Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians Read online

  Table of Contents

  CRUCIFIED AGAIN

  Title Page

  Dedication

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  PART ONE - LOST HISTORY

  MIGHT MAKES RIGHT

  THE CHRISTIAN GOLDEN AGE

  FROM EMULATION TO CONTEMPT

  KORAN AND CALIPH

  PART TWO - ISLAM’ S WAR ON CHRISTIAN WORSHIP

  ISLAMIC HOSTILITY FOR THE THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IS OBLIGATORY

  ISLAMIC HOSTILITY FOR THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN HISTORY

  A PARADIGMATIC EXAMPLE: THE COPTIC CHURCH OF EGYPT

  CHRISTIAN HOLIDAY, ISLAMIC HORROR

  THE LEGAL JIHAD ON CHRISTIAN CHURCHES BY MUSLIM GOVERNMENTS

  CHRISTIAN CHURCHES HELD HOSTAGE BY THE MUSLIM MOB

  THE VIOLENT JIHAD ON CHRISTIAN CHURCHES BY MUSLIM TERRORISTS

  MONASTERIES AND MUSLIM MARAUDERS

  ISLAM’S WAR ON THE CROSS

  PART THREE - ISLAM’ S WAR ON CHRISTIAN FREEDOM

  APOSTASY

  BLASPHEMY

  PROSELYTISM

  THE TRUTH BEHIND ISLAM’S ANTI-FREEDOM LAWS

  WHY CHRISTIANS ARE SINGLED OUT

  WITNESSES FOR CHRIST

  RECENT EXAMPLES OF ANTI-FREEDOM LAWS

  APOSTATES: RECANT OR DIE

  NO ESCAPE

  DEATH TO BLASPHEMERS

  SILENCING THE GOSPEL

  PART FOUR - CLIMATE OF HATE

  MUSLIM GOVERNMENTS: PLANTING AND NOURISHING SEEDS OF HATE

  MUSLIM MOB MENTALITY

  MUSLIM JIHADIS: YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE

  PIOUS MUSLIMS, PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS

  PART FIVE - SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL

  ACADEMIA: WHITEWASHING ISLAM, BLAMING THE WEST

  THE MEDIA: OBSCURING THE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS

  THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: ENABLING THE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS

  NOTES

  INDEX

  Copyright Page

  CRUCIFIED AGAIN

  “Systematic oppression of Christians in the Islamic world is as little reported on as it is increasingly widespread. Yet to document the ongoing tragedy requires fluency in Arabic, familiarity with the Middle East, and a courage to report what is often denied abroad and felt better left unsaid at home. Raymond Abraham has both the skills and commitment to enlighten the world about oppression and intolerance in this much need exposé—characterized by scholarship, prodigious research, and a commitment to the truth.”

  —Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow, classics and military history, the Hoover

  Institution, Stanford University, and author, Carnage and Culture

  “The great unspoken civil rights issue of our day is sharia—how its suffocating laws and the supremacist culture it breeds are incompatible with the Western ideals of liberty and the equal dignity of every human life. The great unspoken scandal of our day is the brutality with which this incompatibility manifests itself, from Morocco across to Indonesia, from Turkey down to sub-Saharan Africa, in the Muslim slaughter of Christian populations. Only the spotlight of faithful, tireless reporting can shame us into speaking about, and ending, the slaughter. On that score, no one is more faithful, more tireless, and more valuable than Raymond Ibrahim. This is an essential book.”

  —Andrew C. McCarthy, executive director of the Philadelphia

  Freedom Center, contributing editor of National Review,

  and bestselling author of Willful Blindness, The Grand Jihad,

  and Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy

  “The most aggressive force in the world today is the Islamic movement to subdue and then outlaw rival creeds, including those that are secular. Most people assume the primary targets of Islamic supremacists are Jews. Raymond Ibrahim’s indispensable book shows that they are Christians and democrats as well.”

  —David Horowitz, founding president of the David Horowitz

  Freedom Center and editor of FrontPage Magazine

  “Raymond Ibrahim eloquently, relentlessly highlights a topic of the greatest urgency but only passingly noted and generally ignored in polite society: rampant Muslim (and not just Islamist) jihadi aggression these days against all that is Christian—crosses, holidays, churches, beliefs, and believers. He documents how Muslims, drawing ultimately on medieval sources, mistreat Christians ‘from Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east, from Turkey in the north, to sub-Saharan Africa in the south.’ Ibrahim then convincingly explains why Western academics, journalists, and politicians tend to skip over these systematic human rights abuses by portraying them as anomalies to a ‘rule of tolerance that is presumed to prevail in Islam.’ He concludes by warning of the potential threat jihad poses to every non-Muslim. We are in Ibrahim’s debt both for his research and for marshalling it to great effect.”

