Iran authorities arrested recently dozens of Christians who were former Muslims, raising concerns about stepped-up persecution of Christians in the Islamic world.

Gov. Morteza Tamadon of Teheran said the Christians were arrested during the Christmas holidays either for converting to Christianity from Islam, and/or for trying to convert other Muslims, the UPI said.

Tamadon said, “Just like the Taliban who have inserted themselves into Islam like a parasite, (evangelicals) have crafted a movement in the name of Christianity.” The UPI reported.

The UPI said plainclothesmen raided Christian homes during the Christmas season and searched for religious items. Iran forbids Christians to possess bibles, nor can they say mass in Persian.

Stepped up attacks

This is the latest among stepped up attacks against Christians from Muslim-majority countries. Last October extremists occupied Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad leaving 52 dead and 67 wounded. (See http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2010/11/iraqi-cardinal-condemns-bloody-ruthless-attack-on-landmark-church-14305).

Stepped up attacks led to planting bombs on the grounds of nine Christian churches and most recently, lobbing bombs at some 14 Christian homes during the Christmas season, The Sydney Morning Herald said.

In Egypt 23 Coptic Christians were killed 30 minutes into the New Year and 79 were injured when a bomb was lobbed at Al-Qiddissin Church in Alexandria, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

In Nigeria, 32 were killed and 74 wounded in a series of Christmas eve bomb attacks at churches in Jos. (See http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2010/12/pope-condemns-church-bombings-in-nigeria-philippines-14909). In Pakistan, most recently, moderate Muslim Gov. Salman Taseer of Punjab was assassinated for opposing the blasphemy law.

Pretext

The attacks on churchgoers in Iraq and Egypt were done on the pretext that two Coptic Christian women in Egypt allegedly converted to Islam, but are now ‘imprisoned’ in a Coptic monastery.

The Sydney Morning Herald said, “These seemingly absurd sparks ignited two of the higher-octane bonfires in a new wave in the persecution of minority Christians across the Islamic world in recent days.”

The Sydney Morning Herald compares such retribution to that which was generated when the head of a 50-member Florida sect planned to burn copies of the Qu’ran in front of their property.

Safer under Saddam

Iraqi Christians were safer under Saddam, Father Rony Hanna of the Iraqi Chaldean Archdiocese said. “This is what we miss most now—being protected,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald.

The Sydney Morning Herald said Christians post-Saddam make easier targets, noting that in the initial post-Saddam years violence was focused between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. It shifted to Christians amid harsh public criticism and because both sides are well armed for counterattacks.

Christians lack militias and political clout. Also, they are viewed by extremists as Western surrogates. The attacks prevail because the Iraqi government is not powerful enough to control them, The Sydney Morning Herald said.

Egypt

Egyptian analysts suggest the New Year church bombing in Egypt is the work of locals who are disaffected with Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, rather than Al-Qaida, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Discovery News, however, blamed the persecution on the fact that moderate Muslims do not speak out. When they do, as did Egypt’s Grand Mufti Dr. Ali Gomaa, (who denounced the New Year bombing), the media doesn’t cover it.

Pakistan

The recent assassination of Taseer for opposing the blasphemy law and supporting Christian prisoner Asia Bibi, is a signal to moderate Pakistani Muslims to put their politics on the shelf, The Sydney Morning Herald said.

Discovery News said the exploitation of the blasphemy law for personal vendetta or material gain is so accepted in Pakistan that the government dares not repeal it, nor introduce court interpretation to curb whimsical arrests.

Analyst Ahmed Rashid told The Sydney Morning Herald, “We have a very, very severe polarization in the country—we have a small minority of extremists and a small number of liberals speaking out, but the very large silent majority are people who are not extremists in any way, but are not speaking out.”

It’s all about power

Christian persecution is more often about “raw political power and social control,” The Sydney Morning Herald said, which is done either by autocratic governments, fundamentalist breakaway groups or extremists, including Al-Qaida and imitators.

Discovery News said Christian persecution is increasing even in formerly tolerant Islamic countries such as Morocco, adding, “This really is the scandal of modern Islam and demands action from within the Islamic community.” It adds that media fails to give Christian persecution due attention.

