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".
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
Church Vicar Likens Disruptive Climate Protestors to
Jesus Christ
English Church Offered to Cover up Jesus for Muslim
Celebration Meal
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 of England Vicar Likens Disruptive Climate Protestors to Jesus https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/04/21/church-england-vicar-likens-disruptive-climate-protestors-jesus-christ/ …
Church Vicar Likens Disruptive Climate Protestors to
Jesus Christ
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'
Report:
Boko Haram Jihadists Behead Catholic Bride and Bridal Party
“They Asked Him to Deny
Christ”
'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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