‘Burned Beyond Recognition’
The atrocities Muslims inflicted on Christians in the span of just one month.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article was first published by the Gatestone Institute.
The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of November, 2021:
The Muslim Slaughter of Christians
Uganda: Muslims slaughtered a Christian leader for refusing to remove his church from a Muslim-majority region. Pastor Stephen Lugwire, 58, was working on his farm with one of his daughters when three men dressed in Islamic attire and brandishing long knives shouted at them. One yelled that Pastor Stephen was a “kafir” (infidel) who had harmed the religion of Allah. Another, coming closer, said, “We have told you to remove the church which is near our mosque, but you have not heeded our message. Today you will face the wrath of Allah.” “There and then one of the assailants hit my dad with a big stick on the head, and he fell down,” explained the daughter; before fleeing in terror, she saw another of the Muslims slashing her father with a knife. She ran to and informed her family, who reported it to the police; Stephen’s body was later found thoroughly slashed, with deep cuts to his throat and chest. Police arrested a wealthy Muslim woman, Shamimu, after it was learned that the murderers were hiding in her home. Apparently unrepentant, the Muslim woman told police,
The servants of Allah entered my house in order to remove the clothes which they were wearing, because they were soaked in blood, and said that they had killed an infidel, hence Allah will reward them as they were following the footsteps of their prophet. Furthermore, the pastor didn’t honor Allah by refusing to demolish the church which was close to the mosque, along with his activities of winning their members to Christianity.
In another incident, Muslims finally managed to murder one of their brothers, a former sheikh who converted to Christianity. Earlier, on Oct. 19 (as reported here), Mustafa Obbo’s family had beaten him when he returned to the village to visit his sick mother. As Mustafa had then explained:
As I arrived home, my dad and uncles ambushed me, tied me up and flogged me with several long sticks and said they were going to kill me if I did not recant my Christian faith. But by grace, as they were sending someone for petrol to burn me up, a Toyota vehicle was approaching the homestead. When they saw the vehicle entering the compound, they took off each in his direction.
Two weeks later, on Nov. 2, police recovered the body of Mustafa “burned beyond recognition.” Ismail, one of the brothers who had beaten him on Oct. 19, had called him feigning repentance and saying he too had embraced Christ and wanted to meet. It was a trick to lure him to a distant and empty place where Ismail and another of Mustafa’s brothers, along with several other Muslims, beat and murdered the Christian. “Later [Ismail] Odwori called me,” said one of Mustafa’s friends, “and said that Allah has killed my friend, and I that I should be wise and careful. He was thanking Allah for enabling them to throw an infidel into an agony of death. Then the phone call ended.”
Finally, Muslims decapitated Alex Mukasa, a 60-year-old Christian man, for sharing the Gospel. After learning that Alex was missing, his brother discovered “that his motorcycle was abandoned along the Bukoova road, and that his body was beheaded and dumped in a sugarcane plantation. The assailants carried away his head.” Farmers came across the Christian man’s head in a swamp days later. Earlier, local Muslims had begun to threaten Alex for leading three Muslim men to Christ. “He was given two weeks to vacate the place before he would meet his death,” his brother explained. Last reported, two Muslim men had been arrested, though several more are believed to be connected to the murder. According to a Muslim convert to Christianity, Alex “was a peaceful man whose murder shook the community members and the Church of Christ at large. He was a very respectable elder and leader who frequently offered timely advice and God’s messages to warring parties within our community. We were shocked to find out that he had been butchered by Muslim extremists.”
Nigeria: The Islamic jihad against the West African nation’s Christian population continued unabated. According to one report, 44 Christians were slaughtered in one region; according to another, 10 Christians were killed and 100 homes torched by “Allahu Akbar” screaming militants.
“I lost my grandchildren for the sake of Christ,” said one of the survivors, Sibi Gara, with tears from her hospital bed. “This is the sad reality Christians have been forced to live with—total carnage and genocide against us,” said Samuel Achie, president of the Atyap Community Development Association in Kaduna state: “These horrific experiences have virtually become a daily affair with hardly any intervention from the Nigeria government, as in all these attacks against Christians there’s been complete absence of security intervention.” “Life here is miserable for Christians, I must confess,” added Celina John, yet another survivor from one of November’s attacks: “The herdsmen came and attacked us, and because we are helpless, were unable to defend ourselves. Our houses have been obliterated completely, and we have been forced to flee to other areas.”
In one attack, Islamic gunmen stormed the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Kaduna State, murdered one Christian worshipper and abducted more than a hundred others. According to the Nov. 5 report,
The kidnappers are demanding a ransom for the release of the Christians. The family of one victim said the kidnappers told them that they had to pay more because the gunmen had to go the extra mile for network service before they were able to contact the families of their victims…. Some attacks on Christians in the north of the country are carried out by a minority of Fulani herdsmen, an ethnic group of 20 million Muslims…. The United Nations has estimated that since 2011 Boko Haram has killed more than 15,200 Nigerians, and forced 1.7 million others from their homes as it has sought to turn Nigeria into an Islamic nation ruled by Sharia law.
Finally, on Nov. 17, the U.S. removed Nigeria from its list of Countries of Particular Concern, meaning nations that engage in or tolerate violations of religious freedom—even though Nigeria was the country with the most Christians killed (3,530) for their faith in 2020. Discussing this shocking reversal, John Eibner, president of Christian Solidarity International, said,
The State Department’s decision to de-list a country where thousands of Christians are killed every year reveals Washington’s true priorities…. Removing this largely symbolic sign of concern is a brazen denial of reality and indicates that the U.S. intends to pursue its interests in western Africa through an alliance with Nigeria’s security elite, at the expense of Christians and other victims of widespread sectarian violence, especially in the country’s predominantly Christian Middle Belt region…. If the U.S. CPC list means anything at all – an open question at this point – Nigeria belongs on it.
