todays martyrs

MURDER BY MUSLIMS

Shepherd Me, O God

Refrain: Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life.

God is my shepherd, so nothing shall I want,

I rest in the meadows of faithfulness and love,

I walk by the quiet waters of peace

Gently you raise me and heal my weary soul,

You lead me by pathways of righteousness and truth,

my spirit shall sing the music of your Name.

Though I should wander the valley of death,

I fear no evil, for You are at my side,

Your rod and Your staff, my comfort and my hope.

You have set me a banquet of love

in the face of hatred,

crowning me with love beyond my power to hold.

Surely Your kindness and mercy follow me

all the days of my life

I will dwell in the house of my God forevermore.

Christians in Danger

July 8, 2010

National Review Online

Bishop Luigi Padovese, stabbed to death last month, is the latest victim of Turkey’s growing hostility to Christians.

For all the attention Turkey has gotten lately, very few Americans are aware that the Roman Catholic bishop serving as apostolic vicar of Anatolia was stabbed to death and decapitated last month by an assailant shouting, “Allahu Akbar! I have killed the great Satan!”

There are fewer than 60 Catholic priests in all of Turkey, and yet Bishop Luigi Padovese was the fifth of them to be shot or stabbed in the last four years, starting with the murder of Fr. Andrea Santoro in 2006, also by an assailant shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” (An Armenian journalist and three Protestants working at a Christian publishing house — one of them German, the other two Turkish converts — were also killed during this period.)

What’s going on? Why has traditionally secularist Turkey, with its minuscule Christian community (less than 0.2 percent of the population), lately become nearly as dangerous for Christians as neighboring Iraq? And why has this disturbing pattern of events so far escaped notice in the West?

In a nutshell, all these violent acts reflect a popular culture increasingly shaped by Turkish media accounts deliberately promoting hatred of Christians and Jews.

As it happens, Bishop Padovese was murdered on the same day (June 3) that the Wall Street Journal published an eye-opening report on how Turkey’s press and film industry have increasingly blurred the distinction between fact and fantasy, especially since the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power in 2002.

“To follow Turkish discourse in recent years has been to follow a national decline into madness.” That’s how Robert L. Pollock, editorial-features editor of the Journal, summed up the trajectory of the daily fare that shapes Turks’ attitudes toward the outside world — and toward non-Muslims in their midst. Indeed, much of what passes for fact in Turkish public discourse would be comical if not for the deadly consequences.

Take, for instance, the wildly popular 2006 film Valley of the Wolves, later serialized for television. An earlier Journal piece summing up the plot as “a cross between American Psycho in uniform and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion” hardly does it justice. The plot turns on blood-crazed American soldiers committing war crimes for fun and profit in Iraq. These include the harvesting of body parts from murdered Iraqi civilians on an industrial scale (overseen by a Jewish doctor, of course) for shipment in crates clearly labeled New York and Tel Aviv.

Valley of the Wolves is the most expensive and most commercially successful Turkish feature film ever. Worse yet, it comes with the endorsement of leading AKP figures, such as the speaker of the parliament (“absolutely magnificent”) and the mayor of Istanbul (“a great screenplay”). Mr. Pollock’s judgment? “It is no exaggeration to say that such anti-Semitic fare had not been played to mass audiences in Europe since the Third Reich.”

Unfortunately, this film — with its poisonous blood libel against Christians and Jews — falls well within what is now mainstream Turkish public discourse.

Consider only some of the wilder rumors given credence by the Turkish press — for example, how the United States intends to colonize the Middle East because of an impending asteroid strike on North America, or how the 2004 Asian tsunami was really caused by secret U.S. nuclear testing. The latter claim was so prevalent in the Turkish media that the U.S. ambassador at the time, Eric Edelman, actually organized a conference call with Turkish journalists to refute the calumny.

This is the overall context in which incendiary published accusations are made that Catholic priests, sometimes identified by name, are engaging in proselytism — that is, seeking to convert Muslims, often with cash payments. I happen to know just how implausible these claims are, based on my own experience as a Catholic seminarian living and working in the Middle East a decade ago. I found that pastors of the historic Middle Eastern churches almost always go out of their way to discourage prospective converts, rightly fearing agents provocateurs from the security services or Islamist groups. In the rare case where a conversion does occur, the person is generally baptized outside his home country, in a place where apostasy is not criminalized or barred by powerful social norms, such as preservation of family honor.

What local Christian clergy actually do is to tend shrinking flocks without seeking to add to their numbers. (These little congregations increasingly include migrants like the Filipina nurses and domestic workers who are ubiquitous throughout the Middle East.) Some also provide public goods such as education and health care for Muslims and Christians alike on a non-sectarian basis. Others serve the pastoral needs of pilgrims visiting places (like Turkey) where Christianity once flourished. Nearly all see themselves as silent witnesses for Gospel values in places where prudence now bars the Gospel’s open proclamation.

There are vanishingly few Christians and Jews in Turkey. So the numbers of non-Muslims in the country cannot begin to explain the mounting popular hostility — not simply toward Americans, Europeans, and Israelis, but toward Christians and Jews as such. Turkey’s population (roughly 77 million) is more than 99.8 percent Muslim, with its tiny Jewish and Christian populations (perhaps 25,000 and 150,000, respectively) looking like a rounding error. Yet more than two-thirds of all Turks (68 percent) expressed a negative view of Christians in the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, as opposed to the results in nearby Muslim-majority states with much larger Christian minorities, like Jordan (44 percent negative) and Egypt (49 percent). Hostility toward Jews, moreover, has spiked recently, with those self-identified as “very unfavorable” jumping from 32 percent in 2004 to 73 percent in 2009.

The short answer to the question why Christians keep getting attacked in Turkey is that ideas have consequences, with bad ones often leading to deadly consequences. In the current issue of Commentary, Michael Rubin offers a masterly step-by-step analysis of the way in which Turkey’s current Islamist rulers have systematically undermined and dismantled Atatürk’s secular legacy and have put in place an embryonic Islamist state. Ideas once expressed on the fringes of Turkish society have now become mainstream and respectable.

It is precisely this darkening climate of public opinion that provides the essential context for the spate of attacks against Catholic priests. Here it’s worth noting that, historically, Catholics were not regarded as enemies of modern Turkey in the way that Greeks and Armenians were. The Holy See was one of the first states to exchange ambassadors with the newly formed Turkish Republic in 1923; and one of its first ambassadors (from 1933 to 1944), still fondly remembered, was Angelo Roncalli, better known today as Blessed John XXIII.

So too is it a fact that Catholic clergy serving in trouble spots like Turkey have sometimes (though not always) enjoyed a certain immunity from violence or arbitrary arrest. That’s because the Vatican is widely perceived as a powerful entity that can command diplomatic and media attention (especially as compared to Christian evangelicals, who lack similar institutional support). That several Catholic priests have now been attacked in Turkey is a troubling new development that may reflect political Islam’s implacable hostility toward Pope Benedict XVI. Recall that what angered Islamists most about Benedict’s 2006 Regensburg lecture was not an injudicious quotation from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor. It was Benedict’s observation that while reason without faith leads to nihilism (Europe’s problem), faith without reason leads to fanaticism and violence (Islam’s problem).

But it’s also a fact that the killing of Catholic clerics in Muslim-majority states tends nowadays in the West to be passed over in silence or treated as business as usual. Imagine for a moment what would happen if — God forbid! — a very senior, foreign-born Muslim cleric were murdered in the U.S. in circumstances amounting to a hate crime. It is not difficult to imagine the likely aftermath: wall-to-wall media coverage, repeated international condemnations, and multiple presidential apologies.

