The Muslim War on Christianity

The most widespread oppression in the world today is the oppression of Christians by Muslims. And yet, for some reason, the world’s foremost human rights crisis is rarely noticed, let alone opposed. Raymond Ibrahim, author of a new book titled Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, has tirelessly tried to draw attention to the catastrophe that has befallen Christians living in predominantly Muslim countries in recent years. Ibrahim offered an overview of the situation at the Middle East Forum:

A mass exodus of Christians is currently underway. Millions of Christians are being displaced from one end of the Islamic world to the other. …

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently said: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.” In our lifetime alone “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.”

Most of what we now think of as the “Muslim world” was inhabited by Christians long before Islam came into being. Now, in one country after another, Christians are being exterminated. Syria is the most recent case in point:

In October 2012 the last Christian in the city of Homs—which had a Christian population of some 80,000 before jihadis came—was murdered.

It is notable that the Muslim war on Christianity is not limited to Arab states or the Middle East:

Iraq, Syria, and Egypt are the Arab world. But even in “black” African and “white” European nations with Muslim majorities, Christians are fleeing.

In Mali, after a 2012 Islamic coup, as many as 200,000 Christians fled. According to reports, “the church in Mali faces being eradicated,” especially in the north “where rebels want to establish an independent Islamist state and drive Christians out… there have been house to house searches for Christians who might be in hiding, church and Christian property has been looted or destroyed, and people tortured into revealing any Christian relatives.” At least one pastor was beheaded.

Even in European Bosnia, Christians are leaving en mass “amid mounting discrimination and Islamization.” Only 440,000 Catholics remain in the Balkan nation, half the prewar figure.

Islam is, in its most fundamental teachings, intolerant of other religions. The story is the same, whether in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Ivory Coast (where, as Ibrahim notes, Christians have been crucified), Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia or Sudan. Ibrahim places today’s oppression in the broader sweep of history:

Often forgotten is that, in the 7th century, half of the world’s entire Christian population was spread across what is now nonchalantly called the “Muslim world.” Then Islam, born in the deserts of Arabia, burst out in a series of world-altering jihads, conquering and slowly transforming these once Christian nations into Islamic nations.

In order to evade sporadic persecution and constant discrimination, over the centuries most Christians converted, while others fled. A few opted to remain Christian and live as barely tolerated third-class subjects, or dhimmis, according to Sharia law.

They eventually experienced something of a renaissance during the colonial and post-colonial era, when many Muslims were Westward-looking.

But today, with the international resurgence of Muhammad’s religion, these remaining Christians are reaching extinction, as Islam’s 1400 year mission of supremacy and global hegemony continues unabated—even as the West looks the other way, that is, when it’s not actually supporting it in the context of the so-called “Arab Spring.”

Maybe next time President Obama holds a press conference, a reporter will ask him whether he is concerned about the Muslim oppression of Christians, and whether his administration’s policies are contributing to that oppression.

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