Islam’s ‘Rule of Numbers’ Explains London Beheading

Last week in London, two Muslim men shouting jihad’s ancient war-cry, “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a British soldier with a cleaver—in a busy intersection and in broad daylight.  They boasted in front of passersby and asked to be videotaped.

With blood still on his hands, and his decapitated victim still on the street, the jihadi still managed to go into “grievance” mode in front of the camera.

As surreal as this event may seem, Islamic beheadings are not uncommon in the West, including the U.S.  In 2011, a Pakistani-American who helped develop “Bridges TV”—a station “designed to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims”—beheaded his wife.  In Germany in 2012, another Muslim man beheaded his wife in front of their six children—again while hollering “Allahu Akbar.”

Beheading non-Muslim “infidels” in the Islamic world is especially commonplace: in Yemen a “sorceress” was beheaded by the “Supporters of Sharia”; in Indonesia, three Christian girls on their way to school were beheaded; in Syria last Christmas, U.S.-supported rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to the dogs; in Africa—Somalia, Tanzania, Mali—Christians are regularly decapitated.  (For a comprehensive picture of Christian suffering under Islam, see my new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians.)

Most recently, a disturbing video surfaced from “liberated” Libya of a machete-wielding masked man hacking at the head of a captive—again, to cries of “Allahu Akbar!”

But the greater lesson of the London beheading concerns its audacity—done in broad daylight with the attackers boasting in front of cameras, as often happens in the Islamic world.

It reflects what I call “Islam’s Rule of Numbers,” a rule that expresses itself with remarkable consistency:  The more Muslims grow in numbers, the more Islamic phenomena intrinsic to the Muslim world—in this case, brazen violence against “infidels”—appear.

In the U.S., where Muslims are less than 1% of the population, London-style attacks are uncommon.  Islamic assertiveness is limited to political activism dedicated to portraying Islam as a “religion of peace,” and sporadic, but clandestine, acts of terror.

In Europe, where Muslims make for much larger minorities, open violence is common.  But because they are still a vulnerable minority, Islamic violence is always placed in the context of “grievances,” a word that pacifies Westerners.

With an approximate 10% Muslim population, London’s butcherers acted brazenly, yes, but they still invoked grievances.  Standing with bloodied hands, the murderer declared: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone…. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day.”

Days later in Stockholm, which also has a large Muslim minority, masked rioters  destroyed 100 cars and property.  The grievance for this particular outbreak was that police earlier shot a(nother) machete-wielding “immigrant” in self-defense.

Grievances disappear when Muslims become at least 35-40% of a nation and feel capable of waging an all-out jihad, as in Nigeria, where the Muslim-majority north has been terrorizing Christians—bombing hundreds of churches and beheading hundreds of infidels.

Sudan was an earlier paradigm, when the Khartoum government slaughtered millions to cleanse Sudan of Christians and polytheists.  Historically Christian-majority Lebanon plunged into a deadly civil war as the Muslim population grew… Continue reading to see what happens when Muslims become majorities.

The Calm Before the Jihadi Storm

It’s important to remember that the very same U.S. policies that created al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s—leading to the horrific attacks of 9/11—are today allowing al-Qaeda to metastasize all around the Muslim world.  As in the 80s, these new terrorist cells are quietly gathering strength now, and are sure to deliver future terror strikes that will make 9/11 seem like child’s play.

Once limited to Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, thanks to U.S. policies, has metastasized around the world, and is in the consolidation/training phase for the new jihad.

To understand this dire prediction, we must first examine the United States’ history  of empowering Islamic jihadis—only to be attacked by those same jihadis many years later—and the chronic shortsightedness of American policymakers, whose policies are based on their brief tenure, not America’s long-term wellbeing.

In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Afghani rebels—among them the jihadis—to repel the Soviets.  Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and countless foreign jihadis journeyed to Afghanistan to form a base of training and planning—the first prerequisite of the jihad, as delineated in Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones.

Al-Qaeda—which tellingly means “the base”—was born.

The U.S. supported al-Qaeda, they defeated the Soviets, shook hands with Reagan, Afghanistan became ruled by the Taliban, and for many years all seemed well.

But it wasn’t.  For over a decade al-Qaeda, unfettered in Afghanistan, trained and plotted.  Then came the strikes of 9/11, which were portrayed by the talking heads as a great and unexpected surprise: “What happened? Who knew?  Why do they hate us?”

Had al-Qaeda not secured a base of operations, its namesake, 9/11 would not have occurred.

But if Reagan helped create the first al-Qaeda cell in relatively unimportant Afghanistan, Obama is helping to create numerous, more emboldened, al-Qaeda cells in some of the most important Islamic nations.

He is doing this by helping get rid of Arab autocrats who were effective at suppressing jihadis (even if for selfish reasons), while empowering some of the most radical jihadis who were formerly imprisoned or in hiding.

And all in the name of  the “Arab Spring” and “democracy.”

In Egypt, Obama threw Mubarak, America’s chief Mideast ally for three decades, under the bus, and cozied up to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Egypt’s government is today overrun with Islamists, many who share al-Qaeda’s radical worldview.  Several of these new policymakers—including President Morsi himself—were imprisoned under Mubarak, not, as the Western media portray, because they were freedom-loving rebels, but because they were, and are, Sharia-loving radicals trying to transform Egypt into an Islamist state.

The Sinai alone is now infested with jihadis, including possibly al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri.

In Libya, Obama supported the opposition against Gaddafi—knowing full well that al-Qaeda was among them—enabling the Benghazi attack and murder of Americans on the anniversary of 9/11.  The unprecedented persecution of Christians in Libya—from attacks on churches to attacks on nuns—is further indicative of the direction “liberated” Libya is taking.

And now in Syria, Obama is, once again, supporting foreign jihadis, who make up 95% of Syria’s so-called “opposition.”  As in Libya—and as in Afghanistan in the 80s—foreign jihadis are flooding Syria and terrorizing non-Muslims (a recent fatwa permits the raping of non-Sunni women), in their bid to create another base, another qaeda.

One of them recently declared, “When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!”—precisely al-Qaeda’s thinking in the 80s-90s when it was supported by the U.S. against the U.S.S.R.

Thus all the forces and circumstances that led up to the strikes of 9/11—foreign jihadis infiltrating and consolidating power in Muslim countries formerly run by secular dictators—are once again in full play, but in a much more profound way.  Today it’s not just one relatively unimportant country, Afghanistan, that is being subverted by jihadis but several strategically important nations.

If 9/11 was the price the U.S later paid for helping turn Afghanistan into a jihadi base in the 80s-90s, what price will America later pay now that it’s betraying several major nations to the jihadis, who are turning them into bases, into qaedas?

So why are American politicians not blowing the whistle on Obama’s suicidal policies?  

Because their myopia and inability to see beyond today—beyond their tenure—has not changed since September 11, 2001.  Just as it took over a decade after al-Qaeda’s creation to launch the 9/11 attacks—a time of ostensible peace and calm for the U.S., a time of planning and training for the jihadis—it will take time for the new jihadi storm to pour on America.

And that’s the era we’re currently in: the calm before the storm.  Just as before 9/11, today’s American leaders focus only on the moment—a moment when the U.S appears relatively safe—never considering the future or the inevitable consequences of a woefully counterproductive U.S. foreign policy.

Speaking of foreign policy, if Reagan supported the jihadis to combat the U.S.S.R—a hostile super-power—why is Obama supporting the jihadis?  What exactly does America have to gain?

At any rate, just as it was before 9/11, when the jihadi storm eventually does break out—and it will, it’s a matter of time—those American politicians who helped empower it, chief among them Obama, will be long gone, and the talking heads will again be stupidly asking “What happened?” “Who knew?” Why do they hate us?”

Except then it will be too late.

Persecution Myth? How the Present Explains the Past

Despite the fact that Christian martyrdom under the militant Roman Empire has long been an unquestioned historical fact, Candida Moss in her new book The Myth of Persecution claims that it was largely a “myth,” that many of history’s best known narratives of Christian martyrs were entirely fabricated.

Failure to comply: Saint Sebastian, who was ordered killed by the Roman emperor Diocletian.

Failure to comply: Saint Sebastian, who was ordered killed by the Roman emperor Diocletian.

This thesis, as most modern-day academic theses concerning early history, is fundamentally based on conjecture, projections, and above all, anachronisms—the sort that earlier turned Christ into a homosexual hippie and Muhammad into a humanitarian feminist. Neither Moss nor anyone else can prove or disprove what the primary historical texts say—that Roman persecution of Christians was very real, widespread, and brutal.

We weren’t there.

But from an objective point of view, is it not more reasonable to accept the many testimonies of contemporary eyewitnesses, than it is the conjectures of a politically charged book that is separated from its subject by 2,000 years?

Among other ideas unintelligible and inapplicable to the ancient world, Moss invokes “T-shirts,” “favorite athletes,” and “brands of soda” to “prove” that the ancient narrative of Christians tortured and killed for their faith was all a gag to make a profit: “Martyrs were like the action heroes of the ancient world,” Moss says. “It was like getting your favorite athlete endorsing your favorite brand of soda. …Of course, the prices were completely jacked up.”

