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.

Turkey: Persecution of Converts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Same Ploy

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

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

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

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

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

. . .

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

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

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

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

Islam and Apostacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When shall there be a spiritual Islam?

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

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

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

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

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

The article also has a solution:-

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

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

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

. . .

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

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

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

Church in West Java Forced to Close after 40 Years

Original article here:-

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

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

. . .

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

This is moderate Indonesia, right?

Report Minimizes Muslim Crimes in Nigeria Riot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Persecution of Egyptian Converts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nigeria: Christian Killed in Election Violence

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

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

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

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

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

. . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turkey: Malatya Murder Trial Begins

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

According to this report:-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lawyer believes that will help those accused plead provocation.

So Christian missionary work is provocation for murder?

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

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

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

Egypt: Christian Woman Sentenced to Three Years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Armenian Genocide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Persecution News Roundup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, in Indonesia:-

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

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

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

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

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

More Good News from Baghdad

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

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

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

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

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

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

Negativity on Islam 'fuels tension'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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