Christians ‘Losing Everything’ to Islam

iraq-christian-afpOriginally published by the Gatestone Institute

“I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things”—Philippians 3:8

When St. Paul wrote the above in his letter to the Christians of Philippi, he and the early church were being persecuted (Paul was eventually executed in Rome).  While today’s Western Christians still quote his words in the context of their daily struggles, an increasing number of Christians around the world, especially the Muslim world, are still literally losing absolutely everything for their faith.

In Uganda, matters have gone from bad to worse to murderous. The plight of Hassan Muwanguzi, for instance, a Muslim convert to Christianity—whose initial sacrifices are recorded in Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (page 131)—far from abating, has only gotten worse.

After earning a university degree in Islamic law and then, in 2003, when he was in his early 20s, converting to Christianity, his family immediately threw him out of their home. “Enraged Muslims” beat him. Later that same year, his wife left him and he lost his job as a teacher at Nankodo Islamic School, near Pallisa.

This was just the beginning.  Picking up the pieces of his life and moving on, he eventually opened a Christian school, Grace International Nursery and Primary School, near Muslim-majority Mbale.  Accordingly, “The Muslims have tried to use all kinds of threats to make me close the school—first they used witchcraft,” said Hassan. “This did not work, so then they tried to discourage Muslims from bringing their children to the school, saying that the school was converting Muslim children to Christianity by teaching Christian Religious Education.”

When all else failed, in 2011 an Islamic teacher, Sheikh Hassan Abdalla, filed a false charge claiming that Hassan had “defiled” the sheikh’s young daughter. Together with his fellow Muslim countrymen, the Islamic cleric filed a case at the chief magistrate’s court.  Hassan was subsequently arrested and incarcerated for three weeks.

But because Sheikh Abdalla, his accuser, repeatedly failed to appear in court to testify, Hassan was released.  In his words:  “The judge found out it was a false accusation, hence the case was dropped.  I had been subjected to humiliation, but I forgave them for the sake of my Christian outreach in the area.”

The next Islamic attack came a few months after Hassan was acquitted.  First, the owner of the land where Hassan had built his Christian school denied ever having sold it, leading to a court order to close down the school in May, 2012.  This incurred great losses on Hassan.   The month after, in June, the Christian convert’s home was burnt down by three Muslims:

I and my family escaped from the house by grace, but if it had not been so, then by now we would be no more….  This attack was mobilized by Muslim sheikhs, imams and family members after hearing that I had converted to Christianity after studying and completing university with a degree in Islamic law.

Less than a year later, on March 31, 2013, Hassan was hospitalized in Mbale after an aunt who had called a “family gathering” slipped some insecticide in his tea.  According to Hassan:

After eating and taking tea, I started feeling stomachache, then I realized that she was the one responsible for it—and I believe she did not do it alone, since they have been hunting for me directly and indirectly, because when I left them and converted to Christianity it pained them so much….  The reason they want to kill me is very clear—it is because of being a convert to Christianity; above all, to them it is like I brought shame by converting, as a [former] sheikh. But to God the Almighty Father, this was His plan for me to expand His Kingdom.

According to the doctor who treated him, when Hassan arrived at the hospital, he had already vomited, “looked confused with slurred speech” and his “vision was getting very poor,” so that “he could not even recognize the friend who brought him in.?

During the family meeting, when he first began to feel ill, he telephoned a local Christian leader who advised him to leave secretly: “I knew if he were to mention to them that he was getting sick, they would harm him more,” said Bishop Kinyewa.

Now, most recently, on June 16, 2014, four Muslim men barged into his home with one shouting, “Today we shall kill you—you have been a trouble-maker and are not respecting our prophet’s religion.”  The “apostate” fled into a room, thinking they would not hurt his young daughter, Grace Baruka.  But then he heard the 12-year-old girl’s cries, as the Muslim invaders were strangling her.

When he came out of the room they seized him:  “They hit me with a blunt object, and I fell down.  I just woke up and saw neighbors surrounding me while wailing, saying that my daughter is in critical condition.”  Neighbors took Grace to a clinic but she was declared dead upon arrival.  “I am regretting why I survived the poisoning,” said Hassan.  God could have allowed me to die. My daughter has died, and I am now mourning for her death as well [as] have pain all over my body.”

While Hassan’s ongoing experience with the relentless “Hound of Jihad” speaks for itself, the reality is that countless Christians around the world—both Muslim converts and born Christians—are quietly “losing everything” at the hands of Muslims, whether family members, “local Muslims,” Islamic regimes and courts, or Islamic terrorist organizations.

According to a human rights activist who recently visited the Christians fleeing the Islamic State’s advance into Mosul, “People are severely traumatized: they have lost everything. Often they are fleeing for the second, third or even fourth time.”  One Iraqi Christian man, lamenting his ongoing struggles and sounding like Hassan, told her: “Sometimes I wish my parents had never brought me into the world.”

From one end of the Muslim world to the other, Christians are suffering persecution.  Not one month goes by without several attacks on churches, many—for example in Nigeria and Kenya—resulting in large casualties; not one month goes by without several attacks on Christians accused of apostatizing from Islam or “blaspheming.”

Last week a pregnant Christian mother of four and her husband, falsely accused of burning pages of the Koran, were beaten by a Muslim mob and throw into a kiln, a fiery oven at a brick factory, where they were roasted alive; and the world recalls the plight of Meriam Ibrahim, another Christian wife and mother who, while also pregnant, was imprisoned in Sudan and sentenced to receive 100 lashes followed by execution on the charge of apostatizing from Muhammad’s religion.  Although she has been freed, Pastor Saeed Abedini, an American, is still being held in prison in Iran for apostasy and practicing his Christian faith. His case was apparently not even raised by the Americans negotiating with Iran on its nuclear weapons program.

