Raymond Ibrahim, a scholar of Islam and Islamic history who has a particular focus on Muslim persecution of Christians, has on his website – for which I also write – a new article, Islamic Forced Conversions — Past and Present, highlighting the astonishing similarities of past atrocities, which many people in the West believe to have been consigned to distant history (belief largely due to the mainstream media’s “carpet non-coverage” and total neglect of these everyday slaughters, massacres, beheadings, torture and discrimination), to current ones.
His piece was inspired by last Sunday’s canonization by Pope Francis I of the 813 Martyrs of Otranto, Christians from the South-Eastern Italian town of Otranto killed by Muslim Ottomans for refusing to convert to Islam in 1480. Their elevation had been decided by Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, in one of his last acts before resigning.
This canonization concerned the largest number of people to be elevated to sainthood at once in the history of the Catholic Church.
Muslims, and their tireless allies and apologists in the liberal media, cannot leave the Holy Father alone even when he is just doing his job, like canonizing new saints. And something as small as a symbolic hint and an indirect reference to current persecution of Christians, without any mention of specific countries or even Islam, can be enough for a Muslim website to say: “He did not mention any countries, but the Vatican has expressed deep concern recently about the fate of Christians in parts of the Middle East, including Coptic Christians in Egypt. The pope’s canonization is expected to raise anger among Muslims over linking Islam to violence.”
And the NBCNews website faithfully echoed: “The choice of some of the new saints was also striking, touching on the already-fragile relationship between Christianity and Islam… So why risk creating yet another inter-faith row with a celebration which some in the Muslim world may be seen [sic] as a provocation?”.
These comments are a reminder, if necessary, that things have not changed in Muslim intolerance towards Christianity, as Raymond Ibrahim explains in his new article:
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.”
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 7th 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 [Amazon USA] , [Amazon UK] , 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.”
Just as happened throughout history, Muslims today regularly “invite” Christians to Islam, often presenting it as the only cure to their sufferings—sufferings caused by Muslims in the first place.
In Pakistan, a Christian couple was arrested on a false charge and severely beaten by police. The pregnant wife was “punched, kicked and beat” as her interrogators threatened to kill her unborn baby. A policeman offered to drop the theft charge if the husband would only “renounce Christianity and convert to Islam,” but the man refused.
In Uzbekistan, a 26-year-old Christian woman, partially paralyzed from youth, and her elderly mother were violently attacked by invaders who ransacked their home, confiscating “icons, Bibles, religious calendars, and prayer books.” At the police department, the paralyzed woman was “offered to convert to Islam.” She refused, and the judge “decided that the women had resisted police and had stored the banned religious literature at home and conducted missionary activities. He fined them 20 minimum monthly wages each.”
In Sudan, Muslims kidnapped a 15-year-old Christian girl; they raped, beat and ordered her to convert to Islam. When her mother went to police to open a case, the Muslim officer of the so-called “Family and Child Protection Unit,” told her: “You must convert to Islam if you want your daughter back.”
Indeed, because Christian females are the most vulnerable segments of Islamic societies, they are especially targeted for forced conversions. In 2012, U.S. Congress heard testimony about the “escalating abduction, coerced conversion and forced marriage of Coptic Christian women and girls [550 cases in the last five years alone].Those women are being terrorized and, consequently, marginalized, in the formation of the new Egypt.”
As my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians [Amazon USA] , [Amazon UK] , documents, wherever there are large numbers of Muslims—whether in the Arab World, Africa, Asia, or even in the West—Christians are being persecuted. Forced conversions are the tip of the iceberg, and certainly not anomalies of history.
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Iranian American Ex-mooslim – Amil Imani – Salutes Pamela Geller as Champion of Freedom
Iranian-American ex-Muslim, Amil Imani, salutes counterjihadist champion of liberty, Pamela Geller
Tragically, during these times of great peril, truth is sacrificed by the politically correct, the myopic self-serving in the liberally dominated media, and the ruling class. Against this backdrop, a woman of great courage and integrity labors tirelessly in speaking the truth and in the defense of liberty.
Amil Imani Pamela Geller’s work in objectively revealing the true nature of Islam makes her a valued champion and defender of human dignity with liberty for all, and in particular, for women as longstanding victims of Islamic misogyny.
Geller methodically sheds light on the dark nature of Islamic beliefs and the barbaric practices involving the abuse of women in all ways, such as honor killing, female genital mutilation, child sex trafficking, forced child brides, severe abuse of homosexuals, and much more under the Stone Age Sharia law. Her work upholds and defends the ideals of human rights.
Liberty-loving people of America and the world over owe a debt of gratitude to Pamela Geller for valiantly exposing the racist and supremacist nature of Islam, for fearlessly braving where others dare not tread. She is a standard-bearer for human freedom and dignity. What does she get in return? A vicious and dirty hate campaign from jihadist apologists, fraudsters like the Southern Poverty Law Center, assorted left wing whacko groups, and even some Jewish organizations like the ADL, who should know better, and many threats by the Allah-following fanatics, simply because she speaks the truth about Islam.
If telling the truth about Islam is Islam bashing, then she is guilty.
