While the Obama administration has been pursuing Islamist refugees from Syria to bring thousands to the safe haven of the United States, Christians have been under fire – often literally – and losing their property and lives in Iraq and Uganda.
And Syria, Bangladesh and Congo.
Also, Philippines, Egypt, Tanzania, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Eritrea, Turkey, Iran and Nigeria.
Even Germany.
By Muslims.
A new report from Gatestone Institute finds that although the Muslims doing the persecution are minority, there’s no doubt, “persecution of Christians by Muslims is growing.”
And it’s not random, either, the report by Raymond Ibrahim, author of “Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians,” found.
“Such Muslim persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place in all languages, ethnicities, and locations.”
WND has had multiple reports on the horrific wave of death imposed by ISIS across the Middle East, the beheadings, the burnings, the drownings, the crucifixions and other attacks by Muslims on Christians and other religious minorities.
The AP reported just on Tuesday that it documented 72 mass graves in Iraqi territories recently freed from ISIS control.
The agency estimated that up to 15,000 victims were slaughtered by the Islamists and buried there, often times with bulldozers.
Gatestone’s new report, in fact, notes such attacks have been going on.
“We will show the Armenians and the Christians who we are … We have been ordered not to leave any Armenians in the area,” Islamic rebels in Aleppo, Syria, were quoted saying.
And the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom recently found, “The government of Iran continues to engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, including prolonged detention, torture, and executions based primarily or entirely upon the religion of the accused.”
The violence matches almost anything reported from previous worldwide conflicts.
Said the report, “One account told of a couple who, after their children were abducted by ISIS militants, answered their door one day to find a plastic bag on their doorstep. It contained the body parts of their daughters and a video of them being brutally tortured and raped.”
The report continued, “In yet another disturbing example of the genocide facing Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East, on 12-13 May a group from Islamic State (IS) entered a town near the city of Hama in Syria, populated only by Christians and Alawites, killing an as yet unspecified number of men, women and children. Men were beheaded, whilst women were raped and then murdered. Many children were also killed. It is not yet clear exactly how many people have been killed.”
And Father Douglas Bazi, an Iraqi priest who was kidnapped by ISIS in 2006 but later escaped, recounted his experiences as a captive:
“They destroyed my car, they blew up my church on [sic] front of me. I got shot by AK-47 in my leg. The bullet is still in my leg. And I [have] been kidnapped for nine days. They smash my nose and my teeth by hammer. And they broke one of my back discs.”
“To be Christian in Iraq, it’s an impossible mission,” he recounted. “But even so, I’m not actually surprised when they attack my people. I’m surprised how my people are still existing. Please talk about our stories. Let the world know what happens to us.”
But the report also said Eritrea is “one of the world’s fastest emptying nations” and a majority of the 40,000 to fled to Italy last year are Christian.
Even in Western democracies to which Christian refugees flee they are surprisingly unsafe, with the report revealing, “as many as 40,000 Christians – including Muslims who wish to convert to Christianity – are being attacked and harassed by Muslims in migrant homes.”
“Now in European asylum homes they are finding more and more that they are in as much danger from radical Muslims in Europe as they were in their home countries,” the report said.
The List:
- In Uganda, a Christian pastor was poisoned by a Muslim. The report said Micah Byamukama, 61, pastor of a Baptist church, died on May 15 after ingesting an insecticide that a Muslim, Ahmed Mupere, had put into his food. Mupere reportedly was mad at the pastor for challenging his belief in jinn, those otherworldly creatures of the Quran. “Mupere … came to visit the pastor, a widower with no children. He apparently dined with the pastor, but secretly put poison on the food and stopped eating.”
- Separately in Uganda, a Muslim man, Awali Kakaire, 34, allegedly strangled his wife for converting to Christianity. Then he allegedly tried to “force his five children, ages 5 to 12, into a hole he had dug in a nearby garden,” Gatestone reported.”We resisted and began screaming, and neighbors arrived immediately, but he had already dumped us into the hole that he had dug. Seeing the neighbors, he tried to flee, but he was overtaken and then began to be questioned by those who surrounded him,” Morning Star News reported.
- In Syria, some 200 Christians died in bombardments of Aleppo in April and early May. The April bombardment involved approximately 1,350 rockets hitting in the Christian region of the city.
- In Bangladesh, Dr. Sanaur Rahman, 58, was going home on his motorcycle when he was attacked and slashed by machete-wielding terrorists. He was killed, and a friend with him was wounded. “The doctor was popular in his village because he used to treat and offer medicine to poor people free of charge and ran a free clinic on Fridays,” the report said.
- In Congo, “Muslims terrorists killed scores of villagers.” One source reported “16 bodies are in front of me,” while another said 38 were slaughtered. The attack was attributed to the Muslim Defensive International, which “has repeatedly attacked the majority-Christian population in eastern DRC for years.”
- In the Catholic-majority Philippines, a “recently established ISIS branch … claimed responsibility for a terror attack on a military position on Basilan Island. The attack killed one soldier and injured another.”
- In Bangladesh, “A 26-year-old Catholic high school teacher was raped on May 12 by her Muslim principal and his friend … Afterward, they threatened to post the video of the rape on Facebook, if she reported them.”
