Islamist extremism spreading in Tanzania

From: Christian Today

Islamisation is increasing at an alarming rate in Tanzania according to a bishop from the country.

Bishop Bernadin Mfumbusa of Kondoa warned that religious freedom and other civil liberties were under threat from intolerant radical Muslim influences sweeping in from countries neighbouring the east African nation.

Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need, the Catholic charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, the bishop said: “We see more and more itinerant preachers from Saudi Arabia and Sudan entering this country – and Muslims are increasingly making political demands.”

These demands include extending Islamic Sharia law and making everyone subject to it – Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Bishop Mfumbusa said: “In recent times there has been a constant demand to introduce Shari‘a into other parts of Tanzania which do not have a majority of Muslims.”

Sharia law is already in force in Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous archipelago with an almost completely Muslim population, but it does not apply to other parts of the country.

The bishop said there were calls for Sharia, which currently applies in areas of civil law such as marriage and inheritance, to be extended to cover criminal law.

“They claim that otherwise Muslims would be able to avoid the law by claiming not to be Muslim.
“To prevent this they say Sharia law must be made applicable to everyone.”

But, despite these demands to extend Islamic law, no more than 31 per cent of Tanzania’s 45 million inhabitants are Muslim according to Church sources.

Christians make up more than half the population – including more than 12 million Catholics.

Bishop Mfumbusa described how the influence of radical Islam can be seen on the country’s streets.

He said: “In many parts of the country more veiled women than in the past can be seen, among them small girls.”

The bishop added: “Verbal attacks are also on the increase,” but stressed that to date there had been no violent attacks in Kondoa Diocese.

He said that education is not only being radicalised but even Catholic schools can face difficulties.
“In the church schools, which are also attended by Muslim children, we must be very sensitive and cautious to avoid any undesirable incidents,” said Bishop Mfumbusa.

The number of madrassas – Qur’anic schools – has also grown, with more extremist ones encouraging pupils not to attend regular schools, which is compulsory in Tanzania.

Gaza Christians protest 'forcible conversions'

From: Haaretz Daily Newspaper

Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest Monday, claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will.

The small but noisy demonstration showed the increasingly desperate situation facing the tiny minority.

Protesters banged on a church bell and chanted, "With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus."

Gaza police say the two are staying with a Muslim religious official at their request, because they fear retribution from their families converting to Islam. Two mediators said the two - a 25-year-old man and a woman with three children - appeared to have embraced Islam of their free will. Forced conversions have been unheard of in Gaza before.

Since the Islamic militant Hamas seized power five years ago, Christians have felt increasingly embattled, but have mostly kept silent.

There are growing fears among Gaza Christians that their rapidly shrinking community could disappear through emigration and conversions.

Their numbers appear to have shrunk from some 3,500 to about 1,500 in recent years, according to community estimates. They are a tiny minority among 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza, most conservative Muslims.

"If things remain like this, there'll be no Christians left in Gaza," said Huda Al-Amash, mother of one of the converts, Ramez, 25. She sat sobbing in a church hallway alongside her daughters, Ranin and Rinad, and a dozen other women. "Today it's Ramez. Then who, and who will be next?"

Christians said the main reason for the shrinking numbers is emigration, since there are few jobs in Gaza.

Changing faith is a deeply traumatic affair in the Arab world, where religion is strongly interwoven with people's identities and tribal membership.

To convert often means to be ostracized by the community.

The two converts, Al-Amash, and Hiba Abu Dawoud, 31, could not be reached for comment. Abu Dawould took her three daughters with her, further enraging the community.

On Monday, groups of men and women stood in groups in the square of the ancient Church of Saint Porphyrius, angrily chanting," Bring back Ramez!" One man angrily hit the church bell.

"People are locking up their sons and daughters, worried about the ideas people put in their head," said Al-Amash's mother, Huda.

Iran steps up crackdown on Christians

From: Jerusalem Post

Iran’s stepped up its crackdown on the country struggling Christian community by closing a church in Tehran, prompting an Iranian human rights group and religious freedom experts to slam the regime.

“The ability to join a church or mosque or temple is one of the most fundamental religious freedoms,” Hadi Ghaemi, a spokesman for the group International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said last week.

“This drive to close churches is an assault on free religious practice, in violation of Iran’s international commitments, and a sign of growing religious intolerance within the Iranian government.”

