MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute – “Recently an Egyptian Muslim posted a YouTube videotape of himself cursing Islam and its holy book, the Koran; then tearing it to pieces and throwing it in the garbage. Here are excerpts of what he said:

There it is, Allah’s book; this is the basic catastrophe. I don’t know what day it is of this disgusting month of Ramadan. You are making the tearing of the Quran such a big and dangerous thing… it is instinctive to tear up this book, those sons of [profanity] think they can threaten me and challenge me not to tear up the Quran, but I want to prove to them that they are nothing, and what is the big deal in tearing up this book?! There it is [he starts tearing the Quran] in the trash. Are you feeling better now? You cannot touch a hair on my head. We keep blaming Hamas and Gaza, but it is not them, it is this son of [profanity] book that I am stepping on right now. That book is the source of all evil and the real catastrophe. There is nothing new here; it is not Omar Abdel Rahman, Abbud or all the others: it is this garbage that is causing us to run in a demonic, never-ending circle that will never end.

This latest Koran desecration is a reminder of the new Egypt—not merely that there are everyday Egyptians who are sick of the Islamization of Egypt, but aghast at what is in store for them.

On a recent talk show on Al Hafiz channel dealing with this incident of Koran-tearing, after playing the video of the man tearing the Koran, one of the guests, a bearded and white-robed Dr. Mahmoud Sha’ban, visibly shaken by what he had just seen, said:

Someone like him must receive the punishment he deserves—and it is death! He is an apostate… It is clear from what he says that he is a Muslim, and must be killed as an apostate. As for that act itself, it is an infidel act, and he deserves to be struck by the sword in a public place—and as soon as possible; as soon as possible; as soon as possible. It must be announced and photographed and disseminated among the people, so that all the people may know that we respect our Koran and its words from Allah, and whoever insults it, receives his punishment from Allah. If people like him are left alone, they will only get bolder and bolder.

The next guest, Sheikh Abdul Mohsin said: ‘I support the words of Sheikh Mahmoud [who just spoke], that this man must be killed fast, that he may be an example to others, so that all learn that we have reached a new phase in respecting Islam and the holy sanctity of the Koran and Sunna. This man has become an apostate and must suffer the penalty in front of the people.’

The third and final guest Dr. Abdullah was somewhat critical of the first two Islamic scholars—not because they called for the man’s death, but because, by focusing on the fact that the man had apostatized, it seemed as if they were exonerating non-Muslims: ‘The issue of killing him is not limited to his being a Muslim and then apostatizing. No, it is known to us from the Sharia that whoever insults the Prophet or tears the Koran, his judgment is death—whether he’s a Muslim or non-Muslim.’ Read more…

1 Peter 4:13, “But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.”

By DAVID PINAULT, America Magazine – “My sharpest memory from Cairo is what my driver said: al-Masih biygarribna, ‘Christ is testing us.’ I’d hired Sami to drive me around the city. As soon as I saw on his wrist the washma, a faded tattoo in the shape of a cross, I knew he was a Copt, a member of Egypt’s Christian minority, a community that predates the Muslim presence by centuries.

Since the early 1980s I had been to Egypt many times as a student of Arabic, as a researcher and as a tour guide on Nile cruise-boats. But this visit in 2012 was my first time back since the onset of the Arab Spring and Egypt’s ‘Lotus Revolution.’

As we drove, Sami told me about the persecution Copts endure at the hands of Egyptian Salafists. Salafists are Muslims who want an Islamist government in which the harshest interpretations of Islamic law (shariah) are privileged at the expense of both non-Muslims and progressive-minded Muslims. ‘Things had been less worse for us under Mubarak,’ Sami said. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s authoritarian ruler until his ouster in the revolution, had suppressed Islamist radicals. But now, said Sami, the Salafists feel bold enough to burn churches, incite anti-Coptic riots and call openly for the expulsion of Christians.

I told him the statistics: in 2011 and 2012, since the revolution’s onset, over 100,000 Copts have fled Egypt. ‘Well, I’m not going to leave,’ Sami insisted. ‘Christ is testing us. I tell my friends to stay. Christ could end this suffering, this trial, at any time. How will you feel, I tell my friends, if you’re in Canada instead of Egypt when Christ returns?’

I pondered this apocalyptic thought as we skirted Tahrir Square, the scene of recurrent confrontations between demonstrators and Egypt’s military, and passed the blackened ruins of the Institute of Egypt.” Read more.

By Darryl Levings, The Kansas City Star – “The final outcome of the Arab Spring will not be known for years, perhaps decades, but in the meantime Christian communities across the Middle East continue to wither.

The latest to face a possible exodus are Syrian Christians, many of whom are on the wrong side of the deepening civil war there.

The birthplace of Christianity has held populations of denominations that predate Islam: Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Roman Catholic, Chaldean and Assyrian Christian.

But theses churches have never stopped shrinking, in early times because of conversions to Islam to escape discrimination or worse, and more recently from emigration, low birth rates compared to their Muslim neighbors and violence by extremists among them.

A century ago, Christians made up perhaps 1 in 5 of Middle East peoples. Today it’s not even 1 in 20.

