Christophobia

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T07:08:00.000Z

Happy New Year to you all.

Muslim persecution of Christians continues in many parts of the World. The plight of Christians in the West Bank and, especially, Gaza continues to worsen, as described here and here.

One of the worst places in the world to be a Christian is in the northern states of Nigeria where Shari'a law has been forced on the entire population by the Muslim majority. This article describes the struggle for survival of a church in the Nigerian province of Kano.

Despite this, I have decided to stop posting on this blog for the following reasons:-

1) I am merely repeating stories that are reported elsewhere; I'm not able to add much by way of comment and analysis to these stories.

2) The scope of this blog is quite limited; it does not allow me to comment on many events and issues which I want to.

3) Some of the events I have commented on are quite appalling, even horrific. While I wish to expose the whining of Muslims in the west over relatively trivial issues, it is vitally important not to create (or increase) antagonism against them. This requires walking a fine line, which I do not think that I can do well enough.

My source for most of the stories I have commented on was either The Religion of Peace or Compass Direct News. If you wish to continue reading similar stories, you can find them there.

As my final comment, I would like to point out that the first, and most frequent, victims of Islamic extremism are Muslims. As such, they deserve our sympathy, not our hate.

Peace be with you.

More on Muslim Apostates in the UK

2007-12-10T07:19:00.000Z

In this post I commented on an article from the Times Online which described the violence and threats experienced by one young convert from her own family. Today, in the Telegraph, we read another very similar story about another young Muslim woman who converted to Christianity:-

When Sofia Allam left the Muslim faith for Christianity, the response from her family was one of persecution and threats. Alasdair Palmer explores the dangers facing Islam's apostates
Sofia Allam simply could not believe it. Her kind, loving father was sitting in front of her threatening to kill her. He said she had brought shame and humiliation on him, that she was now "worse than the muck on their shoes" and she deserved to die.
And what had brought on his transformation? He had discovered that she had left the Muslim faith in which he had raised her and become a Christian.

"He said he couldn't have me in the house now that I was a Kaffir [an insulting term for a non-Muslim]," Sofia - not her real name - remembers.
"He said I was damned for ever. He insulted me horribly. I couldn't recognise that man as the father who had been so kind to me as I was growing up.
"My mother's transformation was even worse. She constantly beat me about the head. She screamed at me all the time. I remember saying to them, as they were shouting death threats, 'Mum, Dad - you're saying you should kill me… but I'm your daughter! Don't you realise that?'?"
. . .
Religious persecution of the kind Sofia suffers, however, is increasingly common in Britain today. It is hard to get an accurate notion of the scale of the problem, not least because very few of the people who leave Islam are willing to complain to the police about the way they are treated.
"Intimidation is very widespread and pretty effective," says Maryam Namazie, a spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. She believes that many of the deaths classified as "honour killings" are actually murders of people who have renounced Islam.
. . .
But it is not only extreme Muslim families that believe it is their religious duty to threaten, and even kill, members who renounce the religion.
"My father could not be described as an extremist," insists Sofia, who is now 31. "We read the Koran and prayed regularly together, but he never insisted on my wearing Islamic dress and he was quite happy that I went to the local comprehensive, which was all girls, but not by any means dominated by Muslims."

The violent reaction to this young woman's conversion is typical, or at least common. While the Shari'a punishment of death for apostasy is well-known, what I cannot understand is the violence shown towards the apostate by his or her own family.

The article continues:-

Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), says that it is "absolutely disgraceful behaviour… In Britain, no Muslim has the right to harm one hair of someone who decides to leave Islam."
Inayat Bunglawala, also a spokesman for the MCB, insists that such behaviour in Britain is "awful and quite wrong. The police should crack down on it."
And yet a significant portion of British Muslims think that such behaviour is not merely right, but a religious obligation: a survey by the think-tank Policy Exchange, for instance, revealed that 36 per cent of young Muslims believe that those who leave Islam should be killed.

Does Ibrahim Mogra believe that this behaviour is wrong only in Britain? Would it be acceptable somewhere else, like Pakistan perhaps?

There is considerable support, from the Koran and other sacred Islamic texts, for that position - which may explain why, out of the 57 Islamic states in the world today, seven have a legal code that punishes Muslims who leave the religion with death.
That number may soon increase: Pakistan is currently considering a Bill that would make apostasy a capital crime for men and one carrying a sentence of imprisonment for women.
As it is, ordinary Pakistanis take the law into their own hands and kill Muslim apostates.

It would be nice to have an unqualified condemnation of this behaviour from Muslim spokesmen.

Indonesia: Islamists Force Two Churches to Close

2007-12-08T10:52:00.000Z

In Indonesia radical Muslim groups have forced the closure of two Christian churches. The first was in Banten province (shown in green on the map above):-

In Banten province, extremists from the Islamic Defender Forces (Front Pembela Islam, or FPI) on November 21 attacked the Tangerang home of the Rev. Bedali Hulu, pastor at Jakarta Christian Baptist Church (GKBJ), kicking out doors and windows, breaking glass and throwing the pastor’s belongings from the house. The church had been meeting in the pastor’s home.
. . .
As a result of the attack and objections to the church, Rev. Hulu met with Pisangan Jaya village leaders on November 22 – with the result that officials asked him to leave the territory until tensions cooled. Activities at the church, which has a permit and is registered with Religious Affairs authorities, came to a halt.
. . .
The pastor previously had met with Pisangan Jaya village authorities on Nov. 8, sources said, after about 10 Muslim extremists on November 4 arrived at a Sunday school class at the house church, ordering shocked children to stop meeting. That night, they said, protestors returned and forced those present to halt their worship.

The other church forced to close was a Catholic church in West Jakarta:-

Marching against the church ostensibly because it didn’t have the proper permit for expansion – local authorities had denied the parish priest’s application without explanation – the irate demonstrators walked from Al Maulana mosque to the church yelling “Allahu Akbar [God is Great].”

About 15 protesters, including members of the FPI, undertook tense discussions with the church board at the parish house, along with some local government members. Under the banners of The South Duri Region Mosque-Musholla and the Majlis Ta’lim Cooperation Forum, they submitted several demands that in essence would require the church to stop all of its activities – permanently.

Sources said the protestors threatened violence if church leaders refused to comply with their demands and tried to force clergymen to remove all religious symbols.

The usual mix of intimidation and violence. This is very depressing - although no one was killed or injured, the background of intimidation by Islamists and governmental complicity is just as damaging to the freedom of worship for Christians all over Indonesia.