In short, the merit of Moss’ thesis rests in the fact that it satisfies a certain anti-Christian sentiment, that it satisfies a modern-day political perspective—and not that it offers any facts or serious arguments. By projecting cynical postmodern perspectives onto the mentalities of both Romans and Christians, who lived worlds and centuries away, the thesis is ultimately farcical.

Even so, let’s tackle the myth charge from a different angle.  Let’s leave the question of eyewitnesses, texts, and traditions, and instead rely on common sense—that which is in short supply in the academic community.  The fact is, we can often learn about the past by looking at the present. If at least 100 million Christians are currently being persecuted today, in an era when Western ideas of humanitarianism and religious tolerance have permeated the rest of the world—is it not reasonable to conclude that 2,000 years ago, when “might made right” and brutally prevailed, that Christians were also being persecuted then, especially when contemporary sources indicate as much?

Consider the modern Islamic world alone, where today’s overwhelming majority of horrific Christian persecution occurs, as documented in my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians.  Today in the 21^st century, Christians under Islam are still being tortured, imprisoned, enslaved, and killed; their churches and Bibles are routinely banned or burned.

Why is that?  Because Islam is a supremacist cult, which brooks no opposition and demands conformity, one way or the other: Islamic law (see Koran 9:29) teaches that those who come under its hegemony must either convert, or keep their faith but live as ostracized third-class citizens (dhimmis), or die. The supremacist culture of the Roman Empire—an even older martial cult devoted to the gods of war—was not much different….  Continue Reading

Crucified Again with Pat Robertson on The 700 Club

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Pat Robertson and discussing my new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians

Islamic Forced Conversions — Past and Present

The lost history of Christians forced to convert to Islam—or die—is reemerging, figuratively and literally. According to the BBC: “Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony [last Sunday] at the Vatican—a list which includes 800 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.They were beheaded in the southern Italian town of Otranto after refusing to convert to Islam.”

Palestinian Christian protesters lament the forced conversions of loved ones

The BBC adds in a sidebar: “The ‘Martyrs of Otranto’ were 813 Italians beheaded for defying demands by Turkish invaders to renounce Christianity.  The Turks had been sent by Mohammed II, who had already captured the ‘second Rome’ of Constantinople.”

Historical texts throughout the centuries are filled with similar anecdotes, including the “60 Martyrs of Gaza,” Christian soldiers who were executed for refusing Islam during the 7^th century Islamic invasion of Jerusalem. Seven centuries later, during the Islamic invasion of Georgia, Christians refusing to convert were forced into their church and set on fire. Witnesses for Christ lists 200 anecdotes of Christians killed—including some burned at the stake, thrown on iron spikes, dismembered, stoned, stabbed, shot at, drowned, pummeled to death, impaled and crucified—for refusing to embrace Islam.

If history is shocking, the fact is, today, Christians—men, women, and children—are still being forced to convert to Islam.  Pope Francis alluded to their sufferings during the same ceremony: “As we venerate the martyrs of Otranto, let us ask God to sustain those many Christians who, in these times and in many parts of the world, right now, still suffer violence, and give them the courage and fidelity to respond to evil with good.”

Consider some recent anecdotes:

In Pakistan, a “devoted Christian” was butchered by Muslim men “with multiple axe blows [24 per autopsy] for refusing to convert to Islam.” Another two Christian men returning from church were accosted by six Muslims who tried to force them to convert to Islam, but “the two refused to renounce Christianity.”  Accordingly, the Muslims severely beat them, yelling they must either convert “or be prepared to die. . . . the two Christians fell unconscious, and the young Muslim men left assuming they had killed them.”

In Bangladesh some 300 Christian children were abducted in 2012 and sold to Islamic schools, where “imams force them to abjure Christianity.”  The children are then instructed in Islam and beaten. After full indoctrination they are asked if they are “ready to give their lives for Islam,” presumably by becoming jihadi suicide-bombers.  (Even here the historic patterns are undeniable: for centuries, Christian children were forcibly taken, converted to and indoctrinated in Islam, trained to be jihadis extraordinaire, and then unleashed on their former Christian families.  Such were the Janissaries and Mamelukes.)

In Palestine in 2012, Christians in Gaza protested over the “kidnappings and forced conversions of some former believers to Islam.” The ever-dwindling Christian community banged on a church bell while chanting, “With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus.”… Continue reading

Crucified Again, with Glenn Beck

My recent interview with Glenn Beck on my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians.

The Mass Exodus of Christians from the Muslim World

Over at Fox News, I describe how we are reliving early Islamic history, including how the “Islamic world” came into being: namely, by usurping the lands of others:

A mass exodus of Christians is currently underway. Millions of Christians are being displaced from one end of the Islamic world to the other.We are reliving the true history of how the Islamic world—much of which prior to the Islamic conquests was almost entirely Christian—came into being.

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.

In 2003, Iraq’s Christian population was at least one million. Today fewer than 400,000 remain—the result of an anti-Christian campaign that began with the U.S. occupation of Iraq, when countless Christian churches were bombed and countless Christians killed, including by crucifixion and beheading.

The 2010 Baghdad church attack, which saw nearly 60 Christian worshippers slaughtered, is the tip of a decade-long iceberg.

Now as the U.S. supports the jihad on secular president Assad, the same pattern has come to Syria: entire regions and towns where Christians lived 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 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 the Arab world. But even in “black” African and “white” European nations with Muslim majorities, Christians are fleeing…

Continue reading on Fox or on my website where the full article appears (it had to be shortened to meet Fox’s word count limit).

Raymond Ibrahim’s New Book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians

I’m very happy to announce that my new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute) was released earlier this week.  Below is a recent interview with the Inquisitr’s Wolff Bachner about the book:

1. Raymond, your ground breaking new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, has just been published and it is available from Amazon.Com or in bookstores across America. Why did you decide to write the book and what has the reaction been to such a powerful and controversial study?

Raymond: Thanks, Wolff.  I wrote the book to fill the vacuum, since the mainstream media and others—such as the Obama administration—have, to varying degrees, decided to ignore or whitewash this otherwise growing epidemic of human pain and suffering.  If any other group but Christians were being attacked as they are in the Islamic world, their plight would make international headlines.  But because from childhood on up in America—from high schools to universities, from the media to Hollywood—Americans are conditioned to view Christians and their history as fanatical, intolerant, the source of the world’s woes, it is difficult to acknowledge that, in fact, Christians are by far the most persecuted religious group around the word, especially the Islamic world.  A January 2013 Reuters report estimates some 100 million Christians around are being persecuted for their faith. Thus I wrote this book to give voice to the many voiceless Christians suffering under Islam.

2. How bad is the situation today for Christians in Muslim majority countries?

Raymond: The situation has gone from bad to worse, particularly in light of the so-called “Arab Spring” and the Obama administration’s enthusiastic support for it, despite the fact that it continually exposes its true face as an Islamic takeover.  Almost every single country that Obama has helped rebels and opposition forces to topple the ruling secular regimes has gotten markedly worse for Christians.  Under Gaddafi, one never heard of Libya’s immensely small Christian minority suffering.  Post-Gaddafi, and thanks to Obama’s support for the al-Qaeda linked jihadis who were always a part of the opposition, the very few churches there are under attack and bombed; nuns are harassed and forced to flee; Christians possessing Bibles are arrested and tortured (one recently died from his torture).  It is the same now in Syria, which, under secular strongman Bashar Assad was tolerant towards its Christian minorities.  Now, the “freedom-fighters”—code for the Obama-supported foreign jihadis—are targeting Christians for killing, displacement, and hostage taking for ransoms.  The atrocities being committed are many and barbaric—beheadings, enslavements, rapes, and wholesale massacres—filling the over 300 pages of Crucified Again.

3. Is the widespread persecution a product of modern social and political grievances or does the hatred of non-Muslims have a long tradition in Islam?

Raymond: This is a good and important question.  The persecution is 100% a product of Islamic supremacism.  Consider: the Christians being persecuted by Muslims are identical to their persecutors: they share the same race and ethnicity; speak the same languages; are nationals of the same countries.  There is nothing to distinguish the Christian from the Muslim in widely different countries like Egypt, Nigeria, and Indonesia—except, of course, religion.  Moreover, in all the countries I survey in Crucified Again, Christians are also politically marginalized and poorer than their Muslim counterparts.  Thus it is clear that Muslim attacks on Christians and their places of worship are animated first and foremost by religious hostility, as there is no other valid or even conceivable reason to explain the violence daily visited on Christians under Islam.  And yes, this hostility has a very long tradition in Islam and its teachings and doctrines, much of which I cover in the book.

4.  Is life improving for Christians in countries like Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Morocco, and Tunisia since the uprisings against the region’s dictators and monarchies?

