Iran Destroys Bibles

This is not the beginning of this sort of persecution, and it certainly isn't the end. Expect it even here. Pray.

(CNSNews.com) – A Shi’ite cleric affiliated with the Iranian regime has warned about the “danger” of Christianity spreading in the Islamic republic. This come amid reports of an anti-Christianity propaganda campaign and the seizure of thousands of Bibles.

According to Mohabat News, an independent Iranian Christian news agency, Ayatollah Hadi Jahangosha expressed concern about “the spread of Christianity among our youth,” citing the availability of Christian satellite television programs, books and objects.

“Everyone in society should feel responsibility in this matter and play his or her role in spreading of pure Islam and fight false and distorted cultures,” Mohabat quoted him as saying during a presentation on Mahdism – the belief in the so-called “hidden” or 12th imam, prophesied to emerge at a time of future chaos.

Last week, Mohabat reported that authorities had seized 6,500 pocket-sized Bibles in northwestern Iran. It quoted a parliamentary advisor, Majid Abhari, as telling the Mehr news agency that Christian missionaries were out to deceive Iranians, particularly the youth.

“They have begun a huge campaign by spending huge sums and false propaganda for deviating the public,” Abhari said. “The important point in this issue that should be considered by intelligence, judicial and religious agencies is that all religions are strengthening their power to confront Islam, otherwise what does this huge number of Bibles mean?”

Mohabat recalled previous incidents of Bibles being seized, including one last February, when Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and security officials in a routine inspection of a bus near the Iran-Turkey border found 600 New Testaments, which they destroyed along with confiscated alcohol in a public burning.

A similar incident in the same area last October also saw officials seize and burn Bibles, it said.

In a third incident, in June 2010, Bibles were found in a town near the border with Iraq. Mohabat said the official IRGC Web site at the time accused the U.S. in neighboring Iraq of conspiring to smuggle Bibles into Iran.

The Barnabas Fund, an organization working with Christian minorities in Islamic societies, reports that Iranian authorities have been waging an anti-Christian propaganda campaign through state media in recent weeks.

“Last month, offensive caricatures depicting Christ and Christians were published in the [IRGC mouthpiece] magazine Javan,” it said.

“False and insulting stories about Christians have also appeared in government media. One such article that was published on the website Youth Online alleged that women evangelists were going into stores, using shopping as a pretext to enter into conversation with staff, and then suggesting sexual liaisons and insulting Islam.”

‘Islamic justice and equity’

Iran’s government claims to uphold religious freedom, noting that the constitution recognizes Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, as permitted religious minorities.

When Iran went before the U.N. Human Rights Council early last year for a routine rights review, its official submission stated that those three minorities, “within the limits of the law, are free to perform their religious rites and ceremonies, and to act according to their own canon in matters of personal affairs and religious education.”

“The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non-Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights,” it added.

When Iran in 2008 hosted a conference on “Religion in the Modern World,” attended by former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan and other dignitaries, the Tehran Times in an op-ed said Iran’s hosting of the event showed that its “ancient tradition of showing respect for different cultures and religions is still alive and well.”

“The reality on the ground in Iran is quite different from what is being propagated by certain countries and organizations in their disinformation campaigns,” it said.

“Due to the country’s religious and cultural traditions, in Iran there is no sign of the religious extremism and intolerance that have opened wounds in certain Muslim states and allowed the enemies to present a negative image of Islam to the world.”

Despite such claims, however, reports of religious persecution persist, including most recently the case of a pastor who has been sentenced to death for apostasy.

The Iranian Bible Society’s offices have been shut for decades, and authorities do not allow publishing or reprinting of Bibles in Iran.

Because of this, according to Mohabat, the only solution for Christians needing Farsi-language Bibles is to have them smuggled across the borders from neighboring countries.

One organization that provides Bibles for Iranians is Elam Ministries, which says it printed and distributed 100,000 Bibles and 100,000 New Testaments in 2010.

“Despite the limited support, well over a million New Testaments have been made available in recent years, and up to half a million whole Bibles,” the organization says on its Web site. “And despite the ferocious hostility of the government in Iran to the Bible, brave Christians there have risked their lives to see their fellow country men can read the Scriptures. Some are in prison now for their work.”

Elam was founded in 1988 by senior Iranian church leaders in Britain “with the vision of reaching Iran and the Persian speaking world for Christ.”

