-The old song goes "I was strolling through the park one day, in the merry month of May...."
May was far from a good month for Christians in the Islamic world. The mainstream media, as usual, ignored the vast majority of this. When they did report on this subject, they implied that the plight of Christians was mainly due to their support for ousted and maybe soon-to-be ousted autocrats such as Hussein, Mubarak or Assad. Of course, the impartial press leaves out the fact that the Christians had a thin layer of protection while the strongmen were in power and that this was quickly stripped away in any nation, or rebel-controlled parts thereof. Some of these were already treated on The Hot Gates 480BC.
Firstly, Raymond Ibrahim's list of events that occurred in May alone:
http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11930/muslim-persecution-of-christians-may-2012
"Indonesia saw several church-related attacks:
A mob of 600 Muslims threw bags of urine, stones, and rotten eggs at the congregation of a Protestant church at the start of Ascension Day service, while shouting profanity and threatening to kill the pastor. No arrests were made. The church had applied for a permit to construct its house of worship five years ago. Pressured by local Muslims, the local administration ordered the church to shut down in December 2009, though the Supreme Court recently overruled its decision, saying the church is eligible for a permit. Regardless, local Muslims and officials demand that the church shut down.
Following protests "by hard-line groups including the Islamic Defenders Front," nearly 20 Christian houses of worship were sealed off by authorities on the pretext of "not having permits." Authorities added that only one church may be built in the district in question to accommodate the region's 20,000 Christians.
The Muslim mayor who illegally sealed the beleaguered GKI Yasmin church, forcing congregants to worship in the streets, has agreed to reopen it—but only if a mosque is built next door, to ensure the church stay in line. As well as opposition from the mayor, "the church has faced hostility from local Muslims, who have rallied against them, blocked them from accessing the street where the church is situated and disrupted their outdoor services. It is unlikely that they will suddenly embrace the Christians."
France: Prior to celebrating mass, "four youths, aged 14 to 18, broke into the Church of St. Joseph, beforelaunching handfuls of pebbles at 150 faithful present at the service." They were chased out, though "the parishioners, many of whom are elderly, were greatly shocked by the disrespectful act of the youths of North African origin."
Kashmir: A Catholic church made entirely of wood was partially destroyed after unknown assailants set it on fire. "What happened is not an isolated case," said the president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, and follows the "persecution" of a pastor who baptized Muslims. "With these gestures, the Muslim community is trying to intimidate the Christian minority."
Kuwait: Two months after the Saudi Grand Mufti, in response to a question on whether churches may exist in Kuwait, decreed that all regional churches must be destroyed, villa-churches serving Western foreignersare being targeted. One congregation was evicted without explanation "from a private villa used for worship gatherings for the past seven years"; another villa-church was ordered to "pay an exorbitant fine each month to use a facility it had been renting… Church leaders reportedly decided not to argue and moved out."
Zanzibar: Hundreds of Muslims set two churches on fire and clashed with police during protests against the arrest of senior members of an Islamist movement known as the Association for Islamic Mobilization and Propagation. Afterwards, the group issued a statement denying any involvement of wrong doing.
Pakistan: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Rape, Forced Conversions, and Oppression
A 20-year-old Christian man was arrested and charged with "blasphemy"—a crime "punishable with life imprisonment"—after vengeful Muslims accused him of burning a Koran soon after a billiard game. The Muslims kept taunting and threatening him, to which the Christian "dared them to do whatever they wanted and walked away." Days later came the accusation and arrest, which caused Muslim riots, creating "panic among Christians" who "left their houses anticipating violence."
Two years ago, after a Muslim man converted to Christianity and told his wife, she abused and exposed him, resulting in his getting severely beaten. "No one was willing to let me live the life I wanted [as a Christian]—they say Islam is not a religion of compulsion, but no one has been able to tell me why Muslims who don't find satisfaction in the religion become liable to be killed." He eventually divorced, escaped, and remarried a Christian woman. Now that his family have again discovered his whereabouts, they have resumed threatening him. According to his wife: "Every other day, we receive threatening phone calls…They are now asking him to abandon us and renounce Christianity, threatening that they will kill me and our child."
