International Christian Concern | August 2014 Your Bridge to the Persecuted Church THE SOFT WAR AGAINST AFRICA’S CHRISTIANS A Deafening Silence Boko abducts 240 girls (90% Christian). How did the Press miss this? “We’re Going To Kill You If You Don’t Deny Your Faith” Bits On Boko What they won’t tell you about Boko Haram A Christian I Will Remain The perseverance of Meriam Ibrahim PERSECUTION + PERSECU ION .org INTERNATIONAL CHRIS TIAN CONCERN
Transcript
International Christian Concern | August 2014
Your Bridge to the Persecuted Church
THE SOFT WAR AGAINST AFRICA’S CHRISTIANS
A Deafening Silence Boko abducts 240 girls (90% Christian). How did the Press miss this?
“We’re Going To Kill You If You Don’t Deny Your Faith”
Bits On BokoWhat they won’t tell you about Boko Haram
A Christian I Will RemainThe perseverance of Meriam Ibrahim
PERSECUTION
+PERSECU ION .o
rg
INTERNATIONAL CHRIS TIAN CONCERN
Jeff King, President International Christian Concern
A NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT
“War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.”
Georges Clemenceau (1841 - 1929)
There is a devastating war going on in Africa and the Middle East. This war looks like a series of catastrophes but unlike the quote above, it does not look like it’s going to end in victory unless the Lord or Western governments intervene.
Since the war is fought by several seemingly disconnected militias (armies) with strange names, most see only trees and not a mighty forest.
The armies are all heavily armed, well funded, vicious militias (armys) that have the same ideology (fundamen-talist Islam), methods (extreme violence), end goal (es-tablish Islamic States based on Sharia law) and funding source (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, as well as crimi-nal activities in their own geographic sphere).
They receive funding via the actual governments in the Gulf region but also receive huge revenue from the Zakat (tithes) of regular Muslims that flow through Islamic charities which are then funneled to these violent groups via money brokers and bank transfers.
The West is slowly waking up to the problem but is war weary (rightfully so) and apathetic.
There is no real answer presently other than the Lord! That’s always a good position to be in, isn’t it?
Regardless of whether the West intervenes, our concern is for helping the victims and spreading the gospel into these tough areas. Into His suffering Church.
This suffering Church is His body and He feels the pain of the attacks and calls for us to use our treasure, time, and talents, to bring Him relief.
So please join with us as we bandage and build His persecuted Church.
As always, your donations will be used efficiently, ef-fectively, and ethically.
I Promise!
Jeff King
President, International Christian Concern / Persecution.org
3 You can help today! www.persecution.org
What countries do you think of as the worst persecutors of Chris-tians? North Korea? Pakistan? Egypt? Iraq?
Christians Across Africa Under AttackIt’s hard to imagine, but in just the past year, several places in Africa have become the deadliest killing grounds for Christians. Nigeria is now considered to be the “deadliest place to be called a Christian” on the planet. In 2014 alone, more than 1,500 people, the vast majority being Christians, have been killed by the Is-lamic terrorist group Boko Haram.
Church bombings, military assaults on predominately Christian villages, and mass kidnappings are now part of a daily struggle for survival for Christians living in Nigeria’s north.
In East Africa, Islamic militants from Somalia’s deadly al Shabab are committing murder and mayhem. On June 15, Al Shabab Islamist militants massacred more than 48 in-nocent civilians in Mpeketoni, a Christian stronghold in Kenya’s Muslim dominated Swahili Coast.
Eyewitnesses reported that the Islamists were executing victims based on religion. “They came to our house at around 8 p.m. and asked us in Swahili whether we were Muslims,” one victim told the media. “My husband told them we were Christians and they shot him in the head and chest.”
In Central Africa Republic (CAR), an Islamic rebel force called Seleka, led a successful coup against the Christian majority gov-ernment of CAR. That coup and following chaos has ignited
near genocidal violence. On May 28, a Roman Catholic Church called Notre Dame de Fatima, was attacked by Seleka militants killing many of the Christians in attendance during the attack.
