The mass exodus of Christians from the Muslim world

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  FILE -- May 4, 2013: Pope Tawadros II, the 118th pope of the Coptic Church of Egypt, leads the Easter Mass at St. Mark's Cathedral in Cairo, Egypt.AP Photo/Amr Nabil

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  FILE -- May 4, 2013: Pope Tawadros II, the 118th pope of the Coptic Church of Egypt, leads the Easter Mass at St. Mark's Cathedral in Cairo, Egypt. Egypt's Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the country's 85 million people, have long complained of discrimination by the state. They are the largest Christian community in the Middle East.AP Photo/Amr Nabil

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

We are reliving the true history of how the Islamic world, much of which prior to the Islamic conquests was almost entirely Christian, came into being.

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.”

Ongoing reports from the Islamic world certainly support this conclusion:  Iraq was the earliest indicator of the fate awaiting Christians once Islamic forces are liberated from the grip of dictators.  

The 2010 Baghdad church attack, which saw nearly 60 Christian worshippers slaughtered, is the tip of a decade-long iceberg.

In 2003, Iraq’s Christian population was at least one million. Today fewer than 400,000 remain—the result of an anti-Christian campaign that began with the U.S. occupation of Iraq, when countless Christian churches were bombed and countless Christians killed, including by crucifixion and beheading.  

The 2010 Baghdad church attack, which saw nearly 60 Christian worshippers slaughtered, is the tip of a decade-long iceberg.

Now, as the U.S. supports the jihad on Syria’s secular president Assad, the same pattern has come to Syria: entire regions and towns where Christians lived for centuries before Islam came into being have now been emptied, as the opposition targets Christians for kidnapping, plundering, and beheadings, all in compliance with mosque calls telling the populace that it’s a “sacred duty” to drive Christians away.

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.  One teenage Syrian girl said: “We left because they were trying to kill us… because we were Christians….  Those who were our neighbors turned against us. At the end, when we ran away, we went through balconies. We did not even dare go out on the street in front of our house.”

In Egypt, some 100,000 Christian Copts have fled their homeland soon after the “Arab Spring.”  In September 2012, the Sinai’s small Christian community was attacked and evicted by Al Qaeda linked Muslims, Reuters reported. But even before that, the Coptic Orthodox Church lamented the “repeated incidents of displacement of Copts from their homes, whether by force or threat.

Displacements began in Ameriya [62 Christian families evicted], then they stretched to Dahshur [120 Christian families evicted], and today terror and threats have reached the hearts and souls of our Coptic children in Sinai.”

Iraq, Syria, and Egypt are part of 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, churches and other Christian property have 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.  

Problems cited are typical:  “while dozens of mosques were built in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, no building permissions [permits] were given for Christian churches.” “Time is running out as there is a worrisome rise in radicalism,” said one authority, who further added that the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina were “persecuted for centuries” after European powers “failed to support them in their struggle against the Ottoman Empire.”

And so history repeats itself. 

One can go on and on: 

• In Ethiopia, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes when “Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes.” 
• In the Ivory Coast—where Christians have literally been crucified—Islamic rebels “massacred hundreds and displaced tens of thousands” of Christians.
• In Libya, Islamic rebels forced several Christian religious orders, serving the sick and needy in the country since 1921, to flee.

To anyone following the plight of Christians under Islamic persecution, none of this is surprising.  As I document in my new book, “Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians,” all around the Islamic world—in nations that do not share the same race, language, culture, or economics, in nations that share only Islam—Christians are being persecuted into extinction. Such is the true face of extremist Islamic resurgence.

Raymond Ibrahim is author of the new book "Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians" (Regnery Publishing 2013). A Middle East and Islam specialist, he is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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Bring it on: Author says Muslim group's $30M libel suit will expose terror ties

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  Mubarak Ali Gilani, the shadowy founder of Muslims of the Americas, is believed to be living in Pakistan. (Christian Action Network)

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  Christian Action Network vows to bring Gilani, founder of Muslims of the Americas, into a U.S. court if the $30 million defamation suit proceeds. (Christian Action Network)

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  Gilani, who is believed to be in his eighties, fires a weapon in a training video made by Muslims of the Americas. (Christian Action Network)

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  Muslims of the Americas has rural bases in several states, including South Carolina and New York.