Burkina Faso: On Nov. 1, Islamic terrorists slaughtered ten civilians. “Most of the victims,” an official stated, “were murdered in a cowardly manner, their throats slit.” According to a separate Nov. 5 report, the situation in the African nation has “drastically deteriorated in recent months. Armed groups are creating a reign of terror targeting the whole population, demanding taxes, and pillaging and robbing people in many parts of the country.” Many are “the object of severe persecution,” the report adds, “specifically because they are Christian”:
[I]n recent weeks there have been cases in which the terrorists have first been asking whether the owner [of cattle] is a Christian or a Muslim. Witnesses who have lived through the latest attacks in the Sahel Region in northern Burkina Faso have told ACN: ‘If the owners were Christians the attackers didn’t consider it necessary to count their animals, because they said that they didn’t just want to take their animals, but also to kill the owners.’… [I]n the last week of October a total of 147 persons—among them eight pregnant women and 19 children under five—had to flee from two villages… The displaced people … explained that many of them had been identified as Christians and that the terrorists were expressly seeking them out to kill them because of their faith.
One of a group of 17 Christian refugees—nine elderly people, a woman and seven children—reported that they had fled in the middle of the night “because the extremists were looking for them”:
The terrible thing is that when someone gave us refuge, we were denounced as Christians, and this put the person who had accommodated us in danger. We had to sleep at a distance from the villages. Not all the Christians in the area have been able to flee. We are concerned about the fate of our sons and wives who remain there.
Democratic Republic of Congo: At least 38 men, women, and children in the Christian-majority nation were slaughtered during the course of several attacks in November by Islamic terrorists of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which, despite its name is affiliated with the Islamic State. “Most of the bodies were tied up and their throats were slit by machetes,” a Red Cross official said. “For now it’s hard to have the exact number of men and women killed because we haven’t finished searching for bodies in the bush,” he added. Speaking of an earlier attack on his village, when the ADF slaughtered about 20 people, a Christian clergyman shed light on their Islamic motivations:
They tried to force some of our Christians to convert to Islam. They also tried to force my wife and our four children to convert to Islam, but when they refused to convert, they shot my wife in the head while our four children were cut into pieces with a Somali sword… the rebel militants intend to establish an Islamist state ruled by sharia [Islamic law].
Generic Abuse of and Attacks on Christians
Pakistan: Yet another Christian girl, 12-year-old Mareeb Abbas, was abducted by a Muslim man, Muhammad Daud. According to the report, “She disappeared on 2 November, in all likelihood taken to Balochistan to be forced to convert to Islam and marry Daud. So far, police have arrested two suspects, but the girl remains in the hands of her abductors.” Her mother, Farzana, a 45-year-old widow and domestic worker “is suffering greatly from her daughter’s abduction to the point of requiring admission to a local hospital (see picture 2). Her mental state is critical.” Discussing this incident, Pastor Zahid Augustine said that the mother “already has many challenges to face in her life. We call upon the government to consider these abductions and forced marriages as a grave issue and adopt strict laws to protect minorities… Mareeb is only 12 years old, and she cannot marry. The perpetrators commit these crimes in the name of religion. We just want justice.” Another human rights activist, Ashiknaz Khokhar, said that “The government is not taking this issue seriously and parliament recently refused to pass the bill on forced conversion.”
According to a separate, Nov. 19 report, in just the first half of 2021 in the Punjab alone, 6,754 women were abducted. Out of those, 1,890 were raped, 3,721 were tortured and 752 children were raped. The same report notes that “over 1,000 girls belonging to Hindu and Christian communities are forcefully converted to Islam every year in Pakistan.”
Separately, an armed Muslim mob opened fire on a group of Christians as they were watering their land in an effort to seize that same land. At least nine Christians were wounded, three hospitalized in critical condition. “They wanted to kill us,” said Raja Masih, one of the Christians. “They fired straight at us, so I got a bullet that almost hit me in the heart.” According to the report,
Muslim landowners demanded local Christians to sell their land. Uttering threats, they told them if they refused, they would face ‘serious consequences.’ This is not new. Local Christians have already resisted selling their land in the past because ‘they are the history and legacy of our ancestors’ and allow families to earn a living. The village was originally founded by missionaries and farmland was donated to the poorest families, who handed it down through the generations. ‘In any case, the Muslim offers do not reflect the real market value of the fields,’ Masih told AsiaNews.
Saleem Iqbal, a human rights activist who visited the hospitalized injured said “It is sad to see how Muslim landowners use their influence to target Christians.” This is the second attack of its kind in that region; in an nearby village, “two brothers were killed and several Christians wounded from gunshots over irrigation,” said Ashiknaz Khokhar, another activist: “It is frustrating,” he added, “to see, on the one hand, Christians fighting for their survival and, on the other, the culprits on the loose, pre-released on bail without being arrested.”
Egypt: Christian elementary school students were “beaten up by teachers and fellow students after the headmaster ordered all Christian students to remove any jewelry bearing a cross [and they refused],” to quote from a Nov. 21 report. In one incident, a female teacher “attacked a Christian student, then encouraged other students to do the same, take his cross pendant from him and destroy the cross.” Violence prompted by the crucifix is not uncommon in Egypt. Earlier, 17-year-old Ayman, a Christian student, was strangled and beaten to death by his Muslim teacher and fellow students for refusing to obey the teacher’s demand that he cover his cross. An off-duty Muslim policeman once boarded a train and, while crying “Allahu Akbar,” opened fire on those passengers who had cross tattoos on their wrists (an ancient practice upheld by many Copts). One elderly Christian man was killed and four others seriously wounded. In 2014, Muslim Brotherhood members mauled a young Christian woman named Mary to death after they saw her cross.
