Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (19 page)

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Authors: Raymond Ibrahim

BOOK: Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians
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Thus Islam’s anti-freedom laws, while applicable to lapsed Muslims and secular people who criticize Islam, have been especially devastating to Muslims who convert to Christianity, and to Christians who speak about their religion.
WITNESSES FOR CHRIST
 
Innumerable Christians have been persecuted and killed because of Islam’s anti-freedom laws throughout Islam’s nearly fourteen centuries of existence. But the first fact to recognize is that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, who they were, what they were accused of, and how they died will never be known. Countless and nameless they must remain—just as countless Christians suffering today are nameless.
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However, a few books, most of them little known, contain documented cases, often limited to one region or era. One such book,
Witnesses for Christ
, lists the many Christians known to have been killed or executed in connection with Islam’s anti-freedom laws during the Ottoman period of 1437–1860. It discusses the Orthodox Christian “Neomartyrs”—a term coined for those killed for their faith after the sacking of Constantinople in 1453. (It should be noted that Orthodox Christianity has been the one Christian denomination most persecuted by Islam throughout history, as the onetime eastern lands of Byzantium were all Orthodox, and most of the indigenous Christian communities of today’s Middle East are Orthodox.)
Witnesses for Christ
offers many interesting facts and statistics. Christians were tortured to death, burned at the stake, thrown on iron spikes, dismembered, stoned, stabbed, shot at, drowned, pummeled to death, impaled, and crucified. Five Christians were “literally cut to pieces while still alive.” The book offers two hundred such stories. Its compiler, the late Nomikos Michael Vaporis, correctly noted, “These numbers, of course, are not completely accurate, for all who have dealt with the question are unanimous in their belief that the number of Neomartrys is far greater because many left no record of their martyrdoms. In fact there are some Neomartyrs who are known to us by their name and very little else. ”
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This book makes unequivocally clear that the same exact anti-freedom laws under which Christians are persecuted and killed today were the laws under which Christians were persecuted and killed from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries—demonstrating an amazing degree of continuity that simply cannot be denied. The overwhelming majority of those persecuted were killed in accordance with Islam’s three aforementioned anti-freedom laws:
Apostasy
: These martyrs included Muslim converts to Christianity, as well as Christian converts to Islam—who had converted for wealth, social station, or marriage, or because they were tricked into converting—but later apostatized by becoming Christian again.
 
 
Blasphemy
: These martyrs included Christians who spoke against or insulted Islam’s prophet Muhammad as well as those who were innocent but whom Muslims falsely accused for myriad reasons including envy, revenge, or sheer malice. Some Christians were accused of blasphemy for standing up for themselves or for Christianity, for coming to the aid of fellow Christians, or even for rejecting Muslims’ sexual advances.
 
Proselytism
: These martyrs included Christians preaching to or baptizing Muslims who wished to convert to Christianity. Others were accused of proselytism simply for talking about religion, or publicly comparing Muslim and Christian teachings.
The only way the Christian victims chronicled in
Witnesses for Christ
could avoid being killed was to convert to Islam. (As we shall see, the same thing is often true today.) According to Vaporis,
The vast majority of Neomartyrs, however, found themselves in a position brought on by a variety of circumstances and events where they had to either convert to the Muslim faith or, if they refused, stand as witnesses for their Orthodox Christian beliefs and die as a consequence. In these instances Orthodox Christians were actually being threatened with the loss of life,
with no real attempt on the part of Muslims to convince them of the truth of Islam. It would appear that the Muslims involved were primarily interested in numbers, relying on the pressures of a social consensus in Islamic society and the threat of death to ensure that converts would remain Muslims
. [Emphasis added.]
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Even in the minor details, identical patterns of persecution emerge. Because many if not most Christians who converted to Islam throughout the centuries did so not out of religious conviction but simply to improve their social status or to avoid persecution, it appears that some were struck with remorse, causing a change of heart followed by a reconversion to Christianity. They were then accused of apostasy, attacked, and often savagely killed.
This particular theme appears regularly not just in
Witnesses for Christ
, but in older accounts as well. For example, in 770, Cyrus of Harran converted to Islam, regretted it, and returned to Christianity. He was tortured in an effort to make him renounce Christ; he refused, and was executed. And “like a number of the other neomartyrs, John [of Phanijoit, a Copt] had converted to Islam and then, having repented, reconverted to Christianity, thereby making him liable in Muslim eyes to the death penalty for the crime of apostasy from Islam.”
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Authorities tried to get him simply to accept nominal Islam, but he staunchly refused and was executed. Sometimes such killings happened en masse:
In 1389, a great procession of Copts who had accepted Muhammad under fear of death, marched through Cairo. Repenting of their apostasy, they now wished to atone for it by the inevitable consequence of returning to Christianity. So as they marched, they announced that they believed in Christ and renounced Muhammad. They were seized and all the men were beheaded one after another in an open square before the women. But this did not terrify the women; so they, too, were all martyred.
34
 
Turning to the present, one finds the same pattern still being played out. Consider Pakistan alone. In February 2012, a Muslim mob attacked a sixty-year-old Christian woman named Seema Bibi because, six months after converting to Islam, she reconverted back to Christianity. Angry Muslims “tortured Seema, shaved her head, garlanded her with shoes and paraded her through the village streets.” Afterwards, she received more threats of “dire consequences” from Islamic clerics, prompting her and her family to flee the region.
35
Similarly, in July 2012, it was reported that a Christian couple, Imran James and Nazia Masih, have been on the run since they reconverted to Christianity, after embracing Islam back in 2006. Upon learning that the couple had returned to Christianity, neighboring Muslims attacked and persecuted them. One of the husband’s best friends abducted and tortured him and beat his wife. “[One] should have the freedom to choose the religion one wishes to follow,” lamented the husband.
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RECENT EXAMPLES OF ANTI-FREEDOM LAWS
 
