Tag Archives: Boko Haram

Muslim Persecution of Christians: The Spring Offensive

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Mideast EgyptBy Raymond Ibrahim:

The Islamic jihad against Christians in Nigeria is proving to be the most barbaric.  A new report states that 70% of Christians killed around the world in 2012 were killed in the African nation.  Among some of the atrocities committed in March alone, at least 41 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack at a bus station in a predominantly Christian neighborhood.  According to the Christian Association of Nigeria, these attacks “were a signpost of the intended extermination of Christians and Christianity from northern Nigeria.”

According to the Rev. Jerome Ituah, “Out of the 52 Catholic churches in Maiduguri diocese, 50 of them have been destroyed by Boko Haram.   When two Christian brothers were returning home after Sunday church service, jihadis opened fire on them with machine guns, killing the brothers, as well as three others, and injuring several more Christians.

Another 13 Christian factory workers in Kano were “gruesomely” slain. Said the local bishop: “Reports of the attack reaching us disclosed that on that fateful Saturday at about 7 p.m, Muslim faithful were conducting their prayer close to the affected compound occupied by Christian families, when two taxi cabs stopped in front of the compound and the occupants, who all concealed their arms dashed into the complex and demanded to know why the residents were not part of the 7 p.m. Muslim prayer. They responded by telling the visitors they were Christians and so could not be part of the Muslim gathering. At that point, they separated the men from their wives and children and shot them dead on the spot after ordering the women and children into their homes” to be enslaved.

The bishop added that, “government should show more concern, like it has always done when Muslims are affected; I have not seen that in the case of Christians—that 13 Christians were killed in one straight attack and nothing is heard from the government reflects selective justice because we are aware of compensation paid to Muslim families in situations of this nature.”

However, the Nigeria government recently did go on the offensive to try to contain the jihadis in northern Nigeria—only to be chastised by the Obama administration, in the person of John Kerry, who recently warned the Nigerian government not to violate the “human rights” of the jihadi mass murderers.

Categorized by theme, the rest of March’s Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Church Attacks

Egypt: According to El Watan News, three Christian brothers were shot dead at their home by automatic weapons a few weeks before two were set to have their weddings. The victims’ family was earlier accused of trying to build a church on land they owned because they purchased building material to build a house on that land. The rumors about the building of a church spread during the Friday sermon at the mosque, following which 2,000 Muslims stormed the land and tried to destroy the house, car and tractor, resulting in the murder of the three Christian brothers.

Indonesia: Authorities demolished a church building with a bulldozer in West Java, even as Muslim bystanders cheered and denounced Christians as “infidels.” According to Pastor Leonard Nababan, the government is “criminalising our religion.”  The congregation had gathered around the church in an effort to save it; so did Muslims, shouting, “They’re infidels and they’ve built their church without permission,” “Knock the church down now” and “Allahu Akbar.”

Iraq:  According to Fox News, before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were more than 300 Christian churches.  Today, a decade after the jihad was unleashed on Christians and their churches, only 57 Christian churches remain in the nation.  And “The churches that remain are frequent targets of Islamic extremists, who have driven nearly a million Christians out of the land…”  An Iraqi-based human rights organization said that “The last 10 years have been the worst for Iraqi Christians because they bore witness to the biggest exodus and migration in the history of Iraq….  More than two-thirds [of Christians] have emigrated.” One of the most dramatic cases of Christian persecution came in late October of 2010, when Al Qaeda members laid siege to Our Lady of Deliverance Church in Baghdad, killing 58 and wounding 78.  According to an AP report “Iraq’s Catholic Christians flocked to churches to celebrate Easter Sunday [in March], praying, singing and rejoicing in the resurrection of Christ behind high blast walls and tight security cordons… [emphasis added].”

Libya:  A Coptic Christian church located in Benghazi was attacked by armed Muslims.  The jihadis severely beat and shaved the beard and mustache of Father Paul, the priest of the church, as a sign of humiliation.  They also beat the deacon and nine attendees.  Meanwhile, because Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government had done little regarding the systematic abuse of Egyptian citizens in Libya, including the murder of one under torture, Copts demonstrated in front of the Libyan embassy in Cairo—prompting yet another attack on the Benghazi church, which was set on fire.

Read more at Front Page

Obama Administration Calls for the ‘Human Rights’ of Jihadi Murderers

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images (54)By Raymond Ibrahim:

It’s well known that whenever jihadis attack and slaughter innocent people — especially Christians — the Obama administration tries to ignore or whitewash. Lesser known, however, is that whenever foriegn governments try to subdue the jihadis, the Obama administration objects and calls for the “human rights” of the terrorists.

According to Reuters,

Nigerian warplanes struck militant camps in the northeast on Friday [5/17] in a major push against an Islamist insurgency, drawing a sharp warning from the United States to respect human rights and not harm civilians. Troops used jets and helicopters to bombard targets in their biggest offensive since the Boko Haram group launched a revolt almost four years ago to establish a breakaway Islamic state and one military source said at least 30 militants had been killed.  But three days after President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in the northeast, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a strongly worded statement saying: “We are … deeply concerned by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism.

Thus here is Kerry grandstanding about the “human rights” of Boko Haram, a jihadi group whose name means “Western Education is a Sin” — that is, a group whose very name embodies hostility for Western civilization. (Of course, it’s not surprising that the Obama administration overlooks Boko Haram’s animus for the West, considering that it was just revealed that “it is Obama administration policy to consider specifically Islamic criticism of the American system of government legitimate.”)

But what about the “human rights” of the victims of jihadi terror? In 2011, when Egypt’s Christians protested the constant attacks on their churches and the Egyptian military responded by massacring them at Maspero, including by running them over with armored vehicles, the White House said nothing about “human rights,” declaring instead that “now is a time for restraint on all sides” — as if Egypt’s beleaguered and unarmed Christian minority needed to “restrain” itself against the nation’s military.