Raymond: No, life is getting worse.  One of the most overlooked phenomena of our age is that Muslims are returning to Islam.  This sounds redundant and meaningless, but I speak of a “lost history” that has blinded the West to the implications of this return.  In short, because Islam is a religion that makes might right, after the Islamic world was subjugated by the West beginning with Napoleon’s easy conquest of Egypt in 1798, Muslims began seeing Westernization as pivotal to success, and thus largely turned their backs on Islam, being “Muslim” only in name.  However, around mid-20^th century, beginning in earnest in the “liberal” 1960s, when Western culture took a nosedive, became sexually and morally unrestrained, apologetic for itself and self-loathing, and seeing Western civilization, especially Christianity, as the root of the world’s sufferings, Muslims went from trying to emulate the West, to having great contempt for it, and naturally began returning to their own heritage, Islam and its Sharia—all of course to “multicultural” Western applause, since, to the West, Islam and its Sharia were, and continue to be portrayed, as great things.  But of course, as Muslims turn to Islam, so too do the things of Islam—like Christian persecution—return.  In fact, because I believe this era and its significance are pivotal not only to understanding Muslim persecution of Christians, but the rise of Islam as a political force, I have an early, and important chapter titled “Lost History” in the book, where I fully elaborate on this important but misunderstood theme.

5. How has the withdrawal of US forces impacted the lives of Christians in Iraq and Afghanistan? Dr. Wagdi Gonium, a popular radical cleric in Egypt, ridiculed America when he said, “What do you think — that America will protect you? Let’s be very clear, America will not protect you. If so, it would have protected the Christians of Iraq when they were being butchered!”

Raymond: Honestly, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan has not really exacerbated the sufferings of Christians, as they were still being persecuted even when U.S. forces were there.  In fact, if anything, the presence of U.S. forces sometimes enables the persecution of Christians.  For example, I have a whole section in Crucified Again explaining the concept of collective punishment, and how vulnerable, indigenous Christians are regular attacked in response to the actions of U.S. forces or the West in general, as many Muslims conflate the West with Christianity; when Muhammad cartoons are published in Europe, Christians around the Islamic world are attacked, their churches bombed.  Speaking of churches, although some existed in Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion, a year ago the last church was formally demolished by the U.S.-installed government—and while U.S. troops were there.  As for Iraq, the year following the ousting of Saddam Hussein, in 2004 and under U.S auspices, jihadis went on a church bombing spree, destroying countless churches and killing many Christians who, under Saddam, were relatively well tolerated.

6. Why is the Obama Administration, and the Bush Administration before them, so unwilling to say one word about the horrible violence being done to Christians across the Islamic world? For a nation that prides itself on protecting the helpless, the United States seems to have buried its head in the sand when it comes to the suffering of Christians.

Raymond: Quite true.  There is a difference, however subtle, between Bush’s handling and Obama’s: when Bush “liberated” Iraq, and jihadis went on, among other things, a Christian persecution spree, it was still unknown to most U.S. politicians that that would be a consequence; there really weren’t many precedents to go by.  On the other hand, even before Obama came to power, the fate of Christian minorities in countries “liberated” from the grip of autocrats was known (since the ousting of Saddam, more than half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians have either been killed or fled their homeland).  So there was a precedent for the Obama administration to go by.  Nonetheless, the administration has done all it can to ignore this precedent and empower radical Islamic forces under the umbrella of the “Arab Spring,” so that the same pattern that took place a decade earlier in Iraq—the persecution of Christians, not to mention jihadi intolerance for all that is non-Islamic—has, as expected, come to all of those countries where Obama helped empower Islamists—including Egypt, Libya, and now Syria, where a recent fatwa, an Islamic decree, made it permissible for jihadis to rape all non-Sunni women, as a reward for waging jihad to empower Sharia law in Syria.

7. Why do you think so many citizens in Western nations are unaware of the persecution of Christians? Every time a Jew dares to build a house on Jewish land in Jerusalem there is a major protest and its front-page news, but hundreds of Churches have been burned in the Middle East, Africa and Asia without a word in the Mainstream media.

Raymond: I discuss this at length in Crucified Again.  In a nutshell, the mainstream media, to a great extent, exists to validate its liberal narrative, a narrative which suggests that all violence is a byproduct of some material, tangible grievance.  Thus the Arab-Israeli conflict is a favorite topic for them to cover, for no matter how many rockets are shot into Tel Aviv by Hamas and Hezbollah, that will only be portrayed as proof positive that Muslims in PA territories are aggrieved and frustrated, and thus lashing out at their Israeli “oppressor.”  And no matter how many times jihadi groups articulate their rage in purely Islamic terms, the media will portray their animus as a product of grievance and land conflict.  On the other hand, the media finds it difficult to rationalize away Muslim attacks on Christians—Christians who are of the same race, ethnicity, and speak the same language as their Muslim persecutors.  In this context, the media can’t portray the violence as a “land dispute” or a product of “grievance” (if anything it is the ostracized and politically disempowered Christian minorities who should have grievances).  So since they can’t articulate the attacks on Christians through the established secular/materialistic paradigm, their primary recourse is not to report on Christian persecution,  for it is a phenomenon which throws a wrench in their otherwise well-oiled narrative of “Muslim-violence-is-a-product-of Muslim-grievance.”  Other times, when they have no choice but to report on it—I have in mind the most spectacular attacks on Christians, where dozens are often killed—they do so, but only after using their entire arsenal of semantic games and relativistic, equivocating language that  minimizes the religious element.

8. How can the United Nations claim to be dedicated to world peace, yet they refuse to discuss or debate the treatment of Christian Copts in Egypt, the forced conversion to Islam of thousands of Christians, the violent jihad against Christian worshipers in countries like Nigeria or the public calls from prominent Islamic leaders to destroy every church in the Arabian Peninsula?

Raymond: Because most of those in the United Nations are byproducts of the mainstream media’s  secular and liberal narrative so that, like many in the Western world, they simply cannot see Christian persecution for what it is, and much prefer to focus on those peoples whom the powers that be have bestowed the honor of being portrayed as persecuted people, chief among them Muslim Palestinians (who, ironically, often persecute the Christian minority in their midst).

9. What do you foresee as the future of Christianity if the West continues to ignore the rampant persecution and murder of Christians across the Middle East, Africa and Asia?

Raymond: Extinction.  Many forget that, when Islam burst out of Arabia during the first major wave of Islamic conquests in the 7^th century, half of the world’s entire Christian population lived precisely in those lands we nonchalantly now call the “Arab World”—from Morocco to Egypt in north Africa, from Syria to Turkey in Asia.  Fourteen hundred years of sporadic jihads and dhimmitude has seen the slow decimation and forced conversion of Christians to Islam, making that region nearly purely Islamic.  With the exception of the Christian “golden age” during and after the colonial era, when Muslims were Western-leaning, today’s jihad has resumed in an effort to eradicate Christianity from its birthplace—the Middle East—once and for all.

10. What can a concerned private citizen do to help end the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world? Can they do anything to help or is it simply too late?

Raymond: It’s nearly too late—in some countries like Iraq, the indigenous Christian population has been decimated, and outside of Egypt, the whole of north Africa has something less than 1% of a Christian population—but there are many Muslim majority nations where Christians exist and are fighting for survival, Pakistan, Egypt, and Syria for example.  Concerned citizens should contact their representatives, and visit some of the human rights organizations that fight for Christian survival I list in Crucified Again.  Most importantly, they should spread the word.  At this point, our paralysis is fundamentally tied up to our ignorance.

Order your copy of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians

Raymond Ibrahim and Robert Spencer Discuss Muslim Persecution of Christians

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and author of numerous best-selling books on Islam recently interviewed me on his ABN program about the topic of my new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians:

Ten-Year-Old Coptic Altar Boy Kidnapped for Ransom

A 10-year-old Christian boy who served as a deacon (or altar boy) at the Coptic church of St. Abdul Masih (Servant of Christ) in Minya, Egypt, was kidnapped earlier this week. The boy, Sameh George, was abducted by “unknown persons” while on his way to church to participate in Holy Pascha prayers leading up to Orthodox Easter. His parents and family report that it was his custom to go to church and worship in the evening, but when he didn’t return, and they began to panic, they received an anonymous phone call from the kidnappers, informing them that they had the Christian child in their possession, and will execute him unless they receive 250,000 Egyptian pounds in ransom money.

Such incidents are on the increase. Less than a month earlier, another Coptic Christian boy, 12-year-old Abanoub Ashraf, was also kidnapped right in front of his church, St. Paul in Shubra al-Khayma district. His abductors, four men, put a knife to his throat, dragged him to their car, opened fire on the church, and then sped away. Later they called the boy’s family demanding an exorbitant amount of money to ransom the boy’s life.

As many Coptic activists are pointing out, while the immediate motive behind these kidnappings is money, another obvious purpose is to frighten Christian families from sending their children to church. Otherwise, why were both boys kidnapped from right in front of their respective churches? Considering that some Egyptian Islamic clerics consider attending church as worse than attending bars and brothels, the kidnappers likely deem this the “altruistic” side of their greed and hate.

The Forgotten Genocide: Why It Matters Today

A still frame from the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, which portrayed eye witnessed events from the Armenian Genocide, including crucified Christian girls.

