Ostensibly the resolution puts the church on record for peace in war torn Afghanistan. But actually it demonizes the United States, itself a 50 year tradition in United Methodism, while ignoring the evils of the Taliban and al Qaeda. And it materialistically assumes that peace can be purchased with ever more U.S. dollars. It never cites radical Islam, a chief cause for strife in Afghanistan, perhaps because liberal United Methodist elites cannot conceive of anyone taking traditional religion any more seriously than they do.

The resolution calls the U.S. presence in Afghanistan the “latest in a long history of foreigners trying to impose by military might their own agenda in Afghanistan.” So presumably the American led 2001-2002 overthrow of the Taliban Islamist dictatorship in response to 9-11 is morally on par with the murderous Soviet invasion of 1979, which created 30 years of war and strife. Oddly, but predictably, the resolution never mentions 9-11 or the Taliban, which might distract from its targeting the U.S. It also never mentions that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is scheduled to end in 2014.

Afghanistan is ever degenerating, thanks to the U.S. presence, the resolution claims. And it asserts that U.S. resources spent on war distract from “health care, education, and community development,” without acknowledging tens of billions already spent by the U.S. on these goods, or admitting that almost no spending or progress on health care, education, and community development would be possible under the Taliban. The resolution also condemns U.S./NATO unmanned drone attacks on insurgent/terrorist targets, likening them to “extrajudicial killings.”

Self-importantly, the resolution chides the U.S. for spending on “weapons and soldiers” (again without citing billions spent on civilian aid) while boasting, “By contrast, for more than 45 years United Methodists and other humanitarian organizations, in partnership with local Afghans, have supported health care and community development work in Afghanistan.” Of course, such church programs are impossible without some level of security.

Embarrassingly, the resolution recalls that in the immediate wake of 9-11, the United Methodist Women’s Division urged “diplomatic means to bring the perpetrators of terrorist acts to justice and to end the bombing of Afghanistan.” Even more laughably, it recalls the ostensibly prophetic words of California Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee who, after 9-11, was the “lone voice at that time in the U.S. government to question military action against Afghanistan.”

I. The document states that “cooperation between Afghanistan and the United States is based on mutual respect and shared interests.”

Try telling that to the families of U.S., British and French troops who have been killed by Afghan troops—there have been some 45 attacks by uniformed Afghan troops on U.S. and other NATO forces, killing 70 allied troops—or to the Western forces still fighting for Afghanistan, who have to look over their shoulders as they fight.

II. The document states that the U.S. and Afghanistan “reaffirm” their commitment to “defeating al Qaeda and its affiliates.”

There are two problems with this part of the agreement, and they are significant. First, the commitment of the Afghan government and military is shaky at best. (See Point I.) Fresh from a tour of Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel Davis describes Afghan troops as largely unwilling to engage the Taliban. According to a classified report leaked to The New York Times, one Afghan colonel describes his own troops as “thieves, liars and drug addicts.” An American quoted in the report says Afghan troops are “pretty much gutless in combat; we do most of the fighting.”

Second, just how committed are Kabul and Washington to defeating “al Qaeda and its affiliates” if the two have directed their diplomats to talk to al Qaeda’s closest, oldest affiliate? That would be the Taliban. It pays to recall that Afghanistan became the world headquarters for al Qaeda because the Taliban welcomed bin Laden with open arms. The Taliban and al Qaeda share the same worldview and the same enemy. Given the terror that was unleashed when the Taliban was in power—and their brutality since being ousted from power—there’s no reason to think Mullah Omar and his henchmen have changed. CIA Director David Petraeus certainly doesn’t think so. A year ago, when asked to make the case for staying the course, then-Gen. Petraeus bluntly replied, “Two words…Nine Eleven,” reminding us of what happened the last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

Moreover, when it comes to commitment, it pays to recall, as Karzai surely has, that the Obama administration always keeps its eyes on the calendar and the exit sign—and has little regard for standing agreements with allies. Obama casually scrapped a hard-earned missile-defense agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic in order to get an arms control treaty of questionable merit with Russia; jettisoned Mubarak when the going got tough in Egypt; and when NATO allies made an urgent request for an extension of U.S. air power during the Libya war, a NATO official took pains to emphasize that America’s help “expires on Monday”—a bruising metaphor for what passes as American leadership in the age of Obama.

III. The document calls on NATO member states “to sustain and improve Afghan security capabilities beyond 2014 by taking concrete measures to implement” previous security agreements.

Good luck with that. Following Washington’s lead, NATO is headed for the exits. From the beginning, most NATO members have been half-hearted about the Afghanistan mission. Consider: The United States is contributing 71 percent of all forces to the mission; non-NATO members Australia, Georgia and Sweden have more troops deployed than Belgium, Iceland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal—all founding members of the alliance; Germany, Italy and Spain refused to help in Afghanistan’s restive south; Italy didn’t permit its fighter-bombers in Afghanistan to carry bombs; and German troops, until recently, were required to shout warnings to enemy forces—in three languages—before opening fire.

In Afghanistan it may be a matter of navigating the Pashtuns, Hazaras and Tajiks, and their various families, while in Brooklynbad, Al-Minneapolis or Londonistan it’s Somalis, Turks and Lebanese, but it’s still much the same game. The big brass, in coordination with local activists who claim to represent the community leadership, unveil a new strategy which involves lots of face time, aid and respect for the assorted cultures involved. The boys in blue or khaki fall in line, but know that it mostly comes down to having enough boots on the ground and hoping that the locals are afraid enough not to try anything big.

We can of course withdraw from Afghanistan, send up the choppers in whirls of dust, ship the gear back home and trim down the military. And some of those ex-soldiers will go into local police forces and security companies where they will be doing the same thing they did back in Afghanistan, but with less firepower and more discretion, because while the people on the ground may be Pakistanis, Somalis or Iraqis, they have the right papers and are officially Americans or Europeans.

Withdrawing from Baghdad or Kabul is a snap compared to withdrawing from London or Los Angeles and even small towns are on the line. 3,000 Somalis showed up in Lewiston, Maine, pop. 36,000. Now Lewiston has nearly double the violent crime rate of the state average. In the Finnish town of Lieksa, it’s the same story. Or in Shelbyville, Alabama. There are Little Mogadishus all over which share the problems of the big Mogadishu. The bigger they get, the bigger the problems get.

