Christian Persecution Worse Than Any Time in History

[leilani]

Christian Persecution at HISTORIC Levels; UNKNOWN HEROES of Faith Revealed

[schwartzie]

'It Is the Church that Is Under Attack': The Persecution of Christians, October 2023

by Raymond Ibrahim

November 24, 2023 at 5:00 am



"These rapes are unfortunately customary and serve a specific purpose. It is believed that once no longer a virgin, a girl would become unsuitable for marriage, even if she belongs to a religious minority, and her only choice would be to marry one of her captors. Mishal was then forcibly converted to Islam and married to one of the kidnappers." – bitterwinter.org, October 24, 2023, Pakistan.



"Some cases do land in courts. But it is not easy for the victims to win them. Sometimes, the victims are treated as if they were the perpetrators...." -- bitterwinter.org, October 24, 2023, Pakistan.



"As we returned back to our grass-thatched roof house, we found some of the debris around the house. On entering the house, we found there was a threatening message, 'Today if we find you around, we shall destroy you with the house. You have become an embarrassment to our Muslim family by joining a wrong religion.'" – morningstarnews.org, October 4, 2023, Uganda.



Regrettably, this scenario—a fire claims Christian lives, only for Muslim authorities to say it was "accidental"—has played out many times in the Middle East.


On October 17, "suspected Islamic terrorists" murdered three Christians — a Ugandan tour guide and a European couple — in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda, on the accusation that they were "supporting Christians in Uganda and coming in the name of tourists." Pictured: Crater Lake in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. (image source: Robert Weinkove/Wikimedia Commons)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of October 2023.



The Sexual Abuse and Forced Conversion of Christians



Pakistan: Three Muslim men abducted and violently gang-raped a 16-year-old Christian girl, Persis Masih, on her way to Sunday church service. The girl's father, a pastor, and most of the family had left early for church, while Persis continued to get ready. She never appeared at church and was not home when they returned. After immediately filing a report with police, "the family spent a sleepless night contacting relatives in the hope of finding Persis," according to the Oct. 1 report. Eventually,



"[T]he family heard Persis moaning for help outside their gate. The culprits, realizing the severity of her condition, had callously dropped her off. Supported by her elder brother Yessi Masih, Persis was brought inside the house, her physical and emotional state in shambles... [After rushing her to a hospital, the] medical examination revealed the horrifying truth—Persis had been gang-raped. Despite the trauma, she bravely identified one of the perpetrators, Muhammad Atif, thanks to the assistance of the local police and CCTV footage."



Police acted quickly and arrested Atif before he fled the region. After commending police for this uncharacteristic move—police in Pakistan are notorious for turning a blind eye to the persecution of Christians—a local reporter, Aliyas Wattu, remarked that, "Persis was also beaten, and she bears visible marks of violence on her body." The report concludes that "Persis' suffering did not end with the assault; she bore visible marks of violence. The family, already grappling with the emotional toll, faces an arduous journey towards justice."



In a separate incident, "a gang of armed robbers subjected two Christian women to sexual assault at gunpoint while keeping the men tied up and confined to a room." According to the report, "This nightmarish event occurred in the early hours of September 14th." Shortly after midnight, when the entire family was asleep, six men quietly broke into the Christian household. The father, Intezar Masih, his wife Rani (41), his sister Farzana (36), and children were, "to their sheer horror," rudely awakened to find themselves "encircled by six masked men brandishing firearms." According to Intezar, "We were warned not to make any noise, as the armed robbers were armed with pistols and heavy guns." Two of the men held the family hostage, as the other four ransacked the house, "looting everything they could lay their hands on." Then they took Intezar and his children to a separate room: "Two of the robbers," he said, "forcibly dragged me by my shoulder, took the children inside the room, beat me severely, and eventually tied me up with a rope before departing."



"The children and their patriarch were left bound and confined to the room, while Rani Bibi (41 years old) was taken to another room, where she cried out for mercy while enduring horrific sexual assaults by two of the men. Simultaneously, two other assailants took Farzana Bibi into a separate room, where she became the victim of sexual assault at gunpoint.



"After this horrendous ordeal, Rani Bibi was brought back to the veranda, only to be taken to Mr. Masih's welding workshop, where the remaining robbers subjected her to further sexual violence. The criminals left the family in a state of utter pain, trauma, and fear, warning them of dire consequences if they attempted to pursue them or contact the police...."



Discussing this incident, Juliet Chowdhry, of the British Asian Christian Association, said:



"As the sole Christian family in the area, it appears that this crime targeted them due to their vulnerability and the sense of impunity that perpetrators often feel when targeting marginalized communities."



Finally, a separate Oct. 24 report documents other previous cases of abduction, rape, and forced conversion of Christian girls. In one, Mishal, a 15-year-old Christian girl was "abducted at gunpoint," then "gang-raped by four men":



"These rapes are unfortunately customary and serve a specific purpose. It is believed that once no longer a virgin, a girl would become unsuitable for marriage, even if she belongs to a religious minority, and her only choice would be to marry one of her captors. Mishal was then forcibly converted to Islam and married to one of the kidnappers."



Six months later, when her abductors were distracted with a funeral, Mishal managed to escape and return to her father's home. But when she and her father went to report the kidnappers and rapists to police, "Not only did the officers refuse to investigate, but they also informed Mishal's captors of what was going on. The girl and her father had to go into hiding for fear of being killed."



After pointing out that "Christian and Hindu girls continue to be abducted, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to Muslim men in Pakistan," the report adds:



"This obnoxious practice would not prosper without some complicity by police and courts of law. Some cases do land in courts. But it is not easy for the victims to win them. Sometimes, the victims are treated as if they were the perpetrators.... Meanwhile, the business of kidnapping minority religion girls continues. The whereabouts of another Christian girl, Tabita, daughter of Razzak Mashi, kidnapped by four men on September 29, are still unknown. Her case was reported to the police on October 5, together with a birth certificate proving she is twelve years old, as her captors will probably claim, as usual, [that] she is really 18. Whether the police will do anything about Tabita is a different question."



Nigeria: Muslims, including college personnel, abducted and forcibly converted Dorcas, a 20-year-old Christian college student to Islam. According to Campus Mission Watch, a Christian watchdog group, during a brief communication with her parents,



"Miss Dorcas told her parents that she was taken to an imam's house, the imam of Sultan Bello Mosque, in the city of Kaduna, where she was kept against her will and threatened not to disclose that she was coerced into embracing Islam, before being brought back to campus. She also told her parents that one Muslim woman, Mallama Amina, an academic staff in the Department of Biochemistry, was appointed as her godmother, who facilitated her forceful conversion to Islam through the renouncing of Christianity and the recitation of Kalma Sha'ada, the Islamic creed.... Dorcas remains with the Muslim leaders and has not been allowed to have any contact with her parents or other Christians on campus. This development has created fear in Christians on KASU campus, forcing some to want to leave."



Campus Mission Watch added that a well-financed campus group called the Council of Muslim Sisters, which is supported by Muslim leaders in Kaduna state and the Muslim-controlled state government, has implemented a plan to forcibly convert Christians to Islam:



"This group is made up of highly placed and influential female staff in the university. Some of them are professors, directors, senior lecturers from academic and non-academic cadres. They are well coordinated and professionally structured. They have agents at the top management level, directorate levels, faculty levels, department levels, and even at the Student Union levels."



Attacks on Muslim Converts to Christianity



Kyrgyzstan: Converts to Christianity are openly being targeted for persecution in the Central Asian Muslim nation. According to an October report:



"[V]ideos inciting hatred towards Kyrgyz Christians who have converted from Islam are being widely distributed on the internet.



"In these videos, Christian believers are called sectarians (strong supporters of a minority group or 'sect') and traitors of the nation and native faith. The creators of these videos are calling for people to break into Christian communities and churches to capture the faces of believers on video and then distribute their images online to encourage persecution."



As an example, the article tells the story of Mahri (not her real name), aged 24:



"[She] used to go to church with her mother, a former Uyghur Muslim. Mahri's mother's relatives were completely against her Christian faith, and didn't offer any help when Mahri's dad passed away.



"Unfortunately, Mahri's mother also died, and Mahri went to live with her aunt – who has completely forbidden her to believe in Jesus, attend house church meetings and have any communication with other believers. Every time Mahri leaves the house, her aunt bombards her with questions: 'Where are you going? Who are you seeing?' Mahri's phone is constantly checked, and she's not even allowed to attend school.



"Recently, Mahri was able to attend church where she shared her situation. She's understandably anxious and exhausted."



Egypt and Yemen: According to an Amnesty International:



"Yemeni asylum seeker, Abdul-Baqi Saeed Abdo, who has been arbitrary detained in Egypt for over 20 months, is at risk of deportation to Yemen, where his life would be at risk. Abdul-Baqi Saeed Abdo and his family were forced to flee Yemen for Egypt in 2014 after being subjected to violent attacks with impunity following his announcement of his conversion to Christianity on social media. Egyptian security forces arrested him on 15 December 2021 and forcibly disappeared [sic] him for two weeks, before bringing him for interrogations before a prosecutor, who ordered his pretrial detention pending investigations on bogus charges of 'joining a terrorist group' and 'defamation of the Islamic religion'. He is held solely for exercising his rights to freedom of expression, conscience and belief and must be immediately released; any plans to deport him must be halted."



Uganda: Soon after converting and attending churches in late September, 2023, Sula Mugudi, 70, and his wife, Aisha, 62, returned to their modest home only to find it destroyed by their outraged relatives:



"As we returned back to our grass-thatched roof house, we found some of the debris around the house. On entering the house, we found there was a threatening message, 'Today if we find you around, we shall destroy you with the house. You have become an embarrassment to our Muslim family by joining a wrong religion.'"



They immediately fled: "It was a very difficult moment for us – no place to stay, no clothing and beddings. According to a pastor who helped them:



"When the couple arrived at our church, they looked shaken and fearful. The church has hidden them for the sake of the church as well for the lives of these two new Christians. We need prayers for God's protection and providence."



The Muslim Slaughter of Christians



Democratic Republic of Congo: On Oct. 24, Muslims of the Allied Democratic Forces, which is connected to the Islamic State, slaughtered at least 39 Christians, including 12 children, in a spate of attacks. "Many of these people are Christians, they were servants of God, and teachers in our schools," related Reverend Gabriel, a church leader in Oicha. "It is the church that is under attack."



This is only the latest attack. The same terrorist group massacred 17 Christians and torched two churches in July. Before that, in June, they hacked 12 people to death — four children, four women, and four men — in the nation, which is predominately Christian. According to officials, the Muslims "were opening doors and decapitating people with hatchets and machetes."



"We don't need humanitarian aid, but we do want security," one frustrated local said discussing these latest massacres of October. According to another local, Christians are "in despair and disillusionment. They are losing hope."



"This is a bad situation," said Pastor Paluku Bagheni Joseph, adding:



"Really pray for us so that everything [meaning the funerals of 39 recently slain] can happen in peace, and pray for the situation we are going through, because the fear increased when the enemies entered the city. Your prayers are very important to us at this time when we are going through pain."



Uganda: On Oct. 17, "suspected Islamic terrorists" murdered three Christians—a Ugandan tour guide and a European couple—in Queen Elizabeth National Park, on the accusation that they were "supporting Christians in Uganda and coming in the name of tourists."



Nigeria: A few October instances of the ongoing genocide of Christians:



Oct. 2: Muslim Fulani herdsmen raided a Christian village during the night "and sprayed bullets on the bodies of innocent people while sleeping," killing eight, an eyewitness said.

Oct. 29: "Fulani herdsmen and other terrorists" slaughtered six Christians in Benue state, "following the slaughter of 10 others earlier this month."

Oct. 17: Muslim terrorists slaughtered a Christian doctor and his driver with machetes.

Sept. 30: Terrorists killed one Christian and abducted 19 others, "a day after gunmen in the country's southwest intercepted a church bus and kidnapped 25 members."

Oct. 7: Terrorists kidnapped at least 30 Christians

General Muslim Persecution of Christians



Uganda: On Oct. 10, six Muslims shouting, "Kafir [Infidel]!" and the jihadist slogan "Allah akbar" [Allah is greatest] attacked 27-year-old Robert Settimba, a well-known Christian street preacher, as he was returning home. According to his friend, an eyewitness:



"The Muslims got hold of him and started kicking and boxing him as others came beating him with sticks, as I watched from a distance, helpless. Some bystanders were shouting at me to disappear or else the attackers will also beat me up. I then left my friend lying down."



He ran to a nearby church to recruit some aid. When they returned, they found Robert unconscious and took him to a local hospital.



Iraq: On Oct. 3, more than 100 Christians were burned alive after a fire broke out during a Christian wedding ceremony; another 150 attendees were seriously injured. Nearly 60 of those killed were directly related to the bride and groom. In a press conference held on the same day, the Iraqi government announced that its investigation had "conclusively concluded" that the fire was "accidental," caused by fireworks, and "not intentional at all." Minutes later, the Syriac Church slammed the announcement: "We reject it [the conclusion], we don't accept it," said the Archbishop of Mosul Benedictus Younan Hanno, adding that "political conspiracies" might be afoot. Regarding the claim that the fire was caused by fireworks, "there are tens of videos," the archbishop added, "showing that they were not the reason." After also categorically rejecting the fireworks claim, the bridegroom, Rivan, 27, insisted that the fore has been cause by arson:



"We demand the rights of those whose blood was spilt. Why did their blood have to be spilled? We demand their rights and we demand the perpetrator of this action, him and all who are behind him. We demand an international investigation, not a local or federal investigation."



Regrettably, this scenario—a fire claims Christian lives, only for Muslim authorities to say it was "accidental"—has played out many times in the Middle East.



Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches and Symbols



Italy: On Oct. 6, Arabic graffiti was found on the bell tower of a church in Sacille. In translation, the Arabic stated the primary half of the Islamic credo: "There is no god but Allah" (the continuation is "and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah"). This was not the first time the church was targeted. According to the report, in December of 2022, the church



"reported the theft of the Baby Jesus displayed in the parish nativity scene in the church square. Shortly after that, the sacristy doors were unhinged and everything within the sacristy was found desecrated, causing thousands of euros of damage. More recent to this incident, the parish recorded acts of vandalism in the cemetery, where crosses were kicked down. Also, a few weeks ago a few teenagers occupied the oratory without consent, abandoning bottles of spirits, cigarette butts and remnants of joints.



Separately, on Oct. 11, four teenage boys vandalized, desecrated, and tried to torch the Church of Carmine in Noci. Among other things, "the children also blasphemed heavily, danced, and undressed." One report said:



"The children were in the church for 30 minutes when they broke off the doors of the tabernacle, tampered with the organ, threw hand sanitizer on the floor, threw waste inside the church, and set fire in the skylight. Luckily the fire did not spread to other parts of the church. The teenagers also damaged the security cameras, but by then the footage of their actions had already been archived."



They were accordingly found by police. Because the incident "raised anger and indignation among the citizens of Noci," a meeting was held with the boys and their parents. Having been caught, they "sincerely apologized."



Spain: Two churches were vandalized in Andalusia, which contains the nation's second largest Muslim community. According to the report,



"Two churches were vandalized in Andalusia: the Virgen de las Flores Convent Church in Malaga and the Puerto Real Hospital Chapel in Cadiz. The attacks happened in September of 2023 and were reported on October 3, 2023. In the Puerto Real Hospital the perpetrators took a consecrated host, while in the Virgen de las Flores Convent they scattered the consecrated hosts on the floor, took the mantle of Mary and the image of Baby Jesus."



Germany: Two churches in a region with a large Muslim presence were vandalized by a group of "youth" loitering in the darkness. According to the report,



"During October, two churches in the city of Bonn in Germany were vandalized: paving stones were thrown into the windows of the Saint Lambert Catholic church in mid-October, then, closer to the end of the month, the billboards of the Saint Elisabeth church were tagged. Members of the parish council tell the local press that the exterior of the church is regularly vandalized, as young people meet under the church porch until late at night. This has already been reported to the police numerous times – without any solution being found."



France: On Oct. 7—the same day as Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis—three Muslim men (described in reports only as "North Africans") entered into the Saint Christophe church in Tourcoing during a wedding was being and began to disrupt the service. When a woman asked them to "respect the religious service" or else she would call police, they threatened her with "death by decapitation," before fleeing, the report stated. Discussing this incident, a police source said that "The parish priest regularly receives threats without reporting them to the police."



Separately, a beloved Christian statue of Beatrice of Savoy in Echelles, which depicts her holding a cross, was found decapitated on Oct. 31. The head was nowhere to be found. Beatrice, a thirteenth century countess, is renowned for her charitable disposition and generous donations to the poor. "The case," according to the report, "remains mysterious."



Greece: On Oct. 19, a Syrian man barged into the Saint Panteleimonas Church in Athens, where he began shouting the jihadist war-cry, "Allahu akbar" ("Allah is Greatest") and engaging in Islamic prostrations. Police arrived on the scene and restrained him despite his resistance. A large knife was found in his backpack. According to the report, "The man is known to the authorities as he has created similar problems in the past, while he was once taken for a psychiatric examination."



Germany and Sweden: Two Syrian brothers who were arrested for planning to bomb a church in Sweden in retaliation to a Koran desecration there were nevertheless prosecuted in Germany. To quote from the Oct. 4 report,



"A pair of Syrian brothers from Hamburg and Kempten (Bavaria) wanted to kill many people in an attack with explosives. The scene of the crime was to be a church in Sweden."



One of the Muslim brothers, 29, has been charged with "attempted membership in a terrorist organization abroad, preparation of a serious act of violence endangering the state and financing of terrorism." The other brother, 24, was charged with "probable cause for supporting a terrorist organization abroad and aiding and abetting the financing of terrorism."



Uganda: On Sunday, Oct. 15, police managed to thwart an Islamic terror plot to bomb two churches. The bombs were concealed as gifts and mailed to local pastors. Police managed to locate and defuse them on time.



Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, Sword and Scimitar, Crucified Again, and The Al Qaeda Reader, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.



About this Series



While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by extremists is growing. The report posits that such persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location. It includes incidents that take place during, or are reported on, any given month.



link

[schwartzie]

'If We Like, We Will Kill You, Too': The Persecution of Christians, November 2023

by Raymond Ibrahim

December 24, 2023 at 5:00 am


A few November headlines from the ongoing jihadist-genocide of Christians in Nigeria follow...



Coptic Christians suffer the double injustice of living under systematic discrimination by the Egyptian government, and also from regular members of Egyptian society who attack Copts and their property with impunity. The reality for Copts in Egypt is one of life as second-class citizens.



"Most of the native population converted to Islam over six centuries to escape the jizya [protection tax] and humiliations of dhimmi status. The term 'Copt' came to define the native Christian population that had not converted to Islam..." — Coptic Solidarity, a human rights organization, in a report titled, "Advocacy of Hatred Based on Religion or Belief."


On November 23, a Muslim man of Algerian origin stabbed a group of preschool children attending Saint Mary's Catholic primary school in Dublin, as the children were leaving school. Three children — two girls and a boy aged between 5 and 6 — and a care assistant who tried to defend them, were stabbed in the assault. In response to the stabbing, angry Irish citizens took to the streets and rioted (pictured) that evening. (Photo by Peter Murphy/AFP via Getty Images)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of November 2023.



The Muslim Slaughter of Christians



Pakistan: A Muslim man murdered a young Christian because he was "driven by a strong hatred for Christians and Jews." On Nov. 9, around 3 a.m., Muhammad Zubair broke into a Christian household while everyone was asleep. After opening fire on Farhan Qamar, 20, the youngest of four siblings, the intruder held the entire family hostage at gunpoint for nearly 40 minutes, preventing them from going near the fatally injured youth. According to the slain man's father, Ul Qamar:



"My son was struggling for his life, bleeding profusely from the bullet wounds, but his murderer, Muhammad Zubair, did not allow us to even give him some water, let alone comfort him. He repeatedly called us 'Jews' as he cursed and waved his weapon at us. We all watched helplessly, pleading with him to leave, but he wouldn't go.... [Finally, before Muhammad left the murder scene, he] pointed the gun towards my wife and ordered her to unlock the main gate. He sat on his motorcycle that was parked outside, fired three shots in the air with his pistol, and shouted, 'Allahu Akbar ['Allah is greatest'] two-three times before speeding away."



Once Muhammad left, the family gathered around their blood-soaked son and brother and started crying for help, but "None of our neighbors intervened even after they heard the first three shots fired on Farhan by Zubair." Farhan died on the way to the hospital; doctors confirmed that had he been brought to them even a few minutes earlier, they could have saved him. According to the report:



"[Muhammad] Zubair had never hidden his hatred for Christians, but his behavior worsened after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict erupted into war in Gaza last month... Several Christian families fled the village after Muslims beat two Christian brothers, Aqib Javed and Asher Javed, for reportedly expressing support for Israel."



When the murder was first reported, the family withheld the religious element because the father said they "feared backlash from local Muslims":



"We have been keeping quiet because we did not want the religious leaders to think that we are giving our son's murder a 'religious color,' but this is the truth... We want to see Farhan's killer punished in accordance with the law. If we are unable to find good legal representation, I fear the murderer will be let off, and then no Christian will be safe in this village. Please help us."



Mozambique: Muslim terrorists raided a Christian village in the terrorism-plagued Cabo Delgado region, and killed four. The Islamic State later took credit for the attack. According to one report:



"Through propaganda channels, the group assumed that the attack on the 'Christian village' took place on Friday November 10, using machine guns by 'soldiers of the caliphate.' The attack took place during a ceremony in preparation for a female initiation ritual that was scheduled for Sunday November 12, with the terrorists entering the camp, firing bursts of gunfire."



Nigeria: A few November headlines from the ongoing jihadist-genocide of Christians in the African nation follow:



At Least 10 Christians Slain in Taraba State

Kidnapped Pastor Killed in Nigeria after Ransom Payment

Terrorists Kill Christian, Kidnap 25 Others in Northern Nigeria

Pastor Slain, Wife Kidnapped in Kaduna State

Pastor's Wife Shot Dead in Taraba State

General Muslim Violence and Hostility against Christians



Ireland: On Nov. 23, a Muslim man of Algerian origin stabbed a group of preschool children attending Saint Mary's, a private Catholic primary school in Dublin, as the children were leaving school around 1:30 pm. Three children — two girls and a boy aged between 5 and 6 — and a care assistant who tried to defend them, were stabbed in the assault. Stabbed near the heart, a 5-year-old girl was critically injured and, as of the last reporting from December, remains hospitalized in critical condition. According to one report:



"The motivation behind the attack remains unclear; however, considering the assailant's background and the specific target being children leaving from a well-known Irish Catholic primary school, an anti-Christian motive seems not unlikely."



Although the Algerian attacker had a prior criminal record, his order of deportation was revoked and in 2014 he was granted Irish citizenship. In response to the stabbing, angry Irish citizens took to the streets and rioted that evening.



Greece: On Nov. 11 in the town of Colonos, a 38-year-old Muslim man of Afghan origin knifed a 56-year-old Egyptian because the Egyptian had converted to Christianity. He was stabbed in the head and in one of his hands. He told police, who arrived on the scene and arrested the Afghan, that he was attacked "because he was a Muslim and was baptized a Christian."



Nigeria: "Islamic police (Hisbah) responsible for enforcing Sharia law in northwest Nigeria," a Nov. 24 report relates, "recently harassed, and stopped five Christian girls from going to church in Kano State":



"The Christian girls were walking to Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) when Hisbah Police stopped the girls and asked them to dress like Muslims. When the girls refused, one of the officers told them they would be punished if they went to the church. The girls were released after standing in the sun for three hours, and after the church service ended."



One of the five girls, Mary, said that the Muslim officers told them that they were being targeted because "Israel is killing our sisters in Gaza. If we like, we will kill you, too."



Uganda: A Muslim man set his wife on fire for becoming Christian. Although Hajara Namwase, a 32-year-old mother of three children, had embraced Christ back in May, she kept it secret from her husband, Musa Kalele, 42. On Oct. 17, however, he returned unexpectedly from South Sudan, while she was still away at church. She rushed home. "I got scared upon seeing him," Namwase said "because I had some gospel tracts and a small New Testament Bible which I could not hide." On seeing the Christian items, her husband



"became furious, left the room and returned with a container of gas... He took some bedsheets, covered them around my body and then removed me out of the house. He forced me to lie down. He took the petrol, then poured it on me and thereafter took a matchbox, lit it, and the fire began burning me up."



Her daughter alerted neighbors who managed to rescue and take her to a hospital. Her husband has since fled to South Sudan. According to the report:



"Namwase said she is worried about where she will stay after her release [from hospital], as all her relatives are Muslims, and what will become of her children, ages 4, 6 and 9, who have come under the care of their paternal grandmother. Still hospitalized in Kampala, Namwase has third-degree burns on much of her body, with nerve damage and multiple red spots on her skin..."



Separately, in Uganda, on Nov. 13, a gang of Muslims severely beat two Christians, after their presentation during an interfaith debate between Muslims and Christians held at a church. During their presentation, the two Christians, Musa, 32, and Swidiki, 27, quoted from both the Bible and the Koran to argue that Muhammad was a false prophet and that Christ was the truth. Before they had even finished, Muslims forced the Christians to flee to a nearby Christian's house. Two hours later, when the coast seemed clear, the two Christians emerged from hiding and began returning home on a motorcycle. Before long, a group of Muslims emerged from the darkness and stopped them. According to Swidiki, the Muslims began yelling:



"Allah Akbar, these are the enemies of our prophet, Muhammad, as well as our religion. Kafir [Infidels]! Kafir!"



The Muslims broke their motorcycle "to pieces and tore up" their Bibles and other Christian literature.



"Thereafter they started beating us badly with blunt objects that led to the fracturing of Musa's right leg. Two of the attackers held me tightly and beat me with sticks as four others were beating Musa and stepping on him while he was lying down in the middle of the road."



Before the beating had reached a lethal level, a taxi arrived; its flashing headlights prompted the terrorists to flee. Christians, including a pastor who recognized one of the men, rushed them to a hospital.



Egypt: On Nov. 6, Coptic Solidarity, a human rights organization based in Washington, D.C., submitted a report to Ms. Nazila Ghanea, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Titled, "Advocacy of Hatred Based on Religion or Belief," it traces the history and origin of the hatred and discrimination for Egypt's indigenous Christians, the Copts, and how this hatred has even made its way into Egypt's Constitution and classrooms:



"The status of Egypt's indigenous Copts has been one of subservience and systematic discrimination for centuries. Copts suffer the double injustice of living under systematic discrimination by the Egyptian government, and also from regular members of Egyptian society who attack Copts and their properties with impunity. The reality for Copts in Egypt is one of life as second-class citizens.



"The Coptic people are an ethnoreligious population that identifies as the descendants of ancient Egyptians and civilization. Since the Arab invasion in mid seventh century, rulers have treated the Coptic population with various degrees of discrimination and persecution that ranged from radical increase in taxes to full-scale massacres. Most of the native population converted to Islam over six centuries to escape the jizya [protection tax] and humiliations of dhimmi status. The term 'Copt' came to define the native Christian population that had not converted to Islam....



"The primary vehicle for instilling hatred based in legal and policy frameworks that results in intolerance, discrimination, and violence based on religion is through the establishment of religion. In Egypt, the Constitution includes articles guaranteeing freedom of religion and criminalizing discrimination based on religion. Yet, the second article of the Constitution states that 'Islam is the religion of the state...and the principles of Islamic shari'a are the main sources of legislation.'



"These statements are antithetical since shari'a repudiates religious freedom. Additionally, it is founded on non-equality—the superiority of the Believer (a Muslim) over a Non-believer (and also the superiority of men over women), and it actually proscribes discrimination and persecution of minority faiths. All the constitutional articles are to be interpreted in light of and in submission to Article 2. In short, the Egyptian government cannot implement contradictory principles.... [Even] Egypt's educational curricula and schooling system are permeated with discriminatory teachings."



Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches



Austria: On Friday, Nov. 24, a 29-year-old Muslim refugee of Syrian background wreaked havoc inside Kepler Church in Vienna and violently tearing a Madonna statue from its anchorage. According to one report:



"The refugee also took a wooden cross from the church. Through witness statements and analysis of video surveillance, the migrant was found in the immediate vicinity of the church and temporarily arrested. He was released on the orders of the Vienna public prosecutor's office. The stolen wooden cross was brought back to the church by a woman. According to police, there is uncertainty about the Syrian's motive, but they can supposedly rule out a political or religious motive."



Two days later, on Sunday, Nov. 26, the same Muslim man (though most reports fail to make this connection) disrupted mass inside Vienna's most celebrated place of worship, Saint Stephen's Cathedral. He repeatedly shouted and jumped over the barrier surrounding the main altar. The following day, Nov. 27, he returned to the cathedral. After he was discovered by two security guards, the Muslim "went crazy and threatened to slit the two employees' throats with a screwdriver..."



According to another report:



"After one of the two called the police, the 29-year-old fled. Police arrested the man on Stephansplatz and confiscated the screwdriver. The motive is still unclear. An interrogation has not yet been possible due to the accused's aggressive behavior. He was taken to a prison by order of the Vienna public prosecutor's office."



Germany: On Nov. 27, "unknown persons" vandalized the Saint John Basilica in Saarbrücken. Among other acts of desecration, they severed one of the hands of a large Mary statue, and decapitated the baby Jesus held to her bosom. They also damaged the altar and destroyed two of its large candles. The beloved statues are approximately 300 years old. After confirming that, "The figure of Mary was badly damaged, the head of baby Jesus was cut off," the cantor of the basilica, Bernhard Leonardy, said he was "completely shocked at how people could come up with such thoughts," adding "This is not normal vandalism, but also has a very special symbolic meaning."



