Report Reveals 9 Out Of 10 Top Countries Most Oppressive For Christians … Are Islamic

By Michael Gryboski, The Christian Post – “Nine out of the ten countries ranked the most oppressive for Christians to live in were due to Islamic extremism, according to Open Doors’ annual World Watch List, which was released Wednesday.

With the exception of North Korea – ranked No. 1 for the 12th year in a row – every other country on the top 10 list had as its source of persecution, Islamic extremism. North Korea’s persecution of Christians was due to communist oppression and dictatorial paranoia, explained Open Doors in its 2014 World Watch List. According to the report, the countries with the most extreme persecution besides North Korea are: Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen, respectively.

Open Doors announced the rankings for its 2014 World Watch List, which documented the 50 nations least tolerant of their Christian population, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The Christian persecution watchdog group’s methodology involved measuring the level of Christian freedom found in five spheres of life: private, family, community, national, and church. A sixth sphere regarding degree of violence also factors in to the rankings.

Dr. David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors; Dr. Ronald Boyd-MacMillan, head of Strategy and Research for Open Doors International; and Dr. Paul Marshall, author and senior fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, were among those who gave remarks at the press conference.

America’s Silence on Religious Persecution

In his remarks, Dr. Paul Marshall explained that in contrast to previous years, the United States has been largely silent on the issue of religious persecution. Marshall told The Christian Post that he believes the root of this silence – also seen in Protestant U.S. church, according to him – is in part due to the rise of ‘realism’ regarding diplomacy.

‘I think that one reason is because in the State Department you have the ascendency of realism in international relations,’ said Marshall. ‘So you just deal with states according to what you think you can get and don’t seek to delve inside them.’

Marshall also told CP that another factor was that the Obama administration had different priorities regarding human rights abroad. ‘The Administration has put a larger stress on other forms of human rights or rights conceived of in different ways,’ he said. ‘Rights of women … rights of homosexuals …'” Read more.

Flashback: Obama’s Christian Problem – White House Overlooks Christian Persecution While Pandering to Islam – “The Obama administration has been obsessed with Muslim outreach and recently tried to mend fences with the Jewish community. Given the state of the world, however, the White House ought to be focused on helping the world’s oppressed Christians. The United States has been wary to intervene in matters affecting Christians in the Middle East for fear of validating terrorist narratives that the West is engaged in a new crusade against Islam. The result of this passive policy has been to allow Islamic extremists increasingly to dominate the debate, often with tragic consequences.” Read more.

Flashback: Washington Times: Obama Administration Silent While Saudi Grand Mufti Targets Christianity, ‘Ignores These Types Of Provocations At Its Peril’ – “If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.” Read more.

Jihad Has Been Hijacked By Terrorists, Says Islamic Scholar

Qur’an Sura 4:76a, “Those who believe [in Islam] fight in the cause of Allah …”

If those who believe fight in the cause of “Allah”, then what does that say about the Muslim faith of those who do not? To claim that jihad has been hijacked by terrorists is like saying that Islam had been hijacked by Mohammed. The former cannot exist apart from the latter …

Hadith, Bukhari 2977, “I have been made victorious with terror” – The “Prophet” Of Islam, Mohammed

Hadith, Sahih Muslim 1:33a, “The Messenger of Allah [Mohammed] said: ‘I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Mohammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish [Islamic] prayer …”

Qur’an Sura 33:21, “Indeed in Allah’s Messenger (Mohammad) you have an excellent example to follow for him who hopes in (meeting with) Allah and the Last Day …”

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By Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch – “It is good that Qadri ‘led all participants at the roundtable to observe silence as a mark of respect to all the victims and survivors of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.’ That is a concrete sign of solidarity with the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of at least one jihad terror attack — in stark contrast to the vague denunciations of terror we get all too often from Muslim groups in the West — vague because they don’t specify who the terrorists really are, and leave the door open to the interpretation that what is being condemned is Israeli and American ‘state terrorism,’ not Islamic jihad terrorism.

Still, questions remain. Qadri’s nearly 400-page fatwa against terrorism doesn’t even discuss the verses of the Qur’an that jihadists use to justify terrorism, as I showed in this article. In a response to that article, the Fatwa Against Terrorism site offered Qadri’s fanciful interpolated versions of the verses in question — he added material that made the violent verses relatively peaceful, but his interpolations, unfortunately, have no basis in the Arabic text of the Qur’an or Islamic tradition.

In light of that, he still has not proven that the concept of jihad actually has been hijacked by terrorists. And so he has effectively done nothing to stop the jihadists from continuing to do violence — or from making recruits among peaceful Muslims by presenting themselves as the authentic exponents of the true teaching of the Qur’an and Sunnah.

