Apparently the "religious revolution" that Egyptian President Sisi called for on New Year's Day is taking root — at least by emboldening more moderate Muslims to speak out publicly, as Sisi did.

I am currently watching the latest episode of Cairo Today, hosted by 'Amru Adib, a very popular Egyptian show. Like Sisi's speech before Al Azhar, it too is hard hitting.

Among other things, Adib is "connecting the dots." He started with the Charlie Hebdo attack, saying lots of Muslims will say, "Well, they had it coming for mocking the prophet!" But then he asked "What about all the other terrorist attacks around the Islamic world?!" By way of example, he referred to the killing of two Muslim policemen guarding a Coptic church during Christmas celebrations.

Adib pointed out that, if the French killed were "infidels" attacking Islam, the same "thinking" — recall Sisi's wording — is prompting Muslims to kill other Muslims all around the world, so that there is not "a single Muslim country where this sort of thinking does not exist."

He asked pious Muslims who cannot tolerate a word against Islam, "So why are you, of your own free will, moving to these godless nations[the West] in the first place" (reminding me of this article I wrote nearly a decade ago).

Adib asked his viewers, "Are you, as Muslims, content with the fact that today we are all seen as terrorists by the world?.. We [Egyptians] used to bring civilization to the world, today what? — we are barbarians! Barbarians I tell you!"

Other telling quotes in just the first few minutes of the program follow:

I'm not afraid about how many Muslims kill Christians, I'm afraid of how many Muslims kills Muslims. In 2014, more Muslims were killed by other Muslims than all throughout history... In every Muslim country, we are killing each other — this has nothing to do with non-Muslims mocking Islam!" Who put this hate in us?You're going to tell me that [Muslim] terrorism exists because of Israel, because of the West, because of this and that, but the truth is, we are no longer tolerant Muslims.... If we can't live with each other, are we going to be able to live with the Christians?

He even criticized Al Azhar, because their head, after condemning the Charlie Hebdo attack, added, "but we equally condemn the mockery" — which Adib equated with exonerating the attack.

As for Sisi, he pointed out that to many Muslims, the fact that the Egyptian president entered a Christian church, as he did on the eve of January 7, the Coptic Christmas, must be an infidel. The Salafi party immediately said, "We will never congratulate the Christians on their festivals. What're you crazy?!

To this, Adib said:

Okay, I get it, you hate Christians. But can you please be consistent? Why do you cooperate with them in other regards? Why do you go to their nations [reference to the West]? Why do you go to their doctors? Please, let your hate be consistent." I have no doubt that 3/4 of those hearing me are cursing me now — saying "he's an infidel, an apostate!"...

PJ Media

By Roger Kimball

As the world endeavors to digest the savage massacre of 12 innocent people in Paris by French Muslims, it is worth stepping back to remember that the last week or so has also seen the publication of two important manifestos by prominent Muslims.

Both manifestos, though in different ways, are remarkable for their frank recognition of some salient facts about Islam, what a Marxist might call “really existing Islam,” as distinct from those ideal constructions urged upon us by the naïve but well-meaning.

The first manifesto was delivered in Cairo by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on New Year’s Day before Al-Azhar University and the Awqaf Ministry, which oversees Egypt’s religious endowments. Roger L. Simon, writing here at PJM, was right to call the speech “extraordinary.” Al-Sisi, as Simon observes, called for nothing less that an ecclesiastical revolution in Islam. The great Raymond Ibrahim, who has done as much as anyone to tell the truth about Islam in the Middle East, posted an English translation of key excerpts from the speech on his web site. “The corpus of [Islamic] texts and ideas that we sacralized over the years,” al-Sisi said, are “antagonizing the entire world.” Egypt, he continued, is being “torn apart” by these violent ideas.

We have to think hard about what we are facing . . . It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible! . . . Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible! . . . I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move . . . because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.

Some have objected that al-Sisi has not matched his actions to his words. But Simon is right: no Western leader (certainly not Barack Hussein Obama) has had the courage to issue a call for such radical change in Islam. And the fact that the leader of the largest Arab nation should do so has potentially “world-changing implications.”

Al-Sisi’s speech occurred on New Year’s Day. A scant week later, two masked gunman shouting “Allahu Akbar!” stormed into offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and murdered 10 journalists and 2 policemen in cold blood. This was not a random act of what the Obama administration called “workplace violence” (their description of the Islamic-inspired butchery at Fort Hood). It was not the work of “lone extremists” (another favorite Obama term for the work Islamic terrorism). It certainly was not an act of “anti-Islamic activity,” the cynical and mendacious term that former British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith coined to describe Islamic terrorism. (Shades of the “No True Scotsman fallacy” there, Jacqui.)

