Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (31 page)

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Authors: Raymond Ibrahim

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Mutairi went on to suggest where Muslim men might acquire sex slaves: “For example, in the Chechnyan war, surely there are female Russian captives. So go and buy those and sell them here in Kuwait; better that than have our men engage in forbidden sexual relations. I don’t see any problem in this, no problem at all.”
Nor is the Kuwaiti politician ignorant of Islamic history. She further justified the institution of sex slavery by invoking eighth-century Caliph Harun al-Rashid—who is known in the West from the
Arabian Nights
as a fun-loving, philandering caliph, but who was in reality pious enough to destroy churches and persecute Christians: “And the greatest example we have is Harun al-Rashid: when he died, he had 2,000 sex-slaves—so it’s okay, nothing wrong with it.”
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Likewise, Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini, a popular Salafi preacher in Egypt, appeared on Hikma TV in May 2011 and explained that after Muslims invade and conquer a non-Muslim nation, the properties and persons of those infidels who refuse to convert or pay jizya and live as subjugated dhimmis are to be seized as
ghanima,
or “spoils of war,” distributed among the Muslim jihadis or taken to “the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold.”
Al-Huwaini referred to these sex slaves by the dehumanizing appellation that the Koran gives them,
ma malakat aymanukum
—“ what [not
whom
] your right hands possess”—in this context, sex-slaves: “You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate—though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff—and this is agreed upon by the ulema. In other words, when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”
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This position is not “radical,” although more discreet Muslims may downplay it in public. In a memorable scene on live TV in Egypt, when Sheikh Gamal Qutb was asked if Islam permits men to enslave and rape female captives of jihad, the one-time grand mufti of Islam’s most authoritative university, Al Azhar, refused to answer; when pressed, he became hostile and stormed off the set.
80
Little wonder non-Muslim women surrounded by Muslims face serious problems. While, strictly speaking, a jihad must be in process for Muslims to abduct and enslave such women, this technicality is regularly rationalized away. Sharia has created a culture in which horrific abuses even beyond those actually justified by Sharia are commonplace. As will be seen below, some Muslims rationalize that, by not paying jizya, Christians are not protected and thus are fair game, as in a jihad. Other Muslims, Salafis especially, consider themselves in a constant state of jihad so long as the nation they are living in is not fully governed according to Sharia. Rationalizations are many and easy to come by in the service of vice, and the institution of Islamic sex slavery is built atop vice and perversion.
Spotlight on Egypt
 
The situation for Christian women in Egypt is so bad that in July 2012 the U.S. Congress heard testimony about what Representative Chris Smith called the “escalating abduction, coerced conversion and forced marriage of Coptic Christian women and girls. Those women are being terrorized and, consequently, marginalized, in the formation of the new Egypt. Sadly, the vulnerability and abduction of Coptic Christians is not a new problem. Going back to the 1970s, when Anwar Sadat used Islamism to solidify his leadership of Egypt, Coptic women and girls have been abducted, forced to marry their captors, and coercively converted to Islam.”
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Indeed the late Coptic Pope Shenouda III decried this phenomenon back in 1976, saying, “There is a practice to convert Coptic girls to embrace Islam and marry them under terror to Muslim husbands.”
82
The report from Christian Solidarity International (CSI) that prompted these congressional hearings, entitled “Tell My Mother I Miss Her,” demonstrates that “Coptic women and girls are deceptively lured or abducted into forced marriages with Muslim men” and forced to renounce Christianity and convert to Islam. Its findings confirm those of a previous CSI report published in 2009: “The Disappearance, Forced Conversions and Forced Marriages of Coptic Christian Women in Egypt.”
At least 550 cases of abduction, rape, and forced conversion of Christian women have been documented in the last five years in Egypt. Such incidents have only increased since the “Arab Spring.” CSI details the various ways Christian women are entrapped. One young mother was snatched in broad daylight; as her abductor dragged her to a waiting taxi he shouted to bystanders, “No one interfere! She is an enemy of Islam.” Others are befriended by friends or relatives of their kidnappers, only to be drugged and abducted.
“Tell My Mother I Miss Her” also explains what typically happens after abduction. Those who manage to escape back to their families tell of how they were raped and told they could not go home because their families would reject them. Many are beaten, while others are forced into slavery. Finally, these women are repeatedly told that the only way to be safe and lead a normal life is to convert to Islam, and many of them come to believe it.
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In July 2011, a few months after President Mubarak was ousted, the Assyrian International News Agency reported that “the number of Christian girls abducted and coerced into converting to Islam since the Egyptian ‘January 25 Revolution’ has skyrocketed. . . . More than two to three girls disappear everyday in Giza alone.... The cases that are brought to public attention are few compared to what the numbers actually are.”
The increase in female Christian abductions is directly related to the fact that, with the fall of Hosni Mubarak, Salafis have become more emboldened. Salafis “believe strongly that converting a Christian infidel is in some ways like earning a ticket to paradise—not to mention the earthly remuneration they get from the Saudis,” quipped an Egyptian activist.
The Assyrian International News Agency also noted that Egypt4Christ, a Christian human rights organization,
exposed a highly organized Muslim ring centered in the Fatah Mosque in Alexandria. The investigation also uncovered a systematic “religious call” plan, where young Muslim males in high school and university are urged to approach Coptic girls in the 9–15 age group and manipulate them through sexual exploitation and blackmail. The plan . . . aims at sexually compromising Christian girls, defiling them and humiliating them in front of their parents, thereby forcing them to flee their homes, and use conversion to Islam as a “solution” for their problems.
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Coptic Solidarity president Adel Guindy concurs that much of the abuse is part of a systematic strategy:
Any objective and fair review of the cases of forced conversion of Coptic girls, which started four decades ago but dramatically escalated after January 2011 [when the “Arab Spring” reached Egypt], will show a clear pattern of events that point to well organized “hidden hands” behind the process. Amazingly, the collusion of Egypt’s security as well as judiciary authorities—in defiance of the existing laws concerning minors—shows the extent of the scheme. It is part of a “war of attrition” against the Copts in their own homeland.
85
 
