Islamo-Fascists ("Religion of Peace") Target Nigerian Schools by Arson

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/world/africa/in-nigeria-boko-haram-targets-schools.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1#.  As we learn below, insurgent Islamo-Fascists are striking official targets, police, army officers, elected officials, high-ranking civil servants, United Nations workers and other supporters of the Nigerian government.   First degree homocides have been carried out.  Now, by felonious arson, these fascists have a new front: a war against schools. From the NY Times, we read the following.

Wielding Fire, Islamists Target Nigeria Schools

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — The teenager in the immaculate white robe stood in the ruins of what had been his school. There were no classrooms, no desks or chairs, no intact blackboards — there was, in fact, no longer any reason for him to be there.

 

Yet the teenager, Aruna Mustapha, and a friend had come to sign in anyway, just as they did every morning before the fire, expressing a hunger for education and a frustration with the insurgents bent on preventing it.

“We can’t stay at home any longer; we want to come to school, to learn,” explained Aruna, 16. “I’m fed up. I want to be in school.”       

Public and private schools here have been doused with gasoline at night and set on fire. Crude homemade bombs — soda bottles filled with gasoline — have been hurled at the bare-bones concrete classrooms Nigeria offers its children.

The simple yellow facades have been blackened and the plain desks melted to twisted pipes, leaving thousands of children without a place to learn, stranded at home and underfoot, while anxious parents plead with Nigerian authorities to come up with a contingency plan for their education.

Today, this dusty metropolis in northeastern Nigeria’s desert scrub is dotted with the burned-out shells of what were school buildings. The sun pours in as sheets of charred corrugated metal roof hang down into empty schoolrooms, clanging in the hot wind. In the sunny afternoons small children play in the ruins.

In recent weeks, at least eight schools have been firebombed, apparently the work of Boko Haram, the Islamist group waging a deadly war against the Nigerian government and suspected of cultivating links with Al Qaeda’s affiliates in the region. The group’s very name is a rallying cry against schools — “Boko” means “book” or “Western learning” in the Hausa language, and “haram” is Arabic for forbidden — but it has never gone after them to this degree before, analysts say.

“‘We are Boko Haram, and we will burn the school,’ ” the elderly watchman at Aruna’s school, the Abbaganaram Primary School, recounted the arsonists saying after they appeared out of the darkness, ordered him at gunpoint to lie down, doused the school with gasoline and set it on fire, lighting up the night sky.

A self-described spokesman for Boko Haram who frequently phones journalists in Maiduguri recently claimed responsibility for the school attacks. The spokesman, who calls himself Abul Qaqa, said they were in response to what he called a targeting of this city’s abundant open-air Islamic schools by authorities. Officials here have denied any such campaign. Indeed, young boys can be seen receiving Koranic lessons, untroubled, all over Maiduguri.

Around 2,600 students had gone to school at Abbaganaram, at the edge of a neighborhood considered a Boko Haram stronghold. Now, the quadrangle enclosing a sandy courtyard looks like a roofless war ruin. Fragments of a lesson, scrawled on what remains of a blackboard, can be glimpsed through a windowless opening.

A lone teacher, as eager to resume work as young Aruna, hung about in the school’s remains. “There is no public holiday. We are on duty,” said Babagana Kolo, who had taught primary school there. “We are supposed to be on duty.”

For several days after the attack in early March, students had come to be taught in the open air, under the hardy light-green neem trees in the courtyard, Mr. Kolo said. But he said the government had failed to provide materials, like chalk for a remaining blackboard, so the students had stopped coming.

“They bombed everywhere,” said Aliyu Adamu, a longtime teacher at Abbaganaram. “Everything. All the classes.”

Nobody has been killed in the school attacks, a notable exception amid a campaign of shadowy aims in which virtually anything associated with the Nigerian state is considered fair game. More than 900 people have been killed by Boko Haram in the last two years, according to Human Rights Watch.

 

Maiduguri, the birthplace of the Boko Haram insurgency, has become used to living under siege over the last two years. Fear and an army-enforced curfew empty the scruffy low-rise streets well before dark. Nervous public officials — prime assassination targets of the insurgents — avoid speaking the group’s name or blaming it. Army checkpoints are omnipresent. The soldiers, also a favorite target of snipers, are grim-faced and brusque.

