RUTHFULLY YOURS

Sunday’s referendum to expand his presidential powers didn’t go as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan had planned. The Islamist strongman had hoped for a rousing endorsement, but he won narrowly amid voting irregularities that will taint his victory. The result leaves Turkish society even more polarized and may produce more instability.

The pro-Erdogan camp won a mere 51.2% of the vote, according to the state-run news agency. More telling is that the referendum lost in Turkey’s urban areas, including Ankara and even Istanbul, where Mr. Erdogan was mayor. The country’s election board made a last-minute decision to accept ballots that didn’t bear official stamps normally required to validate ballots. The secular Republican People’s Party said that move and other verification problems cast doubt on the validity of some 2.5 million ballots.

Observers with the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe criticized the election board’s decision. They also noted that civil-society groups had been barred from holding campaign events, and Mr. Erdogan’s camp dominated the media. All of this occurred amid Mr. Erdogan’s crackdown on political opponents, journalists and independent judges since last July’s failed coup against him.

The opposition says it will formally challenge the result, but overturning it is unlikely given Mr. Erdogan’s control over public institutions. Barring a Turkish Spring uprising, Mr. Erdogan will consolidate even more power in the office of the president. The referendum would allow the 63-year-old to remain as president through 2029, and perhaps 2034.

All of this will complicate Turkey’s relations with the West, as Mr. Erdogan advances his Vladimir Putin-like control. The U.S. will have to work with its NATO ally. But without more evidence the U.S. should resist demands to extradite Fethullah Gülen, the Pennsylvania-based imam Mr. Erdogan accuses of masterminding the summer putsch. Mr. Erdogan has staged his own internal coup by abusing the levers of democracy to create an Islamist authoritarian state.

Yussuf K. said he carried out the January 2016 attack “in the name of Allah and the Islamic State.” He added that he chose his victim because “he was Jewish.”

A confidential police report revealed that more than 50 organizations in Molenbeek, a migrant-dominated neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium, are believed to have ties to jihadist terrorism.

An Ipsos poll for France Television and Radio France found that 61% of the French believe that Islam is incompatible with French society.

March 2. In a landmark trial at the Paris Children’s Court, a 17-year-old Turkish jihadist, identified only as Yussuf K., was sentenced to seven years in prison for attacking Benjamin Amsellem, a Jewish teacher in Marseille, with a machete. Yussuf K. said he carried out the January 2016 attack “in the name of Allah and the Islamic State.” He added that he chose his victim because “he was Jewish.” Yussuf K. was charged with “an individual terrorist attempt and attempted assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise,” with the aggravating circumstance of anti-Semitism. He was tried as a minor because he was 15 when he carried out the attack. The criminal trial of a minor on terror charges was the first of its kind in France, where some fifty children are currently being investigated for jihadist offenses.

March 2. The European Parliament voted to lift the immunity from prosecution for National Front leader Marine Le Pen for tweeting images of Islamic State violence. Under French law, publishing violent images can be punished by up to three years in prison and a fine of €75,000 euros ($79,000). Le Pen, a leading candidate in this year’s French presidential election, posted the images in response to a journalist who compared her party’s anti-immigration stance to the Islamic State. Le Pen denounced the legal proceedings against her as political interference in the campaign and called for a moratorium on judicial investigations until the election period has passed.

March 4. The mayor of the French port of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, signed a decree prohibiting aid groups from distributing meals to migrants and refugees at the site of the former “Jungle” migrant camp. The decree said food distribution by charities had led to large numbers of people gathering at the site of the now-closed camp, with fights breaking out and risks posed to the safety of local residents.

March 6. President François Hollande vowed to “do everything in his power” to prevent Marine Le Pen from winning the upcoming presidential election in France. Polls have suggested that Le Pen, leader of the National Front party, may win the first round of France’s election on April 23. Le Pen, who has campaigned on an anti-immigration platform, has also vowed to hold a referendum on France’s membership of the European Union. Hollande, who decided not to run for a second term, said it was his “ultimate duty to do everything to ensure that France is not convinced by such a plan” to take France out of the EU.

The indefatigable Soeren Kern, of the Gatestone Institute, itemizes the multculturalization of Britain, in March, or rather the continuing Islamization of Britain in just one month. For if multculturalization means anything in Britain (and elsewhere), it all seems to be a marked deck, or a rigged game, in favor of Islam. “Heads we win, tails we win.” However, I don’t see Muslims donning bells and learning the simple steps of the Morris dance, or any other British reel. Where does the “multi” enter the picture?It doesn’t.