As tragic as the story of Uganda’s Hassan Muwanguzi is, he is only one of countless Christians and other minorities living under, and losing everything to, Islam.

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  • cacslewisfan

    This story is tragic. How can we help the Christians of Uganda?

    • Curtis Day

      Shoebat .com

  • muchiboy

    Funny that you should bring up how Christians are losing “everything” to Islam.Maybe after that conversation we could talk about how Palestinian Arab Christian war refugees,i.e.the Palestinian Nakba,have lost everything to the Zionists and Diaspora,including their homeland and childrens birth right.Good job,about time we had that conversation.

    • trapper

      Well, you had best talk to the Jordanians about it. The Israelis have given them a home. I guess, you don’t know that, though.

    • s;vbkr0boc,klos;

      The Palestinians have been terrorizing the entire world for decades with UNSPEAKABLE crimes against humanity. They have received more international aid than any other ethnic group on the planet. They have been offered a state of their own three times and refused it. When the Muslim ‘Palestinians’ come for the dhimmi Christian ‘Palestinians’ and cut their throats I’ll not be too sorry.

      • billobillo54

        Yes. Unfortunately, the throat cutting happen to the kafirs in the U.S. too if THE CHRISTIANS DON’T WAKE UP.

    • Earthling

      Those Arabs that stayed in Israel did not lose anything — they gained quite a bit. The lie that Jews stole Arab land is false — in fact they paid double and even triple for it. And the land they gained through wars that the Arabs started in order to destroy Israel was, to a great extent — returned to Arabs in exchange for a peace which the Arabs refused to honor. As for the “Palestinians” (a false term for Arabs who left Israel at the advice of surrounding Arab nations who told them they could take Jewish property when Jews were defeated in war started by these Arab nations), they suffer not at the hands of Jews but at the hands of their brother Arabs.

      The old lies you tell are simply falling apart. As Arabs continue to murder each other mercilessly and as Muslims in the West continue to act out savagely against their non-Muslim neighbors and their own Muslim family members, the world no longer buys their cries of being victims.

    • Softly Bob

      Or you could be truthful and say how the Palestinians are losing everything to Hamas and to the death cult called Islam.
      Then again you could always stay as you are and be a deluded moron.

      It’s up to you!

  • Dan Knight

    Incredible Raymond, Thank you for sharing the story of Hassan Muwanguzi. Our family can only pray for these victims. What’s sad, is that so few here in the West even feel obliged to do anything about it: Though the Left is perfectly happy to destroy anyone who cares.

  • trapper

    There is no “palestinian people”. They are refugees from Jordan. What a miserable cretin you are.

    • muchiboy

      Simple denial and/or rationalizations.Similar in motive and agenda to those who deny the Holocaust.Enough said.

  • kate5778b

    From Zuheir Mohsein 1977, a leader of the PLO…..here’s your baseline, sweetie from the horse’s mouth:

    “The Palestinian people DOES NOT EXIST. The creation of a
    Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle
    against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality
    today there is no difference between Jordanians,
    Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and
    tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of
    a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand
    that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian
    people’ to oppose Zionism.

    “For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state
    with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa.
    While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa,
    Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we
    reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even
    a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

    (PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, in a 1977
    interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw.)

    They are all Arabs, and if Arabia is not enough then go to any other Islamic country, as the ‘Palestinian” charters of Hamas and Fatah are essentially Mohomedan who can’t stand Kuffr of any type, it’s not self-styled it’s devout Islam. k5778b

    • muchiboy

      Again,I repeat my response to an above reply to trapper.

      “Simple denial and/or rationalizations.Similar in motive and agenda to those who deny the Holocaust.Enough said.”

      • kate5778b

        Because you can’t think independently. You talk in your pre-edited version of Palestinian Christians, it doesn’t matter which sort of Christian one is, all it takes is to understand Matthew 5:17 where Jesus states He has not come to do away the law and the Prophets, any flavour ‘Christian’ should understand that Jesus is a Jew and upholds the covenants including the land covenant to Jews. Problem with ‘christianity’ today is, like you, they can’t”
        a) read
        b) understand what they read

        from today’s version of ‘christianity’ I should be able to talk to Siri and ask it to say a prayer of faith and lo! it’ll become a 21st century ‘christian’.

        Even by Hamas /Fatah/PLO Charter Standards ie Islamic today’s ‘Palestinins’ ought to know that the land was given to Jews, ergo today’s ‘Palestinians’ ought to be more comfortable in their Syria, Iraq, Iran, Jordan and of course, Saudia ARABIA, you know…..where ARABS come from.

  • Earthling

    Ironically, you call Christians in Israel or “Palestine” Arab. Most of them no longer identify as Arab at all but rather Arameans who only speak Arabic because of the Arab invasion during the 7th century when countless of their ancestors were murdered, and the foreign Arab culture was forced upon them.

    In Israel, Christians look in horror at what is happening to Christian communities in surrounding “countries” (actually, they are just territories with collections of rapidly disappearing tribes), and they are increasingly proclaiming their loyalty to Israel and identifying themselves as belonging to the nation of Israel. They join the IDF and no longer allow themselves to be bullied by Muslims. More power to them.

  • billobillo54

    The lack of political…I said political…POLITICAL…action and resolve by Christians against Islamic influence is sickening. The misapplication and misunderstanding of Jesus’ commandment to “turn the other cheek” is actually a complete denial of His person and His command for government to protect the innocent (e.g. Romans 13).

  • http://breitbart.com Midway

    Unexplainable. A love affair with a religion that subjugates women, scar them with acid to the face, stone to death, enslave & molest children, raid cities, towns & villages & march its residents into mass graves, blow themselves up in buses, buildings & churches filled with innocent people. Western civilized world & US just make excuses.