Rep. Waltz: Biden Is Selling a ‘Fiction’ About US Ability to Confront Terrorism in Afghanistan
(CNSNews.com) – President Biden is selling the nation a “fiction” by claiming the U.S. military can respond effectively to terror threats emerging in Afghanistan as it does elsewhere, when it has no bases or reliable allies in the region, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) charged on Wednesday.
Questioning U.S. Central Command Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie during a House Armed Services Committee hearing that also featured Defense Secretary Gen. Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, Waltz contrasted the situations in and around Iraq and Afghanistan.
Waltz, a former U.S. Army Green Beret, recalled that after al-Qaeda in Iraq morphed into ISIS, U.S. forces had to go back into Iraq three years after withdrawing, to “clean up that mess.”
When they did so, they relied on numerous military bases in the region, ocean access allowing for the use of naval assets, and effective allies on the ground.
“We had bases in the Gulf, we had bases in Kuwait, we had bases in Turkey, in Jordan, of course in Israel, allied bases in Cyprus,” he said, illustrating his point with the use of a large regional map. “We had allies on the ground in the Kurds.”
That mission was successful, but had still been costly.
“We didn’t let ISIS take over the government in Baghdad and the army and all of the functions of the state,” Waltz said. “We had all of these assets to work with, to go clean up that mess – and how many soldiers and lives did we lose from cleaning up that mistaken withdrawal, Mr. Chairman?”
(The mission to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria that began in the summer of 2014 has accounted for 108 U.S. deaths, 20 of them in combat, according to the Pentagon. A total of 269 U.S. personnel have been wounded in action.)
“But let’s transition over here to Afghanistan,” Waltz continued. “What do we see?”
McKenzie, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, confirmed in response to his questions that the U.S. has no base in Afghanistan, or in any country neighboring Afghanistan.
Asked whether the U.S. has, in the Afghanistan theater, “any local allies approaching the capability of the Kurds,” McKenzie replied, “We do not. There may be options, but we do not.”
(Waltz pointed out that anti-Taliban opposition forces had lost control of their Panjshir valley stronghold, and he said they were “being slaughtered as we speak with our weapons, with our damn equipment” now in the hands of the Taliban.)
“When, and if, you have to present options [on Afghanistan] to the president, how many soldiers are we going to lose because we have no allies on the ground, we have no bases in the region?” he asked.
‘Livid’
On the issue of “over-the-horizon” counterterror capabilities, Waltz said any drone flying from a U.S. base in the Gulf would have to fly around Iran, before turning north and crossing southern Pakistan before reaching Afghan airspace – using “70 to 80 percent of their fuel before they even get anywhere near a target.”
Measured from the U.S. airbase in Qatar, a drone taking that route would have to fly more than 1,000 miles before crossing Afghanistan’s southern border.
Citing last month’s drone strike in Kabul that unintentionally killed civilians, not terrorists, Waltz said multiple sources of intelligence were evidently needed for such operations.
“I know that drone operator would have appreciated somebody on the ground saying ‘No, that’s a civilian. Don’t pull that trigger.’”
“So I appreciate your candor in saying how difficult this is going to be,” he told McKenzie.
“But the president of the United States is selling this country a fiction that we can do over here [in Afghanistan], with nothing, what we’re doing over here [in and around Iraq] with neighboring base access, with allies on the ground, and with ocean access.”
“That is a fiction that I think you all need to own, and we need to be honest with the American people,” Waltz said. “I am just livid at the fact of the future Americans that are going to have to go back to clean up this mess.”
As he concluded his questioning, Waltz asked McKenzie if the U.S. has any evidence or intelligence confirming the presence of Pakistan troops assisting the Taliban offensive.
“I would prefer to answer that in a closed session,” he replied.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Waltz said.
“We’re not going to put words in the mouths of our witnesses,” committee chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told Waltz. “You can’t take it as a yes if it was not in fact a yes.”
In justifying his decision to pull all troops out of Afghanistan, Biden has spoken a number of times about terrorism having “metastasized” well beyond that country, saying threats from Syria, the Arabian Peninsula or Somalia were more significant than those from Afghanistan.
“As I’ve said 100 times: Terrorism has metastasized around the world,” he said during a August 26 press briefing, following the Kabul terrorist attack. “We have greater threats coming out of other countries a heck of a lot closer to the United States.”
“We don’t have military encampments there; we don’t keep people there. We have over-the-horizon capability to keep them from going after us.”
The Saladin Paradigm: Finding the ‘Good’ in Islamic Terrorists
A “moderate” Muslim cleric and counter-terrorism advisor to the U.K. government was recently caught on film referring to Israel as a “terrorist state” and praising “martyrs”—jihadist code for suicide bombers.
During his speech, Imam Irfan Chishti told the crowd that “if they wanted to become ‘mujahideen,’ holy warriors, then they should emulate the Muslim general Saladin, who expelled the Crusaders from Palestine in 1187.” He then lamented, “Where is the modern-day Saladin?”
The choice of Saladin is interesting in that he is in many ways emblematic of Palestinian terrorism: widely seen, especially in the West, as a freedom fighter and liberator, the sultan was in fact a terrorist of the ISIS variety.
Consider some brief facts about this historical figure that is otherwise extolled both in the Muslim and Western worlds. According to his biographer, Baha’ al-Din, Saladin loved hearing Koran recitals, prayed punctually, and “hated philosophers, heretics, and materialists and all opponents of the sharia” (a fitting description of all those Western apologists who currently praise him).
After defeating the crusaders at the battle of Hattin in 1187, rather than ransoming or enslaving them, as was common then, Saladin had the warrior-monks of the military orders of the Temple and Hospital butchered before him in a scene that has long informed ISIS’s propagandistic execution videos.* He then had the True Cross, Christendom’s most precious relic, seized and paraded upside down in dirt and dung to Muslim jeers and spits.
Naturally, Saladin’s Western apologists couldn't care less about these incidents; after all, the crusaders “had it coming to them.” Besides, all wars—including Saladin’s war of “liberation”—get messy.
What, then, does one make of the fact that he severely persecuted Egypt’s indigenous Christians, the Copts—including by crucifying or hanging many thousands of them and routinely breaking the crosses off and tarring their churches—even though the Copts, who refer to Saladin as “the Oppressor of the Cross Worshippers,” had nothing to do with the Franks or the crusades? (See A Sword Over the Nile, pp. 127, 131, 141, and 142.)
In fact, Saladin had a virulent hatred for Christianity—the sort expressed by ISIS and their ilk—above and beyond his conflict with the crusaders. Saladin’s retirement wish, moreover, was, according to his Muslim biographer, to invade and wage jihad on Christian Europe, “until there shall not remain on the face of this earth one unbeliever in Allah, or I will die in the attempt.”
None of this has stopped Western historians from holding Saladin as a model of virtue—one that the West can learn from. Thus, according to an esteemed American historian, Dana Carleton Munro,
When we contrast with this [the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099] the conduct of Saladin when he captured Jerusalem from the Christians in 1187, we have a striking illustration of the difference between the two civilizations and realize what the Christians might learn from contact with the Saracens [Muslims] in the Holy Land.
Note the present tense: “might learn.” Saladin—a hero for ISIS and militant terrorists the world over—is to be held up in the West as an example from whom today’s “intolerant” Christians need to learn.
In reality, the aftermath of the Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 looks, again, like something straight out of ISIS’s playbook. Although he allowed many Christians to be ransomed, Saladin also ordered some fifteen thousand Christians sold into slavery. “Women and children together came to 8,000 and were quickly divided up among us, bringing a smile to Muslim faces at their lamentation,” wrote Muhammad al-Isfahani, one of Saladin’s confidants who was present at Jerusalem’s capitulation, before he launched into a sadomasochistic tirade extolling the sexual debasement of European women at the hands of Muslim men:
How many well-guarded women were profaned, … and miserly women forced to yield themselves, and women who had been kept hidden [nuns] stripped of their modesty … and free women occupied [meaning “penetrated”], and precious ones used for hard work, and pretty things put to the test, and virgins dishonoured and proud women deflowered … and happy ones made to weep! How many [Muslim] noblemen took them as concubines, how many ardent men blazed for one of them, and celibates were satisfied by them, and thirsty men sated by them, and turbulent men able to give vent to their passion.