‘Jihad has been hijacked by terrorists, says Islamic scholar,’ from the Press Trust of India, January 9:

Renowned Islamic scholar of Pakistani descent Shaykh-ul-Islam Dr Mohammed Tahir-ul-Qadri today condemned all acts of terrorism and said the concept of Jihad has been hijacked by terrorists.

Author of the acclaimed book ‘Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings’, Dr Qadri, who is living in Canada for past few years because of threat to his life in Pakistan, said this while delivering his keynote address via a live video feed at the “People’s SAARC Prayer for Peace”, an interfaith roundtable conference to promote peace, solidarity and harmony in South Asia.

The interfaith prayer meeting and roundtable conference was jointly organised by the Observer Research Foundation Mumbai, a not-for-profit public policy think tank, and an NGO Minhaj-ul-Quran International, India.

Religious leaders representing a cross-section of faiths, who participated in the roundtable, agreed to

Al Qaeda Now Controls More Territory Than Ever In The Middle East

Revelation 13:4, “And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’”

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Flag: “Obama Foreign Policy”

By Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland, CNN – “From around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East, according to English and Arab language news accounts as well as accounts on jihadist websites.

Indeed, al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.

The focus of al Qaeda’s leaders has always been regime change in the Arab world in order to install Taliban-style regimes. Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri acknowledged as much in his 2001 autobiography, ‘Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet,’ when he explained that the most important strategic goal of al Qaeda was to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world, explaining that, ‘without achieving this goal our actions will mean nothing.’

Now al-Zawahiri is closer to his goal than he has ever been. On Friday al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq seized control of parts of the city of Falluja and parts of the city of Ramadi, both of which are located in Iraq’s restive Anbar Province.

Anbar is home to predominantly Sunni Muslims, who feel that that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki treats the Sunnis as second-class citizens.

Sectarian tensions in Anbar recently burst into several all-out revolts against the government, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as the al-Qaeda affiliate there is known, quickly seized the opportunity to notch some battlefield victories.

Government forces increased their presence around Falluja in response and on Tuesday tribal leaders issued a statement urging people who had fled the city or stopped reporting to work to return.

ISIS is also operating in Syria, where it has established a presence in many areas of the Aleppo and Idlib Governorates in the northwest. In August, ISIS launched a propaganda series on video highlighting their activities in Syria, which includes interviews with fighters; the ‘graduation’ of a group of mujahedin ‘cubs’ (aged about 7 to 10 years old) from training, and sermons at local mosques preaching al Qaeda’s interpretation of Islam.

The al-Nusra front has claimed to control parts of at least a dozen Syrian towns. Those include sections of the ancient city of the Aleppo in the northwest, where fighters have been filmed running a community fair and preaching al Qaeda’s values to crowds of children.

The group has also released videos on jihadist websites claiming that it is providing services to the people of several towns in the governorate of Idlib, which borders the Aleppo Governorate to the west. Al Nusra claims that it is a quasi-government and service-provider in the towns of Binnish, Taum, and Saraqib.

Al-Nusra fighters allied to al Qaeda function like a government in areas they control in Syria. The group provides daily deliveries of bread, free running water and electricity, a health clinic, and a strict justice system based on Sharia law in the eastern Syrian city of Ash Shaddadi, where it also took control of the city’s wheat silos and oil wells.

In September a CNN reporting team concluded, ‘Al Qaeda has swept to power with the aim of imposing a strict Islamist ideology on Syrians across large swathes of Syria’s rebel-held north.’

In sum, al Qaeda affiliates now control much of northern and northwestern Syria as well as some parts of eastern Syria, as well as much of Anbar province, which is around a third of Iraqi territory.” Read more.

Flashback: Algerian Writer: Islamists And Jihadis Are A Cancer On The Face Of The World – “It is not going to stop, [instead] it keeps on reproducing itself in the cities of the Sahara, it becomes vocal and shouts, then kills, taking you by the throat; it destroys giant Buddhas and [people’s] bodies and advances like a desert that dries out even the desert itself: salafism/Islamism/fundamentalism, the cancer on the face of the world and on the will to live. All this no longer obeys the ancient forms of the threat: it is no longer a brigade, a group or a front, but a sort of tumor: it may swell under your armpit or on the streets of London. It kills; we then arrest the killer, but we do not stop the disease. We kill the hostage taker, but not the malignant cell. And it has a banner, a sort of skein of darkness, that is waved in the dry and dead wind of a theological infinity.” Read more.

