"Things don't seem to get better.... elected officials are just not interested in the welfare of the people," and are offering no protection or other practical support to the Christian communities whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed. — Fr. Andrew Dewan, Director of Communications in Nigeria's Catholic Diocese of Pankshin, canuk.org, July 16, Nigeria.
On July 1, a young Christian man was sentenced to death for "blasphemy" in a Pakistani court. But first Ehsan Shan will need to serve a 22-year prison sentence and pay a fine of one million rupees. — July 2, Pakistan.
On July 20, a Christian man learned that a Muslim organization had offered a $20,000 reward to anyone who beheads him for "blasphemy" .....posters circulating in Pakistan in July [were] showing his picture and calling upon Muslims to hunt the infidel down and to perform, in the words of the posters, sar tan se juda—"head separated from body"—on him."
He said the reason the false blasphemy accusation was leveled against him in the first place was to intimidate him from his activist work: "I have been reporting about the forced conversion and rape of minor Hindu girls and their subsequent marriages to Muslim Men." — July 26.
"The land in question has been specifically designated for religious use, but the government is discriminating against the church because it is not associated with the state's preferred religion...." — Alliance Defending Freedom, July 12, Turkey.
On July 4, a taxi driver — Jamshaid Choudhry, 44, a Muslim man of Pakistani origins — was arrested in New York for attacking large marble statues that had stood before the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Fresh Meadows for 42 years, culminating with the decapitation of the young Christ statue.
Muslim Slaughter of Christians
Democratic Republic of Congo: According to a July 28 report:
"Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) claimed, in four statements published on July 25-27, 2024, that on July 24 its fighters attacked six villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) northeastern provinces, beheading more than 57 Christian villagers. In the two largest attacks that day, 54 villagers were beheaded, 30 and 24 respectively."
Nigeria: Fr. Andrew Dewan, the Director of communications in Nigeria's Catholic Diocese of Pankshin, wrote in a July 16 report that Christians "feel helpless ... We keep encouraging them as priests, as pastors of souls to be hopeful, to be resilient. But things don't seem to get better... So, there is an atmosphere of hopelessness." He goes on to say that "elected officials are just not interested in the welfare of the people," and are offering no protection or other practical support to the Christian communities whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed.
He recalled a couple of recent attacks—including the July 13 kidnapping of a Christian woman and her daughter, and the Sunday, July 14 storming of a Christian village, where the village head was murdered by Muslim herdsmen. "[T]here is a clear religious dimension to the attacks," he said.
A couple of July headlines from the ongoing Muslim genocide of Christians in the African nation:
Pakistan: Late at night on July 10, four Muslim men broke into the home of a Christian man and murdered him for having the gall to confront them about sexually harassing Christian women in their Lahore neighborhood. Marshall Masih, 29, was the sole breadwinner for his elderly parents, wife and four children – the oldest 10, the youngest 18 months old. His sister, Goshi, who was at the house that night, said the family was asleep when four armed Muslims, led by Muhammad Shani, broke into the home around 4:30 am.
"The assailants broke the door of my brother's bedroom on the first floor of the house and held him and his family hostage on gunpoint. They then opened indiscriminate fire on him, riddling his body with 16 bullets in the presence of his wife and minor children.... I was horrified to see his blood-soaked body lying on the floor while his wife and children were huddled in a corner crying frantically."
Although rushed to a hospital, he died of his many wounds. The sister said that Marshall had filed a complaint with police against Muhammad a couple of months earlier, after repeated, unsuccessful attempts to dissuade him and his cohorts from harassing Christian women and shooting their guns in the air:
"Though the police arrested Shani and recovered illegal weapons from his possession, he was freed after a day without any case. Instead, the police pressured my brother to stop pursuing the matter. The Muslims were offended that a Christian had taken a stand against their criminal activities, and by killing him in cold blood, they have shown that our lives do not matter... [O]ur pleas have fallen on deaf ears, and so far none of the accused murderers have been arrested...
My brother was the sole provider for the family.... Our entire world has crumbled after this incident."
Muslim Rape of Christian Girls in Pakistan
On July 1, two Muslim men drugged and raped a 15-year-old Christian girl. As she was returning to her family home from a nearby grocery store, the Muslim men accosted and pressured her to drink some water, which turned out to be laced with drugs. "She fell unconscious after drinking the drug-laced water," her mother, Sonia, said "after which the accused took her to a house and raped her." When the girl did not return, the mother and father went looking for her. "After some time, we saw [Muhammad] Amjad coming out of a house followed by [my daughter], who was struggling to walk." On seeing her parents, Muhammad immediately fled. They ran to their daughter, who appeared drugged and unable to speak:
"Her clothes were drenched in blood. We immediately called the police, who took her to the hospital for treatment and medical examination. The medical examination showed that she has been raped. There were also torture and bite marks on her body."
According to the daughter herself, whose name is withheld:
"My mind was numb and vision was blurry when I gained consciousness. At first, I couldn't figure out what had happened to me, but then I started to feel the pain. It was awful. There were some bite injuries on my body which also hurt a lot.... [At one point during her captivity] I tried to run, but he beat me up, biting me on the cheek when I was struggling to free myself. I started screaming for help, after which he let go of me and left the house. I followed him outside, and while I was trying to make out where I was, my parents saw me and took me in their arms.... I'm still unable to sleep at night. The bitter memory of that night continues to haunt me to this day."
As usual in Pakistan, police have been reluctant to move against the accused, a fellow Muslim. According to the victim's mother:
"We made several visits to the police station, but each time we were treated harshly by the police. When the police finally registered our FIR, no attempt was made to arrest the accused, enabling them to obtain interim bails from the court."
Christian attorney Zunaira Yousaf said:
"The police are clearly siding with the accused; nearly a month has passed, yet the police have not conducted DNA tests of the accused and the victim. Due to this, the accused have thrice managed to get their pre-arrest bails extended from the court."
For the full 10 page article, please click on this link or click on the link below for the pdf file:
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, Sword and Scimitar, Crucified Again, and The Al Qaeda Reader, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
About this Series
While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by extremists is growing. The report posits that such persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location. It includes incidents that take place during, or are reported on, any given month.
Pictured: Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, photographed in 2020. (Image source: Tdorante10/Wikimedia Commons)
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