[Originally published under the headline “We Are Bigger than Your Jesus”]
- If any measure of peace between Muslims and Christians is to prevail, no church can exist in the village, local Muslims said. “The only houses of worship that can ever be built in this village are Muslim places of worship for Allah.” — Watan International, Egypt.
- “The Al Shabaab are now hunting down the children in Mogadishu, and we have moved the care center to a bit safer location.... The children look devastated and malnourished, so we as a secret church do appeal to our brothers and sisters in the free world to consider extending a hand to these persecuted children.” — Pastor of an underground church, Somalia.
- "[I]t seems that the Muslims intentionally wanted to pick a fight with us.” — Pastor of King Jesus Church, Pakistan.
Muslim Slaughter of Christians
Pakistan: In a Lahore hospital, a throng of Muslim doctors, security guards, and medical staff beat Christian family members — one to death — because they tried to prevent another doctor from beating their pregnant sister. According to Anil Saleem, the pregnant woman’s brother, once they took her to the emergency labor ward at Services Hospital:“Kiran [the pregnant woman] went to the doctor on duty, Dr. Saira, who was playing with her cell phone while sipping on tea. Dr. Saira told Kiran to wait outside until she finished her tea. We waited for some time, but since Kiran was experiencing severe pain, she again went inside the ward to request for immediate attention.”
Speaking of this incident, a human rights lawmaker said, “It’s shocking that even doctors, who are supposedly educated and have taken an oath to save lives regardless of caste, color or faith, have resorted to such acts of religious intolerance and violence.” “I am still trying to digest the fact that doctors took the life of an innocent man,” said another rights activist. “What hope can one have for justice to the family if police have been unable to arrest even one of the accused?”
In a separate incident, in a move criticized by Christian activist groups, after “giving them the benefit of doubt,” a court freed 20 Muslims suspected of immolating a Christian couple, says a report, adding:
“Shahzad and Shama were burned alive in a brick kiln by a frenzied lynch mob ─ incited by announcements made from mosques in the area ─ ranging between 400-1,000 people for their alleged role in the desecration of the Holy Quran in Nov 2014.... [T]he woman, a mother of three, was pregnant at the time.”
“The killings reportedly came in retaliation for an unspecified attack on Fulani families by young men from the predominantly Christian Bachama tribe who have formed militias in response to violence by Islamic extremist group Boko Haram and heavily-armed Muslim Fulani herdsmen.”
“Matthew told us many times before that the colonel in his military unit, Ayman Mohamad Ahmed El Kabeer, was always persecuting and insulting him because of his religious identity. Matthew, however, was patient and endured it all. His friends from the same unit told us that there had been a quarrel between Colonel El Kabeer and him on the day of the incident, when he had objected to something the colonel said.”
Others in Baghdad voiced the same sentiment: “As a Christian, life is good so long as you don’t have enemies,” said one resident. "(Also you shouldn’t) bring attention to yourself... I feel depressed because of what happened for Hisham and his family, even (though) it is something that has happened so often since 2003, but it still makes me sad.”
Somalia: Orphans whose Christian parents are killed for their faith are growing in number and in need of care, said the pastor of an underground church.
“Last year we lost a Christian family killed by the Al Shabaab, and the number of children rose from 30 to 35. The Al Shabaab are now hunting down the children in Mogadishu, and we have moved the care center to a bit safer location.... The children look devastated and malnourished, so we as a secret church do appeal to our brothers and sisters in the free world to consider extending a hand to these persecuted children.”
Turkey: A report briefly notes that on March 6, a man in his forties opened fire on the Saint Maria Catholic Church in Trabzon. It was just the latest in several attacks on the church. Less than a month earlier, a makeshift bomb was thrown at the church’s garden; in 2016 Muslims crying “Allahu Akbar” vandalized the church, using sledgehammers among other objects; in 2011 the church was targeted and threatened for its visible cross, and in 2006 its priest was slaughtered during an armed attack. Indonesia: Less than a month after a radicalized student stormed a church and started hacking at its worshippers and statues with a machete, six unknown persons firebombed St. Zechariah Church shortly after midnight on March 8. According to the report:
”...a group of six vandals blew a hole through the wall of the church, consecrated just last March 4 by Msgr. Sudarso. The strangers then destroyed a statue of the Virgin and stacked some chairs setting them on fire. The noise woke the faithful who live nearby. They rushed to extinguish the flames, while the thugs fled from the place of worship.”
“Some of our church elders were trying to install a flex signboard in connection with the upcoming Easter festival on the wall in front of the church but they were stopped by Sharif’s sons. Sharif is a local tough who has previously grabbed a piece of the Christian cemetery in our colony and built a cattle shed on the graves.... Suspicions also arose when these Muslim youths started hanging out near the church during service timings and began teasing our girls.”
