Understanding the World's Greatest Source of Jew-Hatred
Understanding the World's Greatest Source of Jew-Hatred
A sober examination of Islam's historical treatment of Jews.
[To order Andrew Bostom's new paperback edition of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, CLICK HERE.]
During a public U.S. Congressional hearing held in April 2019, data was presented from a worldwide survey performed between 2014 and 2017 by the Anti-Defamation League that found the 16 nations with the highest prevalence of extreme antisemitism to all be Muslim countries in the Middle East. In response to the presentation of these data, the ADL's Senior Vice President for Policy Eileen Hershenov had this to say: "vulnerable, marginalized communities have bigotry within them."
If explaining away Muslim Jew-hatred as somehow a result of vulnerability and marginalization in societies that are overwhelmingly Muslim strikes one as troubling, well it should; especially if the person doing the explaining represents an organization that claims "its timeless mission is to protect the Jewish people." Any person with a healthy sense of self-preservation might ponder other questions that arise from this case. Like, for instance: Why is extreme antisemitism so ubiquitous in the Arab Muslim world? Or: Why is a prominent Jewish advocacy organization so intent on apologizing for Islamic Jew hatred?
Unfortunately, anyone searching for answers to these timely questions is not going to find them anywhere in the public arena. In fact, a conspiracy of sorts has prevailed on college campuses, in Hollywood, in the establishment media, in think tanks, and in other cultural institutions, both Left and Right, where honest and open discussion of Islamic anti-Semitism is taboo because of the fear of social ostracism and professional suicide.
Shamefully, many Jews too often aid and abet this ugly and dangerous conspiracy.
Enter Andrew Bostom, M.D., an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at Brown University, who has just released a second (paperback) edition of his magnum opus The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History. It is a desperately needed corrective to the amnesia, ignorance, and self-destructive denial of reality that currently plagues much of Western Civilization and its Jewish community when it comes to Islam's historical treatment of Jews.
Full disclosure: I worked with Andrew as a research collaborator and have remained friends since. Bostom drew on his professional skills as a physician, medical researcher and epidemiologist to carefully construct an understanding of the underpinnings of Jew-hatred within Islamic theology and civilization. The empirical evidence Bostom provides is so comprehensive and powerful that it hits the reader like a tsunami.
Bostom is very careful to let Islam’s core texts and its most renowned and influential theologians, scholars, jurists, and leaders--from Islam’s inception to the 21st century--speak for themselves on this matter, which makes the overall argument even more persuasive. Perhaps inspired by his medical training, the author also offers the reader dozens of "case studies" culled from primary sources as well as third-party observers over disparate eras and lands (some translated for the first time) that encapsulate how Jews, identified in the Koran as the worst enemies of the Muslims, have suffered immeasurably as dhimmis, or subjugated people, under Islamic rule up to the present time.
Bostom is very careful to let Islam’s core texts and its most renowned and influential theologians, scholars, jurists, and leaders--from Islam’s inception to the 21st century--speak for themselves on this matter, which makes the overall argument even more persuasive. Perhaps inspired by his medical training, the author also offers the reader dozens of "case studies" culled from primary sources as well as third-party observers over disparate eras and lands (some translated for the first time) that encapsulate how Jews, identified in the Koran as the worst enemies of the Muslims, have suffered immeasurably as dhimmis, or subjugated people, under Islamic rule up to the present time.
The new edition also features an updated preface that elegantly demonstrates how ancient antisemitic doctrines within Islam have reverberated through the centuries to explain contemporary Muslim antagonism and violence directed towards Jews. If there is any downside to this book, it is that becoming so thoroughly informed about the predations suffered by Jews throughout the ages can weigh heavily on the soul.
The author does, however, provide the blueprint for a constructive way forward by highlighting the immediate post-World War II efforts of Jules Isaac, a French historian and Holocaust survivor. Isaac, working with willing Christian colleagues and directly appealing to two popes, helped catalyze a movement that culminated in the Second Vatican Council and the Nostra Aetate (1965) declaration, which was an unprecedented and brutally honest document detailing the failings of the Church when it came to the treatment of Jews. This movement ultimately reformed Christian teaching about the Jews and greatly advanced Christian-Jewish relations.
Who should buy this book? Anyone who wants to understand the world as it is today in an unvarnished presentation, free of the distortions of political correctness; anyone who wants to understand the fundamental underpinnings of the genocidal war against Israel; anyone who wants to understand why Jews in Europe today are under siege. And anyone who wants to save American Jewry as it stands at a precipice while Islamic Jew-hatred in the world escalates frighteningly unchecked.
Allon Friedman, M.D., is a practicing physician and vice president of the Jewish American Affairs Committee of Indiana. JAACI is a leading advocate for Jews and Israel in Indiana was instrumental in passing Indiana’s anti-BDS law, the second in the nation. Dr. Friedman’s essays and editorials have been published locally as well as in various media outlets across North America and Israel.
Anti-Christian Oppression Around
the World
Atrocious -- and accelerating.
January 22, 2020
Jack
Kerwick
The statistics are truly terrifying.
About a quarter-billion Christians worldwide are made to endure -- for their faith -- incarceration, confiscation and destruction of their property, bodily torture, and physical violence, including rape and murder.
Open Doors, an organization that exists for the sake of serving persecuted Christians throughout the world, has just published its 2020 World Watch List (WWL) report of the 50 countries “where it’s most dangerous to follow Jesus.” The report informs readers that the number of Christians who experience “high levels of persecution”—about 260 million—has actually increased by 6% since a year ago.
During this period:
2,983 followers of Christ were murdered. This means that on average, 8 Christians were murdered every day;
9,488 churches or Christian buildings were violated; and
3,711 Christians have been detained without trial; arrested; sentenced, and imprisoned.
Other telling facts include the following:
(1)The single most dangerous place for Christians has consistently been North Korea, a country with an atheistic, communist regime.
Here, Christians suffer “extreme persecution,” the worst degree of persecution recognized by Open Doors.
In North Korea, Christians are subjected to “constant stress” and “constant threats.” From the WWL report:
“If North Korean Christians are discovered, they are deported to labor camps as political criminals or even killed on the spot. Driven by the state, Christian persecution in North Korea is extreme and meeting [with] other Christians to worship is nearly impossible unless it’s done in complete secrecy.”
It adds: “A recent increase in diplomatic activity, starting with the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, has not changed anything for Christians in the country.”
(2)Those two countries with the largest populations on the planet, China and India, are both hostile to Christianity. China is ranked as the 23rd most dangerous place for Christians, and India the 10th. Yet both nations are distinguished on account of the fact that they are “Surveillance States” inasmuch as their governments are deploying the mass resources at their disposal to develop technology that will enable them to differentiate “good” citizens from “bad” ones.
In some parts of China, this has already, yet predictably, resulted in proposals to identify and penalize those who have “illegally spread Christianity.”
The facial recognition system that the government of India plans upon devising will doubtless render that much more efficient its campaign to oppress its Christian citizens.
(3)Seventy-percent, or seven out of 10, of the world’s 50 most dangerous countries for Christians are Islamic.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the persecution is as brutal as it is ubiquitous.
And it is intensifying.
Islamic militants are “killing, kidnapping and sowing chaos with impunity.”
In Burkina Faso—a place that, being but the 61st most oppressive country for Christians just a year ago, didn’t even make the top 50 list in 2019—is now ranked as the 28th most dangerous country for Christians. The latter, in fact, claim that “they are in a fight for their survival” as scores “of Catholic priests have been killed” and “Protestant pastors and their families have been killed or kidnapped [.]”
Mali, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Nigeria are all among those Islamic-dominated African nations that are most dangerous for Christians. Islamic militants target Christians for rape and murder as a matter of course.
But it isn’t just in Africa that the Islamic oppression of Christians occurs. It is occurring as well throughout parts of Asia. The WWL report informs us that the “influence of radical Islamic ideology has dispersed not only across sub-Saharan Africa, but has also emerged in completely unexpected atrocities.”
For example, in Sri Lanka, which was ranked as the 46th most dangerous country for Christians just a year earlier, but which has now become the 30th most dangerous, “250 people died and more than 500 were injured in attacks on Catholic and Protestant churches and hotels on Easter Sunday.”
In Pakistan, the fifth most dangerous place on the planet for Christians, Christians are imprisoned for violating the government’s “blasphemy laws.”
In Iraq, the 15th most dangerous country for Christians, the ancient Christian community has been all but obliterated over the span of the last 17 years since the American invasion in 2003. At that time, approximately 1.5 million Christians called Iraq home. Today, about 202,000 Christians inhabit the country.
That is, there has been close to a 90% reduction in the Christian population of Iraq.
Over the last nine years, since the outbreak of its civil war, Syria—which is the 11th most dangerous place for the followers of Christ—has witnessed a drop in its Christian population from 2.2 million to about 744,000.
In drawing the reader’s attention to the ubiquity and brutality of the oppression endured by Christians around the globe, my intention is not to marginalize either the suffering inflicted upon the members of other religious groups or, for that matter, the attacks against Christians and upon Christian churches that have occurred within this country, within America.
Rather, the objective here is fivefold:
First, I want, simply, to acquaint readers with these ugly facts, hideous realities to which they would otherwise remain oblivious if they had only the American (mostly leftist) media upon which to rely.
