Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (34 page)

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Authors: Raymond Ibrahim

BOOK: Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians
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In October 2012 the last Christian in the city of Homs—which had had a Christian population of some 80,000 before jihadi insurgents began targeting them—was murdered.
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As one teenage Syrian girl had put it earlier,
We left because they were trying to kill us. . . . They wanted to kill us because we were Christians. They were calling us Kaffirs [infidels], even little children saying these things. Those who were our neighbors turned against us. At the end, when we ran away, we went through balconies. We did not even dare go out on the street in front of our house. I’ve kept in touch with the few Christian friends left back home, but I cannot speak to my Muslim friends any more. I feel very sorry about that.
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In August 2012, another Christian girl who escaped only after several of her family were killed, said, “They [Muslim clerics] sermonized on Fridays in the mosques that it was a sacred duty to drive us [Christians] away.... Christians had to pay bribes to the jihadists repeatedly in order to avoid getting killed.” After making the sign of the cross, her grandmother added, “Anyone who believes in this cross suffers.”
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Indeed, earlier in 2012 it was reported that “Al-Faruq Battalion, which is affiliated with the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA), is imposing jizya (an extra tax imposed on non-Muslims living under Muslim rule) on Christians in Homs Governorate” and that “armed men . . . threaten to kidnap or kill them or members of their families if they refuse to comply”
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—precisely what has been taking place in next-door Iraq, and precisely what took place over many centuries under Islam.
Compare what is happening to the Christians of Iraq and Syria today to the ceaseless extortion of Christians throughout the centuries:
Nomadic tribes and all the rebels and heads of bands . . . satisfied their needs by pillage and ransoming dhimmis. . . . The chronicles indicate that [Christians] were subject to pillage and violence from rebel or uncontrollable Arab clans.... Whether it be in Armenia, Mesopotamia [Iraq], the Syro-Palestinian region, Egypt, Anatolia [modern-day Turkey], or Spain, details about this endless booty seized from dhimmi villagers fill the chroniclers’ pages. . . .
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In Syria today, even those trying to flee the plunder-jihad are not immune. A September 2012 report discussed how Christians fleeing to the Lebanese border are being targeted, kidnapped, and in some cases murdered for ransom money. In one instance, “armed gangs,” taking advantage of the chaos of the war, held 280 people hostage. Many of those kidnapped are later found slaughtered or beheaded on the road.
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A January 2012 report from Barnabas Aid, “Christians in Syria Targeted in Series of Kidnappings and Killings; 100 Dead,” tells how “children were being especially targeted by the kidnappers, who, if they do not receive the ransom demanded, kill the victim.” In one instance, kidnappers videotaped a Christian boy as they murdered him in an attempt to frame the government for the atrocity.
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A Christian man “was cut into pieces and thrown in a river” and another “was found hanged with numerous injuries.”
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In October 2012, armed groups from the opposition kidnapped a Greek Orthodox priest, Father Fadi Jamil Haddad. Days later his body, which showed evidence of gruesome torture—with “his eyes gouged out”—was found dumped near the place he was abducted. Earlier “the kidnappers had asked the priest’s family and his church a ransom of 50 million Syrian pounds (over 550 thousand euros)”—a sum that was impossible to raise. A source quoted by Agenzia Fides condemned this “terrible practice, present for months in this dirty war, of kidnapping and then killing innocent civilians.”
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In November 2012 more Christians were kidnapped. Two of the victims were young men for whom the kidnappers demanded $100,000 USD in ransom, per man. A third victim was a seventeen-year-old girl who was taken by four men after they beat her sixteen-year-old brother unconscious. The Assyrian International News Agency reported, “Violence against Assyrians has sharply risen in the last 12 months, much of it perpetrated by the rebel militia, especially by the Jihadist elements of the rebels.”
