Friday, January 31, 2020

MURDERING MUSLIMS - EGYPT, THE AMERICAN WELFARE STATE, MURDERS CHRISTIANS

Egypt Ushers in New Year with Murderous Assaults on Christians

There’s nothing “new” about this New Year.
 
Raymond Ibrahim

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  This article was originally published on Coptic Solidarity.
The New Year began with an uptick of slaughter attempts on Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority.
First, on January 12, 2020, a Muslim man crept up behind a Coptic woman walking home with groceries, pulled her head back with a hand full of hair, and slit her throat with a knife in the other hand.
Nearby people attacked and restrained the man in al-Wariq, Giza, where the incident took place. Catherine Ramzi was rushed to a nearby medical center, where her throat was sewn with 63 stitches; despite initial heavy bleeding, she managed to survive. The doctor told her that had the knife penetrated one millimeter more—her now mangled sweatshirt had provided some buffering against the knife—it would’ve reached her jugular and killed her.
During an interview, she explained that she had never before seen the man. All she heard him say during the assault is that she “deserved it” because her “hair was exposed.” He may have also identified her as a Christian because, like many Copts, Catherine bears a visible tattoo of the cross on her hand.
When the interviewer suggested that the assailant must have been insane, Catherine and her sister, who was present during the interview, argued otherwise, giving several reasons—including that the man knew and casually recited his ID number, his home address, and other detailed information to the arresting officers—suggesting that he was sane of mind. “This was a determined man who sought to execute a specific idea in his mind,” said Catherine’s brother. “There is no way that he was acting in a craze.”
Two days after the attack on Catherine, on January 14, 2020, in the region of al-Maraj, Egypt, another Muslim man tried to slaughter a Coptic man with a sharp box-cutter in a public space; he managed only to slice off a portion of the Christian’s ear.
After Muhammad ‘Awad, 32,  was arrested and questioned as to why he tried to murder Rafiq Karam, 56, he confessed that he did not know the Copt, but that he simply “hates Christians, for they are from among the People of Lot, and the [death] penalty must be applied to them, for they commit indecencies.”
“The People of Lot” is a reference to the homosexual behavior of the denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, as recorded in the Bible and, later, the Koran. This would not be the first time a Muslim misunderstands Christianity’s message of love as promoting libertine or illicit sexuality.
These recent attacks are hardly unprecedented for Egypt. For example, one need look no further than to al-Wariq, Giza, where Catherine was attacked for a nearly identical precedent: there, in March, 2017, another Muslim man slit the throat of another Christian woman, also in broad daylight—and also only to be characterized by authorities as “mentally unstable.”
In January, 2017, another Muslim man crept up behind a Coptic man, 45, and slit his throat, killing him in Alexandria. The murderer’s reasoning was that the Christian man owned a shop that sold alcohol, which the Muslim deemed “contrary to the shar‘ia [Islamic law] and the religion [Islam].” There are many more examples.
In other words, these most recent and random murder attempts of 2020 are clear indicators that there’s nothing “new” about the New Year—at least not in Egypt, where its Coptic minorities continue to be targeted for slaughter, simply for being Christians.


Anti-Christian Oppression Around the World

Atrocious -- and accelerating.
January 22, 2020 
Jack Kerwick
Today, Christians throughout the world constitute by far and away the single largest persecuted religious group. 
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.


