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The Mass Exodus of Christians from the Muslim World

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images (34)By Raymond Ibrahim:

A mass exodus of Christians is currently underway.  Millions of Christians are being displaced from one end of the Islamic world to the other.

We are reliving the true history of how the Islamic world—much of which prior to the Islamic conquests was almost entirely Christian—came into being.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently said: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.”  In our lifetime alone “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.”

Ongoing reports from the Islamic world certainly support this conclusion.  Iraq was the earliest indicator of the fate awaiting Christians once Islamic forces are liberated from the grip of dictators.

In 2003, Iraq’s Christian population was at least one million.  Today fewer than 400,000 remain—the result of an anti-Christian campaign that began with the U.S. occupation of Iraq, when countless Christian churches were bombed and countless Christians killed, including by crucifixion and beheading.

The 2010 Baghdad church attack, which saw nearly 60 Christian worshippers slaughtered, is the tip of a decade-long iceberg.

Now as the U.S. supports the jihad on secular president Assad, the same pattern has come to Syria: entire regions and towns where Christians lived centuries before Islam came into being have now been emptied, as the opposition targets Christians for kidnapping, plundering, and beheadings, all in compliance with mosque calls that it’s a “sacred duty” to drive Christians away.

In October 2012 the last Christian in the city of Homs—which had a Christian population of some 80,000 before jihadis came—was murdered.  One teenage Syrian girl said: “We left because they were trying to kill us… because we were Christians….  Those who were our neighbors turned against us. At the end, when we ran away, we went through balconies. We did not even dare go out on the street in front of our house.”

In Egypt, some 100,000 Christian Copts have fled their homeland soon after the “Arab Spring.”  In September 2012, the Sinai’s small Christian community was attacked and evicted by al-Qaeda linked Muslims, Reuters reported.

But even before that, the Coptic Orthodox Church lamented the “repeated incidents of displacement of Copts from their homes, whether by force or threat. Displacements began in Ameriya [62 Christian families evicted], then they stretched to Dahshur [120 Christian families evicted], and today terror and threats have reached the hearts and souls of our Coptic children in Sinai.”

Iraq, Syria, and Egypt are the Arab world.  But even in “black” African and “white” European nations with Muslim majorities, Christians are fleeing.

In Mali, after a 2012 Islamic coup, as many as 200,000 Christians fled.  According to reports, “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.” At least one pastor was beheaded.

Even in European Bosnia, Christians are leaving en mass “amid mounting discrimination and Islamization.”  Only 440,000 Catholics remain in the Balkan nation, half the prewar figure.  Problems cited are typical:  “while dozens of mosques were built in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, no building permissions were given for Christian churches.”

“Time is running out as there is a worrisome rise in radicalism,” said one authority, who further added that the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina were “persecuted for centuries” after European powers “failed to support them in their struggle against the Ottoman Empire.”

And so history repeats itself.

One can go on and on:

  • In Ethiopia, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes when “Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes.”
  • In the Ivory Coast—where Christians have been crucified—Islamic rebels “massacred hundreds and displaced tens of thousands” of Christians.
  • In Libya, Islamic rebels forced several Christian nun orders serving the sick and needy since 1921 to flee.
  • In Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, where nary a Sunday passes without a church bombing, Christians are fleeing by the thousands; one region has been emptied of 95% of its Christian population.
  • In Pakistan, after a Christian child was falsely accused of desecrating a Koran and Muslims went on an anti-Christian rampage, an entire Christian village—men, women, and children—was forced to flee into the nearby woods, where they built a church, permanently resided there.
  • In Somali, where Christianity is completely outlawed, Muslim converts to Christianity are fleeing to neighboring nations, including Kenya and Ethiopia, sometimes to be tracked down and executed.
  • In Sudan, over half a million people, mostly Christian, have been stripped of citizenship in response to the South’s secession, and forced to relocate.

To anyone following the plight of Christians under Islam, none of this is surprising.  As I document in my new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, all around the Islamic world—in nations that do not share the same race, language, culture, or economics, in nations that share only Islam—Christians are being persecuted into extinction.   Such is the true face of the global Islamic resurgence.