No, these two French Muslims, since identified as Said Kouachi (34) and his brother Cherif Kouachi (32), were on a mission. They targeted Charlie Hebdo because the irreverent magazine had repeatedly made fun of Islam and its founder (it has done the same to other religions and indeed to other establishment figures in general, but with less incarnadine results). Back in 2011, after the paper published the famous “Danish Cartoons” of Mohammed, other partisans of “the religion of peace” firebombed the offices of the magazine. Its editor, Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier, was given round-the-clock police protection as a result. It wasn’t enough. The Kouachi brothers knew exactly who they were looking for. When they shot their way into the office of Cahrlie Hebdo, they rattled off a list of names of journalists and cartoonists, including Charbonnier’s. When they found them, they murdered them. Now at last, they proclaimed, “the prophet has been avenged.”

Think about that. The prophet, i.e., Mohammed, the revered founder of Islam, has been “avenged” because 12 people have been murdered in cold blood. Why? Because a magazine published some satirical cartoons of said prophet.

Which brings me to the second Muslim manifesto I mentioned. This, too, was an extraordinary effusion, notable for its honesty about the realities of Islam in the world today. But unlike President al-Sisi’s speech in Cairo, this manifesto was not a call for an accommodating revolution in Islam. On the contrary, it was a warning to infidels (that would be you and me, Virginia) that the French journalists (and their bodyguards) reaped what they had sown.

I refer to the “opposing view” op-ed by Anjem Choudary, “a radical Muslim cleric in London and a lecturer in sharia,” inUSA Today yesterday. “Why,” the article’s dek asks, “did France allow the tabloid to provoke Muslims?”

You know what happens when Muslims are provoked. They start murdering people. One or two, if that’s all they can manage, thousands if they happen to get their hands on a few airliners. “Offend” them and they kill you. If you let them.

This ravening specimen of intolerant, theocratic rage doesn’t put it quite like that, of course, but he is pretty frank. “Contrary to popular misconception,” he begins (are you listening, President Bush?), “Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone.”

He’s right about that, you know: “Islam” means “submission” not “peace.” And Choudary’s frankness does not end there. About the first thing Barack Obama did on assuming office was travel to Cairo as part of his world-apologize-to-tyrants-tour. At the University of Cairo, he gave a famous (now infamous) speech in which he asserted that Islam and America share core principles, “principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Tolerance, eh? Barack Obama ought to have asked Anjem Choudary about that. “Muslims,” Choudary wrote in USA Today, “do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires.” How does that accord with “tolerance”? Choudary is clear-eyed about that, too. “In an increasingly unstable and insecure world,” he writes, “the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.” You said it, Anjem! Even as I write, Riaf Badawi, a Saudi blogger, is receiving 50-lashes in public, part of a sentence that includes a 10-year prison sentence and 1000 lashes (50 every Friday for 20 weeks, if he lasts that long). And what heinous crime did Badawi commit to merit such barbaric punishment? Why, he “insulted Islam.” So our “friends” and “allies” the Saudis are subjecting him to something out of a twisted medieval melodrama.

Badawi might well die from the prolonged torture he is being subjected to. But he might survive. Which in a way, I suppose, shows that, from an Islamic perspective, the Saudis are being lenient. I suspect that Anjem Choudary would not be so accommodating. To besmirch the “honor” of Mohammed is a grave crime against Sharia, i.e., Islamic law, Choudary points out, and the “strict punishment if found guilty . . . is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, ‘Whoever insults a Prophet kill him.’”

Oh, I see. So that’s all right then?

According to Anjem Choudary, France is responsible for the deaths of those 10 journalists and 2 policemen because it allowed Charlie Hebdo to “provoke Muslims.” It thereby, he suggests, “placed the sanctity of its citizens as risk.” His conclusion? “It is time that the sanctity of a Prophet revered by up to one-quarter of the world’s population was protected.”

My conclusion is a bit different. I believe it is time that the insane and murderous ideology of Islam is recognized for what it is, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. USA Today got a lot of pushback for publishing Choudary’s drooling apology for murder. I am glad that they did, for it reminds us in vivid terms exactly the sort of thing we in the so-called liberal West are up against.

Liberal regimes have always suffered from this paralyzing antinomy: Liberalism implies openness to other points of view, even those points of view whose success would destroy liberalism. Tolerance to those points of view is a prescription for suicide. Intolerance betrays the fundamental premise of liberalism, i.e. openness.

