting the house on fire. The attackers, who spoke mainly in Somali, targeted non-Muslims, whom they tied with ropes before slitting their throats.” (Gamba is about 28 miles from Mpeketoni, another Christian town where gunmen killed at least 57 people in a June 15 attack.)

Lebanon: A shadowy group known as the Free Sunnis of Baalbek Brigade, which had only recently pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State, announced on its twitter account that a “specialized group of free jihadists were tasked with cleansing the Islamic state of Bekaa in particular and in Lebanon in general from the churches. We will target crusaders in the state and in Lebanon to silence the ringing of the bells.” (According to Islamic Sharia, churches under Islamic authority are forbidden from ringing their bells.) The Brigade has claimed responsibility for several rocket and bomb attacks inside Lebanon, the last of which were the suicide blasts in Dahr al-Baydar and Raouche’s Duroy Hotel.

Nigeria: A bomb blast inside the Saint Charles Catholic Church left five people dead and eight injured. The attack came shortly after Sunday mass ended, when an improvised explosive device was thrown inside the city of Kano, which has a strong presence of Boko Haram, the local Islamic terrorist organization. On the same Sunday and also in Kano, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up outside a university after police prevented her from carrying out an attack. Five officers were injured. According to a police spokesman, “A female suicide bomber was isolated (by police) as she was walking towards the gate of the university.” She had hidden the bomb under her “long black hijab” and was singled out for behaving strangely, said the spokesman. Police were about to ask a female colleague to frisk the woman when she detonated the bomb, killing herself and injuring the police officers. Also in July, Nicholas Okoh, primate of the Church of Nigeria, said in an interview that, despite Boko Haram’s nonstop attacks on Christians and their churches, for long “the United States did not come out to say anything about Boko Haram. They kept talking about economic problems, [saying] that Boko Haram is fighting because of economic problems. That is not true … The United States deliberately ignored the fundamental issues of religious ideology.”

Sudan: In adherence to Islamic law, the east African nation formally announced a ban on the construction of any new Christian churches in the country. This move came after several churches, some of which have been in existence for decades, were bulldozed to the ground by authorities, the most recent one, the Sudanese Christ Church at El Izba residential area in Khartoum North, on July 1. According to Pravoslavie, “The Sudanese Minister of Guidance and Religious Endowments Shalil Abdullah announced that the government will henceforth not issue permits for the building of churches in the country. Minister Shalil Abdullah told the press on Saturday [July 12] that the existing churches are enough for the Christian population remaining in Sudan after the secession of South Sudan in 2011.” Since 1989, Sudan has been governed by a Sharia enforcing Islamic regime. Reverend Kori El Ramli, the Secretary-General of Sudan Council of Churches, criticized this move as contradicting the nation’s Constitution, adding “Yes, we are a minority, but we have freedom of worship and belief just like the rest of the Sudanese as long as we are Sudanese nationals like them.”

Turkey: A band of Muslims attacked the Saint Stephanos Church in Istanbul during a baptismal service held on July 15. Among other things, the Muslim intruders pushed their way into the baptismal service, yelling obscenities, with one waving a knife and threatening to stab a parishioner. The attack occurred during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which often sees a concomitant rise of intolerance in Muslim majority areas. Speaking about the attack, one parishioner said on condition of anonymity that “It’s not the first, and it won’t be the last.” In fact, two months earlier, men in their late teens and 20s entered the church building at night, ripped out most of its audio equipment and destroyed what they couldn’t carry away. They also took some of the ceremonial candles, lit them and started setting items in the rear of the building on fire. They stacked all remaining candles into a pile, lit them and left.

Uganda: A gang of Muslims brandishing machetes stormed a church during service, hacking one 18-year-old woman to death and leaving three others, including a one-year-old baby, injured. A group of around 20 Christians had gathered at Chali Born Victory Church in Kyegegwa district for their regular Friday night prayer session when armed Muslims burst into the building around 2 am. Pastor Jackson Turyamureba was preaching when he saw somebody peeping through a window. According to the pastor, “I thought he was a drunkard and told him to either enter or go away. Shortly after that I heard doors being banged and men shouting ‘Allahu Akhbar’ (Allah is great) as they stormed the church brandishing pangas (machetes) and beating worshippers…. One of the attackers followed me and threw a panga which went over my head. I ran through a garden and the man who was pursuing me fell down and gave up the chase.” The Muslim attackers then fled to a nearby mosque; police surrounded the mosque and one officer was killed when attackers opened fire. Two suspects were arrested. According to the pastor, the church has had problems with a group of Muslims in the area who had unsuccessfully tried to convert them to Islam. Church member Polly Tashobya added that the group said they wanted to transform Uganda into an Islamic nation and would kill anyone who refused to convert.

Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom and ‘Dhimmitude’

Iran: Authorities detained a pastor and two other members of the Church of Iran, one of the country’s largest house church movements. Pastor Matthias Haghnejad, Mohammad Roghangir, and Suroush Saraie were arrested July 5 by security forces at the pastor’s home in the city of Bandar-Anzali. According to BosNewsLife, “Their detention comes amid an ongoing government campaign to halt the spread of Christianity in the Islamic country. Especially converts from Islam, many of whom visit the Church of Iran, have been targeted.” Security forces reportedly confiscated the pastor’s belongings, including his Bible, and several other books. This would be the latest setback for Pastor Matthias, who was jailed for his faith on three other occasions between 2006 and 2011. Separately, a judge sentenced a Christian man to have his lips burnt with a cigarette for eating during the day in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims are required to abstain from food and drink during daylight. The punishment was carried out in public in a square in the city of Kermanshah. Five other Muslim men were also flogged in public with 70 lashes for not fasting during Ramadan. A spokesperson from The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a political coalition which opposes the government, denounced the treatment as ‘savage’ and called on Western countries to respond: “The silence of the world community, especially of western countries, vis-à-vis these medieval punishments under the excuse of having nuclear talks with Iran has intensified the brutal and systematic violation of human rights in Iran.”

Somalia: Muslim converts to Christianity who fled Somalia and reside in Kenyan refugee camps remain in mortal danger. One convert, known only as “Abubakr,” and his wife reportedly held each other under their bed in their refugee camp as suspected gunmen from the Islamic terrorist organization Al Shabaab pounded on their door. They ordered the man to come out and called him an “infidel” (in both the Arabic and Somali languages), saying, “We need your head.” When the apostate refused, they opened fire through the spaces of the poles of the couple’s hut, striking their legs. Then they heard the attackers say, “We have killed the infidels” as they shot into the air while leaving. The Christian couple was found two days later lying in their own pool of blood. According to Abubakr, far from providing security for the hiding apostates, Muslim guards at the refugee camp actually help Al Shabaab militants locate them. Another Somali convert from Islam, Abdikadir, saw Muslim relatives and other Somalis burn down his home in one of the undisclosed Dadaab refugee camps in April. They took away his wife and four children in the course of destroying his home. He fled the camp and is now living elsewhere.

United Kingdom: According to the Telegraph, “Children were taught that all Christians are liars and attempts were made to introduce Sharia law in classrooms as part of an alleged ‘Trojan Horse’ takeover plot of Birmingham schools, an inquiry has found.” Commissioned by Birmingham City Council, the inquiry found “evidence of religious extremism in 13 schools as school governors and teachers tried to promote and enforce radical Islamic values.” Among other things, schools canceled Christmas, put up posters warning children that they would “go to hell” if they did not pray, and girls were taught that women who refused to have sex with their husbands would be “punished” by angels “from dusk to dawn.” The report found that the extremism went unchecked because the council “disastrously” prioritized community cohesion over “doing what is right.”

[Teddy Bear]

As if to highlight just how the BBC skews reporting when it comes to Islamic attacks on Christians, here's how the Independent reported a story yesterday with the headline: Christian couple beaten to death and bodies burned for 'desecrating the Koran'

Here's the only BBC headline for this story: Pakistan arrests 43 over 'blasphemy' killings

You can decide for yourself which one gives you an accurate representation of events, and nobody can accuse the Independent of being right wing.

[Teddy Bear]

With the BBC trying to make us feel disgust for the CIA who have been waterboarding and torturing terrorist suspects to try and get information out of them to prevent further attacks and incidents, when I read the opening story about this Christian who was beheaded after he was forced to convert to Islam, the only loathing I feel besides to these Islamic scum, is the BBC itself.

Raymond Ibrahim with the August account. (Numerous links on his website)

Raping and Beheading the Faithful: Muslim Persecution of Christians, August 2014
By Raymond Ibrahim on December 10, 2014 in Muslim Persecution of Christians

Muslims beheading Christians was a visibly growing spectacle throughout the month of August. Islamic State militants cut off a Christian man’s head—after compelling him to say the shehada, the Islamic profession of faith, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” When the shehada is spoken before Muslim witnesses, the speaker becomes Muslim and thus, in theory, safeguards his life and possessions from the jihad. Not so for this hapless man, who, after renouncing his Christian faith for Islam, was still slaughtered on camera (graphic video can be viewed here).

Christian man publicly converts to Islam under duress, before being beheaded


The Christian Post has the story:

A Christian man in Syria recently had his head brutally hacked off by Islamic militants after being forced to deny his faith and salute Mohammed as “the messenger of God.”

The incident was caught on video for the world to see and broadcast as a warning to “everyone like him.”

In the video that was posted to YouTube with translated captions, the helpless Christian man is surrounded by armed militants wearing masks and he is heard reciting as instructed: “There is no God but God and I testify that Mohammed is the messenger of God.”