- In Egypt, “On May 20, a 70-year-old Christian woman was stripped naked, savagely beaten, spat upon, and paraded in the streets of Minya to jeers, whistles, and yells of ‘Allahu Akbar,’ after a mob of some 300 Muslim men descended on her home. Her crime was that her son was accused of having a romantic relationship with a Muslim woman, an intimacy that is banned under Islamic law, Shariah.”
- In Uganda, “After a 22-year-old Christian woman accused a mosque leader of murdering her father earlier in the year, local Muslims responded by beating and raping her. The woman, whose name was withheld, said she was beaten and raped on April 19 for telling a court what she had witnessed. She was found unconscious in a pool of blood, with cuts on her body. One of the three Muslims who assaulted her told her, ‘We shall kill you today because you are the one who made our sheikh to be imprisoned.'”
- The report explains in Tanzania, a Roman Catholic church was burned to the ground, the third church in four months to be destroyed. “According to a local pastor, ‘Since 2013 we have had over 13 churches torched here in Kagera and no one has been held accountable.'”
- In Pakistan, it was the government that announced plans to demolish four churches, all of which had been built decades ago and now were on “very expensive and prime locations which politicians and Islamists are jealous of. “In the same country, a Christian was accused of watching an anti-Islamic video on his phone, and immediately a $10,000 bounty was put on his head by Muslims. For additional punishment, the report said, “Fellow Christians in his village were prevented from buying food from Muslim shopkeepers and given three options: ‘convert to Islam, leave the village forever, or hand over Imran so he can be burnt alive.'”
- In Azerbaijan, a Christian evangelist reported he was framed by people angry over his outreach to Muslims and he was jailed, and spent a year behind bars. “Local sources said, ‘His health is very bad and he needs urgent help.'”
- In Eritrea, “Thousands of Christians are fleeing the nation due to extreme persecution, according to a report which describes Eritrea as ‘one of the world’s fastest emptying nations’ and the ‘North Korea of Africa.'”
- Turkey, which is a NATO ally of the United States, is “aiding and abetting the Islamic State and other terrorist groups in Syria that kill Christians,” the report said. It provides aerial cover and “safe haven,” the report said.
- In Iran, despite the “nuclear deal made with the Obama administration,” investigators have reported “Christians continue experiencing severe human rights abuses.”
- In Nigeria, “Gunmen shot at a car carrying Roman Catholic Cardinal John Onaiyekan in the country’s southern Edo state. The attack on the cardinal comes amid increasing violence and kidnappings of Christian clergy by Muslims for ransom. Three other Christian leaders were kidnapped for ransom within the same year. The decomposing body of a cleric kidnapped in a Muslim-majority region was found last April.”
- It is in Germany, where thousands of Muslims have migrated, along with Christians, where the latter are being attacked.”The most prevalent form of abuse was verbal insults with 96 people saying that had received abuse or threats. Eighty-six said they had been physically assaulted and 73 said they had been subjected to death threats against themselves and family members. Three quarters of the migrants also said they had been victims of multiple attacks. The perpetrators of most of the attacks were fellow migrants who look down on converts and believe them to be apostates [from Islam].”
A survivor of the attacks told Morning Star News that the herdsmen killed two Christian women in Ninte village on Aug. 1, and that she knew of eight Christians killed in Gada Biyu on Aug. 2. Local newspapers reported nine people were killed in Gada Biyu, with another two men killed in Akwa’a on Aug. 3.
It was the Washington-based Media Research Center that issued a special report titled “Shameful Silence” in which it spotlights the whitewashing by the U.S. media of the Christian genocide going on in the Middle East.
The report details the broadcast news networks’ silence on Christian genocide in the Middle East.
Also, earlier this year, the “Harbinger Man,” Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, issued a powerful call for the world to stand up for the forgotten believers in Jesus who are being persecuted in the Middle East.
Cahn’s call went out to spiritual leaders from around the globe who gathered at the United Nations to talk about the pressing challenges of the 21st century for people of faith.
“More Christians have been persecuted, brutalized and killed in the modern age than in any other,” Cahn charged. “Every year, tens of thousands of Christians are dehumanized, tortured or killed, and over 100 million Christians live in the darkness of persecution.
“This very body, the United Nations, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declares that everyone has the right to ‘manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.’ But then, why is it that believers are being killed for their faith in our day, in our midst, and next to nothing is being done?”
Cahn charged that it’s the responsibility of more than just the leaders, however, to address the danger.
“If our faith consists of how comfortable and prosperous God can make us, while we deafen our ears to the cries of those who are neither comfortable nor prosperous, our brothers and sisters imprisoned and tortured for their faith, how can we bear the name ‘Christian?'” Cahn asked rhetorically.
“On the Day of Judgment, we will be asked, ‘Why did you do nothing to save them?’ And what will our answer be?” he asked.
Cahn, the subject of the new film “The Harbinger Man,” and the author of the bestselling book “The Harbinger,” challenged believers around the world to follow an “Agenda of Light” built upon the words of Jesus.
A report released earlier this year by the British nonprofit Open Doors World Watch List concludes 100 million Christians were persecuted in 2015. The group has studied the issue since 1955, when it first began smuggling Bibles into Communist Europe.
The group says 7,000 Christian were killed for their faith in 2015 compared to 4,000 the previous year. That number does not include executions in Iraq and Syria, where millions of Christians have been displaced by civil war and the Islamic State group.
Data for North Korea is also missing, although 70,000 Christians are estimated to exist inside the police state’s gulags.