Of course (may I say “of course”?), there is a sense in which the antinomy is illusory, since any robust liberalism, i.e., a liberalism buttressed by a core of conservative backbone, understands that tolerance, if it is to flourish, cannot be synonymous with capitulation to ideas that would exploit tolerance only to destroy it. The “openness” that liberal society rightly cherishes is not a vacuous openness to all points of view: it is not “value neutral.” It need not, indeed it cannot, say Yes to all comers. American democracy, for example, affords its citizens great latitude, but great latitude is not synonymous with the proposition that “anything goes.” Our society, like every society, is founded on particular positive values—the rule of law, for example, respect for the individual, religious freedom, the separation of church and state.

Islam in its current configuration denies those values. Perhaps the “revolution” that President al-Sisi hopes for will eventually take place and carve out a place for Islam among the civilized religions and political systems of the world. Until that day, however, the sane response to Islam is not to pixelate images that Muslims find “offensive,” as The Daily News just did, to its shame. Nor is it to redact news stories in the hope that they will not (as Anjem Choudary put it) “provoke Muslims,” as The New York Times just did, to its shame. Were I (per impossible) editor of The New York Times, I would run those cartoons of Mohammed on the front page of the paper every day for a month. The sane response is to say No to any form of Islam that does not accommodate itself to the animating principles of liberal Western society. That means no to polygamy, no to murdering people who apostatize from Islam, no to stoning adulteresses, no to murdering homosexuals and Jews, no to treating women like chattel, no, in short, to the entire rancid menu of insanity that is contained under the rubric “Sharia.”

Aristotle observed that without courage, one cannot reliably practice the other virtues, because courage is necessary to meet the existential challenges of life. We in the West have grown pusillanimous about our foundational principles and have retreated to a vacuous pseudo-tolerance that is without foundation because it is without animating convictions. As I write, there are reports that the Kouachi brothers have been cornered and killed outside Paris. At the same time, news is coming in that another Muslim, who killed a policewoman yesterday and two hostages today, has also been killed by French authorities. It’s a start. But the West will never be free from the murderous incursions of the sick atavism that is Islam until it rejects the timid ideology of political correctness and multiculturalism. It is just too bad if wackos like Anjem Choudary are “offended” or “provoked” by satirical cartoons. They can stew all they like in their wounded self-aggrandizing fantasies. Once they act upon them, however, they have rejected the social contract that makes civilized life in a liberal democracy possible. Having done so, they should themselves be rejected.

Gatestone Institute

Both in the Islamic world and the Western world, Muslims continued to attack and slaughter Christians.

In Pakistan, "A mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily, according to family members who witnessed the attack," reported NBC News:

Sajjad Maseeh, 27, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were set upon by at least 1,200 people after rumors circulated that they had burned verses from the Quran, family spokesman Javed Maseeh told NBC News via telephone late Thursday. Their legs were also broken so they couldn't run away. "They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire," he said. "And then they threw them inside the furnace." Bibi, a mother of four who was four months pregnant, was wearing an outfit that initially didn't burn, according to Javed Maseeh. The mob removed her from over the kiln and wrapped her up in cotton to make sure the garments would be set alight.

Discussing this latest atrocity against Pakistan's Christian minorities, an AFP report states:

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in the majority Muslim country, with even unproven allegations often prompting mob violence. Anyone convicted, or even just accused, of insulting Islam, risks a violent and bloody death at the hands of vigilantes. A Christian woman [Asia Bibi] has been on death row since November 2010 after she was found guilty of making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed during an argument with a Muslim woman. An elderly British man with severe mental illness, sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan in January, was shot by a prison guard last month.

Two days after the Christian couple were burned alive, a policeman in Pakistan hacked a man to death for allegedly making blasphemous remarks against Islam.

Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, President of the Pakistan Christian Congress,wrote a letter to U.S. President Obama expressing surprise that the U.S. did not even bother to condemn the crime against the murdered Christian couple:

It is surprising that neither US Administration under your honor nor US State Department even bothered to condemn this horrific crime of burning live of Christian couple by a mob living in country named Islamic Republic of Pakistan which is receiving billions of aid of US taxpayers. I would appeal your honor to put pressure on government of Pakistan to end misuse of blasphemy laws against Christian, Ahamadiyyia and other religious minorities and condition US Aid to Pakistan on human rights and repeal of blasphemy laws.