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Right around Christmastime in 2012, Islamic rebels beheaded Andrei Arbashe, a thirty-eight-year-old Christian man, and fed his body to dogs. According to Sister Agnes-Mariam, mother superior of the Monastery of St. James the Mutilated, the man’s headless corpse was found by the side of the road, surrounded by hungry dogs. He had recently married and was soon to be a father: “His only crime was his brother criticized the rebels, accused them of acting like bandits, which is what they are.” The nun added, “The free and democratic world is supporting extremists. . . . They want to impose Sharia Law and create an Islamic state in Syria.... More than 200 families were driven out in the night. People are afraid. Everywhere the deaths squads stop civilians, abduct them and ask for ransom, sometimes they kill them. ”
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Also in December 2012, Tim Marshall, a Western reporter who was granted the opportunity to interview jihadi rebel fighters captured by the army, had a very telling—or as he called it, “surreal”—conversation with them, touching on the idea that non-Muslims must either pay jizya or convert to Islam. Marshall asked the four jihadis about the future of Syria’s Christian minorities, and
Ahmed, Basah, and Hamid Hassan all agreed—Christians could only live there if they either converted, or paid the “Jizyah”—special tax levied on non-Muslims in previous centuries in the Middle East. If not said Bahar, they could be killed. When asked why, the answer was, to them, quite simple—because the Prophet Muhammad said so. I was then invited to become a Muslim. The conversation verged on the surreal. There we were talking in a quite friendly manner, with the occasional joke, about killing people because they wouldn’t pay the Jizyah, which critics regard as effectively obtaining money through menaces. The interview ended with Ahmed volunteering that eventually Muslims must reclaim Andalusia in Spain for the Islamic Caliphate. His logic, that it was justified because Spain used to be under Islam, was somewhat undermined when he went on to say that Islam should move on to bring the UK under its control and indeed, eventually, the whole world. Rebel fighters want an end to President Assad’s regime. This was a rare first-hand glimpse into the jihadi mindset. . . . As the men left to go back to their cells, we shook hands. Two of them were still trying to convert me, asking me, with a smile, to say the Shahada ‘La ilaha il Allah’—there is no God but Allah.
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Spotlight on Egypt
 
Iraq and Syria are seeing the return of the violence of the chaotic years of early Islam, when plundering Christians of their money and lives was commonplace. This phenomenon has also returned to Egypt and Pakistan, where oppressing Christians is a way of life.
In September 2011 Abu Shadi, a Salfi leader, announced that Egypt’s Christians “must either convert to Islam, pay jizya, or prepare for war.” Weeks earlier, in June 2011, a priest had narrowly escaped being “killed at the hands of the Salafis because of his refusal to pay them jizya money.... [T]he church’s priest had declared that the Copts would not pay jizya, in any way, shape, or form. This is what caused the Salafis to want to banish him from the region, so they could collect jizya from the Copts.”
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Nor are calls for jizya limited to Salafi radicals. Earlier, in 2009, Dr. Amani Tawfiq, a female professor at Egypt’s Mansoura University, said, “If Egypt wants to slowly but surely get out of its economic situation and address poverty in the country, the Jizya has to be imposed on the Copts.”
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In September 2011, Dr. Mohamed Saad Katatni, the secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, reportedly said that “Copts would not pay jizya now,” implying that the idea of collecting tribute from subdued “dhimmi” Christians is very much alive among the Brotherhood, only dormant till a more opportune moment.
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In the meantime, because jizya is not being exacted by the state, many Muslims deem it their right to plunder Christians, as in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. In fact, this has been going on since the 1970s, when al-Gama‘a al Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) issued fatwas legitimizing the plundering of Christian homes and businesses in Egypt, in lieu of jizya.
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Since the “Arab Spring” began, several human rights reports have appeared indicating that roaming gangs of Muslims are intentionally targeting Egypt’s Christians and holding them for ransom. The stories follow the same pattern: a Christian is kidnapped; his or her family is contacted and told to pay an exorbitant sum, usually more than they can possibly come up with; and police do nothing.