It says that at the time of the Islamic revolution in 1979, there were fewer than 500 known Iranian Christians from a Muslim background.

“Today the most conservative estimate is that there are at least 100,000 believers in the nation.”

The Fall Of Europe Begins

Troubling numbers and facts from Soeren Kern at the Hudson Institute: “Islamic mosques are being built more often in France than Roman Catholic churches, and there now are more practising Muslims in the country than practicing Catholics.

Nearly 150 new mosques currently are under construction in France, home to the biggest Muslim community in Europe. The mosque-building projects are at various stages of completion, according to Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the Muslim Council of France (CFCM), who provided the data in an August 2 interview with the French radio station RTL.

The total number of mosques in France has already doubled to more than 2,000 during just the past ten years, according to a research report “Constructing Mosques: The Governance of Islam in France and the Netherlands.” France’s most prominent Muslim leader, Dalil Boubakeur, who is rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, recently called for the number of mosques in the country to be doubled again – to 4,000 – to meet growing demand.

By contrast, the Roman Catholic Church in France has built only 20 new churches during the past decade, and has formally closed more than 60 churches, many of which are destined to become mosques, according to research conducted by La Croix, a Roman Catholic daily newspaper based in Paris.

Although 64% of the French population (or 41.6 million of France’s 65 million inhabitants) identifies itself as Roman Catholic, only 4.5% (or 1.9 million) of those actually are practising Catholics, according to the French Institute of Public Opinion (or Ifop, as it is usually called).

By way of comparison, 75% (or 4.5 million) of the estimated 6 million mostly ethnic North African and sub-Saharan Muslims in France identify themselves as “believers” and 41% (or 2.5 million) say they are “practising” Muslims, according to an in-depth research report on Islam in France published by Ifop on August 1. The report also says that more than 70% of the Muslims in France say they will be observing the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in 2011.

Taken together, the research data provides empirical evidence that Islam is well on its way to overtaking Roman Catholicism as the dominant religion in France.

As their numbers grow, Muslims in France are becoming far more assertive than ever before. A case in point: Muslim groups in France are now asking the Roman Catholic Church for permission to use its empty churches as a way to solve the traffic problems caused by thousands of Muslims who pray in the streets.

In a March 11 communiqué addressed to the Church of France, the National Federation of the Great Mosque of Paris, the Council of Democratic Muslims of France and a Muslim activist group called Collectif Banlieues Respect called on the Catholic Church – in a spirit of inter-religious solidarity, of course – to make its empty churches available to Muslims for Friday prayers, so that Muslims do not have to "pray in the streets" and be "held hostage to politics."

Every Friday, thousands of Muslims in Paris and other French cities close off streets and sidewalks (and by extension, close down local businesses and trap non-Muslim residents in their homes and offices) to accommodate overflowing crowds for midday prayers. Some mosques have also begun broadcasting sermons and chants of "Allah Akbar" via loudspeakers in the streets.

The weekly spectacles, which have been documented by dozens of videos posted on Youtube.com (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), have provoked anger and disbelief. But despite many public complaints, local authorities have declined to intervene because they are afraid of sparking riots.

The issue of illegal street prayers was catapulted to the top of the national political agenda in France in December 2010, when Marine Le Pen, the charismatic new leader of the far-right National Front party, denounced them as an "occupation without tanks or soldiers."

During a gathering in the east central French city of Lyon on December 10, Le Pen compared Muslims praying in the streets to Nazi occupation. She said: "For those who want to talk a lot about World War II, if it is about occupation, then we could also talk about it [Muslim prayers in the streets], because that is occupation of territory. It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of districts in which religious laws apply. It is an occupation. There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs heavily on local residents."

Many French voters agree. In fact, the issue of Muslim street prayers – and the broader question of the role of Islam in French society – has become a major issue ahead of the 2012 presidential elections. According to a survey by Ifop for the France-Soir newspaper, nearly 40% of French voters agree with Len Pen's views that Muslim prayer in the streets resembles an occupation. Another opinion poll published by Le Parisien newspaper shows that voters view Le Pen, who has criss-crossed the country arguing that France has been invaded by Muslims and betrayed by its elite, as the candidate best suited to deal with the growing problem of runaway Muslim immigration.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose popularity was at 25% in July – worse than any predecessor less than a year ahead of a re-election bid, according to the TNS-Sofres polling group – has been spooked by Le Pen's advance in the opinion polls. He now seems determined not to allow Le Pen to monopolize the issue of Islam in France.

