Nigeria: Four Churches to be Demolished

Under the guise of requiring the land to build roads and hospitals, the Kano state government has decided to demolish four churches without discussion or compensation:-

Two Pentecostal churches and two churches belonging to the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) will be demolished under the northern Nigerian city’s plan. The Rev. Murtala Marti Dangora, secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Kano state chapter, said the road and hospital construction are a guise for demolishing the churches.

“Throughout last month [October], announcements were made by the Kano state government on its state radio that a road would be constructed in Badawa area, and that all structures there must give way,” Dangora said. “These churches are located in the said area, and the government has refused to discuss with us about the fate of these churches.”

Dangora said that during re-election campaigning earlier this year, Kano Gov. Malam Ibrahim Shekarau promised Muslims in the Ginginya area that if they gave him the mandate, “he would demolish the ECWA church and relocate the police barrack there in order to build a hospital for them.”

The ECWA church in the Ginginya area serves Christian policemen in the barracks and their families, as well as other members of the Christian community there. The other three churches to be demolished are Assemblies of God Church, Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church, and an ECWA church, all in the Badawa area of Kano.

The plan to demolish the churches, Kano CAN leaders said, is a continuation of an onslaught on the church by the state government under Gov. Shekarau, who has implemented the Islamic legal system (sharia).

The Kano State Commissioner for Information did not return calls by Compass requesting comment on the demolition plans.

Same Ploy

Dangora said the ploy reflects the same strategy the state government used last year, when it instructed local authorities of the Rogo town council to demolish the HEKAN church there. It was the only church serving the Christian community in Rogo town.

Muazu Aliyu, the HEKAN church caretaker in Rogo, told Compass that the demolition of the church on September 30, 2006 has left the 70-member congregation without a place of worship.

“In the process of demolishing the worship place, these Muslim government officials destroyed Bibles, hymnbooks, and church pews,” Aliyu said.

On the church premises, he added, was a 30-bedroom building accommodating Christian public servants who were denied lodging on properties belonging to Muslims.

“The house was also demolished along with the church building,” he said.

. . .

Yahaya Ibrahim, pastor of HEKAN Church Kadafa Dari in the greater Rogo Local Government Area, told Compass that the demolition was an example of persecution in just one of various realms. Among other spheres, he cited discrimination against Christian children in public schools.

“Our children cannot be admitted into government-owned schools unless they change their names to Muslim names,” Ibrahim said. “There are times children of Christians are forced to convert into Islam.”

Somebody remind me of the last time a mosque in the West was demolished to make way for a road or a hospital, or of when Muslims children had to convert to Christianity so that they could get into a state school.

(Please note that I am not suggesting that Muslims in the west should be treated in the same way: two wrongs do not make a right.)

Islam and Apostacy

This article describes the problems faced by Muslims who convert to Christianity and the extreme reaction of some Muslims to these conversions so well that I am going to quote large parts of it:-

Islam protects itself against conversions by putting apostates in prison or by killing them. But its obsession with conversion includes a series of privileges it claims for itself. So much so that in many Muslim countries, even those that are supposedly secular, the right to promote the Islamic faith is taken for granted and is not enshrined in law. Conversely, the right to promote any other religion is considered de facto and de jure unacceptable.

Islamic propaganda is part of the state’s mandate. In Egypt for example public institutions disseminate songs, prayers, movies and written material that praise Islam and denigrate Christianity. Inevitably this favours conversions to Islam. By contrast, Christian propaganda (tabshīr) is banned by law.

Recently in Algeria, a new law was approved that condemns anyone promoting the Christian faith and anyone who converts to Christianity. Of course, some might say that this kind of law is directed only at Protestant proselytising. True! But Muslims proselytise as well? Should the law not be the same for everyone?

Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly the country where double standards in matter of religion are the most glaring. One example: Saudi Arab Airlines’ website explicitly warns its passengers that Bibles, crucifixes, and any other non-Muslim religious symbol are prohibited on board. If any are found they are confiscated. Another example is when two pieces of wood happen to end up across one another. However inadvertently that may have come about, the resulting cross becomes ipso facto a religious symbol and police are known to have ordered people who happened to be nearby to step on them.

Anti-Christian propaganda is also found in how words are used. In Arabic Christians are called Massihi. In Arabia they are also called Salībi, crusaders, and Nasrami, Nazarenes. Interestingly, at the time of the Crusades Christians were by and large referred to as Faranj or Franks. But the most commonly used word today is kuffar, unbelievers who must be killed. For the past 30 or so years, its use has increasingly spread around the Muslim world.

By some estimates, the number of Christians who convert to Islam in Egypt is around 10,000, usually prompted by practical reasons like the need to divorce, or to marry a Muslim woman (or man), or to get a job. Rarely does faith come into the picture.

More recently there has been some talk about thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity. Protestant missionary centres, based in the United States (the Zwemer Institute* has been mentioned), are said to offer money, apartments, passports, etc in exchange for conversion to Christianity. Such charges have often found their way into the Muslim press in relation to the Hegazi affair.

In Arabic Tabshīr means ‘evangelisation’ and has taken on negative connotations. In Egypt and other countries anyone guilty of Tabshīr can end up in prison or pushed out of the country. On the other hand, daˤwah, which means a call to join Islam, has positive connotations and is seen as duty for every Muslim. In some Muslim countries daˤwah has its own ministry (or Ministry of Islamic Propaganda, a bit like the Vatican’s dicastery De propaganda fide).

When shall there be a spiritual Islam?

Leaving Islam is seen as a religious, social and political outrage.

From a religious point of view, converts abandon the true faith for a false one. Indeed, the Qur’an itself warns that “The only religion approved by GOD is ‘Submission’ (Qur’an 3:19),” and “Anyone who accepts other than Submission as his religion [. . .] will not be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter, he will be with the losers” (Qur’an 3:85).

From a social point of view, someone who converts to Christianity and encourages others to follow him or her becomes a cancer on society.

From a political point of view, anyone leaving Islam is a traitor, a spy against his own nation who deserves death, because Islam is always viewed as a community, the Ummah.

For the Egyptian government for example, anyone who converts to another religion “threatens national unity.” Although Egyptians authorities are not likely to put any apostate to death, they will certainly try to hush up the whole thing or attempt to push the apostate to emigrate. This is exactly what befell Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, a writer forced into exile in the Netherlands after a fatwa was pronounced calling for his death.

The article also has a solution:-

Still a French Muslim scholar, Abdennour Bidar, has recently published a book**, in which he writes that “Islam must reach the point where it is no longer a religion but is instead a spiritual movement and a matter of personal choices.”

Undeniably the real problem with Islam is that becoming a Muslim today means joining a political and sociological group. It no longer means making a religious and spiritual choice.

This is what most ails Islam today. If this profound conversion is not made, Islam shall always be the enemy of the modern world, a world that is based on individual liberties, on the individual person rather than the group, on freedom of conscience, etc.

. . .

Conversely, in the Muslim world the most common teaching that is spreading inside families and in the mass media is that submission must be total, obliterating one’s personality, removing all differences.