Koran 8:12 comes to mind:



"I [Allah] will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off their fingertips."



According to the report:



"Many were horrified in comments on the post [by the cantor]: 'Unbelievable ...,' 'That leaves me speechless!' or 'Who does something like that? I can't understand that!'"



Separately, in Germany, two teenage Muslims, aged 15 and 16, were arrested before launching a massive terror attack designed to "set fire to the infidels at the Christmas market." According to one report,



"In a video published on Telegram, two young people are said to have called for a 'holy war' against the West and at the same time announced a terrorist attack in Germany for December 1st.... The young people are said to have arranged to meet to discuss an Islamist attack. Accordingly, they wanted to use incendiary devices or a small truck to attack a Christmas market or a synagogue in Cologne. They are also believed to have discussed a specific date for their plans... Both young people are considered sympathizers of the 'Islamic State' (IS). The older man is classified by the security authorities in Brandenburg as a 'relevant person' in the Islamist scene and is said to have attracted attention in the past by spreading jihadist propaganda."



France: On Sunday, Nov. 5, a Muslim man disrupted mass in Dunkirk's Saint Éloi Church by twice shouting "Allahu akbar" ("Allah is greatest"), once during the Lord's Prayer and once at the end of mass. The priest said the Muslim seemed "disturbed."



Italy: A young Muslim man, identified as a Moroccan, appeared in a surveillance video inside a church, as he was kicking down and stomping on large crucifixes. In the words of Radio Genoa, which published the video on Nov.10, "Moroccan Muslim destroys 3 crucifixes in a church in Italy and threatens police officers. They hate us." Earlier, on Nov. 4, a fire was started at the Church of Santa Maria in Vado. Although the arsonist was captured, no information about his or her identity was released.



Switzerland: Muslim migrants appropriated the Saint Laurent Church in Lausanne for their own use, including as a toilet. "Churches must remain open to everyone, but a minimum [level] of respect is required," responded the Christian caretaker. "If you behaved like this in a mosque," he added, "they would throw you out—and rightfully so."



Armenia/Azerbaijan: According to a Nov. 10 report:



"Azerbaijan demolished an Armenian church in Nagorno-Karabakh, thereby violating the interim decision of the International Court of Justice..."



Sudan: At least two Christian buildings were bombed and severely damaged amid fighting between rival military factions of the Muslim nation. First on Nov. 1, a Presbyterian Evangelical Church in Omdurman "came under heavy shelling from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) at about 9 p.m. that left its worship structure in ruins." Although several people were in the church, which includes an orphanage, no one was hurt. Most of the church structure was devastated from the three strikes it suffered, and "everything inside was destroyed, including Bibles and hymnbooks." Two days later, on Nov. 3, a Roman Catholic mission house in Khartoum was also bombed. A nun, as well as a mother and her two children, ages 4 and 7, were injured in the blast. Although these strikes are connected to the fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April, it appears that Christian sites are intentionally being targeted in the chaos of war. According to the report:



"Christian sites have been targeted since the conflict began in April. On May 14 unidentified gunmen attacked the Coptic Orthodox Church of Mar Girgis (St. George) in the Masalma area of Omdurman... The RSF on May 15 seized a central Khartoum cathedral after having evacuated the Coptic Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary near the presidential palace on May 14, converting the latter into a military headquarters... RSF had reportedly been intimidating and harassing those in the church for a week before forcing them to leave. The RSF reportedly stormed buildings of the Episcopal church on Khartoum's First Street on May 16 to use as a strategic base ... [and] a vehicle belonging to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Khartoum was stolen at gunpoint. On May 3, a Coptic Church in Khartoum North (Bahri) was attacked, after the Evangelical Church in the same area was bombed and partially burned in April...On April 28, the Gerief Bible School in the Gerief West area of Khartoum was bombed. Its worship auditorium, halls and student dorms were destroyed... On April 17, gunmen raided the compound of the Anglican cathedral in Khartoum..."



link

[schwartzie]

Nigerian Christians, Forgotten by the West, Face Christmas Under the Shadow of Jihadist Genocide
FRANCES MARTEL
25 Dec 2023
10:26


Christians in Nigeria will celebrate Christmas this year facing a relentless onslaught of jihadist terrorism seeking to eliminate them from the country, experts told Breitbart News, with little support from their government.



In the northeast, Nigerian Christians have endured decades of attacks by Boko Haram, the Islamic State-affiliated terrorist organization committed to killing Christians and forcing young girls into sex slavery “marriages” with their fighters. In the central Middle Belt, jihadists belonging to the majority-Muslim Fulani ethnic group regularly conduct raids on Christian communities, burning down entire villages and occupying land historically populated by Christian majorities. The objective in both cases is the genocide of Nigerian Christians and the establishment of a sharia “caliphate” system.



International Christian Concern named Nigeria the world’s top oppressor of Christians in its 2023 report — the world’s most dangerous place to be a Christian — as a result of the “20-year genocide against Christians” there by Boko Haram, the Fulani, and other jihadist elements.




TOPSHOT - Clergymen carry white coffins containing the bodies of priests allegedly killed by Fulani herdsmen, for burial at Ayati-Ikpayongo in Gwer East district of Benue State, north-central Nigeria on May 22, 2018. - Two Nigerian priests and 17 worshippers have been buried, nearly a month after an attack on their church, as Catholics took to the streets calling for an end to a spiral of violence. White coffins containing the bodies of the clergymen and the members of their congregation were laid to rest in central Benue state, which has been hit by a wave of deadly unrest. (Photo by EMMY IBU / AFP) (Photo by EMMY IBU/AFP via Getty Images)

“You have to distinguish between the tribe and the group of extremists within that category. With that understanding, the Fulani feel as though all of a certain territory belongs to them by right, by history, and you might say they view it as their God-given caliphate,” David Curry, the president and CEO of Global Christian Relief, told Breitbart News, “because they have a theology. This is not just a tribal issue, this is not just a land issue, and it’s not a climate issue, as is sometimes stated … No, this is, they view this as their God-given right.”



The persecution has plagued the country for years with little or no intervention from the government and, unlike in many other parts of the world where Christians face genocidal action, even though they make up a significant percentage of the population. While a slight plurality of Nigerians are Muslim, about 45 percent of the country belongs to some form of Christian church.



It largely occurs in the form of raids of Christian communities, in both north and central Nigeria, by jihadist attackers who kill and abduct as many Christians as possible — then take their homes and settle in their land.



“Last Christmas, essentially, there was a spate of attacks where something like 100 plus people were attacked, unfortunately the numbers are always inexact,” Edward Clancy, the director of outreach for the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, told Breitbart News in a recent interview, naming the Middle Belt state of Benue as a particularly troubling hotspot of genocidal violence.


“There’s, I believe, like 3 and a half to 4 million people in the state – and like 2 million plus, over 2 million are displaced,” he explained. “So it is not a good place to be on the outskirts. For example, the Diocese of Makurdi, they’ve lost 14 parishes.”



“Now 14 parishes — people in North America we hear about parishes merging, closing, things like that,” he continued. “This is a place in Nigeria where first of all a parish is not just one building, it’s oftentimes two, three, four, even a dozen buildings because it’s such a large area that a parish can represent 10 or 12 places of worship. So the diocese has lost 14 of these parishes and when we say lost, we mean like lost territory, there are Christians being forced out so there are no more residents there.”



“In one four-month span this year, more than 50 separate attacks killed over 500 Christians. Not a week goes by that Christians aren’t brutally kidnapped, tortured, and killed in the Middle Belt,” Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern (ICC), explained to Breitbart News this week. “The adoption of Sharia criminal law in 12 northern states has contributed to the ongoing persecution of Christians in the region.”



These descriptions of Benue are consistent with that given to Breitbart News in July by Father Remigius Ihyula, a university chaplain and emergency relief coordinator in the Diocese of Makurdi.



“These killings have been consistent. We have documented atrocities that have risen to the level of genocide against our people,” Father Ihyula told Breitbart News. “People, women and children, are killed on a daily basis. They are butchered, they have been driven from their homes, some have been living in camps for about ten years. They cannot go back to their homes.”





Father Remigius Ihyula of Benue State, Nigeria (Courtesy of the Catholic Diocese of Makurdi Foundation for Justice, Development, & Peace)



In northeast Nigeria — particularly in Borno state, the birthplace of Boko Haram, Christians face similar routine abductions, mass killings, bombings, and other attacks.



Curry of Global Christian Relief lamented in a recent conversation with Breitbart News that the new Nigerian government offered “a lot of lip service,” but no significant action to protect Christian populations. Having recently returned from northeast Nigeria, Curry said camps of internally displaced Christians — whose homes had been destroyed by jihadists — were largely left with no state protection.



“So the camps that I visited, none of them were protected. They were all vulnerable. They remain vulnerable, and the government seems to be doing little to stop the incursion of Boko Haram,” he explained. “Now, at one point, I was 15 minutes away, I was at a camp that was 15 minutes from a Boko Haram headquarters and the government knows they’re there. They know what they’ve done, and they allow them to remain. It’s outrageous.”



“So in this case, it could be that the regional leaders, unless there is an imminent danger to the general population, are not going to care if these Christians are attacked,” Curry said. “That sounds outrageous except when you see it firsthand, you can’t imagine why they don’t have protection around these camps where Christians have already been traumatized and also why they’re not policing the area.”



“They don’t have any helicopters on site to observe the movements of Boko Haram, who clearly exist 15 minutes from their camp,” he added.



Politicians at the national level often do not need to appeal to Christian voting blocs to stay in power and ignore their concerns entirely.


Nigeria President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu (L) arrives to attend a swearing-in ceremony at Eagle Square venue in the capital, Abuja, Nigeria on May 29, 2023. Former President Muhammadu Buhari (R) was also present at the ceremony. (Photo by Emmanuel Osodi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)



Former President Muhammadu Buhari, an ethnic Fulani Muslim who previously ruled as a military dictator, claimed in 2015 that Nigeria had “won the war” against Boko Haram and largely refused to acknowledge its existence in his eight years in power. His successor, fellow Muslim Bola Tinubu, broke with the tacit tradition of choosing a Christian vice presidential running mate and has not made any major moves to curtail genocidal activity against Christians in the country since taking office this year.



“The Nigerian government cannot be trusted on this subject,” Curry told Breitbart News. “Either their political alliances or moral framework has not allowed them to really go after these terrorists. … I don’t know whether it’s political alliances or just moral bankruptcy but the government is not protecting these Christians in these regions in the north.”



“Fundamentalist Muslims are in control of all the security organs of State including the police, the military, and intel agencies,” King, of ICC, said. “Fundamentalist Muslim actors embedded in the security apparatus of the Nigerian State in Nigeria have aided and abetted the Muslim Fulani’s slow-moving anti-Christian genocide and/or jihad for two decades now.”



King was nonetheless slightly more positive towards Tinubu, expressing a “glimmer of hope” in his administration.



“The new president has a Christian wife and has appointed several Christian heads of state. The president has also begun implementing increased military efforts against Fulani militants,” he said, “and has disappointed the extreme Islamic north, which has been facing economic challenges since his appointment.”



Clancy, of Aid to the Church in Need, lamented that the lack of improvement, “just based on that alone,” makes for a worse situation for Christians “because this will have a cumulative effect.”



“It’s worse because this will have a cumulative effect of year after year after year of wearing people down, destroying communities, making these little villages on the outskirts of states or not so close to the cities become devoid of any Christian presence,” he explained. “Up in Maiduguri, which is up in the northeast in Borno, which is the birthplace of Boko Haram. Maiduguri is essentially the Christian center of a very Muslim area of the country.”



“And there, there are neighbors, communities in that region. And again, Christians have left and you have this area where it might be a mix of Christians and Muslims, farmers, living near each other in relatively in peace,” he continued, “and now you have these Christian families that can’t even go to their farms because it’s not safe and if they do go to their farms and do any farming, they can’t go to the markets because the markets are not safe.”



“These areas could literally become devoid of Christians,” he warned.


The threats have yet to succeed in eliminating Christianity completely, however, and Nigerians will continue to celebrate in the face of threats, the experts agreed.



“In the areas I was at, there is a strong population, if not the majority, of Christians and they’re going to celebrate Christmas,” Curry said, “but they’re going to do it in the posture of vulnerability because they know at any minute they could be attacked for their faith.”



“And certainly Christmas for many persecuted believers is something that they have to sort of practice and celebrate underground. But in Nigeria, by and large, they will celebrate in their homes, but it won’t necessarily be underground,” he added.



“The amazing thing is that Nigerians in Nigeria will celebrate Christmas with all of this going on,” Clancy concurred, “with the attacks that happened in Pentecost last year and then the attacks that happened earlier this year around Christmas … they still continue.”



“They still continue doing their jobs, filling their vocations, living their Christian lives, and the churches for the most part will be filled and they will be very joyful and they will celebrate,” he noted. “And for us in the West, we have to look at that not only as joy in the face of persecution and suffering but also the bravery, the fact that they are in a sense undaunted by what we would think, ‘ok I’m leaving.'”


link

[schwartzie]

Nicaraguans Face a Dark Christmas of Communist Repression as War on Christians Continues

CHRISTIAN K. CARUZO
25 Dec 2023

Millions of Nicaraguans will spend Christmas under the growing repression of communist dictator Daniel Ortega, who has arrested and banished members of the Catholic Church, prohibited Catholic festivities, and intimidated Christians into silence.



Nicaraguans are a majority Catholic people. Out of the country’s roughly 6.35 million citizens, 50 percent identify as Roman Catholic and 33.2 percent identify as Evangelical Christian. Another 2.9 percent identify as practitioners of other religions.



Ortega, who himself claims to be Catholic, has maintained a fierce animosity against the Catholic Church throughout the four decades of Sandinista rule in Nicaragua, declaring a “war” against the Vatican in 2022 and openly stating that he has never held any respect for the Church’s bishops.



Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have used the full might of the Sandinista regime they rule to punish the Nicaraguan Catholic Church for its support of pro-democracy dissidents during 2018’s wave of peaceful protests, when thousands of Nicaraguans flocked to the streets calling for the end of four decades of communist rule.


The Church’s support of the pro-democracy dissidents led to Ortega branding Catholic bishops “terrorists,” accusing them of conspiring to stage a coup. Ortega also claims that the Church was “covering up [for] a gang of assassins” that, according to him, tried to assassinate him in 2018.



The Ortega regime’s “punishment” of the Catholic Church started as violent assaults against Catholic churches in Nicaragua carried out by Sandinistas on behalf of the ruling regime. It has now morphed into full-blown regime persecution of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, dramatically escalating in 2022 and 2023.



The Ortega regime has banned the Nicaraguan Catholic Church from celebrating its traditional festivities and processions. Public celebrations of the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the feast of the Immaculate Conception became the latest additions to a growing list of banned celebrations ahead of this year’s Christmas season.



Nicaraguan authorities repeatedly claim that the prohibitions are necessary for “public security” reasons, providing no evidence for how these peaceful religious activities allegedly pose a threat. Such warnings prevent the faithful from freely exercising their religious freedom.



During Lent in 2023, the Ortega regime banned all Holy Week processions nationwide, including the Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross) processions that commemorate Jesus Christ’s last day on Earth prior to resurrection.



In 2022, Catholic processions for Saints Michael and Jerome and La Purisima and La Griteria, unique Nicaraguan celebrations that honor the Blessed Mother Mary, were also banned.


Journalists who “dare” to cover their local Catholic festivities are subject to the Sandinista regime’s retaliation. Such is the case of Nicaraguan reporter Victor Ticay, who police arrested in his hometown of Nandaime for the “crime” of covering La Reseña, a centuries-old local Catholic procession celebrated in Nandaime during Holy Week, and publishing footage of the event on social media.



Ticay was sentenced in August to eight years in prison on “spreading fake news,” “conspiracy to undermine national integrity,” and “treason” charges.



When it comes to repression against members of the Nicaraguan Church, the most significant case is the arrest and sentencing of of the Bishop of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, an outspoken critic of Ortega who has been held asa political prisoner since August 2022.



Álvarez was arrested in August 2022 alongside seven other members of the Catholic Church at the end of a two-week long police raid on the priest’s house. Days before his arrest, Murillo accused Álvarez of having committed “sins against spirituality.”



Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years in prison for “treason” in February and was stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship, rendering him a stateless person — an act that is in clear violation of international law. Álvarez’s lawyer, Yonarqui de los Ángeles Martínez García, was permanently barred from practicing law in May.



As of December 17, Álvarez has spent over 500 days in prison.


Last week, 63-year-old Bishop Isidoro del Carmen Mora Ortega (no relation to the dictator) was arrested, becoming the second bishop behind bars in the country.



Bishop Mora’s “crime” was that he had offered prayers for Álvarez alongside members of the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference. The Bishop was reportedly intercepted by the Nicaraguan Police when he was on his way to the Santa Cruz parish, where he planned to preside over the Confirmation of 230 parishioners, according to local sources.



In November, several members of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church who have been persecuted recounted their harrowing experiences to Congress. The witnesses detailed how they were arrested, interrogated, and brutalized by the communist regime, which accused them of being part of an “organized crime” syndicate simply for being Catholic.



“We were accused of being members of an organized crime gang and that the leaders were the bishops, and above all they said Rolando [Álvarez]. I was accused of undermining the dignity of the state and of Nicaragua, of spreading false news,” one of the witnesses said.



Álvarez is the first Catholic priest to be arrested following Ortega’s return to power in 2007. Since his arrest and sentence, the priest has only been shown in pictures and footage released by the Ortega regime that show Álvarez looking visibly thin. Álvarez remains imprisoned in La Modelo, located in the outskirts of the nation’s capital, Managua. La Modelo is infamously known for the torture and beating of prisoners that occurs on a daily basis.



The seven men arrested in the raid on Álvarez’s home — four priests, two seminarians, and a layman — were sentenced to ten years in prison in February on “treason” and “fake news” charges.



In October, Catholic priests Julio Ricardo Norori and Iván Centeno were kidnapped by Nicaraguan police forces dressed in civilian clothing while they were in their respective churches.


Other members of the Catholic Church were banished instead of arrested in 2022, including the papal nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, and 18 nuns from the Missionaries of Charity congregation. Monsignor Silvio Báez fled Nicaragua in 2019 at the request of Pope Francis after several threats made to Báez’s security.



In 2022, the Ortega regime began to forcefully shut down Catholic television and radio stations. As of November 2023, at least 15 Catholic media outlets have been closed down along the dozens of dissident media outlets shutdown or seized by the communist Ortega regime.



The regime froze the Nicaraguan Catholic Church’s bank assets and seized or shut down Catholic-led universities throughout the country. The Jesuit order-run Central American University (UCA) of Managua was completely seized by the regime in August. The John Paul II University and the Autonomous Christian University of Nicaragua (UCAN) were shut down by the regime in March.



Much like the socialist Maduro regime in Venezuela, the Ortega regime persecution includes not just silencing real Catholic voices, but hijacking the faith in the service of socialism.



Ortega and his wife Murillo, after banning the festivities of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, celebrated their own socialist version of the festivity last week, in which Murillo accused the Catholic Church and dissidents of her husband’s communist regime as spreading “terrorist hate.”

link

[schwartzie]

Christians in Northern India Forgo Christmas Celebrations After ‘Record’ Year of Persecution
FRANCES MARTEL
25 Dec 2023
7:42


The Hindu nationalist government of India presided over the escalation of Christian persecution in the country at a “record pace” in 2023, religious freedom experts told Breitbart News, and faces little to no pressure to protect their Christian populations from the West.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly claimed in public — including on the lawn of the White House in June — that India is not a hotbed of persecution or violence against religious minorities.



“I’m actually really surprised that people say so. And so, people don’t say it. Indeed, India is a democracy,” Modi said while standing next to President Joe Biden during a visit to Washington this year. “We have always proved that democracy can deliver. And when I say deliver, this is regardless of caste, creed, religion, gender. There’s absolutely no space for discrimination.”



In reality, Hindu nationalists organized mob attacks on Christian communities throughout the year, burning down churches and often destroying entire neighborhoods, leaving Christians displaced. The worst of the violence in 2023 occurred in Manipur, northern India, where members of the majority Hindu Meitei tribe went on a rampage against majority Christian Kuki-Zo communities throughout the spring and summer, often filming their atrocities. Modi’s government did not comment on the matter until a video went viral in the rest of the country showing a mob of presumably Meitei men raping Christian women in broad daylight and parading them naked through the streets.


“The police were there with the mob which was attacking our village,” one of the assaulted women revealed in an anonymous interview in July. “The police picked us up from near home and took us a little away from the village and left us on the road with the mob. We were given to them by police.”



At least tens of thousands of people remain displaced in Manipur as of September, according to the United Nations.



As a result, Christmas celebrations will be largely absent in Manipur, local media reported Thursday.



“The violence continues. In this environment, nobody can celebrate Christmas, or any other festival like before,” Manipur local Helamboi Baite told the Indian outlet. “It won’t be the same for us. Maybe, families would have a somber celebration inside their homes, but I don’t think any gathering will take place in the streets.”



Manipur Christians held a mass funeral for the remains of 87 people killed in the mob violence erupting in May on December 19; they had not received the remains of their loved ones before then.



“The youngest tribal victim in the ongoing violence is one-month-old Isaac, while the oldest is 87-year-old Veinem Chongloi,” the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF), a Kuki-Zo organization, said in a statement, according to The Print.



The outburst of anti-Christian violence in Manipur followed a protest by Christians in New Delhi in February in which a crowd of between 15,000 and 20,000 people demanded the Modi government act to protect Christian communities.



“We’ve gathered here peacefully because we want to share the anguish of our fellow citizens who follow the Christian faith in the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and so many other places where their basic fundamental rights are being snatched,” said the United Christian Forum, a human rights group participating in the rally.





The national government in New Delhi rarely actively participates in this violence but also does little to stop it.

“The Brahmins that sit atop the cultural landscape of India (Prime Minister Modi and his political party, the BJP) see Christianity as a direct threat to their status and power and are therefore intent on strangling it,” Jeff King, the president of International Christian Concern (ICC) and author of The Last Words of the Martyrs, told Breitbart News. “Modi is a very savvy world-leading politician that will never be seen making anti-Christian comments. His main job is to stay silent in response to attacks on Christians.”



“Violence against Christians this year continued at a record pace,” he explained, “and will eclipse the 600 recorded attacks in 2022. Large-scale riots by radical Hindus in Chhattisgarh and Udar Pradesh displaced thousands of Christians and destroyed hundreds of homes and churches earlier this year, beginning in the late fall of 2022.”



“Because of Modi and his government’s inaction in Manipur, we saw an incredible outbreak of anti-Christian violence,” King continued. “Christians suffered greatly under the brutal attacks and hundreds of churches were targeted. While it’s been difficult to get accurate information from the region because of the government’s lockdown, by summer 200-400 Christian churches, including at least two dozen Meiti churches, and dozens of temples had been destroyed along more than 3,500 houses.”



“Just in the last 12 months, you have massive riots in Chhattisgarh against churches and of course in Manipur in the north, where over 350 churches were destroyed,” David Curry, the president and CEO of Global Christian Relief, told Breitbart News in a recent conversation. “And when you think of it, that’s a lot of churches, that is a lot of people who have been displaced, hundreds of thousands — and the government has done little to nothing about it.”


“They wouldn’t even acknowledge it was happening until a video escaped of that young Christian girl being raped caused such an uproar. So it’s shameful,” he added, urging the U.S. government to pressure “friends” such as India and Nigeria, where jihadist terrorists regularly destroy Christian communities, to address the safety and freedom of Christians at home.



Biden welcomed Modi to Washington for a state dinner, the highest honor for a foreign head of government, in June. The leaders exchanged personal gifts and Modi signed a range of agreements with both Washington and American companies, prominently a deal to jointly manufacture jet engines with General Electric. The Biden administration was careful not to condemn Modi’s handling of mob violence against Christians in his country, instead hailing India as a “vibrant democracy” and worthy partner.



U.S. President Joe Biden (R) and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi participate in a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on September 24, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden is hosting a Quad Leaders Summit later today with Prime Minister Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide. (Photo by Sarahbeth Maney-Pool/Getty Images)

U.S. President Joe Biden (R) and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi participate in a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on September 24, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Sarahbeth Maney-Pool/Getty Images)



“I think what the American government should do is start with our friends and I put Nigeria and India in that category because these are countries which, by all rights, are democracies,” Curry told Breitbart News. “They’re going to want to have relationships with us and we should use that friendship and all of the hundreds of millions — and ,who knows, even billions of dollars — that we are putting into security and so forth in these countries to create a stronger human rights and religious freedom environment.”



“But India is going the other way despite all that we are doing with them and for them, military contracts, et cetera, business contracts,” he observed. “They — the government, the administration in charge there — is targeting Christians and Muslims, any religious minorities, those that are not Hindus and creating a very difficult environment for them.”



“We need to draw a tough line on religious persecution,” he urged.



King, of ICC, predicted violence against Christians in India would continue unabated without outside pressure.



“Until India’s business interests and Western capital flows are affected, the hate speech and anti-Christian activities urged on by Modi (silently) and the BJP (openly) will continue or keep growing,” he told Breitbart News.

link

[Midnight]

Christians 160 died in Nigeria on Christmas weekend 2023

[schwartzie]

'A Gory Christmas': Christians Slaughtered in the Nigerian Genocide

by Raymond Ibrahim

January 7, 2024 at 5:00 am


"Every two hours [in Nigeria], a Christian is killed for their faith." — Open Doors, April 22, 2022.



[T]he Associated Press (AP) failed to mention that the massacres occurred during Christmas, just as it failed to mention the identities of the attackers (Muslims) and their victims (Christians). Rather, it presented the conflict, as many commentators increasingly do, as a supposedly regrettable byproduct of climate change...



"It's tough to tell Nigerian Christians this isn't a religious conflict since what they see are Fulani fighters clad entirely in black, chanting 'Allahu Akbar!' and screaming 'Death to Christians.'" — Sister Monica Chikwe, Nigerian nun, cruxnow.com, August 4, 2019.



In 2020, President Donald J. Trump placed Nigeria on the State Department's List of Countries of Particular Concern — that is, nations which engage in, or tolerate violations of, religious freedom. Under President Joseph R. Biden, however, the State Department removed Nigeria... from the list.



[F]or the mainstream media and many politicians, black lives — well over 50,000 and counting — apparently do not matter. At least not when those lives are Christian and being slaughtered by Muslims.

Continued at link

[schwartzie]

'We Have to Kill Those Who Preach Christianity': The Persecution of Christians, December 2023 (Christmas Edition)

by Raymond Ibrahim • January 21, 2024 at 5:00 am


"Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in the Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians' lands and impose Islam...." — morningstarnews.org, December 26, 2023, Nigeria.



"t is also the existence of disbelief itself that is a 'grievance'," — Aymenn Jawad al Tamimi, December , 2023, Philippines.



n Austria, on Dec. 9, Heiligenkreuz Abbey received a bomb threat by phone. Police later confirmed that it had an "Islamist overtone". The caller had said "Convert to Islam, or I'll bomb you away!".... Father John Paul commented: "t encourages us even more to pray and work for peace, healing and reconciliation." — puls24.at, December 11, 2023.



"Reports include statements like, 'We have to kill those who preach Christianity, and these Christians have no place in Mauritania.'" — persecution.org, December 13, 2023.



Two Christian evangelists, Joseph and Isaac, after Muslims beat them for quoting the Koran, spent Christmas Day in jail for "blasphemy." The report does not indicate which verses were deemed so objectionable, or why. — morningstarnews.org, December 22, 2023, Uganda.


According to a January 2 report: "Three migrants who allegedly planned an attack on Cologne Cathedral are free again. A judge let them go after just one night in custody." Pictured: Police conduct security checks on visitors at Cologne Cathedral on December 24, 2023 in Cologne, Germany, after indications of an Islamist terror threat. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)



The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of December 2023.



Christmas Slaughters



Nigeria: Beginning on Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day, Muslim terrorists massacred nearly 200 Christians. Well-armed Muslim Fulani tribesmen hacked, stabbed, riddled with bullets and burned alive Christians, many of whom were in the process of celebrating Christmas. According to one report:



"At least 25 communities across three Local Government Areas [in Plateau State] were targeted. Survivors recounted militia men attacking in large numbers, indiscriminately killing and destroying homes, vehicles, farmlands and other properties. About 37 individuals, primarily women, children and the disabled, were burned to death in their homes. Eight churches and parsonages were also destroyed..."


Iran: Talk Big but Wave a Small Stick

by Amir Taheri • January 21, 2024 at 4:00 am



Tehran needed TV clips to show that its pawns in the region are moving -- without, however, provoking a major Israeli or American retaliation.



The fact that ISIS was able to launch a carnage operation in the middle of a solemn official memorial ceremony for Soleimani who "wiped ISIS off the face of the earth," led to suspicions that, like the Wizard of Oz, the ayatollah may be a good man, but a bad liberator of Palestine and redeemer of mankind.



The ayatollah took the spiral stair from tragedy to farce when he ordered a missile attack on what he said was "the headquarters of Mossad" in the Middle East. Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh claimed that the attack "was ordered by Imam Khamenei in person." Within minutes, however, it was established that the target had been the home of a Kurdish Iraqi businessman and the victims were him, his 11-month-old child, his Filipino cook and a business associate.