Christian Convert Threatened with Violence

2007-12-06T15:20:00.001Z

Nothing new there you might think but this is not happening in Egypt or Pakistan or Indonesia - this is happening in the U.K! From an article in the Times Online:-

A British imam's daughter is living in fear of her life under police protection after she received death threats from her family for converting to Christianity.
The young woman, aged 32, whose father is a Muslim imam in the north of England, has moved house 45 times to escape detection by her family since she became a Christian 15 years ago.
Hannah, who uses a pseudonym to hide her identity, told The Times how she became a Christian after she ran away from home at 16 to escape an arranged marriage.
. . .
The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali [pictured below], will claim "freedom to believe" is under threat in Britain because of Islamic hostility to conversion.
Hannah, now employed in multi-faith youth work and who gives talks to churches on Islam, is the daughter of a Lancashire imam whose seven other children are demanding she return to Islam.
She has been in hiding, since her home was attacked by a group of men armed with knives, axes and hammers, in 1994. She will describe today how she is in fear of her life after the death threats against her were recently renewed.
. . .
Hannah said she was looking forward to getting married so she could change her name and escape detection by her family. Not all Muslims in Britain are this extreme, she believes.

Not all Muslims anywhere are this extreme, but the ones that are make life very difficult indeed for converts.

"It is representative of some Muslims. I know the Koran says that anyone who goes away from Islam should be killed as an apostate so in some ways my family are following the Koran. They are following Islam to the word. But I do not think every Muslim would actually act on that."
Earlier this year, a Policy Exchange study found that 36 per cent of British Muslims aged between 16 and 24 believed those who converted to another religion should be punished by death.

The fact that Muslim converts to Christianity fear for their lives even in the U.K. is disgraceful. The article does state that she has been given a telephone number by the police that she can call for an instant response if she needs help.

Hannah was speaking at the launch of a new charity called Lapido Media whose aim is to promote "religious literacy".

Hindus (and Christians) Persecuted in Malaysia

2007-12-04T07:38:00.000Z

Normally this blog only comments on the persecution of Christians by Muslims, however, other religious minorities also suffer persecution at the hand of Muslims. To highlight this, I will quote from this article:-

When Hindus gathered courage and protested in an unprecedented solidarity on November 26 in Kuala Lumpur, they were crushed brutally by the Malay police using chemicals in the water cannons. None of those who had put up a united front against a cartoon created in Denmark felt anything bad or condemnable in the injustices meted out to the Hindus in an Islamic country. When it's a question of Hindus getting unfair treatment in a Muslim majority region, the 'civil, sophisticated and articulate' Muslim intellectuals take refuge in the statement that it's a matter concerning a foreign country. But when it's a question regarding a cartoon or a fatwa for beheading a writer, they say -we are a global Ummah, anything happening anywhere to Muslims is our common concern!

Quite; one rule for Muslims, another for non-Muslims.

This year Diwali was not celebrated openly by Malaysian Hindus in protest against the demolition of one of their most revered shrines, the hundred-year-old Maha Mariamman temple in Padang Jawa. In the last fifteen years, hundreds of Hindu temples have been demolished and the number of forcible conversions and unfair treatment on religious grounds has been constantly increasing. The tragic case of Revathi was just a recent one.

Churches being demolished, temples being destroyed: same old story. The case of Revathi is similar to those of Christian converts in Egypt who are prevented from changing their religion on their identity cards.

Moorthy Maniam was a Malaysian Hindu hero. After he died, a group of Muslims claimed he'd made a deathbed conversion. Despite his widow's protests, the Sharia courts declared that he should be buried as a Muslim. “They used Moorthy to show that in this country, Islam is supreme", complained his lawyer.

In the 1980s, Malaysia's Sharia courts were given equal power to the civil courts, creating two parallel legal systems. But while the Sharia courts are constantly trying to extend their authority, secular courts are reluctant to challenge them.

Christians, especially converts from Islam, have also suffered at the hand of the Sharia courts in Malasia. One of the most famous examples of this is Lina Joy: she converted at age 26 but couldn't get her religion changed on her identity card (doesn't this sound so familiar).

The Federal court ruled that matters of conversion to and from Islam were an issue for the Sharia court and refused her appeal:-

The ruling stated that "a person who wanted to renounce his/her religion must do so according to existing laws or practices of the particular religion. Only after the person has complied with the requirements and the authorities are satisfied that the person has apostatised, can she embrace Christianity.... In other words, a person cannot, at one's whims and fancies renounce or embrace a religion."

One of the most outrageous statements I have ever read. This has, of course, caused problems for Lina Joy: she is (or was) unable to marry her Christian fiancée because marriage between a Muslim and a non-Muslim is forbidden in Malasia. The non-Muslim partner has to convert to Islam.

The article continues:-

Hindus seems to be losing hope on all fronts and are making last-ditch efforts to attract attention by any which way to their sorry state of affairs. An umbrella organisation of thirty Hindu NGOs has been formed under the banner of Hindu Rights Action Force or HINDRAF that had called for the successful demonstration on November 26.
. . .
It's a reflection of India's secular government that the Malay Hindus of Indian origin chose to knock at the British doors, strangely petitioning the British government, Malaysia's former colonial ruler, to pay two million dollars each to every Indian-origin Malay as compensation for 'putting them in a situation of darkness and exploitation' which was a result of bringing their ancestors as indentured labourers a century before. They are discriminated on religious grounds and economic opportunities are not available to them.

It is, perhaps, a reflection of the loss of hope that the Hindus seem to have given up any attempt to oppose or change this discrimination. They seem to regard it as some sort of force of nature and hold the British responsible for leaving them to it's mercy!

They have my sympathy; they are being persecuted as many Christians are being persecuted inmany Muslim countries, but the people who are responsible for this are those who are doing the discrimination and persecution.

Muslim Militants Loot Christian Farmer's Rice Crop

2007-12-04T07:20:00.000Z

Picture for illustration only.

In Pakistan a Christian farmer has been robbed of his rice crop by armed Muslim Militants:-

Robby Simon said he had been robbed off "ripened rice crops worth" nearly $7,000, a huge amount in the impoverished region around his village of Tara Tibbi in District Mandi Bhaudin of Pakistan’s Punjab province.
He said the attack happened November 14 "in broad daylight", but police has so far refused to arrest any of the suspects. Police officials were not immediately available for comments, however security forces have been criticized by several advocacy groups of not doing enough to prevent attacks against Pakistan’s Christian minority.
Pakistani advocacy group Rays of Development (ROD) and relatives of Simon told BosNewsLife that militants carrying AK-47 rifles and other weapons forcibly entered in to the farm house of Simon and tied up his workers, identified as Nazir Masih and Muhammad Saleem, with ropes.
WAVING FIRE ARMS
A witness, Yousaf Masih, said the assailants reaped up the crop within 3.5 hours during the day light. "They finished harvesting and took away the looted rice crop with them, waving fire arms and saying: 'Christians are born to clean manure, therefore go and clean the cesspits and you (Christian) are not supposed to do cultivation'," he said, his voice trembling.
He added that the Muslim robbers "also blatantly challenged us to do whatever we (Christians) can do against them."
Masih said that the culprits are the residents of the same village and "very influential and powerful," and use bribery to avoid justice. Other Christian farmers have reportedly complained about similar incidents.

