Considering that Easter, one of the highest Christian holidays, comes in April, Christian persecution in Muslim nations—from sheer violence to oppressive laws—was rampant last month: In Nigeria, where jihadis seek to expunge all traces of Christianity, a church was bombed during Easter Sunday, killing some 50 worshippers; in Turkey, a pastor was beaten by Muslims immediately following Easter service and threatened with death unless he converts to Islam; and in Iran,Easter Sunday saw 12 Christians stand trial as “apostates.”

The persecution of Christians has come to regions not normally associated with it. As in Nigeria, Muslim militants are running amok in Timbuktu, Mali—beheading a Christian leader and threatening other Christians with similar treatment. Sharia law has been imposed, churches are being destroyed, and Christians are fleeing Timbuktu in mass.

Categorized by theme, the rest of April’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:

 Church Attacks

Azerbaijan: A church in the Muslim-majority nation has “become the first religious community to beliquidated by a court” since the country’s “harsh new Religion Law,” requiring all previously registered religious institutions to re-register, came into force in 2009. Greater Grace Protestant Church in the capital, Baku, “was stripped of its registration at a 15-minute hearing on 25 April. The decision, which was made in the absence of any church representatives, makes any activity by the church illegal and subject to punishment.”

Indonesia: Gunmen opened fire on the GKI Yasmin church, causing much damage in the latest attack on the building, which has been illegally sealed off by authorities since 2088, due to Muslim demands. Another Protestant church unlawfully sealed off by the authorities—despite meeting all requirements for a permit—was met with violent opposition from Muslims for trying to hold a service on the street in front of their sealed-off church building. Muslim residents made death threats, played loud music, and even rode a motorcycle through the congregation. A church spokesman said: “We are constantly having to change our location because our existence appears to be unwanted, and we have to hide so that we are not intimidated by intolerant groups… We had hoped for help from the police, but after many attacks on members of the congregation, we see that the police are also involved in this.”

Kenya: Two separate grenade attacks on churches occurred: 1) Muslims threw grenades into an open-air Christian church gathering, killing a woman and a boy, and wounding some 50 other Christians: Muslims had been holding a meeting near the gathering, and Christians could hear their preachers railing against Christianity right before the attack took place. 2) In a separate incident, a Muslim man pretending to be a worshipper at a church threw three grenades during service, killing a 27-year-old university student and injuring16. The terrorist, who, according to eyewitnesses, appeared to be of Somali origin, “looked uncomfortable and always looked down. He threw three hand grenades and only one exploded. He took off, and he fired in the air three gunshots.”

Nigeria: An early morning attack on a Christian church service left at least 16 people dead: Jihadi gunmen on motorcycles stormed Bayero University in the city of Kano on a Sunday morning during a Catholic mass held in the school’s theater hall, hurling improvised explosive devices, and opening fire as people fled. “The attack follows a string of violent incidents against Christians in the predominantly Muslim north.”

Sudan: A Christian compound in Khartoum was stormed by a throng of Muslims “armed with clubs, iron rods, a bulldozer and fire,” the day after a Muslim leader called on Muslims to destroy “the infidels’ church.”Shouting “Allahu Akbar [God is greater]” and “No more Christianity from today on—no more church from today on,” the jihadis stormed the Bible school bookstore, burning Bibles and threatening to kill anyone resisting them. “What happened could not be imagined—it was terrible,” said an eyewitness. “They burned all furniture of the school and the church as well.” As usual, “Police at the compound stood back and did nothing to prevent the mob from vandalizing the compound.”

Tunisia: The Christian Orthodox Church in Tunis, one of very few churches in the nation, is being “abused” and receiving “threatening messages.” Church members are “living in a state of terror,” so much so that the Russian ambassador in Tunis specifically requested the nation’s Ministry of Interior to “protect the church.” The abuse has gotten to the point where “Salafis covered the cross of the church with garbage bags, telling the church members that they do not wish to see the vision of the Cross anywhere in the Islamic state of Tunisia.” Separately, a Muslim burst into a church to deliver a letter from an Islamist party inviting the archpriest to convert to Islam or to take down the church’s crosses and pay jizya, Islamic subjugation tribute.

Apostasy and Blasphemy: Death and Prison

Algeria: A Christian was sentenced to five years in prison for “shaking the faith” of Muslims. He had discussed his faith with a Muslim man at a food court when the Muslim became angry and accused the Christian of “insulting Muhammad.” Police arrested the man and found a large amount of Christian materials in his apartment. The judge gave him the maximum sentence of five years in prison, even though the prosecutor himself had recommended a lesser sentence.

Bangladesh: A former Muslim prayer leader who converted to Christianity was “welcomed by threats and violence.” Members of his Muslim community “beat him almost to death,” causing him to be hospitalized for almost two months: “the same Muslims who followed him and held him in high esteem when he was their imam now cannot accept his new status.”

Egypt: Two incidents of “blasphemy” convictions occurred: 1) A juvenile court sentenced a Coptic Christian teenager to three years in prison for allegedly “insulting Islam,” due to claims that he posted unflattering cartoons of Muhammad on Facebook. When the incident originally came to light, Muslims rioted, fire-bombing his home and at least five other Christian-owned homes. 2) Another judge upheld a six-year prison sentence for a Christian convicted of “blasphemy”: after a Muslim had told the 49-year old Christian convict that Jesus had illegal sex with at least ten women, the Christian countered “by stating that Muhammad, the founder of the Islamic religion, had more than four wives—a view commonly held by Islamic scholars.” Police subsequently arrested him and, in a 10-minute mock trial with no defense attorney present, the judge sentenced him to six years in prison for “insulting the prophet.”

Iran: A Christian convert from Islam has been sentenced to six years in prison. Originally arrested in December 2010 as part of a major crackdown on the country’s house church movement, “the married father of two has been held in the notorious Evin prison ever since, spending several months in solitary confinement,” where he was likely goaded into returning to Islam. He is accused of “action against the regime’s security, being in contact with foreign organizations and religious propaganda.” In short, according to Iranian Christians, “his ‘crime’ was practicing his Christian faith.”

Pakistan: Two incidents of “blasphemy” charges occurred: 1) A Christian man was arrested and charged with “blasphemy” for rescuing his 8-year-old nephew from a beating at the hands of Muslim boys who sought to force the boy to convert to Islam. “Seeing the attack from a distance, Masih [the man] shouted and rushed to the scene, rescued his nephew and then went to his work as a painter. Soon after the incident, a Muslim mob of about 55 led by the village prayer leader besieged Masih’s house,” insisting that “the blasphemer” be turned over to them. He was eventually released from prison, after being threatened and harassed by Muslim inmates and jail officials. 2) The mother of a newborn baby has been illegally jailed for over a month: authorities have failed to file a charge sheet within the mandatory 14-day period against the 26-year-old Christian woman accused of “blaspheming” the prophet of Islam. The woman was arrested after neighbors accused her of “uttering remarks against Muhammad.”

Philippines: Two pastors were slaughtered by Muslim assailants: 1) A former Muslim who became a Christian pastor was murdered in front of his wife in his home: “My husband staggered into our bedroom and I was shocked because he was full of blood,” she recalled. “I brought him to the hospital right away. He was operated on for eight bullet wounds, but did not survive.” The Philippines is a mostly Christian nation, but in the south, “Muslim fundamentalists are trying to build an Islamic state. Christians there face persecution and even death…. This year, at least four house churches closed down after their pastors and lay leaders were killed by Muslim extremists.” 2) Another pastor was shot in the head five times and killed by two “unknown gunmen” in front of his teenage daughter.

