The spirits of the diabolical pursue after the saints of the Most Holy, conspiring and conniving, as Cain, “to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage” (Galatians 2:4).
And so are many of the sons of Heaven enslaved by those who are slaves to Satan. Over 20,000 Christian families now find themselves under the shackles of the heretic Muslims, who deny the Way, the Truth, and the Life, to only hate the life that God has created in His own image.
Let us look to the lives of Qasir Masih and his wife Farzana, both Christians who were enslaved by Muslims and forced to work in a brick kiln. Both of them give their testimonies as to their state of being slaves, and how they were eventually rescued by our organization, Rescue Christians:
Even if we go to market to buy some food they send their guards to watch over us, so we could not escaped. … And we were not able to educate our children. And we were living miserably; we were not allowed to go church or to any event of our family or relatives. The lives of our children were ruined and we were under constant threat and fear. …On the 22nd of July we met with the team of Rescue Christians, and we told them our and they promised to help us, which they did on the 25th of July. On the 25th of July, they rescued us from the Kiln and save or lives and now we are at safe place with freedom. God bless them abundantly.
Rescue Christians did an interview of Qasir and his wife, sharing their testimony of slavery and bondage, and their liberation from it by Rescue Christians:
Rescue Christians, moreover, rescued another Christian family from Muslim slavery. Meet Ansar Masih and Sobia Bibi. Both were kept in captivity and forced to work for a Muslim brick kiln. Yoked by the fetters of Islamic tyranny, they were forced never to observe Christian activities, even being prevented from celebrating Christmas. As the Christian family said themselves:
We were under many restrictions, we cannot go out nor enjoy any religious day like Christmas … We were working on the kiln as slaves with no contact with the outside world
They were then, by God’s providence, rescued from this horrid and wicked bondage, by our organization, Rescue Christians:
On the 15th of July, 2014 we met with the team of Rescue Christians. We told them all what happened with us, and we requested them to help us. And then later on Rescue Christians rescued us from the kiln and now we are safe and free. We are thankful to Rescue Christians and we pray that God blesses them.
Rescue Christians also interviewed Ansar Masih and his wife, and here is the video:
We still have thousands of other Christians in Pakistan that need to be rescued from this horrible state of slavery. Let us rescue them from the forces of darkness, and from the bastions of tyranny. Help us rescue them.
Both the al-Shabaab terrorists, and the Obama family, want the nation of Kenya to be under Sharia code.
Al-Arab wrote that Obama’s cousin, Musa Obama, “studied Sharia in Medina”, called “upon the Arab and Islamic states to put more effort toward aiding the Kenyan Muslim brethren, especially since there is much support coming from Western nations and Western churches,” said that his organization, the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation, “gives scholarships to study Sharia in Medina [Saudi Arabia].”
He also stated “that despite the fact that Barack Obama hasn’t visited his tribe in Kenya since his election in the United States, there is a continual communication between him and several members of his family and his tribe in Kenya, of which the Kenyan prime minister is also a member.”
So, we know for a fact that Musa Obama studied Sharia in Medina, that his organization gives scholarships for Muslim youths to study Sharia in Saudi Arabia, for the purpose of dechristinizing and extinguishing Christianity in Kenya where the majority of people are Christians. Musa Obama, Sarah Obama (Obama’s grandmother) and Sayed Obama (Obama’s uncle) are lending scholarships for youths to enter the three major Sharia schools in Saudi Arabia, Umm al-Qura, the Islamic University in Medina, and the University of Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.
Now, we have al-Shabaab terrorists executing a slaughter of people in a Nairobi mall, and when we look into what this group is, what we find is that they are a result of youths being sent to these very same universities in Saudi Arabia, including the one where Musa Obama studied.
In the sixties and seventies, the major conduit of wahabism into Somalia, was the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood bringing in Islamic schools into Somalia. Somalian youths were then given scholarships for three major Islamic universities, Umm al-qura University, the University of Medina, and Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University, all three of these institutions are the same schools to where the Mama Obama Sara Fund is sending Kenyan youths to learn Sharia.
The Gulf Issues Centre For Strategic Studiesdescribes these institutions as “the spring of Wahhabism”, and further writes:
[Wahhabists] grew up in the Wahhabi and Salafi schools which imbibed radical ideas in the Islamic University in Medina, Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah, and the University of Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.