Today, April 24, marks the “Great Crime,” that is, the Armenian genocide that took place under Turkey’s Islamic Ottoman Empire, during and after WWI.  Out of an approximate population of two million, some 1.5 million Armenians died. If early 20^th century Turkey had the apparatuses and technology to execute in mass—such as 1940s Germany’s gas chambers—the entire Armenian population may well have been annihilated.  Most objective American historians who have studied the question unequivocally agree that it was a deliberate, calculated genocide:

More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse.  A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as “Turkey”] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century.  At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000….  Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Indeed, evidence has been overwhelming.  U.S. Senate Resolution 359 from 1920 heard testimony that included evidence of “[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death [which] have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.”  In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem (which agrees with Islam’s rules of war).  Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.”  Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, some of which is based on Mardiganian’s memoirs….Continue reading to see how the Armenian genocide may be the tragic culmination of the current persecution of Christians under Islam, some of which has indeed reached genocidal proportions.

Video: Christian Girls Gang Raped to Screams of ‘Allahu Akbar’ in Egypt

Earlier this week a video began circulating on Arabic-language websites purportedly showing a crowd of Muslims in Egypt assaulting and raping two Christian women — on a crowded street and in broad daylight.  The video opens with Muslim men repeatedly shouting the word “Nasara”— the Koran’s derogatory appellation for “Christians”— as they identify two Coptic women who proceed to scream and run, only to be knocked to the ground by several Muslim men who savagely attack them, strip their clothing, and try to gang rape them.  Throughout, the women scream in terror while the men shout “Allahu Akbar,” that is, “Allah is Great,” as well as chant the shehada, or Islamic profession of faith: “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah.” None of the many passersby intervene in any way.

Little other information about the video accompanies the Arabic sites posting it.  So I did some searching; apparently the events recorded in the video occurred in 2009.  As for the context, I found a pro-Muslim article titled (in translation) “The truth about the video of Coptic girls raped in the street.”  Here I expected to encounter denial and dissemble, claims that the video was a “hoax,” that these are not even Egyptians, etc., etc.  Surprisingly, the article confirmed the authenticity of the video and what it depicts.  The main quibble it offered was that the video was in fact made in 2009 and that the Coptic activists who recently uploaded  it are troublemakers trying to create “sectarian strife.”

Much more interesting are the arguments the article makes to justify the rape of Christians: it claims that Muslim rage (for this particular incident) was prompted by accusations that a Coptic man had raped a Muslim girl.   Accordingly, Muslims were merely retaliating in like manner (along with raping Christian girls, Muslims also rioted, burned, and destroyed Christian shops and homes, as is customary)…Continue reading and/or see the video.

In Pictures: Savage Islamic Attack on St. Mark Cathedral Allowed by Egyptian Forces

Egypt’s Coptic Christians frequently accuse State Security and police of overlooking Muslim attacks on Christians and their places of worship, especially monasteries and churches.  The Western mainstream media often ignores these accusations, or mentions them in passing as “unsubstantiated reports.” Last weekend’s assault on the St. Mark Cathedral — unprecedented in significance — was no different, except for the fact that there are many pictures demonstrating State complicity.

To recap: After last Sunday’s St. Mark Cathedral funeral service for Egypt’s most recent Christian victims of jihad — including one man set aflame — gangs of Muslims attacked the Christian mourners, resulting in the deaths of two more Copts, including one shot through the heart.   Hundreds of Christians retreated back into the cathedral — both to get out of harm’s way, and to protect their holiest site.  They were trapped there all night, enduring projectile and firebomb attacks.   State Security also opened fire on the cathedral, including through tear-gas.

Several Egyptian media outlets and newspapers, especially the popular Youm7,  have published a variety of pictures showing Muslims attacking the cathedral in front of an absolutely indifferent, possibly approving, security forces.  Three of these pictures, with my captions, follow.  To see all pictures, read on website.

Jihad Erupts on Egypt’s Christians, Again

Over the weekend, Muslims launched yet another all-out jihad, replete with cries of “Allahu Akbar,” on Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority—also known as the original, indigenous inhabitants of Egypt, before Muslims invaded in the 7^th century.   Different reports are citing different sources as prompting this latest Islamic assault: some say Muslim children drew swastikas on a mosque, which prompted the imam and others to scapegoat and attack Christians; some say the source of the conflict is a feud between a Christian family and a Muslim family (over the latter’s sexual harassment of Christian girls).

Whatever the source or pretense of this latest jihad on Egypt’s Christians, the hate has led to the deaths of several Christians—including one Copt intentionally set on fire—and the wounding of hundreds.  The next day, after the funeral of the slain Christians, Muslims again attacked and opened fire on Christians, this time in the St. Mark Cathedral, one of the most sacred spots for Copts.

Worse, various elements of Egypt’s military, police, and security, have not only failed to protect the beleaguered Christians, but, according to numerous sources, have even joined in the attack on the cathedral.

This should be unsurprising, considering the Egyptian military intentionally slaughtered some 23 Coptic Christians—including by intentionally running them over with armored vehicles—during the Maspero Massacre of October 2010, when Copts dared protest against the constant Islamic attacks on their churches.

Similarly, just as the White House issued a statement during the 2010 Maspero Massacre, saying “Now is a time for restraint on all sides”—as if to imply Egypt’s beleaguered and unarmed Christian minority needed to “restrain” itself against the nation’s military—one expects more whitewashing and relativism from the White House.  For, just as the Obama administration tried to cover up the fact that the Benghazi attack, where American diplomats were killed by the same jihadi forces that Obama helped empower, so too will it naturally try to dissemble the fact that Egypt’s Christians are being terrorized and killed by the same Islamic forces—in this case, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis, who routinely incite Muslims against Christians—it helped empower.

Because there is so much startling and disturbing information concerning this latest attack on Egypt’s Christians in the Arabic-language media—much of which will never make it to the English-language media—over the next few days, I will be combing through the many Arabic reports and videos to bring you the facts and details of this latest atrocity.

Exposed: President Morsi’s ‘Brotherhoodization’ Plan for Egypt

The Muslim Brotherhood’s former General Guide, Mahdi Akef, the organization’s supreme leader from 2004-2010, declared during an interview published today by the Kuwaiti newspaper, Al Jarida, that the “Brotherhoodization” of Egypt’s state organs—which would see the transformation of Egypt into the image of the Muslim Brotherhood—is President Muhammad Morsi’s grand plan for the nation.

Mahdi Akef

Akef was referring to Morsi’s electoral program, also known as his “Nahda [or Renaissance] Project,” which, as it appears on the English-language website of the Muslim Brotherhood, says nothing about overrunning Egypt’s state institutions with Brotherhood members, but rather speaks glowingly of freedom, equality, and pluralism.  Yet, according to Al Jarida, Akef declared that “there is no Nahda without the Brotherhoodization of Egypt’s state organs.”

Akef further indicated the determination of Morsi’s resolve by boasting that, “despite the lack of cooperation from some state institutions and despite his being exposed to a fierce attack from the media and judiciary, he [Morsi] remains in office.”

During the same Al Jarida interview, Akef—who when once pressured to talk more about Egypt’s interests and less about Islam’s declared “the hell with Egypt”—further exposed the totalitarian and supremacist nature of the Muslim Brotherhood mentality.  For example, concerning Egyptian surgeon-turned-satirist, Bassem Youssef—who has been targeted by Morsi’s government for his jabs at the Muslim Brotherhood—Akef warned that the comedian “is transgressing against his masters.”

Needless to say, this assertion has ruffled some feathers among Egyptians.  As secular TV host Mahmoud Sa‘ad said in mockery, “Who, exactly, are our masters, the Muslim Brotherhood?  They have to clarify, so we can kiss their hands and their feet when we meet them, since they’re our masters.”… Continue reading.

Islam’s Latest Fatwa Permitting Rape of Non-Muslim Women

Yet another Islamic cleric recently made it permissible for the Islamic fighters waging a jihad in Syria—politely known as “the opposition”—to rape the nation’s women.

Salafi Sheikh Yasir al-‘Ajlawni, a Jordanian of origin who earlier lived in Damascus, Syria for 17 years, posted a YouTube video last week where he said he was preparing to issue a “legitimate fatwa” making it legal (in the eyes of Islam) for those Muslims fighting to topple secular president Bashar Assad and install Sharia law to “capture and have sex with” all non-Sunni women, specifically naming Assad’s own sect, the Alawites, as well as the Druze and several others, in short, all non-Sunnis and non-Muslims.

The sheikh used Islam’s legitimate Arabic term for these hapless, non-Muslim women, melk al-yamin, a phrase that appears in Islam’s sacred book, the Koran, and which is simply a reference to non-Muslim sex-slaves.  For example, Koran 4:3 commands Muslim men to “Marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four… or what your right hands possess.”  Islam’s ulema, or “scholars,” are unanimously agreed that “what your right hands possess” is, according to Islamic law, simply a sex-slave. Linguistic evidence further suggests that she is seen more as an animal or a possession than a human—hence this inhuman fatwa.

Jordanian Sheih Yasir al-‘Ajlawni is certainly not the first cleric to legitimize the rape of infidel women in recent times. Calls to capture and rape non-Muslim women are appearing with increasing frequency from all corners of the Islamic world.