Though criticized for their human-rights records, some authoritarian and secular regimes, such Syria’s Assads, ironhandedly crushed most religious strife.

But the toppling of Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt exposed a tragic result: resurgent Muslim radicals making life harder on the Christians of those lands.

Iraq is the most extreme example; two-thirds of its original 1.5 million Christians have fled homes and churches since U.S. forces invaded nine years ago. In Tunisia, a mob in June beheaded a convert to Christianity. A recent news story reported: ‘Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest … claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will.’

The Syrian Christians may regret allying with President Bashar Assad against the majority Sunni Muslims. Assad belongs to the ruling Alawite minority, a sect out of mainstream Islam seen by fundamentalist Sunnis as heretical. Alawites make up about 12 percent of the Syrian population, same as Christians.

Some Christians have refused to take sides or have already fled to Lebanon. In Wadi al-Nasara, or the Valley of the Christians, west of Homs, some are fighting beside Alawite loyalists.

‘Many Christians in Syria believe that there’s no alternative to the Bashar Assad regime,’ Jesuit Father Paulo Dall’Oglio told the Wall Street Journal after being expelled by the government in June. Retribution is expected from the rebel groups supported by radical Wahhabist Muslims in Saudi Arabia.

‘We have been leading a life that has been the envy of many,’ said Isadore Battikha, who until 2010 served as the Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Homs, Hama and Yabroud. ‘But today fear is a reality.'” 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 – “Several reports appearing in July indicate that Christian minorities all around the Muslim world—especially women and children—are being abducted, tortured, raped, forced to convert to Islam, and/or enslaved. In Egypt, at least 550 such cases have been documented in the last five years, and have only increased since the revolution. Christians who manage to escape back to their families often find the government siding with the Muslim abductors. One young mother who recently testified before the Helsinki Commission explained how she was snatched in broad daylight, as her abductor shouted to bystanders while dragging her to a waiting taxi, ‘No one interfere! She is an enemy of Islam.’

Identical reports are emerging from Pakistan, where ‘persecution, kidnapping and abduction of Christian women and girls,’ including many married women with children, are on the rise. Last year the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said that 1800 Christian and Hindu girls were forcibly converted to Islam. Most recently, the sister of a pastor was ‘kidnapped raped and forcibly converted to Islam.’ She ‘was kidnapped around a month ago by some Muslim men while returning home from college. She was held for days, suffered sexual abuse, threats and violence. In such a state of terror and exhaustion, first she was coerced into converting to Islam, and then marriage. Her family reported the incident to the police station in Chunian, but no investigations have been conducted and instead her abductors have presented a report to the court attesting to the girl now being Muslim and legally married. Among other things, the girl is a minor and, according to the law, marriage is not permitted to minors.’

The tiny Palestinian Christian community in the Hamas-run Gaza strip is also under siege, and charges that five Christians were abducted and pressured into converting to Islam. Because they made this forced conversion charge known, ‘members of the Christian community now fear reprisal attacks by Muslim extremists.’ Some have appealed to the Vatican and Christian groups and churches in the West for help. Yet ‘we only hear voices telling us to stay where we are and to stop making too much noise,’ said a Christian man living in Gaza City. ‘If they continue to turn a blind eye to our tragedy, in a few months there will be no Christians left in Palestine. Today it’s happening in the Gaza Strip, tomorrow it will take place in Bethlehem.’

Categorized by theme, July’s assemblage of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity Read more…

“In the Northern part of the African nation of Mali, a refugee crisis is quickly escalating. The front page of the Vatican newspaper expressed concern over the gravity of the situation. It noted that many of the refugees were Christians that were trying to escape persecution from a version of Sharia law that has been imposed in parts of the country by a group known as the ‘Ansar Dine’ movement.

The Algerian newspaper El Khabar has reported that some 200,000 people have fled to refugee camps in Mauritania and Algeria.

In August, the UN Secretary-General has also spoken out and encouraged the Security Council to consider taking more action such as travel and financial sanctions against those responsible for the violence… ‘I am also extremely concerned about reports that armed groups in the north are committing serious human rights violations, including summary executions of civilians, rapes and torture.’

The ‘Ansar Dine’ group, which is said to have ties with al-Qaida, has also been responsible for destroying nine of the 16 mausoleums in the country’s capital of Timbuktu. These places had previously been classified as world heritage UNESCO sites.

The country’s High Islamic Council has opened talks with ‘Ansar Dine’ in hopes of finding a peaceful resolution. In the meantime, thousands continue to flee and face shortages of food, water and basic health services.” Source – Rome Reports.

Flashback: Mali: Christian Leader Beheaded as Islamists Terrorize Country, Create List of All Christians They Intend to Execute by Beheading – “A Christian leader has been beheaded and others are being threatened with similar treatment as Islamic militants run amok in Mali, West Africa. Christians have fled the town of Timbuktu in the north of the country where harsh Sharia Law has already been imposed amid reports that churches in Gao, 200 miles to the east, have been completely destroyed… ‘We have escaped in the wake of horrible death threats as the Islamists have a list of all the Christians in Timbuktu whom they intend to execute by beheading.’” Read more.