A new report indicates that "on average, eight to ten Christians are being forced every month by fanatic Muslims to convert to Islam, mostly in Sindh and Punjab provinces. The victims of forced conversions are often girls from poor backgrounds who are then subjected to harrowing and extremely traumatic ordeals. Most of them are extremely vulnerable and are unable to defend themselves against extremists because their community is deprived, defenseless and marginalized. Christians, who constitute just about two percent of the Pakistani population, are paying a high price for being a part of the minority community." Two such cases from May follow:
In an attempt to force her to drop charges against them for raping her 13-year-old niece, a band of Muslims severely beat a pregnant Christian woman causing her to lose female twins to miscarriage. The rapists came when all male members of the Christian household were out working and beat the women "mercilessly." "They murdered our children, they raped our daughter. We have nothing left with us," lamented an older family member. As usual, police ignored both cases—the raped Christian girl and her beaten family.
A14-year-old Christian girl was abducted and forced to convert to Islam by her uncle who himself earlier converted. Pakistani police refuse to liberate her, saying she converted of her own free will. According to her father: "After converting, my brother is conspiring against our family and kidnapped Mary with deception."
The investigation into the murder of the nation's only cabinet-level Christian, Shahbaz Bhatti, has become mired amid suspicions of a possible cover-up. Lax investigations, a series of freed suspects, and lack of coordination across law enforcement organizations have stalled the case following the March 2, 2011 slaying of the federal minister for Minority Affairs, who was an outspoken critic of, and targeted by, those who support Pakistan's "blasphemy" laws.Christians are being threatened and abused for trying to save their community's graveyard which they owned since 1947. Despite failing to produce any proof, a retired Muslim official who claims he "recently discovered" that the land really belongs to him has already built a boundary wall, reducing the graveyard to less than a third of its original size, and turned the seized land over to agricultural use. Police failed to respond, as usual.
Dhimmitude
[General Abuse, Debasement, and Suppression of non-Muslims as "Tolerated" Citizens]
Egypt: A court verdict that was criticized by many human rights groups as "unbelievable" and "extremely harsh" towards Christians was decided according to religion: all twelve Christians were convicted to life imprisonment, while all eight Muslims—including some who torched nearly 60 Christian homes—were acquitted, all to thunderous cries of "Allahu Akbar!" in the courtroom. Another Muslim judge in Upper Egypt dismissed all charges against a group of Muslims who terrorized a Christian man and his family for over a year, culminating with their cutting off his ear in a knife attack while trying to force him to convert after they "falsely accused him" of having an affair with a Muslim woman. And a new report describes the plight of Coptic girls: "hundreds of Christian girls … have been abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and forced into marriage in Egypt. These incidents are often accompanied by acts of violence, including rape, beatings, and other forms of physical and mental abuse."
Eritrea: Activists taking part in a protest outside the Eritrean embassy in London revealed that "Some 2,000 to 3,000 Christians are currently detained in Eritrea without charge or trial… Several Christians are known to have died in notorious prison camps" and "thousands of Eritreans flee their country every year," some falling "into the hands of abusive traffickers, and are held hostage in torture camps in the Sinai Desert pending payment of exorbitant ransoms, or the forcible removal of organs."
Ethiopia: A Christian man accused of "desecrating the Koran" spent two years in prison, where he was abused, pressured to convert to Islam, and left paralyzed. Now returning home, he has found that his two young children have been abducted by local Muslims: "My life is ruined—I have lost my house, my children, my health. I am now homeless, and I am limping."
Greece: Abet Hasman, the deputy mayor of Patras who recently passed away, left a message to be revealed only in his obituary—that, though born to Muslim parents in Jordan, he was "secretly baptized" a Christian (demonstrating how some Muslims who convert to Christianity, knowing the consequences of apostasy, opt for secrecy).
Indonesia: A predominantly Christian neighborhood was attacked for several days by "unidentified persons" who set fire to homes and cars. Dozens of Christian families fled their homes, "many fear[ing] the involvement of Islamic extremist groups."