With egg on their faces, Iran's leaders then tried to divert attention by ordering missile attacks on targets in Pakistan's Baluchistan Desert.







Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has found his comfort zone in rhetoric-land: Bark aloud but lie low. Pictured: Khamenei (R) speaks with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general Ali Akbar Ahmadian (2nd L) in an undisclosed location, in an undated photo released on May 22, 2023. (Photo by khamenei.ir/AFP via Getty Images)



Torture at ringside! This is how Antoine Blondin, perhaps the greatest contemporary French sports writer, described the agonies of hard-core fans of combat sports. They are glued to the ringside, watch the fight, see or imagine that they see the mistakes of the adversaries in the ring, wish they were in the ring to unleash the right punches and feel frustrated that all they could do is to shout "Oh no! Oh no!"



The mood described by Blondin also reflects the feelings of armchair generals who could tell you where Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, not to mention Field Marshal von Paulus, went wrong. Vicarious sorrow is as potent in fomenting the melancholy behind the farce as the pleasure offered by voyeurism.


10,000 a Day and Counting: Government's Plan to Increase Voter Base?

by Lawrence Kadish • January 21, 2024 at 3:30 am


It remains inexplicable. And then again, perhaps not.



The crisis on our southern border needs to be considered in political context, and no one can avoid describing it as anything other than "a crisis." Tens of thousands of people are daily seeking entry into our country, and the response from the White House is little more than a shrug.



Stephen Miller, a former speechwriter and policy advisor for President Donald Trump, told Fox News's Mark Levin that he believes the Biden Administration has deliberately allowed the immigration crisis to continue for the purpose of advancing its strategic agenda to change the political demographics of who goes to the polls. If that is true, it is a constitutional threat to the future of the nation that makes the Watergate scandal look like a children's kindly bedtime story.



Miller also observed that Biden's calculated immigration policy has allowed America to abdicate its sovereignty by essentially dismantling our border.


On Confronting the Iranian Regime

by Majid Rafizadeh • January 20, 2024 at 5:00 am



Any evaluation of the Biden administration's policy towards the Iranian regime (and towards the Palestinians) reveals a failure: the deadly Western miscalculation that "being nice" will be reciprocated. In the culture of the Middle East, that simply does not work. Instead, one is looked on as a gullible sucker or juicy "mark," like a jolly drunk at a strip club.



As Osama bin Laden pointed out, especially for his region, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse."



Former U.S. Army General Jack Keane recently noted that many possible targets are already on "the list" and suggested taking out the military installations that have been launching such attacks. Other possible responses floated include sinking Iran's spy ship currently in the Red Sea and taking out Iran's military communications systems.



If Iran itself is not made to pay a price, it will simply continue using its proxies to escalate aggression and take the hits. After all, that is why Iran has proxies in the first place.


The Biden administration's reluctance to robustly respond to the rogue Islamist regime of Iran apparently only reinforces the inclination of Iran's political and military leadership to inflict more harm. In 1988, President Reagan launched Operation Praying Mantis, which retaliated against Iran for its attack on a U.S. Navy ship, sent a strong message to Iran, and reduced the threat posed by Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf. Pictured: The USS Enterprise, which played a key role in Operation Praying Mantis, is shown in the Persian Gulf on December 15, 1998. (U.S. Navy photo by Michael W. Pendergrass)



The Biden administration's reluctance to robustly respond to the rogue Islamist regime of Iran apparently only reinforces the inclination of Iran's political and military leadership to inflict more harm.



When US responses lack decisiveness, the Islamic Republic interprets this "restraint" as a failure of nerve on the part of the US and the international community. Such leniency, it seems, simply invigorates the regime to persist in disrupting regional and global stability, and escalate its assertive military maneuvers and support for terrorist activities.



As Osama bin Laden pointed out, especially for his region, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse."


Pakistan: Young Christian Unjustly Sentenced to Death

by Uzay Bulut • January 19, 2024 at 5:00 am



"The superintendent of police stated in his report that neither he nor the eyewitness found any blasphemy in Shahzad's conversation. His investigation also found that Shahzad was a minor, illiterate and did not have clear knowledge of any religion and only repeated words at the direction of Ishtiak Jalali." — CeCe Heil, Senior Counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, July 11, 2023.



"Based on this investigation the police literally said he was not guilty. He had not committed any blasphemy." — CeCe Heil, July 11, 2023.



"s a juvenile, Shahzad was entitled to be immediately released on bail and the judge obviously was not going to follow the law.... A much bigger plan seemed to be in place with the mob controlling the outcome..... This happens because Muslim fanatics pack courtrooms to intimidate the judges." — CeCe Heil, July 11, 2023.



According to the organization Open Doors, the persecution of Christians in Pakistan is "extreme"...



It would be advisable for the US government to suspend all aid to Pakistan until its government takes concrete steps to free the many victims of its deadly blasphemy laws; persuade Pakistan to discontinue enforcing them altogether; improve minority rights, and, most importantly, stop enabling Islamist terrorism.







According to the organization Open Doors, the persecution of Christians in Pakistan is "extreme". It would be advisable for the US government to suspend all aid to Pakistan until its government takes concrete steps to free the many victims of its deadly blasphemy laws; persuade Pakistan to discontinue enforcing them altogether; improve minority rights, and, most importantly, stop enabling Islamist terrorism. Pictured: Thousands of people in Karachi, Pakistan, demand the execution of Asia Bibi, on November 21, 2018. Bibi, a Christian woman, spent 8 years on death row because of a false accusation of blasphemy, before being released and exiled. (Photo by Asif Hassan/AFP via Getty Images)



Shahzad Masih, a Pakistani Christian, was 16 years old and working in a hospital as a janitor in 2017, when Muslims falsely accused him of blasphemy. Since then, has spent more than five years in prison, and has been sentenced to death by hanging for statements he did not even make.



In 2017, authorities arrested Masih after a Muslim coworker and another man linked with the Islamic terrorist group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Islami Pakistan (TTIP), accused him of insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad. In 2022, a court sentenced Masih to death.



According to Pakistan's blasphemy laws, those deemed to have insulted Islam or Islam's Prophet Muhammad can be subjected to the death penalty.


Biden Administration's 'Pathway' to a Palestinian Terror State

by Bassam Tawil • January 18, 2024 at 5:00 am



By continuing to obsessively stick to the creation of a Palestinian state, the Biden administration is actually sending a message to Iran and its terror proxies that terrorism pays - that if they inflict more pain and casualties on Israel, the Americans will reward them with a state of their own next to Israel to facilitate their mission of continuing their Jihadist murder spree against Jews and finally obliterate Israel.



The poll further showed that if presidential elections were held today, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would receive 78% of the vote, as opposed to only 16% for Abbas.



The poll found that 64% of the Palestinians oppose the idea of a two-state solution, while 53% support a return to the "armed struggle" against Israel.



All polls conducted by the same center have consistently shown that a majority of the Palestinians believe that Hamas is more deserving of representing them than the PA. This means that if and when a Palestinian state is established, as the Biden administration is hoping, it will be ruled by Hamas and its masters in Iran... overlooking the few miles from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport.



The idea that creating another Arab state alongside Israel would "isolate" or "marginalize" Iran and its proxies is as wrong as it is dangerous. In reality, the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of the West Bank or Gaza Strip would incentivize Iran and its clients to escalate their Jihad against Israel: it would send them the message that the more Jews you murder, the more land you get.



[T]his conflict is not about a settlement or a checkpoint or Jerusalem, but about Israel's right to exist in any form in the Middle East. What Blinken and the Biden administration seem unable to grasp is that there are still too many people among the Palestinians, and many other Arabs and Muslims, who have yet to come to terms with the right of a nation that is not Islamic to remain in its home in the Middle East.



Blinken is suggesting not a pathway to peace, but a prize to Hamas and the Palestinians for committing genocide.







By continuing to obsessively stick to the creation of a Palestinian state, the Biden administration is actually sending a message to Iran and its terror proxies that terrorism pays - that if they inflict more pain and casualties on Israel, the Americans will reward them with a state of their own next to Israel to facilitate their mission of continuing their Jihadist murder spree against Jews and finally obliterate Israel. Pictured: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, Jordan on October 13, 2023. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)



As Iran and its proxies in the Middle East are continuing the jihad (holy war) to murder Jews and eliminate Israel, the Biden administration has not abandoned their dream of creating a Palestinian terror state on Israel's doorstep. The last thing the Middle East needs is another Iran-dominated terror state that would destabilize security and stability and pose an existential threat to Israel.



In the past few years, everyone has seen how Iran has been working non-stop to export its Islamic Revolution. With the help of Iran's proxies in the Gaza Strip (Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad), Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthis) and Iraq and Syria (multiple militias operating under various names), Iran's mullahs have consistently targeted not only Israel and the US, but Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).


Islam Overtaking Europe?

by Drieu Godefridi • January 17, 2024 at 5:00 am



What seems to have created the current chaos is the well-meaning but calamitously unthinking jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), combined with the disastrous "Wir schaffen das" ("We can manage this") of Germany's then Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The ECHR's extreme interpretation of "open borders" hinders the development of a workable asylum policy.



Immigration is not a natural disaster that befalls Europe, like a plague of locusts or a drought. The migration chaos we are experiencing in Europe is purely a human catastrophe, caused by dreamy policies and faceless judges who are accountable to no one.



[F]urther mass influxes of migrants, such as many countries are experiencing, can be stopped the day after tomorrow by neutralizing the ECHR -- simply by opting out of it.



To think now that Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, Antwerp will inevitably become Islamic is to promise victory in advance. It is defeatist thinking, which Winston Churchill, in his six-volume series, The Second World War, described as more threatening than all the Nazi divisions put together.



A moratorium on immigration might be a good place to start.







What seems to have created the current chaos is the well-meaning but calamitously unthinking jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), combined with the disastrous "Wir schaffen das" ("We can manage this") of Germany's then Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The ECHR's extreme interpretation of "open borders" hinders the development of a workable asylum policy. Pictured: An inside view of the ECHR, in Strasbourg, France. (Photo by Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images)



In New York, as in the Belgian parliament, you can meet more and more people who are convinced that the Islamization of Brussels -- and London and other capitals, they often add -- is now inevitable and only a matter of time.



The growth of the Muslim population in Brussels has been both enormous and meteoric. Over the past 50 years, the number of Muslims has grown steadily, and given the erasure of Europe's borders, thanks to the 1985 Schengen Agreement, there seems to be no end in sight.



The figures


How to End the Suffering of the Palestinians

by Bassam Tawil • January 16, 2024 at 5:00 am



Palestinians in Lebanon are "prevented from employment in 39 professions such as medicine, law and engineering... are socially marginalized, have very limited civil, social, political and economic rights, including restricted access to the Government of Lebanon's public health, educational and social services and face significant restrictions on their right to work..." — United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees, updated September 2020.



Arab citizens of Israel.... can own, buy and sell property, can vote and run in national and local elections, have equal access to free public healthcare, education and other services.... Many Arab Israelis serve in senior positions in hospitals, universities and colleges, courts, the civil service, and even in the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces.



Neither Syria nor Lebanon grants citizenship to the Palestinians living there...



[W]hat is happening inside the Syrian detention centers against the Palestinians is "a war crime by all standards." – Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, alquds.co.uk, November 29, 2023.



By ignoring the profound suffering of the Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, these self-proclaimed "pro-Palestinian" activists and groups are once again proving that their goal is not to help Palestinians, but only to make Israel into a pariah state.



If these activists and groups want to end the suffering of the Palestinians, they should be demanding that the Arab countries end their discriminatory and repressive measures against their Palestinian brethren. The activists and groups should also be raising the plight of the Palestinians at every available international platform instead of blaming Israel.



The real anti-Palestinians are not the Israelis at all, but the same old racist Jew-haters and antisemites who cannot be bothered to learn the truth when it comes to the actual human rights abuse of Palestinians: it is delivered from the hands of Arabs.







By ignoring the profound suffering of the Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, the self-proclaimed "pro-Palestinian" activists and groups are once again proving that their goal is not to help Palestinians, but only to make Israel into a pariah state. Pictured: Rashidieh Refugee Camp for Palestinians in Lebanon. (Photo by Patrick Baz/AFP via Getty Images)



As the world's attention is focused on the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, including South Africa's false "genocide" charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice, in Syria Palestinians are worried about a new government law that considers them "foreigners."



By labeling the Palestinians as "foreigners," the Syrian government is seeking to deprive them of the ability to purchase real estate. Like the majority of the Syrians, most of the Palestinians are Arab Muslims.


How Power Corrupts a Compromised Nation

by Lawrence Kadish • January 15, 2024 at 1:30 pm


If our democracy is to survive, our nation's citizens need to be mindful of Lord Acton's warning, as well as that of founding father Benjamin Franklin, who, upon leaving Independence Hall, told a bystander that America will have a republic, "if you can keep it." Pictured: Benjamin Franklin (L) and Lord Acton. (Images source: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)



Few know his name, but John Dalberg-Acton, otherwise known as Lord Acton, gave us insight and a warning that millions of people recite, perhaps now than ever. A British historian, politician, and writer from the 1800s, he told posterity, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."



Today we are faced with centers of absolute power that, one can argue, have done serious harm to the fabric of our democracy. Education, elections, politics, have all become concentrations of power where someone speaking the truth to such power runs the risk of being sued for defamation or worse.


How Equity Grade Inflation Hurts Jews, Asians and Other Disfavored Minorities

by Alan M. Dershowitz • January 15, 2024 at 5:00 am



Diversity equity and inclusion require that groups – rather than individuals – be treated "equitably", and that preferred groups be advantaged in hiring, admissions and other benefits.



This is all part of the DEI attack on meritocracy. DEI demands that individuals be judged by the color of their skin and their identity rather than the content of their character — or their grades.



DEI now demands that schools begin with the goal of achieving equity grading by any means, including non-blind grading, grade inflation or grade abolition. Anything to undercut the equality of meritocratic blind grading that didn't achieve the goals of DEI.



The negative impact of equity grading is incalculable. It stifles learning, hard work and creativity. It fails to prepare students for the competitive world they will inevitably face after they finish being coddled by universities. It will destroy the competitive advantages American universities used to have.







(Image source: iStock/Getty Images Plus)



A recent study showed that grade inflation has become rampant at American universities. What used to be C+ has now become an A-, as more than 3/4 of students in elite universities get grades of A or A-.



This grade inflation is a direct result of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies and their twin concept of intersectionality. DEI requires that groups – rather than individuals – be treated "equitably", and that preferred groups be advantaged in hiring, admissions and other benefits.



Jews and other disfavored minorities are thus discriminated against in grading. The only way individuals from disfavored groups can compete against favored groups is by achieving better grades. But if everyone gets the same A grades, the favored groups will get the job and admission benefits.


Directing America's Future

by Lawrence Kadish • January 15, 2024 at 4:00 am


The historic freefall now taking place in the House of Representatives is a needless, self-inflicted political wound that only serves to distract our representatives and the nation at large from the extremely real crises facing America.


Taiwan Voters Just Cut China's Xi Jinping Down to Size

by Gordon G. Chang • January 14, 2024 at 5:00 am



The Taiwanese, especially after seeing how Beijing suffocated Hong Kong in the past four years, do not want to be ruled by the Chinese regime.



Xi Jinping at the moment must be fuming. In his 2024 New Year's message, he signaled he is soon going to annex Taiwan. "China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," the Chinese leader declared in a paragraph that appears to list what will happen this year.



The people of the small island of Taiwan are not afraid of large China. They are an inspiration to free people everywhere.







Taiwan's voters stood up to China and all its war talk of recent weeks. The Taiwanese heard Communist Chinese ruler Xi Jinping's threats, became even more defiant, and have now cut him down to size by electing Lai Ching-te as their next president. Pictured: Taiwan's Vice President and president-elect, Lai Ching-te, speaks to supporters at a rally on January 13, 2024 in Taipei, Taiwan. (Photo by Annabelle Chih/Getty Images)



The results are in. Taiwan's voters stood up to China and all its war talk of recent weeks.



Vice President Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency on Saturday in a three-way race with 40.1% of the vote. Hsiao Bi-khim, recently Taipei's representative in Washington, was elected vice president.



New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih, of the opposition Kuomintang received 33.5%, and Ko Wen-je of the new Taiwan People's Party came in third with 26.5%.



The election was historic. For the first time since 1996, when the island republic held its first democratic presidential election, a party has won a third straight presidential term.



Previously, the DPP, as the governing party is known, and the Kuomintang or KMT, traded the presidency every eight years.


One War and Two Visions

by Amir Taheri • January 14, 2024 at 4:00 am



The BBC gives massive coverage to so-called diplomatic initiatives to bring about a ceasefire. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's "shuttle diplomacy" between Washington and the Middle East is presented as a serious enterprise rather than a banal version of shadow-boxing.



[T]he Beeb wants only Israel to rein in its furies, never mentioning that Hamas, too, could help by stopping rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets.



The IRGC cannot tell its audience that those heroes of the "Resistance" have been unable to protect the people they have under their rule for almost two decades. Thus, the IRGC offers no footage of "charred bodies of children" or heaps of rubble where once stood a Gazan village or town.



Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi assures everyone that "martyrs" in Gaza have the good fortune of going straight to paradise.



IRGC Quds Force chief Major-General Ismail Qa'ani has put it succinctly: "We give our Arab brothers who join the Resistance Front everything they want, including arms and training. But we shall not fight on their behalf."



In other words, the glory of martyrdom is not for us, but for those we hire to die on our behalf.







Pictured: Anti-Israel protesters outside the offices of BBC Scotland, on October 14, 2023 in Glasgow, United Kingdom. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)



If you thought you knew all you need to know about the war in Gaza, think again. Much depends on where and how you get your news from. Last week I decided to do a little, obviously non-scientific, experiment by following the Gaza news through two channels: the old BBC, one of Great Britain's most adulated institutions, and in parallel with it, the various news outlets controlled by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tehran.



A number of themes emerged.



The BBC has already sent the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel to its dead archives, while the IRGC outlets keep mentioning it as "the battle that ended the myth of Zionist invincibility." The fact that 7 October was an ambush unleashed against unarmed people, including youths attending a concert, and not a battle, is beside the point; it must be constantly mentioned to justify Iran's thinly disguised hope that the Gaza war continues "longer than any think."


Iran's Growing Ballistic Missile Threat

by Majid Rafizadeh • January 13, 2024 at 5:00 am



Because of the apparent lack of oversight from world leaders, especially the United States, the rising provision of ballistic missiles by Iran to non-state actors --including terrorist and militia groups, as well as rogue states -- now presents a significant source of concern for global security.



The regime continues to hide behind its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Those are Iran's human shields. That is why they have proxies in the first place: then it is the proxies doing the dirty work and being attacked, not Iran.



Unfortunately, unless Iran's leaders themselves feel seriously disrupted, why would they ever stop? The Obama and Biden administrations tried giving Iran billions of dollars in "carrots." Clearly that was a flop. The answer, all the same, is not: "Maybe there weren't enough carrots. So next time, we will give more of them!"



To stabilize the Middle East, it is essential to apply ongoing pressure on the Iranian leaders themselves, to disrupt their accelerating programs to produce nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, and to convince them, the old-fashioned way, that their hegemonic dreams of taking over the Middle East simply will not work.


The period of the Biden administration's leadership has witnessed notable strides in Iran's ballistic missile capabilities. These encompass advances in range, accuracy and payload capacity. Because of the apparent lack of oversight from world leaders, especially the United States, the rising provision of ballistic missiles by Iran to non-state actors --including terrorist and militia groups, as well as rogue states -- now presents a significant source of concern for global security.


The International Court Of "Injustice" Begins Its Blood Libel Trial Against Israel

by Alan M. Dershowitz • January 12, 2024 at 5:00 am



What is the International Court of Justice? It is not international, because it excludes judges from certain countries. It is not a real court, because the judges are selected by their countries and many of them simply follow the instructions of those who appointed them. And it has never done justice, because it has long been biased against Israel. It is the United Nations court, and that tells you all you need to know about it.



The United Nations has become the megaphone of bigotry and anti-Semitism.... Both the United Nations and its court are shams.



It is the Hamas charter that calls for genocide against the Jews of Israel, and it is South Africa that is harboring Hamas terrorists and defending its murders and rapes. It should be Hamas that is on trial for attempted genocide and South Africa that is on trial for complicity with Hamas. Instead, the nation-state of the Jewish people is being accused of a blood libel, despite going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties in its legitimate efforts to destroy Hamas.



The evidence is indisputable that Hamas has committed numerous war crimes.



Were the International Court of Justice to falsely conclude that Israel was guilty of genocide, it would destroy whatever remaining credibility that court might have. If that were to happen, the United States and some other nations should and probably would leave the court: it would not deserve the legitimacy afforded by membership of any decent country.


What is the International Court of Justice? It is not international, because it excludes judges from certain countries. It is not a real court, because the judges are selected by their countries and many of them simply follow the instructions of those who appointed them. And it has never done justice, because it has long been biased against Israel. The United Nations has become the megaphone of bigotry and anti-Semitism. Both the United Nations and its court are shams. Pictured: Judges in the International Court of Justice take their seats to hear the blood libel accusation against Israel, brought by South Africa, in The Hague on January 11, 2024. (Photo by Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)



The blood libel accusation against Israel has now begun in The Hague. The failed nation of South Africa has brought genocide charges against Israel in the International Court of Justice.



What is the International Court of Justice? It is not international, because it excludes judges from certain countries. It is not a real court, because the judges are selected by their countries and many of them simply follow the instructions of those who appointed them. And it has never done justice, because it has long been biased against Israel. It is the United Nations court, and that tells you all you need to know about it. The United Nations has become the megaphone of bigotry and anti-Semitism. As an Israeli diplomat once put it, if Algeria introduced a resolution that the earth is flat and that Israel flattened it, it would win 120 to 27 with 32 abstentions. And you can name the countries in each of the groups before any evidence is presented.

link

[OmegaMan]

Physical Attacks On Churches Saw A 600% Increase In 2023, Annual Report Shows

By

Decision Magazine

January 18, 2024


Worldwide, the persecution of Christians reached higher levels last year, and in many countries the persecution grew more violent, according to the Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List, an annual report detailing global persecution against Christians.



One in seven Christians (365 million) across the globe live under what the report calls “high levels” of persecution. In 2023, the report counts 4,998 believers who were killed because of their faith, some 15,000 churches or Christian properties that were attacked, and around 4,000 Christians who were detained by authorities. Additionally, nearly 300,000 believers were driven from the homes by war or extremism.



The physical attacks on churches and church property saw a sixfold increase over last year, Open Doors says.



“These attacks put huge pressure on Christian communities, sparking fear and insecurity,” the report states. “Even if believers do regroup in smaller numbers, they have limited leadership and few resources.”



The nation with the worst record for tolerating or perpetrating persecution against Christians, once again, is North Korea. Rounding out the top five, in order, were Somalia, Libya, Eritrea and Yemen. Rounding out the top 10 were Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan.



Even though Nigeria was No. 6 among the worst countries for persecution, the African nation remains “the deadliest place to follow Jesus,” Open Doors reports, with 82% of killings happening there.



Despite the violence against Christians in Nigeria, the Biden administration’s State Department neglected for the third straight year to designate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern,” once again over the objections of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and religious freedom advocates.



Sub-Saharan Africa is among the worst areas for violent persecution of Christians, driven by political instability, war and extremism.



“Amid lawlessness, jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and Boko Haram have thrived,” the report states. “Weak governments fail to stop them. And militants attack Christian communities and churches with impunity.”



In addition to Nigeria, African Christians were also killed in Congo (DRC), Burkina Faso, Cameroon and the Central African Republic (CAR), Open Doors says.


link

[ExquisiteGerbil]

Report: Mob Torches Christian Communities as Blinken Arrives in Nigeria

ABUJA, NIGERIA - JANUARY 23: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY - MANDATORY CREDIT - 'CHUCK KENNEDY / DEPARTMENT OF STATE / HANDOUT' - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) meets with Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (R) in Abuja, …Chuck Kennedy/Department of State/Anadolu via Getty Images

FRANCES MARTEL
23 Jan 2024

6:30

Reports began surfacing on Tuesday out of Mangu, Plateau state, Nigeria, of mass mob attacks on “those perceived to be Christians” and the burning down of church buildings.



Plateau Government Caleb Mutfwang imposed a 24-hour curfew on Mangu in response to “the deterioration of the security situation,” but did not specify the nature of the crisis.



The situation unfolded as American Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Abuja where he met with President Bola Tinubu to discuss American business investment opportunities in the country. The administration of President Joe Biden has prioritized attempts to strengthen relations with the Nigerian government even as human rights groups condemn the federal government for turning a blind eye to coordinated mass killings and other attacks on Christians in the country.



Plateau lies in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, the central region where the majority Christian south and majority Muslim north of the country meet. It has faced years of increasingly gruesome violent attacks on local Christian communities fueled by an organized jihad on the part of ethnic Fulani herdsmen, who, local Christians denounce, are attempting to exterminate indigenous Christian communities and take their land for Muslims.






The wreckage of a car hit by an attack led by Boko Haram members is seen surrounded by residents of the Adam Kolo district of Maiduguri on February 24, 2021. (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)



International Christian Concern named Nigeria the world’s most dangerous place to be a Christian in its 2023 annual report on religious freedom, citing a “20-year genocide against Christians” by Fulani terrorists as well as jihadist groups such as the Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram.



Mangu, in particular, was one of several Plateau targets of a slaughter estimated to have killed at least 195 people and resulted in the destruction of over 1,200 homes in Christian communities on Christmas Eve 2023.



“As I am talking to you, in Mangu local government alone, we buried 15 people. As of this morning, in Bokkos, we are counting not less than 100 corpses. I am yet to take stock of (the deaths in) Barkin Ladi,” Mutfwang said shortly after the terrorist siege. “It has been a very terrifying Christmas for us here in Plateau.”



The regional outlet Sahara Reporters claimed on Tuesday that a mob of suspected “herdsmen” stormed the Mangu community from bushes and began burning down Christian homes and church buildings. As part of the attack, the mob set the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) headquarters in Mangu on fire. COCIN is one of several local Christian denominations in Nigeria, marking its 120th anniversary



“As we speak, the COCIN Church near Sabon Kasuwa is on fire and they are advancing towards other churches in town,” an anonymous alleged resident told Sahara Reporters.



The outlet published footage showing mobs terrorizing Mangu and a sky full of what appeared to be smoke from a fire, but the video did not indicate what was on fire or who was being attacked.






The office of the governor of Plateau announced a 24-hour curfew in Mangu, an apparent confirmation that the area was experiencing some form of turmoil. Mutfwang’s office did not confirm if the situation was, indeed, mob attacks on Christians as Sahara Reporters documented, not commenting on the nature of the unrest at all. Mutfwang’s office said the curfew was needed “in view of the deterioration of the security situation within the area.”



“It may appear as though some people are determined to create an atmosphere of insecurity in the state, despite the government’s efforts to end the activities of terrorist elements,” the announcement of the curfew read in part, failing to offer any hints as to who “some people” was a reference to.



Nigerian media and local government officials often refer to jihadist attackers in the region as “bandits” or “herdsman,” without identifying them as being driven by Islamist ideology. In a conversation with Breitbart News in July, Father Remigius Ihyula, whose diocese is in neighboring Benue state, denounced the use of vague terms to identify the threat.



“In fact, people were even warned not to say they are Fulani herdsmen who have been causing these atrocities such that when you open the general media they are talking about bandits – bandits or they say ‘unknown gunmen’ or things like that,” Father Ihyula said, “so you read about bandits. It’s rubbish: they are Fulani men going about with cattle and with guns and killing people and the government won’t do anything about it.”



Local Nigerian news broadcasts on Tuesday quoted local officials who said that unspecific unrest had erupted in Mangu due to an “alleged misunderstanding between some cattle herders and a native.” The cattle herders in the region tend to be members of the Muslim-majority Fulani ethnic group, while the Christian communities are often smaller tribal communities with little to no representation in the Nigerian federal government.






While the local Plateau government contended with the unrest, President Tinubu met with America’s top diplomat on Tuesday. Blinken arrived in Nigeria on Tuesday after brief stops in Cabo Verde and Cote d’Ivoire, on a tour in part meant to compete with growing Chinese influence on African states. Shortly before Blinken’s arrival on the continent, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi concluded his own tour a week prior; China has sent its foreign minister to Africa for the first trip of the year for the past 34 years.



“American entrepreneurs, American companies are eager to partner with and invest in Nigeria’s economy, particularly in the tech sector,” Blinken said on Tuesday, according to the Nigerian newspaper Vanguard. “Our venture capital companies are working to finance so we want to work in partnership to help drive Nigeria’s technological revolution, which is creating jobs.”



Blinken also announced on Tuesday prior to his meeting with Tinubu that the Biden administration would invest $45 million in funds to help foster “stability” in West Africa generally.



The Biden administration received widespread criticism in 2021 for removing Nigeria from the State Department’s list of “Countries of Particular Concern” (CPC) for religious freedom, a designation that serves as a warning to dismissive governments to act to improve the situation or receive less support from Washington. As of early January, Biden has failed to restore Nigeria to that list in 2024.

link

[schwartzie]

The Genocide of 'The Sunday People': 365,000,000 Christians Persecuted Worldwide

by Raymond Ibrahim

February 7, 2024 at 5:00 am



Overall, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 365 million believers suffering "high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith."



