MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

The Voice of Russia – “Islamist extremists have attacked the Christian village of al-Hasaniya near the city of Homs, Syria.

According to local TV, they killed five civilians and took 17 people hostages.

Islamists are linked to the rebels that are now being forced out of the city by the government troops.

Assad’s troops have regained control over the major part of the city though they still see resistance in the old part of the town and in the suburbs.

Late Tuesday, the government forces repelled a terrorist attack by Lebanese mercenaries” Source – The Voice of Russia.

Flashback: Syria: Entire Christian Family Beheaded By Suspected Islamists In Damascus – “As reported by Fides sources in Damascus, the Christians in the suburbs of Jaramana (south-west of Damascus) and Zamalka (South-East of the city) are under pressure from armed groups jiahdisti and are terrified. Today in Zamalka a family of Armenian Christians was found murdered, and all members of the family horribly decapitated. The execution brings to mind the work of radical Islamist Salafis.” Read more.

Flashback: ‘Deliberate and Growing’: Christian Persecution From ‘Arab Spring’ Insurgents in Syria Becoming a Steadily Growing Reality, ‘It Will Never Be the Same Anymore’ – “Refugees who have fled to Jordan from Syria are telling mission leaders supported by Christian Aid Mission about deliberate, new persecution from the ‘Arab Spring’ insurgents who are seeking to overthrow the brutal Assad regime in Damascus. Nearly 100,000 Christians so far have fled from Homs and other cities being targeted by government forces, but it is no longer just to escape the crossfire. Now, more reports are revealing that a new wave of persecution is deliberate and growing… ‘It is over; we can’t get back what we lost,’ said one discouraged Christian refugee here in Jordan. ‘It will never be the same anymore for me or my family. We’ve lost hope.’” Read more.

“Tensions grow even more in Nigeria for Christians

Muslim extremists attempted to kill a pastor supported by VOM and his family earlier this month in Nigeria.

At least seven gunmen entered Pastor Audu D. Gadzama’s church on August 10, intending to kill the pastor, his wife and his three children. One gunman shot Pastor Audu’s 24-year-old son, Thomas, in the leg.

Pastor Audu ran outside when he heard the gunshot, and the gunmen fired at him as well but missed. The gunmen, assuming both their targets were dead after seeing the men fall to the ground, then entered the house to search for the church key.

They forced Pastor Audu’s wife and other two children to lie on the ground as they set fire to the house and church. The family was able to escape and hide in the bushes as the gunmen fired into the air while shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ The Christians remained in hiding through the night, and the next morning took Thomas to a hospital. The family is now living with another pastor in the area.

Please pray for the safety of this family. Pray that this incident will not sow anxiety in their hearts, but that they will remain steadfast in their faith. Pray for wisdom for Pastor Audu and other church leaders in Nigeria. Pray that Nigerian Christians will be able to forgive and love their persecutors.” Source – Vlad Tepes.

Results Of Missed Prayers In Bangladesh

By Nozrul Islam, AsiaNews – “Dhaka (AsiaNews) – In Bangladesh, Christian children from Tripuri tribes have been taken away from their villages and forcibly converted to Islam. Local Catholic sources, who asked their names be withheld, told AsiaNews that almost 300 children have been taken to madrassas (Islamic schools).

The story is the same. So-called intermediaries, who are also ethnic Tripuri, visit poverty-stricken communities where they convince families to send their children to a mission hostel, charging between 6,000 and 15,000 taka (US$ 500 to 1,200) for school and board. After pocketing the money, the intermediaries sell the children to Islamic schools elsewhere in the country.

The latest case involved 11 children, ten boys and a girl, from Thanchi, Ruma and Lama in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Their story has a happy ending though. After six months of threats and violence, the children were able to escape thanks Hotline Human Rights Trust, a Dhaka-based civil rights organisation that defends minorities run by a Catholic woman, Rosaline Costa.

Tripuri are one of the many tribal groups found in Bangladesh. Most are Christian, both Catholic and Protestants, especially in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, in south-eastern Bangladesh.

