This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/5851

The Muslim Assault On Christians

May 23, 2013

By EMERSON VERMAAT

May 23, 2013 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - A few months ago, on February 18, the body of 43-year old Mostafa Talaie was found in the tranquil Dutch city of Oisterwijk. He had been stabbed to death at around 10 clock p.m. It was already dark then. Mostafa Talaie was an Iranian asylum seeker in Holland whose application for asylum had been granted just three days before his unexpected death. He was on his way to the asylum seekers center in Oisterwijk, a city in the south of Holland and was murdered just a few hundred meters away from the center. Initially, Mostafa had been accommodated in an asylum center in the northern province of Friesland. Mostafa was also a Muslim convert to Christianity and a frequent churchgoer in the Frisian village of Burgum. The Dutch police still do not know who killed him but the most likely candidates are radical Muslims in Holland.

Mostafa knew that he would be sentenced to death in Iran if the Dutch authorities would have decided to reject his application for asylum and if he would have been deported to Tehran. Mostafa's reformed church pastor, the Rev. Marco Buitenhuis, told me recently that Muslim converts to Christianity have been subjected to violence more frequently than other asylum seekers. Other Iranian converts to Christianity assured Rev. Buitenhuis that the brutal way Mostafa was killed "pointed to an Iranian hand." "It is recognizable and it has to with Mustafa's conversion to Christianity," they told him.

"Iranian Christian asylum seekers who were in the same asylum seekers center as Mustafa have been threatened by Muslim asylum seekers from Afghanistan," Rev. Buitenhuis says. "They told them that it is allowed to spill the blood of Christians. Both Afghans and Iranians speak Farsi." "I know that an Iranian asylum seeker who is a member of my church has now gone into hiding because he is scared that he is no longer safe here. Mind you, these people flee to Holland hoping to find peace and security here, but once they convert to Christianity, they don't feel safe anymore." "Especially Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers do not accept it when a Muslim decides to convert to Christianity. Three Iraqi Christians who were baptized in own church were confronted with hostility and violence in the last two and a half years. The most recent case was the beginning of this year." "This has been reported to the police, but we don't hear from them."

But those asylum seekers who misbehave should not be granted asylum in Holland. Too many mistakes have been made in the past. In Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the United States and Canada, a lot of asylum seekers have been granted asylum whose applications should have been rejected in the first place. In too many cases, they were radical Muslims who were and are still hostile to Western values, hated and still hate the Jews and suppressed and still suppress women.

Asfhin Ellian, a former Iranian refugee in Holland and now a professor of Law at Leiden University, needs a body-guard because radical Muslim immigrants want to kill him. olland Ellian is a courageous and vocal critic of Islam and militant Muslims believe so-called "apostates" deserve the death penalty. The outspoken Leiden University Professor now accuses Iran's leaders of anti-Semitism. They deny the Holocaust, but want to wipe Israel from the map. Ellian believes that militant Muslims are Islamo-Fascists – and so do I.

"The global assault on Christians"

A very important book called "Persecuted – The Global Assault on Christians" was published recently. "The most widespread persecution of Christians takes place in the Muslim world," Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea write in "Persecuted." The so-called Arab Spring turned out to be an Arab Winter for Christian minorities in North Africa and the Middle East. The authors write about Egypt that "angry mobs have attacked Christian churches and monastries, burning them to the ground and murdering people inside."

Raymond Ibrahim, an American expert on Islam and al-Qaeda, writes that Egypt's Salafis base themselves on the doctrine of authoritative and classic jurists. "According to Ibn Qayyim, author of the multivolume Rules for the Dhimmis, it is ‘obligatory' to destroy or convert into a mosque ‘every church' both old and new that exists in the lands that were taken by Muslims through force, for they ‘breed corruption.'"

Ibrahim then describes a number of attacks on Coptic churches, for example: "In February 2012, thousands of Muslims attacked a Coptic church, demanding the death of its pastor, who along with ‘nearly 100 terrorized Copts sought refuge inside the church, while Muslim rioters were pelting the church with stones in an effort to break into the church, assault the Cops and torch the building.' They did this because a Christian girl who, according to Islamic law, automatically became a Muslim when her father converted to Islam, fled her father and was rumored to be hiding in the church." On april 7, 2013, Cairo's St. Mark cathedral, the most sacred building for millions of Coptic Christians, was attacked by a mob of angry Muslims. The police failed to protect the besieged Christians. On the contrary, a witness named Amir Ramzi said: "We were surprised to find that the police began to intervene and become another party to the conflict attacking Copts who were fighting back against the (Muslim) youth who were attacking them."

Coptic girls – usually minors – are abducted and raped by Salafist Muslims who subsequently force their defenseless victims to convert to Islam. As Cam McGrath reported last April: "Christian rights watchdogs say abductions and forced conversions of young Egyptian Coptic girls have been going on for decades right under the noses of local auhorities. But the frequency of the kidnappings has increased alarmingly since the uprising in 2011 that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak and brought an Islamist-led government to power. More than 500 Christian girls have been abducted in the last two years, according to the Association of Victims of Abduction and Forced Disappearance (AVAFD), which documents the disappearances. A growing number of cases involve girls between the ages of 13 and 17." ‘"Egypt has laws in place to protect girls under 18, but Salafis do not accept them,' says Amal Abdel Hadi, head of the New Women Foundation. ‘To them, a girl is only a minor until she has her first period.'"

