{"id":1064,"date":"2012-01-21T21:16:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T21:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=1064"},"modified":"2013-03-05T21:18:26","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T21:18:26","slug":"christmas-under-islam-hardly-a-season-to-be-jolly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/christmas-under-islam-hardly-a-season-to-be-jolly\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Under Islam: Hardly a Season to be Jolly"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n

PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n

Earlier I\u00a0discussed<\/a>\u00a0how mosques, some of which\u00a0breed radicalization<\/a>\u00a0and serve as\u00a0terrorist bases<\/a>, flourish in America, while churches are increasingly targeted and destroyed in the Muslim world, especially the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity.<\/p>\n

This pattern \u2014 religious appeasement of Muslim minorities in the West, religious hostility for Christian minorities under Islam \u2014 continues and manifests itself in other ways.<\/p>\n

Consider Christmas. The same appeasement that allows a “victory mosque<\/a>” to be erected near Ground Zero, where jihadists killed some 3,000 Americans, compromises one of Christianity’s most important events.<\/p>\n

For instance, a “Montreal suburb has decided to\u00a0remove a nativity scene and menorah<\/a>\u00a0from [the] town hall rather than acquiesce to demands from a Muslim group to erect Islamic religious symbols.” Contrast this with Iran, where many churches were “ordered to cancel Christmas<\/a>\u00a0and New Year’s celebrations as a show of their compliance and support” for “the two month-long mourning activities of the Shia’ Moslems,” a reference to the\u00a0bloody flagellations and self mutilations<\/a>\u00a0Shias perform in memory of Imam Hussein during Ashura.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the University of London held\u00a0Christmas service featuring readings from the Quran<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Islam’s holy book that unequivocally condemns the Incarnation, which is precisely what Christmas celebrates. Meanwhile, Islam’s clerics in the West proclaimed things like “saying Merry Christmas is worse than fornication or killing someone<\/a>,” since doing so is to “approve of the biggest crime ever committed by humanity”: the belief that God became man on Christmas. As the cleric makes clear, these are not his words, but rather the words of Islam’s most authoritative clerics.<\/p>\n

Nor are these just words. Around the Muslim world, Christmas time for Christians is a time of threats, harassment, and fear. One can point to any number of Muslim attacks on Christians to prove this \u2014 whether churches attacked, burned, or forced into closure; whether Muslim converts to Christianity beat, killed, or imprisoned; whether Christians abused on “blasphemy” charges; or whether just sheer violence and killings of “infidel” Christians. (See “Muslim Persecution of Christians<\/a>” for a list of December’s abuses alone).<\/p>\n

More telling, however, are the attacks that specifically targeted or revolved around Christmas:<\/p>\n

December 25, 2011 was “Nigeria’s blackest Christmas ever<\/a>“: in a number of coordinated jihadi attacks, several church were bombed, killing over 40 people, “the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church after celebrating Christmas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion.” As expected, the\u00a0New York Times<\/a><\/em>\u00a0all but apologized for the terrorists.<\/p>\n

Christmas Eve in Uganda saw\u00a0Muslims throw acid on a church leader<\/a>, leaving him with severe burns, blinding one eye and threatening sight in the other. The pastor was on his way to a church party when a man pretending to be a Christian approached him from behind, yelling, “Pastor, pastor.” When he turned, the Muslim threw acid in his face while others poured it on his back, all running away while screaming Islam’s victory cry, “Allahu Akbar!”<\/p>\n

In Muslim-majority Tajikistan, “a young man dressed as Father Frost \u2014 the Russian equivalent of Father Christmas \u2014 was\u00a0stabbed to death<\/a>” while visiting relatives and bringing gifts. Considering that the crowd beating and stabbing him were shouting “you infidel!” police cited “religious hatred” as motivation.<\/p>\n

These are among the more violent and illegal attacks on Christians around Christmas time, undertaken by Muslim mobs and terrorists. In their own way, however, Muslim governments \u2014 many deemed “friends” of America \u2014 also make Christmas a very “un-merry” time for celebrants.<\/p>\n

For example, if “vandals” in Indonesia\u00a0decapitated the statue of the Virgin Mary<\/a>\u00a0in a small grotto days before Christmas, Indonesian officials have been shutting down churches; one “embattled church<\/a>” fighting for survival was forced to move its Christmas prayers to a member’s house.<\/p>\n

This pattern of treating Christian minorities as\u00a0dhimmis<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 Sharia’s legal term for non-Muslims under Islam forced to live as despised, second-class citizens \u2014 is business as usual in the Muslim world. Some more Christmas-related examples follow, from a cursory Internet search:<\/p>\n