In the case of Bishop Padovese, one close observer makes explicit the connection between pervasive media vilification and violence against Catholic clergy. Fr. Bernardo Cervellera, whose Asia News broke the story of the true facts surrounding the bishop’s murder, maintains that “there’s a campaign against Christian priests in Turkey. The government says it’s not true, the Turks say they don’t believe it, but it’s quite enough to watch television or read the newspapers to realize that indeed it is true.”

These facts — and their necessary implications — are a long way from the Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace happy talk peddled by both the Bush and Obama administrations. Little wonder that there’s practically no understanding in the U.S. that Turkey’s beleaguered religious minorities — and their co-religionists elsewhere in the region — serve as canaries in the coal mine, bellwethers for major policy shifts that our foreign-policy establishment is slow to grasp. Or indeed that the plight of these minorities mirrors, at least roughly, the state of U.S. interests and ideals in the region.

It wasn’t always the case that Americans paid no attention to the plight of Middle Eastern Christians. In the wake of World War I, the New York Times could safely assume a lively interest (and some Biblical literacy) among readers when editorializing in 1922 about the mass expulsion of ethnic Greek Christians from the new Turkish state: “Is this to be the end of the Christian minorities in Asia Minor — that land where, 13 centuries and more before the Turk came to rule, Paul had journeyed as a missionary through its length and breadth, and where the first ‘seven churches that are in Asia’ stood, to which the messages written in the Book of Revelation were sent?”

But that was then; and this is now.

—John F. Cullinan, a regular NRO contributor, writes frequently on international religious freedom and Middle Eastern Christianity.

They Want to Destroy Christians

Spasm of Religious Violence Leaves a Pakistani Minority in Mourning

By Joshua Partlow

Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 3, 2009

GOJRA, Pakistan, Aug. 2 -- They do not want to bury the Christians. They want the nation to see them.

By nightfall Sunday, hundreds of residents of the Christian enclave here stood in defiant vigil around seven particleboard coffins neatly aligned on the train tracks that run through town. They had demands: Until the government investigates the killings and finds those responsible, they will not remove the bodies.

Police waited warily in the street. A man on a loudspeaker bellowed the villagers' sentiments, which included anger at provincial authorities for not stopping the killings.

"Death to the Punjab government!"

A spasm of religious violence came to this rural town in the shape of an angry Muslim mob Saturday morning. The Muslims marched to avenge what they believed was the desecration of a Koran one week earlier. When it was over, dozens of houses were torched and Faith Bible Pentecostal Church lay in ruins. Two villagers were shot dead, residents said. Five others, including two children, burned alive.

Killing has become commonplace in Pakistan. But this attack startled the country both for its ferocity and for its stark message to religious minorities. Many saw the violence as further evidence of the growing power of the Taliban and allied Islamist militant groups in Punjab province, home to about half of Pakistan's population.

"They have made up their minds to crush Christianity. They always call us dogs of America, agents of America," said Romar Sardar, an English teacher from the area. "There has been no protection by the police. Nothing."

The conflict apparently began with a wedding. On the evening of July 25, a wedding procession for a Christian couple passed through the nearby village of Korian, according to a police report. Revelers danced and threw money in the air, as is local custom. In the morning, a resident told police he had picked up scraps of paper on the ground and found Arabic writing. "We examined them, and it was the pages from the holy Koran," the man said in the report.

Four days later, the accused, a member of the wedding party named Talib Masih, faced a meeting of local elders, who demanded that he be punished. Instead of repenting, the report said, he denied the desecration, and as a result, "the whole Muslim population was enraged." The house burning began that night and then quieted down until Saturday morning.

That day, Riaz Masih, 68, a retired teacher, grew increasingly worried as a crowd gathered, chanting anti-Christian slogans and cursing Americans. He locked his house and rushed with his wife and children to the home of a Muslim friend nearby. The crowd, some wearing black veils and carrying guns, turned down Masih's narrow brick alley near the train tracks and into the Christian Colony, according to several witnesses. Residents and marchers threw rocks at each other, and gunfire broke out. Using what residents described as gasoline and other flammable chemicals, the mob torched Masih's house.

"We have nothing left," he said, standing in the charred remains of his living room, his daughter's empty jewelry box at his feet. "We are trying to face this in the name of Jesus Christ. The Bible says you cannot take revenge."

On Sunday, the scenes of wreckage and dismay played out in house after house. Residents tossed burned blankets and clothing, broken televisions, and charred beds into heaps on the street. Fruit seller Iqbal Masih, 49, stepped over his mangled carts on his patio and tried to assess what was left of his daughter's dowry. The armoire, a refrigerator, the bedding were burned; the $675 for furniture had disappeared.

"I am out of my mind. I can't look," he said. "They have subjected us to severe cruelties. May God show them the right path."

At least four of the dead came from a single house. As the mob approached, a bullet struck Hamid Masih, a builder, in the head as he stood in his doorway, said his son, Min Has. Has heaved his father onto a motorcycle and drove him to a hospital, while the rest of the family members crowded in a back bedroom. The house began burning, and smoked billowed into the rooms. At least three other relatives, including 5- and 8-year-old siblings, died in the flames, according to residents. "There was fire everywhere, and it was impossible for them to get out," Has said.

"I know one thing. They want to destroy Christians," said Atiq Masih, 22, a janitor who was shot in the right knee. "They were attacking everything."

Christians, who make up about 2 percent of the Punjab population, have been targeted in other recent cases. In June, a mob attacked Christian homes in the Kasur district of Punjab for allegedly dishonoring the prophet Mohammed. In Pakistan, which has strict laws against blasphemy, people can be imprisoned for life or put to death for insulting Islam.

Residents in Gojra said that this was the first incident of its kind in the town and that Christians and Muslims have long lived alongside one another without serious problems. They blamed Muslim clerics for inciting anger over the Koran incident in mosque sermons and accused the Taliban and the militant group Sipah-e-Sahaba of involvement in the attack.

"The provincial government is not accepting that a large part of Punjab is suffering from religious intolerance due to the Taliban and religious outfits," said Peter Jacob, executive secretary of the National Commission for Justice and Peace, which issues an annual report on religious minorities in Pakistan. "They have been very negligent. This conflict was brewing for three days, and they were not receptive. They were not taking it seriously."

Pakistan's president and prime minister have called for investigations into the violence. By Sunday, police and paramilitary troops had taken up positions in the town. Provincial authorities said they have already made arrests and registered cases against 800 people. Federal Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti denied that any Koran had been desecrated.

Police in Gojra said the violence Saturday was beyond their control.

"It happened all of a sudden. The police that were here were too few in number to stop it," said policeman Kashif Sadiq. "It's not fair to assume they let this happen intentionally."

Special correspondents Shaiq Hussain and Aoun Sahi contributed to this report.

Church of martyrs

by Anthony Browne

For most citizens of Iraq, the invasion meant the end of tyranny. For one group, however, it meant a new start: the country's historic Christian community. When the war stopped, persecution by Islamists, held in check by Saddam, started.

At a church in Basra I visited a month after the war ended, the women complained of attacks against them for not wearing the Islamic veil. I saw many Christian-owned shops that had been firebombed, with many of the owners killed for exercising their legal right to sell alcohol. Two years and many church attacks later, Iraq may still be occupied by Christian foreign powers, but the Islamist plan to ethnically cleanse Iraq of its nearly 2,000-year-old Assyrian and Armenian Christian communities is reaching fruition.

There is nothing unusual about the persecution of Iraqi Christians, or the unwillingness of other Christians to help them. Rising nationalism and fundamentalism around the world have meant that Christianity is going back to its roots as the religion of the persecuted. There are now more than 300 million Christians who are either threatened with violence or legally discriminated against simply because of their faith — more than any other religion. Christians are no longer, as far as I am aware, thrown to the lions. But from China, North Korea and Malaysia, through India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, they are subjected to legalised discrimination, violence, imprisonment, relocation and forced conversion. Even in supposedly Christian Europe, Christianity has become the most mocked religion, its followers treated with public suspicion and derision and sometimes — such as the would-be EU commissioner Rocco Buttiglione — hounded out of political office.