As Christians and as Westerners, we must help Islam take a step in the right direction and make Muslims understand that personal freedoms are against neither Islam, nor God; that they are instead for Him. Unlike the rest of creation God endowed man with the power to understand and choose because without the right to choose there is no love. As Christ said to his disciples: “I no longer call you slaves, [. . .]. I have called you friends” (John 15:15).

An excellent an insightful article. I have little to add to it.

Church in West Java Forced to Close after 40 Years

Original article here:-

(AsiaNews) – Once again in the name of the law, religious freedom – one of the rights guaranteed by the National Constitution – has been violated. It happened on November 23 in South Duri, West Jakarta, where a group of Muslims with the backing of police and local politicians forced the Catholic parish of Christ’s Peace Church to stop all religious activity. The pretext is always the same: it does not have the legal permit to build a place of worship.

Christ’s Peace Parish Church has at least 4,000 parishioners and holds three week-end services. The church activity has existed since 1968.

. . .

It all began with the plan to build a new parish church. Last week officials visited the parish priest to ask whether there were plans to enlarge the small church and stated that the priest did not possess a permit to build a place of worship but only a house. The conflict continued to heat up until locals calling themselves the Cooperation Forum for Mosque, Prayer Rooms and Koranic Recital Group of Duri Selatan, began to speculate on the legality of the parish, which “use as a multi-function room run by the Mother of Sacred Heart Foundation as a church”. Until November 23 when after Friday prayers some 70 enraged Muslims, rallied outside the parish shouting “Allah is great” and demanding its closure. A meeting ensued between the protesters, Catholic personnel, police and local authorities. “They forcibly asked us to sign a document agreeing to halt all activity – said Fr. Widyolestari - if we rejected the proposal then they said they would not be responsible if vandalism took place”. They also wanted to force the removal of all religious symbols, “But we strongly rejected the idea”, the priest adds. In the afternoon, an official letter arrived from Tambura district, imposing the suspension of all religious activities.

This is moderate Indonesia, right?

Report Minimizes Muslim Crimes in Nigeria Riot

According to this report, a Muslim dominated committee responsible for investigating the September 28 Muslim rioting in Tudun Wada Dankadai has downplayed the extent of Muslim crimes against Christians and put the blame on the Christians:-

A Kano state committee investigating the September 28 Muslim rioting in Tudun Wada Dankadai learned at public hearings that 19 Christians were killed, but it only reported three deaths in its interim report to state authorities.

The committee, made up of nine Muslims and three Christians, discovered from at least two official sources that 17 Muslims and Islamic preacher Isa Jihad were responsible for starting the violence, but in its report to the state government it sought to blame the disturbance on Christian students.

Inexplicably, in its report to state authorities earlier this month the committee stated that Christian students began the violent rampage when they supposedly became upset that one had converted to Islam.
. . .
The committee also found that the Muslim rampage displaced 350 Christian families and that there is not a single house belonging to a Christian now standing in Tudun Wada Dankadai.

Muslim committee members held that they could report only three killings because the other 16 could not be officially identified. During the attack, 16 victims were buried in a common grave, while three corpses were identified by surviving family members were released to them.

“When we said we should reflect the fact that 19 Christians were killed in our report, the other members who are Muslims refused,” Rev. Dangora told Compass. “What could we have done when we were a minority?”

Rev. Dangora said the committee also refused to document its findings that Muslim preacher Isa Jihad and 17 other Muslims were behind the attack on Christians – even though the names of the perpetrators originally came from the Muslim district head of Tudun Wada, Alhaji Abbas Muhammad.

“Alhaji Abbas Muhammad, while receiving the committee members in his palace, told us that he had given the divisional police officer [DPO], Saidu Idris Jatau, the names of 17 Muslims who were behind the attack on Christians and demanded that the police arrest and prosecute them,” Rev. Dangora told Compass. “But he said that the DPO, being a Muslim, refused to do so.”

When district head Muhammad again appeared before the committee to present it with the 17 names, Rev. Dangora said, “The Muslim members of our committee deliberately refused to include these names in our report.”

Instead, he said, the panel decided to report that Christian students caused the September 28 outbreak in the course of refusing to allow the conversion of a Christian student to Islam.

How strange! It's usually Muslims who get angry when someone converts out of their religion - how unusual to see Christians reacting in this way!

More Persecution of Egyptian Converts

This is a picture of Siham Ibrahim Muhammad Hassan al-Sharqawi, an Egyptian convert to Christianity.

According to this report, she first met her Christian husband while attending a school of tourism:-

There she met her future husband, one of Egypt’s indigenous Coptic Christians who comprise an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the national population. According to a source who spoke to her husband, the two of them began to meet regularly outside of class to talk about issues of faith.

In 2002, Al-Sharqawi’s family discovered she was spending time with a Christian and beat her, repeating the punishment whenever they suspected she had been to see him. Her husband said that an older sister who had attended al-Azhar, Egypt’s top Islamic university, often joined her father in administering the beatings.

“On October 28, 2003 they tied her up to a chair in her dining room and beat her,” her husband said. “Her arm was completely blue.”

The same day, Al-Sharqawi managed to flee her home. She called her parents two weeks later to let them know that she had left of her own free will and would not be returning.

Remaining in hiding with the help of friends, Al-Sharqawi continued meeting with her future husband and other Christians.

On August 26, 2004, Al-Sharqawi was baptized, and three months later, on November 22, she and her Coptic friend from tourism school were married. Due to Islamic law’s ban on Christian men marrying Muslim women, the convert was forced to use a false Christian name to procure a marriage certificate.

A typical experience of a Christian convert in Egypt. While the conversion itself is not explicitly illegal, by not allowing the convert's id to be updated with his or her new religion, Egyptian bureaucracy forces converts to commit other crimes. I have commented on this previously, e.g. here.

This Egyptian security services have now caught up with this young woman, although the reason for her detention is not clear:-

Plainclothes officers arrested Siham Ibrahim Muhammad Hassan al-Sharqawi at 3 p.m. on Thursday (November 22) on the outskirts of Qena, 300 miles south of Cairo, according to an eyewitness. The reason for the arrest was not immediately clear.

The convert had attempted to leave a friend’s apartment building by a backdoor after realizing that plainclothes policemen were standing at the entrance, the source said.

Officers intercepted Al-Sharqawi, 24, on the street and took her to Qena’s security police headquarters, where she was interrogated until yesterday morning. Witnesses said that police treated the woman like a prostitute, calling her a “whore,” and threatening to beat her.

Sources gave conflicting reports about whether State Security Investigation officials used physical violence against Al-Sharqawi or limited themselves to only threats.

Many Egyptian Christian converts from Islam have been tortured at the hands of security police according to a report this month by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. A Christian helping converts in Alexandria told Compass that in December 2006 police applied electrical shocks to his genitals and other sensitive areas of his body for seven hours.

A local source said that Al-Sharqawi was transferred from the station yesterday morning, but her destination remains unknown.

