PERSECUTION DES CHRETIENS ...PAR LES MUSULMANS

Muslim Persecution of Christians: 

January, 2013

Posted on March 31, 2013

  by creepingsharia

via Muslim Persecution of Christians: January, 2013 | Raymond Ibrahim.

The 2013 year began with reports indicating that wherever Christians live side by side with large numbers of Muslims, they are under attack. One report said that “Africa, where Christianity spread fastest during the past century, now is the region where oppression of Christians is spreading fastest.” This is certainly true: whether in Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, or Tanzania, attacks on Christians in those countries are as frequent as they are graphic.

As for the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, a new study by the Pew Forum finds that “just 0.6 percent of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians now live in the Middle East and North Africa. Christians make up only 4% of the region’s inhabitants, drastically down from 20% a century ago and marking the smallest regional Christian minority in the world.  Fully 93% of the region is Muslim, and 1.6% is Jewish.”

How Christianity became all but eradicated from the region where it was born is made clear by yet another report concerning Egypt’s Christian Copts, the Middle East’s largest Christian minority.  Due to a “climate of fear and uncertainty,” Christian families are leaving Egypt in large numbers.  Along with regular church attacks, the situation has gotten to the point that, according to one Coptic priest, “Salafis meet Christian girls in the street and order them to cover their hair.  Sometimes they hit them when they refuse.”  Another congregation leader said “With the new [Sharia-heavy] constitution, the new laws that are expected, and the majority in parliament I don’t believe we can be treated on an equal basis.”

Elsewhere, Christians are not allowed to flee.  In eastern Syria, for example, 25,000 Christians, including Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholics, Chaldeans and Armenians, were prevented from fleeing due to  a number of roadblocks set up by armed Islamic militia groups, who deliberately target Christians for robbery and kidnapping for ransoming, often slaughtering their victims.
Categorized by theme, January’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Church Attacks

Egypt: Reminiscent of the 2011 New Year’s Eve church bombing in Alexandria, which left over 23 Christians dead, a car packed with explosives was discovered by a Coptic church celebrating Christmas [which is in January] and neutralized before detonating.  A car with masked men was seen speeding away as patrols seized the explosives-packed car. Separately, hundreds of Muslims in the village of Fanous destroyed a social services building belonging to a Coptic Church while chanting Islamic slogans. Security forces arrived only after the building was completely destroyed. According to the report, the social services building “had all the necessary government permits; it had a reception hall on the first floor and a kindergarten on the second. But the Muslims insisted that it would become a church.”  Mosques in surrounding areas had earlier called on Muslims through their megaphones to go and help their Muslim brethren in Fanous, because Christians were “building a church.” Hundreds of other Muslim protesters rioted outside yet another church in Upper Egypt, throwing stones at the building, on claims that a Christian man had sexually assaulted a 6-year-old Muslim girl.  Four stores owned by Copts were also torched.  Police are investigating the accusations.

Nigeria: A total of 30 Christians were slaughtered in two separate attacks carried out by armed men ahead of the New Year in the Muslim-majority north: on Sunday December 30, 15 people were killed when armed jihadis stormed a church and opened fire on worshippers.   The night before, Muslim terrorists broke into selected homes and slaughtered 15 other Christians in their sleep.  “The victims were selected because they were all Christians, some of whom had moved into the neighbourhood from other parts of the city hit by Boko Haram attacks,” said a relief worker.  Meanwhile, Nigerian president Jonathan revealed that Boko Haram has enablers even within his own government: “the saboteurs in government condoning terrorism by Boko Haram, you do not love this nation. Those of you who leak secrets to Boko Haram do not love this nation.”