Such, then, is the true Saladin of history. As seen, however, none of these ISIS-like aspects interest those many Western historians devoted to whitewashing premodern Islam; instead, they focus on and highlight the one aspect of his career that can be made to appear positive—that he “liberated” Jerusalem from the crusader “occupiers,” that he was a Muslim defender against Christian offenders.
Interestingly, this exact pattern is duplicated by those many Western commentators devoted to whitewashing modern Islam. Thus, even though Islamic terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah share in ISIS’s worldview, their Western apologists focus on and highlight the one aspect of their actions that can be made to appear positive—that they are fighting a war of “liberation” against the “Zionist occupiers,” that they are Muslim defenders against Jewish offenders.
At any rate, from here one can understand why all Imam Irfan Chishti had to do was “apologize” to be reinstated to his high paying job as a “counter terrorist” expert in the UK: “Some of my words reflect a clear error of judgment, in the heat of the moment,” he said, “and do not reflect my sentiments or the sentiments of the audience. I now appreciate that my ill-chosen words will have caused offence and hurt to the Jewish community and I tender my most profound apologies.”
Of course, of all his “ill-chosen words,” surely those concerning Saladin are not among those he would take back; for few in the West know who the true Saladin was or what the “Saladin paradigm” is: the Western penchant to find, extrapolate, and obsess over one noble aspect of Muslims who otherwise were Islamic terrorists—a paradigm alive and well today.
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After boasting “I shall purify the land of these two impure races [Templars and Hospitallers],” Saladin “ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison,” writes eyewitness Baha’ al-Din: “With him was a whole band of scholars and Sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics; each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his scimitar and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais; the infidels showed black despair, the troops were drawn up in their ranks, the amirs stood in double file. There were some who slashed and cut cleanly, and were thanked for it.” After saying that some of these would-be executioners did not have the stomach to continue in the ritual slaughter, Baha’ al-Din focused on one who “killed unbelief to give life to Islam”: “I saw there the man who laughed scornfully and slaughtered, who spoke and acted; how many promises he fulfilled, how much praise he won, the eternal rewards he secured with the blood he shed, the pious works added to his account with a neck severed by him” (Gabrieli, 138-139).
Raymond Ibrahim, author most recently of Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center; a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum; and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
Image: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek - Austrian National Library, via Picryl / Public Domain Mark 1.0
Afghan Refugees in US Indicted on Assault Charges
Afghan refugees indicted for child molestation, spousal abuse
Two Afghan refugees have been indicted on assault charges stemming from incidents at a military base in Wisconsin that houses thousands of recently evacuated Afghan nationals.
A federal grand jury indicted Bahrullah Noori, 20, on charges that he tried to molest two underage boys. The grand jury issued a separate indictment against Mohammad Haroom Imaad, 32, on charges that he strangled and suffocated his wife. Noori and Imaad were among 12,500 refugees airlifted from Afghanistan to Fort McCoy during the U.S. military withdrawal last month.
The cases are likely to stoke concerns about the government's vetting process for the 100,000 refugees brought to the United States during the airlift. Gov. Tony Evers (D., Wis.) accused conservatives last month of engaging in "dog whistle crap" for questioning the screening process. Republicans have cast doubt on the Biden administration's ability to screen for suspected terrorists and other criminals. Speaking at an event at Fort McCoy on Aug. 31, Evers said that Republicans were "vastly uninformed" about the screening process.
Days earlier, Evers welcomed the refugees to Wisconsin, saying that "a lot of families, a lot of women, a lot of kids" were being housed at Fort McCoy. "They were vetted when they were in Europe. They were vetted when they were in the U.S. So I feel very confident what's happening is the right thing," Evers said.
According to an FBI affidavit, Noori was caught molesting a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy in a bathroom at Fort McCoy. A witness caught Noori trying to have sex with the 14-year-old and later trying to kiss the younger boy.
The boys told investigators that Noori fondled them repeatedly and pressured them to have sex, according to the affidavit.
Imaad was arrested days after his wife said he beat and choked her during an incident on Sept. 7. The woman said that Imaad had abused their children, and that he had raped her and threatened to kill her while they were at Fort McCoy. She said that Imaad told her that 9 Afghan women had been killed at Fort McCoy and that she would be the 10th. She also said that Imaad threatened to send her back to Afghanistan, where she would fall into the hands of the Taliban.
It is unclear what qualified Noori and Imaad for refugee status. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for details on their qualification as refugees. Evers's office also did not respond to a request for comment about the cases.
Noori and Imaad appeared in federal court on Sept. 16 and are being held at the Dane County Jail, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
Noori faces a minimum of 30 years in prison if convicted. Imaad faces up to 10 years in prison.
Published under: Afghanistan, Refugees, Tony Evers
Given that the constitution also contained the proviso that nothing in it can be construed to contradict sharia law, how were Muslim men and women, 99% of whom support sharia, make sense of this imperialist cultural hubris?
Hilton: Biden is an 'utterly mediocre machine-politician, surrounded by amateurs'
Biden Administration Blocks Rescue of Persecuted Christians from Afghanistan
Just as the Obama administration did to the Christians of Syria.
[Order David Horowitz's 'Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America': HERE.]
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
The Biden administration is preventing the rescue of persecuted Christian minorities from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, where they face certain and likely gruesome death.
This information surfaced on August 26, 2021, during an interview between Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson on Fox News. Through his charity, the Nazarene Fund, Beck had managed to charter planes to airlift 5,100 Christians out of Afghanistan and into neighboring nations. Before long, however, U.S. officials intervened and prevented the escape of a batch of 500 Christians, mostly women and children, who were ordered outside of the airport’s protection zone: “I have pictures of them pleading to get back through the gate,” Beck continued:
And then I have pictures of blood and body parts and nothing but death in that same area [where they were confined]. We believe that our State Department is directly responsible… I don’t know how many [of these 500 Christians] survived. The State Department has blocked us every step of the way. The State Department and the White House have been the biggest problem. Everyone else, everyone else, has been working together, putting aside differences and trying to get these people to safety. The State Department and the White House have blocked us every single step of the way. In fact, an ambassador was called in Macedonia last night and told not to accept any of these people, as we were trying to get them off of the tarmac here, to keep the airport flowing, and getting these Christians out. We haven’t really been able to move anybody for about 12 hours. Our mission is now changing greatly. We have to send people into even greater danger to try to smuggle these Christians out, who are marked not just for death, but to be set on fire alive because they’re converted Christians.
Beck, it should be noted, is not exaggerating. According to one recent report, “Taliban militants are even pulling people off public transport and killing them on the spot if they're Christians.” Similarly, any Afghan caught with a Bible app on their phone is executed. “How we survive daily only God knows,” a Christian Afghani said earlier this year on condition of anonymity. “But we are tired of all the death around us.”
According to the World Watch List, which ranks the 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted for their faith, Afghanistan is the worst Muslim nation in the world in which to be Christian. This is saying much, considering that nearly 80 percent of all persecution Christians experience around the globe is committed by Muslims and/or in the Islamic world. Afghanistan is, moreover, considered the second-worst nation in the entire world, just after North Korea:
It is impossible to live openly as a Christian in Afghanistan. Leaving Islam is considered shameful, and Christian converts face dire consequences if their new faith is discovered. Either they have to flee the country or they will be killed…. Afghanistan remains the second highest country on the World Watch List, and persecution is only very slightly less oppressive than in North Korea. The Islamic State group and the Taliban continue to have a strong, violent presence in Afghanistan, with the Taliban controlling large regions…. All Christians in Afghanistan are extremely vulnerable to persecution. Areas controlled by the Taliban are particularly oppressive, but there is no safe way to express any form of Christian faith in the country.
