CHRISTIANS: On the Front Lines of Muslim Violence

[righteousmomma]

Totally unconnected to interest in this thread I just reread a little classic book i have cherished for about 45 years.

It is a worthy read for anyone but the mention of violence in Pakistan - Lahore etc prompts me to recommend it--

As an evangelical believer I love the book for its message but for anyone the book is a perfect example of how all things have changed FOR THE WORSE.

 

I DARED TO CALL HIM FATHER by Bilquis Sheikh.

(An anniversary edition was released a few years ago and is still available on Amazon )

[Geee]

Report: Christianity Most Persecuted Faith Worldwide

 

Americans take religious liberty for granted. It is the First Freedom, guaranteed by the First Amendment. But four of five people around the world lack the freedom to worship and live faithfully. And the percentage of the world’s population lacking religious liberty recently edged upward. Attacks on Jews hit a recent peak. Even Americans cannot afford to take their freedoms for granted.

 

The Pew Research Center, with Peter Henne as lead researcher, recently issued its latest study on religious liberty. The report makes for a sad read. Many organizations address religious persecution, which occurs in virtually every Muslim and authoritarian state, plus a diverse mix of other nations. Pew also assesses equally threatening social antagonism, ranging from discrimination to hostility to violence.

 

In some nations governments take the lead in suppressing the faithful, imposing a range of restrictions backed by the state. Examples include bans on particular faiths, prohibitions on conversion, and restrictions on religious practice. In other countries the people make their societies unfriendly to minority beliefs, imposing a wide range of less formal sanctions. Such behavior includes harassment, intimidation, and violence, including murder. The overall global environment to religious faith is hostile. Concluded the study: “restrictions on religion were high or very high in 39 percent of countries. Because some of these countries (like China and India) are very populous, about 5.5 billion people (77 percent of the world’s population) were living in countries with a high or very high overall level of restrictions on religion in 2013, up from 76 percent in 2012 and 68 percent as of 2007.”

 

http://cnsnews.com/commentary/doug-bandow/report-christianity-most-persecuted-faith-worldwide

[righteousmomma]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/school-divided-reading-pledge-allegiance-arabic-article-1.2154933

(one of many articles)

"The upstate New York high school senior who ignited furor over the Arabic reading of the Pledge of Allegiance was trying to show the great cultural rift in the nation when he divided the student body.

"A lot of people said stuff like, 'You're waking up terrorism in America,'" Andrew Zinc, 18, told the Daily News. "I was expecting outrage from the student body ... I wasn't expecting it to get this big."

Zinc, the elected student assembly president, sparked controversy Wednesday at Pine Bush High School when he allowed another student to recite the country’s oath of allegiance in Arabic during the school’s Foreign Language Week celebration.

The girl, identified as Dana and believed to be Muslim, asked Zinc permission before she took over the loud speaker following his daily morning announcements.

"As soon as she asked, I knew without hesitation I would say yes,” he said. “I felt impassioned about it because I knew what would happen. I knew people wouldn't like it.”

“The point of reading it in another language is that it doesn't matter what language you speak,” the teen added. “America is defined by what you believe, not what you speak or how you look. I wanted everyone to see this so we could see that deep cultural divide."

Zinc said he was instructed to read the Pledge of Allegiance in different languages that week to promote diversity, but received a hail of backlash for it.

In some classrooms, students reportedly catcalled during the reading or sat down in protest......."snip

 

Such a totally ignorant understanding and perspective by a well meaning "know it all" teenager! Lliberal indoctrination of our youth has led America to this:

"One nation under Allah"

 

The really scary thing is the total oblivion and colossal ignorance pervasive in the Nation amongst "Christians" as to Who God is versus who Allah is - all in the name of political correctness, diversity and humanism.

[Geee]

ISIS’s Mission: Burn Their Churches And Kill Their Pastors

 

WASHINGTON, DC – It was midnight in Damascus, 2 p.m. in my hometown in California, when I received an e-mail with only two words in its subject line: “Awaiting death.”

 

The sender of the message was in Syria, and while I had heard of him, I had never met him. Yet, somehow, I felt eerily close to him. He was a faithful Christian pastor who hadn’t a vein of violence in his body. But what he did have was love for those he’d served for so long—a love that waged on despite the hatred encompassing his city.

 

There once were many pastors like him in Syria. That country’s Christian communities had thrived since the Apostle Paul himself preached in Damascus after his conversion on the road to that ancient city. In fact, it was in Syria that the word “Christian” was first used at all.