Separately, Ramy Kamel, a Christian activist arrested two years earlier for reporting on the persecution of the nation’s indigenous Christian minority, the Copts, remained under arrest—mostly in solitary confinement, and sometimes under torture—beyond the maximum amount of time permitted by law. Ramy was detained in November, 2019, and his detention has been repeatedly renewed, even though under Article 143 of the Egyptian Penal Code, authorities are not to hold citizens in pre-trial detention for more than two years—and that is only if the crime in question merits the death penalty or life imprisonment. As the report explains,
Strictly speaking, if Ramy Kamel were to be accused of a crime that is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty, the maximum pretrial detention period – according to Egyptian law– ended on November 23, 2021. Yet, the Egyptian judiciary has failed to make any formal accusations against Mr. Kamel, much less shown any indication of ending his illegal and abusive detention…. This kind of brutal behavior by Egypt’s authorities is egregious. Furthermore, Ramy Kamel’s case is not unique. There are many other Egyptian activists, journalists, politicians, and regular citizens who are suffering under Egypt’s sham of a judicial system.
Iraq: On Sunday, Nov. 28, an unknown motorcyclist hurled an explosive at the home of a Christian man and shopkeeper. In a statement on the fire-bombing, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, the Baghdad-based Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, said: “Fortunately, no one was killed or wounded, but the act sparked terror in the family and the Christian community because it brought back memories of past violence.” After highlighting “the rise in violence against the country’s Christians since the US-led invasion in 2003,” the patriarch continued by saying that “the country has become like a jungle” and placed the most recent firebombing “in the context of the ongoing hemorrhaging of Christians which has been prompted partly by attacks like this one and other extremist activity”:
There is the seizure of the property of Christians despite the efforts of some good people, as well as harassment of Christians in their jobs, and the exclusion of their employment despite the existence of a law to compensate them with jobs for Christians who have retired or emigrated…. I hope that everyone understands the ongoing suffering of Christians.
This particular attack is believed to have been motivated because the Christian man sold alcohol in his store, which is banned under Islamic law.
Malaysia: Based on a new law that came into effect on Nov. 1, converting out of Islam has become illegal in Malaysia’s Kelantan State. Apostates now face prison, fines, and/or caning. Other sharia compliant mandates that also came into effect in November include laws against disrespecting Ramadan, misrepresenting Islam, getting tattoos or plastic surgery, engaging in sexual intercourse with corpses and non-humans, and witchcraft. Ahmad Yako, chief minister of Kelantan, said the new bans will help strengthen Sharia in Kelantan, which he hopes will serve as a model for other Malaysian states. Responding to these developments, a women’s rights group, Sisters in Islam, “expressed concern that these developments violate fundamental principles of democracy because they suppress critical thought and expression.” According to one report, “The new enactment comes as the case of Malaysian Pastor Raymond Koh remains unsolved. Koh has been missing since he was abducted in a well-organized, military-style operation more than four years ago after being accused of preaching to Muslims.”
Indonesia: A “group of unidentified Islamic radicals,” according to a Nov. 18 report, attacked the house of a Christian man on the rumor that he was using his home as a church for other Christians to meet and worship in. His home, which was “never used as a place of worship,” was “extensively damaged” from the jihadist assault. The report adds that,
Christians in Indonesia often turn to house churches, as they face great difficulties in constructing real churches since there are many government rules and criteria at play. For instance, interested parties need to submit the authorization of at least 60 residents to get the process moving forward. Even if they have the authorization, construction can still be interrupted and permits can still be revoked by the government, which faces pressure from Islamic extremists.
Turkey: On Nov. 2, Garo Paylan, an Armenian member of the Peoples’ Democratic Party in Turkey’s parliament, submitted a proposal to increase resources for Christian and Jewish minority schools so that they are on a par with those allocated to Muslim ones. “I am sure that both the Minister and the AKP deputies,” Paylan declared, “who claim that there is justice and equality, will support our proposal and minority schools will get their due from the budget in this country.” The proposal was rejected by both the ruling Justice and Development Party of President Erdogan, and the Nationalist Movement Party of the ultra-Islamist so-called Grey Wolves.
For although the last few years have seen sensational revelations of Muslim child rape in cities all over England, the media coverage - which generally dwindles down to nothing after a few news cycles - and the handful of low-key prosecutions apparently haven’t put a dent in the practice.
The antisemitic rants, the hostage crisis, and the rapid cover-up are all regular features of life for Jews in Europe. Changing demographics are making them a new reality for American Jews.
The Rape of Britain
Sleazy Muslim aristocrats versus a noble commoner.
Bruce Bawer is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
As you can tell from his title, Nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed - born in 1957 in Mirpur, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan - is an aristocrat, a nob, a gent, a member of the crème-de-la-crème of the United Kingdom - a man who’s moved in the most rarefied circles and enjoyed the most extraordinary privileges. A former Labour MP, he was created a life peer in 1998 by Her Majesty the Queen on the recommendation of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. On January 5 of this year, he was convicted by a Sheffield court of buggering a boy under age 11 and of two counts of attempted rape of a girl under age 13. At the same time and in the same courtroom, two of his brothers, Mohammed Farouq and Mohammed Tariq, were found guilty of similar crimes, the former of sexually assaulting a boy of eight (four counts) and the latter of sexually assaulting a boy under eleven (two counts). All three will be sentenced on February 4.
