Islam’s Anti-Christian Jihad

FrontPageMagazine.com | March 29, 2004 ^ | FrontPageMagazine.com | March 29, 2004 | By Robert Spencer

[dennisw]

Islam’s Anti-Christian Jihad

By Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com | March 29, 2004

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has published an ad in several California newspapers to promote peace between Christians and Muslims. “Like Christians,” it says, “Muslims respect and revere Jesus. Islam teaches that Jesus is one of the greatest of God’s prophets and messengers to humankind. Like Christians, every day, over 1.3 billion Muslims strive to live by his teachings of love, peace, and forgiveness. Those teachings, which have become universal values, remind us that all of us, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and all others have more in common than we think.”

I support efforts to diminish prejudice and build bridges, but not under false pretenses. CAIR would do more to promote peace by confronting and repudiating the roots of Muslim hostility toward Christians. It could start by denouncing some recent incidents of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world.

One notable site of this persecution is Egypt. “I have received so many letters,” said the patriarch of Egypt’s Coptic Church, Pope Shenouda III, in a speech last week, “about what’s happening to the Christian girls who go to supermarket stores to shop. At the store they tell them that they have won and have to go upstairs to receive their award or prize. After that we don’t know what’s happening to these girls upstairs.”

Whatever is happening, they aren’t being given free coupons. Pope Shenouda adds: We don’t know where they took the girls. They could be anywhere.” They most likely have been taken to places where they can be pressured to convert to Islam. Says Wilfred Wong of the Jubilee Campaign, a Christian human rights group: “The attempts to force Christians to convert to Islam in Egypt are on the increase and the methods are getting increasingly varied and well organized.”

In fact, some of these forced conversions, Wong observes, “are being conducted by well funded groups. … It is common for money to be offered to Christians to convert to Islam ... but it also common for intimidation and force, including kidnapping and the threat or use of rape to be adopted as a method of making Christians convert to Islam. Christian women and girls are especially vulnerable to these attacks and the Egyptian authorities do nothing to protect the Christians. The Egyptian police even order the families of kidnapped Christian women to forget about their daughters and not to try to get them back.”

In neighboring Sudan it’s much the same story. Reports journalist Jesper Strudsholm: “According to several human rights organizations, it is common for desperate Sudanese to convert to Islam to gain access to food and money. While the government earlier this year was busy negotiating a peace built on religious tolerance, up to 3,000 Christians were given a four-week crash course in Islam in Khartoum.” A Dinka chief explained, says Strudsholm, that they were enticed by promises of food, money, food, cars, and free trips to Mecca — little of which they actually received.

In Indonesia, dozens of churches have been forcibly closed in recent months — including seven in one day in a province west of Jakarta. The Barnabas Fund reports that motorcycle-riding Muslim attackers have targeted individual Christians: “Nuci, a 40-year old mother of two, died two hours after receiving fatal injuries to her head, neck and back. A witness to the incident described how she heard the roar of the motorbikes, followed almost immediately by a baby’s screams. She ran towards the cries and found Nuci, bleeding to death and crawling towards her baby.”

Where does the Islamic animus toward Christians come from? Certainly radical Muslims despise Christians: the great radical theorist Sayyid Qutb said that while “Jews have been behind every calamity that has befallen the Muslim communities everywhere,” Christians “have been no less hostile.” But the roots lie deeper. CAIR’s ad doesn’t mention the verses of the Qur’an that say that those who “call Christ the son of Allah” are under “Allah’s curse” (9:30), or that command Muslims to “fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day . . . (even if they are) of the People of the Book” — that is, primarily Jews and Christians (9:29). Yet Muslims around the world are acting upon them. If CAIR wants Christians to believe that Christians and Muslims have “more in common than we think,” let them repudiate the violence these verses still inspire in the world, and help Muslims understand these verses in a way that will enable them to live in lasting peace with their Christian neighbors.

[samtheman]

Not to mention, what is life like for a Christian in a state governed by Islamic Law? Second-class-citizen? Worse. More like a Jew in Nazi Germany before being sent to a camp.

[weegie]

I'm sorry but as a generalization that is nonsense. I'm one of 40 odd thousand Christians living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and have never heard of anyone having problems in practising thier faith

[samtheman]

If you're living there, you know more than I do. But what's the word for "people of the book", dhinni? Something like that. And isn't it a severe second-class status --- tantamount to wearing the yellow star --- in at least some Islamic countries. Maybe Dubai is more liberal than most. What's the word I'm looking for? If you live there, you must know it.