A 2010 African Policy Briefing for the International Crisis Group, in writing on the history of wahhabism and the al-Shabab group in Somalia, places its significant growth with Somalian youths being recruited into Umm al-Qura University and the University of Medina, the same schools to which the Mama Sarah Obama Fund brings Kenyan youths to study Islamic Sharia:
Saudi Arabia – flush with petro-dollars after the oil shocks of the 1970s – was particularly instrumental in promoting Wahhabism. and Islamic charities sprang up in all the major urban centres and even in the remote countryside. Well-funded madrasas (religious schools) Thousands of Somali youngsters were brought to Saudi universities – principally Medina and Umm al-Qura – to study Wahhabi jurisprudence (fiqh) and missionary work (da’wa).
The two named universities are the ones which the Obamas are heavily associated with. Moreover, Obama’s brother, Malik Obama, is the executive secretary for the Islamic Da’wa Organization of Sudan, which is working to make Africa Islamic, the same goal of the two named universities’ da’wa programs.
The Foreign Policy Council attributed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Somalia substantially to these same three universities:
After Somalia’s independence in 1960, Egyptians opened secondary schools in many of the country’s towns. In the 1960s and 1970s, Saudi religious and educational institutions—especially the Islamic University of Medina, the Umm al-Qura University in Mecca, and the Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh—joined al-Azhar in offering scholarships to the graduates of these institutions. This development has parallels with the entrenchment of radical Islam in nearby Sudan via the establishment of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, the precursor to the currently-ruling National Congress Party (formerly the National Islamic Front).
This goal to replace Christianity with Islam in Kenya by the Obamas, was expressed by al-Arab in their interview with Musa Obama in the World University Ruff in Nairobi:
Muslims [in Kenya] suffer from the monumental Christianization aided by Zionist expansionism that infiltrates the nation.
Al-Shabaab, as well, wants to purge Kenya of all Christianity. When they were slaughtering people in the Nairobi mall, they lined civilians up, and executed them after deeming them non-Muslims because they could not “name the Prophet Mohammed’s mother or recite passages from the Koran”. There was one man who was Muslim who was spared after he recited some verses of the Koran.
Lets not forget that Kenya is 83% Christian, so we know that this massacre was done specifically to kill Christians. In 2011 it was reported that al-Shabaab decapitated a Christian in Somalia named Juma Nuradin Kamil.
But no matter, the world cares more for sodomites in Russia than Christians being massacred.
There is a very significant figure in the Nairobi mall shooting, Hassan Mahad Omar, also known as Hassaan Hussein Adam “Abu Salman.” Hassan is the unofficial mufti and ideologue for al-Shabaab, and their terrorist attacks are linked, directly and indirectly, to his fatwas.
Hassan teaches Islamic doctrine and has a degree from an Islamic university in Saudi Arabia, which means that he is interlinked with the three major Islamic universities to where the Obamas are sending Islamic youths to study Islam and Sharia.
Al-Shabaab, the group who slaughtered the people in the Christian majority nation of Kenya, and the Obamas, are associated with the universities which gave rise to the ideology of al-Shabaab, and both are striving for the same goal: an Islamic Kenya where Christianity would be outlawed.
Is it any wonder, now, that Obama prevented the revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood dictator of North Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, and that he is giving weapons to the jihadists in Syria?
An Egyptian Christian human rights activist is so fed up with the American government assisting the Muslim Brotherhood that he believes the U.S. ambassador should be recalled.
As demonstrators hit the streets of Cairo to protest against Egyptian president and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, Coptic Christian activist and writer Wagih Yacoub is calling for the removal of Ambassador Anne Patterson.
“We absolutely object to the American intervention in our country and we demand the withdrawal, the American government to withdraw the ambassador – the ambassador from our country,” Yacoub said. “She is interfering badly. They are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. They are supporting terrorists to take over the country to protest the American interests.
“They are working on this. She goes and has dealings with the Interior Minister. I mean come on, the Egyptian ambassador wouldn’t go and have meetings with the police forces in America,” Yacoub said.