Meanwhile, in America itself, in Oklahoma, Jimmy Stepney, a Muslim, stabbed Jerome Bullock, a Christian, after Stepney had said that Muslims need to "step up" beheadings. According to Koco5 News:

The [police] report went on to say Stepney had been making comments about beheading people. "We were watching the news," said Bullock. "He said he felt like more Muslims need to step up to the plate and do certain thing. He was talking about beheading people."

The severity of the plight of Christians in the Middle East was further underscored by Dr. Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, who wrote:

Russia is currently considering the possibility of initiating a draft decision of the UN Human Rights Council on the protection of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa. Russian experts are now working on this document.[…] The scale of the problems demands the coordination of international efforts to protect Christians in the Middle East. Further initiatives, new measures and relevant discussions aimed at finding durable solutions in this regard are strongly needed. Of course, we believe that Europe, including the UK, should make its contribution to these efforts, taking into account the Christian roots of the European civilization, which are now often forgotten for the sake of political correctness.[…] The fate of the region's religious minorities is of the greatest concern. The mass exodus of Christians, who have been an integral part of the Middle Eastern mosaic for centuries, is particularly troubling.

The rest of November's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Bangladesh: Two Christian pastors from the Faith Bible Church of God were arrested for preaching the Gospel to Muslims . They could face two years in prison if convicted for "hurting religious sentiments" and luring Muslims to convert by offering them money. The pastors deny both charges. Police arrested the pastors and 41 other people, including Muslims, after a throng of Muslims disrupted a house meeting. According to a witness: "More than 100 Muslims headed by local Jamaat-e-Islami party members and Muslim clerics gathered at the house and started barking questions at the pastors—why did they propagate Christianity in the locality and convert some of them," and who gave them permission to preach to Muslims. "The pastors replied that it did not take any permission from any authority to propagate any religion and convert people to any religion. Suddenly the Muslims became apoplectic with rage, tried to pick a fight and started jabbing the pastors' faces."

Egypt: Father Timothy Shakar, priest of St. Mina Church in Port Said, confirmed that two homemade bombs were planted near the St. Mina Church but caused no injuries, or losses of life or property. Police searched other churches in the region for more bombs.

Germany: Nine men who had earlier broken into, vandalized, and robbed several Christian churches in the Cologne area—including by stealing money from the collection boxes and liturgical vessels—were caught during a massive raid. Apparently, all of the arrested are German by nationality, but Muslim by background and heritage. Some were also identified as "Salafis"—especially fundamentalist Muslims—connected to international terrorist organizations. Some had even raised hundreds of thousands of Euros from native (and naive) Germans to support overseas "charities," the proceeds of which actually went to terrorist groups such as ISIS.

Iraq: As cries of "Allahu Akbar" emanated from surrounding mosques, Islamic State militants blew up yet another Christian church — St. George's Church and its associated nunnery in the city of Mosul — along with other non-Sunni sites. Separately, after breaking the cross from off the dome of the St. Ephrem Church dome (before and after pictures here) and selling its pews and other furnishings, IS transformed the church into a mosque and council seat for the jihadis.

East Jerusalem: Despite constant and ever bolder attacks on a church, police refuse to respond to pleas for help from the Christian congregation. According to Morning Star News, "The attacks, driven by both intent to seize property and opposition to Christianity, have been mounted by young men with ties to Palestinian militants who for more than three months have been trying to force Living Bread Church from its rented building. Church pastor Karen Dunham and others have filed at least eight police reports about the assaults." The most recent incident took place on November 5, when the gas tank of a car owned by a church volunteer was filled with sugar. On November 2, a car owned by one of the pastor's relatives was stolen. And on October 16, three American Christians were injured while trying to repair a metal security door: A crowd of Palestinian men attacked them with box cutters, sticks, clubs and pepper spray. According to the church's attorney, authorities "have their [the assailants'] pictures, they have their names, they even have their national ID numbers, and still they do nothing.... The level of brute force compared to the level of lack of response of the police force there is pretty shocking.... It almost seems like if someone is going to go in and murder her [Dunham], that no one is going to lift a finger."

Malaysia: Approximately 70 local residents in Petaling Jaya protested the construction of a church. They claimed the growing number of Christian places of worship in the area is part of an attempt to evangelize and convert Muslims to Christianity. An NGO, the local branch of Pertubuhan Sahabat, supported the claims of the Muslims. They argued that there are three churches in the vicinity, although close to 70 percent of the residents in the area are Muslims. According to a spokesman, "Even before the church is built, flyers on Christianity have been distributed to our homes, and this could confuse our children and divert them from the path of Islam." The vacant plot was previously occupied by squatters, a car park and several food stalls. Another local Muslim added "None of our neighbours are Christians, we can vouch for that... it is an insult to Muslims to allow a church to be built here, but none of our representatives seem to have the time to listen to us." One demonstrator hurled large rocks at the temporary steel fence around the vacant plot.