According to the human rights group, Iranian Christians are in a dire situation because the regime assigned the Revolutionary Guard Corps to handle the “oversight of Christian churches in Iran, which were previously overseen by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.”

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran noted, “At the end of May 2012, Iranian authorities forced the Assembly of God Church in the western Tehran neighborhood of Jannat Abad to close its doors and discontinue services, a local source with knowledge of the Iranian Protestant community told the campaign.”
A source told quoted the Iran’s authorities as saying, “You must close the church, and if you don’t do this and we have to formally close the church, then there is no hope of you even keeping the building afterwards to sell,” .
In an email to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law & Justice, wrote, “Iran’s latest assault on the religious freedom of Christians is disturbing, yet not surprising. Iran has consistently shown that it has no respect for international human rights and religious freedom. In fact, Iran is one of the world’s worst offenders.

Those who embrace Christianity do so at great risk and are frequently targeted for persecution – including death because of their religious beliefs.”

The American Center for Law & Justice is a US-based organization that defends religious freedom in the United States and abroad.

Dr. Richard Landes, an associate professor of history and director and cofounder of the Center of Millennial Studies at Boston University, told the Post via email, “On one level, the closure reveals the insecurity of the Muslims who carry it out, re-emphasizing (if that were necessary) the profound lack of confidence that Islamists in power have in a free market of ideas. And of course, this affects not only the specific church, but any kind of dissident, infidel or Muslim. This is classic pre-modern political behavior.”

Landes , who has delivered talks about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, added, “In a larger sense, this raises the issue of reciprocity.

At a time when Muslim spokesmen and women make strong demands to be treated by the highest standards of ‘human rights’ in the West, neither these Muslim spokespeople, nor those who trust them in the West, demand any kind of reciprocal restraint from Muslims in Islamic countries: ‘Who are we to judge?’” “This failure might seem to the human rights activists who look the other way as a sign of generosity towards a morally challenged part of the world from whom we cannot expect anything like reciprocity, but it seems to ‘them’ as a sign of our moral cowardice, that we proleptically accept the dhimma [the inferior status of non- Muslims in a Muslim state],” he continued.

Nasrin Amirsedghi, a leading German-Iranian intellectual who has written extensively about human rights violations in the Islamic Republic, told the Post that “the systematic and state-sponsored persecution of Christians in Iran, particularly in the recent period, is a sign of an increasingly weakened regime leadership.

Wherever there is a fear of losing legitimacy, the regime employs violence and repression.”

She noted that Iran’s parliament voted 196 to 7 for the death penalty in 2008 to be imposed on apostates, such as those who convert from Islam to Christianity.

Sekulow, from the Center for Law & Justice, said, “Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani is a perfect example of the persecution of Christians by Iran and its leadership. Pastor Youcef is fast approaching 1,000 days in captivity inside Iran – and a death sentence – because of his Christian beliefs. In our work in the United States and abroad to call attention to the plight of Pastor Youcef, we have seen a tremendous outcry from around the globe – support for Pastor Youcef and condemnation of Iran. Our global Tweet for Youcef campaign reaches nearly 2.5 million Twitter accounts daily in more than 200 countries around the world.”

Asked what the West can do regarding human rights violations in Iran, Sekulow said, “There are several areas of involvement where the West can make a difference. We have a duty to report on and work for the release of those persecuted, imprisoned and even facing death by execution because of their religious beliefs.

As a free people, it is our job to take every bit of information we can obtain and utilize it in a way that can best assist those who too often are forgotten.”

He continued, “It is important that these crimes be publicized – that a media spotlight expose these tragic events – to let Iran know that the world is watching.”

Report: Obama's Muslim Advisers Block Middle Eastern Christians Access to the White House

From: Big Peace.com

From a Middle East correspondent:

Beirut Arab news agency al Nashra reported on Saturday November 22, that [White House Muslim envoy] Dalia Mogahed has succeeded in canceling a meeting between the Maronite Patriarch of Lebanon and President Barack Obama. Writing in al Nashra, the reporter said “an unnamed US source told the news agency, that those who sought canceling a visit of (the spiritual head of the Maronite Church) Patriarch Beshara Rahi to the White House are Dalia Mujahid (Mogahed), the highest adviser on Arab and Islamic Affairs in the State Department, who is from Egyptian origins. And that,” according to al Nashra, “heeding a request by the higher leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who consider that US Administration must support the Islamist Sunni current facing the Iranian current in the region.”

