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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Church</title>
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		<title>Europe Should Learn Ethiopia’s ‘Islam Lesson’</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/europe-should-learn-ethiopias-islam-lesson/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=europe-should-learn-ethiopias-islam-lesson</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Dec 2014 05:40:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[destroyed]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethiopia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247531</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Another example of “Islam’s Rule of Numbers.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/burned-out-church-Indonesia.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247532" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/burned-out-church-Indonesia-450x283.jpg" alt="burned-out-church-Indonesia" width="323" height="203" /></a>Originally published by<a href="http://www.vieinter.com/europe/europe-should-learn-ethiopias-islam-lesson/"> VIE</a>.</i></p>
<p>Yet another Christian church was destroyed by Muslims in Ethiopia—this time by local authorities.</p>
<p>Heaven’s Light Church, which served some 100 evangelical Christians, was demolished last November 28.  The church had stood and functioned in the Muslim-majority city of Harar for five years.  In the days preceding the destruction, officials forcibly removed the church’s exterior sign and warned believers not to worship there, citing complaints by a local Muslim.  Officials further told church members who had previously congregated at the church “not to gather under what remains of the church building.”  Accordingly, Christians are now meeting in homes of individual believers.</p>
<p>Prior to the demolition of the church, when some Christian leaders protested, they were illegally detained, released only after community members, “outraged by the wrongful detentions,” called “for their immediate release,” reported <a href="http://www.persecution.org/2014/12/01/local-officials-destroy-evangelical-church-in-muslim-majority-area/">International Christian Concern</a>, a rights advocacy group <a href="http://www.bosnewslife.com/34160-ethiopia-destroys-evangelical-church-building-100-christians-forced-underground">supporting</a> the Christians:</p>
<p>These are no isolated incidents, explained ICC, adding that it had documented “numerous ongoing land rights battles between churches and their local governments across Ethiopia.”</p>
<p>In many cases, ICC said, “churches have been operating peacefully for decades on land given to them by now-deceased former congregants.”</p>
<p>However efforts by local majority Muslim populations to “eliminate the public presence” of churches resulted in the forceful closure, destruction and demolition of several church buildings in recent years, according to ICC investigators.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>ICC’s Regional Manager for Africa, Cameron Thomas, accused Ethiopia of violating the rights of devoted Christians. “Corrupt officials willing to defend their religion [Islam] rather than the laws they’ve sworn to uphold, are violating Christians’ rights by forcibly closing, destroying and demolishing churches across Ethiopia,” the official said.</p>
<p>If this is the treatment Christian churches receive by Muslim officials and politicians—“sworn to uphold” the rights of every citizen, not just Muslims—one can imagine the treatment churches receive by Muslim mobs.  One example suffices:</p>
<p>In 2011, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/24/thousands-christians-displaced-ethiopia-muslim-extremists-torch-churches-homes-2057387870/#ixzz2SSF8T1xb">thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes</a> when “Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes” in a Muslim-majority region in western Ethiopia.  At least one Christian was killed, many injured, and anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 displaced.  Around the same time, in another area that is 90% Muslim, “all the Christians in the city woke up to find notes on their doors warning them to convert to Islam, leave the city or face death.”</p>
<p>For those few Western observers who live beyond the moment and have an interest in the “big picture”—the world bequeathed to future generations—it is well to reflect on the question of numbers in the context of Ethiopia.  As Jonathan Racho, another official at <a href="http://www.persecution.org/">ICC</a>, earlier said, “It’s extremely disconcerting that in Ethiopia, where Christians are the majority, they are also the victims of persecution.”</p>
<p>That Muslims are an otherwise peaceable minority group in Ethiopia, but in enclaves where they represent the majority, they attack their outnumbered Christian countrymen, suggests that Muslim aggression and passivity are very much rooted in numbers.  This reflects what I call “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/islams-rule-of-numbers-and-the-london-beheading/">Islam’s Rule of Numbers</a>,” which holds that,<b> </b>wherever and whenever Muslims grow in number—and thus in strength and confidence—so too does Muslim intolerance for “the other” grow (<a href="http://www.meforum.org/3757/islam-rule-of-numbers">video explanation here</a>).</p>
<p>This naturally has lessons for the West, especially European nations like Britain and France that have a significant and ever-growing Muslim population—and where <a href="http://diversitymachtfrei.blogspot.ca/2014/08/france-muslim-smashes-up-historic.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">church attacks</span></a> and <a href="http://nypost.com/2013/05/22/uk-soldier-beheaded-near-barracks-by-man-who-praised-allah-after-cleaver-attack/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">even</span></a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/uk-woman-beheaded-in-broad-daylight-by-machete-wielding-muslim-police-rule-out-terrorism"><span style="color: #0433ff;">beheadings</span></a> are now taking place.</p>
<p>By way of final illustration, the reader is left with the story of Islam’s entry into Ethiopia, one of the oldest Christian civilizations.  According to Islamic tradition, in 615, when the pagan Quraysh were persecuting Muhammad’s outnumbered followers and disciples in Arabia, some fled to Ethiopia seeking sanctuary. The Christian king, or “Negus” of Ethiopia, welcomed and protected these Muslim fugitives, ignoring Quraysh demands to return them—and thus reportedly winning Muhammad’s gratitude.</p>
<p>Today, 14 centuries later, when Islam has carved itself a solid niche in Ethiopia, accounting for 1/3 of the population, Muslim gratitude has turned into Muslim aggression—not least a warning to Western states.</p>
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		<title>Maoist Church Saga</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/spyridon-mitsotakis/maoist-church-saga/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=maoist-church-saga</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jul 2014 04:10:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Spyridon Mitsotakis]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mao]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Robert Reiss]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Unitarian/Universalist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236718</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Frontpage's reporting on the ideological struggle within a Unitarian/Universalist Church sets possible changes in motion.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/southworthexit.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236724" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/southworthexit.jpg" alt="southworthexit" width="311" height="230" /></a>Frontpage has learned that its reporting on the contentious ideological struggle within a mid-town Manhattan Unitarian/Universalist Church has set possible changes in motion. The original purpose of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/spyridon-mitsotakis/community-church-of-new-york-pacifists-suspended-maoists-welcome/">the article </a>was meant to be a case study and cautionary tale of the folly of trying to work with intolerant totalitarian movements such as the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Dr. Karen Hoover, chair of Church&#8217;s Action for Justice group, reached out to hardcore Marxist organizations beginning in the run up to the Iraq war. As a result, the RCP today enjoys large degrees of influence and partnership with sectors of the Church (Dr. Hoover has been known to direct people toward RCP’s HQ and bookstore). But because of the light that was shown on this activity, these relationships may be vulnerable to a course correction, if wisdom prevails; and an audit is in progress.</p>
<p>We now have more information regarding Church critic Robert Reiss&#8217;s <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/spyridon-mitsotakis/community-church-of-new-york-pacifists-suspended-maoists-welcome/" target="_blank">suspension</a> from the Community Church of New York, the former liberal but now increasingly Maoist and anti-Israel Unitarian/Universalist Church. Special Meetings were held on <span class="aBn" tabindex="0" data-term="goog_580887882"><span class="aQJ">Wednesday June 11th and Sunday June 15th</span></span> to discuss Frontpage&#8217;s <span class="aBn" tabindex="0" data-term="goog_580887883"><span class="aQJ">June 5th</span></span> <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/spyridon-mitsotakis/support-for-israel-now-grounds-for-expulsion-at-new-york-unitarian-church/" target="_blank">article</a> first detailing the ignominious influences on the Church, and what to do about Reiss, whom they falsely blamed for the unwanted attention. The meeting on the 15th resulted in a quorum of Board of Trustee members who, flouted both the letter and the spirit of the bylaws of the Church by voting to suspend Reiss for 6 months, barring him from setting foot on Church property &#8211; including attending <span class="aBn" tabindex="0" data-term="goog_580887884"><span class="aQJ">Sunday</span></span> Services &#8211; under threat of police arrest or ejection at the hands of Church Security personnel.</p>
<p>On Sunday, June 22nd, during Church coffee hour at <span class="aBn" tabindex="0" data-term="goog_580887885"><span class="aQJ">noon</span></span>, 3 Board of Trustee members, including the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Board, beckoned Reiss to accompany them into the intimate “Chapel of Peace.” It was here, Reiss was told of the rogue vote against his membership and was told to comply of this banishment forthwith. Immediately thereafter, Reiss returned to the coffee hour space where he announced to the Churchgoers present before him:</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"><p>&#8220;Dear Church Friends, I&#8217;ve been told just now of my banishment, which is against the bylaws of this Church &#8212; simply because of my Israel advocacy. I&#8217;ve been a loyal member here since I was 7 years old and do more volunteer work here than almost anyone else &#8212; yet <i>I&#8217;m</i> to be banished from your company for half a year without any due process.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>While he was addressing the church, the cabal of trustees whispered to Reiss that &#8220;we&#8217;ve called the police who&#8217;ll arrest you if you don&#8217;t leave.&#8221; An arrangement with the local police precinct was made earlier in the week by Church administration. This was apparently necessary, as the Church&#8217;s own security personnel would not be willing to comply. &#8220;Robert Reiss tells the truth&#8230;&#8221; they said, complaining that &#8220;Rev. Southworth acts like he is the king.&#8221;</p>
<p>Rather than a confrontation escalating, Reiss took his leave.</p>
<p>In recent years there was another issue that divided the congregation – the effort of a large portion of the Church to unseat the Minister, which failed during a humiliating voting session during which his detractors vented their dislike of him and his dictatorial leadership style. Over many years Southworth never censures or chastises anyone&#8217;s articulated anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements; yet he only sought to silence, harass or intimidate the articulation of pro-Israel sentiments.</p>
<p>Dr. Hoover cheered the recent Presbyterian vote to divest from companies doing business with Israel and hoped the Community Church would follow suit. Member Jerry Forman, of the Church&#8217;s Finance Committee stated aloud at an A.F.J. forum: &#8220;I don&#8217;t like the anti-Semitism at the Church,&#8221; thus acknowledging its presence.</p>
<p>Statements that troubled these Churchgoers have become common at Church meetings. They range from the typical fringe-left canard of “In Israel, they’re committing genocide,” to the outrages of “The Ashkenazi are responsible for genocide in the Middle East … What we need is a strong man … a Stalin or a Mao Zedong,” and “In Europe, the Jews got themselves in trouble for being the capitalist masterminds.”</p>
<p>At a Church monthly meeting on or about <span class="aBn" tabindex="0" data-term="goog_580887886"><span class="aQJ">April 10th</span></span>, It was announced: “That there will be a sign up sheet for Church members to be part of a year long study group around the Presbyterian’s booklet ‘Zionism Unsettled.’” Reiss looked askance at the announcement, which elicited his concern. “I defy you to find anything untrue in it,” yelled a leading “anti-racist” presence in the Church.</p>
<p>A Church meeting opened with affiliate minister and Church administrator Rev. Dr. Orlanda Brugnola turning to Reiss and saying: “I want to deal with ‘Right-relations’ – what are your views on Israel’s mistreatment of the Palistinians!?” Dumbfownded, Reiss responded, “What would that have to do with your concept of ‘Right-relations’ between us?” as he pointed out the minister’s double standards and implicit bias.</p>
<p>At a September meeting, hosted by Rev. Southworth, held in the Church chapel, convened to address the Syrian crisis, many Church members were saying “the Jews are behind the unrest in Syria and fomenting resistance.” Reiss, and not Rev. Southworth, corrected these big lies. (Afterwards many members privately thanked Reiss for defending the obvious.)</p>
<p>Once, Rev. Southworth lamented at his pulpit how he “felt for the anquish” over Israel, expressed by the then uptown Imam, founder of a so-called interfaith mosque. True to form, after this same Imam decamped for the Middle East, he now, overseas, blasted Jews “for starting the worldwide AIDS epidemic.” Here, now, the lachrymose Southworth became a self-caricature of the liberal minister who can’t see through the cobwebs of political correctness, a church member observed.</p>
<p>At a recent U.N. S<span class="aBn" tabindex="0" data-term="goog_580887887"><span class="aQJ">unday</span></span> forum, Dr. Fay Lord opened the meeting with the gratuitous remarks regarding “overturning old paradigms” she chose as an example: “like Israel’s hope of conquest of the greater Middle East,” although this had nothing whatsoever to do with the guest speaker, who was the daughter of Pakistan’s admiral of the Navy.</p>
<p>Another time a recent chair of the Board of Trustees, Robert Bobrick, in his opening remarks at the quarterly congregational meeting, made a parallel with ongoing conflict within the Church to “the original error of the founding of Israel and the legacy of consequences.”</p>
<p>The above quotations are illustrative of the ubiquitous and commonly corrosive slurs that are fashionably current among these people.</p>
<p>Additionally, Board member Rachael Stone, who voted to boot out Reiss for his opposition to the presence of RCP front groups and Israel advocacy, helps facilitate at the Church the monthly held &#8220;People&#8217;s Voice Cafe,&#8221; which is a self-constituted &#8220;collective&#8221; promoting Communist-era Folk songs and newer compositions. A quarter century ago, historian and ex-radical Ronald Radosh says,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Community Church in the 50&#8242;s and early 60&#8242;s banned political folk music. They had a folk sing and square dance every Sat night. All participants had to pledge not to sing any leftist songs.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Now, contrariwise, to cite a recent example of what&#8217;s going on in the present moment, People&#8217;s Voice Cafe, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, held an anti-Israel themed event with guests Jewish Voices for Peace (sic), distorting the Purim story to their ideological ends in opposition to the state of Israel.</p>
<p>The Community Church of New York, today, following upon Minister Southworth&#8217;s fetishization of this politically correct &#8220;anti-racism&#8221; exemplifies the doleful reality of how political correctness can metastasize into, as it were, a petri dish of garden variety anti-Semitism. Perversly, the senior minister averts his eyes from these developments burgeoning before him, undermining his own Church&#8217;s formerly distinguished history of civic engagement of a high moral standard.</p>
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		<title>Swedish Archbishop: Why Pick Jesus over Muhammed?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/swedish-archbishop-why-pick-jesus-over-muhammed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=swedish-archbishop-why-pick-jesus-over-muhammed</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Nov 2013 04:05:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Antje Jackelén]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jesus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lutheran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muhammad]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209506</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What's the difference?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AntjeJackelen_990114c.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209519" alt="AntjeJackelen_990114c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AntjeJackelen_990114c-450x298.jpg" width="270" height="179" /></a>Sweden is the gift that keeps on giving – to Islam. In recent weeks, for those of you who are keeping score at home, Swedish feminists mounted a nationwide <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/feminist-hijab-solidarity/">&#8220;hijab campaign&#8221;</a> in &#8220;solidarity&#8221; with a Muslim woman whose veil may or may not have been yanked off her head in a parking garage, and the government <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/the-coming-flood-of-syrian-refugees-to-sweden/">announced</a> its intention to grant automatic permanent residency to refugees from Syria. Now comes the news that the Church of Sweden has chosen as its new leader a woman who, judging from recent statements, does not care to recognize much of a difference between Jesus Christ and Muhammed.</p>
<p>But first a little background. Unlike the Church of Norway and the Church of Denmark, the Church of Sweden is no longer an official state church, having been cut loose in the year 2000 (a fate which will probably befall its sister Scandinavian churches before too long). But although its pews, like those in Norway and Denmark, are pretty empty most of the time (while most Swedes are church members, only 2% attend services regularly), the church in Sweden continues, like its Norwegian and Danish counterparts, to receive generous cash subsidies from the government, and still enjoys a high public profile. Scandinavians may not go to church, and most of them may not be devout believers in much of anything, but that doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean that they don&#8217;t identify, perhaps even strongly, as Christians – or, more specifically, Lutherans.</p>
<p>How does this work? As follows. To live under a highly statist system is to assume, as if it were the way of nature itself, that the state will take care of all kinds of things that people in other, not-so-statist countries would never think of expecting the government to do for them. In Scandinavia, at least, this habit of thought can extend even to the realm of religion. Meaning what? That under such regimes, the idea of a personal faith, to say nothing of a personal commitment to go to church, can easily fall away. One doesn&#8217;t <i>have </i>to go to church, or give much thought to what one does or doesn&#8217;t believe; what matters is knowing that the church is there, and that one&#8217;s tax money is helping to keep it up and running and staffed with clergy who <i>have </i>given thought to questions of belief, and who are continuing to hold the right services and say the right prayers – even though there&#8217;s barely enough parishioners in some churches on a Sunday morning to get a bridge game going.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not, after all, as if most Scandinavians never set foot in a church. They may or may not believe in God, but they believe in church baptisms, church weddings, and church funerals. Confirmation, especially, remains a major rite of passage – so much so that kids from families that are actively hostile to religion have the option of taking part in a mass &#8220;civil confirmation,&#8221; a thoroughly secular ceremony that is held once a year in city halls and other non-ecclesiastical settings. In all three Scandinavian countries, moreover, certain Christian feasts are still observed in a traditional manner – notably <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-bawer/candles-in-the-dark/">Saint Lucy&#8217;s Day</a> on December 13, when many children and teenagers participate in processions wearing white robes, carrying candles, and singing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Lucia">&#8220;Santa Lucia.&#8221;</a> The Norwegian cabinet includes a Minister of Culture and Church Affairs; the Danish cabinet includes a Minister for Equality, Church, and Nordic Cooperation. In all three countries, most of the official holidays are Christian holy days; Norway&#8217;s list includes no fewer than eight of them: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Whit Monday, Christmas, and St. Stephen&#8217;s Day. (The only secular days off are New Year&#8217;s Day, May Day, and Constitution Day.)</p>
<p>So it was of more than minor significance when the Church of Swedish announced a couple of weeks ago that its new boss, who will assume the title of Archbishop of Uppsala next June upon the retirement of the current primate, Anders Wejryd, is a woman named Antje Jackelén, the present Bishop of Lund. Born in Germany in 1955, she moved to Sweden in 1978, married a Swede in 1979 (he&#8217;s a priest, too), and became a member of the clergy in 1980. She will be the first female archbishop in the Church of Sweden, which has been ordaining women for more than half a century. But no, that&#8217;s not the big news. Nor is it news, big or otherwise, that the bishop who ordained her back in 1980, Lars Carlzon, was at the time head of a Communist front group, the Swedish-East German “Friendship Association.” (Let&#8217;s face it: given the Swedish establishment&#8217;s weakness for totalitarianism, that&#8217;s scarcely a footnote.)</p>
<p>No, the big news – or one part of it, anyway – is that Jackelén, who after her ordination worked in parishes in Stockholm and Lund and then spent several years teaching systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, has as her episcopal motto (yes, bishops have mottoes) the simple statement “God is greater.” As Ingeborg Olsson <a href="http://www.d-intl.com/2013/10/15/swedish-archbishop-prefers-allah/?lang=en">wrote</a> in <i>Dispatch International: </i>“If that sounds familiar, it may be due to the fact that an Arabic translation renders it as &#8216;Allahu akbar.&#8217;”</p>