Perinent points from this report are that this is not an isolated incident and that the criminals are being protected by the police.

End of Christian Presence in Holy Land?

2007-12-04T07:08:00.000Z

It appears that the rate at which Christians are leaving the Palestinian territories is such that there will be none left in 15 years time:-

The ever-dwindling Christian communities living in Palestinian-run territories in the West Bank and Gaza are likely to dissipate completely within the next 15 years as a result of increasing Muslim persecution and maltreatment, an Israeli scholar said Monday.

"The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs," said Justus Reid Weiner, an international human rights lawyer in an address at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, where he serves as a scholar in residence.
He cited Muslim harassment and persecution as the main cause of the "acute human rights crisis" facing Christian Arabs, and predicted that unless governments or institutions step in to remedy the situation - such as with job opportunities - there will be no more Christian communities living in the Palestinians territories within 15 years, with only a few Western Christians and top clergymen left in the area.
"Christian leaders are being forced to abandon their followers to the forces of radical Islam," Weiner said.
Facing a pernicious mixture of persecution and economic hardships as a result of years of Palestinian violence and Israeli counter-terrorism measures, tens of thousands of Christian Arabs have left the Palestinian territories for a better life in the West, in a continuing exodus which has led some Christian leaders to warn that the faith could be virtually extinct in its birthplace in a matter of decades.
The Palestinian Christian population has dipped to 1.5 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, down from at least 15% a half century ago, according to some estimates.

No one city in the Holy Land is more indicative of the great exodus of Christians than Bethlehem, which fell under full Palestinian control last decade as part of the Oslo Accords.
The town of 30,000 is now less than 20% Christian, after decades when Christians were the majority.

The biggest disgrace here is the way this situation is being totally ignored by the MSM, Western governments and NGOs such as Amnesty International.

Turkey: Persecution of Converts

2007-12-01T18:07:00.000Z

I have written about the case of the Malatya murders here and here. As well as these violent crimes against Christians, it appears that you will also find in Turkey the insidious, low-level, persecution of converts which I have commented about so much in Egypt.

According to this report, two converts are accused of “insulting Turkishness”:-

During a 50-minute hearing yesterday in Silivri, 45 miles west of Istanbul, Judge Metin Tamirci summoned two alleged eyewitnesses, five gendarme soldiers, two policemen and three local residents to appear at the next hearing before the Silivri Criminal Court, set for March 13.
. . .
The prosecution had previously requested several of these individuals as potential witnesses, but their admission into the case had been denied by the previous judge. Judge Neset Eren withdrew from the case in September after Kerincsiz accused him of improper bias in his handling of the litigation.

“A year has passed, and the court has already heard all the testimonies on both sides of this case,” defense lawyer Haydar Polat told Compass yesterday. “But it is clear from today’s hearing that the court plans to continue this unfounded case for at least another year or more.”

Stonewalled Judicial Process
In July, State Prosecutor Ahmet Demirhuyuk had called for the Christians’ release, declaring that no credible evidence had been produced against them.

Not only did the three plaintiffs give contradictory testimonies, he said, but the prosecution failed to provide any concrete proof that the two men had ever cursed Turkey or Islam.

Accordingly, Polat told Compass, his clients should have been acquitted of all the charges at the next hearing on September 12. Instead, the presiding judge’s resignation and replacement in effect stonewalled the judicial process.

Without explanation, Demirhuyuk has been replaced by a succession of other state prosecutors at subsequent hearings on the case.

. . . and so it goes. One wonders whether this is a deliberate ploy to keep this case dragging on as a "punishment" for their conversion. The article continues:-

The new presiding judge yesterday overrode objections by lawyers Polat and Gursel Meric against calling new witnesses. The defense team had argued specifically that those persons who prepared the official statements for the case did not have the legal right to now come up with any other information differing from what had already been presented to the court.

The prosecution repeated its claims that the Christian defendants were part of an organized, illegal group suspected of possessing weapons and using immoral means to spread their influence.

Tastan and Topal are accused of insulting Turkishness, reviling Islam and secretly compiling files on private citizens for a Bible course by three young men, two of them minors.

What a dreadful crime - running a Bible course! There's more:-

Halting Hate Language
After the gruesome killing of three Christians who were tortured and their throats slit in the southeastern city of Malatya last April, the Turkish Interior Ministry admitted in June that there had been an increase in individual crimes against non-Muslim citizens and their places of worship.

The Interior Ministry’s official circular urged provincial governors to take precautionary measures.

But to date, no open steps have been taken to halt trumped-up legal pretexts against Christians or other non-Muslims, nor to prosecute the use of hate language that could incite violence against them.

Last night, still another episode of Turkey’s highly popular “Valley of the Wolves” weekly series on Show TV featured derogatory scenes against Christianity. In one scene, a character voiced the threat, “Just as we drove out the Christian crusaders, we will drive them out. If you don’t have a gun, let me give you one.”

In a thinly veiled variation of the Malatya murders, this fall the TV series even portrayed a teenage boy commissioned by a nationalist group to kill a Christian book publisher. Episodes on November 8 and 15 implied Christian missionaries were enemies of society, guilty of links ranging from the sale of body parts to prostitution.

This month Turkish Christians started a protest campaign against the overtly anti-Christian slant of the TV series, which has repeatedly dramatized popular misconceptions of the Turkish populace against missionaries, the Bible and so-called proselytizing of Muslims.

Sounds like a variation on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", except that Christians are substituted for Jews.

Nigeria: Four Churches to be Demolished

2007-11-30T20:27:00.000Z

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

2007-11-29T14:36:00.000Z

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

2007-11-29T11:56:00.000Z

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

2007-11-29T10:32:00.000Z

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

2007-11-28T10:28:00.000Z

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

2007-11-28T10:07:00.000Z

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

2007-11-24T06:54:00.000Z

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

2007-11-24T06:39:00.000Z

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

2007-11-20T07:15:00.000Z

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

2007-11-19T17:58:00.000Z

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

2007-11-18T20:13:00.000Z

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'

2007-11-18T07:41:00.000Z

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

2007-11-16T11:49:00.000Z

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

2007-11-14T12:56:00.000Z

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

2007-11-13T11:45:00.000Z

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

2007-11-12T11:12:00.000Z

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

2007-11-11T11:09:00.000Z

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

2007-11-11T10:53:00.000Z

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

2007-11-08T09:45:00.000Z

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!