An apparent leader in the group of militants is then heard instructing the group: “No one will shoot him now, do you understand? He will not be killed by shooting because it is merciful for him.”

“He will be beheaded because he is Kaffir, non-Muslim, sided [with] the government and was not praying at all. Everyone like him will have the same end, beheading,” said the militant.

A militant armed with a machete then grabs the defenseless man by the hair and begins to cut his head from his body as the group cries “Allahu Akbar…there is no God but God.”

Apparently inspired by the spate of beheadings conducted by the Islamic State, a female British convert to Islam who is believed to have relocated to IS controlled territories “is threatening to behead Christians with a blunt knife,” according to the Daily Mail. Umm Hussain al-Britani—formerly Sally Jones of Chatham, a member of an all-girl rock band and single mother of two—warned in messages since deleted “You Christians all need beheading with a nice blunt knife and stuck on the railings at raqqa … Come here I’ll do it for you!”

In Nigeria, the Islamic group, Boko Haram, which seeks to enforce Islamic law over the whole African nation, beheaded a six-year-old boy—again, because he was Christian. During Sunday church services, over 100 Islamic militants descended upon Attagara, a Christian-majority village. With machetes and machine guns, they slaughtered men, women, and children.

According to Christian Today, “One villager, Sawaltha Wandala, was arriving at church for the second service when he saw children being massacred. One six-year-old boy had been slashed and thrown into a ditch, but he was alive. Wandala picked him up and was carrying him to a hospital in Cameroon, when he was stopped by five of the militants. The men reportedly took the child from Wandala’s arms and beheaded him, then began beating the 55-year-old with tree branches. After striking him in the head with a rock, they left him for dead.”

Another Christian man, John Yakuba, was told by Boko Haram members, “You must convert to Islam or else you will die a painful death.”

When Yakuba refused to denounce Christ, they tied his arms and legs to a tree, and hacked his hands with a knife.

“Can you become a Muslim now?” the militants asked.

“You can kill my body, but not my soul,” Yakubu cried out.

The men continued to cut his feet and back with a machete and knife to torture him.

“We will show you,” they said.

Yakuba’s head was slashed, and an axe was driven into his knee, reaching the bone.

He lost consciousness and was left tied to the tree for three days before someone found him, after which he was taken to the hospital in a coma.

In a separate attack by Boko Haram, where approximately 100 people from a Christian-majority region were killed, a survivor reported: “I thank God for sparing my life, but three of my neighbors and members of our church were killed during the attack. These Christians in our village had their throats slit with knives while their hands were tied behind their backs. Some houses were bombed as the Boko Haram gunmen were chanting, ‘God is great!’ in Arabic.”

In Kenya, militants from the Somali Al Shabaab Islamic organization abducted a group of traders near the resort island of Lamu, and drove them into a dense forest. The militants eventually released three of them, because they were Muslims, but beheaded the fourth, a Christian.

If “infidel” Christian men were beheaded, Christian women—including children—were raped and enslaved in various regions of the Islamic world.

In Iraq, approximately 1,500 Christian and other minorities not able to escape the advance of the Islamic State were gang-raped and sold as sex slaves, some for as little as $25. A joint statement by two senior UN officials declared that “Atrocious accounts of abduction and detention of Yazidi, Christian, as well as Turkomen and Shabak women, girls and boys, and reports of savage rapes, are reaching us in an alarming manner.” One young woman, who managed to hide a mobile phone in the prison, spoke of horrific experiences, including being raped by dozens of men over a few hours. Other women said children born out of rape were ripped from their mothers’ arms, and never seen again.

In Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where Christians make for less than one percent, dozens of men armed with machetes, knives and iron rods attacked the convent of Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions nuns in Boldipuku), a village mission in north Bangladesh. “The nuns were beaten and molested, ending when police arrived,” reported Bishop Sebastian Tudu. According to Catholic Online, “Some 60 men attempted to loot the building and rape the nuns… The attackers first tied the hands and legs of the mission’s two night watchmen and gagged them in the early morning hours …. Three PIME nuns suffered attempted rape and were sent to their provincial house in Dhaka, the national capital where they are trying to overcome the shock and mental suffering.”

And in Pakistan, yet another Christian girl, 12-year-old Muqadas (“Sacred”) was raped by a gang of Muslim men. The girl, who worked as a maid for a Muslim family, was returning home from work “when Muqadas was kidnapped by two Muslim men and three women. They took her inside a school (which was closed) and the two men, identified as Ashraf Alias Achi and Ghaffor Alias Paida raped her repeatedly in turn. The girl was later abandoned.” As usual, her family received threats of more violence for filing a complaint with local police.

According to the family’s Christian lawyer, Sardar Mushtaq Gill, “In Pakistan rape is used as an instrument of arbitrary power over Christian girls, who come from poor and marginalized families. It is a form of violence that wants to reiterate the submission to Muslims. The rest of society is not outraged because the victims mostly belong to religious minorities, who are the most vulnerable. Rarely rapists are punished. Furthermore, rape victims face terrible difficulties; they do not receive adequate medical treatment for sexual assault. Many girls are traumatized and become depressed and in need of psychological assistance.” (See here for more on the sexual abuse of Christian minors in Pakistan.) For his troubles, Gill, a vocal human rights activist who represents abused Christians, was again targeted for assassination: his home was sprayed with bullets in the night, for the second time.

Although beheadings and rape in the Islamic world may seem distant from the minds of most in the West, the exiled Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Iraq, warned the West that its turn will come. In an interview, Archbishop Amel Shimoun Nona, said:

Our sufferings today are the prelude of those you, Europeans and Western Christians, will also suffer in the near future. I lost my diocese. The physical setting of my apostolate has been occupied by Islamic radicals who want us converted or dead. But my community is still alive.

Please, try to understand us. Your liberal and democratic principles are worth nothing here. You must consider again our reality in the Middle East, because you are welcoming in your countries an ever growing number of Muslims. Also you are in danger. You must take strong and courageous decisions, even at the cost of contradicting your principles. You think all men are equal, but that is not true: Islam does not say that all men are equal. Your values are not their values. If you do not understand this soon enough, you will become the victims of the enemy you have welcomed in your home.

The rest of August’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Muslim Attacks on Churches

East Jerusalem: Seven years of harassment and attacks by Muslims finally forced Calvary Baptist Church to leave their church building. The attacks began soon after the congregation moved into the building, located in 2007 in a predominantly Muslim area. Within 10 days of beginning meetings and worship services, a Muslim who lived near the church attacked a member with a knife. Then someone tried to set the building on fire. Next came vandalism. First, cars parked at the church were damaged, then property. Finally, some children were physically assaulted on their way to church. The congregation was finally evicted after the landlord was threatened. “How dare you do this,” he was told. “This is a disgrace to Islam. If you don’t do anything about this, we will.” The landlord eventually succumbed to the pressure and the 110-member congregation had to leave the building. This is the third church in Muslim-majority East Jerusalem to be forced shut in recent years.

France: In the early morning of August 5 at Thonon-les-Bains, a man of about 30, described as a “young Muslim,” committed major acts of vandalism in the church of Saint-Hippolyte and in the adjacent basilica of Saint-François-de-Sales. He overturned and broke two altars, the candelabras and lecterns, destroyed statues, tore down a tabernacle, twisted a massive bronze cross, smashed in a sacristy door and even broke some stained-glass windows. (Click for images of the destruction caused in the church.)

Iraq: Soon after the unprecedented Christian exodus from Mosul, after the Islamic State told Christians to convert to Islam or die, a human rights organization went to northern Iraq to provide assistance and support to all displaced Christians. It reported that “around 45 churches in Mosul … were destroyed and converted into mosques and centers for the Islamic State.” According to Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako “This is a humanitarian disaster. The churches are occupied, their crosses were taken down,” and up to 1,500 manuscripts, many ancient, were burnt.

Nigeria: According to Vatican Radio, “In Madagali, Boko Haram are said to have looted parish property, vandalized and then set alight buildings belonging to the church. Fr. Obasogie was not sure of the number of people killed or of other causalities in the Madagali attack but he says there are many…. Christian Churches within Maiduguri Diocese have borne much of the brunt of the terrorist activities… According to Fr. Obasogie, all Christian churches on the major road linking Maiduguri and Adamawa state have been closed after several acts of terrorism at the hands of Boko Haram sects.”

Muslim Attacks on Converts to Christianity

Iran: According to the Idaho wife of Iranian-American Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, who has been imprisoned in Iran for nearly two years, her husband has received death threats from Sunni militants from the Islamic State held in the same detention center: “He’s already under threat because he is a convert to Christianity. Now we understand that ISIS members in the prison have said he is their number one target.” The pastor is in the same ward but a separate section from the Islamic State adherents, his wife said, adding that he is afraid to leave his cell and join the general prison population in the yard for exercise. “I fear for his life,” she said, adding that the couple’s young children have submitted a video to President Barack Obama pleading with him to bring their father safely home. Separately, Pastor Matthias Haghnejad, a former Muslim, is charged with enmity against Allah, a crime that can be punishable by death, while the fate of two other Christians arrested with him remains unknown. The pastor was arrested when intelligence agents stormed his home. They arrested the church leader along with Mohammad (Vahid) Roghangir and Suroush Saraie, two other converts staying with him. The agents also seized Bibles, Christian booklets, and the pastor’s personal computer. On August 3, after being interrogated for two hours, the pastor was charged with “Moharebeh,” or “waging war against Allah,” a capital offence in Iran. All three converts have been targeted by the authorities in the past, including for “evangelism” and “actions against public security.”