He said the ambassador has legitimate reason for talking to the president, “but she has no right to interfere.”
He insists the U.S. government should stay out of Egyptian affairs entirely.
“We love the American people, and we love the American way of life, but we don’t like someone to interfere in our home,” Yacoub said.
On Sunday, thousands of Egyptians are again planning to demonstrate against the Muslim Brotherhood government that Yacoub says is supported by the U. S.
The Coptic Christians of Egypt will definitely be a part of the protests, he said.
“Obviously we agree with the demonstrations. Nothing has improved since Morsi came to power,” Yacoub said. “We see that our country is in real danger and all Egyptians are going out. We are Christians, Muslims, nonbelievers. Everyone is going out.”
International Christian Concern’s new Middle East analyst, Todd Daniels, confirms Yacoub’s statements.
“From talking to some of our contacts on the ground in Egypt there are a large number of Christians who are planning to take part in the demonstrations. One of them said just today that there are some small protests planned for Friday,” Daniels said.
Yacoub says he’s not concerned about a Muslim Brotherhood backlash if Christians are involved.
“They’re trying to push us to sectarian violence, so they try to mention that only Christians are going (to the protests). Everyone is going,” Yacoub said.
Yacoub said the Brotherhood’s intentions are clear, since it is saying only Christians are protesting.
“Why are they saying it’s only the Christians unless they want to play against the Copts. It’s the Copts and they’re trying to prey on them. They want to set up fire against the Christians, and I’m expecting attacks on the churches and Copts,” Yacoub said.
However, Daniels added that an Egyptian Christian in Cairo is forecasting that the demonstrations may be more than just protests.
“The real thing, what will be almost a revolution, will be on Sunday,” Daniels said, quoting the Coptic Christian.
Yacoub said that the eight-hour April attack on the Copts’ St. Mark’s Cathedral is an example of the harsh treatment Christians have received under Morsi.
“I have to mention the attack on one of our cathedrals. Nothing like that has happened in centuries. The attack continued for over eight hours. The president delayed and called our pope after four hours and then the attack continued for four more hours. [The attacks] were sponsored by the Interior minister.”
Daniels believes that Egypt’s secular Arabs, too, question whether Morsi is fit for office. He was installed after the West-friendly Hosni Mubarak was forced out, at President Obama’s urging.
“The opposition groups which are coming from more secular minded Egyptians as well as the minority communities are calling into question if President Morsi even retains the legitimacy to stay in office,” Daniels said. “The majority of his opponents seem ready to say no, and want to see him leave office.
Daniels believes that much of the pre-election posturing by the strongly Islamic groups was false. He added that Christians have paid a price.
“Christians have seen their rights trampled on since Morsi took office. They have been repeatedly targeted in trumped up denigration of religion or blasphemy cases. This has become nearly systemic legal persecution of Christians,” Daniels said.
Open Doors USA spokesman Jerry Dykstra agrees and believes the Christians are just expressing their frustration.
“The Christians have been marginalized even more by President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in the last year,” Dykstra said.
Dykstra added that the Christians want to see change – again.
“The Christians obviously would like to see another election. Believers are wary over the future with the little freedoms they have being eroded even more by the Muslim extremists, who might set up Shariah law. Many are fleeing the country,” Dykstra said.
Daniels added that many Christians in Egypt were misled before the election.
“The idea that many espoused prior to the election of Morsi that by allowing Islamists to participate in the political process would force them to moderate seems to have been false. The society is becoming increasingly radicalized,” Daniels said.
Daniels said that one reason secular Arabs are protesting is that Egypt’s entire government is the work of a small, but radical, minority.
“The constitution that was enacted under Morsi was written after the few Christians and liberals who were part of the writing process had been forced out,” he said. “That this is happening at the same time as aid [is] being distributed to Egypt and the Human Rights stipulations (H.R. 416 Egyptian Accountability and Democracy Promotion Act) are being waived raises serious concerns.”
However, Dykstra believes it’s in everyone’s interest for a peaceful outcome.
“They want a peaceful protest on Sunday. The military is sending troops to the larger cities already in anticipation of violence this weekend – hopefully to protect the protesters from harm,” Dykstra said.
Violence dominates the streets and a Jew in Sweden today feels like a Jew in Berlin in the ’20s.