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The shadowy leader of an American Muslim organization accused of running terror training camps in the U.S. could find himself being questioned under oath if his outfit follows through on its $30 million defamation suit against the Christian group that leveled the charges in a best-selling book.

Muslims of the Americas, a group founded in the 1980s by elusive Pakistani Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, is suing the Christian Action Network for defamation and libel following CAN’s recent publication of the book “Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamist Terrorist Training Camps Inside America.” Co-authored by CAN founder Martin Mawyer and Patti Pierucci, the book accuses MOA of “acting as a front for the radical Islamist group Jamaat al-Fuqra.”

In the suit, filed this year in federal court in Albany, N.Y., the Muslim group accuses Mawyer, Pierucci and CAN of "malicious, repetitious and continuous pronouncements and publication of defamatory statements against plaintiff."

"We're calling their bluff," said Mawyer. "I would have thought this would have been dropped a while ago, but I guess they feel they have to defend themselves to their own members."

Many of the book’s allegations are based on the claims of a former NYPD undercover informant who spent eight years posing as a member of the Muslim group, which has secretive bases in rural areas around the country, including Hancock, N.Y., and York County, S.C.

“We're calling their bluff.”

- Martin Mawyer, founder of Christian Action Network

The book alleges organized criminal activity on the part of MOA and claims profits from “street crimes, drugs, brothels, unemployment fraud and other offenses” have been funneled to Jamaat al-Fuqra. Part of the money has been used to establish a series of Jihadi training camps on American soil, according to the book.

Both Muslims of the Americas -- made up primarily of African-American converts to Islam -- and the Pakistan-based Jamaat al-Fuqra, are guided by Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani, a highly controversial cleric who lived in the U.S. during the 1980s and who was the subject of an investigation by the late Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

In 2002, Pearl was in Pakistan on his way to a pre-arranged interview with Gilani when he was kidnapped by Al Qaeda and eventually beheaded in a brutal case that shocked the world. Gilani was questioned in relation to the investigation but released without being charged.

“Twilight in America” highlights some 17 purported terrorist training camps inside the U.S. Mawyer said he learned of the camps from NYPD informant Ali Aziz, who said one of the camps – often attended by 100 or more followers -- was only 30 miles away from the CAN office in Forest, Va.

Aziz allegedly passed on vital information to authorities about MOA’s plans, its activities across the U.S., and the powerful presence of Gilani.

“If Gilani told everyone, ‘Set yourselves on fire,’ everybody would burn themselves,” Aziz told www.christianaction.org. “This has been going on for 30 years. And people praise him. They give him money. They kiss his feet. It’s crazy.”

Despite the evidence presented in the book, neither MOA nor Jamaat al-Fuqra is currently designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.

"The chapters on the former undercover agent really put them over the edge, as their members knew who Ali Aziz was,” Mawyer told FoxNews.com. “It then became very difficult for the leadership to continue to convince the women and children on the compounds that they weren’t associated with terrorists. They had to sue us to protect the wealth that they derive from the thousands of members they have in the U.S. I fully expect us to win this lawsuit.”

Mawyer and Pierucci say in the book that MOA has been linked to 10 unsolved assassinations and 17 bombings since the 1980s, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Gilani, who describes himself as “Vice Chancellor of the International Qur’anic Open University, Imam of the Muslims of the Americas and a direct Descendant of the Holy Last Messenger [the Prophet Muhammed],” has previously been accused of inspiring so-called “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid and John Allen Mohammed, the Beltway sniper attacker who, with a young accomplice, killed 10 people during a brief reign of terror in October 2002.

Mawyer said if the civil suit goes to trial, he will move to bring Gilani to the U.S. and put him on the stand. For an organization that so jealously guards its privacy, that may be enough to drop the suit.

“I think they hoped that we would not have the money to fight it and it would serve the purpose of telling their own members, ‘See, we took care of that Martin Mawyer fellow,’” Mawyer said. “They say we have declared war on Islam, but I can tell you that is definitely not the case. This group is against Christians, Hindus, Hari Krishna, Jews, and any Imams who do not preach their strict view of Islam.”