 

Within the Middle East, Syria was once as famous for its two million Christians as it was for anything else. They were pillars of society, living and thriving as neighbors to Muslims whom they served without prejudice. Their mysterious hillside monasteries had maintained the same intrigue they had when they were first constructed, many more than a thousand years ago.

 

http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/20/isiss-mission-burn-their-churches-and-kill-their-pastors/

[Geee]

Pakistani Christians Slaughtered in Suicide-Jihad

 

On Sunday, March 15, as Christian churches around the world were celebrating morning mass, two churches in Pakistan were attacked by Islamic suicide bombers. At least 17 people were killed and over 70 were wounded.

 

The two churches (located in Youhanabad, Lahore’s Christian quarter) were St. John’s Catholic Church and Christ Church (Protestant). The Taliban claimed responsibility. It is believed that the group had hoped for much greater death tolls, as there were almost 2,000 people in both churches at the time of the explosions.

 

According to eyewitnesses, two suicide bombers approached the gates of the two churches and tried to enter them. When they were stopped — including by a 15-year-old Christian who blocked them with his body — they self-detonated. Witnesses saw “body parts flying through the air.”

Thus did the jihadis “kill and be killed,” in the words of Koran 9:111, the verse most often cited to justify suicide attacks.

According to an official statement of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Episcopal Conference of Pakistan, despite all the threats received by the churches, authorities only provided “minimal” security:

Agents present at the time of the attack were busy watching the cricket match on TV, instead of carrying out their duty to protect churches. As a result of this neglect, many Christians have lost their lives.

 

http://pjmedia.com/blog/pakistani-christians-slaughtered-in-suicide-jihad/

[Geee]

FATE OF 220 ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS ABDUCTED BY ISIS REMAINS UNKNOWN

 

The fate remains completely uncertain of around 220 Assyrian Christians who continue to be held captive in Syria by the Islamic State terror group.

With each day that passes, the likelihood that the majority of the Assyrian men, women, and children survive captivity diminishes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported.

“Sheikhs of Arabian clans are still working privately to release the detainees, amid fears by SOHR on their lives after the fake promises by the IS to release them,” reports the Observatory.

Islamic State jihadis have now executed around 2,000 Assyrian Christians, including 1,266 civilians, the human rights group says.

 

The Islamic State released two dozen of the Assyrian hostages from March 2-4 in exchange for a lump sum of cash, some reports have stated. More reports indicated that only elderly hostages were released, leaving the most valuable abductees within ISIS captivity.

 

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/03/19/fate-of-220-assyrian-christians-abducted-by-isis-remains-unknown/

[Geee]

China jails Christian pastor who fought church demolitions

 

A Chinese preacher who opposed an “anti-church” demolition campaign that saw hundreds of places of worship partially or completely destroyed has been jailed for one year on charges supporters claim are trumped up.

Huang Yizi, 40, was sentenced before a packed courtroom on Tuesday afternoon for “gathering crowds to disturb social order,” Zhang Kai, his lawyer, said.

“I think the whole trial was manipulated by the authorities,” Mr Zhang told The Telegraph, adding that his client would appeal.

The lawyer said around 1,000 Christian supporters gathered outside the court in Pingyang County in the eastern province of Zhejiang. He met his the pastor before the hearing and believed “his state of mind was good”

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11493548/China-jails-Christian-pastor-who-fought-church-demolitions.html

[Valin]

China jails Christian pastor who fought church demolitions

 

A Chinese preacher who opposed an “anti-church” demolition campaign that saw hundreds of places of worship partially or completely destroyed has been jailed for one year on charges supporters claim are trumped up.

Huang Yizi, 40, was sentenced before a packed courtroom on Tuesday afternoon for “gathering crowds to disturb social order,” Zhang Kai, his lawyer, said.

“I think the whole trial was manipulated by the authorities,” Mr Zhang told The Telegraph, adding that his client would appeal.

The lawyer said around 1,000 Christian supporters gathered outside the court in Pingyang County in the eastern province of Zhejiang. He met his the pastor before the hearing and believed “his state of mind was good”

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11493548/China-jails-Christian-pastor-who-fought-church-demolitions.html

 

 

From this and other things, I suspect China may be returning to The Bad Old Days.

[Geee]

 

China jails Christian pastor who fought church demolitions

 

A Chinese preacher who opposed an “anti-church” demolition campaign that saw hundreds of places of worship partially or completely destroyed has been jailed for one year on charges supporters claim are trumped up.