  —Daniel Pipes, president, Middle East Forum

  “Raymond Ibrahim is one of the very few writers on the scene today who has the courage, knowledge, and insight to be able to expose not only what is happening to Christians in Muslim lands, but why it is happening—despite the desperate attempts of politically correct Leftist enablers of the global jihad to obscure both of those things. This book reveals a scandal of astounding proportions: the persecution itself, as well as the silence and complacency of the international human rights community in the face of that persecution. Every UN official should be told that U.S. funding will be withdrawn from that woebegone organization unless and until this book is read and heeded.”

  —Robert Spencer, author of the New York Times bestsellers

  The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)

  and The Truth about Muhammad

  “Take the blinders off and the earplugs out and read Raymond Ibrahim’s timely and explosive exposé to find out what the media won’t tell you: that Christians are suffering, dying, and disappearing across what we now think of as the Islamic world, and why. There is no sharper student of the current Arab scene than Ibrahim, whose fluency in Arabic and understanding of Islamic law and culture endow his analysis of this specifically Islamic assault on religious freedom with essential context and historical perspective.”

  —Diana West, nationally syndicated columnist and author of

  The Death of the Grown-Up and American Betrayal:

  The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character

  “The phenomenon of religious persecution has been a feature of medieval times on both sides of the Mediterranean and plagued Europe until popular revolutions established the concept of secular and pluralist state in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately the Greater Middle East and North Africa, particularly under Islamist regimes, witnessed a continued suppression of Muslim liberals, of all minorities in general, and of Christian minorities in particular till our current days. From the Copts of Egypt to the Assyro-Chaldeans of Iraq, from Iran to Lebanon, various Christian communities—Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants—traversed tragic decades of legal, political, and psychological discrimination. Raymond Ibrahim, a former researcher at the Library of Congress and the author of The Al Qaeda Reader, has been a prolific writer on Middle East Christian affairs. In this book he expands the analysis of the roots and bases of persecution. A necessary read that links Jihadism to human rights abuse.”

  —Walid Phares, visiting fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy

  and author of The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy

  “In Crucified Again, Raymond Ibrahim exposes Islam’s dirty little secret of utter intolerance and persecution of Christians and its inability to co-exist with other faiths. Ibrahim, an American
-born son of Christian immigrants from the Middle East, is clearly committed to be the voice of the voiceless Christians living under the wickedness of Islamic tyranny.”

  —Nonie Darwish, director of Former Muslims United and author of Now

  They Call Me Infidel, Cruel and Unusual Punishment,

  and The Devil We Don’t Know

  “Raymond Ibrahim knows the Islamic world well and is one of the few reporters courageous enough to tell the story of the global persecution of Christians by radical Islamists. The English-speaking world needs to know what Raymond Ibrahim has to report, and Christian readers need to pray and speak up for the victims whose stories he tells with such passion and verve.”

  —David Alton, Lord Alton of Liverpool, member of parliament

  “If you want to know what’s really happening in the Muslim world, there’s one man to turn to: Raymond Ibrahim. As a Christian, he takes a special interest in reporting the great unreported story of our time, the brutal persecution of Christians by Muslims across the world. Cruci fied Again is a stunning and revelatory book that should be in the hands of every congressman, everyone at the State Department, and every member of the National Security Council—not to mention in the hands of every reader who cares about Islamist aggression, human rights, and the survival of Christians in the Holy Land and elsewhere.”

  —Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project

  on Terrorism, author of numerous books, and director of the

  award-winning documentary Jihad in America

  “Crucified Again masterfully ‘joins the dots’ of persecution of Christians at the hands of their Muslim neighbors. Raymond Ibrahim’s politically incorrect but irrefutable conclusion is that Islam itself is the root cause of an aggressively advancing global epidemic of human pain and suffering. This book is a wake-up call for the West, and a courageous act of compassion for Islam’s victims.”

  —Mark Durie, Anglican pastor, theologian, and human rights activist

  “The mainstream media might ignore the persecution of Christians around the world—but Raymond Ibrahim does not. An American Christian of Egyptian Coptic ancestry, fluent in Arabic, he exposes one of the most tragic under-told stories of our time: how Christians are being murdered or driven from their churches and their homes by Islamists. I urge every Christian who cares about his fellow Christians in Islamic parts of the world to read this incredibly important book.”

  —Pat Robertson, bestselling author, host of the 700 Club,

  chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network,

  and founder and chancellor of Regent University

  “At a time when the Western media obsess over the slightest insult to Muslims, Raymond Ibrahim exposes the extensive Muslim persecution of Christians all across the Islamic world, an epidemic of violence and murder ignored by Western reporters and enabled by a foreign policy of appeasement. In addition to exhaustively documenting this outbreak of religious violence, Ibrahim shows how it is consistent with traditional Islamic supremacist theology and laws that justify violence against infidels, apostates, and proselytes. Meticulously researched and passionately written, Ibrahim’s book is a must-read for all concerned about the future of Christianity and the wages of a misguided foreign policy.”