Multiculturalism in Islam’s vocabulary means submission to Islam. It doesn’t mean “equality” or par with Western values or cultural traditions. It doesn’t mean that the hijab is equal to the miniskirt. In means a total substitution of Islam for whatever is Western. It means the negation of the West. It means not just the elevation of a barbaric “culture” to a level with the West’s. It means its burial. Paraphrasing one of Ayn Rand’s villains, it means “elevating the mediocre so that the shrines are razed.” That is all it has ever meant.

The month of London and Britain in March that Kern details does not include the likes of Indiscreet. That culture is gone.

Afraid of asserting the superiority of its values lest it be charge with hubris, the West has always shilly-shallied when it came to defending its values against the cultural and moral relativists, and against Islam. It did not want to be accused of cultural “imperialism.” Rand had another gem that applies across the board in all conflicts, most especially today, in the conflict between the West and Islam:

“In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

That is, the most consistent party will come out on top.

Andrew Michta, in his essay on American Interest, “The Deconstruction of the West,” offers a number of salient observations on why the West has become so timorous when confronting Islam, among them:

The problem, rather, is the West’s growing inability to agree on how it should be defined as a civilization. At the core of the deepening dysfunction in the West is the self-induced deconstruction of Western culture and, with it, the glue that for two centuries kept Europe and the United States at the center of the international system….

Today, in the wake of decades of group identity politics and the attendant deconstruction of our heritage through academia, the media, and popular culture, this conviction in the uniqueness of the West is only a pale shadow of what it was a mere half century ago. It has been replaced by elite narratives substituting shame for pride and indifference to one’s own heritage for patriotism. [Italics mine]

Soeren Kern, in an earlier Gatestone article from May 2016, “Meet the First Muslim of London,” discusses the number of “troubling” actions and statements from Sadiq Khan’s past that belie his image as a mild-mannered Muslim and a harmless Pooh bear:

Conservative Party candidate Zac Goldsmith accused Khan of giving “platform, oxygen and cover” to Islamic extremists. He also accused Khan of “hiding behind Britain’s Muslims” by branding as “Islamophobes” those who shed light on his past…..

Khan also spent years campaigning to prevent Babar Ahmad from being extradited to the United States on charges of providing material support to terrorism. Ahmad, who admitted his guilt, later said that his support for the Taliban was “naïve.”

In 2002, Khan represented the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan. Khan tried to reverse a decision by the Home Office, which had banned Farrakhan from entering the UK due to fears that his anti-Semitic views would stir up racial hatred. Farrakhan has called Jews “bloodsuckers” and referred to Judaism as “a gutter religion.”

At the time, Khan said: “Mr. Farrakhan is not anti-Semitic and does not preach a message of racial hatred and antagonism.” Khan added:

“Farrakhan is preaching a message of self-discipline, self-reliance, atonement and responsibility. He’s trying to address the issues and problems we have in the UK, black on black crime and problems in the black community. It’s outrageous and astonishing that the British Government is trying to exclude this man.”

Khan now says: “Even the worst people deserve a legal defense.,,,”

In 2004, Khan was the chief legal advisor to the Muslim Council of Britain, a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Khan defended Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born Islamist who has been banned from entering the UK. Al-Qaradawi has expressed support for Hamas suicide bombings against Israel: “It’s not suicide, it is martyrdom in the name of Allah.” According to Khan, however, “Quotes attributed to this man may or may not be true.”

Also in 2004, Khan shared a platform with a half-dozen Islamic extremists in London at a political meeting where women were told to use a separate entrance. One of the speakers was Azzam Tamimi, who has said he wants Israel destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state. Another speaker was Daud Abdullah, who has led boycotts of Holocaust Memorial Day. Yet another speaker was Ibrahim Hewitt, a Muslim hardliner who believes that adulterers should be “stoned to death….”in 2009, when Khan was the Minister for Community Cohesion in charge of government efforts to eradicate extremism, he gave an interview to the Iran-backed Press TV. He described moderate Muslims as “Uncle Toms,” a racial slur used against blacks to imply that they are too eager to please whites.