There was always a thin line between community policing and counterinsurgency, but the rise of domestic Muslim violence has nearly eliminated the line as the insurgency comes home. In Afghanistan soldiers look for IEDs, while back in London or New York their law enforcement colleagues search for bombs in cars and bus stations. Angry bearded mobs shake their fists and threaten death in London and Jalalabad. And uniformed men visit mosques, take off their shoes and discuss working together with the local leaders on stopping the violence.

The war has already come home and the only real tactic on tap is cultural sensitivity. Display enough of it and you’ll win over the locals and if you win over the locals, they’ll help you stop the violence. And along the way the eyes of the law have to be closed to some of their nastier habits, like beating their wives and killing their daughters. If they turn violent when a Koran is burned, then everything possible has to be done to prevent anyone from ever torching one or drawing an offensive cartoon or doing anything else to light the fuse.

The failure in Afghanistan is predictive of the failures in Europe and America, and vice versa, all the glowing visions of girls going to school and a participatory society giving way to tribal enclaves, violent explosions and blood feuds. The drug dealers pass by the mosque and the corner grocery, while the suicide bomber and the rapist have their atrocities sanctified by the black book of the Koran.

Despite all the best efforts and the fortunes plowed into the project, integration never seems to take off, though there are plenty of spokesmen for it. The violence never goes away, no matter how much outreach takes place or how many young men and community leaders are bribed with aid money. And the clock always seems to keep moving relentlessly to the midnight hour when the masks come off, the bombs go off and the cities burn.

In Afghanistan we discovered that three cups of tea don’t work, but they also don’t work in London or New York. There are plenty of cordial meetings and some tips do come in. A Taliban attack in Helmand province, a suicide bombing on the A train to Far Rockaway, are headed off. And the brass smile and exchange handshakes because it’s working. But then next week three unreported attacks shake their faith. And the leaders they had three cups of tea with have a higher price this time because violence has become their asset, letting them take in money and support from both sides, while acting as intermediaries between the brass and the bombers.

Seven attacks occurred simultaneously at about 1:45 PM. The fighting lasted for over 18 hours in Kabul and the capitals of Paktia, Logar and Nangarhar provinces. Several embassies, police stations, a NATO base, the Kabul Star Hotel, an airport and the parliament building all came under attack. The targets were chosen based on prominence instead of creating maximum casualties. The Islamist enemy’s goal was to demonstrate that no target is safe and to show off its ability to conduct complicated operations.

The attacks are also meant to discourage the Afghans and the American public. About 66% of Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan and 70% believe that the Afghan population does not support the U.S. military presence. Only 22% believe the Afghans support American involvement.

One captured participant in the attacks admitted that he is part of the Haqqani network. Shortly before the attacks, the authorities arrested four members of the Haqqani network. The cell revealed that they were in the midst of carrying out a plan to kill one of Afghanistan’s vice presidents.

The alleged involvement of the Haqqani network points directly to Pakistani complicity. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, bluntly accuses the Pakistani ISI intelligence service of being behind sophisticated attacks in September. Fed up with Pakistan’s duplicity, he forcefully stated, “The Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.” Outcry followed and the White House tried to soften his remarks. He wouldn’t allow it. “I phrased it the way I wanted it to be phrased,” Mullen said.

A Taliban spokesman named Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for his group and downplayed the role of the Haqqanis. He said that reports that the Haqqani network orchestrated the attacks are a part of “a baseless plot from the West, who wants to show that we are separate.” Indeed, the U.S. has been trying to lure the Taliban into a peace deal that would sever its ties to the Haqqani network and Al-Qaeda. Vice President Joe Biden even made the astonishing statement that the “Taliban is not our enemy, per se.”

Mujahid asserts that the Taliban meticulously planned the wave of attacks for two months without being foiled. He said that members even put together models of their targets so they could rehearse their attacks, secretly stored weapons and had help from agents within the Afghan security forces. He boasted that the Taliban’s planned spring offensive has not yet begun.

On the same day, 100-200 militants stormed a prison in Bannu, Pakistan and freed 384 prisoners. Among those released were 20 terrorists deemed “very dangerous,” including one who tried to kill former Pakistani President Musharraf. The circumstances surrounding the break-in strongly indicate that top Pakistani officials were involved. The fighting went on for two hours but no soldiers or police arrived. The huge group of armed militants was not stopped by the border guards at the tribal areas and passed police checkpoints and military installations on their way to the prison.

The deal comes on the heels of another agreement signed last month that hands the management of the sprawling Bagram prison and its 3,000 prisoners over to the Afghan government. The two pacts clear the way for a comprehensive treaty on the long-term strategic partnership sought by the United States that would govern American policy after all combat troops are withdrawn in 2014. Washington would like that deal in place before the NATO summit in May.

Despite reservations by many US Afghan commanders, the agreement will give the Afghan army veto power over any suggested night-time raids, while allowing Afghan special forces to be “first through the door” when the raids are executed. Decisions on the raids will be made by an as yet unnamed board made up of “an inter-ministry Afghan command center with representatives of the Defense and Interior ministries as well as the National Directorate of Security,” according to the New York Times. An Afghan judge will have to sign off on a warrant for any raid, but not until a court is “capable of issuing timely and operationally secure judicial authorizations.” It is believed that some warrants may be granted after the raid is completed, but within 48 hours of their authorization.

American forces will still be responsible for most logistical aspects of the raids, including intelligence, transportation, and fire support in case air power or artillery is called for. One controversial provision of the deal is that all prisoners captured during the raids will be in Afghan military custody. The US will only be able to interrogate them if the Afghans ask them.

The pact encompasses most special operations, except for those conducted by the CIA, and other unspecified unilateral US combat actions.

The agreement removes a sore point in US-Afghanistan relations. President Hamid Karzai has been complaining for years about night-time raids that have terrified Afghan civilians as soldiers break into their homes in the middle of the night seeking Taliban commanders and fighters. While casualties are rare, there is nothing that enrages the locals like the killing of civilians in their own home. There have also been cultural concerns and bitter resentment, as the soldiers not only violate the sanctity of the domicile, but also Afghan traditions regarding the hiding of women from strangers, especially men. For Karzai, there was also the question of Afghan sovereignty being ignored in these raids, largely carried out with no consultation with his government. Although the US claims that lately, most of these raids have been conducted with Afghans in the lead, that practice has now been formalized with the advent of the agreement.