Iran: A prominent house church pastor remains behind bars, even as his family expresses concerns that he may die from continued abuse and beatings, leading to internal bleeding and other ailments; authorities refuse to give him medical treatment. Also, the attorney of Youssef Nadarkhani—the imprisoned Christian pastor who awaits execution for apostasy—was himself "convicted for his work defending human rights and is expected to begin serving his nine-year sentence in the near future." Meanwhile, in a letter attributed to him, the imprisoned pastor wrote: "I have surrendered myself to God's will...[and I] consider it as the day of exam and trial of my faith...[so that I may] prove my loyalty and sincerity to God."
Jordan: After the Jordanian Dubai Islamic Bank decreed that all females must wear the hijab, the Islamic veil, or be terminated, all female employees who refused to wear the hijab—mostly Christians, including one Christian woman who worked there for 27 years—were fired. There are suspicions that this new policy was set to target and terminate the Christian employees, since it is they who are most likely to reject the hijab.
Lebanon: A 24-year-old woman, the daughter of a Shiite cleric, who was "physically and psychologicallytortured by her father for converting to Christianity three years ago," managed to escape and then got baptized by a Christian priest—who was abducted and interrogated to disclose the whereabouts of the renegade woman. In connection, Muslim assailants fired gunshots at the house of another priest and at a church. This "is part of an escalating pattern of violence against local Catholics," in the words of the region's prelate.
Macedonia: After some Muslims were arrested in connection to a "series of murders of Christians," thousands of fellow Muslims demonstrated after Friday prayers, shouting slogans like "death to Christians" and calling for "jihad."
Mali: Ever since the government was overthrown in a coup, "the church in Mali faces being eradicated," especially in the north "where rebels want to establish an independent Islamist state and drive Christians out… there have been house to house searches for Christians who might be in hiding, church and Christian property has been looted or destroyed, and people tortured into revealing any Christian relatives."
Nigeria: Muslim gunmen set fire to a home in a Christian village and then opened fire on all who tried to escape the inferno, killing at least seven and wounding many others, in just one of dozens of attacks on Christians.
Sudan: Without reason, security officials closed down regional offices of the Sudan Council of Churches and a much needed church clinic for the poor; staff members were arrested and taken to an undisclosed location: "Their families are living in agony due to the uncertainty of their fate."
Syria: Jihadi gunmen evicted all the families of a Christian region, "taking over all the homes of the village, occupying the church and turning it to their base."
Uzbekistan: Police raided a Protestant house church meeting, claiming "that a bomb was in the home." No bomb was found, only Christian literature which was confiscated. Subsequently, 14 members of the unregistered church were heavily fined—the equivalent of 10-60 times a monthly salary—for an "unsanctioned meeting in a private home." Between February and April, 28 Protestants were fined and four were warned for the offence, with three Baptists also being fined for not declaring their personal Bibles while crossing the border from Kazakhstan into Uzbekistan. Fines and warnings were accompanied by the confiscation of religious literature."
There is more in the above-linked post.
Also from Mr. Ibrahim - an example of how the Christians are implicitly blamed for bringing this carnage and oppression upon themselves. This post concerns a report by Robert Fisk, a Middle East correspondent from the UK. It is a sad fact that Great Britain also expended tremendous efforts, including sending their own men to war (The Crimean War), in support of the Christian-oppressing Ottomans to prevent Russia from gaining too much strength. Russia had been making considerable gains in the Black Sea and the liberation of Constantinople was not an impossible outcome.The "Great Game", however, required that Christian nations do whatever they could to maintain the balance of power, including assisting Islamic states:
http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11933/robert-fisk-demonizes-mideast-persecuted
"In a recent article, Fisk goes out of his way to demonize the abused Christian minorities of the Middle East for supporting those secularist leaders most likely to preserve their freedoms and dignity. For instance, after portraying the Middle East's "old guard" in the worst possible terms, he complains that "Ahmed Shafiq, the Mubarak loyalist, has the support of the Christian Copts, and Assad has the support of the Syrian Christians. The Christians support the dictators. Not much of a line, is it?"