“The Boko Haram are the ones controlling the state here,” said one of the lone human rights activists in Maiduguri, Maikaramba Sadiq of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organization. Residents fear that Boko Haram and its informants are everywhere.

“They are working 24 hours, looking, observing,” said Mr. Sadiq, who has been an intermediary between suspected Boko Haram members here and lawyers willing to represent them.

Yet the destruction of Maiduguri’s schools has bewildered and demoralized students, parents and teachers here in a way that the near-daily attacks, including one on a crowded market in February that killed 30, have not. The targeting of children, even indirectly, is seen as a new and sinister twist.

“I can’t even explain this,” said Musa Adam, a teacher at the Gwange III school, which endured a firebombing attempt but was not destroyed. “Is it an act of wickedness, or what? How can somebody destroy a school where children come to learn?”

Meanwhile, thousands of parents have seen one more prop supporting the illusion of normal life here destroyed.

“No one knows what this thing is all about,” said Musa Abakar, 39, father of two boys and a girl, ages 8 to 15, who attended the Abbaganaram Primary School before it was destroyed. “Burning schools, burning markets. How can one understand these things?”

Parents also wonder what to do about their marooned children since the Nigerian government has made no provision for them. The official in charge, Abba Ali Tijjani, the commissioner of Borno State schools, acknowledged as much in an interview.

“All our children are just staying at home,” said Isa Dauda, 27, who works in an open-air mattress workshop and has four children. “We don’t know what to do now. It’s more than a difficult situation.”

Opposite the Kulo Gumna Primary and Junior day school, where eight classrooms were destroyed in the heart of a Boko Haram-infiltrated neighborhood, Mamadou Youndusa, a barber cutting a child’s hair, lamented his own children’s newly imposed idleness.

He had children in both sections of the school. Now, “They are all at home. Which means a bleak future for them.”

A few of the classrooms at Kulo Gumna were untouched, but most of the students in them have not returned.

“They are afraid something will happen; that is why they are not coming back,” said a teacher, Fatouma Tujjani. Fewer than half of her 46 students have returned, she said. “They are just afraid.”

Elsewhere in Maiduguri, though, the will to resume schooling is overcoming fear, government lethargy and the absence of a plan. Early this month, several hundred children — laughing girls in blue-checked head scarves, and some white-shirted boys as well — showed up at the Abbaganaram ruins, preparing to trek a mile or so to another school that had agreed to take them in.

One of the older students, Adam Abagana, 18, expressed outrage at what had befallen his school.

“It’s an abomination. There is no justification for it,” he said. “We never thought the excesses of the gunmen would come down to burning schools.”

He added, “The only hope is, God has destined it.”

Historical Reality of Muslim Conquests, Jihad, and Supremacism

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=15739

The Historical Reality of the Muslim Conquests
by Raymond Ibrahim
Jihad Watch http://www.washingtonpost.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Ibrahim:
March 12, 2012

Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to whitewash all things Islamic (see here for example), it may be instructive to examine one of those aspects that are regularly distorted: the Muslim conquests.

Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (632) and tapered off circa 750. Large swathes of the Old World - from India in the east, to Spain in the west - were conquered and consolidated by the sword of Islam during this time, with more after (e.g., the Ottoman conquests).

By the standards of history, the reality of these conquests is unassailable, for history proper concerns itself with primary sources; and the Islamic conquests are thoroughly documented. More importantly, the overwhelming majority of primary source materials we rely on do not come from non-Muslims, who might be accused of bias. Rather, the foremost historians bequeathing to posterity thousands of pages of source materials documenting the Islamic conquests were not only Muslims themselves, they were - and still are - regarded by today's Muslims as pious and trustworthy scholars (generically, the ulema).

Among the most authoritative books devoted to recounting the conquests are: Ibn Ishaq's (d. 767) Sira ("Life of Muhammad"), the oldest biography of Muhammad; Waqidi's (d. circa. 820)Maghazi ("Military Campaigns [of the Prophet]"); Baladhuri's (d. 892) Futuh al-Buldan ("Conquests of the Nations"); and Tabari's (d.923) multi-volume Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, ("History of Prophets and Kings"), which is 40 volumes in the English translation.

