“So no matter how much the threats continue coming, I’m determined to stay the course and never waver in my faith or in my ministry” Quote from Aweis Ali in the video. If only Christians in America were as steadfast as Aweis. Always remember your brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering in other countries of the world! Just because it’s not happening here yet doesn’t mean it won’t. It will just come in a different manner (Noahide laws) and it’s already in place.
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While I was reading this story and watching the video I was reminded about how good we’ve had it here in America while many Christians in the rest of the world are suffering greatly. Some people will say to me “Johnny it can’t be the tribulation yet because we’re not being persecuted” as if somehow only American’s are Christian and capable of being persecuted. The arrogance and pride that many American believers have is appalling.
I’m also reminded that my main mission is to report the stories that aren’t being spoken about and this definitely qualifies as even the video only has 1000 views. Unfortunately the Pastor is correct, hardly anyone cares about their plight, not even their own government. It probably won’t get much attention here either but I have to try to get the word out so people at least KNOW about what’s happening to believers in Sub Saharan Africa! Pray for your fellow believers there, pray that they can get relief and some rest from their persecutors in Jesus Holy and Mighty name!
What strikes me about this Pastor is his almost supernatural unwavering FAITH! Despite all he has experienced, Pastor Barnabas knows he can be sure of God’s faithfulness. “God has been helping and He’s the one that has been sustaining me and has kept me till today,” he says. “That’s the reason why I still strongly hold on to Him.
“I will not lose my confidence in God. And I will always encourage them that, no matter what should be the situation, they should still believe God that, one day, we shall come back to our ancestral homes.”
While our (my wife and I) situation here at home looks dire they’re not as dire as those in this article. Please keep them in your prayers as well as the other remnants around the world.
As Pastor Barnabas walks through the camp, he points out the makeshift tents in every direction. There are hundreds of them, small huts where people are huddled, seeking refuge from the sun. Thousands of people live here, in an informal camp for internally displaced people (IDPs), in Benue State in northern Nigeria. “Each and every one you see here—we are all Christians,” he says. “We are displaced because of violence.” He speaks with a determined, authoritative voice. You can see the compassion register on his face as he talks, but there is something else, too: a forcefulness that comes from a righteous anger that he and his church family have ended up in a camp like this.
It’s one of many similar IDP camps across sub-Saharan Africa, where 16.2 million Christians have been forcibly displaced—many due to violence. Many of those millions are Christians like Pastor Barnabas, who face attack simply because they follow Jesus.
Even though so many people are affected every year, this displacement crisis often isn’t recognized by the wider world. It’s something Pastor Barnabas finds frustrating and heartbreaking: “Millions of Christians are displaced, here in Nigeria. Millions of Christians are displaced in the whole of Africa. The news doesn’t care about it, politicians don’t talk about it, government don’t talk about it, global politics don’t talk about it. Nobody talks about it. We are remaining in darkness. Tell me: How that would make you feel? Being forgotten, being disregarded?”
‘A terrible place to live’
Pastor Barnabas gets to his tent, and stoops down to show it. Even though he and his family have lived in the camp for almost five years, their home is made of whatever materials were available. “We don’t have accommodation, we don’t have houses to live in,” he says. “We can only go and pluck palm leaves and use mosquito nets to construct it. And that is how we stay: We don’t have any privacy, me and my children.”
or a family with five children, the tent is far too small. Pastor Barnabas gestures to the four sides: “From here to here, it’s 1.5 meters (about 5 feet). From here to here, it’s 1.5 meters. From here to here, it’s 1.5 meters. It’s smaller than a double mattress. I don’t have a bed.
“Because my tent is too tiny, I can’t stay with my children,” he continues. “Three of them stay here with me and my wife. The rest of my children join with my neighbor. When day breaks, they come back to stay with me. His role is to pastor the believers in the camp. During the day, you’ll mostly meet women and children. Pastor Barnabas explains: “Most of the men—they have gone out looking for work to do, in order to get daily food. But yet, it will not be enough for a meal for a day.” Many of these Christians have left behind farms—places where they would be able to get food for their families. But they would be in extreme danger if they venture there.
Every day, Pastor Barnabas sees the men in the camp weigh this terrible choice. “This hunger leads many of them to go in search of food to eat where they are being attacked by the militants,” he says. “They have no option, they have to go back there again—and when they go, they are attacked again.”
The IDP camp is a bit safer, but the living conditions are appalling. “It is not easy to live in IDP camp. It is a terrible place to live,” says Pastor Barnabas bluntly. “In the IDP camp, we don’t have good hygiene, we don’t have water, we don’t have toilets, we don’t have good sanitation. Many people are dying. Only last week, as I am talking, we lost eight people in this IDP camp.”
People wouldn’t live in a camp like this if they had any other choice. They only live here because it’s worse outside the camps—because of the horrendous persecution that has displaced them.
