They Cry in Silence Jan/Feb 2013
When Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani was finally released from prison in Iran in September 2012 after an ordeal of many years, people around the world rejoiced. They did the same recently when Rimsha Masih, the 14-year-old Christian girl (many say she is only 11) jailed for allegedly burning pages of the Qur’an, was released from jail in Pakistan.
However, these cases are merely the tip of the iceberg. Many Christians languish in prisons where they are tortured for their faith. Gospel for Asia said in October there has been a 400 percent increase in persecution of Christians in the 10/40 window, a geographic designation for the rectangular area extending from West Africa to East Asia and from 10 degrees south to 40 degrees north of the equator. Four billion of the world’s 7 billion people live there.
Raymond Ibrahim, with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Middle East Forum, wrote that, while Rimsha’s blasphemy ordeal was making headlines around the world, other atrocities were going unnoticed. Here is an excerpt from his report:
On August 14, another Christian girl, 12-year-old Muqadas Kainat (which means “Holy Universe”) was ambushed in a field near her home in Sahawil by five Muslim men who “gang raped and murdered her.”1 At the time, her father was at a hospital visiting her sick mother. He and other family members began a frantic search, until a tip led them to the field where his daughter’s body lay.
The postmortem revealed that she had been “gang raped and later strangled to death by five men.” Police, as usual, did not arrest anyone.
Similarly, on August 20, an 11-year-old Christian boy, Samuel Yaqoob, went to the markets of Faisalabad to buy food for his family, never to return. According to Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association, “After extensive searching his body was found near a drain in the Christian colony, bearing marks of horrific torture, with the murder weapon nearby. His nose, lips and belly had been sliced off, and his family could hardly recognize him because the body was so badly burnt. Some 23 wounds by a sharp weapon have been identified in the autopsy. When sending his body for an autopsy, police raised the possibility of sodomy. Parts of Pakistani culture have a strong homosexual pederast culture, and Christian and other minority boys are especially susceptible to rape and abuse because of the powerlessness of their community and their despised status. In one case fairly recently, a Christian boy was kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed by a police officer, his body similarly being dumped in a drain.”2
These were just some of the stories concerning the sexual abuse and murder of Pakistan’s Christian children that occurred last August—even as the world stood in awe at the Rimsha Masih blasphemy case.3 Ibrahim then supplied a long list of gruesome details involving Christian children who were savagely tortured and murdered.4
In another article, he reported that Muslims in Tunisia sawed off the head of a young convert to Christianity while crying, “Allahu Akbar!” meaning “Allah is great.” “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,” he reported.5
Ibrahim said a top Egyptian leader has openly stated no Muslim has the right to apostatize or leave Islam, “based on the canonical hadiths, including Muhammad’s command, ‘Whoever leaves his religion, kill him.’” To learn more, go to tinyurl.com/meforumIbrahim.
Some Westerners believe public pressure will help stem this vicious tide of Christian persecution in the Islamic world. We urge you to pray fervently and to contact your elected officials for the sake of your brothers and sisters in Christ.
ENDNOTES
- Dan Wooding, “Pakistan: A Christian Minor Girl Murdered after allegedly being Gang Raped by Muslims,” August 26, 2012 <assistnews.net/STORIES/2012/s12080178.htm>.
- Dan Wooding, “Pakistan: Orphan Christian boy found brutally tortured and burned to death,” August 23, 2012 <assistnews.net/STORIES/2012/s12080160.htm>.
- Raymond Ibrahim, “The Rape and Murder of Pakistan’s Christian Children,” October 17, 2012 <meforum.org/3362/pakistan-christian-children>.
- Ibid.
- Raymond Ibrahim, “Graphic Video: Muslims Slaughter Convert to Christianity in Tunisia,” June 4, 2012 <meforum.org/3256/tunisia-muslims-slaughter-christian-convert>.