As for Nigeria’s Boko Haram, the group has been responsible for some of the most horrific human-rights abuses. Indeed, of all the human rights abuses I catalog in my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, Boko Haram’s relentless slaughter of Christians is the most savage, resulting in more Christians killed than in the rest of the world combined.

The group has bombed or burned hundreds of Christian churches, most when packed for service. The Christmas day church attacks — in 2010, 2011, and 2012 — which left hundreds of Christians dead or dismembered, are the tip of the iceberg of Boko Haram’s hate for Christianity. In the group’s bid to cleanse northern Nigeria of all Christian presence, it has threatened to poison the food eaten by Christians and “to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women.” The group frequently storms areas where Christians and Muslims are intermingled — from villages to colleges — and singles the Christians out before slitting their throats to cries of Allahu Akbar. Pregnant and elderly Christian women and children have been raped, enslaved, and slaughtered simply for being “infidels.”

The fact that Boko Haram’s motives are clear-cut and fueled by Islamic teachings — the creation of an Islamic state that enforces Sharia law and is Christian-free — has not stopped the Obama administration from pointing to anything and everything else to rationalize its bloodlust.

The very next day after Boko Haram bombed Christian churches celebrating Easter in April 2012, killing 39 Christian worshippers, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said, “I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence” in Muslim-majority Nigerian areas where churches were and continue to be attacked.

As far as Bill Clinton is concerned,  “inequality” and “poverty” are “‘what’s fueling all this stuff’” — a reference to Boko Haram’s anti-Christian jihad. Foreshadowing Kerry’s concern for the wellbeing of Islamic mass murderers, Clinton also said that “it is almost impossible to cure a problem based on violence with violence” — a suggestion that Nigeria’s government not retaliate in response to Boko Haram with any severity.

Talk of “poverty,” “inequality,” “grievance,” and the rest of the canards used by Western leaders to overlook Islamic violence blatantly ignores all the facts. Boko Haram began its jihad in earnest because a Christian won what was described as Nigeria’s freest and fairest elections. And Islamic law forbids non-Muslims from ruling over Muslims — not because they’re bad for the economy, but because they’re infidels.

Read more at PJ Media

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Obama Pushes Funds for Islamists —- Trashes Their Christian Victims

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Boko-Haram-Violence-450x286By :

The “Islamist apologist choir” described in Cinnamon Stillwell’s recent story “Profs on Boston Bombing” doesn’t sing solely on behalf of Chechnya and Cambridge. Some of that choir’s most dreadful caterwauling today is in support of Nigeria’s yet-undesignated terrorists, Boko Haram. The choir stalls are located in the U.S. State Department, which not only refuses to designate the jihadists as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), but maligns and defames Boko Haram’s Christian victims, as well.

Boko Haram’s latest attack, killing at least 42, took place on Tuesday, May 7, in the already battle-worn town of Bama, in Nigeria’s northeast Borno State. Borno, one of 12 states under Sharia, has suffered heavy losses under the Islamists. Some believe that Boko Haram has taken over northern Borno State much as Islamists took over northern Mali. At least 277 had been killed by Boko Haram in Borno State in 2013 before this attack.  According to an AP story the Tuesday event involved “coordinated attacks by Islamic extremists armed with heavy machine guns” in multiple locations around Bama. The jihadists also raided a federal prison, freeing 105 inmates.

Military spokesman Lt. Colonel Sagir Musa told AP that “some 200 fighters in buses and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns attacked the barracks of the 202 Battalion of Nigeria’s beleaguered army.” Musa, who said two soldiers and 10 insurgents died in the attack, revealed that the attackers “came in army uniform pretending to be soldiers.” The Islamists killed 14 prison guards. They also attacked and razed a police station, a police barracks, a magistrate’s court, and local government offices, according to Lt. Col. Musa. Bama police commander Sagir Abubakar reported that at least 22 police officers, three children and a woman were killed in the attacks.

Boko Haram frequently attacks Nigeria’s police and military forces. In 2012 as documented by the Facts on Nigeria Violence website, there were at least 67 attacks, almost exclusively by Boko Haram, against military barracks, police stations, prisons, and other government facilities, as well as against individual soldiers, policemen, and civil servants. But Boko Haram’s main targets are northern Nigeria’s Christians and churches.

The official name of Boko Haram, Jamā’a Ahl al-sunnah li-da’wa wa al-jihād, can be translated “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” Its goal is to establish a pure Islamic state in northern Nigeria, removing the Christian presence – either by conversion, expulsion, or extermination. Boko Haram appears to prefer the third option. According to the World Watch Monitor (WWM) report on global Christian persecution, Nigeria had a higher death toll from anti-Christian persecution and violence than the rest of the world combined. WWM concluded that Nigeria is “the most violent place on earth for Christians.”

In a recent Front Page Magazine article, Daniel Greenfield exposed the unfortunate moral equivalence found in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) 2013 report on Nigeria. While much of the report is very good and condemns Boko Haram, impunity, and the forced imposition of Sharia, USCIRF appears to have developed the same pathological impulse that afflicts the rest of the federal government, to never blame Islam. As a result, portions of the report mischaracterize certain acts of violence by both Boko Haram and other Islamists targeting Christians, and criticize northern Nigerian Christian leaders for calling the situation what it is: persecution.

USCIRF’s egregious observations and recommendations are actually State Department policy. For instance, USCIRF parrots former Asst. Sec. of State for Africa, Johnnie Carson, who declared in a congressional hearing, “It is important to note that religion is not the primary driver behind extremist violence in Nigeria” and that “the Nigerian government must effectively engage communities vulnerable to extremist violence by addressing the underlying political and socio-economic problems in the North.” USCIRF reports that “The U.S. government consistently has urged the Nigerian government to expand its strategy against Boko Haram from solely a military solution to addressing problems of economic and political marginalization in the north,” says USCIRF, “arguing that Boko Haram’s motivations are not religious but socio-economic.”

