'Blood on My Torn Skirt'
The persecution Christians experienced in just one month at the hands of Muslims.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This report was originally published by the Gatestone Institute.
The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of December, 2020:
The Slaughter of Christians
Nigeria: In a video that appeared on Dec. 29, Islamic terrorists executed five Christians. The footage showed five armed members of the Islamic State (West African province) standing behind five men dressed in orange suits with their arms tied behind their backs and on their knees. The terrorists order each of the men to say their names and the hostages oblige, each adding, “I am a Christian.” One of the terrorists then says “This is a warning to Christians in all parts of the world and those in Nigeria…. Use the heads of these five of your brethren to continue with your ungodly celebrations,” a reference to Christmas. The five Muslims then open fire into the back of the Christians’ heads and kill them.
A few days earlier, on Christmas Eve, and for several hours into the early morning of Christmas Day, Muslim raiders terrorized a Christian village, where they slaughtered between seven and 11 people, including a 5-year-old, and kidnapped 11 more (it is believed that the five Christians who were executed on video were from among these 11). Riding on trucks and motorcycles, the jihadis opened fire indiscriminately, torched 10 homes and one church, and plundered the food supplies meant to be distributed on Christmas Day. Although traumatized, some Christians remained defiant, as captured by a Christmas Day text by one Markus Bulus, a local:
Whatever Boko Haram planned against us has failed. Whatever it is, we shall still celebrate Christmas. Jesus, we’re so grateful this day even with the bad experience we had last night. We have nothing to offer as our thanksgiving, but we offer our hearts in deep supplication to your majesty on this Christmas Day.
Elsewhere throughout the month of December, Muslim Fulani herdsmen “killed 33 Christians, destroyed 18 homes and displaced more than 2,500 people.” Moreover, according to a report released by the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (“INTERSOCIETY”), Muslims have massacred at least 2,200 Nigerian Christians between Jan. 2020 and Dec. 13, 2020. Of this figure, “Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen,” it said, were responsible for about “1,300 Christian deaths, followed by Boko Haram and its splinter groups (ISWAP and Ansaru) with 500 Christian deaths…. In other words, Nigeria in 2020 has lost average of six Christians per day and 180 per month.”
Uganda: A Muslim mob attacked and killed a man “a few days after he renounced Islam to follow Christ.” On Nov. 30, Yusuf Kintu, 41, then an imam at a mosque, converted to Christianity. “We had been talking on several occasions,” Pastor Andrew Nyanma explained, “but he was so argumentative when we touched on matters related to faith. He was a brilliant Muslim Imam but also respected other people’s faith. On this day [of his conversion], he was calm and receptive.” Three days later, his wife divorced him and left the house with his two youngest children. On Dec. 6, one week after his conversion—or, in Muslim eyes, apostasy—an angry Muslim mob rose up against him. According to one source, “the local Muslim community was upset in [sic] Yusuf for leaving Islam and becoming a Christian. Yusuf was seriously beaten and left unconscious.” Pastor Andrew found him in the morning and took him to a hospital, where Yusuf succumbed to his injuries on Dec. 7.
Egypt: On Dec. 10, two Muslim brothers went on a stabbing spree targeting Christians in Alexandria; one man was killed and two others were severely injured and hospitalized. According to authorities, they went on their murderous rampage because they were “upset” that their mother had died earlier that day. “The matter began with insults and curses to the shopkeepers for being Christians,” explained Fr. Michael Gamil, whose nearby church was also targeted. “The Copts present responded with patience. Then, when one of them, Ramses, quietly went to close and lock his shop door, they lunged at and stabbed him with knives.” Ramses’ brother, who ran a grocery store nearby, saw what was happening, rushed to his brother’s aid, and was also stabbed. The Muslim brothers then barged into the clothing shop of another Christian man and stabbed him in the torso, near his heart. All three men were hospitalized with serious injuries in intensive care; Ramses died of his wounds. The rampaging Muslim brothers then entered Fr. Michael’s church and cursed at a partially blind priest. Discussing the alleged motive, Fr. Michael said: “They [Egyptian authorities] say they started cursing the Copts because their mother died; and two years earlier, they cursed the Copts because their brother died: what do [familial] death and the Copts have to do with each other?” He emphasized that the two brothers had been in the habit of verbally harassing and insulting Christians for years—though they clearly took their hate to another level on Dec. 10.
Artsakh: Muslim fighters tortured a 58-year-old Christian woman of Armenian descent by hacking off her ears, hands, and feet, before finally executing her. According to the Jan. 14 report,
On the same day of talks between Erdogan and Putin, when Turkey’s leader said he would like to create conditions of ‘coexistence’ between Armenians and Azeris, officials located the body of an Armenian woman today who had been reported missing.
