The Mass Exodus of Christians from the Muslim World

by Raymond Ibrahim

May 7, 2013

http://www.meforum.org/3504/christians-exodus-muslim-world

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.

In Mali, after a 2012 Islamic coup, as many as 200,000 Christians fled. According to reports, "the church in Mali faces being eradicated," especially in the north "where rebels want to establish an independent Islamist state and drive Christians out… there have been house to house searches for Christians who might be in hiding, church and Christian property has been looted or destroyed, and people tortured into revealing any Christian relatives." At least one pastor was beheaded.

Even in European Bosnia, Christians are leaving en mass "amid mounting discrimination and Islamization." Only 440,000 Catholics remain in the Balkan nation, half the prewar figure. Problems cited are typical: "while dozens of mosques were built in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, no building permissions were given for Christian churches."

"Time is running out as there is a worrisome rise in radicalism," said one authority, who further added that the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina were "persecuted for centuries" after European powers "failed to support them in their struggle against the Ottoman Empire."

And so history repeats itself.

One can go on and on:

• In Ethiopia, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes when "Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes."
• In the Ivory Coast—where Christians have been crucified—Islamic rebels "massacred hundreds and displaced tens of thousands" of Christians.
• In Libya, Islamic rebels forced several Christian nun orders serving the sick and needy since 1921 to flee.
• In Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, where nary a Sunday passes without a church bombing, Christians are fleeing by the thousands; one region has been emptied of 95% of its Christian population.
• In Pakistan, after a Christian child was falsely accused of desecrating a Koran and Muslims went on an anti-Christian rampage, an entire Christian village—men, women, and children—was forced to flee into the nearby woods, where they built a church, permanently resided there.
• In Somali, where Christianity is completely outlawed, Muslim converts to Christianity are fleeing to neighboring nations, including Kenya and Ethiopia, sometimes to be tracked down and executed.
• In Sudan, over half a million people, mostly Christian, have been stripped of citizenship in response to the South's secession, and forced to relocate.

To anyone following the plight of Christians under Islam, none of this is surprising. As I document in my new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians, all around the Islamic world—in nations that do not share the same race, language, culture, or economics, in nations that share only Islam—Christians are being persecuted into extinction. Such is the true face of the global Islamic resurgence.

Often forgotten is that, in the 7^th century, half of the world's entire Christian population was spread across what is now nonchalantly called the "Muslim world." Then, Islam, born in the deserts of Arabia, burst out in a series of world-altering jihads, conquering and slowly transforming these once Christian nations into Islamic nations.

In order to evade sporadic persecution and constant discrimination, over the centuries most Christians converted, while others fled. A few opted to remain Christian and live as barely tolerated third-class subjects, or dhimmis, according to Sharia law.

They eventually experienced something of a renaissance during the colonial and post-colonial era, when many Muslims were Westward-looking.

But today, with the international resurgence of Muhammad's religion, these remaining Christians are reaching extinction, as Islam's 1400 year mission of supremacy and global hegemony continues unabated—even as the West looks the other way, that is, when it's not actually supporting it in the context of the so-called "Arab Spring."

Raymond Ibrahim is author of the new book "Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians" (Regnery Publishing 2013). A Middle East and Islam specialist, he is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.