<p>Coincidence? Not bloody likely. On October 1, when Jackelén and the other three candidates for the church&#8217;s top job were interviewed by church officials in front of the media, they were asked – and here comes the rest of the big news – “Does Jesus provide a truer picture of God than Muhammed?” Only one of the candidates, Ragnar Persenius, the Bishop of Uppsala, answered with a flat-out yes. (He ended up coming in second.) The other candidates “seemed uncertain,” <a href="http://www.friatider.se/antje-jackelen-ny-arkebiskop-i-svenska-kyrkan">according</a> to <i>Fria Tider</i>. Jackelén&#8217;s answer was as follows: “One cannot reduce the whole of religious theology, that is to say the question of how different religions relate to one another, to a yes-and-no question. It amounts to doing violence to a wealth of knowledge and experience that can be found there.”</p>
<p>This wishy-washiness was too much for Eva Hamberg, a prominent theologian who has been a priest in the Church of Sweden for thirty years. Back when she was ordained, said Hamberg, such a question would never even have been asked – and if it had been, the idea that any candidate for the priesthood would have so much as hesitated to say “yes” would have been absolutely unthinkable. Even before Jackelén was selected as archbishop, Hamberg publicly announced that she was quitting the Church of Sweden, saying she could no longer associate herself with a body that had become, in her view, altogether too secularized, politicized, and intolerant of dissident (i.e. traditional) voices.</p>
<p>Since Jackelén&#8217;s election, her supporters and her critics have been doing battle in the op-ed columns – not only about the Jesus/Muhammed dodge, but about Jackelén&#8217;s views of the Virgin Birth and the existence of Hell, among other things. As it happens, I agree with much of what she and her supporters have to say – about, for example, the fact that some parts of the Bible are plainly intended to be read metaphorically or symbolically, not literally, and that there&#8217;s room for honest disagreement among Christians about various aspects of scripture and theology. But to refuse to provide a straightforward answer to the simple question of whether Jesus provides a truer picture of God than Muhammed is a whole different ball of wax. It&#8217;s not about being a liberal Christian as opposed to a conservative Christian; it&#8217;s about being any kind of Christian at all. For that one question sums up what everything else comes down to – it brings you face to face with the utter contrast between, on the one hand, the story of Jesus&#8217; life and ministry, which is to say the message of the gospel, and, on the other, the story of Muhammed&#8217;s life, which is to say the message of the Koran. Between these two things – Jesus&#8217; message of love, and Muhammed&#8217;s message of brutal conquest and control – there could hardly be a greater, starker divergence. For a Christian body to install as its superintendent someone who refuses to pronounce clearly upon that divergence is sheer absurdity.</p>
<p>But you ain&#8217;t heard nothing yet. On October 27, Anna Ekström, who writes regularly in <i>Expressen, </i><a href="http://www.expressen.se/kvp/kultur/tala-klarsprak-i-kyrkan-nu-antje-jackelen/">reminded</a> readers of her <a href="http://www.expressen.se/kvp/kultur/pavedivisioner/">criticism</a> last December of Jackelén&#8217;s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcQ-oXxPgq4">videotaped</a> Christmas greeting to her diocese, which can still be viewed on You Tube. (Watch it: even if you don&#8217;t understand Swedish, the visual, and the tone of voice, speak volumes.) In the video, Jackelén launched right into an oh-so-gently-voiced lament about Israel&#8217;s security barrier, and by way of illustration held up a small nativity that she purchased some years ago at a shop in Bethlehem. It was a very special kind of nativity – Jesus and two of the Wise Men were separated by a wall. Get it? Get it? She purred on about this separation wall, observing that the two Wise Men who were separated from Jesus looked as if they were praying to the wall. (The implicit reference to Jews at the Wailing Wall was obvious.) And she showed her audience that, while the separation wall obstructed one&#8217;s view of Jesus, there was an opening in the stable wall behind the crib, symbolizing the fact that (and here she claimed to be quoting the shopkeeper who sold her the nativity) “God always creates an opening” that lets us see Christ. “Fear builds walls,” she said in English, reading aloud the words written on the nativity wall. “Hope builds bridges.” Christmas, she stressed, is all about the elimination of walls between God and man. And with that, she removed the wall separating the stable from those two Wise Men.</p>
<p>Jackelén&#8217;s “Christmas message” was a remarkable piece of work – a hand grenade, as it were, wrapped in several thick, soft layers of purple cotton. How smoothly and neatly she managed to suggest, without quite saying so, that Israeli Jews have separated themselves from God by denying the message of Christ, that when they pray at the Wailing Wall they are praying to a false god, and that the Israeli wall is nothing less than an offense to Christian belief. Very slick stuff.</p>
<p>To be sure, Jackelén did not come up with this nasty line of argument herself: every ugly, silken word of her little homily is standard-issue “Palestinian liberation theology,” as developed over the last few decades by Palestinian Christians like Naim Ateek (an Anglican priest who runs a Jerusalem-based outfit called the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center) and as obediently taken up, in recent years, by more and more fatuous leftist clergy in Europe and North America. Ateek&#8217;s “theology,” which teaches that Zionists are motivated by (in his words) “a narrow and exclusive concept of a tribal God,” and which drips with smarmily sanctimonious language and overwrought symbolism of the sort Jackelen employed in her “Christmas message” (“In this season of Lent,” wrote Ateek during the run-up to Easter 2001, “it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him&#8230;.Palestine has become one huge golgotha”), is in fact a cleverly calculated means of manipulating naïve Christians in the Western world into thinking that their faith requires them not only to condemn Israel&#8217;s security barrier, and its supposed mistreatment of Palestinians, but to reject the very legitimacy of the Jewish state itself.</p>
<p>Watching Jackelén&#8217;s “Christmas message,” and recognizing at once the slippery rhetoric of “Palestinian liberation theology,”  I wondered if she had any direct connection to Ateek and his organization – which is, after all, the Ground Zero of that “theology.” Sure enough, a quick Google search turned up an <a href="http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?id=654224">article</a> on her diocesan website singing Ateek&#8217;s praises and recounting a conversation that she and Ateek had at his office. (As a bonus, the article features a lovely picture of Jackelén celebrating mass with one Munib Younan, who, in addition to being head of the Lutheran World Federation, has been <a href="http://www.friendsofsabeel.org.uk/news/christians-hold-mass-to-mark-nakba-day-15th-may/">identified by Sabeel itself</a>, with which he is associated, as a Fatah leader.)</p>
<p>Ekström, in her comments about Jackelén&#8217;s “Christmas message,”  noted that while Jackelén made good use of the opportunity to malign Israel&#8217;s security defenses, she had nothing whatsoever to say about the ongoing slaughter and persecution of Christians throughout the Muslim world – a kind of violence that, as Ekström pointed out, “requires more robust protection of the kind Antje Jackelén wants to tear down.” As Ekström put it: during a holiday season “when Jews through the ages have been subjected to pogroms,” and in a time “when Christians in our time are being murdered, [Jackelén] chose to meditate about an Arabized Jesus and stir resentment toward Israeli Jews.” In short, she “used the timeless Christmas story to throw a dark shadow over the Jews in all times, in all places.” That was last Christmas – ten months ago. Has Jackelén, Ekström asked the other day, changed since then? Well, if her crafty reply to the question about Jesus and Muhammed is any indication – and nothing could be <i>more</i> of an indication – she hasn&#8217;t changed at all.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see what she has to say to her flock on You Tube this Christmas.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Inviting CAIR to Church</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/inviting-cair-to-church/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=inviting-cair-to-church</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:25:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[More churches team up with Hamas-linked group to learn about Islam.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/islam-hates-christianity.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-205758" alt="islam-hates-christianity" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/islam-hates-christianity-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>When a Unitarian church in Florida decided to teach its congregation about Islam around the time of this year’s anniversary of 9/11, it brought in an extremist official from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) who has promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories. The group may <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/news/new-justice-dept-report-criticizes-fbi-ties-cair">no longer be embraced by the FBI</a>, but CAIR’s list of <a href="http://www.cair.com/about-us/what-they-say-about-cair.html">published endorsements</a> shows there are plenty of Christian and Jewish leaders happy to work with it.</p>
<p>CAIR is an <a href="http://media.radicalislam.org/misc/pdf/List+of+Unindicted+HLF+Co-conspirators.pdf">unindicted co-conspirator</a> in the country’s largest terrorism financing trial and is listed by federal prosecutors as an entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s secret Palestine Committee. A federal judge <a href="http://media.radicalislam.org/misc/pdf/43380629-2009-order-on-Holy-Land-Foundation-unindicted-coconspirator-list.pdf">ruled</a> in 2009 that there is “ample” evidence tying CAIR to Hamas. The organization was recently accused of <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/cair%E2%80%99s-money-laundering-scheme-exposed">using money laundering to hide its foreign financiers</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most damning official statement about CAIR comes from a <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/542.pdf">2007 court filing.</a> Federal prosecutors said: “From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists…the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”</p>
<p>In response to Pastor Terry Jones’ plan to burn of Qurans on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lakeland, Florida <a href="https://fl.cair.com/fl.cair.com/blog/unitarian_universalist_congregation_of_lakeland_to_host_understanding_islam_talks.html">booked</a> a guest speaker teach them about Islam. That speaker was Hassan Shibly, the executive-director of CAIR’s Florida chapter.</p>
<p>Lately, Shibly has been making <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/cair-cries-foul-play-fbi-shooting-tsarneav-associate">the FBI sound like anti-Muslim murderers</a> for the shooting death of an associate of one of the Boston bombers.</p>
<p>In 2004, Shibly was detained at the Canadian border after he and some colleagues attended the Reviving Islamic Spirit Conference in Toronto. The U.S. government <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6225-2005Apr20.html">said</a> they were questioned because of “credible intelligence that conferences similar to the one from which these individuals were leaving were being used by terrorist organizations to fundraise and to hide the travel of terrorists themselves.” Shibly subsequently <a href="http://www.nyclu.org/pdfs/tabbaa_v_chertoff_complaint.pdf">sued</a> the Department of Homeland Security and it has been dismissed.</p>
<p>In 2010, I wrote an <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/frequent-muslim-speaker-to-kids-in-new-york-schools-supports-hamas-hezbollah/?singlepage=true">article about how Shibly had been repeatedly used as a guest speaker by Clarence High School in New York</a>. In his communication with me, Shibly refused to condemn Hamas as a whole or call them a “terrorist” group. He had previously said that “Hezbollah is absolutely not a terrorist organization” and “any war against them is illegitimate.”</p>
<p>He “liked” radical clerics on Facebook and promoted conspiracy theories suggesting that the 9/11 attacks carried out by Israel and that the U.S. and U.K. were instigating sectarian violence in Iraq. Shibly also wrote a post titled, “Former American Terrorist Denounces American Terrorism” where a U.S. soldier says the U.S. military in Iraq are the real terrorists and are racist.</p>
<p>Unitarians have been particularly receptive to CAIR and its allies. The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/cair-teams-up-with-church-to-sue-nsa/">teamed up with CAIR</a> to sue the National Security Agency.</p>
<p>The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations is an official <a href="http://www.isna.net/interfaith-partners.html">interfaith partner</a> of the Islamic Society of North America, CAIR’s fellow unindicted co-conspirator and U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity. It is also a <a href="http://shouldertoshouldercampaign.org/members/">member</a> of the ISNA-allied Shoulder-to-Shoulder interfaith coalition.</p>
<p>CAIR has a list of treasured interfaith friends and is sure to <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/cair-banquets-honor-christian-allies/">flatter them with honors at fundraising events.</a> A number of these friends have provided <a href="http://www.cair.com/about-us/what-they-say-about-cair.html">quotes</a> for CAIR’s website.</p>
<p>Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson, pastor of the First United Church of Tampa and President of the North American region of the World Council of Churches, gave CAIR an award in 2011.</p>
<p>The Faith Action Network, created by the Lutheran Public Policy Office and Washington Association of Churches, awarded CAIR’s Washington state chapter with its “Connecting Communities” award in 2011.</p>
<p>The Central United Methodist Church’s 7<sup>th</sup> Annual Peace and Justice Banquet honored the executive-director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, Dawud Walid with the “Pastor’s Award” in 2011.</p>
<p>The Investigative Project on Terrorism <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/454.pdf">documents</a>, “In response to FBI raids, arrests and prosecutions, Walid has repeatedly responded with virulent comments alleging FBI misconduct.” He <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/2082/cair-suspected-and-supported-by-the-federal">once said</a> the FBI is “manufacturing their own terrorism suspects to give the appearance that they’re actually doing something tangible in the so-called ‘War on Terrorism.’”</p>
<p>Pastor Warren Clark of Tampa said in 2007, “As a Christian pastor, I support the work of CAIR…We need groups like CAIR in these fear-mongering times.”</p>
<p><em>Hannah Schwarzschild of the </em>Philadelphia chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace said CAIR-PA is “engaged in some of the most urgent civil rights work…” in 2007. An organizer of a Muslim Brotherhood-linked rally <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/muslim-brotherhood-groups-and-their-jewish-friends/">boasted of the &#8220;friendship&#8221; of Jewish Voice for Peace</a> after Egyptian President Morsi was overthrown.</p>
<p>Rev. John C. Wagner of the United Methodist Church and Professor Emeritus of the United Theological Seminary praised CAIR-OH in 2006 “for their credible, gracious and courageous witness to the Muslim experience in Ohio.”</p>
<p>CAIR recently <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/cair-honors-leading-interfaith-islamist/">honored Dr. Sayyid Syeed of ISNA</a> with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Syeed is the orchestrator of ISNA’s very successful interfaith engagement. As we documented last week, Syeed’s resume shows he has hopped from one U.S. Muslim Brotherhood front to the next.</p>
<p>CAIR’s interfaith hero was recorded in 2006 saying, “Our job is to change the constitution of America.” The U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities have said what their motivation is, if only their non-Muslim allies would pay attention.</p>
<p><strong>This article was sponsored by the <a href="http://www.theird.org">Institute on Religion and Democracy.</a></strong></p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don’t miss Jamie Glazov&#8217;s video interview with Steven Emerson about The Sordid World of CAIR:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SaNMPpgPCh4" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>A Christian Pogrom in Egypt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/a-christian-pogrom-in-egypt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-christian-pogrom-in-egypt</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Sep 2013 04:22:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The unprecedented purge following Morsi's ouster is only the tip of the iceberg. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/churchInteriorBurntChurchWide_0.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-204838" alt="churchInteriorBurntChurchWide_0" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/churchInteriorBurntChurchWide_0.jpg" width="280" height="193" /></a>Originally published by the <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3977/egypt-nigeria-attacks-christians">Gatestone Institute</a>.</em></p>
<p>On July 4<sup>th</sup>, the day after the Egyptian military liberated the nation of Muslim Brotherhood rule, Christian Copts were immediately scapegoated and targeted.  All Islamist leaders—from Brotherhood supreme leader Muhammad Badi, to Egyptian-born al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri, to top Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi—made it a point to single out Egypt’s Copts as being especially instrumental in the ousting of former Islamist president Morsi, ushering in a month of pogroms against the nation’s Christian minority.</p>
<p>Among other things in July, unprecedented numbers of Christian churches were attacked, plundered, desecrated, and torched.  According to one Egyptian human rights lawyer, &#8220;<a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20130818125428.htm">82 churches, many of which were from the 5th century</a>, were attacked by pro-Morsi supporters in just two days.&#8221; Al-Qaeda’s flag was raised above some churches; <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/egypt-church-vandal-caught-in-the-act/">anti-Christian</a> <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/anti-christian-islamic-graffiti-vandalizes-egypt/">graffiti littered</a> the sides of other churches and Coptic homes.  Due to extreme anti-Christian sentiment, many churches ceased holding worship services until recently.  Dozens of Coptic homes and businesses were also attacked, looted, and torched.</p>
<p>In the Sinai, a young <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/muslim-brotherhood-out-killing-christians-in/">Coptic priest was shot dead</a> in front of his church, while the body of Magdy Lam‘i Habib, a Copt, was found mutilated and beheaded.  Four other Christians were slaughtered by Muslims in Luxor province.  Whole towns and villages have been emptied of Copts, including more than 100 Christian families from El Arish in the terror-infested Sinai.</p>
<p>Due to the many death threats to Coptic Pope Tawadros II, for a time he left the papal residence at St. Mark Cathedral—which was earlier <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/scandal-morsi-government-permits-savage-attack-on-st-mark-cathedral/">savagely attacked</a>, when Morsi was still president—and temporarily ceased holding services.</p>
<p>The rest of July’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not according to severity:</p>
<p><b>Attacks on Christian Worship: Churches and Monasteries</b></p>
<p><b>Guinea</b>:  During a mob-led frenzy, Christians and their churches were <a href="http://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2013/07/2629362/">savagely attacked</a> in the Muslim-majority nation, with some 95 Christians slain and 130 wounded.  In Nzérékoré, five churches as well as the homes of pastors were attacked by Muslim mobs. One priest recounted the violence:  “The two Catholic and Protestant churches have all been ransacked and burned… Almost all the houses and shops belonging to Christians or people affiliated with Christians, have not escaped the fury of the attackers.” Similarly, the Catholic area, including the quarters of the nuns, was looted before being torched.  In Moribadou, the violence lasted three days and saw some 10 churches destroyed.</p>
<p><b>Indonesia</b>:  According to the Annual Report published by IndonesianChristian.org, a Protestant organization monitoring the nation’s Christian community, the pressures against Christian communities in Aceh &#8220;have become intolerable. Within a year, with non-existent legal pretexts, <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Aceh,-increasing-intolerance-against-Christians:-17-house-churches-closed-28502.html">17 house churches have been closed</a>: these also include Catholic chapels. The Islamization of the province continues, just as promised by the governor Abdullah.” The forced closure of places of worship and threats against Protestant congregations, says the text, &#8220;increase unabated… The behavior of local authorities is a potential threat to the tolerant atmosphere we see deteriorating over time.&#8221;  Behind this upsurge is the aforementioned current governor of Aceh, Zaini Abdullah, who earlier spent years in exile in Sweden for his Islamist and separatist activities. During his election campaign, the Islamic politician frequently said that &#8220;he would not hesitate to apply the Koranic laws in the province.&#8221; Months after his victory and his words have become reality.</p>
<p><b>Nigeria</b>: Members or supporters of the Islamic organization Boko Haram set off <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2013/07/churches-bombed-in-kano-nigeria-killing-45-people-christian-leaders-say/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MorningStarNews+%28Morning+Star+News%29">four bombs planted near three Protestant churches</a> in Kano city, killing at least 45 people.  Local Christians were meeting for Bible study at Christ Salvation Pentecostal Church when one explosion hit, and 39 bodies were recovered in the area; Christians were also meeting at St. Stephen’s Anglican Church when another bomb went off; and an explosion apparently targeting Peniel Baptist Church failed to affect the building.</p>
<p><b>PA Territories</b>: Nuns of the Greek-Orthodox monastery in Bethany sent a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urging him and other PA leaders to respond to the escalation of attacks on the Christian house, including the throwing of stones, broken glass, theft and looting of the monastery property.  &#8220;Someone wants to send us away,” wrote Sister Ibraxia to Abbas, &#8220;but we will not flee.” Added to complications, and as increasingly happens to other monasteries—such as a <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/christendoms-greatest-cathedral-to-become-a-mosque/">5<sup>th</sup> century monastery in Turkey</a>—a local Muslim family has, according to local Christians, “arbitrarily” claimed the monastery’s land.</p>
<p><b>Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism</b></p>
