Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians

by Raymond Ibrahim

  Such was the state of affairs for Christian churches under the rule of many caliphs. Thus over the course of nearly fourteen centuries, former centers of Christianity such as Egypt became Muslim countries with only Christian enclaves, a few dilapidated outposts of Christianity in a sea of Muslim hostility.

  And today, as Muslims reclaim their Islamic identity and heritage, to Western approval and praise, such is the state of affairs for Christian churches throughout much of the Muslim world at this very moment.

  CHRISTIAN HOLIDAY, ISLAMIC HORROR

  Christians in the Islamic world today are suffering attacks motivated by the very same diabolical animus as a thousand years ago under Hakim. Proof of this is that some of the most terrible assaults occur precisely on Christian holidays—Christmas, Easter, and New Year’s Eve (which is a major church day in the Middle East). And no wonder, considering that some Muslim clerics insist that “saying Merry Christmas is worse than fornication... or killing someone.”28

  After some fourteen centuries of church attacks and other persecution—punctuated by a brief Christian Golden Age—Egypt’s Copts began the new year in 2011 once again under assault, at one of their largest churches: during midnight Mass in the early hours of January 1, 2011, the Two Saints Coptic Church in Alexandria, crowded with hundreds of Christian worshippers, was bombed, leaving at least twenty-three dead and approximately a hundred injured. According to eyewitnesses, “body parts were strewn all over the street outside the church. The body parts were covered with newspapers until they were brought inside the church after some Muslims started stepping on them and chanting Jihadi chants,” including “Allahu Akbar! ”29 Witnesses further attest that “security forces withdrew one hour before the church blast.”30 And a year earlier, Muslims shot and killed six Christians as they were leaving church after celebrating the Coptic Christmas Eve midnight Mass in Nag Hammadi.31

  December 25, 2011, was called Nigeria’s “blackest Christmas ever.”32 In a number of coordinated jihadi operations, Reuters reported, Islamic terrorists bombed several churches during Christmas liturgies, killing at least thirty-eight people, “the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church after celebrating Christmas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion.”33 Charred bodies and dismembered limbs lay scattered around the destroyed church. This attack was simply a reenactment of Christmas Eve one year earlier, in 2010, when several other churches were set ablaze and Christians were attacked, also leaving nearly thirty-eight dead.34 There was no reprieve for Nigeria’s Christians when the next religious holiday came; some fifty Christians were killed “when explosives concealed in two cars went off near the Assemblies of God’s Church during Easter Sunday services” in April 2012 in a predominantly Muslim region.35 According to the pastor, “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.”36 December 25, 2012, saw a repeat of the last few Christmases: in two separate attacks, Islamic gunmen shot and killed twelve Christian worshippers who had gathered for Christmas Eve church services, including one church’s pastor.37

  The violence in Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world, was not so bloody, but Muslims’ hostility was equally clear. In December 2012, more than two hundred Muslims threw rotten eggs at nearly one hundred Christians desiring to hold a Christmas Mass in empty land outside Jakarta, since their church, the Philadelphia Batak Protestant Church, had been illegally closed. A photographer saw angered Muslims—men, women wearing the hijab (the Muslim headscarf), and children—blocking the road and hurling rotten eggs at those attempting to worship. According to the Reverend Palti Panjaitan, the incident followed a Christmas Eve attack when “intolerant people” threw not only rotten eggs but also “plastic bags filled with urine and cow dung” at the Christians. “Everything had happened while police were there. They were just watching without doing anything to stop them from harming us.”38

  The attack was a repeat of what had happened several months earlier, during an Ascension Day church service in May 2012. Then some six hundred Muslims threw bags of urine, stones, and rotten eggs at the same congregation. The mob also threatened to kill the pastor. No arrests were made. The church had applied for a permit to construct its house of worship five years ago. But pressured by local Muslims, the local administration ordered the church to shut down in December 2009—though the Supreme Court recently overruled its decision, saying the church was eligible for the permit. Regardless, local Muslims and officials demand the church cease to exist.39

  In the Philippines, during Mass on Christmas Day 2010, a bomb exploded inside a packed Catholic church in the “Muslim-dominated” island of Jolo, injuring six worshippers including the priest. The bomb was planted by the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group, which according to the Daily Mail “has been blamed for several bomb attacks on the Roman Catholic cathedral in Jolo since the early 2000s and for kidnapping priests and nuns. ”40

  While many more examples of church attacks on Christian holidays could be given, the four examples above demonstrate an important point. Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, and the Philippines have very little in common. These countries do not share the same language, race, or culture. What, then, do they have in common that explains this similar pattern of church attacks during Christian holy days? The answer is Islam. All four countries have large Muslim populations.