The convert’s husband fears that his wife will be transferred to her native Alexandria or Cairo’s Abbassiya security offices, where her full identity will be discovered. He said that he is not yet certain whether police are aware that she is a convert, because she was carrying neither her Muslim ID nor her forged Christian papers at the time of her arrest.

Al-Sharqawi’s husband and friends remain uncertain of the exact reason for the convert’s arrest. Apart from forgery, Al-Sharqawi may also be held for marrying a Christian man or insulting Islam.

Let's hope and pray that the police decide to release Siham as soon as possible.

Nigeria: Christian Killed in Election Violence

Nigeria is one of those countries where anti-Christian violence by Muslims is a regular occurrence (see earlier posts here and here). Recent elections in the Sumaila area now appear to be the cause of yet more Muslim attacks on Christians:-

KANO, Nigeria, November 26 (Compass Direct News) – Christians said violence over elections in the Sumaila area this month included a strong religious element, with Muslims killing one Christian in an attack on a Christian settlement.

Eyewitnesses said violence broke out in the Gani electoral ward of Sumaila on November 17 after news reports showed that the Christian candidate for councillor for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Zara Gambo, was ahead in the polls, signifying the first ever victory for a Christian in the area.

As a result, they said, Muslims attacked Christians in Gani town and in Gani Mission, a Christian settlement in the area, injuring several of them, destroying their houses and shops and killing elementary school teacher Danyaro Bala. He is survived by a wife and 11 children.

Sani Duma, Bala’s younger brother, told Compass that he believes Muslims killed the local church elder in order to cow area Christians into submitting to Islam.

. . .

The administrator of the Sumaila Local Government Council, as well as the area divisional police officer, both declined to comment to Compass. On the night following the voting, Gov. Malam Ibrahim Shekarau blamed the PDP opposition for igniting violence in Sumaila.

Gov. Shekarau, an Islamic preacher, is considered an open proponent of the Islamization of Nigeria. The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), which rules the state, introduced the Islamic legal code, sharia, in 2000.

In chaotic elections marked by accusations of fraud in which roaming, armed thugs kept voters from polls, the Kano government admitted to two deaths in Sumaila for a total of six throughout the state. The ANPP was reportedly declared the winner of the local government in Sumaila.

Among Sumaila Christians injured by rampaging Muslims, according to area Christians, was Danganye Barrau, who received machete cuts. Other injured Christians included Garba Buddi, Malam Saleh and Uba Bala.

Muslims burned the homes and shops of Christians Dan Wuye, Saleh Dogo, Malam Yakubu, and two others identified only as Anayo and James.

Note the connection between Islam and politics. Islam is more than just a religion; it has a significant political component, the main aim of which is the imposition of Shari'a. When political means alone do not work, as in this case, there is always a significant minority of Muslims willing to use violence.

Note: please remember that the majority of Muslims are peaceful and non-violent people.

Turkey: Malatya Murder Trial Begins

The trial of five men accused of mudering three Christians in the Turkish town of Malatya, began yesterday. I have previously written about this case here.

According to this report:-

The trial was adjourned after defence lawyers argued they needed more time to prepare. The hearing is now expected to resume in mid-January.

Turkey is a candidate for EU membership. The bloc has asked Ankara to protect the human rights of the country's ethnic and religious minorities, as a precondition for membership.

Germany has accused Turkey of "unacceptable intolerance" towards non-Muslims.

The murders prompted three Christian families to leave Malatya, in eastern Turkey.

Reading the above you could be forgiven for thinking that attitudes in Turkey haven't changed since the last days of the Ottoman empire!

A lawyer acting for the victims' families earlier said he was concerned by the tone of the indictment against the accused.

More than half the 31 files in the indictment focus on the missionary work of the men murdered. They include contact details of people they approached.

The lawyer believes that will help those accused plead provocation.

So Christian missionary work is provocation for murder?

The town's Protestant community now numbers only about two dozen people.

There are only around 100,000 Christians left in Turkey - less than 1% of the population.

That's the result of intimidation and persecution - a gradual decline in the Christian population.

Egypt: Christian Woman Sentenced to Three Years

I have previously written, e.g. here, about the problem Egyptian Christian converts have getting their religion correctly stated on their id cards.

This report is about an Egyptian woman who's father briefly converted to Islam in the 1960s:-

An Egyptian Christian woman has been jailed for three years because her father's brief conversion to Islam 45 years ago made her legally a Muslim while her official papers said she was Christian, her lawyer said on Thursday.
. . .

In 1996, the man who forged Ibrahim's documents was detained for falsifying dozens of documents and confessed to changing Ibrahim's papers.

Authorities detained Ibrahim and also informed his daughter that on paper, Ibrahim was still a Muslim and therefore so was she. Children in Egypt automatically take their father's religion.

Under Egyptian law it is also illegal for a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man.

She was charged with "providing false information on official documents" for stating she was Christian on her marriage certificate in 1982.

After a lengthy trial, she was sentenced to three years in absentia in 2000, but the case was subsequently dropped.

She was detained again in August this year and sentenced to three years after just one brief court session, her lawyer said.

It appears that this woman did not know that she was legally a Muslim until 1996, however, she is being prosecuted for stating her religion as Christian when she married in 1982!

The Armenian Genocide

My apologies for coming to this subject a bit late; it was a hot topic a few months ago. However, it takes me a while to think things through.

Firstly, the Armenian genocide cannot be disputed by anyone who cares to look at the evidence. This evidence has, for example, been extremely thoroughly reviewed by Adrian Morgan of the Western Resistance blog in a three part article available here, here and here.

It is easy to understand why the Islamists in Turkey want to deny the Armenian genocide, if that is, you can understand the need for an offence of "Insulting Turkishness". (This law was used, for example, in 2005 to prosecute the nobel-prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk for writing about the massacre of Kurds and Armenians in Anatolia in 1915.)

But, I digress. The reason that the Armenian Genocide (and the Assyrian Genocide) is so important is that it gives the lie to the myth of Islamic tolerance of religious minorities:-

It [i.e. Muslim rule] protected Jews from Christians and Eastern Christians from Roman Catholics. In Spain under the Umayyads and in Baghdad under the Abbasid Khalifahs, Christians and Jews enjoyed a freedom of religion that they did not allow each other or anyone else.

Muslim apologists make claims like that above while pointing to the treatment of Jews in Europe. Looking at the vile anti-semitic content of Arab media, one wonders what would happen if Israel lost one of its wars with its Arab neighbours.

Even if this myth was true, it is inaccurate to compare the fate of Jews in Europe with that of non-Muslims under Muslim rule. While the Jews were a tiny minority in Europe, in the early days, a Muslims minority often ruled a majority non-Muslim population. Killing or expelling them would have de-populated the entire country!

Even now, the Coptic population of Egypt is estimated to be 6 to 10% of the total population. Jewish populations in Europe were never anywhere near this level..

At first, conversion to Islam was actively discouraged so as not to diminish the revenue aquired from the high levels of taxation on non-Muslims (jizya). Muslim converts were thus given the second-class status of mawali who had almost as much a tax burden as the non-Muslims.

