MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

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 – “These reports of the persecution of Christians by Muslims around the world during the month of October include (but are not limited to) the following accounts, listed by form of persecution, and by country, in alphabetical order—not according to severity.

Church Attacks

Canada: As happens regularly in Egypt (see below), a Molotov cocktail was hurled through the window of a newly opened Coptic church near Toronto. Unlike in Egypt, however, firefighters came quickly and little damage was done: ‘Police have no suspects or motive in the incident.’

Egypt: A Muslim mob, consisting mostly of Salafis, surrounded St. George Church in the Beni Suef Governorate. Armed with batons, they assaulted Christians as they exited the church after Sunday mass; five were hospitalized with broken limbs. The Salafi grievance is that Christians from neighboring villages, who have no churches to serve them, are traveling and attending St. George. The priest could not leave the church for hours after the mass, even though he contacted the police; they came only after a prominent Coptic lawyer complained to the Ministry of the Interior concerning the lack of response from police. ‘I want the whole world to know,’ he said, ‘that a priest and his congregation are presently held captive in their church, afraid of the Salafi Muslims surrounding the church.’ Separately, a group of Muslims, led by Mostafa Kamel, a prosecutor at the Alexandria Criminal Court, broke into the Church of St. Mary in Rashid near Alexandria and proceeded to destroy its altar, on claims that he bought the 9th century church; in fact it had earlier been sold to the Copts by the Greeks, due to the Greeks’ dwindling numbers in Egypt. Two priests, Fr. Maximos and Fr. Luke, rushed to the police station to try to bring the police to help. Kamel and his two sons also came to the police station, where they openly threatened to kill the two priests and their lawyer. ‘We stayed at the police station for over six hours with the police,’ Fr. Maximos said, ‘begging prosecutor Kamel and his two sons not to demolish the church.’ Fr. Luke said that the prosecutor had so far lost all the cases he brought against the church, ‘So when this route failed, he tried taking the matter into his own hands.’

Indonesia: On a Sunday, ‘unknown assailants’ set fire to the Madele Pentecostal Church in the city of Poso by dousing a collection box with petrol and setting it alight. Flames eventually spread to the pastor’s residence. Only the intervention of the fire department and volunteers prevented the blaze from causing major damage to the two buildings. Weeks earlier in the same region, Christian homes were attacked and bombed. Also, two law enforcement agents who were investigating a recent attack on the Christian community were kidnapped; their murdered bodies were later found dumped near an ‘extremist Muslim’ group’s training ground. Because Poso has a large Christian presence, Muslim attacks are frequent, including the Read more…

Am I hearing an echo? The words of these Islamist rebels in Syria sound an awful lot like the words of Egypt’s Islamist President, the Muslim Brotherhood’s own Mohammed Morsi …

By Tim Marshall, Sky News – “To the soundtrack of multiple rocket launchers and small arms fire, I met six men who the Syrian authorities told us were jihadist rebel fighters captured by the army.

We were in a Ministry of Interior prison near Damascus in an area now close to the front lines.

The men, four Syrian, an Iraqi, and a Turk, said they had indeed been in the jihadist movement fighting President Assad’s forces, but now renounced the armed struggle even though they continued to espouse Salafist ideology. All are awaiting court appearances…

The Syrian authorities are keen to promote the view that they are fighting an al Qaeda type force which partially explains why, after much pushing, we were allowed rare access into the jail.

Mahmoud al Ahab, who described himself as a Palestinian Syrian, told me he was in the al Nusra Front which he said was an al Qaeda group. He had sworn an oath of allegiance to al Nursa but now felt this was a mistake.

Ahmed al Rabido, a 48-year-old Syrian, said he was a religious leader, a Mufti, in the Free Syrian Army.

‘I joined because I wanted to demolish the secular state… I don’t believe in this anymore because the country is being ruined,’ he said…

This led to a question about the future of Syria’s minorities such as the Christians. Ahmed, Basah, and Hamid Hassan all agreed – Christians could only live there if they either converted, or paid the ‘Jizyah’ – a special tax levied on non-Muslims in previous centuries in the Middle East. If not said Bahar, they could be killed.

When asked why, the answer was, to them, quite simple – because the Prophet Mohammed said so. I was then invited to become a Muslim.

The conversation verged on the surreal. There we were talking in a quite friendly manner, with the occasional joke, about killing people because they wouldn’t pay the Jizyah, which critics regard as effectively obtaining money through menaces.

The interview ended with Ahmed volunteering that eventually Muslims must reclaim Andalucia in Spain for the Islamic Caliphate.” Read more.

