This is a long article on an important topic from the Gatestone Institute.

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of June 2021:

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Pakistan

The Rape, Forced Conversion, and Child Marriage of Christians

A Muslim father of four abducted a 13-year-old Christian girl, forced her to convert to Islam, and then “married” her. According to the father of Nayab Gill, when the beauty school she was attending shut down due to the Covid-19 lockdown, Saddam Hayat, a local Muslim who ran his own beauty shop, “told me that rather than wasting time, Nayab should learn salon skills to help her in supporting the family financially. He even offered to pick her up from home and drop her off after work, assuring us that she was just like his daughter.”

Hayat had also promised to pay the girl Rs.10,000 (US $63) per month for her services, but stopped paying her after a couple of months. When the girl went missing on May 20, her frantic parents turned to Hayat, who claimed not to know where she was, and kindly offered to help them find her. He even instructed Nayab’s simple and trusting mother to fill out the missing person’s report in a way that did not implicate him.

“On May 26, we were informed by the police that Nayab was in the Darul Aman [women’s shelter] since May 21,” her father continued. “In an application submitted to a magistrate’s court, Nayab claimed she had willfully converted to Islam a month ago …”…

In another incident, a young Christian woman was beaten and raped in her home for refusing to convert to Islam and marry her rapist. Neelam Masih shared her experiences in a June 7 report. She was home alone when Faisal Basra “entered my home at gunpoint.”

“[He] dragged me to my bedroom and began to punch and kick me. He threw me on the bed and started to rape me. He demanded I marry him and convert to Islam. I refused. I am not willing to deny Jesus and he said that if I would not agree he would kill me. He hit me on the face with his pistol and I shouted and screamed and tried to escape but he kept pulling me back, dragging me by my hair.”

Eventually Neelam’s neighbor heard her cries and came rushing to the house, at which point the rapist fled into the night. Neelam, who is studying for a Master of Philosophy degree, said that as the only educated Christian woman in her village, she is committed to speaking out against oppression and abuse, despite “reports that friends and family” of the Muslim rapist “are trying to hunt her down and kill her for standing up to him.”..

“Struggling against this man has taken great courage…. Most girls feel ashamed and submit to the demands of the attacker. They don’t want to tell anyone. They are usually easily threatened. But Neelam remains faithful to Jesus and is determined to tell her story to bring an end to attacks on Christian girls and young women.”…

Uganda: Death and Destruction for Christians

On June 11, a Muslim imam slaughtered a 70-year-old Christian pastor. Pentecostal bishop Francis Obo was killed after a group of Muslims stopped him and his wife as they were returning home in the evening after grocery shopping. The slain man’s wife, Christine, said the men had accused him of being an “infidel” who causes Muslims to leave Islam and that, accordingly, “Today Allah has judged you.” One of the assailants told her to go away because “Today, it is a day for your husband,” she said. “As I moved a few meters in a hurry trying to save my life, I heard a little noise and wailing from my husband and realized that his life was in danger.” She ran home, “trembling and unable to speak, and her children took her to a hospital where she was treated for shock.” In the early morning, when she told her eldest son what had happened, he and other siblings went to search for their father where she had last seen him. “Reaching there, they were shocked and fearful as they found a big number of Christians and relatives gathered around the dead body mourning their bishop after being murdered by Muslims,” she said…

The next Sunday, after the family had attended the religious service and thanked the church for the prayers that healed their son, when they returned home, they found more than 20 Muslim relatives gathered there. When the family began questioning them, one got extremely animated and began crying “Allahu Akbar.” “We thought that they were going to kill us,” Baula said, “but they only warned us not to attend the church, and the meeting ended.”

The family at first stopped going to church, but then attended again. On returning home that Sunday, they found three of their goats missing. “A [Muslim] relative named Hamisi told me that Allah had taken the goats,” Baula said. “I was scared by that statement and came back and told my wife.” She insisted that they and their three children, ages 3, 6, and 10, relocate.

“As we were thinking of where to go, at around 9 p.m. we heard hens making a lot of noise in the kitchen, and when I came out, I saw smoke and flames going up the roof, and I went back and told my wife that we are dying. We picked up our children and went out very fast, and within a short period my brothers, sisters and Muslim neighbors together with an imam arrived. The imam recited the Koran, and then later told my brothers to start destroying the house.”

They watched helplessly as their Muslim relatives and the fire destroyed their home, property, and livestock. According to Baula:

“The imam told us that from today we were no longer one of the family members, that we were kafir [infidels] and that we should leave the homestead immediately to go and look for other infidels. He added that had it not been the law of our state, we would face death, but ‘go out of here since you have disobeyed Allah and his messenger.'”

The family fled with nothing and, as of the last report, took refuge in another Christian’s home.

More Christian Slaughter in Africa

Mozambique: As the southeastern African nation continues to fight off the Islamic State and other terrorists — nearly a million people have been displaced since 2017 and thousands slaughtered — in a June 28 report, Todd Nettleton of The Voice of the Martyrs USA explained how the terrorists mostly target Christians:

“They say their goal is to set up a caliphate similar to ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And they are in some cases, literally going door to door. They ask, ‘Are you a Christian? Or are you a Muslim?’ If you’re a Christian, you’re killed. If you’re a Muslim, then you get the opportunity to quote some Quranic verses. And if you can quote them sufficiently, you save your life. Otherwise, you also get killed [sometimes by crucifixion].”…

Attacks on Churches

Democratic Republic of Congo: On Sunday, June 27, a makeshift bomb placed in the first row behind the altar exploded inside a Catholic church in Beni, leaving at least two injured. One of the injured women, Antoinette Kavira, said from her hospital bed:

“I had just entered the church, I hadn’t even managed to sit down, I heard ‘Boom’… Blood started flowing from my mouth. I lost four teeth and was injured in the arms.”…

Indonesia: In the early morning hours of Sunday, June 27, a Protestant church was vandalized and then set on fire in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. The blaze was put out before it could do extensive damage. Although evidence indicates that the arsonist acted purposefully — he first broke the church’s windows, vandalized the interior, and then torched the exterior, all under the helpful cover of darkness — police concluded that the suspect was mentally disabled. The description prompted some critics to say that the incident was being “played down.”…

Finally, on June 19, ten Muslim schoolchildren, between the ages of 5 and 12, vandalized and desecrated a Christian cemetery by breaking the crosses off a dozen gravestones. After inspecting the damage done, the mayor of Solo laid the blame on the Islamic madrasa the children attend, and its teachers, “because they are teaching intolerance to their students.” He even urged police to prosecute the teachers and punish the students despite their being children. “Their actions were a gross act of intolerance.”…

Egypt: Authorities seized land belonging to an ancient Coptic monastery, originally founded in 360 CE — nearly 300 years before Islam invaded and conquered Egypt in the seventh century. On May 30, authorities arrived with bulldozers and police at the Monastery of Saint Macarius in the deserts of Wadi al-Rayan in Fayum and demolished a fence of the annex-farm and other structures — including a church — that had been erected by the monks living there. Several monks who protested, or who tried to prevent this state-sanctioned destruction, were arrested but shortly thereafter released. The reason given for this takeover was that the monastery had been unable to pay the exorbitant levies that the government imposed on it a few years ago, in large measure due to the many government-enforced Covid-19 restrictions, such as on tourism, which would have helped keep the ancient monastery afloat…

Please share your prayers in the comments below for Christian minority populations whose safety and livelihood are threatened simply because of their faith in Jesus.

(Excerpted from Gatestone Institute. Article by Raymond Ibrahim. Photo Credit: Levi Meir Clancy/Unsplash).