The lands conquered by Islam in the early years of Islamic expansion were, at that time, some of the most Christianised parts of the World. The combination of taxation, persecution and exclusion of non-Muslims from many aspects of society is the foundation on which most of the Muslim nations of North Africa and the Middle East have been built.

The Islamicisation of these areas has been extensively documented by Bat Ye'Or in her book "The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam". For a briefer treatment, read this on-line article on the dhimmi (non-Muslims in a Muslim state).


The Armenian Genocide is estimated to have killed between 600,000 and 1.5 million people between 1914 and 1923. The Assyrian Genocide is estimated to have killed 275,000 people between 1914 and 1918. These were Christians living under the supposedly benevolent rule of the Ottoman Caliphate.

Persecution News Roundup

There are several news items that are either worth mentioning or that I had missed previously so I'll discuss all of them in one post.

In Egypt, Mohammed Beshoy Hegazy, a convert from Islam to Christianity is still in hiding. He is famous, or infamous, for being the first Egyptian convert to seek official recognition of his conversion. I reported on his fight to get his religion changed from Islam to Christianity here.

He had to go into hiding after several clerics called for his death in the Egyptian media when his case was announced earlier this year.

In Turkey, a 17th century church has been wrecked and nearly demolished:-

A XVII century chapel dedicated to Our Lord’s Transfiguration, which lies in front of the Haliki School of Theology, was almost completely destroyed yesterday by Forest Guards. The Church had been recently restored with the permission of local authorities. Demolishers had begun tearing down the building without any prior warning, which is called for in such cases.

Only at the last minute was the total destruction of the chapel avoided: following protests by the prior of Haliki School and Metropolitan Meliton, director of the Ecumenical Patriarchates office for legal affairs, the prefect of the Prince Islands stopped the Forest Guards. The building however was seriously damaged.

The Prior of Halki immediately brought to the attention of the Turkish authorities that these kinds of episodes will provoke international disapproval, including that of the European Union. The Authorities response was stark: “Don’t dare to threaten us!”.

What are "forest guards"? Shouldn't they be in a forest rather than demolishing buildings in a city. Is it normal in Turkey to pull down 17th century buildings, with or without notice?

In my blog entry here on the Malatya murder trial, I quoted Isa Karatas, spokesperson for the Alliance of Protestant Churches in Turkey:-

“It is clear from these statements of the suspects that there is some group of powerful influence behind them,”

While he was unwilling to name names, I can confidently say that it is Islamists who are trying to create an atmosphere of hate and distrust towards Christians in Turkey.

Finally, in Indonesia:-

About 30 self-appointed Islamic vigilantes are alleged to have raided a house suspected to be a Christian place of worship in Citeureup Village of Bandung in the Indonesian province of West Java, on Monday.

The owner of the house, Ranto Gunawan Simamora, told reporters that dozens of people raided the house and went directly to the living room which is normally used for Christian gatherings and worship.

No-one was injured in the raid and the police have sealed off the house while they carry out further investigation.

The attack is the latest aimed against so-called illegal places of worship in Java and beyond.

Once again we see extremist elements of the Muslim population who feel duty-bound to persecute members of another religion.

More Good News from Baghdad

About ten days ago I blogged about the re-opening of St. John’s Church in Baghdad. On 15 November 2007 a service was held at this church at which the Most Reverend Shlemon Warduni, Auxiliary Bishop of the St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Diocese for Chaldeans and Assyrians in Iraq officiated.

This event was again described by the free-lance reporter Michael Yon:-

LTC Stephen Michael at St John’s. LTC Michael told me today that when al Qaeda came to Dora, they began harassing Christians first, charging them “rent.” It was the local Muslims, according to LTC Michael, who first came to him for help to protect the Christians in his area. That’s right. LTC Michael told me more than once that the Muslims reached out to him to protect the Christians from al Qaeda. Real Muslims here are quick to say that al Qaeda members are not true Muslims. From charging “rent,” al Qaeda’s harassment escalated to killing Christians, and also Muslims. Untold thousands of Christians and Muslims fled Baghdad in the wake of the darkness of civil war.

This is the main reason I want to high-light this report: it clearly demonstrates that the Muslims who persecute Christians are a very small minority.

Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John’s. Muslims who want their Christian friends and neighbors to come home.

Let us hope and pray that all the citizens of Iraq will soon be able to live their lives in peace and security.

Negativity on Islam 'fuels tension'

This is the sort of thing that made me start this blog. Muhammad Abdul Bari, head of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), says:-

The UK must be careful how it tackles terrorism and treats Islamic culture if it is to avoid recreating a society reminiscent of Nazi Germany, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain has warned.

Given the way the U.K. government and the media are bending over backwards to avoid any mention of Islam when discussing terrorism, this is outrageous. Mr. Abdul Bari should also read some history books about the Third Reich before comparing our open and liberal society with that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Muhammad Abdul Bari, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, criticised the Government for fuelling tensions in the Muslim community rather than dissipating them.

Who is fuelling tensions in the Muslim community? Is it the government or extremist preachers and Islamists who are trying to radicalize the Muslim youth?

He told the paper: "There is a disproportionate amount of discussion surrounding us. The air is thick with suspicion and unease. It is not good for the Muslim community, it is not good for society."

The cause of much of this discussion is Muslims and Muslim organizations like his demanding extra rights, over and above those of anybody else on, on account of their religion.

The other cause of the high profile of Muslims in the UK is Islamic terrorism. While much of this takes place outside the U.K., there is a significant number of potentially violent jihadis in the U.K. In a recent speech, the head of MI5 Jonathan Evans said there about 2,000 individuals in the U.K who "posed a direct threat to national security and public safety, because of their support for terrorism."

The MCB would help defuse the "suspicion and unease" about Muslims if they did something about the Islamist ideology that's motivating these 2,000 individuals.

Dr Bari also criticised the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, for painting a bleak picture of the terrorist threat the night before the Queen's Speech this week. He said: "I don't think it was a good thing to share information in this way, I think it is creating a scare in the community and wider society. It probably helps some people who try to recruit the young to terrorism."

Oh, I'm sorry, he has done something about this problem; he's told us shut up! Sweep the problem under the carpet; don't talk about it and maybe it'll go away!

Despite being described as "moderate" and having close links with the government, there have been accusations of close links between the MCB and terrorist organisations. These accusations have been made in an article published in the Observer on 14 August 2005 and in an edition of the BBC 1 program Panorama first broadcast on 21 August 2005 (transcript here).

While on the subject of Muslim organisations in the UK, an article on the website of MPACUK states:-

Just how oppressive must a government become before we can justifiably say that it has turned a country into a police-state? Midnight knocks on the door? Security squads in black uniforms? The indefinite imprisonment of innocent individuals in prison cells and the immediate assumption of their guilt until proved innocent? Imprisonment for thought crimes? The use of torture to extricate information which may never otherwise be given? The permanent surveillance of a population at large?