Read more at Front Page

Muslim Persecution of Christians: February, 2013

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images (24)

Half of the Victims Were under the Age of Six

by Raymond Ibrahim:

“We thank our young men, trained in Somalia, for killing an infidel. Many more will die.” — Message signed by Muslim Renewal

Reports of Christian persecution by Muslims around the world during the month of February include (but are not limited to) the following accounts. They are listed by form of persecution, and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Church Attacks

Egypt: Once again, soon after Friday prayers, a throng of Muslims in Fayoum province destroyed a Coptic church. The reason cited this time was that the church is “an unlawful neighbor to the Muslims who live adjacent to it and must therefore be moved.” According to AINA, “The mob climbed to the church dome and started demolishing it and setting it on fire. The dome collapsed into the burning church and caused great damage. Muslims used bricks from the dome and the holy cross and hurled it at the altar inside the church, causing part of it to be demolished; all the icons of saints were destroyed. Muslims tried to assault Father Domadios and threw stones at him, but he was saved by a Muslim family who brought him away from the village in their car.” Local Christian families were reported as staying indoors for fear of being assaulted by the Muslims. And, once again, although state security was present throughout this entire proceeding, it did nothing to prevent it. None of the perpetrators was arrested. Two days later, hundreds of Copts demonstrated, demanding a halt to the ongoing attacks on their churches. In response, the church was attacked again, by Muslims hurling more Molotov cocktails and stones while shouting “We do not want the church.” Some Muslims climbed atop the church again to destroy completely the remains of the wooden dome.

Indonesia: Four churches were firebombed with Molotov cocktails in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Two were attacked on a Sunday morning in South Sulawesi. Another two churches were attacked a few days later. All the churches suffered various degrees of fire damage. According to Barnabas Fund, the same region was earlier “ravaged in a bloody anti-Christian campaign by Islamic extremists between 1997 and 2001. Hundreds of churches and thousands of homes were destroyed; according to some estimates 30,000 Christians were killed and about half a million driven out in what amounted to ethnic cleansing…. The beheading of three girls as they made their way [to] their Christian school in Central Sulawesi in 2005 was among the most egregious.” Elsewhere, in the village of Mekargalih, some 50 members of the Islamic Defenders Front descended upon a Pentecostal church, scaling its gates, vandalizing the building, and assaulting the church’s minister, including strangling him with his own necktie. The reason cited for this assault was that the church was operating without a permit. Two days later, the only person arrested and currently serving a three month prison sentence, was the minister, for continuing to hold services without a valid permit. The church, which has been running for 26 years, has made repeated attempts, at significant financial cost, to obtain the required permit but has been obstructed by local authorities. This was the third violent attack against the church by the Islamic party in the last two years. According to the minister’s wife, who has also been threatened and harassed, this latest attack has “traumatized” the 400-strong congregation; many Christians are now too afraid to attend services.

Libya: A Coptic Christian church located in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked by armed Muslim militants. Initial reports indicate that at least one priest, Fr. Paul Isaac, was injured, as well as his assistant. This was the second church to be attacked in two months. Earlier, on Sunday, December 30, an explosion had rocked a Coptic Christian church near the western city of Misrata, where a group of U.S. backed rebels hold a major checkpoint. The explosion killed two people and wounded two others, all Egyptians.

Zanzibar: Arsonists set the Evangelical Church of Siloam aflame on the island, populated 99% by Muslims. The church was under construction following a previous attack in January 2012. The current attack follows a string of other attacks on church leaders and Christian property across the country. Two days earlier, a Catholic priest was shot dead on his way to church for Sunday worship. Two Muslim youths at the church entrance shot him in the head. A message signed by “Muslim Renewal” later appeared saying, “We thank our young men, trained in Somalia, for killing an infidel. Many more will die. We will burn homes and churches. We have not finished: at Easter, be prepared for disaster.” A few days before the slaying of the Catholic priest, an Assemblies of God pastor was beheaded by Muslims on the Tanzanian mainland. And on Christmas Day, gunmen shot and seriously wounded another Catholic priest as he was returning home from church.

Apostates, Evangelists, Murder and Slaughter

Cameroon: Two Muslim converts to Christianity were shot dead and two others wounded, in the Christian-majority African nation where Muslims make up approximately 20% of the population. One of the converts was previously threatened by the Nigerian Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram ["Western Education is a Sin"] to return to Islam or “face Allah’s wrath.” The attack occurred when these two Muslim converts to Christianity and two others were travelling together around Lake Chad. Their vehicle was stopped by armed men who forced the four Christians out of the vehicle and opened fire on them. The slain Christians leave behind wives and several children.

Iran: Fox News reported that American pastor Saeed Abedini, who is jailed for his Christian faith in the notorious Evin prison, was “facing physical and psychological torture at the hands of captors, who demanded that he renounce his beliefs.” The 32-year-old married father of two, who left his home in Boise, Idaho, to help start an orphanage in Iran, detailed, in a letter to family members, “horrific pressures” and “death threats”: “My eyes get blurry, my body does not have the strength to walk, and my steps become very weak and shaky… They are only waiting for one thing…for me to deny Christ. But they will never get this from me.” Similarly, according toMohabet News, since four Muslim converts to Christianity were arrested soon after Christmas, “they have been taken to the Revolutionary Court of Shiraz several times in a pitiful condition with their hands and feet chained, where their charges were officially announced as participating in house-church services, evangelizing and promoting Christianity, having contact with foreign Christian ministries, distributing propaganda against the regime and disturbing national security. These four Christian converts were arrested as they gathered for worship in a house church on February 8, 2012.” The report goes on to explain the “obvious mental and physical torture” in prison to which Iran’s converts to Christianity are routinely subjected.