Meanwhile, today, Kern reveals that:

March 3. The Amateur Swimming Association changed its swimsuit regulations to allow Muslim women to wear full body outfits, after a request from the Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation. The rule was changed to encourage more Muslim women to take part in the sport. Rimla Akhtar, from the Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation, said:

“Participation in sport amongst Muslim women is increasing at a rapid pace. It is imperative that governing bodies adapt and tailor their offerings to suit the changing landscape of sport, including those who access their sport.”

Any distinction between “extremists” and “moderates” in Iran’s political establishment is false.

Whatever the results of the upcoming Iranian elections, there will be no shift in Tehran’s human rights violations or core aims of regional hegemony and pursuit of nuclear weapons.

What does matter is the behavior of the West, particularly the United States, in the near future. If it again resorts to cooperating with Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria, Khamenei will not only be able to pursue his regional and global interests unfettered, but will be better equipped to contain crises at home.

The presidential elections in Iran, scheduled for May 19, have observers wondering whether the “white turban” incumbent, Hassan Rouhani, will retain his position, or be defeated by his likely contender, the “black turban” mullah, Ebrahim Raisi, known for his key role in the 1988 massacre of more than 30,000 political prisoners.

Iran’s elections have observers wondering whether the “white turban” incumbent, Hassan Rouhani (left), will retain his position or be defeated by his likely contender, Ebrahim Raisi (right), the “black turban” mullah. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons).

More importantly, the question on Western minds is how and in what way the Islamic Republic will be affected by either outcome.

The two periods in Iran’s recent history that need to be examined in order to answer this question are that of the tenure of former firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005 to 2013), who also announced he is running again, and the one that has followed under Rouhani.

At the outset of the Ahmadinejad era, Iran’s GDP (using purchasing power parity) soared beyond $1 trillion, and two of the country’s greatest threats — Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Afghanistan under the Taliban — were eliminated. Both enabled Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to solidify his stronghold.

Midway through this period, however, Iran’s economy fell sharply. Iran became the country with the fifth highest inflation rate in the world. Iran fell into a serious recession, and millions of Iranians found themselves unemployed. All this was going on even before the international community imposed sanctions on the regime in Tehran.

In the years that followed Ahmadinejad’s replacement by the so-called “moderate” Rouhani, sanctions were lifted; oil exports reached pre-sanction levels; billions of dollars’ worth of assets abroad were unfrozen; and hundreds of agreements were signed to expand business transactions with the West.

Nevertheless, the last year of Rouhani’s first term was characterized by yet another economic crisis, summarized in March by Iranian Road and Construction Minister Abbas Akhoondi as: banks going bankrupt, crippling national debt and low economic efficiency.

This isn’t the kind of victory that Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted.

Turkey’s president, after all, has long enjoyed most of the executive powers that he formally obtained in Sunday’s vote on constitutional changes. His role as head of the country’s governing party, with its pliant parliamentary majority, ensured that real authority was already concentrated in the presidential palace.

What Mr. Erdogan needed, after the July coup attempt against him, was a public affirmation of his leadership—and of his drive to root out dissent. That drive saw hundreds of thousands of opponents, including most leaders of the second-largest opposition party in parliament, hounded from their jobs or thrown behind bars.

With the broadcast media under tight state control and “No” campaigners branded by government officials as traitors or terrorists, Mr. Erdogan’ aides just a few weeks ago confidently predicted that “Yes” would carry the referendum by 60% or more.

Instead, despite all the intimidation and the widespread reports of fraud during Sunday’s vote, the preliminary results, as released by Anadolu state news agency, showed “Yes” barely eking it out at 51.2% versus 48.8%.

That didn’t deter Mr. Erdogan from issuing congratulations on the victory. “The entire country has triumphed,” he said, calling for an end to “unnecessary discussions.”

In a speech to a crowd of supporters gathered under the rain in front of the ruling party’s headquarters, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim described the vote as providing a popular mandate for Mr. Erdogan. “It’s a turning point in the history of our democracy,” he said. “Against the traitors and dividers we stood united as a nation.”

Yet, instead of cementing Mr. Erdogan’s authority, such a thin—and contested—margin may end up threatening his ability to govern unchallenged in the months to come.

“Erdogan may discover that this is a Pyrrhic victory,” said Henri Barkey, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “He may have won now, but he may find that in the medium term opposition to him at home and abroad may harden.”

Turkey’s opposition politicians have already claimed that massive fraud has occurred, particularly in the ruling party’s strongholds in rural Anatolia and in the war-ravaged Kurdish areas of southeast Turkey. These complaints are likely to further delegitimize the result in the eyes of many Turks opposed to Mr. Erdogan.