Kenya: Hussein Hassan Mohammed, 30, a Muslim convert to Christianity, tearfully recounted his experiences at the hands of Muslims at Mogotio King’s Outreach Church, where he originally announced his conversion in April. He told of how he was beaten unconscious inside a mosque, how Islamic leaders had paid assassins to kill him, and how his own father tried to poison him to death (similar to the experiences of another Muslim convert to Christianity in Uganda, whose aunt tried to poison him). For a while he was arrested and tortured because authorities refused to believe that he had really converted to Christianity (they thought he was an Islamic terrorist pretending to be Christian, which happens frequently). Then, while he was recuperating in hospital, he called his father, 72-year-old Hassan Mohammed, who came to visit him at the hospital: “Are you serious about what you told me, that you had embraced the Christian faith?” his father asked, to which Hussein, replied, “Yes.” According to the Christian convert, “My father came with the food, but my conscience rejected the food. The doctors noticed that I was restless. I was told to eat the food, but I refused. The doctor tried to give the food to the cat, but it too refused to eat it, hence the food was taken to the laboratory, where it was found that it was a poisoned food.” Police guarding Mohammed arrested his father. Questioned about why he would want to kill his son, he told them, “My son has forsaken Islam as well as defiling our community by joining Christianity.” Said Hussein: “I thought my father had come to help, but I realized that he had come to kill me.” Still, when he was discharged from the hospital Hussein pled for the release of his father. Mohammed said he had forgiven his father, and police released his father.

New Zealand: Friends of Khalid Muidh Alzahrani, a Muslim convert to Christianity known as Daniel, “fear the refugee has been abducted from his Christchurch flat and taken back to Saudi Arabia—home to the Islamic holy city of Mecca—where it is against the law for Muslims to abandon their faith.” Daniel arrived in Christchurch about five years ago on a Saudi Government scholarship to study English, eventually converted to Christianity and applied for asylum. He was granted refugee status on the grounds that he would be persecuted in Saudi Arabia, and told friends he was terrified he would be kidnapped and forced to return. The Saudi ambassador to New Zealand said that Daniel had “insisted” on returning home to visit his mother and the consulate had paid for his air ticket. But, according to National, “his friends don’t believe it—they say he was last seen in the company of two strange Arab men and believe he was taken out of the country under duress, possibly by agents of the state or family members….There have been numerous documented cases of Saudi nationals being uplifted from foreign countries. In 2012, columnist Hamza Kashgari, who’d been accused of insulting the prophet Mohammad on Twitter, tried to seek asylum in New Zealand but was intercepted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, sent home and jailed without trial. In May last year, a young Saudi Christian who had arrived in Auckland two months earlier and claimed asylum was snatched off the street by three men just three days before his refugee interview and was flown back to Saudi Arabia, where it is believed he spent time in prison and was tortured. His lawyer, Roger Chambers, said the man had managed to secretly make contact with his friends in Auckland. ‘He has had a dreadful time in Saudi Arabia,” Chambers said. ‘[He was told] more than once if he did not renounce his Christianity that he could expect to be beheaded.’”

Yemen: Muslim relatives of a woman who converted to Christianity placed gasoline in one of her kitchen bottles, it caused her to catch fire while cooking breakfast for her family; eventually she died from the burns. Morning Star News reports: “In southern Yemen, Saeed woke to the sound of screaming. He shot out of bed, pushed panicked family members aside and saw his wife stumbling out of their kitchen, engulfed in flames. His wife, Nazeera, had been preparing breakfast at about 9 a.m. when she poured liquid from a cooking oil bottle into a hot pan. The liquid flashed, and the bottle exploded. While her four children watched, screaming, Nazeera was being burned alive. ‘I rushed out of the room,” Saeed (full name undisclosed for security reasons) told Morning Star News, weeping. ‘I couldn’t even speak to ask her what happened. All I could think about was putting the fire out and then getting her to the hospital. But my 16-year-old son, he couldn’t stop himself and held on to her, hugging her while she was burning. He got hurt, and I had to pull him away from her.’ About two weeks later, Nazeera, 33, died as a result of her burns. When Saeed returned to his home in a village (undisclosed for security reasons) after her death, a relative told him the unthinkable—members of both his family and hers had taken the vegetable oil out of the bottle and replaced it with gasoline. Saeed knew the reason—many years ago, the two had become Christians and refused to return to Islam.”

Dhimmitude: Islamic Discrimination Against Christianity

Libya: Roaming bands of armed Islamic militants went door to door in Tripoli’s jewelry stores. They ordered the owners to stop selling any crosses or Christian icons. “Immediately thereafter,” report Arabic media, “the store owners collected all the crosses and Christian icons and delivered them to their Christian villages outside of Tripoli. Other store owners hid the Christian crosses and icons deeply, in the hopes of transferring them somewhere later, because they live in Tripoli and have no outside Christian villages to deliver the banned Christian items to.”

United Kingdom: Yasmin Jackson, a 24-year-old Christian mother, claims staff at Kingswood Daycare Nursery in Mitcham, south London “starved” her five-year-old daughter because her packed food was not halal—that is, prepared according to Islamic custom. According to the Daily Mail: “Ms Jackson, a single mother and former nursery worker, said: ‘When I picked her up at the end of the day the first thing she said to me was, “mummy I’m really hungry, can I have my lunch now?” The mother went to speak with the manager. When she asked why her daughter was not allowed to eat her packed lunch, the manager said “We didn’t know if it’s halal.” The mother responded, “We are a Christian family and it was a chicken sandwich,” to which the manager said, “We don’t allow any non-halal meat in the nursery.”

[Teddy Bear]

The Muslim persecution of Christians in September started making prominent appearances not just in the Islamic world, but also in the West—in America, Australia and Europe.
Yet when you read reports on these incidents, the perpetrators are described as deranged, or sick, and nothing to do with Islam. Even when they scream Allahu Akbar (God is greater) as they commit their insidious evil deeds.

The West needs to start realising what it is about Islam that makes more 'deranged' and 'sick' individuals than any other religion.

Christians and Churches Attacked in the WestMuslim Persecution of Christians, September 2014

by Raymond Ibrahim
December 24, 2014 at 5:00 am

"You have a cross on… Do you know what we do to people like you?" — Muslim in Denmark.

Muslim Fulani gunmen forced their way into the church, cut [the pastor], his wife and a daughter with a machete, and then tied the hands and feet of the three of them before setting the building on fire... We only found the charred remains of the three of them in the morning. I heard them shouting at the top of their voices, saying they must obliterate any traces of Christianity in the town." — Eyewitness account, Nigeria.

Each year, approximately 1,000 women in Pakistan are forced to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men. Whenever a case of this nature reaches the law courts, those women, under threat and blackmail, often declare that their conversion and marriage were decisions freely made, and the case is closed.

The Muslim persecution of Christians in September started making prominent appearances not just in the Islamic world, but also in the West—in America, Australia and Europe.

In the United States, in Columbus, Indiana, three churches were vandalized on the same night. The words most frequently sprayed were "Infidels!" and "Koran 3:151." The verse from the Koran states, "We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve [or "infidels"] for what they have associated with Allah [reference to Christian Trinity] of which He had not sent down [any] authority. And their refuge will be the Fire, and wretched is the residence of the wrongdoers."

Father Doug Marcotte of Saint Bartholomew's Catholic Church, one of those vandalized, said, "There's a lot of bad stuff being done in the name of Allah and so when people see this happening in Columbus, whether that was truly the person's intent or there's something else going on, it makes people nervous. It makes people upset. It makes them scared."

Meanwhile, in Australia, AAP reported that "Church-goers in Sydney's west have been left shaken after a stranger shouted death threats from a car bearing the Islamic State flag. The car drove past Our Lady of Lebanon Church at Harris Park on Tuesday and witnesses claim it had a flag similar to those brandished by Islamic State jihadists hanging out the window." A church official said the people in the car threatened to "kill the Christians" and slaughter their children: "They were strong words and people were scared of what they saw." Witnesses saw a flag outside the window with the words, "There is only one god and Muhammad is the prophet." And as happens frequently in Muslim-majority nations, police security was later dispatched to patrol the Harris Park church while hundreds partook of the mass inside.

People in a car bearing a jihadist flag verbally abused parishioners at the Our Lady of Lebanon Church in Sydney, Australia in September, threatening to "kill the Christians" and slaughter their children.

In Denmark—2013's "happiest country in the world"—Christians of Middle Eastern backgrounds continued to experience "harassment, verbal attacks and in some cases direct violence from Muslims," reports TV2, especially in Muslim-majority areas, such as Nørrebro. One Christian, "Jojo," born in Denmark of Lebanese parents, shared her experiences. Once when sitting in her parked car, several Muslims surrounded it, harassing her about her Western attire. When one of them noticed she was wearing a cross, he said "Well, you have a cross on—then you are also a Christian f***ing whore. Do you know what we do to people like you? Do you know what we do to people like you? You get stoned [to death]."

Another Christian woman of Iranian background recounted how she and her son are harassed on the Muslim-majority block where they live—and where she stands out for not wearing a hijab, the Islamic veil: "My son is being called everything. I get called all sorts of things. Infidel. Filthy Christians. They tell me I ought to be stoned to death. My son was beaten at the bus stop. He was called pig, dirty potato (Muslim slang for Danes), and that 'you and your mother should die."'