The above excerpt was published nine months ago—when a U.S.-supported government ran Afghanistan. Since then, matters have only significantly worsened for Christians, now that the Taliban—whose views and modus operandi is similar to ISIS—has become the official master of Afghanistan.
Ironically, while Afghanistan was always bad for Christians, it became significantly worse in direct response to U.S. intervention Because in many non-Christian majority countries, Christians tend to be conflated with the West in general, and America in particular—based on the popular but erroneous belief in the Muslim world that the West and America are Christian—Afghan Christians were especially targeted after the 2001 U.S. invasion as a form of “collective punishment.”
Indeed, even Christians in neighboring Pakistan got attacked; according a 2011 report:
Life on any given day for Pakistani Christians is difficult. But members of Pakistan’s Christian community say now they’re being persecuted for U.S. drone attacks on Islamic militants hiding on the border with Afghanistan. The minority, which accounts for an estimated one percent of the country’s 170 million [mostly Muslim] population, says because its faith is strongly associated with America, it is targeted by Muslims.
“When America does a drone strike, they come and blame us,” explained one Christian. “They think we belong to America. It’s a simple mentality.”
On the other hand, because U.S. and Western leadership are very careful not to show interest in Christian minorities—a sentiment that goes hand in hand with Western acquiescence to Islamic sensibilities—they are more prone to turn a blind eye to the persecution of Christians than even some Muslim governments.
Worst of all, not only has the U.S. exacerbated and then totally ignored the plight of Christians in Afghanistan, it is now going out of its way to prevent others, as noted by Beck, from helping to evacuate Christians to other nations willing to accept them.
Beck, it should be noted, is not alone in his accusation: “I’ve heard similar reports,” said Senator Tom Cotton:
I know that our people on the ground inside the airport, both the Department of Defense and intelligence agents and our State Department officials are trying to move heaven and Earth to get people into the airport and out of the country, but the senior leadership at the State Department is a different kettle of fish.
At one point in his interview with Carlson, Beck mentioned two nations that were being cooperative in helping him rescue Christians—though he was anxious to add, “I don’t even want to say who they are, because I’m afraid our State Department will call them and threaten them!”
“I don't know why we have open borders and closed airports,” Beck concluded his interview. While it is easy for all sorts of illegals to cross over the porous US/Mexico border, “one group of people”— he said referring to persecuted Christians—is not even allowed to enter airports, and are abandoned to be “raped, exploited and crucified or set on fire by terrorists,” said Beck, before adding, “There seems to be a pattern with the Biden administration.”
In fact, this is a pattern begun by the Obama administration. Biden—who it bears recalling was for eight years Obama’s vice president—is merely continuing it. Under Barack Hussein Obama’s presidency, the White House and State Department engaged in all sorts discriminatory measures against Christians, particularly during the refugee crisis that occurred during the rise of ISIS under Obama’s watch.
The Obama administration's discrimination against Christians was so obvious, in fact, that in late 2016, a federal appellate court filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, in which Judge Daniel expressed his “concern about the apparent lack of Syrian Christians as a part of immigrants from that country”:
Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one-half of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian.... To date, there has not been a good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy.
The numbers were even more perplexing when examined in full context. Although the U.S. government had acknowledged that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians in Syria due solely to their religious identity, it brought into the United States only those who by definition were not in any way being targeted by ISIS — Sunni Muslims, of whom ISIS, a Sunni organization, identifies with and does not attack. Despite these two all-important facts — and despite the fact that Sunnis were about 75% of Syria's population, and Christians about 10% — 99% of those brought to America were Sunni Muslims and under 0.5% were Christian. As CNS news noted in 2016, “Record 499 Syrian Refugees Admitted to US So Far in May Includes No Christians.”
In other words, even if one were to operate under the assumption that refugee status should have been made available to all Syrians, regardless of who was and was not being persecuted, there should have been 20 times more Christians and about one-quarter fewer Sunnis granted refugee status under Obama.
This, of course, leads to another pattern established by Obama and continued by Biden: while preventing true victims of Islamic terror from escape or entry into the US, the Biden administration is granting refugee status to countless, un-vetted male Muslims from Afghanistan—not a few of whom share in the same worldview as ISIS and the Taliban.
This article was first published by the Gatestone Institute.
Tragedy, Therapy, and the Challenge of Jihad
The cost of our therapeutic delusions and cultural arrogance.
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
After a year of righteous anger and renewed patriotism, post-9/11 America returned to many of the dysfunctional orthodoxies and bad received wisdom that had helped pave the way for al Qaeda’s success. Foreign policy in particular quickly shifted from punitive kinetic realism to enhance our prestige and create deterrence, to nation-building idealism and cringing “diplomatic outreach.” But this “rules-based international order” foreign-policy thinking itself was a consequence of a long shift in Western culture from tragic realism to therapeutic idealism that permeates our culture and accounts for many of its utopian fantasies.
Twenty years later, the debacle in Afghanistan shows that when it comes to Islam, we are still crippled by our therapeutic delusions.
The tragic view of human life derives from both our Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots. It can be summed up in a line from Euripides: “To suffer is necessity for mortals.” We are beings driven by destructive passions and impulses, yet possessing as well conscious minds and free will. We live in a hostile natural world indifferent to our pain and suffering. We are bound by time and vulnerable to change and the consequence of choices that we can’t foresee. Our world is defined by those limits, and no human effort, no philosophy, no social or political order we create can transcend them or our destructive passions.
Modernity is defined by its claims to correct this tragic world through human knowledge, technology, and the progressive improvement of humanity by eliminating those tragic constants that create our misery and suffering. Educate people to know their true best interests, remove or reform tyrannical governments, provide adequate nutrition and health-care, and create freedom and prosperity, then people will become peaceful, free, and tolerant. Pain, suffering, the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” injustice, bigotry, cruelty, hunger, and even emotional pain caused by our own bad choices––remove these tragic conditions of human existence and we can create heaven on earth.
Or as Dr. Joyce Brothers, for 50 years a celebrity psychologist and popular advice columnist, put it, “Love, power, riches, success, a good marriage, exciting sex, fulfillment are not impossible dreams. They can be yours if you want them.” That is the therapeutic sensibility: failure, misery, and suffering are not the tragic constants of human existence, but anomalies that can be corrected by modern “human sciences.” Utopia, “no-place” in Greek, can become a reality.
The West has been seeking this utopia for over a century, influencing how we conduct foreign affairs. Idealistic internationalism began to shape our thinking about conflict and war. Rather than see war, as Plato did, as the “natural state” of relations among nations, and peace as “just a name,” we made war and conflict the anomalies to be corrected by privileging non-lethal diplomatic outreach, supranational institutions, international courts and laws, foreign aid, and multinational treaties and covenants.
Two world wars, serial ethnic cleansing, and gruesome genocides that slaughtered over 200 million people in the last century were the grim, tragic challenge to that optimism. Yet from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama, this foreign policy idealism came to define how we conduct international relations––as the therapeutic mechanism for creating a “new world order,” as George H.W. Bush called it, “where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind––peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law.”
These dubious assertions of a universal human longing for political goods and principles that developed in the West, but were applied to a complexly diverse global population, were seconded by George W. Bush, and influenced the “war on terror” we have been waging against Islamic jihad. How we viewed that enemy, moreover, also reflected the therapeutic imperative not to say anything that hurt anybody’s feelings, even our enemies’. Our defense and national security establishments were further limited by the West’s reflexive guilt over colonialism and imperialism, and its unwillingness to “blame the victim” because environmental, social, and political forces, along with historical injustices like colonialism, have determined his bad behavior. Hence our foreign policy establishments refused to confront the reality of historical Islam and its doctrines, and their role in jihadist terror.