The following recent stories represent a sampling of what Christians are suffering under Islam’s laws against apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism. Oftentimes Christians are persecuted under two or all three of Islam’s anti-freedom laws. For example, in May 2011 in Algeria, a judge “stunned the Christian community” by sentencing Siaghi Krimo, a Muslim convert to Christianity (an apostate), to a five-year prison term and a fine of $200,000 Algerian dinars—even though prosecutors had only asked for a two-year imprisonment and a $50,000 dinar fine. Krimo’s crime was to give a CD about Christianity to a Muslim (proselytism), who later claimed the CD insulted Muslim prophet Muhammad (blasphemy).
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Even so, the examples below are organized according to the particular anti-freedom feature of Sharia law most central to the case in question.
APOSTATES: RECANT OR DIE
 
Like attacks on churches, some of the most heinous apostasy-related attacks are intentionally planned for Christian holy days.
On December 24, 2011—Christmas Eve—Muslims in Christian-majority Uganda threw acid on a church pastor outside his church, severely disfiguring him, blinding one eye and damaging the other. Pastor of the ten-thousand-strong Gospel Life International Pentecostal church, Umar Mulinde, formerly a Muslim, explained his ordeal: “I was attacked by a man who claimed to be a Christian. He called out to me shouting ‘pastor, pastor,’ and as I turned to see who he was, he poured acid which burnt part of my face. As I turned away from the attacker, another man poured the liquid on my back and ran away shouting ‘Allah Akbar.’” Mulinde originally “came from a strict Muslim family and his father was an imam.” Umar was the fifty-second child to be born to the polygamist Muslim leader. The son went on to become a sheikh himself before converting to Christianity in 1993, a decision that caused a strong reaction in the Muslim community. The thirty-nine-year-old father of six was also a leading figure in a campaign to block the introduction of Sharia courts into Uganda. After being taken to a hospital, where specialists struggled to restore his vision, Umar was relocated to an Israeli medical center for advanced treatment. According to his wife, “The main point of contention between Muslims and Christians in Uganda is that
Muslims are yet to embrace the reality of freedom of worship or coexistence, but Muslims always think that any person who doesn’t believe like them is an enemy who deserves to be killed
” [emphasis added].
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Spotlight on Iran
 
Despite the fact that Christians reportedly make up less than 1 percent of its population, Iran is one of the Middle Eastern countries most associated with persecution for apostasy. This is because the Islamist regime itself, as opposed to vigilante mobs, actively persecutes apostates there—though usually under different pretexts, for instance, “disloyalty to the state” or “calling into question the Islamic foundations of the Republic.” Nevertheless, the apostasy case of Pastor Youssef Nadarkhani received widespread media attention, placing the spotlight on Iran’s abuse of apostates.
The father of two and onetime evangelical house church pastor was arrested in late 2009, found guilty of apostasy, and sentenced to death. The pastor was kept in solitary confinement, routinely tortured, and pressured to renounce Christ and convert to Islam. He staunchly refused. At one point, his wife was also arrested and charged with apostasy and sentenced to life in prison, but she was later released.
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While Nadarkhani’s experiences were not new or unusual in Iran, news of his plight made it to the mainstream media in the West, prompting heavy criticism of Iran’s Islamist regime. In response, Iranian authorities changed the whole story in an attempt to make it more palatable to Western sensibilities—they said Nadarkhani was not being executed for apostasy, but because he had been found guilty of being a “Zionist traitor,” a “rapist,” an “extortionist,” and a “brothel owner. ”
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Such distortions did not square with the fact that Iran’s Supreme Court ruling had earlier decreed that Nadarkhani
is convicted of turning his back on Islam, the greatest religion the prophesy of Mohammad at the age of 19. He has often participated in Christian worship and organized home church services, evangelizing and has been baptized and baptized others, converting Muslims to Christianity. He has been accused of breaking Islamic Law that from puberty (15 years according to Islamic law) until the age of 19 the year 1996, he was raised a Muslim in a Muslim home. During court trials, he denied the prophecy of Mohammad and the authority of Islam. He has stated that he is a Christian and no longer Muslim.
41
 
Because Nadarkhani had become an international liability for the Iranian regime—among other things, exposing the hypocrisy behind Iran’s humanitarian arguments against Israel—in September 2012 (soon after Canada severed diplomatic ties with Iran, citing among other things basic human rights concerns), the imprisoned pastor was acquitted of the apostasy charge but found guilty of proselytizing to Muslims but released because the court determined he had already served the requisite prison time for that crime. Then, on Christmas Day—to add insult to injury—authorities arrested him yet again, citing “improperly completed paperwork.”
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Although Nadarkhani’s case is well known, the fact is that it represents only the tip of the iceberg of Christian persecution under the mullahs. Both before and after Nadarkhani, apostates to Christianity have been regularly targeted. Beginning in the 1990s, authorities even used “death squads” against apostates. They formally executed at least one convert to Christianity, Pastor Hossein Soodmand. In 2006 the Iranian regime was described as “currently engaged in a systematic campaign to track down and reconvert or kill those who have changed their religion from Islam.”
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Recently, however, having learned a lesson from the Nadarkhani debacle, Islamic authorities couch their charges against apostates in political language, often accusing them of being in cahoots with foreign powers—though human rights organizations monitoring the situation insist that this is just a cover for the apostasy law.

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