ICC Note: Christian persecution in Libya has risen significantly with the rise in extremist violence over the past two years with include ISIS influence. Remaining among the most dangerous and heavily persecuted Christian countries are Iraq, Iran, and Syria—also due to the cancerous growth of ISIS in the region and its eliminationist campaign against Christians in throughout the Middle East.
01/14/2016 Libya (Worthy News) With North Korea leading the way and Islamic extremism rapidly expanding, 2015 was the “worst year in modern history for Christian persecution,” according to a group tracking the issue.
Iraq is in second place on the Open Doors 2016 World Watch List, a ranking of the Top 50 most dangerous places in the world to be a Christian.
It’s the first of 35 countries on the list where Islamic extremism “has risen to a level akin to ethnic cleansing,” said the report, released Wednesday.
…
“Every one of the numbers in this report is a human being,” the ambassador said, as he stood at the podium directly in front of Gladys Juma, whose husband was murdered in Kenya.
Juma detailed a heartbreaking night of searching for her husband, Benjamin, who had gone with a pastor to “share the word of Christ” in a nearby Muslim area.
Hours after the two men went missing, Gladys Juma went to a hospital nearby, where she was shown a gunnysack of hacked and burned body parts and a seared skull sitting in a burned tire rim. No one could say who they were. A few hours later, she learned that those unidentifiable victims were, in fact, her husband and the pastor.
“It hit us very hard,” Juma said. “In Mombasa, we had had religious tolerance for many years and suddenly the tables had turned with no warning. We are still healing.”
That healing, for herself and her four children, relies on forgiveness, on trust in God and in her belief, she said, that America will act “to make sure people respect other people’s faith.”
…