Islamic dreams of conquering Europe were prevalent. A senior analyst in Spain warned that, because Islamists see the Iberian peninsula as being "under Spanish and Portuguese occupation," greater risk of terrorism exists there than in other Western areas. Because Iberia—or, in Arabic, Al-Andalus—was under Islamic domination for centuries, many Muslims consider it part of the Islamic world, or Dar al-Islam, which needs to be reconquered, no less than Israel, also seen as occupied Islamic territory.

More pointedly, in the Islamic State [IS], in a lengthy message partially addressed to the "crusaders"—a reference to the West—some members declared, "We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah." Members of the IS also invoked a statement attributed to Muhammad, that Constantinople would be conquered before Rome—and it was, in 1453. The implication was that the Eternal City of Rome would be next.

Around the same time, Rome responded by rejecting a motion to name a street after the late Oriana Fallaci, a veteran journalist who had once written that, "the Muslim world is attempting to conquer the West in the name of Islam." In explaining their decision, local politicians described Fallaci's writings as containing "religious hatred," or "Islamophobia."

In Canada, while 80 special Muslims went to the trouble of attending a Muslim rally on behalf of persecuted Christians, sadly, another rally, an extremist Al Quds Day Anti-Israel Hate Fest, drew approximately 6,000 participants.

The rest of September's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Muslim Attacks on Churches

East Jerusalem: A Christian church was attacked numerous times: On September 29, young Muslim men, with ties to a Palestinian militant group, wired shut the door of the Living Bread Church and sprayed a gaseous substance at those inside. An earlier gas attack had already occurred on September 17. Hours before the second attack, someone threw a rock through one of the windows of the church, and the day before that, Sunday, September 28, a Palestinian and others assaulted a church member as he was emptying trash into a dumpster outside the church.

On Sept. 21, a Palestinian militant, without warning, ran up behind a church leader, Karen Dunham, and knocked her to the pavement: "This guy charged me as fast as he could," she said. "He came up behind me and just slammed into my back, and I fell and I hit the ground. My face is bruised. There's bruises on the side of my cheek, on my face, on my head, on my knee, cuts on my head, and my wrist was fractured."

Egypt: A Christian priest in Egypt appealed to President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to intervene on behalf of yet another church being threatened by "religious extremists." So far, local authorities have done nothing. Four years ago, the Coptic Church of St. Abram in Shubra al-Khaima received a permit to build an additional building. During those same four years, seven "thugs"—in the words of the report—have prevented it from being built. The "thugs" had mobilized local Muslims to threaten and demonstrate against the church. "The priest lamented that 'after suffering many long years' they finally managed to acquire the permit to build, but then the next obstacle presented itself in the person of the aforementioned seven 'thugs' who constantly harass, and incite Muslim mobs, against the church, whenever it tries to exercise its right to build the services building. Islamic law forbids the building of new churches or the renovation of existing churches."

Iraq: Islamic State militants "completely destroyed" the ancient Green Church in Tikrit. They packed the church with explosives and detonated them -- completely destroying the ancient church, which belonged to the Assyrian Church of the East. Almost from the time it was built in the seventh century, when Islam overran Iraq, the church had been attacked, ransacked, and destroyed by Muslim rulers and others, but was restored on the orders of Iraq's late President Saddam Hussein in the 1990s.

Nigeria: Many more churches and a Christian university, Kulp Bible College, were forced to shut down as a result of the advances of the Islamic jihadi group, Boko Haram. In one instance, a pastor reported that "Boko Haram violence has been getting worse every day, and our members are fleeing the area by the thousands. Recent attacks in Borno and Adamawa states where our churches are located have seen Boko Haram take over the Army base. As a result, about 350 Christians have been killed."

Separately, in Kaduna state, where "Muslim Fulani assailants seem driven to rid the area of Christianity and use the land to graze their cattle," according to church leaders, 46 Christians, including two pastors, were slaughtered in raids. According to an eyewitness,

"Suddenly we heard sounds of gunshots around our village. The pastor was still in the pastorate when the Muslim Fulani gunmen forced their way onto the church premises. They cut him, his wife and a daughter with a machete, and then tied the hands and feet of the three of them before setting the house on fire. The three of them were burned to ashes in the living room of the pastorate. We only found the charred remains of the three of them the following morning.... The gunmen then came onto the church premises and began shooting. I heard them shouting at the top of their voices, saying they must obliterate any trace of Christianity in the town."

Although Muslim Fulani have historically had property disputes with Christian farmers, Christian leaders say attacks by the herdsmen constitute a war "by Islam to eliminate Christianity" in Nigeria.

Sudan: In the latest incident of a nearly two-year wave of church demolitions, closures and confiscations, security agents padlocked a 500-member church building, the Sudan Pentecostal Church [SPC] in Khartoum. The church also houses the Khartoum Christian Center (KCC). "The church is concerned that the building might be sold by the government, which renders more than 500 worshippers to have no place for worship," a source told the Morning Star News. The Islamist government appears to be seeking any pretext for closing churches, sources said. In this instance, the space for the church was originally designated as "office space." But, as one source asked, "How do you close a church building that has been in operation for 20 years in the name of the church being meant for offices?" The church has a deed showing that it owns the building and property -- a situation that raises the question of the government's right to sell it.

On June 30 bulldozers demolished the Sudanese Church of Christ in the Thiba Al Hamyida area of North Khartoum as church members watched, while security personnel threatened to arrest them if they tried to block the bulldozers, church members said.

Syria: The Islamic State destroyed the Armenian Genocide Memorial Church in Der Zor, seen as the "Auschwitz" of the Armenian Genocide. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished in Der Zor and the surrounding desert during the genocide. In the summer of 1916 alone, more than 200,000 Armenians, mostly women and children, were massacred by Ottoman Turks. Armenia's foreign minister issued a statement calling the church's destruction a "horrible barbarity," and referred to the Islamic State as a "disease" that "threatened civilized mankind." The church was built in 1989-90 and consecrated a year later. A genocide memorial and a museum housing the remains of the victims of the genocide were also located in the church compound. Thousands of Armenians from Syria and neighboring countries gathered at the memorial every year on April 24 to commemorate the genocide.

Pakistani Rape and Dhimmitude

Four young Muslims gang raped a 15-year-old Christian girl and filmed it. The girl's father, although he was threatened against filing a complaint, went to police, who confirmed the existence of a video that corroborates the violence. The video will apparently be introduced as evidence against the youths. A lawyer, Mushtaq Gill, issued a statement that, "Many Christian girls continue to be victims of sexual assault by young Muslims, who go unpunished" and that, "in this case there is also a video, flaunted as a trophy."

Two Christian women were abducted, forced to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men. Lawyer Mushtaq Gill said, "A Christian girl, Sairish, forced to marry a Muslim in 2009, in her heart never abandoned the faith and continued to pray to Jesus Christ even after her marriage. After a few years she found the courage to rebel against the situation and run away.... Her life is now in danger because if she declares herself Christian, Muslims may accuse her of apostasy and the punishment would be death." Each year, approximately 1,000 women in Pakistan are forced to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men. Whenever a case of this nature reaches the law courts, those women, under threat and blackmail, often declare that their conversion and marriage were decisions freely made, and the case is closed.

Another Christian family fled their hometown, Lahore, to save their daughters from forced conversion to Islam. According to the Justice and Peace Commission, the two sisters, aged 12 and 8, were studying in public schools, where learning to recite the Koran is mandatory. Apparently, because the girls recited the shehada, the Islamic declaration of faith, "an Islamic cleric, the father of a student stated that these girls had become Muslims and thus needed to be taken from their Christian parents and entrusted to adult Muslims." The parents pulled their daughters out of school, but then the headmaster and other Muslim teachers "warned the parents to send them back to school, offering the family financial aid regarding the school fees." The parents quit their jobs and fled the region.

Police arrested 15 Christians and booked 45 other members of the minority community under the blasphemy law for allegedly desecrating Muslim graves in a village in Punjab province. According to the AP, "The case was registered after a local cleric filed a complaint alleging that the Christians had desecrated over 400 Muslim graves to occupy the land in Chak village in Faisalabad, about 150 kilometres from Lahore." Rights groups said it was a spurious charge meant to prevent the Christians from acquiring the land. In fact, the accusations were later proven false.

Dhimmitude: Islamic Discrimination Against Christianity

Egypt: Iman Sarofim, a 39-year-old Christian mother of five, returned home to her family after being kidnapped. Initially it was believed that she had voluntarily converted to Islam and fled her family to be with a Muslim man. The woman contacted the family from Suez, where she had been brought by the kidnapper. The return of the woman was celebrated by neighbors and relatives in the city of Gabal al-Tir. Her disappearance had been the cause of clashes between Copts and police, who believed the narrative that she had voluntarily left. In retaliation, police officers entered the homes of dozens of Coptic families and violently arrested dozens of Christians. Separately, Ehab Karam, a Coptic dentist, was killed after he was abducted by unknown persons, most likely for ransom. The kidnapping of Copts for ransom has evidently become a regular part of life in Egypt for Christians, particularly in Upper Egypt. Last February, for instance, police dismantled a crime network that for months had been organizing kidnappings, robberies and extortion against the local Coptic community. "Unfortunately," said the Coptic Catholic Bishop of Assist, Kyrillos William, "the phenomenon continues and there are no signs of improvement. Police operations are episodic and ineffective, they are unable to solve the problem."

Iraq: The Islamic State decreed that all schools in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain which bore Christian names, some since the 1700s, must be changed. Also, the teaching of the Syriac language and culture and Christian religious education has been abolished. Reports indicate that the Islamic State took these moves "in order to erase all traces of cultural and religious pluralism in the conquered areas and turn schools into propaganda tools of jihadist ideology among the new generations."