The convictions didn’t come fast, or easily. This was the second trial of Lord Ahmed (pictured above) and his brothers on the same charges. The first began last February. Two days after it started, a judiciary official, Judge Jeremy Richardson QC, called a halt to the proceedings, supposedly because the prosecution hadn’t shared certain items of evidence with the defense. Richardson called the prosecutors “disgraceful” and “shameful.” (I can’t find any indication that he ever described the actions by Lord Ahmed and his brothers in remotely similar terms.) Richardson even sought to prevent a re-trial, which made no sense, given his professed reason for stopping the first trial. This attempt to squelch justice wasn’t surprising: as we’ve seen over and over, there are many elements in the English judiciary - as well as in the most powerful ranks of the political class - who, in the name of multicultural harmony, will do all they can to protect Muslim felons from justice.
Fortunately, the Crown Prosecution Service appealed Richardson’s order and the Court of Appeal overturned it, making a new trial - and convictions - possible.
What, you may ask, did Lord Ahmed do to deserve a title? Not much. He was a Labor Party hack and one of several Muslim cronies to whom Blair doled out aristocratic titles. Why? A few reasons. For one thing, he wanted to suck up to Muslim voters, who form a key part of the Labour Party base. For another, he wanted to make the British nobility more diverse (a pretty funny concept, if you pause to think about it). Finally, he wanted to combat Islamic “extremism” by holding up “moderate” Muslims as role models. Of course, if Blair and his crew had been less blinkered about the horrors of Islamic ideology - and about the consequent everyday horrors of British Muslim life - they might have acted a tad more cautiously. Surely no one who’s paid attention to the grooming-gangs scandal should be surprised to see not just Lord Ahmed but also his two brothers nabbed for molesting kids. It’s long since been established that in Pakistani communities in England, child rape is not a vanishingly rare occurrence, as it is in most Western societies, but a favorite diversion, as popular as kebab and samosas. The kafir may not know - or may try to forget - that Muhammed’s favorite wife was a little girl, but Muslims - for whom Muhammed is, after all, the ultimate role model in all things - remember. So it is that in many a Muslim home, thanks to the prophet’s sacred example, the family that prays together preys together.
Child abuse aside, Lord Ahmed has long been known to be a top-flight sleazeball and an enemy within. His anti-Semitism was so extreme that he was forced to quit the Labour Party, which is famously tolerant of Jew-hatred. Repeatedly, he acted as an apologist for nefarious Islamic elements in the U.K. (After terrorists murdered 56 people in London on July 7, 2005, he described them as having an “identity crisis.”) And while his history of child rape wasn’t publicly known, this was a guy who had to resign from the House of Lords after being found guilty of sexual assault - the victim in that case being an adult woman. That was, moreover, only one of several occasions on which he was accused of inappropriate conduct with women. Given that background, you might have at least suspected that something even worse was lurking in his past.
Especially since he was from Rotherham, the town of 100,000 whose name is now synonymous with child sexual assault. It’s far from the only city where Pakistani men have been sexually abusing English kids for decades, but it was the first big locus of such activity (on the order of more than 1400 victims, some of them abused repeatedly over many years) to be reported on at some length in the mainstream media. As it happens, Lord Ahmed’s father settled in Rotherham in the 1960s after immigrating from Kashmir. It was in Rotherham that the three brothers carried out their pederastic depredations. It’s where they still live. And Lord Ahmed’s full official moniker, believe it or not, is Lord Ahmed of Rotherham.
Finally the title sounds appropriate.
I’ve mentioned that there are many individuals in the corridors of U.K. power who, in the name of multicultural harmony, will go to great lengths to prevent Muslim felons like Lord Ahmed from paying for their crimes. Many of the same eminences, for the same noble reason, have striven to put Tommy Robinson behind bars on the slightest pretext and to keep him there for as long as possible, even at the risk of his very life. The two men form a fascinating contrast: whereas Ahmed, as a young Rotherhamite, sought out English children to exploit, harm, and destroy, Robinson, who’s spent his life in the rough-and-tumble Bedfordshire town of Luton, sought from early on sought to protect the most vulnerable members of his community
He’s always cared about his fellow Lutonians. After 9/11, he was horrified to see posters all over town celebrating the terrorists and calling for similar atrocities in the U.K. Alarmed by the indifference of British elites to such threats, he joined the British National Party - only to quit soon after when they turned out to be racists, unwilling to let black friends of his become members. When he witnessed a crowd of Luton Muslims shouting abuse at British soldiers who’d fought in Afghanistan, he formed the English Defence League - which he also later walked away from when he felt that it was turning into a vehicle for bigotry. Oh, and when he became aware that Muslims in Luton were raping English children - and that public officials and the media were turning a blind eye to it - Tommy sounded the alarm. For millions of ordinary Brits, he’s a hero. But he’ll never be knighted. Because the elites who make such decisions - the kind of people who decided that the patently greasy Nazir Ahmed merited a peerage - will always consider Tommy a lout and a thug.
During the last few months, while Lord Ahmed was on trial for child rape, Tommy Robinson was in Telford, a Shropshire burg of 142,000 people, producing a documentary about mass child molestation in that town. It’s called The Rape of Britain and will be livestreamed on Gettr on January 29. In promotional videos, he’s vented anger at local police who’ve refused to take action against the rapists and who’ve even refused to protect victims who’ve been threatened for speaking up. Tommy promises to name names - including the names of grooming-gang leaders - and has consequently made enemies in Telford. Three days before the Ahmed verdict, and a day after he released a trailer for The Rape of Britain, Tommy’s car was firebombed outside his Telford hotel. On January 8, he reported on Gettr that, in response to his investigations in Telford, several other cars have been torched, house windows broken, and “an innocent woman attacked by a gang of armed Muslims.”