‘I was attacked by the Fulani militants’
Every year, thousands of Christians in Nigeria and across sub-Saharan Africa are murdered for their faith. Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List research shows that about 95% of believers killed last year for their faith are in sub-Saharan Africa. More Christians were killed for their faith in Nigeria than the rest of the world combined. And that doesn’t include the huge numbers of people who are injured, abducted, face sexual violence, or lose their homes and livelihoods.
Pastor Barnabas can easily empathize with the displaced women, men and children who have faced this violence. He’s been through exactly the same experience.
“I was on the farm with my brother, Everen, and his wife, Friday,” he remembers. “We were walking when we heard rapid shooting of guns and other sounds. We didn’t know what was happening. We saw people running in different directions. We didn’t know that the militants had surrounded us.”
“We didn’t know that the militants had surrounded us.”Pastor Barnabas
The community was being attacked by Fulani militants, a group of Islamic extremists who are responsible for many of the violent attacks in north central and central Nigeria.
“We began to ask each other, ‘What is happening?’ and said, ‘We should run, we should run’,” he says. “Some of them came with guns, some of them came with machetes, some of them came with sticks.”
Tragically, Everen and Friday weren’t able to escape their persecutors. It’s been almost five years, but the pain is still raw for Pastor Barnabas. “My brother was shot by the militants, and my brother’s wife was also shot and then macheted and killed by the militants,” he says.
Lasting injuries
The attack kept going. Pastor Barnabas couldn’t stop to help his brother and sister-in-law, or even to retrieve their bodies. “I kept running,” he remembers. “Then the militants divided themselves and one of them followed me.”
This man tried to attack Pastor Barnabas with a machete, but accidentally dropped it. “He proceeded to remove his stick and hit me on my hand, and my hand was badly broken,” Pastor Barnabas says.
“If not for God’s intervention, if not for God’s love, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”Pastor Barnabas
Years later, he is still affected by these injuries. The attack caused long-term damage and, while he managed to gather enough money to pay for initial surgery, he can’t afford to have the metal in his hand removed. Without a second operation, he can’t use his hand properly. It’s a daily reminder of the horror he experienced at the hands of the militants.
He knows it could have been even worse. The only reason the brutal attack stopped without Pastor Barnabas being killed was because he was running in the direction of police. “Thankfully, I was close to the main road and there was a checkpoint with police officers,” he says. “The officers heard us and started shooting into the air. The militant couldn’t harm me the way he wanted. He became scared and ran back, and that was how I was saved.”
Despite the horrendous ordeal, Pastor Barnabas is grateful to God that his life was saved. “If not for God’s intervention, if not for God’s love, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he says. “I hand everything over to God; let the will of God be done in my life.”
Why was Pastor Barnabas attacked?
Attacks like this one happen countless times in northern and central Nigeria and in nearby countries. Sometimes Fulani militants are the perpetrators—in other attacks, Boko Haram, the Islamic State group (ISWAP) or other jihadist groups are responsible for the violence. Their motivation is clear: to destroy as many Christians and Christian communities as possible and establish a caliphate (an Islamic state).
“We discovered that this thing [violent attack] is because we are Christians,” says Pastor Barnabas. “They want to convert us to being Muslim, as they are.” The attackers take land and other spoils; some victims of these attacks aren’t believers, but research and first-hand testimonies both demonstrate that Christians are being particularly targeted for their faith.
“The reason why we know that they are attacking us because we are Christians is because, when they come to attack us, they call us ‘capari,’” Pastor Barnabas explains. “It means you don’t have any religion.” The militants don’t value their lives, because they are considered infidels.
He lives with the impact of his individual attack every day, but Pastor Barnabas wants to make clear that it is a far, far wider problem. The huge numbers of Christians in IDP camps are there because they have fled this sort of violence, or the threat of it. “In this camp, many people are affected, many are injured, many are killed or their loved ones have been killed,” he says. “This affected not only my family, not only in the particular IDP camp I’m living, but there are millions of Nigerians that are being displaced. And it is not only in Nigeria these things are happening. They are happening in the whole of Africa.”
Permanent scars
When a Christian community is attacked by a militant group, the effects are long-lasting. As well as the terrible loss of life, it removes any means of getting an income, or future opportunities for the children of affected believers. “Now, I have lost everything that I had. Everything in my home and village was burned; I was left with nothing,” says Pastor Barnabas. “I cannot take care of my children. I cannot feed them. I cannot take care of my family. My children now, they are no longer in the school. This has affected them.”
He continues: “As a father, the Bible says we should bring up a child in the way of God – when he grows up, he will not forget this way. But now, as a father now, what example will I give to my children when they grow up? Will they say: My father did not help me and I didn’t have a house? They were living a godly life—but now, because of this, they are influenced by bad people.”
“People ask: ‘If our God is alive, then why would He allow us to pass through this kind of a problem that we are in?'”Pastor Barnabas
Pastor Barnabas also sees how the trauma of this violence, and the ongoing desperation his church family experiences, challenges their faith. Many join in his services in the IDP camp, praising God in the face of this persecution—but many also question why this is happening to them.