Dhimmitude

[General Abuse, Debasement, and Suppression of non-Muslims as "Tolerated" Citizens]

Egypt: A recent “reconciliation meeting” between members of a sword-wielding Muslim mob that earlier brutalized a Christian school proved to be “nothing less than an attempt at legalized extortion.” In exchange for peace, members of the mob that stormed the school last month without provocation—holding two nuns hostage for several hours—demanded in the meetings that the school sign over land that includes the guesthouse they attacked. “Human rights groups and Coptic rights activists, say the meetings are just a way to pressure powerless groups and people into giving away what little rights they have.” Likewise, the judges appointed to investigate the Maspero massacre, which claimed the lives of 27 Christians and injured 329,closed the case, due to “lack of identification of the culprits.” As one Christian lawyer put it: “We said all along that it was just a show and this is the outcome we got.”

India: Muslims stormed and terrorized a home where a Christian prayer meeting was being held, beating the Christians, including a 65-year-old widow. The Muslims “called them pagans as they kicked, slapped and pushed the Christians…. The Christians were running in all directions for their lives, including the children who were crying in fear,” even as one Muslim, “brandishing a sickle, chased many of them, hurling all kinds of insults and attempting to murder them all…. 500 Muslims had gathered and were watching in amusement as the extremists chased and harassed the Christians for about 90 minutes.”

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The following article was originally published by the

The war on Christianity and its adherents rages on in the Muslim world.  In March alone, Saudi Arabia’s highest Islamic law authority decreed that churches in the region must be destroyed; jihadis in Nigeria said they “are going to put into action new efforts to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women”; American teachers in the Middle East were murdered for being or talking about Christianity; churches were banned or bombed, and nuns terrorized by knife-wielding Muslim mobs.  Christians continue to be attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and killed for allegedly “blaspheming” Islam’s prophet Muhammad;  former Muslims continue to be attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and killed for converting to Christianity.

To understand why all this persecution is virtually unknown in the West, consider the mainstream media’s well-documented biases: also in March alone, the New York Times ran a virulently anti-Catholic ad, but refused to publish a near identical ad directed at Islam; the BBC admitted it will mock Jesus but never Muhammad; and U.S. sitcoms were exposed for bashing Christianity, but never Islam.

Is it any wonder, then, that this same mainstream media ignores or at best whitewashes the nonstop persecution of Christians under Islam?  Exposing such ugly truths would undermine their narrative of Islam as the “religion of peace.”

Categorized by theme, March’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:

Apostasy, Blasphemy, and Proselytism: Death and Prison

Egypt: A Christian man accused of insulting Islam’s prophet Muhammad was sentenced to six years in prison.  Though “defamation of religion” is a misdemeanor under Egyptian law, punishable by a prison sentence of one month to three years, the judge doubled the sentence to appease Muslims, including an angry 2,500-strong mob that terrorized the courtroom, demanding death for the Christian. Likewise, an “anti-Christianization course” by an organization that is “specializing in the resistance to Christianity”—so Muslims are not “throw[n] under the feet of the Cross”—was initiated; according to an instructor, “Reoccurring attempts at the university in Aswan to convert Muslims to Christianity or provoke them with misleading information was the drive behind the course.”

India: A young woman was attacked and kicked out of her home “for daring to give thanks for healing in Christ’s name” in a predominantly Muslim village; “her parents helped Islamic extremists to beat her nearly unconscious.” In a village where “hard-line Muslims have threatened to kill the 25 families who initially showed interest in Christ, leaving only five frightened Christian families,” the woman was attacked when returning from church, called “pagan, among other verbal abuse.” The mob also harassed and threatened the Christian woman who “lured” her to convert to Christianity.

Iran: In a rare crackdown on a concentrated area, authorities arrested 12 more converts to Christianity living in Isfahan, the country’s third largest city, in what is seen as a tactic to discourage Muslims from attending official churches.  Among the latest known Christian converts detained in the Isfahan area is a man who was reportedly taken into custody on March 2 while returning home from his work: “Security authorities raided his home and seized him without explanation.”

Iraq: An American teacher was shot to death by an 18-year-old student at a private Christian academy.  He “was a devout Christian who frequently praised Christianity and prayed in the classroom, and his friends in Washington said his evangelism is what motivated him to teach in Iraq.” According to students, “Mr. Jeremiah’s hands were still folded in prayer when he fell”; others say a day before the shooting “a heated discussion” broke out “during which the pupil threatened to kill the teacher because of conflicting religious views.” In an interview, the father of the pupil condemned Christian evangelists, portraying them as “more dangerous than al-Qaeda.”

Malaysia:  After religious police raided a Methodist church event due to “fears that Muslims were being converted,” Muslim officials created a seminar called “Strengthening the faith, the dangers of liberalism and pluralism and the threat of Christianity towards Muslims.”  Due to criticism of the title, a lawmaker said the reference to Christianity would be removed, but the seminar’s content would remain unchanged: “The seminar is part of the right of Muslims to defend the faith of its practitioners from any action which may lead to apostasy. It is our responsibility.”

Pakistan: A Muslim mob attacked a 60-year-old Christian woman who had converted to Islam, only to reconvert back to Christianity six months later: she “was tortured—her head shaved—and paraded through the streets, garlanded with shoes.” Soon after, she received more threats of “dire consequences” from Islamic clerics, fleeing the region with her family.  Likewise, a 26-year-old Christian woman, mother to a five-month-old girl, was falsely accused of “blaspheming” Muhammad and arrested.  A few days prior, some of her relatives who converted to Islam pressured her also to do likewise:   “She refused, telling them that she was satisfied with Christianity and did not want to convert,” and was arrested of blasphemy soon thereafter.

Yemen: Al-Qaeda gunmen fatally shot an American teacher.  The terror network’s affiliate in Yemen issued a message saying, “This operation comes as a response to the campaign of Christian proselytizing that the West has launched against Muslims,” calling the teacher “one of the biggest American proselytizers.” He was shot eight times on a Sunday.

Church Attacks

Bethlehem: One week after the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority told an audience of Evangelicals that his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities, the PA declared a Baptist Church illegal, adding that birth, wedding, and death certificates from the church are no longer valid.  A pastor notes that “animosity towards the Christian minority in areas controlled by the PA continues to get increasingly worse. People are always telling [Christians], ‘Convert to Islam. Convert to Islam. It’s the true and right religion.’”

Egypt: Some 1500 Muslims—several armed with swords and knives and shouting Islamic slogans—terrorized the Notre Dame Language School in Upper Egypt, in response to calls from local mosques falsely claiming the private school was building a church: “Two nuns were besieged in the school’s guesthouse for some eight hours by a murderous mob threatening to burn them alive”; one nun suffered a “major nervous breakdown requiring hospitalization… The entire property was ransacked and looted. The next day the Muslims returned and terrorized the children. Consequently, school attendance has dropped by at least one third.”

