Post 73--Voluntary Martyrdom

Today's post treats of martyrs for Jesus at the hands of Muslims we know as ISIS.  Muslims?  By far most Muslims, probably somewhere close to a billion, will deny ISIS status as Muslims.  It is not for me as Christian to determine who is or is not Muslim.  We do know from the media, as wrong as they often may be, that millions of acknowledged Muslims cheer when ISIS pulls off one of its horrendous pranks. And if you doubt media truth, you may take it from me who have witnessed it first hand in Nigeria. 

I pass on this particular story not because such martyr scenes are unusual. In fact, they are very common--and it is not always ISIS who commits them. If you subscribe to BARNABASAID's magazine, you will realize that it is almost a daily occurrence in one Muslim country or another.

I pass on this particular story because of the amazing voluntary martyrdom chosen by one of the victims who could have been "saved" by simply being quiet. I refer you to the red paragraph in the middle of the story. Read that paragraph over a few times. Ponder it. Try to imagine it is you!  Does it not make you cringe with fear, anger, horror and everything else negative?  What would you have done, knowing that whatever your response, it would not affect any of the others. They would be shot anyhow. 

Well, go ahead and read.....

Christian Newsline Our Faith in Today's World

A witness unto death: bodies of Christian martyrs returned to Egypt Last week the bodies of the 20 Egyptian Christians martyred by Islamic State (IS) in Libya in 2015 were returned to Egypt. This is a very poignant reminder of IS’s activities, their systematic killing and their brutality. A total of 21 people were beheaded by IS including one Ghanaian. According to a video of the incident posted by IS, the martyred wore orange jumpsuits and were brutally murdered at a beach location in Sirte, an IS stronghold at the time. Their bodies were recovered when the area was recaptured from IS in October last year and eventually forensically identified by doctors. These 20 were among the many displaced Egyptians who risked their lives trying to find work in an increasingly lawless and chaotic Libya, in the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall in 2011. Many hundreds of Christian families have since fled their homes in North Sinai in Egypt, fearing for their lives after IS issued death threats against all Christians in the region early in 2017.       Barnabas Aid is supporting the families of the 20 Egyptian Christian martyrs murdered by IS in 2015 Many Christians will have been moved by Foxe’s Book of Martyrs account of martyrdoms such as Tyndale, who was strangled and burnt at the stake, in obedience to Christ during the Reformation. It is difficult to imagine their suffering and faithfulness “unto death” (Revelation 2:10) in the Western church today, where Christians still enjoy relatively unrestricted freedom of belief and worship. The notion of “sacrifice” as part of Christian life has become abstract and perhaps more connected with giving up time, money, resources or personal comforts in Christian service. Egyptian Christians often call martyrdom a “second baptism”. They consider it a glorious privilege, welcoming it and embracing it as a blessing from God. One of the 20 Egyptian martyrs in Libya could easily have escaped death. His name was one more commonly used by Muslims than by Christians. So when the IS militants separated the Muslim and Christian migrant workers, on the basis of their ID documents, they placed him with the Muslims. But he spoke up and protested that he was a Christian and wanted to go with his Christian brothers. He surely knew that he was in all probability going to his death, but it was death for Christ and therefore he chose it. Martyrdom is an everyday reality in Egypt, connecting with the story of Christianity from its very beginning. In an age of cynicism and materialism, the 20 Egyptian martyrs, together with Ghanaian believer Matthew Aryga killed with them, remind us that some Christians are still willing to pay the ultimate price for their faith. The past two weeks have seen many Christians die in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. On Sunday May 13, in Surabaya on the island of Java, a family of suicide bombers targeted early morning services at three churches of different denominations killing 13. Their names are unrecorded and unknown to the wider world. Even the numbers receive little or no public mention. But they are known to God. Martyr, from the Greek word “martus” used in the New Testament, is translated “witness”. It is used in Scripture in the senses of a witness at a judicial trial, the witness of the people of God in a general sense and, lastly, to all witnesses who have sealed their testimony with their own blood. The apostles were eyewitnesses to Christ’s life, atoning death and resurrection, whereas the martyrs of Christ, past and present day, are His “blood witnesses”. We are all called to be witnesses, whether in death or in life. www.barnabasaid.org

Post 53--Why the Ramadan Violence?

