‘By their fruits you shall know them...'
(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2; see also Part 4)
by Ralph H. Sidway
“After the San Bernardino attacks, everybody was saying, ‘If only Americans knew more about Islam, they wouldn’t be so afraid.’ Actually, it’s the reverse.” — Bill Maher
"I HAVE BEEN COMMANDED TO FIGHT!" — It says so RIGHT HERE! |
‘I have been commanded to fight…’
The condemnations of Christianity in the Koran (cited in Part 2) have real-world implications, as can be seen in the 14 centuries of Islamic jihad and aggression, and in the modern global phenomenon of Muslim persecution of Christians. As Raymond Ibrahim painstakingly documents both in his book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War Against Christians, and in his monthly series Muslim Persecution of Christians, Islam’s jihad against Christianity spans centuries, geography, race and language, and takes exactly the same form, whether in Nigeria, Sudan or Egypt (Africa), or in Iraq, Syria, Iran or Lebanon (the Middle East), or in Pakistan, Afghanistan and all the other ‘stans (Central Asia), or in Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and so on.
Another reliable source, Open Doors, has just published their annual World Watch List on persecution of Christians for 2015, noting that the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries, while horrific in 2014 and prior years, actually doubled in 2015. Over 80% of the 50 worst nations for persecution of Christians are Islamic nations or have large Muslim populations.
Why is Muslim persecution of Christians so universal, and why has it been going on for 14 centuries?
It certainly can’t be a retaliation for the Crusades, as they post-date the creation of Islam by more than four centuries, and were themselves a response against relentless Islamic aggression.
Rather, the Muslim ummah was a completely new military force, which swept out of the Arabian peninsula in the mid-630s, conquering the Middle East and North Africa by the mid-7th century (and well into Central Asia in the East), followed by the Iberian peninsula (Spain), and even besieging Constantinople (for the first time) in the early 8th century. The below map shows the rapid expanse of Islam during the Arab jihad.