Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (11 page)

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Authors: Raymond Ibrahim

BOOK: Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians
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In July 2011, another Muslim mob went on a violent spree, attacking Christians, including a five-months-pregnant woman who was “beaten with iron rods and pipes . . . ‘The real reason behind this assault was the church bell, which has greatly angered the Muslims in the village.... This is the first time such an incident has taken place in this village,’ said Father Estephanos, ‘which is 60–75 percent Christian, and the reason is definitely the presence of the church bell.’”
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According to
The Conditions of Omar
, church bells are forbidden.
Similarly, in October 2011, in the Upper Egyptian village of Elmadmar, which only has two churches to serve fifteen thousand Christians, a Muslim mob with a “No to the Church” banner surrounded one St. Mary’s Church, throwing bricks at it and attempting to demolish it. According to the priest, the church had approval to operate, but “its license is still pending.... Muslims claim that we hold a mass every day at 4:00 PM, and we ring the church bell, which the church does not have, besides singing hymns, which they claim disturbs them.”
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In January 2012, before a bishop was going to celebrate Epiphany Mass in the Abu Makka church, several Muslims, mostly Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood members, entered the building, saying that the church had no permit and no Christian should be permitted to pray in it. One Muslim was heard to remark that the building “would be suitable for a Muslim mosque.”
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In February 2012, 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.” Their motivation was that a Christian girl, who, according to Sharia law, had automatically become a Muslim when her father converted to Islam, had fled her father and was rumored to be hiding in the church. Again, one is reminded that
The Conditions of Omar
stipulate that Christians shall not prevent any of their family members from converting to Islam—or in this case, aid a hapless Christian who suddenly found herself Muslim.
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Then in March 2012, some fifteen hundred Muslims—some armed with swords and knives and shouting Islamic slogans—terrorized the Notre Dame Language School in Upper Egypt in response to false claims from local mosques that 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.”
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Later, during a “‘reconciliation meeting,’” the offers of the leaders of the sword-waving mob proved to be “nothing less than an attempt at legalized extortion.” In exchange for peace, Muslim leaders demanded that the school sign over land that includes the guesthouse they attacked. As many human rights groups maintain, such meetings are “just a way to pressure powerless groups and people into giving away what little rights they have. ”
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Similarly, in June 2011, eight Christian homes were torched on the rumor that a church was being built.
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In September 2012, Qadr al-Dubara in Egypt, the largest Evangelical church in the Middle East, was besieged by “unknown people” hurling “stones and gas bombs.” The first gas bomb thrown at the church was called an error by police, but it was soon followed by other bomb attacks, which continued all throughout the night and into morning. Christians locked themselves inside the church and put on masks to avoid gas poisoning. Some of those trapped inside sought help by trying to contact politicians, journalists, and even the Muslim Brotherhood. All the latter did was announce on TV that the attackers were not Brotherhood members. After the besiegers left and the trapped Christians finally came out, not a single police or security agent could be found.
105
In October 2012, another group of Muslims, led by Mostafa Kamel, a prosecutor in the Alexandria Criminal Court, broke into the Church of St. Mary in Rashid near Alexandria and proceeded to destroy its altar. Kamel claimed that he had bought the ninth-century church, when in fact it had been sold—but not to him. Greek Christians had sold the church to Coptic Christians because of the Greeks’ dwindling numbers in Egypt. Two priests, Father Maximos and Father Luke, rushed to the police station for aid. Kamel and his two sons also came to the police station, where they openly threatened to kill the two priests and their lawyer. Said Father Maximos, “We stayed at the police station for over six hours with the police begging prosecutor Kamel and his two sons not to demolish the church.” Father Luke said that the prosecutor had earlier lost all the cases he brought against the church, “So when this route failed, he tried taking the matter into his own hands.”
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In June 2012, because many visiting Christians came to attend Divine Liturgy, Muslims surrounded St. Lyons Coptic Church during the service “demanding that the visiting Copts leave the church before the completion of prayers, and threatening to burn down the church if their demand was not met.” The priest asked the police for aid, only to be told to comply with the Muslims’ wishes—“and do not let buses with visitors come to the church anymore.” Christian worshippers exited halfway through Mass to insults outside. As they drove away, Muslims threw rocks at the passing buses.
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The same story was repeated in October 2012 when a Muslim mob consisting mostly of Salafis surrounded the St. George Church in the Beni Suef Governorate. Armed with batons, they assaulted Christians as they exited the church after Sunday Mass, leaving five hospitalized with broken limbs. The Salafi grievance was that Christians from neighboring villages—who have no local churches to serve them—were traveling to St. George. The priest could not go out of church for hours after Mass, even though he contacted police, who came only after a prominent Coptic lawyer complained to the Ministry of Interior about the lack of response from police, saying “‘I want the whole world to know . . . that a priest and his congregation are presently held captives in their church, afraid of the Salafi Muslims surrounding the church.’”
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The Muslim propensity for complicating Christians’ lives by, for example, not allowing them to enter churches out of their own (churchless) jurisdictions is grounded in Muhammad’s command to Muslims: “Do not initiate the Salam [peace greeting] to the Jews and Christians, and if you meet any of them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley,”
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which has always been interpreted to mean that Muslims should make things hard on dhimmis.
Lest it appear that Muslim mob attacks on churches—whether in response to a perceived transgression of
The Conditions of Omar
or out of sheer hate—are limited to Egypt, here are a number of recent examples from around the Muslim world. The countries in which these atrocities occurred share neither race, ethnicity, language, nor culture—but only Islam:
Algeria
 