Tommy had been keeping a relatively low profile since his September 2019 release from a cruel, undeserved, and almost fatal prison sentence. It’s good to see him back in action. For although the last few years have seen sensational revelations of Muslim child rape in cities all over England, the media coverage - which generally dwindles down to nothing after a few news cycles - and the handful of low-key prosecutions apparently haven’t put a dent in the practice. And as brief clips from The Rape of Britain make clear, the cops and child-protection officials are no less lackadaisical than they were when this whole scandal first broke. The movers and shakers, as ever, would prefer to see Tommy Robinson to go away and stay away, so that the abuse of working-class white girls can go on behind closed doors and Muslim bigwigs who know all about it (and may even be participating in, or profiting from, it) can be exalted by the Queen with clamor or controversy. But as long as there are vermin afoot - some of them, like Lord Ahmed and Prince Andrew, dripping with titles and covered with medals - we’ll need men of real nobility like Tommy, who refuse to accept the moral corruption of their nominal better.
Raymond Ibrahim: Muslim Persecution of Christians Reaches More Europeans
Shillman Fellow’s German Parliament lecture.
Mon Dec 6, 2021
Editor’s note: On Nov. 23, 2021, Sonja Dahlmans, a columnist for a Belgian magazine, published an article summarizing the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim’s talk in Berlin. Titled, “Lecture on Islamic Persecution in German Parliament,” and appearing on PAL NWS, a Dutch news website, a translation follows:
At the invitation of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, American Islam expert Raymond Ibrahim addressed the German parliament about the worldwide persecution of Christians. Ibrahim gave a lecture on the history and present of Islamic persecution of Christians. The lecture is dated December 2020, but was only recently released on its own page.
Ibrahim is American of Egyptian descent. His family, Coptic Christian refugees, emigrated to the United States where Ibrahim was born. He graduated in the history of Islam in the Middle East, especially military history. He now works as a writer and translator. Ibrahim masters several languages, including Arabic.
Since 2011, he started recording Christian persecution in the Islamic world on a monthly basis. Ibrahim indicated that he initially feared that he would not have enough incidents for a monthly column. Instead, he now has to select what to post or not, because there’s too much going on for him to report everything to his readers. He notes that the public in the West rarely hears or reads about Christian persecution. In contrast, he says, every incident in which Muslims are victims is widely reported in the press. According to Ibrahim, Christian persecution is deliberately brushed under the carpet.
There is an idea in the West that Islamic terrorism is new and also that persecution of Christians in Islamic countries is new. This is not true, according to Ibrahim. According to him, it is the basis of the history of Islam. According to Ibrahim, when Christian persecution is reported, it usually concerns ‘spectacular’ cases, such as the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya in 2015. However, he says this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Eighty percent of the persecution of Christians would take place in an Islamic context, according to Ibrahim. “Governments ban churches, angry mobs burn churches and terrorists bomb churches, ” said Ibrahim. According to Sharia, a church cannot be restored or repaired. He predicts that such cases will also become more common in Europe. People persist in the idea that this is propaganda or Islamophobia and that the West itself is to blame for such atrocities because of the Crusades or colonization.
Ibrahim warns that with the disappearance of Christian culture and ethics in Europe we will see a resurgence of Islamic aggression. Last week it was announced that anti-Christian hate crimes in Europe have increased by 70 percent from 2019 to 2020.
Remember The San Bernardino Fourteen
Key collaborator with terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gets only probation.
Fri Dec 3, 2021
Syed Faroo and Tashfeen Malik drove up to the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, and began firing automatic rifles while still outside on the grounds. The American-born Muslim Farook and the Pakistani-born Malik, then barged inside where a holiday party was in progress.
There Farook and Malik gunned down Robert Adams, Isaac Amianos, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damien Meins, Tin Ngyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, and Michael Wetzel. The pair then fled in a black SUV and fired more than 100 rounds at police, wounding one officer.
Police took down the terrorists and inside their SUV found a trigger device to detonate bombs the Muslims had planted at the Regional Center. Had the bombs exploded, many others would have perished.
“We must seek justice for those who lost their lives in the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino,” said California attorney general Kamala Harris in a December 17 statement. Like the composite character David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, Harris failed to name any of the fourteen murder victims. On the other hand, the attorney general did make her priorities evident.
“Ultimately,” Harris said, “not only is it immoral and contrary to our values to stoke fear and cast aspersions against an entire faith and the millions of law-abiding American Muslims, but it is also strategically unwise. This very community is a critical ally in the short and long term fight combatting terrorism and radicalization here at home and across the world.”
Harris was joined by officials from the Muslim Public Affairs Council and CAIR, whose Los Angeles director Hussam Ayloush said “Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric by certain public figures has made Muslim communities an easy target for hate crimes.” Attorney general Harris, Ayloush added, “exemplified leadership” by addressing “the spike in hate crimes against American Muslims and other minorities.”
In a statement one year later, Harris recalled “those who lost their lives and the loved ones they left behind,” but named not a single victim or any of the “brave first responders.” Those were the San Bernardino police, but the word “police” does not appear. In similar style, Farook and Malik were not named, and Harris does not mention their possible motive for “the tragedy that took place.” Like the president, Harris hailed the Muslim community as an ally against terrorism. In this case, it wasn’t.
Muslim convert Enrique Marquez procured weapons for Farook and Malik, and in February of 2017, Marquez pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges. In October of 2020, Marquez was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Rafia Farook, mother of Syed, claimed she knew nothing of his deadly plans, but she shredded a map her son had made for the attack. As the U.S. Attorney announced on March 3, 2020, Rafia Farook, agreed to plead guilty to one count of “alteration, destruction, and mutilation of records.”
Last February, Obama judge Jesus Bernal rejected an 18-month prison term and sentenced Rafia Farook to only three years probation. Her daughter-in-law, Tatiana Farook, got three years probation for an immigration scam involving her younger sister. Tatiana Farook’s sister, Mariya Chernykh, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, perjury and making false statements to federal officials. Last May, Bernal sentenced Chernykh to only three years probation.