Second, I want for readers to realize that they would indeed remain oblivious to these facts if they had only the media to rely upon.
Third, I want for readers to recognize the curious nature of a journalistic/media class—comprised of analysts, reporters, commentators—that has long since exchanged truth-telling for advocacy, the reporting of facts for the cause of “Social Justice,” now, in effect, turning a collective blind eye to the real, systematic oppression of this one group, Christians, around the world.
Fourth, it is my hope that readers will resolve this mystery for themselves and discover that a story within which overwhelmingly non-white, anti-Christian actors are oppressing overwhelmingly non-white Christians has none of the political and ideological advantages (for those producing, purveying, and distributing the “news”) as one with white Christian oppressors and non-white victims.
Finally, readers, hopefully, will now have a better perspective on what the establishment media truly is, and what it cares -- and does not care -- about.
'Urinated On and Cursed For
Being Christian'
September’s Muslim
persecution of Christians.
November 25, 2019
Raymond Ibrahim
This report
was first published by the Gatestone Institute. Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz
Freedom Center.
The following are some of the
abuses that Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of September,
2019, thematically categorized:
The Slaughter of Christians
Nigeria: On September 22, the jihadi group, Boko Haram, released a
video depicting the execution of two Christian aid
workers. Lawrence Duna Dacighir and Godfrey Ali Shikagham, both members
of the Church of Christ in Nations, appeared on their knees, with three armed
men behind them, who proceeded to shoot them. Both Christians had
gone to Maiduguri—near where they were captured—to help build shelters for
people displaced by Islamic extremist violence. In the same video
and “speaking in the Hausa
language, the middle one of the three terrorists says … that they have vowed to
kill every Christian they capture…” Responding to the executions, Pastor
Pofi, a cousin of the two executed Christians, said, “Lawrence and Godfrey left
Abuja for Maiduguri in search of opportunities to utilize their skills for the
betterment of humanity and paid with their lives. We will never get their
corpses to bury. The community will have to make do with a makeshift memorial
to these young lives cut short so horrifically.”
Separately, a Christian pastor
and the wife of another pastor were killed in two separate raids by
Muslim Fulani herdsmen. “After they had killed her [Esther Ishaku
Katung], they were still demanding the ransom without telling her family that
they had killed her,” a local Christian said. “It was only after the ransom
was paid that it was found by her family that she had been killed by her
abductors.” Her mutilated body was found dumped in the bushes.
Pakistan: Police in Lahore tortured Amir Masih, a 28-year-old
Christian man, to death. After the employer that
Amir worked for as a gardener reported an incident of theft, police contacted
and told Amir and the other employees to come in for questioning. “My brother
went to the police station of his own will,” Sunny Masih, Amir’s sibling, explained. “When he reached there
[n August 28] the cops seized his phone, bundled him into a vehicle and
spirited him to some unknown place.” Four days later, police contacted
his distraught family to say Amir was ill and that they should take him to a
hospital. “We rushed to the police station, where we were handed a
semi-conscious Amir,” his brother continues: “He was beaten up mercilessly, and
his body was full of bruises.” While en route to the hospital, Amir told
Sunny that six officials, two inspectors and four constables, had tortured him
for four days. “He told us that the police officials had urinated on him
while cursing him for being a Christian and tried to force him to confess to
the crime.” Sunny also noted that all other employees
who were questioned regarding the theft were released “without a scratch,” and
that his brother “was subjected to severe torture because he was a poor
Christian whom police believed could be coerced into a false
confession…. But my brother was innocent, and he refused to admit
to something that he had not done, which further infuriated his interrogators.
They increased the intensity of the violence, also subjecting him to electric
shocks.” Two hours after arriving in the hospital Amir succumbed to his
injuries and died. A post-mortem report indicated broken ribs and
visible torture marks on the hands, arms, back, and feet. The
murdered Christian is survived by a wife and two sons, aged 7 and 2-weeks-old.
In a separate incident, also in
Pakistan, three Muslim men—Muhammad Naveed, Muhammad Amjad, and Abdul
Majeed—participated in the slaughter of two Christian
brothers, Javaid and Suleman Masih. According to Javaid’s widow,
“For over a year, we have been experiencing and smelling hatred against us by
our Muslim neighbors. Often their women discussed and passed insulting remarks
against Christians. However, keeping our safety in view, we always kept quite
[sic] and never replied…. The Muslim neighbors did not like our van,
which carries a holy cross inside, to be parked next to their door. They often
criticized it.” Javaid’s 17-year-old son continues: “Naveed, one of
the Muslim family members, was trying to put some scratches on the wind-screen
of my uncle’s van on the incident day. When I tried to stop him, he reacted in
anger stating ‘whenever I step out of my house, I see this hanging stuff (holy
cross) in the van – which I don’t want to see.’ He pointed out the cross in an
insulting way. ‘Therefore, you must remove it,’ he ordered.” Soon thereafter,
both brothers “left their house to visit a relative in the neighborhood,”
Javaid’s widow resumes; “they were suddenly attacked in front of their house by
the two Muslims with knives. Each received 5 – 8 attacks, which resulted into
their deaths. The father of the two Muslims was provoking his sons and
chanting loudly, ‘don’t spare, kill all of these Chooras!’” (Chooras is a
derogatory word used for Christians in Pakistan.) Javaid is survived by
his wife and four children (aged 10 to 17). Suleman was recently married;
he and his wife were expecting their first child weeks after his murder.
Violence against and Abuse of Christians
Philippines: In the early hours of September 6, an explosion occurred in the
marketplace of a predominantly Christian area; several people were
injured. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. According to
one report,
The group issued a statement
late on Saturday saying the motorcycle bombing had wounded seven Filipino
Christians at a public market. It was the fourth blast in the area in 13
months, according to the Philippine military, which said a militant group
operating in the mostly Christian city of Isulan in the province of Sultan
Kudarat was among the suspects…. [T]hree incidents in the past year
authorities said were suicide bombings by militants linked to the Islamic
State.
Burkina Faso: “Christians … are currently being exterminated or expelled from
their villages by Muslim extremists,” notes a September 18 report. Speaking on condition
of anonymity, a local source said that the militants sometimes give Christians
a chance to convert to Islam; he referred to it as “part of a
program by the jihadists who are deliberately sowing terror, assassinating
members of the Christian communities and forcing the remaining Christians to
flee after warning them that they will return in three days’ time—and that they
do not wish to find any Christians or catechumens still there.” He elaborated on the recent
experiences of the village of Hitté: “At the beginning of September, 16
men arrived in the village, intercepting the villagers who were returning from
the fields. Some of the men forced the people to enter the church where they
threatened the Christians and ordered them to leave their homes in the next
three days, while others set fire to whatever they found in their path. Now
Hitté no longer has any Christians and any catechumens.” He
also made an observation that has
been made of militants in Nigeria: “Weapons like these [those used by the
Muslim invaders] are not made in Burkina Faso. We know that the arms are
supplied by international organizations. We are calling for the removal of
these weapons, so that peace can return to Burkina Faso…. The situation
is critical.”
Egypt: Unknown persons hurled bricks at Marina Sami Rageb, a Christian
woman, as she exited her church.
The 21-year-old medical student’s skull was fractured and she suffered
hemorrhage from the assault. Little else is known about the incident or
assailant(s). According to the report, “This type of incident,
unfortunately, is common place in Egypt. Christian women are not religiously
compelled to cover their hair, but are constantly pressured to do so by their
Muslim peers. Uncovered women are frequently targeted for harassment, and even
attacks. This underlying threat greatly impacts their ability to walk freely in
Egypt and to choose their clothing preference.” One woman comments that “In Egypt,
there are a lot of security threats in the streets. But I always avoid walking
in the radical Muslim districts or areas, just preferring the main streets.” “I
always wear long clothes,” explained another Christian
woman. “In the streets, I always avoided dealing with the extremists or the
radical Muslims.”
Pakistan: On September 16, Muhammad Ramiz and four other Muslim men,
kidnapped a 14-year-old Christian girl, Samra Bibi, from her home while her
family was away, “in what is but the latest in a long series of kidnappings and
forced conversions of underaged minority girls, often obtained under threat and
after sexual violence,” the report adds. Samra was
subsequently forced into Islam and forced to marry her abductor. Her
family rushed to the local police station on learning what happened. Police
refused to open a case and instead mocked and insulted the distraught
family. After two days of continued pleadings from the family and local
Christian leaders, police arrested Muhammad—only to release him an hour later,
in part due to pressure from Islamic clerics. According to Samra’s father,
“Muhammad Ramiz had long set his sights on Christian girls and teased them.
When they told him to stop, he used abusive language against them. When we were
not at home, he abducted our underage girl. About ten days have passed and no
one has been arrested.” Discussing this and other like incidents, a human
rights activist said, “According to the law, no
minor girl can be converted to any other religion but here no one has courage
to challenge the radicals who are committing such crimes.” “Sometimes
courts seem to be more supportive of perpetrators,” another family
representative said. “For example, in Samra’s
case, the girl is 14, a juvenile who cannot be married; yet police deliberately
wrote in their report that she is between 15 and 16 years. We will also
challenge this aspect during the trial.”