US Commander in Afghanistan Marine General John Allen hailed the pact as being “one step closer to the establishment of the U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership. Most importantly, today we are one step closer to our shared goal and vision of a secure and sovereign Afghanistan.” Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said, “This is an important step in strengthening the sovereignty of Afghanistan,” adding that it was “a national goal” and “a wish of the Afghan people” that raids be conducted and controlled by Afghans.”

In February of this year, American troops burned copies of the Qur’an at an army base in Afghanistan.  Western media were immediately abuzz with the Muslim response: massive riots causing the deaths of dozens of local Afghans, a Taliban revenge suicide attack on US troops, car bombs, an Afghan policeman enraged by Qur’an burnings murders two US officers, Afghan soldiers turn on US troops and shoot two, Taliban suspends talks with the USA, and  in an incendiary anti-American speech Afghan president Karzai calls America “a demon” comparable to the Taliban. At least 40 die and hundreds are injured.

The event spawned three (count’em, three!) parallel and separate legal inquiries. The soldiers may be disciplined;  but according to Congressman Allan West’s interpretation of the events,  prisoners were writing extremist messages to one another in the pages of the Qur’ans, thus effectively desecrating them according to Muslim practice. And the incident provides support for Obama’s call for a pre-election pull-out from Afghanistan.

Last year’s Qur’an burning incident in Florida had similar effects. A publicity hungry pastor threatens to burn Qur’ans and riots break out across the Middle East; followed by murder and mayhem and destruction and endless anti-American propaganda.  But we respond with  cringing misplaced deference, as General Petraeus ignores the murderous Muslim mobs and instead condemns the Florida preacher.

Similarly, in 2005 massive riots and destruction of property erupted in much of the Arab world when the provocation was the mere accusation, unsupported by objective evidence, of desecration of a Quran by American personnel at Guantanamo.

The explosion of the “Arab Street” when a Quran somewhere in the world may have been desecrated is not a new phenomenon.  It recurs with suspicious frequency and nearly cookie-cutter responses.  This phenomenon raises three questions:

Is it effective for our Commander-in-Chief to burst into paeans of groveling apology, hand wringing, and self-deprecating mea culpas, and press for changes in American military strategy and foreign policy?

Why is there not a word from anyone in the west about the galactic hypocrisy of Muslim furor for an inadvertent error, when 1,400 years of Muslim history are characterized by Muslim assaults on Christians and the Christian Scriptures, not to mention desecrations of Jewish sacred sites and scriptures and the mass murder of Jews?

Why does no one raise the issue of the mass hypocrisy of Muslims world-wide who are silent as adherents desecrate Islam with the endless reciprocal violence of Sunni and Shiite, Iranian and Azeri, Alawite and Syrian, blowing up entire mosques, killing thousands of innocent Muslims, and burning thousands of copies of the Qur’an — not to mention killings at weddings, funerals, and other religious events.

The Danish “Cartoon Intifada” of 2005-6 may provide answers to these questions.

Cartoons using Muslim imagery were published first by Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten newspaper in September, 2005.[1]  A few Muslim Imams in Denmark were upset. Then the cartoons were republished on October 17 on the front page of El-Farg, a major Egyptian newspaper, with provocative headlines about the west deprecating the Prophet Mohammed; but still no outrage. Only after a summit meeting in Mecca in December did the Muslim world go ballistic about the cartoons.  What happened at that meeting?

First a Palestinian Muslim Arab Imam living in Copenhagen, Ahmad Abu Laban, and some friends took copies of the cartoons to Muslim leaders in the Middle East.  Knowing that the original cartoons were not really very derogatory, they created a few really repulsive ones and told their Arab interlocutors at Mecca that all had been published in the Danish press.

The result was an astonishing uproar in the Muslim world.  Three months after the fact came the riots and mob attacks, vandalism, murders, arson, boycotts of European goods, thousands of Muslim demonstrators in London waved posters proclaiming “EXTERMINATE THOSE WHO MOCK ISLAM” and “BE PREPARED FOR THE REAL HOLOCAUST”, and the editor of France-Soir was fired for reprinting the drawings.  Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the publication, and protesters set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. The Egyptian Ambassador to Denmark proclaimed: “The government of Denmark has to do something to appease the Muslim world!”   You have sinned! You must repent and show contrition, or else!

In a later publication, El-Farg editors explained the whole farce to the world. In opportunistic hindsight they wrote that “…It would have been better that this [current] holy war against Denmark (i.e., the cartoon intifada) been launched during the holy month of Ramadan (October, 2005) …This irrelevant….timing is but a sign that this violent response to the cartoons is politically motivated by Muslim extremists in Europe and the so-called secular governments of the Middle East.”

Obviously, the Mecca conference had recognized the real value of the cartoons: the spark to ignite a new and more global intifada in order to draw the West’s attention away from other embarrassing Middle East issues, and to teach the West a lesson about the price of offending Muslim delicate sensibilities. By February, 2006, 100,000 Muslims were prepared to “Vent Anger in London at Cartoon Protest.”[2]

Now, why would they want to do that?[3]  There are several reasons.

The Arabs of the Palestinian Authority (PA) had just voted Hamas into power, but the European Union would not subsidize the PA if the money would go to Hamas. The cartoon intifada put the EU on the defensive, made all Muslims appear the victims of European racism, and make the EU too embarrassed and guilty to withhold its contributions.

It has been a bad month in Afghanistan.  First there was the inadvertent burning of the Koran by U.S. troops.  Although the Korans had initially been desecrated by Taliban prisoners—an act forbidden in Islam—this fact was lost on the Afghans.  In their self-righteous vengeance, Afghans killed numerous Americans, most notably two U.S. Army officers that were shot in the back of the head inside the Afghan Interior Ministry.  These murders prompted NATO—which had shamelessly agreed to prosecute the Americans involved in the Koran burning—to withdraw its personnel from all Afghan ministries.  Even hawkish conservative stalwarts were beginning to say “the hell with the place.”

Then Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales purportedly massacred 17 Afghan civilians, a cold-blooded act that threatens to change the entire dynamics of the war.  Subsequently, about 200 U.S. Marines were told to leave their weapons outside the tent during a visit from Defense Secretary Panetta.  This was a symbolic moment that spoke volumes about the disarray of our strategy.  Trust is indispensable in war, and it is being undermined in every corner.  The timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan—slated for either 2013 or 2014, depending on who is asked—may now be expedited due to these developments.

