An
extremely horrific video has been uploaded onto the internet, which has also
been aired on prime-time television in
I would like to thank Stuart (eChurch) for highlighting this upsetting story.
But thanks is also due to Raymond
Ibrahim (WARNING: this site contains the video) for having first
brought this tragic death to the world’s attention, as well as to the Spectator’s
Douglas Murray for his comments on this horrific act of
persecution. If you decide to follow the link to Raymond Ibrahim's site, then I
would encourage you NOT to watch the video. The filming of this man’s murder
was in itself and act of torture and barbarity, an attempt to humiliate a dying
man even further. The video will be used by Islamists to try and scare
Christians. Also, the footage shows something so graphically shocking that it
should not even be on the internet in the first place.
So, to avoid having to watch the video, Raymond
Ibrahim has provided a summary (itself very harrowing) of what the film
depicts: -
A young
man appears held down by masked men. His head is pulled back, with a knife to
his throat. He does not struggle and appears resigned to his fate. Speaking in
Arabic, the background speaker, or "narrator," chants a number of
Muslim prayers and supplications, mostly condemning Christianity, which,
because of the Trinity, is referred to as a polytheistic faith: "Let Allah
be avenged on the polytheist apostate"; "Allah empower your religion,
make it victorious against the polytheists"; "Allah, defeat the
infidels at the hands of the Muslims"; "There is no god but Allah and
Muhammad is his messenger."
Then, to cries of "Allahu
Akbar!"—or,
"God is great!"—the man holding the knife to the apostate's throat
begins to slice away, even as the victim appears calmly mouthing a prayer. It
takes nearly two minutes of graphic knife-carving to sever the Christian's
head, which is then held aloft to more Islamic cries and slogans of victory.
Sadly,
this is not a rare event in the Muslim world. In fact, a simple internet news
search reveals that in the past few days there have been several such gruesome
executions of Christians in Islamic dominated lands, one example being a story
in the Pakistan
Christian Post, which reports on the recent beheading of five
Christian members of the same Pakistani family.
Compared to other stories that seem to dominate European and North American
news media, though, these real and horrific crimes against Christians are
hardly ever reported. The western media will go wild if a bishop stands up to
defend marriage, usually accusing him of hatred towards homosexuals, with some
commentators even foaming at the mouth with rage at this supposed act of
'homophobia' and 'persecution'. But hardly anything is ever mentioned
concerning the hundreds of thousands of Christians around the world
who are daily being truly persecuted for their faith.
The recent beheading in
Church
Attacks
Apostasy
and Blasphemy: Death and Prison
Pakistan:
Two incidents of “blasphemy” charges: 1) A Christian man was arrested and
charged with “blasphemy” for rescuing his 8-year-old nephew from a beating at
the hands of Muslim boys who sought to force the boy to convert to Islam. 2)
The mother of a newborn baby has been illegally jailed for over a month:
authorities have failed to file a charge sheet within the mandatory 14-day
period against the 26-year-old Christian woman accused of “blaspheming” the
prophet of Islam.
The
above listed acts of persecution mainly involve those being carried out by the
state. The list does not really cover beheadings such as the one I mentioned at
the beginning of this post. Islamic vigilantes normally carry out those kinds
of barbarous killings. Of course, these vigilante thugs never seem to get
caught or prosecuted by their respective Muslim governments - many of which
seem complicit in these extreme and barbarous acts of persecution, torture and
murder.
Many people are now aware, even if our British and US
governments seem oblivious to it, of the fact that those countries currently
experiencing an ‘Arab spring’ are actually descending into an Islamic tyranny –
out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak. And those who are paying
the price - often with their lives - for these Islamist revolutions are the
ancient Christian communities of North Africa and the
The so-called Arab spring is fast becoming an Islamic ice age. As the regimes
of various African and Middle Eastern dictators fall, the political vacuum left
in their wake is being filled by a far greater evil – Islamism. Left unchecked,
this new and religiously inspired form of tyranny, which derives its misconceptions
of Christianity and Judaism from the Qur'an, will possibly even prove to be the
most horrendous movement ever to have inflicted humanity. Thankfully, though,
those lands now living under the shadow of the crescent will soon embrace the
light of the cross once more - for Tertullian's prophetic words still ring
true: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”