Jihadi Slaughter of Christians

Kenya: Members of neighboring Somalia's Islamic group Al Shabaab—"the Youth"—hijacked a bus carrying 60 passengers in the town of Mandera, near Kenya's border with Somalia. They singled out and massacred 28 non-Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom were Christian. According to an eyewitness, "When we got down, passengers were separated according to Somali and non-Somali. The non-Somalis were ordered to read some verses of the holy Koran, and those who failed to read were ordered to lie down. One by one they were shot in the head at point blank range."

Nigeria: On November 10, a suicide bomb attack on a Christian secondary school as students gathered for morning assembly killed at least 47 people. The Islamic group Boko Haram—meaning: "Western education is forbidden"—is believed to be behind the blast. In a separate incident, Christians from the predominantly Christian city of Mubi in Adamawa state were tortured and killed after Boko Haram took control of the town. Churches and homes were torched throughout the city, which was renamed Madinat al-Islam, or "the City of Islam." In yet another separate incident, Boko Haram militants raided the mostly Christian town of Shani. According to a resident speaking to Reuters, "They rode on motorcycles and were more than 30 men. They started throwing bombs into houses... then the Boko Haram fired shots at people fleeing. They set ablaze the police station, houses and a telecom mast... I saw people fleeing, some bodies on the ground." Reuters continues: "The Sunni jihadist movement is fighting to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in Nigeria's north."

Pakistani Persecution

A few days after the Christian couple, mentioned earlier, was burned alive, a 35-year-old Christian father of five known as "Mithu" was arrested on false charges by police and tortured to death in prison. According to the deceased's brother-in-law: "It was a fake allegation, because the raiding party failed to recover any contraband from Mithu's person and his house... On the morning of Nov. 22, we were informed by Ilyas Gill, a local councilor, that Mithu had died in police custody because of heart failure.... Young Christian men are made scapegoats to show police performance while the real culprits are carrying out their illegal activities right under the police's nose." Morning Star News adds: "Area police routinely round up young, impoverished Christians on false charges of drug peddling and bootlegging, and then force their families to pay heavy bribes in return for their release... family elders had seen signs of torture on the body..."

Christian families in a Punjabi village were forced to flee after a Christian man married a Muslim woman—an act forbidden by Islamic law. According to the Pakistani report, "The Muslims in this village became enraged when this occurred and began threatening them.... When the news of the marriage was learned, the Muslims in Sahiwal attacked Shahab's [the Christian husband's] family as well as other Christian families in the village. The Muslims demanded that Ruksana [the Muslim wife] be returned immediately, according to Sharia which prohibits Muslim women from marrying a man from another religion…. the entire Muslim community was threatening to kill Shahab's father and all of the village's Christians.... The Christians' pleas for help from the local police were all in vain."

And Qaiser Ayub, a 40-year-old professor of Christian background, was arrested and charged with insulting Islam's prophet Muhammad. The computer science professor had been a fugitive avoiding the police since 2011, when he was first accused of having written blasphemous comments on his blog.

Dhimmitude: Generic Contempt and Hostility

Denmark: In an apparent replication of the Islamic world's modus operandi, Muslim refugees in the European nation are persecuting Christian refugees. According to 10news.dk, "Christian asylum seekers are repeatedly exposed to everything from harassment to threats and physical abuse by other refugees in the asylum centers, simply because they have converted from Islam to Christianity." According to Niels Eriksen Nyman, who led the study, "There are certainly many more cases around the country than the ones we hear about in the church. I hate to say it, but I'm afraid that on some of the asylum centers there are some very unhealthy control mechanisms when the staff turns their back... I refuse to support Islamophobia, but we have a serious problem here." Two recent examples: "An eight year old Christian at the Center Sandholm was bullied and beaten by the larger Arab boys on their way to school. Now the boy nolonger [sic] dares to go to school. On the island Bornholm, somebody had tampered with a Christian asylum seeker's bike so that he crashed and broke both hands."

