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.

[weegie]

I spend two to three days a month in Beirut. There are hundreds, literally hundreds of churches in Beirut and its western and northern suburbs. There are huge statues of Christ and our Lady on the clifftops. The president of the country is a Christian. The majority of the police are Christian
The only law pertaining to favoritism of Islam is that which disallows a bar to be opened within 100 metres of an established Mosque.

I would love to see these reports because they completely run contrary to my experience of many pleasant evening in the city's bars, restaurants and nightclubs in the company of both Christians and Moslems.

I am no apologist for Islamic fundamentalism buy please lets not ridicule the challenge of it by stating blatant untruths

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

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. >>>

And if you ask some Serbocrazy Freepers, it's responded to in kind.

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

I am no apologist for Islamic fundamentalism buy please lets not ridicule the challenge of it by stating blatant untruths.>>

You haven't been on Free Republic long, have you comrade?

The Balkans threads here are filled with white hot anti-Muslim bigotry (by Serbs) that can only be compared to a Nuremberg rally.

[Esther Ruth]

International Christian Concern online at Persecution.org, index on left, Country info, regarding UAE and Lebanon, and referring to Bonnie Penner, November 2002 in Lebanon with OM I think.

[philosofy123]

Do you suppose Hollywood would make a movie demonstrating the suffering of Christians under Islamic majority governments.

[philosofy123]

You are either stupid, or living under a rock.

[philosofy123]

You sound like a white guy in the south in the 1930s saying that black people are free. Or a german Nazi party member in the same period saying that Jews experience no problem under Hitler.

[weegie]

Persecution.org

UAE - No prisoners held. The two instances of arrests for proselytizing resulted in no charges.
Remember I have lived in the country alongside 40,000 other westerners for 7 years

The comments on Lebanon do not show any governmental restrictions based on religion (the use of the phrase "Christian dissidents is particularly disingenuous). Political dissidents will certainly be arrested.
Remember the President is Christian

[philosofy123]

Your brother is pimping himself. America is pimping herself. Any person or government who is willing to obey this barbaric ragheads for money is acting as a prostitute.

If the world act together to force these barbarians to recognize individual rights, they will change. As it is today, there is no shortage of pimps and prostitutes who sell their sole for money. I was offered a job in Saudi Arabia for three times my salary in American oil company - I refused it.

[weegie]

No philosofy123 I sound like someone whose statements on these matters is backed up by having traveled extensively in the region in question, rather than basing my opinions on what I have selectively read on websites with a specific agenda.

[weegie]

In fact it is the law Lebanon that the president be Christian

[philosofy123]

Lebanon is an exception to all Arab countries. As a matter of fact, if it was not for the radical Islamists in Lebanon, it would have renounced its affiliation to the Arabs all together. Lebanon uses French as almost first language, its culture, and intelligentsia is very European.

[philosofy123]

You traveled in the region does not entitle you to an educated opinion if you were born STUPID/BLIND. Just because some raghead smiles at you that does not mean that he likes you.

[Capt. Tom]

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.”

The problem is very basic. Those 3 religions believe in different Gods:\; and that can't be overcome. - Tom

[weegie]

I agree partly - Most of the Muslims in Lebanon are VERY liberal (the women are particularly stunning) although it does have its share of lunatics.

Here in the UAE I spent Saturday at the Dubai Gold Cup - the worlds richest horse race In the company of my wife and friends wandering around the enclosure drinking vast quantities of beer before moving on to a nightclub.

All I am saying is that the idea that Christians must skulk around the Middle East (Saudi excepted) pretending that they don't exist is a fallacy.

If you choose to believe otherwise then there really isn't anymore I can say to you

[weegie]

Now Philosofy - -You are the one resorting to abuse because of a failure to win an argument. You tell me who's stupid and blind.

Better still get up off your fat ass and try actually seeing something with your own eyes.

[dennisw]

I spend two to three days a month in Beirut. There are hundreds, literally hundreds of churches in Beirut and its western and northern suburbs. There are huge statues of Christ and our Lady on the clifftops. The president of the country is a Christian. The majority of the police are Christian
The only law pertaining to favoritism of Islam is that which disallows a bar to be opened within 100 metres of an established Mosque.

Lebanon has always been known as the Christian fortress in the Middle East. Though the Christians have been driven out in recent years by Muslim depredations and high birthrates. Many fine Lebanese Christians are in the USA today ..... driven out of a once flourishing nation under Christian rule.

[weegie]

I agree and many fine Christians are still there (and more are returning) . My point was that it is certainly not a place where Christians are routinely persecuted

[Esther Ruth]

Well, I think denial never helps the matter,it hurts it, these things are going on, regardless, I know you are concerned there is an overemphasis on persecution from people with an agenda, but that is not the case, you are not a threat perhaps, you are not aggressive in regards to practicing your faith, so not a threat and thus you don't sense it, but if you were a preacher or pastor of such you would. My gramma grew up in the 10s and 20s here in the US and I would not have known if she had not told me, but she wasn't able to play with Catholic children (she was Methodist), her and her brother would sneak out late at night with wagons of food to bring to poor Catholic families, if anyone found out they would be in trouble. People in America who are racist will like you a whole lot UNTIL they find out you love Jews, love Black people. People who hate Jesus will put up with you UNTIL you start talking about how much you love the Lord. You need to broaden your concept of free speech, - a country claiming to be free of persecution should not have people fearing their lives for just speaking what they believe, sure you get to live if you keep your mouth shut, but open up your mouth, say you love Jesus, loves Jews, believe the land belongs to them and see what happens.

[Esther Ruth]

Also, my kids, we can tell them over and over how dangerous the world can be, tell them that there are bad people at the malls who might kidnap them, hurt them, etc - but kids just don't believe it, they roll their eyes, think you overreact and are seeing boogie man everywhere, you read them the news, show them the pictures of missing kids, but not until someone experiences it, the hurt, harm or crime do they or are they able to grasp it, a sort of denial. You see what you want to see, and if you really want it to be a real sunny day, that is all you will look for, BUT there are people being hurt, persecuted and harmed. Acknowledging this also means that you might have to do something different from what you are doing now and perhaps you are unwilling. It comes at a cost. Are you sure money has not become your God.