“We were in the church when we heard the shooting outside,” a survivor told the media. “There were screams and after 30 min-utes of gunfire there were bodies everywhere.”
CommonalityAfrica is being ripped apart by an explosion of violence. If you pull back and analyze the conflicts to discern any major patterns or lessons, you will find three.
Line of DemarcationThe first lesson is that there is a geographic boundary to the violence. If one were to chart where Boko Haram, Seleka and al-Shabaab are perpetrating these acts of anti-Chris-tian violence, one would draw a line across Africa dividing Africa’s Christian and animist south and its Muslim north.
They are attacking, terrorizing, and persecuting Christian com-munities who are in the way of establishing Islamic States and the onflict line is moving south. Boko Haram’s Flag
THE SOFT WARAN UNDECLARED WAR ON CHRISTIANS IN AFRICA
There is a clear boundary to the violence as armed Islamists head south
Islam Is the SourceThe next lesson is that violence is perpetrated by Islamic ex-tremist groups, all of whom are motivated by the similar goal of eradicating Christians and establishing Islamic States.
Boko, Seleka, and al-Shabaab, are different faces of the same entity; radical Islam looking to take over nations, funded by the Saudis and Gulf States. In Northern Nigeria, Somalia and CAR, Christians are unwelcome in the planned Islamic States and they are being eradicated.
For example, Boko Haram demanded in 2012 that Christians living in northern Nigeria leave the North so they could es-tablish a “purely Islamic society” where they will implement Sharia law. Since then, Boko Haram militants have led military scale raids on Christian villages, killing thousands and displac-ing hundreds of thousands.
The Hidden HandThe third lesson is that there is an entity behind these attacks. Whenever you see terrorist groups operating on any kind of
scale, you should “follow the money” to discover the source. Wars and soft wars are incredibly expensive and usually funded by state actors to enlarge territories, create buffer zones, or to destabilize enemy states.
In this case, these conflicts are about enlarging territory, the territory of Islam! They are largely funded by the Saudi’s and Gulf States as well as massive funding from Islamic charities and in Boko’s case, money and arms flow from Islamist allies within the Nigerian government.
Boko Haram, Seleka, and al-Shabaab, are merely different divisions of an Islamic terror apparatus that exists to bring territory under the control of Islam. The Islamic word for this is Jihad and it has been ebbing and flowing for many centuries. Although relatively dormant for centuries, the oil revenue flowing to the Gulf has revived Islam’s Jihad on a massive scale and Africa’s Christians are paying the price.
You can help today! 800-ICC-5441 4
The Human Cost of the Soft War. . . .the Lives of Christians
5 You can help today! www.persecution.org
“A Deafening Silence”
It was late at night when they came. The girls were tucked away in their dormitories, studying hard for final exami-nations they’d been kept from taking when earlier that month, President Jonathan had forcibly closed schools in
their district for “security concerns.” Boko Haram (BH) was notorious for its vitriolic hatred against Western oriented ed-ucation. They’d attacked several school buildings, murdered educators and, earlier this year, set a boys’ dormitory on fire—with 59 young men inside. No one made it out alive.
On April 14th, they came to the girls’ secondary school as they always do: well-armed and prepared to commit atroci-ties against “the infidels.” They raided the girls’ school, shooting security staff dead, pillaging the library, and burn-ing compound buildings to the ground, all while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” or, “Praise Allah.”
When the gunfire ceased, men in military camos swept the halls of the terrified girls’ dormitories, instructing the girls to leave their studies and to gather in the courtyard. Believing they had been saved by the Nigerian military, they left text-books open on desks, lamps lit and study guides half-com-pleted. For months now, that’s how the dormitories have re-mained: vacant, abandoned in a moment’s notice, devoid of the conversation, debate, and even laughter that once filled their now silent halls. That lingering silence in the school,
churches, and thousands of abandoned and attacked homes, speaks most deafeningly to the persecution of the nation’s Christians.
For years, BH has utilized violence, abduction, and murder to push Nigeria’s Christians and others out of the increas-ingly radicalized Islamic north.