So too our universities and media. Right after 9/11 many in our universities attributed the attacks to our own historical crimes. Typical were the comments of the dean of the prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He advised Americans to “think about our own history” such as the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. A Brown University English professor equated the attacks to the first Gulf War, which was “also terrorism.” A University of North Carolina teach-in demanded that the President apologize to “all the millions of victims of American imperialism.”
Such comments set the pattern for subsequent interpretations of the attacks, all of which reduced the followers of a 14-centuries-old faith to passive victims lacking agency or their own motivations. In 2007, the Society of Professional Journalists promulgated guidelines for covering Muslims that included rules such as “when writing about terrorism, remember to include white supremacist, radical anti-abortionists and other groups with a history of such activity,” an egregiously false comparison. Phrases like “Muslim terrorism,” “Islamic terrorist,” or “Muslim extremists” were also proscribed.
Writer Bruce Bawer, analyzing a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times puff-piece about a Brooklyn Imam, in 2009 wrote that the “article was a prime example of the way the mainstream media cover Islam today: emphasize personal and superficial details that are likely to generate sympathy while side-stepping or whitewashing core beliefs, domestic arrangements, social rules, and long-term political goals that might actually inform––enlighten, and therefore alarm–– readers.”
In other words, approach the topic of Islamic jihad from the therapeutic angle focused on the personal and emotional, while ignoring the tragic truth about jihad documented in word and deed for 14 centuries.
Such avoidance of fact shaped the federal government’s responses as well. An assistant to the Secretary of State from the Clinton administration announced that there was no conflict between Islam and “such Western ideal as personal freedom or individual choice”––sheer ignorance about the tenets of sharia law that big majorities of global Muslims believe is “the revealed word of God,” and hence cannot be revised or altered.
Similarly, a “fact sheet” from the State Department claimed, “Most Americans and most Muslims share fundamental values such as peace, justice, economic security, and good governance.” Apparently, the author missed Koran 5:51, “O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends,” for “whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them,” i.e. an apostate who must be killed.
And George W. Bush continued this bad habit, proclaiming that Islam’s “teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.” The President seemed unfamiliar with this Koranic verse: “I [Allah] will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads,” or Mohammed’s farewell address, “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’”
This willful blindness explains the attempt to redefine “jihad” to mean not holy war, but “to strive in the path of god,” as the National Counterterrorism Center put it; or “a quest to find one’s faith or an external fight for justice,” as the New York Times opined, begging the question of what exactly “justice” means to pious Muslims. Or as Obama’s assistant for Homeland Security, John Brennan scolded, the fight against terrorism is not “against ‘jihadists,” for ‘“jihad’ means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal.”
In fact, Danish linguist Tina Magaard’s study of the word’s root in the Koran concludes that only a single reference “explicitly presents the struggle as an inner, spiritual phenomenon . . . But this sole reference does not carry much weight against the more than 50 references to actual armed struggle,” with “even more in the Hadith.”
These distortions of traditional Muslim beliefs continues to dominate official understandings of Islamic jihad. They serve the therapeutic idea that our alleged historical colonial and imperial sins, along with the lack of economic development and liberal democratic governments, accounts for the thousands of terrorist attacks by self-proclaimed Muslim jihadists traumatized by those crimes. This assumption that secular Westerners know Islam better than Muslims who are willing to kill and die for their faith bespeaks the arrogance and cultural centrism of the West. Since we have banished faith to the ghetto of the private, we cannot imagine that there exists a faith that sanctions intolerance and sacralizes violence. Thus external forces and Western crimes and bigotry must have driven Muslims to “hijack” their faith and distort it for evil ends.
This interpretation would have astonished most Western peoples before World War II, when the historical memory of centuries of Islamic conquest, occupation, raiding, and slaving had not yet faded. Take, for example, Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1838 assessment of Islam:
Jihad, Holy war, is an obligation for all believers. . . . The state of war is the natural state with regard to infidels . . . . [T]hese doctrines of which the practical outcome is obvious are found on every page and in almost every word of the Koran . . . . The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them.
Just a judgement from a bigoted Westerner? Consider the response of the representative of the Pasha of Tripoli in 1785 to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who were protesting against Barbary States’ privateers preying on American and European ships and kidnapping their crews: It was “written in the Koran that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their [Muslims’] authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find.” Are we to believe that John Brennan and other specious apologists know Islamic doctrine better than a believer?
Finally, these bad therapeutic habits of distorting Islam in order to placate Muslims characterized the doomed attempts to bring liberal democracy and our notion of equal rights to a Muslim nation like Afghanistan. One example of our efforts can stand in for the whole misbegotten effort predicated on arrogance and an ignorance of Islamic doctrines and sharia law. As the columnist “Cockburn” reported of “nation-building” in Afghanistan, “Do-gooders established a ‘National Masculinity Alliance,’ so a few hundred Afghan men could talk about their ‘gender roles’ and ‘examine male attitudes that are harmful to women.’”
Moreover, “Under the U.S.’s guidance, Afghanistan’s 2004 constitution set a 27 percent quota for women in the lower house—higher than the actual figure in America!” The bill for that folly, by the way, was nearly a billion taxpayer dollars. Given that the constitution also contained the proviso that nothing in it can be construed to contradict sharia law, how were Muslim men and women, 99% of whom support sharia, make sense of this imperialist cultural hubris?
Historian Robert Conquest once wrote about “the absolutely crucial problem of making the intellectual and imaginative effort not to project our own ideas of common sense or natural motivation onto the products of totally different cultures.” Those who fail to make that effort “assume that the light of their own parochial common sense is enough. And they frame policies based on illusions.”
For twenty years we have willfully refused to make that effort, and made “policies based on illusions.” As a consequence, committed jihadists who sheltered the 9/11 attackers are on the brink of creating a globally recognized nation that will harbor other jihadist outfits. Such is the price of our therapeutic delusions and cultural arrogance.
Pakistan: Armed Muslims Abduct, Forcibly Convert, Rape Hindu Girl for Three Months
Why did this horror story not make headlines across the world?
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A story of horror that should have made headlines on news portals across the world has been masterfully swept under the rug. Is this how media outlets deal from Islamic barbarity?
The incident has been reported from Pakistan’s Sindh province. A young Hindu girl named Tamana Meghwad was allegedly abducted by a group of armed Muslims in the province and was gang-raped for over three months. They also forced Tamana to convert to Islam. There are no records of Pakistan’s administration making any arrangement to rescue this girl or extend any kind of assistance to her family to locate her. After months of assault and molestation, the girl somehow managed to escape and return to her parents.
While the shocking incident was astutely kept quiet by Pakistan’s domestic media, Rahat Austin shared a video of Tamana Meghwad on Twitter and presented her story to the world at large. Austin, a Christian born in Pakistan, is a human rights activist who had to flee his home country and has been staying in South Korea with his family.
In the video, Tamana seems to be naming her perpetrators as Ghulam Rasool, Allah Baig, and Rasool Baig. She accuses them of kidnapping her, forcing themselves on her, and holding her captive for over three months. Now that she has escaped the captivity, they continue to intimidate her.
Returning home doesn’t guarantee safety for Tamana, as now “she is a Muslim” and she must live like one, and with her kind. Muslims are constantly threatening Tamana and her family.
Apostasy from Islam is not permissible, as per the Sharia law. Islamic law prescribes the death penalty for the crime of apostasy. Though Pakistan claims to be a republic, faith in the supremacy of the Sharia wields an enormous influence on the country’s judicial system. Hence, the toothless administration that showed itself incapable of rescuing an abducted girl continues to demonstrate its powerlessness and stands as a silent spectator while the Muslim hoodlums torment the beleaguered family from the minority community.
Tamana was captured from the Kunri area, which is located in the Umerkot district of the Sindh province. More than 90% of Pakistan’s total Hindu demography, comprising 2-4% of Pakistan’s total population, lives in Sindh. They are mostly scattered across border districts including Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, Tharparkar, Sanghar, and, Ghotki.