2007-11-08T09:10:00.000Z

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

2007-11-04T13:55:00.000Z

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

2007-11-03T15:30:00.000Z

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

2007-11-03T12:28:00.000Z

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

2007-11-03T11:22:00.000Z

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.

Iranian Judge Rules Beating Victim Guilty of 'Evangelism'

2007-11-03T10:54:00.000Z

From this story at WorldNetDaily:-

An Iranian judge has concluded a woman who was attacked and beaten and had her sewing shop equipment destroyed by vandals has no legal recourse because she was guilty of "evangelism," according to a new report from Voice of the Martyrs, a worldwide ministry to the Persecuted Church.

. . .

The woman, whose name was not revealed, was running a tailoring business, and had volunteered to teach three young ladies how to sew. As part of the conversations that arose, her testimony about Christianity came up, and in response to a number of questions, she started teaching them about Christianity,
. . .

The VOM contacts reported, however, one of the students was from "a fanatic Muslim family," and when they discovered the teaching, they first opposed it.

"But this young lady was seriously following her Christian beliefs. Things got worse, to the extent that her parents started beating her up and threatening her if she didn't leave her faith," the VOM report said.

"They told her, 'If you don't return to Islam, we will keep beating you until you die,'" VOM said.
She eventually fled to another city, and in their subsequent search for her, the parents and other family members sought the sewing instructor.

"They thought she might have taken refuge in the home of the lady who was teaching her how to sew. They had heard about her and the fact that she had evangelized their daughter. In any case, they contacted that lady and threatened her by telling her that if she did not send their daughter back to them, they would close down her shop and would even arrange to kill her," the report said.

"Within fundamentalist Islam, the penalty of someone who turns from Islam is death. That is why they had the right to kill her if they wanted to. Obviously, their daughter was not staying with that seamstress, but the parents did not believe this," VOM said.

"On one of the days when the seamstress was working in the dress shop, the young woman's family, including the father, went to the shop and broke all her equipment. A couple of ladies from the family started beating up the woman. They kept telling her that she forced their daughter to turn from Islam and become a Christian. They eventually informed the police about it. This lady was taken to the court because of all that had happened to her," the report continued.

"The judge considered her to be the guilty one. He told her that there was no way of refunding all the broken items in her shop. The judge said the persecutors had the right to attack her. The judge told the lady that if he heard about her doing evangelism again, he would punish her more severely," VOM said.

One word of caution: the source of this article is said to be a report from the Voice of the Martyrs. However, I was unable to find any such report on the VOM website.

Two Christians Kidnapped from a Hospital in Pakistan

2007-10-29T19:38:00.000Z

According to this article in the Times of India:-

ISLAMABAD: Suspected pro-Taliban militants kidnapped two Christians from a hospital in Pakistan's North Waziristan, a news report has said.

Masked men kidnapped the two Christian sanitation workers from the Miranshah Headquarters Hospital in North Waziristan on Friday, eyewitnesses said. Naeem Masih and Shahbaz Masih were abducted "right from the main gate of the hospital", the Daily Times quoted witnesses as saying. Around 1,000 Christians live in Miranshah.

. . .

Islamist militants in Pakistan have regularly threatened to kill Christian clerics in Southern Punjab's Khanewal district if they did not "embrace Islam and stop preaching Christianity." Demanding equal opportunities "as promised" by Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, minority organisations in August had sought a ban on forced conversions and repeal of the stringent blasphemy laws in the Islamic country.

How dare they demand equal opportunities and a ban on forced conversions!

Off Topic: Abortion

2007-10-29T19:09:00.000Z

Just over a week ago, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, made a statement on abortion which closely mirrored the way my mind was working. He said:-

The British public is in danger of losing its 'moral focus' on abortion and treating the procedure as normal, rather than a last resort, says the Archbishop of Canterbury.

. . .

There has been an obvious weakening of the feeling that abortion is a last resort in cases of extreme danger or distress,' Williams writes, noting that 'nearly 200,000 abortions a year in England and Wales tell their own story'.

. . .

He also suggests that the present 24-week limit for abortions should be reviewed. 'This issue needs attention, if only because of the fact that the existing law assumes a rather less developed state of medical science than is now the case.'

The extracts shown above are the ones that most closely match what I had been thinking. Then I read this article about abortion in Algeria:-

Banned by law and condemned by Islam, abortion remains a taboo in Algeria, where those who want to interrupt their pregnancy are forced to turn to doctors who operate illegally or to go to Tunisia where the law is more permissive. Despite the strict laws that envisage from five-year prison sentence for those who practice abortion to life sentence for those who practice it repeatedly, at least 80,000 women decide to resort to illegal abortions every year, according to police data. For years, women's rights associations have called unsuccessfully for the decriminalisation of abortion, with the latest appeal coming a few days ago by the president of the Medical Deontology Council, Bekat Borkani, who requested: "to at least allow abortion for women victims of rape". According to some experts, the net increase of the interrupted pregnancies in the last five years is in fact a direct consequence of the increase of sexual violence. According to the data by some associations, two rapes take place in the North African country every 36 hours, although charges are rarely pressed.

80,000 abortions a year in a country where abortion is completely illegal! For comparison, the population of Algeria is some 33.3 million.

This is where I run out of words. Make up your own mind.

Pakistan: Muslims Apologize for Attack on Chrurch

2007-10-28T19:22:00.000Z

Another attack on a church in Pakistan. It's all right, though - they apologized:-

Muslims who attacked a Pakistani church and declared religious war against Christians from mosque minarets have apologized for their actions, human rights workers said.

. . .

No charges have been brought against the 300 Punjabi Muslim villagers who vandalized the New Apostolic Church at 6 a.m. October 10. The mob broke church windows, threw dung on its walls and cut wires to the church’s loudspeaker.

But subsequent threats against Gowindh’s Christians were even more serious than the initial attack, Mehboob Khan of the HRCP told Compass.

Following these acts of vandalism, Muslim clerics called for jihad, Islamic holy war, against the Christian “infidels.” The clerics issued the call from the town’s eight mosques, Khan said.

Another HRCP worker who visited the village, located east of Lahore on the Indian border, said that the threats had included demands for Christians to convert to Islam.

“Become Muslims or be prepared to fight or die,” the clerics announced from the mosque loudspeakers, HRCP member Nadeem Anthony said. “This was the first time it happened, which is why the villagers were so scared.”

This story contains several common elements: the violence being incited from Mosques, a declaration of religious war and the choice to convert, fight or die. They then imposed a bocott of the Christians:-

“Christians couldn’t get anything from Muslims’ shops,” Gowindh Christian leader Sattar Masih told Sharing Life Ministries Pakistan, a Christian rights group that visited the area. “They couldn’t go to the doctor as the doctors were Muslims.”