Vice president Joe Biden issued no official statement on the San Bernardino terrorist attack, but on others he did speak out. In 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, jihadist Nidal Hasan murdered 13 American soldiers, including three women, Lt. Col Juanita Warman, Sgt. Amy Sue Krueger, and Pvt. Francheska Velez, who was pregnant. According to Biden the American soldiers only “fell” in a “senseless tragedy,” and the Delaware Democrat failed to name a single victim.
The American soldiers Hasan murdered were shipping out to Afghanistan. Joe Biden withdrew from that nation in disastrous fashion, leaving the Taliban billions in armaments, yet described the operation as an “extraordinary success.” While stranding Americans behind, the Biden Junta brought to the United States more than 80,000 Afghans.
The Biden Junta assured Americans the arrivals would all be carefully vetted but as Robert Spencer explains, “almost none of the 82,000 Afghans who are now in the United States after being airlifted out of Kabul in August were vetted first. Biden officials simply accepted the claims at face value, “without making any effort at all to check whether or not the evacuees’ claims were true.”
The evacuees could include jihad terrorists and other criminals but Americans won’t know for sure until they actually commit crimes or acts of terrorism. The same goes for the unvetted masses now streaming across the border and being shipped across the country.
In the meantime, with the holiday season at hand, remember the 14 innocents murdered by Islamic terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik on December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California, USA.
They ‘Wanted to Kill Me Because I am a Christian'
The abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians in the span of just one month.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This report was first published by the Gatestone Institute.
The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of October 2021:
The Muslim Slaughter of Christians
United Kingdom: On Oct. 15, Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old Muslim man of Somali descent, lunged at and repeatedly stabbed British MP Sir David Amess with a knife. Amess, 69, died soon after. The murder took place inside Belfairs Methodist Church in Essex, where Amess had gone to meet with his constituents. Although initial reports indicated that the motive was unclear, police later declared it a “terrorist incident,” with “a potential link to Islamist extremism.” It is worth noting that, when it comes to severely persecuting and slaughtering Christians, Somalia is the world’s third-worst ranked nation, after Afghanistan (#2) and North Korea (#1).
Uganda: Two Muslim men murdered Pastor Barnabas Musana for his role in bringing Muslims to Christ. Discussing what happened, Pastor Simon Okot of the same church, Life of God Ministry, said that “In February 2020, the Muslims got irritated and furious when he said that Jesus is the Son of God and hence is more than prophet Muhammad. They shouted at him, and the church members whisked him away before they could mount an attack. Since then, he started receiving threatening messages that he should leave the area.” At that point, Musana stopped evangelizing and debating and spent his time training other evangelists. They, in their turn, won over 15 Muslims within six months. “This angered the Muslims most,” Okot continued, “and he was given a second warning to leave the area.” Before long, area Muslims began to harass their church: “Whenever they met me going to church,” said Okot, “some shouted at me, calling me, ‘Kafir! [infidel],’ and a[t] times they sent children to throw stones on the roof of the church to interrupt the service.” As for Pastor Musana, “Muslims started saying abusive things to him, his wife and two children, along with throwing stones on top of his roof at night. One of the killers, Faluku Gaju, at one time said that if he killed him, then Allah will reward him with Jannah [Garden Paradise] in a place called Firdausi [highest level of heaven], where the prophet will be” Soon thereafter, Musana was found murdered; witnesses saw two local Muslims following him around earlier that day. His body was found “strangled and with numerous deep wounds and scars, caught in water plants at the river’s edge.”
Pakistan: On Oct. 8, a Muslim mob shot and killed two Christian brothers. “A Muslim family had religious hatred against us and other Christians living in the village,” Indriyas Masih, an eyewitness and survivor of the attack, explained. “They never like the development of Christians in the village and therefore opposed us in getting a contract for a piece of land for cultivation.” When, finally, local authorities granted the Christians lease of six acres of land for cultivation, “five of us went to the agricultural fields for irrigation work”; once there, “a mob of over two dozen armed men attacked [us].” While shouting “anti-Christian slogans,” the Muslims opened fire on the five Christians. “The attack resulted in the killing of Yaqoob and Haroon.” “The Christians are treated as slaves bounded to Muslims,” Asif Muniwar, a local human rights defender, said while discussing this incident. “Christians enjoy no rights, no dignity, and no protection in this country. The overall system of society is based on religious hatred against Christians and other minorities.”
In another incident in Pakistan, on October 3, three Christian workers died after Muslim emergency staff refused to rescue them because Christians are supposedly “ritually unclean.” Problems began when the Muslim employers of sewage worker Michael Masih, aged 33, threatened to fire him unless he entered a highly toxic sewer without any personal protective equipment or masks. According to the report:
Michael tried to refuse the work but received a heavy verbal tirade full of expletives. The disgusting language included the use of the term choorah, an insult given to Christians meaning dirty cleaner and was heard by many of his colleagues…. Faisal grudgingly entered the dangerous sewer at around 10pm with intent to clear a blockage. Three sanitary supervisors—Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Amjad and Muhammad Rashid—were present when Michael entered the sewage pipe without any safety equipment. Within minutes Michael had passed out, and other staff raised the alarm. The result of which was a barked command from Mohammad Farooq to two other Christian men Nadeem Masih (40 yrs) and Faisal Masih (34yrs), to enact a rescue. The two men terrified for their own lives asked for some PPE [personal protective equipment] but were refused; desperate to save the other man’s life, however, they quickly entered the main sewer… The two rescuers grabbed Michael from the floor of the main sewer and managed to heave him out above of the sewer with the help of other workers. But as they were to begin their ascent out of the sewer to safety they were caught in a heavy current of water which dragged them to the floor far away where they became unconscious. Only at this point did Muhammad Farooq call emergency services … An emergency team got to the sewer within 10 minutes but on arrival they looked down the pipe and could see the men but refused to save them. This was on account that they were choorah and would cause the Muslims to become ritually impure.