Attacks on and Hostility for Muslim Converts to Christianity
United Kingdom: Around mid-September, police announced that they would be
taking no action against a Muslim man who had earlier threatened to sodomize
any Muslim who dares convert to Christianity. Zaheer Hussain, 41, made
a video, which subsequently went
viral, while chatting with a laughing companion. Speaking to the camera,
Hussain said:
Bro, listen… any motherf**er
wants to convert to f**king Christianity, we’re both gonna f**k you up the a**,
you under-f**king-stand? … We’re gonna f**ck you up the a** [moves his pelvis
in a sexual act]…. Why you f**king converting for, you motherf**kers?
Huh? Why you f**cking — why would you want to become Christian? You f**king
baptizing sh*t motherf**kers. Ah [mocking sound] “in the Lord of Jesus”…
The above was spoken in
English, of a sort, though extended portions of his tirade were in a foreign
(likely Pakistani) language. “It frightens me now to identify myself as a
Christian to someone that I don’t know,” said the Christian woman from
Preston who reported Hussain to police; “[it’s] sad that I have to hide my
religion… His threats to sexually assault those who convert to
Christianity is the heart of hate speech…. I’m genuinely concerned for the
welfare of the public who may not be aware of his extreme views.”
Regardless, and despite the UK’s anti-hate-speech laws, police took no action, even though,
as one report notes:
Hussain’s generous treatment by
the authorities contrasts sharply with that meted out to Scottish comedian
Markus Meechan … who was arrested, charged, and convicted in a trial
without a jury for causing gross offence with a viral video in which he trained
his girlfriend’s pug dog to imitate the “least cute thing that I could think of,
which is a Nazi.”
Uganda: After the Muslim-in-laws of a widowed mother learned that she
had converted to Christianity, they attacked her and her
children, and drove them away from their home. 54-year-old Lezia
Nakayiza’s problems began when her 8-year-old “told one of the relatives of the
wonderful choir at church, and that we have been attending the church since
March. This was the beginning of our persecution,” she said. It was not long before
a “Christian neighbor informed me that the family was planning to attack
us.” Soon thereafter, and “by the light from moonlight, I peeped through
the window and saw many people approaching our house with sticks and other
weapons with loud noise from the animals’ shed.” She heard them shouting, “Away with this
infidel!” Nakayiza and her children managed to escape from the
backdoor. Afterwards, “We walked on foot for two hours and arrived at the
church compound around 11 p.m., and we were received by the pastor.” On
the following day, the pastor learned of the “huge destruction” her deceased
husband’s brothers visited on her home, including “five cows and six sheep
killed, iron sheets pulled down, windows and doors destroyed…. The family
has to be relocated to another place,” the pastor added. “Life for them is so hard.
The children are out of school. They are very fearful of their lives. Even the
church is at risk from the relatives who are radical Muslims. Our church is
still too small to support the family.” Last reported, Nakayiza was
offering to wash people’s clothes and/or work their land to earn enough for the
basic necessities of her children, four of which are aged 15, 13, 11, and
8. “What we are going through at the moment is almost unbearable,”
she said.
Iran: The Islamic republic denied two sons (17 and 15) of an imprisoned Christian pastor their
high school diplomas, until such time that they complete Islamic education
first. Their father, Yousef Nadarkhani, made headlines in 2009, when he
was first arrested for protesting
Iran’s educational requirement that all students study the Koran. The
government responded by arresting him, a convert to Christianity, and charging
him with the death penalty for apostasy. Due to international pressure,
he was released in 2012—only to be arrested again in 2016. He is currently serving a 10 year sentence.
Contempt for Churches and Crosses
Turkey: “A local municipality in Trabzon (northern Turkey) has ruled
that architectural elements of houses which resemble crosses will not be
tolerated,” says a report:
This decision follows an investigation
which opened last December following complaints that the balconies of certain
villas in the village resembled crosses. Photos show that houses had two levels
and a cross shape divided the houses into four quadrants. Multiple complaints
from primarily local Arab families led the houses to be destroyed on the basis
of their architecture incorporating the cross…. [T]he situation is not
unusual. In other locations, such as Gaziantep and Ankara, buildings have been
renovated so that the cross shaped architecture is no longer visible.
Separately, on September 18, a
hooded man approached and threatened the Church of St.
Paul in Antalya, Turkey. The incident occurred as representatives from
three churches were meeting together, in part to prepare for celebrations of
the 20th anniversary of their cultural center’s founding. According to the
report,
The man became verbally
abusive, and made threats of physical attacks. The identity of the man is
unknown, and he was careful to keep his face hidden from security cameras. …
The man was shouting that he would take great pleasure in destroying the
Christians, as he viewed them as a type of parasitism on Turkey. Police are
investigating the incident. Hate speech is one of the primary challenges
facing Turkish Christians, who are often viewed as traitors to their country
since they have left Islam. While violent persecution attacks are rare, the
increase of hate speech throughout Turkey does cause alarm of what it may
foreshadow in the future.
A separate study published in Armenian in September found
that there were a total of 6,517 incidents of hate speech in Turkish media in
2018. The two peoples most targeted were Jews and Armenians, followed by
Syrians, Greeks, and other Christian groups.
Iran: The government removed tax exemption status from all non-Muslim
institutions. According to one report,
The Tehran City Council will no
longer consider churches and synagogues as eligible for tax exemption… Before
this decision, these non-Islamic institutions were eligible for tax exemption
so long as they were purely religious in nature. The city’s decision has been
heavily criticized by Assyrian [Christian] parliamentarians… Iran’s
constitution recognizes the freedom of religious practice only for those who
can prove that their families belonged to certain non-Muslim faiths prior to
the 1979 revolution. These [sic] means that, technically, Assyrian and Armenian
Christians should have some (albeit limited) freedom of religious expression.
The reality, however, is that Iran does not follow its own laws. All Christian
groups, as well as other religious minorities, face heavy persecution from the
authorities.
Algeria: Authorities shut down two more church buildings. On
September 24, eight police officers arrived at the Church of Boghni, and sealed
off the Protestant church’s doors and windows. “I was surprised when one
of the police officers contacted me to meet them at the site where our church
is,” Pastor Chergui explained. “I had not received any
notice; they went straight to proceed with the closure by sealing. They could
have warned us before; why didn’t they?” The building had served two
separate churches—Pastor Chergui’s congregation of 190 members, and another
Protestant church of nearly 200 members from a neighboring village.
Police left a note explaining that they
closed down the building because it was being “illegally used … to celebrate
non-Muslim worship.” A separate report discussing this same
closure elaborates on the law being cited:
Since November 2017, the
government has been engaged in a systematic campaign against Christians.
EPA-affiliated churches [the Protestant Church of Algeria] have been challenged
to prove that they have licenses according to the requirement of a 2006
ordinance regulating non-Muslim worship. These regulations stipulate that all
places of non-Muslim worship must be licenced. However, the government has yet
to issue any licence for a church buildings under this ordinance, ignoring
applications from churches to regularise their status in accordance with the
ordinance.
This closure raises the number
of sealed church buildings affiliated with the EPA, to eight. Another four church
groups have been ordered to cease all activities. In at least two cases,
authorities have pressured the landlords renting to churches to deny Christians
access to the premises.
Separately, on September
26—just two days after the closure of the Church of Boghni—authorities sealed
off another church which
had served 70, mostly elderly, people; it also functioned as a Bible school.
“They told us that they are giving us time to clear useful objects out before
they come back to seal it,” church leader Ali Zerdoud said the day before. “I can
only say one thing: This is an injustice.”
General Discrimination against Christians
Egypt: Coptic Solidarity, a human rights group, took several initiatives in
September—particularly by contacting the Fédération
Internationale de Football Association, better known as “FIFA”—to draw
attention to the fact that Christian soccer players in Egypt are regularly
discriminated against. Although Christians are about 10 percent of
Egypt’s population, not a single player on the national and reserves teams is a
Christian, Coptic Solidarity noted in a September 17 letter
sent to the Normalization Committee of the Egyptian Football Association, a
portion of which follows:
CS has received dozens of
reports of discrimination from Coptic footballers in Egypt, indicating
systematic discrimination against them based solely on faith, which prevents
them from reaching the highest levels of competition. In response, CS
published a report titled Discrimination Against Copts in Egyptian Sport Clubs, which we also submitted to FIFA by email and via the
online complaints mechanism.
The report contains an overview
of the widespread discrimination against Copts in football including ample
sources and testimonies by moderate Muslims corroborating reality of the
ongoing discrimination. It also includes a sampling of 25 of the cases reported
to Coptic Solidarity by Coptic footballers.
The Egyptian Olympic Mission to
Brazil in 2016 was completely devoid of Copts, and the same applies to the
Egyptian national team at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Not a single Copt can
be found on either the main team or the reserve. There are currently 540
players in the top-flight soccer clubs in Egypt, and that number includes only
one Coptic footballer.
