“Khosravi said the main goal of detention isn’t always punishment or even to gather information, but to break a prisoner at such a fundamental level that they are shattered permanently…. Another Christian, forced to listen to the cries of a woman screaming in a near-by cell, was convinced by guards that it was his wife being raped repeatedly, he said.” — morningstarnews.org, October 1, 2024, Iran.
The “pure genocide” of Christians in Nigeria, as it has been characterized by several international observers, is reaching unprecedented levels, according to two separate reports.
“Countering the myth of religious indifference in Nigerian terror (10/2019 – 9/2023),” a comprehensive, 136-page report published by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa on August 29, 2024, found that Muslim militants slaughtered 16,769 Christians in just the four years between 2019 and 2023. That comes out to 4,192 Christians killed on average per year — or one Christian murdered for his/her faith every two hours.
If 16.2 million Muslims had been displaced in sub-Saharan Africa due to violence by Christians, what would be the level of coverage in a Western news outlet such as the BBC? One imagines it would be quite substantial.
Open Doors, a charity which supports persecuted Christians around the world, is trying to draw attention to the displacement of this number of Christians in the region by Islamist violence. But it faces an uphill task in generating interest in the mainstream Western media.
Democratic Republic of Congo: According to a July 28 report:
“Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) claimed, in four statements published on July 25-27, 2024, that on July 24 its fighters attacked six villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) northeastern provinces, beheading more than 57 Christian villagers. In the two largest attacks that day, 54 villagers were beheaded, 30 and 24 respectively.”
August 6 marked the tenth anniversary of “the Black Day,” a day indelible to Iraqi Christians as the start of the unrelenting atrocities to which they were subjected on August 6, 2014, ten years ago.
On that day, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) unleashed a jihadi massacre of unprecedented terror, brutally attacking ancient Christian communities across northern Iraq. Villages were overrun, homes and churches looted and destroyed, and countless lives shattered. Christians were murdered, raped and sold into slavery. Those who survived were forced to flee, leaving behind everything they held dear.
The caliphate was destroyed, but persecution of Christians has continued unabated across the Middle East, Africa, and even in Europe.
Even though it was a friendly jibe as we drove over the oldest bridge into Mosul, being blamed for the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, and all the ensuing problems that Iraq had endured for the next hundred years was, I felt, stretching collective British and French colonial guilt a little bit, at least in my mind.
As the Islamic State’s Caliphate had just been driven out, it was time, on the latest of my many visits to Iraq to help the ancient Christian community, to see if any Christians could safely return to the city once called Nineveh, where Jonah the prophet had preached.
“ISIS militants, using machetes and rifles, slaughtered more than 80 Christians….ISIS emphasized the religious identity of its victims in a post, saying that “Caliphate soldiers” killed “Christians.” According to one report, many of the slain were “very young” and were targeted for “refusing to convert into Islam”…. some bodies were found “tied up” and “decapitated.” – premierchristian.news, June 18, 2024, Democratic Republic of Congo.”
The authorities talk of “involuntary destruction by fire”: I suspect that these fires have the same source as the desecrated cemeteries and synagogue burnings of Bondy, Clichy, Trappes and many other Jewish places of worship in France.
November 24, 2018: Pontoise Cathedral burns.
February 6, 2019: Lavaur Cathedral burns.
March 18, 2019: the cathedral-basilica of Saint-Sulpice burns.
April 15, 2019: Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burns.
June 12, 2020: Rennes cathedral burns.
July 18, 2020: Nantes Cathedral burns.
Six great cathedrals of France set on fire.
Many other attacks on churches in France persisted throughout the month of May, including arson attacks, general desecrations, desecrations of cemeteries, defecations in churches and urination in their baptismal fonts, and bomb threats. — France.
h/t kiki9
While outright violence is a well-known — and very obvious — way of annihilating a people, lesser known are the subtle, slow-motion ways that can be exerted to suffocate a people into extinction.
For example, earlier this year, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, leader of the Chaldean church in Iraq, sounded the alarm over the near extinction of Christianity in Iraq (where it had been firmly embedded for nearly 2,000 years, since shortly after the time of Christ). While he mentioned the most obvious form of persecution — the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other “radical” elements — he also made clear that anti-Christian sentiment infused the whole of Iraq’s Muslim society and (U.S.-installed) government.
h/t Kiki9
On April 26, a Muslim man named Muhammad Shehroz, led a 4-year-old Christian boy, Moosa Masih to a field where he brutally sodomized and then sought to strangle the child to death. — britishasianchristians.org, May 3, 2024, Pakistan.
The European Commission is enabling a culture of horrific child abuse and is exporting the same destructive culture to Europe.
A 13-year-old Christian girl, Sania Amin, went missing on April 4 after she left home to buy groceries in Anjotar, a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Local eyewitnesses reported that three Muslims took her by force and dragged her through the streets. Pakistani police refused to register a “First Information Report” (FIR) for Sania’s abduction.
Russia: On March 22, Muslim terrorists armed with automatic weapons launched an attack on Crocus City Hall near Moscow, massacring at least 139 people and wounding more. Boasting of “killing Christians,” ISIS quickly claimed the attack in a statement that said the assault was intentionally designed to target “thousands of Christians.” Two months earlier, ISIS issued a communique to the “Lions of Islam” — presumably Muslim “avengers” around the world — to terrorize and slaughter Christians and Jews, including by targeting churches and synagogues. An excerpt follows …
Nigeria: A few January headlines from the ongoing jihadist-genocide of Christians in the African nation follow:
In 2023, around the world, 4,998 Christians — on average, 13 a day — were “killed for faith related reasons.” Another 4,125 Christians were illegally detained or arrested, and 14,766 churches and other Christian institutions were attacked.
Overall, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 365 million believers suffering “high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.”
