MidnightWatcher's Blogspot

MNN – “A sudden spike in violence targeting Christians in Tanzania has finally given way to a threat.

Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for the Voice of the Martyrs USA, explains, ‘There have been threats made regarding Easter. That is one concern.’

Another threat is a recent propaganda campaign. ‘There are leaflets, apparently, being circulated saying that Christians should respond with violence, and they should come back and attack the Muslims in retaliation for these attacks that have happened on Christians. So there really is the potential for a lot of upheaval this Holy week, as we head into Easter Sunday.’

Christians are calling for prayers and for peace and reconciliation in the wake of the violence. Over the last four months, a handful of attacks against church leaders in Tanzania have left believers in the Eastern African nation concerned over the future of religious freedom.

Nettleton attributes some of that to an alarming shift. ‘Some of that is the rise of radical Islam within the country. There is some evidence of links between radical Muslims in Tanzania–particularly on the island of Zanzibar, and al Shabaab in Somalia.’ In fact, wherever Islamic militants appear to be bent on wiping out all Christians, there have been corresponding upticks in attacks on churches, leaders, death threats and murders.

More recently, Nettleton adds, ‘We’re seeing more persecution in Tanzania than we’ve seen in past years, and that really has brought it [Tanzania] to the attention of others who monitor religious freedom and persecution around the world.’ That’s born out in the Open Doors World Watch List for 2013. It’s a compilation of the 50 countries most noted for the persecution of Christians. Tanzania, never having been on the list before, ranks 24th now.

The situation begs the question of whether or not these are isolated events or symptoms of a larger issue. Believers are concerned and wary, says Nettleton. ‘One of my coworkers was in Tanzania last week to encourage and meet with persecuted Christians–Christians who have already faced persecution. There is definitely a concern about what’s going to happen.'” Read more.

Flashback: Tanzania: Christians Increasingly Worried As Islamism Spreads At Alarming Rate, Seeks To Impose Sharia Law Upon All – “Islamisation is increasing at an alarming rate in Tanzania, according to a bishop from the country. Bishop Bernadin Mfumbusa of Kondoa warned that religious freedom and other civil liberties were under threat from intolerant radical Muslim influences sweeping in from countries neighbouring the east African nation… ‘We see more and more itinerant preachers from Saudi Arabia and Sudan entering this country – and Muslims are increasingly making political demands.’” Read more.

Matthew 10:22, “And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.”

By Juliana Taimoorazy, Morning Star News – “Men running, women pleading for God’s mercy, children screaming out of fear, older women trapped under rubble and thick dust rising in the air. This has been a recurring scene in Iraqi cities for close to a decade.

Since June 26, 2004, Assyrian (also known as Chaldean and Syriac) churches have come under attack more than 80 times. The most widely publicized assault came on Oct. 31, 2010, when Islamic terrorists wearing suicide vests invaded Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Church in Baghdad during mass, shot two priests and then blew themselves up. When it was over, 62 people were killed and 78 injured.

For many people in the United States, news of this attack was their first exposure to the Assyrian people, whose history dates back to 4750 B.C. in Mesopotamia. According to Biblical tradition, they are the direct descendants of Shem, the Son of Noah. The Assyrians, whose language evolved from Akkadian to Aramaic, built the first cities and invented agriculture; river-fed irrigation systems and establishment of the first library were among many other Assyrian inventions that have shaped our world history.

Ancient Assyria, with Nineveh (today’s Mosul) as its capital city, was once a feared kingdom from western Persia into eastern Egypt. Since the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C. to this day, however, Assyrians have faced repeated ethno-religious cleansing in the Middle East.

Having come to Christ through the disciples Thomas, Thaddeus and Bartholomew in the first century A.D., Assyrians realized a new enemy was on the horizon as Islam spread throughout the region after 622 A.D. The first Islamic attack was perpetrated against them in 650 A.D., when many monks were killed along the Byzantine border. The Assyrians have since suffered attacks on a regular basis, generation after generation. After Ottoman Turkey’s systematic killing of 750,000 Assyrians, 1.5 million Armenians and over 500,000 Greeks in the early 20th century, many Assyrians ended up in refugee camps.

