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In this mailing:
* Raymond Ibrahim: "This Is Not the Country We Were Enjoying Before": The Persecution of Christians, March 2022
* Amir Taheri: France: A Leap into the Unknown?


** "This Is Not the Country We Were Enjoying Before": The Persecution of Christians, March 2022 ([link removed])
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by Raymond Ibrahim • April 24, 2022 at 5:00 am
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pubid=ra-52f7af5809191749&ct=1&title=%22This+Is+Not+the+Country+We+Were+Enjoying+Before%22%3A+The+Persecution+of+Christians%2C+March+2022 [link removed] [link removed]
* "For the entirety of March 8, social media comment columns were awash with people who, as always, condoned the murder.... Old pictures of Maria were passed around, in which she was still wearing a hijab, and people commented, 'see, this is what happens when you leave your faith,'.... Lies and slander were spread about her, and men and women threw themselves into a contest to see who could blame her most for her murder." — medyanews.net, March 10, 2022 - Iraq.
* "[M]y father went inside the room and picked up a bottle of acid and began spraying it on us while the group started shouting, 'Allah Akbar [Allah is the greatest], you deserve death'"... The following day, while all three family members were still hspitalized, Muslim relatives set their home ablaze. — Morning Star News, March 22, 2022 - Uganda.
* A few days after a Christian man and a Muslim woman got married—and photos of their wedding in a Catholic church went viral—...the Indonesian Ulema Council the nation's leading Islamic clerical body, declared that "the marriage of this couple is invalid and cannot be allowed." According to Islamic law, or sharia, interfaith marriages are permissible only when the man (seen as the head of the woman and future children) is Muslim. The married couple responded by ignoring the clerics. — Union of Catholic Asian News, March 9, 2022 - Indonesia.
* "Egyptian authorities have failed not only to protect Coptic Christians from repeated sectarian attacks against their communities, but also to bring those responsible for such violence to justice." — Philip Luther, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director, Amnesty.org, March 30, 2022 - Egypt.

On March 3, in an attempt to demonstrate Egypt's advancement concerning women, 98 female judges took the oath in preparation for assuming judicial roles in Egypt's State Council. Since its inception 75 years earlier, not a single woman had sat on the court. And yet, not one of the 98 women is a Christian — despite the fact that Christian Copts account for more than 10% of the nation's population. Pictured: Judge Radwa Helmi Ahmad, the first woman on the bench of Egypt's State Council, sits on her first State Council hearing in Cairo, on March 5, 2022. (Photo by Samer Abdallah/AFP via Getty Images)

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of March, 2022:

The Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Iraq: Family members murdered Eman Sami Maghdid, 20, known as "Maria." Her "crime" was having embraced Christianity and abandoning the marriage she had been forced into at the age of 12. Her 18-year-old brother and perhaps uncle responded by slaughtering her on Sunday, March 6. Her body "tied with a tape, thrown at the side of the road, with many stab wounds," was found later, according to a local source:

"[S]he was punished by her family for leaving Islam, specifically for being emancipated and embracing the Christian religion; in short, she was 'guilty' of apostasy.... The young woman was well known for her activism, her struggle for women's rights, which—together with her conversion to Christianity—led her to be condemned by her family....

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** France: A Leap into the Unknown? ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • April 24, 2022 at 4:00 am
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* A Le Pen presidency could face other hurdles. She wants to take France out of NATO's integrated military command, a move that would upset relations with the US and most other EU members.
* In the current campaign, Le Pen has tried to explain away her long abiding admiration for Vladimir Putin as "the kind of strong leader that France needs", and her endorsement of the annexation of Crimea by Russia.
* More importantly in terms of here-and-now, she says she will oppose European schemes to impose a total ban on gas imports from Russia, thus ensuring a regular source of income for Putin.
* There are other signs that her heart still belongs to Putin if not as daddy at least as sugar daddy who financed the National Front and its new epiphany, National Rally, through low-interest loans from Russian banks.
* Le Pen has also tried to camouflage her party's visceral anti-Americanism, partly highlighted by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen's admiration for the Khomeinist regime in Tehran.
* This is the third time in a generation that French voters are given a choice between an incumbent they don't especially like and a challenger that most find unlikable.
* Many French voters have told me in recent weeks that they still dream of a "real election" in which one is able to choose with both head and heart. This time round, however, the heart is out of the equation, leaving only the head. And that may give Macron a second term -- just.

Many French voters... still dream of a "real election" in which one is able to choose with both head and heart. This time round, however, the heart is out of the equation, leaving only the head. And that may give Macron a second term -- just. (Photo by Lionel Bonaventure /AFP via Getty Images)

Until even two weeks ago, most political analysts regarded France as the current leader of the European Union, with President Emmanuel Macron the point-man in dealing with the crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Macron gave some credence to that analysis with almost daily calls to Vladimir Putin and trips to various European capitals, refusing to take to the campaign trail in the presidential election.

However, as the second round of the election on Sunday drew near, Macron crisscrossed France to secure, as he says, "every vote".

Having won the first round with only four percent of the votes ahead of his closest challenger -- Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate -- Macron is no longer certain he would be able to sail to victory as he did five years ago against the same rival.

Today, even the most optimistic opinion polls show Macron winning with a small majority that, given last minute surprises, might not even materialize.

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