In 2003, Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas member from Hevron, delivered a sermon at the Great Mosque in Stockholm, expressing support for suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. Outside the mosque, militants distributed leaflets containing calls to “liquidate the Jews in Palestine in the name of Allah”.
Why did the Swedish authorities allow this Arab anti-Semite to deliver a homicidal sermon in their capital’s main mosque if not to help foment a new war against the Jewish people?
Ten years later, and Sweden, long famed as a shelter for U.S. draft resisters, Arab immigrants, political refugees and other exiles, has become one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world.
A recent poll found that 68 percent of Swedes have a negative opinion of Israel. No other nation in the West has a higher anti-Semitic public opinion. Everyone is welcome today in Sweden, except the Jews.
France and the UK registered many more anti-Semitic incidents than Sweden last year, but Sweden, like the Netherlands, is a kind of laboratory of Europe’s general trend.
The Jews of Malmö, a community of about 1,500 in a city of 300,000 led by an anti-Semite like Reepalu, is a microcosm of what is happening elsewhere in the West.
In Sweden, which has one of the largest Muslim communities in Europe, the Jewish communities spend 25 per cent of their funds on security measures. It is a ghettoized and dying community.
Violence dominates the streets and a Jew in Sweden today feels like a Jew in Berlin in the ’20s.
A Swedish mayor working to stop anti-Israel propaganda from being sold at a municipal cultural center was just phisically assaulted. Mats Green, mayor of Jonkoping, was wounded outside his home by two men who struck him and kicked him. His “guilt”? Trying to stop the sale of T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Burn, Israel, burn” at the Book Cafe, a shop operating inside a city-owned cultural center.
Not only is Swedish culture deeply anti-Zionist (Swedish bestselling author Henning Mankell was part of the pro-Hamas Flottilla), but also Sweden’s political mainstream is imbued with anti-Semitism.
Omar Mustafa, a member of the Social Democratic Party’s governing board, called Sweden to send fighter planes to bomb Israel. In the same week another politician, Alexander Kieding of the Swedish Democrats party, an alderman in the Stockholm suburb of Jarna, declared that the Holocaust may have never happened and that “Israel inflated the number” of victims.
The European Jewish Congress has warned that the Jewish community living in the Swedish City of Malmo is in grave danger. Police presence is essential to enable Malmo’s Jews to celebrate any ritual in public and in safety. Last year, when the world remembered the infamous Nazi pogrom of Kristallnacht, in Malmö and Helsingborg, the manifestations took place without Jews, since the event had become a playground for gays, Muslims and leftists.
The Swedish government funds anti-Semitic publications without any shame – like the anti-Israel booklet “Colonialism and Apartheid – the Israeli occupation in Palestine”, funded by the authorities in the sum of $104,600, under the guise of “humanitarian aid”. The brochure accuses Israel of racism, ethnic cleansing and segregation, and calls for a boycott of the Jewish State.
The national religious authorities promote anti-Israel hate. The Kyrkomötet – the Church Assembly of the Church of Sweden – has just called for a boycott of Israeli products manufactured in Judea and Samaria. Archbishop Karl G. Hammar, heading the Swedish Lutheran Church, was among the first Western Protestant leaders to call for a boycott.
The press too is totally lost to anti-Semitism. Swedish liberal publications are unilaterally imbued with anti-Jewish sentiment, but the conservative Svenska Dagbladet too published articles that invoked the image of Jews as child murderers. We can count an infinite number of anti-Semitic publications in the Swedish press which can challenge the hate of Nazi papers like Der Sturmer or the Soviet Pravda.
Economically, Sweden has passed many boycott initiatives against the Jewish State. A large Swedish pension fund divested from Elbit over the latter’s role in building Israel’s security fence. Meanwhile, the Ethical Council of four Swedish buffer pension funds urged Motorola “to pull out of the Israeli-occupied territories in the West Bank” or face divestment.
Unfortunately, many Swedish Jewish leaders have capitulated to the ghetto mentality as well.
When popular daily Aftonbladet falsely charged the IDF of harvesting Palestinians Arabs’ organs and Israel asked the Swedish government to issue a condemnation, Lena Posner, head of the Jewish community in Stockholm and president of the Official Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden, declared: “Israel caused all this mess.”
