'We Don't Want Churches, We Want Mosques': The Persecution of Christians, May 2024

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of May 2024.

Muslim Slaughter of and Violence against Christians

Nigeria: Some May headlines from the ongoing Muslim genocide of Christians in the African nation:

• May 1: "Fulani Herdsmen Kill 12 Christians in Plateau State, Nigeria"
• May 6: "Herdsmen Kill 28 Christians in Benue State, Nigeria"
• May 7: "Six Christians Killed, Eight Wounded in Kaduna State, Nigeria"
• May 10: "Suspected Fulani Herdsmen Attack Catholic School in Nigeria"
• May 14: "Christians, Others Increasingly Targeted in Plateau State, Nigeria: Amnesty International reports 1,336 people killed in three months"

Democratic Republic of Congo: During a public speech on May 25, Pope Francis said,

"I would like to stop and thank God for the testimony of martyrdom that a group of Catholics from Congo, from North Kivu, have given in recent days. Their throats were slit simply because they were Christians and didn't want to convert to Islam."

As there have been so many massacres of Christians in the Congo, it was not immediately clear which the pope was referring to in "recent days," though it was most likely the one that occurred on May 13, in the Ituri Province, where Muslim militants slaughtered 11 Christians, kidnapped others, and set their village on fire.

Somalia: On May 5, the extended Muslim family of Mohammad Abdul, a 40-year-old man, knifed him for converting to Christianity. Earlier, after local Muslims learned that he had become Christian they began sending the apostate threatening texts:

"We are now aware that every evening you are praying in the name of Issa [Jesus] as well as reading a corrupted book [Bible] and not reading the Quran, the holy book sent to Muhammad from Allah. If you do not stop this bad way of conducting religious activities, then you risk your life."

Afterwards, things got worse—"On May 2, my younger son arrived crying that he was beaten by some boys after telling them about my reading the Bible and praying," said Mohammad. Then, in the evening of May 5, his Muslim relatives arrived at his door:

"They were shouting and yelling that they were looking for my head. The attackers forcibly entered the house and started questioning me for forsaking Islam and joining a bad religion. My wife and children looked shaken."

After a relative knifed Abdul, "The children began wailing and crying in a very loud voice, which confused the attackers. I then managed to escape through the rear door, bleeding."

An unnamed source who helped Abdul continues the narrative:

"While [Mohammad] Abdul was nursing injuries, the Muslims went back to his house and started destroying his house, and the wife and the five children went back with their people. His wife has told him that the Muslims are looking for him, and that therefore he should not go back to them."

Uganda: On May 16, Muslims savagely beat two Christian evangelists for proclaiming Christ. Samuel, 27, and Ephraim, 25, had just left an evangelistic outreach when three Muslims blocked them near a swamp. According to Samuel,

"They stopped us and asked us to renounce Jesus Christ, whom we were preaching at Naigombwa trading center for four days. At the same time, they wanted to forcefully circumcise us as per Islamic teaching for us to live. We totally refused, and they started beating us badly with sharp objects and left us unconscious in a coma in a pool of blood... My colleague, [Ephraim] suffered serious bleeding coming out of his ears, bruised face and a deep cut in his left hand, while myself I had a twisted neck, swollen face and neck."

They regained consciousness in a hospital where they learned that motorcycle passersby had rescued them.

Niger: According to a May 24 report,

"On May 2, Christians began to leave their villages and took refuge in the town of Makalondi, in the Tillabéri region (southwest of Niger). Currently, around 357 Christian families have fled. The reason for this exodus? On April 16, jihadists announced that from that day on, all men aged 15 and over who refuse to convert to Islam are required to pay Jizya, a ["protection"] tax levied on non-Muslim residents.

"This law would apply to all villages controlled by jihadists. According to our contacts, all villagers have been strongly advised to convert to Islam if they want to continue living in their villages. And those who refuse must pay a tax. If they pay, they are allowed to continue living in the village. But they will live like slaves with their families. All their property will automatically become that of the jihadists. Those who do not want to convert or pay Jizya must leave the village. But they are not allowed to take anything with them except the clothes they are wearing.

"Our partners have confirmed that to date, the jihadists control six other villages in the Tillabéri region in which they are imposing their new law. Since then, new Christian families have been leaving their villages every day."

Christians fleeing for their lives have become destitute. According to a local pastor, "We fled with nothing because we couldn't bring our food. We don't even have a shelter to stay in..."

