Islamic Hate for the Christian Cross

by Raymond Ibrahim on June 20, 2015 in Islam, Muslim Persecution of Christians

PJ Media
Last May in Italy, a Muslim boy of African origin beat a 12-year-old girl during school
because she was wearing a crucifix around her neck. The African schoolboy, who had only
started to attend the school approximately three weeks earlier, began to bully the Christian
girlinsulting her and picking on her in other ways all because she was wearing the
crucifixbefore he finally punched the girl violently in the back.
What is it about the Christian cross that makes some Muslims react this way?

Muslims in Pakistan burn cross

The fact is, Islamic hostility to the cross is an unwavering fact of lifeone that crosses
continents and centuries; one that is very much indicative of Islams innate hostility to
Christianity.
Doctrine and History
Because the Christian cross is the quintessential symbol of Christianityfor all
denominations, including most forms of otherwise iconoclastic Protestantismit has been a
despised symbol in Islam.
According to the Conditions of Omara Medieval text which lays out the many humiliating
stipulations conquered Christians must embrace to preserve their lives and which Islamic
history attributes to the second righteous caliph, Omar al-KhattabChristians are Not to
display a cross [on churches] and Not to produce a cross or [Christian] book in the
markets of the Muslims.

The reason for this animosity is that the cross symbolizes the fundamental disagreement
between Christians and Muslims. According to Dr. Sidney Griffith, author of The Church in
the Shadow of the Mosque, 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, so that there
was an ongoing campaign to erase the public symbols of Christianity, especially the
previously ubiquitous sign of the cross.
Islams hostility to the cross, like all of Islams hostilities, begins with the Muslim prophet
Muhammad. He reportedly had such a repugnance to the form of the cross that he broke
everything brought into his house with its figure upon it. He once ordered someone wearing
a cross to take off that piece of idolatry and claimed that at the end times Jesus himself
would make it a point to break the crossan assertion the Islamic State regularly makes.

Islamic history following Muhammad is riddled with anecdotes of Muslims cursing and
breaking crosses. Prior to the Battle of Yarmuk in 636, which pitted the earliest invading
Muslim armies against the Byzantine Empire, Khalid bin al-Walid, the savage Sword of
Allah, told the Christians that if they wanted peace they must break the cross and
embrace Islam, or pay jizya and live in subjugationjust as his Islamic State successors are
doing today in direct emulation. The Byzantines opted for war.
In Egypt, Saladin (d. 1193)regularly touted in the West for his magnanimityordered
theremoval of every cross from atop the dome of every church in the provinces of Egypt, in
the words of The History of the Patriarchate of the Egyptian Church.
Europe: Growing Violence against the Cross
Centuries later, not much has changed concerning Islams position towards the cross,
though much has changed in Western perceptions. In other words, an African boy punching
a Christian girl in Italy for her crucifix is part of a long continuum of Islamic hostility for the

cross. Perhaps he learned this hatred in mosquethe same European mosques where
Islamic State representatives call Muslims to jihad?
After all, earlier this year in Italy, another crucifix was destroyed in close proximity to a
populated mosque. The municipalitys Councilor, Giuseppe Berlin, did not mince
words concerning the identity of the culprit(s):
Before we put a show of unity with Muslims, lets have them begin by respecting our
civilization and our culture. We shouldnt minimize the importance of certain signals; we
must wake up now or our children will suffer the consequences of this dangerous and
uncontrolled Islamic invasion.
Nor is Italy the only European nation experiencing this phenomenon. In neighboring
France, a young Muslim committed major acts of vandalism at two churches. Along with
twisting a massive bronze cross, he overturned and broke two altars, the candelabras and
lecterns, destroyed statues, tore down a tabernacle, smashed in a sacristy door and even
broke some stained-glass windows. (Click for images.)
And in Germany, a Turkish man who checked himself into a hospital for treatment went into
a sudden frenzy because there were too many crosses on the wall. He called the nurse a
bitch and fascist and became physically aggressive.
Of course, other times Europeans willingly capitulate to Islamic hostility for the cross . Real
Madrid, a professional football (soccer) team in Spain reportedly stripped the traditional
Christian cross from its club crest as part of a deal with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi
so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities in the United Arab Emirates. And in the United
Kingdom, offensive crucifixes are being removed from prisons in order not to offend Muslim
inmates (who are further provided with food baths for Islamic rituals).
Muslim World: Christians Killed for the Cross
If this is how some Muslims react to the Christian cross in Europewhere Muslims are
aware of their outnumbered, minority statushow do other Muslims react to the cross in the
Islamic world, where vastly outnumbered and ostracized Christian infidels are easy prey?
The answer is murderousliterally, Christians are being murdered by Muslims provoked at
the sight of the cross:
Last year in Egypt, a young Coptic Christian woman named Mary was mauled to death
simply because her cross identified her as a Christian to Muslim Brotherhood rioters.
According to an eyewitness who discussed the episode, Mary Sameh George was parking
her car by the church to deliver medicine to an elderly woman:
Once they [Brotherhood rioters] saw that she was a Christian [because of the cross hanging
on her rearview mirror], they jumped on top of the car, to the point that the vehicle was no