Muslim Deceit and the Burden of Proof


In his recent defense of the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya (dismantled here), Usama Hasan of the UK think tank Quilliam made the following admission:
It is true that hardened islamist terrorists, such as the Al-Qaeda & ISIS supporter Usman Khan who murdered two people at Fishmongers’ Hall [after pretending to have been “rehabilitated”], do misuse the principle of taqiyyah in order to further their cause. However, the charge that all Muslims are generally religiously obligated to lie, and do so routinely, is both dangerous and untrue.
However true this may be, it is also irrelevant.  After all, how is the infidel to know which Muslim is and isn’t “misusing the principle of taqiyyah”?  Moreover, why should the burden of proof be on the non-Muslim -- who stands to (and often does) suffer and even die from ignoring the role of deceit in Islam -- and not on the Muslim, whose religion allows deception in the first place? This is particularly so since more than a few “hardened islamist terrorists” are convinced that their creed allows them to dissimulate to their heart’s content -- so long as doing so can be seen as helping further the cause of Islam.
In this, as in virtually all things Islamic, Muslims have their prophet’s example -- two that are especially poignant -- to turn to. 
First is the assassination of Ka‘b ibn Ashraf (d. 624), an elderly Jew.  Because he dared mock Muhammad, the latter exclaimed, “Who will kill this man who has hurt Allah and his messenger?” A young Muslim named Ibn Maslama volunteered on condition that to get close enough to Ka‘b to murder him, he needed permission to lie to the Jew. 
Allah’s messenger agreed. So Ibn Maslama traveled to Ka‘b and began to complain about Muhammad until his disaffection became so convincing that Ka‘b eventually dropped his guard and befriended him.
After behaving as his friend for some time, Ibn Maslama eventually appeared with another Muslim, also pretending to have apostatized.  Then, while a trusting Ka‘b’s guard was down, they attacked and slaughtered him, bringing his head to Muhammad to the usual triumphant cries of “Allahu Akbar!”
In another account, after Muhammad and his followers had attacked, plundered, and massacred a number of non-Muslim Arabs and Jews, the latter assembled and were poised to defeat the Muslims (at the Battle of the Trench, 627).   But then Naim bin Mas‘ud, one of the leaders of these non-Muslim “confederates,” as they came to be known in history, secretly went to Muhammad and converted to Islam. The prophet asked him to return to his tribesmen and allies -- without revealing that he had joined the Muslim camp -- and to try to get them to abandon the siege.  “For,” Muhammad assured him, “war is deceit.”
Mas‘ud returned, pretending to be loyal to his former kinsmen and allies, all while giving them bad advice. He also subtly instigated quarrels between the various tribes until, no longer trusting each other, they disbanded -- thereby becoming a celebrated hero in Islamic tradition.
In the two well-known examples above, Muslims deceived non-Muslims not because they were being persecuted for being Muslim but as a tactic to empower Islam.  (Even the Battle of the Trench was precipitated precisely because Muhammad and his followers had first attacked the confederates at the Battle of Badr and massacred hundreds of them on other occasions.)
Despite these stories being part of the Sunna to which Sunnis adhere, UCLA’s Abou El Fadl -- the primary expert the Washington Post once quoted to show that Islam does not promote deceit -- claims that “there is no concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal. That is a complete invention.”
Tell that to Ka‘b ibn Ashraf, whose head was cut off for believing Muslim lies.  The prophet of Islam allowed his followers to deceive the Jew to slaughter him -- even though Ka‘b posed no threat to any Muslim’s life.
Especially revealing is that, in Dr. Sami Makerem’s seminal book on the topic, Al-Taqiyya fi’l Islam (Taqiyya in Islam), he cites the two aforementioned examples from the prophet’s biography as prime examples of taqiyya.
It comes to this: even if  one were to accept the limited definition of taqiyya as permitting deception only under life-threatening circumstances (as Usama Hasan and any number of apologists insist), the fact remains: Islam also permits lies and deception in order to empower itself.  Accordingly, and considering that Islam considers itself in a constant state of war with non-Islam (typified by the classical formulation of Dar al-Islam vs. Dar al-Harb) any Muslim who feels this or that piece of deception over the infidel is somehow benefiting Islam will believe that he has a blank check to lie. 
That’s the inconvenient fact -- passingly admitted to by Usama Hasan -- that needs addressing; and that’s why the burden of proof belongs on Muslims, not non-Muslims.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center; a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute; and a Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum.


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'Hating and Loving' for Islam