Taken together, these accounts (which are primarily based on older accounts - oral and written - tracing back to Muhammad and his successors) provide what was once, and in the Muslim world still is, a famous story: that Allah had perfected religion (Islam) for all humanity; that he commanded his final prophet (Muhammad) and community (Muslims) to spread Islam to the world; and that the latter was/is to accept it either willingly or unwillingly (jihad).

It should be noted that contemporary non-Muslim accounts further validate the facts of the conquests. The writings of the Christian bishop of Jerusalem Sophronius (d.638), for instance, or the chronicles of the Byzantine historian Theophanes (d.758), to name a couple, make clear that Muslims conquered much of what is today called the "Muslim world."

According to the Muslim historical tradition, the majority of non-Muslim peoples of the Old World, not desiring to submit to Islam or its laws (Sharia), fought back, though most were eventually defeated and subsumed.

The first major conquest, renowned for its brutality, occurred in Arabia itself, immediately after Muhammad's death in 632. Many tribes which had only nominally accepted Islam's authority, upon Muhammad's death, figured they could break away; however, Muhammad's successor and first caliph, or successor, Abu Bakr, would have none of that, and proclaimed a jihad against these apostates, known in Arabic as the "Ridda Wars" (or Apostasy Wars). According to the aforementioned historians, tens of thousands of Arabs were put to the sword until their tribes re-submitted to Islam.

The Ridda Wars ended around 634. To keep the Arab Muslims from quarreling, the next caliph, Omar, launched the Muslim conquests: Syria was conquered around 636, Egypt 641, Mesopotamia and the Persian Empire, 650. By the early 8th century, all of north Africa and Spain to the west, and the lands of central Asia and India to the east, were also brought under Islamic suzerainty.

The colorful accounts contained in the Muslim tradition are typified by constant warfare, which normally goes as follows: Muslims go to a new region and offer the inhabitants three choices: 1) submit (i.e., convert) to Islam; 2) live as second-class citizens, or "dhimmis," paying special taxes and accepting several social debilitations; 3) fight to the death.

Centuries later, and partially due to trade, Islam came to be accepted by a few periphery peoples, mostly polytheists and animists, who followed no major religion (e.g., in Indonesia, Somalia), and who currently form the outer fringes of the Islamic world.

Ironically, these exceptions are now portrayed as the rule in America's classrooms: many textbooks suggest or at least imply that most people who converted to Islam did so under no duress, but rather through peaceful contacts with merchants and traders; that they eagerly opted to convert to Islam for the religion's intrinsic appeal, without noting the many debilitations conquered non-Muslims avoided - extra taxes, second-rate social status, enforced humiliation, etc. - by converting to Islam. In fact, in the first century, and due to these debilitations, many conquered peoples sought to convert to Islam only to be rebuffed by the caliphate, which preferred to keep them as subdued - and heavily taxed - subjects, not as Muslim equals.

Meanwhile, as US textbooks equivocate about the Muslim conquests, in the schoolrooms of the Muslim world, the conquests are not only taught as a matter of course, but are glorified: their rapidity and decisiveness are regularly portrayed as evidence that Allah was in fact on the side of the Muslims (and will be again, so long as Muslims uphold their communal duty of waging jihad).

The dissimulation of how Islam was spread in the early centuries contained in Western textbook's mirrors the way the word jihad, once inextricable to the conquests, has also been recast. Whereas the word jihad has throughout the centuries simply meant armed warfare on behalf of Islam, in recent years, American students have been taught the Sufi interpretation of jihad - Sufis make up perhaps one percent of the Islamic world and are often seen as heretics with aberrant interpretations - which portrays jihad as a "spiritual-struggle" against one's vices.

Contrast this definition of jihad with that of an early edition of the venerable Encyclopaedia of Islam. Its opening sentence simply states, "The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general.... Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam.... Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated." Muslim legal manuals written in Arabic are even more explicit.

Likewise, the Islamic conquests narrated in the Muslim histories often mirror the doctrinal obligations laid out in Islam's theological texts - the Koran and Hadith. Muslim historians often justify the actions of the early Islamic invaders by juxtaposing the jihad injunctions found in Islamic scriptures.