The woman has been identified as 58-year-old Alvard Tovmasyan who was a resident of Karin Tak village, near the Shushi region of Artsakh currently occupied by Azerbaijani forces.
Tovmasyan was a second degree intellectually disabled person killed and ‘tortured beyond recognition’ outside of her home with her hands, ears, and feet cut off, according to her brother Samvel Tovmasyan who confirmed her identity by recognizing the clothes she was wearing.
As to why she was mutilated before being killed, jihadis often cite the Koran’s calls to cut off the hands, feet, and throats of infidels (e.g., Koran 5:33, 47:4).
According to a separate Dec. 15 Church Militant news report, “Armenians are being brutalized” and have “lost territory to their jihadist neighbors before agreeing to a cease-fire enforced by Russia…. Prior to violating the so-called peace agreement, the Turkish Muslims of Azerbaijan did as Muhammad commanded in beheading Christians.” The report linked to a video of camouflaged soldiers overpowering and forcing down a struggling, elderly Armenian man, and then casually carving at his throat with a knife: “Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of violating the peace deal first,” the report continues, “but observers note the only provocation Muslims need to attack Armenians is their continued existence.”
Democratic Republic of Congo: Members of the Allied Democratic Forces, widely acknowledged as “an insurgent jihadist group,” slaughtered at least 30 Christians and raped ten women and girls in five villages between Nov. 20 and Dec. 3. One of the survivors, Tony Longi, managed to escape his home in time and hide in the outside bathroom: “through the ventilator of the latrine he saw the rebels killing 4 members of his family including his wife and 3 children.” According to one local official, “We got information that as they killed the Christians the[y] were saying that they were killing them because they refused to convert to Islam.” Another report describing these raids said there were “scenes of terrified Christians flooding into the streets as the jihadists surrounded churches in each of the five villages armed with guns, machetes, clubs, swords and axes.”
Attacks on Muslim Converts and Christian Preachers
Uganda: A Muslim man beat and forced his wife to drink pesticide on learning that she had become Christian. Three months after Zubeda Nabirye, a 38-year-old mother of three, had secretly converted, her husband discovered Bibles in her possession and demanded if she had apostatized. She told him that “a friend had given me the Bibles, and I was using it to compare it with what is written in the Koran, and after all religion is a matter of personal choice”; she added that “I was convicted and decided to embrace Christianity.” In response, “My husband began reading verses in the Koran that allowed men to beat their wives if they disobey them, and after that he started beating me with slaps and sticks. As if this was not enough, he forced me to take Dithane M-45,” a toxic pesticide. He forced the poison into his wife’s mouth; though she managed not to swallow most of it, she “ingested some while he was trying to strangle her and hitting her leg with sticks… He also injured her chest, neck and thigh.” It was late in the night when “I regained consciousness and found myself surrounded by neighbors.” One of them later explained that “we heard groaning
Biden’s New Asst Sec of State Worked for Islamic Terror State That Funds Hamas
“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada.”
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” Hady Amr wrote a year after September 11, discussing his work as the national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network.
Biden has now chosen Amr as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine.
"I have news for every Israeli," Amr ranted in one column written after Sheikh Salah Shahada, the head of Hamas' Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was taken out by an Israeli air strike.
Amr warned that Arabs "now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents."
He also threatened Americans that "we too shouldn't be shocked when our military assistance to Israel and our security council vetoes that keep on protecting Israel come back to haunt us"
The future State Department official was making these threats less than a year after 9/11.
Hady Amr had accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and coordinated an organization that had accused Israel of “apartheid” making his appointment, like that of Maher Bitar, an anti-Israel activist appointed as the Senior Director for Intelligence on the NSC, a statement about the Biden administration’s hostile relationship to the Jewish State.
Amr’s job offer from Biden isn’t surprising. The Beirut-born Amr who grew up in Saudi Arabia had dived into politics as the director of ethnic outreach for Al Gore’s failed presidential campaign. And the Biden campaign listed Amr as one of its bundlers who fueled it with cash.
Biden’s move puts Amr, who had repeatedly advocated for a deal with Hamas, and worked closely with a terror state that serves as a major backer of Hamas, in a key policy position.
But Amr isn’t just another foreign policy expert with a history of hostility to Israel.
"What's exciting about this project is that it's a joint project of Brookings and the Qatari Government," Hady Amr had gushed about his old role as the director of the Brookings Doha Center, whose aim he said was to "inform the American public and American policy makers".
In, "Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks", the New York Times had reported that Qatar, an ally of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, was the single biggest foreign donor to the Brookings Institute.