Understanding the roots of terror.
January 17, 2020 
Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
During a New Year’s Eve Islamic terror attack that took place in Russia minutes before the clock struck midnight, two Muslim men—Akhmed Imagozhev, 22 and Mikail Miziyev, 18—drove their car into and stabbed to death two police officers, one a married father of four.  Other officers subsequently shot one of the jihadis dead, while hospitalizing the other.
An image of the two Muslim men posing with knives was later found on social media.  Beneath it appeared the words, “love and hatred based on Tawhid!”  This is hardly the first time this ostensibly oxymoronic phrase appears in connection with Islamic acts of terror.  After launching a successful terror attack that killed two policemen in the Kashmir Valley, the militant commander of Kashmir’s Hizb al-Mujahidin—“the Party of Jihadis”—justified the murders by saying,  “We love and hate for the sake of Allah.”
Interestingly, in this otherwise cryptic motto lie the roots of Islam’s conflict with the rest of the world.  “Loving and hating” is one of several translations of the Islamic doctrine of al-wala’ wa’l-bara’ (which since 2006 I have generally translated as “Loyalty and Enmity”).
The wala’ portion—“love,” “loyalty,” etc.—requires Muslims always to aid and support fellow Muslims (including jihadis, for example through funds or zakat).  As one medieval Muslim authority explained, the believer “is obligated to befriend a believer—even if he is oppressive and violent toward you — while he must be hostile to the infidel—even if he is liberal and kind to you” (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 64 ).   This is a clear reflection of Koran 48:29: “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; and those with him are forceful against the disbelievers, merciful among themselves.”
But it is the bara’—the “hate,” the “enmity”—that manifests itself so regularly that even those in the West who are not necessarily acquainted with the particulars of Muslim doctrine sense it.  For instance, in November 2015, after a series of deadly Islamic terror strikes in the West, then presidential candidate Donald Trump said, “I think Islam hates us.  There’s something there that — there’s a tremendous hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There’s an unbelievable hatred of us.”
This “tremendous” and “unbelievable hatred” is not a product of grievances, political factors, or even an “extremist” interpretation of Islam; rather, it is a direct byproduct of mainstream Islamic teaching.  Koran 60:4 is the cornerstone verse of this doctrine and speaks for itself.  As Osama bin Laden once wrote:
As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High’s Word: “We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us—till you believe in Allah alone” [Koran 60:4]. So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility—that is, battle—ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed [i.e., a dhimmi], or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy!… Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred—directed from the Muslim to the infidel—is the foundation of our religion.  (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 43).
Similarly, the Islamic State confessed to the West in the context of Koran 60: 4 that “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers.”  As for any and all political “grievances,” these are “secondary” reasons for the jihad, ISIS said:
The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.
Koran 58:22 goes as far as to praise Muslims who kill their own non-Muslim family members: “You shall find none who believe in Allah and the Last Day on friendly terms with those who oppose Allah and His Messenger—even if they be their fathers, their sons, their brothers, or their nearest kindred.”
According to Ibn Kathir’s mainstream commentary on the Koran, this verse refers to a number of Muslims who slaughtered their own non-Muslim kin (one slew his non-Muslim father, another his non-Muslim brother, a third—Abu Bakr, the first revered caliph of Islamic history—tried to slay his non-Muslim son, and Omar, the second righteous caliph, slaughtered his relatives).   Ibn Kathir adds that Allah was immensely pleased by their unwavering zeal for his cause and rewarded them with paradise. (The Al Qaeda Reader75-76).
In fact, verses that support the divisive doctrine of al-wala’ wa’l-bara’ permeate the Koran (see also 4:89, 4:144, 5:51, 5:54, 6:40, 9:23, and 60:1).  There is one caveat, captured by Koran 3:28: when Muslims are in a position of weakness, they may pretend to befriend non-Muslims, as long as the hate carries on in their hearts (such is taqiyya; see herehere, and here for examples; for other Islamic sanctioned forms of deception, read about tawriya, and taysir).
Little wonder, then, that America’s supposed best Muslim friends and allies—such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar—are on record calling on all Muslims to hate.  According to a Saudi governmental run website,  Muslims must “oppose and hate whomever Allah commands us to oppose and hate, including the Jews, the Christians, and other mushrikin [non-Muslims], until they believe in Allah alone and abide by his laws, which he sent down to his Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him.”
Indeed, because enmity for non-Muslims is so ironclad in the Koran, mainstream Islamic teaching holds that Muslim men must even hate—and show that they hate—their non-Muslim wives, for no other reason than that they are “infidels.”
If Muslims must hate those closest to them—including fathers, sons, brothers, and wives—simply because they are non-Muslims, is there any surprise that so many Muslims hate foreign “infidels” who live oceans away—such as Americans, who are further portrayed throughout the Islamic world as trying to undermine Islam?
In short, jihad—or terrorism, war on non-Muslims for no less a reason than that they are non-Muslims—is simply the physical realization of an overlooked concept that precedes it: Islam’s unequivocal command for Muslims to hate non-Muslims.



THE KORAN

BIBLE OF THE MUSLIM TERRORIST:

“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

Koran 2:191 "slay the unbelievers wherever you find them"
Koran 3:21 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends"
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam"
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran"
Koran 8:60 " Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels"
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid, urge all Muslims to fight them"
Koran 9:5 "When the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them"
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood"
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies"
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels, behead them when you catch them".


“The tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply penetrated the world. The Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear threat in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood also wages its deadly campaign through its dozens of well-established and functioning branches all over the world.”

“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

* We will take advantage of their immigration policy to infiltrate them.

* We will use their own welfare system to provide us with food, housing, schooling, and health care, while we out breed them and plot against them. We will Caliphate on their dime.

* We will use political correctness as a weapon. Anyone who criticizes us, we will take the opportunity to grandstand and curry favor from the media and Democrats and loudly accuse our critics of being an Islamophobe.