Yet all is not lost in Afghanistan.  While the United States might not “win” the decade-long war, it is almost impossible to lose.  In a sense, there is nothing to win: Afghan culture is an embarrassment to the human condition.  Even the “good guys” will kill people over a book and then sell their daughters to a septuagenarian.  But there is nothing to lose, either.  Lest we forget, the U.S. routed al-Qaeda and the Taliban more than ten years ago, by December 2001, with the use of just 5,200 troops.  The ensuing failure of Afghan civil society is not a U.S. military defeat.

In World War II, General Douglas MacArthur famously said, “We are not retreating—we are advancing in another direction.”  As we begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, U.S. leaders should speak in a comparable manner.  What we need is a public psychological operations strategy—or what the military now calls “Military Information Support Operations,” or MISO—coupled with tangible displays of military superiority.

Win or lose, Afghanistan was always going to be at the whims of Pakistan.  Thus, the U.S. has a Pakistan problem, not a Taliban problem.  It’s Hamid Karzai with the Taliban problem.  The Taliban are bad actors, no doubt, but they’re essentially a hobnob militia.  The head of the snake is Pakistan, which covertly supports al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and every major terrorist group in South Asia.  We must be clear: our eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan does not portend an American flight from South Asian politics.  In fact, if we are wise, it might strengthen our leverage.

We must intensify our drone campaign throughout the “Af-Pak” theater—and talk about it openly, too.  Predator drones work.  They have killed thousands of top-tier terrorists and have not hurt our popularity throughout the region (we are already unpopular).  The drones have, however, undermined among the indigenous population the popularity of the Taliban.  If someone in your village were liable to get bombed at any moment, at some point you would want to kick him out your village.

Our air campaign has struck fear into the hearts of the enemy.  Terror chieftain Ustadh Ahmad Farooq was quoted as saying: “There were many areas where we once had freedom, but now they have been lost.  We are the ones that are losing people; we are the ones facing shortages of resources.  Our land is shrinking and drones are flying in the sky.”  American leaders should be citing quotes like this publicly.  Bringing to light the enemy’s private fears is effective psychological warfare.

Although there are some slippery-slope arguments against the use of Predator drones, we should not doubt their efficacy.  The conventional wisdom once suggested that the more we bombed, the more we would “inflame” hatred against us.  But just the opposite is true.  The more air supremacy we display over our al-Qaeda and Taliban adversaries, the more they doubt themselves and their actions.  The truth is this: when our Islamist enemies have been irrefutably whipped on the battlefield, they are not enraged, but rather humbled, and are more prone to second-guess the divine sanction of their cause.  Allah doesn’t like losers, you see.  This was Osama bin Laden’s old “strong horse” logic: a neutral man will not gravitate to a weak horse.

CNN blogger Stephen Prothero exemplified this dementia perfectly in a recent piece titled “My Take: It takes a nation to make a massacre” in which he spells out who is really at fault. “It takes a country to make a man do these things, and we were his country,” writes Prothero. “We U.S. citizens voted for the presidents who sent him into combat and for the Congress that appropriated the money for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” If Bales is found guilty? Prothero suggests that “each of the rest of us should spend a day sitting in front of our local jail. There we should confess to our respective gods ‘our sins, known and unknown, things done and left undone’ (as the Book of Common Prayer puts it). Then we should write a letter to the wife and children of Sgt. Bales asking for their forgiveness too.”

Prothero then reflexively descends into one of the prevailing themes that inevitably emerges when an American soldier is accused war crimes: comparisons to Lieutenant William Calley and the massacre at My Lai that occurred during the Vietnam War. Calley’s crimes were indeed horrific, but Counterpunch writer Jeff Sparrow uses them, along with Neil Shea writing for Democracy Now, not merely to condemn Bales, but soldiers in general, who need “a protective layer of hatred to perform what [is] asked of them.” He then takes on America itself, which has ostensibly normalized “torture against (mostly Muslim) detainees; the construction of secret prisons to detain Muslim prisoners indefinitely without charges or trial; the routinisation of assassinations and other extrajudicial killings of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen; and, most of all, deaths of (by the most conservative reckoning) hundreds of thousands of people, most of them Muslim, in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.”

His conclusion is that the war against Islamic terror has “created a new audience who wants to never leave the gun, an audience no longer shocked by atrocity but increasingly prepared to celebrate it.” Completely missing from Sparrow’s article, however, is a single word on the far greater — and continuing — atrocities committed by the Taliban and other jihadists across the world, which our military has sacrificed enormously to prevent.

Shea himself continues with another trope made popular during the Vietnam war: American soldiers straddle the border between sanity and psychosis. “I met up with a group of soldiers who were the first I had ever come across who made me feel pretty nervous about what I was going to see while I was with them,” he writes. “And I spent a few days with them and came to just really understand that they had gotten to the edge of violence, as we understand it, in Afghanistan, and they seemed ready and capable of doing some pretty bad things. I didn’t actually witness them do anything too terrible, but the way that they talked and the way that they acted toward Afghan civilians and animals and property in the country was sort of stunning to me…Many of these guys seemed like they had reached the end of their rope in terms of stability and controlling their aggression.” That’s a rather remarkable conclusion for a man who “didn’t actually witness” our troops doing anything wrong.

At least Shea was somewhat restrained. Benjamin Busch’s Daily Beast article on the issue warns that the murders allegedly committed by Bales allow “for the possibility that any one of us could go insane at any time, and that every veteran poisoned by their combat experience could be on edge for life.” He too takes Americans as a whole to task, noting that our “national disinterest” in “distant events” is unsurprising because “we are a people known more and more for our selfish distractions than for our awareness.”

In the New York Times, psychiatrist and retired brigadier general Dr. Stephen Xenakis employs both themes, and asserts that Sgt. Bales is “emblematic” of bigger problems within the military. “This is equivalent to what My Lai did to reveal all the problems with the conduct of the Vietnam War,” contends Xenakis. “The Army will want to say that soldiers who commit crimes are rogues, that they are individual, isolated cases. But they are not.” The Tucson Sentinel’s Charles M. Sennott echoes those thoughts. “Overnight, Bales has for many around the world become the face of what is wrong with America’s war in Afghanistan,” he contends. “Just as 44 years ago in the ides of March of 1968, the My Lai massacre and Lt. William Calley became synonymous with all that was wrong with the war in Vietnam.”