Saudi Arabia: In the Eastern Province city of Khafji, "religious police," or agents from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, raided a house where at least 27 Christians, mostly expatriates from various Asian nationalities, were gathered. The Christians, including children, were accused of practicing Christianity in a house church, and were arrested and detained overnight. Authorities also confiscated musical instruments and copies of the Bible. The house had been placed under surveillance after a citizen reported that his Indian neighbor had converted his home into a Christian church. After witnessing a large number of individuals enter the home, officers raided the house. The only religion allowed to be practiced in public in Saudi Arabia is Islam. In the land of the prophet, no public places of worship for non-Muslims are permitted to exist.

Turkey: According to the Armenian magazine, Agos, many of the primary and secondary education books being used for the current school year still describe the Armenians and other Christian communities as enemy forces at the service of foreign powers, including Russia and England, after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. One eighth-grade history book tries to whitewash the Armenian genocide, which is portrayed as a "necessary deportation," never as a massacre.

Uzbekistan: Security forces reportedly raided the home of Pastor Stanislav Kim in Chirchik, 20 miles northeast of Tashkent, the capital. They detained 11 teenagers and three adults, who had gathered there for a volleyball game, and questioned them for more than four hours before releasing them. Officials also searched the pastor's home and confiscated a New Testament, a Bible, several other Christian books, more than 100 slides of hymns, as well as some computer equipment. Voice of the Martyrs, which says there are at least 65 unregistered congregations scattered throughout Uzbekistan, said in a statement, "Please pray that this pastor and his son will not face fines, but will soon be acquitted of any perceived wrongdoing. Ask God to strengthen each believer who was present during this unwarranted raid so that they will not give in to governmental intimidation and pressure, but instead be emboldened to serve our Lord faithfully."

[Teddy Bear]

Seeing the response by the mainstream media to the recent terrible murders by the Taliban in a school in Pakistan, Raymond Ibrahim correctly observed that why only when it is Muslim children that are killed does our media take notice. He reports continually how our media consistently prefers to downplay or ignore completely attacks on Christians, regardless of just how heinous this is.

According to the BBC propaganda this should make you proud of being so tolerant.
Does it?

Media prioritises Muslim school kids over Christian school kids
The recent terrible attack on a school in Pakistan by the Taliban rightly received wide coverage in the mainstream media. But this was because the victims were Muslim children. When the victims are Christian children our media ignores or downplays it. Why?

Raymond Ibrahim

On 30 December 2014 10:04

In my last article I looked at “how Western mainstream media enable Islamic terrorism,” specifically by employing an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism to portray such violence as a product of anything and everything -- political and historical grievances, “Islamophobia,” individual insanity, poverty and ignorance, territorial disputes -- except Islam.

Another strategy that recently came to the fore consists of highlighting Islamic terror attacks that target other Muslims.

The logic here is clear: How “Islamic” can such Islamic groups be if they attack and kill fellow Muslims? In other words, whatever the motivation, it surely cannot be Islam, since those being killed are themselves Muslims.

This suggests that the terrorists themselves cannot be true Muslims since Muslims are generally forbidden by Islam to kill other Muslims (caveats exist).

A recent example of this is the December 16 Taliban attack on an army public school in Peshawar, where 145 people were killed, the majority being schoolchildren age 18 and under.

This incident was reported all over the mainstream media, and rightfully so.

Yet this begs the question: why do similar attacks, when directed at non-Muslims --especially Christians -- rarely if ever get the same sort of media coverage?

For example, in Nigeria on November 10,

A suicide bomb attack in a Christian secondary school in the town of Potiskum in Yobe state, north-eastern Nigeria, has killed at least 47 people on Monday as the students gathered for morning assembly. Boko Haram is thought to be behind the blast, having carried out several attacks on schools giving a Western-style education. Translated from Hausa, Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden” of which this latest school attack is a stark reminder.

Earlier in the year, “Boko Haram claimed the lives of 59 students at a Christian school ... Some 50 men ambushed the school, then beat and shot staff and students. Once finished, they set fire to the buildings, with many students still inside. It's the fourth attack of its kind since May of last year.”

On October 1 in Syria, at least 41 Alawite children -- all under 12 -- were killed:

The massacre was one of the most severe in terms of children who died since the beginning of the conflict in Syria. According to official Syrian sources, a car bomb and a suicide bomber caused two explosions when the children came out of school, in the suburb of Akrameh inhabited mainly by Alawites, with the targeted intention to cause the highest number possible of deaths among children of the same religious community to which the Assad family belong.

Here is the testimony of an eyewitness to another Islamic attack on a Christian school in Syria, where 12 people -- mostly children -- were killed:

I want to tell you about Tuesday. It was a terrible day. We cried and prayed all day. Tuesday they were bombing Bab Touma, the old city of Damascus. A lot of Christians live there. There is also a Christian school—a private one. We know a lot of people in that school. Some children from our area also go to school there. When those kids went to school on Tuesday, gathered at the square like they always do, a mortar fell in their midst. Some friends passed by the school and saw that parents and teachers were carrying their wounded children out of the school, dripping with blood. They saw them running to the hospitals in panic. For me, as a mother and a teacher, I can hardly bear to imagine what these people must be going through right now. Twelve people lost their lives in that school, most of them children from the elementary school. Many more of them have lost arms and legs or have other injuries.

As for Islamic attacks on Christian schools that do not lead to casualties, these are quite common. Thus, on November 5 in Bangladesh, hundreds of Muslims, some armed with knives and machetes, attacked a Christian school.

They torched its library, burned Bibles and hymnals, and committed other wanton acts of violence. According to a source, “A wave of panic swept through the school and traumatized everyone. Many students became sick in the following days.” The reason for this particular attack? Muslim projection: a rumor started that the Christian school was converting Muslim students to Christianity.

How many of those Western people who could not help but hear about the Peshawar attack -- considering its widespread coverage -- also heard about these Islamic attacks on schools some of which also took large numbers of children lives? Not very many, I would wager.

The reason, again, is obvious: reporting Muslims killing Muslims does not contradict the mainstream media’s narrative but ostensibly enforces it. For, so the simple logic goes, Muslims who kill fellow Muslims cannot be “real” Muslims to start with, and must in fact be, as Western politicians habitually characterize them, mere “criminals.”

Thus, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan issued a statement condemning the Peshawar attack, adding, “The barbaric actions of the Taliban illustrate their lack of value for human life and lack of respect for the Islamic faith. These attacks only prove their selfish desire for power and willingness to murder to reach their self-serving goals.”

On the other hand, it is more difficult for the media to dissemble the motives of Muslims who intentionally target and kill “the other” -- outnumbered and defenseless “infidel” minorities -- simply because they are “the other.”

Whether small numbers or large -- whether four children decapitated for refusing to renounce Christ or whether the largest massacre of Christians in Syria -- Muslim persecution of Christians will rarely if ever get MSM coverage, for it throws a wrench in the media’s narrative that Islamic violence is a product of anything and everything but Islamic hate for non-Muslims.

[Teddy Bear]

Raymond with his ongoing series (numerous links available on the webpage)
As ever, it is only by being aware of what really is going on in this regard that we can see just how little our media report on it.

Thousand Churches Destroyed in Nigeria
Muslim Persecution of Christians, October 2014

by Raymond Ibrahim
January 2, 2015 at 5:00 am

A court in Pakistan upheld the death penalty for Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of four. She is accused of having made derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbors objected to her drinking water from their glass, because she was not a Muslim and therefore "unclean."

A successful Christian school in the United Kingdom was warned that it would be downgraded by inspectors and might even face closure after failing to invite a leader from another religion, such as a Muslim imam, to lead assemblies. "A Government consultation paper... makes clear that even taking children on trips to different places of worship would not be enough to be judged compliant."

"They then told me that since I refused to [convert to Islam] they would kill me.... They pinned me down and told me they will make death painful and slow, as they are not prepared to waste bullets on me. They said, 'Be warned that if any of you Muslims dares to assist him, he is also an infidel and we shall make sure that he too is killed.'" — Adamu, a Christian; Nigeria.

They are searching [for me] to cut my throat. When I go to mass, I say I am going to English classes because I plan to travel." — "Tarek," a convert to Christianity in Lebanon.

The police, far from interfering, actually incited the Muslim man.

"With no one on hand to know what is going on, it's easier to mistreat them." — Jason Demars, President, Present Truth Ministries.

About 100,000 Christians die every year because of their religious beliefs. — The Center for the Studies of Global Christianity in the United States.

In just two months, from August to October, nearly 200 Christian churches were destroyed in Nigeria by the Islamic organization Boko Haram and its Muslim allies, after their capture of towns and villages in the north-eastern states of Borno and Adamawa. In the words of Reverend Gideon Obasogie, the director of Catholic Social Communication of Maiduguri Diocese in Borno State: "The group's seizure of territory in both states has seen 185 churches torched and over 190,000 people displaced by their insurgency."

Obasogie added that Boko Haram's "ransacking and torching" of churches was "sad, heart-aching and potentially dangerous to the territorial integrity and common good of Nigeria.... Our priests are displaced, while citizens... are counting their losses and regrets as they have been reduced to the status of Internally Displaced Persons [IDP]. Where is the freedom?... Life is really terribly difficult."

In 2011, hundreds of Christians were killed and 430 churches destroyed or damaged in Nigeria by Boko Haram. In 2012, 900 Christians were slaughtered and an unknown number of churches destroyed. In 2013, 612 Christians were slaughtered and approximately 300 churches destroyed.