Often forgotten is that, in the 7th century, half of the world’s entire Christian population was spread across what is now nonchalantly called the “Muslim world.”  Then, Islam, born in the deserts of Arabia, burst out in a series of world-altering jihads, conquering and slowly transforming these once Christian nations into Islamic nations.

In order to evade sporadic persecution and constant discrimination, over the centuries most Christians converted, while others fled.  A few opted to remain Christian and live as barely tolerated third-class subjects, or dhimmis, according to Sharia law.

They eventually experienced something of a renaissance during the colonial and post-colonial era, when many Muslims were Westward-looking.

But today, with the international resurgence of Muhammad’s religion, these remaining Christians are reaching extinction, as Islam’s 1400 year mission of supremacy and global hegemony continues unabated—even as the West looks the other way, that is, when it’s not actually supporting it in the context of the so-called “Arab Spring.”

RAYMOND IBRAHIM, a Middle East and Islam specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. A widely published author, best known for The Al Qaeda Reader (Doubleday, 2007), he guest lectures at universities, including the National Defense Intelligence College, briefs governmental agencies, such as U.S. Strategic Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency, provides expert testimony for Islam-related lawsuits, and has testified before Congress regarding the conceptual failures that dominate American discourse concerning Islam and the worsening plight of Egypt’s Christian Copts. Among other media, he has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, C-SPAN, PBS, Reuters, Al-Jazeera, CBN, and NPR.

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Muslim Persecution of Christians: February, 2013

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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

An Islamic Declaration of War on Christianity

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Unprecedented: one of Christendom’s most sacred sites turned into a war zone under the Muslim Brotherhood’s President Morsi.

Unprecedented: one of Christendom’s most sacred sites turned into a war zone under the Muslim Brotherhood’s President Morsi.

by Raymond Ibrahim:

While it is easy to confuse the recent jihadi attack on Egypt’s St. Mark Cathedral in Cairo as just more of the usual, this attack has great symbolic significance, and in many ways bodes great evil for Egypt’s millions of Christians.

Consider some facts: St. Mark Cathedral—named after the author of the Gospel of the same name who brought Christianity to Egypt some 600 years before Amr bin al-As brought Islam with the sword—is not simply “just another” Coptic church to be attacked and/or set aflame by a Muslim mob (see my forthcoming book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, for a comprehensive idea of past and present Muslim attacks on Coptic churches).  Instead, it is considered the most sacred building for millions of Christians around the world—above and beyond the many millions of Copts in and out of Egypt.  As the only apostolic see in the entire continent of Africa, its significance and evangelizing mission extends to the entire continent, including nations such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, to name just a few.  As an apostolic see—the actual seat of an apostle of Christ—the cathedral further possesses historical significance for Christianity in general.

In short, Muslim mobs—aided and abetted by the state of Egypt under Muslim Brotherhood tutelage—did not merely attack yet one more Coptic church, but rather committed an act of war against all Christianity.  Such an open attack on a Christian center which holds symbolic and historic significance for all Christians—St. Mark, whose relics are in the cathedral and who authored one of the four Gospels of the Bible, belongs to all Christians not just Copts—was an open attack on a universally acknowledged Christian shrine.  It was precisely these sorts of attacks on eastern and orthodox churches—including the destruction of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem in 1009—that presaged the way for the crusades (back when Christianity was not utterly fragmented and disunited as it is today).

Put differently, this jihadi attack on St. Mark Cathedral is no different for Copts than a jihadi attack on the Vatican would be for Catholics.  Or, to maintain the analogy, but from the other side, it would be no different than a “crusader” attack on the Grand Mosque of Mecca for Muslims.

While one can only imagine how the world’s Muslims would react to a “Christian/Western” assault on their most sacred of shrines, “post-Christian” Western leaders, as usual, stand by idly (not unlike Egyptian state security, which stood by idly as the Muslim mob opened fire on the cathedral).

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Obama’s New Libya

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Libya_Jihad-450x333By :

Remember all the hoopla the Obama administration engaged in after helping Libya’s “freedom fighters” oust (and sodomize and murder) the nation’s former president, Muammar Gaddafi? Remember the rationale used by Obama to justify using the U.S. military to help Libya’s “opposition”?  In his March 28, 2011 speech, he spoke of “our responsibilities to our fellow human beings,” adding that not assisting them “would have been a betrayal of who we are.”