In remarks delivered later during his trip, Panetta made it clear that such incidents — including the recent massacre of civilians — would not alter President Obama’s planned withdrawal of American combat forces by the end of next year when the Afghan army and police are handed responsibility for security in the war-torn country. In Washington, President Obama, who said after a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday that “real progress” was being made in Afghanistan, pledged to stick to the withdrawal timetable he set last year despite recent incidents involving the accidental burning of some Korans and the massacre of 16 civilians by a US soldier, which have enraged the Afghan people and government. Obama and Cameron mapped out a strategy for the next year while putting on a show of “rock solid” unity.

Meanwhile, a new Gallup poll revealed that 50% of Americans want to speed up the withdrawal timetable while only 24% believe we should stick with Obama’s plan. Just 21% think we should stay in Afghanistan until the mission is accomplished.

Such pessimism was not likely alleviated by the airport incident Wednesday. The Afghan civilian lost control of the truck — stolen earlier from a NATO soldier who was injured when he was pulled from the vehicle — and ended up in a ditch near the ramp where the secretary was to deplane. He emerged from the crash on fire, fleeing the scene in another truck before he was apprehended. He is reported to have suffered serious burns over 70% of his body.

It is thought that the interpreter did not know that Secretary Panetta was on the plane. Panetta’s visit was unannounced, but there is evidence that at least some Afghanistan military personnel knew the Secretary was coming before he landed. All 20 Afghan soldiers who were requested to come to the meeting with Panetta were asked to come unarmed.

Marine Major General Charles “Mark”  Gurganus, the new NATO International Security and Assistance Force commander for the area that covers Helmand Province, then ordered the American and other coalition soldiers to stack arms as well, ostensibly to avoid the impression that we can’t trust our Afghan allies.

Panetta told the assembled coalition forces at Camp Leatherneck, “We’ll be challenged by our enemy. We’ll be challenged by ourselves. We’ll be challenged by the hell of war itself. But none of that, none of that, must ever deter us from the mission that we must achieve.” The secretary, commenting on the massacre and Koran burnings said, “We will not allow individual incidents to undermine our resolve to that mission and to sticking to the strategy that we’ve put in place.”

The alleged attack on Afghans by an American soldier in Kandahar, where 91 soldiers were murdered last year alone, is already receiving the full outrage treatment. Any outrage over the deaths of those 91 soldiers in the province will be completely absent.

There will be no mention of how many of them died because the Obama Administration decided that the lives of Afghan civilians counted for more than the lives of soldiers. No talk of what it is like to walk past houses with gunmen dressed in civilian clothing inside and if you are fired at from those houses, your orders are to retreat.

Air strikes are for days gone by. The American soldier in the ISAF is expected to patrol and retreat, to smile and reach out to Afghans while they shoot him in the back. After risking his life to hold back the Taliban, he is expected to take it calmly when his government announces that it is trying to cut a deal with the Taliban. As he waits out the final months until withdrawal, seeing his friends lose their limbs and their lives, knowing that the enemy has won, that he has been betrayed and is being kept senselessly on the front line for no objective except the diplomatic position of a government that hates him, that is taking away his health care, his equipment and his job; how does he feel?

The Panjwai district, where the shootings happened, are the cradle of the Taliban. Smiling civilians plant IED’s and children serve as lookouts. Obama’s Surge pushed hard into Panjwai and the Taliban pushed back. American soldiers were caught in the middle, dying for a handful of dusty towns where the inhabitants took their presents and shook hands with them, and then shot at them from cover.

The Montreal Gazette tells us that Belanday, one of the villages where the shootings took place, was a model village. What it omits is that Belanday was a key Taliban base, the houses were used for IED factories and it served as a transit route on the way to Kandahar City. The model village concept was supposed to change all that, but it didn’t change the sympathies of the local population.

All of that doesn’t matter though. The feelings of the men and women sent into the heart of the beast don’t matter. Only the eternally tender sensibilities of Muslims do. When Muslims kill us because we disposed of Korans that they marked up, we are at fault. This is the modern Catch 22 of the military which requires officers who have only one skill, sensitivity to Muslim feelings, and soldiers who die to keep the peace among their killers.

The life of an American soldier is worth less than a Muslim’s feelings. Under Islamic Sharia law, the blood price for a non-Muslim was only a third that of a Muslim. At Islam’s homicidal Wal-Mart, you could kill three Christians for the price of a Muslim. And we have cut prices even further by placing the feelings of a Muslim above the life of a non-Muslim.

When American soldiers die to protect Muslim feelings, denied air support and the right to defend themselves so as not to outrage the IED planting populace, there is no outrage from the mass media organs of outrage who take the liberal bumper sticker about always being outraged by their attention deficit disorder to heart. But when Muslims die, then the outrage machine grinds to life and begins making blood sausage out of any members of the military unfortunately enough to caught in the crossfire between CNN, CBS and FOX.

This is yet another opportunity for the Apologizer-in-Chief to apologize. By the time American soldiers leave hellholes like Kandahar behind, he may have racked up nearly as many apologies as the bodies of American sons and daughters, not to their parents naturally, but to the parents of their killers.

These days Obama hates the military more than ever for inconveniencing him by urinating on Taliban corpses, burning Korans and carrying out night raids. His only consolation is that if enough of them from key states die at the hands of the “moderate” Taliban, that the Muslim Brotherhood is negotiating with on his behalf, it might be enough to swing a key state in a close election. And if the soldiers get their revenge by urinating on dead Taliban, he gets his revenge urinating on live soldiers.

The soldiers, those who survive, can expect no parades, they can expect to have their health care benefits cut at the urging of the Soros-run Center for American Progress and they can expect to be hounded by the media and Hollywood, which is already doing its best to turn the veteran of Kandahar or Fallujah into the new Vietnam veteran. They can watch on television as the Taliban sweep back into Kabul, firing assault rifles into the air, taking back every inch of the ground that they fought to defend for the ungrateful Afghans and D.C. drones. And they can watch some of the Afghans who have received visas, bring over large families and set up shop smuggling cigarettes and engaging in wire fraud, while receiving hefty government benefits, while they look for work.

Obama also said in a statement: “I offer my condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives and to the people of Afghanistan, who have endured too much violence and suffering. This incident is tragic and shocking and does not represent the exceptional character of our military.”

Indeed it does not, and the soldier, reportedly a staff sergeant, should be prosecuted and punished as severely as military justice allows: he has brought shame and discredit upon the U.S. military at a particularly delicate time in Afghanistan, when tempers are running high after the Qur’an-burning incident. And Karzai was in no mood to accept American assurances that the crime would be investigated and the perpetrator punished, saying in a statement of his own: “This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven.”

