PRAY
FOR THE PERSECUTED CHRISTIAN!
UNDER FIRE FOR THE FAITH IN NIGERIA
Jihad’s genocide against Christians ensues unabated.
August 29, 2018
Recently, via social media, I’ve become friends with a Catholic priest in Nigeria. Because of the brutal persecution to which Christians in his country are routinely subjected by Muslims, I will not disclose his name. Just a couple of days ago, he posted on his Facebook page a link to a story regarding a fellow Nigerian priest, a man of God who was doing some shopping at the local market for the poor when Muslim gunmen shot him dead.
Knowing that I’ve made it a mission of sorts to draw what attention I can to the plight of persecuted Christians throughout the world, particularly throughout the Middle East and Africa, my new friend private messaged me, thanking me for my “love.” He also underscored the unadulterated evil of Islamic-on-Christian oppression in his country, adding: “The Muslims want our lives!”
On August 18, Father Michael Akawu, “the first indigenous priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, was gunned down in cold blood while shopping at a “supermarket” in Gwagwalada, a suburb of Akawu.
Father Michael was ordained as recently as February of last year.
But just hours later, according to Samson Ayokunle, president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), “hoodlums suspected to be Fulani terrorists” besieged a Baptist church. They murdered Reverend Hosea Akuchi and abducted his wife. Ayokunle verifies that the latter’s “whereabouts remain unknown” and her captors are demanding a ransom for her safe return.
Earlier in the winter, two Catholic priests, Joseph Gor and Felix Tyolaha, along with 15 of their parishioners were murdered by Islamic herdsmen who besieged their community and raided their church.
In March, Nigerian Christians protested against the persecution that they suffer, persecution that is not only systemic, but which they insist has at least the implicit backing of the Islamic government. Bishop Olukayode Odetoyinbo called for the resignation of President Muhammadu Buhari on the grounds that the latter has taken no action to stop the slaughter of Christians.
“We asked the president to resign because he’s the father of the nation [and] when the father cannot protect home, what’s the responsibility of a father then?” The bishop asserted that the president has a “duty…to protect Nigerians” who “entrust” their “lives” to him. “But if a father cannot do that,” cannot honor that trust and protect those under his jurisdiction, he must resign.
Bishop Odetoyinbo assures us that he and his fellow Catholics will “continue praying” with the knowledge that “with the help of God and ourselves, there will be peace in Nigeria.” Catholics and other Nigerian Christians will continue calling on “the president and everyone to protect lives, respect lives and ward away from any factor or any reasons that can take another person’s life.”
Another Catholic bishop, Oyeleke Abegunrin, remarked that “no word of sympathy or condolence has been addressed to the Catholic community in Nigeria” has been extended by the Nigerian president for the losses that Catholics have suffered. “If the president cannot keep our country safe by taking very drastic and urgent steps to reverse this ugly tragedy that threatens the foundation of our collective existence and unity as a nation, it is time for him to choose the path of honour and consider stepping aside to save the nation from total collapse.”
Bulus Lakar, a representative of another Catholic diocese, addressed one of the nation-wide protests with powerful words. He referenced “the wave of political assassinations, killings for ritual purposes, [and the] frequent gruesome and mass murders of harmless, innocent and defenceless citizens [.]” “Very often,” Lakar noted, [it is] “our young people, the very symbols of life and vigour, [who] are the victims and agents of this wastage of human life.”
He concluded: “In recognition of our divine mandate, we must all be reminded of the sacredness and inviolability of human life.”
Lakar called on Muslims to join Christians in “say[ing] no to these senseless killings.”
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that Christian demonstrators carried placards with such poignant phrases as: “No weapon fashioned against Christians shall prosper,” “Say no to terrorism in places of worship,” “Christians’ lives matter,” “Live and let Live,” “human lives are sacred,” “Change is not about killing of innocent Nigerians,” and “Peaceful and prayerful march for life: Stop the Killings.”
Bishop John Ayah assured the media that Catholics had no plans on assuming arms against their persecutors. “We do not have arms,” he said. Rather, “our arms are our prayers and our rosaries.” It is for this reason that he and his fellow Catholics will continue imploring “governments to wake up to their responsibilities of providing adequate security to the citizens.”
Nigerian Christians living in the middle and northern regions—i.e. the Islamic-dominated regions—of their country are systematically targeted by Muslim predators because of their faith. Meanwhile, the Islamic government turns a blind eye to the abuses.
But don’t expect to hear much about this in the Western media.
THE KORAN
BIBLE OF THE MUSLIM TERRORIST:
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".
Robert Spencer's essential history of jihad.
August 29, 2018
[To order Robert Spencer's new book, The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, CLICK HERE.]
It's good to have something you love to do – something that brings zest and joy to your life. For the Prophet Muhammed, as Robert Spencer graphically establishes in the opening pages of his comprehensive yet concise History of Jihad, that something was murder – often followed by beheading, dismemberment, and ostentatious gloating. When he wasn't committing murder, Muhammed was talking about murder or threatening to murder. Nor, to be sure, was it just ordinary murder. It was jihad – murder for the purpose of expanding the reach of Islam, which, by the time he died in 632, had been spread by the sword to the whole Arabian peninsula.
Indeed, the reason why the House of Islam continued to expand so fast after Muhammed's death was that he taught his disciples well. The love of murder proved infectious, especially after he informed them – as Allah had informed him – that anyone who died in the act of jihad would go straight to Paradise. Following his death, as Spencer puts it, they pursued “a series of conquests unparalleled in human history for their rapidity and scope.” They totally eradicated one of the two great powers of the day, the Persian Empire, and took a big bite out of the other, the Eastern Roman Empire.
