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Some 100,000 Christians Killed Per Year Over Faith, Vatican Says

Photo Credit: Fox News

A staggering 100,000 Christians are killed annually because of their faith, according to the Vatican — and several human rights groups claim such anti-Christian violence is on the rise in countries like Pakistan, Nigeria and Egypt.

“Credible research has reached the shocking conclusion that an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are violently killed because of some relation to their faith every year,” Vatican spokesman Monsieur Silvano Maria Tomassi said Tuesday in a radio address to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“Other Christians and other believers are subjected to forced displacement, to the destruction of their places of worship, to rape and to the abduction of their leaders, as it recently happened in the case of Bishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji, in Aleppo [Syria],” Tomassi said.

While several human rights groups could not comment specifically on the Vatican’s number, organizations, like Persecution.Org, said the persecutions of Christians have been on the rise in places like Africa and the Middle East over the last decade.

“Two-hundred million Christians currently live under persecution. It’s absolutely on the rise,” Jeff King, the group’s president, told FoxNews.com.

Read more from this story HERE.

Catholic Children Massacred in Nigeria, Islamic Terrorists Suspected (+video)

Kaduna State was yesterday thrown into another round of pandemonium following a suicide bomb blast that rocked the Saint Rita’s Catholic Church at Ungwa Yero in Malali, Kaduna North LGA. The church has a capacity to accommodate over 1,000 worshipers.

The blast, which affected mostly women and children, killed at least 15 people and severely injured about 150 including the parish priest, Rev. Fr. Bonet Micah.

The victims were rushed to several hospitals within the Kaduna metropolis. Although details of the numbers could not be ascertained officially, our correspondents gathered that three dead bodies and 35 injured persons were taken to 44 Army Reference Hospital, four bodies and over 88 injured persons were taken to Barau Dikko Specialist Hospital, 14 injured persons were taken to Saint Gerard Catholic Hospital, one dead body and 14 injured persons were taken to Garkuwa Hospital, three injured persons were taken to Giwa Hospital, and two injured persons were taken to Yusuf Dantsoho Hospital.

The location of the church is more or less like a border separating the Kwaru, Badarawa and Ungwa Yero areas; while Christians dominate the Ungwa Yero axis, Muslims dominate the other areas. They are normally flashpoints during any crisis in Kaduna.

LEADERSHIP had reported, prior to the Sallah celebration, that there could be security threats during the Eid-El-Kabir celebration, but a top security operative told our correspondent that all flashpoints had been properly manned across the state. Read more from this story HERE.

The Multiple Personalities of the Muslim Rage

Photo credit: derek7272

At the height of the latest Islamic rage, one of the Muslim world’s first media-celebrity imams told worshippers they were indeed witnessing a clash of civilizations. But just not the kind you think.

This one also is within Islam, and it helps explain the multiple personalities of the fury.

It’s political: The uncompromising ethos of extremism clawing for any gains against more moderate voices. It’s social: Fed by an explosive blend of economic stagnation, anger over U.S.-led wars and — in some places — frustrations as the soaring hopes of the Arab Spring hit the grinding realities of rebuilding.

And it cuts deeply into questions that have added resonance in a hyper-connected world that moves at the quicksilver pace of the web: How to coexist with the free-speech openness of the West and whether violence is ever a valid response.

“Our manner of protesting should reflect sense and reason,” urged Egyptian-born cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi in his Friday sermon in Qatar’s capital Doha, where he has found a worldwide audience through the web and a show on the pan-Arab network Al-Jazeera.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s rebels in Syria committing Christian genocide

U.S.-backed rebels are committing Christian genocide in Syria, where they are sacking churches and issuing threats that all Christians will be cleansed from rebel-held territory. A mass exodus of thousands of Christians is taking place, even as mainstream Western reporters like Robert Fisk demonize those same Christians for being supportive of the secular regime.

The bloody jihad waged against Nigeria’s Christians, which has seen hundreds killed this year alone, now includes plans to kill Christians with poisoned food, as part of the Islamic organization Boko Haram’s stated goal of purging Nigeria of all Christian presence.

During Egypt’s presidential elections, Al Ahram reported that “the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets, prevented Copts from voting at gunpoint, and threatened Christian families not to let their children go out and vote” for the secular candidate.

Meanwhile, under President Obama, the U.S. State Department, in an unprecedented move, purged the sections dealing with religious persecution from its recently released Country Reports on Human Rights. Likewise, the Obama administration insists that the Nigerian crisis has nothing to do with religion, even as Obama offered his hearty blessings to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, in the midst of allegations of electoral fraud.

Categorized by theme, June’s assemblage of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity.  Read more from this story HERE.

If you want to see the Syrian rebels in action, view this video.  [warning: explicit content]