Christians suffer "extreme levels of persecution" in the top 13 of the 50 nations. They are: 1) North Korea, 2) Somalia, 3) Libya, 4) Eritrea, 5) Yemen, 6) Nigeria, 7) Pakistan, 8) Sudan, 9) Iran, 10) Afghanistan, 11) India, 12) Syria, 13) and Saudi Arabia.



In the worst of the Muslim nations, Christianity has been so stamped out over the years that there are no indigenous Christians to persecute, only converts—apostates, who, according to most interpretations of Islamic law, deserve death.



The wildly popular late Sunni cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi noted on television that if not for the apostasy law [proposing death], Islam would have died out long ago.



Afghanistan: "When the Taliban came to power, they did so with pledges to recognize more freedoms than in the past. But that hasn't happened—if an Afghan's Christian faith is discovered, it can be a death sentence, or they can be detained and tortured into giving information about fellow believers." — World Watch List 2024, opendoors.org


Continued at link

[schwartzie]

More Than 365 million Christians Face Genocide

by Uzay Bulut

February 20, 2024 at 5:00 am



Except for North Korea, where the persecution is caused by "dictatorial paranoia" and "communist and post-communist oppression," the main religion of all other countries and groups on the list is Islam.



"While some relief aid is available, this is mostly distributed through local Muslim groups and mosques, which are alleged to be discriminating against anyone not considered a devout Muslim." — Open Doors, Yemen.



"More believers are killed for their faith in Nigeria each year, than everywhere else in the world combined." — Open Doors, Nigeria.



"For Christians who convert from Islam, not even the veneer of tolerance is present." — Open Doors, Iran.



"When the Taliban came to power, they did so with pledges to recognize more freedoms than in the past. But that hasn't happened—if an Afghan's Christian faith is discovered, it can be a death sentence, or they can be detained and tortured into giving information about fellow believers." — Open Doors, Afghanistan.



"Of 34.5 million displaced people across Sub-Saharan Africa, around 16.2 million are Christians." — Open Doors, Sub-Saharan Africa.



Many of these incidents remain unreported by the mainstream media. And until the mainstream media, governments and international organizations start openly addressing the ideological and theological motives of the perpetrators, this worldwide, genocide-level persecution of Christians will likely increase.

Continued at link

[schwartzie]

'You Are an Infidel': The Persecution of Christians, February 2024

by Raymond Ibrahim

March 31, 2024 at 5:00 am



Her family immediately went to police, who told them not to go public, and that they would help return Irene.... In early February, however, the family finally did go public -- and hinted that the authorities were complicit in the abduction and know exactly where she is. — copticsolidarity.org, February 292, 2024 - Egypt.



Muslim terrorists launched raids on several Christian villages. They murdered 23 people—six were burned alive—wounded 10 and abducted five more, along with setting 28 homes on fire. — persecution.org, February 21, 2024 - Nigeria.



Nigerian cleric asserted that, because Nigeria's First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, is Christian, she should be put to death. — naijanews.com, February 22, 2024 - Nigeria.



"[One of the Muslims] shouted that no Christian in the area should be left alive." — morningstarnews.org, February 6, 2024 - Pakistan.



"...[T]hese pernicious laws... are deeply entrenched in Islamic Sharia law, and the determination to abolish them is lacking in a radicalized nation." — Juliet Chowdhry, Trustee for the British Asian Christian Association, britishasianchristians.org, February 26, 2024 - Pakistan.



"He replied to me that he was acting in the name of Allah because it was not normal to have statues and that he had come to correct that." — charentelibre.fr, February 2, 2024 - France.





On February 9 — a Friday, when Muslims assemble at mosques and get riled against "infidels" — Islamic State militants torched several churches and Christian homes in Cabo Delgado Province. Pictured: Burned and damaged huts in the village of Aldeia da Paz outside Macomia, Cabo Delgado Province, Mozambique on August 24, 2019. On August 1, 2019, the village was attacked by an Islamist group. (Photo by Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of February 2024.



The Abduction, Rape, and Forced Conversion of Christian Girls



Egypt: On Jan. 22, Irene Ibrahim Shehata, a 21-year-old medical student at Asyut National University, disappeared between midterm exams. Her family immediately went to police, who told them not to go public, and that they would help return Irene; the family complied. In early February, however, the family finally did go public -- and hinted that the authorities were complicit in the abduction and know exactly where she is. Their fears appeared confirmed: in late February, her family learned that the religion field on Irene's ID had been electronically changed from Christian to Muslim. Weeks before that, Irene had managed to make a desperate, tearful call to her brother, before a man seized the phone and said, "Okay, you heard her voice and know she's okay, right? Now go to hell!" and slammed down the phone. According to one source familiar with the case (name withheld for fear of reprisals),



"Her brother heard her screaming, someone was yelling at her, and then the call ended. It seems that she used his phone without his permission. This was a great piece of evidence that she was kidnapped."



The family then began its own investigation, but when they contacted police with the information they had gathered, "The police officers threatened to arrest the family if they tried to rescue her and warned them that the kidnappers are armed." As of mid-February, authorities "concluded" that Irene was never abducted but had rather run off with a Muslim man and had willingly converted to Islam. As her father said in an interview, though: if Irene had intended to run off, why would she do it in between exams, while carrying medical supplies as opposed to travel gear? The family's experiences with the authorities, the unnamed source concluded, are "Another way to mislead families." He added:



"The Muslim Brotherhood Sharia Association in the Asyut Governorate, under security cover from Asyut and Sohaj cities, coordinated the kidnapping of Christian college student Irene Shehata."



The abduction and Islamization of Christian girls in Egypt and is well-documented in a 2020 report by Coptic Solidary, "Jihad of the Womb": Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt, which documents "the widespread practice of abduction and trafficking" of Coptic girls.



Pakistan: On Feb. 12, four Muslim men kidnapped a 10-year-old Christian girl. Since then, Laiba Suhail was apparently compelled to convert to Islam. The man behind the child's abduction, Shaukat Shah, "is well-known in the area for forcibly converting children to Islam under duress, coercing them to file court statements that they willfully converted and later taking them from shelter homes on the pretext of giving them religious education." According to the child's handicapped father,



"This is Shah's modus operandi. No one knows what happens to his victims after they are handed to him. We fear that he and his accomplices are involved in sex trafficking, and they sell these minor girls when they see that the families are in no position to pursue the matter further in courts."



Police, arguing that the 10-year-old "willingly" converted, have refused to help the father recover his child:



"On Feb. 15, police informed us that an application had been filed by Laiba in the court of a magistrate in which she had claimed that she had converted to Islam of her own free will 'after being impressed with Islamic teachings.' We immediately went to the court where we saw our minor daughter surrounded by several policemen. We were not allowed to talk to her despite our repeated requests. The police later presented her before the magistrate where she reportedly repeated the contents of the application. She also sought to be sent to the Dar Ul Aman [women's shelter], which the magistrate admitted...



"It is a blatant lie that my daughter has changed her faith willingly. Whatever little religious education she has is from the church's Sunday school. She has had no interaction with Muslims, because she used to stay at home all day long to take care of me and her mother."



According to the family's attorney,



"Laiba's case is yet another example of how sharia [Islamic law] is invoked to undermine the age of a minor. In her statement before the magistrate, the girl claimed that she's an adult, but her official birth document states her age is 10 years and two months."



The Muslim Slaughter of Christians



Nigeria: Between Feb. 16 and 19, Muslim terrorists launched raids on several Christian villages. They murdered 23 people — six were burned alive — wounded 10 and abducted five more, along with setting 28 homes on fire. A resident from one of the affected villages in Kajuru county said that "The attackers were on many motorcycles, shouting 'Allah Akbar [Allah is greater].'" Another resident said "We are killed because of our faith in Jesus."



On Sunday, Feb. 18, Muslim Fulani tribesmen ambushed six Christians as they were returning home from church. One man was killed, three sustained gunshot wounds, and a woman was raped.



On Feb. 28, Muslims terrorized a Christian village. According to local resident, Patience Ali,



"The attackers, who we know to be Muslim bandits terrorizing Christians in Kaduna state, attacked the Angwan Auta area of Gonin Gora and killed two Christians. They also broke into about 10 houses belonging to Christians and kidnapped dozens of members from these households."



According to a Feb. 15 report, Muslims killed about 200 Christians during raids on several villages in January, and then renamed the "conquered" villages with Muslim names.



On Feb. 14, while discussing this unaddressed genocide, Nigeria Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi said,



"The violent persecution and massacres in my diocese have increased exponentially since I was appointed as bishop in 2014 and continue to increase ... What is occurring in Benue State and elsewhere in Nigeria is an organized, systematic and brutal cleansing of Christians. Between November 2023 and January 2024, Nigeria has lost over 1,000 lives to these bandits, to these Fulani terrorists, and no arrests [have been made]."



Also in February, a Nigerian cleric asserted that, because Nigeria's First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, is Christian, she should be put to death. In a video, he could be heard saying,



"Now, Tinubu, his wife, is an infidel (Christian). As an infidel, she is a leader among the infidels. Allah's judgement says she must be killed. She's a pastor... a leader of infidels (Christians); Allah says they must be killed..."



Burkina Faso: On Sunday, Feb. 25, Muslim gunmen stormed into a Catholic church during service. They opened fire and murdered 15 Christian worshippers (12 immediately, three died later from their wounds). The report adds:



"This is just the latest in a series of atrocities blamed on terrorist groups active in the region, some of which have targeted Christian churches while others have involved the abduction of clergy."



Uganda: Two months after a former Muslim couple had put their faith in Christ, the parents of four young children were "slashed to death." On Feb. 2, according to the neighbor of Twaha, 38, and his 27-year-old wife, Nadiimu,



"I heard people talking and conversing loudly in Arabic and the Lugwere language, saying that Twaha is to reap the fruits of leaving Islam. After a few minutes, I heard loud wailing coming out of Twaha's house."



The neighbor contacted police; when they arrived, they found the married couple's corpses "with deep cuts." The husband also had "a swollen neck, possibly indicating strangulation." Several long Somali swords, knives, and an axe were left at the scene of the murder, presumably "as a warning to other Muslims considering conversion to Christianity." The slain couple leave behind four children, aged two, three, five, and seven.



Pakistan: On Feb. 5, six Muslim gunmen opened fire on a group of Christians at a marketplace. A 14-year-old Christian boy, Sunil Masih, was killed. According to the boy's uncle, who was with him at the time,



"We were talking to each other when suddenly Zaman Butt and his accomplices ... came there on motorcycles... [One of the Muslims] shouted that no Christian in the area should be left alive, after which Zaman opened fire on Sunil with his pistol, hitting him in the chest.... The other assailants also opened fire on us with their weapons, but we managed to save ourselves by taking cover of a wall."



Another Christian youth was also shot but the bullet only grazed him. The murderers fled the scene "while hurling threats at the Christians and so far have not been arrested."



A day earlier, on Feb. 4, this same Zaman Butt, at the head of a group of intoxicated Muslims,



"attempted to kidnap Sharoon Masih, also 15 years old, for sexual assault at gunpoint. When Sharoon bravely resisted, he was subjected to a brutal beating that rendered him unconscious. To intimidate the community and deter any intervention, the assailants fired shots into the air."



It was to "avenge" himself on Sharoon's family, who had dared to contact police, that Butt, the following day, launched his fatal marketplace attack on random Christians, killing Sunil. Discussing this latest murder, Asif Masih, a local church pastor, said,



"The perpetrators were known for their consistent pattern of harassing and assaulting young Christian men in the community. They are part of a growing local paedophile ring that is known to the police but being ignored. Their vile depredations target the weak Christian community because authorities ignore our pleas for help."



Juliet Chowdhry, of the British Asian Christian Association, said,



"The tragic murder of an innocent Christian teenager could have been prevented. Fearful families, following a previous shooting incident [on a Christian wedding and church], opted to accept a peace deal ... fearing that the police would not provide adequate protection if they pursued justice through the courts. It is a damning indictment of the Pakistani law enforcement and justice system that the perpetrators of last year's shooting incident have escalated their violence to the extent of cold-bloodedly killing a 15-year-old. What is even more distressing is the fact that, to date, not a single arrest has been made."



This latest murder in the Punjab is the second in three months. On Nov. 9, 2023, a 20-year-old Christian medical technician student, Farhan Ul Qamar, was shot to death by a Muslim who reportdly hates Christians.



Separately, on Feb. 23, Asif Masih, a 38-year-old Christian man, was discovered in a water pond with his throat slit. The family eventually learned that Asif's Muslim employer had killed him and dumped his body in the water a month earlier, when the slain man's family first started frantically searching for him, with virtually no help from police. According to Juliet Chowdhry, Trustee for the British Asian Christian Association,



"The murder and disposal of Mr. Masih's body in such a cold and calculated manner by an employer or anyone with a vendetta against non-Muslims is sadly not a new occurrence. Wealthy Muslims have long exploited the horrific Qisas and Diyat Ordinance, a law that has fostered one of the most despicable mindsets among sections of Pakistan's populace. Pakistani human rights activists have tirelessly campaigned for the removal of these pernicious laws, but they are deeply entrenched in Islamic Sharia law, and the determination to abolish them is lacking in a radicalized nation."



Iran: On Feb. 20, a Muslim convert to Christianity, who was exiled and imprisoned, was "found" dead at the age of 37. Authorities claimed natural causes, namely, a heart attack. During the Christian man's funeral, eulogist Mansour Borji, said:



"Ebrahim's untimely death is devastating. We have followed his case since he was arrested by the Iranian regime for going to a house-church and for being in possession of Bibles. The Islamic Republic of Iran had sentenced Ebrahim for 'acting against national security', but nothing could have been further from the truth. The freedom for everyone to have access to and possess a Bible was central to Ebrahim's life and ministry. It was the reason he was initially arrested and served almost seven years in prison for."



Ebrahim's experiences in Iran are not uncommon. The headline of a separate report from Feb. 19 says, "At Least 166 Christians Arrested in Iran Last Year for Their Faith."



Muslim Attacks on Freedom: Apostates, Blasphemers, and Preachers



Pakistan: A Muslim judge sentenced a Christian man to life in prison for allegedly committing "blasphemy" against Muhammad on social media. According to a Feb. 9 report,



"Fanson Shahid, 56, had been beaten in his home in Lahore when arrested in March 2022 and tortured into confessing after he was accused of posting a derogatory remark about the prophet of Islam in a comment on a post that another Christian had shared, his wife said. The phone on which the Facebook comment was made had been stolen from him in 2019, she said."



The report adds that it is only on a technicality that the accused "lucked out" and was not handed a death sentence:



"Fanson Shahid was convicted under Section 295-C of Pakistan's blasphemy statutes, which calls for a mandatory death sentence for derogatory comments about Muhammad, but [Justice] Chadhar cited as a 'mitigating circumstance' that the comment was posted 'only once.'"



Uganda: Muslims beat and torched the home of Philemon Shuha, a 34-year-old Christian father of three, due to his evangelical work. According to his colleague, Titus, Muslims approached them on Jan. 30 and said,



"Why did you give out Christian literature to our people? Have you come to kill Islam by converting our people? Today you can't go unpunished."



Titus fled, but they managed to grab Philemon. After mobilizing a group of Christians for assistance, Titus returned:



"[W]e arrived at the scene of the incident, and the attackers fled in different directions. We found Shuha almost lifeless and unconscious and lying in a pool of blood. He had a deep cut on the right side of the head near the ear and blood coming from his right hand. He could not open his eyes."



They rushed him to a hospital. Later that night, sometime after 10:30 p.m., Titus received a phone call from Shuha's wife saying that an arson attack on her home was in progress:



"The church members who were with me in the hospital urgently rushed to the home of Shuha using the church van, but upon arrival the house was on fire. We tried to put out the fire, but unfortunately a big portion of the house had been destroyed."



South Sudan: A Muslim man beat and abandoned his wife, a mother of seven children, for converting to Christianity during their stay at a displaced persons refugee camp bordering Sudan. "My husband told me, 'Why did you believe in Issa [Jesus]? You are an infidel," before thrashing her, Hawa Abdalla, 44, said. According to the Feb. 14 report, 2,000 of the 9,000 refugees she lives with have also been persecuted for their Christian faith:



"The Christians who are fleeing the war in Sudan are facing persecution from Muslim refugees in both Darfur and the Wedwiel camp in South Sudan... [T]he 2,000 refugees and internally displaced people in Sudan who have converted to Christianity from Islam all face the threat of persecution."



Muslim Attacks on Churches and Crosses



Mozambique: On Feb. 9 — a Friday, when Muslims assemble at mosques and get riled against "infidels" — Islamic State militants torched several churches and Christian homes in Cabo Delgado Province. The report adds that, "although insurgents do not usually distinguish between Muslims and Christians, they have carried out attacks against specifically Christian communities, including cases where they separated people based on their religion, and executed Christians."



Another report states that on Feb. 12, Islamic State militants torched a Catholic mission in the town of Mazeze. According to its priest, who managed to escape, the Muslim terrorists,



"attacked and destroyed the mission buildings, particularly the presbytery, the church and the parish office, some of which were recently built, but without causing human casualties. Everything was machine-gunned, everything was razed, not even a single item of clothing remained."



Malawi: On Feb. 9 — the same Friday — Muslims in Machinga went on a "rampage ... burning to ashes a church and a house of a church minister. The Muslims claim Islam is under threat after Living Waters Church converted a number of Muslims to Christianity and joined the church." The report adds that "some church members were severely beaten up and undressed..."



France: On Feb. 2 — another Friday — a Muslim man desecrated the St. John the Baptist Church in La Couronne. He removed a large cross from the altar and repeatedly swung it at a large statue of St. John. It was completely destroyed and the cross badly damaged. Police arrested the man at the scene. The parish priest, Fr. Sylvain, arrived and questioned the man as to his actions:



"I told him what he did really hurt. He replied to me that he was acting in the name of Allah because it was not normal to have statues and that he had come to correct that."



The priest added:



"This act has spread a lot of violence, it is extremely painful. We feel sadness and revolt, but also a very strong feeling of insecurity and we hope that justice will do its job to prevent the irreparable from being committed."



The man was soon thereafter released — although he may need to undergo psychiatric treatment.



On Feb. 14, another Muslim man who had also been arrested for threatening a church and "glorifying terrorism," fled the hospital in which he was being treated but was rearrested on a train platform in Paris. According to witnesses, he was heard crying "Dirty Christians, I'm going to kill you all! The first one who comes, I'll kill him; the first who speaks, I'll kill him!"



Separately, in Dordogne, four large public crucifixes (cavalries) spread out in separate towns were defaced with references to Islam. One cross, built in the 1800s in a village of 146 people, had the word "Islam" and a crescent moon sprawled on it. Another had "Allah." Yet another was spray-painted with, "Today is the land of infidels, tomorrow the land of Islam." Responding to this latest act of anti-Christianism and Islamic supremacism, Quentin Marty, a Catholic farmer on whose land one of these crosses was desecrated, said,



"It's despicable, sickening, childish... And it's a reflection of today's society. Everyone makes fun of everything. I am ignoring the sacrilege and I am not going to engage in hateful speech, but those who wrote this are imbeciles who do not respect the religion of our ancestors."



Thierry Niquot, a priest and administrator of an affected parish, said "There is no need to add fuel to the fire," and that accusing Muslims "must be avoided at all costs."



Several other churches and statues were attacked and desecrated in France throughout February (such as here and here).



Germany: Soon after 5,000 "leftist" Germans demonstrated against the AfD, an anti-immigration political party, in the city of Hamm, the Church of Hamm was spray-painted with the Arabic words "Allahu akbar." ("Allah is greatest"). As the Feb. 21 report points out, such is the "gratitude" the Germans received for marching against "anti-Islam" and "racism."



There were many other attacks, including arson, and desecration of churches in Germany throughout February (for instance: here, here, here, here, and here).



Italy: On Feb. 26, the Church of the Madonna in Vasto was broken into, vandalized, and plundered. According to a report,



"The perpetrators furthermore left human excrement on the floor of the church. The parish priest expressed his shock and disgust about this gesture of degradation and disrespect.



"It is not the first time that the churches of Vasto have been the target of vandals and petty thieves."



It is also not the first time a European church in an area with a large Muslim presence has been smeared with feces.



Lebanon: Three people, two of whom are Syrian "refugees," were arrested for vandalizing and plundering ten churches in Mount Lebanon and Beirut. After adding that "These arrests come after several crimes were reported at the start of the year," the report cites that in just nine days, between Jan. 15 and 24, six churches were attacked.



Artsakh: Despite claiming that it will not desecrate ancient Christian heritage sites in Artsakh, Azerbaijan continue to deface churches. According to a Feb. 6 report,



"Vankasar Church, a world-renowned historical and cultural monument, stands proudly in the ancient cradle of Artsakh, a region marked by deep history and rich heritage....



"With deep concern, we learned about the recent malicious actions of Azerbaijani vandals who attacked the Vankasar church. Shocking footage has surfaced revealing that the sacred cross, a symbol of faith and spirituality, has been removed, leaving a heartbreaking void in the integrity of this revered relic....



"This act of vandalism represents not just an attack on stones and mortars, but a deliberate attack on the soul and heritage of a nation.



"It is imperative that the international community mobilizes to condemn these barbaric acts and urge Azerbaijan to respect international conventions protecting cultural and religious sites."



Turkey: After transforming the Hagia Sophia — originally one of Eastern Christianity's oldest and grandest cathedrals — into a mosque, authorities have targeted yet another iconic Christian monument, the Chora Church, for transformation into a mosque. According to a Feb. 6 report,



"The conversion of Hagia Sophia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a powerful symbol for the world's Orthodox Christians, sparked an international outcry and caused an additional strain in tense ties between Athens and Ankara. Chora Church, or Church of the Holy Savior, is another emblematic monument listed among the masterpieces of UNESCO's World Heritage List.... Chora Church was the first to be looted when the Ottomans conquered the city in 1453 and was converted into a mosque under Sultan Bayezid II in the early 16th century, when it was renamed Kariye Camii and a minaret was added to the structure. The building was designated a museum by the Turkish government in 1945."



Chora Church is set to open as Kariya Mosque for Muslim worshippers by May 2024.

link

[schwartzie]

'You Have a Beautiful Daughter...': The Persecution of Christians, March 2024

by Raymond Ibrahim

April 28, 2024 at 6:00 am



[O]n March 25, the Lahore High Court in Pakistan awarded custody of a 13-year-old Christian girl to her Muslim kidnapper.



Charges were filed, "but instead of arresting the two suspects, police tipped them off .... Since that time, they have been threatening me and my mother to withdraw the case or face the consequences." – Morning Star News, March 8, 2024, Pakistan.



"Christians are obviously a despised minority [in Yemen]... Christians are often last in line as it relates to being able to receive the care and attention there as war and as these things continue to escalate. That has a ripple effect ... while Christians were already last [in] line, that line becomes even further elongated." — Open Doors USA CEO Ryan Brown, Christian Broadcasting Network, March 8, 2024.



"I thought it only happened elsewhere." — Mayor of Clermont d'Excideuil, France, March 11, 2024.


On March 25, the Lahore High Court in Pakistan awarded custody of a 13-year-old Christian girl to her Muslim kidnapper. Pictured: The Lahore High Court. (Photo by Arif Ali/AFP via Getty Images)

The Muslim Slaughter of Christians



Russia: On March 22, Muslim terrorists armed with automatic weapons launched an attack on Crocus City Hall near Moscow, massacring at least 139 people and wounding more. Boasting of "killing Christians," ISIS quickly claimed the attack in a statement that said the assault was intentionally designed to target "thousands of Christians." Two months earlier, ISIS issued a communique to the "Lions of Islam" — presumably Muslim "avengers" around the world — to terrorize and slaughter Christians and Jews, including by targeting churches and synagogues. An excerpt follows:



"Chase your preys whether Jewish, Christian or their allies, on the streets and roads of America, Europe, and the world. Break into their homes, kill them and steal their peace of mind by any means you can lay hands on..... hoot them with bullets, cut their throats with sharp knives, and run them over with vehicles. A sincere person will not lack the means to draw blood from the hearts of the Jews, the Christians, and their allies, and thus ease the suffering in the hearts of the believers. Come at them from every door, kill them by the worst of means, turn their gatherings and celebrations into bloody massacres, do not distinguish between a civilian kaffir, and a military one, for they are all kuffar and the ruling against them is one.... Intentionally seek easy targets before hard ones, civilian targets before military one, religious targets like synagogues and churches before others, for this will satisfy the soul."



Uganda: On March 30, Muslims hacked a Christian man to death for leading Muslims—all of whom immediately went into hiding—to Christ. Ronald Twinomugisha was 32. According to his neighbor, an eyewitness, men dressed in Islamic attire entered into Ronald's home around 7 p.m.:



"At around 8 p.m. I heard an alarm and a call for help then followed by a loud bang like that of splitting firewood. It was a loud wailing saying, 'Please don't kill me! Please don't kill me! I am working for Jesus Christ! Please, Jesus is the one who sent me!' I feared to come out of my house, but shortly the voice stopped."



Ronald's body was later found in a pool of his own blood:



"The attackers left a note saying, 'We learned what you have been teaching, and misleading Muslims and leading them to a wrong religion from the course and path of Allah.'"



Separately, on March 8, Muslims murdered another Christian man for similarly leading other Muslims to Christ. Earlier that day, Kiisa Masolo, 45, had been preaching in the streets, and returned home around 7 p.m., at which point seven masked men dressed in Islamic attire broke into his house and abducted him. According to his mother, Norah,



"After whisking him away, three men remained behind and told me that, 'Allah is very displeased with your son, and we're out to punish him.' Then the three men left."



Her son's slain body was later found with deep cuts to the head and neck, and a note in Arabic pinned to it.



"A person fluent in Arabic was called to read the script which stated, 'We had warned you not to convert our Muslim brothers and sisters to Christianity, but you failed to heed to our warning. This has finally cost your life.'... I tried to advise my son to be very cautious with his life, but he used to tell me that his life was in the hands of God and that he was called to carry out the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Since then, I knew that the life of my son was in danger, and he might not live for long due to the many threatening messages of Allah who was out to kill him."



Finally, on March 29, a Muslim man murdered his 19-year-old sister after he discovered that she had become Christian. Earlier that day, Namukuve's father had called her and her six siblings to a family meeting devoted to inquiring why she was not attending Muslim prayers. According to a relative,



"Namukuve kept quiet for a while and later replied that she had converted to Prophet Issa [Jesus Christ]. This angered her elder brother, Abdul Rahim Munaabi, and he got hold of a wooden chair and hit her on the head. She cried out once, saying, 'Oh Mum,' [who was away] and then stopped breathing.... Namukuve's body was removed from the house and dumped in a swamp near the River Naigombwa."



Somalia: On Good Friday, March 29, Muslims connected to the Islamic terror group Al Shabaab slaughtered six Christians from bordering Kenya for spreading Christianity.



Kenya: On March 8, Muslims ambushed and slaughtered an evangelist and seriously wounded three other Christians. On first trapping the four men, the large group of Muslims complained "that they were not happy about the conversion of their fellow Muslims, especially their relatives during their door-to door mission outreach," Masaba, one of the injured, said:



"This led the discussion getting more tense, and there and then one of the Muslims got hold of Ismail Wafula and pierced him with a sharp knife on the neck, chest and in the stomach, and he sustained terrible wounds on the head. He then fell down bleeding."



The other Muslims began assaulting the three remaining men and tearing their Bibles:



"We started screaming, wailing and calling for help. Thank God there came an approaching vehicle that arrived as well as some people living close by."



Nigeria: Some March headlines from the ongoing Muslim genocide of Christians in the African nation follow:



March 26: "Herdsmen Kill Pastor, Five other Christians in Central Nigeria"

March 27: "Pastor, His Family and Other Christians Killed in Nigeria"

March 28: "Herdsmen Kill Seven Christians in Central Nigeria"

Pakistan: The Abduction, Rape, and Forced Conversion of Christian Girls



A 13-year-old Christian girl, Mariyam Masih, disappeared while shopping for groceries. Her family immediately searched the region but discovered no leads as to her whereabouts of the girl. According to Yunish Masih, her father, an impoverished rickshaw driver,



"I am tirelessly scouring the streets from dawn till dusk on my rickshaw in search of Mariyam. There are no leads to her whereabouts, but we live in a very busy neighbourhood and someone must know something. My family and I are caught up in such deep despair, our grief knows no end, we believe our daughter is still alive but every day she is missing our fear grows. I don't know what local police are doing but they have not even put up missing posters, how can they find Mariyam without reaching out to the community? I pray daily that God will return our beautiful daughter home."



The family's fears are heightened by another Christian girl also having disappeared—on Christmas Eve, no less—only to be later discovered slain in a field. As documented here, many Christian girls—and boys—have similarly disappeared in Pakistan only to be later found raped and murdered. Discussing this latest incident, Juliet Chowdhry, Trustee for British Asian Christian Association, said:



"[Mariyam's] parents are enduring unimaginable anguish. It's a heartbreaking reality that Christian girls in Pakistan are often targeted by sexual predators or traffickers, leaving them vulnerable to unspeakable fates such as murder, forced marriage, or exploitation in the sex trade. The family's desperation grows with each passing moment, clinging to hope for any information that might reveal Mariyam's whereabouts. Yet, as time elapses, the window of opportunity narrows."



