The following comes from a June 3 email
…The numbers say it all: Christians are leaving Muslim countries in droves, in most cases under threat or following physical attacks. There are still relatively strong communities in Lebanon and in Egypt (the Copts), but in most other places, they are running away or are being overtly persecuted. With the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood from Tunisia to Egypt and Jordan (not to mention the radical Islamist elements dominating the Syrian rebellion), Muslims who hold intolerant views of other faiths feel increasingly emboldened… and are acting on it.
And if you don’t believe me (which is your right), I invite you to attend an interesting event that will take place this coming Saturday June 8 in El Cajon. Organized by a national US-based group called Advocates for the Persecuted, it will give a chance to Arab Christians from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and other Middle East countries to testify about their plight.
The following comes from a pdf attached to the email
Saturday, June 8
Registration 9:30am | Meetings 10am-5pm
Foothills Christian Church | 365 W. Bradley Ave. El Cajon 92020
You will meet with brothers and sisters from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and different other Middle East countries who have firsthand experience of persecution in prisons and in their homes. You will be informed, inspired and motivated to pray for them and act on their behalf.
Topics include:
» An explanation of what is going on in the middle east
» Muslim plan for America in the next 10 years
» Persecution of Muslim women who accept Christ
» Persecution of Muslim kids & teenagers who accept Christ
» What follows after a Muslim man accepts Christ
» An overview of what it looks like to be an active Christian in the middle east
“The price I paid (to follow Christ) was two years of house arrest. My family members were not allowed to talk to me. But I count it nothing for Christ suffered a lot for me.”
Kareem, a Muslim convert who suffered a lot for his faith: “The price I paid (to follow Christ) was several weeks in jail, beaten, sexually assaulted, kidnapped and seeing my wife and kid suffer tortures for their faith.”
Hassan: “I was the youngest prisoner in the entire Egyptian prisons for many months, but Jesus visited me many times in my cell. I was released by the petition of 30 American Congressmen who offered me a green card to escape Egypt but Jesus said, ‘No I need you in Egypt.’”
Gafer, a man who paid a big price for sharing his testimony with others: “My crime was sharing my testimony with my fellow workers. My family disowned me, my dad attempted to kill me and I had been forced to leave my country.”
Dr. Joseph says: “I was forced to visit the secret police offices every two months to give a report of what I was doing, even in my private life. My crime was ‘serving Jesus Christ publicly and outside the church buildings.’”
Samer, a Muslim young man whom his parents accepted Christ says: “The price I paid was that I have to live with double personalities since I the age of 6. In Egypt school I had to act like I was a Muslim, was forced to attend the Islamic religious classes and go through the final exams. At home I am Christian.”
To learn more, go to the website – www.advocatesforthepersecuted.org
Or call 619.206.3169
Or email: aftp@advocatesforthepersecuted.org
Thank you for this information. I often keep our persecuted brothers and sisters in my prayers. It always bothers me every time I hear priest talk as if Christian martyrdom is in the past.
This has been the sad result of much of our foreign policy in the middle east.
Our invasion of Iraq ended up destroying the Christian community in Iraq. The “democracies” of the Arab spring have been worse for Christians than the despots they replaced.
JonJ, how do you know that the USA invasion destroyed the Iraqi Christian population? Maybe they would have been targeted anyway.
Skai, I’m not saying Saddam Hussein was a good guy. He wasn’t.
But, under his rule the Christians weren’t persecuted like they were after 2003. Most of the Christians left Iraq because they were targeted by radical muslims when things went to hell. The chaotic conditions that prevailed after Saddam’s government collapsed were very bad for Iraq’s Christian minority.
The price might have been worth it if Bush wasn’t a moron and ignored Colin Powell when he talked about the need for an overwhelming number of boots on the ground to control the country. He bought into Rumsfeld’s belief that he could do Iraq “on the cheap”.
What we have now is a sectarian “democracy” that is likely to blow apart before another military dictator takes over.
JonJ. you have a point. This is very tragic. Why hasn’t our country stepped in to protect the Christian minority in Iraq? It would seem that since we started the war there that we should have seen that Christians were not mistreated in Iraq. It is shameful that the Christian population there is suffered due to our actions.