I am no Christian, but rather a godless atheist whose soul doesn't want to be saved, thank you. I may not believe in the man with the white beard, but I do believe that all persecution is wrong. The trouble is that the trendies who normally champion human rights seem to think persecution is fine, so long as it's only against Christians. While Muslims openly help other Muslims, Christians helping Christians has become as taboo as jingoistic nationalism.

On the face of it, the idea of Christians facing serious persecution seems as far-fetched as a carpenter saving humanity. Christianity is the world's most followed religion, with two billion believers, and by far its most powerful. It is the most popular faith in six of the seven continents, and in both of the world's two biggest economies, the US and Europe. Seven of the G8 richest industrial nations are majority Christian, as are four out of five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The cheek-turners control the vast majority of the world's weapons of mass destruction.

When I bumped into George Bush in the breakfast room of the US embassy in Brussels last month, standing right behind me were two men in uniform carrying the little black 'nuclear football', containing the codes to enable the world's most powerful Christian to unleash the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal. Christians claiming persecution seem as credible as Bill Gates pleading poverty. But just as Christian-majority armies control Iraq as it ethnically cleanses itself of its Christian community, so the power of Christian countries is of little help to the Christian persecuted where most Christians now live: the Third World.

Across the Islamic world, Christians are systematically discriminated against and persecuted. Saudi Arabia — the global fountain of religious bigotry — bans churches, public Christian worship, the Bible and the sale of Christmas cards, and stops non-Muslims from entering Mecca. Christians are regularly imprisoned and tortured on trumped-up charges of drinking, blaspheming or Bible-bashing, as some British citizens have found. Just last month, furthermore, Saudi Arabia announced that only Muslims can become citizens.

The Copts of Egypt make up half the Christians in the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity. They inhabited the land before the Islamic conquest, and still make up a fifth of the population. By law they are banned from being president of the Islamic Republic of Egypt or attending Al Azhar University, and severely restricted from joining the police and army. By practice they are banned from holding any high political or commercial position. Under the 19th-century Hamayouni decrees, Copts must get permission from the president to build or repair churches — but he usually refuses. Mosques face no such controls.

Government-controlled TV broadcasts anti-Copt propaganda, while giving no airtime to Copts. It is illegal for Muslims to convert to Christianity, but legal for Christians to convert to Islam. Christian girls — and even the wives of Christian priests — are abducted and forcibly converted to Islam, recently prompting mass demonstrations. A report by Freedom House in Washington concludes: 'The cumulative effect of these threats creates an atmosphere of persecution and raises fears that during the 21st century the Copts may have a vastly diminished presence in their homelands.'

Fr Drew Christiansen, an adviser to the US Conference of Bishops, recently conducted a study which stated that 'all over the Middle East, Christians are under pressure. "The cradle of Christianity" is under enormous pressure from demographic decline, the growth of Islamic militancy, official and unofficial discrimination, the Iraq war, the Palestinian Intifada, failed peace policies and political manipulation.'

In the world's most economically successful Muslim nation, Malaysia, the world's only deliberate affirmative action programme for a majority population ensures that Muslims are given better access to jobs, housing and education. In the world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, some 10,000 Christians have been killed in the last few years by Muslims trying to Islamify the Moluccas.

In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, most of the five million Christians live as an underclass, doing work such as toilet-cleaning. Under the Hudood ordinances, a Muslim can testify against a non-Muslim in court, but a non-Muslim cannot testify against a Muslim. Blasphemy laws are abused to persecute Christians. In the last few years, dozens of Christians have been killed in bomb and gun attacks on churches and Christian schools.

In Nigeria, 12 states have introduced Sharia law, which affects Christians as much as Muslims. Christian girls are forced to wear the Islamic veil at school, and Christians are banned from drinking alcohol. Thousands of Christians have been killed in the last few years in the ensuing violence.

Although persecution of Christians is greatest in Muslim countries, it happens in countries of all religions and none. In Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka, religious tension led to 44 churches being attacked in the first four months of 2004, with 140 churches being forced to close because of intimidation. In India, the rise of Hindu nationalism has lead to persecution not just of Muslims but of Christians. There have been hundreds of attacks against the Christian community, which has been in India since ad 100. The government's affirmative action programme for untouchables guarantees jobs and loans for poor Hindus and Buddhists, but not for Christians.

Last year in China, which has about 70 million Christians, more than 100 'house churches' were closed down, and dozens of priests imprisoned. If you join the Communist party, you get special privileges, but you can only join if you are atheist. In North Korea, Christians are persecuted as anti-communist elements, and dissidents claim they are not just imprisoned but used in chemical warfare experiments.

Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Barnabas Trust, which helps persecuted Christians, blames rising global religious tension. 'More and more Christians are seen as the odd ones out — they are seen as transplants from the West, and not really trusted. It is getting very much worse.'

Even in what was, before multiculturalism, known as Christendom, Christians are persecuted. I have spoken to dozens of former Muslims who have converted to Christianity in Britain, and who are shunned by their community, subjected to mob violence, forced out of town, threatened with death and even kidnapped. The Barnabas Trust knows of 3,000 such Christians facing persecution in this country, but the police and government do nothing.

You get the gist. Dr Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Centre for Religious Freedom in Washington, estimates that there are 200 million Christians who face violence because of their faith, and 350 million who face legally sanctioned discrimination in terms of access to jobs and housing. The World Evangelical Alliance wrote in a report to the UN Human Rights Commission last year that Christians are 'the largest single group in the world which is being denied human rights on the basis of their faith'.

Part of the problem is old-style racism against non-whites; part of it is new-style guilt. If all this were happening to the world's Sikhs or Muslims simply because of their faith, you can be sure it would lead the 10 O'Clock News and the front page of the Guardian on a regular basis. But the BBC, despite being mainly funded by Christians, is an organisation that promotes ridicule of the Bible, while banning criticism of the Koran. Dr Marshall said: 'Christians are seen as Europeans and Americans, which means you get a lack of sympathy which you would not get if they were Tibetan Buddhists.'

Christians themselves are partly to blame for all this. Some get a masochistic kick out of being persecuted, believing it brings them closer to Jesus, crucified for His beliefs. Christianity uniquely defines itself by its persecution, and its forgiveness of its persecutors: the Christian symbol is the method of execution of its founder. Christianity was a persecuted religion for its first three centuries, until Emperor Constantine decided that worshipping Jesus was better for winning battles than worshipping the sun. In contrast, Mohammed was a soldier and ruler who led his people into victorious battle against their enemies. In the hundred years after the death of Mohammed, Islam conquered and converted most of North Africa and the Middle East in the most remarkable religious expansion in history.

To this day, while Muslims stick up for their co-religionists, Christians — beyond a few charities — have given up such forms of discrimination. Dr Sookhdeo said: 'The Muslims have an Ummah [the worldwide Muslim community] whereas Christians do not have Christendom. There is no Christian country that says, "We are Christian and we will help Christians."'

As a liberal democrat atheist, I believe all persecuted people should be helped equally, irrespective of their religion. But the guilt-ridden West is ignoring people because of their religion. If non-Christians like me can sense the nonsense, how does it make Christians feel? And how are they going to react? The Christophobes worried about rising Christian fundamentalism in Britain should understand that it is a reaction to our double standards. And as long as our double standards exist, Christian fundamentalism will grow.

Anthony Browne is Europe correspondent of the Times.