Although it was common knowledge that al-Qaeda and other fiercely anti-American forces were involved in the Libyan jihad, this did not shake Obama’s “responsibilities” to his “fellow human beings.” Predictably, the thanks the U.S. received was an al-Qaeda attack on the American embassy in Benghazi and the murders of four American officials, including Ambassador Chris Stevens (an attack the Obama administration tried to frame as a product of an amateur YouTube video that had “offended” Muslims).

Beyond the attack on Libya’s American embassy, there has been no end of examples of the true nature of the “New Libya” Obama helped create. On Sunday, December 30, an explosion rocked a Coptic Christian church near the western city of Misrata, where a group of U.S.-backed rebels hold a major checkpoint, killing two. Two months later, on February 28, another Coptic Christian church located in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked by armed Muslim militants, resulting in serious injuries for the priest and an assistant.

On February 10, four foreign Christians were arrested in Benghazi, 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, accusing them of being missionaries—simply because they were found in possession of Bibles and other Christian “paraphernalia.” Many of these Christians have been tortured, some with acid.

Read more at Front Page

 

Hatred of Christians Unleashed in Libya

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copts-attacked1By Raymond Ibrahim:

Last Thursday, 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.  It is the second church to be attacked in two months.  Earlier, on Sunday, December 30, an explosion 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.

Such attacks rarely if ever occurred under Col. Gaddafi.

There are currently few details.  Based on countless examples from past experience—including centuries of demonstrable continuity—there were likely loud cries of “Allahu Akbar!” with an exuberant sense of Islamic supremacism in the air. As for motivation, it was likely sheer anti-Christian sentiment.  For where else are Christians being Christians than in church—where they are being as apolitical as they are spiritual, simply trying to worship their God in peace, only to be attacked yet again.

At any rate, here is one more piece of solid evidence to validate my observation from last week—that the recent spate of arrests of Christians in Libya on the accusation that they are “missionaries” is a pretext for simple, good old-fashioned Christian hate.  After all, this armed attack on a Christian church in Benghazi occurred right around the same time 100 Christian Copts were arrested and tortured, their heads shaven and their tattooed crosses burned off with acid.

Libya’s Islamists had no problem arresting and torturing these Copts, indeed, boasting of it by posting a video of them on the Internet.  Libyan law makes it illegal for any Christian to display their Christianity or, worse, preach it.  Thus the Islamic militias are off the hook, as they were merely performing the equivalent of a “citizen’s arrest” when they abducted and trapped all those Egyptian Christians because they had crosses, Bibles, and religious icons.

Read more at Front Page

Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the DHFC, is a widely published author on Islam, and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. Join him as he explores the “Intersection”—the pivotal but ignored point where Islam and Christianity meet—including by examining the latest on Christian persecution, translating important Arabic news that never reaches the West, and much more.

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Coptic Activist: U.S. Needs to Stand for Freedom in Egypt

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Ashraf Ramelah

Ashraf Ramelah

IPT News:

News reports from Egypt focus on protests against the new Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government and other national political developments. But each week brings a new set of attacks on the country’s Christian minority, attacks that often are overlooked by western media

Just this week, Muslims tried to block expansion of a Coptic church. And priests from another church reportedly were threatened with death if they didn’t convert to Islam. The previous week, a Coptic church was set on fire after a neighbor complained about noise during prayer services.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism spoke with Ashraf Ramelah about the challenges facing Egypt’s Coptic Christian population, which is estimated at about 10 percent of the country’s 85 million people.

Ramelah, an Egyptian native, founded Voice of the Copts in 2007 to raise awareness of persecution against Christians and fight for “freedom of religion, cultural identity and women’s rights.”

Go to IPT to view the video of the interview

 

Muslim beheads two Coptic Christians in Koranic ritual – in New Jersey!

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Yusuf Ibrahim

Yusuf Ibrahim

BY :

Here we have another “silent” story about Islamic violence in our country with nary a word from the mainstream media about it. The country goes gaga over a beautiful model’s murder at the hands of an international legless sports hero, but the beheading of two Egyptian Coptic Christian men in New Jersey by a Muslim gets a pass. Why?