[weegie]

The phrase is something like that. UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait all have Christian Churches. In general Christians are fairly well respected (atheists are despised). the shops just now are full of holy statues for Easter aimed at the large and mainly Filipino Catholic community. Remember also that Easter is a public holiday in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.

The one exception amongst the Arab countries I have visited (and its most of them) is Saudi Arabia where possession of a bible or the wearing of a crucifix is a fairly serious crime. Why they were always held up as our best friends in the region is a mystery to me.

[samtheman]

Are you a citizen of UAE?

[weegie]

Nope - UK

[samtheman]

What about UAE Christians? Do they have full voting rights? Are they free from job/promotion discrimination? Can local Christian women walk the streets alone without headscarves?

Just curious.

[ought-six]

It is inevitable that there will be a huge and bloody clash between Christians and Moslems; the animus of Moslems towards Christians is breathtaking in its fervor. Islam is an angry, hate-filled and militant "religion" that daily shows it is not capable of existing side by side with other faiths.

[weegie]

There are no UAE national Christians. Hardly surprising as there was no need for any migration here until the oil boom. There are actually very few UAE nationals - about 22% of the total population. The biggest religion is probably Hindu as that is the faith of the Indian labourers and clerks who make up the majority. More and more of the young national girls are adopting a more western style of dress. There is certainly no legal pressure for anyone to wear headscarf (witness the amount of "daisy dukes" - this years fashion item in the bars and clubs) Familial pressure may well be different thing

[weegie]

Sorry missed this - as for voting - No one has voting rights - absolute monarchy

[2banana]

Ask why these Muslim countries are full of peace and tolerance:


Saudi Arabia - Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is punishable by death. Bibles are illegal. Churches are illegal.

Yemen - Bans proselytizing by non-Muslims and forbids conversions. The Government does not allow the building of new non-Muslim places of worship

Kuwait - Registration and licensing of religious groups. Members of religions not sanctioned in the Koran may not build places of worship. Prohibits organized religious education for religions other than Islam

Egypt -Islam is the official state religion and primary source of legislation. Accordingly, religious practices that conflict with Islamic law are prohibited. Muslims may face legal problems if they convert to another faith. Requires non-Muslims to obtain what is now a presidential decree to build a place of worship

Algeria - The law prohibits public assembly for purposes of practicing a faith other than Islam. Non-Islamic proselytizing is illegal, and the Government restricts the importation of non-Islamic literature for distribution.

Jordan - Has the death penalty for any Muslim selling land to a Jew.

(All information is from US State Department Human Rights Reports)

I could go on with more examples.

[weegie]

There was a new church built in Kuwait about two years ago. It was probably built by the government rather than an organized group of Christians though

[MrsEmmaPeel]

I'm sorry but as a generalization that is nonsense.

My brother is living in Saudi Arabia (has been for many years) and he says very much the same thing. He does talk about the Religious Police -- but they are there to ensure that all people follow the law. Things like a woman can not walk down the street unaccompanied. If she is with a man, that man must be either the husband, father, or brother. They must show papers on demand proving the relationship. My brother has had to do that with his wife many times, but then again, so have many other native born Saudis.

Its not a place I'd particularly enjoy living, but in all the years he's lived there, he's never seen any blatant, overt, persecution of any sect or group. He says that if you follow the rules, there is no problem.

[Savage Beast]

A Muslim's message can always be an example of taqija.

[Esther Ruth]

Nonsense??? No problems practicing Christianity and their faith in these countries????? Where can I get a pair of your rose colored glasses???

[weegie]

And Saudi is by far the most fundamental of all the Arab states. Personally I wouldn't live there for ten times my salary

[weegie]

I don't need them. I have attended churches in UAE, Kuwait, Oman and Lebanon. I have walked past churches in the other countries mentioned.

[Esther Ruth]

Lebanon??? Are you saying the news of murders of Christians, missionaries, health care workers at hospitals, etc., are you saying these did not actually happen, that it was imagined, or are you saying these murders where not related to their faith?

[Savage Beast]

One of the biggest advantages Islam has over the West is Muslim certainty, delusional though it is.

Muslims are not in doubt, whereas millions of people in the West are "Liberals"/leftists, and these people, who are every bit as delusional as the Muslims, are in doubt about everything.