The al Nashra report, circulating now widely in the Middle East, but also in the United States and across the Lebanese Christian Diaspora confirms what was already known about the impact the so-called “advisors on Arab and Islamic Affairs” in the White House on Middle East issues in general and on US policies regarding the Christians in the Middle East.

Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rahi

The anti-Middle East Christian lobbying in Washington, attributed to Muslim Brotherhood front groups and sympathizers is not limited to the Maronites, who form the bulk of the two million Lebanese Americans.

According to research showing the links between Presidential adviser Dalia Mogahed and the Muslim Brotherhood, and to NGOs representing Middle East Christian groups in the US, blocking Middle East Christian meetings at the White House and the State Department have been associated with the work of the “advisors” and their allies in the Islamist camp in Washington such as CAIR and MPAC.

Coptic Solidarity International which has been trying to obtain meetings at the White House or with Secretary Clinton at State to expose the horrors committed against the Christian Copts of Egypt, were not granted such access. “Probably because of fear that American Copts will expose the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in Egypt” said an official with Coptic NGOs.

Also and despite the many massacres against Christians in Iraq over the past two years, representatives from the Assyro-Chaldeans of the US were not received in the Oval Office or by Secretary Clinton, at a time Islamist linked groups are on the roaster of invitations to the White House. Indicatively, Administration officials declined invitations to speak at the annual Assyrian Christian convention this year, few months from the start of the withdrawal from Iraq.

US official attitudes towards the Middle East Christians are, according to this behavior, dictated by the “Muslim Brotherhood friends” now very influential in the Obama Administration. Of late, CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) are pushing to eliminate any intelligence analysis focused on Islamist and Jihadist violence in general and directed against the Christian communities in the Middle East in particular.

This could explain why Maronites, Copts and Chaldo-Assyrians have been cut off the Administration.
Observers believe that the campaign against Americans from Middle East Christian descent has also reached Terrorism experts and congressional advisers and NGO leaders whose field focuses on the Islamist and Jihadist movements. Indeed, in a report published this year, John Esposito, the chair of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University (and an associate to Mogahed) endorses sharp attacks against experts and analysts, always charging “Islamophobia.”

Blocking the Maronite Patriarch from the White House is a move that is directed to all Middle East Christians in the United States and can have significant effects in the region and even on US politics. Brooklyn Bishop for the Maronites in the US, who are part of America’s Catholic Church criticized President Obama for not meeting the Patriarch during his visit. Bishop Mansour wrote:

Patriarch Rai’s warning about the future of Christians in Syria is not taboo. Christians are in a state of peril in the same way that Christians of Iraq were a few years ago when two-thirds of them migrated out… A new day is dawning in the Middle East. The Arab Spring is happening with little vision for the summer that will ensue.

However, for advisors in the Administration to rebuke the spiritual head of a main Middle East Christian community, and engage in a witch hunt against Middle East Christians, including US citizens, for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood is a serious matter the American public should not tolerate.

The Maronites are Middle Eastern Christians who count about a million people inside Lebanon with more than 10 millions in the Diaspora. There are about one and a half million Americans who are Maronites and five millions in Brazil. There are Maronite members of the US Congress such as Congressman Charles Boustany of Louisiana or former Congressman Ray Lahoud, current secretary of transportation. Maronites are among the 25 millions of Christians in the Middle East, including the 15 million Copts in Egypt, the one million Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq, another million Syriacs and Orthodox in Syria as well as Iranian Christians and African Christians in Sudan. Americans who are from Middle East Christian ancestry are about 86% of all Americans from Arab or Middle East Christians and count two times the size of American Muslims.

Not a Single Christian Church Left in Afghanistan

From: CNSnews.com

There is not a single, public Christian church left in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. State Department.

This reflects the state of religious freedom in that country ten years after the United States first invaded it and overthrew its Islamist Taliban regime.

In the intervening decade, U.S. taxpayers have spent $440 billion to support Afghanistan's new government and more than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in that country.

The last public Christian church in Afghanistan was razed in March 2010, according to the Statet Department's latest International Religious Freedom Report. The report, which was released last month and covers the period of July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010, also states that “there were no Christian schools in the country.”

“There is no longer a public Christian church; the courts have not upheld the church's claim to its 99-year lease, and the landowner destroyed the building in March [2010],” reads the State Department report on religious freedom. “[Private] chapels and churches for the international community of various faiths are located on several military bases, PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Teams], and at the Italian embassy. Some citizens who converted to Christianity as refugees have returned.”