This suggests that in the last four years alone, approximately 1,000 Christian churches have been destroyed by Boko Haram and its Muslim sympathizers in a nation that is approximately half Christian half Muslim.

Moreover, according to an October Human Rights Watch report, Boko Haram has so far been responsible for killing 2,053 people in 2014—a number that likely exceeds the previous four years put together.

A typical church attack in Nigeria that occurred in October was reported as follows: "Armed Muslim extremists stormed two churches in Taraba state on Sunday (Oct. 19) and killed 31 people as they worshipped... Two pastors, one pastor's son, and 28 other Christians were slain in the attacks." According to the Rev. Caleb Ahema, president of the Christian Reformed Church of Christ in Nigeria, "The attack on Christians in Taraba state is a planned genocide against Christians by Islamic insurgents who have invaded the southern part of the state, inhabited mostly by Christians, since February."

The experiences of Adamu, a 28-year-old Christian man who refused to abjure Christianity for Islam, appeared in October. One day while working on his farm, a Boko Haram member came to him:

He told me to convert to Islam and join them in waging a jihad to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria. I told him that I will not renounce my Christian faith in order to embrace Islam. He left me there on my farm without saying anything again. [Two days later, five other Boko Haram members showed up.] They said their member told them that I refused to renounce being a Christian and wanted to know whether it is true that I refused to become a Muslim. [Adamu repeated his decision again.] They then told me that since I refused to recant, they would kill me.... They pinned me down and told me they will make death painful and slow, as they are not prepared to waste their bullets on me. They also said they would not give me the honor of slaughtering me by cutting my neck from the front, because that is the way they slaughter their rams. They forced me down on my stomach and then proceeded to slaughter me by cutting my neck from the back. I was bleeding and went blank as the knife cut through my neck. It was pains I cannot explain to you. After cutting my neck, they left me bleeding…. It was only after I was taken to the hospital that I was told that the Boko Haram members who attacked me on the farm had gone to the village shortly after leaving me bleeding to death and had warned other Muslims that if any of them dares to rescue me, he would be killed. They sternly warned other Muslims in Musari, "We have butchered an infidel there on his farm. Be warned that if any of you Muslims dares to assist him, he is also an infidel and we shall make sure that he too is killed.'" [Days later, a fellow Christian snuck onto the farm and rescued the barely living man.]

Also in October, the Center for the Studies of Global Christianity in the United States concluded that

About 100,000 Christians die every year because of their religious beliefs, that is to say one every five minutes. In addition, in many countries, many other religious minorities suffer violence and persecution. In countries such as Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan, Pakistan, Somalia and Egypt the Christian elderly, women, men and their children live in conditions of total insecurity. They are driven from their homes; put in prison for blasphemy, and brutally killed during liturgical celebrations, churches are burned. Girls are kidnapped and forced to marry.

The rest of October's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Muslim Attacks on Churches

Egypt: According to a terse report relayed from Arabic media, "homemade bomb exploded today [October 7] next to the Evangelical Church of God, in Sarie district in Minya [Upper Egypt]. The bomb caused great panic, but no casualties or deaths. Police were reported and the matter is still under investigation."

Germany: Just as happens regularly in Egypt, a Coptic Christian church in the European nation was attacked and torched. According to the report, "The mayor of Berlin condemned attacking and burning St. Athanasius and St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church in Berlin by extremists describing it as a crime against peaceful coexistence. On his part, Abba Demian, bishop of Germany, said that he didn't expect such attack against a church in Germany."

Iraq: Bombings by the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State hit and devastated the Church of the Resurrection near the town of Qaraqosh. The Christian place of worship was being used as a base for jihadis, who had broken off the cross from the building's roof before occupying it.

Philippines: A grenade attack on a church during worship service left two Christians—Felomina Ferolin, a 54-year-old nurse, and teacher Gina Cabilona, 39—dead, and three others injured, one critically. Two men on a motorbike fired a grenade launcher at the door of the United Church of Christ before fleeing the scene. The attack took place in the island of Mindanao, where Islamic groups have previously targeted Christians and churches. In a separate incident, an attempted bomb attack took place on October 11 in Mindanao. At that time, the improvised explosive device was defused at the scene by security forces with no reports of injuries. Another location, Zamboanga had been the location of a previous attack on a church by Islamic militants in February 2014. Members of two other militant Islamist groups in the Philippines recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Sudan: The nation's air force dropped four bombs on an Episcopal Church in complex in the Nuba Mountains. According to the Rev. Youhana Yaqoub "The bombs have completely destroyed our church compound in Tabolo. A family living at the church compound miraculously escaped the attack, although their whole house and property were destroyed."

Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom

Iran: In what was called a "serious blow," three Christian leaders were sentenced to six years in prison for their involvement in house churches. Pastor Benham Irani, Abdolreza Ali-Haghnejad, and Reza Rabbani, all leaders in the Church of Iran, were sentenced for "action against national security" and "creating a network to overthrow the system" -- generic terms the Islamic republic uses to suppress Christian activities. All three are being moved to remote prisons along the nation's borders. Jason Demars, president of Present Truth Ministries, an evangelical group that works in Iran, said, "Basically they want to silence them—they want to move them away to a place that is tough to get to, for their family to get to. With no one on hand to know what is going on, it's easier to mistreat them." Separately, three other converts to Christianity were arrested by intelligence officers in Foolad-Shahr, Esfahan province. Security forces also raided the home of arrested Christian actor Shahram Ghaedi. It is thought that Ghaedi and the two other believers, Heshmat Shafiei and Emad Haghi, were targeted by authorities because of their involvement in a "Jesus Film" project.

Pressure had previously been placed on the filmmakers by the security authorities, forcing some cast members to leave the country and disrupting the project.

Kazakhstan: Two Christian men, Vyacheslav Cherkasov and Zhasulan Alzhanov, were given ten-day prison terms for distributing Christian literature after authorities claimed that one of the books incites religious hatred. The book Jesus: More than a Prophet—a collection of testimonies of former Muslims—which was among 252 Christian books seized by the authorities -- was found by officials who conducted "expert analysis" to contain "elements inciting religious hatred and discord." A Christian source in Kazakhstan characterized the plight of Christians in the Muslim-majority nation as follows: "The situation in every Central Asian republic is different, but we see that persecution is increasing. The Kazakh authorities put tougher pressure on… churches. All countries have passed new regulations in administrative and criminal laws that toughen punishments for illegal religious activity. At the same time the authorities don't protect… churches from zealous local Muslims or just criminals. [Violence] happens not very often but we don't have any protection from the authorities."

Lebanon: A Syrian-born Muslim convert to Christianity who goes by the name "Tarek" is in hiding from his father and stepbrothers who are determined to slaughter him: "They are searching to cut my throat. I've been told they have hired someone to find me to get the mission accomplished.... Sometimes, I feel in danger. Especially when I go into the streets, when I come to Beirut. You never know if someone is looking for you. I'm living in a place where the majority are Muslims. So whenever I go to church on Sunday, they would know I'm Christian. So I don't say anything about my religion, and when I go to mass, I say I am going to English classes because I plan to travel."

Malaysia: Ibrahim Ali, the leader of the Muslim supremacist organization Perkasa, said during a press conference that: "Muslims must unite to protect their religion. They must seize those Bibles, including the Malay editions, which contained the term Allah and other Arabic religious terms, and burn them. This is the way to show our anger against disrespect to our sensitivity." A police investigation was launched to see if Ali was in breach of Section 298, which criminalizes saying words with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings, or Section 505, which criminalizes making statements that could cause public mischief. The government concluded that Ibrahim Ali would not be charged with anything because "he only meant to defend the sanctity of Islam." But as the Christian Federation of Malaysia points out, by portraying calls to burn the Bible as acts "to defend the sanctity of Islam," the government just gave "free rein to other extremists to do likewise, not just to Christians but to any other religious community that is not Muslim."

Pakistan: A court upheld the death penalty for Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of four, who was accused of blasphemy, imprisoned, and sentenced to death in 2010. She is alleged to have made derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbors objected to her drinking water from their glass, because she was not Muslim and therefore "unclean." After Bibi's arrest in 2010, two top Pakistani politicians who sought to intervene on her behalf were gunned down, one by his own bodyguard.



Sudan: Ibrahim Ismaeil Ibrahim, a 34-year-old Muslim convert to Christianity and father of two, once worked as a human rights defender. Today he lives in a refugee camp after surviving an attempt on his life by Muslims trying to kill him for apostatizing from, and criticizing, Islam. Before leaving Islam, he worked as a writer and human rights defender in the Darfur region. As he chronicled human rights violations by Muslim militants, he became disillusioned with Islam and converted to Christianity: "I defected from Islam and started writing articles through my [pseudonymous] page on Facebook, in which I described Islam as a religion of terror and killing. Then some people discovered my identity and sent me messages of intimidation on my phone that they were looking for my head. Suddenly, I was attacked.... An unknown Islamic extremist broke into my house at midnight and opened fire on my room." Ibrahim and his family fled the nation. He later discovered that the government of Sudan was behind the Islamic assassins trying to kill him.

Uzbekistan: Artur Alpayev, a Christian man, was given a large fine—50 times the nation's minimum monthly wage—and threatened with further punishment after religious literature was seized from his home during a raid on a prayer meeting. Police also raided several other homes in the repressive country, in search of Christian materials. When sentencing Alpayev, Judge Oltinbek Mansurov said, "We will continue fining you unless you stop storing religious literature in your home." Police also raided the homes of two other Christian couples in search of religious literature; 65 Christian books and materials were seized, including children's Bibles.

