Not only does Islam deem the Christian cross an idol, but the cross also symbolizes the fundamental disagreement between Christians and Muslims. Islam utterly rejects the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which are fundamental to Christianity. While Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet born of a virgin who will return at the end times, they vehemently reject the idea that he is the Son of God, crucified and resurrected from the dead. As historian Sidney Griffith put it, “The cross and the icons publicly declared those very points of Christian faith which the Koran, in the Muslim view, explicitly denied: that Christ was the Son of God and that he died on the cross.” Thus “the Christian practice of venerating the cross and the icons of Christ and the saints often aroused the disdain of Muslims.” Accordingly, there was an ongoing “campaign to erase the public symbols of Christianity, especially the previously ubiquitous sign of the cross.”212
Islam’s hostility to the cross, like all of Islam’s hostilities, begins with the Muslim prophet Muhammad. His abhorrence of the cross was such that his earliest biographers reported he would always destroy any object that resembled a cross. In William Muir’s words, Muhammad “had such a repugnance to the form of the cross that he broke everything brought into his house with its figure upon it.”213 Moreover, the Prophet claimed that at the end times Jesus himself would make it a point to “break the cross.”214
Islamic history ever since Muhammad is riddled with anecdotes of Muslims cursing and breaking crosses—beginning with the earliest phases of the Islamic conquest. Prior to the Battle of Yarmuk in 636, which pitted the earliest invading Muslim armies against the Christian Byzantine Empire, Khalid bin al-Walid, the “Sword of Allah”—a particularly ferocious warrior still venerated among militant Muslims today—told the Christian army that if they wanted peace they would have to “break the cross” and embrace Islam, or pay jizya and live in subjugation.215 The Byzantines opted for war.
Conquered Christians had no choice. The History of the Patriarchate of the Egyptian Church offers numerous accounts throughout the ages of Muslim authorities destroying the crosses of the Coptic Church—including the supposedly magnanimous Saladin, who ordered “the removal of every cross from atop the dome of every church in the provinces of Egypt. ”216
In fact early accounts of conflict between Muslims and Christians frequently focus on the cross and other religious symbols. Prior to the Battle of Yarmuk, for instance, another Muslim captain, Ubaida, sent a message to Caliph Omar lamenting that “the Dog of the Romans [Byzantine emperor Heraclius] has frustrated us with the ubiquitous presence of the cross.” His complaint is unsurprising given that, as one historian explains with reference to the Battle of Yarmuk, “Almost more important than tactics was the question of morale, and Byzantine leaders paid close attention to this. Byzantium’s role as the Christian Empire was central to its morale. Careful religious preparations preceded a battle,” including the parading of relics, images, and, of course, crosses. 217
But Muslims cursing the cross (not to mention calling Christians dogs) is certainly not limited to history. In March 2012, a video of a Muslim mob attacking a commonwealth cemetery near Benghazi, Libya, where British officers who died during World War II were buried, appeared on the Internet. As the Muslims kick down and destroy headstones with crosses on them, the man videotaping them urges them to “‘Break the cross of the dogs!’” while he and others cry “Allahu Akbar!” At one point, he chuckles as he tells one overly zealous desecrater to “calm down.” When another Muslim complains that he is unable to kick down a particular stone, wondering if it is because “‘this soldier must have been good to his parents,’” the man videotaping replies, “Come on, they are all dogs, who cares?” Finally the mob congregates around the huge Cross of Sacrifice, the cemetery’s cenotaph monument, and starts hammering at it, to more cries of “Allahu Akbar. ”218
The persistence of Muslim hostility to the cross, from the birth of Islam to the present, speaks for itself. In August 2012 in Egypt, leaflets were distributed in areas with large Christian populations offering monetary rewards to Muslims who “kill or physically attack the enemies of the religion of Allah—the Christians in all of Egypt’s provinces, the Slaves of the Cross, Allah’s curse upon them.”219 One month later, when the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was under attack, “Slaves of the Cross” was one of the epithets hurled by rioting Muslims.