Huang Yizi, 40, was sentenced before a packed courtroom on Tuesday afternoon for “gathering crowds to disturb social order,” Zhang Kai, his lawyer, said.

“I think the whole trial was manipulated by the authorities,” Mr Zhang told The Telegraph, adding that his client would appeal.

The lawyer said around 1,000 Christian supporters gathered outside the court in Pingyang County in the eastern province of Zhejiang. He met his the pastor before the hearing and believed “his state of mind was good”

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11493548/China-jails-Christian-pastor-who-fought-church-demolitions.html

 

 

From this and other things, I suspect China may be returning to The Bad Old Days.

 

Ya - Russia and China - those fledgling democracies At least we don't owe Russia a bundle of money though.

[Valin]

 

 

China jails Christian pastor who fought church demolitions

 

A Chinese preacher who opposed an “anti-church” demolition campaign that saw hundreds of places of worship partially or completely destroyed has been jailed for one year on charges supporters claim are trumped up.

Huang Yizi, 40, was sentenced before a packed courtroom on Tuesday afternoon for “gathering crowds to disturb social order,” Zhang Kai, his lawyer, said.

“I think the whole trial was manipulated by the authorities,” Mr Zhang told The Telegraph, adding that his client would appeal.

The lawyer said around 1,000 Christian supporters gathered outside the court in Pingyang County in the eastern province of Zhejiang. He met his the pastor before the hearing and believed “his state of mind was good”

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11493548/China-jails-Christian-pastor-who-fought-church-demolitions.html

 

 

From this and other things, I suspect China may be returning to The Bad Old Days.

 

Ya - Russia and China - those fledgling democracies At least we don't owe Russia a bundle of money though.

 

 

 

As the old saying goes....If you owe the bank $100.00 and can't pay, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $1,000,000 and can't pay, The bank has a problem.

[Valin]

Pakistani Christians Fight Back
ALI SETHI
MARCH 24, 2015

LAHORE, Pakistan — LAST Monday, this city was briefly overrun with bands of sloganeering, stick-wielding youths. The demonstrators threw stones at police officers, burned car tires and smashed windows. One gang even plundered a 7Up truck, guzzling its goods before transfixed TV cameras. (I watched the footage — slow-mo jets of sparkly liquid, with strains of horror-movie music playing in the background — that night on the Internet.) There was a euphoric edge to the riots, apparent even when they took a grotesquely violent turn with the lynching of two men.

Who were these vandals? And what, if anything, did their actions demonstrate?

If you went by the original news bulletins, they were Christians reacting to a suicide bombing the day before of two churches in Youhanabad, a low-income area of Lahore that is home to some 100,000 Christians. A faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed 15 people and injured dozens. The rioters’ anger was directed at Pakistan’s state and society, which had repeatedly failed to protect them from Islamist extremists. According to one estimate, in the last two years there have been 36 targeted attacks on Pakistani Christians, 265 Christian deaths from suicide bombings and 21 “persecutions” of Christians under Pakistan’s blasphemy law. To their credit, several TV anchors ran heart-rending montages of recent incidents in which Muslim mobs or terrorists had shot, bombed or burned Pakistani Christians.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Daily News Egypt: Minya church commemorating beheaded Egyptians attacked

Church was still under construction, but some locals were angered by it

Mahmoud Mostafa

March 29, 2015

 

Almost two years after the removal of the Islamist government of the Muslim Brotherhood, Coptic churches are still facing threats from radical Islamist actions.

 

On Friday, scores of mostly young Muslims gathered in the Minya governorate after midday prayer, demonstrating in front of a church under construction there. They chanted that there is no way the church would be built.

 

After a while, the crowd vanished, but later in the night a smaller number of anonymous militants attacked the church with Molotov cocktails. In the attack, seven people were injured, and one car was left burning.

 

In February, Copts in Minya’s Our Village called for a church to be established in the village honouring 20 Coptic Egyptian workers beheaded in Libya. They died at the hands of Islamic State militants in Libya, according to religious freedoms researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) Ishak Ibrahim.

 

Thirteen of the beheaded Coptic workers were from the village. Ibrahim told Daily News Egypt that, during their funeral, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb said President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi agreed for the church to be built.

 

(Snip)

 

H/T PJ Media

[Geee]

Kenya Garissa University attack: At least 15 dead after al-Shabaab terrorists storm campus and separate Muslim and Christian students

 

At least 15 people have been killed after al-Shabaab gunmen stormed a university in Kenya, opened fire on dormitories and began separating Muslim and Christian students.

