Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians

by Raymond Ibrahim

In January 2012, after announcing his conversion to Christianity, Hassan Sharif Lubenga, formerly a prominent member of an Islamic organization in Uganda, suffered the usual consequences. In his own words: “They [former colleagues] were furious. They then kidnapped me and blindfolded me for three days, coupled with beatings. They demanded I deny Jesus as the Son of God, which I consented to because I feared that they were going to kill me. . . . The whole family and clan members were out to destroy me.” As a Muslim, he had had four wives; upon his conversion, one of them tried to poison him. His father committed suicide, leaving a note that read, “I have decided to kill myself because my son became a Christian,” and urging all family members to curse him. Hassan is currently in hiding: “All my family members have deserted me. . . . The Muslims are looking to kill me. I need protection and help.”89

  Around the same time, another Muslim convert to Christianity, Hassan Muwanguzi, experienced similar treatment. After he apostatized, his “family immediately kicked him out of their home, and enraged Muslims beat him. His wife left him that same year, and he lost his job as a teacher.” Undaunted, he recently opened a Christian school, Grace International Nursery and Primary School, in a predominantly Muslim region. “Incensed by his boldness,” an Islamic teacher filed a false charge that Muwanguzi had “defiled” his daughter, leading to Muwanguzi’s arrest. He was imprisoned for a time, but the accusation was discovered to be false, and he was eventually released, and fled.90

  Zanzibar

  In January 2012, Musta Kim, a Muslim convert to Christianity, called police to his house after being robbed. When they discovered a Bible during their inspection, the course of inquiry immediately changed from ascertaining the identity of the thieves to asking why Musta “was practicing a forbidden faith.” He was imprisoned for eight months without trial. Since being released, his family has rejected him and at last report he was homeless and diseased.91

  NO ESCAPE

  Sometimes when Muslim converts to Christianity flee their countries of origin, their persecutors pursue them. This is especially the case when the apostate flees to a nation where there are Muslims aplenty. Christian converts seeking refuge in Kenya, for example, are being tracked and attacked by Muslims from their countries of origin, especially Somalia. In December 2011 in Kenya, seven Muslims of Somali descent beat a young Somali Christian unconscious, seriously injuring his eye.92 During the attack, which occurred less than six weeks after a similar attack on his older brother, his assailants said, “We did not succeed in killing your brother, but today we are going to kill you. ”93 His family was presumably Muslim when he was born, so the gang beat him as an “apostate,” even though he was raised as a Christian. Also in Kenya, an Ethiopian was shot by his father, kidnapped, and almost killed upon converting to Christianity, according to the Christian Post.94

  In September 2012, a Somali Muslim apostate who fled to Kenya said, “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 threats that these fugitive apostates have received include “Stop your harmful ideologies and preaching to the Muslims” and other warnings—words that echo the subjugated status decreed for infidels by Koran 9:29:Some Somali Muslims are already affected by this cancer of Christianity . . . they will be under the sword of the mujahedeen [holy warriers]. . . . We know where you are.... We ask Allah to help us make his purpose reign.... 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.95

  Even in South Africa, thousands of miles from its stronghold in the Horn of Africa, the Somali al-Shabaab was accused of systematically targeting and murdering fourteen Ethiopian Christians in August 2012. According to the local South African bishop, “‘If nothing is done, the Ethiopian population will be depleted.... [Those who were killed are] holy martyrs who have died because they are Christians.’ . . . Meanwhile, Father Mike Williams of the Anglican Catholic Church also reveals members of his congregation have been targeted by gunmen with connections to Muslim extremists, saying, ‘In July [2012], we have lost seven members of our church.’”96