Pakistan:  On Christmas day, “when Christian worshipers were coming out of different Churches after performing Christmas prayers, more than one hundred Muslim extremists equipped with automatic rifles, pistols and sticks attacked the Christian women, children and men,” according to a report. Several were shot or beaten relentlessly.  Much of this appears to have been exacerbated by a fatwa, or an Islamic edict, that came out right before Christmas, saying that, “Christmas cannot be celebrated by Muslims because it is against the concept of monotheism in Islam.”  Due to the subsequent chaos, Christians “were under siege from Christmas day and running out of food supplies and milk for children on fear of safety and security of life from further attacks of [the] Muslim mob….  The news of this attack on Christians on Christmas Day was intentionally blocked by media and administration of capital city Islamabad.”

Russia: Security forces in a North Caucasus province on Sunday killed three Islamic militants suspected of planning attacks on church services during the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday, which comes in January.  Security forces tried to stop a van in a Muslim-majority province but its occupants opened fire and were killed in the ensuing battle.  Guns and ammunition were subsequently discovered in the van indicating that the men were planning attacks on churches during services marking Russian Orthodox Christmas. “Deadly exchanges of gunfire between police and suspected militants at road checkpoints are common in Russia’s North Caucasus, a string of provinces hit by an Islamist insurgency rooted in two separatist wars in Chechnya,” adds the report.

Murders and Plots of Murder

Algeria: According to a local man who escaped an Islamic raid in the Sahara, the Islamic gunmen who seized hundreds of gas plant workers told staff they would not harm Muslims but would kill Western hostages whom they referred to as “Christians and infidels”: “The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels. ‘We will kill them,’ they said.”

Egypt: Two bearded men, apparently Salafis —those Muslims who most try to pattern themselves after Islam’s prophet—in what appears to have been a random act of violence, stabbed a Christian woman in Alexandria. The two men were riding a motorcycle when they intercepted Mary and stabbed her in her abdomen as she was crossing the street, causing a serious wound in her peritoneal membrane. The Coptic woman was transported to the hospital where she underwent surgery. Although Mary’s family filed a complaint with the police, as usual, the head detective refused to go out and inspect the assault scene. An activist confirmed that this is not the first attack on Coptic women in Alexandria. Indeed there have been several such cases reported in January without any response from authorities.

Iraq: The nation’s ever dwindling Christian minority continues to suffer untold atrocities.  A Christian university medical student was killed by a car bomb a day after the body of a 54-year-old female Christian teacher was found with her throat cut.  The slain Christian woman was discovered in the same area where attacks have been perpetrated in the past against members of the city’s Christian minority, some abducted and murdered.

Turkey: An assassination plot against a Protestant pastor was thwarted when police arrested 14 suspects, two of whom had been part of his congregation for more than a year, pretending to be interested in Christianity; one went so far as to be baptized.  “These people had infiltrated our church and collected information about me, my family and the church and were preparing an attack against us,” said the pastor, a native Turk and convert to Christianity. “Two of them attended our church for over a year and they were like family.” Also, an 85-year-old Christian Armenian woman was repeatedly stabbed to death in her apartment.  
A crucifix was carved onto her naked corpse.   Another elderly Christian Armenian woman was punched in the head and, after collapsing to the floor, repeatedly kicked by a masked man.   According to the report, “the attack marks the fifth in the past two months against elderly Armenian women (one has lost an eye)….  Opinion remains divided as to whether these are organised hate crimes targeting non-Muslims or just random theft.”  Yet according to Turkey’s Human Rights Association, “The attacks were carried out with racist motives,” that is, the victims were intentionally targeted for being Christian Armenians.

Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism

Egypt: A court sentenced an entire family—Nadia Mohamed Ali and her seven children—to fifteen years in prison for converting to Christianity. Seven other people were sentenced to five years in prison, primarily for facilitating the formal conversion of the family.  A born Christian, Nadia had earlier converted to Islam to marry a Muslim man; reconverting back to Christianity after the death of her husband, she attempted to reflect this change formally on her identity card and her children’s, which created suspicions among security, who arrested the family, followed by the subsequent fifteen year prison sentence.

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