“Some of them whipped out their weapons and opened fire on the church members, who ran to save themselves. I immediately telephoned the police and headed out to try and defuse the situation. However, I was also beaten up, my service robe torn and my mobile phone smashed to the ground. I think we were fortunate that none of us suffered a fatal bullet injury during the clash.”
“I was conducting a worship service when [a group of men, including a government official], equipped with firearms, barged into the church. As soon as they entered, [two of them] forcibly took down gospel verses written on banners, while shouting abusive words, tore them into pieces and then denigrated them by throwing them down.”
“Our church elder, George Masih, who was 70, was overseeing masons and laborers who were constructing the wall. We were praying [inside the church] when we heard shouting and yelling, and, when we rushed outside, we saw about 20 men, armed with clubs and axes, [who] were beating Masih and others... Then our women tried to intervene but they too were beaten and their clothes were torn.”
Egypt: Muslims blocked the legalization of yet another church, this time in the village of al-Tout. According to the report:
“The small 10-year old church of the Holy Virgin, which serves some 400 Coptic villagers, was built as a village house in the midst of a collection of some 70 Copts’ houses, and was used for worship even though it had never been licensed as a church. This was a very common situation in Egypt: Copts resorted to worshipping in unlicensed churches owing to the dire need of the growing population and the near-impossibility of obtaining license to build a church.”
“Egged on by calls broadcast through mosque microphones in the village, thousands of them held angry demonstrations against there being a church in the village. Screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘Allah is the Greatest’) and angry slogans against the church, they attacked the Copts’ houses with stones and rushed to hastily build a wall blocking access to the street leading to the church and, in the process, placing the Copts’ homes under siege. When the committee members arrived, they were forced away under the pretext that there was no church in that place.”
“The Christians are afraid to pray at hundreds of churches ... because they know that the prayers will incite the radicals and cause bloodshed. There is total frustration among Christians because of the failure of the government to legalize the churches.”
Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom and Dignity Indonesia: Two Christians were publicly flogged in front of a mosque for playing a children’s game said to violate Islamic law. According to the report:
“The game [unspecified] is seen by authorities in the conservative Muslim province [of Banda Aceh] as ‘gambling’ and therefore it violates Islamic Sharia law. Some 300 people jeered and held up their mobile phones to record when Dahlan Silitonga, 61, and Tjia Nyuk Hwa, 45, were flogged six and seven times respectively. The pair had been arrested along with a third man for playing a game at a children’s entertainment complex that lets users exchange coins for prizes or vouchers, including cash. They were among five people—including a couple whipped two dozen times each for showing affection in public—receiving between six and 24 lashes with a rattan stick.”
Uganda: A Muslim family attacked a male family member with boiling oil for becoming Christian. A week earlier, on Sunday March 4, Gobera Bashir, 27, had accompanied a friend to church in a different village; during service he accepted Christ and a pastor gave him a Bible, adding, “Be cautious when reading the Bible, since your family is a Muslim family.”
Four days later his young sister walked into his room while he was reading the Bible. “Why are you reading the Bible? You know our family only reads the Koran,” she said. He replied that he was merely trying to gain knowledge, but word soon spread that he was in possession of a Bible. On March 10, around 9:30 pm, a group of people began knocking on the door of his home. When he refused to answer, they broke in. “As they entered the house, they found me in the sitting room and began tying my arms and legs with robes and shouting, ‘Shame! Shame! You are bringing a bad omen to the family with your bad Christian religion. Our family is a Muslim family.’”
Although the men were masked, he determined that some, including his uncle, were related to him. “There and then,” continues Gobera “one of them poured a hot liquid from a thermos flask on me, and then they dragged me out of the house” to a nearby swamp. “As they pulled me, I felt a lot of pain and screamed for help as one of the attackers blocked my mouth, and there I lost consciousness. I only gained consciousness around midnight.” A nearby Christian family took him in. He received medical treatment at a health center for four days. Burns covered 40% of his body. Most were on his legs and buttocks, caused when his persecutors forced him to sit on the scorching oil.
Saudi Arabia: The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a statement on March 24 saying that it “is disappointed to find inflammatory content in Saudi textbooks that was previously thought to have been removed.” A study conducted by the commission “uncovered content promoting violence and hatred toward religious minorities and others.”
“While the Saudi government has been engaged in textbook reform for the last 15 years, the presence of these passages makes clear how little progress has been made and highlights an immediate need for the Saudi government to more seriously address this issue, as well as the exportation of these textbooks internationally, as a part of its ambitious reform process.”
About this Series
While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by Muslim extremists is growing. The report posits that such Muslim persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is the Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