Thousands of Hindu girls have been abducted from these regions; these girls either end up as sex slaves or are pushed into forced marriages after religious conversions. Hindu families in this region are economically backward, and hail from the marginalized Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe. It is easy to exploit them, and that is exactly what Pakistan is doing as a country. Bonded labor is still a thing in Pakistan, and in most cases, it is the subjugated Hindus from Sindh who are taken in as bonded laborers by feudal landlords. Shamefully, its government has not introduced any reforms to protect these families. The administration has essentially thrown them to the mercy of feudal landlords and hardline Muslims.
Christians Buried or Burned Alive by Their Muslim Parents
The persecution Christians suffered at the hands of Muslims over the course of just one month.
24 comments
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 August, 2021:
The Sexual Abuse of Christian Women and Girls
Pakistan: Three Muslim gunmen forcibly abducted Muqadas, a 16-year-old Christian girl, from her family home; they seriously injured her grandmother, for trying to prevent them, in the process. According to the Aug. 28 report, “The whole incident was seen by a village of witnesses who ran out of their homes to see what was causing loud shrill screaming by the younger sister of Muqadas.” Despite this, and as usual, police initially refused to register a crime until three days later and after much pressure, including from a foreign human rights association. “Even then,” continues the report, “police visited the family home of the abductor Mohammed Azim Malik and failed to locate him or the missing child and instead of placing Mr. Malik on a wanted list, [they] allowed time for Mr. Malik to beat Muqadas into submission [and escape].” Instead of offering to help locate the abductor and his victim, when approached by some local Christian women, the Muslim wife of Mohammed the rapist proceeded to mock them by saying her husband had “done a good deed.” According to one of these Christian women,
I have heard from women in the village that [Muhammad’s] wife is not ashamed of her husband’s cruel act. She has turned our Christian women away abruptly and has said she is proud of Mr. Malik as he has converted a ‘dirty Christian girl.’ She has told women of our community that his actions have ensured ‘the whole [Muslim] family a place in heaven.’ It breaks my heart to hear how little the Muslim community think of us Christians, [when] we have done them no harm.
Discussing this latest abduction, Juliet Chowdhry, of the British Pakistani Christian Association, said:
The nature of this attack—which involved a daylight raid on a Christian home before witnesses, by men equipped with guns—is simply horrific. It not only illustrates new levels of impunity that have increased boldness for such crimes, but I also fear the inculcation of hardliner ideologies in Pakistani mosques is creating a disheartening acceptance of such crime by the country's majority…. This child's dilemma is faced by hundreds of Christian girls every year. It is heart-breaking that police have been investigating for more than two weeks and do not yet have an inkling of where Muqadas and Mr. Malik are…. Every day she is not found is a chance for her to be lost forever to her abductor.
In a separate incident in Pakistan, Chashman, a 14-year-old Christian girl, disappeared after school. Her family frantically searched for her in the streets and made repeated visits to local police who initially refused to file a missing person case. “After much pleading, our application was converted into an FIR [First Information Report, No. 622/21], but the police remained indifferent to the issue,” the girl’s father, Gulzar Masih, explained. On the following day, images of an Islamic conversion letter and affidavit supposedly signed by the underage girl and witnessed by a sheikh known for his “radical” tendencies were anonymously texted to the family. The documents indicated that she had willingly converted to Islam and married a Muslim named Muhammad Usman. “We requested the police to at least recover Chashman and ask her under what circumstances she had left her home, but they are not listening to us,” Masih continued: “They say she has changed her faith and married of her own will, so there’s nothing they can do. But my daughter is only 14—she’s just a child…” According to the report, “Chashman’s abduction adds to the growing list of underage Christian girls who have been forcibly converted and married to their Muslim abductors, particularly in Punjab and Sindh provinces.”
In a final incident, after sexually harassing her, a Muslim supervisor threatened to file blasphemy charges—which carry a maximum death penalty—against a Christian sanitation worker unless she withdraws her complaints against him. According to the Aug. 31 report,
Salima Rani Bibi, a 50-year-old Catholic sweeper … was allegedly groped and had clothes torn off by supervisor Ajmal Khan Dukki in front of other employees on July 22 after she repeatedly refused his demands for sex… Dukki routinely sexually harassed Rani Bibi, a mother of six girls, and made lewd remarks to her in front of other Christian workers.
After she filed her complaint,
Dukki and other senior officials started intimidating her by stopping her salary and going as far as threatening her with abduction of her daughters, four of whom are minors…. This incident happened in front of a large number of employees, but even though all of Rani Bibi’s Christian colleagues are willing to testify in her favor, the court has been adjourning the hearing on one pretext or the other.
The report goes on to suggest that such treatment is standard:
Most sanitation workers in Pakistan are Christian…. Christian sanitation workers are routinely called derogatory terms such as Choora … and face sexual harassment, discrimination, nonpayment of salaries, irregular work contracts and extortion by senior officers…. Muslim sweepers use their influence in registering daily attendance but hardly show up, whereas the salaries of Christian sanitation workers are usually delayed…. Social security law guarantees compensation for those who die on duty, but the families of Christian sanitation workers are not paid the full amount. Christian workers, particularly women, also have to face harassment by Muslim supervisors… They know that these poor workers cannot do anything against them, hence the harassment is continuing unabated in almost all cities of Punjab and Sindh provinces…. The manner in which Rani Bibi has been denied justice shows how the majority population treats the most vulnerable segment of society.
Last reported, “Rani Bibi has been forced to go into hiding along with her children due to mounting pressure on her to withdraw the harassment case.”
Egypt: On Aug. 9, a 15-year-old Christian girl disappeared off the streets of Cairo; her mobile phone was turned off at the same time. Randa Fathallah Faleh was returning home alone, after helping another female member of her family move. Her family instantly reported her disappearance to police and urged the Minister of the Interior to investigate. A few days later, online Arabic websites reported that the underage girl had been happily returned to her family—which turned out to be false. In fact, Randa’s father and uncle were at and pestering the police station the same day this false rumor began. A family friend responded by posting on social media: “People, Randa has not been returned. Please stop promoting false rumors. Randa must be returned! Please copy and paste.” According to a 2020 report, this is just one of at least 500 abductions and “disappearances” of Christian girls over the last decade:
The rampant trafficking of Coptic [Christian] women and girls is a direct violation of their most basic rights to safety, freedom of movement, and freedom of conscience and belief. The crimes committed against these women must be urgently addressed by the Egyptian government, ending impunity for kidnappers, their accomplices, and police who refuse to perform their duties. Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence. If there is any hope for Coptic women in Egypt to have a merely ‘primitive’ level of equality, these incidents of trafficking must cease, and the perpetrators must be held accountable by the judiciary.
Death to Muslim Converts to Christianity in Uganda
A number of murders and violent outbursts against Muslim converts to Christianity occurred in Uganda throughout August:
Muslims murdered a man for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity by burying him alive. Saban Sajabi, 32, was an itinerant mosque preacher until 2015, when he converted to Christianity. Family threats prompted him to leave his wife and child and flee the village. He established a new life over the following year, including by marrying a Christian woman and having children. Threats continued, however, including via text messaging. According to one from 2016, “If anything happens to you, be informed that we shall not help you, especially at this time of COVID-19. Our advice is for you to return to Islam, the religion of the family.” Then, in mid-July, he received a call from a relative saying his beloved uncle who had led him to Christ was sick and dying. “Without wasting time, we left Jinja immediately, leaving behind our children,” his wife explained. It all turned out to be a ruse, however; hired men ambushed the couple in a deserted place: “They started beating my husband and then dragged him to a nearby anthill, dug into it and pushed his head inside, and he breathed his last.” During the assault, one of the assailants covered her mouth and said he would slaughter her if she continued crying for help, adding: “What you have witnessed happening to your husband today is for the disobedience of your husband not heeding the advice given by the family that he should return to Islam, since Islam cannot tolerate infidels.” According to report, “Police have taken no action regarding the killing.” The widow, moreover, was “hospitalized for depression and trauma for 18 days”:
Since the time I was discharged from the hospital, I have been having sleepless nights. Doctors have recommended trauma counseling for me. My two children always ask the whereabouts of their dad. Please pray for me and my two kids.