<p><b>Pakistan</b>:  Asia Bibi, a Christian mother languishing on death row since June 2009 for allegedly blaspheming Islam’s prophet Muhammad, may have to wait another two more years before the appeal against her blasphemy conviction is heard.  In November 2010 she was <a href="http://barnabasfund.org/US/News/Archives/Aasia-Bibi-facing-at-least-two-more-years-in-Pakistani-jail-awaiting-appeal.html">sentenced to death</a>.  The chairman of the Human Liberation Commission in Pakistan has been lobbying the country’s chief justice for Asia’s appeal to be heard as soon as possible but has received no response.  Also, a Christian couple was arrested for <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2013/07/more-christians-in-pakistan-accused-of-sending-blasphemous-text-messages/">allegedly sending blasphemous text messages</a> to a Muslim cleric in Gojra, where a week before a young Christian man was sentenced to life in prison on the same charge.  Shafqat Masih, 43, and his wife Shagufta, 40, who have four children between the ages of 5 and 11, were taken into custody on a complaint by Muslim cleric Rana Muhammad Ejaz, who alleged that he had received blasphemous text messages from Masih.  Gojra City police registered a case under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s widely condemned blasphemy laws for allegedly defaming Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. Conviction is punishable by death or life in prison, which is 25 years in Pakistan.</p>
<p><b>Iran</b>: Mostafa Bordbar, a Muslim convert to Christianity who, along with several other Christians, was arrested in December 2012 while celebrating Christmas, was tried in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. He is one of several Christian prisoners currently being held in ward 350 of Evin prison for their faith.  According to Mohabat News, the court registered the charges against him as &#8220;illegal gathering and participating in a house church.” If found guilty, he can be sentenced to anywhere from two to 10 years in prison.   Five years earlier, he was arrested for converting to Christianity and participating in a house church. His interrogator at the time <a href="http://www.mohabatnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=7122:christian-convert-tried-in-tehran&amp;catid=36:iranian-christians&amp;Itemid=279">charged him with &#8220;apostasy,”</a> a charge which still remains on his record.</p>
<p><b>Sudan</b>: Apparently responding to the vitality of the Christian church, Ammar Saleh, the head of the Islamic Centre for Preaching and Comparative Studies, chastised the government for not taking decisive action against Christians operating “boldly” and thus leading to the apostasy of many Muslim converts to Christianity.  According to International Christian Concern (ICC), Saleh “argued that anyone who believes there’s growth in Sudan’s Islamic faithful is ‘living on Mars,’ drawing attention to <a href="http://www.persecution.org/?p=46886">increasing proselytization and an exodus of Muslims to Christianity</a>…  He also stated that the government’s efforts to curb the rise of Christianity were timid as compared to efforts of missionaries to lead people to Christ.”  Meanwhile, according to ICC “Churches are being forced to close down, foreign workers are being kicked out of the country and Christians are constantly pressurized by the government and society in all kinds of ways, so much so that the recent increase in Christian persecution in Sudan moved the country from being ranked 16<sup>th</sup> on the 2012 Open Doors World watch List to 12<sup>th</sup> in 2013.”</p>
<p><b>Dhimmitude: A Climate of Hate and Contempt</b></p>
<p><b>Iraq</b>:  Kidnapped on May 27, the body of Salem Dawood Coca, a Christian, was found inside the truck he was driving when abducted.  According to AINA News, “The truck was booby trapped with explosives, and it is believed that he was forced to carry out a suicide bombing, but refused to do so. The kidnappers had contacted Mr. Coca&#8217;s family but had not demanded a ransom and <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/2013079163548.htm">described him as a ‘Christian infidel</a>.’”<b> </b>Mr. Coca leaves behind a wife and several children.</p>
<p><b>Kurdistan</b>: A Muslim ambulance driver <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Kurdistan:-%27Islamic%27-ambulance-driver-refuses-to-take-the-body-of-a-Christian-woman-to-church-28547.html">refused to transport the deceased body of a Christian woman</a> from the hospital to the church, citing that it was forbidden in Islam. According to Asia News, “The body of the Assyrian woman, who died last Sunday at Zarkari hospital in Erbil, had to be brought to the town of Ankawa, but the Muslim ambulance driver refused to drive to the church because it is &#8220;haram&#8221; (forbidden) in Islam.”  In traditional Muslim theology, being near the deceased body of an infidel is dangerous, as the <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/jihad-martyrdom-and-the-torments-of-the-grave/">torture reserved for them</a> could spread.</p>
<p><b>Nigeria</b>: Growing numbers of Christian girls in Muslim-majority areas, where the Islamic group, Boko Haram holds sway, are being abducted, kept in the homes of Muslim leaders and forced to renounce their faith.  According to Professor Daniel Babayi, secretary of the Northern Christian Association of Nigeria, the issue is getting worse:  “<a href="http://barnabasfund.org/US/News/Archives/Christian-girls-abducted-forced-to-renounce-faith-in-Northern-Nigeria.html">Christian girls below the age of 18 are forcefully abducted and made to denounce their faith</a>… They have been kept in the houses of emirs or imams. When we report to the police, they tell you there is nothing they can do. The police have become very helpless. In some instances, they are part of the conspiracy.”  Last year, Boko Haram had declared that it would begin doing precisely this—kidnap Christian women—as a way “<a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3033/muslim-persecution-of-christians-march-2012">to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam</a>.”</p>
<p><b>Pakistan</b>:  Farhad Masih, a 16-year-old Christian boy, was arrested and beaten on the accusation that he was involved with a Muslim girl (which is forbidden in Islam).  A Muslim mob also tried to burn and loot his family’s house.  Local Muslim leaders have made several draconian stipulations, including that <a href="http://www.christiansinpakistan.com/3-christian-boys-were-killed-by-police-due-to-love-affair-with-muslim-girls/#sthash.cVlFOn5g.dpuf">the boy must either convert to Islam or die</a>.  The same thing happened earlier in April 2013, when three Christian youth were arrested, tortured, and killed by Pakistani police for allegedly having “love affairs” with Muslim girls.</p>
<p><b>Syria</b>:  According to the Assyrian International News Agency, the “Assyrian village of Tel Hormizd was attacked on Saturday, July 27 at about midnight. Fifty Arab Muslims on motorcycles entered the village and began a shooting rampage. According to residents, the <a href="http://www.christiansinpakistan.com/3-christian-boys-were-killed-by-police-due-to-love-affair-with-muslim-girls/#sthash.cVlFOn5g.dpuf">Muslims fired indiscriminately, wounding two Assyrians</a>, one of whom is still in hospital.”  Also, al-Qaeda linked rebel fighters abducted Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio, a prominent Italian Jesuit priest, most likely for <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/syrias-graphic-beheading-videos/">ransom or beheading</a>.  Ironically, Fr. Paolo had reportedly championed the uprising against Bashar al-Assad.</p>
<p><b>Nigerian Slaughter</b></p>
<p>July saw several atrocities during the jihad on Nigeria’s Christians, including:</p>
<p>• At least <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23498757">28 were killed in a series of explosions throughout a Christian neighborhood</a> in the Muslim-majority northern city of Kano.  The attacks happened in the evening while people were out “to enjoy the area’s nightlife.” The same neighborhood had been targeted in the past by Boko Haram.  The group has been responsible for the killing of more than 2,000 people; and although several nations have designated the group as a terrorist organization, the Obama government refuses to do so, even as <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/terrorism/234193-obama-administration-pressed-to-do-more-on-boko-haram-terror-designations-">several American policymakers push for the designation</a>.</p>
<p>• At least 30 Christian men, women and children were slain in three villages in southern Plateau state on June 27 by Islamic extremists suspected to be from outside of Nigeria who raided the villages massacring all in sight. Initially a Muslim spokesman for the military’s Special Task Force said the Christian residents of Magama, Bolgong and Karkashi were attacked by Fulani herdsmen “in apparent retaliation for cattle theft.” Later, however, the military said that many of the culprits were not even Nigerian.   “<a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2013/07/dozens-of-christians-killed-in-plateau-state-nigeria/">The number of Christians killed may be as high as 70</a>, as corpses of Christians killed while fleeing these attacked villages still litter the bushes,” said a witness. “The Muslim attackers chased their Christian victims on motorcycles and were killing them as they tried to escape. So many dead bodies have been recovered from the bush, and we believe that more may still be found….  So far, we have recorded over 100 houses that have been burnt down by the rampaging Muslim Fulani attackers in these villages.”</p>
<p>• According to <a href="http://www.christiantoday.com/article/nigeria.christian.girls.at.risk.of.abduction/33375.htm">Christian Today</a>, Boko Haram “has repeatedly attacked Christian communities and churches, most recently killing 40 at a boarding school in Yobe state on 6 July.  A dormitory was set alight in the attack and those fleeing gunned down.  A dormitory was set aflame while the children were sleeping; those trying to escape were gunned down.  A month earlier, 16 other students were shot dead in attacks on a secondary school in Yobe and another school in Borno.  True to its name, “Boko Haram,” or “Western Education is a Sin,” the group recently asserted, “Teachers who teach western education? <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/130715/boko-haram-leader-burn-schools-kill-teachers-no-ceasefire">We will kill them!</a> We will kill them in front of their students, and tell the students to henceforth study the Quran.”</p>
<p>• Islamic gunmen raided Dinu village in southern plateau state, a Christian village, on an early Sunday morning, before church services, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/nigeria-muslims-slaughter-christians-before-sunday-church-services/">as increasingly happens</a>, and <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2013/07/dozens-of-christians-killed-in-plateau-state-nigeria/">slaughtered six Christians</a>, a month after Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot another Christian to death in a nearby village and destroyed the churches of four villages.</p>
<p><b>About this Series</b></p>
<p>Because the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching pandemic proportions, “Muslim Persecution of Christians”  was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:</p>
<p>1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, Muslim persecution of Christians.</p>
<p>2) To show that such persecution is not &#8220;random,&#8221; but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Sharia.</p>
<p>Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; apostasy and blasphemy laws that criminalize and punish with death those who &#8220;offend&#8221; Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of <i>jizya </i>(financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like <i>dhimmis</i>, or second-class, &#8220;tolerated&#8221; citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination.</p>
<p>Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to India in the East, and throughout the West wherever there are Muslims—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.</p>
<p>Previous Reports:</p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-june-2013/">June, 2013</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslim-persecution-of-christians-may-2013/">May, 2013</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslim-persecution-of-christians-april-2013/">April, 2013</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-march-2013/">March, 2013</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslim-persecution-of-christians-february-2013/">February, 2013</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-january-2013/">January, 2013</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-december-2012/">December, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-november-2012/">November, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-october-2012/">October, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-september-2012/">September, 2012 </a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-august-2012/">August, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/12215/muslim-persecution-of-christians-july-2012">July, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/12045/muslim-persecution-of-christians-june-2012">June, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11930/muslim-persecution-of-christians-may-2012">May, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11713/muslim-persecution-of-christians-april-2012">April, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11604/muslim-persecution-of-christians-march-2012">March, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11373/muslim-persecution-of-christians-february-2012">February, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11152/muslim-persecution-of-christians-january-2012">January, 2012</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10989/muslim-persecution-of-christians-december-2011">December, 2011</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10922/muslim-persecution-of-christians-november-2011">November, 2011</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10724/muslim-persecution-of-christians-october-2011">October, 2011</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10504/muslim-persecution-of-christians-september-2011">September, 2011</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10247/muslim-persecution-of-christians-august-2011">August, 2011</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-july-2011/">July, 2011</a></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Islam&#8217;s War on the Copts</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/theodore-shoebat/islams-war-on-the-copts/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islams-war-on-the-copts</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Aug 2013 04:20:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Theodore Shoebat]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[copts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oppression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=201455</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A dire history lesson. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/islamg.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-201466" alt="islamg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/islamg-450x280.jpg" width="315" height="196" /></a><em>&#8220;I was constantly verbally abused for being a Christian. Even on the public buses, they would insult me for being Christian, and accused us of being infidels, and that we as Christian people deserve to be wiped off the face of this country, because they believe that we do not deserve to live in this country.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>These are the <a href="http://rescuechristians.org/muslims-in-egypt-christians-deserve-to-be-wiped-out/">words</a> of a Christian Copt from a recent interview on the current sufferings of the Egyptian Christians.</p>
<p><a href="http://rescuechristians.org/muslim-brotherhood-does-pogroms-against-christians-in-egypt/">Pogroms</a> have been done by the Muslim Brotherhood against Copts, calling for their deaths and the destruction of their churches. <a href="http://mbinenglish.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/fjp-helwan-facebook-page-on-church-attacks/">One Brotherhood statement</a> justifies the razing of sanctuaries, writing:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Pope of the Church is involved in the removal of the first elected Islamist president.</p>
<p>The Pope of the Church alleges Islamic Sharia is backwards, stubborn, and reactionary.</p>
<p>The Pope of the Church sponsors Black Bloc groups to create chaos, pursue banditry, and siege and storm mosques.</p>
<p>The Church mobilizes the Copts in June 30 demonstrations to topple the Islamist president.</p>
<p>The Pope of the Church objects to the articles of Islamic identity and withdraws from the Constituent Assembly.</p>
<p>The Pope of the Church was the first to respond to Al-Sisi’s call to authorize the killing of Muslims and the outcome of the authorization was more than 500 dead today.</p>
<p>The Pope of the Church sends a memo to the current commission to cancel the articles of Sharia.</p>
<p>After all this people ask why they burn the churches.</p></blockquote>
<p>Here is a recent video of a patriarch orthodox church attacked by the Muslims:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/KEC9GfIg0cE" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Nina Shea <a href="http://rescuechristians.org/muslim-brotherhood-does-pogroms-against-christians-in-egypt/">gives a list of the names of the churches</a> ransacked by the jihadists:</p>
<blockquote><p>The litany of attacks is long: St. George Church, St. Mary’s Church, Good Shepherd’s Church, the Pentecostal Church, in Minya; St. Therese Church, Church of the Reformation, Church of the Apostle, Holy Revival Church, St. John’s Church, in Assiut; Church of the Virgin Mary in Cairo, St. Damiana Church, the Evangelical Church, and Joseph’s Church, in Fayoum; Church of the Archangel Michael, St. Saviors Anglican Church, the Greek Orthodox and Franciscan churches, in Suez; Fr. Maximus Church and St. George’s Church, in Alexandria</p></blockquote>
<p>This is a repeat of history &#8212; history that has occurred since great tyrants of the Muslim faith have ruled over Egypt. By learning from history we can predict that a major massacre of the Copts is inevitable. Al-Hakim, a past tyrant who believed himself to be Allah reincarnated, and was called an antichrist by the Christians, massacred many of the faithful; he burned down the Egyptian city of Babylon for its Christianity, beheaded saints, seized the property of the followers of Christ and tore down thirty thousand churches. He forced Christians to wear a huge cross around their necks, Jews to put a round piece of wood around theirs, outlawed Christian holidays and burned any cross discovered. [1]</p>
<p>Years later, under a different ruler, a man named Nekam denied Christ to preserve himself, but once guilt seeped into his heart, and he realized that “whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” (Matthew 16:25) he confronted tyranny directly, threw away his Muslim garb and wore Christian dress, and openly proclaimed Christ. He was arrest and sentenced to death, and when his father came to visit and convince him to leave his zealotry, he had already professed who his Redeemer was, and was beheaded. [2]</p>
<p>The patriarch of Egypt in the early thirteenth century, Nicholas, had this to say on the persecution occurring in a letter to Pope Honorius in Rome:</p>
<p>“If any Christian church from any accident happens to fall, we dare not rebuild it; and for these fourteen years past each Christian in Egypt is compelled to pay a [Jizya] tax of one bezant and fourteen karabbas; and if he be poor, he is committed to prison and not set at liberty until he have paid the whole sum. There are so many Christians in this country that the Sultan derives from them a yearly revenue of one hundred thousand golden bezants. What further shall I say when Christians are employed for every unfit and sordid work, and are even compelled to clean the streets of the city?” [3]</p>
<p>On one afternoon in June 1320, mosques throughout Egypt were observing the Friday prayers, and in multiple congregations men arose and cried out “God [Allah] is great! God is great! O my brethren, let us go forth and destroy the churches!” In Cairo the same rallying cry was heard in three places at the same moment. It was a calculated plot, the conspirators understood the easily shaken conscious of the masses, and it worked sufficiently to rouse the mob to violence.</p>
<p>They attacked the church of Zehry, and not one stone of the sanctuary was left upon another. They then raided and ruined the church of St. Mena in the Hamra quarter. The mob broke through the Church of the Maiden, took out every nun and stripped them all naked, plundered the church of its valuables and then set it on fire. The same rabble destroyed another 56 churches and countless convents. A crowed rushed to the sultan and screamed, “Let there be no faith except that of Islam! God protect the faith of Mohammad! O thou commander of the faithful, help us against the infidels. No favour to the Christians!”</p>
<p>The sultan unwillingly acquiesced to the wants of the masses just as Pilot had done, and the crowed was ecstatic at such freedom given to them. The details of the violence is left only to our imagination, but we know that they ferociously reduced the Christians into servility, with any Christian caught wearing a white turban or riding a horse swiftly put to death. [4]</p>
<p>This mob violence continued on for years. One Christian was tortured for a whole week and then beheaded for denouncing the wickedness and anarchy of the Muslims. Churches were frequently leveled to the ground and Christian tombs were torn open and the bodies burnt. One multitude of jihadists even went so far as to make a large pit to throw Christian in. (5) One Christian named Gabriel was seized, and under the order of the sultan, tortured and forced to parade naked through the streets as an official screamed, “Thus shall it be done to every Christian in the employ of the Sultan.”</p>
<p>This type of violence is only going to occur again, but this era of persecution will be the ultimate one, unlike the past oppression. A holocaust of the Copts is coming, it is inexorable. But there is a great hope, for the prophet Isaiah prophesied:</p>
<blockquote><p>In that day shall there be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the LORD. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the LORD because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them. (Isaiah 19:19-20)</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong></p>
<p>(1) Edith Louisa Butcher, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Story of the Church of Egypt</span> (Reprint Edition, Ams Pr Inc: June 1997), vol. ii, part ii, ch. xv, pp. 26-28.</p>
<p>(2) Ibid., vol. ii, part ii, ch. xvi, pp. 41-42.</p>
<p>(3) Ibid., vol. ii, part ii, ch. xxiv, p. 134.</p>
<p>(4) Ibid., vol. ii, part ii, ch. xxix, pp. 188-199.</p>
<p>(5) Ibid., vol. ii, part ii, ch. xxx, pp. 205-206, 209.</p>
<p>(6) Ibid., vol. ii, part ii, ch. xxxi, pp. 226.</p>
<p><strong>Theodore Shoebat is the author of the book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Tyranny-When-Nations-Natural/dp/0982567901">For God or For Tyranny </a></strong></p>
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		<title>Death to Churches Under Islam: A Study of the Coptic Church, Part I</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/death-to-churches-under-islam-a-study-of-the-coptic-church-part-i/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=death-to-churches-under-islam-a-study-of-the-coptic-church-part-i</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:20:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A horrific past returns to the present. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Egypt_Church_burning_after_attack_300px.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-187476" alt="Egypt_Church_burning_after_attack_300px" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Egypt_Church_burning_after_attack_300px-238x350.jpg" width="190" height="280" /></a>[<i>Editor&#8217;s note: The following essay was originally published by the <a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/634399/the-fate-of-egypts-coptic-christians-part-one-with-raymond-ibrahim/" target="_blank">Inquisitr</a>, with a comprehensive introduction by Wolff Bachner.  It is divided in two parts.  Part I follows.</i>]</p>
<p>Christians throughout the Islamic world are under attack.  Unlike Muslim attacks on Christians, which are regularly confused with a myriad of social factors, the ongoing attacks on Christian churches in the Muslim world are perhaps the most visible expression of Christian persecution under Islam. In churches, Christians throughout the Islamic world are simply being Christians—peacefully and apolitically worshipping their God.  And yet modern day Muslim governments try to prevent them, Muslim mobs attack them, and Muslim jihadis massacre them.</p>