And then the perpetrators escape any criminal action by apologizing:-

The incident is consistent with the ongoing pattern of isolated church attacks in Pakistan where perpetrators later apologize and avoid facing charges.

Several Christians were injured and Christian literature was destroyed when Muslim villagers attacked a church north of Faisalabad in June. The congregation had obtained permission from the village government to use a loudspeaker to broadcast evangelistic meetings they were planning to hold the night of the attack.

In a similar out-of-court settlement, the attackers apologized but were not charged for the violence.

In May in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province town of Charsadda, two madrassah (Muslim seminary) students confessed to having authored anonymous threats against Christians. At least 50 Christians had fled Charsadda after they received a letter telling them to convert to Islam or face suicide bombing. But the Christian community chose not to press charges and on June 4 officially forgave the two students, who said the threats had been a prank.

Christians make up approximately 1.5 percent of Pakistan’s population, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2007 Report on International Religious Freedom.

I'm willing to forgive these villagers, even if their apology is not sincere. However, the problem seem to be escalating. If someone was punished, it might discourage further attacks.

Yet Another Christian Girl Kidnapped in Egypt

2007-10-23T23:44:00.000+01:00

Some days, you just can't keep up. This is the first time I've reported a Christian girl being abducted in Egypt, but it's far from being the first that I've heard about.

Yet another Christian underage girl has been reported missing.

Nora Ayoub Sanad, aged 17, left home on Monday 17 September 2007 to escort her brother and two sisters to school as usual but she never returned. Her family waited till almost 2:00pm and then started calling her friends asking if they had seen her, but no-one knew anything about her whereabouts. Suspicions turned towards their neighbour, 23-year-old unemployed, Mohamed Ahmed Ali known as Mohamed Adidas, since he also mysteriously disappeared around the same time. The father, 50, a tyre repair man and mother, 38, a house wife, went to talk to the young man’s mother who denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of the daughter. When the father threatened to go to the State security, Mohamed’s sister intervened telling her mother to call the uncle telling him “to let them go and not to carry out their plan.”

On hearing this, Nora’s father went straight to Amriya police station where he reported the abduction of his daughter by Mohamed Adidas. Unfortunately the police officers on duty procrastinated endlessly and treated the father in a most humiliating way, making fun of him and insulting him and his daughter. On Wednesday evening, following endless trips between the State security office and the police station, the father, the mother of Mohamed Adidas and four policemen headed to the uncle’s house to find, not surprisingly, that the young people were not there. The father, reaching the end of his tether, said clearly that he officially accuses Mohamed Ahmed Ali of abducting and holding his under age daughter against her will and that Mohamed’s family know his whereabouts and are in contact with him. The mother said Nora had tried to call her twice, each time crying hysterically and saying that she wants to come home but “they will only let her go after ten days.” Now it is more than a month and Nora is still missing.

And it has come to the attention of Watani that five other underage girls disappeared, from different regions in Egypt, during the week before Eid al-Fitr—the Ramadan feast. Will the agony ever end?

Presumably, Nora Ayoub Sanad and the other girls who disappeared were Copts. This is one of the main ways the Copts are being oppressed by Muslim extremist in Egypt.

Pakistani Talibans Attack Christian Schools

2007-10-23T23:35:00.000+01:00

This is what's happening in Pakistan:-

The process of talebanisation of Pakistan continues despite formal pledges by the central government and local authorities. Islamic extremism has in fact reached the Swat Valley, once known as the Switzerland of the Orient, this according to a report by Minorities Concern of Pakistan, a local organisation which monitors the situation of minorities and violations of the human rights of the population.

One of the cases cited in the report involves a Catholic-run public high school in Sangota, in the Swat Valley. In a recent letter, a group calling itself Janisaran-i-Islam (Sacrifices of Islam) attacked the school administration for allegedly “forcibly converting students” and “encouraging un-Islamic behaviour.”

ChristiansThe fundamentalist group calls for the firing of all Christians employed by the school and their replacement with fervent Muslims. It also threatens suicide bombers “if its orders are not followed.”

Instead of finding out what the school had to say, the local government agreed with the letter, and issued an order that all female students cover their heads in the school to preserve local Islamic morality from conversion and atheism.

Extremists enthusiastically welcomed the order, citing the case of the three young Christian women in Indonesia who were decapitated for not wearing the veil.

Worried by the turn of events, many parents pulled their daughters from the school, which was forced to shut down till next week when local authorities will send security agents to enforce security. However, only half of all non Muslim students are planning to come back. Many are actually thinking about leaving the country to avoid further violence.

What is happening does not worry the Christian minority alone. In the Swat Valley, a region much loved by Pakistanis and one of the country’s richest areas, greater Islamist pressures show that the government has failed to stem the flow of Talibans from neighbouring Afghanistan.

Actually, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Asylum for Eritrean Gospel Singer

2007-10-23T23:16:00.000+01:00

From the BBC:-

An Eritrean Christian gospel singer who was tortured and detained without charge for two years in her homeland has been granted asylum in Denmark.
Helen Berhane was imprisoned inside a metal shipping container and beaten in an effort to make her recant her faith.
Freed in December 2006, she took refuge in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, before being granted asylum.
Ms Berhane uses a wheelchair because of severe injuries to her legs and feet sustained in prison beatings.
More than 90% of Eritreans belong to one of four recognised religions - Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran Churches and Islam.
All other religions were outlawed by a government decree passed in May 2001, though Jehovah's Witnesses had been denied their rights as Eritrean citizens as early as 1994.
Helen Berhane is a member of the unregistered Rema Church and had just released a cassette of gospel music when she was arrested in the Eritrean capital on 13 May 2004.

. . .

Among the tortures she endured was the infamous "helicopter" position, in which the prisoner is placed face down with arms and legs tied behind the back.
Her account of the cruel and inhumane treatment she suffered is echoed by the testimony of hundreds of others persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Prisoners say they are routinely subjected to extremes of heat and cold, denied water and sanitation, according to testimony collected from exiles by Release Eritrea, an organisation that campaigns for the rights of religious minorities.

. . .
Initially Helen Berhane applied to the United Kingdom for asylum and was interviewed by immigration officials at the British High Commission in Khartoum in January 2007.
Seven months later, with no decision on her case by the British, Ms Berhane sought help from Denmark which took one month to determine that she was a genuine asylum seeker.

Well done the Danes; shame on the U.K.