Sarkozy recently called Muslim prayers in the street "unacceptable" and said that the street cannot be allowed to become "an extension of the mosque." He also warned that the overflow of Muslim faithful on to the streets at prayer time when mosques are packed to capacity risks undermining the French secular tradition separating state and religion.

Interior Minister Claude Guéant on August 8 told Muslims who have been praying on the streets of Paris that they should utilize a disused barracks instead. "Praying in the street is something that is not acceptable," Guéant said. "It has to stop."

Meanwhile, France ushered in Ramadan by inaugurating a new mega-mosque for 2,000 worshipers in Strasbourg, where the Muslim population has reached 15%. Construction also continues apace of a new mega-mosque in Marseille, France's second-largest city where the Muslim population has reached 25% (or 250,000). The Grand Mosque – which at more than 8,300 square meters (92,000 square feet) will accommodate up to 7,000 worshippers in a vast prayer hall – is designed to be the biggest and most potent symbol of Islam's place in modern France.

Boubakeur, of the Grande Mosque of Paris, says the construction of even more mosques – paid for by French taxpayers – would ease the "pressure, frustration and the sense of injustice" felt by many French Muslims. "Open a mosque and you close a prison," says Boubakeur.

But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has implied that the construction of mosques and minarets actually is part of a strategy for the Islamization of Europe. Publicly repeating the words of a 1912 poem written by the Turkish nationalist poet Ziya Gökalp, Erdogan said: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers."

Reflecting on the retreat of Catholicism and the rise of Islam in France, Archbishop Giuseppe Bernardini, an Italian Franciscan who heads the Izmir archdiocese in Turkey, and who has lived in the Islamic world for more than 40 years, has recounted a conversation he once had with a Muslim leader, who told him: "Thanks to your democratic laws, we will invade you. Thanks to our religious laws, we will dominate you."

Are you ready to take action, or will you continue to pretend that this isn't happening?

Did You See This On The News?

From our friend Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs

We should take small comfort that the "extremists" Obama's Department of Homeland Security are referring to in this report are activated Musims, jihadists, and not the DHS usual pablum (ie grandmas, vets, patriots, and tea partiers.) Hey, for Obama's DHS that's huge.

A new intelligence report from the Department of Homeland Security issued yesterday warns "violent extremists have, in fact, obtained insider positions," and that "outsiders have attempted to solicit utility-sector employees" for damaging physical and cyber attacks.How did that happen and why wasn't DHS all over this before they got inside? Too busy groping 6 year olds at the airports and patting down 70 year old nuns in wheelchairs?

What appears to be missing from this report is that devout Muslims aka extremists have also obtained insider positions in the White House, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice etc.

New Terror Report Warns of Insider Threat to Utilities ABC News

DHS bulletin: "Extremists have, in fact, obtained insider positions.

Sabotage by an insider at a major utility facility, including a chemical or oil refinery, could provide al Qaeda with its best opportunity for the kind of massive Sept. 11 anniversary attack Osama bin Laden was planning, according to U.S. officials.

A new intelligence report from the Department of Homeland Security issued Tuesday, titled Insider Threat to Utilities, warns "violent extremists have, in fact, obtained insider positions," and that "outsiders have attempted to solicit utility-sector employees" for damaging physical and cyber attacks.

"Based on the reliable reporting of previous incidents, we have high confidence in our judgment that insiders and their actions pose a significant threat to the infrastructure and information systems of U.S. facilities," the bulletin reads in part. "Past events and reporting also provide high confidence in our judgment that insider information on sites, infrastructure, networks, and personnel is valuable to our adversaries and may increase the impact of any attack on the utilities infrastructure."

In the materials recovered after the Navy SEAL operation that killed Osama bin Laden in May, officials found evidence bin Laden sought to repeat the carnage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on or around its ten year anniversary.

"The only way you can actually kill the large scale number of Americans that [bin Laden] literally was calculating was through the use of this critical infrastructure," Chad Sweet, former DHS chief of staff and co-founder of the Chertoff Group, told ABC News.

After gaining access to such sites, causing mayhem could be relatively easy, according to former White House counter-terrorism advisor and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke.

"There are a lot of very sensitive facilities where someone can get a job on the inside, get access to a control room, flip a switch, which causes an electric power grid to short circuit, causes a pipeline to explode," Clarke said.

[...]