Note: Atheists don't understand why the world hates Jesus Christ and His followers or Christianity in general.

Jesus said: "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you." John 15:18.

Jesus said: "Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:11-16

Christian converts are worldwide victims
Monday, April 10, 2006

Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

It was gratifying to hear about Abdul Rahman's release from his persecutors in Afghanistan. I wish with all my heart that Rahman's plight was an isolated case of the violent abuse of Christian converts, but that is sadly not the case.

Our family receives monthly updates from an organization called Voice of the Martyrs. They report regularly on Muslim, Communist/atheistic, and Buddhist nations where Christians are, on a regular basis, burned out of their homes, arrested and jailed on false charges, tortured, have their property and Bibles seized or destroyed, and are often raped and murdered -- sometimes without government approval, but far too often with.

Unfortunately, we are not talking about two or three isolated cases of a zealot getting out of hand. We're talking about large scale, planned, brutal persecution of hundreds and even thousands of Christian believers. Worse yet, there are more countries and more instances of Christians being horribly persecuted than can even be touched on in a short editorial letter.

So where are the news reports? Where is the public outrage? Where is our government's decisive stand for civil rights? Hopefully, they'll be starting right here, right now, with us.

Please, log on to www.persecution.com or contact Voice of the Martyrs, P.O. Box 443, Bartlesville, Okla. 74005-0443 to get more information on the widespread, violent persecution of Christian believers and, more importantly, what you can do to help them.

Sherry Grunder

Pakistani blasphemy law key factor in attacks against Christian minority

By David Pinault
4/2/2006

NEW YORK (America) – Gambling often produces sore losers. This past November, in the town of Sangla Hill in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, it served as the trigger for something worse: religious riots and violence against members of Pakistan’s minority Christian population.

Yousuf Masih, a 40-year-old Christian, won several thousand rupees playing cards with a Muslim neighbor. The angry loser retaliated by filing an allegation with the local police that Masih had set fire to a copy of the Koran – a punishable offense under Pakistani law. Within hours, rumors that a Christian had insulted the Islamic scripture were circulating throughout town. Local Muslim clerics used mosque loudspeakers to call on the faithful to avenge the insult.

The result: the next day, Nov. 12, 2005, a mob of more than 2,500 men (some from Sangla Hill, others from nearby Punjabi villages) attacked buildings belonging to the town’s minority Christian community. They set fire to three churches and vandalized a Catholic convent and a Christian elementary school. Local Christian families were forced to flee or go into hiding. Police did nothing to restrain the violence – but they did arrest the luckless Christian card-player Yousuf Masih.

When I visited the Punjabi city of Lahore in December, local Christians showed me photographs of the destruction at Sangla Hill: a marble altar smashed to rubble, a tabernacle lying dented on the ground, a statue of the Virgin Mary that rioters had defaced with hammers. I was also shown a copy of a letter of protest dated Nov. 14 that had been sent to Pakistan’s President Pevez Musharraf immediately after the violence in Sangla Hill. Signed by prominent Pakistani Catholic and Protestant church leaders, the letter identified a salient factor in the recurrent violence against the country’s religious minorities in recent years: Ordinance 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The blasphemy law

Ordinance 295 – commonly referred to as the blasphemy law – dates back to the 1980s and the reign of the military dictator General Zia ul-Haq. Zia sought to legitimize his dictatorship by indulging the fundamentalist-minded mullahs of Pakistan’s various religious parties. Ordinance 295 gave them what they wanted.

The law’s roots go back to the colonial era: the British Indian Penal Code provided two years’ jail time for persons convicted of religious insults or acts of desecration against any faith whatsoever.

Zia’s regime updated this legislation by adding provisions designed specifically to “safeguard” Islam. Section 295-B of Zia’s law mandates life imprisonment for desecration of the Koran. Section 295-C goes further: it stipulates the death penalty for anyone who defames or insults the Prophet Muhammad.

A progressive-minded legislator from Pakistan’s National Assembly whom I interviewed in Islamabad listed what he called “three substantive legal problems” with Ordinance 295. First, no evidence is required when filing a blasphemy complaint. The word of anyone claiming to be a witness is enough. Second, the alleged blasphemer is arrested and imprisoned as soon as the complaint is lodged. Defendants often remain in jail for months awaiting trial. Third, plaintiffs can make false accusations with little worry of punishment or any other legal repercussion.

This third factor is especially important in light of recent data assembled by the National Commission for Justice and Peace, a human-rights advocacy group established in 1985 by Pakistan’s Catholic Bishops Conference. The commission demonstrated that in more than 100 cases in which defendants in recent blasphemy trials had been found innocent, the accusers were shown by the court to have been motivated by personal grudges or hope of financial gain.

A popular law

Despite the manifest injustice associated with Ordinance 295, President Musharraf, who has evinced a commitment to protect his country’s religious minorities, has been unable to bring about the repeal of the blasphemy law. It is simply too popular. Judging from interviews with Muslims and Christians in both the Punjab and the Northwest Frontier Province, I would say this law is widely accepted by many Muslims – especially in rural areas – because it is seen as a useful weapon for the defense of Islam.

A Muslim professor in Peshawar explained to me that when rumors of blasphemy or Koran desecration circulate, many mosque preachers warn their congregations that “Islam khatar mayn hay” (“Islam is in danger”). This sense of endangerment comes from a widespread perception among Pakistani Muslims that they are a beleaguered minority.

This might be surprising, since 97 percent of Pakistan’s population is Muslim. But it makes sense if one takes into account the feeling many Pakistanis have that they are overshadowed and threatened by neighboring India – a country that is not only much bigger than Pakistan but is also overwhelmingly Hindu. Hinduism is perceived by many Pakistani Muslims as fundamentally inimical to Islam.

For many Pakistanis, their country is protected from being swallowed up, from disappearing, by its Islamic identity, which is symbolized by reverence for the Koran and devotion to the Prophet Muhammad’s honor. Ordinance 295 is popular because it is seen as safeguarding both of these. Many fundamentalist-minded Muslims question the loyalty of Pakistani Christians and members of other non-Muslim minorities, who are often accused of serving as agents for the United States and other foreign powers.

Christians speak out

But Pakistan’s Christian community is mobilizing to speak out collectively against sectarian discrimination and prejudice. On Dec. 20, Christians throughout the country observed a nationwide day of prayer and fasting to condemn the violence at Sangla Hill and the persecution of minorities in the name of religion. Additional nonviolent protests will continue throughout 2006 for the purpose of drawing attention to the injustice of Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

Most of the individuals I interviewed preferred to remain anonymous because of the volatile politics surrounding Ordinance 295. One exception is Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha, the Catholic archbishop of Lahore. Archbishop Saldanha, who is currently the president of Pakistan’s Catholic Bishops Conference, is spearheading a movement for the repeal of Sections B and C of Ordinance 295. In December we met in his office in Lahore’s Catholic Cathedral. He is fighting for the repeal, he told me, because this harmful ordinance – which is worded so as to encourage slander against anyone designated an “enemy of Islam” – has provided a legal rationale for inciting interreligious violence and the persecution of minorities.

Muslims also suffer

But Christians are not the only ones who have suffered because of Pakistan’s blasphemy law. The Catholic Bishops Conference has pointed out that 50 percent of the individuals imprisoned under Ordinance 295 have been Muslims. They were denounced as apostates by fellow Muslims – whether out of religious zealotry or sheer opportunism – on charges of questioning the Koran or showing insufficient reverence for the Prophet Muhammad’s legacy. (The remaining 50 percent of those imprisoned have been Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis.)

