By Muslims.
via Can We Finally Start Talking About The Global Persecution Of Christians? | The Federalist.
After yet another bloody weekend, it’s time to speak frankly about who’s killing Christians and whyWealthy Kenyans and Westerners bustled about Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi on Saturday. Families ate lunch in the food court. A radio station targeting Kenyan Asians was hosting a children’s event on the roof of the parking lot.
Around noon, armed gunmen stormed the mall and exploded grenades.
Thousands of terrified people dropped to the floor, fled out of exits
and hid in stores. The gunmen began lining people up and shooting some
of the five dozen people they would slaughter and 240 people, ages 2 to
78, that they would wound.
Al-Shabaab, which is claiming credit for the attack, is reported to
have singled out non-Muslims. “A witness to the attacks at Nairobi’s
upscale mall says that gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave and
that non-Muslims would be targeted,” according to the Associated Press.
To weed out the infidels, according to news reports, the terrorists
asked people for the name of Muhammad’s mother or to recite a verse from
the Quran.
The Washington Post reported that one British mother and her young children survived when captors who shot her allowed her to leave on the condition she immediately convert to Islam. The siege of the mall, which included the taking of hostages, lasted four days. Three floors of the mall collapsed and bodies were buried in the rubble.
The Washington Post reported that one British mother and her young children survived when captors who shot her allowed her to leave on the condition she immediately convert to Islam. The siege of the mall, which included the taking of hostages, lasted four days. Three floors of the mall collapsed and bodies were buried in the rubble.
And that wasn’t even the worst terrorist attack of the weekend.
The next day, two suicide bombs went off as Christians were leaving Sunday services at All Saints Anglican Church in Peshawar, Pakistan.
“There were blasts and there was hell for all of us,” Nazir John, who
was at the church with at least 400 other worshipers, told the
Associated Press. “When I got my senses back, I found nothing but smoke,
dust, blood and screaming people. I saw severed body parts and blood
all around.”
Some 85 Christians were slaughtered and 120 injured, the bloodiest
attack on Christians in Pakistan in history. The hospital ran out of
beds for the injured and there weren’t enough caskets for the dead.
The situation for Christians in Egypt has also gone from bad to worse. August saw the worst anti-Christian violence in seven centuries. Sam Tadros, a Coptic Christian and author of Motherland Lost, says that there has been nothing like this year’s Muslim Brotherhood anti-Christian pogrom since 1321, when a similar wave of church burnings and persecution caused the decline of the Christian community in Egypt from nearly half of Egypt’s population to its current ten percent.
The situation for Christians in Egypt has also gone from bad to worse. August saw the worst anti-Christian violence in seven centuries. Sam Tadros, a Coptic Christian and author of Motherland Lost, says that there has been nothing like this year’s Muslim Brotherhood anti-Christian pogrom since 1321, when a similar wave of church burnings and persecution caused the decline of the Christian community in Egypt from nearly half of Egypt’s population to its current ten percent.
The violence of just three days in mid-August was staggering.
Thirty-eight churches were destroyed, 23 vandalized; 58 homes were
burned and looted and 85 shops, 16 pharmacies and 3 hotels were
demolished. It was so bad that the Coptic Pope was in hiding, many
Sunday services were canceled, and Christians stayed indoors, fearing
for their lives. Six Christians were killed in the violence. Seven were
kidnapped.
Maalula, Syria, is an ancient Christian town that has been so
sheltered for 2,000 years that it’s one of only three villages where
people still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Until September 7,
when Islamist rebels attacked as part of the civil war ripping through
the country.
An eyewitness to the murder of three Christians in Maalula—Mikhael
Taalab, his cousin Antoun Taalab, and his grandson Sarkis el
Zakhm—reported that the Islamists warned everyone present to convert to
Islam. Sarkis answered clearly, Vatican news agency Fides reported: “I am a Christian and if you want to kill me because I am a Christian, do it.”
Sister Carmel, one of the Christians in Damascus who assist Maalula’s
many displaced Christians, told Fides, “What Sarkis did is true
martyrdom, a death in odium fidei.”
In recent weeks, we have Muslims killing Christians in Kenya, Egypt, Pakistan and Syria. Again.
It’s time to ask an important question that many of us have successfully avoided for far too long:
Can we finally start talking about the global persecution of Christians and other non-Muslims?
Finally? Please? Read more »
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