Canada: The government’s immigration department sought to deport a refugee family—a mother
and three children—that had fled their native country of Nigeria after they
were attacked and threatened with death for leaving Islam and converting to
Christianity. “They ran because her mother wrote her [daughter] a letter
saying that she is very disappointed that she is a Christian, but she must run
because her father wants to kill [her] to become higher in the organization,” a
family spokesperson said. “They face a ‘fatwa’ (a
pronouncement of death) against them for converting to Christianity from
Islam. They believe they face certain death if they are returned to
Nigeria. They are quite fearful.” According to the report, “Ironically,
both Hephzibah and Rejoice [two of the children, 14 and 10 respectively] were
featured in a CBC News photograph with Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau, with an
accompanying caption saying they were his supporters. In reality, they and a
spokesperson for the family had delivered a plea to Trudeau in person when he
appeared in Niagara-on-the-Lake last month.”
Supporters of the family said the government was not
taking the time to establish the family’s humanitarian status or perform a
proper risk assessment. “They’re trying to boot [them] out of the country
before then.” The family’s current status is unclear.
Note: Click
here for previous monthly reports of Muslim Persecution of
Christians, going back to July 2011.
Report:
Boko Haram Jihadists Behead Catholic Bride and Bridal Party
4 Jan 2020153
3:19
The communications director of the
Catholic diocese of Maiduguri in Nigeria has confirmed that a bride-to-be and
her bridal party were beheaded December 26 while en route to the December 31
wedding.
“They were
beheaded by suspected Boko Haram insurgents at Gwoza on their way to her
country home,” Father Francis Arinse told Catholic News Service
(CNS), regarding the alleged murders of Martha Bulus and her bridal party.
CNS reported
further the alleged murders of Bulus and her bridal party occurred on the same
day that 11 Christian aid workers had been murdered:
Several
international media outlets reported Dec. 26 that the Islamic State group
released a video showing it had beheaded 10 Christians and shot an 11th Dec.
26. The news agencies said they were unable to confirm the contents of the
video but described the victims as men. IS said the beheadings were payback for
the late-October killing of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghadi.
According to
the Christian Post,
the Islamic State in West Africa Province, a Boko Haram “breakaway group”
associated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the
beheadings of the Christians shown in the video.
“This message
is to the Christians in the world,” said a man’s voice in Arabic and the native
Nigerian language over the video footage, SITE
Intelligence Group told the New York Times.
The voice
continued:
Those who you
see in front of us are Christians, and we will shed their blood as revenge for
the two dignified sheikhs, the caliph of the Muslims, and the spokesman for the
Islamic State, Sheikh Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, may Allah accept them.
The video,
which reportedly showed one Christian aid worker being shot and ten others
beheaded, was published by the Islamic States’ propaganda media outlet, Amaq
News Agency.
Arinse said
Bulus had been his parishioner at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Maiduguri
when he first became a priest.
According to
Arinse’s report, the area has seen a number of abductions recently and government
security has not been sufficient.
CNS noted
that Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, chief of army staff in Nigeria, has said he is
ordering greater security in the area and has urged his troops to “stand firm
against all the criminals.”
In December,
the U.S. State Department said it had added Nigeria,
along with Cuba and Nicaragua, to the Special Watch List of governments “that
have engaged in or tolerated ‘severe violations of religious freedom.’”
According to
the Post, U.S.
Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback said:
We are
designating [Nigeria] special watch list for the first time because of all of
the increasing violence and communal activity and the lack of effective
government response and the lack of judicial cases being brought forward in
that country.
It is a
dangerous situation in too many parts of Nigeria. The government has either not
been willing to or have been ineffective in their response and the violence
continues to grow.
The Post noted that Nigeria “ranks
as the 12th-worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution,
according to Open Doors USA’s 2019 World Watch List.”
“They Asked Him to Deny
Christ”
Muslim persecution of
Christians during August, 2019, alone.
November 1, 2019
Raymond Ibrahim
This report
was first published by Gatestone Institute. Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz
Freedom Center.
The following are some of the
abuses that Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of August,
2019, thematically categorized:
Hate for and Violence against Christians
Cameroon: Militant Muslims reportedly connected with the Nigerian based
Islamic terror group, Boko Haram, “reached new heights” of
depravity, according to a report: after devastating the Christian village of
Kalagari in a raid, they kidnapped and fled with eight women. Some of the
women were later released—but only after having their ears cut off (image here). The report adds that Boko Haram
“has terrorised Christian communities in Nigeria for the last decade and has
now splintered and spread its violent ideology into Cameroon, Niger and Chad.”
Nigeria: On August 29, Chuck Holton, a CBN News reporter, aired a segment on his visit with
Christian refugees who had fled Boko Haram’s incursions into their
villages. Among the stories of death and devastation, the
following, spoken by a young man, stood
out:
“On 29 September 2014 was the
day that they attacked my village. Around ten I had a call that they have
killed my dad. They asked him to deny Christ and when he refused they cut off
his right hand. Then he refused [again], they cut to the elbow. In which he
refused, before they shot him in the forehead, the neck, and chest.” “Many of
the 1,500 Christians living in this camp have similar stories,” adds Holton.
Indonesia: A Muslim preacher in a Christian majority region referred to the
Christian cross as “an element of the devil,” prompting
outrage among Christians and some moderates. Sheikh Abdul Somad
made the comment during a videotaped sermon when he was asked why Muslims “felt
a chill whenever they saw a crucifix.” “Because of Satan! Was
his response: “There’s an evil jinn in
every crucifix that wants to convert people into Christianity.”
Christians and moderates condemned his words. Even so, “I can’t imagine
the reaction if it had been another preacher of a different religion insulting
an Islamic symbol,” observed one moderate. “There would have been a tsunami of
protests, with the perpetrator severely punished.” Sheikh Somad responded by releasing another
video; his excuse was that he was unaware that non-Muslims might hear his
words: “The Quran reciting session was held in a closed mosque, not at a
stadium, a football field, nor aired on television,” he explained. “It was for Muslims
internally. I was answering a question about statues and the position of the
Prophet Isa (Jesus) relative to Muslims.”
Burkina Faso: Although most mainstream media downplay the religious element in
Muslim on Christian violence in Africa, attacks on the Christians of Burkina
Faso have become so flagrantly based on religion that the Washington Post published
a report on August 21 titled, “Islamist militants are targeting Christians in Burkina Faso.” Its author, Danielle Paquette, explained that “A spreading
Islamist insurgency has transformed Burkina Faso from a peaceful country known
for farming, a celebrated film festival and religious tolerance into a hotbed
of extremism.” She noted that the jihadis have been checking people’s
necks for Christian symbols, killing anyone wearing a crucifix or carrying any
other Christian image. In a separate report discussing several deadly
attacks on Christians and their churches, Bishop Dabiré said, “If this continues without
anyone intervening, the result will be the elimination of the Christian
presence in this area and — perhaps in the future —in the entire country.
Egypt: Authorities reinstated Sheikh Yasser
Burhami, a notoriously “radical” cleric and hate preacher, to the pulpit (minbar) despite strong
opposition. Burhami had previously issued numerous fatwas—edicts based on
Islamic scriptures—that demand hate and hostility for non-Muslims, most
specifically the nation’s largest and most visible minority, the Christian
Copts, whom Burhami has referred to as “a criminal and infidel minority,” and has invoked “Allah’s curse” on
them. He once went so far as to say that, although a Muslim man is
permitted to marry Christian or Jewish women (ahl al-kitab), he must make sure he
still hates them in his heart—and show them this
hate—because they are infidels; otherwise he risks compromising his
Islam. Burhami has also stated that churches—which he
refers to as “places of polytheism (shirk)
and houses of infidelity (kufr)”—must
never be built in Egypt. He issued a separate fatwa forbidding Muslim taxi
and bus drivers from transporting Christian clergymen to their churches, an act
he depicted as being “more forbidden than taking someone to a liquor
bar.” Burhami’s fatwas also include calling for the persecution of apostates, permitting
Muslim husbands to abandon their wives to rape,
permitting “marriage” to 12-year-old
girls, and banning Mother’s Day.
In a video, Dr. Naguib Ghobrial, a
Coptic activist, politician, and head of the Egyptian Union for Human Rights
Organization—which over the years has lodged 22 separate complaints against
Burhami—repeatedly questioned Egypt’s leading religious authorities’ decision
to reinstate the hate preaching sheikh:
“Is what Burhami teaches truly
what Islam teaches—is that why no one has done anything to him [in regards to
the 22 complaints lodged against him]? Truly I’m shocked! Please
answer Sheikh of Al Azhar; please answer Grand Mufti: are the things Burhami
teaches what Islam teaches? Is this why none of you oppose him or joined
us when we lodged complaints against him?… Why are you so silent? Amazing!”
The Slaughter of Christians
Pakistan: “A ten year old Christian child who chose to work in a dangerous
scrap factory so he could support his mother who had to fend for a family of
two boys and a drug-addict husband, was raped and tortured before being killed
by his Muslim employers,” according to a report (with photos).
Badil, 10, worked at the men’s factory in order to support his impoverished
mother, Sharifa Bibi:
“I worked hard for many hours
just for the sake of my two sons so that they would not have to suffer as I
have suffered without education. My son Badil couldn’t bear to see the
struggle of his mother and insisted on working to help the family—despite my insistence
that he avoid work till he was older. Badil was such a responsible
son. Daily before leaving for work he asked me what should bring in the
evening from his wages. I insisted that he kept his money for himself,
but he brought groceries like sugar, rice, flour, ghee daily.”