<p>To understand the nature of this perennial hostility, one must first examine Muslim doctrines concerning Christian churches; then look at how these teachings have manifested themselves in reality over the course of centuries; and finally  look at how modern day attacks on Christian churches mirror the attacks of history, often in identical patterns.   The continuity is undeniable.</p>
<p>Because tracing and documenting the treatment of churches across the thousands of miles of formerly Christian lands conquered by Islam is well beyond the purview of this study, a paradigm is needed.  Accordingly, an examination of the treatment of Christian churches in Egypt suffices as a model for understanding the fate churches under Islamic dominion.   Indeed, as one of the oldest and largest Muslim nations, with one of the oldest and largest Christian populations, Egypt is the ultimate paragon for understanding all aspects of Christianity under Islam, both past and present.  [For a complete survey of the fate of Christians and their churches throughout the entire Muslim world, both past and present, see author’s new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621570258/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1621570258&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=uhurnetw-20"><i>Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians</i></a><i>.</i>]</p>
<p><b>Muslim Doctrine Concerning Churches</b></p>
<p>Sharia law is draconian if not hostile to Christian worship.  Consider the words of some of Islam’s most authoritative and classic jurists, the same ones revered today by Egypt’s Salafis.  According to Ibn Qayyim author of the multivolume <i>Rules for the Dhimmis, </i>it is “obligatory” to destroy or convert into a mosque “every church” both old and new that exists on lands that were taken by Muslims through force, for they “breed corruption.”  Even if Muslims are not sure whether one of “these things [churches] is old [pre-conquest] or new, it is better to err on the side of caution, treat it as new, and demolition it.”</p>
<p>Likewise, Ibn Taymiyya confirms that “the ulema of the Muslims from all four schools of law—Hanafi, Shafi‘i, Maliki, Hanbali, and others, including al-Thawri, al-Layth, all the way back to the companions and the followers—are all agreed that if the imam destroys every church in lands taken by force, such as Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Syria … this would not be deemed unjust of him,” adding that, if Christians resist, “they forfeit their covenant, their lives, and their possessions.” Elsewhere he writes, “Wherever Muslims live and have mosques, it is impermissible for any sign of infidelity to be present, churches or otherwise.”</p>
<p>Echoing the words of the jurists that the church is “worse than bars and brothels” and “houses of torment and fire,” in August 2009, Dar al-Ifta, an Al Azhar affiliate, issued a fatwa likening the building of a church to “a nightclub, a gambling casino, or building a barn for rearing pigs, cats or dogs.”  In July 2012, Dr. Yassir al-Burhami, a prominent figure in Egypt’s Salafi movement, issued a fatwa forbidding Muslim taxi-drivers and bus-drivers from transporting Coptic Christian priests to their churches, which he depicted as “more forbidden than taking someone to a liquor bar.”</p>
<p>Regardless, one need only examine the Conditions of Omar—an influential document Muslims attribute to 7<sup>th</sup> century Caliph Omar, purportedly ratified with a conquered Christian community—to appreciate the plight of the church under Islam. Among other things, conquered Christians had to agree:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Not to build a church in our city… and not to repair those that fall in ruins or are in Muslim quarters;….Not to clang our cymbals except lightly and from the innermost recesses of our churches; Not to display a cross on them [churches], nor raise our voices during prayer or readings in our churches anywhere near Muslims; Not to produce a cross or [Christian] book in the markets of the Muslims;…. [I]f we change or contradict these conditions imposed upon ourselves . . . we forfeit our dhimma [covenant], and we become liable to the same treatment you inflict upon the people who resist and cause sedition.</i></p></blockquote>
<p><b>History </b></p>
<p>When it comes to churches, Islamic history is a testimony to Islamic doctrine: under Muslim rule, from the 7<sup>th</sup> century to the present, tens of thousands of churches that were once spread across thousands of miles of formerly Christian lands, were attacked, plundered, ransacked, destroyed and/or converted into mosques.  Such a large number is consistent with the fact that, at the time of the Muslim conquests, half of the world’s entire Christian population lived in those lands invaded and subjugated by Islam.</p>
<p>According to one medieval Muslim historian, over the two-year-course of a particularly ruthless Christian persecution campaign, some 30,000 churches were burned or pillaged in Egypt and Syria alone.  Major church attacks during Abbasid rule include when “the Muslims in Jerusalem made a rising [in 936] and burnt down the Church of the Resurrection [believed to be built atop the tomb of Christ] which they plundered, and destroyed all they could of it.” Nearly a century later, Caliph Hakim bi-Amr Allah (r. 996-1021) ordered that the already ravaged Church of the Resurrection be torn down “to its very foundations, apart from what could not be destroyed or pulled up, and they also destroyed the Golgotha and the Church of Saint Constantine and all that they contained, as well as all the sacred gravestones. They even tried to dig up the graves and wipe out all traces of their existence.”</p>
<p><b>A Coptic Paradigm</b></p>
<p>The history, or plight, of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church is well preserved. <i>The History of the Patriarchate of the Egyptian Church</i>, for instance, a multivolume chronicle begun under Coptic Bishop Severus ibn al-Muqaffa in the 10<sup>th</sup> century, records innumerable massacres and persecutions over the centuries, from destroyed churches, to crucified Christians, to raped and murdered nuns.</p>
<p>However, to bypass the objection that Christian writers may have been biased against their persecutors, let us content ourselves with the famous history of Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi (1364 – 1442), the most authoritative Muslim scholar of Egyptian history in the Middle Ages.  His account appears especially objective when one considers that the pious Muslim Maqriz was no friend to the Christians.  For example, after recounting centuries of persecution and church destruction at the hands of Muslims, Maqrizi concludes by sounding like a modern-day Salafi, blaming Christians for their own persecution: “For from the traces they left, will then be seen how shamefully they intrigued against Islamism and the followers of it, as any one may know who looks into the lowness of their origin, and the old hated of their ancestors towards our religion and the doings thereof.”</p>
<p>In Maqrizi’s account, things appear relatively quiet during the first century of Islam’s occupation of Egypt (circa 641-741), no doubt due to the fact that Christians still numerically overwhelmed their Muslim conquerors.  By 767, however, after decades of Coptic uprisings in face of abuses, “heavier hardships than ever fell upon the Christians, who were obliged to eat the[ir] dead; while their new churches in Egypt were destroyed.  The church of Mary anent [alongside] that of Abu Senuda in Egypt was also pulled down, as well as that in the ward of Constantine, which the Christians entreated Suliman bin Ali, Emir of Egypt, to spare for fifty thousand dinars; but he would not.”  By 845, al-Mutawakal ordered Christian churches to be pulled down.  In 912, “the great church in Alexandria, known as that of the Resurrection, was burnt down.” In 939, “the Muslims made another rising in the city of Askalon, where they demolished the Greek Church of Mary, and plundered what was in it.”</p>
<p>Then comes the era of the aforementioned Caliph Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who decimated the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem.  In the words of al-Maqrizi:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>And in his [al-Hakim’s] time, hardships such as one never saw befell the Christians….  He then laid his hands on all endowments of the churches and of the monasteries, which he confiscated to the public treasury, and wrote to that effect to all his provinces.  He then burnt the wood of a great many crosses, and forbade the Christians to buy men or maid servants [which were often set free]; he pulled down the churches that were in the street Rashida, outside the city of Misr [Old Cairo].  He then laid in ruins the churches of al-Maqs outside Cairo, and made over their contents to the people, who plundered them of more goods than can be told.  He threw down the convent of al-Qosseir, and gave it to the people to sack….He then set about demolishing all churches, and made over to the people, as prey and forfeit, all that was in them, and all that was settled on them.  They were then all demolished, all their furniture and chattels were plundered, their endowments were forfeited to others, and mosques were built in their place.  He allowed the call to prayer from the church of Senuda in Misr; and built a wall around the church of Mo’allaqa [the Hanging Church], in Qasr esh-Sema.  Then many people [Muslims] sent up letters to request to be allowed to search the churches and monasteries in provinces of Egypt.  But their request was hardly delivered [at headquarters], when a favourable answer was returned to the request; so they took the vessels and chattel of the churches and of the monasteries, and sold them in the market places of Egypt, together with what they found in those churches of gold and silver vessels, and things of the kind; and bartered their endowments.   The emir also wrote to the intendants of the provinces to support the Muslims in their destruction of the churches and of monasteries.  And the work of demolition in Egypt was so general in the year 1012, that according to statements on which one can rely, as to what was demolished at the end of the year 1014, both in Egypt and in Syria and the provinces thereof, of temples built by the Greeks—it amounted to more than 3,000 churches [the original Arabic says 30,000]. All the gold and silver vessels in them were plundered, their endowments were forfeited; and those endowments were splendid and bestowed on wonderful edifices.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Finally, after describing different forms of persecutions against Christians during Hakim’s reign, Maqrizi, the Muslim historian, makes an interesting observation: “Under these circumstances a great many Christians became Muslims.” In another place, after recounting how “the greater number of the churches of the Sa‘id [Upper Egypt] had been pulled down, and mosques built in their stead,” the historian notes again the typical consequence: “more than four hundred and fifty Christians became Muslims in one day.”</p>
<p>It bears repeating that the Muslim Maqrizi had no great love for Egypt’s Christians, and  made disparaging observations concerning them in his volumes—thereby making his account of persecution all the more trustworthy.</p>
<p>Because Hakim’s persecution was so terrible and far-reaching, most modern Western historians acknowledge it, even as they portray it as an aberration of a madman, implying that Christians suffered only under his rule. Yet there is no dearth of Muslim leaders throughout the whole of Islamic history that did not at one time or another persecute Christians and their churches.</p>
<p>If Hakim is remembered as a terrible and insane tyrant, consider Caliph Harun al-Rashid, who in the West is depicted as a colorful and fun-loving prankster in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>.  Though renowned for his secular pursuits—including riotous living, strong drink and harems of concubines, to the point that a modern day female Kuwaiti activist referred to him as a model to justify the institution of sex-slavery—Harun al-Rashid was still pious enough “to force Christians to distinguish themselves by dress, to expel them from their positions, and to destroy their churches through the use of fatwas by the imams.”  Similarly, Saladin (Salah ad-Din)—another Muslim ruler who is habitually portrayed in the West as magnanimous and tolerant—commanded that all crucifixes on Coptic church domes be destroyed, and that “whoever saw that the outside of a church was white, to cover it with black dirt,” as a sign of degradation.</p>
<p>Indeed, in 1354, well after the “mad caliph” Hakim was gone, churches were still under attack, including by Muslim mobs, who, according to Maqrizi, “demolished a church anent the Bridge of Lions, and a church in the street el-Asra in Misr, and the Church of Fahhadin within the precincts of Cairo; also the Convent of Nehya in Djizah, and a church in the neighborhood of Bataq al-Tokruni; they plundered the wealth of the churches they demolished, which was great; and carried away even the woodwork and slabs of alabaster.  They rushed upon the churches of Misr and Cairo…”</p>
<p>Such was the state of affairs of churches under Islam, explaining how, over the course of nearly 14 centuries, former centers of Christianity like Egypt, were reduced to sporadic enclaves that came to resemble dilapidated strongholds of Christianity surrounded by a sea of Muslim hostility.</p>
<p>And such is the state of affairs of Christian churches throughout much of the Muslim world at this very moment as the past returns to the present.</p>
<p><strong>End of Part I</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Presbyterian Church Uses Islamists for Interfaith Study</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Apr 2013 04:50:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Warns of “anti-Muslim” actions while partnering with U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/presbyterian-church-uses-islamists-for-interfaith-study/pres-4/" rel="attachment wp-att-185141"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-185141" title="pres" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/pres.gif" alt="" width="280" height="280" /></a>The Presbyterian Church (USA) is updating its 2010 study, “<a href="http://www.pcusa.org/media/uploads/interfaithrelations/pdf/toward_an_understanding_of_christian-muslim_relations.pdf">&#8220;Toward an Understanding of Christian-Muslim Relations,&#8221;</a> which was prompted by “alarming anti-Muslim statements and actions.” The 2-million member church partnered with Islamist groups for the project and its website promotes U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities as interfaith partners.</p>
<p>The listed advisors for the study include Naeem Baig, president of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and Farhanahz Eliz of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, a mosque led by the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). A <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/Muslim_Brotherhood_Explanatory_Memorandum">1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo</a> lists ISNA and ICNA among “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” ISNA was labeled by the government as an <a href="http://media.radicalislam.org/misc/pdf/List+of+Unindicted+HLF+Co-conspirators.pdf">unindicted co-conspirator</a> in the Holy Land Foundation trial and U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.</p>
<p>Another advisor was Ghulam Haider Aasi of American Islamic College. The chairman of the <a href="http://www.aicusa.edu/about/board-of-trustees/#sthash.OVBjpGbs.dpbs">board of trustees</a> is Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the <a href="http://www.oicun.org/4/29/">Secretary-General</a> of the <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/defamation-religion-rule-applies-islam-only#frm">Organization of Islamic Cooperation.</a> Its <a href="http://www.aicusa.edu/about/board-of-advisers/#sthash.eq3bRZbo.dpbs">advisory board</a> includes Ahmed Rehab of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Kifah Mustapha of the <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/case/391">Mosque Foundation</a>. CAIR and Mustapha are also unindicted co-conspirators that were listed as part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. The president of the Mosque Foundation, Oussama Jamal, is also on the advisory board.</p>
<p>The study’s bibliography cites Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood’s creator; Dr. John Esposito, one of the top allies of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network and Ingrid Mattson, former ISNA president, described by the authors as an “excellent and readable scholar.” She is also on the International Institute of Islamic Thought’s <a href="http://www.iiit.org/AboutUs/CouncilofScholars/tabid/228/Default.aspx">Council of Scholars</a>, another group mentioned in the 1991 memo.</p>
<p>The Presbyterian Mission Agency’s <a href="http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/interfaith/interfaith-links/">&#8220;interfaith links of interest&#8221;</a> include CAIR, ICNA, ISNA and the <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/muslim-public-affairs-council-debates-radicalislamorg#frm">Muslim Public Affairs Council</a> (MPAC), a group founded by Muslim Brotherhood ideologues that has opposed the designations of Hamas and Hezbollah as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.</p>
<p>An e-mail sent to an address on the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s website was not returned.</p>
<p>The Presbyterian Church (USA) also <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&amp;x_outlet=118&amp;x_article=2433">whitewashed</a> Imam Zaid Shakir and Zaytuna College in a book it published titled, <a href="http://www.wjkbooks.com/Products/0664237053/the-search-for-truth-about-islam.aspx"><em>&#8220;The Search for Truth About Islam: A Christian Pastor Separates Fact from Fiction</em></a>” by Reverend Ben Daniel. The book “explores what he calls ‘the American cult of fear,’ particularly as it relates to the rise of Islamophobia in the United States.”</p>
<p>The book says that Zaytuna College, which Shakir is a founder and co-chairman of, is “filling an important niche in American higher education.” The reader is not told about his <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/news/american-imam-compares-school-shooting-us-israeli-military-operations#frm">history</a> of <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/imam-zaid-shakir-marine-barracks-bombing-not-terrorism#frm">extremism</a>, which includes preaching that a <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/top-american-imam-called-resurrected-caliphate-wage-jihad#frm">new Caliphate</a> is needed to wage jihad with “weaponry against the enemies of Islam.” Instead, readers are left with the impression that Shakir is a living rebuttal to all the negative stereotypes that moderate Muslims must contend with.</p>
<p>What begins as an interfaith partnership often becomes a political partnership. In July 2012, the Presbyterian Church Office of Public Witness and other Christian groups <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/american-christians-shocking-support-islamists">came to the defense</a> of ISNA, MPAC and Huma Abedin, the State Department appointee with <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/huma-abedin-associate-editor-islamist-journal#frm">Islamist links.</a> The Presbyterian Church was offended that Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other congressmen had raised concerns about the Brotherhood links of these organizations and individuals.</p>
<p>The Presbyterian Church (USA) and its Islamic interfaith partners have also made common cause when it comes to Israel. The Church <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/divestment-fails-now_648498.html">almost voted in favor of divestment</a> from Israel last summer, winning praise from the director of ISNA’s Office of Interfaith Relations, Sayyid Syeed. He was previously <a href="http://www.thegranddeception.com">recorded</a> in 2006 saying, “Our job is to change the constitution of America.”</p>
<p>Its Israel-Palestine Mission Network endorsed the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/no-blank-check-for-israel-march-coming-to-dc-on-january-19/">&#8220;No Blank Check for Israel&#8221; rally</a> on January 19. It is a member of the <a href="http://www.israelpalestinemissionnetwork.org/main/component/content/article/245-sodastream-boycott">Interfaith Boycott Coalition</a>, the faith-based wing of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. The Interfaith Boycott Coalition <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/interfaith-financial-war-on-israel/">supported the boycott</a> of SodaStream because it is based in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.</p>
<p>The revised study is scheduled to be presented during the 221<sup>st</sup> General Assembly in 2014. The current version states that Presbyterians are called to “identify and speak out against bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, and violence against Islam and Muslim peoples of all cultures, especially in the United States.”</p>
<p>This may be a laudable goal, but we’ve seen how these groups use “Islamophobia” as a weapon against their critics. When Rep. Bachmann and her colleagues confronted these groups, they responded by deploying the Presbyterian Church and their other interfaith partners. They were criticized as paranoid and bigoted.</p>
<p>The Islamists want to make the church their “Islamophobia” police and undermine American-Christian support for Israel. And they are making progress.</p>
<p><strong>This article was sponsored by the <a href="http://www.theird.org">Institute on Religion and Democracy.</a> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>A Florida Megachurch Pastor&#8217;s Islamist Associations</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/a-florida-megachurch-pastors-islamist-associations/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-florida-megachurch-pastors-islamist-associations</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:17:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Joel C. Hunter]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Influential church leader joins with Muslim Brotherhood front groups to oppose ban on foreign law. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/a-florida-megachurch-pastors-islamist-associations/northland_church/" rel="attachment wp-att-184722"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-184722" title="northland_church" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/northland_church-450x299.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="179" /></a>Pastor Joel C. Hunter of Florida’s Northland Church is under fire for his stance against the state’s proposed legislation based on <a href="http://publicpolicyalliance.org/legislation/american-laws-for-american-courts/">American Laws for American Courts</a>. He chose a peculiar individual to help make his case: Atif Fareed, former chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Florida.</p>
<p>The influence of Pastor Hunter is not to be dismissed. His church’s congregation numbers around <a href="http://www.northlandchurch.net/staff/dr_joel_c_hunter/?JoelHunter/">15,000</a> and he sits on the boards of the National Association of Evangelicals and the World Evangelical Alliance. He has served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and remains a “spiritual advisor” to him.</p>
<p>Hunter <a href="http://www.charismanews.com/us/38877-joel-hunter-responds-to-accusations-of-islamist-association">opposes</a> the legislation, which is designed to stop foreign law from superseding American law, because he sees it as an “unnecessary law that increases bias and heightens animosity between Christians and Muslims.” Although it is often described as “anti-Shariah” legislation, it doesn’t mention Shariah or Islam. It is focused on all foreign law.</p>