Iran: The Armenian Evangelical Church in Tehran is the latest church to be ordered to cease holding Persian service on Fridays. The officers serving the notice threatened church officials, saying that “if the order is ignored, the church building will be bombed ‘as happens in Iraq every day.’”  As another report summarizes, “Christians and Churches in the Islamic Republic of Iran are now banned from preaching the Gospel to non-Christians, holding Persian language services, teaching and distributing the Bible, or holding Christian classes.”

The following article was originally published by the Stonegate Institute.

When it comes to Muslim persecution of Christians, the mainstream media (MSM) have a long paper trail of obfuscating; while they eventually do state the bare-bone facts—if they ever report on the story in the first place, which is rare—they do so after creating and sustaining an aura of moral relativism that minimizes the Muslim role.

False Moral Equivalency

As previously discussed, one of the most obvious ways is to evoke “sectarian strife” between Muslims and Christians, a phrase that conjures images of two equally matched—equally abused, and abusive—adversaries fighting. This hardly suffices to describe reality: Muslim majorities persecuting largely passive Christian minorities.

Boko Haram seeks to enforce Sharia law; here, members stand in front of a distinctly Islamic banner. Yet the MSM claims the group's goals are "unclear."

Most recently, for instance, in the context of the well-documented suffering of Christians in Egypt, an NPR report declared “In Egypt, growing tensions between Muslims and Christians have led to sporadic violence [initiated by whom?]. Many Egyptians blame the interreligious strife on hooligans [who?] taking advantage of absent or weak security forces. Others believe it’s because of a deep-seated mistrust between Muslims and the minority Christian community [how did the "mistrust" originate?].” Though the report does highlight cases where Christians are victimized, the tone throughout suggests that examples of Muslims victimized by Christians could just as easily have been found (not true). Even the title of the report is “In Egypt, Christian-Muslim Tension is on the Rise”; the accompanying photo is of a group of angry Christians, one militantly holding a cross aloft—not Muslims destroying crosses, which is what prompts the former to such displays of religious solidarity.

Two more strategies that fall under the MSM’s umbrella of obfuscating and minimizing Islam’s role—strategies that the reader should become acquainted with—appeared in recent reports dealing with the jihadi group Boko Haram and its ongoing genocide of Nigeria’s Christians.

First, some context: Boko Haram, whose full name in Arabic is “Sunnis for Da’wa [Islamization] and Jihad,” is a terrorist organization dedicated to the overthrow of the secular government and establishment of Sharia law (sound familiar?). It has been slaughtering Christians for years, with an uptick since last December’s Christmas day church bombing, which left 40 Christians dead, followed by its New Year ultimatum that all Christians must evacuate northern regions or die—an ultimatum Boko Haram has been living up to, as hardly a day goes by without a terrorist attack on Christians or churches, most recently, last Sunday’s Easter day church attack that killed nearly 50.

Blurring the Line between Persecutor and Victim

Now consider some MSM strategies. The first one is to frame the conflict between Muslims and Christians in a way that blurs the line between persecutor and victim, for example, this recent BBC report on one of Boko Haram’s many church attacks that left three Christians dead, including a toddler. After stating the bare-bone facts, the report goes on to describe how “the bombing sparked a riot by Christian youths, with reports that at least two Muslims were killed in the violence. The two men were dragged off their bikes after being stopped at a roadblock set up by the rioters, police said. A row of Muslim-owned shops was also burned…” The report goes on and on, with a special section about “very angry” Christians, till one all but confuses victims with persecutors, forgetting what the Christians are “very angry” about in the first place: unprovoked and nonstop terror attacks on their churches, and the murder of their women and children.

The abuse has gotten to the point where “Salafis covered the cross of the church with garbage bags, telling the church members that they do not wish to see the vision of the Cross anywhere in the Islamic state of Tunisia.”

Among all the Arabic-speaking nations, Tunisia has long been described as one of the most “secular” and “liberal”; it was also the first nation where the much ballyhooed “Arab Spring” began. Now its very few churches are not tolerated, and their crucifixes abhorred. If this is “tolerant” Tunisia, what should one expect from the more “radical” nations? More evidence of the true nature of the “Arab Spring.”

Some anti-Israel church activists in the West blast Israel in time for Christmas. Others choose Easter.  Recently, World Vision chief Richard Stearns, who heads one of the largest U.S. evangelical relief groups, proclaimed in the Huffington Post that Palestinian Christians are enduring a Holy Week of “trial and tribulation” thanks to Israel.

Claiming Israel allows only 2,000-3000 travel permits for Jerusalem during Holy Week to a population of about 50,000 Palestinian Christians, Stearns never bothered to acknowledge why Israel has security concerns about visitors to Jerusalem.  Quoting a Palestinian colleague who attended church in Jerusalem in 2010, Stearns ominously recalled: “The crowd, striving to stay joyful, could still feel the change of what Easter had now become and the dark cloud of checkpoints, police forces, and denial of entry that had obscured the joy of this holiday.”  Stearns announced he’s praying for the “miracle” of “full religious freedom to the Christians in the West Bank and Gaza.”

If he has time, maybe Stearns can pray for all Christians in the Middle East, whose problems entail considerably more than travel inconveniences.

Responding to Stearns, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren said Israel has provided more than 20,000 permits this year for Palestinian Christians to enter Jerusalem for Holy Week, plus 500 permits for the handful of Christians left in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

“With the exception of the very few individuals who have raised security concerns, and notwithstanding the measures we must take to protect our citizens, any Christian from the West Bank can reach Jerusalem on Good Friday and Easter,” Oren said.  “Israel, the only Middle Eastern country with a growing and thriving Christian population, remains committed to maintaining its superb relations with Christian communities worldwide. Though we face serious and continuing defense challenges, we uphold the principle of free access to the Holy Places to all religions.”

Ambassador Oren has recently had to address the realities that confront the Middle East’s shriveling Christian populations while many Western Christians prefer silence or blaming Israel.   In   a Wall Street Journal op-ed recently he described the Christian exodus from Palestinian territories thanks to Islamist intimidation.  The Religious Left and its preferred Palestinian voices responded indignantly, since Oren had challenged their narrative that only Israel can be faulted for Christian difficulties in the Middle East.

Oren’s facts were indisputable. About 20 percent of the Middle East a century ago was Christian. Today it’s 5 percent and plunging, as churches are burned in Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere, forcing thousands to flee. Oren likened the Christian exodus to the 800,000 Jews forced from their homes in Arab lands after Israel’s creation.  The only safe place for Christians in the current Middle East is in Israel, he observed with understatement.

As a minority, Christians experience some “intolerance” in Israel, Oren admitted.  “But in contrast to elsewhere in the Middle East where hatred of Christians is ignored or encouraged,” he wrote, “Israel remains committed to its Declaration of Independence pledge to ‘ensure the complete equality of all its citizens irrespective of religion.’”

In contrast, half of Gaza’s almost tiny Christian community has fled since the Hamas coup in 2007, Oren noted.   On the West Bank, the Christian community has fallen to under 2 percent.  Although Israel is commonly blamed for Christian emigration, most Palestinian Christians live in West Bank cities under the Palestinian Authority.  And the Muslim majority population continues to grow.  In Bethlehem, where Christians where once the majority, they have become 20 percent since the Palestinian take-over in 1995.

