“They Came to Kill Him”: The Persecution of Christians – November 2019

by Raymond Ibrahim  •  February 16, 2020 at 5:00 am

• “He was a 15-year-old adolescent. He was so deeply asleep in his bed that he didn’t hear any of the noise around him. They thrust the blade of the axe so deeply into his skull, to the point we had to use a hammer to get it out of his head.” Many Christians have been displaced by these ongoing attacks and live in “extreme misery,” added another local: “This is beyond persecution. It is a dramatic situation, plunging thousands of families into a deplorable humanitarian crisis.” — Rebecca, a witness, Barnabas Fund, November 15, 2019, Cameroon.
• A group of Muslims beat, robbed, and threatened to kill a Christian evangelist if he did not convert to Islam…. [T]he Muslims indicated that they had physical pains and injuries. Fløttum offered to pray for them, they accepted, and he complied. They said they felt better and urged him to go with them and pray for another of their friends who was also suffering from a foot injury…. “They were very nice and I couldn’t believe they would deceive me,” he later said. They took him to a backyard, pushed him down a cellar staircase, and began to beat and kick him in the face….”While they kept me there, they threatened me and said they would kill me if I did not convert to Islam….I was scared and actually thought they were going to kill me because they said they had a knife and didn’t want witnesses.” — Idag.no, November 28, 2019, Norway.
• “…although the Egyptian government has made some modest progress toward legalizing informal churches around the country and improving public discourse about Coptic rights, it has taken few steps toward systematically improving religious freedom conditions for vulnerable Christian populations, particularly in rural areas.” — United States Commission on Interreligious Freedom (USCIRF), Annual Report 2019, Egypt.