There is something rank and sour in Sweden. You see it from the artistic exhibitions, just as you could during the Nazi era.
The Martin Bryder Gallery in Lund displayed a vile “ash-painting” which used Jewish human remains stolen from the Majdanek Nazi death camp. Jewish cremated ashes for a postmodern artistic exhibition in the Islamicizied Sweden.
Previously, a Swedish Christian Art exhibition depicted Israelis as gun-toting rats devouring the “Holey(sic) Land”.
The Nazis used such dehumanization techniques to lay the groundwork for the physical extermination of those labelled “pests”, the Jews. The same is happening in Sweden.
During the Second intifada, a Swedish museum displayed an artist’s work eulogizing the Palestinian suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who killed 20 Israelis at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, with a small ship carrying a picture of Jaradat, sailing in a rectangular pool filled with red-colored water, and accompanied by a piece of Bach’s music.
An Arab waiter at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa brought Jaradat a menu and took her order. The Swedish terrorist ‘heroine’ ate calmly, watching the Israeli families unaware that they were eating their last meal and taking their last breaths. Then she blew herself up. All that remained of nineteen people—including five children, along with fathers and mothers and grandparents—was a pile of indistinguishable body parts.
If he were looking at his country today, a country which has declared war on the Jewish people, Swedish legend Raoul Wallenberg would say: “If I had a grave, I’d be turning over in it”.
(Arutzsheva)
Ibrahim: Muslim Brotherhood Declares “Mastership of World” as Ultimate Goal
Although many Muslim leaders openly articulate their efforts as part of a larger picture—one that culminates in the resurrection of a caliphate adversarial by nature to all things non-Muslim—many Western leaders see only the moment, either out of context or, worse, in a false context built atop wishful thinking.
Among other things, this myopia causes virtually all Western politicians to overlook long-term threats and focus exclusively on violence and terror, the tangible and temporal—those things that may coincide with their tenure.
This narrow-sighted approach sometimes leads to absurdities, such as when Homeland Defense’s Paul Stockton, being questioned by Dan Lungren at a recent hearing, refused to agree that al-Qaeda “is acting out violent Islamist extremism,” insisting instead that the group merely consists of “murderers.” In doing so, he divorced reality from any meaningful context, thereby living up to the Obama doctrine of not knowing your enemy.
Of course, all Islamists have the same goal: the establishment of a sharia-enforcing caliphate. The only difference is that most are prudent enough to understand that incremental infiltration and subtle subversion—step by step, phase by phase, decade after decade—are much more effective for securing their goals than outright violence. Then, once in power, “they will become much more savage.”
Accordingly, thanks to the so-called “Arab spring” and its Western supporters, more and more clerics feel they are nearing their ultimate goal of resurrecting the caliphate, the capital of which is to be Jerusalem. This sheikh, for instance, recently boasted that the caliphate will soon be restored and the West will pay jizya—tribute and submission, via Koran 9:29—“or else we will bring the sword to your necks!” So too this sheikh, citing infidel Germany as an example. And of course calls for jizya from Egypt’s Christian Copts are growing by the day.
Now, consider the clear, unequivocal words of Dr. Muhammad Badi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Al Masry Al Youm (as translated by Coptic Solidarity):
Dr. Muhammad Badi, supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, said: “The Brotherhood is getting closer to achieving its greatest goal as envisioned by its founder, Imam Hassan al-Banna. This will be accomplished by establishing a righteous and fair ruling system [based on Islamic sharia], with all its institutions and associations, including a government evolving into a rightly guided caliphate and mastership of the world.” Badi added in his weekly message yesterday [12/29/11]: “When the Brotherhood started its advocacy [da’wa], it tried to awaken the nation from its slumber and stagnation, to guide it back to its position and vocation. In his message at the sixth caucus, the Imam [Banna] defined two goals for the Brotherhood: a short term goal, the fruits of which are seen as soon as a person becomes a member of the Brotherhood; and a long term goal that requires utilizing events, waiting, making appropriate preparations and prior designs, and a comprehensive and total reform of all aspects of life.” The leader of the Brotherhood continued: “The Imam [Banna] delineated transitional goals and detailed methods to achieve this greatest objective, starting by reforming the individual, followed by building the family, the society, the government, and then a rightly guided caliphate and finally mastership of the world” [emphasis added].