'I am Taking This Plant Hostage

U.S. officials were stunned last year in Yemen with the arrest of an alleged American recruit to al Qaeda, Sharif Mobley, of New Jersey, who had been employed as five different U.S. nuclear power plants in and around Pennsylvania after successfully passing federal background checks.

"If someone is determined, and has the right access, they could do damage that would affect thousands of lives," Sweet said.

Al Qaeda has already put out the word in its online magazine, Inspire, for "brothers of ours who have specialized expertise and those who work in sensitive locations that would offer them unique opportunities to wreak havoc on the enemies of Allah."

Thank You, Mohammed!

This week's attacks are brought to you courtesy of the Prophet Mohammed!

2011-07-13 (Pattani, Thailand) - Two Buddhist brothers working as construction workers are brutally murdered by Muslim gunmen.

2011.07.13 (Mumbai, India) - An opera house and two other commercial areas are targeted by Religion of Peace bombers. Twenty-one are killed and over a hundred more maimed.

2011.07.13 (Tagab, Afghanistan) - Five French soldiers guarding a local council meeting are among six killed by a Shahid suicide bomber.

2011.07.12 (Abu Ghraib, Iraq) - A Fedayeen suicide bomber takes out two Iraqis.

2011.07.12 (Bajaur, Pakistan) - Women and children are among the casualties when radicals send a shell into a family home.
2011.07.11 (Maiduguri, Nigeria) - Hardliners detonate a bomb under a van, killing three occupants.

Check out The Religion of Peace for more info.

The 4 Stages Of Islamic Conquest

Step One: Infiltration

Muslims begin moving to non-Muslim countries in increasing numbers and the beginning of cultural conflicts are visible, though often subtle.

• First migration wave to non-Muslim “host” country.
• Appeal for humanitarian tolerance from the host society.
• Attempts to portray Islam as a peaceful & Muslims as victims of misunderstanding and racism (even though Islam is not a ‘race’).
• High Muslim birth rate in host country increase Muslim population.
• Mosques used to spread Islam and dislike of host country & culture.
• Calls to criminalize “Islamophobia” as a hate crime.
• Threatened legal action for perceived discrimination.
• Offers of “interfaith dialogue” to indoctrinate non-Muslims.

How many nations are suffering from Islamic infiltration? One? A handful? Nearly every nation? The Islamic ‘leadership” of the Muslim Brotherhood and others wish to dissolve each nation’s sovereignty and replace it with the global imposition of Islamic sharia law. Sharia law, based on the koran, sira and hadith, condemns liberty and forbids equality and is inconsistent with the laws of all Western nations. As the author and historian Serge Trifkovic states:

“The refusal of the Western elite class to protect their nations from jihadist infiltration is the biggest betrayal in history.”

Islam's Top Ten List

Ten Obvious Reasons Why
Islam is NOT a Religion of Peace

#1 14,000 deadly terror attacks committed explicitly in the name of Islam in just the last eight years. (Other religions combined for perhaps a dozen or so).

#2 Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, had people killed for insulting him or criticizing his religion. This included women. Muslims are told to emulate the example of Muhammad.

#3 Muhammad said in many places that he has been "ordered by Allah to fight men until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger." In the last nine years of his life, he ordered no less than 65 military campaigns to do exactly that.

Muhammad inspired his men to war with the basest of motives, using captured loot, sex and a gluttonous paradise as incentives. He beheaded captives, enslaved children and raped women captured in battle. Again, Muslims are told to emulate the example of Muhammad.

#4 After Muhammad died, the people who lived with him, and knew his religion best, immediately fell into war with each other.

Fatima, Muhammad's favorite daughter, survived the early years at Mecca safe and sound, yet died of stress from the persecution of fellow Muslims only six months after her father died.

Fatima's husband Ali, who was the second second convert to Islam and was raised like a son to Muhammad, fought a civil war against an army raised by Aisha, Muhammad's favorite wife - and one whom he had said was a "perfect woman." 10,000 Muslims were killed in a single battle, waged less than 25 years after Muhammad's death.

Three of the first four Muslim rulers (caliphs) were murdered. All of them were among Muhammad's closest companions. The third caliph was killed by allies of the son of the first (who was murdered by the fifth caliph a few years later, then wrapped in the skin of a dead donkey and burned). The fourth caliph (Ali) was stabbed to death after a bitter dispute with the fifth. The fifth caliph went on to poison one of Muhammad's two favorite grandsons. The other grandson was later beheaded by the sixth caliph.