Nigeria: Two Christians Murdered after call to Jihad

2007-10-22T15:23:00.000+01:00

Yet another post about Christians being threatened or attached in Nigeria. Apparently, these two were attacked after a Muslim leader called on Muslims to wage Jihad against young Christians. The call for Jihad was made in a sermon broadcast on television during Ramadan:-

One man has been killed with a sword and another bludgeoned to death in this city in central northern Nigeria following Muslim leaders’ appeal to wage violent jihad against youthful Christians.
Muslim extremists on October 12 murdered Henry Emmanuel Ogbaje, a 24-year-old Christian, at an area known as Gamji Gate. The following day, church leaders said, a young Christian identified only as Basil was beaten to death with wooden clubs in the same area.

Ogbaje was a Sunday school teacher with the Military Protestant Church at Kotoko Barracks in Kaduna, while Basil, church leaders said, was a member of the Our Lady of Apostles Catholic Church. He was from Kagarko Local Government Area.

Elder Saidu Dogo, secretary of the northern Nigeria chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), told Compass that Islamic leader Sheik Gumi had urged Muslims to wage jihad against Christians during Tafsir, the reading and interpretation of the Quran, in televised broadcasts during the Islamic month-long observance of Ramadan.

“I saw Sheik Gumi on the television, NTA [Nigeria Television Authority], during that period preaching this inciting sermon – in fact, the same sermon was again broadcast by NTA Kaduna, on September 21 and 22,” Dogo told Compass. “He specifically called for a jihad, and that when they go killing they should not kill the elderly people, because the elderly have spent their years already, but that Muslims should kill young Christians.”
. . .
Both murders took place as Muslims were celebrating the Eid-El-Fatr festival marking the end of Ramadan. Noting that other Muslim leaders also preached attacks against Christians during Ramadan, Dogo raised a plea for the Nigerian government to act quickly to forestall what he and other Christian leaders said was a systematic effort to wipe out Christianity from northern Nigeria.

This is Sheikh Ahmed Gumi, son of the late Sheikh Abubaker Gumi, who was a noted Islamic scholar. The son, apparently, spends most of his time in Saudi Arabia and only visits Nigeria during Ramadan.

Islamists Threaten Church in Nigeria

2007-10-22T15:09:00.000+01:00

Only a threat, so far:-

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, October 10 (Compass Direct News) – Militant Islamists in this city in the northern state of Borno have sent three letters to a church warning that members would be attacked in the next few days, raising tensions where 50 Christians were killed and 57 churches destroyed last year.

Leaders of the Christian Association of Nigeria told Compass that the letters were dropped onto the premises of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria (EYN), in the Polo Area of Maiduguri, on separate days last week.

The Rev. Daniel Mbaya of the Polo Area Church of the Brethren, which has about 3,000 members, had reported the threat to police and Christian leaders. Nigeria’s security agencies and Christian leaders held an emergency meeting yesterday on ways to protect Christians in the event of an Islamic strike on the church.

The Rev. Daniel Mbaya is no stranger to having his church burnt down:-

The sanctuary was set ablaze on February 18 last year, alongside other churches in the city, by Muslim militants protesting cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad by a Danish newspaper.

Christian Couple Flogged for Attending “Underground Church”

2007-10-18T15:14:00.000+01:00

Here is a report I missed earlier:-

A Christian couple were flogged in Iran for participating in an “underground Church”, an Iranian Christian group said in a report on its website earlier this week.

The unnamed couple were arrested on September 21, 2005, the report said, adding that a Revolutionary Court reviewed their case in July 2007.

Even though the couple had decided to marry seven years ago, the country’s marriage laws - which prohibit the union of ex-Muslims and members of other religious minorities – prevented them from obtaining a certificate of marriage.

The report said that the woman was born a Christian in an Assyrian-Iranian family and the man was a convert to Christianity prior to getting married.

The court ruled that both the man and the woman were Mortad, a description of someone who has committed apostasy by leaving Islam.

This seems to be the usual policy of making life as difficult as possible for ex-Muslims.

Muslims

2007-10-17T20:12:00.000+01:00

Let me make one thing clear - those Muslims who are guilty of persecuting Christians and using violence against them are a small minority.

The vast majority of Muslims are like any other group of people - some good, some bad and most of them somewhere in the middle - in other words, just like you and me and all the people we know.

While I was brought up in a very devout Christian environment, I do not want to deceive you into thinking that I'm a practising Christian. Most people would probably describe me as an agnostic, however, I remember enough from my upbringing to ask - and answer - the following question:-

What would Jesus say? He would say "Love thy neighbour" - and you don't need me to tell you that "thy neighbour" includes every Islamist who hates our culture, our religion and everything it stands for. It also includes every suicide bomber who is willing to send as many innocents to hell as he can so that he can take a short-cut to paradise.

Christianity isn't easy.

As you read my posts, at the very least, try not to feel malice or hatred for those that persecute and attack Christians (and other non-Muslims). If you do, remember that you are descending to their level.

This does not, however, mean that we do nothing. We can:-

support organizations that help Christians in countries where they are a minority.
bring the persecution of Christians in these countries to the attention of others.
pray for those Christians that are being persecuted for their faith.
pray for those Muslims that persecute Christians, that they may realise that this is not God's will.

I'm sure it would help the victims of persecution just to know that other people in the world know and care about their suffering and are praying for them.

Pope pleads for release of two priests kidnapped in Mosul

2007-10-17T19:44:00.000+01:00

From this article:-

Pope Benedict XVI made a public appeal on Sunday for the release of two Catholic priests kidnapped a day earlier on their way home from a funeral in northern Iraq.

The priests were abducted about 4 p.m. Saturday after participating in a funeral in western Mosul, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, according to Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, Mosul's head of the Syrian Catholic Church, one of the branches of the Roman Catholic Church.

Gunmen ambushed the priests' car, dragged them out and took them to an unidentified location, Casmoussa said Sunday.

. . .

In the summer of 2004, insurgents launched a coordinated bombing campaign against Baghdad churches, sending some Christians fleeing in fear.

A second wave of anti-Christian attacks hit in September 2006 after Pope Benedict XVI made comments perceived to be anti-Muslim. Church bombings spiked and a priest, also in Mosul, was kidnapped and later found beheaded.

Many churches are now nearly empty, with their faithful either gone or too scared to attend.

Lahore: Extremists Attack Church, Beat Children

2007-10-17T19:40:00.000+01:00

More tolerance from Muslim extremists in Pakistan:-

A Muslim mob armed with guns and steel rods attacked the New Apostolic Church in Hadyara, on the outskirts of Lahore. They beat up worshippers, including a child, and damaged property.

After the incident the attackers through mosque loudspeakers called on Muslims from nearby villages to gather for a “final attack” after Ramadan. They also urged businesses and farmers not to allow Christians on their properties or do business with them.

Lahore police arrived only after the incident, but remained overnight to patrol the area around the church building.

According to local political leaders, Christians will be safe until the end of Ramadan. But local police could not confirm the information.

