Today, the same story is once again being repeated around the Islamic world. AsiaNews reported in September 2012 on approximately three hundred Christian children in Bangladesh who were recently abducted and “forcibly converted to Islam.” Middlemen visit “poverty-stricken communities” and convince Christian families to send their children to school at supposed mission hostels, charging them a significant amount of money for schooling, room, and board. But the children never make it to the hostels: “After pocketing the money, the intermediaries sell the children to Islamic schools elsewhere in the country ‘where imams force them to abjure Christianity.’” The children are then instructed in Islam and beaten. After full indoctrination, they are asked if they are “ready to give their lives for Islam,” presumably by becoming jihadi suicide-bombers.68
The tiny Palestinian Christian community in the Hamas-run Gaza strip is under siege from Muslim kidnappers. In July 2012, five Christians were abducted and pressured into converting to Islam. Because Christians protested the forced conversions, “members of the Christian community now fear reprisal attacks by Muslim extremists.” Some have appealed to the Vatican and Christian groups and churches in the West for help. Yet “‘we only hear voices telling us to stay where we are and to stop making too much noise,’ said a Christian man living in Gaza City. ‘If they continue to turn a blind eye to our tragedy, in a few months there will be no Christians left in Palestine. Today it’s happening in the Gaza Strip, tomorrow it will take place in Bethlehem.’”69 Indeed, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christianity’s founder, boasted a Christian population of 60 percent in 1990, but only 15 percent of those living there today are Christians .70
The fact that Islamic indoctrination tends to inspire Muslims to put pressure on Christians to convert is exemplified by an August 2012 incident in Pakistan. After a Muslim opened a madrassa—that is, an Islamic school—near where Christians held their tent church worship, Muslims began harassing the Christians, spraying their homes with bullets and saying, “Convert to Islam or leave this neighborhood.” They also tried to trick a pastor into confessing that he proselytizes Muslims, and they gathered in front of the church to harass Christian girls as they left after services. 71
Just as they have done for over a millennium, Muslim authorities still offer Christians reprieve from their sufferings if they only convert to Islam. In Uzbekistan in August 2012, a twenty-six-year-old Christian woman, partially paralyzed from youth, and her mother were violently attacked with sticks by six men who broke into their home at 4:00 a.m. The men ransacked the house, confiscating “icons, bibles, religious calendars, and prayer books.” When the paralyzed woman furtively tried to phone for help, she was beaten again. The home invaders and the Christian women were all taken to the police department, where the paralyzed woman was “offered to convert to Islam.” She refused, and the judge eventually “decided that the women had resisted police and had stored the banned religious literature at home and conducted missionary activities. He fined them 20 minimum monthly wages each.”72
In Pakistan in November 2011, a Christian couple was arrested on a false charge and severely beaten by police. The pregnant wife was “kicked and punched” even as her interrogators threatened to kill her unborn fetus. A policeman offered to drop the theft charge if the husband would only “renounce Christianity and convert to Islam. ”73 Likewise in August 2011, Muslims beat unconscious a Christian man celebrating Pakistan’s Independence Day; they told him he should convert to Islam if he wanted to join in the celebration .74
In Sudan in February 2011, Muslims kidnapped a fifteen-year-old Christian girl, Hiba Abdelfadil Anglo. Her mother, a widow, received menacing phone calls ordering her to pay $1,500 Sudanese pounds to get back her daughter, who was referred to as a “slave.” When the mother went to the police station to open a case, officer Fakhr El-Dean Mustafa, of the ironically named “Family and Child Protection Unit,” told her, “You must convert to Islam if you want your daughter back.” Soon after the mother’s Muslim employer told her she could take time off to find her daughter, she was fired.75
Over one year later, the girl managed to escape after having pretended to convert to Islam. She had been locked in a room and “beaten until she was unconscious.” The leader of the Muslim gang raped and beat her. In her own words:Several times I was warned that if I do not convert to Islam, then I risk losing my life.... The man who put me in his house on several occasions tortured me and threatened to kill me. He did not allow me to pray Christian prayers. He even insulted my family as a family of infidels.... Apart from abusing me sexually, he tried to force me to change my faith and kept reminding me to prepare for Ramadan [the Muslim holy month].... I cannot forget this bad incident, and whenever I try to pray, I find it difficult to forget. I ask believers to pray for me for inner healing. 76
The Jihad on Christian Women: Abduction, Rape, and Forced Conversion