A few months earlier, Saudi preacher Muhammad al-Arifi also issued a fatwa allowing jihadi fighters to engage in “intercourse marriage” with captive Syrian women that lasts for a few hours “in order to give each fighter a turn”—also known as gang-rape.

Then there is Egyptian Sheikh Ishaq Huwaini, who once lectured on how infidel captives, or to use another term from the Koran, ghanima, the “spoils of war,” are to be distributed among the jihadis and taken to “the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold.” He, too, referred to such women as “what your right hands possess,” saying:  “You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate—though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff—and this is agreed upon by the ulema….  In other words, when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”

Indeed, even some Muslim women advocate the enslavement and rape of fellow (non-Muslim) women…  Continue reading.

Video: ‘I Hate Christians and Am Disgusted by Them’ – Egyptian Muslim Cleric

Dr. Abdullah Badr — an Egyptian Muslim scholar, Al Azhar graduate, and professor of Islamic exegesis, who spent ten years in prison under Mubarak, but, along with any number of Islamic terrorists and agitators, was released under Morsi — recently gave an excellent summation of the second half of the highly divisive Muslim doctrine of wala’ wa bara’ (or, “Love and Hate”) — namely, that the true Muslim should love and help fellow Muslims, while hating and being disgusted by non-Muslims.

During a conference last week (see video below, with English subtitles) he explained how he is so “disgusted” by Christians, to the point that, if a Christian were to touch his cup, he would not drink from it:

[It’s] not a matter of piety, but disgust. I get grossed out.  Get that?  Disgust, I get grossed out man, I cannot stand their smell or … I don’t like them, it’s my choice.  And they gross me out; their smell, their look, everything.  I feel disgusted, disgusted.  I get disgusted not only by that, but by many things.

He kept stressing that, while Sharia law does not ban Muslims from eating food prepared by Christians, he personally is sickened by them.  Badr explained how he once entered a store in Egypt to buy food, but when he saw the crosses and Christian icons on the wall, and understood that the owner was Christian, he immediately gave the food away on the street…  Continue reading and/or to see video.

Islam’s Outrageous Obscenities

If you’re the sort who likes to consider the “differences” between the world’s major religions — or better still, if you think all religions are equal —  it may interest you to read “Islam’s Outrageous Obscenities,” where, based on recent assertions from Islam’s clerics (especially the fellow pictured here), I quote some rather “wild” language attributed to Islam’s prophet and the first caliphs.  Be warned, it contains lots of vulgarities and graphic imagery.

President Morsi Smuggling Al-Qaeda Leader Zawahiri to Egypt?

According to a new report from the Arabic-language website Misr al-Gidida (New Egypt), during Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi’s recent visit to Islamabad, Pakistan, he secretly met with Ayman Zawahiri, the leader of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, and promised to smuggle the Egyptian-born jihadi back home.  The Arabic report cites a Pakistani source saying that the meeting was clandestinely arranged, away from the delegation accompanying Morsi, and “facilitated by elements of Pakistani intelligence [ISI] and influential members of the international organization, the Muslim brotherhood” [all quotes translated from Arabic by author].

Morsi himself is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood; Zawahiri is a former member who grew impatient with the Brotherhood’s tactics of non-violent patience and perseverance, eventually quitting the organization and joining the jihad, becoming its current leader.  (See “Ayman Zawahiri and Egypt: A Trip through Time” for an expose on Zawahiri and his decades-long connections to Egypt, the Salafis, and the Muslim Brotherhood.)

The Pakistani source adds that “the meeting lasted 45 minutes, during which Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi promised to make preparations for Ayman Zawahiri to return soon to Egypt, indicating that some Muslim Brotherhood members would handle the operation, by first smuggling the al-Qaeda leader to a Gulf nation, likely Qatar, and then easily transferring him to Egypt—on condition that Zawahiri disappear lest he embarrass Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood with its American ally, whose security and intelligence agencies consider Zawahiri most wanted.”…  Continue reading.

Egyptian Imam: “Islam’s flag will be raised above the White House”

A video recording from a recent Friday sermon in Egypt, where the imam swears to Allah several times that the flag of Islam will be raised above the White House of America, recently appeared on the Arabic Internet.  According to the imam preaching, all Muslims need do is be patient and continue working towards this goal.

I uploaded it and included subtitles on my YouTube account, below:

Muslim Supremacism and Media Dissembling

Many are the reasons why Americans — including most Christians — are utterly ignorant of the plight of Christians under Islam.  Yet there is no doubt that the media, where we get our information, is the root source of this ignorance.  Whether by distorting, engaging in apologetics for Islam, or simply not reporting on the reality on the ground, the mainstream media has seen to it that Muslim persecution of Christians, arguably the greatest human rights abuse of our time, is little known and even less acted upon.

Michael Kravshik offers a good, recent example of how the media, including those most expected to be objective, habitually, perhaps instinctively, distort and thus minimize the situation.  Excerpts from his article, which is well worth a full read, follow:

This most recent example comes courtesy of both Foreign Policy Magazine and the Associated Press, two sources that are expected to uphold objective integrity when reporting on straight facts. Foreign Policy Magazine’s opinion pieces are exceptions to this rule, but this example comes not from an op-ed, but from its “Morning Brief” which is intended to report on facts, not opinion…  [O]n March 1, 2013 I was greeted with the following: “Muslim-Chritian fighting has reportedly broken out in a town in Southern Egypt.” [Note: spelling error on the word Christian from original source.]

Following the link to the AP report that this headline was sourced from leads to an article entitled, “Christian-Muslim tension flares in southern Egypt.” The actual facts of the situation are presented quite clearly in the first paragraph:

“Dozens of Muslim residents threw firebombs and rocks at police on Friday as they tried to storm a church in southern Egypt in search of a woman suspected of converting to Christianity, security officials said.” You can find more specifics in the body of the article.

The report refers to the event in a number of ways:

1)   “Christian-Muslim tension flares…” (in the title)

2)   “Clashes between Copts and Muslims…”

3)   “Violence between Egypt’s Christians and Muslims…”

4)   “The fighting…”

Tensions, clashes, violence and fighting. By reading the actual details of the event, it is clear that none of these phrases adequately describe what is quite obviously an assault on a besieged Egyptian minority. All of these phrases—especially clashes, and fighting—including the Foreign Policy headline imply the culpability of both parties, which in this case is far from the truth. Regardless of whether the intention to deceive exists, deception has certainly occurred; especially if a reader decided to take Foreign Policy’s brief at its word without looking into the details (something everyone is guilty of from time to time). The phrasing used leaves readers with a thoroughly false perception of the actual events. Whether by intentional deception or just plain old poor reporting, the damage has been done.

Thus the power of subtlety; something not limited to the case of Coptic Christians. Intentional or not in this case, in other cases it certainly has been. Either way, the authors have betrayed the integrity and trust that readers have placed in them. As consumers of information, we must always be cognizant of the power of words like these and the ease with which we can all be fooled by them. We must always do our best to use our common sense, and the sparse details we can get our hands on, to make our own value judgments. Unfortunately, this trend is far too common.

Egyptian Scholar: Christian Copts Must Pay ‘Protection Money’

During a recent interview, Dr. Mahmoud Shu‘ban, a professor at Egypt’s prestigious Al Azhar University, made clear that the Copts, Egypt’s Christian minority, will pay the jizya — what is often referred to in the West as an Islamic “poll tax.” According to the Al Azhar professor, “If non-Muslims were to learn the meaning of ‘jizya,’ they would ask for it to be applied — and we will apply it, just like Islam commands us to.” His logic is that, if Christians pay the jizya, they would buy for themselves “protection,” hence why they themselves should want to pay it.

Most Western apologists for Islam also claim that jizya money was historically paid to protect conquered dhimmis, though they often imply protection from outside enemies, non-Muslims. In fact, the jizya was/is protection money from surrounding Muslims themselves — precisely Shu‘ban’s point: pay up and maybe your churches won’t be burned and your girls routinely abducted; because you are not paying, you are not protected from such things and have no right to complain.

Incidentally, this Shu‘ban is the same scholar who went into hysterics on live TV, insisting that an Egyptian Muslim man who tore a Koran “deserves to be struck by the sword in a public place — and as soon as possible; as soon as possible; as soon as possible!” He is also the same sheikh who recently issued another fatwa on live TV calling for the killing of the leaders of Egypt’s secular National Salvation Front party for being openly critical of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, when all the latter want to do is enforce the laws of Allah. He unhesitatingly pronounced that the “Sharia of Allah” demands their killing, basing his decree on the words of prophet Muhammad — specifically, to behead those who oppose the Islamic leader — as found in the canonical collections of Sahih Muslim.

In short, Professor Shu‘ban is one of Egypt’s most frank scholars of Islam. Those who would learn the true, unadulterated teachings of Islam would do well to heed his words, for he never seems to miss an opportunity to expose the things of Islam (for those who have eyes and ears to see and hear with, that is).