<p>The Florida Family Association <a href="http://floridafamily.org/full_article.php?article_no=216">went into action</a> when Hunter asked Atif Fareed, a former chairman of the Florida branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), to read a statement to the Florida Senate Committee on Governmental Oversight and Accountability for him. CAIR was labeled an <a href="http://media.radicalislam.org/misc/pdf/List+of+Unindicted+HLF+Co-conspirators.pdf">unindicted co-conspirator</a> in the country’s largest terrorism-finance trial and was listed among “individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” The Palestine Committee is a secret Brotherhood body set up to support the Hamas agenda in America.</p>
<p>Fareed was <a href="http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2633">interrogated</a> by the FBI for three hours in 2004, but he has provided sensitivity training to FBI agents since then. He was a representative for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group founded by Brotherhood ideologues, and was involved in a <a href="http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/5270">rally</a> to defend Sami al-Arian, a convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader. He is the <a href="http://www.amccenters.org/boardmembers.php">chairman</a> of American Muslim Community Centers, which has a facility in the same city as Hunter’s church.</p>
<p>The organization’s <a href="http://www.amccenters.org/amccbylaws.php">bylaws</a> state that if it were to be dissolved, its assets are to be distributed to the “North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) or another recognized National non-profit Islamic organization.” NAIT, like CAIR, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation and is listed as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity. A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/Muslim_Brotherhood_Explanatory_Memorandum">strategic memorandum</a>, which describes its work as a “kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within,” lists NAIT as one of its fronts.</p>
<p>“I am not aligning myself with CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other Muslim organization. I am not for Shariah or any other foreign law to compete with our Constitution,” Hunter <a href="http://www.charismanews.com/us/38877-joel-hunter-responds-to-accusations-of-islamist-association">said</a> after the controversy began.</p>
<p>Though Hunter insists the legislation is not necessary, the Center for Security Policy has compiled <a href="http://shariahinamericancourts.com/">50 instances</a> where Shariah-based legislation from 16 countries influenced the court case. As the American Public Policy Alliance <a href="http://publicpolicyalliance.org/answering-the-critics/aug-16-2011-response-to-cair-mi-disinformation-on-alac/">explains</a>, unclear state law has resulted in “the courts and the litigants hav[ing] repeatedly failed to recognize that granting comity to a foreign judgment may be at odds with our state and federal constitutional principles…”</p>
<p>The website has <a href="http://publicpolicyalliance.org/faq/ten-american-families-and-shariah-law/">10 cases</a> where American-Muslim court cases where there was conflict between American law and Shariah-based foreign law. The results are as follows: “In cases 1-3, the Appellate Courts upheld Shariah law; in cases 4-7, the Trial Courts upheld Shariah, but the Appellate Courts reversed (protecting the litigant’s constitutional rights); in cases 8-10, both Trial and Appellate Courts rejected the attempts to enforce Shariah law.”</p>
<p>Hunter’s view of himself as a rival of “Christian Zionists”  may help explain his relationship with Fareed, who said in 2002, “[Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon is a warmonger and only the United States can stop him.”</p>
<p>“There is a part of the evangelical family, which is what I call Christian Zionists, who are just so staunchly pro-Israel that Israel and their side can do no wrong, and it’s almost anti-biblical to criticize Israel for anything. But there are many more evangelicals who are really open and seek justice for both parties,” Hunter <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/us/29evangelical.html?pagewanted=print&amp;_r=0">said</a> in 2007.</p>
<p>In his March 2012 newsletter, Hunter <a href="http://www.pastorjoelhunter.com/?p=891">spoke at</a> the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/christ-at-an-israeli-checkpoint-2/">&#8220;Christ at the Checkpoint&#8221; conference</a> put together by Palestinian Christians at Bethlehem Bible College. An article posted on Hunter’s website <a href="http://www.pastorjoelhunter.com/?p=877">reports</a> how the audience, including students from Wheaton and Eastern Universities, “were moved by the testimony of Palestinian men and women who shared the pain and suffering they experience on a daily basis caused primarily by the continuing occupation.”</p>
<p>The Bethlehem Bible College’s President, Dr. Bishara Awad, is an <a href="http://www.emeu.net/media/bulletin_february_12.pdf">&#8220;old friend&#8221;</a> of the executive director of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding, who attended the conference.</p>
<p>As we <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/israel-haters-invade-wheaton-college/">documented when the group held an event at Wheaton College</a>, Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding’s objective is to battle Christian Zionism, which it accuses of seeking to trigger Armageddon. Its former director even spoke at an <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/brotherhoodhamas-linked-activists-gather-illinois-extremist-event#frm">American Muslims for Palestine convention</a> full of Islamist speakers linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.</p>
<p>When groups like CAIR talk about interfaith engagement, they are talking about political coalition-building. For Islamists, the true test of one’s tolerance is their willingness to join their campaigns.</p>
<p><em>This article was sponsored by the <a href="http://www.theird.org/">Institute on Religion and Democracy.</a></em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Hatred of Christians Unleashed in Libya</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/libyas-unleashed-hatred-for-christianity/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=libyas-unleashed-hatred-for-christianity</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Mar 2013 04:20:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Attacks on Benghazi consulate and religious minorities share a common cause in the Islamist state.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/libyas-unleashed-hatred-for-christianity/copts-attacked1/" rel="attachment wp-att-180113"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-180113" title="copts-attacked[1]" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/copts-attacked1.jpg" alt="" width="254" height="184" /></a>Last Thursday, a Coptic Christian church located in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked by armed Muslim militants.  Initial reports indicate that at least one priest, Fr. Paul Isaac, was injured, as well as his assistant.  It is the second church to be attacked in two months.  Earlier, on Sunday, December 30, an <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20121230-libya-church-blast-kills-two-egyptians-embassy">explosion rocked a Coptic Christian church </a>near the western city of Misrata, where a group of U.S. backed rebels hold a major checkpoint. The explosion killed two people and wounded two others, all Egyptians.</p>
<p>Such attacks rarely if ever occurred under Col. Gaddafi.</p>
<p>There are currently few details.  Based on countless examples from past experience—including centuries of demonstrable continuity—there were likely loud cries of “Allahu Akbar!” with an exuberant sense of Islamic supremacism in the air. As for motivation, it was likely sheer anti-Christian sentiment.  For where else are Christians being Christians than in church—where they are being as apolitical as they are spiritual, simply trying to worship their God in peace, only to be attacked yet again.</p>
<p>At any rate, here is one more piece of solid evidence to validate my <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/mass-arrest-and-torture-of-christians-in-libya/">observation from last week</a>—that the recent spate of arrests of Christians in Libya on the accusation that they are “missionaries” is a pretext for simple, good old-fashioned Christian hate.  After all, this armed attack on a Christian church in Benghazi occurred right around the same time 100 Christian Copts were arrested and tortured, their heads shaven and their tattooed crosses burned off with acid.</p>
<p>Libya’s Islamists had no problem arresting and torturing these Copts, indeed, boasting of it by posting a video of them on the Internet.  Libyan law makes it illegal for any Christian to display their Christianity or, worse, preach it.  Thus the Islamic militias are off the hook, as they were merely performing the equivalent of a “citizen’s arrest” when they abducted and trapped all those Egyptian Christians because they had crosses, Bibles, and religious icons.</p>
<p>Ironically, whereas the Libyan government has not condemned the arrest and abuse of Christians accused of proselytizing—how can it when its own laws ban non-Muslim missionary activities?—it has “voiced its concern” and “expressed regret” for this latest attack on Christians, the Benghazi church raid.  On Sunday, Libya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation said that the attack was “contrary to the teachings of our Islamic faith and customs and as well as international covenants on human rights and fundamental freedoms and respect for the monotheistic religions.” The statement further called on “all Libyan citizens to respect those from friendly and sister countries living in Libya and to respect their beliefs.”</p>
<p>Such benevolent assertions are contradictory on many levels.  Do Libyan authorities really think that enforcing a ban on Christian preaching—that is, banning Christian free speech according to the Muslim belief that Christianity is a false religion that cannot be given a platform to spread—would not further prompt or at least validate fierce anti-Christian sentiment among the average Libyan?  In other words, if Christianity is portrayed by Muslim authorities as a religion that must be denied utterance because it is false, is it not natural that anti-Christian sentiment would metastasize to the average Libyan Muslim, leading to things like attacks on churches, which are then seen as breeding grounds for such falsities or—as the jihadi terrorists who slaughtered nearly 60 Christians in the 2010 Baghdad church attack put it—“nests of paganism”?</p>
<p>How, then, can the Libyan government call on Libyans to “respect their [Christians’] beliefs”?  How can it invoke “international covenants on human rights and fundamental freedoms”—covenants which permit free speech, in this case proselytism, which Muslims in the West routinely exercise?  Is this not just mere talk?</p>
<p>And that’s just it; Libya’s more fervent Muslims know better. If Christian churches are not (currently) banned by Libyan law, their construction on Muslim soil is banned by Islamic <em>Sharia</em> law, which, incidentally, also happens to be the source for the ban on Christian proselytism.  (According to Muslim tradition, in the 7<sup>th</sup> century Caliph Omar ordered conquered Christians not to build new churches and not to preach Christianity around any Muslim.)</p>
<p>Such is the interconnectivity of Islam’s teachings.  Where one anti-Christian law is upheld, many manifestations of anti-Christian sentiment—along with justifications and rationalizations—will follow.</p>
<p>Such also is the interconnectivity of Benghazi: where American embassies are attacked and diplomats killed, so too are Christians and their churches unwelcome. They are all infidels—false, to be despised and denied.   The only Benghazi-related incongruity is that the United States government helped empower it and the Obama administration continues to support it.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>A Congressman&#8217;s Crusade for Human and Religious Rights</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/a-congressmans-crusade-for-human-and-religious-rights/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-congressmans-crusade-for-human-and-religious-rights</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:35:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Faith J. H. McDonnell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[U.S. Representative Frank R. Wolf challenges Church leaders to stand up on behalf of the persecuted.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/a-congressmans-crusade-for-human-and-religious-rights/olympus-digital-camera-7/" rel="attachment wp-att-173498"><img class="wp-image-173498 alignleft" title="OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/wolf-450x337.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="236" /></a>Evoking the moral apathy and failure of the past, U.S. Representative Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) recently <a href="http://wolf.house.gov/press-releases/wolf-calls-on-religious-leaders-in-west-to-speak-out-on-behalf-of-persecuted-church-globally/">asked church leaders around the United States</a> to use their influence for those who are persecuted. In his January 9, 2013 letter to over 300 Catholic and Protestant leaders, Wolf reminded them of the words of German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed by the Nazis during World War II. Bonhoeffer, when “faced with the tyranny and horror of Nazism, famously said, ‘Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.  Not to speak is to speak.  Not to act is to act,’” recalled Wolf.</p>
<p>“And that is precisely what many in the church did, or failed to do, as Hitler unleashed his murderous plans,” Wolf continued. Writing with passion and urgency to such representative Christian leaders as the U.S. Catholic bishops, the leaders of Protestant denominations, and the pastors of some of America’s largest “mega-churches,” the congressman then told the story of a German Christian shared in the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/When-Nation-Forgets-God-Lessons/dp/0802446566"><em>When a Nation Forgets God</em></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust.  I considered myself a Christian.  We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because, what could anyone do to stop it? </em></p>
<p><em>A railroad track ran behind our small church and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks.  We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by.  We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!</em></p>
<p><em>Week after week the whistle would blow.  We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp.  Their screams tormented us.</em></p>
<p><em>We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns.  By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top of our voices.  If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more.</em></p>
<p><em>Years have passed and no one talks about it anymore.  But I still hear that train whistle in my sleep.  God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians and yet did nothing to intervene.”</em></p></blockquote>
<p>There are <a href="http://juicyecumenism.com/2012/12/30/yet-another-german-bishop-decries-persecution-of-christians-and-political-correctness/">admirable</a> <a href="http://juicyecumenism.com/2012/12/28/german-catholic-bishops-decry-global-persecution-of-christians-call-for-prayer/">exceptions</a>, but many church leaders have not spoken out for the persecuted consistently and forthrightly or even called their churches to regular times of prayer for the persecuted. Yet Wolf has seen time and time again that committed, organized advocacy can make a difference. The congressman represents Virginia’s 10th District, but he also represents persecuted Christians and other targeted religious believers around the world. He is known for championing religious freedom and other human rights for people in Sudan, China, Egypt, Pakistan, and elsewhere. His advocacy is as long as his tenure in Congress. As he recounts in the book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Prisoner-Conscience-Crusade-Global-Religious/dp/0310328993/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1358191665&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Prisoner+of+Conscience+Frank+Wolf"><em>Prisoner of Conscience: One Man’s Crusade for Global Human and Religious Rights</em></a><em>, </em>written with Anne Morse, Wolf’s advocacy efforts began with Ethiopia, Romania, and with refuseniks, Christians, and other dissidents being persecuted in the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Wolf is also known for challenging U.S. Christians to accept their responsibility to speak out on behalf of co-religionists and others around the world. He once declared that church members should be confident of their influence with Congress because “there are more churches than Chambers of Commerce in the United States.” But in today’s morass of moral equivalence and political correctness, it is increasingly difficult to find religious leaders – let alone political ones – who will speak the truth. And when and if they do, there are always repercussions. <a href="http://www.theird.org/issues/religious-liberty/12-11-12-rl-angela-merkel-cites-christianity-as-the-worlds-most-persecuted-faith">German Chancellor Angela Merkel</a> discovered this when her statement that “Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world” in a November 2012 address to the Lutheran Church Synod provoked outrage.</p>
<p>Wolf’s letter revealed that in addition to ongoing advocacy for the persecuted around the world, this new session of Congress he will reintroduce a bill to create a special envoy position within the State Department to advocate on behalf of religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia. His previous bill passed overwhelmingly the House of Representatives, but was <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/senate-dems-hold-up-human-rights-legislation/">blocked in the Senate</a> because it was opposed by the State Department and by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry.</p>
<p>Arab “Spring” has exacerbated conditions for the Middle East Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Baha’I, and others for whom Wolf and U.S. Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA) formed the Congressional Caucus on Religious Minorities in the Middle East in 2008. Wolf noted that while there were some 150,000 Jews in Iraq in 1948, today there are less than 10. Likewise, there were over 1.4 million Christians in Iraq in 2003 and possibly as few as 500,000 today. “Over the span of a few decades, the Middle East, with the exception of Israel, was virtually emptied of Jews,” Wolf wrote. “The same thing will happen to the Christian community if the current trajectory holds true,” he lamented.</p>
<p>Conditions are no better for minority believers in Pakistan. Wolf finds inspiration in the late Pakistani federal minister for minority affairs, <a href="http://wolf.house.gov/bhattivideo">Shahbaz Bhatti</a>, who, he said, “boldly followed Jesus in spite of unbelievably hostile circumstances.” Bhatti was brutally assassinated for his outspoken defense of Christians and other minorities and his condemnation of Pakistan’s egregious Blasphemy Laws.</p>
<p>Although Wolf knows a special envoy cannot solve the persecution problem, he told the church leaders, “It certainly can’t hurt to have a high-level person within the State Department bureaucracy who is exclusively focused on the protection and preservation of these ancient communities.” The <em>right</em> envoy can make a difference. For instance, former Senator Jack Danforth, the first Sudan Special Envoy appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001, helped to create the conditions that led to Sudan’s north/south peace settlement. If nothing else, a special envoy would raise the profile of the marginalized. Wolf added, “To do nothing is simply not an option.”</p>
<p>“The Church globally is under assault,” Wolf wrote. “Our response must not be to simply sing more loudly thereby drowning out the cries for help from our brothers and sisters.  Rather we must speak out, advocate and act on their behalf.” But Wolf confessed that from his perspective, “the Church in the West, specifically in America, is failing in this regard.” He said that “the silence of many in the West is deafening” and that stories of religious persecution “receive scant attention in the mainstream media, and perhaps more strikingly, are rarely spoken of from our pulpits.” Wolf admitted that much information about the persecution of Christians and others under Islam is silenced by what British-based think tank Civitas calls “the logical error that equates criticism of Muslims with racism, and therefore as wrong by definition.”</p>
<p>“Can you, as a leader in the Church, help?” Wolf asked. “Are you pained by these accounts of persecution?” he demanded. “Will you use your sphere of influence to raise the profile of this issue—be it through a sermon, writing or media interview?” he challenged. He told the leaders that he welcomed their thoughts and invited their engagement “in this monumental task.”</p>
<p>Although it is tempting to merely express outrage or sadness at the persecution of religious believers and then move on to helplessness and inertia, Wolf does not afford church leaders that luxury. There <em>is </em>something they can do. There <em>is </em>something that they are called to do – and not just by a Virginia Congressman. But their voices and influence can help encourage other members of Congress to join that Virginia Congressman and others like him in legislative and diplomatic measures to defend religious minorities around the world.</p>
<p>Many individual Americans have been defenders of the persecuted and have mobilized other concerned citizens to both prayer and advocacy. But in targeting church leaders, Wolf hopes to spread that influence even more broadly, as well as to encourage church leaders to endorse and bless the advocacy that is already taking place by their parishioners and others.</p>
<p>“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” said Wolf, quoting from The Book of Proverbs. “The Chinese bishop under house arrest cannot speak.  The North Korean believer enslaved in the gulag can’t speak.  The Iraqi nun fearing for her life cannot speak,” he declared. Rather than leading their congregations in indulgent hymns of self-preoccupation, focused only on the local church and its issues, Church leaders must join their voices in advocacy for the persecuted and oppressed – a hymn as ancient as the Church itself.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>California Church to Become Site of Islamist Convention</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/california-church-to-become-site-of-islamist-convention/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=california-church-to-become-site-of-islamist-convention</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2012 04:37:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Muslim Brotherhood followers take the "next step" in their "mission" to corrupt interfaith relations.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/california-church-to-become-site-of-islamist-convention/11-09-2012_l/" rel="attachment wp-att-167231"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-167231" title="11-09-2012_L" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/11-09-2012_L.jpg" alt="" width="254" height="189" /></a>The Muslim Public Affairs Council’s choice of location for its <a href="http://www.mpac.org/convention.php">12th Annual Convention</a> on December 15 is telling: The <a href="http://www.allsaints-pas.org/">All Saints Episcopal Church</a> of Pasadena, California. The group, founded by Muslim Brotherhood followers, says this is the “next step in its mission by crossing the interfaith line.” Yet again, the Islamists are taking advantage of naïve Christians with a desire to show off their tolerance.</p>