Kenya: One church leader was killed another wounded during an ambush by the Somali-based Islamic terrorist group, Al Shabaab ["The Youth"]. Abdi Welli, a Muslim who converted to Christianity in 1990, and became a minister, died at the scene. His colleague and former mentor, Pastor Ibrahim Makunyi , another convert to Christianity, survived after sustaining gunshot wounds. Abdi’s last words were, “It’s good to be in the hands of Al Shaddai,” an ancient name for the Judeo-Christian God. He leaves behind a wife and three children. In response to these latest Muslim murders of Christians, Somali’s much oppressed underground church declared “The Somali Church is the Lord’s and he will protect it from the evil one. No degree of Muslim persecution will destroy the Somali Church.”

Libya: Christians from all walks of life were arrested, and some tortured, on the accusation that they were trying to evangelize Muslims. On February 10, in Benghazi, four foreign Christians were arrested, including one with American citizenship, on the claim that they were “missionaries.” Three days later, two more Christians from Egypt were arrested. Three days after that, a seventh Christian, also from Egypt, was arrested. Then, on February 27, Benghazi forces raided another Coptic church—rounding up some 100 Coptic Christians and accusing them of being missionaries—simply because they had Bibles and other Christian “paraphernalia,” such as icons of Jesus. Many of these Christians were detained and tortured, including by having their heads shaved and cross tattoos removed with acid. Under such torture, one Copt died.

Nigeria: In yet another attack in the Plateau State, Muslim herdsmen used machetes and guns to murder 10 members of the same Christian family; half of the victims were under the age of six, as confirmed by the military and government. According to one official, “Five little children including a two-month-old child were slaughtered.” As happens all throughout the Islamic world, the area’s Christians accused the military of involvement in violence on behalf of the Muslim tribesmen—some of the attackers were apparently dressed in military uniform—although a military spokesman denied it: “Somehow, some hoodlums and criminals gained access to our old uniforms,” he said.

Pakistan: Younas Masih, a 55-year-old Christian, died shortly after being shot five times in an attack that involved his resistance to convert to Islam. According to sources, “Younas’ Muslim colleagues had been pressuring him to convert to Islam. Repeated threats and blackmail attempts had been made against him but he had remained firm in his faith. On the day of the shooting, Younas’ co-workers made another attempt to persuade him to convert. A heated discussion ensued, with insults and threats issued.” This is not the first time a Christian is slaughtered in Pakistan for refusing to convert to Islam. Younas’s son tried to register the attack on his father with the police, but, as usual, they refused to launch a criminal investigation. Also, after local Muslims accused a 19-year-old Christian of being in relationship with a Muslim girl (Islamic Sharia law bans Christian men from marrying Muslim women), he was “barbarically assassinated”: three Muslim men broke into his home in the early hours while the family was asleep, and smote the teenager on the head with an axe while stabbing him with a dagger. When his father awoke from the screaming, the Muslim assassins fled the scene. Further, in Lahore, Roshan Masih, a 45-year-old Christian, was shot dead after an argument over religion. According toAgenzia Fides, “it was an act of murder in cold blood: Roshan’s defence of his Christian beliefs compared to Muslim beliefs, may have been considered ‘blasphemous’… Days before the murder he had a heated argument over religion with a local Muslim, Sohail Akhtar. The latter waited for his opportunity, and, on 16 February, seeing Roshan sitting outside a shop run by Sadiq Masih, another Christian, Sohail Akhtar, armed with a rifle, shot him dead there and then.”

United States: A Muslim man slaughtered two Coptic Christians in New Jersey. Although authorities believethat “the defendant was ruthless and calculating in the manner in which he carried out the killings and attempted to prevent identification of the victims by cutting off their heads and hands before burying their bodies,” it is relevant to note that Koran 8:12 records Allah saying, “I will cast terror into the hearts of infidels, so strike [them] upon the necks [behead them] and strike from them every fingertip.” Moreover, as one report puts it, “Privately some wonder if it had something to do with the victims’ [Christian] religion.”

Read the rest at Gatestone Institute

Muslim Persecution of Christians: January, 2013

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church-burning1

by Raymond Ibrahim:

Egypt: A court sentenced an entire family – Nadia Mohamed Ali and her seven children – to fifteen years in prison for converting to Christianity.

The year 2013 began with reports indicating that wherever Christians live side by side with large numbers of Muslims, the Christians are under attack. As one report said, “Africa, where Christianity spread fastest during the past century, now is the region where oppression of Christians is spreading fastest.” Whether in Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, or Tanzania—attacks on Christians are as frequent as they are graphic.

As for the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, a new study by the Pew Forum finds that “just 0.6 percent of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians now live in the Middle East and North Africa. Christians make up only 4% of the region’s inhabitants, drastically down from 20% a century ago, and marking the smallest regional Christian minority in the world. Fully 93% of the region is Muslim and 1.6% is Jewish.”

How Christianity has been all but eradicated from the region where it was born is made clear in yet another report on the Middle East’s largest Christian minority, Egypt’s Christian Copts. Due to a “climate of fear and uncertainty,” Christian families are leaving Egypt in large numbers. Along with regular church attacks, the situation has gotten to the point that, according to one Coptic priest, “Salafis meet Christian girls in the street and order them to cover their hair. Sometimes they hit them when they refuse.” Another congregation leader said “With the new [Sharia-heavy] constitution, the new laws that are expected, and the majority in parliament I don’t believe we can be treated on an equal basis.”

Elsewhere, Christians are not allowed to flee. In eastern Syria, for example, 25,000 Christians, including Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholics, Chaldeans and Armenians, were prevented from fleeing due to a number of roadblocks set up by armed Islamic militia groups, who deliberately target Christians for robbery and kidnapping-for-ransom—then often slaughtering their victims.