The ‘Epidemic’ of Sexual Harassment — and Rape — In Morsi’s Egypt

Since the “Arab Spring” came to Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood assumed power, sexual harassment, abuse, and rape of women has skyrocketed.  This graph, which shows an enormous jump in sexual harassment beginning around January 2011, when the Tahrir revolts began, certainly demonstrates as much. Its findings are further supported by any number of reports appearing in both Arabic and Western media, and from both Egyptian and foreign women.

Hundreds of Egyptian women recently took to the streets of Tahrir Square to protest the nonstop harassment they must endure whenever they emerge from their homes and onto the streets.  They held slogans like “Silence is unacceptable, my anger will be heard,” and “A safe square for all; Down with sexual harassment.” “Marchers also shouted chants against President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood group from which he hails,” wrote Al Ahram Online

The response?  More sexual harassment and rapes.

One woman recently appeared on Egyptian TV recounting her horrific experiences.  On the program, she appeared shaded, to conceal her identity—less because she felt personal shame or guilt at what happened and more to protect her and her family from further abuses.   She recounted how she had seen a Facebook notice that Egyptian women were going to protest the unsafe conditions for women on the Egyptian street and decided to join them on their scheduled march in Tahrir Square on January 25, the anniversary of the revolution. “I did not realize I would become the victim,” she lamented. When it started to get dark, her group heard that “strange looking men” were appearing and that it was best to leave the area.

During some chaos she was lost from her group.  One man told her “this way,” pretending to help her to safety—“I was so naïve to believe him!”—only to lead her to a large group of men, she estimated around 50, who proceeded to encircle and rape her.  “This was the first time someone touched me” quietly recounted the former virgin: “Each one of them attacked a part of my body.”  Several pinned her down while others pulled off her pants and stripped her naked, gang-raping her for approximately 20 minutes.  She explained how she truly thought she was going to die, and kept screaming “I’m dying!” In response, one of her rapists whispered in her ears: “Don’t worry.  Take it,” even as the rest called her derogatory names she would not recite on the air….  Continue reading.

Saudi Hypocrisy At Its Best

Few things offer surreal experiences as when Islam and the West interact—when 7^th century primordialism encounters 21^st century relativism.  Consider the issue of “interfaith dialogue.”  In principle, it is a decent thing: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others trying to reach a common ground and professing mutual respect.  But what does one make of the gross contradictions that emerge when a human-rights violating nation calls for “dialogue,” even as it enforces religious intolerance on its own turf?

Obama bows before King Abdullah, 2009

Enter Saudi Arabia.  Birthplace of Islam, the Arabian kingdom is also the one Muslim nation that regularly sponsors interfaith initiatives in the West—even as its official policy back home is to demonize and persecute the very faiths it claims to want to have an interfaith dialogue with.

Back in 2008, for example, in what was deemed an unprecedented move, Saudi King Abdullah “made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews,” going so far as to refer to the latter two as “our brothers.”  His stated goal was to develop “respect among religions.”

The Saudi monarch’s most recent initiative reached fruition on November 26 2012, when the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue was launched in the Austrian capital, Vienna. According to its own website, the center “was founded to enable, empower and encourage dialogue among followers of different religions and cultures around the world.”  Lending international legitimacy to this Saudi gesture of goodwill, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was among those who attended the opening.

While all this ostensibly sounds well and good, consider the many incongruities, the many absurdities—initially demonstrated by the simple fact that Saudi Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, who was quoted praising the Austrian-based center as proof that “Islam is a religion of dialogue and understanding and not a religion of enmity, fanaticism, and violence,” is also on record calling Jews “monkeys and pigs” and Christians “cross worshippers.”

Nor is he just a run-of-the-mill sheikh: he is the government-appointed imam of Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mosque in Mecca—Islam’s holiest site, where Christians, Jews, and others are routinelycondemned and cursed during the prayers of the faithful.

But this is not surprising. Even the State Department’s most recent internal religious freedom report on Saudi Arabia notes that “Freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law and is severely restricted in practice.  The public practice of any religion other than Islam is prohibited, and there is no separation between state and religion.”

And this is the key point: Saudi Arabia’s brand of religious intolerance is not a product of the “Arab street,” terrorists, or mob violence.  It is institutionalized; it is enforced by the state itself.  In other words, religious intolerance is being implemented by the very people who claim to want to have dialogue with Christians and Jews under the umbrella of “tolerance” and “mutual respect.”

In this context, what, exactly, do they wish to talk about?… Continue reading for several recent examples of why the Saudi initiative is wholly insincere.

Egyptian President Summons 3,000 Foreign Jihadis to Terrorize Opposition?

The title of a recent Al Khabar News report declares: “Morsi summons 3,000 jihadis from Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia and Iran to be an Islamic army to strike the police and army forces” of Egypt.

According to the report, Ibrahim Ali, a lawyer of various Islamic groups, said that 3,000 leaders and members of the Jihad Groups and the notorious Islamic Group—including the brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, the army officer who planned and participated in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat—will arrive in Egypt in a few days.

Ali added that most of these leaders are coming from Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia, Kenya, Iran, and even London.  Similar reports had appeared earlier, in November: these seasoned jihadis may already be in Egypt.  Moreover, back in August, days after Morsi assumed Egypt’s presidency, he released jihadi convicts from the nation’s two most notorious terrorist organizations, Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group—including several held under tight security and on death row for committing especially heinous acts of terror in Egypt.

It is often forgotten that Morsi himself, Egypt’s president, was a former convict in Egypt, imprisoned for his designs to impose Sharia on the social order—precisely what he is doing now unfettered, including by summoning and releasing jihadis to subdue his fellow Egyptians who oppose the Islamization of Egypt—which has millions of Christians and liberal Muslims… Continue reading for more.

Muslim Brotherhood Admits Supreme Guide ‘Rules’ Morsi

During elections, one of the biggest criticisms against President Muhammad Morsi was that he was just a stooge for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Muhammad Badie — who recently called for a jihad on Israel.  Of course, the Brotherhood and Morsi brushed aside such talk, saying the latter was his own man, that his policies for Egypt would have nothing to do with Brotherhood interests, etc., etc.

Amazingly, however, a couple days ago on Egyptian satellite TV, a Muslim Brotherhood official actually admitted that “Yes, the Supreme Guide rules Morsi.”  Here is the Arabic video.

The discussion was in the context of the ongoing protests against the Sharia-pushing president.  At one point, the MB official says “The people are calling for the fall of the Supreme Guides rule and the fall of Morsi,” to which the host interrupts him by saying “What, does the Supreme Guide rule?”

The MB official responds: “Yes, the Supreme Guide rules Muhammad Morsi.”

The host, visibly amazed, makes a gesture of resignation and says, “Well that’s it; it’s over; what else is there to say”…

‘Obey The Prophet, Even If He Tells You To Kill!’ – Top Islamic Leader, Yusuf Qaradawi

Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi — one of the most influential Islamic clerics in the world, author of over 100 books on Muslim doctrine, head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, and spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood — maintains that Muslims must obey the commands of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, even unto murder.  This would be the same Dr. Qaradawi that American academics like Georgetown professor John Esposito praise for engaging in a “reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism, and human rights.”

Dr. Qaradawi calls for blind obedience to Muhammad — unto murder.

Missed in the West, Qaradawi made this declaration two years ago on his popular Arabic program, Al-Sharia wa Al-Haya (“Sharia and Life”), broadcast by al-Jazeera to an estimated audience of 60 million worldwide.

Towards the end of the show, the host asked Qaradawi what he thought about the fact that Sheikh Ahmad Hassoun, the grand mufti of Syria, had earlier said to an American delegation:  “If [Muslim prophet] Muhammad asked me to reject Christianity or Judaism, I would have rejected him.” Visibly agitated, Qaradawi erupted as follows:

No scholar of Islam or even average Muslim would ever say such words.  If you believe that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, then you must obey him—for he does not command except that which is good.  So, even if he tells you to kill, you must— … The story about our prophet Musa [Moses], when al-Khidr killed the boy and Musa said “you killed and you did!” But then he [Khidr] revealed why he killed the boy, and why he punctured the boat.  So we cannot distort the facts in order to please the people.  Let the people be satisfied with the Truth [Sharia teachings], not the false.

Syria’s grand mufti said many other things concerning goodwill for Christians that roused Qaradawi’s ire. For instance, before a large Christian gathering in Syria, where he was a guest speaker, he insisted that there were no differences between Christians and Muslims:

If Christianity is about believing in one God, so I believe in one God; if Christianity is about believing in Jesus, so I believe in Jesus; if Christianity is about believing in the New Testament, so I believe in the New Testament; if Christianity is about believing in the Old Testament, so I believe in the Old Testament; if Christianity is about believing that Mary was a pure virgin, so I believe she was a pure virgin, untouched by man; and if Christianity is about believing in the resurrection, so I believe in the resurrection—so what is the difference between me and Christians?

Continue reading to see how Qaradawi responded to this talk — and to meet the Quran’s “Green Man”…

VIDEO Captures Jihadi and Terrorist Nature of Syrian Uprising

A video recently appeared on Arabic websites demonstrating the true nature of the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime—that it, or at least dominant elements of it, are not simply Islamist in nature, but terroristic as well. Moreover, and just as was the case elsewhere, for example Libya, many outsiders—including al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists—are in Syria, “blending in” with the rest of the opposition forces

The same telling elements that have appeared elsewhere—including Egypt during the U.S. embassy attack—are present in the video footage: Islam’s black flag, “Salafi” looking Muslims, jihadi slogans and praise for terrorism and terrorists.