Separately, on March 25, the Lahore High Court in Pakistan awarded custody of a 13-year-old Christian girl to her Muslim kidnapper. Two months earlier, the girl, Roshni Shakeel, had in no uncertain terms spurned the advances of her future kidnapper, Muazzam Mazhar, 28. But then Muazzam's father, Abbas, began calling (from Saudi Arabia) and pressuring Roshni's father to relent and surrender the girl to his unemployed son, saying in one call:



"You have a beautiful daughter and it would be better for you to give her to my son yourself—there's nothing you Chuhras [pejorative term for Christians] can do to stop us from taking her."



According to the kidnapped girl's father, Shakeel, who is only five years older than his daughter's would-be suitor:



"I stopped taking Abbas's phone calls after that, and this offended him to the extent that he encouraged his son to abduct Roshni and forcibly marry her."



Accordingly, on March 13, the girl disappeared while her parents were away from home. They immediately went to local authorities who eventually informed them that the 13-year-old girl had married and converted to Islam of her own "free will," and that there was nothing they could do. The parents' took the case to court, but the judge ruled in favor of the kidnapper. Discussing the ruling, her father said:



"My wife and I were hoping that the judge would consider it a clear case of child marriage and order action against the accused, but we were utterly disappointed when he completely ignored our pleas for justice."



The judge also ignored all the case documents and birth certificate and posed only one question to the 13-year-old girl—whether she had married of her own free will. When she replied in the affirmative, "the judge congratulated her on the marriage and said she was free to live with her husband," Shakeel said.



"My wife and I pleaded the judge to at least consider her age and the fact that the child was under the influence of the accused for over two weeks, and she could have been easily coerced into giving that statement. Instead of listening to us and our lawyer, the judge hushed us with a hand gesture and announced his decision."



Her parents were not even allowed to meet with and ask Roshni about her wellbeing:



"In fact, the police and family members of the accused blocked her view during the entire time she was in the courtroom. They then took her away in front of our eyes, and there was nothing I could do to stop them."



Although he sold many of his meagre possessions to hire a lawyer and take the case to court, last reported, her father remained adamant to recover her:



"Roshni is just a child, how can I let that criminal exploit her and then God forbid, sell her into slavery? I will not stop till I rescue my daughter."



In another Pakistani case, according to a March 8 report:



"Police in Pakistan are pressuring a young Christian woman to withdraw charges against two Muslims who raped, blackmailed, and tried to forcibly convert her to Islam."



The 26-year-old woman, a resident of Islamabad, whose name is withheld as a rape victim, said one of the men, Hussain, had originally borrowed a large sum of money from her mother. A month later, he told the Christian woman to follow him to a colleague's house, who would pay her back. "When we reached the house," the woman said, "Hussain left me in a room on the pretext of making a phone call." Soon thereafter, his friend, Waleed barged into the room brandishing an AK-47 rifle:



"He fired a bullet on the wall to scare me and then sexually assaulted me, disregarding my cries for mercy. I cannot express the horror I suffered in those moments as my mind and body went completely numb. After assaulting me, Waleed made videos of me with his cell phone and threatened that he would share them on social media if I reported the incident to the police and did not surrender to his demands."



"The nightmare was only beginning," the report adds, "as Waleed continued to blackmail her with videos, compelling her to repeatedly meet with him repeatedly." She eventually confessed everything to her widowed mother:



"My mother broke down when she heard about my suffering, but she told me not to worry. She then took me to the police station where I narrated my story, showed evidence of the blackmailing and filed a rape case against Waleed and Hussain. I also appealed to the police to recover the blackmail content from their phones."



Charges were filed, "but instead of arresting the two suspects, police tipped them off, and they obtained pre-arrest bails.... Since that time, they have been threatening me and my mother to withdraw the case or face the consequences."



Muslim Attacks on Apostates and Blasphemers



Uganda: On March 25, a Muslim man beat his wife and 10-year-old daughter and scorched them with boiling water after he returned home early and discovered them praying in Jesus's name. "I had put water on for preparing millet bread that was at the boiling point," said the wife, Zafara Nagudi, 32: "Suddenly I saw my husband at the door of the kitchen, and immediately we stopped praying." He repeatedly questioned her as to what they were doing:



"I eventually told him the truth, that we were praying to Jesus Christ to help our family. He became very furious and said, 'I heard everything but am surprised! Are you a Christian or Muslim?'... From there he slapped me and kicked me while boxing me. Since he was in the doorway, we couldn't run away. He grabbed the saucepan of hot water and poured it on me and the child."



He then stormed out of the house "thinking he had killed them." She managed to call her nearby sister who rushed them to a hospital. It took a week before they were discharged.



Pakistan: On March 6, police arrested Ashbeel Ghauri, an 18-year-old Christian youth, on the accusation that he had blasphemed against Islam. His accusers, a group of Muslim classmates had long been pressuring him to convert to Islam, but Ashbeel, described as a "devout Christian," refused "to renounce his faith in Christ," his father, Babar, said, adding:



"Ashbeel has categorically denied making any derogatory remarks about Islam. He always asked academic questions about the Islamic faith whenever he was forcibly dragged into such conversation. As Christians living in Pakistan, we are all well aware of the sensitivities involving religious discussion, and our children are taught from day one to avoid getting into such arguments."



According to lawyer Nadeem Hassan, Ashbeel's accusers claim that



"the Christian had allegedly said that Islam was a false religion, and its teachings were also false. [In fact] Ashbeel merely stated that he believed in the God of the Bible and said his Christian faith did not allow four marriages contrary to Islamic teachings. The complainant's allegation that Ashbeel called Islam a false religion during a phone call has not been substantiated with any evidence."



As the eldest of three children, Ashbeel's impoverished family had long placed their hopes for a better future on him. Now he is facing up to ten years' imprisonment:



"It's a crucial time for my family, especially for Ashbeel, but we know God will walk us through this test, and he will emerge victorious in faith. His mother and I met him in prison on March 8, and though he is concerned about his condition, Ashbeel told us not to worry because he knows Christ will not forsake him."



Yemen: The plight of Christians has worsened due to the rise of Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and their attacks on infrastructure, according to a March 8 report with quotes from Open Doors USA CEO Ryan Brown:



"The Christians in this area are folks that were formerly Muslim–Muslim background believers that have converted to Christianity. Christians are obviously a despised minority... Christians are often last in line as it relates to being able to receive the care and attention there as war and as these things continue to escalate. That has a ripple effect ... It can disrupt supply chains, and so, while Christians were already last [in] line, that line becomes even further elongated. And so Christians are very much impacted by what's going on currently."



Because most Christians in Yemen come from Muslim backgrounds,



"they keep their new faith secret to avoid severe persecution and possibly death at the hands of their clan or family members. And if they are not killed for their faith, they are often blamed for their connections to the West.... They become easy targets... Christians are seen as enemies on all fronts there."



Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches



Pakistan: After a local Muslim vowed to prevent Christians from celebrating Easter in their church, the building went up in flames hours before Resurrection Day. According to one report,



"On the morning of March 30th, 2024, the Presbyterian Church in Gujar Khan, Rawalpindi, became a scene of devastation as flames engulfed its sacred halls. What should have been a place of solace and prayer was instead reduced to ashes, leaving behind a community reeling in shock and fear. Reports indicate that the blaze, ignited by unknown individuals around 3:00 am, tore through the church with merciless intensity. By the time the fire brigade arrived, the damage was extensive, with the roof, furniture, and cherished Biblical literature, including Bibles and hymn books, all consumed by the inferno."



The church's pastor, Rev. Adeem Alphonse, said,



"The huge fire burned everything inside the church, including holy books, the sound system, furniture and curtains, etc. We strongly suspect that it's a case of arson, but the police and administration are trying to hush up the matter by terming it an outcome of a short-circuit in the electricity wiring."



Egypt: On Sunday, March 24, a fire broke out in the Church of St. George in Akhmim. With the help of church youth and locals, civil authorities managed to extinguish the blaze. Mass had been held in the church earlier that day, but when the conflagration, began the building was empty, so no one was hurt. The fire did, however, destroy much of the second floor. Initial reporting said the cause of fire was "unknown." That said, arson attacks on churches in Egypt are commonplace. According to Egyptian researcher Magdi Khalil, "close to one thousand churches have been attacked or torched by mobs in the last five decades [since the 1970s] in Egypt." In recent years, however, virtually all church fires—including those in 11 separate churches that were torched in just one month alone (Aug. 2022) — are nowadays presented as an "accident." Meanwhile, truly accidental fires in mosques in Egypt — which outnumber churches by a ratio of 40 to 1 — are almost unheard of.



Indonesia: On Sunday, March 8, local Muslims surrounded the home of a Christian because she was using it to hold a worship service. Police arrived before violence ensued and made the pastor sign an agreement promising never again to use her home for worship. Discussing this incident, Bonar Tigor Naipospos, deputy chairman of the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, said holding worship at a house is explicitly permitted in Indonesia's Join Ministerial Decree of 2006, which requires a permit only for a venue constructed as a permanent worship site:



"The problem is that those who are intolerant always think that when Christians gather to worship, it is something that violates the rules – that worshiping together must be in a house of worship or church."



Germany: On March 15, two churches were defiled with excrement. In one of them, the feces were found near the altar. (As documented here, "fecal attacks" on churches are growing in Western European regions with large Muslim populations.) Another church was set on fire, another pelted with eggs, and another had its altar desecrated.



Italy: On March 5, a church in Brindisi was smeared with red paint, including the word "Palestine." Even so, according to the report, "police excluded a political motive." At least two other churches were desecrated and robbed.



France: Attacks on Churches and Christian Symbols



Although anti-Christian activities are very common in France, the month of March was more dramatic than usual. Some incidents follow:



On March 5, police foiled an Islamic plot to bomb Notre Dame Cathedral (much of which "inexplicably" went up in flames in 2019). A Muslim man of Egyptian origin, 62, was arrested. The report notes that this was just the latest terror attack to be foiled in the previous three weeks. Discussing it, France's Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said:



"We have never foiled so many attacks in France. The Islamic State is the author of the last eight foiled attacks in France. We foil a lot of [such terror] attacks, one every two months."



On March 5, another 62-year-old man "clearly committed to jihadist ideology," was arrested and indicted on March 8 for terrorist conspiracy as well as for planning "violent action in a Catholic religious building," to quote from court documents.



On Easter Eve, March 30, an illegal Muslim migrant from Senegal with a previous crime record was "arrested for advocating terrorism and for threatening to burn down the Notre Dame de la Voie church, in Athis Mons, in Essonne." According to a report:



"Shortly before 7 p.m., he entered the church, addressed a parishioner by calling himself a Muslim, telling her he had visions and warning her that the religious building would burn within three months, before leaving."



On being arrested near another church, the Muslim man said he was only "kidding."



On March 28, a Muslim man of Albanian origin entered a church while mass was in progress and began shouting "Allahu akbar" ["Allah is greatest"].



On Sunday, March 10, the Notre Dame de Partout chapel in Saint-Mesin was discovered spray painted with several Islamic slogans, including "convert," "Last warning," and "the cross will be broken." The cross opposite the chapel was also vandalized. On the following day, more acts of desecration against churches, crosses, and a cemetery were discovered in the nearby commune of Clermont d'Excideuil, home to just a few hundred people. According to one report;



"Inscriptions with Islamic references were found on graves, the war memorial, the church door, a calvary memorial, and a fountain. Some of the tags read 'France is already Allah's,' 'Isa [Jesus] will break the cross,' and 'Submit to Islam.' Altogether, more than 50 graves were smeared. On two tombs the letters 'GWER' were written with a paint spray. The term 'gwer' refers to a white person, a Westerner, or a non-Muslim. Another grave was marked with the term 'Kouffar,' which designates disbelievers. The desecration occurred on the eve of Ramadan."



A local resident said the threatening messages "make me cold in the back... When I read this, it freezes me. It's a trauma for the municipality."



At least five other large, public crosses (or calvaries) were tagged with similar Islamic warnings and threats since the start of the year in France. "It's weird in a small town like that," said the mayor of Clermont d'Excideuil, the most recent region to be attacked: "I thought it only happened elsewhere."



On March 1, about 40 tombstones in another cemetery in Fresselines were desecrated and vandalized.



On March 26, an important public cross which had stood for many generations in the village of Lias—of which the mayor said "was more than a religious symbol, was the soul of our village"—was found broken up into four pieces.



"Leila, 21," begins a March 15 report, "was planning to attack the faithful of a church in Béziers on Easter Day with a sword when she was arrested. She is on trial in Paris for conspiracy to commit terrorist crimes." The report adds that police discovered photos of decapitated bodies and videos of beheadings and how to make acid bombs in her home. In her spiral notebook, she writes of:



"[my] increasingly intense desire to go out into the street to slit the throat of the first passer-by, drag his corpse into the forest and smash his skull with an iron bar or a hammer then return to look for someone else... I have learned to cut throats so there will probably be no problem."



On March 12, another unidentified woman, aged 39, barged into a church during morning mass, where she made threats while waving a knife around. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic and hospitalized. The church has already suffered an arson attack, and stands near an area where three teenagers once violently attacked two other teens with tear gas while calling them "dirty Christians," a term regularly employed by Muslims.



There were many other attacks on churches—two of which were suspected arson—in France.



Generic Muslim Abuse of Christians



Pakistan: On March 23, Muslim employers beat and shot Waqas Masih, a 42-year-old Christian laborer for requesting the wages owed him to buy clothes for his two children for Easter celebrations. According to his brother, Akash:



"The two men [the employers] first brutally tortured Waqas with the iron rods, and then Luqman pulled out a pistol and opened fire on him, resulting in a bullet injury on his right thigh. We were able to take him to the Allied Hospital in Faisalabad on time, otherwise he could have died due to excessive bleeding.... We are very poor, and a majority of the nearly 300 Christian families living in the village work as laborers for Muslim landowners. We are often subjected to cruelty and torture because we are weak and helpless."



In fact, Akash said, this is the second such attack:



"In December, my father, brother, Waqas, and his wife were attacked in our home when he requested his employers to pay his wages for Christmas."



In a separate incident, Muslims savagely beat their Christian coworker for receiving a promotion. According to the March 18 report:



"Noel is a father of four and has been working as a driver for the last five years. Because of his hard work, honesty, and punctuality, he was promoted to supervisor. However, his Muslim co-workers refused to work under a Christian supervisor... When he left the workplace, about half a dozen Muslim coworkers stopped him on the road and they dragged him and thrashed him with clubs and iron rods. They left Noel unconscious on the road where he was found by Good Samaritans and sent him to the local hospital. The mob broke two ribs and two bones in his legs. His face was badly scratched as well."



link

[schwartzie]

'Groom These Women': The Persecution of Christians, April 2024

by Raymond Ibrahim
May 26, 2024 at 6:00 am

On April 26, a Muslim man named Muhammad Shehroz, led a 4-year-old Christian boy, Moosa Masih to a field where he brutally sodomized and then sought to strangle the child to death. — britishasianchristians.org, May 3, 2024, Pakistan.

Even though it is illegal in Pakistan to marry underage girls, the authorities refused to act on the Christian family's pleas to recover their daughter, due to a birth certificate that had obviously been forged, which claimed she was 18. A court subsequently ruled that, being of age, Ameen had willingly converted to Islam and married a Muslim man. — britishasianchristians.org, April 28, 2014, Pakistan.

"On April 5th, members of the jirga [Pakistani conflict resolution team] forcibly arrived at my residence and coerced me to accompany them to the police station. They threatened to abduct my daughters if I dared to resist," said the father of Kainat Pervaiz, a 16-year-old Christian girl who was abducted and raped. They coerced him to drop the case in exchange for 50,000 rupees (USD $180) and the proposed marriage of his daughter to her rapist as a form of "compensation." — britishasianchristians.org, April 28, 2014, Pakistan.

massive riot broke out in an asylum shelter after some Muslims noticed a resident wearing a cross necklace. — medforth.biz, April 13, 2024, Germany.

On April 15, a 16-year-old Muslim stabbed Orthodox Christian bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and four other Christians at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Sydney, Australia. The bishop lost an eye in the attack. Pictured: A police officer outside Christ The Good Shepherd Church on April 16, 2024. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of April 2024.

The Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Uganda: On Apr. 10, a Muslim man murdered his mother for refusing to leave the Christian faith. Two months earlier, Sulaina Nabirye, a 50-year-old widow, had put her faith in Christ. Immediately, her 31-year-old son, Arajabu Mukiibi, began to pressure her to return to Islam, according to a relative (name withheld for security reasons):

"During the month of Ramadan, she complained of her son pressuring her to stop attending church and revert back to Islam, since he was studying to become an imam at Bugembe Mosque. When she refused to convert back to Islam, he stopped visiting her at her house and threatened to chase or even kill her."

Due to these threats, the anonymous relative began to visit the mother more often, and was present on Apr. 9, when the son visited. After pretending that he had reconciled himself to his mother's Christian status, he said that his wife was preparing dinner for them:

"At 7 p.m. he came with food, which he gave to us, and he left. I was praying and fasting, so I did not eat the food. Shortly after eating the food, Sulaina started vomiting, and then followed diarrhea. I tried what I could, but things were worsening, I called a nearby clinic officer who came with medication. He tried to put her on drip, but all was in vain."

Nabirye died that night, around 2 a.m. The food was discovered to be laced with methanol, a toxic chemical. "Her son did not come to help his mum," the relative said. "He and his wife who were living close by did not show up. This made me conclude that he is the one who planned the poisoning."

Muslims, sadly, have poisoned their Christian relatives in Uganda on many occasions over the years.

United Kingdom: On Apr. 11, Ahmed Alil, a Muslim man, stood trial for the Oct. 15, 2023 murder of a 70-year-old pensioner and the attempted murder of his housemate, Javed Nouri, a convert to Christianity. According to the prosecutor, Alil considered Nouri an "apostate" and "therefore somebody who deserved to die." During the trial, prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford said that Alil, armed with two knives, had kicked open the door of his housemate Nouri's bedroom while shouting "Allahu Akbar," then lunged at him, and repeatedly stabbed him. Nouri managed to fight him off and escape Alil, still armed and irate, stormed out of the house and randomly stabbed—six times—a passerby, Terence Carney, 70, who died at the scene. Even though his violence and murder were prompted by his housemate's apostasy to Christianity, on being arrested, Alil tried to present his behavior as a product of wanting "Palestine to be free from the Zionists."

Nigeria: Some April headlines from the ongoing Muslim genocide of Christians in the African nation:

Apr. 19: "Twenty-nine Nigerian Christians slaughtered in three-day pogrom"
Apr. 2: "Alleged Fulani Militants Kill Four on Easter Monday in Nigeria"
Apr. 25: "Mother, Baby among Christians Slain in Plateau State, Nigeria. More than 30 killed in Fulani raids."
Apr. 26: "Three Christians Slain in Benue State, Central Nigeria"
Apr. 29: "Herdsmen Kill at Least Six Christians in Southeast Nigeria. Children among the dead."
Apr. 29: "ECWA Pastor Slain in Kaduna State, Nigeria. Armed 'bandits' ambush him on highway"
Apr. 30: "Slaughter of Christians Continues in Central Nigeria. Scores killed in Benue state since January"

Kenya: On Apr. 9, members of the terrorist group al-Shabaab killed a farmer in a Christian village previously targeted by the Islamic terror group.

Burkina Faso: On Apr. 18, "jihadists" murdered a catechist.

Pakistan: Rape, Forced Conversion, and Abuse of Christians

On Apr. 26, a Muslim man named Muhammad Shehroz, led a 4-year-old Christian boy, Moosa Masih to a field where he brutally sodomized and then sought to strangle the child to death. According to the boy's father, Shan Masih, Shehroz was known to the family and thus familiar to the trusting boy. As they scoured the region, they heard faint cries from the field, and "When we arrived at the scene, Shehroz was strangling Moosa. If we had been 10 minutes later, we could have lost our son." Shehroz grabbed his clothes and fled the scene. Discussing this incident, the British Asian Christian Association said that "the brutal assault on a child" is "an all too common occurrence in Pakistan":

"The disturbing frequency with which Christian children are targeted is especially troubling, given their small minority status in the country. The lamentable truth is that their marginalized status makes them incredibly vulnerable. Adding to this sorrowful reality is the fact that Christians often hold pariah status, further exacerbating their vulnerability. Unfortunately, the police and the courts frequently display reluctance in pursuing justice and often overlook reports of such crimes when Christians are the victims."

On Apr. 4, a 13-year-old Christian girl, Sania Ameen, was abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and turned into the second wife of Muhamad Saif, a Muslim. Even though it is illegal in Pakistan to marry underage girls, the authorities refused to act on the Christian family's pleas to recover their daughter, due to a birth certificate that had obviously been forged, which claimed she was 18. A court subsequently ruled that, being of age, Ameen had willingly converted to Islam and married a Muslim man. The marriage was orchestrated by the assistance of "a Muslim extremist known for his involvement in the conversion of Christian women and encouraging Muslim men to groom these women into marriage," according to Dr. Adil Ghouri, who is assisting the family:

"Qari Shakir Hussain is notorious for orchestrating illegal conversions of minor Christian girls. He instigates Muslim men to abduct Christian women and brings them to his residence, where he arranges marriages."

In an interview, Ameen Masih, the abducted girl's father expressed the harrowing ordeal his family has been experiencing, adding, "All I want is to get my daughter back to me!... Muhammad Saif brandishes weapons and strolls through my street, threatening me. He has warned me that he will kidnap my other daughters if I don't withdraw the application against him." Meanwhile, "the police have yet to arrest any of the culprits, leaving Ameen Masih and his family in a state of vulnerability and distress."

In a separate but similar case, a Christian father revealed in late April that his 15-year-old daughter was kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam and married to her Muslim abductor. According to Salman Masih:

"It's been nearly two months now that I'm desperately searching for my minor daughter, Muskan. She went missing from home on March 11, but despite my frantic appeals to the police for recovering her, my child is still in the custody of her Muslim abductor, Arsalan Ali."

Although Masih had filed a report with police within one hour of his daughter's abduction, they ignored him. When he pressed the matter, and

"After several hours of waiting, I was told that a police team would come to my home the next day, but I would have to pay them 5,000 Pakistani rupees (USD $18) in 'fuel cost.' The police's indifferent attitude helped the accused in moving my daughter to a safe location and carrying out his nefarious act."

As in the previous case of 13-year-old Sania Ameen, the kidnapper and his accomplices presented forged papers to an indifferent court:

"According to the documents handed to me by the police, the Islamic conversion and Nikah (marriage certificate) were held on the same day Muskan was abducted from home. The next day, Arsalan filed a petition in the court ... in the name of Muskan in which stated that she was an adult aged 19 years and had converted and married of her free will."

The impoverished sanitation worker added that he feared Ali would traffic his daughter for sex:

"Arsalan has a notorious reputation in the neighborhood, and I fear something bad will happen to my child if she is not recovered from his custody. I appeal to the Christian leadership to help me find and save my daughter from exploitation."

On Mar. 31, Easter Sunday, a Muslim man named Muhammad Suleman abducted Kainat Pervaiz, a 16-year-old Christian girl, at gunpoint. He took her to a vacant resident where all through the night, "Kainat endured unimaginable horrors as she was brutally raped multiple times." According to the report:

"The next day, the perpetrator brazenly contacted the girl's father, instructing him to retrieve her from his residence. Despite clear evidence of the assault, confirmed by a Medico Legal Certificate issued by a Government Hospital, the police failed to register an FIR (First Information Report). Shockingly, local authorities did not act to pursue justice."

Instead, according to the father:

"On April 5th, members of the jirga [Pakistani conflict resolution team] forcibly arrived at my residence and coerced me to accompany them to the police station. They threatened to abduct my daughters if I dared to resist."

They coerced him to drop the case in exchange for 50,000 rupees (USD $180) and the proposed marriage of his daughter to her rapist as a form of "compensation." On learning that he could not rely on the authorities for any semblance of justice, he contacted a human rights agency for assistance. Since then, he and his family have received more threats from local supporters of the rapist and were last reported as living in terror. Discussing this case, human rights activist Juliet Chowdhry remarked:

"This appalling incident of kidnapping and rape involved brutal violence and the use of a dangerous weapon. Despite the gravity of the crime, Pakistani police officers attempted to coerce the family into accepting a compromise payment through a jirga, which subsequently pressured them into signing an agreement to forgive the rapist if he married their daughter. This blatant miscarriage of justice, facilitated by both the police and the jirga, highlights the pervasive impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of sexual violence and underscores the urgent need for systemic reform to safeguard the protection and rights of victims. The abysmal conduct of the Pakistani police, particularly in cases involving Christians, has reached a new nadir with this despicable act."

On Apr. 14, a Muslim security officer named Muhammad Abdul Qadir Khan harassed, drugged and coerced a 13-year-old Christian boy named Saim Masih to participate in Muslim prayers, despite the youth's repeated refusals. At one point, Muhammad yanked the boy's cross necklace from around his neck, and hollered, "Stop being a Christian! They are worthless."

The fearful boy protested, "I cannot offer prayer. I am a Christian, and I don't know how to perform a Muslim prayer."

"Don't worry, I will teach you. Accept Islam, and I will give you money and take you with me to Peshawar to show you its green landscape," cajoled Muhammad. According to the report:

"Mr. Khan persisted in his demands, urging Saim to pray, convert to Islam, accept money as a gift, and eat the food he had brought with him. Despite Saim's repeated refusals, Mr. Khan forcefully made him eat some sweets. Siam does not recall what happened after consuming the sweet, but he was later discovered unconscious."

After a frantic search, Masih's family and friends discovered him partially conscious behind a building. Although they questioned Khan, police did not arrest him.

Muslim Attacks on Churches, Crosses, and Other Christian Symbols

Australia: On Apr. 15, a 16-year-old youth of Middle Eastern descent, armed with a knife and crying Islam's war cry, "Allahu akbar!" ("Allah is the greatest!), lunged at and repeatedly stabbed an Orthodox bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel, as he was delivering a sermon from the pulpit of his church in Sydney. In the scuffle to apprehend the Muslim youth, four other Christians were stabbed. The bishop lost an eye in the attack, which was captured on video as the worship service was livestreaming from the Good Shepherd Church.

In the days after the stabbings, seven other juveniles aged between 15 and 17—who according to police reports adhere to a "religiously motivated violent extremist ideology"—were arrested as part of counter-terrorism raids across southwestern Sydney.

Egypt: On Apr. 23, in al-Fawakhir village, more than 500 Muslims savagely attacked and torched the homes of Christians due to a rumor that a church was to be constructed in the village. According to a report:

"Extremists pelted Coptic homes with stones and chanted [Islamic] slogans [including "Allahu Akbar!"] , setting fire to several houses amidst the screams of women and children. The attack continued for hours before security forces arrived. The magnitude of the fire was such that it could be seen from miles away."

Although in some instances Muslims tried to prevent Christians from escaping these fires, no casualties were reported. Al-Fawakhir, home to several hundred Christian families, has no church, like most villages in Egypt. As a result, a Coptic priest occasionally visits and holds a prayer service in a Christian home. This caused Muslims to launch a false rumor that the home was going to be converted into a permanent church.

Three days later, on April 26 — a Friday, when Muslims are used to hearing sermons whipping them up against "infidels" during mosque prayers — extremists from another village, al-Kom al-Ahmar, attacked its Christian minority for receiving a permit to construct a church. Discussing these attacks, Adel Guindy, co-founder of Coptic Solidarity and author of A Sword Over the Nile, told Gatestone:

"In an all too familiar development in Egypt's countryside, Muslims, who may otherwise be content with a low grade life (e.g., no proper hospitals or public services), go into uncontrollable paroxysms at the mere hint that Christians might get a place to pray in—which in itself is no easy feat, as it requires governmental licensing that takes years or even decades to obtain. After fiery incitements, mobs attack Copts' homes and businesses, all under the watchful eyes of the authorities who are usually, at least in part, complicit. Culprits are seldom, if ever, punished, thus inviting a sickening repeat of the ugly scenario."

United States: On Apr. 6, Alexander Scott Mercurio, an 18-year-old convert to Islam, was arrested for "planning a suicide attack on multiple churches," to be carried out on the following day in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. According to the report, "Law enforcement claims that he was going to attack local places of worship with knives, guns and flames." In the words of FBI Director Christopher Wray,

"The defendant allegedly pledged loyalty to ISIS and sought to attack people attending churches in Idaho, a truly horrific plan which was detected and thwarted by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force."

Germany: On Apr. 12, six Muslim teenagers (two boys and four girls, aged between 13 and 16) were exposed for plotting terror attacks against Christians and churches during Easter, with the hopes of "kill[ing] as many 'infidels' as possible." According to one report,

"[T]he youths wanted to attack 'Christians ('unbelievers') in churches' and 'police officers in police stations' with knives and Molotov cocktails [and, as later revealed, with bombs] in the name of the ISIS. .... [T]he youths were communicating in a common chat group in which they were exchanging plans to attack churches, synagogues, and a local sports club in Iserlohn. Furthermore, the cities Dortmund, Düsseldorf and Cologne were mentioned as possible targets. They were also planning to obtain weapons."

The father of one of the arrested girls had already been under police investigation due to terrorist financing and illegal possession of weapons. During a house search, police found a machete and a dagger, which the girl had planned on using during the terrorist attacks, according to her chat messages.

