The mass exodus of Christians from the Muslim world
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently said: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.”
In our lifetime alone “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.” Ongoing reports from the Islamic world certainly support this conclusion: Iraq was the earliest indicator of the fate awaiting Christians once Islamic forces are liberated from the grip of dictators.
Now, as the U.S. supports the jihad on Syria’s secular president Assad, the same pattern has come to Syria: entire regions and towns where Christians lived for centuries before Islam came into being have now been emptied, as the opposition targets Christians for kidnapping, plundering, and beheadings, all in compliance with mosque calls telling the populace that it’s a “sacred duty” to drive Christians away.
In October 2012 the last Christian in the city of Homs—which had a Christian population of some 80,000 before jihadis came—was murdered. One teenage Syrian girl said: “We left because they were trying to kill us… because we were Christians…. Those who were our neighbors turned against us. At the end, when we ran away, we went through balconies. We did not even dare go out on the street in front of our house.”
In Egypt, some 100,000 Christian Copts have fled their homeland soon after the “Arab Spring.” In September 2012, the Sinai’s small Christian community was attacked and evicted by Al Qaeda linked Muslims, Reuters reported. But even before that, the Coptic Orthodox Church lamented the “repeated incidents of displacement of Copts from their homes, whether by force or threat. Displacements began in Ameriya [62 Christian families evicted], then they stretched to Dahshur [120 Christian families evicted], and today terror and threats have reached the hearts and souls of our Coptic children in Sinai.”
Iraq, Syria, and Egypt are part of the Arab world. But even in “black” African and “white” European nations with Muslim majorities, Christians are fleeing. In Mali, after a 2012 Islamic coup, as many as 200,000 Christians fled. According to reports, “the church in Mali faces being eradicated,” especially in the north “where rebels want to establish an independent Islamist state and drive Christians out… there have been house to house searches for Christians who might be in hiding, churches and other Christian property have been looted or destroyed, and people tortured into revealing any Christian relatives.” At least one pastor was beheaded.
Even in European Bosnia, Christians are leaving en mass “amid mounting discrimination and Islamization.” Only 440,000 Catholics remain in the Balkan nation, half the prewar figure. Problems cited are typical: “while dozens of mosques were built in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, no building permissions [permits] were given for Christian churches.” “Time is running out as there is a worrisome rise in radicalism,” said one authority, who further added that the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina were “persecuted for centuries” after European powers “failed to support them in their struggle against the Ottoman Empire.”
And so history repeats itself.
One can go on and on:
- In Ethiopia, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes when “Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes.”
- In the Ivory Coast—where Christians have literally been crucified—Islamic rebels “massacred hundreds and displaced tens of thousands” of Christians.
- In Libya, Islamic rebels forced several Christian religious orders, serving the sick and needy in the country since 1921, to flee.
Raymond Ibrahim is author of the new book "Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians" (Regnery Publishing 2013). A Middle East and Islam specialist, he is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.
[Editor's note: we in New Zealand have experienced part of this exodus. Christian Iraqi refugees have resettled in New Zealand. They are gradually assimilating into NZ churches and finding Christian fellowship and support. This is a very small part of a global story.
At one level it is yet one more demonstration of how intrinsically weak and insipid Islamic doctrine and historical teaching is. Islam cannot survive without the sword. It repeatedly demonstrates it cannot win a religious battle for hearts, minds and souls for it is spiritually impotent. It has to force its doctrines and life by the sword upon subjugated peoples. And when it has "cleansed" itself of Christians, Islamic societies turn upon one another. There are no wars of religious more vicious than the wars between Shi'ites and Sunnis--an enmity that stretches back one and a half millennia. Shi'ites cannot persuade Sunnis, and vice versa, for both are spiritually impotent. They can only progress their cause by means of violence, intimidation, standover tactics, and bloodshed. Islam is a religion of gangsters.
But we also know that those enslaved under this darkness will one day be released, for Islamic nations will eventually willingly fall under the aegis of the Lord Jesus Christ. Their coming to Christ will be not by the sword, but by the Spirit, Who will call them irresistibly in the day of His power, "convincing them of their sin and misery, enlightening their minds in the knowledge of Christ and renewing their wills", He will "both persuade and enable them to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to them in the Gospel. (Westminster Shorter Catechism)]
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