Pakistan: The Rape, Slaughter, and Abuse of Christians

On May 16, one Muhammad Shahbaz broke into a Christian household in the middle of the night, where he raped Asma Bibi, a 35-year-old mentally handicapped Christian woman. *** On being questioned by police, Muhammad casually confessed: "I was sexually aroused, so I entered the house and raped Asma." He also named accomplices, prompting police to arrest and question several other Muslim men. As a result, according to the report,

"The Masih [Christian] family finds themselves in a harrowing situation, navigating threats and intimidation from individuals pressuring them to abandon their pursuit of justice. Since the arrest of the suspects involved, a wave of hostility has swept through the Muslim community, leaving Nasir Masih and his loved ones isolated and vulnerable. These threats, delivered with ominous warnings of impending disaster should they persist in seeking justice, cast a chilling shadow over the family's already tumultuous ordeal."

Human rights activist Juliet Chowdhry condemned the act in a statement:

"A very vulnerable woman was violently and brutally raped in her own home by a neighbor. The man shows no remorse, justifying his act as merely giving in to his urges, as if that were a valid excuse. It's appalling that Islamic Sharia law permits such crimes to be forgiven through compensation payments, which fosters a sense of impunity and only serves to exacerbate and proliferate such crimes against minority Christians."

On May 25, a raging Muslim mob attacked and savagely beat a 74-year-old Christian man, on what turned out to be a false accusation of "blasphemy" (videos and images of the graphic incident here and here). Nine days later, on June 3, Nazir Masih Gill died from his many injuries, including a smashed skull. On the day of the incident, a local mosque had loudly announced that Nazir had been seen burning the Koran in the street. A large mob consisting of hundreds of irate Muslims—including many women and children—swiftly formed and set fire to the modest shoe store of the elderly Christian man— at whom they hurled stones and bricks, beat with sticks and other objects, and, after he had collapsed to the floor, repeatedly kicked. The deceased man's son, Sultan Gill, a member of the Presbyterian Church, described the incident:

"It was around 6 a.m. when we heard shouts outside our main gate. When I went outside to enquire, I saw a group of 20-30 Muslims there who alleged that my father had burned pages of the Quran. I tried to placate them and also sought forgiveness on my father's behalf if he had indeed mistakenly did [sic] something wrong, but they refused to listen. Meanwhile, the number of the mob had grown into hundreds, and as soon as the police [who had earlier arrived] brought my family outside, some people snatched my father from the policemen and started torturing him. I tried to rescue him, but the police told me that the lives of the entire family were at serious risk, and it was important to move us to safety. They assured me that they would save my father from the mob after which I agreed to leave, but they failed to rescue him in time... [T]he entire episode has been so traumatizing for all of us that I don't think we will ever be able to resume our normal lives there.... All our valuables and belongings were looted by the mob. They also burned some rooms of our house and damaged the infrastructure."

As to what spurred the blasphemy accusation in the first place, the son said,

"Our business was flourishing, making some local Muslims jealous of our success. There have been multiple attempts to involve us in fake cases, which we faced bravely, but this time they misused religion to persecute us."

According to a May 15 report, the Muslim employer of Saima Bibi, a 24-year-old Christian woman, dragged her outside and shoved her toward an electric chaff cutter—which sliced off one of her ears, cut off most of her scalp, and injured an eye (image here). Her husband, Shahzad, who worked on the same farm and was present, said that one of their employers, Muhammad Mustafa, was angry that they were taking a break and ordered them to cut fodder for the cattle:

"I immediately got up and started to cut the fodder in the electric chaff cutter, but as soon as my wife came outside to give me tea, Mustafa started hurling abuses at her and told her to get to work. When Saima said that she'll begin work in 10 minutes, Mustafa pulled her from the hair and pushed her towards the chaff cutter, causing her to fall and hitting her head in the running machine... Blood started gushing out of Saima's head, and she screamed and cried in pain. Seeing her in a bloody mess, Mustafa fled the scene."

On May 8, Shahid Masih, a 35-year-old Christian dairy worker, was falsely accused of theft and subjected to "merciless torture" at the hands of Muhammad Ijaz. It included forcing him to ingest acid, from which he died in the hospital 11 days later. Because the impoverished Christian family lived near the dairy and heard the cries, they rushed to the scene, where, according to his wife,

"My children were also subjected to violence simply for weeping at the sight of their father's agonizing ordeal.... I too was subjected to physical assault and verbal abuse."