Since the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi-Assyrian Christians have endured vicious criminal acts by Islamist extremists. Systematic ethno-religious cleansing in Iraq began in 2003, when Christian families received threatening letters offering three options: convert to Islam, pay the jizya (a form of protection tax paid by non-Muslims) or leave their homes, empty-handed.

As families started to receive the letters, terrorists began systematically abducting and killing Christian clergy. To date, there have been hundreds of Christians who have been kidnapped and murdered because of their Assyrian ethnicity and their Christian faith. These acts have driven approximately 1 million people out of their homeland, where their ancestors had lived for thousands of years.” Read more.

Flashback: Muslim Cleric In Iraq Issues New Fatwa To All Iraqi Christians: Choose Islam Or Be Killed – “An Advent of light and shadow for Iraq’s Christians, who are celebrating the reopening of the cathedral of Baghdad but at the same time subjected to new – and heavy – threats from a radical Shiite Muslim leader. From studies of a television broadcaster based in Egypt, an Iraqi Ayatollah launches a fatwa against the religious minority on the eve of Christmas: ‘Conversion to Islam or death.’… Labeling them as ‘polytheists’ and ‘friends of the Zionists’, the extremist leader stressed that they must choose ‘or Islam or death,’ while ‘their women and girls may legitimately be regarded wives of Muslims.’” Read more.

Flashback: Iraq: Islamic Extremists Want to Eliminate Christians From Country – “Ongoing violence against Christians in Iraq has produced an accelerated exodus of believers recently and numbering in the hundreds of thousands over the last 10 years, said Open Doors USA officials… ‘At the beginning of the summer, Open Doors estimated the number of Christians remaining in Iraq at 345,000. However, the number decreases every month,’ officials stated. ‘It is an estimation; some even think there are less Christians left in the country than that,’ another Open Doors member said.” Read more.

Matthew 10:22, “And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.”

By Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute – “The year 2013 began with reports indicating that wherever Christians live side by side with large numbers of Muslims, the Christians are under attack. As one report said, ‘Africa, where Christianity spread fastest during the past century, now is the region where oppression of Christians is spreading fastest.’ Whether in Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, or Tanzania—attacks on Christians are as frequent as they are graphic.

As for the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, a new study by the Pew Forum finds that ‘just 0.6 percent of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians now live in the Middle East and North Africa. Christians make up only 4% of the region’s inhabitants, drastically down from 20% a century ago, and marking the smallest regional Christian minority in the world. Fully 93% of the region is Muslim and 1.6% is Jewish.’

How Christianity has been all but eradicated from the region where it was born is made clear in yet another report on the Middle East’s largest Christian minority, Egypt’s Christian Copts. Due to a ‘climate of fear and uncertainty,’ Christian families are leaving Egypt in large numbers. Along with regular church attacks, the situation has gotten to the point that, according to one Coptic priest, ‘Salafis meet Christian girls in the street and order them to cover their hair. Sometimes they hit them when they refuse.’ Another congregation leader said ‘With the new [Sharia-heavy] constitution, the new laws that are expected, and the majority in parliament I don’t believe we can be treated on an equal basis.’

Elsewhere, Christians are not allowed to flee. In eastern Syria, for example, 25,000 Christians, including Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholics, Chaldeans and Armenians, were prevented from fleeing due to a number of roadblocks set up by armed Islamic militia groups, who deliberately target Christians for robbery and kidnapping-for-ransom—then often slaughtering their victims.