"There was a no-go zone when it came to criticizing the Qatari government," a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar in 2009 had told the Times.
Hady Amr had been the founding director of the Brookings Doha Center and had led it between 2006 and 2010. A Times report noted that the institution had forbade criticism of Qatar. Lawyers interviewed by the paper suggested that some of Brookings’ work with foreign governments merited “registration as foreign agents”. Brookings has not only not done so, its key personnel, like Amr, have gone on to work in important positions for the United States government.
Amr moved back and forth between Brookings and the United States Government, working for Brookings Doha and then the State Department, and returning to Brookings under the Trump Administration, before coming back to the State Department under Biden.
Qatar not only provided $14.8 million in funding for the Brookings Doha Center, but its advisory board was co-chaired by Qatar's foreign prime minister and a member of its royal dynasty while its director had formerly worked for the second of the Qatari Emir's three wives (and the only wife who also wasn't a cousin) making it obvious that the organization was under Qatari control.
“The center will assume its role in reflecting the bright image of Qatar," the Qatari Foreign Ministry had boasted.
Qatar is a major state sponsor of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas. It has been accused by US government officials of being utilized by Al Qaeda and the Taliban for fundraising purposes. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11, operated out of Qatar. He fled after being warned by a member of the Qatari royal family that the Americans were on to him.
"The Qataris had a history of terrorist sympathies," the NSC's former chief counter-terrorism adviser wrote. "It has been true that Qatar has served as a sanctuary for leaders of groups that the U.S. or other countries deem to be terrorist organizations."
Hady Amr’s backing for Islamists mirrored the support for Islamists by the Qatari regime.
At Brookings Doha, Amr had urged that the "Muslim brotherhood organizations across the Muslim World should be engaged". Then he wondered, “in Lebanese and Palestinian society, the faith-based organizations are seen as the least corrupt... Hamas and Hezbollah are often cited by their populations as being non-corrupt. This needs more analysis. Is this the case?”
Over the past few years, Amr has repeatedly urged negotiations with Hamas. When the Trump administration unveiled its proposed peace deal, Amr co-wrote an article declaring that it should be scrapped in favor of focusing on a deal with Hamas. The article provides some insight into the policies that Amr may advance as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine.
“By laying out the terms of a three-way Hamas-Israel-PA/PLO deal now, and building an international consensus around it, the United States could create a pathway toward resolution,” the article had argued. That would potentially not only restart Obama’s attempt to impose a plan on Israel, but would do so not only on behalf of the PLO, but also on behalf of Hamas.
The troubling connections between Qatar, an Islamic terrorist state that is allied with Iran, is a major sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist arm, Hamas, and the influential Brookings Institute think-tank makes Amr’s appointment all the more problematic.
“Our business is to influence policy,” Martin Indyk admitted. "To be policy-relevant, we need to engage policy makers.”
Indyk, a key anti-Israel figure in the Democrat foreign policy establishment, who had worked for Clinton and Obama, had partnered with the Qatari government to set up Brookings in Doha.
Amr's career was fueled by his work with Indyk and after Brookings, he went to work for the State Department and eventually became the Deputy to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations for Economics and Gaza under Obama. Now, after acting as a big money bundler for Biden, the anti-Israel figure has been rewarded with a major foreign policy role.
Hady Amr is not the only Brookings Doha alumnus to end up in a top policy position. Amr’s appointment may be an opportunity to scrutinize whether employees of an organization that effectively functioned as an arm of a foreign government should be allowed to hold such roles.
Through Al Jazeera and organizations like Brookings Doha, Qatar has worked to support and normalize Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Brookings Doha’s leadership made no secret of the fact that its goal was to influence policymakers. But, even more troublingly, the veterans of Brookings Doha, like Amr, are becoming policymakers in their own right.
Should foreign governments like Qatar be able to exercise such an influence over America?
Biden Administration Trying to Fix Obama’s Syria Blunders With the Same Team That Created Them
They believe recognizing your mistakes is self-forgiveness.
With Antony Blinken confirmed by the US Senate as the new Secretary of State, some analysts hope US policy in Syria will not revert to what it was when Obama was in office. This came in the wake of reports that US tanks had rolled back into Syria a few days ago, reversing Trump’s policy of ending military involvement in that conflict.
The fiasco of Obama’s Syria policy benefited no one involved and served no US interest. The Syrian people paid the highest price for this tragedy. ISIS managed to crush all Assad’s opposition, as it turned a vast area in Iraq and Syria into an Islamic state, while many of the US’s traditional allies turned a blind eye.