  Apostates to Christianity are under attack even in the West—including in the heartland of the United States. In June 2012, two formerly Muslim men in Saint Louis, Missouri, reported receiving death threats from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard for converting to Christianity and preaching it. One of the men had formerly served in the Revolutionary Guard and had even been assigned a suicide mission against Israel, before converting to Christianity and immigrating to the U.S. According to a KPLR 11 news report, “The two men believe that Islam is a religion that could easily radicalize a Muslim into a terrorist.”97 Also in Saint Louis, in October 2011, Muslims attacked an Iraqi Muslim convert to Christianity because he wrote a poem “which expresses pain over the loss of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis.” The attackers, who appeared to be Somalis, carved the Star of David on his back with a knife “while laughing as they recited his poem.”98 In October 2011, terrorists with suspected ties to Iranian security threatened to kill nearly a dozen evangelical Christians who had earlier fled Iran. They threatened that, unless the Christians repent, ask forgiveness, and return to Islam, they must die.99

  In Norway in August 2011, a Muslim convert to Christianity was tortured with boiling water while Muslims told him, “If you do not return to Islam, we will kill you.” 100 Also in Norway, in January 2012, two Iranian converts to Christianity out for a walk were stabbed with knives by masked men shouting “infidels!” One of the men stabbed had converted to Christianity in Iran, been threatened there, and fled to Norway—thinking he could escape persecution in Western Europe, in one of the freest nations in the world.101

  In Italy in December 2009, twenty-two-year-old Moroccan immigrant Said Bouidra hanged himself after his Muslim family threatened and savagely beat him for his decision to convert to Christianity. He had previously tried to drown himself in the sea but had been rescued. 102 Later, in January 2011, Karima El Mahroug, a Moroccan teenage nightclub dancer at the center of a prostitution probe, revealed how she was raped by her uncles as a child, and how, when she turned twelve and wanted to convert to Christianity, her father threw a pan of boiling oil over her, causing her to run away from home.103

  In the United Kingdom in June 2011, an Afghan man, Sher Ahmadzai, was sentenced to prison for hitting another Afghan Muslim who had converted to Christianity with a long plank of wood, knocking the apostate down as another man kicked him in the face .104 And in Greece in May 2012, Abet Hasman, the deputy mayor of Patras who recently passed away, left a message to be revealed only in his obituary, that he, though born to Muslim parents in Jordan, was “secretly baptized an Orthodox Christian”—thus demonstrating how some Muslims who convert to Christianity, fully knowing the consequences of apostasy, opt for secrecy even in European countries.105

  Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the lives of many Muslim converts to Christianity who do not get killed are still in many respects over, as they are regularly ostracized by family and treated like traitors by society. Costly Call: Modern Day Stories of Muslims Who Found Jesus, published in 2005, makes the extent of this phenomenon clear. This book contains twenty real-life stories, eighteen of which take place in Muslim-majority nations. According to the introduction, “each believer in Christ has made grave sacrifices for his or her faith,” including being “considered dead in the eyes of family. Some have lost jobs. Some have been imprisoned, threatened with execution, fined, and beaten relentlessly. Some were forced to flee their countries and live in exile.” Even after their initial ordeals, apostates to Christianity must often begin their lives again from scratch. 106

  In December 2011, Abdul Rahman Muhammad Pouri, a convert to Christianity, told the ASSIST News Service of his experiences in Iran:When my family and friends learned of my decision, they didn�
��t accept it and rejected me as a result. They made me leave our family home. In addition, my friends treated me like my family had and began calling me an apostate and an infidel. In Iran, anyone who converts to Christianity faces various problems. In spite of the love I had for my family, I had to leave my home. Everyone rejected me.