In recent times, freedom of religion has declined in Afghanistan, according to the State Department.

“The government’s level of respect for religious freedom in law and in practice declined during the reporting period, particularly for Christian groups and individuals,” reads the State Department report.

“Negative societal opinions and suspicion of Christian activities led to targeting of Christian groups and individuals, including Muslim converts to Christianity," said the report. "The lack of government responsiveness and protection for these groups and individuals contributed to the deterioration of religious freedom.”

Most Christians in the country refuse to “state their beliefs or gather openly to worship,” said the State Department.

More than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in the decade-old Afghanistan war, according to CNSNews.com’s database of all U.S. casualties in Afghanistan. A September audit released jointly by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and the State Department’s Office of Inspector General, found that the U.S. government will spend at least $1.7 billion to support the civilian effort from 2009-2011.

According to that report, the $1.7 billion excludes additional security costs, which the report says the State Department priced at about $491 million.

A March 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service showed that overall the United States has spent more than $440 billion in the Afghanistan war. Christian aid from the international community has also gone to aid the Afghan government.

Nevertheless, according to the State Department, the lack of non-Muslim religious centers in Afghanistan can be blamed in part on a “strapped government budget,” which is primarily fueled by the U.S. aid.

“There were no explicit restrictions for religious minority groups to establish places of worship and training of clergy to serve their communities,” says the report, “however, very few public places of worship exist for minorities due to a strapped government budget.”

The report acknowledged that Afghanistan’s post-Taliban constitution, which was ratified with the help of U.S. mediation in 2004, can be contradictory when it comes to the free exercise of religion.

While the new constitution states that Islam is the “religion of the state” and that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam,” it also proclaims that “followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of the law.”

However, “the right to change one’s religion was not respected either in law or in practice,” according to the State Department.

“Muslims who converted away from Islam risked losing their marriages, rejection from their families and villages, and loss of jobs,” according to the report. “Legal aid for imprisoned converts away from Islam remains difficult due to the personal objection of Afghan lawyers to defend apostates.”

The report does note that “in recent years neither the national nor local authorities have imposed criminal penalties on coverts from Islam.” The report says that “conversion from Islam is considered apostasy and is punishable by death under some interpretations of Islamic rule in the country.”

Also, in recent years, the death punishment for blasphemy “has not been carried out,” according to the State Department.

According to the State Department report, the United States continues to promote religious freedom in Afghanistan--even though the country no longer has even one Christian church.

“The U.S. government regularly discusses religious freedom with government officials as part of its overall policy to promote human rights,” according to the report.

According to the State Department report, more than 99 percent of the population, estimated between 24 and 33 million people, is either Sunni (80 percent) or Shia (19 percent) Muslim. Non-Muslim religious groups, including the estimated 500 to 8,000 strong Christian community in the country, make up less than 1 percent of the population. Other non-Muslim groups in the country are Sikhs, Bahais, and Hindus.

The Silent Extermination of Iraq’s ‘Christian Dogs’

From: Front Page Magazine

Last week an Iraqi Muslim scholar issued a fatwa that, among other barbarities, asserts that “it is permissible to spill the blood of Iraqi Christians.” Inciting as the fatwa is, it is also redundant. While last October’s Baghdad church attack which killed some sixty Christians is widely known—actually receiving some MSM coverage—the fact is, Christian life in Iraq has been a living hell ever since U.S. forces ousted the late Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Among other atrocities, beheading and crucifying Christians are not irregular occurrences; messages saying “you Christian dogs, leave or die,” are typical. Islamists see the church as an “obscene nest of pagans” and threaten to “exterminate Iraqi Christians.” John Eibner, CEO of Christian Solidarity International, summarized the situation well in a recent letter to President Obama:

The threat of extermination is not empty. Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, more than half the country’s Christian population has been forced by targeted violence to seek refuge abroad or to live away from their homes as internally displaced people. According to the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, over 700 Christians, including bishops and priests, have been killed and 61 churches have been bombed. Seven years after the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Catholic Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk reports: “He who is not a Muslim in Iraq is a second-class citizen. Often it is necessary to convert or emigrate, otherwise one risks being killed.” This anti-Christian violence is sustained by a widespread culture of Muslim supremacism that extends far beyond those who pull the triggers and detonate the bombs.