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BUDAPEST (Worthy News)— Islamophobia may make headlines in mainstream media, but it’s “Christianophobia” that is spreading like wildfire, with hundreds of churches being attacked across Europe and North America.
They are not yet among the 50 nations where the advocacy group Open Doors says Christians face the most persecution. Yet devoted Christians are increasingly under pressure in several Western countries, according to a Worthy News investigation.
The situation is most serious in Europe and related territories as hundreds of churches were burned down, vandalized, or graffitied in France and other Western European nations in recent years, including in 2024.
Several reports verified by Worthy News suggest that massive migration from mainly Islamic nations added to extremism toward devoted Christians in Europe.
In France alone in 2020, there were 613 cases of hate crimes against Christianity, said Virginie Joron, a French legislator in the European Parliament, citing police data.
Worthy News obtained written questions from the European Union’s executive, the European Commission, in which Joron wondered why the Commission appears reluctant to tackle anti-Christian attacks.
“In December 2015, the Commission established a European coordinator to combat anti-Muslim hatred in Europe and a coordinator to combat anti-Semitism and foster Jewish life. The Commission has not, however, appointed a coordinator to combat anti-Christian hatred,” she noticed.
‘EUROPE MEANS PEACE’
“Europe means peace. The dozens of church fires in France, conflagrations in the Cathedrals of Paris and Nantes, the beheading of women in Nice, priests’ throats cut by two Islamists, and a Rwandan applicant for refugee status who arrived illegally in 2012 and was not expelled tell a different story,” Joron wrote.
“In 2020, there were 613 attacks on Christians, 80 on Muslims, and 38 on Jewish places of worship. In view of the threats, there were armed police protecting Christmas celebrations in France. Yet neither the Commission nor the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights mentions anti-Christian crimes,” the legislator complained.
She wanted to know, “Why has the Commission not appointed a European coordinator to combat anti-Christian crimes, even though it has done so for other religions? After the controversy over the abolition of Christmas by Brussels, will the Commission finally include the fight against anti-Christian crimes in its missions and reports?”
Vice-President Věra Jourová said in separate remarks seen by Worthy News that “the Commission is committed to protect Christians and members of other religious groups from persecution within the EU and does not make any distinction between religious groups.”
However, she added that the “Commission has no plans as no plans as regards a specific strategy on Christophobia or to appoint a dedicated coordinator on this issue.”
That worries Jean-Paul Garraud, a French politician who has been serving as a member of the European Parliament since 2019. “At a time when Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world and a 70 percent surge in anti-Christian hate crimes between 2019 and 2020 in Europe, can the Commission explain why it does not intend to introduce a strategy or appoint a coordinator to combat christophobia?”
Critics link the reluctance to the growing influence of Muslim hardliners among millions of migrants from Islamic countries in Europe. Additionally, younger Muslims born in Europe were often educated according to strict Islamic traditions, say concerned experts.
‘HATEFUL RELIGION’
While there are many “moderate Muslims,” many also strictly observe Islam, which is “a disgusting, reprehensible, violent and hateful religion,” said Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, whose PVV party won recent parliamentary elections.
He said he has endured “20 years of protection, safe houses, five fatwas, thousands of death threats.” He recalled that his visits “to many Islamic countries” taught him that “none of them” are free societies.
Wilders has long warned that unlimited Muslim migration will eventually lead to more hatred toward Christians, Jews, as well as women and gays, regardless of their religious background.
He is close friends with rightwing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who shares his views about the perceived dangers of massive Muslim immigration.
Orbán is concerned about data predicting the Muslim population in Europe to reach about 10 percent by 2050, nearly doubling their numbers now. Muslims will outnumber Christians worldwide by 2070, according to these forecasts.
Amid a rising Islam, Orbán set up the world’s first government secretariat dedicated to Christian persecution.
It has been active in countries far away, including the Middle East and Africa, but may soon be needed in Europe, investigative journalists and researchers suggest. “There is Christian persecution by Islamists in Europe today,” said journalist Rupert Shortt in The New Culture Forum video on YouTube. “We are witnessing two attacks per day on churches in France.
KNIVES USED
“You get knives being stuck through the throat of statues of the Virgin Mary,” Shortt adds. “You get a great deal of graffiti on the walls with slogans like ‘Submit to Allah or else’ or ‘Abandon your idolatry.’”
Mahyar Tousi, who runs a conservative news channel on YouTube, said that
“If they were mosques [being burned down or otherwise attacked], there would be outrage. The political establishment would launch an investigation. There would be media coverage 24/7. The liberal governments of Western Europe would come out to say, ‘It’s the rise of Islamophobia.’”
Yet “when it’s the other way around” when attacks on churches are reported, “not only do they not talk about it in media… nobody is seeking any sort of investigation. Why is this happening? We know that a lot of the churches in France were attacked because of the rise of Islamism.”
As Muslim immigrants flood France, Britain, Germany, and other Western European nations, at least some seem to get bolder in threats to take over democratic, non-Muslim societies.