MOA officials could not be reached, and the group's attorney, Tahirah Clark, did not return calls. But in a January statement on The Islamic Post website, the group’s official mouthpiece, Gilani denied claims he is a radical. He said he has weeded out militant Muslims who had infiltrated his inner circle, including a man he said was a hitman for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mawyer and the CAN have no intention of backing out of the legal fight with Muslims of the Americas, a group described by the Anti-Defamation League as “virulently anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers.”

“People’s concerns about home-grown terrorism have obviously been raised by the recent events in Boston,” said Mawyer. “They should know that this is the group that has led the way in the U.S. for 30 years.”

Paul Alster is an Israel-based journalist who blogs at www.paulalster.com and can be followed on Twitter @paul_alster

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Christians, we must love our Muslim neighbors, too

Dr. Amir Arain is a trusted friend. We’ve worked together on several projects in the time I’ve lived in Nashville. Amir is a top Neurologist at Vanderbilt Medical Center and leading professor at Vanderbilt University.

He also happens to be the chief spokesperson on matters of faith and culture for the Nashville Islamic Center. Amir is from Pakistan but is now a U.S. citizen with all the rights and privileges I enjoy. He is as devout to his country, faith, city, and family as I am to mine.

In Dearborn, Michigan—just 20 minutes from where I grew up—some of the most loyal citizens of the U.S. make up the single largest concentration of Arabs in the world, outside of the Middle East. These leaders are doctors, teachers, military servants, and spiritual directors. They are part of the fabric of our nation, the most diverse nation in the history of the world.

I start by describing Amir and Dearborn because I immediately thought of these friends and places as the images, religion, and identities of the two brothers accused of bombing the Boston Marathon emerged in the news media last week.

As a pastor, I find it problematic that so many professing followers of Jesus continue to buy into the myth that most Muslims are hateful, violent, and vengeful people.

We are still barely able to make sense of the horrific and despicable actions allegedly carried out by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. If they are indeed guilty of these crimes (as it appears) their actions represent the worst of human capacity.

The (Wahhabi) segments of Islam that are committed to terrorism, violence, and radical jihad are a major problem and need to be dealt with at every level of life: government, society, religion, development, and education. However, it is not fair to assume that a billion people are violent because of a small minority.

Today, Muslims and Christians make up nearly half the world’s total population. Eighty percent of Muslims around the world do not live in the Middle East and do not speak Arabic.
Islam is as diverse a religion as we have on Planet Earth.

But here, in the U.S., Muslims make up a tiny minority (conservative estimates range from 4-6 million—there are more Detroit Tigers fans than Muslims).

As a pastor, I find it problematic that so many professing followers of Jesus continue to buy into the myth that most Muslims are hateful, violent, and vengeful people. Are we really willing to suggest that 1.2 billion people are evil?

Consider this for a moment: In ancient Israel, during the time of Jesus, Samaritans were a substantial rival religious group to Jews inhabiting a region between Galilee and Judea. Samaritans were like Jews, but not like Jews.

In Jesus’ parable of the “good” Samaritan (Luke 10), he tells the story of two orthodox Jewish leaders who see a fellow Jew beat up on the side of a dangerous road. Both religious leaders look but they don’t see; they choose not to help. Until a Samaritan walks by, the Jew in the ditch has no hope.

The Samaritan comes upon the left-for-dead Jew and has compassion. The Samaritan looks and he sees.

The parable is striking because Jesus essentially challenges his Jewish audience to put themselves in the ditch and imagine who they would least likely expect or desire to rescue them from a precarious situation.

Jesus wanted his audience to see the Samaritan as capable of showing much more mercy than the average Jew would allow.

Jesus wanted his audience to see the Samaritan as a person capable of providing intense mercy.
In addition, Jesus made a Samaritan a hero and he taught and healed in Samaritan regions of Israel.

He also taught, honored, interacted, and healed Samaritan individuals. When Jesus’ disciples wanted to literally kill a group of Samaritans, Jesus rebuked them.