Seeing that they had gone "overboard" and nearly killed the Christian, Muhammad and his henchmen dropped him off at a hospital. His esophagus, lungs, and stomach were irretrievably damaged:

"For eleven agonizing days, Shahid fought for his life at Mayo Hospital, but tragically, he succumbed to his injuries on the 18th of May 2024. His untimely passing has left behind his wife, Sonia, and their six children, who now face an uncertain future without their primary provider."

Responding to this latest Pakistani injustice, the British Asian Christian Association said:

"This is a heartbreaking account of brutal violence against an innocent Christian man. The savagery with which Shahid was murdered is utterly detestable and deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. It is a damning indictment of Pakistan that Christians remain vulnerable and face such devastating persecution due to perceived impunity. Only a concerted effort to uphold the law in this and other incidents will change the appalling mindset that treats Christians as pariahs and condones the violence meted out against them."

Last reported, authorities are refusing to prosecute Muhammad Ijaz and his murderous accomplices.

On May 25, Muslims beat Yasir Masih, a 35-year-old Christian sanitation worker, and left him chained for hours in the blistering heat. When his father-in-law Hussain found him hours later,

"Masih's entire body was badly bruised, and he was chained to a chair. When he regained some strength, he told us that Malik Khadim Hussain, a resident of Gujjarpura, his son and three others had held him hostage and tortured him for not immediately obeying their order to collect the garbage and sweep the doorstep of their house."

Masih's primary responsibility was to clean the streets, although he had usually agreed to the Muslim families' requests to clean their specific areas:

"Masih told [Malik] Hussain that he would do the needful as soon as he finished his official work and got busy. After some minutes, when Masih went to Hussain's house, he told him to go on the roof and clean it. When Masih went to the roof, Hussain, his sons and the other men attacked him with iron rods, punches and kicks."

The Muslim family then chained him to a chair:

"When they left Masih alone, he found a chance to escape, still chained to the chair. He tripped down the stairs and dragged himself out of the gate into the street, where he collapsed. Some passersby recognized him, and this is how we also got information about his whereabouts."

Discussing this incident, Christian socio-political activist Sunil Gulzar said,

"Christian sanitation workers work long shifts even in extreme weather conditions to keep the city clean. However, despite their dedicated services, these workers are often ridiculed and mistreated because of their Christian faith.... It seems that sanitary workers are children of a lesser god. They often face salary delays and no job security. They are discriminated against even by their Muslim colleagues, and now we are witnessing incidents of physical violence against these weak people."

Muslim Attacks on Churches and Other Christian Symbols

France: After knocking down a large public cross with his van, a Muslim man of Turkish origin emerged from it and, after shouting out a few "Allahu akbars," began to perform Muslim prostration prayers at the scene. Although the report ascribes his behavior to "psychological problems," it is notable that the day of the incident, May 29, is the anniversary of the Turkish conquest of Constantinople—which featured the systematic breaking of crosses to ubiquitous cries of "Allahu akbar."

Separately, on May 14, the St. Thérèse Church was set on fire in Poitiers (ironically, where Muslim invaders were first defeated by the French General Charles Martel in 732). Because a large number of fire fighters were quick to respond, the fire was put out, so that only some chairs and pews were destroyed. However, a large statue of the Virgin Mary inside the church was found beheaded (image here), apparently by the same people who had set the fire. This was the second such attack on the church in two years. In 2022, the nativity figures near the same statue of Mary were found smashed to pieces.

Another Virgin Mary statue was similarly beheaded (here) and another riddled with bullets (here).

Many other attacks on churches in France persisted throughout the month of May, including arson attacks (here, here, here, here, here), general desecrations (here, here, here, here) desecrations of cemeteries (here and here), defecations in churches and urination in their baptismal fonts (here and here), and bomb threats (here).

England: On May 1 in Bradford, a Muslim woman was videotaped hurling rocks at a church in broad daylight. Her immediate target was a large statue of the Virgin Mary. A driver can be heard yelling "Leave Mary alone!" As the British activist Tommy Robinson observed on X,

"Imagine the uproar if it was Christians throwing rocks at a mosque? MPs and the media would be all over it screaming 'Islamophobia!'"