Even worse, an influx of Muslim terrorists from Europe into Syria was allowed by Turkey, which stood on the sidelines while Syrian forces and the US-backed SDF faced off against ISIS. The Syrian people’s initial revolt against Assad began to wane once it became apparent that the United States was not serious about bringing any meaningful change to the country.
However, the takfiri ideology of ISIS and other anti-Assad groups caused alarm among Arab regimes, since it was perceived as the true teaching of Islam by many Muslims. Nevertheless, the Biden administration is expected to continue economic sanctions against Syria, hoping to increase pressure on the Assad regime to negotiate with the opposition.
Excited at the prospect of a Biden presidency, Iran mounted a PR campaign designed to project strength and defiance, Syria seems trying to project similar euphoria by claiming that “it learned that it is easy to say ‘no’ to the U.S.”
Here in the United States, USAID is expected to play a more active role in trying to alleviate the suffering of Syrian refugees scattered through Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. With Blinken at the helm of the State Department, the US might wish to trim off Iran and Russia’s influence.
However, given that the US faces challenges to keep the pandemic under control and rebuild alliances with some NATO members, President Biden will want to address Iran’s nuclear program, while taking into account Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE’s concerns.
Now more than ever, a regional alliance that includes Israel and some Gulf states will not easily accept the United States returning unconditionally to the Iran nuclear deal.
This could also explain why Iran is trying to reach out to Saudi Arabia, despite their major rifts regarding the Islamic Republic’s interference in Yemen, which does not seem as if it is going to end anytime soon.
At the start of the Syrian civil war, Obama could not know that his attempt to rely on the Muslim Brotherhood group to bring about change in the region was going to end in disappointment.
But now, bitterness over this disappointment is widespread in the Biden administration, as many of its members played a crucial role in causing that failure. They tend to follow the saying of “recognizing your mistakes is also called self-forgiveness.”
Robert Ford, the former US ambassador in Syria, who once bragged about his popularity among the Syrian people while visiting Syrian cities without the regime’s knowledge, is among the pioneers who made efforts to topple the Assad regime. He remains a strong influencer within the new US administration and a potential candidate for many of the remaining senior vacant appointments.
Nevertheless, the new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has said he feels the need to try different approaches. He may very well rely on those State officials who have previously served during several administrations, and who argue that they have learned valuable lessons from previous experiences and would like to take part in shaping a new US policy on Syria.
It is hoped that the US is fully aware that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt are in agreement about the need to retain the Assad government.
It is also expected that US officials will likely work with other European allies to give diplomacy an important role, despite the fact the recent US military buildup inside Syria sends contradictory signals.
The US will always find in ISIS a convenient pretext to justify that military presence, but it will also have to avoid any confrontation with the Assad regime. Russia’s military investment in Syria (mainly in the Mediterranean base in Tartus and Latakia and the airbase in Hmeimim) cannot be overlooked by the Biden’s team.
Last and by all means not least, as part of lifting the restrictions on the Syrian refugees seeking asylum under the political asylum program, the Biden administration is expected to allow more Syrians to settle within the US, while the “Islamic Emirate of Idlib” inside Syria will enjoy greater humanitarian aid.
Samir A. Zedan is a former Senior Counter-Terrorism Analyst at the US Department of State, and a former Development Outreach and Communication Specialist at USAID/Iraq. He has contributed to hundreds of articles published in major media outlets with assignments in the Palestinian Areas, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Europe.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken Orders LGBT Flags Flown at U.S. Embassies, Will Name Special Envoy for Gay Rights
LGBT activists are cheering Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s announcement that he will reverse an order from President Donald Trump and put up “pride” flags at U.S. Embassies around the world.
Outfront magazine reported on the development:
The Biden administration is off to a hopeful start, as Secretary of State nominee, Antony Blinken, has confirmed a recommitment to LGBTQ rights.
In a memo from July 2020, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper released a list of flags permitted to be displayed at U.S. military bases. Missing from the list was the LGBTQ pride flag, which Esper compared to the confederate flag. Prior to the ban, embassies raised the flag during pride month on the official embassy flagpole.
During the hearing, Blinken also confirmed that he plans to appoint an envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTQ persons, a position created by Barack Obama in 2015 that wasn’t filled during the Trump presidency.
Blinken claimed violence against that demographic increased while Trump was in office.
“We’ve seen violence directed against LGBTQI people around the world increase,” Blinken said. “And so, I think the United States playing the role that it should be playing in standing up for and defending the rights of LGBTQI people is something that the department is going to take on and take on immediately. Raising the pride flag is one way to outright show LGBTQ solidarity.”
“Biden is the first U.S. president to openly embrace a full range of queer rights, including transgender equality,” Outfront magazine reported.
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