Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (9 page)

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Authors: Raymond Ibrahim

BOOK: Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians
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In October 2011, ten years after the United States invaded and “liberated” Afghanistan at a cost of more than 1,700 U.S. lives and $440 billion in taxpayer dollars, the State Department reported that the nation’s last Christian church was destroyed in March 2010 in compliance with a court order.
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This is unsurprising considering that the U.S.-installed Afghan government regularly upholds anti-Christian measures.
Azerbaijan
 
In April 2012, the Greater Grace Protestant Church in Muslim-majority Azerbaijan became “the first religious community to be liquidated by a court” since the country’s new religion law, requiring all previously registered religious institutions to re-register, “came into force in 2009.” The church, which had been registered since 1993 and had a congregation of some 500, making it one of the largest Protestant churches in the country, “was stripped of its registration at a 15-minute hearing on April 25. The decision, which was made in the absence of any church representatives, makes any activity by the church illegal and subject to punishment.”
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In August 2012, the highest appeals court in Azerbaijan upheld the decision to close Greater Grace Church.
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Earlier in January 2012, “a pastor was threatened with criminal proceedings following a raid on his church” during Sunday service, in which around two hundred items of Christian literature, including Bibles, were seized. He was told that “a criminal case had been launched over religious literature arousing incitement over other faiths” and was pressured by authorities to leave the area, which he did. At last report, he was traveling long distances each week in order to lead church services.
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Iran
 
In February 2012, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence ordered the last two officially registered churches, Emmanuel Protestant Church and St. Peter’s Evangelical Church, to discontinue Friday Farsi-language services in Tehran—Farsi being the nation’s primary language: “Friday services in Tehran attracted the city’s converts to Christianity as well as Muslims interested in Christianity, as Friday is most Iranians’ day off during the week.”
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Banning the churches’ use of Farsi prevents Iranians from hearing the Gospel. Likewise, one month later, in March 2012, the Armenian Evangelical Church in Tehran was also ordered to discontinue holding Persian-language services on Fridays. The officers serving the notice threatened church officials, saying that “if this order is ignored . . . the church building will be bombed ‘as happens in Iraq every day.’”
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In June 2012, authorities ordered the closure of another church in Tehran “amid a government campaign to crack down on the few recognized churches offering Farsi-speaking services, according to a human rights group.” The church originally served traditional Assyrian Christians; however, “due to an increasing number of Farsi-speaking believers—mostly MBBs [Muslim Background Believers, that is, converts to Christianity from Islam]—it [the church] has become a cause of concern for the authorities and they now ordered it to shut down.”
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In July 2012, “both the Central Assembly of God Church in Tehran and its summer campsite,” once a popular site for Christian gatherings and conferences, were closed by authorities of the Islamic Republic, who also posted a notice on the gates “warning of severe consequences should anyone try to enter the premises.”
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And as part of the crackdown on non-registered house church meetings, plainclothes agents of the Ministry of Islamic Guidance continued raiding, arresting, and “‘aggressively’ interrogating” assembled worshippers.
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In October of 2012, security forces ransacked four underground house churches and arrested the church leaders. An Iranian propaganda media source, Fars News, described the churches as a “network of criminals” affiliated with “Zionist propaganda.”
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According to another report,
State security agents have been permanently stationed at two churches in Esfahan, Iran, in the latest effort by the Islamic regime to frighten people off Christianity. The agents constantly interfere in the activities of St Luke’s and St Paul’s, and harass those present. They order the pastors around and stop church elders from talking to Muslim seekers. They also try to frighten away visitors by warning them of dire consequences if they continue attending, and create tension among the members by spreading false rumors. The children of church members are also threatened and often forbidden from attending.
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Kazakhstan
 
In October 2011, majority-Muslim Kazakhstan adopted new laws in order to further inhibit freedom of religion: “All registered churches must now re-register with the government, and only churches meeting new criteria will be registered. ”
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Accordingly, “police and secret agents reportedly raided a worship meeting of officially registered Protestant church New Life, saying that under the new law the congregation ‘cannot meet outside its legal address.’” During the raid, a seventeen-year-old woman was beaten unconscious by a policeman.
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In February 2012, it was reported that “churches are being raided, leaders fined and Christian literature confiscated as the Kazakh authorities enforce new laws intended further to restrict religious freedom in the country.”
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And in June 2012 authorities “forced a Methodist church to ‘voluntarily’ close and fined the wife of the church’s Pastor.” The pastor put an announcement in newspapers declaring that the church was “liquidating itself” because “we do not want more punishment from the authorities.”
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One year later, “two unrelated Protestant churches in different parts of Kazakhstan were raided in early October, reportedly over a criminal case launched 15 months ago.” First, masked police raided Grace Church and seized items such as literature and electronic devices characterized as “extremist”; police also asked church affiliates to give blood samples in order to determine if the church uses “hallucinogenic” substances in the sacrament of communion. A week and a half later, a similar raid occurred on New Life Church, an establishment completely unrelated to Grace Church. “Members of both churches fear the authorities will use the case to prevent them gaining the mandatory re-registration,” in Kazakhstan’s push to shut down Protestant churches.
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Turkmenistan
 
A raid on an Evangelical church was carried out in the Muslim-majority nation of Turkmenistan in June 2012: “All adult believers at the meeting were questioned about their faith and all of their Christian literature was confiscated,” only to be returned two weeks later.
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Uzbekistan
 