Why so much violence during Ramadan?

Dr. Jim Denison | June 5, 2017

Last night, ISIS claimed responsibility for the London attack that killed seven and wounded forty-eight. One of the terrorists wore a fake bomb vest. According to ABC News, the vest was likely intended to guarantee a police response that would lead to his martyrdom. He was the father of a toddler; his wife was expecting a child. What would motivate him to carry out such an atrocity at the cost of his own life? The day of the attack, an ISIS message called on its followers to use knives, guns, and vehicles in an "all-out war" on "infidels" during Ramadan. The audio message instructed jihadists to "attack them in their homes, their markets, their roads and their forums." When Ramadan began this year, jihadists attacked a bus filled with Christians in Egypt, murdering twenty-nine. Ten of the victims were children. The day after Ramadan began, a suicide bomber murdered eighteen people in Afghanistan, two of them children. Last year's Ramadan was the bloodiest on record. A gunman killed forty-nine and wounded fifty-three at an Orlando gay night club. An Islamist then stabbed a police officer and his wife in Paris. He claimed that he was responding to ISIS's call for violence during Ramadan. Later that month, three ISIS suicide bombers killed forty-five and wounded more than 250 at Istanbul's main airport. When Ramadan ended last year, the final global body count was 421 dead and 729 wounded. Why would terrorists make Ramadan a time to escalate their violence? Ramadan is the ninth month on the Islamic calendar. Muslims believe that Muhammad received the first of a series of "revelations" that became the Qur'an on the seventeenth day of Ramadan in the year AD 610. For this reason, the month has always been holy to them (Qur'an 2:185). The month begins eleven days earlier each year on the solar calendar; this year, it extends from May 26 to June 24. During this month, Muslims fast from their first prayer of the day (at dawn) to the fourth (just after sunset). They also refrain from smoking and sexual relations during the day. They pray more fervently during the month and increase almsgiving. Their increased fervor is not just to honor the month—it is also to receive greater rewards for themselves. Muhammad is believed to have preached a sermon on Ramadan in which he said, "Whoever performs an obligatory deed in (this month) shall receive the reward of performing seventy obligations at any other time." A Taliban spokesman recently stated, "Our fight is Jihad and an obligatory worship. And every obligatory act of worship has 70 times more reward in Ramadan." We can expect further attacks this month as radical Islamists seek reward in heaven for committing atrocities on earth. But Ramadan is also an important time for Christians to intercede for Muslims and especially for jihadists. As Muslims focus more intensely on prayer and worship, many are seeing visions and dreams of Jesus. Saul of Tarsus was committed to killing Christians until he met Christ (Acts 9:1–31). It's vital that we pray for Islamist terrorists to experience the same transformation. F. B. Meyer believed that "the greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer." Is his warning especially true this month?

Post 46—Christian Genocide by ISIS

It is generally recognized in the media that Christians are having a hard time of it in pretty well all Muslim-dominated countries, whether in Asia, Africa or Europe. I have drawn attention to this in several posts in both this blog as well as in another blog I operate under the name “My World—My Neighbour,” the latest being number 124.

Now that claim may smell like Islamophobia to some, but that derisive term is over-used to cover almost anything that is less than laudatory with respect to Islam.  It means “fear of Islam,” which is a far cry from disagreement with Islam. I have high respect for orthodox Islam and for its adherents, but I disagree with them. If you want to know what exactly that translates into, I refer you to my series Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations on my website  < www.SocialTheology.com/Islamica >. Even Muslims have praised me for the spirit pervading that series. Disagreement? Yes.  Phobia? No, not one bit. So, let’s not have that misnomer stand in the way of the rest of this post. 

