"If You Love Jesus, Then Die Like Jesus!"

Muslim Persecution of Christians, November 2016

Raymond Ibrahim • February 5, 2017 at 4:30 am

"They [ISIS] cut his stomach open and shot him before leaving him hanging, crucified."

ISIS planted explosive devices in teddy bears and toys that would be detonated when children picked them up; they killed families.

One Iraqi Christian man from Qaraqosh, who survived ISIS, said: "Obama has never helped the Christians. In fact, he despises them. In the last 26 months, he has shown he despises all of them. But we have hope in the new president, Trump."

"Here, where we have been accommodated presently, we are exposed to the same kinds of threats as before, this time at the hand of Afghan Muslims, and we fear for our lives... The Afghan refugees... call us Iranian Christians 'apostates' and 'infidels' because of our decision to leave Islam and consider the shedding of our blood as legitimate (or even necessary)." — Iranian refugee, Germany.

"I said... 'I'm in Europe, I'm free, I'm in a free country.' They said, 'No, you are not free, you are in the Jungle. The Jungle has Kurdish rule here – leave this camp.' The smugglers were from inside the camp, and were Kurdish. They said to me, 'We will tell the Algerians and Moroccans to kill you.'" — Kurdish church leader in a refugee center, France.

Silmane Bouhafs, a Christian man currently carrying out a three-year prison sentence in Algeria for the alleged crime of "attacking Islam," regularly experiences persecution and physical attacks at the hands of the other inmates. (Image source: Berbère Télévision video screenshot)

Reports of Christian life under the Islamic State (ISIS) continued throughout November. Many of these came from the ancient Christian towns surrounding Mosul, such as Batnaya and Qaraqosh, conquered by ISIS in August, 2014, and liberated in late October, 2016.

One Christian man, Esam, from Qaraqosh, related what ISIS did after his sister's husband refused to convert to Islam: "He was crucified and tortured in front of his wife and children, who were forced to watch. They [ISIS] told him that if he loved Jesus that much, he would die like Jesus."

The Islamic militants tortured his brother-in-law from 6 in the evening until 11: "[T]hey cut his stomach open and shot him before leaving him hanging, crucified." Two other members of Esam's family, a Christian couple, were abducted and separated by ISIS. To this day, the husband does not know where his wife is; he only knows that she was turned into a concubine, a sex-slave.

Continue Reading Article »