On Apr. 19, a massive riot broke out in an asylum shelter after some Muslims noticed a resident wearing a cross necklace. According to the report:

"everal residents, who are of Muslim faith, were outraged by the Christian symbol—a riot broke out. When the security service tried to calm the commotion, around 30 residents attacked the reception centre's security staff. The violence escalated in one room of the accommodation centre: Several security staff were attacked and more and more residents joined in. Five migrants from the group attacked with bottles and chairs, and there were also attacks with fists.... [O]ne attacker even pulled out a knife. Several police patrols were deployed to calm the crowd."

On Sunday, Apr. 21, graffiti and trash were found in the St. Mary Chapel in Aachen. Among other things, "Allahu Akbar" was found written on the walls and doors. There were several other attacks on and desecrations of churches (such as here and here).

On Apr. 14 the Passion Trail along the forest path at Tücking, which was set up by the Evangelical Lutheran parish in Hagen-Haspe to commemorate Easter, was found demolished. Once lined with crosses and prayer texts, everything had been destroyed.

Italy: In broad daylight and in front of everyone, an African migrant vandalized a church while praying to Allah and invoking his name. According to the Apr. 21 report,

"'Asylum seeker' with spray can and shouting 'Allah Akbar' has defaced church of Santi Medici in Martano, Italy, and numerous houses with Arabic writings. Italian residents are afraid because this man goes around armed and terrorizes elderly and children. We need mass deportation."

Several other (including arson) attacks and desecration of churches in Italy (here, here, and here) also took place.

Finally, on Apr. 3, a pre-trial detention order was issued against three Muslims of Tunisian background for savagely beating another Tunisian for attending a church. According to the report:

"The investigation developed following the complaints made by the victim, a 28-year-old Tunisian man, a legal immigrant on the national territory, who was attacked on the evening of November 12, 2023. Specifically, the three men, after approaching him and accusing him of 'frequenting the church of Christians,' threatened him and violently beat him with kicks and punches, snatching a [cross?] necklace from him, before he managed to break free and escape. The victim had to be treated in the local hospital.... [T]he victim had undertaken a conversion to Christianity for some months, attending a local parish and participating in some religious celebrations, which was not accepted by his fellow countrymen of Muslim faith."

United Kingdom: On April 3, a British church that offers refugee support services was vandalized — and smeared with dog feces (a not uncommon Muslim tactic against churches). There were also at least three arson attacks on churches (here, here, and here).

France: On Sunday, Apr. 14, five Muslim teenagers of Turkish origin, aged between 15 and 17, barged into the Saint-Etienne Cathedral in Metz and interrupted a concert in progress by shouting "Allahu Akbar!" before fleeing.

Many other churches in France—including another Notre Dame, built in the 1600s in Brigolo—went up in flames throughout April (here, here, here, here, here, and here).

Azerbaijan: According to an Apr. 24 report, St. John the Baptist Church in the Armenian town of Susa (or Shushi), which was built in the 1800s, but came under Azerbaijani control in late 2023, has been destroyed without a trace left:

"[T]he Susa church, which was wrapped in scaffolding through much of its time under Azerbaijani control, was demolished in the winter of 2023-24.... Two kilometers south of the erased church, satellite images released in April reveal that an entire [Christian] village appears to have been razed to the ground. Today a large mosque is under construction in the broken soil where a settlement once stood..."

Lebanon: On Apr. 16, an Orthodox church of St. George near Denniye was vandalized with Islamic slogans, including the shehada, "There is no god but Allah."

Cameroon: During the night of April 2-3, the Mary Queen of Peace sanctuary was desecrated, in the 20% Muslim nation. The vandals destroyed several representations of Mary and Jesus, and totally shattered the 14 Stations of the Cross.

link

[shalom]

DISTURBING Increase in Christian Persecution Worldwide | Stakelbeck Tonight

[schwartzie]

'We Don't Want Churches, We Want Mosques': The Persecution of Christians, May 2024

by Raymond Ibrahim

June 30, 2024 at 5:00 am


A raging Muslim mob attacked and savagely beat a 74-year-old Christian man, on what turned out to be a false accusation of "blasphemy". Nine days later, on June 3, Nazir Masih Gill died from his many injuries, including a smashed skull. — Morning Star News, June 3, 2024, Pakistan.



The Muslim employer of Saima Bibi, a 24-year-old Christian woman, dragged her outside and shoved her toward an electric chaff cutter—which sliced off one of her ears, cut off most of her scalp, and injured an eye. Her husband, Shahzad, who worked on the same farm and was present, said that one of their employers, Muhammad Mustafa, was angry that they were taking a break and ordered them to cut fodder for the cattle. — Morning Star News, May 15, 2024, Pakistan.



Shahid Masih, a 35-year-old Christian dairy worker, was falsely accused of theft and subjected to "merciless torture" at the hands of Muhammad Ijaz. It included forcing him to ingest acid, from which he died in the hospital 11 days later.... Last reported, authorities are refusing to prosecute Muhammad Ijaz and his murderous accomplices. — britishasianchristians.org, May 15, 2024, Pakistan.



"Christian sanitation workers work long shifts even in extreme weather conditions.... these workers are often ridiculed and mistreated because of their Christian faith.... They often face salary delays and no job security. They are discriminated against even by their Muslim colleagues, and now we are witnessing incidents of physical violence against these weak people." — Sunil Gulzar, Christian socio-political activist, Morning Star News, May 29, 2024, Pakistan.



Many other attacks on churches in France persisted throughout the month of May, including arson attacks, general desecrations, desecrations of cemeteries, defecations in churches and urination in their baptismal fonts, and bomb threats. — France.



"Imagine the uproar if it was Christians throwing rocks at a mosque? MPs and the media would be all over it screaming 'Islamophobia!'" — Tommy Robinson, British activist, x.com, May 1, 2024, England.



The Church of the Holy Trinity was vandalized with Islamic graffiti, which included "Allah Akbar," "Remove this church from here," "Only Muslims are here," "We don't want churches, we want mosques," and "Islam is the only true religion!" — orthodoxtimes.com, May 15, 2024, Kosovo.





On Sunday, May 12, the Church of St. Anthony of Padua in Vienna, Austria (pictured) was defaced with Islamic slogans, including "Islam will win, with you or without." (Image source: Zairon/Wikimedia Commons)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of May 2024.



Muslim Slaughter of and Violence against Christians



Nigeria: Some May headlines from the ongoing Muslim genocide of Christians in the African nation:



May 1: "Fulani Herdsmen Kill 12 Christians in Plateau State, Nigeria"

May 6: "Herdsmen Kill 28 Christians in Benue State, Nigeria"

May 7: "Six Christians Killed, Eight Wounded in Kaduna State, Nigeria"

May 10: "Suspected Fulani Herdsmen Attack Catholic School in Nigeria"

May 14: "Christians, Others Increasingly Targeted in Plateau State, Nigeria: Amnesty International reports 1,336 people killed in three months"

Democratic Republic of Congo: During a public speech on May 25, Pope Francis said,



"I would like to stop and thank God for the testimony of martyrdom that a group of Catholics from Congo, from North Kivu, have given in recent days. Their throats were slit simply because they were Christians and didn't want to convert to Islam."



As there have been so many massacres of Christians in the Congo, it was not immediately clear which the pope was referring to in "recent days," though it was most likely the one that occurred on May 13, in the Ituri Province, where Muslim militants slaughtered 11 Christians, kidnapped others, and set their village on fire.



Somalia: On May 5, the extended Muslim family of Mohammad Abdul, a 40-year-old man, knifed him for converting to Christianity. Earlier, after local Muslims learned that he had become Christian they began sending the apostate threatening texts:



"We are now aware that every evening you are praying in the name of Issa [Jesus] as well as reading a corrupted book [Bible] and not reading the Quran, the holy book sent to Muhammad from Allah. If you do not stop this bad way of conducting religious activities, then you risk your life."



Afterwards, things got worse—"On May 2, my younger son arrived crying that he was beaten by some boys after telling them about my reading the Bible and praying," said Mohammad. Then, in the evening of May 5, his Muslim relatives arrived at his door:



"They were shouting and yelling that they were looking for my head. The attackers forcibly entered the house and started questioning me for forsaking Islam and joining a bad religion. My wife and children looked shaken."



After a relative knifed Abdul, "The children began wailing and crying in a very loud voice, which confused the attackers. I then managed to escape through the rear door, bleeding."



An unnamed source who helped Abdul continues the narrative:



"While [Mohammad] Abdul was nursing injuries, the Muslims went back to his house and started destroying his house, and the wife and the five children went back with their people. His wife has told him that the Muslims are looking for him, and that therefore he should not go back to them."



Uganda: On May 16, Muslims savagely beat two Christian evangelists for proclaiming Christ. Samuel, 27, and Ephraim, 25, had just left an evangelistic outreach when three Muslims blocked them near a swamp. According to Samuel,



"They stopped us and asked us to renounce Jesus Christ, whom we were preaching at Naigombwa trading center for four days. At the same time, they wanted to forcefully circumcise us as per Islamic teaching for us to live. We totally refused, and they started beating us badly with sharp objects and left us unconscious in a coma in a pool of blood... My colleague, [Ephraim] suffered serious bleeding coming out of his ears, bruised face and a deep cut in his left hand, while myself I had a twisted neck, swollen face and neck."



They regained consciousness in a hospital where they learned that motorcycle passersby had rescued them.



Niger: According to a May 24 report,



"On May 2, Christians began to leave their villages and took refuge in the town of Makalondi, in the Tillabéri region (southwest of Niger). Currently, around 357 Christian families have fled. The reason for this exodus? On April 16, jihadists announced that from that day on, all men aged 15 and over who refuse to convert to Islam are required to pay Jizya, a ["protection"] tax levied on non-Muslim residents.



"This law would apply to all villages controlled by jihadists. According to our contacts, all villagers have been strongly advised to convert to Islam if they want to continue living in their villages. And those who refuse must pay a tax. If they pay, they are allowed to continue living in the village. But they will live like slaves with their families. All their property will automatically become that of the jihadists. Those who do not want to convert or pay Jizya must leave the village. But they are not allowed to take anything with them except the clothes they are wearing.



"Our partners have confirmed that to date, the jihadists control six other villages in the Tillabéri region in which they are imposing their new law. Since then, new Christian families have been leaving their villages every day."



Christians fleeing for their lives have become destitute. According to a local pastor, "We fled with nothing because we couldn't bring our food. We don't even have a shelter to stay in..."



Pakistan: The Rape, Slaughter, and Abuse of Christians



On May 16, one Muhammad Shahbaz broke into a Christian household in the middle of the night, where he raped Asma Bibi, a 35-year-old mentally handicapped Christian woman. *** On being questioned by police, Muhammad casually confessed: "I was sexually aroused, so I entered the house and raped Asma." He also named accomplices, prompting police to arrest and question several other Muslim men. As a result, according to the report,



"The Masih [Christian] family finds themselves in a harrowing situation, navigating threats and intimidation from individuals pressuring them to abandon their pursuit of justice. Since the arrest of the suspects involved, a wave of hostility has swept through the Muslim community, leaving Nasir Masih and his loved ones isolated and vulnerable. These threats, delivered with ominous warnings of impending disaster should they persist in seeking justice, cast a chilling shadow over the family's already tumultuous ordeal."



Human rights activist Juliet Chowdhry condemned the act in a statement:



"A very vulnerable woman was violently and brutally raped in her own home by a neighbor. The man shows no remorse, justifying his act as merely giving in to his urges, as if that were a valid excuse. It's appalling that Islamic Sharia law permits such crimes to be forgiven through compensation payments, which fosters a sense of impunity and only serves to exacerbate and proliferate such crimes against minority Christians."



On May 25, a raging Muslim mob attacked and savagely beat a 74-year-old Christian man, on what turned out to be a false accusation of "blasphemy" (videos and images of the graphic incident here and here). Nine days later, on June 3, Nazir Masih Gill died from his many injuries, including a smashed skull. On the day of the incident, a local mosque had loudly announced that Nazir had been seen burning the Koran in the street. A large mob consisting of hundreds of irate Muslims—including many women and children—swiftly formed and set fire to the modest shoe store of the elderly Christian man— at whom they hurled stones and bricks, beat with sticks and other objects, and, after he had collapsed to the floor, repeatedly kicked. The deceased man's son, Sultan Gill, a member of the Presbyterian Church, described the incident:



"It was around 6 a.m. when we heard shouts outside our main gate. When I went outside to enquire, I saw a group of 20-30 Muslims there who alleged that my father had burned pages of the Quran. I tried to placate them and also sought forgiveness on my father's behalf if he had indeed mistakenly did [sic] something wrong, but they refused to listen. Meanwhile, the number of the mob had grown into hundreds, and as soon as the police [who had earlier arrived] brought my family outside, some people snatched my father from the policemen and started torturing him. I tried to rescue him, but the police told me that the lives of the entire family were at serious risk, and it was important to move us to safety. They assured me that they would save my father from the mob after which I agreed to leave, but they failed to rescue him in time... [T]he entire episode has been so traumatizing for all of us that I don't think we will ever be able to resume our normal lives there.... All our valuables and belongings were looted by the mob. They also burned some rooms of our house and damaged the infrastructure."



As to what spurred the blasphemy accusation in the first place, the son said,



"Our business was flourishing, making some local Muslims jealous of our success. There have been multiple attempts to involve us in fake cases, which we faced bravely, but this time they misused religion to persecute us."



According to a May 15 report, the Muslim employer of Saima Bibi, a 24-year-old Christian woman, dragged her outside and shoved her toward an electric chaff cutter—which sliced off one of her ears, cut off most of her scalp, and injured an eye (image here). Her husband, Shahzad, who worked on the same farm and was present, said that one of their employers, Muhammad Mustafa, was angry that they were taking a break and ordered them to cut fodder for the cattle:



"I immediately got up and started to cut the fodder in the electric chaff cutter, but as soon as my wife came outside to give me tea, Mustafa started hurling abuses at her and told her to get to work. When Saima said that she'll begin work in 10 minutes, Mustafa pulled her from the hair and pushed her towards the chaff cutter, causing her to fall and hitting her head in the running machine... Blood started gushing out of Saima's head, and she screamed and cried in pain. Seeing her in a bloody mess, Mustafa fled the scene."



On May 8, Shahid Masih, a 35-year-old Christian dairy worker, was falsely accused of theft and subjected to "merciless torture" at the hands of Muhammad Ijaz. It included forcing him to ingest acid, from which he died in the hospital 11 days later. Because the impoverished Christian family lived near the dairy and heard the cries, they rushed to the scene, where, according to his wife,



"My children were also subjected to violence simply for weeping at the sight of their father's agonizing ordeal.... I too was subjected to physical assault and verbal abuse."



Seeing that they had gone "overboard" and nearly killed the Christian, Muhammad and his henchmen dropped him off at a hospital. His esophagus, lungs, and stomach were irretrievably damaged:



"For eleven agonizing days, Shahid fought for his life at Mayo Hospital, but tragically, he succumbed to his injuries on the 18th of May 2024. His untimely passing has left behind his wife, Sonia, and their six children, who now face an uncertain future without their primary provider."



Responding to this latest Pakistani injustice, the British Asian Christian Association said:



"This is a heartbreaking account of brutal violence against an innocent Christian man. The savagery with which Shahid was murdered is utterly detestable and deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. It is a damning indictment of Pakistan that Christians remain vulnerable and face such devastating persecution due to perceived impunity. Only a concerted effort to uphold the law in this and other incidents will change the appalling mindset that treats Christians as pariahs and condones the violence meted out against them."



Last reported, authorities are refusing to prosecute Muhammad Ijaz and his murderous accomplices.



On May 25, Muslims beat Yasir Masih, a 35-year-old Christian sanitation worker, and left him chained for hours in the blistering heat. When his father-in-law Hussain found him hours later,



"Masih's entire body was badly bruised, and he was chained to a chair. When he regained some strength, he told us that Malik Khadim Hussain, a resident of Gujjarpura, his son and three others had held him hostage and tortured him for not immediately obeying their order to collect the garbage and sweep the doorstep of their house."



Masih's primary responsibility was to clean the streets, although he had usually agreed to the Muslim families' requests to clean their specific areas:



"Masih told [Malik] Hussain that he would do the needful as soon as he finished his official work and got busy. After some minutes, when Masih went to Hussain's house, he told him to go on the roof and clean it. When Masih went to the roof, Hussain, his sons and the other men attacked him with iron rods, punches and kicks."



The Muslim family then chained him to a chair:



"When they left Masih alone, he found a chance to escape, still chained to the chair. He tripped down the stairs and dragged himself out of the gate into the street, where he collapsed. Some passersby recognized him, and this is how we also got information about his whereabouts."



Discussing this incident, Christian socio-political activist Sunil Gulzar said,



"Christian sanitation workers work long shifts even in extreme weather conditions to keep the city clean. However, despite their dedicated services, these workers are often ridiculed and mistreated because of their Christian faith.... It seems that sanitary workers are children of a lesser god. They often face salary delays and no job security. They are discriminated against even by their Muslim colleagues, and now we are witnessing incidents of physical violence against these weak people."



Muslim Attacks on Churches and Other Christian Symbols



France: After knocking down a large public cross with his van, a Muslim man of Turkish origin emerged from it and, after shouting out a few "Allahu akbars," began to perform Muslim prostration prayers at the scene. Although the report ascribes his behavior to "psychological problems," it is notable that the day of the incident, May 29, is the anniversary of the Turkish conquest of Constantinople—which featured the systematic breaking of crosses to ubiquitous cries of "Allahu akbar."



Separately, on May 14, the St. Thérèse Church was set on fire in Poitiers (ironically, where Muslim invaders were first defeated by the French General Charles Martel in 732). Because a large number of fire fighters were quick to respond, the fire was put out, so that only some chairs and pews were destroyed. However, a large statue of the Virgin Mary inside the church was found beheaded (image here), apparently by the same people who had set the fire. This was the second such attack on the church in two years. In 2022, the nativity figures near the same statue of Mary were found smashed to pieces.



Another Virgin Mary statue was similarly beheaded (here) and another riddled with bullets (here).



Many other attacks on churches in France persisted throughout the month of May, including arson attacks (here, here, here, here, here), general desecrations (here, here, here, here) desecrations of cemeteries (here and here), defecations in churches and urination in their baptismal fonts (here and here), and bomb threats (here).



England: On May 1 in Bradford, a Muslim woman was videotaped hurling rocks at a church in broad daylight. Her immediate target was a large statue of the Virgin Mary. A driver can be heard yelling "Leave Mary alone!" As the British activist Tommy Robinson observed on X,



"Imagine the uproar if it was Christians throwing rocks at a mosque? MPs and the media would be all over it screaming 'Islamophobia!'"



Austria: On Sunday, May 12, the Church of St. Anthony of Padua was defaced with Islamic slogans, including "Islam will win, with you or without," and "Deen over Dunya" (religion comes before worldly affairs). According to a report,



"Some of the words have been crossed out or replaced, but the graffiti has not been removed. This is not the first time that St Anthony's Church has been the scene of a crime. Four years ago, around 50 young people stormed the church shouting 'Allahu Akbar.' ... [T]he church intruders were a group of Turkish youths who had previously organised themselves via social media. There is currently no answer as to why the graffiti has not been removed, as the parish has not yet taken a position when asked."



Kosovo: On May 15, the Church of the Holy Trinity was vandalized with Islamic graffiti, which included "Allah Akbar," "Remove this church from here," "Only Muslims are here," "We don't want churches, we want mosques," and "Islam is the only true religion!" According to the report,



"This incident is particularly troubling as it follows the decision by the Kosovo authorities to ban Serbian Patriarch Porfirije and other bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church from entering Kosovo. This prohibition prevented them from celebrating the Holy Liturgy ... [T]hese attacks on churches and private property are predominantly driven by ethnic and religious motivations, specifically targeting the Serbian community and the Serbian Orthodox Church."



Slovenia: On May 29, the walls of a chapel were discovered defaced with the word "Allah" scrawled in large letters with red paint.



Indonesia: On Sunday, May 5, in the island of Java, a Muslim mob, armed with machetes, sickles, and knives, descended on a rented home, where a group of 15 Catholic students were praying. Two young women were injured. The Muslims were angered that the Christians had dared to worship in a home, as opposed to confining it to whichever churches exist. As the report explains:



"Bonar Tigor Naipospos, deputy chairman of the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, indicated that intolerant people in Indonesia mistakenly believe that gathering for worship at a house is against the law. Private worship is legal in Indonesia, but many people consider the 'private sphere' as only the five daily prayers in Islam, he said."



Similarly, on May 8, in another village in Java, a local Muslim official, with his wife and son in tow, disrupted another house during Christian prayer meeting. According to an eyewitness, the Muslim family stood outside "screaming, yelling and calling them bad names," all in an effort to force them to stop worshipping. The report adds that



"The worship was not loud and has been taking place regularly without incident for 10 years.... Indonesia, which has largest Muslim population in the world at 231 million people, has seen a stream of such disruptions of Christian worship in the past 25 years..."



Senegal: Catholic cemeteries were desecrated in the more than 97% Muslim nation. Photos in the report show broken crosses, smashed tombstones, and exhumed graves. A local authority, Cheikh Bamba Dieye, responded with strong denunciations:



"A nation of peace and harmony as tolerant and open-minded as ours cannot tolerate and/or accept this desecration of tombs in the Catholic cemetery of Saint-Louis. It is unacceptable because it undermines living together and undermines our common desire to build a Senegal of all and for all where we will live in peace with respect for others. Shame on you."



Turkey: On May 6, an ancient Christian church in Constantinople (Istanbul) was reopened with much fanfare as a mosque. Believed to have been in built in the sixth century, Chora Church, like so many other churches following the Turkic conquests of Christian lands, was converted into a mosque in the fourteenth century. In the mid-twentieth century, during Turkey's secular reforms, it was, due to its many Christian frescoes (images here) turned into a museum.



In 2020, however, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to its transformation into a mosque—79 years after it had served as a museum. At that time, the president of Greece, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, responded by calling the move "an act of symbolic violence dictated by political arrogance," which "blatantly violates the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and brutally interrupts the long-standing intercultural dialogue between East and West.... [It is further an act of] cultural insecurity and religious intolerance, which condemns a treasure trove of Christian art and cultural nobility to obscurity." One report elaborates,



"This decision [by Erdogan], reminiscent of the conversion of Hagia Sophia in 2020, has sparked controversy both domestically and internationally. *** The Chora Church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its stunning Byzantine mosaics and frescoes, has long been cherished as a cultural and historical treasure. The move to repurpose it as a mosque has drawn criticism from preservationists and religious minority groups alike, who argue that it represents a disregard for cultural heritage and religious tolerance.... Critics see the conversion as a calculated political maneuver aimed at appeasing Islamist parties, which constitute significant voting blocs supporting the ruling Turkish President's Justice and Development Party, or AKP. This shift in the status of historic Christian sites reflects a broader trend in Türkiye, where some monuments with Byzantine and Greek heritage have been repurposed in recent years."

link

[schwartzie]

He 'Wanted to Kill as Many People as Possible': The Persecution of Christians, June 2024

by Raymond Ibrahim

July 28, 2024 at 5:00 am



One elderly and ailing Orthodox priest, Fr. Nikolai Kotelnikov, had his throat slit by the Muslims yelling "Allahu akbar" ["Allah is the greatest"]. – asianews.it, June 24, 2024, Russia.



ISIS militants, using machetes and rifles, slaughtered more than 80 Christians....ISIS emphasized the religious identity of its victims in a post, saying that "Caliphate soldiers" killed "Christians." According to one report, many of the slain were "very young" and were targeted for "refusing to convert into Islam".... some bodies were found "tied up" and "decapitated." – premierchristian.news, June 18, 2024, Democratic Republic of Congo.



In Lahore Pakistan, authorities arrested Jameela Khatoon, a 62-year-old mentally ill Christian woman, after a Muslim shopkeeper, Muhammad Asif, complained that she had committed blasphemy against his namesake, the prophet of Islam. Jameela is being charged under Section 295-C of Pakistan's Penal Code, which carries a mandatory death sentence for those who insult Muhammad. Earlier that day, after Jameela had entered Asif's shop, they argued about shampoo. – britishasianchristians.org, June 7, 2024, Pakistan.



n "anti-terrorism" court, despite lack of evidence, handed out another death sentence to Ehsan Masih, a 27-year-old Christian man, for allegedly sharing a "blasphemous" video against Muhammad on a social media platform. – morningstarnews.org, June 7, 2024, Pakistan.



n impoverished Christian rickshaw driver, [Dennis Albert], is facing a long prison sentence, possibly for life, for stepping out of his carriage onto some papers alleged to have been pages of the Koran. – morningstarnews.org, June 18, 2024, Pakistan.



"Dennis has studied till 10th grade, but he had no clue that the pages he was standing on had religious value. He's a simple rickshaw driver earning an honorable livelihood for himself. He did not have any intention of hurting religious sentiments of any person or community... He's losing hope for his freedom. He's being kept in a special barrack reserved for blasphemy accused..." – Imran Albert, the rickshaw driver's brother, morningstarnews.org, June 18, 2024, Pakistan.



"Typically kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of such Islamic 'marriages' and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers, rights advocates say. Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children's ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their 'legal' wives." -- morningstarnews.org, July 9, 2024, Pakistan.



Muslim factory owner tortured his Christian employee to death -- Waqas Salamat, age 18 -- for refusing to continue working for him.... Muhammad instantly sent some factory workers to collect him; they bound his hands and feet and carried him to Muhammad's factory. There, Muhammad, his son, and several Muslim employees began torturing Waqas for hours—beating him with pipes and administering electric shocks to him—until he died. He was the main breadwinner for his impoverished family. According to his mother, Rubina.



"Our financial condition is such that we didn't even have enough money to arrange for his burial... Waqas was my beloved son and my biggest support. He would often tell me that he'll work very hard to make life easier for us...." -- morningstarnews.org, June 11, 2024, Pakistan.





On June 23, terrorists launched attacks on several churches and synagogues in the Muslim Republic of Dagestan. At least 21 people were killed and dozens wounded. One elderly and ailing Orthodox priest, Fr. Nikolai Kotelnikov, had his throat slit by the Muslims yelling "Allahu akbar". Pictured: Makhachkala, in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, with the Grand Mosque in the foreground. (Photo by iStock/Getty Images)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of June 2024.



The Muslim Slaughter of Christians



Russia: On Sunday, June 23, terrorists launched attacks on several churches and synagogues in the Muslim Republic of Dagestan. At least 21 people were killed and dozens wounded. One elderly and ailing Orthodox priest, Fr. Nikolai Kotelnikov, had his throat slit by the Muslims yelling "Allahu akbar" ["Allah is the greatest"]. At least one church, that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was set on fire. In another church, in the words of one report,



"Gun battles erupted around the Assumption Cathedral in Makhachkala and heavy automatic gunfire rang out late into the night. Footage showed residents running for cover as plumes of smoke rose above the city."



About 5-6 militants were killed; the rest fled. No one claimed the attack, which follows the Moscow massacre, claimed by ISIS, on March 22, 2024, when 145 Russians were murdered.



Democratic Republic of Congo: On Friday, June 7, ISIS militants, using machetes and rifles, slaughtered more than 80 Christians and forced of several churches to close. ISIS emphasized the religious identity of its victims in a post, saying that "Caliphate soldiers" killed "Christians." According to one report, many of the slain were "very young" and were targeted for "refusing to convert into Islam." This incident is part of a larger pattern of violence against Christians. According to another report, "nearly 150 people have been killed by the group since early June." This includes a June 7 attack that left 41 people slaughtered; some bodies were found "tied up" and "decapitated."



Nigeria: Some June headlines from the ongoing Muslim genocide of Christians in the African nation follow:



June 2: "Islamic Fulani Militants Kill Pastor, Wife, 3 Other Church Members."

June 6: "Terrorists Murder 3 Abducted Christian Passengers in Borno." (After stopping and raiding a bus, the Muslims separated the Christian passengers from the Muslims, then killed all the Christians.

June 9: "Priest Kidnapped in Kaduna State, Nigeria.

June 17: "Suspected Islamic Fulani Militants Kill 5 Christians."

June 22: "Muslim Extremists Abduct Second Church Leader in Three Weeks."

June 23-26: "Eight Christians Killed in Plateau State, Nigeria."

June 21-25: "Islamic Terrorists Threaten to Kill Kidnapped Clergymen in Nigeria" (unless heavy ransoms are paid).

Germany: A roaming gang of ten "youths" savagely attacked a 20-year-old Christian of Greek origin, Phillipos Tsanis, for wearing a large pectoral cross. "They beat him to death," Phillipos's grieving father told reporters, "all 10 people were kicking him in the head, after he had dropped to the floor unconscious. Rushed to a hospital and placed on life support, the 20-year-old nonetheless succumbed to his injuries."



"The most disturbing aspect," another relative said, "is that they recorded the attack and are boasting about it." This incident, he added, mirrors other disturbing occurrences in the area targeting individuals perceived as Christian, including the deaths of a 26-year-old man and a policeman. The primary suspect is of Syrian origin. Phillipos's father said that the youth was just returning from a celebratory party:



"He just wanted to enjoy the graduation party with his sister and friends. His life was just beginning. The violence has to stop. This could happen to anyone's child, and no parent should endure such a devastating loss."



Separately, on June 28, a 15-year-old Muslim boy was sentenced to four years in prison after he confessed to planning a major terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Leverkusen. According to the report, "the boy became radicalized in the fall of 2023," after which he and another Muslim teenager made their plans:



"The suspect wanted to kill as many people as possible at the Christmas market with a rented truck. The other suspect would film it. The teenager had posted a video in a chat group announcing an attack, which also features an Islamic State symbol in the background."