Dhimmitude: Islamic Discrimination Against Christianity

Egypt: Lisa Nasim Basari, a 28-year-old Coptic Christian woman, made a video describing the advances of a Muslim man who has been pressuring her to convert to Islam and marry her. According to her account, Wa'il Hassan Abdul Mu'min began stalking her whenever she left home. He eventually asked her to convert to Islam and marry him —even offering her money—but she refused. In retaliation, he attacked and burned portions of the grocery store in which she worked; tore her clothes and sexually abused her. Lisa eventually went to local police to file a formal report against him, but, as she explained in the video, the police, far from interfering, actually incited the Muslim man—who appears to be affiliated with the police department—to keep harassing her. They also imprisoned her for a time and, as she said, "tortured" her into abandoning the complaint against the Muslim man. In the video, she pleas for help, begging some authority in Egypt to intervene and prompt Abdul Mu'min to leave her in peace. Another Coptic female was kidnapped. The 20-year-old Christian woman was on her way to St. George Church in Sohag governate in the early morning but never returned. The family later received a phone call from one "Muhammad" who said that if they wanted to see the girl again they must ransom her for 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($35,000). When her brother went to the authorities, the head captain told him, "So what, one Coptic girl missing? Look at how many millions of Muslims are dying in Palestine. Who would've thought so many millions of Muslims would die in Syria? And you're bothering us about one girl?"

Libya: The old Christian cemetery in Tripoli has been vandalized three times since the fall of the Qaddafi government in 2011. According to an eyewitness who took pictures, several crosses were destroyed or had their sides broken off: "Halfway to the ossuaries, bent steel rods that once strengthened a large concrete cross reminded me of the trouble the Islamists had to go through to destroy that symbol of Christianity… The statues of an angel clutching a cross that was pushed over and of a small boy that had its head chopped off were among other Christian relics that were damaged…. As the Islamists' grip on Libya tightens and Tripoli's Christian population dies out, it is only a matter of time before the Christian cemetery is bulldozed and erased from history.

Pakistan: In a nation where the mere accusation of offending Islam leads to incarceration and possibly death—see Asia Bibi's entry above—offending Christianity leads to nothing. A Muslim shopkeeper started selling shoes which depict the Christian cross on their sole. Christians demonstrated but police did nothing. According to the report, "In Pakistani culture, showing the sole of one's shoe or foot is offensive because placing anything on the ground is considered to be an insult to the object. Therefore, something on the sole of a shoe is going to be constantly insulted as the person walks. The designs are considered very offensive by some local Christians, who feel that they are intended to insult believers, to express hatred towards them, and to try to stir up tensions between Christians and their Muslim neighbours." This is not the first case of its kind. In 2011 a similar case was lodged against a Muslim shopkeeper in Lahore for selling shoes with crosses on the top, although the police did not investigate the incident further.

Syria: Father Hanna Jallouf, a Franciscan priest and around 20 other Christians—among them young boys and girls—were kidnapped by brigades linked to the Islamist Nusra Front from a village near the border with Turkey. Members of the Franciscan order had been present in the village for more than a century.

United Kingdom: An otherwise successful Christian school was warned that it would be downgraded by inspectors and might even face closure after failing to invite a leader from another religion, such as a Muslim imam, to lead assemblies. According to the Telegraph, "In the latest case inspectors are understood to have warned the head that the school, which was previously rated as "good" that it would be downgraded to "adequate" for failing to meet standards requiring it to "actively promote" harmony between different faiths because it had failed to bring in representatives from other religions. They warned that unless the school could demonstrate how it was going to meet the new requirements there would be a further full inspection which could ultimately lead to it being closed. A Government consultation paper published in June, explaining the new rules, makes clear that even taking children on trips to different places of worship would not be enough to be judged compliant."

[Teddy Bear]

The latest in the ongoing series. (Many links available on the webpage)

Christians Burned Alive
Muslim Persecution of Christians, November 2014

by Raymond Ibrahim

"They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire. And then they threw them [alive] inside the furnace." — Javeed Maseeh, family spokesman, concerning a Christian couple in Pakistan murdered on rumors they had burned verses from the Qur'an.

"I would appeal to your honor to put pressure on the government of Pakistan to end misuse of blasphemy laws against Christians, Ahmadiyyia and other religious minorities and condition US Aid on human rights and repeal of blasphemy laws." — From a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama by Dr. Nazir S. Bhutti, President of the Pakistan Christian Congress, expressing surprise that the U.S. did not even bother to condemn the burning of Christians alive.

East Jerusalem: Despite constant and ever bolder attacks on a church, police refuse to respond to pleas for help from the Christian congregation.

Denmark: Muslim refugees are persecuting Christian refugees. "Christian asylum seekers are repeatedly exposed to everything from harassment to threats and physical abuse...." — Niels Eriksen Nyman, 10news.dk

"Young Christian men are made scapegoats to show police performance, while the real culprits are carrying out their illegal activities right under the police's nose." — Brother-in-law of "Mithu," 35, Christian father of five, who was arrested in Pakistan on false charges and tortured to death in prison.

The youngest [slave] being the most expensive. 20-30 years old: 100,000 dinars [$86]; 10-20 years old: 150,000 dinars [$129]; 9 years old: 200,000 dinars [$172]. — The Islamic State.

The Islamic State called on its followers to take the jihad to Egypt.

Qaiser Ayub, a 40 year old professor of computer science in Pakistan, of Christian background, was arrested and charged with insulting Islam's prophet Muhammad.

Both in the Islamic world and the Western world, Muslims continued to attack and slaughter Christians.

In Pakistan, "A mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily, according to family members who witnessed the attack," reported NBC News:

Sajjad Maseeh, 27, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were set upon by at least 1,200 people after rumors circulated that they had burned verses from the Quran, family spokesman Javed Maseeh told NBC News via telephone late Thursday. Their legs were also broken so they couldn't run away.

"They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire," he said. "And then they threw them inside the furnace."

Bibi, a mother of four who was four months pregnant, was wearing an outfit that initially didn't burn, according to Javed Maseeh. The mob removed her from over the kiln and wrapped her up in cotton to make sure the garments would be set alight.

Shama Bibi (left) and Sajjad Maseeh, a Christian couple and parents of four children, were burned to death by a Muslim lynch mob in Pakistan because of a false blasphemy accusation.

Discussing this latest atrocity against Pakistan's Christian minorities, an AFP report states:

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in the majority Muslim country, with even unproven allegations often prompting mob violence.

Anyone convicted, or even just accused, of insulting Islam, risks a violent and bloody death at the hands of vigilantes.

A Christian woman [Asia Bibi] has been on death row since November 2010 after she was found guilty of making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed during an argument with a Muslim woman.

An elderly British man with severe mental illness, sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan in January, was shot by a prison guard last month.

Two days after the Christian couple were burned alive, a policeman in Pakistan hacked a man to death for allegedly making blasphemous remarks against Islam.

About the Christian couple, Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, President of the Pakistan Christian Congress, wrote a letter to U.S. President Obama expressing surprise that the U.S. did not even bother to condemn this crime:

It is surprising that neither US Administration under your honor nor US State Department even bothered to condemn this horrific crime of burning live of Christian couple by a mob living in country named Islamic Republic of Pakistan which is receiving billions of aid of US taxpayers.

I would appeal your honor to put pressure on government of Pakistan to end misuse of blasphemy laws against Christian, Ahamadiyyia and other religious minorities and condition US Aid to Pakistan on human rights and repeal of blasphemy laws.

Meanwhile, in America itself, in Oklahoma, Jimmy Stepney, a Muslim, stabbed Jerome Bullock, a Christian, after Stepney had said that Muslims need to "step up" beheadings. According to Koco5 News:

The [police] report went on to say Stepney had been making comments about beheading people.

"We were watching the news," said Bullock. "He said he felt like more Muslims need to step up to the plate and do certain thing. He was talking about beheading people."

The severity of the plight of Christians in the Middle East was further underscored by Dr. Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, who wrote:

Russia is currently considering the possibility of initiating a draft decision of the UN Human Rights Council on the protection of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa. Russian experts are now working on this document.[…]

The scale of the problems demands the coordination of international efforts to protect Christians in the Middle East.

Further initiatives, new measures and relevant discussions aimed at finding durable solutions in this regard are strongly needed. Of course, we believe that Europe, including the UK, should make its contribution to these efforts, taking into account the Christian roots of the European civilization, which are now often forgotten for the sake of political correctness.[…]

The fate of the region's religious minorities is of the greatest concern. The mass exodus of Christians, who have been an integral part of the Middle Eastern mosaic for centuries, is particularly troubling.

The rest of November's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Bangladesh: Two Christian pastors from the Faith Bible Church of God were arrested for preaching the Gospel to Muslims . They could face two years in prison if convicted for "hurting religious sentiments" and luring Muslims to convert by offering them money. The pastors deny both charges. Police arrested the pastors and 41 other people, including Muslims, after a throng of Muslims disrupted a house meeting. According to a witness: "More than 100 Muslims headed by local Jamaat-e-Islami party members and Muslim clerics gathered at the house and started barking questions at the pastors—why did they propagate Christianity in the locality and convert some of them," and who gave them permission to preach to Muslims. "The pastors replied that it did not take any permission from any authority to propagate any religion and convert people to any religion. Suddenly the Muslims became apoplectic with rage, tried to pick a fight and started jabbing the pastors' faces."