Convert Or Die: How The Muslim World Came Into Being

The man Mohammed had one goal in mind: total conquest. As his number grew, disparity, destruction and death followed closely behind. All of this is spelled out for us in the Book of Revelation. See “Unsealed: A Closer Look At Revelation 6 And ‘The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse’” to learn how …

Revelation 13:15, 18, “And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain… This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate [ψηφίζω – “reckon”] the number [ἀριθμός – “multitude”] of the beast, for it is the number [ἀριθμός – “multitude”] of a man, and his number [ἀριθμός – “multitude”] is [χξς – “In The Name of Allah” in Arabic].”

Hadith, Sahih Muslim 1:33a, “The Messenger of Allah [Mohammed] said: ‘I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Mohammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish [Islamic] prayer …” (The Shahada)

By Raymond Ibrahim, American Thinker – “Arabic-language websites reported earlier this week that the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which throughout the course of the war against the Assad government has committed any number of atrocities — from decapitating ‘infidels’ to burning churches — has successfully ‘forced’ two Armenian Christian families to convert to Islam.

A video accompanies some of these reports.  In it, what appears to be an elderly Armenian man stands alongside an Islamic cleric who announces the Christian man’s conversion to Islam — to thunderous cries of ‘Allahu Akbar!’  In his exultation, the cleric makes exuberant statements like ‘You see, we have no honor without Islam — without crying aloud that ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet!”  (This appears to be another way of saying, ‘Only by joining our winning team can you ever escape dishonor,’ the lot of all non-Muslim ‘infidels.’)

The cleric also adds that, because the man is the head of his household, his Christian wife and children are all now Muslim as well — ‘all praise to Allah!’  And if they reject their new Islamic identity, they become ‘apostates,’ a crime punishable by death.

The rather flippant and sarcastic text that accompanies this video on some websites points out the obvious:

After decades of peaceful coexistence between the various religions of Syria, and after decades of living under the moderate form of Levantine Islam … these two Armenian families were none too keen on entering Islam or learning of its eminence — except at the hands of DAASH [al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], which has been presenting a ‘rosy’ picture of Islam and Muslims, by way of chopping heads, whipping people, and general repression.  Thus did these two Christian Armenian families finally enter Islam, willingly — but only at the hands of DAASH.

In other words, it’s ‘curious,’ to say the least, that Christians who for generations lived amid moderate Muslim majorities in Syria opted to remain Christian, are now ‘suddenly’ attracted to Islam — and at the hands of a jihadi organization that has been bombing churches, kidnapping and beheading Christians, and teaching even children to slaughter Christians wherever they may be found.

Sound like genuine conviction to you?  Maybe the 2012 news that ‘a family of Armenian Christians was found murdered, and all members of the family horribly decapitated‘ in Syria is compelling these Armenian families into seeing the ‘wisdom’ of embracing Islam?

Here we reach an important but overlooked historical point.  While many Christians, past and present, have indeed willingly embraced martyrdom — the sword, death — rather than recant Christ for Muhammad, the majority of born Christians, when faced with converting to Islam or dying, have

Muslim Lecturer In Australia: We Hate Non-Muslims, We Hate Democracy, We Hate Everything Non-Islamic

Yet Australia and other Western nations continue to welcome those who espouse the very religion responsible for this incorrigible ideology …

Qur’an Sura 18:26, “[Allah] maketh none to share in his government.”

Qur’an Sura 8:59-60, “And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip (Allah’s Purpose). Lo! they cannot escape.  Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy.”

By Mark Schliebs, National Affairs – “THE brother of an Australian man jailed for terrorism-related offences in Saudi Arabia has been delivering lectures at some of the nation’s most controversial Islamic centres while encouraging jihadists to show their ‘might’ against disbelievers.

Perth man Junaid Thorne, a 24-year-old who has spent much of his life in Saudi Arabia, has spoken at Sydney’s al-Risalah and Melbourne’s al-Furqan Islamic centres in recent weeks as part of a lecture tour backed by little-known radical organisation Millatu Ibrahim, which is banned in Germany.

Police and terrorism experts yesterday said they were not aware of the organisation having an active presence in Australia.

At al-Risalah, he sat in front of a Millatu Ibrahim banner – featuring the logo of the al-Qa’ida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant used by the most extreme Sunni fighters in Syria – to deliver his first “public lecture” since being deported from Riyadh in July.

His deportation came after his brother, Shayden, was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in a Riyadh prison for possessing terrorism-related materials and supporting and encouraging terrorism. Mr Thorne, whose father is a Noongar Aboriginal man, was detained for two months for protesting against his brother’s arrest in December 2011.

According to those who attended the Sydney lecture last month, ‘Sheik Muhammad Junaid’ told followers that businessmen should be donating money to jihadists around the world.