In Fisk's way of thinking, Christians of Egypt and Syria are unpatriotic freedom-haters because they support secularists, whereas the Sharia-pushing Islamists are patriotic freedom-lovers for not.
"Not much of a line, is it?"—especially from someone who supposedly lives and travels in the Middle East and is deemed an authority on the region. Completely missing from his narrative is why Christians are supporting Shafiq and Assad: because the alternatives, the Islamists, have been making their lives a living hell.
Fisk's biased narrative is, of course, not original to him, but rather originates with his friends—the Islamists. Soon after the first presidential elections in Egypt, many Islamists bemoaned Shafiq's good showing, laying the blame directly on Egypt's Christian Copts, who reportedly came out in large numbers voting for the secular candidates. Tarek al-Zomor, a prominent figure of the Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the terrorist organization that slaughtered some 60 European tourists, including several of Fisk's countrymen, during the Luxor Massacre, "demanded an apology from the Copts" for voting for Shafiq, threatening that "this was a fatal error."
Others, like Abu Ismail, the Salafi presidential candidate who was disqualified, expressed "great disappointment" in "our Coptic brethren," saying that "I do not understand why the Copts so adamantly voted for Ahmed Shafiq," portraying it as some sort of conspiracy between the Copts, the old regime, and even Israel: "Exactly what relationship and benefit do the Copts have with the old regime"?
The uncritical Fisk follows suit and asks the same questions, portraying the Mideast's Christians as unpatriotic.
Missing from the Islamists'—and Fisk's—narrative is the fact that Christians are under attack by Islamists, especially in Egypt and Syria, where Christian women and children and regularly abducted, molested, and forced to convert; where churches and monasteries are regularly attacked; where blasphemy laws imprison or kill and calls for jizya are back—in short, where Christians are persecuted (see entries for Egypt and Syria in my monthly "Muslim Persecution of Christians" for an idea). Moreover, the ultimate goal of Fisk's supposedly "freedom-loving Islamists—the enforcement of a decidedly anti-freedom Sharia law—will naturally spell disaster for Christians, since this draconian law code emphatically condemns non-Muslim "infidels" to dhimmistatus—barely-tolerated, second-class "citizens" of the Islamic state.
Back in the real world, the reaction to Islamist complaints that Copts are not voting for them has been one of amazement. As one Coptic activist put it: "Did they [complaining Islamists] really expect a Christian to choose a president to represent him from those who cut off the ear of a Christian, blocked the railways inobjection to the appointment of a Christian governor in Qena, burn down several churches and who are diligently working to write a Constitution which undermines the rights of Christians?"
Even Egyptian Muslim writer Khaled Montasser, in an article titled "The Muslim Brotherhood Asks Why Christians Fear Them?!" explained that the Brotherhood's own official documents and fatwas decree several anti-Christian measures, including the destruction of churches and the prevention of burying Christian "infidels" near Muslim graves—hence why Christians are not voting for Islamists.
As for Syria, since the uprising, "opposition forces"—that is, Islamists—have been attacking Christians and churches, including through "kidnappings and gruesome murders." None of this happened before the uprising and under Assad's secular rule. As an earlier report put it, "Should Assad fall, it is feared that Syria could go the way of Iraq post-Saddam Hussein. Saddam, like Assad, restrained the influence of militant Islamists, but after his fall they were free to wreak havoc on the Christian community; hundreds of thousands of Christians were consequently forced to flee the violence."
Should the "opposition" get their way and topple the Assad regime, the same brutal pattern experienced byIraq's Christian minorities—who have been liked to, and killed off like, dogs, to the point of nearing extinction—will come to Syria, where a preacher recently urged Muslims to "tear apart, chop up and feed" Christians who support Assad "to the dogs......"
There also is more in the post "Fisk demonizes Christians" in the middle of this post.
The most bizarre part is that many of the Islamists affect incomprehension about the concerns and fears of Christians. The Islamists truly pretend that they have no idea as to why Christians are terrified of the prospects for their future in their own countries.
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