“It’s the first election in which people have serious doubts about the legitimacy of the process,” said Asli Aydintasbas, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “This means nothing gets solved, and this remains a deeply polarized and divided country. That’s a very dangerous place to be in.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Images of protesters in Caracas running through clouds of tear gas and bloodied by state security forces have been front and center in recent media coverage of Venezuela. Other cities around the country also have been hit hard by police, national guard troops and the regime’s paramilitary forces as the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro tries to contain a wildfire of rebellion.

Since 1999, when Hugo Chávez launched his Bolivarian revolution, sporadic periods of social unrest have been quashed with force. But this time things are different. The government is running out of money to buy imports, and since it has crippled domestic production, privation is growing more profound.

These protests were initially sparked by the Supreme Court’s attempt to shut down the opposition-controlled National Assembly. They have flourished because of hunger. Venezuela remains a long way from a return to the modern liberal democracy that its 1961 constitution envisioned. But the status quo is unsustainable.

So far this month pro-government militias or the police have allegedly killed three protesters in and around Barquisimeto, the capital city of Lara state. A demonstrator was fatally shot in Valencia—the third largest city in the country—and the governor of Carabobo state has admitted that the police were responsible. Another young protester was killed in a satellite city of Caracas, and an 87-year-old Caracas woman died when tear gas inundated her home.

Roving bands of government-sponsored militias terrorize civil society as they have for more than a decade. On Wednesday one gang burst into the Basilica of St. Teresa in Caracas, where Cardinal Jorge Urosa was to say Mass, and began attacking parishioners.

Yet protests are swelling and becoming more frequent. Video taken from a tall Caracas building on April 8 captures a mass of humanity blanketing the wide Avenida Francisco Miranda as far as the eye can see.

At a February forum for youth in Miranda state, a 16-year-old girl politely informed Mr. Maduro that students in her school often faint from hunger. She also reported a hole in the school roof and a shortage of desks.

The young men in the streets have a different way of communicating, oozing fury as they dart among heavily armed security forces. Casualties only stiffen their resolve. Mr. Maduro was pelted with stones as he left a military rally in Bolívar state last week. CONTINUE AT SITE

“Have you seen some of those ISIS propaganda videos, they are cut like action movies. Where is the counter narrative?” — Riz Ahmed, actor.

Britain’s foreign aid budget is reportedly funding at least two dozen Palestinian schools, some of which are named after terrorists and murderers and which openly promote terrorism and encourage pupils to see child killers as role models.

An estimated 400 home-grown jihadis have returned to the United Kingdom after fighting in Syria, but only 54 of those have been prosecuted, according to a Mail on Sunday investigation, which also discovered that some returned jihadis are roaming free on the streets of Britain.

March 1. A new Channel 4 documentary series called “Extremely British Muslims” showed the inner workings of a sharia court inside Birmingham’s Central Mosque. In the first episode, viewers witnessed the case of mother-of-four Fatima, 33, as she sought permission to divorce her drug dealer husband she says has abused her throughout their 14-year marriage. According to sharia law, Muslim women must plead their divorce cases in court, while Muslim men need only to say the words “I divorce you” three times to obtain a divorce. Birmingham Central Mosque said it allowed the sharia proceedings to be filmed in an effort to “break down misconceptions about Islam.” Some 100 sharia courts in Britain are now dispensing Islamic justice outside the remit of the British legal system.

March 2. English actor Riz Ahmed warned that the lack of Muslim faces on British television was alienating young people, driving them towards extremism and into the arms of the Islamic State. Delivering Channel 4’s annual diversity lecture in Parliament, Ahmed said that television had a pivotal role to play in ensuring that Muslims felt heard, and valued, in British society:

“If we fail to represent, we are in danger of losing people to extremism. In the mind of the ISIS recruit, he’s the next James Bond right? Have you seen some of those ISIS propaganda videos, they are cut like action movies. Where is the counter narrative? Where are we telling these kids they can be heroes in our stories — that they are valued? If we don’t step up and tell a representative story we are going to start losing British teenagers to the story that the next chapter in their lives is written with ISIS in Syria.”

March 3. The Amateur Swimming Association changed its swimsuit regulations to allow Muslim women to wear full body outfits, after a request from the Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation. The rule was changed to encourage more Muslim women to take part in the sport. Rimla Akhtar, from the Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation, said:

“Participation in sport amongst Muslim women is increasing at a rapid pace. It is imperative that governing bodies adapt and tailor their offerings to suit the changing landscape of sport, including those who access their sport.”