Even so, it matters not how often and openly Islamic leaders like Badi articulate their grand agenda for the world to hear. Western leaders have their intellectual blinders shut so tight, frozen before the word “democracy”—even if “Arab spring” people-power leads to fascism (which, after all, will be someone else’s problem after they leave office).
Thus, here is former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, who not only is “very pleased” with Egyptian elections—despite widespread allegations of voter-fraud against the Muslim Brotherhood—but, when asked if the U.S. should be concerned about the Islamist victory, said “I don’t have any problem with that, and the U.S. government doesn’t have any problem with that either. We want the will of the Egyptian people to be expressed.”
Accordingly, the Muslim Brotherhood and all its offshoots can rest assured that, so long as they do not engage in direct terrorism, they can continue unfettered on their decades-long march to resurrecting the caliphate, which—if history and doctrine are any indicators—will, in its attempt to claim “mastership of the world,” be a global menace.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. (Jihad Watch)
Islamic mosques are being built more often in France than Roman Catholic churches, and there now are more practising Muslims in the country than practising Catholics.
Nearly 150 new mosques currently are under construction in France, home to the biggest Muslim community in Europe. The mosque-building projects are at various stages of completion, according to Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the Muslim Council of France (CFCM), who provided the data in an August 2, 2011 interview with the French radio station RTL.
The total number of mosques in France has already doubled to more than 2,000 during just the past ten years, according to a research report “Constructing Mosques: The Governance of Islam in France and the Netherlands.” France’s most prominent Muslim leader, Dalil Boubakeur, who is rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, recently called for the number of mosques in the country to be doubled again – to 4,000 – to meet growing demand.
By contrast, the Roman Catholic Church in France has built only 20 new churches during the past decade, and has formally closed more than 60 churches, many of which are destined to become mosques, according to research conducted by La Croix, a Roman Catholic daily newspaper based in Paris.
Although 64% of the French population (or 41.6 million of France’s 65 million inhabitants) identifies itself as Roman Catholic, only 4.5% (or 1.9 million) of those actually are practising Catholics, according to the French Institute of Public Opinion (or Ifop, as it is usually called).
By way of comparison, 75% (or 4.5 million) of the estimated 6 million mostly ethnic North African and sub-Saharan Muslims in France identify themselves as “believers” and 41% (or 2.5 million) say they are “practising” Muslims, according to an in-depth research report on Islam in France published by Ifop on August 1. The report also says that more than 70% of the Muslims in France say they will be observing the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in 2011.
Taken together, the research data provides empirical evidence that Islam is well on its way to overtaking Roman Catholicism as the dominant religion in France.
As their numbers grow, Muslims in France are becoming far more assertive than ever before. A case in point: Muslim groups in France are now asking the Roman Catholic Church for permission to use its empty churches as a way to solve the traffic problems caused by thousands of Muslims who pray in the streets.
In a March 11 communiqué addressed to the Church of France, the National Federation of the Great Mosque of Paris, the Council of Democratic Muslims of France and a Muslim activist group called Collectif Banlieues Respect called on the Catholic Church – in a spirit of inter-religious solidarity, of course – to make its empty churches available to Muslims for Friday prayers, so that Muslims do not have to “pray in the streets” and be “held hostage to politics.”
Every Friday, thousands of Muslims in Paris and other French cities close off streets and sidewalks (and by extension, close down local businesses and trap non-Muslim residents in their homes and offices) to accommodate overflowing crowds for midday prayers. Some mosques have also begun broadcasting sermons and chants of “Allah Akbar” via loudspeakers in the streets.
The weekly spectacles, which have been documented by dozens of videos posted on Youtube.com (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), have provoked anger and disbelief. But despite many public complaints, local authorities have declined to intervene because they are afraid of sparking riots.
The issue of illegal street prayers was catapulted to the top of the national political agenda in France in December 2010, when Marine Le Pen, the charismatic new leader of the far-right National Front party, denounced them as an “occupation without tanks or soldiers.”