Elsewhere in the country near Peshawar Islamic extremists stormed six stores selling records and a barber shop for violating Muslim morality. One person was killed and two wounded as a result of the violence. The stores were destroyed.

Egyptian Islamists Join Case Against Convert to Christianity

2007-10-17T19:08:00.000+01:00

Something that really infuriates Muslim zealots, apparently, is the conversion of a Muslim to another religion.

Conservative Islamic lawyers came out in support of the Egyptian government last week at the opening court hearing of a Muslim convert to Chris tianity.

In a move that has caused national uproar, former Muslim Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy is suing Egypt to change the religion listed on his identification papers to Chris tianity.

Even Hegazy's former lawyer, Mamdouh Nakhla, received threats:-

Under public criticism and death threats, Nakhla withdrew from Hegazy’s case days after it became public. Fanatics began harassing Hegazy and his pregnant wife, also a former Muslim, with angry telephone calls, forcing the couple into hiding.

“It’s quite sensitive,” Hegazy’s new lawyer, Rawda Ahmad, told Compass through a translator. “It would be the first time that someone who converted to Chris tianity would be able to change his ID card.”

Though Egyptian law does not forbid conversion from Islam to Chris tianity, it provides no legal means to make the change. Converts to Chris tianity usually hide their identity to avoid torture and forced recantation at the hands of family members and security police.

Apparently, even a single convert to Christianity threatens Egyptian stability:-

Egyptian media have criticized Hegazy in recent months, claiming that his conversion was motivated by money, blackmail, and foreign forces hoping to destabilize Egypt .

Why did he convert to Christianity:-

Now 24, Hegazy said he first made the decision to become a Chris tian when he was 16.

“My father was not a practicing Muslim, but he hated Chris tians and Jews as he believed Islam taught us to do so,” Hegazy said in a website statement. “As a child I was taught not to love or respect Chris tians, but rather treat them harshly because God hates them.”

As a teenager Hegazy enrolled in an institute to train as an Islamic preacher but said he did not like what he learned about Islam’s teaching on women and various subjects.

It was only at the age of 16, when he transferred to a class that had seven Chris tian students, that he began to think seriously about Chris tianity.

“It was the first time that I lived close to Chris tians, and their lives were like lights for me,” Hegazy said. One day he borrowed a Chris tian book from one of his classmates and read about the conversion of Saul. The story created a desire in him to know more about Chris tianity.

Then what happened?

State security police soon arrested the young man and tortured him for three days. Despite using a Coptic Orthodox priest to convince Hegazy to recant, the young convert said that police were unable to persuade him to revert to Islam. He eventually returned home, his father under the illusion that he was once again Muslim.

Historically, the punishment for an apostate from Islam was death, however, few Muslim countries now impose the death penalty for apostasy. Many Muslim countries, however, have some form of punishment for leaving Islam. This may involve imprisonment or they may just make life difficult for the apostate.

Often, however, the chief threat is not from the law, but from fanatical Muslims who are willing to take the law into their own hands.

Christians persecuted under Blasphemy laws in Pakistan

2007-10-17T18:29:00.000+01:00

Pakistan's blasphemy laws, introduced during the rule of General Zia-ul-Haq, have long been used to persecute religious minorities in Pakistan.

According to Wikipedia:-

The Pakistani Catholic bishops' Justice and Peace Commission complained in July 2005 that since 1099, some 650 people had been falsely accused and arrested under the blasphemy law. Moreover, over the same period, some 20 people accused of the same offense had been killed. As of July 2005, 80 Christians were in prison after being accused of blasphemy.

According to this article, even if you are acquitted of the charge of blasphemy, you are still in danger:-

A Pakistan Christian who was previously acquitted of blasphemy is still in hiding almost a year after charges were dropped because Muslim militants are trying to kill him, a report from Release International has said.

In addition, a 16-year-old boy is now a fugitive in fear of his life after a squabble with another schoolboy led to accusations of blasphemy, Christian Today has been told.

Both cases highlight the reason Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws must be repealed, RI has urged.

"They can shoot me or burn me, they can kill me if they know that I am hiding here," Schoolboy Rashid Masih told Release International.

Hospital worker Ranjah Masih was jailed for life under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws simply for knocking over a sign – an offence which would be considered too trivial to bring to court in most countries. But the sign, which it turned out had a verse of Koran on it, belonged to a Muslim shopkeeper, and so the blasphemy charge was used.
. . .

Despite his protested innocence, Ranjah was jailed for life, blindfolded and beaten daily with clubs and sticks until his health was all but broken. He had to bribe the police to give him medicine, and says they beat him to try force him to reveal the names of other Christians.
Many times the police told him that if he converted to Islam they would set him free, however, Ranjah refused.

One day a prison officer brought him a Koran and said that if he just recited an Islamic prayer he could go. Ranjah replied: "If release from prison means forsaking Jesus Christ, then I don't want to be released."

Meanwhile his wife had to bring up their six children on her meagre earnings as a domestic servant. She was supported by Release International's partners, CLAAS – the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement - which helps many persecuted Christians in Pakistan.

After eight-and-a-half years behind bars the authorities finally acknowledged that Ranjah had been innocent all along and set him free.

So much for "There is no compulsion in religion" (Qur'an 2:256).

Ranjah Masih deserves our admiration for his devotion and steadfastness. If you pray, then pray for him and his family.

Palestinian Christan Tortured and Murdered

2007-10-17T18:23:00.000+01:00

"We feel Rami was killed for his Christian faith"

The killing of a prominent Palestinian Christian activist on Sunday sent a shudder of fear through the Gaza Strip's tiny Christian community, which is feeling increasingly insecure since the Islamic Hamas seized control there last summer.
The body of Rami Khader Ayyad, the 32-year-old director of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, was found on a Gaza City street early Sunday. The body bore a visible gunshot wound to the head, and an official at Gaza's Shifa Hospital said he was also stabbed numerous times. Ayyad had been missing since Saturday afternoon.

Ayyad's store, the Teacher's Bookshop, is associated with a Christian group called the Palestinian Bible Society. Ayyad regularly received anonymous death threats from people angry about his perceived missionary work, a rarity among Gaza's Christians, and in April, the bookstore was firebombed.

"We feel Rami was killed for his Christian faith," said Simon Azazian, a spokesman at the Bible Society's head office in Jerusalem.

About 3,200 Christians live in Gaza among 1.4 million Muslims. While Christians and Muslims have generally gotten along over the years, Christians have grown uneasy since Hamas routed forces of the secular Fatah movement and seized control of Gaza in June. During the takeover, vandals ransacked a Roman Catholic convent and an adjacent school, breaking crosses and smashing the face of a ceramic Jesus.