The three Christian men died soon thereafter.
Democratic Republic of Congo: A number of lethal Islamic terror attacks launched by the Allied Democratic Forces—which, despite its name, is an affiliate of ISIS, which is striving to create an Islamic caliphate in the heart of Africa—struck the predominantly Christian nation (nearly 90%). Over the course of three terror attacks, approximately 27 Christians were hacked to death.
Nigeria: Some of the more notable slaughters of Christians and the destruction of their churches during the month of October follow:
In late September, Muslims butchered 38 Christians in one region; they were all buried in a mass grave that was 15 feet wide, 30 feet long, and 5 feet deep. According to the Rev. Michael Cosmas Magaji, who spoke at their funeral, all 38 were murdered “simply because they were Christians.” The same report quotes Ephraim Kafang, the incumbent Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN): “The situation of Christians in Nigeria is no doubt extremely pathetic. Such killings have been on for no less than two decades. The state government has shown no concern to bring an end to it. Obviously, there’s no political will to rescue Christians…. [W]hat is happening to us in Nigeria is an Islamic agenda, an effort to Islamize the country.”
During another ambush, Fulani Muslim herdsmen murdered four Christians, including a priest. According to a survivor quoted in the October 1 report: “The attackers came with guns shouting ‘Allahu Akabar’ (Allah is greatest). I did nothing to them—the [Fulani militants] wanted to kill me because I am a Christian. My friends and our catechist were killed because they were Christians.”
“The killing is against Christians,” confirmed another local Christian, Ezekiel Bine. “Christians are persecuted daily in my community, most especially villages in Plateau state. The government continues to remain silent. We are left under the mercy of gunmen.”
On October 5, Boko Haram Islamic terrorists descended on a Christian community; they randomly opened fire on the villagers and set homes ablaze. “Two committed and dedicated Church members were killed,” a local pastor said. “Many shops were looted after they set them on fire. Church of Christ in All Nation (COCIN) was also burned down…. “[M]any houses were set ablaze. Bulls used for farming were also killed.” A local eyewitness said the murderers were dressed in Nigerian army uniforms and traveling in two vans owned by the Nigerian army. The report adds:
The Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of Christians in Nigeria and displaced millions in an attempt to discard western influence and impose strict Islamic Sharia law. They target those who do not share their radical interpretation of Islam, often attacking villages and forcefully converting Christians, other religious minorities, and the many Muslims who they feel do not appropriately adhere to the teachings of Muhammed. While the Nigerian military repeatedly insists that the group has been defeated, attacks are ongoing.
On October 11, Fulani Muslim herdsmen opened fire on and murdered a Christian pastor and his traveling companion as they were returning home from their farms.
Fulani shot to death Dr. Habila Solomon, a medical doctor who also served as a Christian pastor and president of Charity and Hope Ministry. According to a fellow pastor who knew Solomon,
This is the second attack on him, as he was first attacked by herdsmen in his house on Oct. 1, but God shielded him. However, on Oct. 14, the herdsmen returned and shot him in his chest, killing him instantly. He was the reason why many people saw hope. Dr. Solomon was a great missionary, as he positively impacted thousands of lives for Christ. In the course of doing missions, God used him to provide drinking water, shelter, free education and feed the poor.
According to another source: “[Solomon] also provided the [Muslim] herdsmen and their families with free medical care. I believe that because some of them have professed Christ, some of the fanatical herdsmen must have seen Dr. Solomon as a threat to Islam, hence their decision to kill him.”
On October 13, Muslim gunmen abducted Father Godfrey Chimezie of St. Theresa’s Parish. While driving away from his church, where he had just concluded morning mass, the kidnappers forced his car to a halt and “bundled him into their SUV jeep and escaped,” an eyewitness said. Later that same day a woman believed to be Christian was also abducted, near a Catholic hospital.
Discussing the plight of Nigerian Christians in The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom 2021 annual report, Commissioner Gary L. Bauer called Nigeria a “killing field” of Christians, before elaborating:
The hour is late. Nigeria’s government seems unable or unwilling to stop the growing carnage. In large swaths of the country, Christian parents fear for their children every day when they go to school. Those children are targeted by savage Islamists who kidnap and force them to renounce Christ or face death. Every time a Nigerian Christian family worships at a church, they are painfully aware it may be the last thing they do on this earth. The churches are ripe targets for Boko Haram and other jihadists. Christians have been blown up or ‘mowed’ down in their places of worship. All too often this violence is attributed to mere ‘bandits’ or explained away as hostility between farmers and herdsmen. While there is some truth in these assertions, they ignore the main truth: radical Islamists are committing violence inspired by what they believe is a religious imperative to ‘cleanse’ Nigeria of its Christians. They must be stopped. The failure of many in the international human rights community and the Western media to accurately describe what is really happening in Nigeria is inexcusable. More Christians have been killed for their faith in Nigeria in the last year than in the entire Middle East. Unless we find our voice, what is happening in Nigeria will move relentlessly toward a Christian genocide.
Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches
France: On October 11, an illegal Muslim migrant from North Africa barged into the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption Basilica in Nice, a city that has a significant Muslim population. He began to “scream in Arabic” and spit on the church’s floor. He left, only to return 10 minutes later and resume his yelling and spitting; he also began to threaten the sacristan, who contacted police. Although the Muslim migrant tried to escape, police managed to apprehend him. Three months earlier, in July, another Muslim was arrested after entering the same basilica and shouting at the congregants, “I’m going to come back and I’ll kill you all.” And a year earlier, on October 29, 2020, a Muslim terrorist slaughtered three Christians in the same basilica.