Austria: On Sunday, May 12, the Church of St. Anthony of Padua was defaced with Islamic slogans, including "Islam will win, with you or without," and "Deen over Dunya" (religion comes before worldly affairs). According to a report,

"Some of the words have been crossed out or replaced, but the graffiti has not been removed. This is not the first time that St Anthony's Church has been the scene of a crime. Four years ago, around 50 young people stormed the church shouting 'Allahu Akbar.' ... [T]he church intruders were a group of Turkish youths who had previously organised themselves via social media. There is currently no answer as to why the graffiti has not been removed, as the parish has not yet taken a position when asked."

Kosovo: On May 15, the Church of the Holy Trinity was vandalized with Islamic graffiti, which included "Allah Akbar," "Remove this church from here," "Only Muslims are here," "We don't want churches, we want mosques," and "Islam is the only true religion!" According to the report,

"This incident is particularly troubling as it follows the decision by the Kosovo authorities to ban Serbian Patriarch Porfirije and other bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church from entering Kosovo. This prohibition prevented them from celebrating the Holy Liturgy ... [T]hese attacks on churches and private property are predominantly driven by ethnic and religious motivations, specifically targeting the Serbian community and the Serbian Orthodox Church."

Slovenia: On May 29, the walls of a chapel were discovered defaced with the word "Allah" scrawled in large letters with red paint.

Indonesia: On Sunday, May 5, in the island of Java, a Muslim mob, armed with machetes, sickles, and knives, descended on a rented home, where a group of 15 Catholic students were praying. Two young women were injured. The Muslims were angered that the Christians had dared to worship in a home, as opposed to confining it to whichever churches exist. As the report explains:

"Bonar Tigor Naipospos, deputy chairman of the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, indicated that intolerant people in Indonesia mistakenly believe that gathering for worship at a house is against the law. Private worship is legal in Indonesia, but many people consider the 'private sphere' as only the five daily prayers in Islam, he said."

Similarly, on May 8, in another village in Java, a local Muslim official, with his wife and son in tow, disrupted another house during Christian prayer meeting. According to an eyewitness, the Muslim family stood outside "screaming, yelling and calling them bad names," all in an effort to force them to stop worshipping. The report adds that

"The worship was not loud and has been taking place regularly without incident for 10 years.... Indonesia, which has largest Muslim population in the world at 231 million people, has seen a stream of such disruptions of Christian worship in the past 25 years..."

Senegal: Catholic cemeteries were desecrated in the more than 97% Muslim nation. Photos in the report show broken crosses, smashed tombstones, and exhumed graves. A local authority, Cheikh Bamba Dieye, responded with strong denunciations:

"A nation of peace and harmony as tolerant and open-minded as ours cannot tolerate and/or accept this desecration of tombs in the Catholic cemetery of Saint-Louis. It is unacceptable because it undermines living together and undermines our common desire to build a Senegal of all and for all where we will live in peace with respect for others. Shame on you."

Turkey: On May 6, an ancient Christian church in Constantinople (Istanbul) was reopened with much fanfare as a mosque. Believed to have been in built in the sixth century, Chora Church, like so many other churches following the Turkic conquests of Christian lands, was converted into a mosque in the fourteenth century. In the mid-twentieth century, during Turkey's secular reforms, it was, due to its many Christian frescoes (images here) turned into a museum.

In 2020, however, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to its transformation into a mosque—79 years after it had served as a museum. At that time, the president of Greece, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, responded by calling the move "an act of symbolic violence dictated by political arrogance," which "blatantly violates the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and brutally interrupts the long-standing intercultural dialogue between East and West.... [It is further an act of] cultural insecurity and religious intolerance, which condemns a treasure trove of Christian art and cultural nobility to obscurity." One report elaborates,

"This decision [by Erdogan], reminiscent of the conversion of Hagia Sophia in 2020, has sparked controversy both domestically and internationally. *** The Chora Church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its stunning Byzantine mosaics and frescoes, has long been cherished as a cultural and historical treasure. The move to repurpose it as a mosque has drawn criticism from preservationists and religious minority groups alike, who argue that it represents a disregard for cultural heritage and religious tolerance.... Critics see the conversion as a calculated political maneuver aimed at appeasing Islamist parties, which constitute significant voting blocs supporting the ruling Turkish President's Justice and Development Party, or AKP. This shift in the status of historic Christian sites reflects a broader trend in Türkiye, where some monuments with Byzantine and Greek heritage have been repurposed in recent years."

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, Sword and Scimitar, Crucified Again, and The Al Qaeda Reader, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by extremists is growing. The report posits that such persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location. It includes incidents that take place during, or are reported on, any given month.

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