• Related: Christian Persecution From Syrian Rebels Becoming a Steadily Growing Reality, ‘It Will Never Be the Same Anymore’
• Related: The Syrian Threat To Christians: ‘If An Islamic State Becomes The Reality … Expect A Full-Out Genocide Against Christians’
• Related: Islamist Rebels In Syria May Be Using American-Provided Weapons To Slaughter Christians
• Related: Christians Falling Into Severe Financial Hardship, Could Now Face Bloodbath From Islamist ‘Free Syrian Army’
• Related: ‘Free Syrian Army’ Rebels Executing Soldiers Were Reportedly Executing Christians

By Theodore Shoebat – “The Syrian Revolution geared toward the establishment of an Islamic state. As this revolution’s fire burns, therefore, it is no surprise that Islamists are massacring Christians. If an Islamic state becomes the reality in Syria, and the developments reveal that that will soon be the case, we can expect a full-out genocide against Christians to be implemented by the Islamists in Syria. The fall of Assad will mean a mass cleansing of anybody who believes in the Bible, since the Assad regime protects the Christian population.

Reuters – “MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Suspected Islamist fighters went on the rampage in northeast Nigeria overnight, killing 10 Christians with guns and machetes and burning down their houses, witnesses said on Sunday.

The attack happened in a village called Chibok, in a remote part of northeastern Borno state, at the heart of an insurgency led by Islamist sect Boko Haram.

‘Suspected Boko Haram came at night and set people’s houses on fire before killing their victims,’ said Nuhu Clark, a former local councilor of the village who escaped the attack.

He said he counted ten bodies afterwards.

A police spokesman said they were aware of the incident but were still trying to confirm casualties.

Islamist fighters have killed hundreds of people since launching an uprising against the government in 2009, the usual targets being security forces, government officials or Christians, whom Boko Haram sees as infidels.

But the insecurity the conflict has created has also enabled criminal gangs who are nothing to do with the sect kill and rob.

In a separate incident, militants burned down three churches on Saturday in Gamboru, also in Borno state, said trader Umar Abubakar, who witnessed the attack.” Read more.

Flashback: Nigeria: Deliberate Targeting of Christians in Islamist Attack that Killed 150 in Nigeria, ‘If You Said You Were a Christian, They Killed You’ – “International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that on November 4 members of a radical Islamic group, Boko Haram, killed more than 150 people and bombed 11 churches in the northern Nigerian city of Damaturu. While the press painted this as an attack targeting the police, Christian sources on the ground are reporting to ICC that the majority of the victims are Christians, who were deliberately targeted because of their faith.” Read more.

Canada Free Press – “The threat of genocide looms in Sudan as Christian and non-Arab communities in three regions have been targeted by President General Omar al-Bashir, a notorious leader well known for the systematic slaughter of those who oppose Islamisation.

When the mainly Christian south seceded from the predominantly Islamic north in 2011, the government of Sudan began to persecute ‘southerners’ (those who are politically and culturally aligned with the south) living in the north, stripping them of their citizenship and denying them rights (for more, click here).

The attempts by the Khartoum government to drive out the ‘infidels’ or ‘blacks’ (as it refers to them) from the oil-rich areas of Abyei and South Kordofan, in which tens of thousands were killed in 2011, appear to be continuing. Recent aerial bombardments have completely demolished homes and farms (including crops) in these predominantly Christian areas. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, acute malnutrition and famine have become widespread, and access to humanitarian aid has been denied.

Please pray that these victims of injustice and cruelty will be sustained with supernatural strength and peace, as well as the miraculous provision of food and medical aid. Also pray that the government will cease in its systematic persecution. During these very troubling times, may the Sudanese believers remain faithful and demonstrate Christ to the world through their love and forgiveness.

For more information on persecution in Sudan, visit the Sudan Country Report.” Source – Canada Free Press.

Flashback: Sudan Imam: ‘We Will Never Forgive Christians For Not Being Muslims’, Suggests That Christianity Must Be Eliminated Throughout The North – “Students and administrators at Gerif West Bible School in Sudan have yet to fully recover their losses from the April 21 attack, but the source said classes resumed on Oct. 15 even as area Muslims vie to take school land and anti-Christian messages emanate from a nearby mosque loudspeaker on most Fridays. Muslim leaders have been asserting through the mosque loudspeaker that Christian institutions should not be permitted in Sudan, as the country should be a ‘purely Islamic state’ since the secession of South Sudan on July 9, 2011, he said. ‘We are expecting the level of persecution to rise in Sudan in the coming days,’ a pastor who works at the Bible school told Morning Star News by phone, adding that hostilities against churches and Christians were intensifying.” Read more.