In an online video, British Bangladeshi Dilwar Hussain recently discussed options for a coup, whether by proselytization, jihad, a coup, or a combination.
Representatives of churches have expressed concern about the growing number of Islamists and other opponents of the Christian faith in Europe.
‘CROSS OFFENSIVE’
Expert Raymond Ibrahim’s book Sword and Scimitar documents a 1,400-year-old tendency to destroy, desecrate, pillage, rape, and enslave by the expansionist, militarist Muslims. He suggests that Europeans have broken from their religious past, while Islamists see the present as a continuation of history.
Commentator Tom Holland, a non-Christian, agrees. He recalled being shocked to see the destruction of churches in areas where the Islamic State group fighters retreated. “What is it about the cross that is so offensive that extremists resort to unprintable barbarism?”
Christianity has also become “a symbol of colonization” to some, which is a suspected motive behind a recent wave of arson attacks on churches occurring on an island in the Pacific Ocean.
Four Catholic churches were reportedly torched in recent months in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia. Violence erupted in May this year when the indigenous Kanaks launched a push for independence.
The most recent arson attack occurred on August 14 when a series of fires were started in a church in the town of Poindimé, destroying the sacristy, altar, chapel, and furniture, Catholic sources said.
The Kanaks’ independence movement condemned the attacks. According to church estimates, over 52 percent of New Caledonia’s 270,000 population are baptized, including many Kanaks, who are also regular churchgoers.
Protestants from the London Missionary Society were the first to arrive in New Caledonia in the middle of the 19th century, followed by the Catholic Marist Brothers.
‘AZERBAIJAN INVOLVED’
Since the 1970s, New Caledonia’s main Protestant Church, which has a membership of nearly 40,000 Kanaks, has favored independence; the Catholic Church has always remained neutral.
There is also a belief among some that the arsonists burning Catholic churches in New Caledonia are encouraged by Azerbaijan, a mainly Muslim nation. “It has made no secret of its strategy to undermine French influence in the region after the Paris government supported [mainly Christian ] Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan,” commented the Catholic Herald, one of the world’s oldest Catholic publications.
Among the churches attacked in mainland France this year was the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Saint-Omer, in the Pas-de-Calais department of northern France. It was ravaged by arson on the night of September 2.
“In all of human history, there has never been a civilization that has so opened its doors to another civilization that is openly hostile to it,” Raymond Ibrahim told a Danish conference, ASSIST News Service (ANS) recalled. “Your ancestors of Europe fought tooth and nail to prevent Islam from entering and conquering Europe. This was the Muslims’ actual goal. Now Western Europe is saying: ‘None of that matters. It was all a misunderstanding. Come on in.’ But they [Muslims] haven’t changed that mentality.”
Ibrahim is a Christian, which critics could argue may impact his views. However, ANS, a Christian news agency, noted that this can’t be said of Areesha Babar.
Areesha, a Pakistan rights activist who fled to Germany, condemned the anti-Christian sentiments among Muslims she observed in the German refugee camp where she stays. “The majority of the refugees here are Muslim, and they have some sort of hate. The men from Pakistan try to harass you. If you’re not willing to integrate, why are you moving here? They look at Germans and laugh and say, ‘These are kafur (a derogatory term for unbelievers). Many of them think, eventually, the population will rise and take over.”
Commentators suggest these concerns could serve as a warning for the United States, where illegal migration has become a significant issue ahead of the upcoming presidential elections.
NATIONWIDE ASSAULT
A report earlier this year by the Family Research Council outlined an “alarming rise” in acts of arson and vandalism against churches in the United States in 2023; there were 436 such acts reported, double the number in 2022.
It constituted a nationwide assault, encompassing 48 States, with only Hawaii and Wyoming spared, researchers said.
California reported the most significant number of attacks, 33, “a clue perhaps to the perpetrators of the profanity,” the Catholic Herald noticed.
“The Golden State is the cradle of radical Progressivism, an enemy of the Church which in its turn embodies the principles of “faith, family and flag” that are so viscerally abhorrent to the liberal Left,” the paper commented.
Canada has also experienced church attacks since the claim in 2021 that mass graves of Indigenous children had been found at the Marieval Indian Residential School.
It was part of the Canadian Indian residential school system in Marieval Saskatchewan.
Although still being investigated, the Catholic Church, which in most cases was responsible for running residential schools, was blamed.
CHURCHES DESTROYED
In the last two years, 96 churches have been burned, vandalized, and destroyed in Canada.
The culprits are believed to be “a mix of far-left extremists and wayward youths from Native reservations,” the Catholic Herald reported.
One of the first churches to be burned to the ground in July 2021 was St Gregory’s Church in British Columbia, Canada.
Native American Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band condemned the attack, saying: “I don’t think white people came here and burned this down.”
Yet it was another reminder of the growing hatred in the West toward the Christian faith and the institutions that claim to represent Christianity.