That was just the beginning. They subdued Spain (al-Andalus). They subjugated India. Everywhere they went, they razed houses of worship and destroyed religious art, and, as their Prophet had taught them, offered their Christian and Jewish victims three choices: convert, die, or live as dhimmis (subordinate peoples) paying a steep jizya (infidel tax). If in some times and places Muslims placed less emphasis on jihad than in others, it was, Spencer notes, not because their doctrine had altered but because of infighting.
In 732, Muslims from al-Andalus moved northward into France and were repelled at Tours by Charles Martel – who thereby likely saved all of Europe from imminent Islamization. But the next few centuries saw an almost unbroken record of Islamic triumph – in response to which, in 1095, Pope Urban II called on Europeans to reclaim formerly Christian parts of the Holy Land. This was the First Crusade. In 1099, the Crusaders won Jerusalem. But the Second Crusade, ordered in 1145, was a bust. In 1187, Jerusalem was lost to Saladin, the most celebrated jihadist of his time. The Third Crusade saw some gains, but the Fourth failed. There were further efforts, also in vain. By the late thirteenth century, the Crusader era was over, its conquests undone.
While admirably frank about the savagery of many of the Crusaders, Spencer leaves no doubt that apologists for Islam such as John Esposito are full of it when they depict the Crusades as ending centuries of “peaceful coexistence” of Christians, Jews, and Muslims under Islamic rule. To buy this lie is, among other things, to wilfully forget how those territories fell under Muslim control in the first place.
In any event, the Holy Land was only one of many fronts in the centuries-long clash between jihadists and infidels. In the east, Tamerlane secured India and Georgia for Islam and, in 1405, perished in present-day Kazakhstan on his way to Islamize China. In Spain, over the centuries, Christians took back Iberia one city at a time – Córdoba in 1236, Valencia in 1243, Seville in 1248 – until finally, in 1492, the entire peninsula had been reclaimed. (“To this day,” observes Spencer, “Spain remains one of the few places once ruled by Islam but no longer; usually what the jihadis have conquered, they've kept.” A sobering thought, to put it mildly.) In southeastern Europe, the leaders of what was, by then, the Ottoman Empire subdued Greece and the Balkans over the course of the fourteenth century, seized Constantinople in 1453, and, under Suleiman the Magnificent (the most notorious jihadist of his time), took Belgrade and Buda in 1526 and Baghdad in 1534. On September 12, 1683, came another decisive Christian victory when the Ottomans were turned back at the gates of Vienna.
After Vienna, jihad against the West went small-scale. For generations, the Barbary pirates raided coastal cities and enslaved infidels. Then, as Western power advanced, Islam fell into decline. Napoleon conquered Egypt. Britain annexed the subcontinent. The Ottoman Empire crumbled and gave way to a secular-run Turkey under Kemal Ataturk – but not before committing the massive act of jihad that is now known as the Armenian genocide.
But these changes were largely cosmetic. Islam endured. So did the jihadist imperative. In the twentieth century, new jihad-happy powers arose – Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2001 came the biggest act of jihad ever. But this time it was different.
For one thing, the enemy was not a government. For another, this time the West didn't get it – or didn't want to. Six days after 9/11, President George W. Bush went to a mosque and, reciting what would become the West's new mantra, made the stupefying claim that Al-Qaeda had violated the tenets of Islam. Under both Bush and his successor, questioning this preposterous assertion became an act of bigotry. Even as the jihadist massacres multiplied, Western governments continued to welcome Muslim migrants by the million.
The history of jihad is a grisly one, and for inhabitants of the Western world in the early twenty-first century, no story could be more important. For centuries, Europeans might not have known much, but they knew the reality of Islam. It was an ever-present existential peril. They certainly had no romantic illusions about it – the very idea would have seemed a grotesque joke.
Alas, our generation of Westerners is suffering from a perfect storm of afflictions. We're ignorant of our own history, and what we do know of it we've been encouraged to feel guilty about. We've been taught that other civilizations are and always have been our victims. We've been trained to see them as having no agency, so that whatever they do to us must be a reaction to something we've done to them. We also live in a secular society in which most of us – our political leaders and mainstream media in particular – are utterly incapable of imagining anyone taking his religion so seriously as to be willing to kill (or die) for it. Hence, even though jihadists have repeatedly made clear their motives, our elites tell us repeatedly that the real motives lie elsewhere.
And this is why we're in big trouble. If we aren't familiar with the story told in this book, we're screwed. The good news is that Robert Spencer tells it in a way no one else could. He not only knows all this stuff cold – he knows just how to tell it. Chapter by chapter, anecdote by anecdote, he makes the most of this macabre material. He makes it gripping, and he keeps things moving; he's eminently lucid, vivid, economical. By the time you reach the last chapter, which is darkly but not unjustly entitled “The West Loses the Will to Live,” it could not be clearer what a terrible pickle we're all in. Even if you already know a good deal about the history recounted here, and already grasp its import – which, if you're reading this review, is not unlikely – Spencer recounts it in such a way as to make that last chapter hit home with the power of fresh revelation. The question is, how to get this book into the hands of the smug and ignorant fools who need it the most? Perhaps the best advice is this: buy one for yourself – and another for the person in your life who can best use this vital wake-up call.
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