Categorized by theme, January’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Church Attacks

Egypt: Reminiscent of the 2011 New Year’s Eve church bombing in Alexandria, which left over 23 Christians dead, a car packed with explosives was discovered by a Coptic church celebrating Christmas [which is in January] and was neutralized before it could detonate. As patrols seized the explosives-packed car, another car with masked men in it sped away. Separately, hundreds of Muslims chanting Islamic slogans in the village of Fanous destroyed a social services building belonging to a Coptic Church. Security forces arrived only after the building had been completely destroyed. According to the AINA report, the social services building “had all the necessary government permits; it had a reception hall on the first floor and a kindergarten on the second. But the Muslims insisted that it would become a church. Mosques in surrounding areas had earlier called on Muslims, through their megaphones, to go and help their Muslim brethren in Fanous, because Christians were “building a church.” Hundreds of other Muslim protesters rioted outside yet another church in Upper Egypt; on claims that a Christian man had sexually assaulted a 6-year-old girl, they threw stones at the building. Four stores owned by Copts were torched. Police are investigating the accusations against the merchant.

Nigeria: A total of 30 Christians were slaughtered in two separate attacks carried out by armed men ahead of the New Year, in the Muslim-majority north: on Sunday December 30, 15 people were killed when armed jihadis stormed a church and opened fire on worshippers. The night before, Muslim terrorists broke into targeted homes and slaughtered 15 other Christians in their sleep. “The victims were selected because they were all Christians, some of whom had moved into the neighbourhood from other parts of the city hit by Boko Haram attacks,” said a relief worker. Meanwhile, Nigerian president Jonathan revealed that Boko Haram has enablers even within his own government: “The saboteurs in government condoning terrorism by Boko Haram, you do not love this nation,” he said. “Those of you who leak secrets to Boko Haram do not love this nation.”

Pakistan: On Christmas day, “when Christian worshipers were coming out of different Churches after performing Christmas prayers, more than one hundred Muslim extremists equipped with automatic rifles, pistols and sticks attacked the Christian women, children and men,” according to a Pakistan Christian Post report.Several were shot or beaten relentlessly. Much of this appears to have been exacerbated by a fatwa, or an Islamic edict, that came out right before Christmas, saying that, “Christmas cannot be celebrated by Muslims because it is against the concept of monotheism in Islam.” Due to the subsequent chaos, Christians “were under siege from Christmas day and running out of food supplies and milk for children on fear of safety and security of life from further attacks of Muslim mob…. The news of this attack on Christians on Christmas Day was intentionally blocked by media and administration of capital city Islamabad.”

Russia: Security forces in a North Caucasus province on Sunday killed three Islamic militants suspected ofplanning attacks on church services during the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday in January. Security forces tried to stop a van in a Muslim-majority province but its occupants opened fire and, in the ensuing battle, were killed. Guns and ammunition were subsequently discovered in the van, indicating that the men could have been planning attacks on churches during the services that marked the Russian Orthodox Christmas. “Deadly exchanges of gunfire between police and suspected militants at road checkpoints are common in Russia’s North Caucasus, a string of provinces hit by an Islamist insurgency rooted in two separatist wars in Chechnya,” the report added.

Read more at Gatestone Institute

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Mercy to the Guilty Is Cruelty to the Innocent

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imagesCA63IVAZBy Bill Warner:

Someone wrote in reply to the “Un-Merry Christmas to the Christians from Islam” newsletter:

Oh My God. How wrong can you be? Please have more knowledge before you say anything.

Most of what you wrote about Islam is wrong. Islam has several verses which contribute to peace on earth and tolerance to all. Some people do not adhere to this and happen to be Muslim so you regard that as consensus. It’s interesting to justify your sense of Islam you bring in Boko Haram and the kidnapping of the Christian girl for blasphemy. (Your average Muslims??). I hold a degree in Islamic studies and am now studying a post grad; so I know what I am talking about. As a Christian myself I know we too have our faults in society but on no account does that represent the mass.

So you hold yourself to be an expert? Well, there are only two experts–Allah and Mohammed. Islam is found in the Koran, Sira and Hadith. Everything else is comment, including your post grad courses.

The “several verses which contribute to peace on earth and tolerance for all” in the Koran are all abrogated by later jihadic verses. The man who does not understand the use of abrogation should not comment about the Koran.

Seek critical study of source texts, not university propaganda. After you have read the Koran in the correct time order (to see the abrogation) and read the Sira by Ishaq or al Tabari and Bukhari, come back and comment. (21% of Bukhari’s hadiths are about murderous jihad.) Master the Sunna of Mohammed and then talk to us.

Look at Mohammed’s life. He preached the religion of Islam in Mecca for 13 years and got 150 Meccans to become Muslims. He moved to Medina and attacked every single neighbor he had, without exception. In his rise to absolute power he was responsible for an event of violence on the average of every 6 weeks for the last 9 years of his life. Peace on earth, what a joke!

Boko Haram jihadists follow pure Medinan Islam. You confuse Muslim-ology with the study of Islam. Start with Islam to understand Muslims. Do not start with Muslims to understand Islamic doctrine.

Another thing about those peaceful believers who make up the mass of Muslims, do you notice that they don’t condemn the murder of Christians? They are silent. Do they teach you in your post grad Islam classes that “silence is consent”?

Have you ever condemned the jihadic murder of Christians? Buddhists? Hindus? Jews? Over 270 million non-Muslims were murdered by jihad over the last 1400 years. And you speak of peace.

Christians who are silent in the face of Islamic jihad against Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindu and atheists are giving consent to this brutality. There have been over 20,000 jihad attacks since 9/11. What noise are you making about that? Silence is consent.

Your apologist education has made you a deluded dhimmi. What is truly tragic is that you represent the pious pacifism of today’s Christians. You are so nice, but you are ruled by fear. It is odd how many Christians live in fear, yet Jesus told his followers, again and again, not to fear. Put down the gospel of nice and take up the Gospel of Christ and take on spiritual warfare.

Oh, and you Jews, take up the mantle of Aaron, Gideon, Deborah and David. Let the Hindus remember the Bhagavad Gita. Let the Buddhists take a lesson from Rinzai Zen.

We either stand together in this civilizational war or we will all be annihilated. See Turkey, Egypt, North Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and the other graveyards of Kafir civilization.

Army teams going to Africa as terror threat grows

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Associated Press - In this Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011 photo, Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. African command, attends a conference on terrorism in the Sahara in Algiers, Algeria.