It should also be noted that, to Muslims, the Islamic conquests are seen as acts of altruism: they are referred to as futuh, which literally means "openings" - that is, the countries conquered were "opened" for the light of Islam to enter and guide its infidel inhabitants. Thus to Muslims, there is nothing to regret or apologize for concerning the conquests; they are seen as for the good of those who were conquered (i.e., the ancestors of today's Muslims).

In closing, the fact of the Muslim conquests, by all standards of history, is indisputable. Accordingly, just as less than impressive aspects of Western and Christian history, such as the Inquisition or conquest of the Americas, are regularly taught in US textbooks, so too should the Muslim conquests be taught, without apology or fear of being politically incorrect. This is especially so because it concerns history - which has a way of repeating itself when ignored, or worse, whitewashed.

END

Open Doors: Growth of Christianity in Iran 'Explosive'

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=15741

Open Doors: Growth of Christianity in Iran 'Explosive'
By Alex Murashko http://www.christianpost.com/news/open-doors-growth-of-christianity-in-iran-explosive-71946/
March 23, 2012

Despite the Iranian government's ongoing crackdown of Christians living in the primarily Islamic country, the number of Muslims converting to become Christians is growing at an explosive rate, according to the persecution watchdog group Open Doors USA.

There is even talk of witnessing a Christian revival, especially among young people living in the country, say Open Doors ministry workers in the Middle East.

A house church movement within Iran is part of that revival and has triggered "many secret meetings." The growth in the number of Christians is happening in all regions, but mostly in larger cities, say Open Doors workers in the region.

Iran is ranked 5th on the Open Doors 2012 World Watch List of the top 50 worst persecutors of Christians.

"Open Doors workers think that the growth of Christianity has everything to do with Iranians getting to know the real face of Islam, the official religion of Iran, and the mistrust of the people toward the government and leaders following the fraudulent 2009 presidential election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," said a Middle East worker for Open Doors (name withheld for security reasons).

Since the beginning of this year, authorities have arrested Christian converts in Tehran, Ahwaz, Shiraz, Isfahan and Kermanshah, according to news reports from the Middle East and U.S.

In one city alone, Isfahan, more than a dozen Christians were arrested in less than a month, beginning in late February.

As The Christian Post has previously reported, although the established church in countries such as Iran suffers great violence, it is the underground, invisible church that continues to grow. Christians are putting their lives at risk for their continued faith.

According to Open Doors USA President and CEO Carl Moeller, a stream of Christianity has arisen in the Middle East's invisible church, sometimes referred to as the Muslim Background Believer Church.

"Men and women, out of emptiness of their current situation spiritually, are turning to faith in Jesus Christ despite the literally lethal risks in doing so," Moeller said. "That's only attributable to the work of the Holy Spirit."

Also, at work is a common personality trait of the Iranian people, says another Open Doors worker from the Middle East region.

"Iranians are very outgoing and want to speak about their faith," the ministry worker said. "That is why discipleship training (with elements of outreach and communications) for Iranian believers is successful. If you tell them that a Christian should share, the Iranian Christian shares."

An estimated 200 Muslim Background Believers (MBBs) were living in Iran 40 years ago, according to Open Doors. Now, the number of MBBs is estimated to be 370,000.

Iran also has the presence of the traditional Armenian and Assyrian church with about 80,000 members, Open Doors reports. These churches are presently free to have meetings in the language of its members, but they are not allowed to reach out to the Farsi-speaking Muslims.

According to the Iranian government, there are about 200,000 Christians living in Iran, Open Doors stated.

SEE VIDEO REPORT ON CHRISTIANITY BEING THE FASTEST GROWING RELIGION IN IRAN: http://gnli.christianpost.com/video/christianity-the-fastest-growing-religion-in-iran-2570

Open Doors: An estimated 100 million Christians worldwide suffer interrogation, arrest and even death for their faith in Christ, with millions more facing discrimination and alienation. Open Doors supports and strengthens believers in the world's most difficult areas through Bible and Christian literature distribution, leadership training and assistance, Christian community development, prayer and presence ministry and advocacy on behalf of suffering believers.

On the Web: www.OpenDoorsUSA.org

END