* We will use their own discrimination laws against them and slowly introduce Sharia Law into their culture..

 

Duping Americans on Sharia

A detailed look at how Islamic apologist extraordinaire John Esposito whitewashes Islamic terror.
January 14, 2020 
Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Does Islam itself promote hostility for and violence against non-Muslims, or are all the difficulties between the West and Islam based on secondary factors—from “radical” interpretations of Islam, to economics and grievances?
This is the fundamental question.
Obviously, if “anti-infidel” hostility is inherent to Islam itself, then the conflict becomes existential—a true clash of civilizations, with no easy fixes and lots of ugly implications along the horizon.
Because of this truism, those whose job it is to whitewash Islam’s image in the West insist on the opposite—that all difficulties are temporal and not rooted to innate Islamic teachings.
Enter Shariah: What Everyone Needs to Know, co-authored by John Esposito and Natana J. Delong-Bas.  The authors’ goal is to exonerate Shariah, which they portray as enshrining “the common good (maslahah), human dignity, social justice, and the centrality of the community” from Western criticism or fear, which they say is based solely on “myth” and “sensationalism.”
In their introductory chapters they define Shariah as being built upon the words of the Koran and the Sunna (or example) of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as contained in sahih (canonical) hadiths.  They add: “Shariah and Islamic law are not the same thing.  The distinction between divine law (Shariah) and its human interpretation, application, and development (Islamic law) is important to keep in mind throughout this book…. Whereas Shariah is immutable and infallible, Islamic law (fiqh) is fallible and changeable.”
Next the authors highlight how important Shariah is to a majority of Muslims.  They cite a 2013 Pew Poll which found that  69% of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa, 73% in South Asia, and 55% in Central Asia believe that “Shariah is God’s [Allah’s] divine revelation.”
Even larger numbers “favored the establishment of Shariah as official law”: 99% in Afghanistan, 84% in South Asia, 74% in the Middle East and North Africa, and 64% in sub-Saharan Africa.
So far so good.  The authors’ introductory claims (that Shariah is fundamental to Islam) and statistics (that hundreds of millions of Muslims revere and wish to see it implemented) are correct.
But they also beg the aforementioned question: is Shariah itself behind the intolerance, misogyny, violence, and terrorism committed in the name of Islam?
Here, the hitherto objective authors shift gears and take on the mantle of apologists. Their thesis is simple: Any and all negative activities Muslims engage in are to be pinned on anything and everything—so long as it’s not Shariah.
In order to support this otherwise unsupportable position, and as might be expected, the remainder of the book consists of obfuscation, dissembling, and lots and lots of contextual omissions and historical distortions.
A small sampling follows:
Shariah on Women
The authors quote and discuss at length many Koran verses about women that seem positive (Koran 30:21, 3:195, and 2:187), without alluding to counter verses that permit husbands to beat their wives (4:34) and treat them as “fields” to be “plowed however you wish” (2:223).  Nor do they deal with Muhammad’s assertions that women are “lacking in intelligence” and will form the bulk of hell’s denizens, as recounted in a canonical hadith.
They partially quote Koran 4:3: “…marry those that please you of other women, two or three or four. But if you fear that you will not be just, then marry only one.”  This suits the authors’ purpose, which is to present the Koran as implicitly recommending only one wife, since it acknowledges the near impossibility for a man to treat all wives equally.  Yet the authors deliberately cut off the continuation of that verse—which permits Muslim men to copulate with an unlimited amount of sex slaves (ma malakat aymanukum) even if they are married.
They also dissemble about child marriage, saying “classical Islamic law” permits it, but only when “the child reaches a mature age.”   Yet they make no mention that, based on Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha—that is, based on his Sunna, which is immutable and part of Shariah—nine is considered a “mature age.”
Freedom of Religion and Non-Muslims
The authors claim that “There are more than 100 Quranic verses that … affirm freedom of religion and conscience.”  They quote many at length and assert that “The guiding Shariah principle … underscored by Quran 3:28, 29:46, and 60:89, is that believers should treat unbelievers decently and equitably as long as the unbelievers do not behave aggressively.”
Yet they fail to mention or sideline the many contradictory verses that call for relentless war on non-Muslims—who are further likened to dumb cattle in Koran 25:44 —until they surrender, one way or another, to Islam (e.g., 8:39, 9:5, 9:29).
They fail to quote the verses that form the highly divisive doctrine of al-wala’ w’al bara’ (“Loyalty and Enmity”), including Koran 5:51, which forbids Muslims from befriending Jews and Christians, and Koran 60:4, which commands Muslims to harbor only “hate” for non-Muslims, until they “believe in Allah alone.”