“People ask: ‘If our God is alive, then why would He allow us to pass through this kind of a problem that we are in? Why are we not seeing God’s intervention?’” says Pastor Barnabas. “Their minds have been discouraged, and that makes them ask these kinds of questions. Many people are losing their hope in God because of the situation they are in.”
He also sees how hard it is to remain faithful to God when you don’t know where your next meal will come from, or when you are watching your children suffer. He has even seen some of the Christian women in the IDP camp turn to prostitution, in order to get money to feed their families.
One of the tactics of persecutors is to disgrace Christians so much that they question their faith—in Nigeria, this often means robbing men of their traditional role as providers, and sexually assaulting women, leaving them regarded as shamed or damaged by the surrounding community. Whatever the tactic, the result is the same: the church’s light is diminished. Pastor Barnabas is desperate to help believers in his camp. “I don’t have anything to give them,” he says. “We can only pray together and share the word of God together. As a pastor, I am supposed to take care of these sheep. So, it makes me as a pastor …” he trails off.
“I feel very, very bad.”
Persecution remains a real danger for all Christians in this region. Even the IDP camps don’t have proper security, and believers are fearful and vulnerable to violence, including sexual violence. And Pastor Barnabas’s ordeal isn’t over. Even while he was speaking with Open Doors partners, he heard the terrible news that Ifa, another of his brothers, had been attacked by Fulani militants while trying to gather food. The militant struck him on the head with a machete, and he nearly died. It’s a stark reminder of the constant, ongoing dangers facing Pastor Barnabas and the other Christians in this camp and throughout Nigeria.
A confident hope
Despite all he has experienced, Pastor Barnabas knows he can be sure of God’s faithfulness. “God has been helping and He’s the one that has been sustaining me and has kept me till today,” he says. “That’s the reason why I still strongly hold on to Him.
“I will not lose my confidence in God. And I will always encourage them that, no matter what should be the situation, they should still believe God that, one day, we shall come back to our ancestral homes.”
He continues: “What I want to say is, whatever has happened to us, we should believe that God still exists. Everything has its own time. It does not matter how long we have been in this camp—a day will come when God shall take us back to our ancestral homes. It’s over four years that we have been in this place. I did not come here with anything, but God is using individuals and groups to take care of me.”
Your gifts and prayers at work
Thanks to your support, Open Doors local partners have been able to provide emergency food packages to IDPs in Pastor Barnabas’ camp. “If you are hungry, you will lose your confidence in God; if you are sick, if you are not strong, you may lose your confidence in God.” This vital supply of food isn’t just meeting people’s physical needs – it can help them persevere spiritually too, giving confidence that God hasn’t abandoned them when He uses local Open Doors partners as His hands and feet. Local partners are also planning to provide skills training and trauma care, to support long-term resilience and self-sufficiency. Open Doors local partners were also able to help with Ifa’s urgent medical bills, and are paying for Pastor Barnabas’s operation on his hand.
Pastor Barnabas is keen to send thanks to the Open Doors supporters—people like you—who make this possible through their prayers and gifts. “Brothers and sisters, you have been very supportive in the area of food particularly in this IDP camp,” he says. “We have been starving, but any time it becomes critical, you assist us; we are very grateful. Recently you provided us with corn, rice, beans and other things.
“I want to use this opportunity to say thank you for your ministry. It has been a help for us. If not for the help of your ministry, I don’t think it would be easy for us to live. But with the aid of this ministry, they cared for us. They took us along as brothers and sisters. They cared for us as mothers, as fathers and as sisters.
“So, I am very, very grateful. My prayer for [you] is that God Almighty will remember [you] the way they remembered us. May God Almighty strengthen [you] the way they strengthened us.
“We are grateful as a family. I am grateful. As an individual, I am grateful. On behalf of the IDP camps and especially in the ministry where I am, we are grateful, we are saying thank you. Thank you, thank you, God bless you.”
‘[God] is the only One that can help us’
There is still so much danger and persecution in the region, and the believers Pastor Barnabas cares for long for a time of safety, security and plenty. They want to go home. They want the violence to end. And they want to heal.
When asked what he is praying over the situation, Pastor Barnabas says, “My prayer is that God Almighty should intervene into this case. He should fight this battle for us, because the battle is not ours, it is His. So, our eyes and our hope are on Him. He is the only One that can help us. Without Him, no man can help us.”
He adds: “The Bible says ‘I will fight the battle for you and give you rest.’ If God Almighty will fight the battle for us, I believe a day shall come that we will be at peace. We will live a good life. Even those things that we lost, God will restore back. He did it to people before; He did it to Job.
“I believe that we will not be an exception. So, I say to my people, the Christians in the IDP camp, I believe that God lives high and lives forever in the name of Jesus. I am praying that God should help all of us to still have confidence and hope that it is going to be well with us. That is my prayer.”
Pastor Barnabas knows how vital the support and prayers of his worldwide church family are. “If there is any where you can contribute yourself, contribute in a way to help us Christians in the IDP camp, please do it and God will bless you,” he says, “and join together with us to pray that God Himself should be our defender and that God should preserve our lives—that God would sustain us and keep us.”