Simple. The gruesome beheading invokes the Muslim ritual, called for in the Koran. Koranic verse 8:12 reads: “I will instill terror into the hearts of unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingers off.”

Our media shuts its eyes, turns its head and stuffs its ears when anything negative about the primitive actions of Muslim occur.

Maj. Nidal Hasan, who brutally slaughtered 13 of his fellow troops at Fort Hood, Texas, and wounded 22 others, was said to have shouted, “Allahu Akhbar”  during his shooting spree. He was just following Koranic orders to kill infidels. By the way, “Allahu Akhbar” is Arabic for “God is great.” The Pentagon’s “thorough” investigation into Hasan’s murderous assault never mentioned Islam, the Koran or the major’s religion in its final report. It was considered a workplace act of violence.

We are giving Islamic radicals a free pass to ritually murder those considered infidels, or non-believers in “the religion of peace,” and Muslims considered violators of Islam. May God help us!

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Egyptian Cleric Threatens Christian Copts with Genocide

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By Raymond Ibrahim

Islamic leaders continue to portray the popular protests against President Morsi and his recently passed Sharia-heavy constitution as products of Egypt’s Christians. Recently, Muslim Brotherhood leader Safwat Hegazy said in an open rally, as captured on video:

A message to the church of Egypt, from an Egyptian Muslim: I tell the church — by Allah, and again, by Allah — if you conspire and unite with the remnants [opposition] to bring Morsi down, that will be another matter…. our red line is the legitimacy of Dr. Muhammad Morsi. Whoever splashes water on it, we will splash blood on him.”

Dr. Wagdi Ghoneim

More recently, Dr. Wagdi Ghoneim — who earlier praised Allah for the death of the late Coptic Pope Shenouda, cursing him to hell and damnation on video — made another video, entitled, “A Notice and Warning to the Crusaders in Egypt,” a reference to the nation’s Copts, which he began by saying, “You are playing with fire in Egypt, I swear, the first people to be burned by the fire are you [Copts].” The video was made in the context of the Tahrir protests against Morsi: Islamic leaders, such as Hegazy and Ghoneim, seek to portray the Copts as dominant elements in those protests; according to them, no real Muslim would participate. Ghoneim even went on to say that most of the people at the protests were Copts, “and we know you hid your [wrist] crosses by lowering your sleeves.”

The heart of Ghoneim’s message was genocidal: “The day Egyptians — and I don’t even mean the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafis, regular Egyptians — feel that you are against them, you will be wiped off the face of the earth. I’m warning you now: do not play with fire!”

Along with trying to incite Egypt’s Muslims against the Copts, and threatening them with annihilation, Ghoneim made other telling assertions, including:

  • Addressing the Christians of Egypt as “Crusaders,” once again showing Islam’s simplistic, black-and-white vision, which clumps all Christians — of all nations, past and present, regardless of historical context and denomination — as one, in accordance with an Islamic tradition that states “All infidels are one religion.”
  • Comparing Christian Copts to animals: “Respect yourselves and live with us and we will protect you… Why?… because Allah has forbidden me to be cruel to animals. I’m not trying to compare you to animals … but if I am not cruel to animals or plants, shall I be cruel to a soul created by Allah? You are an infidel in Allah’s sight — and it is for him to judge you. However, when you live in my country, it is forbidden for me to be unjust to you — but that doesn’t mean we are equal. No, oh no.”
  • Telling Copts: “I want to remind you that Egypt is a Muslim country…. if you don’t like the Muslim Sharia, you have eight countries that have a Cross on their flag [in Europe], so go to them. However, if you want to stay here in Egypt with us, know your place and be respectful. You already have all your rights — by Allah, even more than Muslims… No one investigates your homes, no one investigates your churches. In fact, in the past, the Islamic groups used to fake their IDs and put Christian names on them when they would go out for [jihadi] operations, so that when the police would catch them, they would see they are Christians and be left alone.” Ghoneim misses the irony of what he says: Police know that Egyptian Christians are not going to engage in terror; Egyptian Muslims are suspect.
  • Saying, in mocking tones, towards the end: “What do you think — that America will protect you? Let’s be very clear, America will not protect you. If so, it would have protected the Christians of Iraq when they were being butchered!” — a reference to the fact that, after the U.S. ousted Saddam Hussein, half of Iraq’s Christian population has either been butchered or fled the nation, and all under U.S. auspices.
  • Claiming that the Copts are only four million while the Muslims are 85 million — even as Coptic Orthodox Church registries maintain that there are more than 15 million Copts, and most outside analysts say 10 million, in Egypt— and adding that Morsi was only being nice by saying, as he did during one of his speeches: “There are no minorities in Egypt.” Ghoneim fails to explain, if Copts are so few — four million compared to 85 million — how could they be so influential, and flood the Tahrir protests with such large numbers?
  • Mocking new Coptic Pope Tawadros—not surprising considering his great hate for the former Pope—by claiming that the new Pope urged Copts to protest; that the new Pope wants to see Morsi and Sharia law fall, and by adding, “Is it not enough that you have all those monasteries?”