March 4. Ryan Counsell, 28, a jihadist from Nottingham who left his wife and two small children to fight with the Abu Sayyaf Islamist group in the Philippines, blamed his behavior on the Brexit vote. He told the Woolwich Crown Court that increased tension within the local Muslim community after Brexit sparked his decision to leave. He said that he wanted to escape Britain’s political climate and seek an “idyllic life” under sharia law. He was arrested at Stansted airport in July 2016 and was later sentenced to eight years in prison.

March 5. Homegrown terrorism inspired by the Islamic State poses the dominant threat to the national security of the United Kingdom, according to a comprehensive new report on violent Islamism in Britain. The 1,000-page report — “Islamist Terrorism: Analysis of Offenses and Attacks in the UK (1998–2015)” — was published by the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank based in London.

The report found that number of Islamism-related offenses (IROs) in Britain doubled between 2011 and 2015 from 12 to 23 a year. More than half (52%) of IROs were committed by individuals of South Asian ancestry: British-Pakistanis (25%) and British-Bangladeshis (8%). Other offenders had family ties to countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. Forty-seven percent of IROs were committed by individuals born in the UK.

The also report showed a clear link between terrorism and growing up in Muslim-dominated neighborhoods. London was the place of residence of 43% of IROs, followed by West Midlands, with 18%. Of the latter, 80% of IROs were in Birmingham. The third most common region was North West England, with 10% of IROs. Together, these three regions contained the residences in almost three-quarters (72%) of cases. East London was home to half (50%) the London-based offenders, while the three most common boroughs — Tower Hamlets, Newham and Waltham Forest — contained the residence of offenders’ in 38% of all London IROs (and 16% overall).

March 6. British security services have prevented 13 potential terror attacks since June 2013, according to Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the UK’s most senior counter-terrorism police officer. He also said that there were 500 live counter-terror investigations at any given time, and that investigators have been arresting terror suspects at a rate of close to one a day since 2014. The official threat level for international terrorism in the UK has stood at severe — meaning an attack is “highly likely” — for more than two years.

March 7. The National Health Service (NHS) revealed that there were 2,332 new cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Britain between October and December 2016. That brought the total of new cases in 2016 to nearly 5,500.

March 7. The managers of the cash-strapped Sandwell General Hospital near Birmingham are considering the construction of a special kitchen for preparing halal meals for Muslim patients and staff. The move follows complaints about the quality of halal meals that the hospital has outsourced to local vendors. A spokesman said: “We are still reviewing options around creating a separate halal kitchen and the best ways to provide a range of healthy halal options to patients and staff who want them.”

March 10. The BBC announced that it would begin outsourcing production of Songs of Praise, a Sunday worship program that has been produced in-house for 55 years. Critics of the move said they feared that Songs of Praise will lose its Christian focus in favor of Islam. Anglican priest Lynda Rose said a recent Songs of Praise episode featuring a segment about the Muslim faith, including Church of England children visiting a mosque, exemplified the “Islamization of the BBC.” More than 6,000 people have signed an online petition calling for MPs to investigate the BBC after it appointed Fatima Salaria as the BBC’s head of religious programming — the second Muslim in a row to hold the post.

According to the Christian Association of Nigeria, 900 Christian churches have been destroyed in 12 northern states that adopted Islamic law, in the early 2000s.

A blasphemy case was registered against Shaan Taseer — son of Salman Taseer, a human rights activist and defender of persecuted Christians who was assassinated by Muslims — for saying “Merry Christmas.” — Pakistan.

Thanks to dishonest Muslim translators, immigration officials are rejecting asylum applications from Muslim converts to Christianity from Iran and Afghanistan during what one pastor characterized as “kangaroo court” hearings. Rev. Gottfried Martens accused the “almost exclusively Muslim translators” of deliberately mistranslating their responses to disqualify their applications. — Germany.

Tragic stories of Christian experiences under the Islamic State continued to emerge throughout the month of January. A Christian doctor who forfeited the chance to escape his Syrian village after ISIS had captured it because he wanted to stay and help the sick and needy, both Christian and Muslim, was kidnapped by the Muslim terrorists and ordered to renounce Christ for Muhammad. When he refused, they publicly slaughtered him. Similarly, after ISIS ordered another Christian youth in Syria to embrace Islam, he too refused and was slaughtered for it. His mother — who was prevented from burying her martyred son’s body — recalled that when ISIS first invaded their village, he reminded her of Jesus’ assertion in the New Testament: “If you deny me before men I will deny you before the Father.”

