Compass Direct News reports that Islamic militants in Somalia tracked down an underground [Christian] church leader and killed him last week. Islamic extremist al Shabaab rebels shot Madobe Abdi to death on March 15. He had escaped a previous attempt to kidnap him on March 2. Abdi's death adds to a growing number of Christians murdered by Islamic militants.
In another incident, alleged members of the government-aligned Islamic Courts Union last month set fire to the house of an underground church member they suspected of having left Islam. After learning that a Bible and Christian pamphlets were inside, the militants stormed the house in Hamarwien district of Mogadishu as a warning to those who dare possess any Christian literature, sources said. The assailants looted the home before setting it afire.
It’s a pretty sad commentary on Islam when its followers have to resort to persecution, violence, threats, and murder to keep fellow Muslims from reading or owning Christian literature, and to keep any non-Muslim influence out of their territory, and to prevent the free flow of other religious thought, speech and ideas from “infecting” Islamic culture.
It reminds me of the tactics of the old Soviet Union where rule by fear and intimidation was the only way to preserve a weak and ineffective system of government. And we all know how that story turned out with the out-of-the-blue smashing of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent quiet implosion of a nation. My take is that if Islam can’t stand up and offer the world something more valuable than fear, intimidation and violence (something we already have enough of anyway) … it’s only a matter of time before the pages of history preserve more of the Islamic faith than the hearts of living human beings.
