'We Did What We Learned: Attacking Christians'
Christians die and media lie.
November 11, 2015
Raymond Ibrahim
Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.
Throughout the month of August, the Obama administration and the so-called mainstream media kept insisting that Islam does not promote the persecution of Christians -- all the while ignoring the direct testimonies of those who have undergone it.
According to Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda,
All the statements [by U.S. government and media] have not condemned strongly what damage it [persecution of Christians] is doing. What they are saying is just "This is not the true Islam. This is violating the picture of Islam." The issue for them is the image of Islam, but none of these statements speak about the victims, about what has been done to the victims, they are not even mentioned. And that is one of the questions our people have. [Author's emphasis].
Warda added that persecuted Christians are "being denied visas, while others who have participated [in the violence] or at least were silent, can go."
Father Douglas al-Bazi, an Iraqi Catholic parish priest from Erbil, who still carries the torture scars he received nine years earlier at the hands of jihadis, denounced the Western refusal to accept reality about Islam:
I'm proud to be an Iraqi, I love my country. But my [Muslim] country is not proud that I'm part of it. What is happening to my people [Christians] is nothing other than genocide. I beg you: do not call it a conflict. It's genocide... When Islam lives amidst you, the situation might appear acceptable. But when one lives amidst Muslims [as a minority], everything becomes impossible.... Wake up! The cancer is at your door. They will destroy you. We, the Christians of the Middle East are the only group that has seen the face of evil: Islam.
Meanwhile, Western "mainstream media" and academia continued to exonerate Islam in deceptive op-eds, such as the Huffington Post's "ISIS Violates The Consensus Of Mainstream Islam By Persecuting Christians," by Qasim Rashid, a recipient of Saudi largesse, by way of Harvard University's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center.
The rest of August's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following accounts:
Islamic State: Savagery and Sex Slavery
Mokhls Youssef Batk, an Iraqi Christian, was blinded by the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) after he refused to convert to Islam.
The "caliphate" threatened that captive Christian women would become sex slaves unless they were ransomed with money. It posted images of three Assyrian Christian women who were previously abducted. The women hold pieces of paper on which their names and a date -- July 27, 2015 -- are written: "It is feared they will be sold to ISIS fighters if a ransom is not paid for them."
A 12-year-old girl, raped by an Islamic State fighter, was told that "what he was about to do was not a sin" because she "practiced a religion other than Islam." IS also made clear in a 34-page manual released by its Research and Fatwa Department that "sex with Christian and Jewish women who were captured in battle is also permissible."
Jihad on Muslim Converts to Christianity
Uganda: After he learned that his family had converted to Christianity, a Muslim man went berserk. Issa Kasoono beat, strangled, and left his wife for dead. He also severely beat their two teenage sons for the crime of apostasy. The youngest son managed to flee and bring help from the church where, three months earlier, the Muslim mother and sons had accepted Christ. Due to injuries from the strangling, Kadondi, the mother, lost her voice, has difficulty eating, and requires extensive surgery. According to a local source, "The mother and Ibrahim [older son] Kasoono were seriously injured. Ibrahim was hit with a blunt object, had his right arm broken and has stomach pains, while the mother was strangled and sustained neck and throat injuries." Although Uganda's population is 85% Christian and 11% Muslim, attacks on converts to Christianity are on the rise, and include the recent murder by poisoning of a mother and the gang rape of a teenage daughter of a Christian pastor.
Somalia: A Muslim convert to Christianity (name withheld) managed to escape from Al Shabaab -- the dominant Islamic front -- but only after the jihadis chopped off four fingers from his right hand while interrogating him about his conversion. Another man, 31-year-old Sharif, fled his home after his conversion to Christianity was exposed: "My association with a visiting white missionary landed me in trouble... I feel sad because I cannot see my family, because if I return back to Somaliland, then the government will arrest me." His wife and four children -- aged 8, 6, 4, and 1 -- have also relocated to an undisclosed town: "I am not sure what will happen to my wife and four children. I am praying that God will provide for their basic needs. Pray for me that one day I will see them."
Pakistan: Khurram Naveed, 33, a Christian man, and Sobia, 25, a Muslim woman, are on the run. Sobia discovered Christianity through Khurram and decided to be baptized. Since they got married and had two daughters, her parents, Muslim neighbors, and imams have repeatedly tried to convert them to Islam or face the consequences.
In the words of Khurram: "Since we got married we have had to change places many times... Wherever we go, people ask about my beloved wife's conversion. Sometimes, imams try to force us to convert to Islam, issuing terrible threats.... My wife, I and our children have had to flee from place to place. We feel threatened as soon as people find out about my wife's Muslim past. However, running from one place to another is not easy. There are so many problems.... Until now I have to change job six times, and finding new employment is not easy. But we need security for our life and we ask for help from the people of God.
Horn of Africa: A former Muslim cleric, who converted to Christianity and is known as Tofik, explained in an interview what Islamic preachers teach about Christians in mosques and what such converts can expect. For the previous 24 years, he had trained to become an imam at an Islamic madrasa: "In school I only learned about Islam. Parts of our teaching were about destroying Christianity. So we did what we learned, by attacking Christians once we finished our training."
Tofik said he was taught that Christians are evil and that he and other students should steal from and kill them: "We beat them, attacked the church and burnt their Bibles. ... Our teachers would tell us every time there was a new church in town and we were told to go and attack the people and destroy the church. So that is what we did." Due to a series of dreams, he eventually embraced Christ. News of his apostasy spread quickly, especially among his own tribe:
“They reacted by coming to my home saying, 'This brother is dead.' In our culture, when someone dies their property is shared. So they destroyed my house, setting it on fire, and they took my cattle, and the remainder of my property. They then falsely accused me of burning another house, so I was jailed and taken to court. It was only in the court process that the witnesses proved their dishonesty by having contradicting testimonies.”
After being released from jail, Tofik continued preaching Christ and even inspired more than 200 people to convert:
"As a result local villagers were upset. So again, they attacked me physically and burned my house.... The attackers assumed I was dead, so they threw me into the compound. Then they looted the small kiosk I owned and proceeded to loot and burn my children's properties. They said they have killed the lead figure and now our area is free of his activities. They started shouting and singing."