<p>The All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena started an <a href="http://www.allsaints-pas.org/community/peace/interfaith-study-group/%20">Interfaith Study Group</a> in 2007 with the Pasadena Jewish Temple and the Islamic Center of Southern California (ICSC), from which MPAC originated. The organization was founded as a branch of ICSC in 1986 and then became independent in 1988, though the two remain intertwined. The ICSC is proud of its interfaith successes. For example, the First United Methodist Church of Santa Monica is <a href="http://blog.icsconline.org/2012/11/first-united-methodist-church-of-santa-monica-to-serve-as-satellite-friday-prayer-location-to-the-icsc/%20">allowing</a> the ICSC to hold Friday prayers there every week.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/358.pdf">story of MPAC</a> begins with Hassan and Maher Hathout, the former of whom died in 2009. The brothers became active with the Muslim Brotherhood at an early age, with Hassan Hathout <a href="http://www.jannah.org/madina/archives/year2001/4134.shtml">saying</a> that its founder, Hassan al-Banna, is “the person who most influenced my life” and that “centuries might roll over before a similar personality is produced.” Maher Hathout was arrested in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood was banned, and released in 1968. Three years later, they moved to Buffalo, New York and went to California to establish the ICSC in 1978.</p>
<p>Hassan Hathout says they sought to begin the “Islamic Movement” in the U.S., a term the Brotherhood uses to describe its ideology. In 1997, he <a href="http://www.jannah.org/madina/archives/year2001/4134.shtml">predicted</a> its success because “America needs Islam. If you look objectively you will see that this current civilization harbors in its body the seeds of its own destruction.” The language is very similar to that of a <a href="http://media.radicalislam.org/misc/pdf/Muslim+Brotherhood+General+Strategic+Goal+for+North+America.pdf">1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood strategy document</a> where it defines its “work in America as a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” Another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood <a href="http://www.txnd.uscourts.gov/judges/hlf2/09-25-08/Elbarasse%20Search%2011.pdf">document</a> from 1989 from its Financial Committee refers to a person with the last name of Hathout as someone “in the field.”</p>
<p>Maher Hathout has served as a <a href="http://www.mpac.org/about/staff-board/maher-hathout.php">senior adviser</a> to MPAC since its beginning at the ICSC in 1986 and is still a <a href="http://www.infocusnews.net/index.php/en/content/blogcategory/1476/1083">spokesman</a> for the mosque. The ICSC <a href="http://www.icsconline.org/index.php/component/content/article/43-books/prayersalat/186-bibliography">recommends</a> the work of Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, a senior Brotherhood cleric that supports terrorism, Hamas and preaches a strategy of <a href="http://familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11234/pub_detail.asp">&#8220;gradualism&#8221;</a> towards implementing Sharia Law. It also suggests a book on Islamic law called <a href="http://mappingsharia.com/?page_id=67"><em>Fiqh-us-Sunnah</em></a> authored by Brotherhood member Sayyid Saabiq under the guidance of Hassan al-Banna.</p>
<p>In 1998, Maher Hathout <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/109">defended</a> Hezbollah as “legitimate,” saying they are “fighting to liberate their land.” He also entertains 9/11 conspiracy theories suggesting that the U.S. government is lying about the identities of the hijackers. The current President of MPAC, Salam al-Marayati, likewise <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/114">said</a> in 1999 that Hezbollah engages in “legitimate resistance.” His immediate response to the 9/11 attacks were to <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2001/sep/22/local/me-48579">point his finger</a> at Israel.</p>
<p>MPAC’s former Political Director, Mahdi Bray, used to lead the Muslim American Society’s Freedom Foundation. The Muslim American Society is a <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3486/under-oath-alamoudi-ties-mas-to-brotherhood">Brotherhood front.</a> He <a href="http://globalmbreport.org/?p=179">spoke in support</a> of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2007 during a visit to Egypt. In March 2004, he <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/112">condemned</a> the killing of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin as “state-sponsored terrorism.” In 2000, he stood on stage as Abdurrahman Alamoudi, who later was convicted on terrorism-related charges, publicly praised Hamas and Hezbollah. He joined the crowd in their displays of approval.</p>
<p>MPAC’s Policy and Programming Director, <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/718.pdf">Edina Lekovic</a>, was the editor of a Muslim student magazine in the 1990s called <em>Al-Talib.</em> In July 1999, it told Muslims to defend Osama Bin Laden when he’s called a “terrorist” because he’s a “freedom fighter.” By that time, Al-Qaeda had already declared war on the U.S. and bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. <em>Al-Talib</em> management also told readers to reject the “twentieth-century version of Islam in the West,” an Islamist theme. Lekovic’s name also appears on an issue from May 1999 alleging that the Holocaust was exaggerated.</p>
<p>In 2003, MPAC <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/2409/mpac-conference-features-radicals">stood against</a> the labeling of Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations. In March 2009, demonstrators at an MPAC-sponsored rally <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/2409/mpac-conference-features-radicals">chanted</a> in support of Hamas and the elimination of Israel. A policy paper from 2010 titled <a href="http://www.mpac.org/publications/policy-papers/building-bridges.php"><em>Building Bridges to Strengthen America</em></a> treats the Muslim Brotherhood favorably, calling it a “conservative” group that can help the U.S. combat terrorism.</p>
<p>MPAC’s initial reaction to the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas was to <a href="http://www.mpac.org/issues/foreign-policy/mpac-expresses-grave-concern-about-gaza.php">accuse</a> Israel of “assassination of Palestinian leaders, destruction of Gazan infrastructure and the gross killings of Palestinian civilians, including women and children.” The statement did not condemn Hamas. Instead, it legitimized the terrorist group by saying Israel is guilty of the “greatest act of violence” and is responsible for the ongoing conflict.</p>
<p>On November 24, MPAC changed its tune a bit in a <a href="http://www.mpac.org/programs/interfaith/afpi-statement-on-recent-israelgaza-conflict.php">joint statement</a> with the Abrahamic Faiths Peacemaking Initiative that called on both Israel and Hamas to end their attacks. It said, “There is no excuse for the indiscriminate firing of rockets onto civilians, nor terrorism.”</p>
<p>MPAC explains that the holding of its convention at the All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena is a reflection of its focus on winning allies among other faiths. It <a href="http://www.mpac.org/programs/interfaith.php">boasts</a> of establishing partnerships with the National Association of Evangelicals, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Catholic Archdiocese, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Union of Reform Judaism and other faith groups. MPAC and similar groups like the Islamic Society of North America have created an <a href="http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/american-christians-shocking-support-islamists">interfaith bloc</a> willing to defend them against Rep. Michele Bachmann and other opponents.</p>
<p>If MPAC’s convention is <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/2409/mpac-conference-features-radicals">like past ones</a>, Islamists will again be given a platform to rally Muslims to their cause, but this time, it won’t be in a mosque or a hotel conference room. It’ll be from a church pulpit.</p>
<p><em>This article was sponsored by the <a href="http://www.theird.org/">Institute on Religion and Democracy.</a></em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Religious Left Joins in Condemning Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/religious-left-joins-in-condemning-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=religious-left-joins-in-condemning-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Nov 2012 04:30:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[But Hamas's genocidal onslaught against the Jewish State gets a pass. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/religious-left-joins-in-condemning-israel/feb15-03-0068/" rel="attachment wp-att-165687"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-165687" title="feb15-03-0068" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/feb15-03-0068.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="212" /></a>It didn’t take long.  Israel had barely begun to respond militarily to Hamas’s ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians when the “U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation” quickly asked its supporters to urge President Obama to “investigate” Israel’s “violations” of U.S. weapons laws.</p>
<p>The suggested communication to Obama noted Israel had killed 21 mostly civilian Palestinians in the “occupied and besieged” Gaza.  It also kindly admitted that 3 Israeli civilians had died from a Palestinian rocket.  It’s not clear how Gaza is “occupied” since Israel withdrew in 2007, leaving it to suffer under Hamas rule.</p>
<p>“Israel&#8217;s attacks against the Gaza Strip are being committed with U.S. weapons given to Israel as military aid by the U.S. taxpayer,” the U.S. Campaign complained.  “These weapons are being misused by Israel in violation of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act to commit grave human rights abuses of Palestinians.”</p>
<p>Naturally, the U.S. Campaign omits that Hamas and its agents have launched 120 rockets against Israel in the recent week.  Or that Hamas this year has fired over 760 rockets and mortar rounds into Israel.  Or over 2500 since 2009.  Or that Hamas and friends have a stockpile of 10,000 rockets.  For the U.S. Campaign, these facts are largely irrelevant.   They do not really support Israel’s right to exist, much less to defend itself.  The U.S. Campaign and its member groups are not asking any other nation in the world to endure routine rocket attacks on civilian centers by a terrorist group.</p>
<p>What is the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation?  It boasts that it’s the “largest and most diverse coalition working to change U.S. policy toward Palestine/Israel to support human rights, international law, and equality.”  By “human rights” it means exclusively criticizing Israel for all Middle East strife and ignoring transgressions by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and every other actor in the region.</p>
<p>The U.S. Campaign claims over 400 member groups, many of them pretty marginal and kooky, like Code Pink and the National Lawyers Guild.  It lists only 165 groups as in “good standing” for 2012.  Religious groups are prominent among them, including the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, which is an over $150 million missions agency, the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), the Methodist Federation for Social Action, United Methodist Board of Church and Society (official lobby office for United Methodist Church), Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns (leftist Catholic order), Lutherans for Justice in the Holy Land, Episcopal Bishop&#8217;s Committee for Israel/Palestine, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, United Church of Christ Palestine/Israel Network, and the United Methodist Task Force on Peace with Justice in Palestine/Israel.  There are also local chapters of Sabeel and the Council on Arab Islamic Relations.  Interestingly, the only major official denominational agencies are from the United Methodist Church.</p>
<p>Needless to point out, the U.S. Campaign has special programs equating Israel to Apartheid South Africa, to commemorate the “Nakba” (catastrophe) of Israel’s founding, to advocate boycotts and divestments against Israel, and to oppose U.S. support for Israel across the board.  Its very focused theme is to stand with Israel’s enemies in disputing Israel’s right to exist.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, some U.S. denominations are advertising a new statement from 100 Palestinian Christian elites, many of them based in “Occupied Jerusalem,” urging Palestinian membership in the United Nations.   “Just like our Palestinian Muslim brothers and sisters, we have been denied our national and human rights for almost a century,” is how they introduce themselves, which is very interesting.  Apparently they’re dating the loss of their “human rights” to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which was not typically renowned for “human rights.”   Does this group equate “human rights” with Muslim rule? They also describe 64 years of “exile,” referring to their having been “forcibly expelled” from Israel at its founding.   They refer to Israel as a “belligerent occupying power that works tirelessly to distance us from the peace we seek and pray for.”</p>
<p>According to the Palestinian Christians, “The occupation, oppression, exile and Apartheid, have made of everyday a good Friday,” likening their plight to the sufferings of Christ on the cross.  “We believe the Palestine Liberation Organization&#8217;s initiative to enhance Palestine’s status in the United Nations to an Observer State is a positive, collective, and moral step that will get us closer to freedom,” they insist, targeting their appeal especially to European governments.  At least one of the signers, Alex Awad, is a United Methodist missionary.</p>
<p>Such statements from Palestinian Christians are routinely heralded by U.S. denominations to prove that Israel is oppressing Christians.  As such, Palestinian Christians, who comprise a tiny percentage of the Palestinian population, serve as convenient props for anti-Israel campaigns.  Of course, these Christians have little choice but to burnish their Palestinian nationalist credentials as they struggle for survival as a tiny minority under Muslim rule.  And their plight would not in the least concern these same U.S. church groups if Israel were not the villain.  Compare the ink and verbiage expended on the few tens of thousands of Palestinian Christians versus millions of Egyptian Coptic Christians, whose plight now under Muslim Brotherhood rule is of virtually no interest to these church crusaders for “human rights.”</p>
<p>At least the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation, with its religious advocates of “human rights,” has fully unveiled its true intent, by opposing Israel’s right even to react against years of rocket attacks by Hamas.  For them, there can be no peace or justice in the Middle East until Israel just goes away.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Muslim Persecution of Christians: September 2012</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/muslim-persecution-of-christians-september-2012-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-persecution-of-christians-september-2012-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Nov 2012 04:30:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The plight of Pakistani Christians becomes especially deadly.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/muslim-persecution-of-christians-september-2012-2/prayer-beads/" rel="attachment wp-att-163891"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-163891" title="prayer-beads" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/prayer-beads-436x350.gif" alt="" width="305" height="245" /></a></p>
<p><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3421/muslim-persecution-of-christians-september-2012" target="_blank">Gatestone Institute</a>.</em></p>
<p>The aftermath of <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/the-collective-punishment-of-egypts-christian-copts-2/">collective punishment</a> for Pakistan’s Christians—the inevitable byproduct of the notorious Rimsha Masih blasphemy case, concerning a Christian girl falsely accused of desecrating a Quran—was more dramatic than the blasphemy case itself.  Indeed, knowing what was in store for them, some Christians even held a <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/429421/blasphemy-case-christians-highlight-their-fears-of-reprisal-by-holding-a-fake-funeral/">symbolic funeral procession</a>, carrying a Christian leader in a coffin and digging a grave for the “deceased.”  <em> </em></p>
<p>Their morbid predictions proved too true—especially after another pretext for Muslims to riot emerged: the Youtube Muhammad movie.  After Friday prayers, Muslims attacked, killed, and robbed the Christians in their midst, who account for a miniscule 1.5% of Pakistan’s population.  St. Paul’s Church in Mardan was attacked by hundreds of Muslims armed with clubs and sticks.  After looting and desecrating it, they set the church on fire (<a href="http://www.assistnews.net/STORIES/2012/s12090117.htm">see picture here</a>).  Next Muslims raided a nearby church-run school, looting and torching it as well, and burning down a library containing more than 3,000 Christian books.  Although the library also contained thousands of books on Islam—making the Muslim mobs’ actions blasphemous under Pakistan’s law—“the attack continued for more than three hours, with minimal efforts by the authorities to stop it.”</p>
<p>Separately, Gunmen on motorbikes dressed in green (Islam’s color) <a href="http://www.persecution.org/2012/09/19/outrage-over-anti-islam-film-worries-christians-in-pakistan/">opened fire on the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Cathedral in Hyderabad, murdering at least 28 people</a>.  Their immediate target appears to have been a nun, Mother Christina.  Days later, unknown men reportedly threatened workers at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Hyderabad, saying: “<a href="http://www.persecution.org/2012/09/19/outrage-over-anti-islam-film-worries-christians-in-pakistan/">We will teach a lesson to the Christians</a>,” destroying the hospital’s windows and doors. Naeem Samuel, the bishop of Trinity Evangelical Church was assaulted, <a href="http://www.agi.it/english-version/world/elenco-notizie/201209291003-cro-ren1009-pakistani_protestant_bishop_injured_in_lahore">severely beat, and injured</a> as he exited his church.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, far from condemning such outrages, validated them by falsely accusing the Muhammad movie for all the violence—even as they exposed their <a href="http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/wh-silent-over-demands-to-denounce-piss-christ-artwork.html">double standards</a> by refusing to denounce paintings offensive to Christians, such as &#8220;Piss Christ.&#8221; The <em>New York Times</em> also <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/times_changes/">exposed its bias</a> by defending the anti-Christian &#8220;Piss Christ&#8221; as &#8220;art,&#8221; while condemning the anti-Muslim Muhammad movie as hate-speech.</p>
<p>Categorized by theme, September’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Church Attacks</strong></p>
<p><strong>Bahrain</strong>: Long considered the most tolerant nation in the Arabian Peninsula, with a 30% non-Muslim population of foreign workers, Bahrain is the latest Muslim nation to showcase intolerance for churches: <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/03/plan-for-catholic-church-makes-waves-in-bahrain/#ixzz2A3NFcY6X">Sunni clerics strongly opposed the planned construction of a Catholic church</a>, “in a rare open challenge of the country&#8217;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.” One prominent cleric, Sheik Adel Hassan al-Hamad, proclaimed that &#8220;anyone who believes that a church is a true place of worship is someone who has broken in their faith in God.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Egypt:</strong> Kasr El-Dobara, the largest evangelical church in the Middle East, located in Egypt, was besieged by “unknown people” hurling “stones and gas bombs.” The first gas bomb thrown at the church was signaled as an “error” by police, but it was soon followed by other bomb attacks, which went into midnight and early Friday. Worshippers locked themselves inside the church and put on masks to avoid gas poisoning.  Some of those trapped inside looked for help by trying to contact politicians, journalists, and even the “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood. All the latter did was announce on TV that the attackers were not members of the Muslim Brotherhood. After the besiegers left and the trapped Christians finally came out, not a single police or security agent to counter the attacks or protect the church could be found.</p>
<p><strong>Indonesia:</strong> The several-year-long campaign against GKI Yasmin Church took another turn for the worse, as <a href="http://barnabasfund.org/US/News/Archives/Indonesias-GKI-Yasmin-Church-ordered-to-relocate-in-latest-blow.html">authorities ordered the congregation to relocate</a>, reneging on a previous agreement for the church to exist, provided a mosque be built next door, which the church had agreed to.  Moreover, a Supreme Court ruling in 2010 ordered that GKI Yasmin’s building be reopened, since it was shut down in 2008 by local Muslims who, along with the mayor, still refuse to comply with Supreme Court ruling. As one church leader put it, “the rule of law in Indonesia has collapsed.”  Since its forced closure, the congregation has been holding services in the street in front of its half-constructed building or in private homes.</p>
<p><strong>Lebanon</strong>: Two unknown assailants <a href="http://nowlebanon.com/NewsArchiveDetails.aspx?ID=441606">opened fire on the Saint Joseph Church</a> in the town of Bqosta near Sidon, damaging the building’s windows.</p>
<p><strong>Nigeria</strong>: A <a href="http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/09/acf-bauchi-condemn-suicide-bombing-at-st-johns-catholic-church/">suicide bomb attack on Saint John’s Catholic Church</a> claimed three lives including those of a woman and a child; 44 others were seriously injured.  <a href="http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/nigeria/article_1790773.html">Another report</a> describes the typical aftermath of church attacks in Nigeria, citing just one example: “One month after gunmen opened fire inside Deeper Life Bible Church [August 7] … members of the church have yet to resume worship services and other activities.  ‘All of us are traumatized by this attack. [There is] no family in this church that is not affected by this incident,’ said Stephen Imagejor, an assistant pastor whose wife, Ruth, was killed, and their two daughters, Amen, 12, and Juliet, 9, hit by bullets and hospitalized. In all, 19 died.  Church members say they were attacked specifically because of their Christian faith. They may have been a target, they say, because some of the dead include former Muslims who had converted to Christianity… ‘Many are now saying that they can no longer come to the church,’ Imagejor said. ‘But we will eventually try to see how we can get those of us that have survived the attack to return to the church for worship services. But, I do visit them to encourage them to remain steadfast in the faith in spite of the persecution.’”</p>
<p><strong>Spain</strong>:  In Catalonia, a <a href="http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=53611">Catholic church was attacked by Moroccan Muslims</a>, who, along with two other Moroccan Muslims, have been detained and charged with multiple assaults and robberies, including terrorizing and beating indigenous Spaniards with clubs and robbing them.</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism</strong></p>
<p><strong>Egypt</strong>: The U.S. embassy in Cairo issued a press release saying it had “credible information suggesting <a href="http://egypt.usembassy.gov/sm-092812.html">terrorist interest in targeting U.S. female missionaries in Egypt</a>. Accordingly, U.S. citizens should exercise vigilance.”  And an Egyptian court sentenced a Christian teacher to six years in prison after <a href="http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/egyptian-court-sends-copt-prison-over-anti-islam-post">convicting him of blasphemy</a>—specifically “insulting Prophet Muhammad”—and defaming the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt on his Facebook page.</p>
