• Christmas was celebrated in an unusual way in Indonesia this year.  Since sharia forbids the construction of any new churches, hundreds of members of Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church in Parung, West Java, Indonesia decided to celebrate Mass "in a tent set up in the parking lot of the Marsudirini Elementary School."  Although on paper, Indonesia's constitution states that "no one has the right to prohibit any religious community from practicing its faith" the rising influence of Islamic radicals is obliterating all this.

• In Pakistan in July of 2010, "a dozen masked men shot five Christians to death as they came out of their church."  In May, "church leaders had received a threatening letter from the Islamic extremist group Sip-e-Sahaba warning the Christians to leave the area as 'they [were] polluting [the] land.'"

• In the Washington Times, Jeffrey Kuhner writes about ongoing anti-Christian pogroms in the Middle East.  A word usually ascribed to the mass destruction of Jews, it is now being applied here, as "Christians have endured bombings, murders, assassinations, torture, imprisonment and expulsions. These anti-Christian pogroms culminated recently with the brutal attack on Our Lady of Salvation, an Assyrian Catholic church in Baghdad. Al Qaeda gunmen stormed the church during Mass, slaughtering 51 worshippers and two priests. Father Wassim Sabih begged the jihadists to spare the lives of his parishioners. They executed him and then launched their campaign of mass murder."

• Thus, the "Christian population is declining in every majority Muslim country in the [Middle East] region and is under increasingly severe pressure even in Lebanon, where it still constitutes 35 percent of the population."  Besides the decimation of life, the churches which once preserved the "traditions of the Apostolic era in ways no other Christian rites or denominations do" are being destroyed.  Every majority Muslim country is seeing the obliteration of Christian historic and cultural sites.  Yet the world remains mute.

• Of course, Muslims who disagree with their Islamist rulers suffer as well.  Life for the Arabs of Gaza has certainly not improved under Hamas.  Since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Gazan women have been targeted by Islamic religious crackdowns in the area.  Intimidation and terror shape their every move, and Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar pledges "to continue the shaheed project of violent" jihad against Israel."  Furthermore, Zahar has "defended the draconian approach in Gaza by asking, [is] it a crime to Islamize the people?"

• Stoning continues to be prevalent in Islamic lands.  In August of 2010, the Afghan Taliban publicly stoned to death two people because they wanted to marry each other but the woman had already been promised to a relative.  The 19-year-old woman was forced to wear her burqa to her execution.  This is only one of the many honor killings emblematic of Muslim-on-Muslim crimes.  Thus, "in the last thirty years, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Turks, the Saudis, the Iranians, and the Egyptians have all engaged in ... stonings, beheadings, hangings, burying young girls alive, amputations, nose and ear chopping, floggings, [and] acid thrown in the faces of young girls for improper veiling."  Stoning, in fact, is a "legal punishment [which] is embedded explicitly in traditional Islamic law, applied to crimes of 'sina' or adultery and fornication."  According to "Mina Ahadi, Founder of International Committees Against Execution and Stoning, 150 people may have been stoned in Iran over the past 30 years."  In Somalia, a 17-year-old who converted to Christianity from Islam was shot to death in an apparent honor killing.  Her name was Nurta Mohamed Farah.  Her relatives were involved in the heinous murder.

• In the Islamic Regime of Iran, Kurdish Iranian activists await execution because of their political beliefs.

• Caning is also alive and well in Indonesia, where "two people were caned in Indonesia's staunchly Muslim Aceh province after being caught having an extramarital kiss," according to the Indonesian prosecutor.

• New threats are emerging that Muslim extremists are promising a new kind of terrorism which involves implanting a bomb inside an operative's body.  Thus, stitching a bomb made of plastic or liquid explosives into the abdominal cavity of a suicide bomber is being considered by al-Qaeda to achieve its destructive goals.  I.Q. al-Rassooli explains that "almost 25 years ago, a Muslim terror group planted a bomb on the baby of one of their operatives."  Fortunately, El Al security officers stopped the family, but "using babies, wives, or animals is not beneath [the terrorists] modes of operation. They will go to any depraved level to execute their terror tactics."

• A Muslim member of the Israeli Knesset calls for an "Islamic caliphate in Israel."  Masud Ganaim argues that "an Islamic caliphate should be established and it should include Israel."

• In 1996, as part of his fulfillment for a Masters degree, Baheg T. Bistawros wrote "The Coptic Christians of Egypt Today: Under the Threat of Annihilation."  In his thesis, he documents how "Egypt has been able to elude world condemnation despite the grave situation of twelve million Coptic Christians in that country."  Thus, "Coptic Christians in Egypt ... are suffering in their own land," and Coptic Christians "are continuously reminded that any protest and complaint will endanger the safety of the Christians all over Egypt. The scheme and objectives of the Moslim [sic] regimes are to destroy the Christians and the non-Moslims [sic] economically, socially, and educationally, or convert them by force to Islam."

Things have only worsened, as al-Qaeda is now specifically targeting Canadian Coptic Christians.  Thus, "[t]he Shumukh-al-Islam website, often considered to be al-Qaeda's mouthpiece, listed pictures, addresses and cell phone numbers of Coptic Christians, predominantly Egyptian-Canadians, who have been vocal about their opposition to Islam."  Voice of America explains how "Christians in the Middle East are on alert after Islamist extremists called them 'legitimate targets' days after a bloody siege of a Baghdad church.  In Egypt, security has been stepped up around Christian sites as Islamists demand the release of two Coptic women who reportedly converted to Islam."

Furthermore, "[a]l-Qaida in Iraq posted an internet statement saying 'the killing sword will not be lifted' from the necks of Christians, in Iraq and across the region. The speaker said his group will go after ... 'children' in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, adding there are hundreds of thousands of Christians and hundreds of churches on what he referred to as Islamic soil.  He said they will be targeted if Christians do not submit to his group's demands."

• And in Great Britain, "British pupils are being taught how to carry out Sharia punishments at Islamic schools."  Muslims continue to import elements of sharia to Western countries.  Such fare includes this advice in a junior high school text: "For thieves their hands will be cut off for a first offence, and their foot for a subsequent offence."

• Sweden saw terrorist explosions in the busy shopping street of Drottninggatan as Islamic terrorists "singled out Lars Vilks, a cartoonist threatened repeatedly with murder since publishing a derogatory cartoon of the prophet Mohammed in 2007."  Vilks has not been the only cartoonist threatened with death because of his drawings.

• Mahmoud Abbas, whose office controls the Palestinian Authority Television, routinely "presents the killing of Jews as a religious obligation and a fulfillment of the Islamic ideal."  A video on official Hamas Television "calls for Allah to kill Jews, Christians, Communists and their supporters."