The infighting and power struggles between Muhammad's family members, closest companions and their children only intensified with time. Within 50 short years of Muhammad's death, even the Kaaba, which had stood for centuries under pagan religion, lay in ruins from internal Muslim war...

And that's just the fate of those within the house of Islam!

#5 Muhammad directed Muslims to wage war on other religions and bring them under submission to Islam. Within the first few decades following his death, his Arabian companions invaded and conquered Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Zoroastrian lands.

A mere 25 years after Muhammad's death, Muslim armies had captured land and people within the borders of over 28 modern countries outside of Saudi Arabia.

#6 Muslims continued their Jihad against other religions for 1400 years, checked only by the ability of non-Muslims to defend themselves. To this day, not a week goes by that Islamic fundamentalists do not attempt to kill Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists explicitly in the name of Allah.

None of these other religions are at war with each other.

#7 Islam is the only religion that has to retain its membership by threatening to kill anyone who leaves. This is according to the example set by Muhammad.

#8 Islam teaches that non-Muslims are less than fully human. Muhammad said that Muslims can be put to death for murder, but that a Muslim could never be put to death for killing a non-Muslim.

#9 The Qur'an never once speaks of Allah's love for non-Muslims, but it speaks of Allah's cruelty toward and hatred of non-Muslims more than 500 times.

#10 "Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!"
(The last words from the cockpit of Flight 93)

Thanks to our friends at www.thereligionofpeace.com

Muslims Attack Iraq Catholic Church - 52 Dead

I ask you all to offer your prayers for the 52 dead including 2 priests and at least one child at Our Lady Of Deliverance Catholic Church in Iraq. Muslims attacked the church and took the congregation hostage. The church was stormed by the Iraqi Security Forces, by the time the smoke cleared, there were 52 dead, 56 wounded.

We recognize the continued attacks on Christians in the Middle East as an attempt to remove the Church of Christ from the Middle East, and they intend to do so by killing or terrorizing the Christian population to the point that they leave their homelands.

From the Catholic News Service:

Syrian Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan was in Canada when the blasts occurred. In an e-mail to Catholic News Service Nov. 1 while he was en route to Baghdad, he criticized the lack of security for Christian places of worship and called on "Iraqi parties to overcome their personal and confessional interests and look for the good of the Iraqi people who have elected them."

"There are a few churches and Christian institutions left in Baghdad, not so great a number that it is not unreasonable for them to be protected, security-wise," he said, noting that the security being provided by the government is "far less than what we have hoped for and requested."

"Christians are slaughtered in Iraq, in their homes and churches, and the so-called 'free' world is watching in complete indifference, interested only in responding in a way that is politically correct and economically opportune, but in reality is hypocritical," said the patriarch, who served as bishop of the New Jersey-based Syrian-rite diocese in the United States and Canada from 1995 until his election as patriarch in 2009.

The patriarch demanded "that the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, the International Commission for Civil Rights and the League of Arabic States" condemn the actions at the church and "take the appropriate action to defend innocent Christians brutally singled out because of their religion, in Iraq and some other Middle Eastern countries."

Pope Benedict was less forceful in his remarks, asking that people of good will to act together for peace in the Middle East.

What do you think?

1,028

This was a great "holy season" for our Muslim co-inhabitants on this planet.

All tolled, Muslims carried out 226 attacks of terror, killing 1,028 innocents. "Someone must have forgotten to tell them about the "peaceful" religion part.

I Love This Truck

Everyday Muslim Happenings Update

Remember a little while back when the Muslim driver of Bishop Luigi Padovese brutally murdered him in cold blood and beheaded him while shouting "Allah Ackbar!"?

Well, as we should all know by now, that is what Muslims do in the name of their cult.

And they are showing no signs of stopping.

Here's a short update of the most recent murders in the name of Allah.


And more and more often, the targets are Christians. Go figure.

When they aren't complaining about 'Islamophobia', our Muslim friends busy themselves killing anyone they can find who disagree with them. Two weeks ago a young family was beaten to death by an Islamic mob in Pakistan.

Last week, a Pentecostal pastor was shot in the head in Russia.

At least ten Christian children were hacked to death and churches were burned to the ground over the weekend in Nigeria.

And this past Monday in Pakistan, two Christian brothers, (one a Christian pastor) who were to face charges of blasphemy in a court were shot dead while chained outside the halls of justice.