During a gathering in the east central French city of Lyon on December 10, Le Pen compared Muslims praying in the streets to Nazi occupation. She said: “For those who want to talk a lot about World War II, if it is about occupation, then we could also talk about it [Muslim prayers in the streets], because that is occupation of territory. It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of districts in which religious laws apply. It is an occupation. There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs heavily on local residents.”
Many French voters agree. In fact, the issue of Muslim street prayers – and the broader question of the role of Islam in French society – has become a major issue ahead of the 2012 presidential elections. According to a survey by Ifop for the France-Soir newspaper, nearly 40% of French voters agree with Len Pen’s views that Muslim prayer in the streets resembles an occupation. Another opinion poll published by Le Parisien newspaper shows that voters view Le Pen, who has criss-crossed the country arguing that France has been invaded by Muslims and betrayed by its elite, as the candidate best suited to deal with the growing problem of runaway Muslim immigration.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose popularity was at 25% in July – worse than any predecessor less than a year ahead of a re-election bid, according to the TNS-Sofres polling group – has been spooked by Le Pen’s advance in the opinion polls. He now seems determined not to allow Le Pen to monopolize the issue of Islam in France.
Sarkozy recently called Muslim prayers in the street “unacceptable” and said that the street cannot be allowed to become “an extension of the mosque.” He also warned that the overflow of Muslim faithful on to the streets at prayer time when mosques are packed to capacity risks undermining the French secular tradition separating state and religion.
Interior Minister Claude Guéant on August 8 told Muslims who have been praying on the streets of Paris that they should utilize a disused barracks instead. “Praying in the street is something that is not acceptable,” Guéant said. “It has to stop.”
Meanwhile, France ushered in Ramadan by inaugurating a new mega-mosque for 2,000 worshipers in Strasbourg, where the Muslim population has reached 15%. Construction also continues apace of a new mega-mosque in Marseille, France’s second-largest city where the Muslim population has reached 25% (or 250,000). The Grand Mosque – which at more than 8,300 square meters (92,000 square feet) will accommodate up to 7,000 worshippers in a vast prayer hall – is designed to be the biggest and most potent symbol of Islam’s place in modern France.
Boubakeur, of the Grande Mosque of Paris, says the construction of even more mosques – paid for by French taxpayers – would ease the “pressure, frustration and the sense of injustice” felt by many French Muslims. “Open a mosque and you close a prison,” says Boubakeur.
But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has implied that the construction of mosques and minarets actually is part of a strategy for the Islamization of Europe. Publicly repeating the words of a 1912 poem written by the Turkish nationalist poet Ziya Gökalp, Erdogan said: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”
Reflecting on the retreat of Catholicism and the rise of Islam in France, Archbishop Giuseppe Bernardini, an Italian Franciscan who heads the Izmir archdiocese in Turkey, and who has lived in the Islamic world for more than 40 years, has recounted a conversation he once had with a Muslim leader, who told him: “Thanks to your democratic laws, we will invade you. Thanks to our religious laws, we will dominate you.”
(Gatestone Institute)
Since Muhammad obviously commanded his followers to fight unbelievers (simply for being unbelievers), why do Muslims in the West deny this? Here we must turn to Surah 3:28, which reads:
Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers. Whoso doeth that hath no connection with Allah unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them, taking (as it were) security.
According to this verse (which uses a variation of the word Taqiyya, meaning “concealment”), Muslims are not allowed to be friends with non-Muslims. However, if Muslims feel threatened by a stronger adversary, they are allowed to pretend to be friendly. Ibn Kathir comments: “In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship outwardly but never inwardly.” Abu Darda, one of Muhammad’s companions, put it this way: “We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.”
Is Islam a religion of peace? No. Islam is a religion that pretends to be peaceful when Muslims are too weak to win a war. Of course, there are many Muslims who aren’t violent. Many Muslims in the West love peace and tolerance. But they didn’t get these values from Islam. They got them from the West, and now they’re reinterpreting Islam based on their Western values. For dedicated Muslims, however, there are only two possible situations to be in: (1) fighting unbelievers, and (2) pretending to be peaceful while preparing to fight unbelievers. Either way, fighting non-Muslims and conquering the world in the name of Allah is always the goal. (By Answering Muslims.com)
One year after the bombing outside Two Saints Church in Alexandria that killed more than twenty worshippers, “the facts regarding those responsible for committing this horrible crime are no clearer,” Asia News reports.