Badil had to walk long
distances and work for many hours a day to earn the equivalent of one dollar a
day. Soon his employer began to cheat him on his wages. His mother
insisted that he quit, but the boy persevered; at one point he took his younger
brother, 9, with him to help. When the employers refused to pay his
brother anything for his contribution, Badil finally decided to quit—which
angered his Muslim employer. His younger brother recalls:
“As Mr Akram heard this he ran
to hit Badil but Badil ran from the shop and Akram gave chase. However, A
friend of Akram was standing nearby on his motorcycle and told Akram to sit
behind him, then both men chased Badil till they caught up with him. Akram then
got off the motorcycle and dragged Badil back to the store. They took
Badil inside the store which is full of scrap. For half an hour I was
completely unaware of what was happening with Badil inside. Eventually
both men came outside and pretended as if nothing had happened inside. I
thought my brother had also left the store from another exit so I went to look
for him. I searched vigorously for 15 minutes and then saw my mother
[approaching to walk the boys home], so I rushed to her to tell her what had
happened.”
Sharifa and her younger son
searched frantically for Badil and finally found him collapsed on the ground
near their home. They rushed to him, thinking he was exhausted from the
day’s work and subsequent thrashing, but quickly realized that he was barely
breathing: “At this point the whole situation was too much to bear for Sharifa
who began to scream and wail hysterically,” the report notes. Badil was
taken to a hospital where, seven hours later, the boy was pronounced dead. His
brother “has been traumatised following his brother’s death and hasn’t left his
house since and often screams in terror thinking the men responsible will take
him too.”
Cameroon: A Bible translator “was butchered to death on Sunday morning [August
25] during an overnight attack while his wife’s arm was cut off,” according to
a report: “Bible translator Angus
Abraham Fung was among seven people said to have been killed during an attack
carried out by suspected Fulani herdsmen sometime during the early hours of
Sunday morning in the town of Wum, according to Efi Tembon, who leads a
ministry called Oasis Network for Community Transformation.” Fulani
herdsmen are Muslim and the chief persecutors of Christian farmers in
Nigeria. “They went into houses and pulled out the people,” Tembon explained: “They attacked in the
night and nobody was expecting. They just went into the home, pulled them out
and slaughtered them.” Fung’s wife, Eveline Fung, who had her arm hacked
off was last reported as receiving a blood transfusion at a local hospital.
Attacks against Apostates and Evangelists
Iran: Authorities sentenced a 65-year-old woman,
a Muslim convert to Christianity, to one year in prison, on the charge that she
was “acting against national security” and engaging in “propaganda against the
system.” According to the report, “The hearing was owing to her
arrest shortly before Christmas when three agents from Iranian intelligence
raided her home and took Mahrokh to intelligence offices where she endured ten
days of intensive interrogation before she was released after submitting bail
of 30 million Toman (US$2,500).” Friends of the woman said that “the judge was very
rude and tried to humiliate Mahrokh after she disagreed with him.”
Separately, a Kurdish
bookseller in Bokan, Western Azarbaijan province, was arrested for selling
Bibles. According to the August 27 report, “Mostafa Rahimi was arrested
on 11 June on charge of selling bible[s] in his bookstore, and he was released
later on bail until the court issued his sentence. Hengaw Organization for
Human Rights has learned that Rahimi is sentenced to 3 months and 1 day
imprisonment. Later in mid-August he was arrested again, and he is
currently at the central prison of Bokan.” Another report elaborates: “Iran’s government is
officially Islamic, and authorities actively restrict access to Bibles and
other Christian literature. Sharing one’s faith is categorized as a criminal
offense, usually of the national security nature. The authorities often pressure
Christians so extensively, routinely violating their human rights, that they
are given no choice but to escape their country.”
Somaliland: An August 16 report shares the experiences a
married Muslim woman, 32, underwent after her husband discovered a Bible in her
possession.
“I told my husband that I found
the Bible in Nairobi and wanted to read it,” the woman responded. “He just
pronounced the word talaq [Arabic for divorce] to me. I knew that our marriage
had just been rendered null and void because I joined Christianity, so without
wasting time I left the homestead…. There and then he took our two
daughters [ages 4 and 7] away from me and divorced me. He gave me a stern
warning that I should not come close to the children, and that if I do, he will
take the Bible to the Islamic court and I will be killed by stoning for
becoming an apostate.”
Her former husband proceeded to
expose the clandestine Christian to her Muslim family. “My brothers beat me
mercilessly with sticks as well as denying me food,” she said. “I feared to report the case
to the police or the local administration, because they will charge me with a
criminal offense of apostasy in accordance with the sharia.” She has
since relocated to an undisclosed location: “God has spared my life, and my
fellow underground Christians in other regions of Somalia have received me and
shared the little they have, but I am very traumatized.” According to
the report,
“Somalia’s constitution
establishes Islam as the state religion and prohibits the propagation of any
other religion, according to the U.S. State Department. It also requires that
laws comply with sharia (Islamic law) principles, with no exceptions in
application for non-Muslims. Somalia is ranked 3rd on Christian support
group Open Doors’ 2019 World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is most
difficult to be a Christian.”
Pakistan: After opening a summer education program for the youth, a
Christian family was “terrorized” and forced to shut down
on the accusation that they were clandestinely trying to convert Muslim
children to Christianity. According to a family member:
“We started a project for interfaith harmony and education teaching
marginalized children from different faiths about a year ago. In June, we
started a summer camp that provided a free program for children that have
dropped out of school. The design of this program was to provide guidance for
these children to become civilized and tolerant.” Two weeks into the
summer program, a group of men, two of whom were armed, stormed into the
academy, did violence to the property and harassed the children, and beat one
of the instructors: “They threatened us with consequences if the academy was
not shut down. They alleged that we were promoting Christianity and were
doing Christian evangelism. For safety and security, we had no other
choice but to obey the extremists and shutdown the academy…. I don’t want
to lose my son or any family member. This terrorizing incident has already put
us into trauma.”
In a separate incident in
Pakistan, around 4 a.m. of August 2, seven Muslim men stormed into a parish house, where they tied up and savagely beat
two young priests, Fr. Anthony Abraz and Fr. Shahid Boota, all while
they “humiliated and abused them for preaching the Gospel in a
Muslim-majority neighborhood.” The invaders also vandalized the building—including
by breaking windows, bookshelves, and cupboards—and desecrated Christian
objects, including Bibles, Christian literature, and icons. Afterwards, “We
were told we will have to face consequences if this house is not vacated,” Fr.
Abraz reported. “They said, ‘We don’t
want a Christian center near the mosque.’”
Finally, increasing numbers of
Christian girls continue to be targeted for kidnapping, rape, and/or forced
conversion in Pakistan. According to one report,
“In August, Yasmeen Ashraf, age
15, and Muqadas Tufail, age 14, were kidnapped and raped by three men in Kasur.
The pair of Christian girls were taken when they were on their way to work as
domestic workers. Also in August, another young Christian girl, named
Kanwal, was kidnapped, raped, and forcefully converted to Islam by a group of
Muslim men and a cleric in Lala Musa, located in the Gujart District. After
reuniting her family, Kanwal shared that she had been beaten, sexually
assaulted, and threatened with the deaths of her brothers if she refused to
convert to Islam.”
In the previous month of July,
at least three similar cases occurred.
“Oppression exists in different layers for Christian girls in Pakistan. They
are suffering on the bases of gender, religion, and class. It has been
documented that young Christian girls face higher levels of sexual harassment
and are persecuted for their Christian faith,” Nabila Feroz Bhatti, a human
rights defender in Lahore, said in response to the
aforementioned incidents. Similarly, the Pontifical charity, Aid to the
Church in Need, announced in August that it
“is sounding the alarm on the plight of young Christian women, and even
teenagers, in Pakistan who are forced to convert to Islam.” “Every year
at least a thousand girls are kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert to Islam,
even forced to marry their tormentors,” elaborated Tabassum Yousaf, a
local Catholic lawyer.
Meanwhile, those who try to
protect Christian girls are punished. On August 16, Maskeen Khan and two
other Muslim men attacked the home of Bahadur
Masih, a Christian. While holding a knife, Khan and his partners tried to
rape Masih’s daughter, Rachel, but were prevented by the rudely awoken family
that immediately and desperately responded. “Since the Christian family
was defending themselves, Khan also got some injuries,” Ahsan Masih Sindhu, a
local Christian political leader, reported. “The family handed Khan
over to police and he got medical treatment. However, he later died in police
custody.” Police arrested and charged four members of the family with
murder, even though they were in their own home protecting their daughter from
violent intruders. Other members of the family have gone into hiding due
to threats from the dead would-be rapist’s relatives. “We are sad about
the death of Khan, however, the Christian family did have the right to defend,”
Sindhu explained. “The police must conduct
a fair investigation into this incident.” Instead, police are denying the
family the “right to defend” itself.
