RUTHFULLY YOURS

As organizations like CAIR and their allies wax indignant over “Islamophobia” in America, Muslims around the globe are visiting the worst sort of cruelty upon the Christian minorities in their midst.

For instance, over a span of four days, from October 19-23, the Indonesian government succumbed to the demand of Islamic “extremists” and demolished nine churches.  Six days earlier, on October 13, Muslims unleashed a torrent of violence that left a church burned to the ground and a person dead.

And in the course of this single day, 8,000 Christians found themselves displaced from their homes.

The government has deported them.

According to a local church activist, someone who self-identified only as “Rudy,” Islamic militants issued an ultimatum to the Indonesian government: Either raze these Christian churches to the ground or “the radicals will deploy around 7,000 people” to besiege this Christian community.

The organization Open Doors, a group dedicated to “serving persecuted Christians worldwide,” reports: “Church members wept as they watched in despair [as] civil police officers [began] hammering down their worship houses.” As of this juncture, over 1,000 “churchless believers are prohibited from raising temporary tents to hold Sunday worship services.”

The predominantly Islamic country of Bangladesh is a place where Christian women are regularly subjected to unspeakable violence.  Open Doors states that “two out of every three women in Bangladesh will experience gender-based violence in their lifetimes.” Furthermore, the United Nations’ “Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women” has found that “girls are regularly harassed and abused on their way to and from school,” a phenomenon that is the function of the fact that “sexual harassment is often seen as ‘part of the culture.’”

One young woman who has fallen victim to this culture is Susmita Chambugonj.  Back in May, the 20-year-old was assailed by five “youths” who dragged her into a microbus.  While inside, Susmita was raped by two of her abductors.

The current “refugee crisis” has hit Syrian and Iraqi Christians particularly hard. Open Doors informs us that Christians in these countries “have had their homes marked by ISIS,” and “some come from historically Christian towns that were obliterated.” Moreover, some Christians are discovering “that they are being discriminated against when it comes to receiving aid.”

In Africa, stories of Islamic-on-Christian oppression are even more grisly.  At the same time, these same stories supply us with proverbial textbook exhibitions of Christian heroism.

Earlier in the year Boko Haram paid Habila Adamu a visit at his home.  When the militants informed Habila that they were “looking for him” in order to end his life, he replied that he had been looking for them as well—but in order to share with them the Gospel of Christ.

The predators weren’t impressed.  When Habila refused to recant his faith, his persecutors shot him in the face and left him for dead.

Thankfully, Habila survived.

Joshua, however, did not.  Joshua was 18 years old.  A member of a family of farmers, he worked in a factory during the dry season.  One day, Islamic militants showed up at his place of employment and proceeded to separate those employees who were Muslims from those that were Christians.  Then, they wasted no time in murdering the Christians one by one.

Initially, Joshua was in another room with some other employees. They watched through a window as the mass murder unfolded.  When an Islamic woman and fellow employee of Joshua begged the latter to deny his Christianity, he refused. Joshua was blunt: “No,” he told her, for “I am a Christian and they are killing my brothers.”

Joshua continued: “I am also going out there. I am not going to stay here and pretend that I am a Muslim.”

Joshua was martyred along with nine young men.

Even as I write this, the Christian community in Turkey has become the object of a systematic, relentless campaign of death threats.  According to Open Doors, the targeted are being blasted for being “heretics” who have “chosen the path that denies Allah[.]”

In Pakistan this past July, Saddique Azam, a veteran school teacher, was promoted to the position of “headmaster” at an elementary school.  Azam is a Christian.  For months, he was repeatedly threatened by Muslims who believed that the office of headmaster should be held by a Muslim.  Azam refused to resign.

Then, on October 6, three of his Islamic colleagues who worked under him physically attacked Azam.

Azam recounted his experience: “Three Muslim teachers entered the school, went into my office and waited for me there.  When I entered the office, I was alarmed to see them.  I asked them the reason for the visit and they launched a tirade of warnings against me to withdraw and resign from teacher headship.”

From the beating, Azam sustained a severe injury to his left eye.  Things could’ve been worst had it not been for other staff that stopped the assault.

But witnesses reported that while they pummeled Azam, his Islamic assailants mocked him by referring to him as “choora,” an anti-Christian epithet used by Pakistani Muslims. “Choora” connotes the “sweeper” or “untouchable” caste.  “You are a ‘Christian Choora,’” his victimizers shouted. How, then, “can you be a headmaster and be given seniority over us?”

The next time that we hear about the “Islamophobia” that Muslims in America allegedly face, let’s recall the face of real religious persecution: the persecution that truly defenseless Christians suffer at the hands of Muslim aggressors throughout the Islamic world.