As in other Muslims majority areas, the population of Christians in Gaza is steadily declining.

Islamic Tolerance

2007-10-17T17:46:00.000+01:00

The White House hosts Iftars (the meal at which Muslims break their fast after abstaining from food and drink all day during Ramadan) and the Empire State Building is bathed in green light to celebrate then end of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, this group of Muslims show their tolerance of Christianity and Christian festivals:-

A Toronto mosque is telling Muslims not to say "Happy Thanksgiving" or invite friends into their homes for turkey dinner on the holiday weekend.
The Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque says to "avoid participating" in dinners, parties or greetings on Thanksgiving because it is a kuffaar, or non-Muslim, celebration.
A two-part article on the mosque Web site says Muslims should also "stay completely away" from "Halloween trick-and treat nonsense," Christmas, New Year's, anniversaries, birthdays and Earth Day.
"How can we bring ourselves to congratulate or wish people well for their disobedience to Allah? Thus expressions such as:Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Birthday, Happy New Year, etc, are completely out," it says.
In 2003, the Khalid mosque, which mainly serves the Toronto Somali-Canadian community, apologized for a newsletter that compared wishing someone a Merry Christmas to congratulating a murderer.
At the time, a junior employee was blamed for the slight, but the mosque's Web site has since posted similar edicts covering not only Christmas but also virtually every other Western celebration.

It appears that tolerance and understanding is a one-way street at the Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque.

I searched for the article at the website of the Khalid bin Al-Walid Mosque website and found it here (see the second page for the edict forbidding Muslims from congratulating Christians on their festivals such as Thanksgiving and Christmas).

While there is a disclaimer on the article, it seems that this is not the first time such sentiments have been expressed on the mosque's website.

Actually, these statements are standard Wahabi doctrines that can be found on many other websites.

Two Coptic Christians Murdered in Egypt

2007-10-17T17:39:00.000+01:00

According to this article:-

Two Coptic Christians were found dead in a village 240 miles south of Cairo, police said. They added that they were investigating the incident as possible sectarian violence in the same village that witnessed some of the worst massacres seven years ago.
Police sources said they were investigating the deaths of Sadeq Ishaq, 45, and Karam Andraus, 40, who were shot to death on their farm in El Kosheh. The official added that investigators were attempting to determine if the murders were sectarian in nature.
In 2007, a dispute between Muslims and Coptic Christians in the village escalated into a full scale battle as armed gangs took up weapons against each other. The violence left 21 Christians and one Muslim dead.
Coptic Christians are generally estimated to make up around 10 percent of Egypt's population. Often random incidents of violence have been construed as sectarianism by the media.

The last sentence seems a bit misleading to me, given the history of Muslim/Copt violence in this village. Also, according to the Egyptian government, the number of Copts has fallen to 6% of the population.

Update on Christians Killed in Nigeria

2007-10-17T17:35:00.000+01:00

More information about these attacks. The death toll may be higher than the nine originally reported.

Indications that the death toll following the weekend’s violence in the Tundun Wada area of Kano State, northern Nigeria, may be higher than initially estimated are beginning to emerge as more information about the causes of the violence are brought to light, Christian Today has learned.

Official figures suggest around nine Christians were killed, several churches were burnt and businesses and homes belonging to non-Muslims were destroyed during religious violence. Even Christian policemen are reported to have lost their homes and property.

As tensions slowly subside in the area, the circumstances which triggered the violence are gradually coming to light.

The violence appears to have begun on the morning of 28 September 2007, when a group of Muslim students invaded a room shared by two Christian students at the Government Secondary School in Tudun Wada Na Kande, and began to assault them severely.

When the Christian students asked what they had done wrong, their assailants initially told them to “mind their own business”. However, once the school principal arrived at the scene, the Christians were accused of drawing a picture of Mohammed on a mosque wall and of planning an assault on Muslim students.

Christians Killed in Nigeria Over Cartoon Drawn by Muslim

2007-10-17T16:07:00.000+01:00

These nine Christians were killed in Nigeria over a cartoon drawn by a Muslim in Bangladesh!

According to Mr Samuel Salifu, General Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN):-

"Information available to me is that almost all the churches within that local government area have been razed down and shops belonging to Christians had also been burnt including their houses. We have been told that they have been ejected and their property brought down and burnt.
"The information given was that they saw a cartoon on the internet and they discovered that this cartoon was drawn by a 20-year-old Muslim boy from Bangladesh and they decided to visit their anger on innocent Christians and their churches.
"I have been told that nine people including a youth corper are confirmed dead and several others injured while the local government in a desperate attempt to cover the dastardly act pretended to be taking the victims to the hospital while in reality they sent some of the victims to Bauchi and some other places around so that people will not go there and see the number of destitutes or refugees caused by this incident."

Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim with a Christian minority. Muslim attacks on Christians have been commonplace in this region in recent years.

BANGLADESH: ANTI-CHRISTIAN RUMOR HELPS FUEL ATTACKS

2007-10-17T15:58:00.000+01:00

Reported by Compass Direct News on October 16, 2007.

It appears that Muslims (and Buddhists) in Bangladesh are claiming that Christian missionaries are paying Muslims large amounts of money to convert to Christianity:-

As Christianity spreads in this Muslim-majority country, an increasingly frequent refrain is heard in various quarters: “People become Christians after getting huge amounts of money as a reward for conversion.”

and:

In Nilphamari district, where 42 former Muslims from 26 families were baptized as Christians in June, educated Muslim Tabligh Jamat missionaries from outside the country are helping to spread the conversion-for-pay rumor, said Abul Hossain, a recent convert in Nilphamari district.

The missionaries are going door-to-door in Nilphamari on a misinformation campaign, Hossain said.

“They tell people, ‘Christians will use you and afterward they will throw you in the dustbin – they dangle many temptations before Muslims to become Christian, and later they will destroy the country,’” Hossain said.

Other comments typical of the Muslim missionaries, according to Hossain: “They will destroy this country as they destroyed Afghanistan. They also destroyed Iraq and hanged Saddam extra-judicially.”

Following the baptisms on June 12, Muslim villagers armed with bricks and wooden clubs savagely beat 10 Christian converts in Nilphamari district on June 26 and threatened to burn down their homes. Within days, authorities at the mosque in Durbachari banned Christians from using the village tube-well, the area’s only source of potable water.

Where Shall I Start?

2007-10-17T15:37:00.000+01:00

For many months now, I have read many, many accounts of discrimination, oppression and violence against Christians. The vast majority of these acts were carried out by Muslims. Since Muslims in the West are quick to complain about Islamophobia, I feel that it is only fair that we point out all the instances of "Christophobia" that occur all over the world.

I will start my postings with a look at some of the articles that I have read over the lat few months.