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A report by the Arabic-language news outlet Alkhbar entitled “After Dahshur, Jizya Imposed on Copts in Asyut” tells how “hundreds of Christians gathered before the Asyut Security Directorate in Manfalut Municipality, demanding that police protect them, their children, and houses from a gang attacking their homes and imposing tributes on them.”
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In January 2012 two Christians, a father and son, were killed “after a Muslim racketeer opened fire on them for refusing to pay him extortion money.” The local bishop “hold[s] security forces and local Muslims fully responsible for terrorizing the Copts living there.... who are continuously being subjected to terror and kidnapping.”
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In March 2012 Muslims abducted Fadel Rushdie, a Christian youth, and went on to contact his family demanding a large sum of money. Police failed to react.
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And in August 2012, Islamists in Egypt’s Constituent Assembly attempted to extend the extortion to the law, demanding that the Coptic Church’s funds be placed under the Islamist-led government’s financial control—a measure categorically rejected by Copts. The Egyptian state in no way funds the Coptic Church, even though taxpayers—including Christians—fund mosques. Condemning the proposal, the acting patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church at the time said the demand has only one meaning: “that Copts are clearly persecuted.”
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The displacement of Coptic Christians has become an ongoing crisis, so much so that a recent statement by the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt lamented the “repeated incidents of displacement of Copts from their homes, whether by force or threat.... Displacements began in Amiriyah, then they stretched to Dahshur, and today terror and threats have reached the hearts and souls of our Coptic children in Rafah [Sinai]”—all regions which saw Muslim mobs drive out Christian minorities and seize their property, often as collective punishment for individual Christians’ purported transgressions against Sharia.
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Spotlight on Pakistan
 
It is the same for Pakistan’s harried Christian minority. Anecdotes of Christians being abducted and held for ransom abound; a great many of them concern the hundreds of females abducted and raped. For example, in August 2011 Shaheen Bibi, a forty-year-old Christian mother of seven children, “was kidnapped, raped, sold into marriage and threatened with death” if she did not convert to Islam. Because she resisted, her Islamic abductors contacted her father and demanded 100,000 rupees in exchange for the woman’s freedom.
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Of course when it comes to extorting money from Christians, women are not the only targets. An August 2009 report from the Indian Daily News & Analysis website states that “eight members of the minority Christian community have been kidnapped in Pakistan’s troubled Waziristan tribal region.... There have been several instances of members of minority communities being abducted for ransom or forced to pay jiziya [
sic
], a tax levied on non-Muslims.”
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It is the same elsewhere in Pakistan, not just in jihadi-infested regions. In August 2012 Agenzia Fides, reporting the murder of a Christian youth by Muslims in Karachi—the largest city and financial center of Pakistan—said, “Christians are harassed by criminal gangs and Islamic terrorist groups of ethnic Pashtuns: armed to the teeth, the militants enter the area to collect the ‘Jizya.’ . . . Militants raid houses, steal and abuse women and children for fun. The local population is terrorized. ”
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In July 2009, a Christian businessman driving through Lahore was “shot eight times in the legs” for refusing to pay extortion money to a Muslim. Apparently envious of the Christian’s wealth, the Muslim approached him and said, “‘You now have three cars, so give me $3,750. You are a wealthy Christian, so it is my right to get as much money as I need from you. If you don’t give it to me, I will kill you.’” When the victim’s brothers went to file a report at the police station, they were harassed and delayed. Although the police know the identity of the “jizya-collecting” Muslim, they took no action.
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In October 2011, Muslims raided a Christian home, beat a sick father and abducted two brothers, who they say owe them money—to which supposed debt the kidnappers added an additional 70,000 rupees in ransom. “The men’s mother tried to file a report with police, which refused because one of the suspects is a fellow police officer”—not to mention, a fellow Muslim.
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