Radical Muslims are engaged in a campaign against Christian missionaries whom they accuse of proselytising and forcibly converting others in order to create a Christian majority in the area so that it can be annexed to India.

In the latest case, the first eight boys were taken in January and February and brought to the Darul Huda Islami School in Mia Para village (Gazipur). The girl was placed in a madrassa (whose name she could not tell) in Muhammadpur, Dhaka. The other two boys were brought to another Darul Huda Islami in Maddha Badda (Gulshan, Dhaka).

Their days included Arabic lessons (8-12 AM), Qur’an reading (Nurani Shikkha, 2-5 PM) and five daily prayers.

In their respective madrassas, the children found other tribal Christians, many even younger themselves. They also saw acts of physical violence when children missed prayers or refused to take part in a lesson. In fact, after she was rescued, the girl showed scars to the hand, where she was struck with a cane.” Read more.

Flashback: Muslim Teacher In Bangladesh Burns Children’s Legs With Hot Iron Rods After Learning They Didn’t Pray Regularly During Vacation – “Police in Bangladesh are looking for a teacher from a Muslim religious school who allegedly placed burning hot iron rods on the legs of her students for failing to offer prayers regularly. They say 14 girls, aged between eight and 12, received burn injuries… ‘It was the first day of the madrassa after our holidays. Our teacher got angry when she heard that we were not offering regular prayers during our vacation,’ said Ferdousi Akther, aged eight. ‘Then she asked her servant to heat up the rod and then she pressed it on our legs. The pain was unbearable.’ Pupils say that the teacher asked the students whether they knew the severity of the fire in hell.” Read more.

By Felix Corley, Forum 18 – “Protestant Christians have faced an upsurge since late July in raids, threats of expulsion from villages or social ostracism, threats that their children will be kept under close scrutiny in school and other harassment, Protestants have told Forum 18 News Service from Turkmenistan. At least three separate administrative trials of Protestants have taken place, leading to large fines. ‘The situation has got markedly worse since July and we don’t know why,’ one Protestant, who asked not to be identified for fear of state reprisals, told Forum 18 in late August.

Several Protestants have told Forum 18 that they fear their children will face discrimination and harassment in schools, especially in rural areas. The new academic year began in Turkmenistan’s schools on 1 September. ‘Children of believers can be singled out by head teachers and individual teachers for ridicule and can have their grades lowered because of the faith of their parents,’ one Protestant complained to Forum 18. The Protestant pointed to several such instances in the academic year that finished in the summer…

Three administrative trials of Protestant Christians are known to have taken place from late August in Lebap Region of eastern Turkmenistan. All were accused of violating Article 205 of the Code of Administrative Offences (‘violation of the law on religious organisations’), which carries a punishment of fines of between five and ten times the minimum monthly wage for refusing to register a religious community or participating in an unregistered religious community. Fines can be doubled for repeat offenders…

In a village in Serdarabad District, the Deputy Hyakim (administration chief) responsible for culture Almagul Nazarova, Lebap’s Regional Imam, local Imams and Aksakals (elders) summoned a meeting of all local residents. They threatened to ostracise or expel all local Protestants. They also warned that once school resumed on 1 September, all Protestant children would be kept under special observation…

On 25 June, police raided the home of a Protestant in Tejen, a town south-east of Ashgabad. He was at work, and only his mother was at home. When he returned that evening, he found his mother crying. ‘She told him men in civilian clothes had visited, gone into his room and seized seven of his Christian books, including Bibles, and asked many questions,’ Protestants told Forum 18. They had ordered him to come to the police station the following day to write a statement.

When the Protestant arrived at the police station on 26 June, his local police officer told him he was in trouble with the MSS secret police. An MSS officer took him into a room set up for recording, and interrogated him about his work and his religious activity. ‘He asked why he did not pray the namaz [Muslim prayers], adding that all young men of his age go to the mosque,’ Protestants told Forum 18. The Protestant responded that what he believed and what religious books he reads was his business. The MSS officer then shouted at him and threatened him.” Read more.

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…