Associated Press – In this Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011 photo, Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. African command, attends a conference on terrorism in the Sahara in Algiers, Algeria.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Army brigade will begin sending small teams into as many as 35 African nations early next year, part of an intensifying Pentagon effort to train countries to battle extremists and give the U.S. a ready and trained force to dispatch to Africa if crises requiring the U.S. military emerge.

The teams will be limited to training and equipping efforts, and will not be permitted to conduct military operations without specific, additional approvals from the secretary of defense.

The sharper focus on Africa by the U.S. comes against a backdrop of widespread insurgent violence across North Africa, and as the African Union and other nations discuss military intervention in northern Mali.

The terror threat from al-Qaida linked groups in Africa has been growing steadily, particularly with the rise of the extremist Islamist sect Boko Haram in Nigeria. Officials also believe that the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which killed the ambassador and three other Americans, may have been carried out by those who had ties to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

This first-of-its-kind brigade assignment — involving teams from the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division — will target countries such as Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger, where al-Qaida-linked groups have been active. It also will assist nations like Kenya and Uganda that have been battling al-Shabab militants on the front lines in Somalia.

Gen. Carter Ham, the top U.S. commander in Africa, noted that the brigade has a small drone capability that could be useful in Africa. But he also acknowledged that he would need special permission to tap it for that kind of mission.

“If they want them for (military) operations, the brigade is our first sourcing solution because they’re prepared,” said Gen. David Rodriguez, the head of U.S. Army Forces Command. “But that has to go back to the secretary of defense to get an execute order.”

Already the U.S. military has plans for nearly 100 different exercises, training programs and other activities across the widely diverse continent. But the new program faces significant cultural and language challenges, as well as nagging questions about how many of the lower-level enlisted members of the brigade, based in Fort Riley, Kan., will participate, since the teams would largely be made up of more senior enlisted troops and officers. A full brigade numbers about 3,500, but the teams could range from just a few people to a company of about 200. In rare cases for certain exercises, it could be a battalion, which would number about 800.

To bridge the cultural gaps with the African militaries, the Army is reaching out across the services, the embassies and a network of professional organizations to find troops and experts that are from some of the African countries. The experts can be used during training, and the troops can both advise or travel with the teams as they begin the program.

Read more at news.yahoo.com

Religious Apartheid: Islamic Terror Group Slaughters Christians in Nigeria

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NigeriaBlast_Boko_HaramBreitbart:

By  AWR Hawkins

Boko Haram is a Nigerian-based terror group which actually brags of its ties to Al Qaeda. Since 2009, it has conducted a brutal and intense war against its own government which has involved the slaughter of Christians. It has also voiced threats against the United States and President Barack Obama.

The terrorist group has murdered more than 3,000 people since 2009, most of whom were Christians; many of the victims were killed by being chopped up with machetes, while others were tortured until death or burned alive.

Just last weekend, members of Boko Haram attacked and killed 10 Christians in northeast Nigeria and burned their houses to the ground. Police reports indicate Boko Haram members attacked at night by setting the houses on fire, catching the victims as they ran out, and cutting them down with machetes.

In January 2012 alone, Boko Haram killed more people than died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria combined that month.

The number of people Boko Haram has killed this year ranges from 770 to 860; the majority of victims were Christians.

In August 2011, a Boko Haram operative bombed the United Nations building in Abuja, killing 23 and wounding 18. Following the attack, Boko Haram released a pre-recorded video wherein the bomber said he carried out the attack to send “a message to the U.S. president and ‘other infidels.’”

Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. Africa Command, is warning that Boko Haram’s focus is increasingly broadening, and could soon include attacks on Europe if left unchecked.

On Dec. 3 Ham said, “Anything that is Western is a legitimate target in their eyes. I think it’s in our national interest to help the Nigerians address the problem internally before it gets worse.”

Related articles

Muslim Persecution of Christians: August, 2012

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by Raymond Ibrahim at Gatestone Institute:

Egypt: The nation’s jihad organizations dropped leaflets calling on Muslims to kill Christians wherever they found them. Islamists in the Constituent Assembly demanded that the Coptic Church’s funds be placed under state financial control.

While many people are regularly persecuted by Islam’s blasphemy law, one particular case made August headlines: a 14-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan, Rimsha Masih, was arrested, accused of burning pages of a Quran. Rioting Muslims destroyed Christian homes and churches, tore Bibles to pieces and broke crosses, while calling for the death penalty against her. Because this story made it to the mainstream media, widespread international condemnation caused Pakistani authorities to release her recently, not by annulling Pakistan’s blasphemy law, but by finding loopholes, from characterizing the girl as retarded—Islamic law does not mandate punishment for blasphemers if they are retarded—to the unprecedented exposure of a Muslim cleric who framed her.

Because this incident prompted a widespread rampage against Pakistan’s Christians, thousands have deserted their homes and are dispossessed. The Christians from Rimsha’s neighborhood, including women and children, fled into the woods in fear of Muslim retribution, while others were evicted by their Muslim landlords. A few Christians sleeping overnight on the ground just miles away from Pakistani government buildings decided to build a church there and make it their permanent dwelling place. “Here it is not anybody’s home, nobody’s land. Let us live here in safety,” said one. Another said: “We have cleared this place with our hands, and we have laid the first foundation of a small church here. Although this is a mere skeleton made of tree branches, this is the holy home of God. This should be respected.”

Categorized by theme, August’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Jihad Killings and Christian Displacement

Iraq: What Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors, characterized as “religicide,” continues unabated in the nation that was liberated by U.S. forces a decade ago: “Christians in cities like Baghdad and Mosul are gripped by terrorism. They are fleeing in droves. Today [August 16] it was reported that at least 20 people died in blasts and shootings across the country.” Before the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Mosul was home to some 75,000 Christians, but now the number has dropped to around 25,000. Christian homes are set on fire, bombs placed in their cars; other Christian families are receiving letters threatening them to leave Iraq or be kidnapped or killed.