  If Islamic jihadis target churches during Christian holidays, Islamic governments exploit the law to oppress Christian worship during those same holidays. For example, in December 2011 in Iran, several reports appeared indicating “a sharp increase of activities against Christians prior to Christmas by the State Security centers of the Islamic Republic.” Local churches were “ordered to cancel Christmas and New Year’s celebrations as a show of their compliance and support” for “the two-month-long mourning activities of the Shia’ Moslems” (activities which culminate with a bloody exhibition of self-mutilation and flagellation during Ashura). Two days before Christmas 2011, state security raided an Assemblies of God’s church. Most of those present, including Sunday school children, were arrested and interrogated. Hundreds of Christian books were seized. As one reporter put it, “Raids and detentions during the Christmas season are not uncommon in Iran, a Shi’a-majority country that is seen as one of the worst persecutors of religious minorities.”41

  Indeed, such oppression of Christians during Christmas is not uncommon throughout much of the Islamic world. In Iraq, some Muslim school teachers in Mosul’s elementary and high schools scheduled exams on December 25, 2012, forcing Christian students to attend school on Christmas Day and miss Christmas Mass, “even though authorities had identified the 25th of December as an official holiday for Christians.”42 In December 2011 in supposedly moderate Malaysia, priests and church youth leaders were required to obtain “caroling permits” by submitting their full names and identity card numbers at police stations—always a harrowing experience—simply to visit their fellow church members and sing carols like “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night.” In Pakistan in 2011, Christians lamented that “extreme power outages have become routine during Christmas and Easter seasons.”43 In Indonesia, December 2011, after “vandals” decapitated the statue of the Virgin Mary in a small grotto days before Christmas, the “embattled” church of GKI Bogor, another Christian church that local Muslims want eliminated, was forced to move its Christmas prayers to a member’s house after Islamic groups warned Christians not to meet at the site of the church.44

  Most Muslim attacks on churches today can be classified into three general categories, which sometimes intersect:1. Churches harassed by Muslim governments, often by denying them the necessary permits to exist and function as churches—the sort of permits that are routinely issued to build mosques. This “red-tape” jihad works to uphold Omar’s conditions for churches, specifically that new churches may not be built and old churches may not be renovated. Even churches that
have existed for decades are sometimes shut down through the refusal to renew their permits, while others are fined and penalized for merely repairing their toilets without permission.45

  2. Churches attacked by the Muslim mob. These account for the majority of church attacks. Muslim mobs attack churches for many and varied reasons, including the perception that churches somehow transgress The Conditions of Omar—by, for instance, installing offensive bells or crosses—and “retaliation” for the perceived crimes of individual Christians. Such attacks are often prompted by local Muslim preachers who regularly whip their followers into anti-Christian frenzies. Muslim mobs also use the permit pretext to attack churches and harass their congregations.

  3. Churches attacked by Muslim jihadis, whose hyper-Islam simply cannot abide the presence of Christianity and its houses of worship, and who actively seek to express their deep-seated hatred—as typified, for instance, in the above Christian holiday terrorist attacks. Because of their premeditated nature, these attacks are usually more deadly than Muslim mob attacks, which are often impromptu.

  THE LEGAL JIHAD ON CHRISTIAN CHURCHES BY MUSLIM GOVERNMENTS

  Because Islamic law is clear about the status of churches—new ones are not to be built and old ones are not to be repaired—Muslim governments, do, in fact, make it next to impossible for Christian churches to be built or repaired, usually by denying them permits on any number of pretexts. This phenomenon is especially prominent in Iran and Central Asia, where Evangelical Protestantism has taken root and is seen as a threat to the Islamic order.

  Afghanistan

  In October 2011, ten years after the United States invaded and “liberated” Afghanistan at a cost of more than 1,700 U.S. lives and $440 billion in taxpayer dollars, the State Department reported that the nation’s last Christian church was destroyed in March 2010 in compliance with a court order.46 This is unsurprising considering that the U.S.-installed Afghan government regularly upholds anti-Christian measures.

  Azerbaijan

  In April 2012, the Greater Grace Protestant Church in Muslim-majority Azerbaijan became “the first religious community to be liquidated by a court” since the country’s new religion law, requiring all previously registered religious institutions to re-register, “came into force in 2009.” The church, which had been registered since 1993 and had a congregation of some 500, making it one of the largest Protestant churches in the country, “was stripped of its registration at a 15-minute hearing on April 25. The decision, which was made in the absence of any church representatives, makes any activity by the church illegal and subject to punishment.”47 In August 2012, the highest appeals court in Azerbaijan upheld the decision to close Greater Grace Church.48 Earlier in January 2012, “a pastor was threatened with criminal proceedings following a raid on his church” during Sunday service, in which around two hundred items of Christian literature, including Bibles, were seized. He was told that “a criminal case had been launched over religious literature arousing incitement over other faiths” and was pressured by authorities to leave the area, which he did. At last report, he was traveling long distances each week in order to lead church services. 49