  Ironically, Islam’s apostasy law was one thing that made him doubt Islam: “In my opinion, the violence and contradictions in Islam made it impossible for me to feel close to God. Because of this I replaced my traditional religion with Christianity. ”107

  The same month in Pakistan, a Muslim family discovered that their son, Malik Pauloos, had converted to Christianity. Not only did his father put up a notice in local newspapers disowning him, but also “his family would file a police complaint against him” saying that, by apostatizing, he had “blasphemed” Islam. Malik’s response was that his family should “know that I had indeed become a Christian and would not renounce Christ even if they killed me,” even as he fled and prepared to begin life anew.108

  DEATH TO BLASPHEMERS

  Islam’s blasphemy law is once again and with increasing regularity being invoked by malicious Muslims, as it was in former times, to punish, coerce, and get revenge against Christian minorities under Islam. Christians in those Muslim countries that enshrine the blasphemy law in their constitutions—Pakistan being the primary example—are especially being targeted.

  Spotlight on Pakistan

  Pakistan is one of the most dangerous countries in which to express—or simply be accused of expressing—anything other than praise and blessings for Islam’s prophet. Pakistanis’ extreme sensitivity to any potential insult to Muhammad is reflected in several laws in the nation’s penal code, including Section 295-C: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.” 109

  Aside from the fact that countless people have been beaten, imprisoned, and tortured because of this law, in the last two decades at least fifty-two people are known to have been murdered—usually by vigilante mobs—for transgressing it, according to the International Herald Tribune .110

  Because non-Muslims—particularly Christians who by definition are known to reject Muhammad’s prophecy—are more likely to be suspected of blasphemy, and because the word of a Christian is not valid against the word of a Muslim in Sharia law, blasphemy accusations against Christians by Muslims routinely result in the imprisonment, beating, and sometimes death of the accused, even when there is no evidence that they did in fact say anything against Muhammad. This scenario has played itself out over and over again in Pakistan—despite the fact that, because of their social vulnerability (Christians reportedly make up less than 1 percent of the population in Pakistan) and susceptibility to the blasphemy charge, Pakistan’s Christians are probably much more careful than Muslims not to say anything that can be construed as “anti-Muhammad.”

  As Amnesty International reported back in 1994,Several dozen people have been charged with blasphemy in Pakistan over the last few years; in all the cases known to Amnesty International, the charges of blasphemy appear to have been arbitrarily brought, founded solely on the individuals’ minority religious beliefs.... The available evidence in all these cases suggests that charges were brought as a measure to intimidate and punish members of minority religious communities . . . hostility towards religious minority groups appeared in many cases to be compounded by personal enmity, professional or economic rivalry or a desire to gain political advantage. As a consequence, Amnesty International has concluded that most of the individuals now facing charges of blasphemy, or convicted on such charges, are prisoners of conscience, detained solely for their real or imputed religious beliefs in violation of their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. [Emphasis added.]111

  The most notorious blasphemy case against a Christian in Pakistan in modern times illustrates Amnesty’s point here. In November 2010, Asia Bibi, a married mother of five, was sentenced to death in accordance to Section 295-C for “defaming” the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

  Back in June 2009 while working as a farm laborer, she had been told to fetch water. When Asia returned, some Muslim coworkers refused to drink the water, complaining that it was “unclean” because a Christian brought it. Arguments ensued. Moreover, there was already a feud between Asia and one of her Muslim neighbors concerning property damage. It was not long before her coworkers went and complained to a Muslim cleric, accusing Asia of making insulting statements about the Muslim prophet Muhammad. A mob stormed her home, severely beating Asia and her family, including children. She was later arrested and in November 2010 a Punjabi court fined her and sentenced her to death by hanging for insulting Muhammad.

  Asia’s case, like that of the Iranian pastor Nardkhani, was one of the rare cases actually to receive media coverage, resulting in international calls for her release—as well as threats from Pakistani Muslims that if she were released, they would take the (Sharia) law in their own hands and slaughter her. One mosque prayer leader has even offered $6,000 to anyone who kills her.