Hostility to the cross frequently leads Muslims beyond the disparagement of “Christian dogs” and “Slaves of the Cross.” In Egypt, the Muslims who raided the Abu Fana monastery destroyed crosses and tried to force their monk victims to renounce and spit on the cross, while the Muslims who destroyed the St. George Church claimed the cross was “irritating Muslims and their children.”220 In Algeria, the Muslims who raided the Protestant Church of Ouargla made it a point to damage and dismantle the iron cross on the church’s roof. In Macedonia, rioting Muslims destroyed the cross of a church in the village of Labunista. And in May 2012 in Tunisia, as we have seen, Salafi Muslims “covered the cross of the Orthodox Church of Tunis with garbage bags, telling church members that they do not wish to see the vision of the Cross anywhere in the Islamic state of Tunisia.”221
After the Russian ambassador in Tunis requested that the nation’s Ministry of Interior “protect the church,” both the Russian school located behind the church and the Christian cemetery in Tunis were vandalized. The walls of the school and religious frescoes were smeared with fecal matter, while the cemetery’s crosses were destroyed.222
Attacks on Christian cemeteries and their crosses are on the rise. The historical graveyard of English Christians in Bushehr, Iran, which was also used by the Armenian community, is in complete disarray and “all the crosses on graves are broken.”223 In Islamist-dominant Iran, one may presume that the animus behind the desecration of this Christian cemetery and its crosses is the same hatred that can be seen on the videotape from the Benghazi cemetery.224 All the way at the other end of the Islamic world, in Muslim-majority Senegal in October 2012, more than 160 graves were desecrated in two Catholic cemeteries: “Crucifixes and other stone objects were taken away from their graves in the Christian cemeteries of Saint Lazarus of Bethany and Bel Air, by individuals who have not yet been identified. ” 225
Nor is it just graves that are attacked when Muslims take offense at the cross. In Egypt in October 2011 seventeen-year-old Ayman Nabil Labib, a Christian student, was strangled and beaten to death by his Muslim teacher and some fellow students—simply for refusing to obey the teacher’s orders to remove his cross. Student eyewitnesses present during the assault said that while Ayman was in the classroom he was told to cover up his tattooed wrist cross, which many Copts wear. Not only did he refuse, but he defiantly produced the pectoral cross he wore under his shirt, which prompted the enraged Muslim teacher and some students to attack and severely beat the Christian youth. According to his father, who spoke to eyewitnesses, “They beat my son so much in the classroom that he fled to the lavatory on the ground floor, but they followed him and continued their assault. When one of the supervisors took him to his room, Ayman was still breathing. The ambulance transported him from there dead, one hour later.”
The headmaster, informed of the attack in progress, reportedly ignored it and “continued to sip his tea.” As usual, Egyptian state media tried to minimize the attack, insisting the “conflict” was “non-sectarian” and that it revolved around non-religious matters. When the truth was later revealed, one prominent columnist wrote in the independent newspaper Masry Youm, “I was shaken to the bones when I read the news that a teacher forced a student to take off the crucifix he wore, and when the Christian student stood firm for his rights, the teacher quarreled with him, joined by some of the students; he was beastly assaulted until his last breath left him.” After the funeral service for Ayman, over five thousand Christians marched, denouncing “the repeated killing of Copts in Egypt” and referring to Ayman as a “Martyr of the Cross,” an honorific that litt
ers the annals of Christian history under Islam. 226
Such stories of Christian children being abused for wearing the cross are not uncommon in the Muslim world. A 12-year-old Turkish boy who converted to Christianity and decided to profess his new faith by wearing a silver cross necklace in class was attacked by Muslim classmates and teachers, who spit on him and beat him regularly.227
In Egypt in July 2010, the case of Nagla Imam, an apostate to Christianity who was being persecuted by both family and nation, was covered by satellite media stations. After her arrest, a top government official “twisted the cross she was wearing, tightening the chain around her neck, while saying ‘the cross will be the death of you.’ He then proceeded to beat her, leaving her with a black eye, a bruised body, and broken teeth. Before releasing her, he said, ‘Stay in your house, till you are carried out to your grave,’ adding that if she does not return to Islam, ‘people’ would be dispatched to ‘take care of her.’”228
The cross often exposes its bearer’s Christian identity, bringing on abuse and even murder. In January 2011, an off-duty Muslim police officer on a train from Asyut to Cairo shouted “Allahu Akbar!” and opened fire on six Christians, killing a seventy-one-year-old man and critically wounding the rest. The newspaper Masry Youm reported that the assailant had checked for passengers with the traditional Coptic cross tattooed on their wrists.229 (Interestingly, Copts traditionally wore these tattooed crosses at least in part so that they could be identified as Christians in case they were abducted and forced to convert to Islam. Several accounts exist of Muslims scraping these tattooed crosses from the wrists of their victims.)230
In July 2012, Julie Aftab, a Pakistani Christian woman now living in the U.S., revealed how, ten years earlier, when she was sixteen and living in Pakistan, Muslims disfigured her in an acid attack after one man noticed the “small cross she wore around her neck,” which exposed her as a Christian. From the account in the Daily Mail: The man became abusive, shouting at her that she was living in the gutter and would go to hell for shunning Islam. He left and returned half an hour later, clutching a bottle of battery acid which he savagely chucked over her head. As she ran screaming for the door a second man grabbed her by the hair and forced more of the liquid down her throat, searing her esophagus. Teeth fell from her mouth as she desperately called for help, stumbling down the street. A woman heard her cries and took her to her home, pouring water over her head and taking her to hospital. At first the doctors refused to treat her, because she was a Christian. ‘They all turned against me . . . even the people who took me to the hospital. They told the doctor they were going to set the hospital on fire if they treated me’. . . . 67 percent of her esophagus was burned and she was missing an eye and both eyelids. What remained of her teeth could be seen through a gaping hole where her cheek had been. The doctors predicted she would die any day. Despite the odds she pulled through.231
