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In this mailing:
* Raymond Ibrahim: "Why Are You So Silent?": Persecution of Christians, August 2019
* Uzay Bulut: Iraq: Indigenous Christians Latest in Battle for Better Society, New Government
* Amir Taheri: Why Soleimani Misreads Lebanon


** "Why Are You So Silent?": Persecution of Christians, August 2019 ([link removed])
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by Raymond Ibrahim • October 27, 2019 at 5:00 am
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* Boko Haram "has terrorised Christian communities in Nigeria for the last decade and has now splintered and spread its violent ideology into Cameroon, Niger and Chad." — Staff writer, Christian Today, August 8, 2019.
* "They asked him to deny Christ and when he refused they cut off his right hand. Then he refused [again], they cut to the elbow again. In which he refused, before they shot him twice, at the head, the forehead, the neck, and chest." — Enoch Yeohanna, speaking on CBN News, August 29, 2019. Nigeria.
* "Every year at least a thousand girls are kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert to Islam, even forced to marry their tormentors." — Tabassum Yousaf, a local Catholic lawyer, quoted in Newsbook MT, August 12, 2019. Pakistan.

In Turkey, St. Theodoros Trion, an abandoned, historic church — the original Greek congregation of which was purged by the Ottoman Empire — was vandalized in August; the graffiti included genocidal slogans. Pictured: St. Theodoros Trion in 2008. (Image source: Chanilim714/Wikimedia Commons)

Hate for and Violence against Christians

Cameroon: Militant Muslims, allegedly affiliated with the Nigerian-based Islamic terror group Boko Haram, "reached new heights" of depravity. Boko Haram, after devastating the Christian village of Kalagari in a raid and kidnapping eight women, later released them but some had their ears "chopped off" (image here). The report adds that Boko Haram "has terrorised Christian communities in Nigeria for the last decade and has now splintered and spread its violent ideology into Cameroon, Niger and Chad."

Nigeria: On August 29, Chuck Holton, a CBN News reporter, aired a segment on his visit with Christian refugees who had fled Boko Haram's invasions into their villages. Among the stories of death and devastation, the following, spoken by a young man, stood out:

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** Iraq: Indigenous Christians Latest in Battle for Better Society, New Government ([link removed])
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by Uzay Bulut • October 27, 2019 at 4:30 am
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* "The Iraqi government should accept the protesters' demand for early elections, with a new electoral system to be organized and monitored by the UN: the current Iraqi electoral system is corrupt." — Ashur Sargon Eskrya, head of the Assyrian Aid Society, to Gatestone.
* "It's time to pay attention. The country [Iraq] is riddled by protests by members of almost every ethnic or religious group, and the government is unstable and ineffective, with an uncertain future If the Iraqi regime were to collapse, most of the country that Americans fought so hard and long to liberate could become, de facto, a colony of Iran." — Juliana Taimoorazy, founding president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, to Gatestone.
* "We [Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac Christians] were the group most ruthlessly ethnically cleansed, right under the noses of US troops, as our people became the scapegoats for any angry Muslim fundamentalists who resented America's policy. They treated us as honorary Westerners, but the West did nothing for us." — Juliana Taimoorazy, to Gatestone.
* "Now we are asking again for the right to self-governance and self-defense.... The answer for Iraq is still the one that doesn't appeal to the powerful or the connected, but offers the best chance of civil peace: real, effective decentralization of political, military and economic power." — Juliana Taimoorazy, to Gatestone.

Iraq's security forces recently were joined by Iran-backed militias in a violent crackdown on anti-government protests. The mass demonstrations were sparked by widespread fury on the part of Iraqi youths at Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and what they view as his corrupt government's failure to rehabilitate Iraq after its battle against ISIS and provide basic necessities. Pictured: Iraqi PM Adel Abdul Mahdi. (Photo by Michele Tantussi/Getty Images)

Iraq's security forces recently were joined by Iran-backed militias in a violent crackdown on anti-government protests. These protests have been taking place, since October 1, throughout much of the country as well as in Baghdad.

The mass demonstrations were sparked by widespread fury on the part of Iraqi youths at Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and what they view as his corrupt government's failure to rehabilitate Iraq after its battle against ISIS and provide basic necessities, such as electricity, clean water and jobs. According to Amnesty International, activists and journalists have been brutally intimidated by Iraqi authorities and gunned down in the streets by snipers. The death toll has passed 180, with figures in the thousands for those wounded.

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** Why Soleimani Misreads Lebanon ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • October 27, 2019 at 4:00 am
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* I think Soleimani is wrong to write-off Lebanon as a nation-state and reinvent it as an Iranian bridgehead. Having known Lebanon for more than half a century, I can tell him that there is such a thing as "Lebanese-ness" that transcends sectarian and political divides. The Lebanese look to the Mediterranean and the exciting possibilities of the modern world rather than the recesses of the Iranian Plateau under the mullahs with their antediluvian ideology. As a matter of taste, Lebanese-ness is closer to the beach than to the bunker.

The wave of protests in Lebanon has shaken the parallel universe created by Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani's depiction of Lebanon as the bridgehead for the conquest of the Middle East by Khomeinist ideology. Pictured: Protestors in Beirut, Lebanon on October 18, 2019. (Image source: Shahen Araboghlian/Wikimedia Commons)

The way the state-controlled media in Tehran put it, the wave of protests in Lebanon is about "showing solidarity with Palestine." Photos of a dozen people burning Israeli and American flags in Beirut come with surreal captions about "Lebanese resistance fighters" calling for jihad against "baby-killing Zionists" and the American "Great Satan."

What is certain is that the uprising has shaken the parallel universe created by Major-General Qassem Soleimani's Madison Avenue depiction of Lebanon as the bridgehead for the conquest of the Middle East by Khomeinist ideology. Those familiar with Tehran's propaganda know that the mullahs regard Lebanon as their most successful attempt at empire-building, worth every cent of the billions of dollars invested there.

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