Germany: A migrant from Afghanistan vandalized church property in the city of Nordhausen. The man, who came to Germany as an “asylum seeker” in 2015, was found angrily removing many of the church’s objects—including the crucifix that hung on its main wall, altar items, and hymn books—out of the church building. When the pastor confronted him about his actions, the man replied that he “can’t accept the Christian faith.” According to the October 30 report: “The ‘refugee’ describes the Christian faith as ‘wrong’ and takes the view that it is fundamentally a mistake that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, which is why he felt compelled to redecorate such a house of worship… He made his point of view clear that he cannot accept the Christian faith.” Police were eventually called and the man expelled from the premises. Some of the church’s items were damaged by him, including the Christ figure which broke off the cross; and “a showcase inside the church was also broken into and cleared out.”
Muslim Attacks on Converts to Christianity
Uganda: Two separate accounts of Muslims beating, starving, and even trying to set their family members on fire for converting to Christianity surfaced in October:
Mustafa Obbo—a former sheikh who converted to Christianity and was beaten and expelled from his village in 2018—learned that his mother was deathly ill and hurried back to her homestead on Oct. 19. It was his first visit since he was driven out of the region. Once there, his family ambushed and beat him. Obbo had told one of his brothers that he was coming only to be betrayed: “As I arrived home,” Obbo later explained, “my dad and uncles ambushed me, tied me up and flogged me with several long sticks and said they were going to kill me if I did not recant my Christian faith.” His brother who betrayed him was among those beating him. The convert was so thrashed that “he felt he was going to lose his life.” But just as “they were sending someone for petrol to burn me up, a Toyota vehicle was approaching the homestead. When they saw the vehicle entering the compound, they took off each in his direction.” It was a school friend, who was bringing food to his ailing mother; he found and untied Obbo. According to the report: “Obbo sustained injuries to both legs, including a bone fracture in one, along with a back injury, bleeding and swelling. Fearing retaliation from his family or other Muslims, he has not reported the assault to police.”
In another incident, a Muslim man starved his wife and 8-year-old son by locking them in a bedroom for two weeks without food—all because he found Bibles in her bags while she was fetching water on Oct. 5. On returning, “he slapped me, then pulled out the bag and removed two Bibles and started questioning me concerning the Bibles,” Jafalan Muduwa said. She remained quiet as he continued to slap her:
When I realized that he could kill me, I told him that the Bibles were mine. He started reciting Koranic verses and labeling me a blasphemous wife. He continued beating me with a stick, and also beat our child. After that he locked us up in the room whenever he left the home. He gave us only a little piece of bread.
Imprisoned on October 5, the woman and her son finally managed to escape on October 18:
My husband received a call in the morning from his business partner that he needed him urgently. He forgot to lock the door, and there we managed to escape back to my family with my son…. People were very shocked to see the state we were in. I thank God that we’re still alive. I cannot think rightly at the moment. We need prayers so that God my restore back our health.
General Abuse and Discrimination against Christians
Pakistan: Although the abduction, rape, and forced conversion to Islam of Christian girls and other religious minorities is rampant in Pakistan—with Muslim police, judges, and authorities often siding with the kidnappers and rapists—the nation is now witnessing record breaking numbers. According to an October report, during the first 10 months of 2021, 36 underage non-Muslims girls (21 Christians and 15 Hindus) were abducted and forcibly converted to Islam. This represents a nearly 300% increase from 2020, when only 13 cases were reported.
This report comes on the heels of the Pakistani government’s rejection of an anti-forced conversion bill, which would have helped protect such minor girls. Discussing these developments, Nasira Iqbal, a retired judge of Lahore High Court, said: “Religion is yet again being used to defend the abuses against minority women and children. In fact, it is a huge disservice to religion in the current context to try to cover up heinous crimes perpetrated against minor girls of the minorities in Pakistan.”
Libya: On September 30, at least 17 Coptic Christian workers from Egypt disappeared; they were living in a predominantly Egyptian village in Tripoli. Their whereabouts remain unknown. Some family and friends believe that they were taken by authorities, while others fear they were abducted by Islamic terror groups. Many fear that these 17 Copts will end up like the 20 Copts (and one Ghanaian) that were abducted in a similar fashion, only to appear in a 2015 video being decapitated by ISIS.
United Kingdom: A 61-year-old Christian woman who escaped her Nigerian homeland to Britain in 1988 in order to worship freely is now experiencing something similar in her adopted home. Mary Onuoha, formerly a nurse at Croydon University Hospital in England since 2002, was pressured and finally “bullied” out of her job by management for refusing to remove her small cross necklace. As she explained in an October 8 interview:
This has always been an attack on my faith. My cross has been with me for 40 years. It is part of me, and my faith, and it has never caused anyone any harm…. At this hospital there are members of staff who go to a mosque four times a day and no one says anything to them. Hindus wear red bracelets on their wrists and female Muslims wear hijabs in theatre. Yet my small cross around my neck was deemed so dangerous that I was no longer allowed to do my job. From a young age I naturally always wanted to care for people—it was in my blood. All I have ever wanted is to be a nurse and to be true to my faith. I am a strong woman, but I have been treated like a criminal. I love my job, but I am not prepared to compromise my faith for it, and neither should other Christian NHS staff in this country.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, which is representing Mary, said:
From the beginning this case has been about one or two members of staff being offended by the cross—the worldwide, recognised and cherished symbol of the Christian faith. It is upsetting that an experienced nurse, during a pandemic, has been forced to choose between her faith and the profession she loves. Why do some NHS employers feel that the cross is less worthy of protection or display than other religious attire?
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