Uganda: On June 18, the slain body of Richard Malinga, a 36-year-old pastor. was found. He had been receiving threats from Muslims for leading their coreligionists to Christianity.



According to his pastor (name withheld), "The evening of June 17, I received a short message from Malinga of being surrounded by the Muslims. I wrote back to him several times, but there was no response." He was later found "in a pool of blood. We found the victim dead and tied with ropes."



In a separate incident, Muslims savagely beat two Christian evangelists—breaking the leg of one—for preaching Christ in their village. Once they began to preach, Tenywa Herbert, 34, and Mukisa Siraji, 30, found that "We landed among some angry Muslims who were hunting for me," Mukisa said:



"Before completing our message, one sheikh called Jaberi, the imam of one of the mosques in Kaliro, who had a big beard, ordered other Muslims to beat us and get Jannah (Paradise). We were grabbed and flogged publicly until my leg was hit with a hammer, and it got broken totally."



The Muslims then culminated this punitive "ritual" by tearing their Bibles and religious tracts to pieces.



Pakistan: Blasphemy Charges, Rape, Forced Conversions and Murder of Christians



On June 4, In Lahore Pakistan, authorities arrested Jameela Khatoon, a 62-year-old mentally ill Christian woman, after a Muslim shopkeeper, Muhammad Asif, complained that she had committed blasphemy against his namesake, the prophet of Islam. Jameela is being charged under Section 295-C of Pakistan's Penal Code, which carries a mandatory death sentence for those who insult Muhammad. Earlier that day, after Jameela had entered Asif's shop, they argued about shampoo. After she left, he called police and accused her of "uttering derogatory remarks about Muhammad." He alleged that she said that "Christ was greater than the prophet of Islam," and generally "screaming and shouting." According to Jameela's son, Sonny Gil, everyone in the neighborhood knows about her mental condition:



"Ali also knows about her illness, and we are surprised as to why he filed a case against her... Ali has claimed that when he and some other Muslims tried to stop my mother from blaspheming against their prophet, she started walking towards her home but kept insulting Muhammad."



Gil said his mother's mental health has been rapidly deteriorating for four years and added:



"We have taken her to the Punjab Institute of Mental Health several times for treatment, but she hasn't improved much... We have tried our best to keep her in the house, but she refuses to stay confined and becomes violent... My mother didn't know what she was saying or doing. It would be very unfair to keep her in prison with such a medical condition. We hope that the court will drop the charges against her on compassionate grounds."



Meanwhile, the rest of the 40-45 Christian families living in Jameela's neighborhood have fled their homes: reprisals and collective punishment against Christians are routine in Pakistan.



Separately, on June 29, an "anti-terrorism" court, despite lack of evidence, handed out another death sentence to Ehsan Masih, a 27-year-old Christian man, for allegedly sharing a "blasphemous" video against Muhammad on a social media platform. According to his lawyer,



"The police recovered Masih's phone from his house and sent it to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) for examination. The PFSA report concluded that no blasphemous material was found on the accused's phone or TikTok account.... Despite there being no direct evidence against Masih, the court relied on the statements given by the prosecution witnesses and sentenced him to death, which is a gross miscarriage of justice."



In another blasphemy-related incident, an impoverished Christian rickshaw driver is facing a long prison sentence, possibly for life, for stepping out of his carriage onto some papers alleged to have been pages of the Koran. According to the report,



"Dennis Albert, a 35-year-old rickshaw driver, was booked under one section of Pakistan's blasphemy laws that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison (Section 295-A, hurting religious sentiments), and another that mandates life in prison (Section 295-B, defiling the Quran)."



Police arrested him after a Muslim passerby alleged that Dennis was standing on Islamic scriptures. As Dennis's brother, Imran, said, however:



"Dennis has studied till 10th grade, but he had no clue that the pages he was standing on had religious value. He's a simple rickshaw driver earning an honorable livelihood for himself. He did not have any intention of hurting religious sentiments of any person or community... He's losing hope for his freedom. He's being kept in a special barrack reserved for blasphemy accused, and it seems after hearing their stories of prolonged imprisonment, Dennis has started thinking that the effort is futile. I keep encouraging him not to give up and remain steadfast in his faith."



What is not clear is why Muslims were not outraged that Koran scriptures littered the public streets in the first place.



Another Christian woman, in yet another incident, after her bail was denied on June 3, was reported rotting in a jail cell while awaiting trial for accusations of blasphemy. Stella Khawar, 28, was arrested and charged with "hurting religious sentiments of Muslims," said her husband, Khawar Shahzad, who reportedly does not believe that there is any evidence or that his wife is capable of the deed. Lawyers and human rights activist believe the accusation is part of an Islamic campaign against Christians of the region.



On June 24, Haider Ali, a 27-year-old Muslim man and butcher by profession, kidnapped Alina Khalid, a 14-year-old Christian girl, and forced her to convert to Islam and marry him. Her father reported the kidnapping on the same day to police but they failed to act, "giving the accused sufficient time to go into hiding," Khalid Masih said. Then, three days later, the family learned that their daughter had been forcibly converted to Islam and married to Ali:



"We came to know about Alina's conversion and marriage after she recorded her statement in court in which she purportedly claimed that she had changed her faith and married Ali by choice."



The Islamic marriage certificate lies by recording Alina's age as 19; it also lacks her required national identity card number.



"Alina did not have a phone and never went out of the house alone, so I don't think she had any direct contact with Ali. He has abducted her with the sole objective of exploiting her sexually. Like all other victims, Alina too was forced to do what her abductor said."



The report adds,



"Typically kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of such Islamic 'marriages' and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers, rights advocates say. Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children's ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their 'legal' wives."



A June 13 article recounts the forced conversion attempt against a 20-year-old Christian mother of two young children The woman (name withheld) started by saying she was kidnapped from her parents' home by five Muslim men: "I was alone in the house when the accused scaled the wall and abducted me on gunpoint." She was taken to a deserted building and raped by the ringleader, Ali Raza, while his armed accomplices stood guard:



"Ali Raza lives in the same village, and he had been trying to force me to develop illicit relations with him whenever I used to go out for chores. I told my father about this, and he had raised the issue with the village elders. However, our pleas for intervention were ignored, emboldening him further."



Her abductors next moved her to another location for several days:



"During this time, Ali Raza continued to rape me on gunpoint. He beat me up when I resisted him and threatened that he would kill my parents if I screamed or called for help."



She was finally moved to Ali's home "where he and his accomplices tried to force her to convert to Islam and marry him by forcibly taking her thumbprint as a signature on a blank paper":



"They wanted me to surrender to their demands so that if there was any legal issue, they could claim that I had eloped with Ali Raza and converted and married him with my will. Even though they tortured me to take my thumbprint, I refused to renounce my faith and told them that I will not deny Christ come what may."



When she finally managed to escape, thanks to the help a Muslim woman who took pity on her, and called her father, it took him days to raise the money needed to take a bus to where she was. "When I heard her voice after 10-11 days," he said, "I cannot express how relieved I felt despite the pain of hearing what she had been through." Of the Muslim woman who aided his daughter, he said, "I can never thank her enough for treating my daughter like her own."



In addition, on June 6, a Muslim factory owner tortured his Christian employee to death for refusing to continue working for him. Waqas Salamat, the 18-year-old Christian worker started working for Muhammad Saleem two months earlier, but decided to leave on June 1 and search for a job that paid better to help support his family. This would not do for Muhammad. He continued pestering the young man to return and even harassed his parents, threatening to accuse the youth of theft unless he returned. Finally, when Waqas went to see another potential employer, Muhammad's son spotted him and informed his father. Muhammad instantly sent some factory workers to collect him; they bound his hands and feet and carried him to Muhammad's factory. There, Muhammad, his son, and several Muslim employees began torturing Waqas for hours—beating him with pipes and administering electric shocks to him—until he died. He was the main breadwinner for his impoverished family. According to his mother, Rubina,



"Our financial condition is such that we didn't even have enough money to arrange for his burial... Waqas was my beloved son and my biggest support. He would often tell me that he'll work very hard to make life easier for us, but I never imagined that he would be taken from me like this. I'm very poor, and with Waqas gone, my family's financial situation has further deteriorated. I humbly ask my Christian brothers and sisters to support us in getting justice for my innocent son."



The report adds that,



"Muslim employers commonly exploit impoverished Christian workers, believing they do not have the resources or status in the 96-percent Muslim country to obtain justice."



Separately, on June 21, Rakha, the devastated widow of an elderly Christian man, Nazir Masih, who a few weeks earlier had been beaten to death by a Muslim mob—also on a false blasphemy accusation—died, partly of a broken heart. Her grieving son recalled how she could not get over and constantly obsessed over the murder of her beloved husband:



"The tears in her eyes never dried. She would recall the good times they had spent together and would then cry out his name. A few hours before she passed away, my mother wept and said that life had become meaningless for her after my father's death. She would say, 'He has left me alone, and I can't bear this anymore.' ... Her pain and agony apparently worsened when she overheard some family members talking about the bails being granted to the people involved in my father's killing. We tried our best to keep this information from her, but we failed.... Our lives have been completely shattered – all family members, including our children, are suffering from depression and stress. We have lost our business, and are forced to live in our own house as refugees. The release of the people involved in the killing of my father is akin to rubbing salt on our wounds. We've already lost hope for justice, and now my mother has also left us."



Muslim Attacks on Churches



France: On June 5, a Muslim refugee, Fataharhman Awad Allah Abdalkrem, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for engaging in a series of arson attacks in Pau over the course of three months in 2022, including the torching of the Saint-Pierre Church, many cars, 16 apartments, and other buildings.



Several other churches were attacked in France in June. One was set on fire, and in another,



"The cross was twisted, the altar smashed, vases of flowers were thrown against the walls, a sacred plaque on the altar was unsealed, twelve columns were torn down and the cross from the high altar was thrown on the sidewalk."



Germany: On June 22, in a small and sleepy Bavarian town, a group of "young people" barged into a church during evening mass and began shouting "Allahu akbar!" -- terrifying worshippers.



Indonesia: Because a Christian church of 150 members stands close to an Islamic university, authorities are, according to a June 18 report, threatening to close it, even though it had been functioning in the same location for nine years.



Separately, on Sunday, June 30, local officials forced a stop to a Christian wedding ceremony and banned the church where it was being held in from any further meetings involving worship. They claimed that the church lacked a proper permit and that, anyway, residents were (supposedly) opposed to the church. According to the report, a video shows the pastor telling officials that they "might first ban the prostitution taking place in front of the village head office," while the pastor's wife pled:



"We're not causing any trouble, sir. We're sorry, we ask for your understanding. We come from everywhere. We are a minority group. Our congregation is small in number. So please understand."



Authorities refused to relent, citing only that the locals were against the church—although the report states that this claim may not even be true, and that the Muslim authorities' are citing it as a pretext to close the church for their own reasons.



Senegal: In the 97% Muslim nation, the St Louis du Sénégal cemetery was ransacked and vandalized; several iron crosses were twisted and broken, and tomb paintings and decorations were destroyed. Fr. Louis Gomis appealed to the authorities as well as other "religious leaders":



"For a long time, especially in recent days, we have suffered a ransacking of our Catholic cemetery. This cemetery has been desecrated by unknown individuals and we are asking for help from the authorities, from religious leaders so that we can preserve the sacred place where our deceased rest."



General Muslim Persecution of Christians



Iran: According to a June 24 report, "Five Christian converts have been sentenced to a total of over 25 years in prison by the Iranian judiciary....there has been no available information about the specific reason for the charge against the five Christian converts or the details of their accusations." The report cintinues that while Christians are "acknowledged as a religious minority in Iran, authorities impose severe penalties, especially on those who convert from Islam to Christianity"-- meaning apostates.



One of those Christians sentenced, an Armenian, was given 10 years' imprisonment, even though there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on his part. The judges relied on a legal provision that allows punishment for "supposed" crimes. According to the report,



"Hakop Gochumyan, who had been in a cell since last summer, ended up on trial for 'proselytising activities' defined as 'deviant' that 'contradicts the sacred law of Islam' due to his membership and leadership of 'a network of evangelical Christianity.'"



Iraq: A court told a Christian woman and her children to convert to Islam, due to the actions of the woman's mother. Evlin Joseph was 15 when her mother, following a divorce from Evlin's father, converted to Islam and married a Muslim man. According to Iraqi law, "if a parent converts to Islam, their children who are under 18 should also adopt the new faith." Evlin, however, protests that:



"I am Christian. I am married to a Christian man. I have three Christian kids. My education was in our language. All my official documents are Christian. Our marriage is registered by the Church."



Lawyer Akram Mikhail said he had seen "many cases" similar to Evlin's:



"This forces someone to convert to Islam, with force. I am not an expert in Islam, but it is in Islam that one cannot force the religion onto others."



As the report reveals, this development affects more than just Evlin:



"The law also stipulates that if one spouse converts to Islam, then Sharia law is applicable. This means that Joseph does not have the right to marry a Christian man. The law also is applied to inheritance and custody."

link

[Berean]

The saddest thing is that most - if not all  - of those killed weren't saved. 



Jihadist Militia Murder Congregation of Roman Catholics, Stuff Local Wells with Corpses


By Staff Writer


Nearly 50 residents of Ayati village in Central Nigeria were murdered by Fulani bikers, including 20 Roman Catholics gathered for service, with the victims gunned down and their bodies stuffed into wells, according to a new report by Truth Nigeria. Local resident Akika Tsav shared what he witnessed:



It was around 4:30 pm when I heard the sound of motorcycles approaching our compound…I counted up to 15 gunmen shooting indiscriminately into huts and at people running for their lives. They shot point-blank at anyone they saw, ensuring those shots were killed with a bullet to the head.



Tsav’s voice cracked as he described the slaughter of his family members. “I watched in horror as my two brothers, my cousin, and her 8-month-old baby were gunned down before my eyes. My mother, over 90 years old, died of shock. The trauma of that day will haunt me forever.”



We’ve written about the violence and persecution of the Faluni before, who have taken a particular interest in murdering Christians. Fulani Herdsman Behead Christian Father, 7-Year-old Son, that time

Coordinated Attack sees 160 Christians Massacred in Nigeria, Including Baptist Pastor and 9 Family Members, and when Four Women Abducted From Baptist Church Service in Nigeria.



Another resident Ayati Ahangba, who lost three brothers and five cousins, wept as he detailed the attack on St. Peter Catholic Church, which was stormed by the gunman:


The congregation, unaware of the horror that was about to unfold, was mercilessly gunned down, leaving 20 innocent lives lost.



Resident Terso James also added:



The attackers, with prior knowledge of the ongoing mass, deliberately targeted their church. They opened fire on the unsuspecting worshipers, killing those who attempted to flee. Their bodies were left to lie in the sacred space where they had sought solace and peace.



Truth Nigeria also reports:



According to Tsav, the Fulani terrorists, who had been attacking other counties in North East Benue State, had decide to make the village an example of the consequence of resistance to Fulani land takeover. Ayati residents had dare to resist the free grazing of Fulani cattle herds on the croplands of the farmers.



…The survivors of the Ayati Precinct massacre are now facing a new nightmare: a looming epidemic outbreak. Charred and decomposing bodies litter the farms and homesteads, and water wells have been poisoned by rotting corpses.



Health officials are racing against time to contain the crisis, but their efforts are being hindered by the sheer scale of the devastation. Tsav, a survivor, described the horrific scene:



“Our wells were filled with corpses, a gruesome sight that will haunt us forever. The Fulanis showed no mercy, stuffing dead bodies into our wells, but that’s not all—the terrorists also poisoned the ponds with Gammalin 20, a pesticide, ensuring that the survivors would be denied even a drop of clean water.




link

[schwartzie]

'Head Separated from Body': The Persecution of Christians, July 2024

by Raymond Ibrahim

September 1, 2024 at 5:15 am



"[T]hings don't seem to get better.... elected officials are just not interested in the welfare of the people," and are offering no protection or other practical support to the Christian communities whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed. — Fr. Andrew Dewan, Director of Communications in Nigeria's Catholic Diocese of Pankshin, canuk.org, July 16, Nigeria.



On July 1, a young Christian man was sentenced to death for "blasphemy" in a Pakistani court. But first Ehsan Shan will need to serve a 22-year prison sentence and pay a fine of one million rupees. — July 2, Pakistan.



On July 20, a Christian man learned that a Muslim organization had offered a $20,000 reward to anyone who beheads him for "blasphemy" .....posters circulating in Pakistan in July [were] showing his picture and calling upon Muslims to hunt the infidel down and to perform, in the words of the posters, sar tan se juda—"head separated from body"—on him." He said the reason the false blasphemy accusation was leveled against him in the first place was to intimidate him from his activist work: "I have been reporting about the forced conversion and rape of minor Hindu girls and their subsequent marriages to Muslim Men." — July 26.



"The land in question has been specifically designated for religious use, but the government is discriminating against the church because it is not associated with the state's preferred religion...." — Alliance Defending Freedom, July 12, Turkey.





On July 4, a taxi driver — Jamshaid Choudhry, 44, a Muslim man of Pakistani origins — was arrested in New York for attacking large marble statues that had stood before the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Fresh Meadows for 42 years, culminating with the decapitation of the young Christ statue. Pictured: Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, photographed in 2020. (Image source: Tdorante10/Wikimedia Commons)

Muslim Slaughter of Christians



Democratic Republic of Congo: According to a July 28 report:



"Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) claimed, in four statements published on July 25-27, 2024, that on July 24 its fighters attacked six villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) northeastern provinces, beheading more than 57 Christian villagers. In the two largest attacks that day, 54 villagers were beheaded, 30 and 24 respectively."



Nigeria: Fr. Andrew Dewan, the Director of communications in Nigeria's Catholic Diocese of Pankshin, wrote in a July 16 report that Christians "feel helpless ... We keep encouraging them as priests, as pastors of souls to be hopeful, to be resilient. But things don't seem to get better... So, there is an atmosphere of hopelessness." He goes on to say that "elected officials are just not interested in the welfare of the people," and are offering no protection or other practical support to the Christian communities whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed. He recalled a couple of recent attacks—including the July 13 kidnapping of a Christian woman and her daughter, and the Sunday, July 14 storming of a Christian village, where the village head was murdered by Muslim herdsmen. "[T]here is a clear religious dimension to the attacks," he said.



A couple of July headlines from the ongoing Muslim genocide of Christians in the African nation:



July 19: "Fulani Extremists Kill 18 Christians in Benue State."

July 8: "Terrorists Shut Down 70 Churches in Nigeria."

Pakistan: Late at night on July 10, four Muslim men broke into the home of a Christian man and murdered him for having the gall to confront them about sexually harassing Christian women in their Lahore neighborhood. Marshall Masih, 29, was the sole breadwinner for his elderly parents, wife and four children – the oldest 10, the youngest 18 months old. His sister, Goshi, who was at the house that night, said the family was asleep when four armed Muslims, led by Muhammad Shani, broke into the home around 4:30 am.



"The assailants broke the door of my brother's bedroom on the first floor of the house and held him and his family hostage on gunpoint. They then opened indiscriminate fire on him, riddling his body with 16 bullets in the presence of his wife and minor children.... I was horrified to see his blood-soaked body lying on the floor while his wife and children were huddled in a corner crying frantically."



Although rushed to a hospital, he died of his many wounds. The sister said that Marshall had filed a complaint with police against Muhammad a couple of months earlier, after repeated, unsuccessful attempts to dissuade him and his cohorts from harassing Christian women and shooting their guns in the air:



"Though the police arrested Shani and recovered illegal weapons from his possession, he was freed after a day without any case. Instead, the police pressured my brother to stop pursuing the matter. The Muslims were offended that a Christian had taken a stand against their criminal activities, and by killing him in cold blood, they have shown that our lives do not matter... [O]ur pleas have fallen on deaf ears, and so far none of the accused murderers have been arrested... My brother was the sole provider for the family.... Our entire world has crumbled after this incident."



Muslim Rape of Christian Girls in Pakistan



On July 1, two Muslim men drugged and raped a 15-year-old Christian girl. As she was returning to her family home from a nearby grocery store, the Muslim men accosted and pressured her to drink some water, which turned out to be laced with drugs. "She fell unconscious after drinking the drug-laced water," her mother, Sonia, said "after which the accused took her to a house and raped her." When the girl did not return, the mother and father went looking for her. "After some time, we saw [Muhammad] Amjad coming out of a house followed by [my daughter], who was struggling to walk." On seeing her parents, Muhammad immediately fled. They ran to their daughter, who appeared drugged and unable to speak:



"Her clothes were drenched in blood. We immediately called the police, who took her to the hospital for treatment and medical examination. The medical examination showed that she has been raped. There were also torture and bite marks on her body."



According to the daughter herself, whose name is withheld:



"My mind was numb and vision was blurry when I gained consciousness. At first, I couldn't figure out what had happened to me, but then I started to feel the pain. It was awful. There were some bite injuries on my body which also hurt a lot.... [At one point during her captivity] I tried to run, but he beat me up, biting me on the cheek when I was struggling to free myself. I started screaming for help, after which he let go of me and left the house. I followed him outside, and while I was trying to make out where I was, my parents saw me and took me in their arms.... I'm still unable to sleep at night. The bitter memory of that night continues to haunt me to this day."



As usual in Pakistan, police have been reluctant to move against the accused, a fellow Muslim. According to the victim's mother:



"We made several visits to the police station, but each time we were treated harshly by the police. When the police finally registered our FIR, no attempt was made to arrest the accused, enabling them to obtain interim bails from the court."



Christian attorney Zunaira Yousaf said:



"The police are clearly siding with the accused; nearly a month has passed, yet the police have not conducted DNA tests of the accused and the victim. Due to this, the accused have thrice managed to get their pre-arrest bails extended from the court."



Separately, according to a July 30 report:



"A Christian girl was abducted, raped, and sold to a brothel in Gujranwala by her captor. She was eventually found and returned home when her brother accidentally spotted her in a rickshaw en route to a hospital. Tragically, she passed away from a high fever and severe bleeding caused by abortion pills. In a further distressing turn, the perpetrator attempted to abduct her younger sister as well."



Muslim Attacks on Apostates and Blasphemers



Pakistan: On July 1, a young Christian man was sentenced to death for "blasphemy" in a Pakistani court. But first Ehsan Shan will need to serve a 22-year prison sentence and pay a fine of one million rupees. According to the report:



"The young man was accused of sharing blasphemous content on the social media site TikTok, considered to be the cause of the violence that broke out in Jaranwala in August 2023.... [when] a mob of militants destroyed and burned dozens of Christian homes and some 26 churches in the Christian quarter of the Punjab city. Based on intelligence, police arrested people on blasphemy charges three days after the violence. According to police, the young man did not produce and package the blasphemous content himself, but shared it, which made it go viral. Representatives of the local Christian community have called the young man a 'scapegoat,' while those who attacked and burned Christian churches and homes go unpunished."



"A grave injustice has been committed," noted the NGO Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS):



"The verdict against Ehsan Shan symbolises the virtual death of all Christians in Pakistan today. For the violence and destruction that took place in Jaranwala, only one culprit has been identified, and that is a Christian."



Separately in Pakistan, on July 20, a Christian man learned that a Muslim organization had offered a $20,000 reward to anyone who beheads him, for "blasphemy." Since first being accused of supposedly producing pictures and sketches of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, a decade ago, Faraz Pervaiz, a Pakistani Christian activist, has been living in exile in Thailand. Threats against him broke anew, however, with posters circulating in Pakistan in July showing his picture and calling upon Muslims to hunt the infidel down and to perform, in the words of the posters, sar tan se juda—"head separated from body"—on him. In a recent interview, Faraz revealed the "sinister plans" of Muslims trying to murder him:



"Pakistani Muslims are calling me, pretending to be officials from the Indian Embassy. They claim to help me and insist that I meet them in person. This is akin to honey trapping. They want to get a hold of me, torture and then kill me."



He said the reason the false blasphemy accusation was leveled against him in the first place was to intimidate him from his activist work: "I have been reporting about the forced conversion and rape of minor Hindu girls and their subsequent marriages to Muslim Men." Although his family and he had fled Pakistan a decade ago, the threats and attempts on his life continue, he said, because "Revenge has no age, time or boundaries." He added that his family "continues to live in fear."



Uganda: On July 21, a Muslim father burned his 19-year-old daughter on learning that she had become Christian a week earlier. Naasike Maliyati came home a week after her conversion to find her father, Abdulrahim Kutosi, and uncles angry with her:



"They tied me up, beat me, and finally my dad picked up a hot flat iron and hot water and burned me and shouted loudly that I was an embarrassment to the family. I was burnt for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity, as my father furiously continued shouting that I had ashamed [sic] the family. He continued saying that even Allah is annoyed with me as the pain continued inside my body."



She was then taken and unceremoniously dumped by the Namatala River, where a Christian passerby found and took her to a hospital.



Somalia: On July 8, Muslim relatives, for a second time, attacked and wounded a convert to Christianity and his family. Two months earlier, Mohammad Abdul, 40, had survived a knife attack, which left him with a scar on his forehead and a fractured hand. Then, Muslims had destroyed his home, and his in-laws had seized his wife and five children. On June 10, Abdul rented a home and regathered his family in it. Before long, his wife "started receiving calls from my relatives that I should return back to my people before we get converted to a religion which is not approved in Islam – 'Please come back home to avoid endangering yourself and the children.'"



Thinking they were safe in her new and undisclosed location, the wife initially ignored the threats. "As several frequent and threatening messages continued streaming in, I started getting fearful." Suddenly, on July 8, five of her relatives appeared pounding on her front door: "My husband was then in the washroom. Immediately they started asking the whereabouts of my husband." When she remained silent,



"One of my relatives went outside the sitting room and came back with sticks and started beating the children, who started crying loudly. Another relative went outside and came with a blunt object and hit me on my left ankle. My husband gained courage and dashed out of the bedroom and came trying to save me, but he was easily overpowered and knifed at the stomach as another hit him all over his body."



Once many neighbors started appearing, her relatives fled. Because her neighbors are all Muslim, the wife was grateful that that they did not know what the quarrel was about, thinking it a mere robbery attempt:



"I thank God that this time round they [her relatives] did not mention their usual Islamic slogan of, 'Allah Akbar [Allah is the greatest], which could have endangered our lives, because we are living in an Islamic region... The neighbors found my husband in a pool of blood and took us to a nearby medical clinic."



She was left with a broken ankle; her husband has lost the ability to speak.



Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches



United States: On July 4, a taxi driver — Jamshaid Choudhry, 44, a Muslim man of Pakistani origins — was arrested in New York for committing a hate crime. On the previous Sunday, June 20, he had attacked large marble statues of the Holy Family that had stood before a church for 42 years, culminating with the decapitation of the young Christ statue. Video footage shows the man stopping his taxicab near the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Fresh Meadows around 5:30 am. He then removed one of his shoes and charged at the three statues of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, savagely swatting at the heads of Mary and Joseph. He then turned his attention to the Christ child, and repeatedly struck his head until it went spiraling to the ground. He concluded his jihad by spitting at the statue. Choudhry was then seen calmly walking off with the weapon—his shoe—in hand. Repairs to the beloved statues will cost $20,000. In a statement, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said:



"We will not tolerate unprovoked attacks, especially those driven by hate. Queens stands as a beacon of diversity and inclusivity, where freedom of religion and expression are celebrated as fundamental pillars of our democracy."



Choudhry pled not guilty at his arraignment in Queens Criminal Court and was released.



France: On July 24, a Muslim man barged into the Notre-Dame de l'Assomption Basilica in Nice, splattered water on the lit candles, and recited Arabic prayers and the Koran before declaring "Allah will judge!" Police, who were quickly contacted, arrived and took the 29-year-old man, whom the report describes as "suffering from psychiatric disorders," into custody.



In another incident, late Sunday, July 14, another Notre-Dame-du-Travail church in Paris was vandalized. A knife was left planted in the throat of a statue of St. Mary, and the pillars of the church were desecrated with anti-Christian graffiti, including "Infidels should pray five times a day", "Bastard Jesus one God Allah", "The church is consecrated by Satan", "The church will be burnt", "The last prophet Muhammad", "Those who continue will have their heads cut off", "I will wage war against you Christian world", "We Muslims cannot accept this whore of a religion / Mary is your destiny", and "Go to hell."



On July 3, various graffiti inciting violence against Jews and Christians—including one that literally read, "Death to Jews and Christians"—was found in Croissy-sur-Seine, just west of Paris. Among hate-filled messages found on the wall of the Canotiers' underground parking lot, was "Free Palestine."



Finally, on July 8, another church in Lyon in the Rhône "caught fire," with little other information.



Germany: On Sunday, July 28, a Muslim migrant of Afghan origins disrupted the service of the St. Maximilian Kolbe parish in Hamburg. According to the report:



"The young man had tied a Palestinian flag around his neck and then displayed it on his back. Eyewitnesses reported that the young man then walked through the nave towards the priest and stood there. He was then asked to leave the church by church staff, a request with which he complied. At the door, however, he continued to cause a disturbance by playing loud music on a speaker at the open entrance. When the police arrived with several patrol cars, the man initially fled, according to a police spokesperson. He was later stopped by police officers who clarified his identity. He was then released from police custody."



There were many other acts of vandalism and arson against churches in Germany throughout July (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).