 

Watch Raymond Ibrahim talk with Robert Spencer about what’s going on in Egypt, the plight of Coptic Christians, Islamic Revivalism, the Muslim Brotherhood and more:

Blasphemy and Islam

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Coptic Christian blogger Alber Saber

Coptic Christian blogger Alber Saber

By Andrew C. McCarthy

In Cairo on Wednesday, a Coptic Christian blogger named Alber Saber was convicted of blasphemy and “contempt of religion.” There’s a tragic irony: As any of the country’s Christians can tell you, contempt of religion is not merely permitted but encouraged in the new, post-Mubarak Egypt. What is criminal, what has become increasingly perilous, is any criticism of Islam.

Nor is truth a defense. Another Egyptian court recently upheld the blasphemy conviction of Makarem Diab, also a Coptic Christian. Diab had gotten into a discussion with a Muslim acquaintance, Abd al-Hameed, who, in the course of mocking Diab’s faith, insisted that Jesus was a serial fornicator. Diab countered Hameed’s baseless taunt with an assertion most Islamic scholars regard as accurate: namely, that Mohammed had more than four wives. Yet, because the context of Diab’s assertion evinced an intention to cast Islam’s prophet in an unfavorable light, Diab was prosecuted for “insulting the prophet” and “provoking students.” He was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.

This is now everyday life in Egypt. It is also certain to be the future of Egypt. The overwhelmingly Islamist population, having first elected Islamic supremacists led by the Muslim Brotherhood to top leadership positions, is now poised to adopt a constitution that is founded on sharia, Islam’s totalitarian legal framework, and that expressly enshrines these blasphemy standards. But the problem is not just sharia in Egypt. Sharia is here.

About three weeks ago, another Egyptian court sentenced seven people to death after convicting them in absentia on blasphemy charges. Most of the seven are in the United States. Most of them are Coptic Christians; one is a Florida-based pastor who is a blistering critic of Islamic scripture. The charges relate to the defendants’ alleged involvement in “Innocence of Muslims,” an obscure amateur video that Islamists have frivolously cited as a pretext for their latest round of international mayhem — and that the Obama administration has fraudulently portrayed as the catalyst of a massacre in Benghazi in which jihadists killed four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya.

So how has President Obama responded to the Egyptian government’s human-rights violations, its failure to protect the Copts from persecution (indeed, its willing participation in that persecution), and its provocations against Americans — which now include ordering their killing, through a kangaroo-court process that flouts our due-process standards, over their engagement in activity that is expressly protected by our Constitution?

Well . . . the president has announced that not only will he continue funding Egypt’s Islamist government, but he intends to include in that U.S. aid the provision of 20 F-16 fighter jets. Moreover, Obama is continuing his administration’s collaboration with the 57-government Organization of Islamic Cooperation on the “Istanbul Process.” That is the OIC’s campaign to impose sharia’s repressive blasphemy standards.

The most recent aggression in this blasphemy enterprise — a years-long, carefully plotted OIC campaign to snuff out American free-speech rights under the guise of “defamation of religion” — is U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18. It calls on Western governments to outlaw “any advocacy of religious hatred against individuals that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

Read more at National Review

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, which was published by Encounter Books.