Attacks on Churches
Algeria: On August 6, police barged into a church during
worship service, evacuated reluctant worshippers, and sealed the church
building off. “I am deeply saddened by so much injustice – it breaks my
heart,” Messaoud Takilt, the pastor said. “This is not surprising
since other Christian places of worship have been closed and sealed as was the
case today. But anyway, we will continue to celebrate our services outside
while the Lord gives us grace for a final solution.” When police denied,
with a veiled threat, his request to at least let the worship service conclude,
“The assembly finally yielded and agreed to leave the premises, but with much
pain. Some went out with eyes full of tears. ” Police proceeded to
empty the premises of all furniture and sealed off every door before the
distressed pastor (picture here). Responding to this
latest church closure the World Evangelical Alliance issued a statement on August 12 calling
on Algeria to cease closing and instead reopen churches. A portion follows:
“We deeply regret that two
additional churches were forcibly closed by administrative decisions, in May
and in August 2019 in the city of Boudjima, northeast of Tizi-Ouzou in Kabylie
Region. This brings the number of forcibly closed churches to 6,
including one house church…. Many more churches are threatened with closure,
amid denial of formal registration and recognition by authorities.”
Indonesia: Muslim protestors compelled local authorities to
revoke a permit for and cease construction of a Baptist church in Central
Java. On August 1, residents went to the partially constructed church and
padlocked its fence. A meeting was later held between the church, local
residents, authorities, and others. Although the pastor displayed the
governmentally issued permit to build a church, Muslim residents insisted that
it was wrongly given, leading to a standstill in negotiations.
In the previous month, July, two other churches were shut
down in Indonesia following local protests.
Turkey: St. Theodoros Trion, an abandoned, historic church—the original
Greek congregation of which was purged by the Ottoman Empire—was vandalized,
including with genocidal slogans. According to the report,
“The vandals sprayed hate
speech across the church’s walls. The vandalism was largely a reference to the
secularism that Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, had forced into the
governmental structure…. Just a few years ago, the same church was
targeted by Islamist vandals who wrote slogans such as ‘the priest is gone, he
went to the mosque’ — a reference to the country’s genocide and the forced
conversions which occurred during this time. There are no Christians attending
this church. All of the congregants were victims of the genocide. They faced
death, deportation, and forced conversions. Those few who survived have since
fled the country. The church currently stands as a historic monument to the
Christianity that once was commonplace in the region.”
Egypt: A Christian toddler was the latest, if inadvertent, victim of Egypt’s
draconian restrictions on churches. According to an August
21 report, Youssed Ebid, a 4-year-old
Christian boy (photo), was struck by a tractor
while waiting outdoors for a bus to take him to church in another
village. His own village is currently denied one, forcing its Christian
residents to travel long distances to attend church. Many Christians in
Egypt are in the same situation, and accidents during their long treks are not
uncommon.
Note: Click here for
previous monthly reports of Muslim Persecution of Christians, going back to
July 2011.
Exclusive: 'A Piece of Meat' -
How Muslim Men See White Women
Past and present, little has changed.
December 20, 2019
Raymond
Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom
Center.
A British girl was “passed around like a piece of meat” between Muslim men who abused and raped her between the ages of
12 and 14, a court heard earlier this month. Her problems began after she
befriended a young Muslim man who, before long, was “forcing her to perform sex
acts on other [and older] men,” and receiving money for it. When she
resisted, he threatened her and her family with death and destruction.
Speaking now as an adult, the woman explained how she eventually “lost count of
how many men I was forced to have sex with” during two years of “hell” when she
often considered suicide. Among other anecdotes, the court heard how the
young “girl was raped on a dirty mattress above a takeaway and forced to
perform [oral] sex acts in a churchyard,” and how one of her abusers “urinated
on her in an act of humiliation” afterwards.
Although her experiences are
akin to those of many British girls, that she was
“passed around like a piece of meat” is a reminder of the experiences of another British woman known
by the pseudonym of Kate Elysia. The Muslim men she encountered “made me
believe I was nothing more than a slut, a white whore,” she said. “They
treated me like a leper, apart from when they wanted sex. I was less than
human to them, I was rubbish.”
What explains this ongoing
exploitation of European women by Muslim men—which exists well beyond the UK and has
become epidemic in Germany Sweden, and elsewhere? The answer begins by
understanding that, although these sordid accounts are routinely dismissed as
the activities of “criminals,” they are in fact
reflective of nearly fourteen centuries of Muslim views on and treatment of
European women.
For starters, Muslim men have
long had an obsessive attraction for fair women of the European variety. This, as all things Islamic,
traces back to their prophet, Muhammad. In order to entice his men to war on
the Byzantines—who, as the Arabs’ nearest European neighbors represented
“white” people—the prophet told them that they would be able to sexually
enslave the “yellow” women (an apparent reference to their fair hair).
For over a millennium after
Muhammad, jihadi leaders—Arabs, Berbers, Turks, Tatars et al—also coaxed their
men to jihad on Europe by citing (and later sexually enslaving) its
women. As one example, prior to their invasion into Spain, Tarek bin Ziyad,
a jihadi hero, enticed the Muslims by saying, “You must have heard numerous
accounts of this island, you must know how the Grecian maidens, as beautiful
as houris … are awaiting your
arrival, reclining on soft couches in the sumptuous palaces of crowned lords
and princes.”
That the sexual enslavement of
fair women was an aspect that always fueled the jihad is evident in other
ways. Thus, for M.A. Khan, an author and former Muslim, it is “impossible
to disconnect Islam from the Viking slave-trade, because the supply was
absolutely meant for meeting [the] Islamic world’s unceasing demand for the
prized white slaves” and for “white sex-slaves.”
Just as Muslim rapists see
British and other European women as “pieces of meat,” “nothing more than
sluts,” and “white whores,” so did Muslim luminaries always describe the
nearest European women of Byzantium. Thus, for Abu Uthman al-Jahiz (b. 776), a
prolific court scholar, the females of Constantinople were the “most shameless
women in the whole world … [T]hey find sex more enjoyable” and “are prone to
adultery.” Abd al-Jabbar (b. 935), another prominent scholar, claimed that
“adultery is commonplace in the cities and markets of Byzantium”—so much so
that even “the nuns from the convents went out to the fortresses to offer
themselves to monks.”
But as the author of Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs,
explains:
Our [Arab/Muslim] sources show
not Byzantine women but writers’ images of these women, who served as symbols
of the eternal female—constantly a potential threat, particularly due to
blatant exaggerations of their sexual promiscuity. In our texts
[Arab/Muslim], Byzantine women are strongly associated with sexual immorality .
. . .While the one quality that our sources never deny is the beauty of
Byzantine women, the image that they create in describing these women is
anything but beautiful. Their depictions are, occasionally, excessive,
virtually caricatures, overwhelmingly negative…The behavior of most women in
Byzantium was a far cry from the depictions that appear in Arabic sources.
The continuity in Muslim
“dealings” with European women is evident even in the otherwise arcane
details. For example, the aforementioned Kate “was trafficked to the
North African country of Morocco where she was prostituted and repeatedly
raped.” She was kept in an apartment in Marrakesh, where another girl no
more than 15 was also kept for sexual purposes. “I can’t remember how
many times I’m raped that [first] night, or by who,” Kate recounts.
This mirrors history. By
1541, the Muslim Barbary State of “Algiers teemed with Christian captives,”
from Europe that “it became a common saying that a Christian slave was scarce a
fair barter for an onion.”
According to the conservative
estimate of American professor Robert Davis, “between 1530 and 1780 [alone]
there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million
and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary
Coast,” of which Morocco—where Kate was abducted to in the modern era—was one.
Women slaves—and not a few men and boys—were always sexually
abused. With countless European women selling for the price of an onion,
little wonder by the late 1700s, European observers noted how “the inhabitants
of Algiers have a rather white complexion.”
It was the same
elsewhere. (The number of Europeans enslaved by Muslims throughout
history is closer to 15 million.) The slave markets of
the Ottoman sultanate were for centuries so inundated with European flesh that
children sold for pennies, “a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a
pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse.” In
Crimea—where some three million Slavs were enslaved by the Muslim Tatars—an
eyewitness described how Christian men were castrated and savagely tortured
(including by gouging their eyes out), whereas “The youngest women are kept for
wanton pleasures.”
Such a long and unwavering
history of sexually enslaving European women on the claim that, they are all
“pieces of meat,” “nothing more than sluts,” and “white whores,” should place
the ongoing sexual abuse of Western women in context—and offer a dim prognosis
for the future.
(Note: All historical quotes and facts in this article are
sourced from the author’s book, Sword and
Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.)
Why Yasmine Mohammed's 'Unveiled' Is a Must-Read
Buy a copy for yourself -- and one for your leftist
Islam-apologist friend.
December 20, 2019
Danusha
V. Goska
"My whole body was
suffocating. My head throbbed, and my skin oozed sweat from every pore …
dressing like the kuffar was evil. I would go to hell if I dressed that way …
when the Caliphate rises, if you're not wearing hijab, how will you be
distinguished from the nonbelievers? If you look like them, you'll be killed
like them … wearing a niqab [face veil] you feel like you're in a portable
sensory deprivation chamber. It impedes your ability to see, hear, touch,
smell. I felt like I was slowly dying inside … I didn't even know who I was
anymore – if I even was somebody at all."