‘Support oppressed Muslims across the world, support the mujaheddin,’ he said, according to a summary of the speech that appeared on social media after the event.

‘Money comes and goes, but what remains is what you gave in the cause of Allah. Most of the Ayat (numbered Koranic verses) mention financing jihad before jihad, in relation to the individual (sic) performance.’ …

In other online postings, Mr Thorne indicated that he was involved in a group called Millatu Ibrahim Perth and quoted American-born al-Qa’ida militant Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011…

Millatu Ibrahim Perth’s website was recently closed down, but it has used its Facebook page to declare a hatred of disbelievers.

‘We hate the Kuffar and everything that they worship,’ it reads. ‘We hate their constitutions, we reject their way of life, we reject their political systems, we reject their parliaments, we reject their democracy, capitalism, liberalism, socialism, communism and every other filthy disbelieving ‘ism’ that has come to act as a hindrance from Islam, the pure religion of Allah to rule from the east to the west.'” Read more.

Flashback: Darkness In The Land Down Under

• Muslim ‘Refugee’ Sexually Assaults Blind Woman On Train
• Muslims Discussing The Beheading Of Lee Rigby Say ‘He Deserved It’
• Outrage: Muslim Billboard Campaign Declares Jesus A ‘Prophet of Islam’
• Muslim Father Tells Daughter She Must Never Play With Non-Muslim Kids
• Muslim Teacher Says Raped Women Have Nobody To Blame But Themselves
• Cleric: We’ll Establish The Caliphate, Sharia Law, Make Arabic Official Language
• Mosque Issues Fatwa Against Christmas Because It Promotes Belief In The Trinity
• Radical Imam Calls Democracy ‘Evil’, Calls For The Overthrow Of Australian Law
• Children Carry Signs Calling For The Beheading Of Anyone Insulting Mohammed
• Muslim ‘Prayer Leader’ Sexually Assaults Girls, Blames It On ‘Cultural Differences’
• Muslim TV Commercials Portray ‘Prophet’ Mohammed As ‘The Savior Of Humanity’
• Prime Minister’s New Parliamentary Secretary Ed Husic Swears Loyalty To The Qur’an

Syria: Christian Man Killed For Refusing To Convert To Islam And Worship “Allah”

Where there are reports of one Christian killed for the faith of Jesus there are undoubtedly many more that go unreported. The article below doesn’t specify how this Christian prisoner was killed by Al Qaeda, but as we know all too well they have stated and demonstrated their preferred method in the past on more than on occasion …

Qur’an Sura 8:12b, “… terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.”

Revelation 13:15, “And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain.”

By PanARMENIAN.Net – “An Armenian man named Minas was reportedly killed in Syria for rejecting to be converted to Islam.

As Arabic-language website khabararmani.com reports, the man was killed by members of al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in one of Aleppo prisons controlled by the group.

Estimates of deaths in the Syrian civil war, per opposition activist groups, vary between 95,850 and 130,435. 2.3 million refugees who have registered — and tens of thousands more are waiting to register — with the office of the UN High Commissioner on Refugees. The actual number is feared to be much higher. Almost half of the refugees are girls and women, while another quarter are boys under 18.

66 Armenians were killed in the armed conflict.” Source – PanARMENIAN.Net.

Psalms 94:3, 21, 23, “How long, LORD, will the wicked, how long will the wicked be jubilant? … The wicked band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death… He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the LORD our God will destroy them.”

Flashback: Syria: Rebels Attack Christian Homes, Churches, Many Feared Dead, ‘Convert To Islam Or You Will Be Beheaded’ – “A Maaloula resident said the rebels, many of them sporting beards and shouting [Allahu akbar], attacked Christian homes and churches shortly after moving into the village overnight… Now, Maaloula ‘is a ghost town. Where is President Obama to see what befallen on us?’ asked the man… Another resident, a Christian man, said he saw militants forcing some Christian residents to convert to Islam. ‘I saw the militants grabbing five villagers Wednesday and threatening them (saying): `Either you convert to Islam, or you will be beheaded,’ he said.” Read more.

Flashback: Syria: Entire Christian Family Beheaded By Suspected Islamists In Damascus – “Today in Zamalka a family of Armenian Christians was found murdered, and all members of the family horribly decapitated. The execution brings to mind the work of radical Islamist Salafis. These acts, which affect innocent people, have generated anger and confusion in the Christian community. A leader of the Latin Catholic community of Damascus, who requested anonymity, told Fides: ‘These are terrorist acts: we do not know who is behind, some are groups that want to destroy Syria. Armed gangs of jihadists have begun to sow terror.” Read more.

Revelation 20:4b, “And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”