Today I discuss not mere Muslim persecution of Christians, but genocide. According to one edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, it means “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group,” with the last one, I take it, including religious groups.  It is much more specific than the more general term “persecution.” While the latter is common place throughout the Muslim world, genocide is more local and currently widely applied especially to ISIS, who are widely recognized to consciously and officially be practicing Christian genocide.

You need details of this recognition?  Carl Anderson, the CEO of the Knights of Columbus and a New York Times bestselling author, together with  Archbishop Bashar Warda, a Chaldean Catholic Archbishop in Iraq (A&W), wrote an article, “ISIS perpetrates genocide against Christians” (Vancouver Sun, Aug. 5, 2016, p. A11) that is fully worth a serious read. They write:

Based on overwhelming evidence, Christians have been included in genocide designations by the European Parliament, the US State Department, the US Congress, parliaments and officials of a number of European governments, as well as the Iraqi cabinet and the Kurdish Regional Government.    

In addition, according to Barnabas Aid, certain members of the British House of Lords urged their Prime Minister some months ago that, “jihadist attacks on  Christians and other religions in the Middle East should be classified as genocide.”  In other words, the UK Government hesitated to join the authorities in the paragraph above. And they are not the only ones. The same Barnabas report states that “The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has said that she ‘stands ready’ to begin a genocide enquiry but needs an order from the UN Security Council.”  So, the UN also hesitates. Given its membership, that should be no surprise to anyone.

But coming closer to home, our own Canadian Government also has rejected the call to declare a genocide on the part of ISIS.  A&W advocate that Canada should take leadership on the question of genocide by ISIS, but it is following the lead of the UN. The argument against the genocide issue turns on a definition of a tax Islam calls “jizya”, a tax Christians and others have historically paid to Muslim rulers for protection instead of the traditional “convert or die” ultimatum. However, according to A&W, ISIS has widened the definition of this protection so that it includes even “kidnapping, rape and confiscation,” all actions from which that tax is supposed to protect them. In fact, a former ISIS leader “publicly revoked any special treatment of Christians years ago.”  Its official magazine, Dabiq, has threatened to “conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women.” 

The result of all this violence? A&W tell us that the number of Christians in Iraq “has plummeted by nearly 90 percent, Syria’s by almost 70 per cent. “In the land where it first took root, Christianity could be stamped out entirely—within our lifetime.”  Such threats and actions hardly represent the preferential treatment Jizya is supposed to offer, as A&W put it.

And so I strongly support the call of A&W and the campaign being waged by Barnabas Aid for both Canada and the UN to become realistic. A&W urge, “It is time for both Canada and the UN to join the international consensus, supported by a majority of the Canadian people at a rate of two to one in our recent K of C-Leger poll.” As a Canadian I will be extremely embarrassed if our Government were to renege on this life-and-death issue for thousands of people. If there is no change at this front, I will definitely campaign against the Federal Government on basis of this offensive indifference during any future election. I will help arouse the Christian community against them in my writings. It is one more spike in the coffin of death with which the politicians of almost all parties are saddling our country, the others being easy abortion and easy assisted suicide along with the more general ones of poverty and injustice.

Though I am always wary of one-issue politics, the matter of life and death trumps all other issues in importance along with poverty and injustice.  Come to think of it, when you lump these “few” issues together, you’re really talking a pretty wide umbrella of issues that can hardly be considered “single-issue” stuff. I am aware this could leave me a political orphan without a party to vote for. I may be left to vote for the least of all evils, a position that an increasing number of Canadian Christians find themselves in.

Though I drift in this post from the specific issue of genocide of Christians to more general politics, what I want you to take away from it is first of all the genocide issue. That’s my issue for today.  It is more than an “issue” for thousands of Christians in the Middle East; for them it is indeed literally an issue of life and death that goes far beyond mere politics. We need to press the Government of Canada to recognize and declare ISIS genocide of Middle Eastern Christians and others of various persuasions. Does the pretty face of our current PM mask an attitude of indifference to the lot of the most vulnerable and, thus, of an underlying cruelty? I leave the answer to you.