Yasmine Mohammed is a spitfire,
a term once applied both to World-War-II-era combat aircraft and to superstars
like Jane Russell who played hotblooded women who didn't let anyone push them
around. Yasmine is a forty-something Canadian ex-Muslim, atheist, educator, and
activist. (I'm going against convention here and referring to the author by her
first name. She shares a last name with Islam's prophet and founder, and I want
to avoid confusion.)
Yasmine was raised by a strict
Muslim mother who was the second wife of an equally strict stepfather. She was
in an arranged marriage to an Al-Qaeda member. She left Islam and she is now
married to a non-Muslim. Unveiled:
How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam is her first book. And what a first book it is. Unveiled is a
can't-put-it-down instant classic. Authors Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Wafa
Sultan, Kate McCord, Jean Sasson, Nawal el-Saadawi, and Phyllis
Chesler, move over. There is a new star in your literary firmament.
The subtitle of Unveiled, How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam, is a bit misleading. Yes, Yasmine takes on actor Ben
Affleck's October, 2014 appearance on Bill
Maher's Real Time HBO show. On that broadcast Maher and Sam Harris, both atheists
and critics of Christianity, bemoaned their fellow liberals' attacking them for
also criticizing Islam. Ben Affleck exploded – no pun intended. Affleck, a
normally cool and ironic actor, devoted a freakish amount of zealotry to
shielding from analysis clitoridectomy, throwing gay men off roofs, and suicide
bombings. Affleck yelled, waved his arms, furrowed his brow and interrupted.
Any criticism of Islamic doctrine is "gross, racist, ugly." Affleck
offered zero facts. Facts are not necessary. Become apoplectic, smear any critic
of jihad or gender apartheid as racist, pose and preen and signal your own
superior, culturally relative virtue, and the good liberal is done. We've all
met versions of this Islamapologist, though most are not as good looking as
Affleck.
Affleck's Islamapologism
outraged Yasmine Mohammed. She notes that Affleck made a film, Dogma, that mocks Christianity.
She insists that liberals like Affleck do great harm to real, live human
beings. "It was unforgiveable for Ben Affleck to deflect criticism of this
ideology that has caused so much suffering in the world … no one in the West
cares if Muslim women were being imprisoned or killed … for not covering their
hair … that bloggers in Bangladesh were being hacked to death … because they
dared write about humanism … this seemingly well-meaning, white-guilt ridden
man was standing in the way!" Affleck's immorality, cowardice, narcissism
and ignorance, so paradigmatic of Islamapologists, prompted Yasmine to write
her book. Unveiled, she says, "is for anyone who feels a duty to defend Islam
from scrutiny and criticism … you are deflecting the light from shining on
millions of people imprisoned in darkness."
"At times Western
corporations actively support the very things brave women fight against. The
2019 Sports Illustrated featured a burkini." Nike put a swoosh on "religiously
prescribed modesty clothing … How can we fight Western patriarchy while
simultaneously supporting Islamic patriarchy?" Yasmine asks.
Liberal Islamapologists'
constant shielding of Islam from critique is not merely a debate question for
Yasmine Mohammed. Decades ago, young Yasmine told her teacher, Rick Fabbro, that she was being abused.
She showed Fabbro bruises on her arms, caused by her stepfather's beatings with
a belt. Her stepfather wasn't punishing Yasmine for any wrong-doing; he was
merely taking out his own personal frustrations on her body. Fabbro reported
the abuse. A Canadian judge ruled that Islamic culture allowed severe
"corporal punishment." "I never felt so betrayed in my life …
how disgusting to allow a child to be beaten because her abuser happens to come
from another country!" Children are being abused, Yasmine reports,
"because their government is hell-bent on cultural and moral
relativism."
Yasmine is not alone. In
2010, a New Jersey judge refused
a restraining order to a teenage Muslima who was raped and tortured by her
arranged husband. The husband told the wife, "this is according to our
religion. You are my wife, I can do anything to you. The woman, she should
submit and do anything I ask her to do." The judge agreed, asserting that
spousal abuse is sanctioned in Islam. The Islamapologism of useful idiots like
Ben Affleck causes real harm to real victims.
Though Yasmine opens and closes
with mentions of Ben Affleck, The bulk of the book is not about liberals empowering
radical Islam. Rather, it is a riveting memoir of child abuse and recovery.
Yasmine's mother is one of the most vile characters I have ever read about, and
I've read a fair number of books about Nazism. "Mama" quite literally
tortures her daughter, all in the name of making her a good Muslima.
Islamapologists will no doubt
hit upon this aspect of the book. "Yasmine Mohammed's critique of Islamic
gender apartheid and jihad can't be taken at face value. She was raised by an
abusive mother and molested by her mother's male companions. Child abuse is her
problem, not Islam," they'll say. Further, some will accuse Yasmine of
stoking the flames of xenophobic hatred. "By speaking in such detail about
your abuse, you make all Muslims look like monsters!" they'll say.
No, Yasmine does not stoke the
flames of xenophobic hatred. In fact, Yasmine dedicates her book in part
"to those of you who feel compelled to demonize all Muslims. I hope you
will see that we are all just human beings and we battle our own demons."
She rejects racist terms like "sandn----r" and insists that no one
should misconstrue her "personal journey out of faith as an invitation to
be hateful to those still in it." After reading this book, I felt great
compassion and fellow feeling for Yasmine Mohammed, a woman who lived most of
her life as a devout Muslim. Yasmine will, no doubt, arouse that same
compassion and fellow feeling in many readers.
It's also very true that
horrific child abuse occurs in non-Muslim societies as well as Muslim ones.
There are several features, though, that distinguish Muslim child abuse and
non-Muslim child abuse.
In her book Wholly Different, Nonie Darwish discusses the Islamic emphasis on hiding sin.
Darwish contrasts this emphasis with the Judeo-Christian tradition of
confession of sin and subsequent redemption. Darwish heard an Egyptian sheikh
say on TV that if a follower of a sheikh witnesses the sheikh committing a sin,
the follower should say, "it is my eyes that committed the sin" for
having witnessed a power figure do wrong. The holy man is "masoom," infallible or free from sin. The Islamic view of public
exposure of sin feeds a culture based on pride and shame. The Koran is replete
with references to "shame," "disgrace,"
"humiliation," and "losers." These concepts contribute to
thwarting attempts at rescuing abused children. If you can't see, or talk about
child abuse, you can't address it.
Another cultural factor:
submission to an overwhelming sense that everything "is
written." "Any effort to try to create
your own destiny is meaningless … your whole life is written before you take
your first breath," Yasmine writes.
Yasmine describes Islam as a
pyramid-shaped power structure, with unquestioning obedience required at all
levels. Men submit to Allah, women submit to men, and children submit to adults.
Yasmine cites a hadith that describes power
descending from the ruler, to the man, to the woman, and then to the servant.
There are ethnic pyramids of worth as well. Rich Gulf Arabs are superior to
poor Muslims from Pakistan and India.
In such a system, "women
rarely support one another. Each woman is too concerned with saving her own
skin … We hold down our screaming five-year-old daughters and allow a woman to
take a razor to their genitals because a man will prefer her that way."
Girls are close to the bottom of the pyramid of power. Yasmine mentions the
2017 Norwegian film What Will People Say. In the film, the main character, a child of Pakistani parents
growing up in Norway, abuses a cat. Why? Because she's on the bottom. She's
been taught that you deal with frustration by abusing the person, or animal,
beneath you on the pyramid of power. The cat is the innocent and defenseless
target.
The Allah who is the pinnacle
of the Islamic pyramidal power structure is a sadist whose graphic torments are
detailed in the Koran. Don Richardson, in Secrets of the Koran, writes
that one in every eight Koran verses is a threat of damnation. Hell is graphically
described as a place with vivid tortures. By contrast, according to Richardson,
the Old Testament mentions Hell once in every 774 verses, and it is never
described so graphically.
In the Koran, Allah burns off
the skin of the damned. They grow new skin, and that skin, in turn, is burned
off, for all eternity. Young Yasmine dared ask her mother, "Won't I
eventually get used to it?"
No, her mother replied.
"Allah will make sure that every single time it hurts as much as the first
time."
The hadiths, as well as the
Koran, contain graphic tortures of Hell. In one
hadith, Mohammed reports that he saw women
hanging by their hair, with their brains boiling. Their crime? They refused to
wear hijab.
Total, unquestioning obedience
under pain of eternal damnation is pounded into Muslims several times a day,
with the daily prayers. Islamic prayer indoctrinates Muslims in mindless
obedience and group, not individual, behavior. Yasmine details the robotic
movements that must accompany each syllable. These syllables, she says, are
meaningless to most Muslims, who don't understand classical Arabic. They must
merely memorize syllables and repeat them over and over to the point where the
mind is numbed. When praying in a group, they must stand touching other
Muslims. This physical contact provides an extra layer of surveillance. If a
Muslim shirks a given, required movement, other Muslims will not only see it,
they will feel it. Too, Muslims are assured that their prophet is watching them pray, "Make your rows straight for I can see you behind my
back." Any deviation from prescribed activity is automatically a ticket to
Hell. If you don't touch another Muslim while praying, you leave room for
Satan, and you will be punished. "Do not leave any gaps for the Shaytaan. Whoever complete [sic] a row, Allaah will reward him, and
whoever breaks a row, Allaah will forsake him."