 

Heavy gunfire was reported in the early hours of Thursday morning at the Garissa University College, 120 miles from the Somalian border, when militants attacked the building. There were over 800 students inside at the time and only 280 have been accounted for so far.

 

Kenya's National Police Service said armed militants shot at campus guards to gain entry, triggering a "fierce shootout". The attackers still managed to get inside one of the student dormitories and some remain trapped inside.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/kenya-garissa-university-shooting-two-killed-after-masked-gunmen-storm-campus-10150665.html

[Draggingtree]

He descended into Hell

Posted by Leslie Eastman ▪ April 5, 2015 at 9:00pm

One of Kenyan gunmen was son of a government official.

On this Easter Sunday, I wanted to share some thoughts I had during these past days about the most recent butchery of my fellow Christians in Kenya.

 

Following the news as closely as I do, I thought I had become accustomed to graphic images of terror that ISIS has spawned. Then, I saw this tweet: http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/04/he-descended-into-hell/

[Geee]

ISIS BLOWS UP HISTORIC CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN SYRIA ON EASTER

 

As Assyrian Christians were celebrating Easter Sunday, militants from the Islamic State blew up the 80-year-old church of the Virgin Mary in Tal Nasri village in the western countryside of Hasaka province, in northeastern Syria.

 

Since last February, Tal Nasri has been under the control of the jihadist group led by self-proclaimed Caliph al-Baghdadi. Fighters of Kurdish militias along with Christians who have taken up arms have been struggling for some time trying to regain control of the village.

 

According to reports, ISIS jihadists booby-trapped the church with explosives before detonating it.

 

The Church of the Virgin Mary was originally built in 1934 and is one of three main churches in the Assyrian village of Tal Nasri, which is located to the south of Tal Tamr town that was earlier overrun by ISIS.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/04/06/isis-blows-up-historic-christian-church-in-syria-on-easter/

[Geee]

ISLAMIC RADICALS ATTACK POLICE CHECKPOINT, EGYPTIAN CHURCH ON EASTER

 

Islamic jihadists carried out deadly attacks in Egypt’s two biggest cities Sunday, storming a church in Alexandria and conducting a bombing attack in Cairo, which resulted in the death of a police officer and wounded several more.

 

In Alexandria, Islamic militants conducted a drive-by shooting at the Church of the Angel Rafael, wounding four before they took off in their vehicle, which was described by NBC News as a microbus.

 

In an upper-class area of Cairo, jihadists killed a police officer after detonating a bomb in the district of Zamalek, Interior Ministry officials revealed.

 

Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt in English), an Islamist group that first surfaced in 2014, took responsibility for the bombing attack on social media. The group is responsible for at least 26 separate attacks on Egyptian military and police positions over the past year, according to the Interior Ministry.

 

“Again God has enabled our brave soldiers from planting a sticky bomb [sic] in a gathering for the criminal institutions above the 15th of May Bridge,” said the group’s Twitter post.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/04/06/islamic-radicals-attack-police-checkpoint-egyptian-church-on-easter/

[Geee]

Pope: 'Our Martyrs Today...Are More Numerous Than in the First Centuries'

 

(CNSNews.com) - Pope Francis said on Monday that Christian martyrs are more numerous today than they were in the first centuries of the church.

He made the statement while speaking to a group, the Shalom Community, that had run a relay through Rome, as reported by Vatican Radio, to show solidarity with Christians who are being persecuted.

"Your itinerary on the streets is over," the pope said to the group, "but what must continue on the part of all is the spiritual journey of prayer, intense prayer; the concrete participation and tangible help in the defense and protection of our brothers and sisters, who are persecuted, exiled, killed, beheaded, for the only reason of being a Christian."

"They are our martyrs today and they are many," said the pope, "we are able to say that they are more than in the first centuries."

 

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/cnsnewscom-staff/pope-our-martyrs-todayare-more-numerous-first-centuries

[Valin]

Pope: 'Our Martyrs Today...Are More Numerous Than in the First Centuries'

 

 

 

 

Oh Yeah. More often than not the Roman authorities did everything they could to not martyr those people.

[Valin]

Here Are Some Of The Victims Of The Kenya University Massacre

 

Solomon Oludo, a soldier in the Kenyan Defense Forces.

 

 

Macline Ubue

 

Selpher Wandia, 21. Her dream was to be a teacher

 

Joy Chepkorir, a daughter,niece, sister and friend to many...