This mis-representation, surely, can only be for the purpose of stirring up "tensions in the Muslim community" as described by Muhammad Abdul Bari. The article continues:-

If these were the criteria then there can be no doubt that Britain has become a police-state. Using the pretence of ‘Anti-Terror’ laws, themselves the product of an entirely fabricated ‘War on Terror’ which resulted from a false-flag incident involving the mass-murder of over 3000 innocent people, 911, and again 52 innocents in another false-flag incident involving Britain’s secret services, 7/7.

Ah! Right - while some Muslims celebrate the 9/11 terrorists as "The Magnificent 19", these guys allege that 9/11 was the work of the CIA, or Mossad, or somebody else, anybody other than Muslims. Near the end the article states:-

And 8 million Muslims have died as a direct result of USUK imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 16 years.

OK, I'm seriously off topic now. This is not whining - this is a naked attempt to radicalise Muslims and to foster hatred towards the US and the UK. This is the start of the process that leads British Muslims to try and blow up innocent people on the London transport system.

These are the people Muhammad Abdul Bari should be talking to if he wants to create a better atmosphere between Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK.

Update: The author of the article on the MPACUK site, which I discussed above, is a far-left non-Muslim called Rory Winter. It is very strange to see someone apparently inciting hatred against his own country. I'm sure that what Mr. Winter objects to are the policies of the UK and US governments but it seems to me that he is happy to have his work used to incite hatred between Muslim and non-Muslim citizens of the UK.

It is also strange to see that on his blog Mr. Winter announces that he is anti-fascist, yet fails to see the fascist elements in Islamism!

Re-reading Mr. Winters article has also reminded me that the last thing I want to do is incite hatred of Muslims by non-Muslims. My argument is with Muslims and Muslim organizations like the MCB who claim to represent the interests of Muslims in the UK yet by their whining manage to alienate the majority of UK non-Muslims. Please also read this post.

Woman Suffers Horrific Torture in Denmark

According to this report posted at Western Resistance:-

A 19 year old woman managed Sunday evening to escape from her torturer, a Danish citizen of Lebanese background.

She had been held captive for 9 days in a shed in the Sydhavnen district of Copenhagen where she had been beaten with an electric cable and subjected to other acts of violence by her boyfriend, a 19 year old Danish citizen from Lebanon. Sunday afternoon she managed to break out of her prison, climbed a fence and broke into a store, where she found a telephone and called her family.

I will omit the details of her injuries which are quite horrific. Although the title of the post is "Muslim Tortures Woman For "Being Christian" the motivation for the attacks on this woman is not made clear. The source of this report is an article (in Danish) from Jyllands-Posten which I, unfortunately, don't understand.

The translation provided at Western Resistance only mentions:-

The violence has taken place over a period of one year, but has escalated drastically during the last month, according to the girl. The man threatened to kill her family if she reported him. Also, he has forbidden her to speak to her mother, because she is a Christian.

Presumably, the young woman is, or at least was, also a Christian. Her attacker is described as "a Danish citizen of Lebanese background". Since he objected to the young woman speaking to her mother because the mother was Christian, it is reasonable to assume that he is not a Christian.

The population of Lebanon is estimated to be 39% Christian and 59% Muslim so it is probable that the "boyfriend" is Muslim. We can still only guess as to why he tortured this young woman. Was he trying to get her to convert to Islam? Had she converted and then had second thoughts and wanted to leave Islam? Or perhaps there was some other reason not related to Islam - I don't know.

Let There be no Compulsion in Religion

Given that verse 2:256 in the Qur'an states:-

Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error:

it is very surprising to me to see the number of cases where Muslims have tortured Christians to try to get them to convert to Islam.

Apostates are another matter; Islamic law clearly states that apostates should be killed. Often they end up getting tortured as well, or as an attempt to get them to return to Islam. The above verse is understood to refer only to conversion to Islam.

A quick search of the internet came up with the following examples:-

In May 2004 a Christian student was kidnapped and tortured inside a Pakistani madrassah:-

On his hospital deathbed, Anjum declared in his formal statement to the police that he was tortured specifically because he refused to convert to Islam. According to his testimony videotaped by his family, Anjum had been seized by people from the madrasseh when he stopped to get a drink of water from the school's water tap.

When they learned he was a Christian, they pressured him "from night until morning" to convert to Islam. When he resisted, he said, he was subjected to barbaric forms of torture.

His abuse included repeated electric shocks to his ears, a broken right arm and fingers, some of his fingernails pulled out, skin burns, severe beatings on his feet, and serious injuries to his kidneys and bladder. Reportedly 26 wounds were found on his body in the official post mortem report issued May 6.

Anjum said he was finally forced under torture to repeat the words of the Muslim creed, an act which according to Islamic law constitutes conversion to Islam. But he told his family he had not renounced his Christian faith.

In December 2006 two Christian women were released after being held and tortured for months by their Pakistani employer:-

However, after they had been working there for one month, Muhammad “refused to pay their salary and together with his wife, kidnapped the two women. They tore the crosses from their necks and forbade them to pray. They demanded that the women change their faith and convert to Islam and when they refused, they tortured them.”

At night, “they were chained to prevent them from escaping. Razia’s right foot was injured with the shards of a broken bottle and both had burns on their bodies. One day, Muhammad threatened to kill their relatives if they continued to be hard headed and to refuse to change religion or if they tried to escape.”

He even brought a bottle of acid and a syringe: “You will die with this in your body”. Nasreen responded: “You may kill us but we will not convert.”

In January 2007 a very similar story emerged about two brother who had worked at a brick kiln:-

"When Shahzad and Saraj refused to convert, the brick kiln owner took them away," according to a VOM source within Pakistan. "He put them in a small, empty room with a mud floor without a bed, chair or mattress."

The source continued: "He kept them there for a month. He gave them food once a day and beat them with a stick when they refused to convert back to Islam. He also threw acid on their arms, but they remained true to their Christ."

In June 2007 a young Christian was tortured and gang-raped for refusing to convert to Islam:-

According to CLAAS, the Christian was invited to a game of cricket. A quarrel broke out and he was beaten up. Later that evening, the father of one of the Muslims asked the Christian over to his house.

Joseph Francis, the National Director of CLAAS, explained: “When he entered the drawing room, he found it filled with unknown people. They began to beat him severely. They threatened him with dire consequences if he did not accept Islam. After his refusal, they committed sodomy with him one by one for the whole night.”

In July 2007, 23 Korean Christian volunteer aid workers were seized by the Taliban in Afghanistan. There were seven men and 16 women in this group. Two of the men were killed but the remainder were released over a period of several days at the end of August. The Korean government denied that a ransom had been paid.

Subsequently it emerged that one of those who died was killed for refusing to convert to Islam:-

The youth pastor who was leading the group of 23 South Korean aid volunteers in Afghanistan was killed for refusing to convert to Islam, the head pastor of the church revealed after the final 19 former hostages arrived home.

“Among the 19 hostages who returned on the second (of September), some were asked by the Taliban to convert and when they rejected, they were assaulted and severely beaten,” reported Park Eun-jo, pastor of the hostages’ home church, Saemmul Presbyterian Church in Bundang, just south of the South Korean capital Seoul.

