Happy New Year

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.