“The extinction of the Middle East’s Christian communities is an injustice of historic magnitude,” Oren concluded.   But an anti-Israel Christian group called Kairos Palestine denounced Oren’s op-ed as “inaccurate and manipulative” for faulting Muslims instead of Israel’s “illegal Israeli occupation.”  Their response, helpfully broadcast by the United Church of Christ’s Global Ministries Board, did not identify any specific inaccuracies by Oren.  Instead, the Palestinian activists blamed Christian “persecution” on the “occupation that systematically degrades all Palestinians” and the “underlying political oppression that afflicts Christians and Muslims alike.”

Israel has become the only safe haven for Christians in the Middle East, Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, wrote in a recent op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.

“As 800,000 Jews were once expelled from Arab countries, so are Christians being forced from lands they’ve inhabited for centuries”, Ambassador Oren stated, comparing the expulsion of Jews after the establishment of the state of Israel with the Arab countries’ current treatment of their Christian minorities.

The numbers are telling. Today there is only one Middle Eastern country where the number of Christians has grown: Israel. As documented in the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the Christian community that numbered 34,000 people in 1949 is now 163,000-strong, and will reach 187,000 in 2020.

In the rest of the Middle East, the drive for Islamic purity is going to banish all traces of pre-Islamic pasts. When the Islamists will have prevailed, the Middle East will be completely green, the colour of Islam.

Therefore, it is time for Christians to recognize Israel’s survival as critical and vital also for them. Instead, Arab Christians chose to react to Ambassador Oren by embracing Islam and demonizing the Jews.

“As Christian leaders in Palestine, we were appalled by the baseless allegations you published in the Wall Street Journal”, says one letter signed by many  Arab Christian personalities published in the Palestinian media outlets. “Your attempt to blame the difficult reality that Palestinian Christians face on Palestinian Muslims is a shameful manipulation of the facts intended to mask the damage that Israel has done to our community. The Israeli occupation is the primary reason why so many members of the oldest Christian communities in the world have left the holy land, Palestine. Our reality is one of occupation, oppression and loss”.

The letter is signed by Palestinian ministries, activists, priests and mayors and members of the PLO.

Arab Christianity is near its extinction everywhere. “Christianity in Iraq could be eradicated in our lifetime, partially as a result of the US troop withdrawal”, declared Leonard Leo, chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.

In Egypt, 100,000 Christians already have left the country - after Hosni Mubarak’s fall last year. The Egyptian Union of Human Rights is denouncing this “mass exodus”.

Even more dramatic is the collapse of Christian Arab society following Israel’s handing over of large parts of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Authority. Christians have suffered the most from the mafia-style rule of Yasser Arafat’s kleptocracy.

Christian sites and cemeteries were desecrated by Muslims. Slogans like “Islam will win” and “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday People” have been painted on walls, and PLO flags were draped over Jesus crosses.

Ramallah was 90% Christian before the 1948 War of Independence and Bethlehem was 80% Christian. Today Ramallah is a large Islamic city and Bethlehem’s Christians are near extinction.

Given their common status as minorities within an overwhelmingly Islamic region, you might expect Christian Arabs to find common cause with Jews and Israel. But the traditional hatred of Eastern Christianity for Judaism, combined with the futile hopes for assimilation within the Arab world, have closed off that option.

As the letter clearly shows, Arab Christians are lost to Islam. This unavoidable historical process has been explained by the pioneer Bat Ye’or, the most important historian of the “dhimmitude”.

The following article was originally published by the 

Apologists often try to explain away Islamic terrorism as a byproduct of something else. The usual argument is that, because Muslims are politically, socially, or militarily weak—the archetypal example often given is Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians—they have no choice but to resort to terror to strike at their stronger adversaries.   In other words, they resort to terrorism simply to even the odds—hence the argument that terrorism is the “weapon of the weak.”

Though this narrative is widely accepted, it is demonstrably false.  Consider the following account that took place a couple of weeks ago in Muslim-majority Egypt:

More than 300 Muslim lawyers inside and outside a courthouse in the southern Egyptian province of Assuit today [3/16] prevented defense lawyer Ahmad Sayed Gabali, who is representing the Christian, Makarem Diab, from going into court. Mr. Diab was found guilty of “Insulting the Muslim Prophet” and was scheduled today for a hearing on his appeal. Attorney Dr. Naguib Gabriell, head of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organization, said there was “terror in the Assiut Court today.” He added that he was on his way to court when he was advised that Muslim lawyers have issued death threats to any Christian lawyers who attend the court session. “Makram Diab was assaulted by Muslim lawyers during his transfer from the courtroom and security failed to protect him.”  Peter Sarwat, a Coptic lawyer, said that Muslim lawyers representing the plaintiffs prevented the defense team from entering court: “They said no Muslim will defend a Christian. It was agreed that Christian lawyers would take over and two Coptic lawyers volunteered, but the Muslims decided later that even Christians would not defend him.” Sarwat said the Muslim lawyers wanted to assault the chief judge but he managed to leave the court via a rear door [emphasis added].

The report goes on to explain how Muslim lawyers and activists went to court to defend Diab’s right to a fair trial only to be assaulted by other Muslim lawyers: “They were assaulting us in a beastly and strange way just because we went there to defend a citizen who happened to be a Christian,” said one of the lawyers, adding that exiting the court required security intervention: “We left court in a security vehicle which took us to Security headquarters, otherwise, we don’t know what the outcome would have been for us.”

The Boko Haram death toll has surpassed a thousand in only a few years. It has killed 250 people this year alone. It draws inspiration from the Taliban, has links to Al-Qaeda and has carried out numerous sophisticated attacks, including multiple car bombings.

That leaves one question. Why hasn’t Boko Haram been designated a terrorist organization? It has killed more people than some of the organizations on the list and it is dedicated to ethnic cleansing, something that we decided was unacceptable when it came to Muslims. Shouldn’t it then be equally unacceptable when it is being done by Muslims to Christians?

Apparently not. Johnnie Carson, Obama’s Chicago-born man in Africa, and the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs at subcommittee hearings chaired by Senator Coons, dismissed the idea of designating Boko Haram a terrorist organization and claimed falsely, that despite Boko Haram’s repeated statements about its goals and its very name, that this conflict was not driven by religion, but by social inequities.

Questions about Boko Haram’s terrorism against Christians were rerouted into what Carson described as a “comprehensive” approach to the problem, sidelining security assistance in favor of providing social aid to the Muslim north and urging the Nigerian government to stop aggressively fighting terrorism.

Boko Haram had been inspired by the Taliban and American diplomats are forcefully pushing the Nigerian government into adopting the same disastrous failed “Hearts and Minds” policies of Afghanistan. Instead of combating Boko Haram, we will be increasing funding to the Muslim north and even opening a consulate there. And of course urging Nigeria to appoint more Muslims to high ranking positions.

While the subcommittee on Homeland Security has urged that Boko Haram be designated a terrorist group, diplomats in the State Department are doing everything possible to sabotage the effort. The lies are coming fast and thick. In the New York Times, Jean Herskovitz wrote an op-ed insisting that there was no Boko Haram, suggesting instead that random criminal gangs were really responsible for the mass murder of Christians.

Herskovitz used the exact same line put out by appeasers in the early days of the War on Terror when they claimed that there was no actual Al-Qaeda. Since then that spin has been used for countless Muslim terrorist groups, who cannot be fought because they don’t truly exist. Carson echoed her in his testimony, insisting that Boko Haram was vague, loosely defined and not at all monolithic.