 

 

[Draggingtree]

America must stop funding Christian persecution around world Nations that sanction, fail to punish Christian persecution must lose U.S. foreign aid

By: Curt Olson (Diary) | April 6th, 2015 at 05:33 PM

United States taxpayers fund Christian persecution around the world with the nation’s existing foreign aid program of more than $30 billion a year.

 

That brutal conclusion surfaces by examining Open Doors USA’s 2015 study on the most severe Christian persecution worldwide and compare it to the list of nations that receiveU.S. foreign aid.

Of the 50 nations identified in the Open Doors USA World Watch List of Christian persecution, 41 of those nations receive U.S. foreign aid this year. Open Doors USA, which is based in Santa Ana, Calif., has a scale of Extreme, Severe, Moderate, and Sparse persecution to grade nations worldwide.

http://www.redstate.com/diary/colson46/2015/04/06/america-must-stop-funding-christian-persecution-around-world/

[Draggingtree]

The Marxist/Nazi/Ottoman/Islamist ISIS pogrom against Christianity continues to this day

 

The Armenian Genocide

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh -- Bio and Archives April 16, 2015

“Around the world, Christians are facing violence, persecution, brutality in a way we have not seen in generations.” – Rey Flores, “The Wanderer”

 

The hypocritical “war on women” movement is deafly silent, no real effort to save the captives, and good men are doing nothing when faced daily with photographs of Christian hostages on their knees, clad in orange jumpsuits, about to be beheaded, when women and girls are kidnapped, raped, genitally mutilated by ISIS, and driven into a life of slavery as forced converts to Islam.

One year later, the Clarion Project says, “ http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/71223

[Geee]

ITALIAN POLICE: LIBYAN MUSLIMS THREW CHRISTIANS OVERBOARD

 

The Italian police have arrested 15 Muslim refugees from war-torn Libya on charges they murdered Christian passengers on their escape boat by throwing them overboard.

 

“The original group of 105 people left Libya on Tuesday in a rubber boat,” reports CNN, relaying statements from Italian authorities. “Sometime during the trip north across the Mediterranean Sea, the alleged assailants – Muslims from the Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal – threw the 12 [Christians] overboard.”

 

The rubber boat was subsequently intercepted by the Italian navy, which put the passengers aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship bound for Palermo. The alleged murderers were arrested after the ship docked.

 

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/04/16/italian-police-libyan-muslims-threw-christians-overboard/

[Geee]

ISIS SURROUNDS THE FEW REMAINING CHRISTIAN VILLAGES IN SYRIA

 

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) charged into eleven of the 35 Christian communities along the Khabur River in Syria in February targeting Tel Tamer, which at the time was protected by Christian fighters and locals determined to defeat the terrorist group. This week, the Islamic State took another shot at conquering it.

 

“We should resist and stay; we shouldn’t leave our land,” insists Athur Ishak, a 32-year-old mother of one who divorced her husband nine years ago.

 

Ishak is one of the few who chose to stay in Tel Tamer. She remains in her house with her nine-year-old son Ashur Francis. She is alone since “her family fled the Syrian turmoil and moved to Canada and the United States.” Half of the communities left by the end of 2014. But Ishak is not lonely as she prepares coffee for the men outside her house.

 

“The people who have stayed to protect the town are my new family; it’s because of them that we are still here,” she explained.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/04/16/isis-surrounds-the-few-remaining-christian-villages-in-syria/

[Draggingtree]

How Will Turkey Compensate Armenians?

Michael Rubin | @mrubin197104.16.2015 - 4:15 PM

I have written here previously arguing that historians, rather than the pope or other politicians, should be the ultimate arbiters about what is and is not genocide, whether it comes to the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Anfal, the slaughter in Darfur, or any other mass murder. It might seem quibbling, but the basic difference between genocide and mass murder is whether the state implemented a master plan to exterminate a people everywhere they existed (genocide), in certain locales (ethnic cleansing) or whether mass murder occurred against the backdrop of war. Granted, such a distinction doesn’t help the victims nor alleviate their suffering.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/04/16/how-will-turkey-compensate-armenians/

[Geee]

ISIL video purports to show killing of Ethiopian Christians

 

A video purporting to show the killing of Ethiopian Christians by Islamic State-affiliated militants in Libya has been released online.

The 29-minute video appears to show militants holding two groups of captives, one by an affiliate in eastern Libya known as Barka Province and the other by the Fazzan Province, an affiliate in the south.

A masked fighter wielding a pistol says Christians must convert to Islam or pay a special tax prescribed by the Quran, before the captives in the south are shown being shot dead and the captives in the east are beheaded on a beach.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/19/isil-ethiopian-christians/26026769/