After members of ISIS raided the home of Zarefa, an elderly Christian woman in Iraq, they discovered crucifixes and Christian icons. “They forced me to spit on the Cross,” she recalled.

“I told them that it was not appropriate, that it was a sin. He said that I must spit. ‘Don’t you see that I have a gun?’ he asked me. I said to myself, ‘Oh, the Cross! I am weak, I will spit on you. But Lord, I ask you to take revenge for me. I cannot escape from this.'”

According to the report, “The shame is still visible on Zarefa’s face when she recounts the memory; her town, Qaraqosh, is liberated now, but she is still recovering from the traumatic two years that are only just behind her.”

A Christian widow and her teenage son from the Nineveh plains of Iraq recounted their treatment after ISIS took their village. The boy described how the militants once marched him “by men in orange suits, held at gunpoint by a group of Daesh [ISIS] children.”

“The children executed them with pleasure… Another time I ran into a big crowd on the street. There was a woman; her hands and feet were tied. The Daesh terrorists drew a circle around her. If she got out of the circle, she would live, but that was impossible because she was tied. While her relatives were crying and begging for a pardon, the Jihadists threw stones at her until she died.”

After being made to watch several such execution, the militants told him: “If you do not convert to Islam, we will shoot you as well.” The boy, who was 14 at the time, added: “That is when I converted to Islam. From that time on, we concealed that we were Christians.” Later, when the jihadis discovered he was wearing a crucifix around his neck, they beat him and sent him to an Islamic “correctional camp” where he was indoctrinated in the Koran for a month.

“I was hit whenever I could not answer their questions [about Muslim doctrine] the way they wanted me to, and my mother was stung with long needles because she had not studied anything from the Koran.”

After two years under ISIS, they managed to escape. “Yes, I am embarrassed for having had to profess Islam,” the boy said.

The rest of the accounts of Muslim persecution of Christians to surface in January 2017 include, but are not limited to, the following:

Muslim Violence against and Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: Over the course of just 10 days in January, four Christians were slaughtered on three separate occasions. On January 3, a Muslim man crept up behind a Christian man, 45, and slit his throat, because he owned a shop that sold alcohol, which the Muslim deemed “contrary to the Sharia [Islamic law] and the religion [Islam].” On January 6, a married Christian couple (husband 62, wife 55) were found slaughtered in their home in Monufia, north Egypt. Their throats were slit and their bodies had multiple stab wounds. Nothing was stolen from their apartments; relatives say it was a hate crime based on their religion. On Friday, January 13, another Christian man, a young surgeon — well-liked by poor Muslim and Christian locals for providing them with free treatment — was found slaughtered in his apartment in Asyut, southern Egypt. He too had stab wounds to his neck, chest, and back.

Philippines: According to a January 12, 2017 report, a former Muslim convert to Christianity was found slaughtered in his home by local Muslims for apostatizing from Islam. During his time as a Muslim, Datu was hostile to Christianity; when he found that a Christian youth was courting his daughter and the couple wanted to marry, he began to hurl stones at the boy’s father, a pastor. Later, when even death threats failed to separate the couple — and after securing a large dowry from the Christian family — Datu agreed to the marriage. During the church ceremony, which was conducted by the bridegroom’s father, whom Datu used to stone, the Muslim man was struck by what he heard to the point that he converted to Christianity. He then fled to another town to avoid persecution and study the Bible. When he returned home to visit his family, he was found dead, killed by local Muslims for apostatizing from Islam.

Germany: A court heard how a 27-year-old Muslim intruder named Abubaker broke into the Heilbronn home of a 70-year-old Christian woman described as a “devout Catholic” and “regular churchgoer.” He tied her up, abused her, placed a cross in her hands, and strangled her to death. Then he wrote “a series of Arabic and religious messages around the house” — including “It’s payback time” in English — before stealing some items and fleeing the scene. The defendant — described as a “strict Muslim” — is of Pakistani descent and grew up in Saudi Arabia. Although his DNA was found on the scene of the murder as well as an imprint of the sole of his red shoes and fibers from his jacket, Abubaker insisted the charges against him were a “lie” and that he was being “framed by a religious conspiracy.”