The other day I made a video about the Christian persecution including murders that have been happening in Nigeria. Now we have 70 decapitated bodies that were found in a Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). An Islamist group linked to Islamic State called the AFD are feared to have beheaded the victims with machetes. Here is more from Newsweek.
The 70 decapitated bodies were discovered in a Protestant church in the town of Kasanga, in the Lubero Territory in the province of North Kivu toward the end of last week, according to Open Doors.
No group has taken responsibility for the atrocity, but Open Doors, and several other organizations, have accused the AFD of the murders, citing “field sources.” The victims are believed to have been taken hostage a few days before they were killed.
Military administrator Alain Kiwewa for the Lubero Territory said he was investigating the incident, Pan-African news agency Agence de Presse Africaine reported.
“Local sources suspect the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist group of Ugandan origin affiliated with the Islamic State, as well as local armed groups of being responsible for the massacre. These groups have maintained a climate of terror in the region for several months,” the agency said.
It said the victims, who had been “tied up and decapitated with knives,” had been kidnapped on February 12.
American conservative anti-abortion activity Lila Rose posted on X: “Horrific. 70 Christians were brutally beheaded by an Islamist group inside a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo Where’s the media outrage? Pray for persecuted Christians.”
Seventy Christians were found beheaded in a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
They were reportedly hostages of the Islamist group ADF— an ISIS affiliate
According to Christianity Today, 365 million Christians live in nations with high levels of persecution or discrimination. That’s 1 in 7 Christians worldwide, including 1 in 5 believers in Africa, 2 in 5 in Asia, and 1 in 16 in Latin America. According to their top 50 countries for Christian persecution, North Korea ranked No. 1, as it has every year except for 2022 when Afghanistan briefly displaced it. The rest of the top 10 reshuffled but remained the same: Somalia (No. 2), Libya (No. 3), Eritrea (No. 4), Yemen (No. 5), Nigeria (No. 6), Pakistan (No. 7), Sudan (No. 8), Iran (No. 9), and Afghanistan (No. 10).
Remember to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering persecutions. In Nigeria there’s a believer killed every 2 hours at least! Prayer is our most powerful tool when used earnestly and consistently! I love Psalm 91 myself, beginning with verse 1 and 2. Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Here are 4 more you can use to pray for our persecuted brethren.
Stay tuned as I’ll be back tomorrow (God willing) to talk about the persecution of true believers in America with the Noahide laws. Blessings to you all
Johnny
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Editors Note: It never ceases to amaze me how American Christians always tell me that it’s not the tribulation yet because they’re not being persecuted yet. Once again they’re NOT PAYING ATTENTION to anything that’s outside of their little bubbles as Christians are being persecuted around the world! I have Nigeria on my prayer list because it’s so horrible over there! Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 10.
21 And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. 22 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. 23 But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. Matthew 10: 21-23
As you will see in the article below Jesus Christ is coming soon and the persecution of believers is going on around the world and the USA/Mystery Babylon is about to be destroyed. Prayed up and prepped up, time is short! Johnny
“Typically, kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of Islamic ‘marriages’ and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers….” — morningstarnews.org, September 24, 2024, Pakistan.
Headlines of the “pure genocide” of Christians from the month of September follow…. — Nigeria.
“Muslims who abducted a 17-year-old Christian girl and gang-raped her for 10 days are threatening her family to pressure them to withdraw charges, even as police have failed to arrest most of the suspects.” — morningstarnews.com, September 30, 2024, Pakistan.
Muslims murdered, hacked to pieces, and dumped the remains of a Christian man into a Cairo canal…. Mina Musa, 21, had left his family home in Minya for a new job in Cairo…. He was responding to an advertisement on social media to assist an elderly person in Cairo. The notice included the offer of a generous salary, along with broader networking opportunities in the field of physical therapy….. The authorities managed to track the young man down to a Cairo apartment. On breaking in, they found parts of Mina’s body…. Last reported, divers were searching in the canal for Mina’s head. — copticsolidarity.org, October 5, 2024, Egypt.
“I WILL BOMB THE POPE. I’M A TERRORIST…JUST BE CAREFUL…WAIT FOR NEWS YEEE.” — posted on social media, morningstarnews.com, September 10, 2024, Indonesia.
“Khosravi said the main goal of detention isn’t always punishment or even to gather information, but to break a prisoner at such a fundamental level that they are shattered permanently…. Another Christian, forced to listen to the cries of a woman screaming in a near-by cell, was convinced by guards that it was his wife being raped repeatedly, he said.” — morningstarnews.org, October 1, 2024, Iran.
On September 18, Christian mother of four was sentenced to death on a “blasphemy” conviction…. The reason she was handed the death sentence has less to do with actual evidence and everything to do with extremist pressure groups, Hameed [her lawyer] said… “If you analyze all cases of 295-C, you will see that all the convictions of the trial court are overturned by the superior courts.” — morningstarnews.org, September 19, 2024, Pakistan.