Too many Muslims do not recognize that "everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion." "This right," says Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "includes freedom to change one's religion or belief, and freedom either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

Attacks by Muslims on Christian churches do not only occur in Egypt, but also in many other countries, even in Canada, as Ibrahim describes in another article. Thus, in October 2012, "a Molotov cocktail was hurled through the window of a newly opened Coptic church near Toronto." In Indonesia, "unknown assailants" set fire to the Madele Pentacostal Church in the city of Poso. "Weeks earlier, in the same region, Christian homes were attacked and bombed." "Because Poso has a large Christian presence, Muslim attacks are frequent, including the 2005 beheading of three Christian girls going to school." Ibrahim also describes how in October 2012 churches were attacked Iran, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria and Tanzania.

In northern Nigeria, "an Islamic suicide bomber rammed an SUV loaded with explosives into St. Rita Catholic Church holding Sunday Mass; he killed eight people and wounded more than 100." In Pakistan, "the Catholic Church of St. Francis, the oldest of the archdiocese of Karachi, was attacked by a Muslim mob of 600, who destroyed property." This church "has always served the poor with a school and a medical clinic run by nuns, the Archbishop of Karachi said. In Syria, "a bomb was detonated near the historical gate of Bab Touma (‘Thomas' Doorway') which is largely populated by the nation's Christian minority." "Another car bomb exploded in front of the only Syrian Orthodox Church in the town of Deir Ezzor, currently under opposition control."

The authors of the book "Persecuted – The Global Assault on Christians" describe the process of "ruthless religious cleansing" in Iraq: "Relentless waves of targeted, religiously motivated bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, extortions, and rapes have triggered a mass exodus of Christians. Since 2003, up to two-thirds of the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi Chaldean and Syriac Catholics; Assyrian, Syriac and Armenian Orthodox; as well as some Protestants, have fled to Syria, Jordan, and farther-flung places." "Both Sunni and Shia extremists who seek to impose their codes of behavior have been ruthless toward Christians, throwing acid in the faces of women without a hijab (veil)."

Even in Turkey, a member of NATO and an official ally of the United States, "the state deprives Christians of churches" and churches are converted into mosques, Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea write. "In 2006, Father Andrea of Trabzon was shot to death as he prayed in church. Convicted in the murder was a fifteen-year-old boy, who claimed he was avenging a Danish newspaper's publication of the caricatures of Muhammad. Bishop Luigi Padovese, who served as the Vicar Apostolic for Anatolia and had previously expressed concern over rising anti-Christian sentiment, spoke during his memorial mass, saying, ‘As long as television programs and newspaper articles produce material that shine a bad light on Christians and show them as enemies of Islam (and vice versa), how can we imagine a climate of peace?'"

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan sides with the anti-Semitic Muslim Brotherhood and plans to visit Gaza in June. He is an ally of Hamas, a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel. Moreover, the same Erdogan wants all Turkish immigrants in Europe to follow his instructions, the German weekly Der Spiegel pointed out earlier this month. He is pursuing "an aggressive diaspora policy." In Europe, too, more and more new Turkish mosques are being built. According to Der Spiegel, two-thirds of the Turkish immigrants in Germany and other European countries support Erdogan's policies.

Emerson Vermaat is an investigative reporter in the Netherlands. Website: emersonvermaat.com.

Sources:

Onderzoek dood Mostafa Talaie, www.politie.nl; Nederlands Dagblad (Netherlands), February 28, 2013 ("Kerk Noardburgum vreest geweld tegen bekeerlingen"); May 3, 2013, p. 4 ("Politie vraagt hulp burgers na dood Iraanse bekeerling"); Trouw (Netherlands), May 7, 2013, p. 5 ("Veel scenario's rond vermoorde asielzoeker").

Telephone conversation by the author with the Rev. M. Buitenhuis, (Noard)burgum, May 17, 2013.

Afshin Ellian, "Allahu Akbar," Down with the dictatorship, Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2009.

Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea, Persecuted – The Global Assault on Christians (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013), p. 123 ("The most widespread persecution of Christians…"), p. 136-139 (Turkey), p. 228 ("ruthless religious cleansing"), p. 231 ("…throwing acid in the faces of women…"), p. 310 ("Angry mobs in Egypt").

Raymond Ibrahim, Death to the Churches Under Islam. A Study of the Coptic Church, meforum.org, April 25, 2013.

Raymond Ibrahim, The Siege of Egypt's St. Mark Cathedral. An Insider's Account, Gatestone Institute, April 22, 2103.

Cam McGrath, Missing Christian Girls Leave Trail of Tears, Inter Press Service (IPS), April 16, 2013.

Raymond Ibrahim, Muslim Persecution of Christians: October 2012, December 7, 2012 (Gatestone Institute).

Der Spiegel (Germany), May 5, 2013 ("Ersatzkanzler in Ankara"). On Erdogan's "aggressive diaspora policy."

©2013 Emerson Vermaat. All rights reserved.
http://www.pipelinenews.org/2013/may/23/The-Muslim-Aussault-on-Christians.html

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/5851