According to Herskovitz, the genocidal Boko Haram terrorist group was actually a “peaceful” group which only turned to violence in response to government oppression, and urged us not to act in a way that “would make us appear biased toward a Christian president” or the Nigerian Muslims would turn on us too.

As a government employee, Johnnie Carson was somewhat more discreet, but took the same position that the real fault lies with the Christian South and the Nigerian government for keeping Muslims oppressed and in poverty, and that the only solution is to pour money, jobs and power into the north. The unstated endgame of this is to create a stalemate that will force the Nigerian political system to make further concessions to Islam and the Sharia law that Boko Haram is fighting for.

The following interview with Freedom Center Shillman Journalism Fellow Raymond Ibrahim was conducted by Wolff Bachner and first appeared on

Most of us in the West have little knowledge of what life is like for Christians in the Muslim world. Take for example, the Coptic Christians, who were once the dominant religious group in Egypt. Previously the mainstay of their nation, Copts are now living as an oppressed minority, denied religious freedom and equal status in Egyptian life. The Copts are routinely denied meaningful employment and may not hold positions in the Egyptian Civil Service. Copts are refused permission to build new churches and even a request to renovate a church that is badly in need of repair can lead to an outbreak of severe Muslim violence against the Copts. Recently, there have even been calls for a return to collecting Jizya from the Copts, a tax that the Qur’an instructs Muslims to charge to all Dhimmis (non-Muslims) whenever Muslims are in power.

To give our readers an accurate picture of the situation in Egypt, we asked Raymond Ibrahim to answer several questions about the Coptic Christians. Raymond is the son of Coptic Christian parents who were born in Egypt and he has firsthand knowledge about Coptic life under Islam. Raymond is a highly respected Middle East and Islam specialist, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. A widely published author, best known for The Al Qaeda Reader (Doubleday, 2007), he guest lectures at universities, including the National Defense Intelligence College. Raymond also briefs governmental agencies, such as U.S. Strategic Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency.  Among other media, he has appeared on Inquisitr.com, MSNBC, Fox News, C-SPAN, PBS, Reuters, Al-Jazeera, CBN, and NPR. Raymond is fluent in Arabic and he has studied the Qur’an and many ancient Islamic historical documents in the original language. You can find Raymond’s latest writings at http://www.raymondibrahim.com.

Here is our interview with Raymond Ibrahim:

1. Who are the Coptic Christians and what is their history?

Raymond Ibrahim:

The Copts are the indigenous inhabitants of Egypt, before the Arab/Muslim invasion around 641 A.D.  The word “Copt” simply means “Egyptian”; however, because all Egyptians were Christian in the 7th century—Egypt was a major Christian center, so much so that Alexandria vied with Rome over ecclesiastical leadership—“Copt” also became synonymous with “Christian.”  In short, the word Copt is similar to the word Jew: both words convey a people and a religion. Tradition teaches that St. Mark, author of the Gospel of the same name, proselytized the pagan Egyptians of the 1st century; by approximately the 3rd century, Christianity was the dominant religion; and by the 7th century when Islam burst into Egypt, Christianity was THE religion.

2. When did persecution of the Copts begin and why?

Raymond Ibrahim:

Muslim persecution of the Copts begins with the Islamic invasion.  It is true that, at the time, the Copts were already under nearly a decade of persecution by the Byzantine Empire over doctrinal disputes.  However, with Islam’s entry, the persecution took on a different shape, and grew steadily worse, until the modern era and the age of colonialism.  At first, and because the Copts were the majority people of Egypt, they were merely deemed a subject race, to be heavily taxed and kept in line by their Muslim overlords.  Over the years, however, their subject status came to be codified in what is seen as Islam’s divine and immutable law, or Sharia.

3. What is Life like for a Copt today in Egypt?

Raymond Ibrahim:

There are approximately 10 million Copts in Egypt, roughly 12% of the population.  This is not an insignificant number.  In fact, in the entire Middle East, Copts make for the largest Christian minority.  Accordingly, the everyday average Copt is not “persecuted”; however, everyday forms of discrimination are common (for instance, only Muslims get hired for the best jobs, and so forth).  The problem, though, is that persecution of the sort that occurred centuries ago—for instance, the ongoing attacks on churches—is on the rise, unsurprisingly so, considering the overall Islamization of Egypt in recent decades, culminating with Islamists, who were once in jail for their extremist views, now sitting in Egypt’s new parliament.

4. What can the Copts do to protect their lives and preserve their religion?  What does the future hold for the Copts? Can they survive in the Middle East and remain faithful Coptic Christians?

The following article was originally published by the Stonegate Institute.

Half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians are gone due to the unleashed forces of jihad, many of them fleeing to nearby Syria; yet, as the Assad regime comes under attack by al-Qaeda and others, the jihad now seeps into Syria, where Christians are experiencing a level of persecution unprecedented in the nation’s modern history.   Likewise, some 100,000 Christian Copts have fled their native Egypt since the overthrow of the Mubarak regime; and in northern regions of Nigeria, where the jihadi group Boko Haram has been slaughtering Christians, up to 95 % of the Christian population has fled.

Meanwhile, the “big news” concerning the Muslim world in the month of February—the news that flooded the mainstream media and had U.S. politicians, beginning with President Obama, flustered, angry, and full of regret—was that copies of the Koran in Afghanistan were burned by U.S. soldiers because imprisoned Muslim inmates were using them  “to facilitate extremist communications.”

Categorized by theme, February’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.

Church Attacks

Algeria: Armed men raided and ransacked a church formally recognized since 1958, dismantling the crucifix above the premises.  The pastor and his family, trapped inside, feared that “they could kill us.” The pastor “has been repeatedly threatened and attacked since being ordained as pastor in 2007. In the summer of 2009 his wife was beaten and seriously injured by a group of unknown men. Then, in late 2011, heaps of trash were thrown over the compound walls while an angry mob shouted death threats.”

Egypt: Thousands of Muslims attacked a Coptic church, demanding the death of its pastor, who, along with “nearly 100 terrorized Copts sought refuge inside the church, while Muslim rioters were pelting the church with stones in an effort to break into the church, assault the Copts and torch the building.” They did this because a Christian girl who, according to Islamic law, automatically became a Muslim when her father converted to Islam, fled and was rumored to be hiding in the church.

Iran:  Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence has ordered the last two officially registered churches holding Friday Farsi-language services in Tehran—Farsi being the nation’s language—to discontinue the language: “Friday services in Tehran attracted the city’s converts to Christianity as well as Muslims interested in Christianity, as Friday is most Iranians’ day off during the week.” Banning church use of Farsi prevents most Iranians from hearing the Gospel.

Kazakhstan: A new report notes that “Churches are being raided, leaders fined and Christian literature confiscated as the Kazakh authorities enforce new laws intended further to restrict religious freedom in the country.”

Kuwait: A parliamentarian is set to submit a draft law banning the construction of churches.  Originally, Osama al-Munawer announced on Twitter his plans on submitting a draft law calling for the removal of all churches in Kuwait. However, he later “clarified,” saying that existing churches can remain, but the construction of new ones must be banned.

Macedonia: A two-century-old Christian church famed for its valuable icons was set on fire in response to “a carnival in which Orthodox Christian men dressed as women in burkas and mocked the Koran.”  Earlier, “perpetrators attacked a[nother] church in the nearby village of Labunista, destroying a cross standing outside” and “also defaced a Macedonian flag outside Struga’s municipal building, replacing it with a green flag representing Islam.”