  Iran

  In February 2012, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence ordered the last two officially registered churches, Emmanuel Protestant Church and St. Peter’s Evangelical Church, to discontinue Friday Farsi-language services in Tehran—Farsi being the nation’s primary language: “Friday services in Tehran attracted the city’s converts to Christianity as well as Muslims interested in Christianity, as Friday is most Iranians’ day off during the week.”50 Banning the churches’ use of Farsi prevents Iranians from hearing the Gospel. Likewise, one month later, in March 2012, the Armenian Evangelical Church in Tehran was also ordered to discontinue holding Persian-language services on Fridays. The officers serving the notice threatened church officials, saying that “if this order is ignored . . . the church building will be bombed ‘as happens in Iraq every day.’”51 In June 2012, authorities ordered the closure of another church in Tehran “amid a government campaign to crack down on the few recognized churches offering Farsi-speaking services, according to a human rights group.” The church originally served traditional Assyrian Christians; however, “due to an increasing number of Farsi-speaking believers—mostly MBBs [Muslim Background Believers, that is, converts to Christianity from Islam]—it [the church] has become a cause of concern for the authorities and they now ordered it to shut down.”52 In July 2012, “both the Central Assembly of God Church in Tehran and its summer campsite,” once a popular site for Christian gatherings and conferences, were closed by authorities of the Islamic Republic, who also posted a notice on the gates “warning of severe consequences should anyone try to enter the premises.” 53 And as part of the crackdown on non-registered house church meetings, plainclothes agents of the Ministry of Islamic Guidance continued raiding, arresting, and “‘aggressively’ interrogating” assembled worshippers.54

  In October of 2012, security forces ransacked four underground house churches and arrested the church leaders. An Iranian propaganda media source, Fars News, described the churches as a “network of criminals” affiliated with “Zionist propaganda.”55 According to another report,State security agents have been permanently stationed at two churches in Esfahan, Iran, in the latest effort by the Islamic regime to frighten people off Christianity. The agents constantly interfere in the activities of St Luke’s and St Paul’s, and harass those present. They order the pastors around and stop church elders from talking to Muslim seekers. They also try to frighten away visitors by warning them of dire consequences if they continue attending, and create tension among the members by spreading false rumors. The children of church members are also threatened and often forbidden from attending.56

  Kazakhstan

  In October 2011, majority-Muslim Kazakhstan adopted new laws in order to further inhibit freedom of religion: “All registered churches must now re-register with the government, and only churches meeting new criteria will be registered. ”57 Accordingly, “police and secret agents reportedly raided a worship meeting of officially registered Protestant church New Life, saying that under the new law the congregation ‘cannot meet outside its legal address.’” During the raid, a seventeen-year-old woman was beaten unconscious by a policeman. 58 In February 2012, it was reported that “churches are being raided, leaders fined and Christian literature confiscated as the Kazakh authorities enforce new laws intended further to restrict religious freedom in the country.”59 And in June 2012 authorities “forced a Methodist church to ‘voluntarily’ close and fined the wife of the church’s Pastor.” The pastor put an announcement in newspapers declaring that the church was “liquidating itself” because “we do not want more punishment from the authorities.”60 One year later, “two unrelated Protestant churches in different parts of Kazakhstan were raided in early October, reportedly over a criminal case launched 15 months ago.” First, masked police raided Grace Church and seized items such as literature and electronic devices characterized as “extremist”; police also asked church affiliates to give blood samples in order to determine if the church uses “hallucinogenic” substances in the sacrament of communion. A week and a half later, a similar raid occurred on New Life Church, an establishment completely unrelated to Grace Church. “Members of both churches fear the authorities will use the case to prevent them gaining the mandatory re-registration,” in Kazakhstan’s push to shut down Protestant churches.61

  Turkmenistan

  A raid on an Evangelical church was carried out in the Muslim-majority nation of Turkmenistan in June 2012: “All adult believers at the meeting were questioned about their faith and all of their Christian literature was confiscated,” only to be returned two weeks later.62

  Uzbekistan

  In May 2012, police raided a Protestant house church meeting in Uzbekistan, claiming that a bomb was in the home. No bomb was found, only Christian literature, which was confiscated and which a judge
ordered to be destroyed. Subsequently, fourteen members of the unregistered church were heavily fined—between ten and sixty times a month’s salary—for an “unsanctioned meeting in a private home.”63 Between “February and April, 28 Protestants were fined and four warned” for the offense,64 with three Baptists also being fined for not declaring their personal Bibles while crossing the border from Kazakhstan into Uzbekistan. Fines and warnings were accompanied by the confiscation of religious literature. 65

  And the same pattern continues throughout the Arab world—from Algeria in the west to Kuwait in the east.

  Algeria

  In May 2011, seven Algerian churches, accused of being unregistered and operating illegally, were threatened with closure. “Registration is required under controversial Ordinance 06-03, but Christians report the government refuses to respond to or grant their applications for registration. The controversial law was introduced in 2006 to regulate non-Muslim worship.” In 2008, the government applied measures in accordance with Ordinance 06-03 to limit the activities of non-Muslim groups, ordering the closure of twenty-six churches in one region alone because they were not registered. According to local church members, “authorities apply the law when they want to harass churches: ‘It’s always the same thing. . . . They use this law when they want to pester us.’”66

  The Palestinian Authority