Categorized by theme, January’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Church Attacks

Egypt: Reminiscent of the 2011 New Year’s Eve church bombing in Alexandria, which left over 23 Christians dead, a car packed with explosives was discovered by a Coptic church celebrating Christmas [which is in January] and was neutralized before it could detonate. As patrols seized the explosives-packed car, another car with masked men in it sped away. Separately, hundreds of Muslims chanting Islamic slogans in the village of Fanous destroyed a social services building belonging to a Coptic Church. Security forces arrived only after the building had been completely destroyed. According to the AINA report, the social services building ‘had all the necessary government permits; it had a reception hall on the first floor and a kindergarten on the second. But the Muslims insisted that it would become a church. Mosques in surrounding areas had earlier called on Muslims, through their megaphones, to go and help their Muslim brethren in Fanous, because Christians were ‘building a church.’ Hundreds of other Muslim protesters rioted outside yet another church in Upper Egypt; on claims that a Christian man had sexually assaulted a 6-year-old girl, they threw stones at the building. Four stores owned by Copts were torched. Police are investigating the accusations against the merchant.

Nigeria: A total of 30 Christians were slaughtered in two separate attacks carried out by armed men ahead of the Read more…

Fox News – “Islamic hard-liners stormed a mosque in suburban Cairo, turning it into torture chamber for Christians who had been demonstrating against the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in the latest case of violent persecution that experts fear will only get worse.

Such stories have become increasingly common as tensions between Egypt’s Muslims and Copts mount, but in the latest case, mosque officials corroborated much of the account and even filed a police report. Demonstrators say they were taken from the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in suburban Cairo to a nearby mosque on Friday and tortured for hours by hard-line militia members.

By BosNewsLife News Center – “A court in Kazakhstan has ordered the destruction of 121 pieces of Christian literature, including Bibles, while in neighboring Uzbekistan an elderly convert from Islam is in ‘great distress’ after police raided his home, Christians said Thursday, March 21.

Vyacheslav Cherkasov, a street evangelist from the Kazakhstan’s city of Shchuchinsk, was reportedly detained by police on October 20 last year for offering Christian literature to passers-by in the street.

Officers confiscated his suitcase containing Bibles, children’s Bibles and other books and leaflets about the Christian faith, said Forum 18, an advocacy group investigating the case.

On March 5 the court said the confiscated material should be destroyed, in what is believed to be the first such ruling since Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Cherkasov was also ordered to pay 86,550 Tenge (US$574) well above the average one month’s wage in Kazakhstan on charges of ‘violating the rules’ regarding ‘importing, publishing and distribution of religious literature’ which came into force in 2011 as part of a harsh new Religion Law…

The legislation was introduced under the autocratic President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been in power virtually unchallenged since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Cherkasov, who was previously harassed by police, has lodged an appeal, trial observers said.

The state Agency of Religious Affairs (ARA) has reportedly defended the ruling saying they are not ‘bothered by having to destroy religious literature’.

Local Council of Churches Baptists said in published remarks: ‘We were shocked – this is sacrilege and illegality’.

The latest incident is part of a wider crackdown by authorities on devoted Christians in Central Asia, rights activists say, with reports that in neighboring Uzbekistan an elderly man was attacked by security forces.” Read more.

Flashback: Kazakhstan: Fall of Soviet Union Gives Birth to Islamic Religious Revival in Former Soviet Republic, and the Rise of Islamic Terror – “After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the people of Kazakhstan, like those in the rest of the former Soviet Republics, experienced a revival in religious affiliation… Previously non-existent elements of Salafism crept to the surface in Kazakhstan and are now apparent, especially in the southern and western regions of the country located near the Caspian Sea and the volatile North Caucasus. Salafism is a reform movement of Islam in which followers believe that the life of their Prophet Mohammad and the earliest Muslim community constitutes a universal paradigm for interpreting world events and history…” Read more.

Flashback: Strict Muslim’ from Uzbekistan Caught by the FBI Sought Ways to Kill President Obama, ‘Didn’t Care If He Lost His Life In An Assassination Attempt’ – “A man from Uzbekistan who pleaded guilty Friday to plotting to kill President Barack Obama with an automatic rifle claimed he was acting at the direction of an Islamic terror group in his home country. Authorities said Ulugbek Kodirov had discussed trying to kill the president as he campaigned for re-election because he would be out in public more often. Kodirov entered the plea during a hearing in Birmingham before U.S. District Judge Abdul K. Kallon, an Obama appointee.” Read more.