Nigeria: A Muslim suicide bomber forced his way into the grounds of a major church, killing two women and an 18-month-old child during Sunday morning service; some 50 people were injured in the blast. In a separate incident, Muslims detonated a bomb outside a church building, injuring five, one critically: “The bomb, planted in a parked car, was left by suspected members of Boko Haram, which seeks to impose sharia (Islamic law) throughout Nigeria.”

Pakistan: A dozen armed Muslims stormed a church, seriously wounding two Christians: one man was shot and is in critical condition, the other risks having his arm amputated; another church member was thrown from the roof, after being struck repeatedly with a rifle butt. “The extremist raid was sparked by charges that [the] church was trying to evangelize Muslims in an attempt to convert them to Christianity. The community several times in the past has been the subject of assault and the pastor and his family the subject of death threats.”  As usual, the police, instead of pursuing the perpetrators, have opened an investigation against the pastor and 20 other church members.

Syria: Some 30 armed and masked jihadis attacked a Catholic monastery—unprecedented in Syria’s modern history—demanding money. According to the Catholic Archbishop of Damascus, “the situation in the country is spiraling out of control as the armed opposition spreads its influence to different regions of the state.”

Dhimmitude

[General Abuse, Debasement, and Suppression of non-Muslims as “Tolerated” Citizens]

Bangladesh: Three American Christians were injured after their car was attacked by a Muslim mob that suspected they were converting Muslims into Christians: at least 200 angry locals chased the missionaries’ car and threw stones at it, leaving three with cuts from broken glass.

Egypt: Rather than punishing the perpetrators who opened fire on and ran tanks over Christians protesting the constant destruction of their churches, the government arrested and is trying two priests in connection to the Maspero massacre. And although Egypt’s new parliament has 498 seats, only six are Copts, though Copts make up at the very least 10% of the population, and so should have approximately 50 seats.  Finally, evincing how bad the situation is, Coptic protesters organized a demonstration in front of Parliament to protest “the disappearance and abduction of Coptic girls.”

Indonesia: The Islamist Prosperous Justice Party complained about the Red Cross’ symbol of a cross, saying it is too identifiable with Christian culture and traditions. Red Cross volunteers and activists rejected the claim, saying that any changes to the logo would be “tantamount to giving in to the extremists.”

Iran: A pastor of a major house church movement began serving a five-year prison sentence for “crimes against the order.”  According to one activist,  “His ‘crimes’ were being a pastor and possessing Christian materials.” He is being beat in jail and getting sick, to the point that his hair has “turned fully gray.”

Israel: A mob of some 50 Palestinian Muslims stoned a group of Christian tourists atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, wounding three Israeli police officers in the process. The attack is believed to have been instigated by the former Muslim mufti of Jerusalem.

Pakistan: Yet another Christian woman, a teacher, has been targeted by Muslims due to allegations that she burned a Koran.  A mob stormed her school in an attempt to abduct her, but police took her into custody. Also, a Christian student who missed the grade to get into medical school by less than 0.1% would have earned 20 extra points if he had memorized the Koran—though no bonus points for having similar knowledge of the Bible.

The Grand Mufti made his assertion in response to a question posed by a delegation from Kuwait: a Kuwaiti parliament member recently called for the “removal” of churches (he later “clarified” by saying he merely meant that no churches should be built in Kuwait), and the delegation wanted to confirm Sharia’s position on churches.

Accordingly, the Grand Mufti “stressed that Kuwait was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore it is necessary to destroy all churches in it.”

As with many grand muftis before him, the Sheikh based his proclamation on the famous tradition, or hadith, wherein the prophet of Islam declared on his deathbed that “There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula,” which has always been interpreted to mean that only Islam can be practiced in the region.

While the facts of this account speak for themselves, consider further:

Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah is not just some random Muslim hating on churches. He is the Grand Mufti of the nation that brought Islam to the world. Moreover, he is the President of the Supreme Council of Ulema [Islamic scholars] and Chairman of the Standing Committee for Scientific Research and Issuing of Fatwas. Accordingly, when it comes to what Islam teaches, his words are immensely authoritative.

Considering the hysteria that besets the West whenever non-authoritative individuals offend Islam—for instance, a fringe, unknown pastor—imagine what would happen if a Christian counterpart to the Grand Mufti, say the Pope, were to declare that all mosques in Italy must be destroyed; imagine the nonstop Western media frenzy that would erupt, all the shrill screams of “intolerance” and “bigot,” demands for apologies if not resignation, nonstop handwringing by sensitive politicians, and worse.

Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to whitewash all things Islamic (see here for example), it may be instructive to examine one of those aspects that are regularly distorted: the Muslim conquests.

Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (632) and tapered off circa 750. Large swathes of the Old World—from the India in the east, to Spain in the west—were conquered and consolidated by the sword of Islam during this time, with more after (e.g., the Ottoman conquests).

By the standards of history, the reality of these conquests is unassailable, for history proper concerns itself with primary sources; and the Islamic conquests are thoroughly documented. More importantly, the overwhelming majority of primary source materials we rely on do not come from non-Muslims, who might be accused of bias. Rather, the foremost historians bequeathing to posterity thousands of pages of source materials documenting the Islamic conquests were not only Muslims themselves; they were—and still are—regarded by today’s Muslims as pious and trustworthy scholars (generically, the ulema).

Among the most authoritative books devoted to recounting the conquests are: Ibn Ishaq’s (d. 767) Sira (“Life of Muhammad”), the oldest biography of Muhammad; Waqidi’s (d. circa. 820) Maghazi (“Military Campaigns [of the Prophet]“); Baladhuri’s (d. 892) Futuh al-Buldan (“Conquests of the Nations”); and Tabari’s (d.923) multi-volumeTarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, (“History of Prophets and Kings”), which is 40 volumes in the English translation.

Taken together, these accounts (which are primarily based on older accounts—oral and written—tracing back to Muhammad and his successors) provide what was once, and in the Muslim world still is, a famous story: that Allah had perfected religion (Islam) for all humanity; that he commanded his final prophet (Muhammad) and community (Muslims) to spread Islam to the world; and that the latter was/is to accept it either willingly or unwillingly (jihad).

It should be noted that contemporary non-Muslim accounts further validate the facts of the conquests. The writings of the Christian bishop of Jerusalem Sophronius (d.638), for instance, or the chronicles of the Byzantine historian Theophanes (d.758), to name a couple, make clear that Muslims conquered much of what is today called the “Muslim world.”

According to the Muslim historical tradition, the majority of non-Muslim peoples of the Old World, not desiring to submit to Islam or its laws (Sharia), fought back, though most were eventually defeated and subsumed.

The first major conquest, renowned for its brutality, occurred in Arabia itself, immediately after Muhammad’s death in 632. Many tribes which had only nominally accepted Islam’s authority, upon Muhammad’s death, figured they could break away; however, Muhammad’s successor and first caliph, or successor, Abu Bakr, would have none of that, and proclaimed a jihad against these apostates, known in Arabic as the “Ridda Wars” (or Apostasy Wars). According to the aforementioned historians, tens of thousands of Arabs were put to the sword until their tribes re-submitted to Islam.