Hiba’s story is tragically common. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Christians being forced to convert to Islam are women, who are pressured by means of rapes and beatings. There are several reasons that Muslims specially target women for forced conversion. First and foremost is the fact that in the Koran and according to Sharia, non-Muslim women are to be treated as plunder by Muslim men in the context of jihad. Both the Prophet of Islam and his followers regularly abducted women from non-Muslim tribes and kept them as concubines, or sex slaves. This practice is even sanctioned in the Koran: “Marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four; but if you fear that you will not do justice, then only one, or what your right hands possess.” (Koran 4:3). Islamic authorities understand “what your right hands possess” as women taken captive in war .77
Indeed, the institution of infidel sex slaves is so well documented in the whole of Islamic history and doctrine that various Muslim scholars and activists today are calling for its official revival. Salwa al-Mutairi, a female political activist and former parliamentary candidate for Kuwait’s government, is pushing for the legalization of enslaving and selling non-Muslim women for sexual purposes.
In a 2011 video she posted on You Tube, Mutairi insists that “it’s of course true” that “the prophet of Islam legitimized sex slavery.” She recounts how when she was in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, she asked various sheikhs and muftis about the legality of sex slavery according to Sharia, and they all confirmed it to be perfectly legal. Kuwaiti scholars further pointed out that extra-virile men would do well to purchase sex slaves to sate their appetites so they will not be tempted to sin by fornicating with Muslim women. In Mutairi’s own words:A Muslim state must attack a Christian state—sorry, I mean any non-Muslim state—and they [the future sex slaves] must be captives of the raid. Is this forbidden? Not at all; according to Islam, sex slaves are not at all forbidden. Quite the contrary, the rules regulating sex slaves differ from those for free women: the latter’s body must be covered entirely, except for her face and hands, whereas the sex slave is kept naked from the bellybutton on up—she is different from the free woman; the free woman has to be married properly to her husband, but the sex slave—he just buys her and that’s that.
Mutairi went on to suggest where Muslim men might acquire sex slaves: “For example, in the Chechnyan war, surely there are female Russian captives. So go and buy those and sell them here in Kuwait; better that than have our men engage in forbidden sexual relations. I don’t see any problem in this, no problem at all.”
Nor is the Kuwaiti politician ignorant of Islamic history. She further justified the institution of sex slavery by invoking eighth-century Caliph Harun al-Rashid—who is known in the West from the Arabian Nights as a fun-loving, philandering caliph, but who was in reality pious enough to destroy churches and persecute Christians: “And the greatest example we have is Harun al-Rashid: when he died, he had 2,000 sex-slaves—so it’s okay, nothing wrong with it.”78
Likewise, Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini, a popular Salafi preacher in Egypt, appeared on Hikma TV in May 2011 and
explained that after Muslims invade and conquer a non-Muslim nation, the properties and persons of those infidels who refuse to convert or pay jizya and live as subjugated dhimmis are to be seized as ghanima, or “spoils of war,” distributed among the Muslim jihadis or taken to “the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold.”
Al-Huwaini referred to these sex slaves by the dehumanizing appellation that the Koran gives them, ma malakat aymanukum—“ what [not whom] your right hands possess”—in this context, sex-slaves: “You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate—though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff—and this is agreed upon by the ulema. In other words, when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”79
This position is not “radical,” although more discreet Muslims may downplay it in public. In a memorable scene on live TV in Egypt, when Sheikh Gamal Qutb was asked if Islam permits men to enslave and rape female captives of jihad, the one-time grand mufti of Islam’s most authoritative university, Al Azhar, refused to answer; when pressed, he became hostile and stormed off the set.80
Little wonder non-Muslim women surrounded by Muslims face serious problems. While, strictly speaking, a jihad must be in process for Muslims to abduct and enslave such women, this technicality is regularly rationalized away. Sharia has created a culture in which horrific abuses even beyond those actually justified by Sharia are commonplace. As will be seen below, some Muslims rationalize that, by not paying jizya, Christians are not protected and thus are fair game, as in a jihad. Other Muslims, Salafis especially, consider themselves in a constant state of jihad so long as the nation they are living in is not fully governed according to Sharia. Rationalizations are many and easy to come by in the service of vice, and the institution of Islamic sex slavery is built atop vice and perversion.