Many leaders today call for Christians to be afraid of Muslims, not to trust “them” because “those people” only want to kill, harm, and destroy Christianity and Western Civilization.
Others, of a different ideological viewpoint, insist that all religions—including Christianity and Islam—are the same; that we are all “traveling up the same mountain, taking different paths.”
Just because I don’t call Amir Arain my brother in the faith, doesn’t mean he isn’t my neighbor.
According to Jesus, everyone is a neighbor, and there’s no one who’s not my neighbor.

Yes, I disagree with Amir on the precise meaning of Jesus’ life and because of this—not in spite of— I believe that the real test of my disagreement with Amir is in the depth of my commitment to loving Amir as Jesus has loved both us.

Because the real test of the Christian faith, in the foreseeable future, is in the church’s willingness to love those who do not subscribe to the Jesus Way.

Josh Graves is the author of The Feast and Heaven on Earth (Abingdon Press)-which comes out Dec. 1. He blogs at www.joshuagraves.com and tweets from @joshgraves.

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Egyptian mosque turned into house of torture for Christians after Muslim Brotherhood protest

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  Amir Ayad lies in a hospital bed after he was allegedly beaten by Islamic hardliners who stormed a mosque in suburban Cairo. (MidEast Christian News)

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  Protesters chant in front of the general prosecutor's office in Cairo this week after the arrest of a prominent blogger and four others following violent clashes between supporters and opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

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  Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is under fire from Copts and moderate Muslims, but violent militias are fighting his opponents in the streets. (AP)AP/Egypt State TV

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Islamic hard-liners stormed a mosque in suburban Cairo, turning it into torture chamber for Christians who had been demonstrating against the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in the latest case of violent persecution that experts fear will only get worse.

Such stories have become increasingly common as tensions between Egypt’s Muslims and Copts mount, but in the latest case, mosque officials corroborated much of the account and even filed a police report. Demonstrators, some of whom were Muslim, say they were taken from the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in suburban Cairo to a nearby mosque on Friday and tortured for hours by hard-line militia members.

“There is no longer anything to hold them back. The floodgates are open.”

- Shaul Gabbay, University of Denver professor on Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood

“They accompanied me to one of the mosques in the area and I discovered the mosque was being used to imprison demonstrators and torture them,” Amir Ayad, a Coptic who has been a vocal protester against the regime, told MidEast Christian News from a hospital bed.

Ayad said he was beaten for hours with sticks before being left for dead on a roadside. Amir’s brother, Ezzat Ayad, said he received an anonymous phone call at 3 a.m. Saturday, with the caller saying his brother had been found near death and had been taken to the ambulance.

“He underwent radiation treatment that proved that he suffered a fracture in the bottom of his skull, a fracture in his left arm, a bleeding in the right eye, and birdshot injuries,” Ezzat Ayad said.

Officials at the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque said radical militias stormed the building, in the Cairo suburb of Moqattam, after Friday prayers.

“[We] deeply regret what has happened and apologize to the people of Moqattam,” mosque officials said in a statement, adding that “they had lost control over the mosque at the time."

The statement also “denounced and condemned the violence and involving mosques in political conflicts.”

The latest crackdown is further confirmation that the Muslim Brotherhood’s most hard-line elements are consolidating control in Egypt, according to Shaul Gabbay, a professor of international studies at the University of Denver.

“It will only get worse,” said Gabbay. “This has been a longstanding conflict, but now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power, it is moving forward to implement its ideology – which is that Christians are supposed to become Muslims.

“There is no longer anything to hold them back,” he continued. “The floodgates are open.”

Gabbay said the violent militias that allegedly tortured Ayad work hand-in-hand with police and may, in fact, be beyond the control of increasingly unpopular President Mohammed Morsi. While he may benefit from roving bands that attack demonstrators, they also undermine his claim of being a legitimate leader.

“Egyptian society is split over the Morsi regime, and it is not just a Coptic-Muslim split,” Gabbay said. “The less conservative elements of the Muslim society are increasingly uneasy with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Christian Copts are an easy target, but they are not alone in their mistrust of the Brotherhood.”

Experts agreed that the Copts, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the nation’s 83 million people, are not alone in their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood, which took power in hotly contested elections following the 2011 ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak. Moderate Muslims and secular liberals are increasingly uncomfortable with the Islamization of the government.  

Sheikh Ahmed Saber, a well-known imam and official in Egypt’s Ministry of Endowments, has blasted Morsi’s justice ministry for allowing persecution of Copts.