longer visible. The roof of the car collapsed in. When they realized that she was starting to
die, they pulled her out of the car and started pounding on her and pulling her hairto the
point that portions of her hair and scalp came off. They kept beating her, kicking her,
stabbing her with any object or weapon they could find. Throughout [her ordeal] she tried
to protect her face, giving her back to the attackers, till one of them came and stabbed her
right in the back, near the heart, finishing her off. Then another came and grabbed her by
the hair, shaking her head, and with the other hand slit her throat. Another pulled her pants
off, to the point that she was totally naked.
In response, the Coptic Christian Church issued the following statement: Oh how lucky you
are, Mary, you who are beloved of Christ. They tore your body because of the Cross. Yet
they offered you the greatest service and gave you a name of honor as one who attained
the crown of martyrdom. The statement also quoted Christs warning to believers: Yes, the
time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service (John 16:2).
In October 2011, seventeen-year-old Ayman Nabil Labib, a Coptic student, was strangled
and beaten to death by his Muslim teacher and some fellow studentssimply for refusing to
obey the teachers 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
students to beat the Christian youth to death.
Before that, 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. Before opening fire he had checked for passengers with the traditional
Coptic cross tattooed on their wrists. (Days ago, another Coptic woman was shot dead by
an Egyptian police officer. Although officially an accident, the Muslim officer is notorious
for hating Christians.)
In Pakistan, when a Muslim man saw Julie Aftab, a Christian woman, wearing a cross
around her neck,
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.
All this because she was wearing a cross.
Even in Muslim nations deemed moderate, violence provoked by the cross is not
uncommon. In 2012, a 12-year-old boy in Turkey who converted to Christianity and decided
to profess his new faith by wearing a silver cross necklace in class was spit on and beat
regularly by Muslim classmates and teachers.
In the Maldives, October 2010, authorities had to rescue Geethamma George, a Christian
teacher from India, after 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 the Christian cross.
Christians Killed Again for the Cross
If some Muslims kill the wearers of the cross, so do they disturb the slumber of those
already dead for having the cross on their tombstones. A few of the many examples follow:

Libya, March 2012: A video of a Muslim mob attacking a commonwealth cemetery

near Benghazi appeared on the internet. As the Muslims kicked down and destroyed
headstones with crosses on them, the man videotaping them urged them to Break the
cross of the dogs! while he and others cried Allahu Akbar! Towards the end of the video,
the mob congregated around the huge Cross of Sacrifice, the cemeterys cenotaph
monument, and started to hammer at it, to more cries of Allahu Akbar. Other Christian
cemeteriesin post-Arab Spring Libya have suffered similarly.
France, April 2015: Christian crosses and gravestones in a cemetery
were damaged and desecrated by a Muslim. After being apprehended, he was described
as follows: The man repeats Muslim prayers over and over, he drools and cannot be
communicated with: his condition has been declared incompatible with preliminary
detention. He was hospitalized as mentally unbalanced. (See his handiwork.)
Malaysia, February 2014: A Christian cemetery was attacked and desecrated in the
middle of the night by unknown persons in the Muslim majority nation. Several crosses
were destroyed, including by the use of a heavy tool to do the damage.
Germany, June 2014: After Muslims were granted their own section at a cemetery in
Seligenstadt, and after being allowed to conduct distinctly Islamic ceremonies, these same
Muslims began demanding that Christian symbols and crosses in the cemetery be removed
or covered up during Islamic funerals.

One can go on and on with more recent examples of Islams hostility to the cross. Last April
in moderate Malaysia, a Muslim mob rioted against a small Protestant church due to the
visible cross atop the building of worship. It was quickly removed.
And in Pakistan, a nation where the mere accusation of offending Islam get Christians
burned alivea Muslim shopkeeper is allowed to sell shoes which depict the Christian
cross on their sole: In Pakistani culture, showing the sole of ones shoe or foot is offensive
because placing anything on the ground is considered to be an insult to the object.
Therefore, something on the sole of a shoe is going to be constantly insulted as the person
walks.
From an African School Boy in Italy to ISIS
In light of the above, it should come as no surprise that the Islamic StateISISalso
exhibits violence to the Christian cross. In its communiques to the West, hostile reference
to the cross is often made: We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave
your women, by the permission of Allah. [We will cast] fear into the hearts of the cross
worshippers.
After carving the heads of Coptic Christians off in Libya, the lead executioner waved his
dagger at the camera and said, Oh people, recently you have seen us on the hills of asSham and Dabiqs plain [Syrian regions], chopping off the heads that have been carrying
the cross for a long time. And today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam,
Libya, sending another message. He concluded by declaring: We will fight you
[Christians/Westerners] until Christ descends, breaks the cross and kills the pig (all
eschatological actions ascribed to the Muslim Christ, Isa).

ISIS member destroying cross in ancient church

Moreover, the Islamic State has committed countless atrocities against and because of the
cross: it made and disseminated a video showing its memberssmashing crosses in and

atop churches in territories under its sway; it beheaded and stabbed a man with his own
crucifix after it exposed him as a Christian; and it published pictures of its members
destroying Christian crosses and tombstones in cemeteries under its jurisdiction and
quoted Islamic scriptures justifying its actions.
Careful readers will note the similar parallels here: destroying crosses in churches and
cemeteries and even killing Christian infidels for wearing them, as documented above, is
not limited to ISIS but is happening all around the Muslim world, and even in Europe.
In short, Islams age-old hatred for the Christian crossand what it representsis not a
product of the Islamic State, but of Islam.