Attacks on the Christian cross, a symbol of the faith’s beliefs, long have been common in Muslim-majority locations like Pakistan, Turkey and Sudan.
But now a new report from Raymond Ibrahim, author of “Crucified Again” and “Sword and Scimitar,” at the Gatestone Institute suggests that problem is expanding into the West, in France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Ibrahim, a distinguished senior fellow at Gatestone and a Shillman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, reports as Islam’s presence grows, “it should come as no surprise that attacks on crosses and related Christian symbols (3,000 in 2019) are also on the rise.”
He warns that even though “the identity of the vandals is often unknown or intentionally omitted,” where there are large Muslim populations in nations like France and Germany, there is “a disproportionate rise in this form of anti-Christian violence.”
For example, he noted, Catholic University of America was sued by Muslim students “because it failed to provide them with a special place to pray without seeing a cross.”
Their lawyer in the case charged it was not “conducive” to their religious to pray while being “looked down upon by a cross of Jesus.”
In Germany, “Muslim migrants beat and repeatedly stabbed a homeless man in Berlin for displaying a Christian symbol, believed to be a cross,” he reported. The victim was left with multiple severe stab wounds.
Also there, Muslims were granted their own section at a cemetery to conduct Islamic services, but then demanded that crosses in other parts of the cemetery be covered because they were “offensive.”
A few years ago, some 50 publicly displayed statues of Jesus and other Christian figures were beheaded in the North Rhine-Westphalia region.
In France, one “enraged” Muslim vandalized churches, overturning and breaking altars, destroying statutes and breaking stained-glass windows, he reported.
In Nimes, he reported, “Vandals plundered and used human excrement to draw a cross on the Notre-Dame des Enfants Church in Nimes (smearing fecal matter on churches is not uncommon in the Muslim world).”
It Italy, a Christian man was wearing a crucifix around his neck and a 37-year-old Moroccan Muslim immigrant stabbed him in the throat.
Also, there, a 12-year-old Italian girl was beat up by a Muslim schoolboy “evidently because she was wearing a crucifix around her neck.” He later confessed he attacked “because she was wearing a crucifix.”
Further, his report noted in Sweden, “An 11-year-old Swedish boy was called a ‘pig bastard’ and beaten by a Muslim migrant gang for wearing a cross.”
Other situations he documented from the U.S. include just this year when Ali Alaheri, 29, and a Muslim, “knocked down and destroyed a large crucifix that had stood for eleven years outside of St. Athanasius Church in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, N.Y.”
Ibrahim explained, “Notably, Western nations have regrettably encouraged this behavior through appeasement, perhaps either not to be called racists or not to discourage votes. In Italy, for example, days before the Muslim mentioned above stabbed a Christian in the throat for wearing a crucifix, a report noted that ‘crosses on graves in an Italian cemetery in Pieve di Cento have been covered with black cloth so as not to offend those who may come from another religion,’ a seeming reference to Muslims, some of whom, as shown, desecrate Christian graves or at least demand that Western authorities cover up their crosses.”
In the United Kingdom, a Christian woman who fled her Nigerian homeland years ago in order to worship freely was “bullied” out of her job as a nurse for refusing to remove her small cross necklace.
She explained, “This has always been an attack on my faith. My cross has been with me for 40 years. It is part of me, and my faith, and it has never caused anyone any harm…. At this hospital there are members of staff who go to a mosque four times a day and no one says anything to them. Hindus wear red bracelets on their wrists and female Muslims wear hijabs in theatre. Yet my small cross around my neck was deemed so dangerous that I was no longer allowed to do my job.”
Such violence against Christian crosses are even worse in Muslim nations, the report said.
It Egypt, a Christian student age 17 “was strangled and beaten to death by his teacher and fellow students for refusing to obey the teacher’s demand that he cover his cross.”
The reason for the attacks, Ibrahim explained, is the Quran’s “hostility” to both Christians and Jews.
In fact, the Quran calls down a curse on those who “say the Christ is the son of God.”
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