Egypt: The Islamic State called on its followers to take the jihad to Egypt. Abu Mus'ab al-Maqdisi, a leader in the Islamic State, said in a statement titled "Advice to Egypt's Mujahidin" that "It is necessary to take the battle to Cairo, until the Sinai is safeguarded from the apostates [reference to Egyptian government] and becomes a rear base [qaeda] from which to expand the jihad." He also called on the jihadis in Egypt to "target the Copts," the nation's indigenous, Christian minority: "For targeting them, following them, and killing them is one of the main ways to serve the cause of our virtuous male and female hostages of the tyrants."

Iraq: Christian homes in Tel Isqof were looted by Kurds who, after fighting the Islamic State, took control of the area on August 17. According to Agenzia Fides, "The city of Tel Isqof was occupied on August 7 by jihadist militias who already in June had conquered Mosul. Faced with the advancing of jihadists, the civilian population, mainly Christians, had fled to the autonomous Region of Iraqi Kurdistan, leaving the city deserted. Ten days later [on August 17], with a counter-offensive the Kurdish Peshmerga had regained control of the city. But it is precisely since then that [Christian] residents periodically return to the city to check the status of their homes, and acknowledge that the doors of a growing number of homes and businesses have been forced and property looted: money and jewelry, technical equipment and electronic instruments." As in the Islamic State, most Kurds are Sunni Muslims.

Islamic State: IS issued a document breaking down the purchase prices of Christian and Yazidi women being sold as sex-slaves. Apparently these enslaved unfortunates are priced based on age— the youngest being the most expensive. The breakdown is as follows (with USD equivalency in brackets): 40-50 years old: 50,000 dinars [$43]; 30-40 years old: 75,000 dinars [$64]; 20-30 years old: 100,000 dinars [$86]; 10-20 years old: 150,000 dinars [$129]; 9 years old: 200,000 dinars [$172].

Spain: Real Madrid, a professional football (soccer) team, stripped the traditional Christian cross from its club crest as part of a deal with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi. "It is believed the European champions' new crest, minus the Christian cross, was created so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities in the United Arab Emirates, where a marketing drive will take place," wrote the Telegraph. Club president Florentino Perez said, "This agreement will help the club to keep conquering the hearts of followers in the United Arab Emirates."

Syria: As of November, Raqqa, which once had approximately 1,500 Christian families, had only 23 Christian families remaining in it—the others were driven out or killed by the Islamic State. Those few remaining were unable to leave the city for lack of resources or for reasons of age and health. On November 16 they were told that they must pay $535, an exorbitant sum (as seen above, human sex-slaves are being sold for as little as $43). "In all likelihood Christian families, impoverished by the war, will not be able to pay the tax and will have to leave their homes" or convert to Islam, as many elderly, debilitated Christians unable to flee have already done.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic. Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:

1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2) To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed dhimmis, or third-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

Previous Reports:

• October, 2014
• September, 2014
• August, 2014
• July, 2014
• June, 2014
• May, 2014
• April, 2014
• March, 2014
• February, 2014
• January, 2014
• December, 2013
• November, 2013
• October, 2013
• September, 2013
• August, 2013
• July, 2013
• June, 2013
• May, 2013
• April, 2013
• March, 2013
• February, 2013
• January, 2013
• December, 2012
• November, 2012
• October, 2012
• September, 2012
• August, 2012
• July, 2012
• June, 2012
• May, 2012
• April, 2012
• March, 2012
• February, 2012
• January, 2012
• December, 2011
• November, 2011
• October, 2011
• September, 2011
• August, 2011
• July, 2011

Yet another young Coptic Christian girl, Sabrine Mushir (right), has been kidnapped in Egypt, from the village of Dalga.

Coptic activists are complaining that not a single person from among the authorities and security apparatus has done a single thing to try to find the hapless girl, adding "If this was the daughter of one of the local authorities, she would have been retrieved in seconds."

Dalga, where the young Christian girl was kidnapped is the same Upper Egyptian village where, in September 2013, Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers had forced the Christian inhabitants to pay Islamic jizya—the money, or tribute, that conquered non-Muslims historically had to pay to their Islamic overlords “with willing submission and while feeling themselves subdued," in the words of Koran 9:29. In some cases, those not able to pay were attacked, their wives and children beaten and/or kidnapped.

Similarly, when another Christian female was kidnapped on her way to church last October, and the kidnappers called her family asking for a ransom of 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($35,000), her brother went to the authorities, who also responded with apathy, saying, “So what, one Coptic girl missing? Look at how many millions of Muslims are dying in Palestine. Who would’ve thought so many millions of Muslims would die in Syria? And you’re bothering us about one girl?”