<p><strong>Maldives</strong>: Airport customs officials <a href="http://minivannews.com/society/custom-seize-two-men-carrying-books-about-christianity-44580">seized 11 books about Christianity</a> from a Bangladeshi expatriate who came to the Maldives via Sri Lanka.  Later the same day a Maldivian national was caught with more Christian books, after arriving to the Maldives from Sri Lanka. The pair has been handed over to police. According to the Maldives Religious Unity Regulations, “it is illegal in the Maldives to propagate any faith other than Islam or to engage in any effort to convert anyone to any religion other than Islam.  It is also illegal to display in public any symbols or slogans belonging to any religion other than Islam, or creating interest in such articles.  It is also illegal in the Maldives to carry or display in public books on religions (other than Islam) and books and writings that promote and propagate other religions…”</p>
<p><strong>Saudi Arabia</strong>: The hunt for a 28-year-old Saudi woman, Maryan, who <a href="http://www.assistnews.net/STORIES/2012/s12090029.htm">embraced Christianity and fled the country</a>, first gaining sanctuary in a Lebanese church, but then fleeing to Sweden, continues. Earlier the woman had said that, though she “was raised to hate Judaism and Christianity she has come to love those religions since finding peace in Christianity.”  Two men, a Christian Lebanese and a Muslim Saudi and are accused of proselytizing to her and helping her escape, respectively.  Prosecuting lawyer, Humood Al-Khaldi, said that while the penalty in Islam of death for apostasy is clear, “the roles played by the two men, the Saudi and Lebanese, in making the girl become Christian should be taken into consideration,” meaning they too must be brought to judgment.  Swedish authorities are actually helping to find and extradite the apostate fugitive back to Saudi Arabia to face Sharia justice, including the possibility of execution.</p>
<p><strong>Somalia</strong>: <a href="http://www.persecution.org/2012/09/07/somali-christians-fear-militant-islam-at-home-and-abroad/">Muslims shot three converts to Christianity</a>. The men had converted while in Ethiopia in 2005, but when Muslims began noticing they were not serious about attending mosque prayers, the apostates were attacked by “militants” who burst into their home and opened fire. Similarly, another family that had embraced Christianity fled their village after receiving death threats.  Another convert who fled to Kenya said &#8220;Pastors and Christians are very afraid.  I know people, mainly Christian converts, who had to leave their homes and their families because of pressures from these terrorists.”   The messages of the Islamists include statements like: &#8220;Stop your harmful ideologies and preaching to the Muslims”; “Some Somali Muslims are already affected by this cancer of Christianity… they will be under the sword of the mujahedeen (holy worriers)&#8230; We know where you are&#8230; We ask Allah to help us make his purpose reign&#8230; We are reaching millions of youth to join our jihad against the enemy of Islam and to terrorize by any means we can to make them understand that they are nothing but lowly infidels.”</p>
<p><strong>Uzbekistan</strong>:  A <a href="http://barnabasfund.org/Disabled-Christian-woman-beaten-in-police-raid-on-Uzbek-home.html">disabled Christian woman</a>, who walks with crutches, and her mother were brutally beaten with sticks in a violent police raid on their home. The officers turned the home upside down, seizing Bibles and other religious literature. At the police station, officers tried to pressure them to accept Islam, saying it was better than Christianity, and that a married man could marry them because Muslim men are allowed to have four wives. When the women refused to comply, the officers beat them again.  The court ordered the destruction of the literature.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Dhimmitude</strong></p>
<p align="center">[General Abuse and Suppression of Non-Muslims as "Tolerated" Citizens]<strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>Bangladesh</strong>: A new report indicates that some <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Almost-300-Christian-children-abducted-and-forcibly-converted-to-Islam-in-Bangladesh-25745.html">300 Christian children were recently abducted and forcibly converted to Islam</a>:  So-called intermediaries visit poverty-stricken communities where they convince families to send their children to a mission hostel, charging them the equivalent of US$ 500 to 1,200 for school and board. “After pocketing the money, the intermediaries sell the children to Islamic schools elsewhere in the country ‘where imams force them to abjure Christianity.’”   The children are then instructed in Islam and beaten; after full indoctrination, they are asked if they are “ready to give their lives for Islam,” presumably by becoming jihadi suicide-bombers.</p>
<p><strong>Iran</strong>: Pastor Behnam Irani, <a href="http://presenttruthmn.com/behnam-irani/">imprisoned for “holding house church services and leading Muslims to Christ</a>,” continues to suffer health problems, while receiving no aid: “First, his eyesight is dimming and he has not been given access to a doctor to get prescription lenses. Second, he has a bleeding ulcer in his intestines. This has caused him to have bloody stool, vomiting blood, resulting in unconsciousness at one point. Third, from an accident several years ago, he had metal placed in his knee, and according to a family member it needs to be replaced every so often.”</p>
<p><strong>Syria</strong>: Christians fleeing to the Lebanese border are still being <a href="http://www.fides.org/aree/news/newsdet.php?idnews=32291&amp;lan=eng">targeted, kidnapped, and in some cases murdered for ransom money</a>.  One report said 280 were held hostage by “armed gangs” taking advantage of the chaos of the war. Some of those kidnapped are later found slaughtered on the road.</p>
<p><strong>Turkmenistan</strong>: A new report indicates how “<a href="http://barnabasfund.org/US/News/Archives/Christians-in-Turkmenistan-face-upsurge-in-harassment-threats-and-fines.html">the situation [for Christians] has got markedly worse</a> since July and we don’t know why.” Among other anecdotes, Christian homes were raided and Bibles confiscated; Christians were threatened for not participating in Muslim prayers; they lost their jobs and businesses; Christian children are being harassed and discriminated against in schools.  In one instance, “secret police officers raided a flat where five elderly Christian women had gathered for worship, as was their regular practice. They were so frightened by the incident that they have stopped meeting together.”</p>
<p><strong>Uzbekistan</strong>:  A former Uzbek Muslim who converted to Christianity eventually becoming an active Protestant house church leader, and subsequently persecuted by the state, fled with his family to Kazakhstan.  Uzbekistan wants him back to face charges that he practiced religion “outside state regulation.”  Because of its evangelical nature, Protestantism is banned in Uzbekistan.  His case now rests before the country’s highest court, which has yet to set a hearing date.</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Pakistani Dhimmitude</strong></p>
<p>Pakistan continues to show that it is one of the absolute worst nations for Christians and other non-Muslims, requiring its own section for September:</p>
<ul>
<li>A 16-year-old Christian girl, Shumaila Masih, was <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Faisalabad:-16-year-old-Christian-girl-gang-raped-for-hours-by-young-Muslims-25928.html">gang-raped for hours by Muslims</a>—joining the countless <a href="http://www.meforum.org/3362/pakistan-christian-children">Christian girls and boys raped and murdered in Pakistan</a>.  Three Muslim men met her on the street, persuading her to go with them. She refused and was forcibly abducted and taken to the home of one of the men, who took “turns raping her for hours. The attack took place at 11 am, in broad daylight, but no one intervened to save Shumaila, despite the desperate cries and pleas for help. Around 5 pm, her father and his cousins began searching for her; when they came to the rape-house, they heard her cries and rushed to it: “At the sight of the men, the three young Muslims fled, leaving Shumaila naked and in pain on the bed.”</li>
<li>According to a new report, as many as 2,000 women and girls from various minority sects, especially Christianity, were <a href="http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\09\05\story_5-9-2012_pg7_25">forcibly converted to Islam through rape, torture and kidnappings</a>, while 161 people were charged with blasphemy in 2011.  “The actual number is larger as many cases go unreported…  For instance, policemen are involved in more than 60 percent of sexual abuse cases of street children.”</li>
<li>A separate report discussing the murder of a Christian youth by Muslims, notes that “Christians are harassed by criminal gangs and Islamic terrorist groups of ethnic Pashtuns: armed to the teeth, the <a href="http://www.fides.org/aree/news/newsdet.php?idnews=32122&amp;lan=eng">militants enter the area to collect jizya</a> [extortion money imposed on Christians and Jews, according to Quran 9:29]. Militants raid houses, steal and abuse women and children for fun. The local population is terrorized.”</li>
<li>Another 16-year-old Christian girl, Sumbal, a maid working for Muslims, was &#8220;<a href="http://www.assistnews.net/STORIES/2012/s12090120.htm">beaten harshly</a>&#8221; by the family with “pipes and iron rods … afterwards, she was taken to the washroom and terribly tortured there.”  When the child’s parents learned of the incident, they went to retrieve their daughter but were told by the family that they did not know her whereabouts.  According to Wilson Chowdhry, Chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association: “Yet again we have violence against a teenage Christian maid. The fact that the family are refusing her mother access is very disturbing. What are they covering up? Is it the fact that the girl was murdered, as in a recent case where a senior lawyer in the same city tortured to death a young Christian girl servant? Is it to try and concoct a story about her condition, or has she been raped and forced to marry and convert as so many young Christian girls are?”</li>
<li>Soon after a Muslim opened a madrassa (Islamic school) near where Christians held their tent church worship, Muslims began harassing the Christians, including by spraying bullets on their homes and saying “<a href="http://www.pakistanchristianpost.com/headlinenewsd.php?hnewsid=3720">Convert to Islam or leave this neighborhood</a>”; trying to trick a pastor to admit he proselytizes Muslims; and gathering in front of the church and harassing Christian girls as they exit after services.</li>
</ul>
<p align="center"><strong> About this Series</strong></p>
<p>Because the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching epidemic proportions, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:</p>
<ol>
<li>Intrinsically, to document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, Muslim persecution of Christians.</li>
<li>Instrumentally, to show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Sharia.</li>
</ol>
<p>Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; apostasy and blasphemy laws; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (tribute); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed “dhimmis” (barely tolerated citizens); and simple violence and murder. Oftentimes it is a combination thereof.</p>
<p>Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the west, to India in the east, and throughout the West, wherever there are Muslims—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.</p>
<p><strong>Previous Reports</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-august-2012/">August, 2012</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/12215/muslim-persecution-of-christians-july-2012">July, 2012</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/12045/muslim-persecution-of-christians-june-2012">June, 2012</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11930/muslim-persecution-of-christians-may-2012">May, 2012</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11713/muslim-persecution-of-christians-april-2012">April, 2012</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11604/muslim-persecution-of-christians-march-2012">March, 2012</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11373/muslim-persecution-of-christians-february-2012">February, 2012</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11152/muslim-persecution-of-christians-january-2012">January, 2012</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10989/muslim-persecution-of-christians-december-2011">December, 2011</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10922/muslim-persecution-of-christians-november-2011">November, 2011</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10724/muslim-persecution-of-christians-october-2011">October, 2011</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10504/muslim-persecution-of-christians-september-2011">September, 2011</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10247/muslim-persecution-of-christians-august-2011">August, 2011</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10107/this-month-in-muslim-persecution-of-christians">July, 2011</a></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Greatest Church Soon To Be Mega Mosque?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/greatest-church-soon-to-be-mega-mosque/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=greatest-church-soon-to-be-mega-mosque</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Jun 2012 04:18:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hagia sophia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mosque]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=134392</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Turks expose their dreams of jihad and conquest.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/n00096180-b.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-134394" title="n00096180-b" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/n00096180-b.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>Though ostensibly dealing with a building, a recent report demonstrates how Turkey’s populace—once deemed the most secular and liberal in the Muslim world—is reverting to its Islamic heritage, complete with animosity for the infidel West and dreams of Islam’s glory days of jihad and conquest.  According to <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2012/05/29/thousands-of-muslims-pray-for-istanbuls-hagia-sophia-to-be-a-mosque-again/">Reuters</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Thousands of devout Muslims prayed outside Turkey’s historic Hagia Sophia museum on Saturday [May 23] to protest a 1934 law that bars religious services at the former church and mosque.    Worshippers shouted, “Break the chains, let Hagia Sophia Mosque open,” and “God is great” [the notorious “Allahu Akbar”] before kneeling in prayer as tourists looked on.  Turkey’s secular laws prevent Muslims and Christians from formal worship within the 6th-century monument, <em>the world’s greatest cathedral for almost a millennium</em> <em>before invading Ottomans converted it into a mosque in the 15th century</em>.</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, Hagia Sophia—Greek for “Holy Wisdom”—was Christendom’s greatest cathedral.  Built in Constantinople, the heart of the Christian empire, it was also a stalwart symbol of defiance against an ever encroaching Islam from the east.  After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts, Constantinople was finally sacked by Ottoman Turks in 1453.  Its crosses desecrated and icons defaced, Hagia Sophia—as well as thousands of other churches—was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph.  Then, after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, as part of several reforms, Ataturk transformed Hagia Sophia into a “neutral” museum in 1934—a gesture of goodwill to the then triumphant West from a then crestfallen Turkey.</p>
<p>Even though Hagia Sophia is a Christian center under Islamic domination, several Christian authorities are content seeing it remain a museum, including the<strong> </strong>Ecumenical Patriarchate, spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians: “We want it to remain a museum in line with the Republic of Turkey’s principles.  If it were to become a mosque, Christians wouldn’t be able to pray there, <em>and if it became a church it would be chaos</em>.”</p>
<p>True enough; one need only recall how back in 2006, when Pope Benedict was scheduled to visit Hagia Sophia, Muslims were outraged.  Then, Turkey’s independent paper <em>Vatan</em> wrote: “The risk is that Benedict will send Turkey’s Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the Pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims.” Before the Pope’s visit, a gang of Turks stormed and occupied Hagia Sophia, screaming “Allahu Akbar!” and warning “Pope! Don’t make a mistake; don’t wear out our patience.” On the day of the Pope’s visit, another throng of Islamists waved banners saying “Pope get out of Turkey” while chanting Hagia Sophia “is Turkish and will remain Turkish.”</p>
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		<title>Religious Left Laments America’s Discovery</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/religious-left-laments-america%e2%80%99s-discovery/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=religious-left-laments-america%25e2%2580%2599s-discovery</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 31 May 2012 04:30:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[discovery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPISCOPAL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religious left]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=133537</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Episcopal Church promotes “dismantling the structures and policies based on" the "ancient evil” of our foundation. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/bishop-katharine-pronounces-the-blessing-after-yesterday-s-eucharist_articleimage.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-133539" title="bishop-katharine-pronounces-the-blessing-after-yesterday-s-eucharist_articleimage" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/bishop-katharine-pronounces-the-blessing-after-yesterday-s-eucharist_articleimage.gif" alt="" width="375" height="243" /></a>Officers of left-leaning, declining churches that no longer evangelize or believe in their own doctrines often have plenty of time to attend tedious secular meetings, such as the 11th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII).</p>
<p>In early May, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori was there at the UN in New York to join in the mournful gabfest over the ostensibly lamentable “Doctrine of Discovery.”  The international bureaucrats were focused on “Discovery’s” enduring “impact on indigenous peoples and the right to redress for past conquests.”  The main sin for which redress is apparently needed is Western Civilization’s global reach.</p>
<p>Evidently Bishop Schori could not deliver all her thoughts at the UN session, so she later issued her own “Pastoral Letter on the Doctrine of Discovery and Indigenous Peoples.”  Perhaps small numbers of elderly Episcopalians, if still awake in their pews, will listen to at least part of it.</p>
<p>Schori gloomily recalled centuries of brutal global conquest by Europeans professing to be Christian.  Armed with “religious warrants, papal bulls which permitted and even encouraged the subjugation and permanent enslavement of any non-Christian peoples they encountered,” these savage conquerors achieved “wholesale slaughter, rape, and enslavement of indigenous peoples in the Americas, as well as in Africa, Asia, and the islands of the Pacific, and the African slave trade was based on these same principles.”  In their wake followed “death, dispossession, and enslavement,” then “rapid depopulation [from]…epidemic disease.”</p>
<p>Of course, neither Bishop Schori nor the United Nations bureaucrats are interested in merely a history lesson.  They want justice and redress. After all, the “ongoing dispossession of indigenous peoples” results from oppressive “legal systems” in the “&#8217;developed world,’” as Bishop Schori carefully put in quotations, that base land ownership on “religious warrants for colonial occupation from half a millennium ago.”</p>
<p>So essentially, Bishop Schori would like to undo the last 500 years of land ownership and wealth accumulation in the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere tainted by Western imperialism. After all, the “dispossession of First Peoples continues to wreak havoc on basic human dignity.” These mystical First Peoples are still “grieving their loss of identity, lifeways, and territory.”  And “all humanity should be grieving” with them. Without irony, Schori cited Old Testament prophetic justice, which came from the ancient Hebrew conquerors of the Canaanites and other “First Peoples.”</p>
<p>Of course, Schori focused on grievous sins against the First Peoples of the United States, emphasizing the Episcopal Church’s long solidarity with them, while briefly citing her predecessor’s apology in 1997 for the “enormities that began with the colony in Jamestown.”  She emphasized:  “Today our understanding of mission has changed.”  Indeed. Unlike the old missionaries, today’s Episcopal elites stress “healing” among people, and with the earth, while “reversing structural and systemic injustice,” of which there is so much.  She even cited Episcopal Church support for the “Violence Against Women Act” currently before Congress.</p>
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		<title>Death to Churches</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/death-to-churches/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=death-to-churches</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Apr 2012 04:10:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nigeria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=128542</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The hate behind bombing churches on Christmas and Easter.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: left;"><strong><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/nigeria_AP120408024228_620x350.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-128582" title="nigeria_AP120408024228_620x350" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/nigeria_AP120408024228_620x350.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>The following article was originally published by the <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/">Gatestone Institute</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Last Sunday, many Christians around the world celebrated Easter, taking it for granted that they can congregate and worship in peace.  Not so; in the Islamic world, where <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11358/saudi-mufti-destroy-churches">top religious officials call for the destruction of churches</a>, Christian holidays celebrated in church are increasingly a time of death and destruction, a time of terror.</p>
<p><a href="http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/50-people-killed-in-easter-sunday-bombings-in-nigeria_768956.html">Nigeria</a>, for example, saw some 50 Christians killed “when explosives concealed in two cars went off near a church during Easter Sunday services in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna…. the casualty figure may go up because some injuries were really critical.”  The church targeted was “the Assemblies of God’s Church near the centre of the city with a large Christian population and known as a major cultural and economic centre in Nigeria&#8217;s north.” According to the pastor holding Easter services at the time, “We were in the Holy Communion service and I was exhorting my people and all of a sudden, we heard a loud noise that shattered all our windows and doors, destroyed our fans and some of our equipment in the church.”</p>