It is noteworthy, however, that in the riots and rage that followed the discovery of the burned Qur’ans at Bagram Airfield, Afghan Muslims have murdered numerous civilians. Just last Monday, a jihad-martyrdom suicide bomber murdered at least two civilians at the gates of the airfield. Thirty people have now been killed in protests over the burning of the Qur’ans, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that Obama and other American officials have apologized repeatedly, profusely, and abjectly for the burning of the Muslim holy book.

Yet no apology has been forthcoming from Karzai or any other Afghan official. Instead, Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, the Afghan government official heading up a panel investigating the Qur’an-burning incident, has demanded that those responsible for the Qur’an burning face Afghan justice: “The military leaders who ordered the burning and the offenders should both be tried and punished…This evil crime has been done inside Afghanistan so the punishment must be according to the country’s law.” He didn’t say anything about the civilians killed in the riots over the Qur’an burning, or take any notice of the fact that none of the people killed in those riots had actually burned any Qur’ans at Bagram Airfield or anywhere else.

Karzai’s office, meanwhile, issued a statement from a council of Muslim clerics who met with the Afghan president: “The council strongly condemns this crime and inhumane, savage act by American troops by desecrating holy Korans. The council emphasized that the apology for this evil act can never be accepted. Those who committed this crime must be publicly tried and punished.”

The fact the Muslim inmates had already desecrated the Korans by defacing them with writing didn’t stop the usual “outraged,” rent-a-religious mob from furiously and hysterically shouting “Death To America.” It also didn’t prevent the subsequent murder of several US soldiers and President Obama from rushing to make an apology.

But that was not the least of the hypocrisy surrounding this staged, anti-American and anti-Western disturbance. Largely passed over by the mainstream media, about the same time the “religious” riots were happening Afghan police freed 41 Afghan children who were being taken to Pakistan to be indoctrinated for use as suicide bombers. The police also were able to arrest four handlers transporting this condemned cargo of innocents.

The ages of the children are shocking. The youngest child destined for a jihadist’s death was six-years-old while the oldest was eleven. They all came from poor Afghan families whose parents, in allowing them to leave, believed they were going to madrassas in Pakistan to receive a free education. Authorities returned the children to their families.

Earlier last month, Afghan police arrested a further two child suicide bombers, both aged 10, before they could attack NATO and Afghan military personnel and civilians. The children were reportedly released when the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, pardoned them along with 18 other children. The problem of child suicide bombers is so severe in Afghanistan that one of Karzai’s ministers warned that people should watch out for their children aged seven to 13 years old.

But this destruction of innocent lives in the name of their religion did not appear to upset in the least the Afghan demonstrators who were so rabidly furious about a few holy books that had been destroyed. They remained curiously uninterested and unmoved about the published fact that men of darkness are recruiting Afghan Muslim children, now by the dozens, to blow themselves up in the name of that very same holy book, causing death and destruction and spreading horror. This is all the more curious when one considers that the Koran, which the “enraged” Muslim mob regards as sacred, forbids murder. All this only heightens the already high level of hypocrisy and phoniness that lay behind the recent Koran-burning demonstrations.

But the fact these “devout” Afghan Muslims would become hysterical over the burning of a few Korans but show a lack of any kind of societal instinctive, protective reaction or moral outrage on behalf of the rescued children and about the fact that an ever increasing number of Afghan children are being recruited for the barbarism of suicide bombings represents something much more sinister. This absence of such shocked and angry indignation regarding the sacredness of the lives of this Muslim country’s most vulnerable members who were going to be killed in such a horrific manner, and kill others, in the name of Islam strongly indicates Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, where children are also used as suicide bombers, are slipping more and more into the grips of the Islamist death cult where the killing of children is welcomed.

In her remarkable and fascinating book Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia, Boston College history professor Anna Geifman analysed the Islamist death cult and explained the underlying desire to claim, first and foremost, children as victims. Islamic terrorists, she explains, are thanatophiles, or death worshippers, just like the Communists and Nazis were. Geifman traces the roots of modern-day Islamic terrorism to socialist and anarchist terrorist groups of pre-revolutionary Russia, primarily after 1901, and sees no difference in the mindset between the followers of Lenin and those of Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Join the Jamie Glazov Show that aired on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 at 8-9 pm Pacific (11-12 pm EST) on Blog Talk Radio. This week’s focus was Afghanistan Burning. A heated exchange broke out when a Muslim caller called in to justify Mohammed’s actions and teachings. Our guests were:

Eric Allen Bell, a regular blogger for the “Daily Kos” — where he was recently banned for the crime of writing three articles that ran afoul of the mindset there, specifically naming “Loonwatch.com” as a “terrorist spin control network.” He is currently producing a documentary entitled “Not Welcome” that is about the backlash against construction of a 53,000 square foot mega mosque in America’s Bible Belt. He has told his story in his Frontpage article, which went viral around the world, The High Price of Telling the Truth About Islam. Don’t miss Eric Bell on Frontpage’s television program, The Glazov Gang.]

and

Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of ten books, including two New York Times bestsellers, The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (both Regnery).

To listen to the program, click here.

Or go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/02/29/the-jamie-glazov-show

See you next Tuesday night!

Three distinguished guests recently joined The Glazov Gang, Frontpage’s television program, to discuss Muslim murderous rage in Afghanistan. Our guests were Andrew Klavan, a critically-acclaimed and world-renowned adult thriller writer, Eric Allen Bell, a writer and filmmaker who was recently fired from the “Daily Kos” for telling the truth about Islam, and Evan Sayet, America’s #1 conservative comedian. Below is Part III of a three-part series. To see Part I, click here. To see Part II, click here.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here. 

And the next thing you know, large numbers of people have been killed, Western embassies have been vandalized, mischief and mayhem of every imaginable kind has taken place.  And meanwhile, the air is thick with apologies.

Not, of course, apologies by Muslim leaders for the primitive, brutal, and murderous conduct of their coreligionists, but apologies by Western leaders because somebody, somewhere, drew a picture or destroyed a book.

It is sheer absurdity.  And yet innumerable Western politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and other highly placed clowns have long since accustomed themselves to discussing this balderdash in the most solemn of tones.  A Muslim somewhere on this planet asserts that the burning of a copy of the Koran thousands of miles away causes him indescribable, excruciating personal torment.  And in a world awash in authentic reasons for emotional distress, this statement is taken not as a baldfaced lie, or as evidence of mental instability, but as a sincere expression of legitimate anguish worthy of the attention of, among others, the President of the United States of America.