“Nearly 3,000 persons have been accused of blasphemy in Pakistan since 1987…” — morningstarnews.org, September 19, 2024, Pakistan.
“These are Christians who are out to convert our people to a wrong religion.” — Sheikh Kalimu, Islamic leader, morningstarnews.com, September 23, 2024, Uganda.
“After 1994 [when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power], the authorities tried to make Yemen an Islamic state. They wiped out our identity as Christians and refused to write ‘Christian’ on documents. Christians had to write either ‘Muslim’ or leave a blank space…. When I got full marks in Islamic education, they would reduce my grades, because they told me ‘a Christian couldn’t be equal to a Muslim.’… [A]ll the nuns were later killed…. In 2018, the authorities refused to renew our passports unless we wrote the word ‘Islam’ in the religion section of the application form, as we were told: ‘There are no Christians in Yemen.'” — Badr, Yemeni Catholic woman living in Aden, catholicnewsagency.com, September 25, 2024, Yemen.
On September 12, a Muslim man and two accomplices kidnapped a 16-year-old Christian girl in Jaranwala, Pakistan, then forced her to convert to Islam and marry him. Pictured: A Christian district of Jaranwala, on December 25, 2023. (Photo by Amna Yaseen/AFP via Getty Images)
The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of September 2024.
Pakistan: Forced Conversion and Rape of Christians
On September 12, a Muslim man and two accomplices kidnapped a 16-year-old Christian girl, then forced her to convert to Islam and marry him. Her parents were away at the time, but when they returned, neighbors said they had seen the gun-wielding suspects bundling their daughter, Diya Iftikhar, into a white Suzuki van and fleeing the scene. “We were terrified,” said the mother, Shaida, “because Ghazaal and his accomplices were involved in the Aug. 16, 2023 attacks on churches and homes in Jaranwala. They are notorious for their criminal activities, including sexual harassment of Christian girls.” Four days later a video was sent to the parents of the underage girl saying she had converted to Islam and married of her own free will:
“We knew Diya was coerced to record this false statement, because she detested Ghazaal. She had often complained to us that Ghazaal and his friends used to harass her when she went to her tuition center.”
Although her parents had immediately gone to the police, they refused to respond. After repeatedly visiting and “pestering” the police station, authorities briefly detained the kidnapper:
“But this was just to show us that the police were making an effort to find Diya. They neither investigated him nor put pressure on him to help recover our daughter from his son’s illegal custody.”
Joseph, the girl’s father, said the investigating officer of the case was being not being cooperative:
“Despite pleading with the IO for Diya’s recovery, he is not taking any action against Ghazaal and his accomplices. My wife and I work in local textile factories and do not have the money to pursue the case in court. We also made a video appeal for support from Christian organizations but so far we haven’t received any legal assistance.”
He said the suspects were pressuring them to drop the case,
“but we will not stop until Diya is returned to us. I’m also fearful for the security of my four younger daughters. If the abductors are not arrested and punished, it will put them and the other Christian girls of my village at serious risk of abduction. I beg the police authorities to protect us from these predators.”
Discussing how common such cases are, the report adds,
“Typically, kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of Islamic “marriages” and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers… Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children’s ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their “legal wives.” Recorded cases of abduction and forced conversion numbered 136 in 2023, the highest annual total ever… Unofficial sources suggest that forced religious conversions linked to forced marriages affect as many as 1,000 girls belonging to religious minorities annually.”
Separately, “Muslims who abducted a 17-year-old Christian girl and gang-raped her for 10 days are,” according to a Sept. 30 report, “threatening her family to pressure them to withdraw charges, even as police have failed to arrest most of the suspects.” The girl’s impoverished family repeatedly tried to retrieve the girl, to no avail. “I’m a poor man and did not have the resources to take a stand against the influential Muslims on my own,” said her father, Taj Masih.
“When the accused were summoned by the village council, they admitted that they had taken her and assured them that she would be returned to us. However, when they kept delaying her return on various pretenses, I filed a complaint with the police… Police on Sept. 5 found the girl, who told them that she had been gang-raped by Muhammad Yasir and Muhammad Saif… A medical examination [and DNA testing] proved she was physically tortured and raped multiple times by the suspects.”
The father said that police arrested Saif (Arabic for “sword”) even though all the other suspects, including a Muslim woman who helped in the abduction, are still free:
“I go to the police station every day hoping for justice but return home empty-handed… [Now] they are threatening me to drop the case or face the consequences, but I won’t back down.”
His poverty and Christian faith have been double obstacles in achieving justice, he said:
“There are about 25-30 Christian families in our locality, and a majority of us are laborers. We are often discriminated against due to our religion, but I was not expecting the police to treat this case with such an indifferent attitude. My daughter’s honor has been violated, and she’s been scarred for life, but it seems there’s no justice for poor Christians like us.”
