by Raymond Ibrahim
"You should remove your church, because we cannot watch our members turning to Christianity and keep quiet." — Sheikh Shafi Mukama "ordering the father and son to leave their church in 2022, while other from the mob kept watch outside," morningstarnews.org, March 22, 2023, Uganda.
"Requirements for obtaining permission to build houses of worship in Indonesia are onerous and hamper the establishment of such buildings for Christians and other faiths.... They are often met with delays or lack of response from officials. Well-organized radical Muslims secretly mobilize outside people to intimidate and pressure members of minority faiths." — morningstarnews.org, March 24, 2023, Indonesia.
"According to the UN, ongoing insecurity in eastern DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] has displaced 300,000 from their homes in February alone." — opendoors.ph, March 22, 2023, Democratic Republic of Congo.
"It is a massacre like...killing animals." — A key church minister, persecution.org, International Christian Concern March 20, 2023, Democratic Republic of Congo.
"For leaving Islam to accept Christ," say a Mar. 19 report, "a young mother... was chained in her home, subjected to electrical shocks at a psychiatric hospital and has lost her children." ....
Her problems began, chiefly from her Muslim husband, who "tried to force her to renounce her faith by chaining her legs and tightening the chains.... Her parents and siblings are all Muslims [a local source said], who believe she is suffering mental illness for believing in Christ." — morningstarnews, March 19, 2023, Sudan.
"Since the start of the war, the Christian population has reportedly diminished by more than 80 per cent, from an estimated 1.5 million to 250,000... More than 350 churches have been destroyed in attacks carried out by terrorists during this period....
On the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, therefore, I want to raise awareness about the country's Christians, in the hope that the international community acts to prevent their tragedy from continuing before it is too late." — Report by Natasha Dado, thenationalnews.com, April 16, 2023.
"The rampant trafficking of Coptic women and girls is a direct violation of their most basic rights.... The crimes committed against these women must be urgently addressed by the Egyptian government, ending impunity for kidnappers, their accomplices, and police who refuse to perform their duties....
The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence." — copticsolidarity.org, March 16, 2023 and September 10, 2020, Egypt.
"For Christians in the Middle East, the Christmas season is not 'the most beautiful time of the year' as in the popular Andy Williams song. On the contrary, after two millennia of Christian presence, the Middle East is slowly but surely being cleansed of Christians.... It is striking that the Western powers, which have a majority Christian population, are not concerned at all by such a disaster." — Matija Šerić, "Christians In The Middle East: A Persecuted And Forgotten People," eurasiareview.com, April 15, 2023.
"The only country in the region with a growing Christian community is Israel, where the Christian population grew by 1.4% in 2020.... Christians in Israel benefit from the only functioning democracy in the Middle East... According to the Israel Bureau of Statistics from December 2021, 84% of Christians surveyed said they were satisfied with life in Israel." — Matija Šerić, "Christians In The Middle East: A Persecuted And Forgotten People."
The report further makes clear that Christians suffer, not just from "terrorists," but Muslim state and society: "The legal political and social order in many Arab countries is a source of discrimination....The system is hostile towards all non-Muslims, especially Christians. Christians are often not second or third but tenth class citizens, they suffer discrimination in the educational system, in the workplace, the community tries to ostracize them." — Matija Šerić, "Christians In The Middle East: A Persecuted And Forgotten People."
According to a recent report titled, "Gaza Churches Struggle to Survive", "Gaza's Christian community is struggling to survive after years of steady decline in numbers. Only an estimated 1,000 Christian remain in the Gaza Strip, an area of more than 2 million residents."
The following are among the murders and abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of March 2023:
France: On Mar. 16, a man, previously "on file for his Islamist radicalization," stormed the Saint-Hippolyte Church in Paris and disrupted its service. He also stole the church's six foot tall Plexiglas cross, which had supported a 400-year-old wooden Christ. It was later found nearby, said police, "smashed into many pieces." The man was "taken to the psychiatric infirmary of the Paris police headquarters, his condition not being considered compatible with his police custody."
Two weeks earlier, on Mar. 2, another man, described as of an "African type," vandalized Saint-Eustache Church, one of the largest churches in Paris, by smashing the protective glass of an altar with a fire extinguisher. The report notes that "The suspect's modus operandi ... [is] comparable to that of the Saint-François-Xavier church [vandalism], where damage had been committed on Tuesday, February 28."
In fact, a total of eight churches in Paris alone were vandalized, sometimes with arson, since the start of 2023.
Finally, on Mar. 8, a Muslim migrant from Senegal entered the Saint-Louis Cemetery, in Évreux, and proceeded to break off and desecrate the crucifixes affixed to some 30 graves. Although he was arrested, according to the report, "His custody was lifted due to his mental health condition. The individual was hospitalized."
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Pictured: St. Barfirious Church in Gaza City on September 15, 2006, shortly after terrorists attacked it with a hand grenade. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)
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