Italy: On July 27, three Muslim migrants vandalized a church and beheaded a statue in Veneto. MP Erik Pretto condemned their actions in a press release:



"Last Saturday, late in the afternoon, the small church of Scalini di Arsiero was brutally vandalized. The suspects, three young people, were of African origin according to witnesses. They allegedly entered the sacred place by breaking down the front door with their shoulders. They then destroyed furniture, candelabras and stained glass windows, going so far as to break and decapitate the statue of Saint Anthony of Padua with the Child Jesus, purchased by the local community at the time of the construction of the building."



There were many more acts of vandalism and arson against churches and the beheading of their statues throughout July in Italy (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).



Spain: On July 20, a 24-year-old Moroccan man, dressed in Islamic prayer attire, barged into the Church of Saint Lawrence in Pamplona where he "uttered shouts and threats of a jihadist nature." He was involved in another public altercation earlier that day. Arrested on the scene, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.



On the next day, Sunday, July 21 a woman barged into church in Navarra and threatened the officiating priest with a knife. Before being arrested, she also smashed the glass entrance to the church. The report does not indicate her identity or motive.



Portugal: On July 31, the Cross of Christ of the São Lázaro statue from 1386, a national monument, was destroyed by "Asian" migrants, said eyewitnesses.



Indonesia: On July 31, authorities foiled an Islamic terror plot to suicide bomb two churches. A 19-year-old Muslim and his parents were arrested. According to the report:



"H.O.K [initials of the 19-year-old] had become a member online of Philippines-based Dawlah Islamiyah, said to be affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS), and he and accomplices were planning to carry out suicide bombings using Triaceton Triperoxide (TATP) explosives at two Christian churches in Malang Regency, East Java. TATP, widely known as the "Mother of Satan," is one of the most powerful and dangerous explosives. Preliminary investigations indicated that H.O.K. often accessed various websites containing Dawlah Islamiyah propaganda that led him to try to carry out suicide bombings."



In a separate incident, another church was pressured into halting its worship service in the world's most populous Muslim nation. According to a July 24 report,



"[Muslim] Residents living near the Tesalonika Church in Kampung Melayu Timur, Teluk Naga District, Tangerang, recently rioted and demanded that the church cease its worship activities. Footage of the rioters ridiculing the church for having to gather inside a home went viral on social media this week. One resident stated that the mob stopped the church's worship because the service occurred in a majority-Muslim community...While churches in larger cities can generally worship openly, smaller churches in Indonesia's villages are increasingly challenged, threatened, and attacked."



Turkey: The Diyarbakir Protestant Church Foundation, established in 2019, is facing overt discrimination from the government which is denying it the ability to build a much needed worship center for its growing congregation on land zoned for religious buildings. Despite repeated applications, the requests have been continually denied or ignored by the authorities. According to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF):



"The land in question has been specifically designated for religious use, but the government is discriminating against the church because it is not associated with the state's preferred religion.... The systemic and bureaucratic persecution is not only in direct violation of the basic human right to religious freedom but also Türkiye's international human rights obligations. The discrimination must stop.... Christians face numerous legal and practical barriers when they wish to establish a legally recognized worship place in Türkiye."


link

[schwartzie]

Thousands of Christians Slaughtered in Nigeria: ‘Deliberately Targeted’

Frank Bergman
September 3, 2024 - 2:12 pm



Thousands of Christians have been slaughtered after being “deliberately targeted” by Islamist groups over their faith, according to reports.



According to a major new report, the killing, persecution, and displacement of Christians in Nigeria are “unrelenting.”



Christians “are deliberately targeted” and killed, according to the report by Open Doors International, a faith-based non-profit working to raise awareness of global persecution.



The group aims to mobilize prayer, support, and action among Christians.



The report warns of a “time bomb” as “Christian communities, their livelihood(s), faith leaders, and places of worship” are being wiped out by violent radical Muslims.



Christians are reportedly becoming “an endangered species” there, the report says.



In a statement about the report, Open Doors U.S. CEO Ryan Brown said:



“Last year alone, in Nigeria there were more people that were killed because of their Christian faith than all other places in the globe combined.



“To be specific, there were 4998 Christians that were killed because of their faith in Nigeria last year.”

In testimonies recorded for the Open Doors International report, titled “No Road Home,” attacks on Christians are said to have been carried out by Islamist terror groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West Africa Province.



The terrorists are predominantly Muslim Fulani militants who originally were herdsmen.



“When the Fulani gunmen came to attack, they could be heard shouting ‘Allahu Akbar (Allah is the greatest), we will destroy all Christians,'” one interviewee claimed in the report.



“The Fulani started to shoot, burning houses,” another added.


“They burnt our animals and maize plants.”



Other interviewees report that in some cases, Christians are being forced to convert to Islam to get food or to preserve their livelihood.



Those who refuse to comply face being murdered along with their entire family.



In the period from October 2019 to September 2023, the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa reports that 16,769 Christians were killed.



Up to 49% of Nigeria’s population is said to be Christian.



The report highlights how persecution has forced Nigerian Christians to flee to other parts of the country and to become Internally Displaced Persons (IDP).



“Extreme violence across parts of Nigeria over the last decade has resulted in mass displacement of Christian communities,” the report notes.



Christians, the report adds, “have been singled out for violence, face harsh living conditions, and experience faith-based challenges throughout their displacement journey.”



The situation is getting worse.



In total, in 2014, the report claims there were 1.1 million IDPs in Nigeria.



However, “as of 2023, there are 3.4 million.”



The report claims supporters of the Islamist terror group Boko Haram are particularly vindictive against Christians in Nigeria.



“Boko Haram target people that are working with the Church,” claims one interviewee.



“Maybe you have a position like Secretary, or you have any position in Church, you are a target.



“In every community, they have a list of people they are looking for.”



In state government camps in Borno, the report claims “to gain access to critical support, some have felt compelled to convert to Islam or deliberately hide their faith.”



Additionally, “in some places of education, they could not gain access with Christian names.”



In a statement, a State Department spokesperson said:



“We are deeply concerned about the high levels of violence in Nigeria, including intercommunal violence and attacks by non-state armed groups on religious communities of all religions and beliefs.



“Boko Haram, ISIS-West Africa (ISIS-WA), and other armed groups continue to attack population centers and religious targets, including churches and mosques, as well as military targets, despite Nigerian government efforts to counter them.”



“Both Boko Haram and ISIS-WA have been designated by the Secretary of State as Entities of Particular Concern for religious freedom.



“In numerous meetings and visits this year, U.S. officials from the Secretary of State, to Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, to the Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom, have urged the government of Nigeria to intensify efforts to address the drivers of conflicts in Nigeria, including criminality and the lack of justice and accountability for violence, and its impact on members of religious communities of all faiths, including Christians.”



The State Department claims it is actively trying to turn the tables.



“We are also working with Nigerian security services to help them respond more effectively to threats, as well as supporting police and justice reform programs, peacebuilding, dialogue efforts, and development programs to help prevent and mitigate conflict.”


link

[schwartzie]

'He Targeted My Child for Sexual Exploitation': The Persecution of Christians, August 2024

by Raymond Ibrahim

September 24, 2024 at 5:00 am



Muslim militants slit the throats of about 26 people inside a church: "All non-Muslim men over the age of 12 were separated out before being killed." — acnuk.org, August 30, 2024, Burkina Faso.



"So let everyone know that the role of Christians in Lebanon has ended! You have become a minority in this country, and yet you still hold high positions... Nobody would accept this issue. The coming generations will... not accept that the president must be Christian; he must be a Sunni Muslim or Shi'ite." — Reda Saad, pro-Hezbollah commentator, x.com, August 18, 2024.



"We informed the police about the accused, but they still did not take any action, giving sufficient time to Asad to convert the minor child and contract an Islamic marriage with her.... Fairy is just 12 years old. She had no access to a cell phone and rarely went out of the home by herself...." — Parveen Shaukat, mother of Fairy Shaukat,12, abducted, converted and married by Muhammad Assad; morningstarnews.org, August 28, 2024, Pakistan.



"The accused not only kidnapped the child, he converted her and contracted an Islamic marriage to save himself from prosecution ." — Sumera Shafique, Christian attorney; morningstarnews.org, August 28, 2024, Pakistan.



"Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt." — Coptic Solidary report, "'Jihad of the Womb': Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt", copticsolidarity.org, September 10, 2020, Egypt.



On August 5, a Muslim migrant from North Africa was arrested for robbing a church in Turin. There were many other acts of arson, desecration (including of a Christian cemetery), statue breaking, and thefts targeting churches in Italy throughout the month of August — torinotoday.it, August 6, 2024, Italy.



On Sunday, Aug. 18, a mob consisting of local officials forcibly dragged a Christian pastor from his church and sealed off its site on the dubious claim that the place had originally belonged to the government.... "What was disappointing was those people who closed my church were my friends...." — morningstarnews.org, September 3, 2024, Indonesia.



On Aug. 30, a massive fire "broke out" in the Coptic Christian Diocese of Beni Suef in Egypt, consuming all of the five-story Christian building's contents.... [T]his is only the latest of many churches in Egypt to be torched and immediately attributed to "faulty wires" and other natural causes. In one month alone, August 2022, a full 11 churches reportedly "caught fire."... Also "interesting" is that "accidental" fires in mosques—which outnumber churches in Egypt by a ratio of 40 to 1—are completely unheard of." — copticslodarity.org, September 2, 2024, Egypt.





On August 4, the tabernacle of Saint Pierre Church, in Lège Cap-Ferret, France, was broken and set on fire, and its religious statues and icons were smashed on the floor. (Image source: Henry Salomé/Wikimedia Commons)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of August 2024.



Muslim Slaughter of, Violence against, and Hate for Christians



Burkina Faso: According to an Aug. 30 report, Muslims had slaughtered more than 100 Christians, and kidnapped many more in just three months, between late May and late August. During the latest reported atrocity, which occurred on Sunday, Aug. 25, Muslim militants slit the throats of about 26 people inside a church: "All non-Muslim men over the age of 12 were separated out before being killed." Not content with killing, they also vandalized the church, "tried to desecrate the tabernacle, and painted inscriptions on the wall that had a fresco of the Sacred Heart of Jesus."



Uganda: On Aug. 19, sword-wielding Muslims slaughtered Yowabu Sebakaki, a 52-year-old Christian man who had been leading Muslims to Christ. Earlier in the summer, Sebakaki had, according to his wife, received threatening text messages, including:



"We are aware of some secret meeting you are undertaking. You have to stop preaching as well as converting our faithful Muslims to Christianity, and if not, then soon we are coming for your life."



Sebakaki was murdered while returning home from a meeting with converts. David Nkomba, who had accompanied him on the trip home, said,



"Just when we were five kilometers from reaching the homestead, at around 6:20 p.m. a motorcycle came up just behind us, and in no given time Sebakaki was struck with an object which happened to be a 'panga' [long Somali sword] on the back near the neck. He fell down and then was cut by another panga at the head. Sebakaki became unconscious due to too much bleeding.... Other attackers were shouting, 'Your time has come, and pray hard if your God will save you – you have been deceiving people about life after death given by Issa [Jesus].' I took off, but I managed to recognize one of the attackers as Rashid Siriman, a well-known radical Muslim youth from Mbale."



Sebakaki was rushed to a hospital but died en route.



Ireland: On Aug. 15, a Muslim teen randomly stabbed and nearly killed a Catholic chaplain. Prosecution described the attack as "indiscriminate, unprovoked, frenzied, and arbitrary." According to the report,



"The 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named because he is a minor, was charged with stabbing Fr Paul Murphy at Renmore Barracks.... Fr Murphy, aged in his 50s, was attacked around 10.35pm and later taken to University Hospital Galway. He is recovering from multiple stab wounds after undergoing surgery. The teenage boy was brought before a sitting of the Children's Court in Galway on Saturday where he was charged with assault causing harm. Detective Sergeant Paul McNulty told the court the attack was 'frenzied' and gardaí [state police] believe the accused holds a 'radical Islamist mindset.' ... The court heard the chaplain had 'seven deep lacerations' to his arms which required surgery, as well as minor cuts to his body and face.... The judge directed that the boy have access to appropriate medical and psychological care."



Egypt: According to an Aug. 17 post on X, Muslims attacked Christian families—including women and children—heading to a historic church in Qalybia near Cairo for a procession. Some of the Copts were severely injured and hospitalized in critical condition. (Click here for a short subtitled video of one of the attacked Christians explaining what happened.)



Lebanon: During a wild tirade, Reda Saad, a pro-Hezbollah commentator, did not even bother to hide a deep-seated antagonism against Lebanon's Christians, who have historically been the largest demographic of the nation, although now they are a close second to Muslims:



"I fear that the Christians in Lebanon will face a similar destiny to that of the Afghans, when they clung to the wheels of the American helicopters and are thrown from the sky. I fear that you won't have an airport or a port [to flee from]. And perhaps the foreign warships are coming to take you, to the last of you.... Unfortunately, did you see where you ended up? You can't even appoint a president!.... So let everyone know that the role of Christians in Lebanon has ended! You have become a minority in this country, and yet you still hold high positions... Nobody would accept this issue. The coming generations will not accept it. They will not accept that the president must be Christian; he must be a Sunni Muslim or Shi'ite."



Muslim Rape and Abduction of Christian Women



Pakistan: On Aug. 10, Atia Bibi, a 28-year-old Christian woman and mother was subjected to a "harrowing ordeal" when a group of Muslim men attacked, beat, and robbed her entire family, before marching her into a nearby field where they repeatedly raped her for nearly two hours. "I begged them to leave me," she recounted, "but they pushed me further into the sugarcane field and raped me multiple times." Her husband, Naveed, also described the ordeal:



"They slapped and punched me repeatedly, leaving marks on my body. One of the robbers took my wife into the field while another held a gun to my head, threatening to kill my son if I resisted or made any noise."



Even though crime and rape are rampant in Pakistan, religious minorities are disproportionately targeted, as their victimizers know the system can be counted in to look the other way.



In a separate incident, on Aug. 9, a Muslim man abducted, forcibly converted, and married Fairy Shaukat, a 12-year-old Christian girl. According to the girl's mother, Parveen, a widow with eight children,



"Fairy had gone to a nearby shop to buy groceries in the afternoon, but she did not return home. My sons started searching for her but could not find her. We then filed a complaint with the police, but their attitude was not welcoming. Instead of helping us, they delayed the registration of a First Information Report [FIR]."



Later, after a neighbor had informed the Christian family that he had seen a local Muslim man, Muhammad Asad, abducting the girl,



"We informed the police about the accused, but they still did not take any action, giving sufficient time to Asad to convert the minor child and contract an Islamic marriage with her.... On Aug. 13, my sons received the Nikahnama [Islamic marriage certificate] of Fairy through WhatsApp from an unknown number. We were shocked to see the document and urged the police to take action against this underage marriage. When the police finally raided the house of the accused, he was not there. It's nearly 20 days now that I haven't seen my child, and we have no information about her safety.... Fairy is just 12 years old. She had no access to a cell phone and rarely went out of the home by herself. She was abducted by Asad, who we have heard is a loafer. He targeted my child for sexual exploitation, and my heart sinks every time I think of how she is being treated in captivity."



Discussing this case, a Christian attorney, Sumera Shafique, said



"I'm filing a petition in the Lahore High Court for the child's recovery. It's very unfortunate that police delay action in cases involving underage minority girls, which allows the perpetrators to scar these children for life... The accused not only kidnapped the child, he converted her and contracted an Islamic marriage to save himself from prosecution ."



Egypt: Sometime in early August, Christina Karim Aziz, a 20-year-old Christian girl, disappeared off the streets of Asyut, where she had gone to apply for a job. Her family immediately went to police to report the disappearance; police responded with nothing. Since then, the girl's family has taken to social media, crying out to whoever will hear them—including President Sisi, whom they have publicly implored to intervene and help. She is only the latest of many Christian girls to disappear off the streets of Egypt. Earlier in the year, for example, and also in Asyut, Irene Ibrahim Shehata, a 21-year-old Christian also disappeared under circumstances very similar to Christina's, including nonresponsive police, and the family crying out to Sisi. This entire process is discussed in a 2020, 15-page Coptic Solidary report, "'Jihad of the Womb': Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt":



"The capture and disappearance of Coptic women and minor girls is a bane of the Coptic community in Egypt, yet little has been done to address this scourge by the Egyptian or foreign governments, NGOs, or international bodies. According to a priest in the Minya Governorate, at least 15 girls go missing every year in his area alone. His own daughter was nearly kidnapped had he not been able to intervene in time.... The rampant trafficking of Coptic women and girls is a direct violation of their most basic rights to safety, freedom of movement, and freedom of conscience and belief. The crimes committed against these women must be urgently addressed by the Egyptian government, ending impunity for kidnappers, their accomplices, and police who refuse to perform their duties. Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence. If there is any hope for Coptic women in Egypt to have a merely 'primitive' level of equality, these incidents of trafficking must cease, and the perpetrators must be held accountable by the judiciary."



Muslim Attacks on Christian 'Blasphemers'



Egypt: On Sunday, July 28, a military court sentenced a Christian conscript to three years in prison for "blasphemy" against Islam. According to court documents, Yusuf Sa'd Hanin was charged with "committing behavior that is harmful to discipline, order, and military requirements," after he exchanged, what prosecution called, "statements offensive to Islam" in a private conversation via Messenger. These "offensive" statements were made last May, 2024, while Yusuf was on leave from compulsory military service, and celebrating Easter with his family in his residence in Beni Suef governorate. During this time, Yusuf got into a verbal altercation and exchanged insults with a Muslim man via text. The Muslim man immediately broadcast what the Christian said, otherwise private, personal exchanges.



This, as is often the case, instantly provoked unrest among the Muslim populace of the village. Local officials, however, managed to quell the nascent uprising by assuring the Muslims that the Christian would pay. On the very next day, Yusuf was ordered to return to the Central Security camp, to resume his military training. He was seized and taken blindfolded to a National Security headquarter, where he was savagely beaten, insulted, and interrogated, including on whether he was following any Christian preachers or involved in any Coptic organizations, all of which he denied. Soon thereafter he was sent to and sentenced by a military court to three years' imprisonment.



Separately, a Muslim convert to Christianity, who has been imprisoned for more than two years in Egypt, has, according to an August 20 report, been on a hunger strike. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom summarized his great "crime" as follows:



"On December 15, 2021, authorities arrested [Abdulbaqi Saeed] Abdo, a Yemeni refugee, from his Cairo home. Abdo's arrest followed his appearance on a Christian TV channel talking about his conversion to Christianity and alleged persecution Christians in Yemen face. Abdo had also been involved in Facebook groups for Christian converts. He was charged with joining a terrorist group (Art. 86 ECC), contempt of Islam (Art. 98(w) ECC), and discrimination against Islam (Art. 161 ECC)."



Pakistan: On Aug. 7, an irate Muslim mob of nearly 300 people attacked and tried to kill a Saima Masih, a 32-year-old Christian mother of two, after a neighbor, Muhammad Haider, accused her of desecrating the Koran. According to Akmal Bhatti, chairman of an organization called the Minorities Alliance Pakistan, "The mob would have lynched Saima if the police had not reached there on time and rescued her." Once the jihadist genie of retribution had been uncorked, the raging Muslims also "attacked some other Christian residents of the village, forcing them to flee their homes and hide in the fields to save their lives." Whipping up more violence, Islamic extremist groups were also present, inciting the mob against Christians. Bhatti suggested that Muhammad Haider had a personal vendetta against the Christian woman:



"Saima denied desecrating the Quran. She reportedly said that her neighbor, Haider, had asked her for an empty sack, which she gave him. However, after some time Haider returned with some other Muslims and accused her of placing defiled pages of the Quran in the sack, which she repeatedly denied."



Although police "saved" the Christian woman's life, they also "registered a blasphemy case against her under the pressure of the mob, which is very unfair," Bhatti said. "The poor woman will now have to suffer in prison for years while her two children will be deprived of her love and care." He added that the government was taking no action against the exorbitant abuse of Pakistan's blasphemy laws: "Christians in Punjab are increasingly being targeted through blasphemy accusations, yet our state is not bothered at all."



In a separate incident, according to an Aug. 29 report,



"A village fair meant for celebration became a nightmare for two Christian brothers when they were accused of desecrating the Quran. Like many other boys at the fair, the brothers, along with Muslim children, threw fake currency notes during a swing boat ride. Among the showered notes, some slips containing Quranic verses were discovered. It was assumed that these slips with Quranic verses were torn and thrown by the Christian brothers, leading to the arrest of their mother and grandfather. Although the Christian mother and grandfather were released after the boys were presented at the police station, the mother remains devastated by the arrest of her beloved sons."



Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches, Crosses, and Cemeteries



Italy: On August 5, a Muslim migrant from North Africa was arrested for robbing a church in Turin. There were many other acts of arson, desecration (including of a Christian cemetery), statue breaking, and thefts targeting churches in Italy throughout the month of August, including here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.



Austria: According to an Aug. 19 report, Islamic graffiti—including phrases such as "Islam will win"—smeared on a Viennese church is no longer being dismissed as the work of "mischievous teens." "In view of the recently foiled terrorist attack in Vienna," that city's VP leader, Karl Mahrer said in reference to the targeting of a Taylor Swift concert, "such graffiti is an alarming warning signal that must not be ignored. We are at a decisive turning point." The vandalism of the St. Anthony Church is, he added, suggestive of "profound problems that are at the very heart of Vienna."



France: On Aug. 4, the tabernacle of Saint Pierre Church was broken and set on fire, and its religious statues and icons were smashed on the floor. "We can only regret this completely scandalous act," said Philippe de Gonneville, mayor of Lège Cap-Ferret. "The town is normally very calm; we were very surprised, it seems totally improbable.... There is an ostensible desire to destroy the sacred."



United Kingdom: During the night of Aug. 7, a beloved statue of Mother Mary was desecrated at the St. Joseph's Church in the Goan district of Wembley. According to the report, "The Goan community has a great devotion to the statue of Mother Mary, with throngs of Goans stopping by to pray in front of the statue throughout the day and night." After saying that he had contacted Muhammad Butt, leader of Brent Council under Wembley, G.O.A. UK President Ravi Vaz, said that "Butt has assured that everything will be done." However, "If needed, I will escalate this to a higher level." Discussing this incident, Joyce De Souza of the Labour Party, said:



"We are parishioners of this Church and this news was shocking.... While this anti-social activity was done to target and hurt the community's religious feelings, Elvis [her husband] and I appeal to the community to stay united at this difficult time.... Let us support communal harmony which is of utmost importance during this crucial time."



There were at least two other instances of theft and desecration in UK churches during August, here and here.



Turkey: On Aug. 24, a Christian cemetery in Istanbul was desecrated. Workers at the Agios Eleftherios Cemetery found that the barbed wire fence surrounding the graveyard had been cut, the guard dogs sedated, and several gravestones and crosses desecrated. The Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate condemned the vandalism, denouncing it as a "deliberate act of desecration and hatred for the Greek Orthodox community of Constantinople," one that evinced a "contempt for religious freedom." The Turkish government's lack of response and commitment to protect the "increasingly precarious position of religious minority communities in Turkey" was also criticized.



Indonesia: On Sunday, Aug. 18, a mob consisting of local officials forcibly dragged a Christian pastor from his church and sealed off its site on the dubious claim that the place had originally belonged to the government. After characterizing the incident as "violent and anarchic," the pastor, Herri Soesanto, said,



"I was harassed and dragged by a mob that I estimated was about 50 people... What was disappointing was those people who closed my church were my friends... I never imagined the violence that government officials made, causing upset among the congregation."



He added that when the church purchased the site, no one, including the real estate agent, had said anything at the time suggesting that the government owed the land. Indonesia is approximately 83% Muslim and 11% Christian. According to Open Doors 2024 World Watch List, which tracks the plight of Christians around the world, the persecution level in Indonesia is "very high."



Egypt: On Aug. 30, a massive fire "broke out" in the Coptic Christian Diocese of Beni Suef in Egypt, consuming all of the five-story Christian building's contents—reception halls, offices, libraries, precious books, furniture, and computers—as well as more than 300 wooden benches belonging to the adjacent Church of the Virgin Mary, which were in the diocese courtyard at the time for repairs. At least ten people, including a clergyman and several staffers, were injured and hospitalized.



Diocese spokesmen who were present said that it was only due to "Divine Providence" that a large number of children present in the building, which houses three children's schools, were saved. It took approximately five hours for firefighters to put out the blaze. Although initial reports stated that a full forensic investigation as to the cause of the fire would be underway, a security source quickly announced that the fire was caused by "faulty electrical wires."



As critics point out, however, this is only the latest of many churches in Egypt—see here, here, here, and here—to be torched and immediately attributed to "faulty wires" and other natural causes. In one month alone, August 2022, a full 11 churches reportedly "caught fire." Forty-one Christian worshippers, including many children, were killed in just one of these fires. Also "interesting" is that "accidental" fires in mosques—which outnumber churches in Egypt by a ratio of 40 to 1—are completely unheard of.



link

[Berean]

Jihadists Attack Church, Slit the Throats of 26 Christians

Staff Writer


Hundreds are dead, including 26 Christians, after a two-day killing spree in the West African country of Burkina Faso saw demonic Jihadists rampage through the countryside, according to Christian Solidarity International (CSI), which tracks persecution and gives aid to affected people.



Burkina Faso is one of the least developed countries in the world and has huge swaths of it controlled by infighting militant groups. Comprised of nearly 65% Muslim and 25% Christians, the US State Department highly advises against traveling there on account of the high likelihood of terrorism and kidnapping.


CSI reports that after the al-Qaeda-linked group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) “opened fire on hundreds of villagers outside the town of Barsalogho, in northern Burkina Faso,” they then “stormed a Protestant church in the western town of Sanaba, killing 26.”


(On) Sunday, a service was underway at a Christian Alliance evangelical church in Sanaba when jihadists attacked. “Twenty-six faithful were killed. Their hands were tied and their throats cut,” said a pastor in the capital, Ouagadougou, who visited the scene shortly afterward. The pastor, whose congregation aids victims of terror, said the survivors had taken refuge in a school.”



One of the victims, a little girl named Micheline, had three bullets removed from her right leg. “We are doing our best to ensure she can return to school. She is now out of hospital and is with a foster family,” the pastor told CSI.

link

[schwartzie]

Arson Attacks on Christian Churches Surge

David Lindfield
October 13, 2024 - 9:15 am



Christian churches around the world are continuing to be targeted by arson attacks, with many being completely destroyed.



At the beginning of September, the Church of the Immaculate Conception in France went up in flames.



However, this was just the latest major historical church in Europe to burn.



Authorities are trying to determine what is driving the attacks.



Data points to Islamists and anti-Christian radicals as the primary culprits.



According to France Bleu, a suspect with a history of committing arson attacks on churches was arrested for setting fire to the Saint-Omer church last month.



He had recently been released from prison and allegedly targeted churches multiple times immediately after his release.



The suspect, Joel Vigoreuz, reportedly posted leftist content and videos of Islamic preachers on his social media.

“There is a general anti-Christian sentiment in France, from its anti-clerical and radical secularist history, which has gone unchallenged for years,” Anja Hoffmann of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians (OIDAC) in Europe told the Daily Caller.



“It should not come as too much of a surprise that these attitudes might at some point translate into violent action.”



She stated an “increasing number of perpetrators” of the crimes targeting Christians are members of anti-Christian “ideological, political or religious groups.”



Hoffmann pointed to examples of vandalism from both radical Islam and the far Left.


During 2024, OIDAC Europe recorded the defacement of one church, two chapels, five crosses, and over 50 graves.



According to Hoffmann, they were desecrated with phrases like “Submit to Allah and “I will make war on the Christian world.”



In July 2024, the Notre-Dame-du-Travail church in Paris was vandalized with “Submit to Allah.”



A knife was also driven into the wooden throat of a statue of the Virgin Mary, La Croix reported.

In March, LeJournal du Dimanche reported that an Egyptian national with ties to the Islamic State was arrested for planning an attack on the Notre-Dame-de-Paris Cathedral in France.



That same month, an Albanian man was arrested for interrupting a Holy Thursday mass in the Sainte-Eulalie church.



The suspect was shouting “Allahu Akbar,” according to Midi Libre.



In May, a Turkish man reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” after knocking over a Catholic cross with his van, according to the outlet FDS.



“In short, it would seem that a full-blown jihad has been declared on the churches of France, and its godless leadership is looking the other way when not actively providing cover,” Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, states on his website that documents Islamic attacks against Christians.



Hoffmann noted how the church of St. Bernadette in Montpellier was vandalized with the slogan “The only church that illuminates is the one that burns.”



Photos show an anarchist symbol graffitied next to the ominous threat, reported Midi Libre.

OIDAC Europe collects data on anti-Christian hate crimes.



Hoffmann says France “consistently” ranks in the top three countries in the continent.



The group documented 106 anti-Christian hate crimes in its 2022 report, with only Italy and Germany having higher numbers.



The report defers to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) definition of a hate crime:



“A criminal act motivated by bias or prejudice towards particular groups of people.”



OIDAC Europe’s report says the majority of hate crimes were committed by far-left groups.



However, there were also attacks by “far-right groups, satanist groups, and radical Islamist groups.”



One of the most common attacks on churches is the destruction of tabernacles, according to The Catholic Arena.



The outlet noted it is the state’s responsibility to protect most churches.



French President Emmanuel Macron promised last year to increase funding for repairing churches.



Nevertheless, the destruction of churches has still not stopped.

From Aug. 25 to Sept. 1, OIDAC Europe documented six arson and attempted arson attacks on churches in Europe.



link