Mark PA, our country does not step in because that man in the oval office whom you voted for is a Muslim sympathizer par excellence. Oh yes, he got Osama bin Lauden because he had to to stay in office for the second time, but he has only made a further mess in the Middle East by shipping our taxes to the Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers for guns, etc. as he tries to take away ours. Get your head out of the sand, Mark. When Muslims conquer, they always force non Muslims to pay a special tax. Sound familiar???? It certainly does to me.
Skai, the Pious one is quite right on this one, the Archbishop of Bagdad was beheaded.. Saddam was a bad guy, but secularist not an Islamist. The Chalcedon Catholic community had been nearly wiped out by radical Muslims Looking back I believe the US invasion of Iraq has turned out to be one of the biggest strategic blunders in our history.
JonJ: Since the Islamic conquests, Christian populations have been attacked. Every crisis, every new fight over power and non-Muslims just “happen” to end up in the middle. It’s a game older than the First Crusade and gets replayed every few centuries. The secular tyrants of recent decades protected the anybody they figured was a possible ally against the crazy radicals. No, we shouldn’t have invade Iraq, but even without that, Saddam Hussein would have fallen eventually and the resulting struggles would have led to the targeting of Christians anyway, without our presence. We don’t matter as much as eliminating any rival to the Prophet and hhis followers.
Muslims were relatively quiescent until the huge discrepency of power when they formed OPEC…we in fact, signed our own downfall by becoming dependent on their oil. I’ll never forget the lines at gas stations back in 1973 due to the embargo by Arabian states. Google 1973 gas shortage and read on Wikipedia how long the Arabians and other muslim states (though Arabia is the big cheese) have been flexing their muscles. They don’t put their intelligence into putting rockets into space, or winning Nobel prizes…no, they’ve been putting all their efforts into dominating the world because they actually, really and truly believe that that is what they must do. I don’t see how anyone studying their history or reading the Koran can come up with any other conclusion. We’ve just made it much, much easier for them by not believing what the Koran tells them to do. Our leaders are utterly corrupt and stupid. Who’s been punished and singled out for the last 5 years? Christians, and primarily Catholics.
Only 12% of USA oil use comes from OPEC. Does that make us dependent on it? Who would get that oil if not the west? Do more people believe there is an endless supply of oil than people who believe it is a limited amount? If more people vote for endless oil, does that make it so? If the oil supply is limited, then when will it end? Now that industrialization, and thus oil use, is rising rapidly, will oil supplies end sooner than later? Global population has doubled in the past forty years. Also, industrialization has been rising exponentially during this same time period. Will hundreds of millions of people each year rise into the middle class? How much of earth’s resources are possible to support this rise to material well being? If a reader can answer these questions rationally, then would there be the realization that all the media talk on resources is pathetically off track?
I’m not sure Saddam would have collapsed. He was an evil guy, but he was pretty darn good at holding onto power. Taking down Libya required international intervention. Keeping the fight going against Syria is requiring international intervention.
Though, Tom, I totally agree that radical muslim elements take advantage of chaotic conditions to persecute Christians in the Middle East. It’s sad. Many in the muslim world are completely clueless about how immoral it is to force your religion onto someone else.
JonJ: The history of Islamic Spain is very illustrative on this point. Up until 1216, the Muslims still held half the peninsula, despite five hundred years of Christian efforts. The Almohads had won a massive victory around 1196, but the whole culture was falling apart: the strength was illusory. After the Christian victory at Tolosa it all fell apart, and Islamic Spain dwindled to Granada by 1264. Lesson: Iraq, Syria and Libya were held together by the duct tape and baling wire of fear and terror, through a brutal loyal corps of troops and secret police. One good kick and they fell over. Not really a surprise.
On this we can agree Jon. Frankly, I think disrupting the Middle East has been the intent all along of our foreign policy as the Bush family had very close ties with the Saudi Arabians, and if you remember back in 2001 after 9/11, 140 Saudi nationals on at least 8 aircraft making stops in 12 cities were allowed to leave the country. “Many of the passengers were high-ranking members of the royal House of Saud. About 24 of them were members of the bin Laden family, which owned the Saudi Binladin Group, a multibillion-dollar construction conglomerate.” I think the Saudis want to completely eliminate the presence of Jews and Christians from the Middle East and eventually the world. Read anything by Robert Spence…go to Jihad Watch. About 100,000 Christians are killed around the world every year.
The Government of Saudi Arabia is setting up (paying for) Mosques and Schools all over the USA. The following are a few things American Muslims are being taught.