In another case, on Sept. 11, a high court ordered the recovery of two Christian sisters, aged 13 and 18. They were forcibly converted to Islam and married to their abductors nearly two months earlier in July. According to attorney Sumera Shafique,
“The family was sleeping in their two-room quarters on July 23 when Zain and Ali accompanied by some unidentified accomplices entered their home, locked the door of the parents’ room from the outside and abducted the girls.”
The parents immediately alerted the police, only to be completely ignored. According to the girls’ mother, Sumera Bibi,
“We kept pleading with police for recovering our daughters, but they did not act. Whenever we received information from someone about my daughters’ whereabouts, my husband and eldest son would immediately go to those cities to look for them. We had to take loans to meet the travel expenses, and we are now under a huge debt.”
A few days after the initial kidnapping, forged Islamic conversion certificates were sent to the parents, falsifying the two girls’ ages. Attorney Shafique continues,
“The perpetrators lived in the same neighborhood and ostensibly targeted the girls because of their poverty and vulnerability due to their Christian faith. The police’s attitude is also regrettable, because they made no effort to find the girls. The court has now directed the Kasur District Police Officer to recover the girls, so we are hoping that the local police will now take some action against the accused.”
Last reported, the rapists’ Muslim relatives were pressuring the Christian family to “withdraw the case and forget about the sisters.” According to the girls’ mother, they
“even attacked my husband with an axe when he confronted them…. How can we let them destroy the lives of our daughters? Neha is only 13, while her abductor-husband is more than double her age… We haven’t seen our daughters since the time they were taken from our home,” she said. “We are extremely worried about them and want them back at all costs.”
Finally, Muslim employers of a teenage Christian boy forcibly converted him to Islam and are refusing to release him. Samsoon Javed, 17, had taken the new job at a gas company to help his family financially. Before long, “He began avoiding us and his siblings and didn’t speak much when he was at home,” said Samina Javed, his mother:
“We were worried about him, but despite our repeated prodding he wouldn’t tell us anything…. We came to know about Samsoon’s conversion in September, when he didn’t come home from work. When my husband and I went to Umar’s shop to inquire about Samsoon, he told us that our son had become a Muslim and didn’t want to live with us anymore. We were shocked to hear this and pleaded with Umar to let us meet with Samsoon, but he refused and told us to leave his property.”
After a few days, they managed to see the supposed willing convert:
“Samsoon kept silent and avoided eye contact when we asked him about his conversion. It was quite clear that he was scared and under pressure. He told us to leave, saying Umar would be angry if he saw us there.”
They later learned from contacts that the Muslim employers had been taking their son to an Islamic spiritual guide (Pir), who pressured the teen to change his Christian faith:
“I’m certain that Samsoon is being held by the two brothers against his will. I have seen fear in his eyes… [I]t’s as if he’s being blackmailed or threatened by them. I know that he’ll expose the truth once he’s out of their custody…. We are in a very difficult situation – no local Muslim is likely to help us because of Samsoon’s alleged conversion. Even if someone does support us, there’s a chance that my son will be disappeared or harmed.”
The Muslim Slaughter of Christians
Nigeria: Headlines of the “pure genocide” of Christians from the month of September follow:
Burkina Faso: On Sunday, Sept. 1, Muslims terrorists murdered 26 Christians who moments earlier were worshipping inside their church. The terrorists first surrounded the building and ordered the women and children out. Next they tied up and ritually executed the men. Before leaving, the Muslims plundered and then torched the church and Christian homes. The report adds that,
“Although this attack in Banwa province was exceptionally brutal, it was not the first targeting [of] the Christian community during a religious ceremony. On February 25, a similar attack in Essakana, in the north of the country, left fifteen dead [Christians] and two injured during a Sunday mass.”
Egypt: Muslims murdered, hacked to pieces, and dumped the remains of a Christian man into a Cairo canal. Days earlier, on Sept. 29, Mina Musa, 21, had left his family home in Minya for a new job in Cairo. Mina took this distant job to help — not exacerbate — his impoverished family’s condition. He was responding to an advertisement on social media to assist an elderly person in Cairo. The notice included the offer of a generous salary, along with broader networking opportunities in the field of physical therapy. His family lost contact with him, only to receive a call from people—the ones behind the fake job advertisement, who ended up choosing him due to his overtly Christian name (Mina)—saying they had kidnapped and were holding Mina for 150,000 (roughly $3,000) Egyptian pounds in ransom, a sizable sum for poorer Egyptians. Mina had taken this distant job precisely to help — not exacerbate — his impoverished family’s condition. The authorities managed to track the young man down to a Cairo apartment. On breaking in, they found parts of Mina’s body—his torso and one arm—with no head, legs, or other arm, which had already been hacked off and thrown into the nearby Ismaila Canal. Three men were arrested; they confessed to their crime. Last reported, divers were searching in the canal for Mina’s head.