“All Egyptians in general are oppressed, but Christians are particularly oppressed, because they suffer double of what others suffer,” Saber told MCN.

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Secretary Kerry, now is not the time to give money to Egypt's Muslim brotherhood

Secretary of State John Kerry has made exactly the wrong move. Releasing $250 million in aid to Egypt’s fragile Muslim Brotherhood government -- based on nothing more than hopes and promises -- is the worst possible course of action and gives a hostile and repressive regime a lifeline at precisely the wrong time.

In fact, given the Muslim Brotherhood’s recent record, it’s impossible to believe any promises of “reform.”

As Egypt’s economy continues to crumble, and periodic violence flares in Cairo and in cities along the Suez canal, and Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi’s consistent priority has been pressing his radical anti-American and anti-Israel agenda.  The list of the Muslim Brotherhood’s sins is long and growing:

- Egypt is violently persecuting its Coptic Christian minority, even going so far as arresting small children for allegedly defiling the Koran.

- Its security forces failed in their legal responsibility to protect the American embassy as protestors stormed the embassy, tore down the American flag, and replaced it with the black flag of jihad.

- Egypt is now becoming not just a source of terrorists but also a launching pad for terror attacks; deadly terror attacks have been launched against Israel from Egyptian soil and Egyptian terrorists were present in the 2012 Benghazi attack and in the recent attack and violence in Algeria.

- Despite getting credit for brokering the Israel/Hamas cease fire last November, Egypt loudly and publicly backed Hamas, a terrorist organization and a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

- Egypt has passed a Shariah-based constitution that restricts religious freedom and provides a legal basis for continued persecution of Egypt’s embattled Christian minority.

- Fox News recently reported that Egyptian authorities denied the U.S. direct access to a Benghazi terrorist suspect, a shocking act from an alleged “ally.”

- Finally, let’s not forget that Egypt’s president is a blatant and outspoken anti-Semite who calls Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs” and said that Egyptian children should be “nursed” on “hatred” for Israel. 

Egypt’s repressive failures have become so obvious that even the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman has begun to sour on Egypt’s version of the so-called “Arab Spring” (more like an Islamist Winter).  

The Muslim Brotherhood’s ruthlessness is matched only by its own economic incompetence.  As the people grow restless, the Morsi government is looking for something, anything, to validate and consolidate its hold on power. 

Fortunately for the Mohammed Morsi, the U.S. State Department is there to lend a hand.  

In addition to this recent infusion of cash – courtesy of the American taxpayer – the U.S. has given the Brotherhood something more valuable than cash: modern weaponry.  

Just as Egypt seethed with unrest, the Muslim Brotherhood and American embassy staff celebrated the delivery of four new American-made F-16 fighter jets, the first batch of 20 new jets – a $213 million gift from American taxpayers.  The celebration reportedly even included glossy American photos of the deadly and agile jets staged under a huge Egyptian flag.

Some have justified this delivery on the basis that the Egyptian military is a force for moderation, but it is now firmly under President Morsi’s control after he fired its Mubarak-era leadership.  

Others claim that we’re obligated to deliver the weapons under the terms of the Camp David accords, yet Egypt has breached the Accords repeatedly since the Arab Spring – even to the point of moving tanks into the Sinai.

Every new F-16 or tank delivered to Egypt is another weapon that can be used to consolidate the Muslim Brotherhood’s grip on power.  Every new dollar of economic aid buys the Brotherhood more time.  For Mohammed Morsi, this aid represents far more than a marginal increase in military and economic strength, it also represents an American seal of approval and a stamp of legitimacy on his repressive regime.  Every F-16 is a propaganda victory for the Morsi regime.

Egypt still has a chance for moderation.  After all, few things cure radical impulses better than the experience of radical rule, and the country does have a long recent history of peace with Israel.  But moderation will be infinitely more difficult to achieve if we arm and aid its most dangerous enemies.

As Egypt still struggles to determine its destiny, if we put our thumb on the scales at all, we must not do so in favor of jihadists.  The Muslim Brotherhood needs our weapons and our money.  We do not need the Muslim Brotherhood.

Jay Sekulow is Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

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