Separately, on Sunday, August 15, a Muslim father slaughtered his own son for converting to and then refusing to recant Christianity. Earlier, in 2019, Tabiruka Tefiiro put his faith in Christ, which prompted his father to kick him out of the family home. Tabiruka went to another city and found a job and new residence. All through 2020, however, Tabiruka’s mother pled with her son to return and reconcile with his father. He finally agreed and returned; when he met his father on Aug. 14, the latter called for a family meeting to question Tabiruka on whether he will return to Islam. “I am mature enough to join any religion that I feel like because I am above 18 years old,” Tabiruka told his father during the meeting, according to the slain’s sister, who was present: “I want to confirm that I am saved by the grace of God. I can’t renounce my Christian faith now or in the future.” On the following day, his father attacked him with a knife and hoe; when Tabiruka fled to a neighboring home, the father “forcefully entered the house and removed him back to the homestead, where he tied him up and started beating him with the hoe,” confirmed another relative, on condition of anonymity: “He fell down unconscious. He then hanged him up.” The wailing of Tabiruka’s mother eventually drew neighbors out. “When I arrived at Kawona’s house with other neighbors, we found the father outside the house,” a local leader said. “He told us that he had killed his son who had disgraced the Islamic religion by becoming a Christian.”
In another incident, a Muslim father beat and forced his daughter to ingest poison because she left Islam. Earlier, Hajira Namusobya, 34, was being routinely beat and tortured by her Muslim husband: “I tried to commit suicide by hanging myself with a rope,” she recalled, “but I failed because my furious husband was following and monitoring my actions.” During this time, she secretly began to attend a church, converted to Christianity, and eventually managed to get a divorce, which required that she relinquish her four children, which, per Muslim law, remained with the father. Getting on with her new life, she met and married a Christian man. Sometime later, she went back to her village to visit her parents: “When I reached Pallisa, I was welcomed by my parents, not knowing that my parents were angry about me for leaving a Muslim man and getting married to a Christian man,” she said. Her father, an observant Muslim who had performed the Hajj and traveled to Mecca, eventually began to inquire about her new faith and husband:
I told him everything, how I left the furious husband who almost took away my life and got married to a Christian man who is friendly and treats me as a wife. My dad in a loud voice replied that that is impossible and it’s blasphemous to leave a Muslim for a Christian man, saying, ‘More so, you are a daughter of a Haji.’
He proceeded to command her to renounce Christianity and her Christian husband and return to Islam and her Muslim husband. When she refused to agree, “He slapped me and brought out his secret stick and Doom mosquito repellant and beat me badly, then forced me to take mosquito Doom. It was too terrible.” Due to the loud cries and ruckus, a neighbor came to her rescue and took her to a nearby hospital, where she remained unconscious for three days.
Finally, while shouting jihadist slogans, a Muslim man tried to slaughter his sister after he learned that she had converted to Christianity. Harriet Nanzala had managed to keep her faith secret for two decades, when her brother became suspicious on Aug. 6: “My brother found me reading the Bible and began questioning me, whether I had converted to Christianity,” she said. “I kept quiet, and he left, shaking his head in disbelief.” Over the next day he continued pressuring her for an answer, but she remained silent. Suddenly, in the morning of Aug. 8, he appeared at Harriet’s home, where she lived with her two daughters and cared for her elderly mother. While brandishing a knife and long spear, her brother began crying “Allahu Akbar [Allah is Greater].” “He began destroying part of the door,” Harriet continues: “I started running away to save my life. My brother followed me as I continued shouting for help, but unfortunately he hit me with the sharp knife on my leg.” A photo indicates that he made a deep gash in her ankle. The ruckus prompted neighbors and later police to appear at the scene. As her brother was hauled away, he continued making threats and shouting: “After my release, I will kill Harriet for renouncing Islam, the religion of Allah.” Last reported, the convert and her household “are now living in great fear of attack if my brother is released on bail.”
The General Slaughter of Christians
South Sudan: On Aug. 16, a jihadist group ambushed nine Christian nuns traveling by minibus. They murdered two of them—Sister Mary Daniel Abut and Sister Regina Roba—in “cold blood,” says the report. Discussing this incident, a local Christian said,
Islam is now invading South Sudan. They’re saying South Sudan is a strategic place and that [it] will be the gate to Africa [so that] Islam can go to all of Africa. [Islamic leaders] are mobilizing money from different Islamic countries and they’re sending them to South Sudan.
Afghanistan: According to an Aug. 17 report, since the U.S. military withdrew,
[T]he Taliban are going door-to-door in Afghanistan, executing Christians on the spot…. Taliban militants are even pulling people off public transport and killing them on the spot if they’re Christians… [They are even] demand[ing] people’s phones, and if they find a downloaded Bible on your device, they will kill you immediately. It’s incredibly dangerous right now for Afghans to have anything Christian on their phones. The Taliban have spies and informants everywhere.
Democratic Republic of Congo: The Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamic terror organization with ties to ISIS, launched several devastating raids throughout the month of August in the Christian-majority (94%) nation. On Aug. 3, the jihadists abducted and later “knifed to death” 16 people; around Aug. 20, they butchered another 18 civilians; and on Aug. 28, 19 Christians were “burned and hacked to death” by the jihadist rebels.
General Abuse of Christians
Syria: The nation’s ancient Christian community has been reduced by approximately 66% since the rise and subsequent persecution at the hands of the Islamic State in that nation. According to an Aug. 9 report, “About two-thirds of Syria’s Christians have fled the country in the past decade… Christians made up eight to ten percent of Syria’s population before the start of the civil war in 2011. Today that number has decreased to three percent.”
Lebanon: Muslim supporters of Hezbollah threatened the nation’s Christian leader with death after he criticized the terrorist organization. On Aug. 8, two days after Hezbollah launched 19 rockets into Israel, the Maronite patriarch, Cardinal Rai, said it was unacceptable for “a party [Hezbollah] to make decisions on war” without the two-thirds quorum required by Lebanon’s constitution. Immediately, according to an Aug. 13 report, “Supporters of Hezbollah responded by threatening the cardinal’s life with social media posts that pictured Cardinal Rai with a noose around his neck.” In one post, someone from southern Beirut wrote in Arabic: “You don’t think we know how to hang?” In response, Defence of Christians, a Lebanese human rights group, said,
The patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church, Patriarch Rai, is just calling for peace. He is not making a political statement. If Hezbollah and Israel go to war, Lebanese civilians will suffer. Hezbollah should not be firing rockets from civilian population centers in Lebanon. The Lebanese people are not human shields.
Egypt: The discrimination Christians regularly face in their country was even apparent during the recent Olympics. Egypt’s delegation to the 2020 Olympics included only one Christian out of 141 athletes, all Muslim. According to the report,
[T]he point is crystal clear: Copts, the indigenous Christians who comprise 10-15% of Egypt’s population, are represented by less than ONE PERCENT of the country’s delegation to the 2020 Olympics. Worse still is that this is not new: Hardly any Copts took part in Egypt’s delegations to the 2016 (Rio) or 2012 (London) Olympics…. [T]he exclusion of Coptic athletes actually reflects the reality of entrenched, deep rooted, systematic and systemic discrimination practiced against the Copts in Egypt.
Although the international human rights organization, Coptic Solidarity (CS), has raised this issue several times with the International Olympic Committee, according to CS, they “have yet to demonstrate a clear willingness to speak out and implement consequences which could help end this discrimination.” This, CS notes, is ironic, considering that the International Olympic Committee’s motto is “to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”
Australia: During the court hearing of Isaac El Matari, a 22-year-old Muslim man who was earlier arrested for terroristic activities and ISIS connections, he confessed, according to an Aug. 31 report, that he “had plans to target Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral and the American embassy for terror attacks.”