"The prayers are
mind-numbingly repetitive. There is no room for the slightest variation. Every
ceremonial motion and every word is specific and methodic, stripping … Muslims
… of any individuality. Get in line. Follow the herd. No distractions … The
meaning [of prayer] was never discussed … Questioning only lead to anger and
admonishment," Yasmine writes. Islam is so thorough in outlining how
Muslims are to live that there is a specific ritualistic way to cut fingernails
and dispose of clippings.
When Yasmine finally does learn
the meaning of the words she's been repeating, she realizes she's been
indoctrinated. "Nearly twenty times a day, I was referring to non-Muslims
as the enemies of Allah. I was chanting that Muslims who became friends with
non-Muslims were doomed to Hell, that non-Muslims were the vilest of animals,
only fit to be used as fuel for the fires of Hell, that Jewish people were
sub-human … I remember one of my aunts lamenting that the cucumbers were
smaller this year because the Jews were putting cancer in the vegetables … At
least five times a day over a billion people are droning on, calling for the
death of all non-Muslims."
Yasmine describes her younger
self being bound, whipped, caned, and locked up. Mama tells little Yasmine that
she has no value whatsoever. Indeed, Yasmine is told again and again that she
is a slut, prostitute, and whore, even though she is a chaste virgin, and,
later, a dutiful wife in an arranged marriage. Don't worry that reading a book
about graphic child abuse will be too upsetting. Yasmine's descriptions are
searing, but brief. The reader never forgets that the author of these
nightmarish accounts is an adult powerhouse who managed to break free both of
her tormentors and the Islam that her tormentors cited as justification.
After each incident is
described, Yasmine offers a corresponding quote from Islamic sacred texts that
is used to justify such tortures. Young Yasmine must kneel at her mother's feet
and kiss them. This is because Islam teaches that "Paradise is under the
feet of mothers." Mama determines whether Yasmine will go to Heaven or
Hell. Yasmine is bound and hung upside down from a hook used to hang the lamb
sacrificed for the Eid holiday. A woman, a sacrificial animal, little
difference. "Hang your whip where members of your household (your wife,
children, and slaves) can see it, for that will discipline them," says one
hadith. Another, "Teach your children to pray when they are seven years
old, and smack them if they do not do so when they are ten."
Yasmine does not cite Koran 18:65-81. In this
passage, Musa, meant to be the Biblical Moses, is depicted as following and
learning from Khidr, a "slave of Allah."
Khidr murders an innocent child. Musa objects. Khidr reprimands Moses for
objecting. Khidr explains that the boy's parents were Muslims and "we
feared lest he should make disobedience and ingratitude to come upon
them." In the place of the child Khidr murdered, Allah "might give
them in his place one better than him." The Koran itself offers a passage
often interpreted to mean that Muslim parents have the right to life and death
over their own children.
When discussing honor
killing, Robert Spencer reminds
his readers that, "A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide
to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in
Sunni Islam, says that 'retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a
human being purely intentionally and without right.' However, 'not subject to
retaliation' is 'a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing
their offspring, or offspring's offspring.' ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other
words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic
law."
I admire Yasmine for being so
frank as to recount how long she stayed loyal to her abusive mother, and to
religious observance that she felt to be destroying her very sense of self.
Again and again the door swings open and Yasmine walks past that open door and
back into the sick, twisted prison of her mother's oppressive hold. Again and
again, Yasmine sees utterly plainly how destructive her mother is, and yet
Yasmine continues to live with her and crave her love, a love this poisonous
viper would never bestow on her precious daughter.
Yasmine marries the man her
mother tells her to marry, though she does not love him. This man, Essam
Marzouk, beats Yasmine so badly she miscarries their second child. Eventually,
slowly but surely, Yasmine breaks her conditioning, leaves her family, abandons
her veil, and marries a non-Muslim man. The reader rejoices for her.
This reader has one problem
with Unveiled and
other media produced by some Ex-Muslims, including the Ex-Muslims
of North America. These ex-Muslims decide,
"I discovered that Islam is oppressive, therefore, all religion is
oppressive nonsense." Their dismissals are based not only on scanty
knowledge of the scripture and dogma of other faiths, but also ignorance of how
other faiths have influenced society.
Yasmine says, again and again,
that her encounters with non-Muslims were like encounters, as she herself puts
it, with "angels." There's a reason that the non-Muslims Yasmine
encountered treated her with concern and decency. That reason is their
training, very different from her own. They were raised in a Judeo-Christian
society, that upholds Judeo-Christian values.
In the Old Testament, God
orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. God stops the sacrifice. For hundreds of
years, Jews and Christians have understood this story as separating God's
chosen people from the surrounding Canaanite society, where child sacrifice to
Moloch was practiced. Archaeology confirms Biblical accounts. Various
Phoenician societies around the Mediterranean, including the Canaanites and Carthaginians,
left evidence of child sacrifice. Child
sacrifice was also practiced by several Native American cultures, including
Chimu, Inca, Maya, Aztec, Mississippian and Pawnee; it possibly occurred in Ancient Greece, and child sacrifice occurs today among Hindus in India.
Contemporary scholars debate whether
or not the Isaac story was originally understood as a stand against child
sacrifice, but Christians and Jews themselves understand it that way, and that
interpretation was explicitly advanced by a Jewish scholar eight hundred years
ago. In any case, Biblical verse after verse condemns
parents killing their own children.
The New Testament could not be
more dramatic in emphasizing the value of children. God, the omnipotent creator
of the universe, enters time in the body of a helpless infant born of a lowly
peasant girl, among stock animals in a stable. Jesus famously says,
"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such
is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the
kingdom of God as little child shall in no wise enter therein."
Pregnant with Jesus, Mary
recites the Magnificat, "He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and
hath exalted the humble and meek." Jesus says, "The last shall be
first, and the first, last," and "Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth." Again and again, the Bible overturns the pyramid
of power.
Early Christian critic Celsus,
a Greek Pagan, dismissed Christianity as a religion that attracted those on the
bottom. Christianity, Celsus sneered, is a religion of women, of children, and
of slaves. The Pagan Roman legal code attributed to Romulus allowed for the
murder of female children, and female infanticide was common in the ancient,
Pagan world. A Greek comedy from the third century BC records, "Everyone,
even a poor man, raises a son; everyone, even a wealthy man, exposes a daughter."
Rodney Stark theorizes that Christianity's remarkable success can be attributed
partially to Christianity's remarkable respect for the personhood of women and
children, even female infants. "Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion
nor kill them when born," said the Didache, "a first century manual of Church teachings." Early Christianity's valuing of young, female human beings
is unforgettably depicted in The Acts of
Paul and Thecla, about a Pagan girl who
converts to Christianity and boldly asserts her own full worth in the face of
murderous Pagan opposition. Finally, of course, Christianity mandates
confession and repentance, rather than the hiding of sin.
Non-believers have only a
partial picture when they refuse to consider how Judeo-Christian teaching and
Christian faith have fostered the features they value in Western Civilization.
Yes, child abuse occurs in Christian families and institutions as well as in
Muslim ones. But there is a difference between, say, Jordan, a relatively
modern Muslim-majority country, and the United States. In Jordan, honor killing
is a perpetual problem. Families practice it; authorities look the other way.
The ancient Koran story of Khidr, a revered Muslim character who killed a child
because the child might someday embarrass his devout Muslim parents, is carried
out daily in Muslim countries. In countries with a Judeo-Christian heritage,
killing your child because the child might embarrass you is not supported by
the wider society. Some cultures provide guardrails and tools that can be used
to dismantle human dysfunction. Other cultures provide scriptures that uphold
hate and abuse.
Not just honor killing
oppresses Muslim women and girls. Clitoredectomy, child and forced marriage,
and polygamy are all part of day-to-day life. Sharia dictates that women
inherit half of what men inherit, and the testimony of two women equals the
testimony of one man. Women cannot pray when they are menstruating. In a
hadith, Mohammed himself cited the ban on women praying during their
menstruation as proof that women are "deficient in religion" and make
up the majority of the damned in Hell. A woman, Mohammed insisted, must satisfy
their husband's demand for sex, even while riding on a camel's back. One could
go on. Denigration of the value of the lives of girls and women is deeply
embedded in the Koran and hadiths.
Rodney Stark ended his
book The Victory of Reason with a quote he attributes to a Chinese scholar. "One of the
things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact,
the pre-eminence of the West all over the world. We studied everything we could
from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first,
we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we
thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on
your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the
heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is
so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was
what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful
transition to democratic politics. We don't have any doubt about this."
I hope (and pray) that the
aversion that immersion in Islam taught ex-Muslims to feel for all religion
does not blind them to the impact of the Judeo-Christian tradition on what they
value in kuffar society – including the right to self-identify as an atheist,
and not be killed for doing so.
Yasmine Mohammed's book is
receiving terrific reviews on Amazon. Yasmine deserves more. Krista Tippett
hosts On Being on National Public Radio. Tippett markets a
soft-focus, touchy-feely Islam. Terry Gross
frequently features memoir authors on Fresh
Air. Tippett, Gross, the New York Times, all should
provide Yasmine Mohammed with a platform. Truth and courage demand it.
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