Monday, April 29, 2019

MURDERING MUSLIMS: JIHADIST KILL PASTOR AND FOUR OTHERS IN CHURCH ATTACK



Jihadists kill pastor, four others in Burkina church attack



Jihadists kill pastor, four others in Burkina church attack
AFP
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Ouagadougou (AFP) – Gunmen killed four worshippers and a pastor in the first jihadist attack on a church in Burkina Faso, security and local sources said Monday, in the latest violence to rock the formerly peaceful west African nation. 
Sunday’s raid took place in the small northern town of Silgadji near Djibo, the capital of Soum province. 
“Unidentified armed individuals have attacked the Protestant church in Silgadji, killing four members of the congregation and the main pastor,” a security source told AFP.
“At least two other people are missing,” the source added.
It was the first attack on a church since jihadist violence erupted in Burkina Faso in 2015.
Former colonial ruler France has deployed some 4,500 troops in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad in a mission codenamed Barkhane to help local forces try to flush out jihadist groups.
“The attack happened around 1:00 pm, just as the faithful were leaving the church at the end of the service,” a member of the church who did not want to be identified told AFP.
“The attackers were on motorbikes. They fired in the air before aiming at the members of the congregation,” the witness added.
Burkina Faso has suffered from increasingly frequent and deadly attacks attributed to a number of jihadist groups, including the Ansarul Islam group, the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.
The raids began in 2015 in the north before targetting the capital Ouagadougou and other regions, notably in the the east.
A total of 350 people have been killed since 2015 — mainly in hit-and-run raids — according to an AFP tally.
The jihadist groups regularly target both Muslim and Christian clerics, mainly in the north.
In February, a Spanish Catholic priest, Father Cesar Fernandez, was killed in a raid attributed to jihadists in Nohao in the centre of the country. He was returning from the adjoining country of Togo when it happened.
Fernandez, 72, had been working in Africa since 1982 for the Salesians of Don Bosco order.
– ‘Dramatic deterioration’ –
In March, gunmen abducted Catholic priest Father Joel Yougbare from Botogui, near Djibo, in the north. The Catholic Church has not yet confirmed reports that his body has since been found.
Several imams have also been killed in the north.
According to security sources, the jihadists do not consider these Muslim clerics sufficiently radical and sometimes accuse them of having collaborated with the authorities.
But religious leaders are not the only people targeted by the extremists. On Friday, jihadists attacked a village school in Maitaougou, in the eastern province of Koulpelogo, killing five teachers and a municipal worker.
Human Right Watch’s Sahel director Corinne Dufka recently said that the surge in jihadist violence and a government crackdown had “forced tens of thousands of villagers to flee since early 2019. 
“Scores of people have been murdered in what amounts to a dramatic deterioration in the rights situation in northern Burkina Faso,” she said last month.
“Villagers are living in fear as both armed Islamists and government forces have demonstrated utter disregard for human life.”
Around 4.3 million people have been driven from their homes in the worsening violence that has engulfed the entire Sahel region, including one million over the past year, according to UN humanitarian officials.


Sri Lanka Bans Islamic Face Veils After Deadly Easter Bombings



burqa
Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images
JACK MONTGOMERY
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2:17

The government of Sri Lanka has banned full face coverings, including but not limited to the Islamic burqa and niqab, as an emergency measure following the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks targeting Christians and tourists.

President Maithripala Sirisena said the emergency measure would prohibit any garment which “hinders identification” as a national security risk, after blasts which killed hundreds were attributed to the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) group.
“The ban is to ensure national security… No-one should obscure their faces to make identification difficult,” the president’s office confirmed in a brief statement.
The Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for the attacks, which is something it often does following mass casualty events regardless of whether or not it has a legitimate link with them — although Sri Lankan deputy defence minister Ruwan Wijewardene has said the authorities believe the attacks “could not have been done just locally” and are seeking to establish if the NTJ had assistance from larger terror networks overseas.
Muslim leaders in Sri Lanka, which has a Sinhalese Buddhist religious majority, have voiced opposition to the face covering ban.
“It is the stupidest thing to do,” complained Hilmy Ahmed, vice-president of the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulema organisation, which represents Muslim clerics, in comments to the BBC.
“Three days ago we took a voluntary decision regarding this. The All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulema told all Muslim women not to wear face veils for security reasons. If they wanted to wear a veil, then they were told not to come out,” Ahmed told the British broadcaster.
“We strongly criticise the decision. We will not accept the authorities interfering with the religion without consulting the religious leadership,” he warned.
Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon while it was part of the British Empire, and for the period up to the 1970s when it was an independent Commonwealth Realm with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.

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‘Nobody Will Go Back’: Christians Flee Middle East After Fall of Islamic State



Iranian Christian worshippers attend the Christmas mass at the Saint Joseph Chaldean-Assyrian Catholic church, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Dec. 25, 2017. Iranian Christians are a minority and recognized by the constitution in the Muslim country and are represented in the parliament. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
EDWIN MORA
 1,154
5:57

The number of Christians in the birthplace of their faith, the greater Middle East, continues to plummet months after the Islamic State, which waged a genocidal campaign against Christians, lost its “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, Breitbart News learned from various experts, including an archbishop.