“I heard from the hostages that they were threatened with death,” he added, according to Christian Today Korea. “Especially it is known that the reason Pastor Bae Hyung-kyu was murdered was because he refused the Taliban’s demand to convert.”

A hospital chief also said on Monday that some of the five South Korean men freed from captivity last week reported being beaten by their Taliban abductors for refusing to convert to Islam and for protecting their female colleagues.

The verse from the Qur'an which I quoted at the start of this post is not the last word on how Muslims should treat "people of the book" (Christians, Jews, etc.). That can be found in verse 9:29 (Sura 9 is believed to have been the last one revealed to Mohammed):-

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

Extremist Muslims like the Taliban and Hamas are known to have tried to extract the jizya from Christians. However, the Qur'an does not tell Muslims to torture Christians (or anybody else) to convert to Islam.

Perhaps it is the general intolerance shown in the Qur'an towards unbelievers that causes these Muslims to resort to torture; e.g. verse 5:73:-

They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One Allah. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them.

Egypt: Persecution of Minorities by Officials

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) have issued a joint report detailing the persecution of Christian converts and members of minority religions in Egypt.

According to media reports here and here:-

Every Egyptian over 16 years old must have an ID card which mentions religious belief, but the interior ministry systematically prevents converts from Islam and members of the minority Bahai faith from registering their belief or just putting nothing, it said.

Many of those interviewed for the report told how interior ministry officials tried to intimidate or bribe them into identifying themselves as Muslims because of a personal interpretation of Islamic sharia law that does not exist in Egyptian law.

"Interior ministry officials apparently believe they have the right to choose someone's religion when they don't like the religion that person chooses," said Joe Stork, deputy director of HRW's Middle East and North Africa division.

. . .

While there are around 2,000 Bahais in Egypt, Muslims who convert to Christianity account for many more and their treatment is often harsher as they are considered to be apostates, which some Muslims see as punishable by death.

As a result, many seek forged documents that turn them into criminals.

"State security tried to persuade us both to be Muslims," said one convert couple. "We were exhausted, more than 24 hours with no food. When they failed to convince us to become Muslims, they referred us to criminal investigation.

"From five in the morning until five at night, the state security grilled us. They said that they would bring forgery charges against both of us."

Consigned to lead a life of severely diminished existence, others simply allow a religion that is not their own to be put on their ID cards.

"The interior ministry's policy essentially says: 'If you lie, we'll give you the documents you need but, if you tell the truth about your religion, we'll make your life miserable by withholding them'," Stork said.

I had already heard about the problems experienced by Christian converts in Egypt but was unaware that officials only accepted Muslim, Christian or Jewish as someone's religion. It's interesting to note that the Jewish religion is accepted despite the expulsion of most of Egypt's Jews in 1956 and the confiscation of their property.

Recent Christian Persecution in Turkey

On 18 April of this year, three Christians were murdered in an attack that took place at a Christian publishing house in Malatya, Turkey.

The victims were Turkish converts Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, and German Christian Tilmann Geske.

Shortly afterwards, details began to emerge of the horrific torture the victims had suffered before being killed:-

The three Christians who were martyred in Turkey last week were horribly tortured for three hours prior to being killed, Christian Today has learned, as details continue to emerge.

According to the Washington-DC based human rights group International Christian Concern, the three were put through a horrific ordeal which included multiple stabbings before finally being killed.

An ICC statement tells: “As difficult and sorrowful as it is to learn more, we believe that we must expose the truly hellish nature of this attack for what it is.”

On Easter Sunday, five of the killers had been to a service that one of the victims, Pastor Necati, had arranged in the city of Malatya.

The attackers had pretended an interest in Christianity and had met with their victims on the pretext of learning more about the bible. They first tied their victims to chairs and then proceeded to torture them:-

ICC then continued to describe the nature of the torture, which included disembowelment, emasculation, and the slicing open of various orifices.

“Tilman was stabbed 156 times, Necati 99 times and Ugur’s stabs were too numerous to count. Finally, their throats were sliced from ear to ear, heads practically decapitated,” ICC reports.

Five Turkish Muslims were quickly arrested and charged with these crimes. Their trial is due to start on November 23:-

All news about the pending trial in the Turkish press last week sensationalized justifications the killers offered for their crimes while under police interrogation, including far-fetched allegations against the victims.
. . .
One headline of one of the most repeated claims read, “Missionaries were linked with the PKK,” highlighting the murderers’ claim that the three Christians had “praised” the violent, separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
. . .

Sabah newspaper’s headline quoted Emre Gunaydin, the alleged ringleader of the five killers, as saying, “We committed murder out of fear they would harm our families.”

One newspaper, the widely circulated Hurriyet, targeted a Protestant pastor in western Turkey by naming him in its headline. The report quoted Gunaydin’s claim that he had planned to travel to kill the pastor once they had murdered the other three.

Most of the news reports also repeated Gunaydin’s claim that the Christians were forcing local girls into prostitution.

“It is clear from these statements of the suspects that there is some group of powerful influence behind them,” spokesperson Isa Karatas of the Alliance of Protestant Churches in Turkey told Compass. “These people want to portray Turkey’s Protestants as enemies of the nation.

“At the same time,” he added, “because honor is such an important concept in our culture, they are trying to accuse us of having weak morals, so that they can find a justification for their murders.”

The slayers had claimed the motive for the gruesome torture and murder of Aydin, Yuksel and Geske was to stop Christians from defaming Islam and the Turkish nation.

While this crime was condemned by the Turkish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Niyazi Güney, Justice Ministry Statutes Directorate General manager said:-

"Missionary work is even more dangerous than terrorism and unfortunately is not considered a crime in Turkey."

This article describes the effect of Pastor Necati Aydın death on his family:-

On a recent Sunday night while on the way home from church services, a sad little voice came from the back seat of the car.

“Mommy, I miss my Daddy so much. Can't Jesus bring him back to us?”

Her mother sighed, and then turned from the front seat to explain gently once more to her 6-year-old daughter, "Esther, Jesus decided to take Daddy to heaven, to be with Him. So we have to wait until Jesus takes us to heaven to see Daddy again."

The little girl thought for a few seconds and then declared, "Well, if Daddy isn't coming back, then I want to go to heaven too!"

. . .

As their mother put them to bed on another recent evening, Elisha finally asked, "Mommy, are you crying about Daddy?"

Admitting it had been hard for her to cry since his death, his mother told him, "I am crying in my heart every day, Elisha."

Bravely trying to comfort her, Elisha answered, "You don't need to cry, Mommy. We know he is in heaven with Jesus, along with Uncle Ugur and Uncle Tilmann."

. . .

Ten years ago, Necati Aydin's strict Muslim family had violently opposed his decision to become a Christian. They literally kidnapped him when they learned of his pending marriage, threatening both of them if he did not change his mind and come back to Islam.

"I was afraid for his life, and that he would renounce Jesus," Aydin

said. "So I told the Lord I would give him up, that I would sacrifice our marriage. I prayed that the Lord would just keep Necati for Himself, not for me."