Discovery News said perhaps Western elites ignore Christian persecution because “secularism of the West is…ambivalent towards Christianity and seeks ever increased infringements on religion[.]”

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Muslims torched recently 10 Coptic Christian homes in a town in southern Egypt because they were enraged by a rumor that a Coptic Christian man and a Muslim girl were dating.

The incident occurred in Al Nawahiz, a small town some 289 miles south of Cairo. This is the second violent incident between Muslims and Christians in Egypt amid rising tensions, according to The National.

Quoting authorities, BBC News said the village has been cordoned off.  They said the incident is a symptom of a continual rise in tensions between Muslims and Christians, with both sides in fear of being attacked by each other.

The police have arrested a number of suspects and have also taken the Muslim girl and the Christian man into custody. The two had been seen together by locals in a cemetery, The Christian Post reported.

Historically, Muslims and Christians have lived together peacefully, sharing the same neighborhoods and going to the same schools. However recently with marked sectarian tensions Christians are moving into All-Christian schools and neighborhoods in increasing number.

The tension is blamed on Muslim extremist groups. In January, in a drive-by shooting, gunmen fired at Christians in Nag Hammadi as they were coming out of church after a service, leaving six dead and nine injured, The Christian Post said.

According to local sources, the gunmen were trying to target Bishop Kirollos of the Nag Hammadi diocese, because he publicly defended Coptic Christians in November after a Muslim riot, The Christian Post reported.

The Muslim riot, which occurred in November 2009, was sparked by claims that a Christian man had raped a Muslim girl. Coptic Christians said the Muslims fabricated the story to justify the attack, which destroyed 65 shops and caused $1 million in damage. In Farshoot town, rioters ransacked 80 percent of Coptic businesses, according to The Christian Post.

Coptic Christians have also reported that there are inequalities in terms of economic opportunities, government positions and education, The Christian Post said. Human rights groups have scored the government’s failure to adequately deal with the sectarian violence, even as the government claims that Christians have the same rights as Muslims, The National said.

The Apostle Mark brought Christianity to Egypt in the first century. In the seventh century, Islam was brought to the country and is now the majority faith, with Christians comprising only 10 percent of the population.

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Last year an Egyptian girl wrote a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama from a Coptic Christian  website.

She told the president that Muslims in the United States are treated much better than Copts in Egypt, Compass Direct News (CDN) reported.

Dina Maher Ahmad Mo’otahssem and her father have been on the run for two years due to religious persecution in Egypt.

Dina Maher Ahmad Mo’otahssem, 16, has been in hiding since 2008 with her father, Maher Ahmad El-Mo’otahssem Bellah El-Gohary.  They have suffered constant persecution whenever people discover their identities, CDN said.

Dina asked Obama to pressure the Egyptian government to ensure religious rights, and expressed hope that she and her father could migrate to the United States, CDN reported.

Last week Dina and her father lived in a tiny, two-bedroom apartment in an unidentified city in Egypt.  The floor was littered with grime and trash. Clumps of dust and used water bottles were everywhere.  El-Gohary had taped over the locks and the inside of windows and doors to guard against eavesdroppers and intruders.

He taped over all the drain holes of the sinks and the shower so no one could pump in natural gas at night.  When the neighbors learned he was a Christian, they threw rocks and pebbles at his home, enough to litter the porch.  El-Gohary couldn’t open a window because rocks might get thrown in, according to CDN.

Whenever he leaves, he padlocks the door, wraps it with a small plastic bag and melts the bag to the lock with a match.  But he rarely leaves the place because it is not safe to go out.

Last month while walking to a market with Dina, someone poured acid over her jacket.  When El-Gohary saw it sizzle and dissolve he immediately ripped it off of her and threw it away before she was hurt, CDN said.

He can’t work and relies on other Christians to bring him food, water and the occasional donation. He cannot count on his own family for help.  When the food runs out, he has to brave going outside.

El-Gohary can’t attend a church more than once, nor can they go to a supermarket more than once.  He has been a Christian for 36 years, but he was forced to go into hiding after August 2008, because he sued the national government to allow him to change the religion listed on his state-issued ID from Islam to Christianity, according to CDN.