“Unfortunately, it can be stated that the Islamic State group’s anti-Christian campaign was very successful in Iraq, and to a certain extent, successful in Syria,” John Hajjar, the co-chair of the American Mideast Coalition for Democracy (AMCD) and co-director of the Middle East Christian Committee (MECHRIC), told Breitbart News.
“I think we have no more hope,” Archbishop Vicken Aykazian, the diocesan legate in America’s capital and ecumenical director for the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Orthodox Church of America, also told Breitbart News, referring to the future of Christianity in its Middle East cradle. “Middle East Christians have no nation that protects them openly.”
The number of Christians in Middle East-North Africa (MENA), as a component of the overall Muslim-majority population, has dropped substantially — from about ten percent in 1900 to between two and four percent now.
There are different estimates for the overall number of Christians that vary from about 12 million in the Middle East alone to about 20 million in MENA, Breitbart News learned from the experts and data from U.S. government and independent sources.
“The future for Christians right now is terrible — a Middle East without Christians. We are going to have churches without Christians as museums for tourists. There will be no Christians left,” the archbishop warned, echoing other analysts who have constantly cautioned that Christianity is on the verge of extinction in the Middle East.
“The number of Christians in the Middle East has already dropped extensively,” he further declared, accusing church leaders of inflating the actual numbers of Christ followers in the region to minimize the fact that Christianity is on the brink of extinction.
The bishop urged U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to do even more to help Middle East Christians.
Contradicting assertions by the Trump administration, the Church leader said, “People are not coming back. I can assure you that nobody will go back.”
The Trump administration has disbursed billions in funding to help victims of ISIS genocide, namely Christians and Yazidis, but the bishop told Breitbart News it is “not enough.”
“Trump is going to be a hero for the Christians in the Middle East if he takes more action,” he said.
Addressing President Trump, Archbishop Aykazian added, “Please help the Christians. They need your help and once you move one of your fingers the entire Arabic world will thank you. If he does such a thing, it is going to change everything. If he doesn’t, they will suffer.”
“The ball is in Trump’s court,” he further said.
In Iraq, which experts say has experienced the most dramatic drop in Christians due to jihadis and Iran-allied groups, Aykazian told Breitbart News that number has decreased from 1.6 million to less than 100,000, marking a drop of more than 90 percent.
“A similar situation is taking place in Syria’s Aleppo where there has also been a drop of more than 90 percent in Christians, from 360,000 to about 25,000 now,” he said, noting, “The church leaders don’t want to say those statements because they fear their followers will be disillusioned.”
ISIS’s genocide campaign targeted religious minorities in Iraq and Syria, primarily Christians and Yazidis, killing tens of thousands of them and taking some hostages as sex slaves.
“They [Christians] realized just how insecure they are,” Nina Shea, a religious freedom expert at the Hudson Institute, told Breitbart News. “Their own governments fail to protect them, and ISIS gained popular support within some neighboring major Sunni areas, like Mosul.”
Archbishop Aykazian said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi “so far has been the best leader in the Middle East for defending Christians.” he said, adding, “The biggest Christian majorities are in Egypt.”
Shea pointed out, “Egypt retains ten million Coptic Christians. That is the only place where I see a certain future for them [Christians].”
“In a generation, Egypt may be the only remaining country with a robust Christian community that traces its roots to the earliest Christian church,” Shea added. “Elsewhere in the Middle East, only remnants of these ancient communities may survive.”
Nevertheless, Shea and the bishop acknowledged that, even in Egypt, Christians are confronting the spread of Sunni extremism and anti-Christian bigotry.
The ongoing war against Islamic terrorism continues to kill, wound, and push Christians out of their historical homelands in the greater Middle East, even in Egypt.
“More recently, after the Arab Spring and with the rise of ISIS, tens of thousands of Christians were killed in Iraq and Syria,” Hajjar said. “Close to 1 million Christians in the region have gone into exile.”
“Following multiple terrorist attacks in Egypt against the Copts, many Christian Egyptians also emigrated from their country,” Hajjar continued. “We can estimate that more than 25-30 percent of Christians in the Middle East have been affected by the recent wars and conflicts.”
The experts also attributed the ongoing demise of Christianity in the Middle East to certain governments’ disdain towards followers of Christianity and their refusal to protect them.
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reportedly designated Christians as “enemies of the state.” In Iraq, the country that experienced the sharpest drop in the number of Christ followers in recent years, Baghdad-sanctioned Iran-allied Shiite militias have reportedly taken Christian lands and are harassing them.
Referring to the countries that have experienced the largest decline in Christians, Hajjar named Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. Similar to Hajjar’s list, the bishop said, “Iraq is number one, Lebanon is number two, and Syria is number three.”
The experts conceded that the Trump administration had done more to help Middle East Christians than his predecessor, but they argued that Christians are far from protected and more can be done.




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