In the Maldives in October 2010, authorities rescued Geethamma George, a Christian teacher from India, when Muslim “parents threatened to tie and drag her off of the island” for “‘preaching Christianity.’” Her crime was simply to draw a compass in class as part of a geography lesson; the compass was mistaken for a Christian cross. 232
In Saudi Arabia in 2010, there was “public outrage” when a Romanian soccer player kissed the tattoo of a cross he had on his arm after scoring a goal. In October of the next year, a Colombian soccer-player “was arrested by the Saudi moral police after customers in a Riyadh shopping mall expressed outrage over the sports player’s religious tattoos, which included the face of Jesus of Nazareth on his arm.”233
In Indonesia in February 2012, the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party complained about the Indonesian Red Cross symbol because of its identification with “Christian culture and traditions.”234
Islamic hostility for the Christian cross has even reached the West. In January 2011, in a Muslim-majority area of Odense, Denmark, an Iranian Christian family had two cars vandalized—windows smashed, seats cut up, and vehicles set ablaze—because the cars had crosses hanging in them, which local “youths” (the press’s usual disingenuous term for Muslim vandals and rioters) had demanded be removed from view. The family has since relocated to an undisclosed location.235
In Spain in April 2012, the nation’s top-ranked football team, Real Madrid, removed a Christian cross from its official logo in accordance with the conditions of Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr al Qasimi, a business partner, and “to strengthen its fan base among Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.” According to Spain’s top sports newspaper, Marca, the change was made to “avoid any form of confusion or misinterpretation in a region where the majority of the population is Muslim.” 236
In Switzerland in October 2012, Muslims complained about a billboard campaign for Swiss International Air Lines, whose logo includes the cross from the Swiss flag, because the ads contained the words “‘the cross is trumps’”: “Muslims in Switzerland have responded negatively to the advertising, which they believe promotes Christianity over other religions.... ‘Many Muslims feel this Christian slogan [of Swiss International] is a provocation and an assault against Islam.’” The airline said that its ad campaign does not carry any religious or political message—that in fact the word “trumps” is a pun for a Swiss card game—and apologized for upsetting Muslims.237
Even in the United States, in October 2011, Fox News reported that “the Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights confirmed that it is investigating allegations that Catholic University of America violated the human rights of Muslim students by not providing them rooms without Christian symbols for their daily prayers. The investigation alleges that Muslim students ‘must perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism—e.g., a wooden crucifix, paintings of Jesus, pictures of priests and theologians which many Muslim students find inappropriate.’” Behind the complaint is John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University professor who asserts that Muslim students are “particularly offended” because they have to “meditate” at the school’s chapels and cathedral, where they pray while “having to stare up and be looked down upon by a cross of Jesus.”238 He does not bother mentioning that offended Muslim students need not attend a private Catholic university.
The examples above are mostly taken from just the past two years. Mark Durie of the Middle Eastern Forum has collected more anecdotes of Muslim hostility toward and violence against the cross from around the world over the past several years:• Afghanistan: A poster was found containing the caption “Destroying the cross is an Islamic obligation” and instructing Muslims to destroy objects with crosses on them.
• Albania: In March 2004, a Muslim mob attacked and desecrated the church of St. Andrew in Podujevo, Kosovo. Photographs show Muslims on the roof breaking off the prominent metal crosses attached there. There have also been many instances of Muslim mobs smashing crosses in Christian graveyards across Kosovo.
• England: In November 2004, Belmarsh Prison was reported to have plans to spend £1.6 million (equivalent to $2.4 million) on a mosque. The facility already maintained a multi-denominational chapel, but it was rejected for use by the Muslim inmates—some of whom had been convicted on terrorism charges—because the chapel contained crosses, which had to be covered up when the Muslims say their prayers.
• Iraq: In April 2007, in the al-Doura Christian area of Baghdad, Muslim militants instructed Christians to remove visible crosses from atop their churches, and issued a fatwa forbidding Christians from wearing crosses.
• Malaysia: In October 2007, a parliamentarian complained about the “display of religious symbols” in front of church schools, insisting that “these crosses need to be destroyed.”
• Pakistan: Two days before Christmas in 1998, a Catholic church in Faisalabad had its crucifix pulled down by a Muslim leader.
• Palestinian Authority: When Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, some of its militias went on a cross-destroying rampage. The Rosary Sisters’ convent a
nd school in Gaza were ransacked and looted by masked men, and crosses were specifically targeted for destruction. A Christian resident of Gaza also reported having a crucifix ripped from his neck by someone from the Hamas Executive Force, who said, “That is forbidden.”239
• Saudi Arabia: In 1995 George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was compelled to remove his pectoral cross when he was forced to make an intermediary stop in the land that birthed Islam. On the approach to the Red Sea coastal city of Jidda, Carey was told to remove all religious insignia, including his clerical collar and pectoral cross.
The long record of Muslim violence specifically targeting churches, monasteries, and crosses is conclusive evidence of Muslim hostility toward the Christian religion itself. This centuries-old, continents-wide pattern of violence cannot be explained by the race, culture, or particular circumstances of the perpetrators, any more than by that of their victims. Muslims who attack churches and other expressions of Christianity come from widely different places all around the world. The attackers are of different races—“white,” “yellow,” “brown,” and “black.” They speak different languages. They have lived at widely different times in world history. The common factor in all these attacks on Christian worship—the real reason behind them—can only be Islam itself.
Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians Page 11