In short, the Western world – the civilized, modern world, the world built on the pillars of reason and Enlightenment values – has, in recent years, in the name of multiculturalism, decided to react with respect to statements and behaviors that we would laugh off as patently nonsensical if they originated from within our own civilization.

And so, as I say, the apologies flow like Niagara – apologies by everyone from the President on down: generals, ambassadors, cabinet officials.  And the more ardent and numerous and overblown the apologies we offer this time for the present “offense,” the more “sensitive” the “offended” parties become, so that the next time they identify an excuse to take offense, the louder their cries of purported anguish will be and the more violent their acts of anti-Western remonstration.  They’ll expect even more urgent and passionate apologies, and they’ll get them. And so it continues in a seemingly endless cycle: as we become ever more contrite in response to their remarkably exquisite “sensitivity,” the more and more “sensitive” they’ll become, and the more deeply we’ll bow and scrape, and so on.

The riots and violence in Afghanistan over some accidentally burned Qur’ans are following a script that by now is all too drearily familiar. As we have seen over the years with the riots over the Mohammed cartoons, Pope Benedict’s comments about violence in Islam, or false rumors of Qur’ans flushed down toilets, violent Muslim overreactions to slights are immediately followed by anxious apologies from American leaders. Rather than defusing the anger, however, such groveling merely encourages more contempt and violence.

So too with the current riots, which have killed 30 people, including 4 U.S. soldiers, two of them in the high-security Interior Ministry. Another seven Sunday were wounded in a grenade attack by demonstrators. This violence, moreover, has been encouraged by mullahs in mosques, teachers in madrassas, and members of parliament. Predictably, the Taliban––with whom our government is eager to talk peace––has encouraged people to “turn their guns on the foreign infidel invaders.” President Obama has responded to this incitement and violence by offering his personal “sincere apologies,” professing his “deep regret,” and vowing to hold those responsible accountable. Defense Secretary Panetta and NATO commander John Allen also apologized.

But no reciprocal apology has been demanded from President Hamid Karzai for the incitement to violence on the part of government and religious leaders, or for the deaths of two of our troops at the hands of an Afghan soldier we trained and armed, and another two inside a government ministry. Newt Gingrich had the best response to this sorry spectacle: “There seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama’s attention in a negative way and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the President of the United States period,” Gingrich said in Washington D.C. “It is Hamid Karzai who owes the American people an apology, not the other way around. This destructive double standard whereby the United States and its democratic allies refuse to hold accountable leaders who tolerate systematic violence and oppression in their borders must come to an end.”

The administration and the military, of course, rationalize their indulgence of this double standard as motivated by “the safety of American men and women in Afghanistan, of our military and civilian personnel there,” as Obama spokesman Jay Carney put it. But as one demonstrator in Kabul said, “We don’t care about Obama’s apology. We have to protest to be responsible to our god. They are burning our Qur’an. An apology is not enough.” Most Afghans obviously agree, since rioting and killing have intensified despite apologies from our highest government and military officials. Indeed, over the past few decades, no amount of apologies for alleged “insults” to Muslims has stopped Islamists form attacking us. Nor have the good deeds benefitting Muslims, from rescuing Bosnians from genocide to liberating Libyans from Gaddafi, stopped jihadists from wanting to kill Americans for an endless list of reasons. The past decades of such incidents have shown instead that apologies are useless, and merely confirm the impression among Muslims that we are spiritually inferior, and so endorse the perverse logic that accidentally burning a book is worse than murdering our soldiers and citizens. Why else would we publicly flagellate ourselves over such “insults” even as we say nothing about the Muslim murders of Christians in Egypt and Nigeria, or the Muslim laws prescribing capital punishment for converts to Christianity, or the Muslim vandalizing and destruction of 300 churches in Cyprus, or the Muslim slow-motion extermination of Christians in lands that worshipped Christ for 6 centuries before Islam even existed?

Madness has overtaken Washington, and the world. Every day this past week has brought fresh reports of more people murdered in Afghanistan over the burning of some copies of the Qur’an at Bagram Airfield. In response, every day new apologies come from American officials. Barack Obama, Leon Panetta, the commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan, General John Allen, and others have all issued abject apologies to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the “noble people of Afghanistan,” and everyone else in sight.

Even the most minor of officials are getting into the act: Peter Lavoy, acting assistant secretary of defense for Asia and Pacific security affairs, scraping the bottom of the barrel for a suitable object for his abject submission, apologized to Muslims in the Washington, D.C. area.

Some have rightly skewered Obama and his cohorts for their cowardice and eagerness to appease the Afghan mobs, especially as the death toll steadily mounts. No one, however, has noted the most remarkable aspect of this entire episode: the United States Government has, no questions asked, eagerly embraced Islamic law (Sharia) regarding the treatment of the Qur’an, and assured the Afghans that it will be enforced.

In his apology letter to Karzai, Obama said that the Qur’an-burning was “inadvertent,” but that nevertheless “we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, including holding accountable those responsible.”

If it was “inadvertent,” why does Obama intend to hold them accountable? Accidents will happen. If he is going to adopt Sharia to the extent that he thinks that anyone should be held accountable for this at all, is he going to adopt Sharia punishments for this “crime” as well? Will he have the U.S. soldiers whom he finds to be responsible for the Qur’an-burning beheaded?

If not, why not?

If burning the Qur’an is now a crime for Americans, and we are thus now subject to Islamic law, how much Sharia are we under? To what extent have we capitulated? Where does Obama draw the line, if anywhere?

At least a dozen people have been killed in riots that have broken out in Afghanistan over the inadvertent burning of several Korans by US soldiers at a prison complex outside of Kabul. Among the dead are two US soldiers, shot by an Afghan soldier at the US base near Kaja. President Barack Obama wrote a letter to President Karzai extending his “sincere apologies” for the incident, adding, “We will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible.” For all its obsequious efforts, analysts agree that profuse apologies issued from every level of the Obama administration have done nothing to temper the outbreak of violence in the country. Some believe apologies may even inflame the situation more.

Karzai and several members of parliament have called on NATO to put the soldiers on trial. Meanwhile, following the attack on the Americans by the uniformed Afghan soldier, the Taliban called on Afghan soldiers to fire on the “infidel invaders.”