<p>There is little doubt that the Islamist group Boko Haram is behind the terror strike.  The group has long been targeting churches—most notoriously, last December 25, when several churches were bombed in the Muslim majority areas of Nigeria, in what was described as “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10947/nigeria-christmas-present-blown-up-christians">Nigeria’s blackest Christmas ever</a>”: then, over 40 Christians were slain, “the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church [in Madalla near the capital of Abuja] after celebrating Christmas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion.” As usual, the charred and dismembered remains of Christian worshippers were seen scattered in and around the destroyed church.</p>
<p>While the Christmas—and now Easter—church attacks may be Nigeria’s most known, they are certainly not the only ones. Consider just the last few weeks:</p>
<p>• <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/least-10-killed-suicide-bomber-attacks-catholic-church-during-mass">Sunday, March 11</a>: A Boko Haram suicide car bomber attacked a Catholic church, killing at least 10 people. The bomb detonated as worshippers attended Mass at St. Finbar’s Catholic Church in Jos, a city where thousands of Christians have died in the last decadeas a result of Boko Haram’s jihad.</p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17169935">Sunday, February 26</a>: A Boko Haram suicide car bomber killed at least three people, including a toddler, at another church in Jos. Witnesses said the jihadist drove his car into the prominent Church of Christ during morning prayers.</p>
<p>• <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017545566_apafnigeriaexplosion.html">Sunday, February 19</a>: A Boko Haram bomb attack outside a church in Abuja left at least five people seriously injured and manymore hurt, when a parked car filled with explosives detonated outside the Christ Embassy Church.</p>
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		<title>Diplomatic Supping With Jihadist Devils</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-thornton/diplomatic-supping-with-jihadist-devils-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=diplomatic-supping-with-jihadist-devils-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Dec 2011 04:45:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bombing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nigeria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=117178</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Western diplomats wring their hands over trivial insults to Islam -- while a genocide of Christians unfolds in the Muslim world.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/hillary.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-117180" title="hillary" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/hillary.jpg" alt="" width="380" height="249" /></a></p>
<p>While Western diplomats wring their hands over trivial insults to Islam, a slow-motion genocide of Christians has been unfolding in the Muslim world. The latest attack occurred on Christmas day in Nigeria, where the terrorist sect Boko Haram bombed two Catholic churches in the towns of Abuja and Jos, killing at least 39 worshipers. This same group killed 32 Christians last Christmas Eve. In this year alone, Boko Haram has murdered 491 people.</p>
<p>The killings in Nigeria are just one example of continuous violent <a href="http://www.hudson-ny.org/2676/muslim-persecution-of-christians-november-2011">attacks</a> on Christians and their churches. Yet our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been nearly silent about this war on Christianity. When the Egyptian military participated in the murder of 25 Egyptian Copts, her State Department rejected a request from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to put Egypt on its list of countries that violate religious freedoms. Instead, Secretary Clinton issued a generic warning to the generals ruling Egypt “to ensure that the fundamental rights of all Egyptians are respected, including the rights of religious freedom, peaceful assembly and the end of military trials for civilians, and that efforts be made to address sectarian tensions.” Compare this reflexive diplo-speak to her more passionate reaction to the recent beating of Egyptian women during a demonstration, one of whom was publicly stripped: “This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform and is not worthy of a great people,” she said. Apparently, exposing a woman’s blue bra is a more heinous crime than running over a Copt’s head with a military vehicle.</p>
<p>In fact, our official spokesman for American views on foreign behavior hasn’t had much to say about a modern persecution of Christians redolent of those perpetrated by the Romans. Nor have we heard anything about the sectarian cleansing that has been going on for decades. Christians who date their presence in the Middle East to several centuries before Islam was created are fast disappearing from the region, choosing exile and emigration over harassment and murder. In Iraq, where American blood and treasure were spent to create “democracy” and “human rights,” eighteen priests and two bishops have been kidnapped, and the archbishop of Mosul murdered.  In the last six years, mobs have attacked over 70 churches, 42 of them in Baghdad.  In October 2010, attackers murdered 58 Christians during evening mass at the Syrian Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad. The Christian population, which once numbered 1.5 million, has dwindled to less than 150,000. The story is the same in Pakistan, Lebanon, the so-called West Bank, Syria, and across the Middle East. A region Christian for six centuries before the rise of Islam will soon be emptied of Christians.</p>
<p>And what has been Secretary Clinton’s response to this assault on Christians? A conference in December to implement the so-called “Istanbul Process,” itself the mechanism for implementing the U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 1618 on religious stereotyping and “stigmatization.” That resolution was a diplomatic effort to keep the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s ongoing efforts to globalize Islamic blasphemy laws law from impinging on free speech. Clinton no doubt thought she was finessing the OIC’s drive to censor speech about Islam, but the OIC saw the meeting differently: “The upcoming [Washington] meetings &#8230; [will] help in enacting domestic laws for the countries involved in the issue, as well as formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred resulting from the continued defamation of religions.” As the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/perverse_process_orKksIN05i0UKsRMCs6r0J">reported</a>, “By standing ‘united’ (as the OIC head put it in a Turkish Daily op-ed) with the OIC on these issues, America appears to validate the OIC agenda, thus demoralizing the legions of women&#8217;s rights and human-rights advocates, bloggers, journalists, minorities, converts, reformers and others in OIC states who look to the United States for support against oppression.” Having intimidated most of Europe into legally repressing opinions or even statements of fact about Islam, the OIC is obviously using “diplomacy” to pressure U.S. government officials into censoring themselves when it comes to Islam.</p>
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		<title>Muslim Persecution of Christians</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/raymond-ibrahim/muslim-persecution-of-christians-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-persecution-of-christians-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Dec 2011 04:12:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bombing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nigeria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=117184</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Arab Spring continues to transition into a Christian Winter.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/nigeria.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-117186" title="nigeria" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/nigeria.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="281" /></a></p>
<p><strong>This article is reprinted from </strong><a href="http://www.hudson-ny.org/2676/muslim-persecution-of-christians-november-2011"><strong>Hudson New York</strong></a>.</p>
<p>The so-called “Arab Spring” continues to transition into a “Christian Winter,” including in those nations undergoing democratic change, such as Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis dominated the elections—unsurprisingly so, considering the Obama administration has actually been <a href="../2011/11/18/obama-administration-training-egyptian-islamists-for-elections/">training Islamists for elections</a>.</p>
<p>Arab regimes not overthrown by the “Arab Spring” are under mounting international pressure;  these include the secular Assad regime of Syria, where Christians, who comprise some 10% of the population, are <a href="http://barnabasfund.org/UK/News/Latest-emergencies/Help-Christians-affected-by-worsening-crisis-in-Syria.html">fearful of the future</a>, having seen the effects of democracy in neighboring nations such as Iraq, where, since the fall of the Saddam regime, Christians have been <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10912/iraq-christians-near-extinction">all but decimated</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, it was <a href="http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/11/-afghan-christians-in-danger-at-home-and-abroad-are-refused-refugee-status-while-muslim-refugee-emig.html">revealed</a> that “Christians are being refused refugee status [in the U.S.] and face persecution and many times certain death for their religious beliefs under Sharia, while whole Muslim communities are entering the U.S. by the tens of thousands per month despite the fact that they face no religious persecution.”</p>
<p>Categorized by theme, November’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed according to theme and in alphabetical order by country, not necessarily severity.</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Churches</strong></p>
<p><strong>Ethiopia: </strong>More than 500 Muslim students assisted by Muslim police burned down a church, while screaming “<a href="http://www.christianpersecution.info/index.php?view=11116">Allahu Akbar</a>” (and thus clearly positing their attack in an Islamic framework); the church was built on land used by Christians for more than 60 years, but now a court has ruled that it was built “without a permit.”<strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>I</strong><strong>ndonesia</strong>: Hundreds of “hard-line” Muslims rallied to decry the “<a href="http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/hundreds-turn-out-for-bogor-rally-to-denounce-besieged-yasmin-church/481223#Scene_1">arrogance</a>” of a beleaguered church that, though kept shuttered by authorities, has been ordered open by the Supreme Court.  Church members have been forced to hold services on the sidewalk, even as Indonesia’s leading Muslim clerics warned Christians that it would be “wise and sensible” for the church to yield to “the feelings of the local believers, specifically Muslims.”</p>
<p><strong>Iran</strong>: The nation’s minister of intelligence said that house <a href="http://www.assistnews.net/STORIES/2011/s11110166.htm">churches in his country are a threat to Iranian youth</a>, and acknowledged a new series of efforts to fight the growth of the house church movement in Iran.<strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>Nigeria: </strong>Islamic militants shouting “<a href="http://www.bosnewslife.com/18906-breaking-news-scores-killed-in-attack-on-nigeria-churches-police">Allahu Akbar</a>” carried out coordinated attacks on churches and police stations, including opening fire on a congregation of “mostly women and children,” killing dozens.  The attacks occurred in a region where hundreds of people were earlier killed during violence that erupted after President Jonathan, a Christian, beat his closet Muslim rival in April elections.</p>
<p><strong>Turkey</strong>:<strong> </strong>The ancient Aghia Sophia church has been <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Erdogan%27s-religious-acrobatics:-Nicaea-council-church-back-to-being-a-mosque-23148.html">turned into a mosque</a>.  Playing an important role in ecumenical history, the church was first transformed into a mosque in 1331 by the jihadist Ottoman state.  As a sign of secularization, however, in 1920 it was turned into a museum.  Its transformation again into a mosque is a reflection of Turkey’s re-Islamization.</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Apostasy and Proselytism</strong></p>
<p>Afghanis around the world are being <a href="http://www.thecypresstimes.com/article/Christian_News/Persecution/AFGHAN_CHRISTIANS_IN_DANGER_AT_HOME_AND_ABROAD/53152">threatened for leaving Islam</a> and converting to Christianity. One exile, who changed his name after fleeing Afghanistan in 2007 when an Islamic court issued an arrest warrant for his conversion, is still receiving threats: “They [Afghan officials] were very angry and saying that they will hit me by knife and kill me.”  Even in distant Norway last September, an Afghan convert to Christianity was scalded with boiling water and acid at a refugee processing center: “If you do not return to Islam, we will kill you,” his attackers told him.</p>
<p><strong>Algeria</strong>:<strong> </strong>Five Christians<strong> </strong><a href="http://www.bosnewslife.com/18895-algeria-detains-christians-for-unauthorized-worship">were jailed</a> for “worshiping in an unregistered location.”  International Christian Concern (ICC), an advocacy group investigating the case, states that the five Christians are charged with “proselytizing,” “unauthorized worship,” and “insulting Islam.”</p>
<p><strong>Iran</strong>: Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, who caught the attention of the world after being imprisoned and <a href="http://www.greeleygazette.com/press/?p=11821">awaiting execution for leaving Islam</a>, remains behind bars as officials continue to come up with excuses to force him to renounce Christianity, the latest being that “everyone is [born] a Muslim.”  A Christian couple “who had been <a href="http://www.assistnews.net/STORIES/2011/s11110131.htm">snatched and illegally-detained</a>” by authorities for eight months without any formal charges, were finally released, beaten again, and have since fled the country.  While imprisoned, they were “ridiculed and debased” for their Christian faith<strong>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Kashmir</strong>: Muslim police <a href="http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/india/article_122974.html">arrested and beat</a> seven converts from Islam in an attempt to obtain a confession against the priest who baptized them.  After the grand mufti alleged that Muslim youths were alternatively being “lured” and “forced” to convert by an Anglican priest “<a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Kashmir:-Anglican-pastor-who-baptised-seven-Muslims-to-be-released-23317.html">in exchange for money</a>,”  the priest was arrested in a “humiliating” manner.  Recently released, his life is now “in serious danger.”</p>
<p><strong>Kenya:</strong> A gang of Muslims <a href="http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/somalia/article_122724.html">stabbed and beat</a> with iron rods a 25-year-old Somali refugee, breaking his teeth; he was then stripped naked, covered with dirt, and left unconscious near a church.  Although he was raised Christian since age 7, he was attacked on the “assumption that as a Somali he was born into Islam and was therefore an apostate deserving of death.”</p>
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		<title>Muslim &#8216;Inferiority Complex&#8217; Kills Christians</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/raymond-ibrahim/muslim-inferiority-complex-kills-christians/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-inferiority-complex-kills-christians</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 May 2011 16:26:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Muslim Persecution of Christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[church burns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coptic churches]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coptic pope shenouda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inferiority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[molotov cocktails]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[priest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sectarian strife]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=93195</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Days ago in Egypt, throngs of Muslims (henceforth, &#8220;Islamists&#8221;), estimated at 3,000, fired guns and rifles and hurled Molotov cocktails at Coptic churches, homes, and businesses in the Imbaba region near Cairo: twelve Christians were killed—some shot by snipers atop rooftops—232 injured; three churches were set aflame to cries of &#8220;Allahu Akbar,&#8221; while Coptic homes [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Days ago in Egypt, <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20110508144114.htm">throngs of Muslims</a> (henceforth, &#8220;Islamists&#8221;), estimated at 3,000, fired guns and rifles and hurled Molotov cocktails at Coptic churches, homes, and businesses in the Imbaba region near Cairo: twelve Christians were killed—some shot by snipers atop rooftops—232 injured; three churches were <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_aAvnDih-U&amp;feature=player_embedded#at=34">set aflame</a> to cries of &#8220;Allahu Akbar,&#8221; while Coptic homes were looted and torched.</p>
<div id="attachment_93197" style="width: 332px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img class="size-full wp-image-93197   " title="Imbaba church burns" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/mpoc.jpg" alt="" width="322" height="194" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Imbaba church burns</p></div>
<p>As <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/8081/coptic-persecution-mubarak">usual</a>, Egyptian authority did little to stop this latest rampage. According to eyewitnesses, though the mob opened fire around 5:30 p.m., the military did not arrive till 10 p.m., providing ample time to terrorize the Copts. One priest said &#8220;I called everyone, but no one bothered to come. I mourn all those young people who died,&#8221; naively adding &#8220;We now must ask for international protection.&#8221; Noting that this attack is unprecedented in scope, Muslim liberal writer Nabil Sharaf el Din said &#8220;The army is either incapable [of stopping anti-Christian violence] or is an accomplice to the Salafis [Islamists].&#8221;</p>
<p>So what triggered this latest bit of Salafi savagery—or, as the <a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/17/egypts-sectarian-strife/">MSM</a> calls it, &#8220;<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/09/us-egypt-violence-idUSTRE7281ST20110309">sectarian strife</a>&#8220;? Islamists claim that a Christian girl converted to Islam and the Coptic Church responded by abducting her and torturing her into renouncing Islam. Hence, the wild rampage was part of a &#8220;rescue&#8221; effort.</p>
<p>This issue of Christian women supposedly converting to Islam only to be kidnapped by the Coptic Church is the Islamists&#8217; latest excuse to make Coptic life a living hell (especially ironic since the <a href="http://www.copts.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=695&amp;Itemid=2">well-documented reality</a> in Egypt is the opposite: Muslims regularly kidnap and force Christian women to convert to Islam). Indeed, days before this rampage, thousands of Islamists marched in front of St. Mark Cathedral, Coptic Pope Shenouda&#8217;s residence, demanding the &#8220;release&#8221; of other Christian women—two wives of clergy, whom Muslims insist also converted to Islam only to be abducted and tormented by the Coptic Church to return to Christianity.</p>
<p>(The notion of torturing women into returning to their original religion obviously comports well with Muslim logic: aside from the other Sharia schools which recommend outright execution of apostates, the &#8220;liberal&#8221; Hanafi school, which is dominant in Egypt, maintains that apostate women should merely be imprisoned and beaten till they come to their senses and return to Islam.)</p>
<p>That these Coptic women have publicly insisted that they never converted to Islam does not seem to matter much; one of them, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=camelia+shehata&amp;aq=f">Camelia Shehata</a>, appeared on video months ago proclaiming that she will &#8220;live and die as a Christian&#8221;; she <a href="http://islamexplained.com/UVG/UVG_video_player/TabId/89/VideoId/713/214----------.aspx">appeared again</a> last week with her priest husband and young child, emphatically denying that she ever converted to Islam, imploring Muslims to leave them in peace.</p>
<p>This supposedly &#8220;chivalrous&#8221; behavior—&#8221;rescuing&#8221; damsel converts to Islam even when they insist on never converting—highlights the Islamic world&#8217;s obsession with the issue of conversion: while it is known that those who convert out, the apostates, should be put to death, few people are aware that those who convert in—against their will or not, based on false rumors or not—are a great source of validation for Islam, and thus must be secured.</p>
<p>Even the West has become involved in this obsession—such as the persistent rumor that the late <a href="http://www.answering-islam.org/Hoaxes/cousteau.html">Jacque Cousteau</a> embraced Islam, prompting the Cousteau foundation to issue a letter insisting its founder never converted, and lived and died as a Catholic Christian.</p>
<p>Indeed, a new Arabic book, <a href="http://www.asharqalarabi.org.uk/markaz/m_kutob-24-10-10-1.htm"><em>Al-Quran Yaqum Wahdu</em></a>—which consists of 33 anecdotes of Western intellectuals converting to Islam after supposedly being bowled over by the truths of the Koran—lists Cousteau and Islam critic Henryk Broder as its very first two examples, despite the fact that, back in the real world, everyone knows they never converted. One is left wondering how many, if any, of the other 31 anecdotes are true.</p>
<p>In an insightful <a href="http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=264894&amp;IssueID=1852">Arabic op-ed</a>—see my <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/9584/the-muslim-world-inferiority-complex">complete translation here</a>—Muslim intellectual Khaled Montaser elaborates on why Muslims are obsessed with converts:</p>
<p>We Muslims have an inferiority complex…feeling that our Islamic religion needs constant, practically daily, confirmation by way of Europeans and Americans converting to Islam. What rapturous joy takes us when a European or American announces their [conversion to] Islam—proof that we are in a constant state of fear, alarm, and chronic anticipation for Western validation or American confirmation that our religion is &#8220;okay.&#8221;</p>
<p>Discussing how the Arab world exulted when it erroneously thought that the German writer Henryk Broder had accepted Islam—based on sarcastic remarks he had made—Montaser wrote &#8220;but we are a people incapable of comprehending sarcasm, since it requires a bit of thinking and intellectualizing. And we read with great speed and a hopeful eye, not an eye for truth or reality. Some of us are struck with blindness when we read things that go against our hopes.&#8221;</p>
<p>And there it is: just as Islamists refuse to face reality concerning so-called Western converts, so do they refuse to face reality concerning so-called Coptic converts to Islam. The only difference, of course, is that Copts live under Islamic authority—hence, all the death and destruction visited upon Egypt&#8217;s indigenous Christians whenever Islam&#8217;s inferiority complex flares up.</p>
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