Two men stand in the balcony of what seems to be a building made vacant from the violence, singing in a microphone, while people congregate in the street and sing along while shouting praises—especially whenever the name “Bin Laden” is sung—and shouting “Allahu Akbar!” Excerpts of some of the words the two men sing—in a non-Syrian accent, likely a Saudi accent—follow:

They called me a terrorist and I said “that will be my honor,” this is a divine call …. We defeated America … the Trade (Center) became a bunch of rubble … Greetings from the Taliban and its leader mullah Omar… Victory is ours, winning is ours, and Allah with all his strength is with us, the infidel masses have come together to defeat us but they will not defeat us.

The Exodus of Egypt’s Christians

If the MSM accurately reported that Christian Copts were being driven out of their homes in Sinai, it failed to mention that they are being driven out of their homes all over Egypt proper, and not just al-Qaeda occupied, peripheral Sinai.

In fact, a recent statement by the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt laments the “repeated incidents of displacement of Copts from their homes, whether by force or threat.”  The statement also made clear that what happened in Sinai is no aberration:  “Displacements began in Ameriya, then they stretched to Dahshur, and today terror and threats have reached the hearts and souls of our Coptic children in Rafah [Sinai].”

Quite so.  Back in February, a mob of over 3000 Muslims attacked and displaced Christians in the region of Ameriya, due to unsubstantiated rumors that a Christian man was involved with a Muslim woman. Christian homes and shops were looted and then torched; “terrorized” women and children who lost their homes stood in the streets with no place to go. As usual, it took the army an hour to drive 2 kilometers to the village, and none of the perpetrators were arrested. Later, a Muslim Council permanently evicted eight Christian families and confiscated their property, even as “Muslims insisted that the whole Coptic population of 62 families must be deported.”

A few weeks ago in Dahshur, after a Christian laundry worker accidently burned the shirt of a Muslim man, the latter came with a Muslim mob to attack the Copt at his home. As the Christian defended his household, a Muslim was killed. Accordingly, thousands of Muslims terrorized the area, causing 120 Christian families to flee. One elderly Coptic woman returned home from the bakery to find the area deserted of Christians. Rioting Muslims looted Christian businesses and homes.  Family members of the deceased Muslim insist that the Christians must still pay with their lives.

Most recently, at the same time the media was reporting about the displacement of Christians in Sinai, over in Asyut, after a quarrel between two school girls—a Christian and a Muslim—several “heavily-armed” Muslims stormed the home of the Christian girl, causing her family and three other Coptic families to flee the village. When the father returned, he found that all his saved money and possessions had been robbed and plundered; and when he asked police for help, the officer replied, “I can’t do anything for you, reconcile with them and end the problem.”

Indeed, this has been the same attitude of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood led government: in all of the above cases, the government looked the other way, or, when called on it, denied reality. Thus the Coptic Holy Synod made it a point to assert in its statement that “nearly one month ago the media had published the violations against the Copts but the Egyptian authorities have not taken the necessary measures to protect the Egyptian families, who have the right to live safely in their homes.”

As for the Sinai incident—the only incident to reach the mainstream media—Prime Minister Hisham Qandil denied that Christians were forced to flee, saying “One or two [Christian] families chose to move to another place and they are totally free to do so like all Egyptian citizens.”  And a day after President Morsi made his perfunctory visit to the Sinai, pledging the safety of the Copts there, the latter were shot at yet again.

At any rate, why did the MSM report the Sinai displacements, but not these other, more dramatic displacements, especially Ameriya and Dahshur, which saw hundreds flee their homes?  Could it be because al-Qaeda — an established “bad guy” — can take the blame for Sinai, whereas there is no such convenient blame-all for these other displacements of Christians taking place all over Egypt?

The Rape of America’s Ambassador to Libya

When seventy-year old retiring Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., suggested that the administration’s response to the embassy attacks was akin to a court asking a rape victim for an apology — in his words, “It’s like the judge telling the woman who got raped, ‘You asked for it because of the way you dressed’” — his analogy may not have been so allegorical:

According to the Arabic website, Tayyar,

the American ambassador in Libya [Christopher Stevens] was sexually raped before being killed by the gunmen who stormed the embassy building in Benghazi last night [Tuesday, September 11], in protestation of a film insulting to the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him.

Then there is this picture, rarely shown on the MSM.  Perhaps he is being rescued from the jihadis, but why, exactly, are his pants down?

Sexual abuse and degradation is a common tactic used against non-Muslims, especially women, as the repeatedly raped Lara Logan found. A report in Arabic media that just appeared discusses how Christian women—identified by wearing crosses around their necks or simply not wearing a hijab—are subject to sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and even threats of rape on the streets of Egypt. This has only “become much more blatant and terrifying [after the embassy attacks]—and has even reached the point of threats of genocide and purging the land of Egypt of infidel Christians,” writes one female Christian in Egypt.

Nor are men immune from such rapes. In fact, the photos of Ambassador Stevens—stripped clothes, bloodied and tortured right before he was killed—very much resemble the photos of Gaddafi right before he was killed. One U.S.-supported “freedom-fighter,” for example, can be seen sodomizing Gadaffi with a rod as others dragged him along.

The al-Qaeda affiliated men who sexually abused and killed Gaddafi are the same sort of men who sexually abused and killed America’s ambassador. We were told that the late Libyan dictator was killed because he was an evil oppressor of his people. Why was the American ambassador killed, who had hailed the revolution and was there helping to “build a better Libya“?

These are the questions the media and the Obama administration need to be answering—not obsessing over a second-rate YouTube video and questioning hard won American freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment. They should be explaining why it is that, after four years of appeasing the Islamic world in ways unprecedented, including by helping oust America’s longstanding allies like Egypt’s Mubarak to empower Islamists, all we have to show for it are dead and violated Americans, stormed embassies, burned U.S. flags, and greater anti-American sentiment than ever before.

Sharia-Medicine: Egyptian Clinic Treats People with Camel Urine Per Prophet’s Advice

A recent Egyptian TV program showed how Islamic Sharia law’s many prescriptions do not merely clash with modern-day concepts like free speech and religious freedom, but even with medicine and science.

On September 16, popular TV persona Wael El-Ibrashi hosted Dr. Zaghlul al-Naggar, a prominent Islamic thinker and Chairman of Egypt’s Committee of Scientific Notions in the Quran, on the topic of medical science and Islam.  Inevitably the idea of drinking camel urine as a form of therapy—first proposed in the 7^th century by Muslim prophet Muhammad—came up.

Not only did Dr. Naggar promote this practice, but he made the staggering announcement that right now in Egypt a medical center in Marsa Matrouh actually specializes in treating people with camel urine, all in accord with the prophet’s advice.

Other Egyptian thinkers joined the show via satellite, including Khaled Montaser (who earlier exposed the Islamic world’s “inferiority complex“).  At one point, while delineating how science and medicine work, Montaser reminded that urine is where all the body’s toxins are carried out, asking “so, shall we drink it for health?” Naggar simply responded with arrogance: “I am older than you and more learned than you: you are not going to teach me; I will teach generations of people like you.”

Staunch secularist Sayyid al-Qemany—whose strong support for rationalistic thinking and the separation of religion and state caused Egypt’s Islamic establishment to pronounce him an apostate infidel—also joined the show via phone, deploring the very idea that drinking camel urine could heal people.

Referring to Naggar’s announcement that there is a clinic specializing in treating people with camel urine as a “catastrophe” that only indicates how far Egypt has sunk,  Qemany called on Egyptian health officials to verify if such a medical center truly exists, saying this is a serious issue involving the health of Egypt’s citizenry.

Naggar tried to defend the “salutary benefits” of camel urine by arguing that European pharmacies produce a medicine that contains female urine (possibly a reference to HCG).  Qemany  replied that such medicines are not based on drinking crude urine but are synthetic, exclaiming, “does this mean I should go drink my wife’s urine?!”….  Continue reading for more.

How ‘Religious Defamation’ Laws Would Ban Islam

As the Islamic world, in the guise of the 57-member state Organization of Islamic Cooperation, continues to push for the enforcement of “religious defamation” laws in the international arena—theoretically developed to protect all religions from insult, but in reality made for Islam—one great irony is lost, especially on Muslims: if such laws would ban movies and cartoons that defame Islam, they would also, by logical extension, have to ban the religion of Islam itself—the only religion whose core texts actively defame other religions.

If films and cartoons defame Islam, the Quran itself defames other religions.

To understand this, consider what “defamation” means. Typical dictionary-definitions include “to blacken another’s reputation” and “false or unjustified injury of the good reputation of another, as by slander or libel.” In Muslim usage, defamation simply means anything that insults or offends Islamic sensibilities.

However, to gain traction among the international community, the OIC maintains that such laws should protect all religions from defamation, not just Islam. Accordingly, the OIC is agreeing that any expression that “slanders” the religious sentiments of others should be banned.