The fact that Muslims have used Ordinance 295 to indict fellow Muslims points up the larger harm inflicted on Pakistan as a whole by this legislation. A Lahore-based Muslim intellectual told me, “295 makes it impossible to think out loud about Islam freely. We’re at risk of paralysis, both as a nation and as a religious tradition.”

For the good of all its citizens, it is time for Pakistan to repeal its blasphemy law.

Pope Benedict XVI Remembers Sacrifice Of Slain Cleric

April 13, 2006

Mary K. Brunskill - All Headline News Contributor

Vatican City, Rome (AHN) - In a Holy Week Mass dedicated to priests on Thursday, Pope Benedict XVI recalled the slaying of Rev. Andrea Santoro, who was killed for preaching Catholicism in the predominantly Muslim Turkey.

Santoro was shot and killed on February 5th while he was praying in his parish in the Black Sea city of Trabzon. Witnesses said his 16-year-old killer screamed "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," and then fired two bullets into Santoro’s back.

Benedict read a letter written by Santano during his homily. In the letter, the Italian prelate professed his willingness to sacrifice his own body for his God.

Santoro wrote, "One becomes capable of salvation only by offering one’s body."

Santoro was killed at a time when caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in Europe were causing an uproar in th Muslim world. Santoro has been called a martyr by top church officials.

During the mass Pope Benedict prayed, "Let us put our hands today again at (God’s) disposition. Let his hand take ours so we won’t sink, but will serve life which is stronger than death, and love which is stronger than hatred."

Not Afraid to Die: The Kingdom and Compassion

Dr. Paul J Dean
Pastor, Counselor, Professor, Columnist and Radio Talk Show Host

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Those who take Christ and His Kingdom seriously are willing to do and suffer anything to see Him exalted and that Kingdom advanced. We sit around and think things that may sound strange to typical church-goers. For example, we think it might be better if persecution were to come our way. Then the true church would be revealed and it would be strong and Christ would be glorified. Our personal comforts are irrelevant. We then contemplate whether or not we should pray for persecution. In the end, most of us do not go that far because we are told to pray for those in authority that it might go well with us (1 Tim. 2:2). God can advance His gospel in a free country if He chooses. His people certainly have greater opportunity to spread the gospel in such an environment. They must simply be obedient. But, we must admit, certain thoughts are tempting in light of the downgrade in the church and culture at this present hour.

One can overhear that sentiment, praise God, in the words of Joel Belz in his article entitled, "Not Afraid to Die." (http://www.worldmag.com/articles/11708). He noted that "the story of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan fellow who was sentenced to death because he had converted to Christianity some 16 years ago, was changing so fast last week that it was hard to tell just which way it was going to go next. Maybe even harder, though, was knowing which way you wanted it to go. I'll admit that seems like a harsh thing to say."

He continues. "But let me put it in perspective by asking this: Which would have been better 50 years ago--for the God of all mercy to rescue five missionaries to the Indians of Ecuador, or to let them be murdered by the people to whom they wanted so much to take the gospel? Which would have been better for the missionaries' families? For the Indians of Ecuador? For the evangelical church in North America? For the Kingdom of God at large? And what about the tens of thousands of people around the world who became Christians through the ministry of the thousands of missionaries who volunteered for service after the five men were martyred? And their children and the generations who will follow them?"

"It was hard not to think of all those issues when you listened to the courageous words of Abdul Rahman. 'I am a Christian,' he said boldly while holding a Bible up for all to see. 'I am not afraid to die.' You couldn't help thinking about how Stephen's face was said to have been shining as he was being stoned to death in the book of Acts. And you really didn't want to see Abdul Rahman's radiance dimmed by some cheesy compromise."

Belz's words strike a chord in the heart of the committed Christian. How we long for the Kingdom of God to advance! And, we know from Scripture and from history that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church (Tertullian)." Our desire for the Kingdom must be such if we are to be truly committed to Christ's call and gospel. When we pray that God's Kingdom would come, we had better know what we are praying (Lk. 11:2). But, we had better pray that way nevertheless. Kingdom advance is more important than any endeavor or cause or desire or whatever. "Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, 'The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever (Rev. 11:15)!'" Our heart's cry is to see this dynamic in plain view.

And yet, just as surely as we desire the Kingdom to come, we must have and do have compassion on others. In fact, compassion, in one sense, is the attitude of the Kingdom. Compassion from God drives us forward with the gospel (not to make light of a desire for His glory, but, He is glorified in our compassion).

And so Belz says of Rahman, "Of course, you also didn't want to see him die." Indeed not. Our prayers were for Him and God was with Him and we give praise to His mighty Name for His deliverance of our brother in chains. With compassion we cried before the throne and the Father of all compassion heard our prayers!

And yet, what of the chains? What if Rahman were martyred? Belz points out in political and practical terms that "it would be, of course, the very last thing the Bush administration needed just now. It would be no help at all to the supposedly moderate government of Afghanistan. It would diminish to the vanishing point whatever credibility any moderate Muslim anywhere might still have left. Might such an event be the point of ignition for a worldwide conflagration of the sort we have all been dreading so much?"

Afghan religious leaders called for Rahman's death after he was released. "'It's clear that a man who converts has to be killed,' said Abdul Raoulf, a senior Muslim cleric seen, until recently, as a moderate who had several times actually been jailed by the Taliban. 'Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be insulted.... They should cut off his head, and pull him into pieces so there's nothing left.'"

Of course, had he been martyred by government execution or torn limb from limb by an angry Muslim mob, it would indeed demonstrate that Islam is not the moderate religion that so many vehemently claim it to be. Neither the Bible (which calls Ishmael and His descendents "a wild man," Gen. 16:12), nor the Koran, nor history will bear out a moderate Islam. This note must be sounded. There is the desire for the Kingdom again.

Belz further commented, "It was as if the cleric wanted to demonstrate the absolute futility of all the U.S. effort that has been poured into Afghanistan over the last four years." "'This is a young democracy,' countered Condoleeza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State. 'They do have a constitution, which if they treat carefully, promising things will happen. A constitution is something Afghanistan never had under the Taliban. The constitution they have adopted is clear in its support for a universal declaration of human rights.'"

And yet, the sad truth is that the Afghan Constitution may have a declaration of human rights attached to it, but the Afghan understanding of human rights is far different from the Christian's understanding or even the American's understanding of human rights. The Afghan Constitution is grounded in and committed to upholding Sharia (Islamic) law. There is no place for universal human rights as we understand them in that law. We point this out in our desire for the Kingdom.

But Belz has an opinion on this point as well. And, we respect Belz. Let us hear him out. With reference to Rice's comments and the Afghan Constitution, he asks, "A flat-out contradiction? Probably not. I write this from Dayton, Ohio, where Orville and Wilbur Wright more or less perfected the airplane credited with launching human travel through the air. I say 'more or less' because the Wright brothers' first flight was a mere 120 feet in 12 seconds--before it came to an embarrassing end. Afghanistan's first democratically elected government may or may not fly. I cannot join the skeptics who say that the case of Abdul Rahman is proof that the U.S. investment in his country has been in vain. Disappointing, confusing, and even terrifying? Yes. But maybe it is necessary one more time for a man to die for his people. It may be the only way really to dramatize how truly awful is the religion to which they hold so tenaciously."

And there's the compassion: not the desire for a man to die, but the desire in such for a people to see how truly awful their religion, and predicament apart from Christ, truly is. And, there is the hope of Kingdom triumph in what would be political failure. May God give us such compassion that we might be part of His Kingdom advance.

Christians in the Muslim World

One-Way Sympathy

By Chuck Colson

Christian Post Guest Columnist

August 17, 2006

Since the start of the Danish cartoon controversy earlier this year, Vatican officials have expressed sympathy with Islamic outrage over the depictions of Muhammad. This sympathy comes from knowing what it's like to have your beliefs treated with disrespect and even contempt. Yet in much of the Islamic world, that sympathy isn't a two-way street.