  —Bruce S. Thornton, research fellow at Stanford University’s

  Hoover Institution and author of The Wages of Appeasement

  To M.M.—He who arises in Might

  “To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over

  again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”

  —Hebrews 6:6

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  This book covers the persecution of Christians across the Islamic world. We will be examining recent incidents from across a wide geographical spread, from Morocco to Nigeria to Indonesia—and even sometimes in Western Europe and North America. We will also be delving back into the past to consider the treatment of Christians under Muslim rule from the time of the earliest Islamic conquests. But rather than dividing this material by continent or century, I have organized the evidence thematically, to demonstrate the continuity and interconnectivity of Christian persecution under Islam.

  Christians are being persecuted in Muslim countries today for the same reasons as in past centuries. And the patterns of persecution—the same motivations, the same actions, and the same horrific results—recur in countries as different as Kenya and Denmark. Those patterns, I will demonstrate, emerge from themes in the Koran, in Islamic theology, in Sharia law, and in Islamic culture. Along the way, we will be looking at Muslim doctrines concerning Christians and Christianity and primary historical texts from the early centuries of Islam, as well as at the situation of today’s Christian populations from one end of the Muslim world to the other.

  The continuity that is observable in Muslim mistreatment of Christians—by Muslims of different nations, races, languages, and cultures; from Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east, and from Turkey in the north to sub-Saharan Africa to the south; in “white,” “yellow,” “brown,” and “black” nations—makes it clear that one thing alone accounts for such identical patterns in such otherwise diverse nations: Islam itself—whether the strict application of its Sharia, or the supremacist culture born of it. No economic, political, or ethnic cause for the violence is relevant to all these widely divergent settings.

  After reading what follows, however, the discerning reader may ask, “If Muslim persecution of Christians is ubiquitous in the Muslim world, if it is intrinsic to Islam, why is it that some Muslim countries figure much more prominently in this book than others?” Indeed, some of the more “moderate” Muslim nations, such as Indonesia, see many more incidents of horrific anti-Christian violence than nations well known to be radical, such as Afghanistan. Does not this incongruity suggest that Christian persecution is not a product of Islamic doctrine and culture but of secular factors such as race or economic problems?

  The answer to this conundrum is in the numbers—comparative numbers of Muslims and Christians, that is. The ratio of Muslims to Christians in any given country—or, looking at it another way, the proximity of Christians and Muslims—is the primary factor explaining which countries see the most and the least Christian persecution. For example, Saudi Arabia, which is vehemently anti-Christian, generates fewer incidents of persecution than some Muslim nations that are generally deemed moderate. The reason for this is simple: Saudi Arabia has nipped the problem in the bud by banning Christianity altogether; there are no churches to bomb or burn. Likewise, the ravages of the historic jihad have exterminated or nearly exterminated Christian populations throughout the Muslim world. For example, the whole of North Africa, prior to the Islamic conquests, was Christian—it gave the world St. Augustine, the giant of theology who played a major role in articulating Western Christianity. But today there are virtually no Christians left to persecute from Morocco to Libya. Christians now make up less than 1 percent of that entire population.

  On the other hand, the very large numbers of Christians in Egypt—according to the baptismal records of the Coptic Orthodox Church, there are some 16 million Christian Copts in Egypt1—prompt regular bursts of anti-Christian persecution. Indeed, as one of the oldest and largest Muslim nations, with one of the oldest and largest Christian populations, Egypt is a kind of paradigm of Islam’s treatment of Christians—both in the present and going back more than thirteen centuries. Accordingly, it figures prominently in this book.

  In sub-Saharan countries where Christians often make up half or even more than half of the entire population, persecution gives way to genocidal jihads as Muslims in these countries try to purge their lands of any trace of the “infidel.” Nigeria, for example, is experiencing appalling violence; the accounts of persecution included in this book are only the tip of the iceberg of Christian suffering in Africa. Of course, wherever and whenever Christians are killed or driven out there will be less persecution there—simply because there
will be fewer and fewer Christians to target, as nations that used to have significant Christian populations slowly become more like Saudi Arabia: infidel-free and thus ostensibly “peaceful.” This may be the future of Iraq, whose small Christian population has shrunk dramatically as a result of the jihad there. In Nigeria, where Christians make up nearly half the population, we are being offered a rare glimpse of early Islamic history repeating itself, as Muslims use violence to subjugate or kill very large numbers of non-Muslims in the name of Islam and through jihad. That is the true story of Islam’s spread from Arabia.

  Even in the West, the numbers theory—that anti-infidel intolerance is predicated on the Muslim-to-non-Muslim ratio—holds up. The Muslims of the United States are relatively nonviolent, but they amount to less than 1 percent of the entire population. It is a different story in Europe, where there are much larger percentages of Muslims. France, which has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, also seems to see the largest amount of Muslim intolerance for Christians and their churches.

  A note on sources: Major media in the West (network and cable news, the Associated Press, New York Times, the BBC, and so forth) cover some of the most spectacular instances of Christian persecution—for example, church bombings that leave dozens (as opposed to only a few people) dead. But many daily run-of-the-mill incidents of persecution are never reported by those sources. Moreover, even when stories are reported, the facts are often articulated in a way that minimizes the religious element of the persecution—to conform to the secular script of the Western mainstream media, which is largely blind to the influence of religion in current events.