Sunday, January 5, 2020

THE DEATH OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH - Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran"

IF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH FAILS TO GET ITS ACT TOGETHER, THE MUSLIMS WILL OVERRUN OUR COUNTRIES AND MURDER US!



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..

The Episcopal Church's Fruits of Heresy


“This church has about 30 more years before it is dead,” stated one young man at a 2016 forum at the Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) in Alexandria, Virginia, as quoted in the recent book The Seduction of the Episcopal Church.  Therein Anglican author David Virtue, a longtime critical observer of worldwide Anglicanism, reviews the Episcopal Church’s decades-long fall from grace in an exposé of Christian folly in accommodating a secularized, sexualized modernity.  
Virtue tells the depressing, detailed “story of a once proud Christian denomination that stood as a landmark church in a nation that has seen presidents, senators and business leaders pass through its hallowed red doors.”  “Spiritual and ecclesiastical death marks the present and future state of this denomination” today as Episcopal Church membership has cratered from a 1966 peak of 3,647,297, to 1,676,349 in 2018.  Particularly the 2003 consecration of noncelibate homosexual V. Gene Robinson as an Episcopal bishop unleashed an “ecclesiastical tsunami wave” and the “worst single outflow of Episcopalians in modern history,” over 100,000.
In an Episcopal Church “intoxicated with the spirit of the age,” 31 percent of Episcopalians according to the latest statistics are 65 or older while 79 percent do not have a child under 18.  Procreation seems a secondary concern for Episcopalians, 79 and 74 percent of whom, respectively, think abortion should be legal in all or most cases and favor same-sex “marriage.”  Rather than walking any orthodox straight and narrow, 47 percent of Episcopalians say the Bible is not God’s Word and 51 percent of Episcopalians seldom or never read Scripture. 
Biographical portraits of contemporary Episcopal false prophets form the milestones along Virtue’s mapping of the Episcopal road to ruin, such as James Albert Pike, who became Bishop of California in 1958.  Pike was the “Episcopal Church’s first public heretic,” who questioned numerous Christian doctrines like the Trinity and deeply dabbled in the occult in order to contact his son who had committed suicide.  His “personal life was as messy as his later theological ramblings,” for after one divorce and one annulment, a 56-year old Pike married his third wife, age 31.  Meanwhile he had a secret telephone installed in the San Francisco episcopal office for his mistresses.
Rutgers University professor and homosexual activist Louie Crew founded the Episcopal homosexual group Integrity in 1974.  He would begin his Bible as Literature classes by dumping a Bible into a bowl of muddy water and mockingly note the absence of wrathful, divine lightning bolts.  Largely due to his lobbyist “inglorious victory for one man,” the “Church had gone from thoroughly heterosexual to pansexual in one generation,” Virtue notes, a “feat that present day cultural Marxists could only stand back and admire.”
The actual record of Crew’s legacy was hardly gay, as the Episcopal Church’s “first ordination of a noncelibate homosexual went unbelievably badly” in 1989 with the AIDS-infected Robert Williams, Virtue observes.  As Williams’ cohabitation with his live-in homosexual partner predicted, the “narrative did not go as planned, with Williams announcing that neither celibacy nor monogamy were natural to human beings.”  Bishop of Newark John Shelby Spong, a notoriously heterodox Episcopalian and inveterate opponent of House of Bishops “Homophobes,” pressured Williams into resignation and he shortly thereafter died of AIDS.
Elected Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop in 1998, Frank Tracy Griswold decided that the mind of Christ was a conglomeration of worldly culture, social confusion, and Islamic beliefs couched in mystical language,” Virtue notes.  Reflecting the “mind of a declining western culture,” Griswold’s writings “tossed numerous quotes and buzzwords at the reader, even though they were meaningless.”  “His only absolute is that there are no absolutes,” Virtue observes of a clergyman who has condemned Jesus’ unique salvation claims as “Jesusolatry.”  
It was perhaps fitting that Robinson, who has revealed himself as an alcoholic, two-time gay divorcee, became bishop under Presiding Bishop Griswold.  “His own sexuality was the private talk of many,” Virtue notes.  One Episcopal bishop had claimed to Virtue that the married “Griswold consorted with known drag queens and homosexuals in Paris in the late 80’s.”
Griswold’s support for Robinson’s ordination has “torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion,” Virtue observes.  “In 2004, the Episcopal Church stood on the edge of being publicly reprimanded, if not thrown out of the Anglican Communion for doctrinal and moral infidelity.”  Additionally, Griswold’s “public affirmation of pansexuality jeopardized the lives of Anglicans in northern Nigeria, who daily face the onslaughts of Islamic fundamentalists pushing Sharia law, who laughingly mock Christianity as a ‘queer’ religion.”
Succeeding Griswold in 2006, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori launched a “personal Inquisition” against any Episcopalians who would not accept the new sexual (dis)order, Virtue writes.  Against congregations that attempted to leave the Episcopal Church with their church property and dissident clergy she “fought in every legal venue open to the church; salaries and pensions would be cut off.”  Episcopal Church legal fees exceeded S22 million.
The vengeful Griswold testified in court that she preferred selling church properties for “saloons” rather than to other, orthodox Anglican entities.  Thus “properties were sold to start up evangelicals, fundamentalists, even to Muslim Imams for mosques,” Virtue writes.  Moreover, “Schori defrocked, humiliated and destroyed hundreds of Anglican priests” in a “bonfire of the Episcopal vanities.”
Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, a supposed “moderate,” followed in 2015 the “ultra-liberal” Schori, who had traded “The Great Commission (to preach the gospel to all the world) for Millennium Development Goals,” Virtue notes.  Yet “even as his preaching revealed the old-style cadence of black preachers,” Curry merely “would be a different shade of gray.”  One young Episcopalian dismissed Curry’s proclaimed “Jesus Movement” as “all that 1960s stuff we are trying to avoid.”
Virtue’s dismal conclusion concurs with the young VTS visitor.  “Within two generations, most of the Church will be gone.  There will be hold out parishes like Trinity Wall Street, the richest church in the world, and a number of large Texas parishes.”  The watchman Virtue has given his alarm; now other Christians must heed this writing on the wall.


