"Don't Dare Sit with Us if You Want to Live"
Muslim Persecution of Christians, September 2017

by Raymond Ibrahim • February 25, 2018 at 5:00 am

"They get paid for every Coptic Christian girl they bring in. In some cases, police provide the kidnappers with drugs they seize. The drugs are then given to the girls to weaken their resistance... I even know of cases in which police offered helped to beat up the girls to make them recite the Islamic creed." — World Watch Monitor, Egypt; September 14, 2017.
On September 14, a court sentenced a Christian man to death for "blasphemy" against the prophet of Islam. Nadeem James, a 27-year-old father of two, was originally arrested in July 2016, after a Muslim angry with him for personal reasons falsely accused James, who is illiterate, of texting a poem deemed "blasphemous" of Muhammad. — Pakistan.
School textbooks taught her that "it was the Christians who wanted to plunder the lands and the riches of the Muslim world" and Turks merely responded by "defend[ing] what was rightfully theirs." (In reality, modern day Turkey consists of territory that was Christian for more than a thousand years before it was conquered by Turks in the name of jihad.) "Everything is used to make the Christians look like villains," she said, adding, "It's the same all through Muslim countries." — Turkey.

Indonesia joined other repressive Muslim nations in May 2017 when it sentenced the Christian governor of Jakarta, known as "Ahok," to a two-year prison term on the charge that he committed "blasphemy" against Islam. Pictured: Ahok on the day of his election, February 15, 2017. (Photo by Oscar Siagian/Getty Images)

Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Continue Reading Article

Iraq: An Election of Conflicting Interests

by Amir Taheri • February 25, 2018 at 4:00 am

Nuri al-Maliki (center), then Iraqi Prime minister, with other lawmakers on June 14, 2010, at the first parliament session after the 2010 election, in Baghdad, Iraq. (Photo by Muhannad Fala'ah /Getty Images)

Almost 15 years after the war that ended Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq, the circumstances that led to it and the way it was conducted remain controversial. However, even the most ardent opponents of the war admit that the end of dictatorship in Baghdad gave Iraq an opportunity to seek a different, hopefully better, future which might include democratization.

While it is true that democracy cannot be imposed by force it is equally true that force could be used to remove barriers to democracy as was the case in Germany, Italy and Japan after the Second World War.

In that context the fact that since 2003 Iraq has held several free and fair elections and referendums is cited as proof that anti-democracy barriers erected by successive despotic regimes in Baghdad may have been removed.

However, elections alone, even when free and fair, do not amount to democratization.

Continue Reading Article