But Necati Aydin stayed firm in his new faith in Christ and, after writing a farewell letter to his family, he married Semse in 1998.

In reading about these dreadful killings we must try to emulate the example set by Semse Aydin:-

Despite the personal cost of her pain, Aydin stands by her public statement to the Turkish media two days after her husband's death, declaring that she has forgiven the five culprits, now jailed and awaiting trial.

In fact, she is actively praying for at least one of them to repent of their deeds and come to faith in Christ.

Egypt: Good News, Bad News

MECA is the Canadian based Middle East Christian Association. A few days ago the Egyptian head of MECA and another member were released by the Egyptian police after being held for three months:-

A host of journalists, lawyers, clergyman, family and friends gathered at the Cairo home of Adel Fawzy Faltas last night to celebrate the acquittal and release on Monday (November 5) of the Egyptian head of the Middle East Christian Association and an associate.

Faltas, 61, and colleague Peter Ezzat, 25, had been held on unsubstantiated charges of insulting Islam and tarnishing Egypt’s reputation abroad. Faltas had conducted an online interview with a controversial convert from Islam to Christianity only days before his arrest on August 8.

. . .

“I was at home taking a nap at 2 p.m. when I was awoken by the sound of our front door being broken in,” Ezzat said. “When I opened my bedroom door, I had some 10 soldiers and five officers pointing machine guns in my face.”

Ezzat said that the officers forced him onto the floor, blindfolded his eyes and tied his hands. The soldiers cleaned out his entire room, confiscating his computer, camera, mobile telephones, all CDs and tapes.

“Many times I thought that they were never going to let us go,” said Ezzat, who works on the organization’s website. “Each time that we went to court, they simply renewed our detention without any interrogation.”

. . .

Starting work in Egypt only 10 months ago, the Canada-based MECA has unabashedly challenged the government on a number of sensitive topics.

“It’s common for the government to arrest activists from time to time,” MECA spokesman Wagih Yaob said. “It’s a way of keeping the voice of the Copts down.”

In July, MECA lawyers opened a case against the government on behalf of Christians whose village was destroyed in a three-day rampage in January 2000. At least 21 Copts were killed, 18 injured and several hundred homes destroyed when Muslims attacked Christians in the upper Egyptian town of el-Kosheh.

Yesterday, however, two more MECA members were arrested by the police:-

U.S. Copts Association deplores the new arrest of two Coptic activists, Mr. Wagih Yaakoob the official spokesman of the ‘Middle East Christian Association’ and Victor George Abd El Melek, an active member of the Association. The two men were taken into state custody in the late hours of November 10th from their homes. It is believed that the State Security raided their apartments and confiscated computers and other publications about Egyptian Copts. The men were very vocal against the previous arrest of two other MECA members three month ago. They have taken parts in association activities inside Egypt including a protest to free the association jailed members. The men are believed to be at the State Security Intelligence (SSI) headquarters at Lazoghly Square, where they remain incarcerated.

The Egyptian police should release these detainees immediately.

Rememberence Day

They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them.

-- Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Indonesia Sentences 41 Christian To Imprisonment

It is reported that an Indonesian court has sentenced 41 Christian to five years imprisonment on charges of blasphemy:-

JAKARTA, INDONESIA (BosNewsLife)-- An Indonesian court has sentenced 41 Christian leaders to five years imprisonment on charges of blasphemy because they openly prayed that Muslims "come to know Christ," local Christians and a well-informed human rights group told BosNewsLife Thursday, November 1.

Voice Of the Martyrs (VOM) Australia said the Christians, who are linked to the international mission group Campus Crusade for Christ participated in a December, 2006, prayer gathering in the Indonesian province of East Java.

"During this time they prayed for their nation asking that all Muslim leaders come to know Christ. Video footage of this prayer meeting was filmed and was leaked to a Muslim organization," VOM Australia said.

The organization quoted local sources as saying that the 41 believers "have been found guilty of abusing the Koran," seen as a holy book by Muslims. "The judge sentenced them to five years in prison". Their lawyers are planning to appeal the sentence in East Java High Court in Surabaya, VOM Australia added.

MUSLIM AUTHORITY

A top official from Indonesia highest Muslim authority, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) told reporters earlier that in total 60 Christians were being sought in connection with the production of a video of the prayer gathering which allegedly contained anti-Islamic sentiments.

"We don't want revenge but only justice," MUI MUI official Muhammad Nidzom Hidayatullah was quoted as saying by Italian news agency Adnkronos International (AKI).

Indonesia has, in recent years, been the site of many violent Muslim-Christian confrontations. The province of Sulawesi was the scene of a bloody religious war in 2001-2002 that killed around 1000 people from both communities.

The Christian-Muslim conflict in Sulawesi was an extension of a wider sectarian war in the nearby Maluku archipelago in which up to 9000 perished between 1999 and 2002.

The violence in the Maluku archiplago (once known as The Spice Islands) was reported by John Mark Ministries as follows:-

The Maluku region of Eastern Indonesia (formerly the Spice Islands) was once predominantly Christian, as was the West Papua region. However, President Suharto's transmigration policy greatly changed their demographics by encouraging Javanese Muslims to migrate to these less densely populated areas. Despite some discontent, Christians, Muslims and Hindus co-existed peacefully. In Maluku, however, this peace came to an end during Ramadan, January 1999.

. . .

When the Islamic parties failed in the June 1999 elections, they joined in with those keen to discredit and bring down the democratically elected government. In mid 2000, thousands of Laskar Jihad militants arrived in Maluku, well armed and supported by elements of the Indonesian military. By the time 8,000 people had died and half a million had become refugees in Maluku, President Wahid was gone and Megawati Sukarnoputri remained mainly by favour of Islamic parties. For some, this was mission accomplished!

. . .

After Friday prayers on 26 April [2002], Thalib urged some 5,000 Muslims outside the Al-Fatah Mosque in Ambon to rally together in holy war against the Christians. He said, 'From today, we will no longer talk about reconciliation. Our ... focus now must be preparing for war - ready your guns, spears and daggers.' At 3:45am on Sunday 28 April, black-masked, heavily armed Islamic militants entered the Christian village of Soya (near Ambon city) as the people slept. They moved from house to house, killing up to 21 people by stabbing, decapitation or burning them alive, as well as wounding many more. Thirty homes and a Christian church were also incinerated. Whilst some attackers were seen with assault rifles and wearing military fatigues, the army denies any involvement.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as Islamic persecution of minorities in Indonesia is concerned. The main victims have been the ethnic Chinese minority and Christians.

Good News - From Baghdad!

After all the suffering and bad news I've reported in this blog, I'm very pleased to be able to bring you some good news.

Free-lance war correspondent Michael Yon reports on the re-opening of St. John’s Church in Baghdad:-

A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers.

It's nice to see something good happening for once.

Muslims Demolish Three Christians’ Houses in Pakistan

Yet another report of Christians being persecuted in Pakistan:-

Muslim residents of a Pakistani village demolished the homes of three Christians recently.