  Two of the most prominent advocates for Asia Bibi, Governor Salmaan Taseer and Minority Affairs Minister Shabaz Bhatti, were both murdered. Taseer was shot twenty-seven times by his own bodyguard as he exited his mother’s home. The assassin cited as his motivation the fact that the governor was supportive of the Christian woman accused of blasphemy. As for Bhatti, a Christian, Muslims from al-Qaeda or the Taliban assassinated him for his outspoken position against Pakistan’s blasphemy law and his support for Asia. His car was ambushed and sprayed with bullets. A letter left at the scene said that anyone who tried to tamper with Pakistan’s blasphemy law would suffer the same fate.112

  Bhatti, who received a large number of death threats, had predicted his own murder. In a prerecorded video released after his assassination he said, “I believe in Jesus Christ who has given his own life for us . . . and I am ready to die for a cause . . . I’m living for my community . . . and I will die to defend their rights.”113 The investigation into his murder was so lax (a series of suspects were freed) as to suggest that the Pakistani government may have been involved in—or at least sympathetic to—the assassination of the anti-blasphemy law Christian.114

  Because her case garnered so much attention and condemnation from the international community, Asia Bibi has not yet been executed. But she still languishes in jail, sick and isolated, and regularly beaten by both prison guards and Muslim inmates. In late 2011 it was reported that the female prison officer assigned to provide security for Asia beat her, “because of the Muslim officer’s anti-Christian bias, while other staff members deployed for her security looked on in silence.”115

  While Asia Bibi’s case is one of the most notorious examples of the abuse of Pakistani Christians under the accusation of blasphemy, there are countless other instances of the same phenomenon.

  In March 2012 twenty-six-year-old Shamim Bibi, a Christian mother of a newborn baby, was arrested after neighbors accused her of “uttering remarks against Muhammad.” A few days earlier, some of her relatives who had converted to Islam pressured her to do likewise, but she had refused, “telling them that she was satisfied with Christianity and did not want to convert.”116 Shamim was arrested for blasphemy soon thereafter. According to her husband Bashir, the accusation is completely baseless: “I was present with her at the time of the alleged incident . . . nothing of the sort happened. The Muslims cooked up a false story, though it’s still not clear who provoked them into leveling this accusation.” Other witnesses concur. After visiting her in jail, her husband said that Shamim “was holding fast to her Christian faith and firmly believed that God would rescue her soon from the false charge,” adding that “She is alright otherwise, but she especially misses her daughter. . . .”117

/>   In February 2012, Muslims targeted Saira Khokhar, a Christian teacher, on the baseless allegation that she had burned a Koran. A mob stormed her school, which is run by City Foundation, a Christian NGO, and seized her, but local police intervened and took her into custody.118

  In June 2011, Dildar Masih, a twenty-seven-year-old married Christian father of two, was arrested and charged with “blasphemy” after he rescued his eight-year-old nephew, known as Sunny, from a beating at the hands of Muslim youths who were trying to force him to convert to Islam by making him recite the shehada. “Seeing the attack from a distance, Masih shouted and rushed to the scene, rescued his nephew and then went to his work as a painter. Soon after the incident, a Muslim mob of about 55 led by the village prayer leader besieged Masih’s house,” insisting that “the blasphemer” be turned over to them and shouting other Islamic slogans. According to Masih’s elderly father, who witnessed the attack, “They pounced on him like tigers.... They slapped him, kicked him, and my poor son didn’t even know why he was being tortured.” He was arrested but eventually released from prison after being threatened and harassed by Muslim inmates and jail officials.119

  In June 2012 an Islamic group attempted to burn down a Christian village after accusing a mentally retarded Christian, Ramzan Masih, of blasphemy. In the words of a villager, “These people [Muslims] do not let us live. We are poor but are working hard to survive. On the night of the incident a mob of Muslim clerics gathered [around] our colony to burn us all because of the Blapshemy [sic] Ramzan [was said to have] committed. Everyone was very scared. We all have small children in our houses and we didn’t know what to do. The mob surrounded our colony and raised a slogan to burn all the houses; they had torches in their hands and petrol in the cans. We called police and thank God police arrived just in time. ”120