Egypt: Father Timothy Shakar, priest of St. Mina Church in Port Said, confirmed that two homemade bombs were planted near the St. Mina Church but caused no injuries, or losses of life or property. Police searched other churches in the region for more bombs.

Germany: Nine men who had earlier broken into, vandalized, and robbed several Christian churches in the Cologne area—including by stealing money from the collection boxes and liturgical vessels—were caught during a massive raid. Apparently, all of the arrested are German by nationality, but Muslim by background and heritage. Some were also identified as "Salafis"—especially fundamentalist Muslims—connected to international terrorist organizations. Some had even raised hundreds of thousands of Euros from native Germans to support overseas "charities," the proceeds of which actually went to terrorist groups such as ISIS.

Iraq: As cries of "Allahu Akbar" emanated from surrounding mosques, Islamic State militants blew up yet another Christian church -- St. George's Church and its associated nunnery in the city of Mosul -- along with other non-Sunni sites. Separately, after breaking the cross from off the dome of the St. Ephrem Church dome (before and after pictures here) and selling its pews and other furnishings, the IS transformed the church into a mosque and council seat for the jihadis.

East Jerusalem: Despite constant and ever bolder attacks on a church, police refuse to respond to pleas for help from the Christian congregation. According to Morning Star News, "The attacks, driven by both intent to seize property and opposition to Christianity, have been mounted by young men with ties to Palestinian militants who for more than three months have been trying to force Living Bread Church from its rented building. Church pastor Karen Dunham and others have filed at least eight police reports about the assaults." The most recent incident took place on November 5, when the gas tank of a car owned by a church volunteer was filled with sugar. On November 2, a car owned by one of the pastor's relatives was stolen. And on October 16, three American Christians were injured while trying to repair a metal security door: A crowd of Palestinian men attacked them with box cutters, sticks, clubs and pepper spray. According to the church's attorney, authorities "have their [the assailants'] pictures, they have their names, they even have their national ID numbers, and still they do nothing.... The level of brute force compared to the level of lack of response of the police force there is pretty shocking.... It almost seems like if someone is going to go in and murder her [Dunham], that no one is going to lift a finger."

Malaysia: Approximately 70 local residents in Petaling Jaya protested the construction of a church. They claimed the growing number of Christian places of worship in the area is part of an attempt to evangelize and convert Muslims to Christianity. An NGO, the local branch of Pertubuhan Sahabat, supported the claims of the Muslims. They argued that there are three churches in the vicinity, although close to 70 percent of the residents in the area are Muslims. According to a spokesman, "Even before the church is built, flyers on Christianity have been distributed to our homes, and this could confuse our children and divert them from the path of Islam." The vacant plot was previously occupied by squatters, a car park and several food stalls. Another local Muslim added "None of our neighbours are Christians, we can vouch for that... it is an insult to Muslims to allow a church to be built here, but none of our representatives seem to have the time to listen to us." One demonstrator hurled large rocks at the temporary steel fence around the vacant plot.

Jihadi Slaughter of Christians

Kenya: Members of neighboring Somalia's Islamic group Al Shabaab—"the Youth"—hijacked a bus carrying 60 passengers in the town of Mandera, near Kenya's border with Somalia. They singled out and massacred 28 non-Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom were Christian. According to an eyewitness, "When we got down, passengers were separated according to Somali and non-Somalis. The non-Somalis were ordered to read some verses of the holy Koran, and those who failed to read were ordered to lie down. One by one they were shot in the head at point blank range."

Nigeria: On November 10, a suicide bomb attack on a Christian secondary school as students gathered for morning assembly killed at least 47 people. The Islamic group Boko Haram— meaning: "Western education is forbidden"—is believed to be behind the blast. In a separate incident, Christians from the predominantly Christian city of Mubi in Adamawa state were tortured and killed after Boko Haram took control of the town. Churches and homes were torched throughout the city, which was renamed Madinat al-Islam, or "the City of Islam." In yet another separate incident, Boko Haram militants raided the mostly Christian town of Shani. According to a resident speaking to Reuters, "They rode on motorcycles and were more than 30 men. They started throwing bombs into houses... then the Boko Haram fired shots at people fleeing. They set ablaze the police station, houses and a telecom mast... I saw people fleeing, some bodies on the ground." Reuters continues: "The Sunni jihadist movement is fighting to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in Nigeria's north."

Pakistani Persecution

A few days after the Christian couple, mentioned earlier, was burned alive, a 35-year-old Christian father of five known as "Mithu" was arrested on false charges by police and tortured to death in prison. According to the deceased's brother-in-law: "It was a fake allegation, because the raiding party failed to recover any contraband from Mithu's person and his house... On the morning of Nov. 22, we were informed by Ilyas Gill, a local councilor, that Mithu had died in police custody because of heart failure.... Young Christian men are made scapegoats to show police performance while the real culprits are carrying out their illegal activities right under the police's nose." Morning Star News adds: "Area police routinely round up young, impoverished Christians on false charges of drug peddling and bootlegging, and then force their families to pay heavy bribes in return for their release... family elders had seen signs of torture on the body..."

Christian families in a Punjabi village were forced to flee after a Christian man married a Muslim woman—an act forbidden by Islamic law. According to the Pakistani report, "The Muslims in this village became enraged when this occurred and began threatening them.... When the news of the marriage was learned, the Muslims in Sahiwal attacked Shahab's [the Christian husband's] family as well as other Christian families in the village. The Muslims demanded that Ruksana [the Muslim wife] be returned immediately, according to Sharia which prohibits Muslim women from marrying a man from another religion…. the entire Muslim community was threatening to kill Shahab's father and all of the village's Christians.... The Christians' pleas for help from the local police were all in vain."

And Qaiser Ayub, a 40-year-old professor of Christian background, was arrested and charged with insulting Islam's prophet Muhammad. The computer science professor had been a fugitive avoiding the police since 2011, when he was first accused of having written blasphemous comments on his blog.

Dhimmitude: Generic Contempt and Hostility

Denmark: In an apparent replication of the Islamic world's modus operandi, Muslim refugees in the European nation are persecuting Christian refugees. According to 10news.dk, "Christian asylum seekers are repeatedly exposed to everything from harassment to threats and physical abuse by other refugees in the asylum centers, simply because they have converted from Islam to Christianity." According to Niels Eriksen Nyman, who led the study, "There are certainly many more cases around the country than the ones we hear about in the church. I hate to say it, but I'm afraid that on some of the asylum centers there are some very unhealthy control mechanisms when the staff turns their back... I refuse to support Islamophobia, but we have a serious problem here." Two recent examples: "An eight year old Christian at the Center Sandholm was bullied and beaten by the larger Arab boys on their way to school. Now the boy nolonger [sic] dares to go to school. On the island Bornholm, somebody had tampered with a Christian asylum seeker's bike so that he crashed and broke both hands."

Egypt: The Islamic State called on its followers to take the jihad to Egypt. Abu Mus'ab al-Maqdisi, a leader in the Islamic State, said in a statement titled "Advice to Egypt's Mujahidin" that "It is necessary to take the battle to Cairo, until the Sinai is safeguarded from the apostates [reference to Egyptian government] and becomes a rear base [qaeda] from which to expand the jihad." He also called on the jihadis in Egypt to "target the Copts," the nation's indigenous, Christian minority: "For targeting them, following them, and killing them is one of the main ways to serve the cause of our virtuous male and female hostages of the tyrants."

Iraq: Christian homes in Tel Isqof were looted by Kurds who, after fighting the Islamic State, took control of the area on August 17. According to Agenzia Fides, "The city of Tel Isqof was occupied on August 7 by jihadist militias who already in June had conquered Mosul. Faced with the advancing of jihadists, the civilian population, mainly Christians, had fled to the autonomous Region of Iraqi Kurdistan, leaving the city deserted. Ten days later [on August 17], with a counter-offensive the Kurdish Peshmerga had regained control of the city. But it is precisely since then that [Christian] residents periodically return to the city to check the status of their homes, and acknowledge that the doors of a growing number of homes and businesses have been forced and property looted: money and jewelry, technical equipment and electronic instruments." As in the Islamic State, most Kurds are Sunni Muslims.

Islamic State: IS issued a document breaking down the purchase prices of Christian and Yazidi women being sold as sex-slaves. Apparently these enslaved unfortunates are priced based on age— the youngest being the most expensive. The breakdown is as follows (with USD equivalency in brackets): 40-50 years old: 50,000 dinars [$43]; 30-40 years old: 75,000 dinars [$64]; 20-30 years old: 100,000 dinars [$86]; 10-20 years old: 150,000 dinars [$129]; 9 years old: 200,000 dinars [$172].

Spain: Real Madrid, a professional football (soccer) team, stripped the traditional Christian cross from its club crest as part of a deal with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi. "It is believed the European champions' new crest, minus the Christian cross, was created so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities in the United Arab Emirates, where a marketing drive will take place," wrote the Telegraph. Club president Florentino Perez said, "This agreement will help the club to keep conquering the hearts of followers in the United Arab Emirates."

Syria: As of November, Raqqa, which once had approximately 1,500 Christian families, had only 23 Christian families remaining in it—the others were driven out or killed by the Islamic State. Those few remaining were unable to leave the city for lack of resources or for reasons of age and health. On November 16 they were told that they must pay $535, an exorbitant sum (human sex-slaves are being sold for as little as $43). "In all likelihood Christian families, impoverished by the war, will not be able to pay the tax and will have to leave their homes" or convert to Islam, as many elderly, debilitated Christians unable to flee have already done.