Human rights activist Magdi Khalil agrees: “Abducting and converting Coptic girls to Islam is not only a result of the paranoid and racist incitation against the Copts, but it is an organized and pre-planned process by associations and organizations inside Egypt with domestic and Arab funding as the main role in seducing and luring Coptic girls carried through cunning, deceit and enticement or through force if required.”
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On top of all this, in August 2012, when Egypt’s Constituent Assembly proposed a law to criminalize “forced labor, slavery, the trafficking of women and children, human organs, and the sex trade,” from which female Christians would especially benefit, Islamists complained. Muhammad Saad Gawish, a member of the Constituent Assembly, wondered, “How can an article mention human trafficking when this is not happening in Egypt?” Yunis Makhiyun, another Constituent Assembly member, complained that “this article will give [Egypt’s] citizens the impression that things like slavery, trafficking in females and children, are happening in Egyptian society, when such things do not exist.”
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Rather tellingly, both of these men are also members of Egypt’s Salafi Nour Party, which is especially associated with the organized abduction, enslavement, and selling of Christian women and children in Egypt.
The very latest examples of abduction in Egypt indicate that the abductors are only getting bolder and more violent. In a Christian village on a Sunday morning in October 2012, Ali Hussein, a Muslim gang leader, and his two ex-convict brothers broke into the home of a Christian family, demanding that Hiyam Zaki, a twenty-five-year-old mother of two children “come and live with him.” Hussein had previously demanded that the family either pay him one million Egyptian pounds or forfeit the Christian woman to him. Because the family rejected his demands, his gang indiscriminately opened fire in the house, killing Hiyam’s elderly father and another relative. Earlier, to terrorize the inhabitants of the Christian village, the Muslim gang had gone through stables and slaughtered all their farm animals. Because Hussein himself was also killed in the incident—though it is unclear who fired at him—a Muslim mob surrounded the local hospital demanding revenge on the Christians for the “Christian killing of a Muslim man,” while referring to the slain Hussein—who was an extortionist, rapist, and gangster—as “the beloved of the Prophet.”
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Right around the same time elsewhere in Egypt, fourteen-year old Sarah, a Christian girl, was kidnapped on her way to school by the son of an Islamic preacher. After filing a missing person report with police, Sarah’s father received an anonymous call telling him that he would never see his daughter again. “Security knows her whereabouts,” said Father Bigem, a local priest, “and they make promises to resolve the crisis, but it’s just words.” After several human rights organizations called for the girl’s release, “the Salafi Front issued a statement on October 28, warning human rights organizations, especially the National Council for Women, not to attempt to return Sarah to her family, as she has converted to Islam and married a Muslim man.” The Salafis, projecting Islamic mores onto the Christian family, said that if Sarah returned to her family she would be killed by her father—to which her devastated father replied, “I want my child back in my arms, even if she became a Muslim.”
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Spotlight on Pakistan
 
It is the same in Pakistan, where, in the words of the
Pakistan Christian Post
, the “persecution, kidnapping and abduction of Christian women and girls,” including many married women with children, are on the rise. There are approximately seven hundred cases every year, a large number considering that Christians make up roughly 1 percent of the population. (Unsurprisingly, their numbers are shrinking.) In October 2011, the Asian Human Rights Commission summarized the phenomenon:
The forced conversion to Islam of women from religious minority groups through rape and abduction has reached an alarming stage which challenges interfaith harmony due to the total collapse of the rule of law and
biased attitude of the judicial officers. It appears today that no one, from the judiciary to the police and even the government has the courage to stand up to the threats from Muslim fundamentalist groups. The situation is worse with the police who always side with the Islamic groups and treat minority groups as lowly life forms
.
The dark side
of the forced conversion to Islam is not restricted only to the religious Muslim groups but also involves the
criminal elements
who are engaged in rape and abduction and then justify their heinous crimes by forcing the victims to convert to Islam. The Muslim fundamentalists are happy to offer these criminals shelter and use the excuse that they are providing a great service to their sacred cause of increasing the population of Muslims. [Emphasis added.]
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The Commission’s report summarizes the situation well—from the ingrained contempt for minorities to the unwavering complicity of authorities. And let us consider the “dark side” it alludes to, concerning how “criminal elements” thrive in this environment. For example, the brutalization of Christian children by rapists is rife in neighboring Afghanistan.
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Islam’s teachings have dehumanized Christian children in the collective Muslim consciousness, prompting not only “extremists” but pedophiles and other sex offenders to use and abuse them at will while “moderates” look the other way.
At the same time as the blasphemy case concerning Rimsha Masih—the fourteen-year-old Christian girl arrested in August 2012 on false accusations that she had burned pages of the Koran—was prompting international outrage, two other Christian children were raped and murdered in Pakistan without their cases garnering attention.
Twelve-year-old Muqadas Kainat was ambushed in a field near her home in Sahawil by five Muslim men who “gang raped and murdered” her. Her father was at a hospital visiting her sick mother at the time. He and other family members began a frantic search, until a tip led them to the field where his daughter’s body lay. The postmortem revealed that she had been “gang raped and later strangled to death by five men.” Police, as usual, did not arrest any of the perpetrators.
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