What, then, do we do with Islam’s core religious texts—beginning with the Quran itself, which slanders, denigrates and blackens the reputation of other religions? Consider Christianity alone: Quran 5:73 declares that “Infidels are they who say Allah is one of three,” a reference to the Christian Trinity; Quran 5:73 says “Infidels are they who say Allah is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary”; and Quran 9:30 complains that “the Christians say the Christ is the son of Allah … may Allah’s curse be upon them!”

Considering that the word “infidel” (or kafir) is one of Islam’s most derogatory terms, what if a Christian book or Western movie appeared declaring that “Infidels are they who say Muhammad is the prophet of God—may God’s curse be upon them“? If Muslims would consider that a great defamation against Islam—and they would, with the attendant rioting, murders, etc.—then by the same standard it must be admitted that the Quran defames Christians and Christianity.

Similarly, consider how the Christian Cross, venerated among millions, is depicted—is defamed—in Islam: according to canonical hadiths, when he returns, Jesus supposedly will destroy all crosses; and Muhammad, who never allowed the cross in his presence, ordered someone wearing a cross to “take off that piece of idolatry.”

What if Christian books or Western movies declared that the sacred things of Islam—say the Black Stone in the Ka’ba of Mecca—are “idolatry” and that Muhammad himself will return and destroy them? If Muslims would consider that defamation against Islam—and they would, with all the attendant rioting, murders, etc.—then by the same standard it must be admitted that the hadith defames the Christian Cross.

Here is a particularly odious form of defamation against Christian sentiment, especially to the millions of Catholic and Orthodox Christians. According to Islam’s most authoritative Quranic exegetes, including the revered Ibn Kathir, Muhammad is in paradise married to and having sex with the Virgin Mary….

Continue reading.

Jihadis Threaten to Burn U.S. Embassy in Cairo

Jihadi groups in Egypt, including Islamic Jihad, the Sunni Group, and Al Gamaa Al Islamiyya have issued a statement threatening to burn the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to the ground.

According to El Fagr, they are calling for the immediate release of the Islamic jihadis who are imprisonment and in detention centers in the U.S. including Guantanamo Bay: “The group, which consists of many members from al-Qaeda, called [especially] for the quick release of the jihadi [mujahid] sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman [the "Blind Sheikh"], whom they described as a scholar and jihadi who sacrificed his life for the Egyptian Umma, who was ignored by the Mubarak regime, and [President] Morsi is refusing to intervene on his behalf and release him, despite promising that he would. The Islamic Group has threatened to burn the U.S. Embassy in Cairo with those in it, and taking hostage those who remain [alive], unless the Blind Sheikh is immediately released.”

Egyptian Father Kills Three Daughters with Snakes

A tragic story concerning an Egyptian father who killed his three young daughters with snakes last April was largely missed in the West. According to Emirates24:

The three dead sisters, killed by snakes from their father for being girls.

An Egyptian man killed his three young daughters aged 7, 5 and 3 by letting a poisonous snake bite them. According to ‘Al Youm Al Sabea’a’ newspaper, the three kids were found dead in their bed in Bani Mazar town of Al Minya governorate of upper Egypt. Forensic reports confirm the kids died due to snake poison. The man allegedly bought two cobras and let them bite the children while they were asleep so as not to be caught. He was divorced from their mother because he doubted her. He alleged that the children’s mother was in a relationship before marrying him and, therefore, denied that he fathered the kids. But she insisted he support the three daughters. However, when his second wife gave birth to a boy, he decided to do away with the children, he confessed to police under arrest.

While Emirates24 gives the story a Western spin—saying the man doubted his wife’s fidelity, the true parentage of his daughters, and did not want to pay child-support—the Egyptian show, Al Haqiqa (“the Truth”), which devoted an episode to this matter, never mentioned this angle, but rather portrayed him as killing his daughters simply because they were girls. Among the many people interviewed who verified this was the maternal grandmother, who said that, beginning with the birth of the first daughter, the man became hostile saying “I hate girls” and had to be placated to return to his wife. This scenario was repeated more dramatically with the birth of the second daughter. When he discovered his wife was pregnant with a third daughter, he tried to poison the pregnant woman but failed. He then spent a year plotting how to kill the girls without getting caught and had even tried with different snakes earlier, which proved ineffective, until he finally succeeded.

After stressing that the father was clearly not insane, but acted in a very deliberate manner, the host of Al Haqiqa, Wael Ibrashi, explained that “this matter deserves discussion, since these mentalities are present in Egyptian society. We never thought that these understandings that existed in pagan [jahiliyya] times concerning female infanticide would ever return, but they have returned.”

By “pagan times,” or jahiliyya, Ibrashi was alluding to a famous narrative: according to Muslim tradition, pre-Islamic Arabs used to bury their newborn infants alive, if they were daughters, but the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, outlawed female infanticide.

While this was a positive step, unfortunately, it is only half the picture. … Continue reading.

Muslim Clerics: Kill All Who Insult Islam

Recently an Egyptian Muslim posted a YouTube videotape of himself cursing Islam, its holy book, the Koran, tearing the latter to pieces and throwing it in the garbage. Excerpts of what he said follow:

The three sheikhs (from left, Abdullah, Mohsin, and Sha’ban) call for the death of all who insult Islam on live TV.

There it is, Allah’s book, this is the basic catastrophe. I don’t know what day it is of this disgusting month of Ramadan! You are making the tearing of the Quran such a big and dangerous thing… it is instinctive to tear this book, those sons of [profanity] think they can threaten me and challenge me to tear the Quran, but I want to prove to them that they are nothing and what is the big deal in tearing this book!! There it is [he starts tearing the Quran] in the trash. Are you feeling better now! You cannot touch a hair on my head! We keep blaming Hamas and Gaza, but it is not them, it is this son of [profanity] book that I am stepping on right now. That book is the source of all evil and the real catastrophe. There is nothing new here, it is not Omar Abdel Rahman, Abbud or all the others; it is this garbage that is causing us to run in a demonic never-ending circle that will never end.

While this latest Koran desecration is a reminder that there are everyday Egyptians who are sick of the Talibanization of Egypt, a recent talk show on Al Hafiz channel concerning this incident is an indicator of what is in store for them.

After the video of the man tearing the Koran was played, one of three guests, a bearded and white-robed Dr. Mahmoud Sha’ban, visibly shaken by what he had just seen, said:

Someone like him must receive the punishment he deserves—and it is death. He is an apostate… It is clear from what he says that he is a Muslim, and must be killed as an apostate. As for that act itself, it is an infidel act, and he deserves to be struck by the sword in a public place—and as soon as possible; as soon as possible; as soon as possible. It must be announced and photographed and disseminated among the people, so that all the people may know that we respect our Koran and its words from Allah, and whoever insults it, receives his punishment from Allah. If people like him are left alone, they will only get bolder and bolder.

The next guest, Sheikh Abdul Mohsin, said: “I support the words of Sheikh Mahmoud [who just spoke], that this man must be killed fast, that he may be an example to others, so that all learn that we have reached a new phase in respecting Islam and the holy sanctity of the Koran and Sunna. This man has become an apostate and must suffer the penalty in front of the people.”

The third and final guest, Dr. Abdullah, was somewhat critical of the first two Islamic scholars—not because they called for the man’s death, but because, by focusing on the fact that the man had apostatized, it seemed as if they were exonerating non-Muslims: “The issue of killing him is not limited to his being a Muslim and then apostatizing. No, it is known to us from the Sharia that whoever insults the Prophet or tears the Koran, his judgment is death—whether he’s a Muslim or non-Muslim, or non-Muslim.”

Later, a listener called in saying, “Just so you know, if I ever meet one of these people, their life is void—they’re simply dead.” The talk show host, who agreed that the man must be slain, responded with some moderate talk about letting the state handle such people, to which the first sheikh, Dr. Mahmoud Sha’ban, erupted in rage:

“Man, we’re talking about the religion of Allah! The religion! The religion!! The woman who insulted the Prophet, he voided her life! There were ten people at the conquest of Mecca whose lives the Prophet also voided!”

When the host tried to get a word in, the cleric exclaimed: “I am the sheikh, not you. I am the sheikh, not you! I am the sheikh! Hear me to the end, before I get up and leave!!”

Dr. Abdullah tried to mediate by clarifying to the host: “Do you know what the word ‘void’ [hadr] means [in Islamic jurisprudence]? It means it is the right for anyone who meets them [those who insult Islam] to kill them.”

Simply put, the host was wrong to think that those who insult Islam should only be killed by the state. Any good Muslim can—and should—kill them, wherever he finds them. Of course, with a Muslim Brotherhood president in office, whether those who offend Islam are killed by the state or by Islamic vigilantes becomes somewhat semantic.

Already under President Morsi’s first two months, Islamists have become more emboldened—whether by pressuring women to wear the hijab, killing a Muslim youth for publicly holding hands with his fiancée, or disseminating flyers that call for the total genocide of Egypt’s Christian Copts—flyers that even openly included names and mosque contact points for those Muslims who wish to collect their rewards for killing Christians.