Ivory Coast: As part of the civil war, Muslim rebels “massacred hundreds and displaced tens of thousands” of predominantly Christian supporters of Laurent Gbagbo. Since the attack, when their homes were taken by rebels, some 5,000 predominantly Christian ethnic Guere have been forced to flee into the ungoverned, inhospitable bush, or to the Catholic mission in Duekoue. The priest there reported that the mission has also been threatened by “crowds of angry youths.”

Mali: As many as 200,000 Christians are fleeing to Algeria and Mauritania, where they are seeking a safe haven from Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qaeda, who have become increasingly active in the northern regions of the nation.

Nigeria: The Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram [Western Education is a Sin] continued its jihad [holy war] to purge north Nigeria of all Christians. In one instance, gunmen murdered a 57-year-old evangelist of a Pentecostal church. When threatened earlier, he had said “I leave everything in the hands of God.”

Syria: Some 12,000 people were blockaded in the predominantly Christian town of Rableh by anti-government forces; they killed several people trying to leave and refused the entry of food and medical supplies. Government forces had reportedly driven out the opposition by August 24. Christians were also given an ultimatum to leave the nearby cities of Qusayr and Homs, which has been almost entirely cleansed of its 50,000-60,000 Christian population. The predominantly Christian part of Aleppo was also hit by heavy fighting earlier this month; and a car bomb was detonated in the predominantly Christian area of Jaramana, a suburb of Damascus, as “a crowd of faithful, families, elderly people, women and children, were heading to the cemetery to bury two young people who had died a day earlier, on August 27, also victims of an IED. Twelve died (other sources say as many as 27), including five children, and injuring more than 50 people.” Further, “a family of Armenian Christians was found murdered, and all members of the family horribly decapitated.”

Church Attacks

Azerbaijan: The highest appeals court upheld the decision to close Greater Grace Church, “the first religious community to be liquidated by a court since the country’s harsh new religion law came into force in 2009.” The church, registered since 1993, had provided a place for Christian worship and teaching for almost 20 years; and with a congregation of nearly 500, was one of the larger Protestant churches in the country.

Indonesia: Two churches were the latest to be forcibly closed in West Java: First, a “large tent” used for services by St. Johannes Baptista Church in Bogor was sealed off by authorities on August 7. The congregation had been using the tent since 2006 as a temporary location while they awaited a permit for a proper building, for which it had applied in 2000. Police threatened to “tear down” the tent if the Christians continued to use it; the church leader suspects the hostility is linked to the growth of the congregation, which now numbers around 500. Second, Batak Karo Protestant Church in Bandung was sealed off by protesters who claimed that the congregation had earlier agreed not to use the building, even though it now has all necessary permits to hold service.

Kenya: After a fight ensued between the supporters of a Muslim cleric who had died and the police, a church near the mosque where the funeral was being held was set on fire, and another church was attacked. Separately, another church was attacked and looted “by an armed mob,” believed to be sympathizers of the al-Shabaab terrorist organization. In the words of the pastor who witnessed the pillage, “attackers armed with guns stormed the compound and immediately began pulling down one iron sheet after another, and soon 60 iron sheets were gone. It was a terrible sight to watch the walls of the church come down, [but] I could not shout for help because the attackers could gun me down. Shocked and dismayed, the church’s 60 congregants arrived for worship the next day to find their church building in ruins.” Police were told that there were threats of an attack and that local Muslims were saying things such as “we do not want infidels in this area,” but did nothing. These latest attacks “came only one week after al-Shabab militants hurled grenades into the African Inland Church of Garissa, in eastern Kenya, and opened fire on congregants, killing 17 people, including 15 worshippers. Grenades were also thrown at the local Catholic church.” More than 14 churches have been attacked in Kenya since April.

Nigeria: Gunmen, probably connected with the jihadi organization Boko Haram, “stormed the Deeper Life Church, where Christian worshippers were gathered in prayer, and surrounded the church in the middle of a worship service and opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles on the worshippers.” At least 19 of them were killed, including the pastor. The following day, an unexploded bomb was discovered at Revival Church.

Syria: Gunmen attacked the Catholic monastery of Mar Musa, which dates from the 4th century, and is located north of Damascus. None of the monks was hurt, although the monastery was, in the words of Father Dall’Oglio, “sacked,” and “gunmen stole everything they could steal,” including tractors and other agricultural tools.

Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism

Egypt: A Christian man accused of defaming Islam was arrested after a complaint in which he was accused of posting opinions in Facebook which insulted Muhammad. Insults to Islam and the prophet are considered crimes in Egypt under Article 98(f) of the Penal Code, which states: “Confinement for a period of not less than six months and not exceeding five years… shall be the penalty inflicted on whoever makes use of religion in propagating, either by words, in writing, or in any other means, extreme ideas for the purpose of inciting strife, ridiculing or insulting a heavenly religion or a sect following it, or damaging national unity.”

Pakistan: After a Pakistani flag with the name of “Allah” on it accidentally blew from a Christian’s property to a Muslim’s, the Muslim accused the Christian of deliberately trying to blaspheme the name of Allah. This accusation was advertised in the local mosques, and prompted enraged Muslims to threaten to burn down the homes of the 15 Christian families in the area. Also, a Christian pastor, who had preached among Muslims, some of whom showed interest in converting, was threatened and subsequently kidnapped.

Tanzania: A 17-year-old girl, Eva Abdullah, who had abandoned Islam three years ago to convert to Christianity, was sentenced to two years in prison after being accused of desecrating the Quran. Her parents had disowned her and “a group of radicals” tried to “persuade” her to renounce her Christian faith. When she refused, they falsely accused her of desecrating a Quran.

Tunisia: The nation’s ruling Islamist party filed a bill to criminalize offenses against “sacred values.” “Crimes” would mandate prison terms and fines for broadly worded offenses, such as insulting or mocking the “sanctity of religion.” Among other things, the bill also codifies the levels of offense to religious feelings, including “insults, profanity, derision and representation of Allah and Mohammed.”