The Ridda Wars ended around 634. To keep the Arab Muslims from quarreling, the next caliph, Omar, launched the Muslim conquests: Syria was conquered around 636, Egypt 641, Mesopotamia and the Persian Empire, 650. By the early 8th century, all of north Africa and Spain to the west, and the lands of central Asia and India to the east, were also brought under Islamic suzerainty.

Alexander Aan was just another bureaucrat holding down a desk at the Department of Planning until his Facebook Atheism page came to the notice of Indonesian authorities in Obama’s old stomping grounds. Now Aan is facing a five year jail sentence for using social media to spread the message that Allah does not exist.

Alexander is being charged with “defiling” Islam by using passages from the Koran to challenge the Islamic religion. And while the State Department and the media routinely go on the attack against any manifestation of what they call “Islamophobia,” it isn’t likely that they will be rushing to Aan’s defense. This isn’t exactly the first time that atheists have run afoul of the Islamic codes under which the Muslim world operates.

Two years ago, the Palestinian Authority arrested Waleed Hasayin on similar charges of blaspheming against Islam on Facebook. Waleed Hasayin had written that, “Muhammad was no different than barbaric thugs who slaughtered, robbed and raped women” and that “Islam has legitimized slavery, reinforced the gap between social classes and allowed stealing from the infidels, taking women in captivity during wars and sexual abuse of women slaves.”

For these and other truthful statements, he was arrested and his family demanded that he be sentenced to life in prison. He has since written a letter of apology in hopes of being released.

The regimes imprisoning Aan and Hasayin are funded by the United States. Indonesia is on the list of the top twenty countries benefiting from USAID funding and the Palestinian Authority, including its security forces and prisons, is mostly subsidized by American taxpayers. The arrests were accompanied by mob protests and violence reflecting populist Muslim hostility toward non-Muslims.

Underlying these individual incidents is a legal code that goes to the very definition of what it means to be a citizen of a Muslim country. Muslim countries recognize a limited set of legal religions. Non-Muslims who are members of legal religions have fewer rights and run the usual risks that come with being a minority group. Non-Muslims who are not members of official religions do not. This includes Muslim sects that the Islamic system does not recognize as legitimate. It includes Muslims who wish to convert to another religion, and it includes atheists who are not a recognized religious group.

Religious identity is linked to civic participation in public life in a way that most Americans are not aware of. It appears on identity cards, it is a basic requirement for doing anything from attending a university to getting married. Without membership in an officially recognized religious group, the atheist is a non-person.

But atheists no longer have to live in the Muslim world in order to be subject to Islamic rules. At Queen Mary, University of London, a public research university with roots going back nearly a thousand years, the Atheism, Secularism and Humanism Society attempted to hold a discussion on “Sharia Law and Human Rights.” The discussion came to an abrupt end when a man entered the room and warned that they would be murdered if they said anything critical about Mohammed.

Earlier I discussed how mosques, some of which breed radicalization and serve as terrorist bases, flourish in America, while churches are increasingly targeted and destroyed in the Muslim world, especially the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity.

This pattern—religious appeasement of Muslim minorities in the West, religious hostility for Christian minorities under Islam—continues and manifests itself in other ways.

Consider Christmas.  The same appeasement that allows a “victory mosque” to be erected near Ground Zero, where jihadists killed some 3,000 Americans, compromises one of Christianity’s most important events.

For instance, a “Montreal suburb has decided to remove a nativity scene and menorah from town hall rather than acquiesce to demands from a Muslim group to erect Islamic religious symbols.” Contrast this with Iran, where many churches were “ordered to cancel Christmas and New Year’s celebrations as a show of their compliance and support” for “the two month-long mourning activities of the Shia’ Moslems,” a reference to the bloody flagellations and self mutilations Shias perform in memory of Imam Hussein during Ashura.

Likewise, the University of London held Christmas service featuring readings from the Quran—Islam’s holy book that unequivocally condemns the Incarnation, which is precisely what Christmas celebrates.  Meanwhile, Islam’s clerics in the West proclaimed things like “saying Merry Christmas is worse than fornication or killing someone,” since doing so is to “approve of the biggest crime ever committed by humanity”: the belief that God became man on Christmas.  As the cleric makes clear, these are not his words, but rather the words of Islam’s most authoritative clerics.

Nor are these just words.  Around the Muslim world, Christmas time for Christians is a time of threats, harassment, and fear. One can point to any number of Muslim attacks on Christians to prove this—whether churches attacked, burned, or forced into closure; whether Muslim converts to Christianity beat, killed, or imprisoned; whether Christians abused on “blasphemy” charges; or whether just sheer violence and killings of “infidel” Christians. (See “Muslim Persecution of Christians” for a list of December’s abuses alone).

The New Year’s resolution for “Sunnis for Da’wa [Islamization] and Jihad”—also known as Boko Haram, that is, “Western education is forbidden”—is to create a Christian-free Nigeria, beginning, naturally, with the north, where Muslims outnumber Christians.

Right at the start of 2012, Boko Haram issued an ultimatum giving Christians living in northern Nigeria three days to evacuate or die—an ultimatum the group has been living up to, so much so that Nigeria’s President Jonathan recently declared a state of emergency.

This, of course, is not to say that Boko Haram has not been long targeting Christians, as the New York Times—which all but apologized for the group’s terrorism—would have it.

Boko Haram and other Muslims have been terrorizing Nigerian Christians for years, killing thousands of them, and destroying hundreds of their churches.  Just last November, hundreds of armed Muslims, many from the group, invaded Christian villages, “like a swarm of bees,” killing, looting, and destroying. At the end of their four-hour rampage, at least 130 Christians were killed. Forty-five other Christians in another village were slaughtered by another set of “Allahu Akbar!” screaming Muslims.

Likewise, another jihadi attack from last November, enabled by “local Muslims,” left five churches destroyed and several Christians killed: “The Muslims in this town were going round town pointing out church buildings and shops owned by Christians to members of Boko Haram, and they in turn bombed these churches and shops.”  In one instance, a local Muslim pleaded with Boko Haram members not to burn down a particular church—not out of altruism, of course, but rather because that Muslim’s home was adjacent to the church, and might also have caught fire.  The church was spared.

Still, beginning with Boko Haram’s church attacks of December 25, where over 40 people celebrating Christmas were killed, the group has definitely upped both the frequency and savagery of jihadi attacks on Christians and their churches.  Most recently, armed Muslims stormed a church and “opened fire on worshippers as their eyes were closed in prayer,” killing six Christians, including the pastor’s wife, and wounding many.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through Nigeria, not a creature was stirring except for the members of the militant Islamic sect Boko Haram, preparing to bomb Christian churches across the country and setting on fire the cars of worshippers inside a church just outside of Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state.

Christmastime in the United States now brings with it a new tradition that is becoming as familiar as eggnog, mistletoe, and the Macy’s Parade: skirmishes in the ongoing cultural war on Christmas. But as the recent attacks in Nigeria prove, in Muslim lands around the world there is also a very real and very violent war on Christmas, or more specifically on Christians themselves minding their own business in peaceful celebration of the birth of Jesus.

In Iraq, for example, all Christian services and masses were scheduled for daylight hours. Why? “Midnight Christmas Mass has been canceled in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk as a consequence of the never-ending assassinations of Christians,” bluntly stated Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. In Egypt, where we are witnessing the outright, state-assisted genocide of the dwindling Coptic Christian population, churches were also threatened with violence. Christian prisoners in Pakistan, incarcerated for such crimes as blasphemy against Islam, were refused Christmas Day visits from their families.