Indonesia: On Aug. 6, a two-month-old Christian baby died, in part because hospitals were not as attentive as they could have been. Afterwards, authorities banned the parents from burying their child in a nearby cemetery, on the argument that the graveyard was reserved for Muslims only. The parents had to bury their dead baby far away, in a cemetery open to Christians.
The persecution Christians suffered at the hands of Muslims over the course of just one month.
24 commentsRaymond 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 August, 2021:
The Sexual Abuse of Christian Women and Girls
Pakistan: Three Muslim gunmen forcibly abducted Muqadas, a 16-year-old Christian girl, from her family home; they seriously injured her grandmother, for trying to prevent them, in the process. According to the Aug. 28 report, “The whole incident was seen by a village of witnesses who ran out of their homes to see what was causing loud shrill screaming by the younger sister of Muqadas.” Despite this, and as usual, police initially refused to register a crime until three days later and after much pressure, including from a foreign human rights association. “Even then,” continues the report, “police visited the family home of the abductor Mohammed Azim Malik and failed to locate him or the missing child and instead of placing Mr. Malik on a wanted list, [they] allowed time for Mr. Malik to beat Muqadas into submission [and escape].” Instead of offering to help locate the abductor and his victim, when approached by some local Christian women, the Muslim wife of Mohammed the rapist proceeded to mock them by saying her husband had “done a good deed.” According to one of these Christian women,
I have heard from women in the village that [Muhammad’s] wife is not ashamed of her husband’s cruel act. She has turned our Christian women away abruptly and has said she is proud of Mr. Malik as he has converted a ‘dirty Christian girl.’ She has told women of our community that his actions have ensured ‘the whole [Muslim] family a place in heaven.’ It breaks my heart to hear how little the Muslim community think of us Christians, [when] we have done them no harm.
Discussing this latest abduction, Juliet Chowdhry, of the British Pakistani Christian Association, said:
The nature of this attack—which involved a daylight raid on a Christian home before witnesses, by men equipped with guns—is simply horrific. It not only illustrates new levels of impunity that have increased boldness for such crimes, but I also fear the inculcation of hardliner ideologies in Pakistani mosques is creating a disheartening acceptance of such crime by the country's majority…. This child's dilemma is faced by hundreds of Christian girls every year. It is heart-breaking that police have been investigating for more than two weeks and do not yet have an inkling of where Muqadas and Mr. Malik are…. Every day she is not found is a chance for her to be lost forever to her abductor.
In a separate incident in Pakistan, Chashman, a 14-year-old Christian girl, disappeared after school. Her family frantically searched for her in the streets and made repeated visits to local police who initially refused to file a missing person case. “After much pleading, our application was converted into an FIR [First Information Report, No. 622/21], but the police remained indifferent to the issue,” the girl’s father, Gulzar Masih, explained. On the following day, images of an Islamic conversion letter and affidavit supposedly signed by the underage girl and witnessed by a sheikh known for his “radical” tendencies were anonymously texted to the family. The documents indicated that she had willingly converted to Islam and married a Muslim named Muhammad Usman. “We requested the police to at least recover Chashman and ask her under what circumstances she had left her home, but they are not listening to us,” Masih continued: “They say she has changed her faith and married of her own will, so there’s nothing they can do. But my daughter is only 14—she’s just a child…” According to the report, “Chashman’s abduction adds to the growing list of underage Christian girls who have been forcibly converted and married to their Muslim abductors, particularly in Punjab and Sindh provinces.”
In a final incident, after sexually harassing her, a Muslim supervisor threatened to file blasphemy charges—which carry a maximum death penalty—against a Christian sanitation worker unless she withdraws her complaints against him. According to the Aug. 31 report,
Salima Rani Bibi, a 50-year-old Catholic sweeper … was allegedly groped and had clothes torn off by supervisor Ajmal Khan Dukki in front of other employees on July 22 after she repeatedly refused his demands for sex… Dukki routinely sexually harassed Rani Bibi, a mother of six girls, and made lewd remarks to her in front of other Christian workers.
After she filed her complaint,
Dukki and other senior officials started intimidating her by stopping her salary and going as far as threatening her with abduction of her daughters, four of whom are minors…. This incident happened in front of a large number of employees, but even though all of Rani Bibi’s Christian colleagues are willing to testify in her favor, the court has been adjourning the hearing on one pretext or the other.
The report goes on to suggest that such treatment is standard:
Most sanitation workers in Pakistan are Christian…. Christian sanitation workers are routinely called derogatory terms such as Choora … and face sexual harassment, discrimination, nonpayment of salaries, irregular work contracts and extortion by senior officers…. Muslim sweepers use their influence in registering daily attendance but hardly show up, whereas the salaries of Christian sanitation workers are usually delayed…. Social security law guarantees compensation for those who die on duty, but the families of Christian sanitation workers are not paid the full amount. Christian workers, particularly women, also have to face harassment by Muslim supervisors… They know that these poor workers cannot do anything against them, hence the harassment is continuing unabated in almost all cities of Punjab and Sindh provinces…. The manner in which Rani Bibi has been denied justice shows how the majority population treats the most vulnerable segment of society.
Last reported, “Rani Bibi has been forced to go into hiding along with her children due to mounting pressure on her to withdraw the harassment case.”
Egypt: On Aug. 9, a 15-year-old Christian girl disappeared off the streets of Cairo; her mobile phone was turned off at the same time. Randa Fathallah Faleh was returning home alone, after helping another female member of her family move. Her family instantly reported her disappearance to police and urged the Minister of the Interior to investigate. A few days later, online Arabic websites reported that the underage girl had been happily returned to her family—which turned out to be false. In fact, Randa’s father and uncle were at and pestering the police station the same day this false rumor began. A family friend responded by posting on social media: “People, Randa has not been returned. Please stop promoting false rumors. Randa must be returned! Please copy and paste.” According to a 2020 report, this is just one of at least 500 abductions and “disappearances” of Christian girls over the last decade:
The rampant trafficking of Coptic [Christian] women and girls is a direct violation of their most basic rights to safety, freedom of movement, and freedom of conscience and belief. The crimes committed against these women must be urgently addressed by the Egyptian government, ending impunity for kidnappers, their accomplices, and police who refuse to perform their duties. Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence. If there is any hope for Coptic women in Egypt to have a merely ‘primitive’ level of equality, these incidents of trafficking must cease, and the perpetrators must be held accountable by the judiciary.
Death to Muslim Converts to Christianity in Uganda
A number of murders and violent outbursts against Muslim converts to Christianity occurred in Uganda throughout August:
Muslims murdered a man for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity by burying him alive. Saban Sajabi, 32, was an itinerant mosque preacher until 2015, when he converted to Christianity. Family threats prompted him to leave his wife and child and flee the village. He established a new life over the following year, including by marrying a Christian woman and having children. Threats continued, however, including via text messaging. According to one from 2016, “If anything happens to you, be informed that we shall not help you, especially at this time of COVID-19. Our advice is for you to return to Islam, the religion of the family.” Then, in mid-July, he received a call from a relative saying his beloved uncle who had led him to Christ was sick and dying. “Without wasting time, we left Jinja immediately, leaving behind our children,” his wife explained. It all turned out to be a ruse, however; hired men ambushed the couple in a deserted place: “They started beating my husband and then dragged him to a nearby anthill, dug into it and pushed his head inside, and he breathed his last.” During the assault, one of the assailants covered her mouth and said he would slaughter her if she continued crying for help, adding: “What you have witnessed happening to your husband today is for the disobedience of your husband not heeding the advice given by the family that he should return to Islam, since Islam cannot tolerate infidels.” According to report, “Police have taken no action regarding the killing.” The widow, moreover, was “hospitalized for depression and trauma for 18 days”:
Since the time I was discharged from the hospital, I have been having sleepless nights. Doctors have recommended trauma counseling for me. My two children always ask the whereabouts of their dad. Please pray for me and my two kids.