Spotlight on Egypt
The situation for Christian women in Egypt is so bad that in July 2012 the U.S. Congress heard testimony about what Representative Chris Smith called the “escalating abduction, coerced conversion and forced marriage of Coptic Christian women and girls. Those women are being terrorized and, consequently, marginalized, in the formation of the new Egypt. Sadly, the vulnerability and abduction of Coptic Christians is not a new problem. Going back to the 1970s, when Anwar Sadat used Islamism to solidify his leadership of Egypt, Coptic women and girls have been abducted, forced to marry their captors, and coercively converted to Islam.”81
Indeed the late Coptic Pope Shenouda III decried this phenomenon back in 1976, saying, “There is a practice to convert Coptic girls to embrace Islam and marry them under terror to Muslim husbands.”82
The report from Christian Solidarity International (CSI) that prompted these congressional hearings, entitled “Tell My Mother I Miss Her,” demonstrates that “Coptic women and girls are deceptively lured or abducted into forced marriages with Muslim men” and forced to renounce Christianity and convert to Islam. Its findings confirm those of a previous CSI report published in 2009: “The Disappearance, Forced Conversions and Forced Marriages of Coptic Christian Women in Egypt.”
At least 550 cases of abduction, rape, and forced conversion of Christian women have been documented in the last five years in Egypt. Such incidents have only increased since the “Arab Spring.” CSI details the various ways Christian women are entrapped. One young mother was snatched in broad daylight; as her abductor dragged her to a waiting taxi he shouted to bystanders, “No one interfere! She is an enemy of Islam.” Others are befriended by friends or relatives of their kidnappers, only to be drugged and abducted.
“Tell My Mother I Miss Her” also explains what typically happens after abduction. Those who manage to escape back to their families tell of how they were raped and told they could not go home because their families would reject them. Many are beaten, while others are forced into slavery. Finally, these women are repeatedly told that the only way to be safe and lead a normal life is to convert to Islam, and many of them come to believe it.83
In July 2011, a few months after President Mubarak was ousted, the Assyrian International News Agency reported that “the number of Christian girls abducted and coerced into converting to Islam since the Egyptian ‘January 25 Revolution’ has skyrocketed. . . . More than two to three girls disappear everyday in Giza alone.... The cases that are brought to public attention are few compared to what the numbers actually are.”
The increase in female Christian abductions is directly related to the fact that, with the fall of Hosni Mubarak, Salafis have become more emboldened. Salafis “believe strongly that converting a Christian infidel is in some ways like earning a ticket to paradise—not to mention the earthly remuneration they get from the Saudis,” quipped an Egyptian activist.