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Egypt’s Christians fear ‘a season of blood’

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By Betsy Hiel

CAIRO — In the Shubra El Kheima section of this  sprawling capital’s outskirts, a herd of goats and three rail-thin horses pick  through garbage piles.

Rattling old cars and exhaust-belching buses honk at  darting three-wheeled “tuc-tuc” taxis.

On a narrow dirt street, four police officers guard  brick pillars rising from the mud.

This was going to be a Coptic Christian community  center — until ultra-Islamist Salafis seized it and declared it a Muslim mosque,  according to Emad El Erian, a spokesman for a Coptic rights organization.

“They threatened to burn some of the Coptic houses in  the neighborhood,” he said.

Salafis occupied the site every night until a  prosecutor ruled that the land belonged to the Copts and ordered a police guard,  local residents say.

“It’s as if (they) are challenging the police, the  government and the general prosecutor, and that they want to drag the Coptic  Christians into sectarian violence, a season of blood,” El Erian said.

Last week’s incident was the latest attack on Egypt’s  Christian minority — but not the week’s only one: A veiled woman sheared a  Christian girl’s hair in Cairo’s subway.

Such attacks — like crime in general — have risen in  number and intensity since last year’s ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak.  Christian churches, homes and shops have been looted or torched; Christians have  been forced to flee some villages.

The situation seems to contradict President Obama’s  assertion in the Oct. 22 presidential debate that Egyptian officials must “take  responsibility for protecting religious minorities, and we have put significant  pressure on them to make sure they’re doing that.”

President Mohamed Morsy, a former Muslim Brotherhood  leader, insists Egypt is open to Muslims and Christians. Yet many Christians,  who make up 10 to 15 percent of Egypt’s 85 million people, believe the Islamist  government is not protecting them.

“Nothing has been done to reform or achieve equality  among Egyptians,” said Youssef Sidhom, the editor of Watani, a Christian  newspaper. He dismisses Morsy’s commitment as “superficial.”

The post-Mubarak rise of the Salafis, who are akin to  Saudi Arabia’s ultra-religious Wahhabis, frightens Christians and less-fanatical  Muslims.

On Friday, thousands of Salafis marched here to  demand “implementation of the Shariah,” or Islamic law. The mostly bearded crowd  waved green Saudi flags and the black banners of al-Qaida and other jihadi  groups.

One veiled Salafi woman carried a sign congratulating  Obama on his re-election as president. Other posters demanded freedom for Omar  Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian “Blind Sheikh” who is in a U.S. prison for his role  in the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center.

‘A dangerous, slippery slope’

Sherif Rushdy

Sherif Rushdy, chief judge of a Cairo appeals court,  describes Copts as “a ship in the middle of a sandy hurricane.” Many are trying  to leave the country, he said.

Eighteen months ago, a fight erupted between a Muslim  and a Christian in Abu Qorqas, a village in Upper Egypt. Muslims then rampaged  for days, looting and burning 36 Christian homes and shops.

Rushdy’s brother Ala’a owned a restaurant that was  torched and a small cafeteria that was ransacked. Soldiers guarded Ala’a’s home  from a mob shouting, “God is great!”

Twenty people were arrested: 12 Christians, including  Rushdy’s brother, and eight Muslims.

“They investigated him and accused him of owning  machine guns, but they didn’t find any,” Rushdy said. “They accused him of  attempted murder.”

At a trial nine months later, an Egyptian general  called the charges nonsensical, Rushdy said. Yet Ala’a and the other Christians  were convicted and given life sentences; the eight Muslims were acquitted.

“We were shocked,” Rushdy recalled. “We had brought  his clothes (to the courtroom) because we thought he was coming home with us.”

He continues to file legal appeals but said that only  a presidential pardon will free his brother.

“We are on a dangerous, slippery slope,” he said. “The extremists have a principle: Whoever is not with us is against us.”

He dismisses the possibility of any help from the  Obama administration: “They didn’t do anything for their own ambassador, who was  killed in Libya. What will they do for us?”

Read more at Trib Live