That's why the Vatican issued a statement "urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities." As Angelo Soldano, the Vatican's Secretary of State put it: "If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us . . . "

Destroy is not too strong a word. The anger originally directed at Denmark is increasingly being directed at Christians. In Turkey, a priest was murdered in an attack that the Turkish media has connected to the cartoon controversy. In Pakistan, protesting mobs have ransacked churches and beaten Christians. In Beirut, which, unlike Pakistan, has a large Christian population, a Christian neighborhood was attacked by a Muslim mob.

By far the worst attacks have occurred in Nigeria. In the state of Borno, attacks left as many as fifty-one Christians dead, including a priest. The Christian property destroyed included at least six churches, both Catholic and Protestant, the Bishop's home, and a Christian bookstore.

The rioters, who went on a rampage after hearing a Muslim cleric denounce the cartoons, sent a clear message with their choice of targets: These are our true enemies, the Christians. This led to a deplorable, yet predictable, response: Nigerian Christians retaliated against Muslims, killing one and burning a mosque. This is tragic.

And where Christians aren't under physical attack, they still face restrictions that far exceed the ones being decried by Muslim protesters. These restrictions, which have been chronicled on "BreakPoint," include bans on public and, in Saudi Arabia, even private worship.

This lack of reciprocity, along with the violence in places like Nigeria and Pakistan, has the usually conciliatory Vatican saying, "Enough!" Pope Benedict told the Moroccan ambassador that peace requires a reciprocal "respect for the religious convictions and practices of others . . . "

Other Vatican officials were even sharper. The Secretary of its supreme court told an Italian newspaper, "Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves."

His frustration arises from the well-founded doubts that the West will do anything about Muslim persecution of Christians. He noted that "half a century" of relations with "Arab countries" had not produced "the slightest concession on human rights."

Sadly, he's right. While countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are cited for their violations of religious freedom, there are not any sanctions. So, the message is that we are not really serious about freedom and democracy.

Without religious freedom, efforts to spread democracy are futile, because societies that don't respect the rights of religious minorities cannot be expected to respect any other human rights. What this tragic turn of events really proves is that, contrary to the politically correct wisdom of our day, not all worldviews or religions are alike. And the differences really matter—just ask the Christians living in the Islamic world.

3 Killed in Turkey Bible Attack

By BENJAMIN HARVEY, Associated Press Writer

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Assailants on Wednesday slit the throats of three employees of a publishing house that distributes Bibles, the latest in a series of attacks targeting Turkey's small Christian minority.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The attack added to concerns in Europe about whether the predominantly Muslim country _ which is bidding for EU membership _ can protect its religious minorities. It also underlined concerns about rising Turkish nationalism and hostility toward non-Muslims.

The three victims _ a German and two Turks _ were found with their hands and legs bound and their throats slit at the Zirve publishing house in the central city of Malatya.

Police detained four men, ages 19 to 20, and a fifth suspect was hospitalized with serious injuries after jumping out of a window to try to escape arrest, authorities said. All five were carrying a letter that read: "We five are brothers. We are going to our deaths," according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the attack and said investigators were looking into whether there were other suspects or possible links with terror groups.

"This is savagery," Erdogan said.

The German victim had been living in Malatya since 2003, said Gov. Halil Ibrahim Dasoz. Anatolia identified him as 46-year-old Tilman Ekkehart Geske.

The attack is the latest in a string of attacks on Turkey's Christian community, which comprises less than 1 percent of the population.

In February 2006, a Turkish teenager shot a Roman Catholic priest to death as he prayed in his church, and two other priests were attacked later that year. A November visit by Pope Benedict XVI was greeted by several nonviolent protests. Earlier this year, a suspected nationalist killed Armenian Christian editor Hrant Dink.

Authorities had vowed to deal with extremists after Dink's murder, but Wednesday's attack showed the violence was not slowing down.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned the attack "in the strongest terms" and said he expected Turkish authorities would "do everything to clear up this crime completely and bring those responsible to justice."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat Party _ which opposes Muslim Turkey's membership in the European Union _ said the attacks showed the country's shortcomings in protecting religious freedom.

"After today's murders, the Turkish government must ... be asked whether it is doing enough to protect religious minorities," the party's general secretary, Ronald Pofalla, said in a statement.

"Freedom of religion is one of the fundamental human rights. The Turkish state is still far from the freedom of religion that marks Europe. It is the task of the Turkish government to guarantee this freedom of religion," the statement said.

About 150 people lit candles and unfolded a banner that read, "We are all Christians," in downtown Istanbul to protest the attack and show solidarity with the Christian community. But there was far less public outcry than with Dink's murder, which was followed by widespread protests and condemnations. More than 100,000 people marched at Dink's funeral.

Malatya, known as a hotbed of nationalists, is the hometown of Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981.

The Zirve publishing house has been the site of protests by nationalists accusing it of proselytizing in this Muslim, but secular country, and Zirve's general manager said his employees had recently been threatened.

Anatolia said the five suspects were students who lived in the same student residence in Malatya.

The manner in which the victims were bound suggested the attack could have been the work of a local Islamic militant group, commentators said, and CNN-Turk television reported that police were investigating the possible involvement of Turkish Hezbollah _ a Kurdish Islamic organization that aims to form a Muslim state in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast.

"These are fanatics who continue to be present in Turkey and who at a moment's notice emerge with these acts of absurd violence," Monsignor Luigi Padovese, the Vatican representative in Turkey, was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency ANSA.

Of Turkey's 70 million people, only about 65,000 are Armenian Orthodox Christians, 20,000 are Roman Catholic and 3,500 are Protestants mostly converts from Islam. Another 2,000 are Greek Orthodox Christians.

The Plight of the Christians in the Middle East

By Gabriel Sawma Esq.

AssyriaTimes.com

August 21, 2007

Today, there are 30 million Christians who live in countries whose majority are Muslims. Some 15 million Christians live in Indonesia; somewhere between 6 and 12 million live in Egypt; 3 million in Pakistan; Christians make up 3 percent of Iraq’s population of 30 million and 2 percent of Jerusalem’s population.

In Turkey, the Christian population numbered 2 million in 1920, but now numbers a few thousand. In Syria Christians represented about one third of the population at the beginning of the twentieth century, today they count for less than 10 percent. In Lebanon the number went from about 55 percent 70 years ago to under 30 percent today. At present rates in the Middle East, the 12 to 15 million Christians will in a decade have been substantially reduced to the point that they will have lost their cultural vitality and political significance. This exodus is a result of the unprecedented mistreatment of Jews and Christians throughout the Middle East.

Egyptian Christians are embattled minority with dwindling right; trapped in poverty and uncertainty, despised and distrusted as second class citizens; facing discrimination in education, jobs and from police and the courts. Often they are victim of brutality. This applies to many countries with a Muslim majority. Yet no Muslim leader voices his objection to such a treatment.

In Iraq, following the fall of Saddam Hussein, Christians have been randomly assassinated, , Christian women have been threatened unless they cover their heads, Christian shop owners of liquor stores, music stores, fashion stores and beauty salons have been attacked. Islamists make it clear that these establishments and not welcomed. And yet no ruler in the Middle East voiced objection to such atrocities.

When Islam spread in the Middle East during the seventh century, the attitude to the People of the Book, as Jews and Christians are called, does not entail any obligation on the part of the Muslim either to convert or to exterminate them. It is at that time that Islam’s reputation as a religion of toleration arises.

The People of the Book are considered as dhimmi (from Aramaic dmm, i.e.the insulted ones), that is, as persons in possession of a protective treaty, dhimma, in which they renounce certain rights and in return enjoy the practice of their religion and their customs.