The Assyrian International News Agency also noted that Egypt4Christ, a Christian human rights organization,exposed a highly organized Muslim ring centered in the Fatah Mosque in Alexandria. The investigation also uncovered a systematic “religious call” plan, where young Muslim males in high school and university are urged to approach Coptic girls in the 9–15 age group and manipulate them through sexual exploitation and blackmail. The plan . . . aims at sexually compromising Christian girls, defiling them and humiliating them in front of their parents, thereby forcing them to flee their homes, and use conversion to Islam as a “solution” for their problems.84
Coptic Solidarity president Adel Guindy concurs that much of the abuse is part of a systematic strategy:Any objective and fair review of the cases of forced conversion of Coptic girls, which started four decades ago but dramatically escalated after January 2011 [when the “Arab Spring” reached Egypt], will show a clear pattern of events that point to well organized “hidden hands” behind the process. Amazingly, the collusion of Egypt’s security as well as judiciary authorities—in defiance of the existing laws concerning minors—shows the extent of the scheme. It is part of a “war of attrition” against the Copts in their own homeland. 85
Human rights activist Magdi Khalil agrees: “Abducting and converting Coptic girls to Islam is not only a result of the paranoid and racist incitation against the Copts, but it is an organized and pre-planned process by associations and organizations inside Egypt with domestic and Arab funding as the main role in seducing and luring Coptic girls carried through cunning, deceit and enticement or through force if required.”86
On top of all this, in August 2012, when Egypt’s Constituent Assembly proposed a law to criminalize “forced labor, slavery, the trafficking of women and children, human organs, and the sex trade,” from which female Christians would especially benefit, Islamists complained. Muhammad Saad Gawish, a member of the Constituent Assembly, wondered, “How can an article mention human trafficking when this is not happening in Egypt?” Yunis Makhiyun, another Constituent Assembly member, complained that “this article will give [Egypt’s] citizens the impression that things like slavery, trafficking in females and children, are happening in Egyptian society, when such things do not exist.”87 Rather tellingly, both of these men are also members of Egypt’s Salafi Nour Party, which is especially associated with the organized abduction, enslavement, and selling of Christian women and children in Egypt.
The very latest examples of abduction in Egypt indicate that the abductors are only getting bolder and more violent. In a Christian village on a Sunday morning in October 2012, Ali Hussein, a Muslim gang leader, and his two ex-convict brothers broke into the home of a Christian family, demanding that Hiyam Zaki, a twenty-five-year-old mother of two children “come and live with him.” Hussein had previously demanded that the family either pay him one million Egyptian pounds or forfeit the Christian woman to him. Because the family rejected his demands, his gang indiscriminately opened fire in the house, killing Hiyam’s elderly father and another relative. Earlier, to terrorize the inhabitants of the Christian village, the Muslim gang had gone through stables and slaughtered all their farm animals. Because Hussein himself was a
lso killed in the incident—though it is unclear who fired at him—a Muslim mob surrounded the local hospital demanding revenge on the Christians for the “Christian killing of a Muslim man,” while referring to the slain Hussein—who was an extortionist, rapist, and gangster—as “the beloved of the Prophet.”88
Right around the same time elsewhere in Egypt, fourteen-year old Sarah, a Christian girl, was kidnapped on her way to school by the son of an Islamic preacher. After filing a missing person report with police, Sarah’s father received an anonymous call telling him that he would never see his daughter again. “Security knows her whereabouts,” said Father Bigem, a local priest, “and they make promises to resolve the crisis, but it’s just words.” After several human rights organizations called for the girl’s release, “the Salafi Front issued a statement on October 28, warning human rights organizations, especially the National Council for Women, not to attempt to return Sarah to her family, as she has converted to Islam and married a Muslim man.” The Salafis, projecting Islamic mores onto the Christian family, said that if Sarah returned to her family she would be killed by her father—to which her devastated father replied, “I want my child back in my arms, even if she became a Muslim.”89
Spotlight on Pakistan
It is the same in Pakistan, where, in the words of the Pakistan Christian Post, the “persecution, kidnapping and abduction of Christian women and girls,” including many married women with children, are on the rise. There are approximately seven hundred cases every year, a large number considering that Christians make up roughly 1 percent of the population. (Unsurprisingly, their numbers are shrinking.) In October 2011, the Asian Human Rights Commission summarized the phenomenon:The forced conversion to Islam of women from religious minority groups through rape and abduction has reached an alarming stage which challenges interfaith harmony due to the total collapse of the rule of law and biased attitude of the judicial officers. It appears today that no one, from the judiciary to the police and even the government has the courage to stand up to the threats from Muslim fundamentalist groups. The situation is worse with the police who always side with the Islamic groups and treat minority groups as lowly life forms. The dark side of the forced conversion to Islam is not restricted only to the religious Muslim groups but also involves the criminal elements who are engaged in rape and abduction and then justify their heinous crimes by forcing the victims to convert to Islam. The Muslim fundamentalists are happy to offer these criminals shelter and use the excuse that they are providing a great service to their sacred cause of increasing the population of Muslims. [Emphasis added.]90
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