From the Quran:
” The male thief, and the female thief, you shall mark, cut, or cut-off their hands/means as a recompense for what they earned, and to serve as a deterrent from God” – Quran 5:38
– Regarding infidels (unbelievers), they are the Muslim’s “inveterate enemies” (Sura 4:101). Muslims are to “arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere” (Sura 9:5) for them. They are to “seize them and put them to death wherever you find them, kill them wherever you find them, seek out the enemies of Islam relentlessly” (Sura 4:90). “Fight them until Islam reigns supreme” (Sura 2:193). “Cut off their heads, and cut off the tips of their fingers” (Sura 8:12).
– Muslims must make war on the infidels (unbelievers) who live around them (Sura 9:123).
– Allah loves those who “fight for his cause” (Sura 61:3).
Anyone who fights against Allah or renounces Islam in favor of another religion shall be “put to death or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off alternative sides” (Sura 5:34).
– They should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides. (Quran 5:33)
(SURA is a part of the Quran.)
Every American should read the Quran to know what they really believe and are being taught.
Tim,
I read it all, and you are giving part of the story. Yet I have a Catholic SC educated friend who calls me names when I try to tell him about the evil of Islam. Go figure. Oh yes, when are our Hierarchy, including the Pope, going to get their heads out of the sand when it comes to “Peace loving Islam”?
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Any bishop ever converted to Islam?
The Koran is like Mein Kampf in that it shows us clearly what Islam is all about. Ignore it at your own peril. Hitler had everything spelled out in his book–most people did not listen until it was too late. The Koran is the same. It’s all there for us to see.
Yes, Hitler had his own Mufti, Stephanie. I suppose if you Google Hitler’s Mufti, you’ll find the muslims were very actively involved in persecuting Jews for the Germans during WWII. What is so strange is the inability of most Americans to see what a dark and twisted political system muslimism really is…it’s not a religion so much as a complete closed box with no exits, a black hole.
St Francis of Asissi went to Islam land to convert them, but ran into a bit of a problem there … not sure how to sort out legend from fact, though.
I wonder what world affairs would be like if the bishops actually had become holy as commanded by God.
Did you watch Michael Voris today, Skai? About that very thing!
Dana, good idea. Maybe I should spend my youtube time watching such programs instead of old cowboy movies.
Ex president Carter contributed to this, too, when he threw the Shah of Iran “under the bus”. Who replaced him? the Ayatollah Khomeini, who hated Christians and lifted the ban against child brides.
In some Islamic countries, they cut off the right hand of a person who steals the first time and his left foot if he steals again, leaving him without a means of supporting himself or even working to pay back what he stole, yet they will still shout, “God is merciful.” God IS merciful and some day he will hold those who do such barbaric things into account for the evil they have done to others unmercifully. This was just done in Afghanistan ( I believe) or some other Muslim country to a Muslim man just recently, and we have all heard of the “Stoning of Sorayah M. Under Shariah Law a Muslim can take the wife of a non Muslim man for one of his concubines if the Muslim conquers in battle. The idea that Islam was or is a peaceful religion is just one big “joke”. They are peaceful until they become powerful enough to put in Sharia as some leftest will eventually find out for themselves.
I guess everyone can have their own opinion but if you have not personally experienced this type of persecution from Muslim countries, then one can not fully understand. I was blessed to have had my dad share with me how bad it was and why he chose to escape and come to America to practice freely his Catholic faith, My dad brought the rest of his family too later on, he helped get them migrated here to this country. My dad was to me a good man and I consider him a hero too. Well that is my own sentiments. God bless my papa and may he rest in peace.
Bush started the war that has resulted in the destruction of the Christian community in Iraq – that is simply a fact.
For folks to dismiss that as something that might have happened anyway – like Skai has – is repulsive in the extreme.
Tim, Thanks for publicizing the truth. As you know there are several good books out on the evil of the devil’s religion, Islam. No one should feel sorry for or sympathize Muslims, except those members who are forced into it out of fear for their lives and those of their family members. Islam is the religion of death, NOT peace and there is a great website to that name i.e. “the religion of peace” which gives many examples of the truth. Also note that the muslims supported Hitler in Africa in WW II and there is plenty of evidence to show it. Pray for the leadership in the Church to stand-up and be courageous to speak out the truth against the devil’s religion and end the ecumenism with the ayatollahs, imams, and its members. Ecumenism is ascinide.