Egypt (Asia News) – One year has passed since the terrible massacre in the Church of the Two Saints, in Alexandria on New Year’s eve last year, which left more than twenty dead and a hundred wounded. One year later the facts regarding those responsible for committing this horrible crime are no clearer. There have been rumours which assert that it was the ministry of internal affairs who ordered the attack, but no investigation results have so far been published. Yesterday, the last Friday of the year, the protestant church called for a peaceful demonstration in Tahrir square to commemorate this anniversary, asking people to come with armed only with candles and no other religious symbol. A large demonstration led by Shaykh Mazhar Shaheen processed from Omar Makram mosque in Midan al Tahrir up to the Evangelical Church of Qasr al Doubara, one street behind Midan al Tahrir to celebrate the Chrismas and New Year’eve feasts.
Three weeks after last New Year’s eve attack the January 25 revolution exploded, and since then many difficult events have succeeded each other making it a hard time for the population, and mainly for Egyptian Christians. In fact, the Alexandria massacre took place less than a year after the violent attack at Nag Hammadi, in Upper Egypt on the eve of the Coptic Christmas celebrations, on the 7th of January 2010, which left seven dead and many wounded. And less than two months after clashes over a church construction in the suburb of Giza, next to Cairo, that left two dead and many wounded.
Early in March 2011, the Church of the Two Martyrs in Sol, next to Helwan, in the southern suburb of Cairo, was set on fire killing two people died. The motive for the arson attack was a forbidden love affaire between a Christian young man and a Muslim girl. The two fathers died in a quarrel, then the Muslim population burned the church. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) decided to rebuild the church which was ready for Easter one month later.
During March the awful virginity test was imposed on young women arrested by the authorities.
On Saturday, March 7, two churches in Imbaba, in a western suburb of Cairo, were attacked by fundamentalist mobs, with the result of a dozen Christians killed and the burning of the two churches. This suburb had once been termed ‘the Islamic Republic of Imbaba’.
In June 2011 a long awaited draft bill on building permits for places of worship both for Islam and Christianity was brought before parliament. But still today, this law has not been implemented.
On June 29, a vast confrontation between demonstrators and police forces left more than one thousand wounded. Again, on July 23, another confrontation resulted in more than two hundred wounded.
On September 30th, a church in Marinab village, in Asswan governorate was raised by Muslim fundamentalists who had decided to eradicate the village church by first pretending it was a new construction, than demanding it remove its crosses and the domes and finally burning the church, and many households belonging to the Christian population, without any protection from the civil authorities, rather, on the contrary with the obvious blessing of Asswan governor.
On Sunday October 9, a Christian demonstration began in Cairo to demand equal rights for Christians and justice for the Marinab village church. Numerous Muslim demonstrators were joined their Christian compatriots. What took place was a veritable slaughter which has now become known as the ‘Maspero massacre’ : The army attacked demonstrators resulting in 25 people dead and 350 wounded, many of them crushed under the wheels of advancing armoured vehicles. The state television located on Maspero Avenue launched an appeal that verged on a call to civil war appealing to the population to come and protect the armed forces ‘savagely attacked by Christian demonstrators’. Three soldiers were reported dead, but in the end revealed to be only lightly wounded.
On October 10, the culprit of Nag Hamadi attack of January 7, 2010, who had been sentenced to death, was executed.
Then came the protests of Mohammad Mahmoud Street on November… and later in mid December, the demonstrations and sit-in around the Parliament and the Ministers Council buildings… with a heavy toll of dead and wounded.
In just one year, more than one thousand people have died, thousands of more wounded, an estimated one thousand two hundred people lost one or both eyes, and probably twelve thousand demonstrators were arrested and judged by military courts. Many political personalities and well-known journalists have also been summoned and mistreated.
It is reported that since last March, one hundred thousand Christian Egyptians have left the country emigrating to different destinations. Many people among the Christian community, and among the poorest of them, would now like to apply for religious asylum in countries like the USA, Canada, or Australia.