In May 2012, police raided a Protestant house church meeting in Uzbekistan, claiming that a bomb was in the home. No bomb was found, only Christian literature, which was confiscated and which a judge ordered to be destroyed. Subsequently, fourteen members of the unregistered church were heavily fined—between ten and sixty times a month’s salary—for an “unsanctioned meeting in a private home.”
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Between “February and April, 28 Protestants were fined and four warned” for the offense,
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with three Baptists also being fined for not declaring their personal Bibles while crossing the border from Kazakhstan into Uzbekistan. Fines and warnings were accompanied by the confiscation of religious literature.
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And the same pattern continues throughout the Arab world—from Algeria in the west to Kuwait in the east.
Algeria
 
In May 2011, seven Algerian churches, accused of being unregistered and operating illegally, were threatened with closure. “Registration is required under controversial Ordinance 06-03, but Christians report the government refuses to respond to or grant their applications for registration. The controversial law was introduced in 2006 to regulate non-Muslim worship.” In 2008, the government applied measures in accordance with Ordinance 06-03 to limit the activities of non-Muslim groups, ordering the closure of twenty-six churches in one region alone because they were not registered. According to local church members, “authorities apply the law when they want to harass churches: ‘It’s always the same thing. . . . They use this law when they want to pester us.’”
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The Palestinian Authority
 
In March 2012, one week after the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) told an audience of Evangelicals that “his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities,” the PA declared a Baptist Church unlawful and added that birth, wedding, and death certificates from the church were henceforth invalid. A pastor noted that “animosity towards the Christian minority in areas controlled by the PA continues to get increasingly worse. People are always telling [Christians], ‘Convert to Islam. Convert to Islam. It’s the true and right religion.’”
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Kuwait
 
In November 2010, the Kuwait City Municipal Council rejected a permit request for the construction of a Greek Catholic church in a southern Kuwaiti region known as al-Mahboula.
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In February 2012, Osama al-Munawer, a Kuwaiti parliamentarian, announced that he would submit a draft law prohibiting church construction. Prior to this announcement, al-Munawer had called for the “removal of all churches in Kuwait” on Twitter. (However, he later “clarified that existing churches can remain, but the construction of new non-Islamic places of worship should be banned.”)
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This incident in Kuwait helped precipitate a series of events that further evinced Islam’s innate hostility to churches. One month after the Kuwaiti parliamentarian announced his plans to ban all churches, a Kuwaiti delegation was sent to Saudi Arabia to ask its Grand Mufti—the highest Islamic law authority in the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam—what Sharia’s position on Christian churches was. It was then that the Grand Mufti declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region,” stressing that Kuwait is a part of the Arabian Peninsula and therefore must abide by the Muslim prophet’s deathbed wish to drive all non-Muslims away from the Peninsula .
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Two months after the Saudi Grand Mufti issued his edict, villa churches serving Western foreigners in Kuwait were targeted.
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One congregation was evicted without explanation “from a private villa used for worship gatherings for the past seven years.” Another villa church was ordered to “pay an exorbitant fine each month to use a facility it had been renting.... Church leaders reportedly decided not to argue and moved out.” Similarly, in July 2012, although approval had already been issued for the construction of a church in the region of Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, a group of Islamic preachers protested, arguing that churches should not be permitted to be built in “Islamic countries particularly in the Arabian Peninsula.” One sheikh “expressed displeasure” against those approving the construction of the church, “stressing that it is not permissible as per the Sharia,” adding that “excuses” such as saying that “it is a matter of human rights and international norms to build it, is not acceptable, as Islam comes first, and people should respect religion first before serving humanity or anything else.”
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Bahrain
 
Such sentiments are now common even in little Bahrain, long considered the most tolerant nation in the Arabian Peninsula, with a 30 percent non-Muslim population of foreign workers, mostly Americans and Europeans. In September 2012, Sunni clerics strongly opposed the planned construction of a Catholic church, “in a rare open challenge of the country’s Sunni king.” “More than 70 clerics signed a petition last week saying it was forbidden to build churches in the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam.... Prominent cleric, Sheik Adel Hassan al-Hamad, proclaimed... ‘anyone who believes that a church is a true place of worship is someone who has broken in their faith in God.’”
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Spotlight on Indonesia
 
The one East Asian nation that has a Muslim majority—indeed, it has the largest Muslim population in the world—is also the one East Asian nation where churches are openly under attack. Indonesia offers the best examples of Muslim mobs using the permit pretext to eliminate churches—even when, ironically, the government, via the courts, actually sides with the churches, saying they are legally registered.
The ongoing saga of the GKI Yasmin Church in Bogor is particularly illustrative of how Sharia law’s draconian approach to churches trumps Indonesian law. At least as early as 2008, local Muslims and officials began complaining about the church’s existence, subsequently closing it, even though it was already fully registered. In December 2010, the Supreme Court ordered the church to be reopened, but the Bogor mayor refuses to comply, keeping it sealed off. At the start, the congregation continued to hold Sunday services on the sidewalk outside their sealed church, often to jeers and attacks by Muslim mobs. Later, members began to meet at private homes. Not satisfied, local Muslims searched out and found one of these private homes where members were congregating and prevented them from worshiping there as well: “It crosses the line now. The protesters now come to the residential area, which is not a public place,” observed one politician sympathetic to the Christians .
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