Flashback: Sudan: Christianity No Longer an Accepted Religion, Muslims Attack Christians Trying to Rebuild Church – “Emboldened by government calls for a Sudan based on Islamic law since the secession of South Sudan, Muslims long opposed to a church near Khartoum have attacked Christians trying to finish constructing their building, sources said. The Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) congregation in Omdurman West, across the Nile River from Khartoum, has continued to meet for Sunday worship in a building without a roof in spite of opposition from area Muslims and local authorities, the sources told Compass. Claiming that Christianity was no longer an accepted religion in the country, Muslims in the Hay al Sawra, Block 29 area of Omdurman West on Aug. 5 attacked SCOC members who were constructing the church building, the sources said.” Read more.

By Tim Cocks, Reuters – “The leader of Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram praises jihadist movements across the globe and singled out the United States, Britain, Israel and Nigeria as enemies in a new video, according to a translation by the SITE monitoring service.

The 39-minute video ‘Glad Tidings, O Soldiers of Allah’, posted in a jihadist forum, features a speech by sect leader Abubakar Shekau with an unusually international focus for a group that has often seemed more pre-occupied with local gripes.

Unlike previous video speeches, which he delivered in his native Hausa tongue, the one posted on Thursday is in Arabic. Shekau pledges solidarity with Islamist fighters everywhere.

‘Nigeria and other crusaders, meaning America and Britain, should witness, and the Jews of Israel who are killing the Muslims in Palestine should witness … that we are with our mujahideen brothers in the cause of Allah everywhere,’ he said, according to SITE’s translation.

The video appears to confirm the fears of security agents that Boko Haram has ambitions to join forces with other Islamist groups pursuing a more explicitly global, anti-Western agenda – like al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), based in Mali…

The video wishes ‘glad tidings’ on Islamist warriors in ‘Islamic Maghreb’ (the Sahara) and ‘the Islamic State in Mali’, as well as Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and ‘usurped Palestine’.

He list ‘martyrs’ in the global fight against world powers like Britain and the United States, including Osama bin-Laden.

‘Don’t think that jihad stops with the death of imams, because imams are individuals,’ he tells them. ‘Think how many sheikhs and men were martyred … Did jihad stop? No. Jihad doesn’t stop until Allah wills it to be stopped.'” Read more.

Flashback: Boko Haram: Our Goal is to Eliminate Followers of Christ – “Terrorist organisation Boko Haram has issued a statement making clear that its goal is to eliminate followers of Christ from Nigeria and establish an Islamic state. ‘The Nigerian state and Christians are our enemies and we will be launching attacks on the Nigerian state and its security apparatus as well as churches until we achieve our goal of establishing an Islamic state in place of the secular state … We are responsible for the suicide attack on a church in Jos and also another attack on another church in Biu,’ a spokesman for the group, Abul Qaqa, is said to have told reporters in the northeastern city of Maiduguri over the phone.” Read more.

France24 – “AFP – Dozen of Algerian jihadists have arrived in the Malian city of Timbuktu to support armed Islamist groups who are imposing an increasingly brutal version of sharia law in the vast northern areas under their control, security sources said Sunday.

The latest influx of foreigners joining the Al-Qaeda linked Islamists was revealed as interim authorities in Bamako postponed a key conference to plan the country’s transition back to democracy and tackle the crisis in the occupied north…

As plans for the internationally-backed intervention force take shape, reports have increased of Sudanese, Algerian and other west Africans joining the jihadists’ ranks.

‘Dozens of Algerian jihadists arrived in Timbuktu this weekend to reinforce the AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) camp,’ a regional security source told AFP.

He said the fabled city of Timbuktu was ‘increasingly becoming the headquarters of AQIM in northern Mali.’

… in the north, Islamists backed by the regional Al-Qaeda franchise soon seized full control, ousting the more secular Tuareg to pursue their goal of running the region according to a severe form of sharia law.

Married couples have been stoned, thieves have had their arms amputated and smokers and drinkers have been whipped…

Two weeks ago the jihadists began going door-to-door to arrest women who were not wearing veils.

Also on Sunday, three Congolese citizens were arrested in Timbuktu after refusing to listen to an Islamic sermon because they are Catholic, a local government official told AFP.

‘They were thrown into one of the Islamists’ prisons in Timbuktu,’ he said.” Read more.

Flashback: Mali: 200,000 Christians Flee Country To Escape Islamic Persecution As Islamists Impose Sharia Law – “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.” Read more.

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.