Danish journalist Peder Jensen recently wrote a report about my talk in Copenhagen for the website Document.dk. Titled, “Raymond Ibrahim Documents the Persecution of Christians, Also in Europe,” an English translation of it, as well as the photo accompanying the report, follow:
Author and translator Raymond Ibrahim was born in the United States to Coptic Christian immigrants from Egypt. He is fluent in Arabic and English and has written for many years about the relationship between the Islamic world and the Western world.
Among his books are Defenders of the West : The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam . There are also a number of videos where Ibrahim shares his considerable historical knowledge.
Although we both contribute texts to the Gatestone Institute , I had never met Ibrahim before. When the Press Freedom Society invited him to Copenhagen to give a lecture on Christian persecution, I chose to participate. Unfortunately, the topic is relevant.
Raymond Ibrahim appears as a knowledgeable and friendly man who can talk about deeply serious subjects without losing his sense of humor. In that way he reminds a bit of Mark Steyn.
Ibrahim focused on the persecution of Christians, a problem he has thoroughly documented over a long period of time. In certain countries, such as communist North Korea, Christians are also oppressed.
Ibrahim pointed out, on the other hand, that in about 80% of the cases where Christians are today subjected to serious harassment or murder because of their faith, it is Muslims who are behind it.
Robert Spencer, Soeren Kern , Raymond Ibrahim and others have for many years documented how Muslim persecution of Christians is gradually spreading more and more in European countries such as Italy, Spain and not least France. It can be anything from vandalism against churches, which now happens almost weekly in France, to arson and regular terrorist attacks.
Data shows a 44 percent increase in attacks against Christians in Europe from 2021 to 2022 . In particular, an increase in arson against Christian institutions was recorded. Such incidents increased by 75 percent in one year. In total, 231 attacks were reported in Germany alone, a development the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party warns against.
Harassment and threats against Christians in Europe seem to be increasing as the Muslim immigrant population grows. Despite this, the EU has shown no significant interest in combating violence against the continent’s indigenous population or their religious buildings .
On the other hand, the EU has a coordinator who specifically has to fight so-called Islamophobia in Europe. Currently, this coordinator is a French woman, Marion Lalisse . She was appointed to this position in February 2023 by the European Commission , the unelected government of the European Union. EU equality commissioner Helena Dalli assures that they will fight Islamophobia in all parts of society.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) constitutes the largest permanent voting block in the UN. They have led the UN to establish an official day to combat alleged Islamophobia on March 15 each year.
51 Muslims were killed on 15 March 2019 in a shooting massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand. Although this was a heinous attack, Raymond Ibrahim pointed out that thousands of Christians are killed for their faith every year, the majority of them by Muslims. Yet the UN has not created a day to combat harassment of Christians.
Ibrahim argued that violent Islamic attacks in many different countries and against different religious groups often have great similarities. This is because they share the same Islamic religious justification for warfare, jihad.
Basically, Islam has not changed very much in the last thousand years. On the other hand, Europe has changed a lot in recent decades and has become weaker.
Virtually all nations bordering the Mediterranean or the Black Sea have for centuries been subject to Muslim campaigns of violence and slave raids. Sometimes Islamic conquests reached even further north. Greeks, Italians, Serbs, Croats, Hungarians, Poles, Spaniards, French, Ukrainians, Russians and others fought, bled and died by the tens of thousands to keep Islam out of Europe.
Now millions of Muslims are being let into Europe without firing a single shot. Raymond Ibrahim commented that never before in history has a civilization voluntarily absorbed large numbers of people from an actively hostile culture.
Weak Christian leaders, both Protestant and Catholic, are trying to make common cause with Muslims who despise them. Pope Francis has hardly met a Muslim illegal immigrant he doesn’t like and appears to be one of the worst leaders the Catholic Church has ever had.
If you look at it historically, Christians have only managed to repel Islamic aggression when Christianity has been combined with a warrior culture, as with Karl Martell, Jan III Sobieski or during the Battle of Lepanto.
SOURCE: RAYMOND IBRAHIM