El-Gohary didn’t want his daughter to be forced to take Islamic education classes or have her declared an “apostate” by Egyptian Islamic authorities if she decided to stay a Christian into adulthood.  This is why he asked for the ID change.

Dina is required by law to possess an ID card, which is used for everything from opening a bank account to receiving medical care. The ID also determines whether Egyptians are subject to Islamic civil courts.  Dina is considered to be a Muslim because her father was born a Muslim, CDN said.

Conversion

El-Gohary became a Christian after he read the account of Jesus meeting a woman caught committing adultery.  He was touched by the level of mercy that Jesus showed her, CDN said.

El-Gohary said. “The basis of Christianity is love and forgiveness, unlike Islam, where it is based on revenge, fighting and war.”  He also said of the two religions’ versions of heaven, that the Islamic heaven is about physical pleasure, while for Christians it is about being with God, CDN reported.

El-Gohary was forced to hide because the State Council, a consultative body of Egypt’s Administrative Court, charged him with apostasy, the penalty for which is death, CDN said.  The case is still ongoing.

El-Gohary believes that he and his daughter are being used to set an example to other Muslims who want to convert.  Also, he thinks they fear that if he is allowed to leave the country, he will talk about how Egypt persecutes Copts.

He said, “We are trapped in our own country without even the rights that animals have.”  When the mosque across the street learned of his identity and of his case, they began to blast messages from their minaret megaphones on how to deal with Christians, CDN reported.

The imam shouted, “Do not shake their hands. Do not go into their homes. Do not eat their food.”  Since he has become a Christian, El-Gohary has been beaten, forcibly detained, endured death threats and poverty.

Still, he and Dina have no regrets about having become Christian, and they have no dreams to become Muslim again, the CDN said.

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A group of Egyptian and foreign Christians sought government action recently against a suit they filed against the Muslim author of a bestselling, award winning novel that they say discriminates against their Christian faith.

The novel, entitled Azazeel (Beelzebub) by Youssef Ziedan, won the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, backed by the Booker Prize Foundation.

However Mamdouh Ramzi, a Coptic (Christian) lawyer, called the novel offensive adding, “He insulted priests and bishops and said many things with no proof or evidence from books or history…He is not a Christian man, what does he know about the Church?”  Reuters reported.

The case has been joined in by Coptic groups in the United States, the Netherlands, Canada and Austria.

This reflects broader complaints by Copts that they are discriminated against and marginalized in Egypt, where they comprise only 12 percent of this primarily Muslim nation of 78 million.

“We should receive attention from the authorities or we will start to wonder why the law does not respond unless the matter includes an insult to Islam,”  Ramzi said to Reuters.

Egyptian law prohibits insults against Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  However, even Al-Azhar, the world’s preeminent Sunni Islamic institution, has published a pamphlet declaring the Bible a corrupted document and Christianity a pagan religion, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Al-Azhar’s textbook for its high-school students, called “Al Iqna’,” states that killing a Muslim is punishable by death, but if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim he is not subject to capital punishment since the superior cannot be punished for killing the inferior (p. 146).

It also states that the blood money (compensation for manslaughter) rates for a woman is half that for a man, but for a Christian or Jew it is one third that of a Muslim (p. 187); and that there can be no stewardship (such as a superior in work) of a non-Muslim over a Muslim (p. 205), the WSJ reported.

Hundreds of thousands of Azhar schools in Egypt, monitored by the state, indoctrinate and discharge annually hundreds of thousands of young Muslims into Egyptian society with an ideology of intolerance, contempt and hatred toward Copts (and even more intensely toward Jews), the WSJ said.

Meanwhile, the hand of the law is more clearly seen when it involves writings that criticize Islam—even when the author is Muslim.

For example in 1995 an Egyptian sharia court declared Egyptian intellectual Nasr Abu Zayd to be disloyal, and called him an apostate from Islam.  They took issue over Zayd’s liberal, critical approach to Islamic teaching.  As a result his marriage was annulled and he was forced into exile, Reuters reported.

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