The Muslims, residents of a Pakistani village in the province of Punjab, claimed that the Christians had constructed their houses on a land which had been allocated for a Muslim graveyard.

Police, who arrived at the scene after an unidentified caller called them, arrested a number of Muslims who were demolishing the Christians’ homes.

James Masih, a Christian resident of the village, told the Sharing Life Ministry that some Muslims compounded the issue by making an announcement on Oct. 19 after Friday prayers through the village mosque’s loudspeaker.

About 80 Muslims riding tractors and other vehicles headed to the Christians’ houses. The alleged perpetrators, most of whom were allegedly armed with weapons, then started demolishing the homes. They also allegedly desecrated Christians literature.

According to the Sharing Life Ministry, the Muslim residents of the village claimed that the Christians had constructed houses on the land which was assigned for their graveyard. The Christian residents of the village, however, told the ministry that they were the legal owners of the land that had been given to them by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1995.

...

Some Muslim residents of the village told Sharing Life Ministry that they also condemned the destruction of Christian-owned houses by Muslims.

Strange how all the reports (of the persecution of Christians) seem to be from one part of the world and then they suddenly switch and they're all from some other part of the world.

Musharraf Imposes Emergency Rule

Since several recent posts have been about the persecution of Christians in Pakistan, I thought that I should at least mention the fact that General Musharraf has declared emergency rule and suspended the constitution. I do not intend to comment on that; you can read more about it here.

What is more relevant to the subject of this blog is the news reported in this article:-

Islamabad - Pakistan is considering enforcement of Islamic laws in Pakistan's north-western Swat valley to meet the demands of pro-Taliban militants who briefly seized and then released around 100 security personnel after nine days' fierce fighting that left more than 200 people dead. "The government is considering the implementation of Sharia law in the view of the demands of the local people," said Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, governor of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in which the valley is situated.

As I mentioned in a previous post, there are a number of Christians in that area who are already suffering persecution. If the Pakistani government agree to the implementation of Sharia in the NWFP, the situation for these people can only get worse.

Update: The imposition of emergency rule by General Musharraf is, perhaps, more significant than I originally thought. It appears that he is now opposed by both the Islamists and the moderates.

If Musharraf's regime falls, the danger is that it would be replaced by a Taliban-style Islamist theocracy in the same way that the overthrow of the Shah resulted in Iran becoming an Islamic republic.

If Sharia was imposed throughout Pakistan it would be disastrous for Pakistan's Christians who make up 1.6% of the population of approximately 161 million. Their persecution would almost certainly get much, much worse.

Another Forced Conversion in Pakistan

This is from a short article which I shall quote in full:-

Faisalabad (AsiaNews) – A young Christian woman was kidnapped, raped and forced to convert to Islam by a Muslim man in Faisalabad, Khalil Tahir, chairman of “Adal Trust,” a free legal aid organisation that helps minorities, told AsiaNews.

According to early reports, 18-year-old Razia went to visit her aunt on October 21 but never came home. Her parents went out looking for her but to no avail. They also contacted a Muslim man, Sajid, who had harassed her in the past, but he denied any knowledge of her whereabouts.

Razia did eventually make it home on October 31 in a state of shock. She told her parents that Sajid had abducted her, repeatedly raped her and forced her to convert to Islam. She is currently under medical care.

“The girl’s father went to the police to file a complaint on the evening of Razia’s return, but they were reluctant to register the case fearing that it might get out of proportion because of its religious element,” Khalil Tahir told AsiaNews.

For the time being “that man is free,” he said. “He can do whatever he wants,” he added, “but as a lawyer I’ll do everything in my power to help the family get justice in a Pakistani court.”

This tactic of persecuting the Christians through their daughters is something I have seen reported many times. Apart from Pakistan, this tactic is most commonly used against the Copts in Egypt. I have already reported such an incident here. Other accounts here.

In these parts of the world a family's honour is inextricably bound up with the women of that family. By attacking the women and taking their honour, they are attacking the honour of the entire family.

Also, with her honour lost, the woman will have great difficulty in finding a husband. She is, therefore, unlikely to have a family - thus reducing the Christian population in the next generation. This would seem too far-fetched to be a likely motive, were it not for the pervasive nature of these rapes.

Even if the woman does find a Christian man willing to marry her, she will probably face violent opposition to her marriage from the Muslim population. Having converted to Islam, she is by Islamic law forbidden from marrying a non-Muslim. However, if she renounces Islam she is liable, according to Islamic law, to the death penalty.

This article describes the ways in which Muslim extremists in Egypt pressure Egyptian Christians to convert. The paragraph at the end is particularly worth quoting:-

"These devious tactics to convert Christians to Islam are being used by Muslim extremists. I believe that most Muslims would strongly disapprove of the use of force, pressure and deception to convert Christians to Islam. However, this minority of extremists can do a lot of harm way out of proportion to their numbers because they are well-organised, disciplined and very determined. They are beginning to combine more subtle and sophisticated methods with their traditional propensity to use force. Their aim is to destroy the Christian presence in Egypt. The Egyptian church is a big prize in the eyes of the extremists because it is the largest Christian community in the predominantly Muslim Arab world. Right now the Coptic community in Egypt is being bled in mainly two ways, through conversion to Islam and through migration. The Egyptian government fails to adequately protect the Copts from Muslim extremists and often carries out or condones persecution or discrimination against Christians."

Islamic Militants in Pakistan Threaten Christian Family

Another report from Pakistan on Christians being threatened and told to convert to Islam:-

(Compass Direct News) – Islamic militants threatened to bomb a Christian family for refusing to convert to Islam as fighting between militants and government troops resumed in northwestern Pakistan yesterday.

“Become Muslim – otherwise, we are going to destroy your house with bombs,” an anonymous caller told a Swat Christian family last night.

The family, who requested that their name and village be kept anonymous for security reasons, said that they stayed awake all night praying after the 10 p.m. threat. They said that a Muslim neighbor, a close friend, spent the night in their front room as a token of solidarity.

Last month the family received a similar threat; militants delivered the threat in writing to a campsite the family operates.

A tiny Christian community in North West Frontier Province has reported increasing pressure to conform to Islamic law in recent months. Since July, followers of Muslim cleric Maulana Fazlullah have worked to enforce Islamic law (sharia) in much of Swat Valley, prompting clashes with government troops this week.

A worker with the Church of Pakistan in Peshawar confirmed that Christians in Swat have been forced to accept Islamic law.

It is worth noting that many Muslims do not believe that this is right, as is evident from the Muslim neighbour who stayed the night with this Christian family. Moreover, many Muslims also suffer from the action of the extremists:-

“Militants have begun to enforce Muslim customs, which is creating problems for the local community,” said Ashar Dean, assistant director of communications for the diocese.

Life has become even more difficult for Christians and other moderates in the valley since fighting broke out between government forces and extremists
last week.

What can we do?

“In these conditions, sometimes people are going to lose their faith,” a member of the threatened family said. “But I am making the request [for prayer] that God give us our faith.”

I'm wondering if there is any more concrete help that I can give? I'll let you know if I can find anything out. If you have any suggestions please let me know.