Muslim Attacks on Churches and Christian Symbols
England: On Sunday, Sept. 1, a Muslim woman entered a church, screamed “Allahu Akbar!” [“Allah is the greatest”] and announced that she was “here to kill the God of the Jews.” According to the report,
“Pastor Regan King had been preparing for worship at the evangelical Angel Church in Islington, North London, with his Jewish wife Rachel and young children. But the crazed woman entered at about 10am, allegedly shouting Islamic calls to prayer in Arabic before directly addressing and reaching out to the youngsters. Mr King then moved his family to safety before demanding that the woman leave the building, but she was instead said to have became [sic] more aggressive. Metropolitan Police officers were then called before the woman began shouting anti-Semitic abuse and screamed: ‘I am here to kill the God of the Jews’. The Muslim woman repeatedly shouts ‘Allahu Akbar’ through the sound system at The Angel Church in Islington, North London, on Sunday before the Metropolitan Police arrived. The woman is said to have became [sic] more aggressive after she was asked to leave the building. As she was arrested on suspicion of a religiously-aggravated public order offence, the woman allegedly tried to appeal to one of the officers who she believed was a Muslim. She was said to have referred to him as ‘brother’, spoke in Arabic and repeatedly said to him: ‘Remember Allah.’ However, the officer told her that he did not speak Arabic and that she should speak in English.”
“My family and I are deeply concerned and shaken by this incident, especially my wife who is Jewish. She is traumatised and now fears going outside. Since October 7 especially, as a family and church, we have experienced multiple incidents of antisemitism and anti-Christianity. Yet we are undeterred and will continue to operate as usual albeit with plans for increasing our security.”
Switzerland: On Sept. 7, Sanija Ameti, the municipal councilor of Zurich, who is of Bosnian Muslim origin, published photos of herself on Instagram using a poster of Mary and Baby Jesus for target practice. The heads of Mary and Jesus appear riddled with bullet holes. After her post caused an outcry among Christians in Europe and America, she quickly deleted the image and tried to apologize. But even her own political partly, the Swiss Green Liberal Party, have distanced themselves from her, with their president saying that the act was a “deliberate provocation.” The Swiss Conference of Catholic Bishops also condemned the act: “Even if one disregards the religious representation of the Mother of God, the use of this image testifies to violence and disrespect towards the human person.”
Germany: A Muslim migrant from Syria, with a history of criminal behavior stretching back to his arrival in 2017, assaulted a 79-year-old German man in a religiously inspired crime. According to the Sept. 16 report,
“At around 12 noon, a 27-year-old refugee from Syria approached a German pensioner and ripped the chain with the Christ cross from his neck…. He then allegedly punched the 79-year-old victim in the face. The senior citizen suffered a bleeding wound…. According to the Gera public prosecutor’s office, the motive for the crime is clearly ‘religious.'”
Kosovo: A historic church was desecrated and shot up in the 95% Muslim nation. In a statement, the Serbian Orthodox Church expressed its
“deep concern and regret over the latest desecration of a historic church site in Međugore…. The destruction of icons and visible bullet damage at this sacred site … is a deeply troubling act that further intensifies the pain and uncertainty felt by our people in Kosovo and Metohija, especially in recent times…. The desecration of this place sends an overt message of hostility, reinforcing the feeling that our people, who have lived in Kosovo and Metohija for centuries, are no longer welcome. We wish to emphasize that this incident, along with other pressures and intimidation from extremists, as well as from the Kosovo police, threatens the safety and dignity of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija. Twenty-five years after the war, it is unacceptable that acts of violence and desecration continue to go unpunished, indicating the inability of local authorities to fully ensure the security and protection of our Church and its faithful. Such actions have a damaging impact … as they deepen ethnic and religious divisions…”
Indonesia: Between September 2 and 4, authorities arrested seven Muslims for plotting to assassinate Pope Francis. During raids on the suspects’ homes, extremist and ISIS literature was found, as well as drones and weapons, drones. The seven Muslims reportedly did not know each other and were working independently. Some of the would-be assassins were especially angered because the pope had visited Istiqlal mosque, southeast Asia’s largest Muslim worship center, and that its Islamic call to prayer was interrupted during a live televised broadcast of the pope’s visit to Jakarta. There were also threats to set fire to all the locations visited by Francis. One of the suspects “conveyed provocation on social media to burn down places of worship (churches) during the pope’s visit to Jakarta.” Another posted on social media: “I WILL BOMB THE POPE. I’M A TERRORIST…JUST BE CAREFUL…WAIT FOR NEWS YEEE.” Another simply wrote that he would “shoot” the pope.
Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom: Jihad on Apostates, Blasphemers, and Evangelists
Iran: On Sept. 20, Mojdeh Falahi, a 36-year-old Christian woman—a convert from Islam—who has been held without charges since Sept. 9, “wept uncontrollably during the five minutes her mother was allowed to visit her.” The family said they were concerned about mistreatment by authorities and the conditions surrounding her confinement, said Sam Khosravi, the apostate woman’s brother-in-law:
“Mojdeh’s mother goes to the court every day to pursue the case and asks the judge to release her. She went to the court today [Sept. 20], and after a lot of begging, the judge allowed her to see Mojdeh…. Psychologically, she is in a very bad condition and only cries… We worry and wonder why they have kept her for such a long time.”