Dhimmitude

[General Abuse, Debasement, and Suppression of Non-Muslims as "Tolerated" Citizens]

Egypt: The nation’s jihad organizations dropped leaflets calling on Muslims to kill Christians wherever they found them. Coptic shop owners who sell Christian icons and statues received threatening letters. Muslim “gangs” plundered and kidnapped for ransom Christians. Islamists in the Constituent Assembly demanded that the Coptic Church’s funds be placed under state financial control, a measure categorically rejected by Copts: the state in no way funds the Church, even though mosques are funded by taxpayers, including Christians. Condemning the proposal, the acting Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church said the demand has only one meaning: “that Copts are clearly persecuted.” Despite promising greater representation for Egypt’s Copts, President Morsi broke his word and allowed only one Copt, a female, to represent the nation’s 10-14% Christians in the newly formed Cabinet: “We had expected an increase in the representation of Copts especially after the number of ministries increased to 35. But the formation ignored all the known rights and concepts of citizenship,” said the acting Patriarch: “It is not right that Copts get treated in this way.” When Egypt’s Constituent Assembly proposed a law to criminalize “forced labor, slavery, the trafficking of women and children, human organs, and the sex trade,” from which Christians, especially females, would benefit, the Islamist party complained.

Iran: According to Mohabat News, authorities “raise[d] unsubstantiated charges” against five arrested converts to Christianity to “pressure” and “intimidate” them, including by falsely accusing them of desecrating the Quran, and holding them for indefinite periods. “Although their situation is still unclear six months after their arrest, there is no doubt that the Christians’ only crime is related to their faith in Jesus Christ.”

Pakistan: Eleven Christian student nurses were poisoned with mercury in their tea. It is believed that the Christian women were targeted as punishment for drinking tea while their Muslim colleagues were fasting during the month of Ramadan. And a 56-year-old Christian woman at the Karachi Press Club recounted how she and her family were enslaved and forced to work without pay, and tortured and beaten. Muslim “feudal lords” are threatening her and her extended family, with, among other charges, accusations of blasphemy: “Please protect us,” they said. “We don’t want to go back.”

Saudi Arabia: The last of the 35 Ethiopian Christians held in detention since December after being arrested for holding a prayer meeting in a private home was deported home: “We have arrived home safe,” one of the released said: “We believe that we are released as the result of the pressure exerted by ICC and others. The Saudi officials do not tolerate any religions other than Islam. They consider non-Muslims unbelievers. They are full of hatred towards non-Muslims.”

Syria: A number of Melchite Greek Catholic priests, including the archbishop, fled to Lebanon after their offices were ransacked. According to Fides, “unidentified groups who want to feed a religious war and drag the Syrian population into sectarian conflicts” attacked the Christian area in the old quarter of Aleppo. A Byzantine Christian museum and an office of the Maronite Christian faith were also damaged.

Turkey: The chairman of Parliament’s education committee is accusing the French government of “planting seeds of hate” with its move to include the Armenian genocide in history and geography books used in French secondary schools. Armenia, backed by many historians, says that about 1.5 million Armenians were killed in what is now eastern Turkey during World War I in a deliberate policy of genocide ordered by the Ottoman government.

Uzbekistan: A 26-year-old Christian woman, paralyzed from youth, and her mother were violently attacked by six men with sticks who broke into their home at 4 a.m. The men ransacked the home, confiscating icons, bibles, religious calendars and prayer books. When the paralyzed woman furtively tried to phone for help, she was beaten again. They were all taken to the police department, where the woman was “offered to convert to Islam.” She refused, and the judge eventually “decided that the women had resisted police and had stored the banned religious literature at home and conducted missionary activities. He fined them 20 minimum monthly wages each.”

About this Series

Because the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching epidemic proportions, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:

  1. To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, Muslim persecution of Christians.
  2. To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; apostasy and blasphemy laws that criminalize and punish with death those who “offend” Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to India in the East, and throughout the West wherever there are Muslims—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

U.S. Distorts Nigerian Jihad on Christians

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Boko Haram’s leader, flanked by armed jihadis, calls on Nigeria’s president to “repent and forsake Christianity.”

By Raymond Ibrahim:

While the Obama administration continues to say that the Islamic group Boko Haram’s jihad against Nigeria’s Christians—which has seen countless churches destroyed, and thousands of Christians killed— has nothing to do with religion, the group once again made clear that it is all about religion. According to a recent report:

In an online video released last week, the militant Muslim group Boko Haram demanded that Nigeria’s Christian president either convert to Islam, or resign. [Boko] Haram head Abubakar Shekau told President Goodluck Jonathan to “repent and forsake Christianity,” otherwise Shekau’s followers would continue their violent campaign…

Indeed, despite the fact that the Obama administration has agreed to spend $600 million in a USAID initiative launched to ascertain the “true causes” behind Boko Haram’s murderous bloodlust, it was clear from the very beginning that the group and other Muslims were enraged that Nigeria was being led by a Christian, President Goodluck Jonathan, even though he won elections “by a landslide.”

Writing back in April 2011, Nigerian analyst Peter Run said:

The current wave of riots was triggered by the Independent National Election Commission’s (INEC) announcement on Monday [April 18, 2011] that the incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, won in the initial round of ballot counts. That there were riots in the largely Muslim inhabited northern states where the defeat of the Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari was [deemed] intolerable was unsurprising…. Now they are angry despite experts and observers concurring that this is the fairest and most independent election in recent Nigerian history.

Once again, then, reality is easily ascertained—at root, Boko Haram’s terror campaign is entirely motivated by religion—even as the Obama administration refuses to designate the group as a terrorist organization, spends millions of U.S. tax dollars on superfluous initiatives (or diversions), and pressures the Nigerian president to make concessions, including building more mosques, the very structures where Muslims are radicalized and recruited to Boko Haram’s jihad.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.