Armed men raided and ransacked the Protestant Church of Ouargla, Algeria, (formally recognized since 1958), dismantling the crucifix above the premises. The pastor and his family, who were 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.”
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Ethiopia
 
In March 2011, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes in western Ethiopia when Muslim majorities set fire to roughly fifty churches and many Christian homes. Sources claim at least one Christian was killed, many more were severely injured, and from three to ten thousand were displaced by the Muslim raids and riots.
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And in November 2011 five hundred Muslim students, aided by Muslim police, burned down the St. Arsema Orthodox Church to cries of “Allahu Akbar!” Although the church was built on land that had been used by Christians for more than six decades, a court had just ruled that it “was built without a permit,” thereby giving local Muslims an excuse to set it aflame.
112
India
 
In April 2012 Muslims stormed and terrorized a house church in India where a Christian prayer meeting was being held, beating the Christians, including a sixty-five-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. . . .’ Five hundred Muslims had gathered and were watching in amusement as the extremists chased and harassed the Christians for about 90 minutes.”
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Kashmir
 
In May 2012 Muslims torched a 119-year-old Kashmiri church. The local bishop “said that the Muslim fundamentalists want Christians to leave the state.... He said that the church had filed a case with the police but had been advised not to ‘play up’ such incidents.” Christian minorities “are coming under growing threat from Kashmir’s Muslim majority. A Christian human rights group in India said that over 400 Christians have been displaced as a result.”
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Around the same time, a Catholic church made entirely of wood was partially destroyed after unknown assailants set it on fire. “What happened is not an isolated case,” said the president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, as it followed the persecution of a pastor who baptized Muslims: “With these gestures, the Muslim community is trying to intimidate the Christian minority. ”
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Spotlight on Pakistan
 
In January 2012 in Pakistan, enraged by the voices of children singing Christian carols at the Philadelphia Pentecostal Church, Muslims praying in a nearby mosque decided to silence them—using an axe: “The children were preparing for mass to be celebrated the next day which was a Sunday. The loud cheers became terrified whimpers when suddenly four men, one of them with an axe, barged into the church. The men slapped the children, wrecked the furniture, smashed the microphone on to the floor and kicked the altar. ‘You are disturbing our prayers. We can’t pray properly. How dare you use the mike and speakers?’”
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As
The Conditions of Omar
clearly states, Christians are “Not to clang our cymbals except lightly and from the innermost recesses of our churches... nor raise our voices during prayer or readings in our churches anywhere near Muslims.”
In October 2012 the Catholic Church of St. Francis, the oldest of the Archdiocese of Karachi, was attacked by a Muslim mob of six hundred. According to a priest, “Fr. Victor had just finished celebrating a wedding, when he heard noises and shouting from the compound of the church. Immediately all the faithful, women and children were sent to the parish house. The radicals, shouting against the Christians, broke into the building and started devastating everything: cars, bikes, vases of flowers. They broke an aedicule and took the statue of the Madonna. They tried to force the door of the church, throwing stones at the church and destroying the windows.” Police did not arrive until an hour later, giving the terrorists plenty of time to wreak havoc. The Archbishop of Karachi lamented that “the church of San Francesco has always served the poor with a school and a medical clinic run by nuns. For nearly 80 years it carries out a humble service to humanity without any discrimination of caste, ethnicity or religion. Why these acts? Why are we not safe?”
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In February 2012 a dozen armed Muslims stormed Grace Ministry Church, seriously wounding two Christians: one man was shot and left in critical condition, the other had to have his arm amputated. And 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, opened an investigation against the victims—the pastor and twenty other church members.
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