Many analysts support the president’s response, but believe it will do little or no good. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the apology was “appropriate given the sensitivity” of the matter. But GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich disagreed, saying on a campaign swing through Washington state that “there seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama’s attention in a negative way and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States period.” He also said that it should be President Karzai doing the apologizing for the killing of US military personnel by a member of his armed forces.  He added that if Karzai doesn’t say he’s sorry for the murders, “then we should say goodbye and good luck, we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn’t care.”

If it were only Obama doing the apologizing, that would make sense. As Commander-in-Chief, the president is responsible for the safety of the troops and even though humbling the US in this way is not easy to accept, with 100,000 or more troops still in Afghanistan, each and every one of them would become a target for any Afghan with a gun unless the president made some effort to placate the people and government of Afghanistan. And guns are common in Afghan households.

But the rash of apologies issued by US officials — including a missive by American and NATO Commander General John Allen and a statement of regret by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta — “don’t seem to have any effect,” said Nina Shea of the conservative Hudson Institute. She said the additional apologies “just feeds the sense of grievance” of the protesters. Another analyst, Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, said that the serial apologies only help the Taliban. “They will use that to again flame their own fire,” he said. “The more they apologize, the more it’s going to inflame them.”

Shaffer also called the burning of the Korans “stupid.” Valuable intelligence may have been lost if there were indeed messages from extremists written in the texts.

Perhaps the incident was best summed up in the Lebanese English language Daily Star:

It’s one of those puzzling cases in which one doesn’t know which is worse: If the Americans knew what they were doing, it is a disaster, and if they were this careless and didn’t know what they were doing, it is also a disaster.

General Allen has promised that troops will receive additional training in the “proper handling of religious materials.” An investigation by the military is underway to determine why the Korans ended up in the burn bin in the first place.

This article was first published by the Stonegate Institute.

The beginning of the New Year saw only an increase in the oppression of Christians under Islam, from Nigeria, where an all-out jihad has been declared in an effort to eradicate the Muslim north of all Christians, to Europe, where Muslim converts to Christianity are still hounded and attacked as apostates.  According to the Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year”; in our life time alone, he predicts “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.”

An international report found that Muslim nations make up nine out of the top ten countries where Christians face the “most severe” persecution.  In response to these findings, a Vatican spokesman said that “Among the most serious concerns, the increase in Islamic extremism merits special attention.  Persons and organizations dedicated to extremist Islamic ideology perpetrate terrible acts of violence in many places throughout the world: the Boko Haram sect in Nigeria is but one example. Then there is the climate of insecurity that unfortunately in some countries accompanies the so-called “Arab spring”—a climate that drives many Christians to flee and even to emigrate.”

Categorized by theme, January’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity of anecdote.

APOSTASY

Iran: A Christian convert who was arrested in her home has been sentenced to two years in prison. Previously she endured five months of uncertainty detained in the notorious Evin prison, where the government hoped she would come to her senses and renounce Christianity. She was convicted of “broad anti-Islamic propaganda, deceiving citizens by formation of what is called a house church, insulting sacred figures and action against national security.” Likewise, Iranian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani continues to suffer in prison.  Most recently, he rejected an offer to be released if he publicly acknowledged Islam’s prophet Muhammad as “a messenger sent by God,” which would amount to rejecting Christianity, as Muhammad/Koran reject it.

Kenya: Muslim apostates seeking refuge in Kenya are being tracked and attacked by Muslims from their countries of origin: An Ethiopian who, upon converting to Christianity, was shot by his father, kidnapped and almost killed, is now receiving threatening text messages. Likewise, a Ugandan convert to Christianity is in hiding, his movements severely restricted since “the Muslims are looking to kill me. I need protection and help.”

Kuwait: A royal prince who openly declared that he has converted to Christianity, confirmed the reality that he now might be targeted for killing as an apostate.

Norway: While out for a walk, two Iranian converts to Christianity were stabbed with knives by masked men shouting “infidels!” One of the men stabbed had converted in Iran, was threatened there, and immigrated to Norway, thinking he could escape persecution there.

Somalia: A female convert to Christianity was paraded before a cheering crowd and publicly flogged as punishment for embracing a “foreign religion.” Imprisoned since November, “the public whipping was meant to mark her release.” She received 40 lashes as hundreds of Muslim spectators jeered. An eyewitness said: “I saw her faint. I thought she had died, but soon she regained consciousness and her family took her away.” Likewise, “Somali Islamists arrested a Muslim father after two of his children converted to Christianity” and fled.  He is accused of “failing to raise his sons as good Muslims,” because “good Muslims cannot convert to Christianity.”

Zanzibar: After being robbed, a Muslim convert to Christianity called police to his house; they discovered a Bible during their inspection. The course of inquiry immediately changed from searching for the thieves to asking why he “was practicing a forbidden faith.” He was imprisoned for eight months without trial, and, since being released, has been rejected by his family and is now homeless and diseased.

CHURCH ATTACKS

Azerbaijan: A pastor has been threatened with criminal proceedings following a raid on his church during Sunday service. Earlier, he was told that “a criminal case had been launched over religious literature arousing incitement over other faiths,” and was pressured by authorities to leave the area, which he did, traveling great distances each week to lead church services.

Egypt: Before a bishop was going to inaugurate the incomplete Abu Makka church and celebrate the Epiphany mass, a large number of Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood members entered the building, asserting that the church had no license and so no one should pray in it. One Muslim remarked that the building would be suitable for a mosque and a hospital.

Indonesia: A sticker on the back of the car of a member of the beleaguered Yasmin church saying “We need a friendly Islam, not an angry Islam,” distributed by the family of the late Muslim president, prompted another Islamic attack on the church: scores of Muslims “terrorized the congregation and attacked several church members.” Since 2008, the congregation has been forced to hold Sunday services on the sidewalk outside the church and then later in the home of parishioners. Not satisfied, hundreds of Muslims later searched and found the private home where members were congregating and holding service and prevented them from worshiping there as well: “It crosses the line now. The protesters now come to the residential area, which is not a public place.” A new report notes that anti-Christian attacks have nearly doubled in the last year.

Nigeria: Soon after jihadis issued an ultimatum giving Christians three days to evacuate the region or die, armed Muslims stormed a church and “opened fire on worshippers as their eyes were closed in prayer,” killing six, including the pastor’s wife. Then, as friends and relatives gathered to mourn the deaths of those slain, “Allahu Akbar” screaming Muslims appeared and opened fire again, killing another 20 Christians. Several other churches were bombed, and seven more killed.