Church Fails to Stand up to Political Correctness, Says Queen’s Former Chaplain Who Converted to Catholicism


23 Dec 201984
4:02
Queen Elizabeth II’s former chaplain converted to Catholicism in response to the Church of England’s failure to stand up to “political correctness”, which he said has instead “swallowed it wholesale”.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Dr Gavin Ashenden recalled his years in the 1980s smuggling Bibles into Czechoslovakia for ordaining Catholic priests — an act banned by the Marxist government — and observed that “in some important respects Britain is starting to resemble Soviet-era Eastern Europe”.
“Freedom of speech is slowly being eroded; those who refuse to be ‘politically correct’ risk accusations of thought crime and Christians are being unfairly persecuted.
“And where is the Church of England in this crucial culture war? Is it on the front line? Not that I can see. If anything, it has switched sides.”
Dr Ashenden, who was one of several personal chaplains to the Queen between 2008 and 2017, said that the mother church of the worldwide Anglican communion had “remained astonishingly silent” when “called upon to defend Christian values” — noting specifically the transgender activist agenda’s influence on children.
He criticised the church — which issued guidance in 2017 to let children experiment with their gender at church-run schools — for failing to defend doctors who affirm that sex is immutable and for remaining silent on unisex toilets in schools.
Criticising the archbishop directly, Dr Ashenden said: “Instead, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has presided over advice warning schools against having distinct boys’ and girls’ uniforms – because it might ‘create difficulty for trans pupils’.”


Church Vicar Likens Disruptive Climate Protestors to Jesus Christ


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The Church of England already allows transgenders to marry someone of the same biological sex in church if they have a legal document stating they are the opposite gender — yet in a contradictory move has recently said it will not challenge marriages if one person legally changes sex after the vows are taken. The positions confirm the church believes gender is fluid and that it will permit “same-sex” marriages.
The Church of England has also said that it should do more to recruit transgenders to the clergy and has issued guidance on how to celebrate gender transition in church.
“Trans people with gender recognition are already able to marry in our churches. Being transgender does not prevent someone offering themselves for ordained ministry and we have transgender clergy as well as laity,” Rev Dr Malcolm Brown said last year.

The Church of England has even sought to redefine the sex of God — referred to throughout the bible with male pronouns and as the “Father” — with Archbishop Welby declaring Him gender-neutral while female bishops called for clergy to stop referring to God as “He”.
Ashenden continued in the Mail: “Rather than resist such political correctness, and offer a Christian critique, the Church of England has swallowed it wholesale. These apparently minor concessions are symptomatic of the C of E’s wider capitulation to the increasingly intense and non-negotiable demands of a secular culture.”


Vicar Offered to Cover up Jesus for Sex-Segregated Ramadan Event in English Church https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/05/20/uk-church-cover-crucifix-muslim/ 

English Church Offered to Cover up Jesus for Muslim Celebration Meal



This is not the first time the former chaplain to the monarch has spoken out against progressive posturing by the Church of England.
Reverend Ashenden was one of several conservative Christians to have expressed outrage when the Muslim call to prayer was pronounced in Blackburn cathedral during an armistice day ceremony last year. A blasphemy in Christianity, the azaan inherently denies the one true God and the divinity of Jesus by declaring the primary deity to be Allah and Mohammed his messenger.
He said at the time: “In the downward spiral of the Church of England’s membership, they are trying to move from being a religious organisation to a cultural organisation.”
The Catholic convert had resigned from his post in 2017 after publicly criticising the Episcopal Church of Scotland for allowing the Quran to be read at St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow.


Criticism After Church of England Cathedral Erects Helter Skelter in Nave https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/08/10/criticism-church-england-cathedral-erect-helter-skelter-nave/ 


'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



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.


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