by Raymond Ibrahim
The top five "pressure points" Christian women experience are: 1) sexual violence; 2) forced marriage; 3) physical violence; 4) incarceration or house arrest by male family members; and 5) psychological violence.
"Faith-based sexual violence is recorded as a risk for Christian women and girls in 86% [of the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted in general]. Sexual violence is consistently chosen time and time again to target Christian women and girls across the globe...." — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.
Of the top 20 nations where gender most shapes the experience of persecution for female Christians, 18 are either Muslim-majority or have a significant Muslim population.
Pakistan: " It is becoming the norm to rape Christian children [some as young as three]....
Many families never see their girls again, partly because the authorities rarely take meaningful action to bring perpetrators to justice.... There are also reports of Christian boys being subject to sexual abuse. Experts indicate that instances of rape and murder of young boys are on the rise in Pakistan..." — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.
Saudi Arabia: "Rape and sexual assault are commonplace across Saudi Arabia for the thousands of non-Saudi (especially Asian and African) housemaids across the country who are Christian (or non-Islamic), a position in which they are commonly abused and virtually treated as slaves." — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.
"House-maids working in the UAE often face sexual harassment or slave-like treatment." — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.
Among other sad conclusions, these disturbing trends make one thing clear: the notorious sexual abuses that the Islamic State ("ISIS") committed against Christians, Yazidis, and other non-Muslim minorities—which the world heard of, but was also reassured had "nothing to do with Islam" — are, in fact, part and parcel of Muslim societies, rich or poor, whether African, Arab, or Asian.
Open Doors, a human rights organization that tracks the global persecution of Christians, recently published reports examining the role of gender. One of these, "A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report," ranks nations based on the category of "gender-specific religious persecution" and shows how a victim's gender shapes their respective persecution. According to the report:
"Globally, Christian women and girls often find themselves caught in a particularly complex web of compounding vulnerabilities. They are not only vulnerable as Christians ... but their additional gender-determined vulnerabilities overlap and interact to a greater extent than for Christian men and boys in the same contexts. These are environments where all females experience a disadvantaged status as women before the law or in society, bias against their lack of education or an elevated risk of poverty.
These multiple vulnerabilities compound one another – like the multiplying forces of compound interest in a bank. Religious persecution exploits the existence of these many interlinking and compounding forces, aggravating the damage to individual women and girls, their families and their communities."
The top five "pressure points" that Christian women experience are: 1) sexual violence; 2) forced marriage; 3) physical violence; 4) incarceration or house arrest by male family members; and 5) psychological violence.
Although all five pressure points are often interconnected, the first — "sexual violence" against Christian women because of their faith — is by far the most common and widespread. The report emphasizes that:
"Faith-based sexual violence is recorded as a risk for Christian women and girls in 86% [of the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted in general]. Sexual violence is consistently chosen time and time again to target Christian women and girls across the globe....
The physical and psychol-emotional severity of sexual violence is considerable and well-understood, but the effectiveness of sexual violence is also due to the myriad of damaging consequences that can ensue. A web of complicit forces can worsen its impact and lead to loss of shelter, food, future opportunities and community." [Emphasis in the original]
Of the top 20 nations where gender most shapes the experience of persecution for female Christians, 18 are either Muslim-majority or have a significant Muslim population (the other two are India and Columbia). The 20 are ranked as follows: 1) Nigeria, 2) Cameroon, 3) Somalia, 4) Sudan, 5) Syria, 6) Ethiopia, 7) Niger, 8) India, 9) Pakistan, 10) Mali, 11) Iran, 12) Mozambique, 13) Eritrea, 14) Burkina Faso, 15) Central African Republic, 16) Afghanistan, 17) Democratic Republic of the Congo, 18) Colombia, 19) Egypt, 20) Tunisia.
For the full article in pdf with more details from each of the above countries, please click here:
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, Sword and Scimitar, Crucified Again, andThe Al Qaeda Reader, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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The global targeting of Christian women for rape and sexual violence, according to a new study, appears to be at an all-time high, especially in the Muslim world. (Image source: iStock).
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