"We Will Teach You a Lesson": Extremist Persecution of Christians, November 2018

by Raymond Ibrahim • January 27, 2019 at 5:00 am

After it was announced that Asia Bibi -- a Christian women who had spent nearly a decade on death row for allegedly "blaspheming" against Islam -- had been acquitted, Muslims rioted throughout early November; in one march, more than 11,000 Muslims demanded her instant and public hanging. A leading Muslim party announced that the judges who had acquitted her deserved death. The lawyer who represented her fled the nation due to many death threats. — Pakistan.
While under arrest, he asked police to allow him to "kill the infidels... otherwise you will become infidels like them." Authorities later said the man had mental problems and was under the influence of drugs. The Christians replied that the media always present such Muslims who attack churches and Christians as suffering from mental illnesses. — Egypt.
"[A]t least 350 Christian owned properties have illegally been seized. The government has stopped only 50 of these properties from being sold... Iraqi Christians have long complained about the disproportionate targeting of their properties for illegal seizures. These seizures often occur in waves which follow violent incidents of persecution." — Iraq.
"[T]he government... protect the aggressors and leave the victims mercilessly helpless... The devastation in terms of massacre of lives and destruction of property is unimaginable." — Rev. Dacholom Datiri, President of the Church of Christ in Nigeria.

A 22-year-old Muslim man, "holding a Koran and sharp tool," entered the St. George Church in Cairo (pictured) during Sunday worship service on November 11. While shouting Islamic slogans including "Allahu Akbar!" ("Allah is greater!"), he wounded two Christian men. Witnesses reported that they "heard him say that he wanted to kill them because they were Christians." (Image source: Terry Feuerborn/Flickr)

The Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: On November 2, heavily armed Islamic terrorists ambushed and massacred Christians returning home after visiting the ancient St. Samuel Monastery in Minya. Seven pilgrims—including a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy—were shot to death. More than 20 others were left injured, with bullet wounds or shards of broken glass from the buses' windows. "I pray for the victims, pilgrims killed just because they were Christian," Pope Francis said after the attack.

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New Year, Same Old Turkey

by Burak Bekdil • January 27, 2019 at 4:30 am

The joke goes: One day a political prisoner asks his guard if he could borrow from the prison library a certain work of fiction written by a certain author. The guard answers: We don't have that book in our library. But if you want, I can bring you its author. He is here."
HSBC Turkey's Chief Executive Officer, Selim Kervancı, is being investigated by the prosecutor's office over a video he retweeted during the Gezi protests five years ago. Kervancı is being charged with insulting Erdoğan for retweeting a video clip from the 2004 German movie "Downfall," set during Adolf Hitler's last days and depicting the collapse of Nazi Germany.
Recently, Erdoğan claimed that the Turkish businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala, currently detained and awaiting trial, was working for "the famous Hungarian Jew George Soros." By adding the "famous Hungarian Jew" to his conspiracy theories, Erdoğan apparently wanted to demonize Kavala and remind the judges that the suspect has a Jewish connection.

In December, a prosecutor launched an investigation into prominent Fox News (Turkey) journalist Fatih Portakal for "openly inciting others to commit a crime," because he asked his viewers a perfectly realistic question: "Let's have a peaceful protest [in Turkey], a protest against... rising natural gas prices. Could we do it [without getting arrested]?" (Image source: Fox News Turkey video screenshot)

Democratic anomaly became the new Turkish normal several years ago. The anomaly, sometimes, offers entertaining moments, too. Take, for instance, Parliament Speaker Binali Yıldırım, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's most important political confidant (and former prime minister), who became the joke of the day when he declared: "Animals, too, are living beings". Someone teased him on social media: "He is right. And I am adding: Plants, too, are living beings." A few days later Yıldırım, under fire from the opposition because he refuses to resign as parliament speaker although he would run for mayor of Istanbul in nationwide local elections on March 31 (they cite the constitution which bans the impartial parliament speaker from engaging in any political activity), amused a whole nation when he said: "Elections are not political activity". Not all Turkish anomalies are as entertaining as this one.

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Trump: In Third Year with Three Charges

by Amir Taheri • January 27, 2019 at 4:00 am

Those who opposed the creation of the US as an independent nation claimed there was collusion between the Founding Fathers and the French, who wished to prevent the English from extending their empire to the whole of North America.
The second charge brought against Donald Trump by is arrogance. Have we forgotten Barack Obama, who claimed that the start of his presidency meant "oceans receding " to end climate change? Or his boast that he would solve the Israel-Palestine problem in one year?
The claim that "foreign interests", including European, Latin American, Arab and Iranian (during the Shah's time) have tried to buy influence in the US by financing candidacies up to the presidency has been a routine part of the political war in America for decades.

(Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Theoretically, we have another year before the next American presidential campaign gets underway. And yet those who follow US policies more closely know that the 2020 presidential campaign has already started. In a sense, at least as far as the two main political parties are concerned, the campaign started the day Donald Trump took the oath of office.

In his first two years in office, Trump has attended at least 30 rallies across the United States that could best be described as campaign sorties. Add to that more than two dozen media interviews, not to mention thousands of tweets designed to create the image of a successful president running for a second term. For their part, Trump's Democrat rivals have campaigned against him in a guerrilla-style, hoping to kill his hope of a second term with a thousand cuts.

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