The family believes she is being “intensely interrogated” to reveal other clandestine converts to Christianity. After saying that “Relatives most fear that Iranian authorities are brutalizing Falahi in a way that could leave her psychologically scarred for life,” the report cites the experiences of her brother-in-law, Khosravi, and other relatives who were also arrested in 2019:
“Khosravi said the main goal of detention isn’t always punishment or even to gather information, but to break a prisoner at such a fundamental level that they are shattered permanently. The intent is to force them to renounce their faith or to spread said a fellow Christian had been so badly treated that she refused to enter church sites even years after her release. *** Another Christian, forced to listen to the cries of a woman screaming in a near-by cell, was convinced by guards that it was his wife being raped repeatedly, he said.”
“It’s all about humiliation,” Khosravi said. “There will be things in their mind and heart they will never get over.”
Pakistan: On Sept. 18, a Christian mother of four was sentenced to death on a “blasphemy” conviction. Shagufta Kiran, 40, was arrested in 2021 for allegedly sharing content deemed offensive to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, in her WhatsApp in 2020. Three years after being tried, she was convicted under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s penal code, which carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone who insults Muhammad. According to her attorney Rana Abdul Hameed,
“The complaint against Kiran was registered by a Muslim named Shiraz Ahmed Farooqi, who alleged that she had shared content disrespectful of Islam’s prophet. However, Kiran has maintained that she has not authored the content and had forwarded it in the WhatsApp group without reading it.”
The reason she was handed the death sentence has less to do with actual evidence and everything to do with extremist pressure groups, Hameed said:
“If you examine all cases of 295-C, the trial courts tend to convict the accused even if the cases against them are very weak. This is due to the pressure of the religious groups and fears of mob violence. If you analyze all cases of 295-C, you will see that all the convictions of the trial court are overturned by the superior courts.”
“Nearly 3,000 persons have been accused of blasphemy in Pakistan since 1987… [H]undreds of accused were incarcerated last year in Pakistan, with 552 detained in prisons in Punjab Province alone. At least 350 persons remained behind bars as of June … [and]103 new persons had been accused of blasphemy this year between January and June…. [A]t least seven persons accused of blasphemy have been killed by individuals or mobs across Pakistan since January. A total of 94 people accused of blasphemy were killed in mob attacks between 1994 and 2023.”
Uganda: On Friday, Sept. 20, Muslims beat a Christian evangelist, leaving him with several injuries, including to the head, that required hospitalization. Robertson Eriot, 41, and fellow evangelist Kefa Mukisa, 25, were visiting homes and sharing the Gospel. When they entered the home of an Islamic leader, and began talking to his attendants, “Sheikh Kalimu who was inside the house heard our conversation—he was angered and came out furiously,” said Mukisa: “He ordered his boys and other Muslims who had come for Islamic fellowship to come out of the room and to discipline us.” After The sheikh cried out in a loud voice, “These are Christians who are out to convert our people to a wrong religion.” Immediately,
“a number of people came out of the house shouting the jihadist slogan, ‘Allah Akbar [Allah is the greatest].’ Since the gate was closed, we decided to jump over the fence…. Unfortunately, Eriot was caught up before he was able to escape over the fence.”
Later, after Mukisa had rounded other Christians for help,
“We entered the homestead, and we found Eriot half-dead in a pool of blood. We were able to rush him to the nearby clinic for treatment. Eriot suffered deep head injuries, a fractured left hand and bruises near the thigh of his right leg.”
Yemen: On Sept. 23, an interview was published surrounding the plight of the Christians in Yemen. Badr, a Yemeni Catholic woman born in the 1980s and living in Aden, said how in middle school she “experienced harsh challenges related to my faith and to the loss of our rights.” Things especially worsened after the Muslim Brotherhood came into power in the 1990s, she added:
“We were forced to wear the hijab. The government officially prohibited us from celebrating midnight Mass on Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Christians accepted the situation and did not raise their voices. Some emigrated, others changed their religion, fearing to lose their homes and jobs. Many practiced their faith behind closed doors at a time when the Church did not support young people or work on strengthening families… After 1994, the authorities tried to make Yemen an Islamic state. They wiped out our identity as Christians and refused to write ‘Christian’ on documents. Christians had to write either ‘Muslim’ or leave a blank space. They accused us of being ‘remnants of British colonialism’ and said that ‘the United States funds us.’ Teachers pressured me to change my religion and forced me to read the Quran daily. When I got full marks in Islamic education, they would reduce my grades, because they told me ‘a Christian couldn’t be equal to a Muslim.’… After being banned from praying [due to the closure of all churches in 2015], we started praying secretly in the convent of the nuns. Unfortunately, all the nuns were later killed. The priest was kidnapped. The churches were stolen, and some were vandalized…. In 2018, the authorities refused to renew our passports unless we wrote the word ‘Islam’ in the religion section of the application form, as we were told: ‘There are no Christians in Yemen.'”