Much has been made of the so called Covenant of ‘Umar as a document of an approximate description of the actual state of affairs around 800 A.D. It demonstrates beyond doubt the isolation of non-Muslims within their own religious groups. Their personal safety and their personal property are guaranteed them at the price of permanent inequality. The Covenant of ‘Umar is in the form of a letter presented by the Christian community to the second Caliph (‘Umar bin al-khattab, the second successor to the Prophet Muhammad). It reads the following: “when you (i.e. ‘Umar) came to us we asked of you safety for our lives, our families, our property, and the people of our religion on the conditions: to pay tribute out of hand and be humiliated; not to hinder any Muslim from stopping in our churches by night or day, to entertain him there three days and give him food there and open to him their doors; to beat the naqus (the wooden board which serves as ‘bell’ amongst the Easter Christians) only gently in them and not to raise our voices in them in chanting;….not to build a church, convent, hermitage, or cell, nor repair those that are dilapidated; nor assemble in any that is in a Muslim quarter, nor in their presence; not to display idolatry, nor invite to it, nor show a cross on our churches, nor in any of the roads or markets of the Muslims; not to learn the Koran nor teach it to our children; not to prevent any of our relatives from turning Muslim if he wish it;….not to resemble the Muslims in dress, appearance, saddles….; to honor and respect them, to stand up for them when we meet together;….not to make our houses higher (than theirs); not to tip weapons or swords, nor wear them in a town or on a journey in Muslim lands;….not to strike a Muslim; not to keep slaves who have been the property of Muslims. We impose these terms on ourselves and on our co-religionists; he who rejects them has no protection.” (See A.S. Tritton, The Caliphs and Their Non-Muslim Subjects, London, 1930).

Leaders of the Christian communities in the Middle East have done their utmost to please their Muslims neighbors. One Christian Patriarch claims that “Islam saved us from the atrocities of the Byzantine”; another Christian bishop claims that “the ancestry of the Christians are Arabs”, that the “blood of Arabs runs in our veins”; another leader says “we (Christians) belong to the Arab tribe of Taghleb, or the tribe of Ghassan; another claims, contrary to the fact, that “we (Christians) are not dhimmi, and most of them use verses from the Quran to support the claim that Islam is a tolerant religion. They often refers to the Quranic verse, which reads: “There is no compulsion in religion” Quran 2:256, and “For you is your religion and for me is mine” (Quran 109:6).

Dhimmi is a word which is used twice in the Quran (9:8 and 10), in the context of Muhammad’s dealings with idolators (mushrikun), who are accused of not honoring their covenants or agreements with the prophet; as a result the prophet is also released from his commitments, and their position becomes rather more vulnerable. But in the period of the conquests the term comes to be used more with reference to the agreements made between the conquered population and their Muslim rulers, and therefore more specific.

In some Christian circles in the Middle East, there are those who believe that Islam “always coexisted with Judaism and Christianity peacefully on religious plane though there were clashes between Muslims and Christians in Medieval ages and not between Islam and Christianity”; most of the prevailing thoughts among Christian leaders as well as Muslim writers in the Middle East blame the Western media for projecting clash of interest as clash of religions, or clash of civilizations.

To defend these arguments which claim that Islam is a tolerant religion, Christian leaders and Muslim writers in the Middle East quote certain verses from the Quran: “If thy Lord had pleased, all those who are in the earth would have believed, all of them. Will thou then force them till they are believers?” Quran 10:99. Some quote another verse which reads: “May thou will kill thyself with grief, sorrowing after, if they believe not in this argument (non-believers)”, Quran: 18:6.

Christian leaders in the Middle East defend the status quo by using the same arguments which are raised by Muslims about the so-called ‘peaceful co-existence’ of religious communities under Islam: “the Negus of Abyssinia had given refuge to Muslim migrants to Ethiopia before they migrated to Medina.” They claim, according to Islamic traditions that stated by Ibn Ishaq’s book (Al-Sirat Al-Nabawiyya), that “a Christian delegation from Najran met the Prophet led by Abdul Masih, the Prophet met with the delegation inside the mosque at Medina and he (the Prophet) treated them with respect and in friendly way.” Another Christian bishop in Lebanon do not hesitate to use verses from the Quran, not the Bible, to support his argument.

Muslims on the other hand refer to the same quotations to stress their belief that Islam could co-exist with Christians and Jews peacefully. To promote such arguments, they quote the Quran. One of the verses refers to Christian priests and monks who are “humble and engage in worshipping God.” Muslim writers claim that the Quran treats all human beings on equal plain whatever their creed or color or nation or tribe. They refer to the following Quranic verse: “And surely we have honored the children of Adam, and we carry them in the land and the sea, and we provide them with good tiding, and we have made to excel highly most of those whom we have created.” Quran 17:70.

Muslim writers quote the Quran in order to promote the so-called ‘peaceful co-existence’ with other religions: “For every one of you we appointed a law and a way. And if Allah had pleased he would have made you a single people, but that he might try you in what he gave you. So vie one with another in virtuous deeds.” Muslim writers claim that Allah did not create all human beings as one community, but rather different sects distinctively. They claim that plurality of religions and ways of life and different laws co-exist peacefully with the Muslim community.

The Islamic Conquest

At the dawn of the Islamic invasion of the seventh century, The vast majority of the population of the conquered Byzantine provinces was Christian, belonging to one church or another, and in the Sassanian Empire (Persia) too there was a significant Christian minority presence, consisting mostly of Nestorian Christians (popularly known as the Assyrian Church) . Even the Arab tribes of Ghassan and others were members of the Christian community. There were bishops among them. Their language, like the rest of the Middle East, was Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. Christian churches and literature spread all over the Middle East. But their status started to decline over the years which followed the invasion.

The initial phase of the encounter between Muslims and Christians should be seen as lasting for roughly 200 years that is until the first half of the ninth century.

Muslim law and, even more, Muslim mentality insisted from the beginning of Islam upon emphasizing without letup the disabilities to which the dhimmi (Christian) was subjected. From the beginning, Islam regarded both Christians and Jews as second-class citizens. Time and again the Muslim texts, which are represented in the Hadith (i.e the interpretations given by Muslim commentators on the Quran and the sayings attributed to the Prophet and his way of life), assert the intention of humiliating the dhimmi. Never was he (Christian or Jew) to be left in doubt about his inferior status. This anxiousness on the part of the Muslim commentators to cajole their own susceptibilities by hurting those of non-Muslims increased as time went by. And it must be said that, on the whole, relations between the communities steadily deteriorated. A Muslim always regarded the Christian to be inferior regardless of the ancestry. In other words, a Christian of Arab ancestry is no different from Greek or European dissent; they are all considered dhimmi and were always second-class citizens.

Under al-Mutawakkil (847-61) a wave of anti-dhimmi feeling swept the Middle East. This Caliph, Barhebraeus (d.1286) reports, “was a hater of the Christians, and afflicted them by ordering them to bind bandlets of wool round their heads; and none of them was to appear outside his house without a belt and girdle. And the new churches were to be pulled down. And if they should happen to have a spacious church, even though it was ancient, one part of it was to be made into a mosque. It may be mentioned in this connection that there is some evidence to suggest that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Great Mosque in Damascus was, to a certain extent, shared with the Christians, (see Ibn Jubair, Travels). Christians were not lift up crosses during their feasts of Hosanna (Palm-Sunday).