Separately, on Sunday, August 15, a Muslim father slaughtered his own son for converting to and then refusing to recant Christianity. Earlier, in 2019, Tabiruka Tefiiro put his faith in Christ, which prompted his father to kick him out of the family home. Tabiruka went to another city and found a job and new residence. All through 2020, however, Tabiruka’s mother pled with her son to return and reconcile with his father. He finally agreed and returned; when he met his father on Aug. 14, the latter called for a family meeting to question Tabiruka on whether he will return to Islam. “I am mature enough to join any religion that I feel like because I am above 18 years old,” Tabiruka told his father during the meeting, according to the slain’s sister, who was present: “I want to confirm that I am saved by the grace of God. I can’t renounce my Christian faith now or in the future.” On the following day, his father attacked him with a knife and hoe; when Tabiruka fled to a neighboring home, the father “forcefully entered the house and removed him back to the homestead, where he tied him up and started beating him with the hoe,” confirmed another relative, on condition of anonymity: “He fell down unconscious. He then hanged him up.” The wailing of Tabiruka’s mother eventually drew neighbors out. “When I arrived at Kawona’s house with other neighbors, we found the father outside the house,” a local leader said. “He told us that he had killed his son who had disgraced the Islamic religion by becoming a Christian.”
In another incident, a Muslim father beat and forced his daughter to ingest poison because she left Islam. Earlier, Hajira Namusobya, 34, was being routinely beat and tortured by her Muslim husband: “I tried to commit suicide by hanging myself with a rope,” she recalled, “but I failed because my furious husband was following and monitoring my actions.” During this time, she secretly began to attend a church, converted to Christianity, and eventually managed to get a divorce, which required that she relinquish her four children, which, per Muslim law, remained with the father. Getting on with her new life, she met and married a Christian man. Sometime later, she went back to her village to visit her parents: “When I reached Pallisa, I was welcomed by my parents, not knowing that my parents were angry about me for leaving a Muslim man and getting married to a Christian man,” she said. Her father, an observant Muslim who had performed the Hajj and traveled to Mecca, eventually began to inquire about her new faith and husband:
I told him everything, how I left the furious husband who almost took away my life and got married to a Christian man who is friendly and treats me as a wife. My dad in a loud voice replied that that is impossible and it’s blasphemous to leave a Muslim for a Christian man, saying, ‘More so, you are a daughter of a Haji.’
He proceeded to command her to renounce Christianity and her Christian husband and return to Islam and her Muslim husband. When she refused to agree, “He slapped me and brought out his secret stick and Doom mosquito repellant and beat me badly, then forced me to take mosquito Doom. It was too terrible.” Due to the loud cries and ruckus, a neighbor came to her rescue and took her to a nearby hospital, where she remained unconscious for three days.
Finally, while shouting jihadist slogans, a Muslim man tried to slaughter his sister after he learned that she had converted to Christianity. Harriet Nanzala had managed to keep her faith secret for two decades, when her brother became suspicious on Aug. 6: “My brother found me reading the Bible and began questioning me, whether I had converted to Christianity,” she said. “I kept quiet, and he left, shaking his head in disbelief.” Over the next day he continued pressuring her for an answer, but she remained silent. Suddenly, in the morning of Aug. 8, he appeared at Harriet’s home, where she lived with her two daughters and cared for her elderly mother. While brandishing a knife and long spear, her brother began crying “Allahu Akbar [Allah is Greater].” “He began destroying part of the door,” Harriet continues: “I started running away to save my life. My brother followed me as I continued shouting for help, but unfortunately he hit me with the sharp knife on my leg.” A photo indicates that he made a deep gash in her ankle. The ruckus prompted neighbors and later police to appear at the scene. As her brother was hauled away, he continued making threats and shouting: “After my release, I will kill Harriet for renouncing Islam, the religion of Allah.” Last reported, the convert and her household “are now living in great fear of attack if my brother is released on bail.”
The General Slaughter of Christians
South Sudan: On Aug. 16, a jihadist group ambushed nine Christian nuns traveling by minibus. They murdered two of them—Sister Mary Daniel Abut and Sister Regina Roba—in “cold blood,” says the report. Discussing this incident, a local Christian said,
Islam is now invading South Sudan. They’re saying South Sudan is a strategic place and that [it] will be the gate to Africa [so that] Islam can go to all of Africa. [Islamic leaders] are mobilizing money from different Islamic countries and they’re sending them to South Sudan.
Afghanistan: According to an Aug. 17 report, since the U.S. military withdrew,
[T]he Taliban are going door-to-door in Afghanistan, executing Christians on the spot…. Taliban militants are even pulling people off public transport and killing them on the spot if they’re Christians… [They are even] demand[ing] people’s phones, and if they find a downloaded Bible on your device, they will kill you immediately. It’s incredibly dangerous right now for Afghans to have anything Christian on their phones. The Taliban have spies and informants everywhere.
Democratic Republic of Congo: The Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamic terror organization with ties to ISIS, launched several devastating raids throughout the month of August in the Christian-majority (94%) nation. On Aug. 3, the jihadists abducted and later “knifed to death” 16 people; around Aug. 20, they butchered another 18 civilians; and on Aug. 28, 19 Christians were “burned and hacked to death” by the jihadist rebels.
General Abuse of Christians
Syria: The nation’s ancient Christian community has been reduced by approximately 66% since the rise and subsequent persecution at the hands of the Islamic State in that nation. According to an Aug. 9 report, “About two-thirds of Syria’s Christians have fled the country in the past decade… Christians made up eight to ten percent of Syria’s population before the start of the civil war in 2011. Today that number has decreased to three percent.”
Lebanon: Muslim supporters of Hezbollah threatened the nation’s Christian leader with death after he criticized the terrorist organization. On Aug. 8, two days after Hezbollah launched 19 rockets into Israel, the Maronite patriarch, Cardinal Rai, said it was unacceptable for “a party [Hezbollah] to make decisions on war” without the two-thirds quorum required by Lebanon’s constitution. Immediately, according to an Aug. 13 report, “Supporters of Hezbollah responded by threatening the cardinal’s life with social media posts that pictured Cardinal Rai with a noose around his neck.” In one post, someone from southern Beirut wrote in Arabic: “You don’t think we know how to hang?” In response, Defence of Christians, a Lebanese human rights group, said,
The patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church, Patriarch Rai, is just calling for peace. He is not making a political statement. If Hezbollah and Israel go to war, Lebanese civilians will suffer. Hezbollah should not be firing rockets from civilian population centers in Lebanon. The Lebanese people are not human shields.
Egypt: The discrimination Christians regularly face in their country was even apparent during the recent Olympics. Egypt’s delegation to the 2020 Olympics included only one Christian out of 141 athletes, all Muslim. According to the report,
[T]he point is crystal clear: Copts, the indigenous Christians who comprise 10-15% of Egypt’s population, are represented by less than ONE PERCENT of the country’s delegation to the 2020 Olympics. Worse still is that this is not new: Hardly any Copts took part in Egypt’s delegations to the 2016 (Rio) or 2012 (London) Olympics…. [T]he exclusion of Coptic athletes actually reflects the reality of entrenched, deep rooted, systematic and systemic discrimination practiced against the Copts in Egypt.
Although the international human rights organization, Coptic Solidarity (CS), has raised this issue several times with the International Olympic Committee, according to CS, they “have yet to demonstrate a clear willingness to speak out and implement consequences which could help end this discrimination.” This, CS notes, is ironic, considering that the International Olympic Committee’s motto is “to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”
Australia: During the court hearing of Isaac El Matari, a 22-year-old Muslim man who was earlier arrested for terroristic activities and ISIS connections, he confessed, according to an Aug. 31 report, that he “had plans to target Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral and the American embassy for terror attacks.”
Indonesia: On Aug. 6, a two-month-old Christian baby died, in part because hospitals were not as attentive as they could have been. Afterwards, authorities banned the parents from burying their child in a nearby cemetery, on the argument that the graveyard was reserved for Muslims only. The parents had to bury their dead baby far away, in a cemetery open to Christians.
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