The fact is that the self-righteous Islamist villains, their leftist apologists, and their paid mercenaries, do not trouble themselves to prove her wrong. Why is it that they do not disprove her naked truth about Islam? Conveniently, true to form, they shower her with all kinds of unspeakable epithets. Some of the more “civil” Muslims play the victim card. These latter types let out a hue and cry that they and their religion are smeared and victimized by people like Pamela. They consider her criticisms of Islam as Islam bashing. They accuse her of being a divisive racist who enjoys slandering Islam. For good measure, they also label her Zionist, in the pay of Israel and Israeli lobbies. Who is bashing whom?
Human nature is also the culprit, in part. We humans are attracted to hate like flies are to honey. Hate is an easy sell. It is appealing and little effort is required to hate. Hate gathers up the person’s or the group’s frustrations, anxieties, fears, paranoia and many other negative emotions in one handy bundle and hurls it at a convenient target. History is replete with instances of hate energizing the masses into the commitment of small and large-scale atrocities.
Truth is not always welcome and can often be greatly disturbing. But truth is the best weapon against evil and falsehood. When Geller points out the horrifying teachings of the Quran, she does not make them up. She cites Surahs from the Muslim Holy Book; Surahs and words that exhort Muslims to carry out all kinds of evil deeds against non-Muslims.
The truth is, Pamela Geller, is a heroine of our era. Heroes appear when circumstances call upon them. Heroes are those extraordinary people who stand up against evil at great peril to themself.
Pamela Geller is a courageous and intrepid human rights activist who has risen to fight for the rights of women and children under the iron fist of Islamic savagery. All of this brings charges of “hate speech” from the extremists and apologists for extremism and persecution. She honestly, and rightfully so, deserves to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. She has done more for her country and humanity than President Obama has ever done. Ironically, he gets to keep his Nobel Peace Prize and she receives a barrage of insults and nasty attacks. The world is upside down, so it appears.
In addition to her distinguished resume, “Pamela Geller has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable and illegal foreign sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign, the anti-Semitic posts on Obama’s website, Obama’s political organizing in public school classrooms, ACORN’s destruction of Republican voter registrations, and many more. She has also been a staunch leader of the nationwide campaign against the Ground Zero mosque.”
Western people with their heads firmly encased in the cocoon of liberalism—the idea of live and let live—fail to see that Islam is anathema to the notion. Muslim sects do not even grant each other a modicum of tolerance. Muslims kill other Muslims on a daily basis, all in the name of Islam. They vie with one another to convert the world to their form of Caliphate. They do all this while also taking advantage of non-Muslim naiveté and destroying the God-given gift of liberty.
“Western elites – government and media – are paralyzed by fear, afraid to speak out against the life-destroying aspects of Sharia law that Islamic jihadists want to impose on the rest of the world. The risk of offending Muslims is, in their calculus, apparently greater than the risk of national or civilizational suicide,” once said the late courageous Journalist, Oriana Fallaci.
Why does all this happen? In her speech Fallaci explained that it was to a great degree because “truth inspires fear.” When one hears the truth, one can only be silent or join the cause. It is a call to a personal revolution, an upheaval, a departure – perhaps forever – from a life of ease and comfort. So most will prefer not to hear the truth — in no small part because of the difficulty of living up to it. Yet the real heroes, she said, are ‘those who raise their voices against anathemas and persecution, while most succumb — and with their silence give their approval to the civil death of those who spoke out.”
Like Fallaci, Pamela Geller is also a voice of rare courage. “I am not as young and energetic as you are, I am hopelessly ill. I shall not last long,” said Fallaci in her latter days. And when she departed from us, she only hoped men and women of courage would rise up and would continue her legacy. One can only thank God people like Pamela Gellar have risen up and spoken the truth no matter how bitter that may be.
Pamela Geller has been sounding the alarm for a number of years about radical Islam and jihadists’ imminent deadly threats. While America is the last haven of hope where liberty can reign, the Islamic jihadists draw heavily from their treasury flush with oil extortion money to bribe politicians and hire mercenaries to further their evil objectives.
“Islamic supremacism is seeping into every aspect of American life. Islamic jihad groups aren’t solely concentrating on terror attacks (although another one of those could come at any moment), but on the creeping encroachment to introduce Islamic law into this country, step-by-step and bit-by-bit, until finally America wakes up to a country transformed into an Islamic state. We must fight back now to defend our nation and our civilization, states our Champion of liberty, Pamela Geller.”
As an ex-Muslim and a proud co-worker of the same cause as Geller’s, I salute this courageous defender of liberty and urge all freedom lovers to do the same and join her ranks to stem the tide of Islamic tyranny. I have experienced first-hand the pall that Islam casts on the life of the individual and society. From cradle to grave, Islam imposes its oppressive, intolerant, and deathly dogma without let up. This archaic primitive belief of over 1400 years ago has been and continues to be at war with valiant people who refuse to lend their necks to its yoke of slavery.
Pamela Geller is a true heroine. She stands for all that is dear to free people. She is a stark contrast to the masses of the politically correct, the apathetic, and the hired Islamic apologists.
I have tasted Islamic poison and imbibed from the chalice of liberty. Islam aims to reclaim me and force the rest of mankind into its bondage and rob us all of the treasure of liberty. I am with Patrick Henry and Pamela Geller: “give me liberty or give me death.”