To promote hatred of the Christians, al-Jahiz wrote a risala in which he pointed out the reasons of their comparative popularity and then went on to explain why they should be detested and abhorred. Al-Jahiz makes it clear that the masses to the Christians is the fact “they are secretaries and servants to kings, physicians to notable, perfumers, and money-changers, whereas the Jews are found to be but dyers, tanners, cuppers, butchers and cobblers. Our people observing thus the occupations of the Jews and the Christians concluded that the religion of the Jews must be compared as unfavorable as do their professions.” (See Radd ‘ala ‘nasara by Al-Jahiz – Arabic version).

Al-Jahiz continues: “Our nation has not been afflicted by the Jews, Magians (persians), or Sabians as much as by the Christians; for (in the polemics with us) they choose contradictory statements in Muslim tradition (as the target of their attack). (They select for disputations) the equivocal verses of the Quran, and (hold us responsible for) hadiths, the chains of guarantors of which are defective….”

Abrogation in Islam

According to Muslim interpreters, no body is allowed to interpret the Quran unless he knows what abrogation means (see Al-Suyuti, Al-Itqan fi ‘Ulum al Quran –Arabic version). In one instance Ali (son in law of the Prophet) asked a judge: do you know what abrogation and what abrogated means? The judge said no, and then Ali said: you are doomed and caused other to be doomed. (See same reference)

Abrogation in Islam means to take away, thus the Quranic verse stated: “Allah abrogates what Satan says, and then Allah corrects that”. It also means to change for one another as the Quranic verse states “and if we change one verse for another”. Abrogation also means to turn and move as stated in the following verse: “We used to abrogate what you previously did”.

All Muslim commentators agree on the principle of abrogation, but some disagree as to whether a Quranic verse may be abrogated by the Sunnah (sayings attributed to the Prophet). They state that the Quran says: “what we abrogate from a verse or forget it, we bring a better one (verse) and equal to it”. Others state that the Sunnah may abrogate verses from the Quran because the Sunnah is also from Allah. Muslim interpreters believe that if the Sunnah is an order from Allah, then it can abrogate a Quranic verse, but if it were a result of opinion, it does not cause abrogation.

In Islam, there are different categories of abrogation. One deals with a general rule such as the direction of prayers towards Mecca (the direction used to be towards Jerusalem, then the Prophet changed and ordered his followers to pray towards Mecca); also falls under this category the replacement of the fast of Ahura by the fast of Ramadan. A second category is based on the reason for abrogation, when the reason goes away, then the abrogation is not necessary such as the case when Allah orders some one to be patient because of lack of money, then the order is abrogated when the same person becomes rich.

According to Muslim tradition, there are verses from the Quran that does not allow abrogation, they include the following chapters: Al-fatiha, Usuf, Yas, Al-Hajarat, al-Rahman, Al-Hadid, Al-saff, Al-Um’aa, Al-Tahrim, Al-Mulk, al-Haqa, Nuh, Al-jinn, Al-Mursalat, ‘Amm, al-Nazi’aat, al-Infitar and the following three chapters, al-Fajr to the rest of the chapters except the verses of al_teen, Al’Asr and al-Kafireen (they accept abrogation).

Twenty five chapters of the Quran allow abrogation, they are: Al-baqara and three chapters follow that, al-Hajj, al-Nur, al-Ahzab, Saba’, Al-Mu’min, Al-Shura, Al-dhariyat, Al-Tur, Al-Waqi’ah, Al-Mujadilah, Al-muzamil, al-Mudather, Kawrath, and Al’’Asr. The following chapters allow the abrogation: al_fath, Al-Hash, al-Munafiqun, Al-taghabun, Al-Talaaq, and Al’A’la.

We will not concern ourselves in this study with the verses that fall under the rule of abrogation in general, instead, we will deal with the abrogation concerning the issues discussed above, which is related to the topic of the so-called Islamic “toleration to the other religions” mainly Christianity and Judaism.

According to Al-Suyuti, who is an authority on Islam, there are one hundred twenty four verses in the Quran that have been abrogated by one Quranic verse; he calls it ‘the verse of the sword’. It states the following: “And when the forbidden months have passed, kill the “Mushrikeen” wherever you find them and take them prisoners, and beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent and observe prayer and pay the Zakat (almsgiving), then leave their way free, surely, Allah is most forgiving, merciful” (Quran 5:9, the Holy Quran, English translation by Maulawi Sher-‘Ali).

Modern Muslim writers replaced the word “mushrikeen” by the term ‘idolators’. But in Arabic, the word includes both: Christians and idolators. In Arabic the stem root is “ishrak” which means ‘in addition’, ‘to associate someone with Allah”. That follows the Christian’s belief, which is based on the fact that Jesus is God. The Muslims consider that to be “ishrak” (i.e. worshipping two Gods), in other words, they believe that Christian worship Jesus and God at the same time, that in itself, Muslim say, is “ishrak”.

So what are the verses that are considered to be abrogated by the verse of the sword? According to Muslim interpreters, they include the following: “And say to the people well done” (i.e. the People of the Book ‘Christians and Jews’). This verse has been abrogated more than one thousand years ago by Muslim commentators.

The verse of the sword forbids fighting during the forbidden month (these are three months of the year during which fighting among the Arabs was forbidden). But Muslim commentators say the verse is abrogated because another verse in the Quran commands the Muslim to “kill all the Mushrikeen” (i.e. Christians and Pagans) (Sea Kitab al-Itqan by Al-Suyuti, Maktabat al-Ma-aarif in Riyadh, Saudi Arabic, volume 2 pp 64, 1996).

Muslim writer’s quote the Quran in matter s related to judiciary. The Quran says: “if they come to you (litigating) you may rule on their matter…” this shows good judgment on the part of the Muslim judiciary. But unfortunately, this verse has been abrogated by the following one: “And if you judge, then be guided with the Islamic Shari’a” (you may not rule according to their norms by the Islamic Shari’a).

In the matter of judiciary, it is necessary to bring two witnesses, the Quran says the following: “bring two from among them” (i.e. Christians or Jews). This verse has been abrogated by the following: “And bring fair witnesses from amongst you” (i.e. from the Muslim community. (See same reference, pp. 65)

Ibn Al’Arabi, a Muslim authority on the interpretation of the Quran, quoted by Al-Suyuti as saying: “everything between the pages of the Quran regarding forgiveness to non-believers by the Muslim community, or compassion and mercy has been abrogated by the verse of the sword (i.e. Quran 5:9, sighted above). Ibn al-‘Arabi states that this verse alone abrogated one hundred twenty four verses.

According to Shaidalah, a Muslim source of Jurisprudence, the Quranic verse that we mentioned earlier which states: “you have your religion and I have mine” has been abrogated by the verse of the sword (Quoted by Al-Suyuti, pp. 68).

The verse of the sword abrogates the following (in italic) of the Quranic verse: “We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob and his children (i.e. the twelve children of Jacob), and what was given to Moses and Jesus, and what was given to all other prophets from their Lord…” (Quran 2: 257). Muslim commentators state that the part in italic is abrogated.

Muslim writers in modern times, try to hide the fact that many verses from the Quran are abrogated. This may be the reason why Muslims around the word sympathize with what is known as “extremists” or “fundamentalists”, “radical Islam” or “militant Islam”. The mild reaction by Muslims around the world to the attack of September 11 on the United States is caused by the principle of abrogation; doing otherwise by Muslims, would be a violation to the principle. Muslims do not hesitate to go along with our ignorance of the Islamic Shari’a by stating that Islam is a “peaceful religion”. Many Western scholars, who do not understand the Islamic Shari’a well, tend to believe in everything written between the two covers of the Quran, not knowing that one hundred twenty four verses which deal with the Christians and Jews are in fact abrogated and non-existent.

Gabriel Sawma is considered an authority in Islam, a lawyer in international law , professor of Semitic Studies, and author of the book: The Qur’an: Misinterpreted, Mistranslated, and Misread. The Aramaic Language of the Qur’an.