They aren't violent animals, they are expressing their religious freedoms, right?

Allah Ackbar!

Harsh description of violence alert!

That's what Muslims shout right before, during, and after the execution of an unbeliever. These unbelievers are almost always beheaded. With a knife.

They just pull your head back, jab the knife into your neck and carve away. I have seen beheadings on the internet that took 2 minutes, with the victim still alive through most of it. One video shows they had a 12 year old boy do the beheading. The victim endured the boy hacking and swinging wildly at his neck because he did not have the strength to do it properly.

Islam, the religion of peace.

You all remember reading about Bishop Luigi Padovese who was "stabbed to death" in Turkey a few weeks ago?

And you all remember how the media went out of their way to say this was just a random killing?

According to Cath Asia News, new details have emerged on the dynamics and motives concerning the killing of Turkish Bishop Luigi Padovese.

The doctors who performed the autopsy reveal that Mgr. Padovese had knife wounds all over his body, but especially in the heart (at least 8), Asia News reports.

His head was almost completely detached from his neck, attached to his body by only the skin of the back of the neck.

Even the dynamics of the killing is clearer: the Bishop was stabbed in his house. He had the strength to go out the door of the house, bleeding and crying for help and there he was killed. Perhaps only when he fell to the ground, was his head cut off.

Witnesses said they heard the bishop cry out for help. They also heard the screams of the alleged killer immediately after the murder. According to these sources, he climbed on the roof of the house shouted: “I killed the great Satan! Allah Akbar! “.

This call coincides perfectly with the idea of beheading, making sense that it is like a ritual sacrifice against evil. This correlates with the murders of ultranationalist groups and Islamic fundamentalists who apparently want to eliminate Christians from Turkey.

Moreover, according to a Turkish newspaper, Milliyet on June 4, the murderer had told police that he his actions were the result of a “divine revelation.”

http://www.cathnewsasia.com/2010/06/09/bishops-killer-shouted-allah-akbar/

Don't Shave The Beard Of A Muslim. Even If He Asks Nice!

Despite the obvious barbarity of Islam in general, can someone explain to me why they insist on raping men? I mean, it wasn't one sick freak who raped the barber, but all seven of them? Should I be surprised?

What would Mohammed do?

Wait. Don't answer that.

Brother of Muslim who insisted on having beard cut, seven others, break hair-cutter’s bones.

SARGODHA, Pakistan, April 28 (CDN) — A Christian barber in this Punjab Province city is still recovering from broken bones and other injuries sustained earlier this month after eight Muslims allegedly beat and sodomized him for cutting the beard of a Muslim.

Marwat Masih, 29, initially refused the request of 19-year-old Qandeel Cheema to cut his beard in Sargodha’s Gulshan-e-Bashir town on April 13, knowing that area Sunni Muslims believe the Quran prohibits it. But Cheema, a high school student, told Masih that he had lived and studied in Lahore and therefore wanted a more modern look, the bed-ridden and feeble Masih told Compass.

“I refused to shave his beard, but he showed me his packed bags and said that he would leave the town straight after the shave, and so no one would ever know that I had shaved his beard,” Masih said.

Eyewitnesses told Compass that as Masih was cutting Cheema’s beard, the client’s older brother – local radical Muslim land owner Shakeel Cheema – was returning by tractor from his fields and, noting the family Jeep in front of the Marwat Hair Stylist shop, stopped in.

“When Shakeel Cheema saw me shaving his younger brother’s beard, he became angry and started vandalizing mirrors, the sound system and chairs, and he desecrated a wooden cross perched on the top of the front mirrors,” Masih said. “He also started beating my head with his shoes.”


Eyewitnesses told Compass that Shakeel Cheema shouted orders to his companions to tie Masih up and throw him into the wagon attached to his tractor, and that he ordered his younger brother to leave for Lahore at once.

Masih said that he was blindfolded with a black cloth and taken to an unknown place where he was locked in a room. An hour later, Shakeel Cheema and seven others arrived and began striking him with clubs, breaking his ribs, a wrist and leg bones.

“Shakeel Cheema said, ‘Now we are going to teach you a real lesson for shaving the beard of a Muslim man,” Masih said, and after a long, pained pause he related how Cheema and the seven others sodomized him. “I started bleeding and fell unconscious.”

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The Koran Challenge

I think I've posted this before, but I like to revisit oldies and goodies!