Needless to say, they ignore Koran 3:28, which permits Muslims to feign friendship for non-Muslims, whenever the former are under the latter’s authority (such is the doctrine of taqiyya; see herehereherehere, and here for examples).
It is, incidentally, because of all these divisive Koran verses—because of Shariah—that the Islamic State forthrightly explained, “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers.”
The closest the authors get to address these issues is in a section titled, “Can Muslims in the West be Loyal Citizens.”  They respond with a yes—but the evidence they cite are polls (based on wishful interpretations), which of course tells the reader little about the topic they purport to “de-mythologize”: Shariah.
Jihad
As might be expected, when the authors reach the topic of jihad, their dissembling reaches a new level.  They repeatedly insist that jihad, as enshrined in Shariah, is simply the Muslim counterpart of Western Just War theory, which teaches that war and aggression are permissible, but only in defense or to recover one’s territory from occupiers:  “The lesser or outer jihad involves defending Islam and the Muslim community.”   As usual, they spend much time quoting and elaborating on Koran verses that comport with this position, while ignoring or sidelining the many contradictory verses.  In reality, mainstream Islam holds that the Koran’s “Sword Verses” (especially 9:5 and 9:29) have abrogated all the peaceful ones, thereby making warfare on non-Muslims—for no less a reason than that they are non-Muslims—obligatory.
Consider Koran 9:29:  “Fight those who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth [Islam] from the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”
What, exactly, is “defensive” about this verse?
Similarly, they claim that dar al-harb, or “abode of war”—Islam’s designation for all those non-Muslim territories (such as Europe) that Muslims were historically in a permanent state of war with—“applied to other parties with whom Muslims were in conflict.” Again, they fail to mention that the primary reason Muslims were “in conflict” with them was because they were non-Muslim, and that all non-Muslim territories were by default part of the “abode of war,” except when treaties advantageous to Islam were drawn.
Instead, the authors say, “The territories classified as the abode of war were those that refused to provide such protection to Muslims and their clients”—thereby implying Muslims were hostile to, say, Europe, because Europe was first hostile to Muslims.  (Reality, as chronicled in Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, was the exact opposite.)
Miscellaneous Subterfuge
One can go on and on; the authors engage in other forms of subterfuge to exonerate Shariah.  They frequently project a Western veneer to Islamic terms and concepts, saying for example that Shariah is ultimately about “promoting good and preventing evil”—which sounds admirable—without pointing out that, based on the Koran and Sunna (that is, Shariah), conquering non-Muslim territories is about “promoting good” and keeping women under wraps and indoors, beating them as required, is about “preventing vice.”
While admitting that Christians and other non-Muslim minorities are currently being persecuted, not only do the authors insist that this has nothing to do with Shariah, but they invoke relativistic thinking: “Just as Muslims living in non-Muslim countries are often concerned with their rights and civil liberties as minorities,” they say, “so some consider the rights and status of non-Muslim minorities living in Muslim countries to be a parallel issue.” In other words, because some Americans view Muslims in their midst with suspicion, the ongoing enslavement and slaughter of Christians—more than 6,000 in Nigeria alone since January 2018—and ban on or destruction of churches is a sort of tit for tat, a “parallel issue” that can only be solved when the West becomes less critical about Islam.
Relativism is also invoked during the authors’ brief treatment of apostasy in Islam: “Historically, apostasy was sometimes punishable by death in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.”  They claim that apostasy is still a major issue in Islam due to “radical” interpretations or politics—bolstering their position by again quoting the same Koran verses that seem to support freedom of religion—without mentioning, say, the canonical hadith (meaning part of Shariah) where Muhammad said, “Whoever leaves his religion [Islam], kill him.”
Such is how Islam’s skilled apologists dupe the West: they admit to some of the more controversial aspects that many other apologists shy away from—namely that Shariah is indeed foundational to Islam and that hundreds of millions of Muslims revere and wish to see it implemented—but then, having established trust with the reader, they slip back into the “game,” portraying all the intolerance, misogyny, violence, and terrorism daily committed in the name of Islam as products of anything and everything—fallible Muslim interpretations, self-serving clerics and terrorists, socio-economic pressures, Western criticism or encroachments—never Shariah itself.
Contrary to its subtitle, then, John Esposito’s  and Natana J. Delong-Bas’s Shariah is not “what everyone needs to know”; rather, it is what non-Muslims need to believe in order to give Shariah—which is fundamentally hostile to all persons and things un-Islamic—a free pass.


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