This recent attack shows that BH is widening its tactics of terror. Shifting from its historical norm of violence against Christian men, Boko Haram has now adopted a policy of inclusiveness: anyone standing in the way of the establish-ment of a separate Islamic State ruled by Sharia law, is now a justifiable target.
As the girls flooded the courtyard, they were instructed by the armed men to line-up and make themselves presentable. One-by-one girls were asked to board the military-grade trucks parked at the courtyard’s entrance. With more than 270 hand-selected girls loaded into the backs of their trucks, the men left the compound, ferrying the girls off to a living nightmare.
For weeks the wails of mothers weeping for their lost daugh-ters drifted through the streets of Chibok, vacated by the vil-lage’s men and boys now scouring the Sambisa forest for
240 PREDOMINANTLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOL GIRLS ABDUCTED IN APRIL REMAIN IN CAPTIVITY
You can help today! 800-ICC-5441 6
“the Nigerian girls,” as they’ve come to be known.
Almost overnight, an international outcry flooded the halls of government and twitter feeds alike. The now infamous hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls, even made its way from so-cial media to the White House, scrawled in permanent mark-er on a slip of paper held up to the cameras by First Lady Michelle Obama.
Human rights groups and faith-based organizations world-wide demanded action from the world’s governments and in-ternational bodies within days of the abduction. And within weeks, many of the world’s most significant leaders, includ-ing those representing the G7, publicly condemned the attacks and pledged their nations’ support in find-ing and return-ing those ab-ducted.
But barred from the con-versation, ex-plicitly left out of the speeches and kept from the fact sheets provided Con-gress is the fact that this abduc-tion, while a gross human rights viola-tion, was an act of Christian persecution. A list detailing the identities and religious preference of some of those abducted that was leaked to the media by a local pastor in May revealed that 90% of the more than 180 then-identified schoolgirls are professed Christians.
Shortly after the leak, Boko haram released a video of some of those abducted dressed in hijabs (traditional dress for Islamic women) reciting Qur’anic passages as Boko Ha-ram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, declared, “and now they have been converted.” Not only have these girls been stolen from their families, robbed of an education and subjected to months of harsh treatment at the hands of their militants cap-
tors, they have been forced to take the name of Allah.
Boko Haram is not simply waging a war against “Western education,” as so many continue to state, nor is it waging a “war on women.” Boko Haram is waging a war against the Nigerian church, claiming members of the body of Christ for Islam, torturing the families of the Church’s daughters and selling the next generation of Christians into forced mar-riages and a lifetime of rape.
In abducting these girls, calling for a global war against Christians, and forcefully converting the defenseless to Islam, Boko Haram intends to make clear that Christians who refuse to bow will be next.
At the time of this article, more than 240 predominantly
Christian schoolgirls remained captive. ICC continues
to advocate for their safe return, pressure the U.S. and
international bodies to take greater action, and pray for
those abducted, their families, and their communities.
You can learn everything you need to know about the
case of the Nigerian girls by visiting ICC online at www.
persecution.org.
“A Deafening Silence”
240 PREDOMINANTLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOL GIRLS ABDUCTED IN APRIL REMAIN IN CAPTIVITY
International Christian Concern is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) (all donations tax-deductible).
ICC makes every effort to honor donor wishes in regards to gifts. Occasionally, situations arise where a project is no lon-ger viable. ICC will then redirect those donated funds to fund most similar to the donor’s original wishes.
#10988
DONATE TO ICC VIA YOUR WORK
Federal employees! You can give to ICC year-round through the
CFC. The CFC allows you to regu-larly donate to ICC by making
a pledge during the campaign season from Sept. to Dec.
Donations are taken through payroll donation.
To give to ICC, just enter #10988 on the Pledge Form at your place of work.
GIVING TO ICC VIA YOUR WILL
Provide now for a future gift to ICC by including a bequest provision in your will or revocable trust. If you would like more information on giving to ICC in this way, please give us a call at 1-800-ICC-5441.