America itself has not been exempt in the past from Islamic Grinches determined to dampen Christmas spirits. Recall the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber, for example, and the failed Portland bomber who had hoped to slaughter and maim thousands of families gathered to watch the annual lighting of a community Christmas tree. Racist Islamophobes managed to prevent both those men from carrying out their jihadist obligations against Christmas celebrants. (FrontPage contributor Daniel Greenfield catalogues past Islamic Christmas assaults here).

But on this Christmas Day, Nigeria was the scene of the greatest holiday devastation. A series of coordinated bombings perpetrated by Boko Haram, which seeks to impose sharia across the country, struck three churches during services. Conflicting reports of casualties suggest that 40 or more were killed, at least 27 at a single location, and of course dozens more were wounded.

The New York Times reported that rescue workers faced not only a shortage of ambulances for the dozens wounded in the bombings, but also “an enraged crowd that initially blocked them from entering the church until soldiers arrived to restore order.” The Times didn’t specify what kind of enraged crowd would seek to block rescue workers from attempting to assist the suffering and dying Christians.

Setting off deadly holiday fireworks is becoming an annual tradition for Boko Haram, a sort of African Taliban, who carried out another series of lethal Christmas Eve bombings last year. It is often noted that the group’s name translates to “Western education is sacrilege,” but in fact its more official name in Arabic means “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” As part of that solemn commitment, Boko Haram has propagated at least 465 killings in Nigeria this year alone while spreading the Religion of Peace. Misunderstanders of Islam, as scholar of Islam Robert Spencer, tongue in cheek, might call them.

This article is reprinted from Hudson New York.

The so-called “Arab Spring” continues to transition into a “Christian Winter,” including in those nations undergoing democratic change, such as Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis dominated the elections—unsurprisingly so, considering the Obama administration has actually been training Islamists for elections.

Arab regimes not overthrown by the “Arab Spring” are under mounting international pressure;  these include the secular Assad regime of Syria, where Christians, who comprise some 10% of the population, are fearful of the future, having seen the effects of democracy in neighboring nations such as Iraq, where, since the fall of the Saddam regime, Christians have been all but decimated.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that “Christians are being refused refugee status [in the U.S.] and face persecution and many times certain death for their religious beliefs under Sharia, while whole Muslim communities are entering the U.S. by the tens of thousands per month despite the fact that they face no religious persecution.”

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

Churches

Ethiopia: More than 500 Muslim students assisted by Muslim police burned down a church, while screaming “Allahu Akbar” (and thus clearly positing their attack in an Islamic framework); the church was built on land used by Christians for more than 60 years, but now a court has ruled that it was built “without a permit.”

Indonesia: Hundreds of “hard-line” Muslims rallied to decry the “arrogance” of a beleaguered church that, though kept shuttered by authorities, has been ordered open by the Supreme Court.  Church members have been forced to hold services on the sidewalk, even as Indonesia’s leading Muslim clerics warned Christians that it would be “wise and sensible” for the church to yield to “the feelings of the local believers, specifically Muslims.”

Iran: The nation’s minister of intelligence said that house churches in his country are a threat to Iranian youth, and acknowledged a new series of efforts to fight the growth of the house church movement in Iran.

Nigeria: Islamic militants shouting “Allahu Akbar” carried out coordinated attacks on churches and police stations, including opening fire on a congregation of “mostly women and children,” killing dozens.  The attacks occurred in a region where hundreds of people were earlier killed during violence that erupted after President Jonathan, a Christian, beat his closet Muslim rival in April elections.

Turkey: The ancient Aghia Sophia church has been turned into a mosque.  Playing an important role in ecumenical history, the church was first transformed into a mosque in 1331 by the jihadist Ottoman state.  As a sign of secularization, however, in 1920 it was turned into a museum.  Its transformation again into a mosque is a reflection of Turkey’s re-Islamization.

Apostasy and Proselytism

Afghanis around the world are being threatened for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity. One exile, who changed his name after fleeing Afghanistan in 2007 when an Islamic court issued an arrest warrant for his conversion, is still receiving threats: “They [Afghan officials] were very angry and saying that they will hit me by knife and kill me.”  Even in distant Norway last September, an Afghan convert to Christianity was scalded with boiling water and acid at a refugee processing center: “If you do not return to Islam, we will kill you,” his attackers told him.

Algeria: Five Christians were jailed for “worshiping in an unregistered location.”  International Christian Concern (ICC), an advocacy group investigating the case, states that the five Christians are charged with “proselytizing,” “unauthorized worship,” and “insulting Islam.”

Iran: Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, who caught the attention of the world after being imprisoned and awaiting execution for leaving Islam, remains behind bars as officials continue to come up with excuses to force him to renounce Christianity, the latest being that “everyone is [born] a Muslim.”  A Christian couple “who had been snatched and illegally-detained” by authorities for eight months without any formal charges, were finally released, beaten again, and have since fled the country.  While imprisoned, they were “ridiculed and debased” for their Christian faith.

Kashmir: Muslim police arrested and beat seven converts from Islam in an attempt to obtain a confession against the priest who baptized them.  After the grand mufti alleged that Muslim youths were alternatively being “lured” and “forced” to convert by an Anglican priest “in exchange for money,”  the priest was arrested in a “humiliating” manner.  Recently released, his life is now “in serious danger.”

Kenya: A gang of Muslims stabbed and beat with iron rods a 25-year-old Somali refugee, breaking his teeth; he was then stripped naked, covered with dirt, and left unconscious near a church.  Although he was raised Christian since age 7, he was attacked on the “assumption that as a Somali he was born into Islam and was therefore an apostate deserving of death.”

A recent Fox News report tells of how “a rash of attacks on Christian-owned businesses in northern Iraq has raised troubling questions about the future safety of the country’s shrinking Christian community, particularly as U.S. forces withdraw completely from the nation they’ve refereed since 2003.”

In fact, “questions about the future safety of the country’s shrinking Christian community”  have been raised ever since the U.S. toppled secular strongman Saddam Hussein, thereby unloosing the forces of jihad previously corked.  The report continues:

The attacks, which have received little international attention, raged through northern cities following a sermon last Friday by a local mullah. Video purportedly from the riots posted online shows mobs burning and wrecking businesses, which included liquor stores, hotels and hair salons.

Note the two important facts here that play over and over whenever Christians are persecuted under Islam: 1) Despite their frequency and severity, they “receive little international attention” (indeed, only the most spectacular of terrorist attacks on Christians—such as the 2010 Baghdad church attack which left some 60 dead—ever receive mainstream media attention); and 2) as usual, the attacks followed “a sermon last Friday by a local mullah” (in other words, are Islamic in nature).

As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, after pointing out that “Iraqi Christians … are living in fear,” U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf said:

“Now with the [U.S.] forces leaving … I think the Iraqi Christians are going to go through a very, very difficult time.” … He urged the Obama administration to do more to speak up on the issue.   “They know this is a problem. Our government ought to be advocating and ought to be pushing.”

It ought to, but it’s not.   After calling the U.S. government’s silence concerning the blatant persecution of Iraq’s Christians “disturbing,” the founder of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council added: “We’re on the verge of extinction.”