WND.com reports: “The U. S. government is absent when it comes to the issue of increasingly violent and deadly Christian persecution, a new report reveals.

The charge is the topic of the book ‘Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians,’ co-authored by Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea. Introduced at a Hudson Institute forum, the book also says that Christian persecution is on the rise world-wide, and that’s especially true in the Muslim world.

Marshall, a senior fellow at the institute, says that it’s hard to measure how ‘bad’ the persecution is getting.

‘The U.S. has tended to underplay religious persecution in general – and called it something else – and, in the case of Christians, often does not mention what is happening in places like Iraq and Egypt,’ Marshall said…” (Judgment is coming for Islamic terrorists – Jude 1:3, 4, 8, 10, 14, and 15. See the next report.)

FoxNews.com reports: “Islamic hard-liners stormed a mosque in suburban Cairo, turning it into torture chamber for Christians who had been demonstrating against the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in the latest case of violent persecution that experts fear will only get worse.

Such stories have become increasingly common as tensions between Egypt’s Muslims and Copts mount, but in the latest case, mosque officials corroborated much of the account and even filed a police report. Demonstrators, some of whom were Muslim, say they were taken from the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in suburban Cairo to a nearby mosque on Friday and tortured for hours by hard-line militia members.

They accompanied me to one of the mosques in the area and I discovered the mosque was being used to imprison demonstrators and torture them,’ Amir Ayad, a Coptic who has been a vocal protester against the regime, told MidEast Christian News from a hospital bed…” (Jesus prophesied such hatred just before His return – Matthew 24:9; John 16:2; Matthew 5:10 – 12; John 15:18 – 20; Galatians 6:12.)

WND.com reports: “In the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ across northern Africa, Islam has been on the rise throughout the continent, and with it, violent persecution against Christians.

Christians in Tanzania, for example, are on alert after an Assemblies of God pastor was killed while attempting to stop Muslim youth from killing two Christian meat cutters. Pastor Mathayo Kachili died on the scene from injuries sustained during the brutal beating by the Muslim teenagers.

International Christian Concern says that this attack set off a two-week string of violent anti-Christian attacks in Tanzania’s northwestern Geita region.

Only days after the pastor was killed, Muslim militants on the island of Zanzibar killed a Father Evarist Mushi, a Catholic priest.

International Christian Concern’s Africa analyst William Stark told WND in an interview that the priest’s murder links violence in Africa to terrorist activity throughout the region.

‘After a Catholic priest was shot and killed, a text message was sent out tying the attackers to Somalia, thus proving the link of radicalization between Zanzibar and Somalia. It is likely that many of the attackers have been trained in Somalia by al-Shabaab, but that is pretty hard to prove,’ Stark said.

Stark adds that the Muslims in Tanzania are radicalizing at a rapid rate.

‘I would agree that the latest series of attacks is likely the beginning of a trend,’ Stark said. ‘Radicalized Muslim youths are being used to commit terrible acts of violence in both Kenya and Tanzania…” (Believers who are persecuted will be greatly rewarded – II Timothy 2:11, 12; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 20:4. Therefore, let’s fight the good fight of faith and lay our crowns down at Jesus’ feet after the Rapture – I Timothy 6:12; Revelation 4:10 -11. See the next three reports.)

The Independent.co.uk reports: “Hundreds of Christians were under siege inside Cairo’s Coptic cathedral as security forces and local residents, some armed with handguns, launched a prolonged and unprecedented attack on the seat of Egypt’s ancient Church.

At least one person was killed and at least 84 injured as Christians inside the walled St Mark’s cathedral compound came under a frenzied assault from their assailants in the main road outside.

The fighting erupted after a mass funeral for five Copts who were killed during violent clashes in a north Egyptian town. A Muslim man also died in the clashes, which happened after an Islamic institute was daubed with offensive graffiti.

Following the service thousands of Christians poured out on to the street and began chanting slogans against Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian President and long-time member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Later President Morsi issued a statement in which he said he had spoken to Pope Tawadros II, the leader of the Coptic church, and had given orders for the cathedral and citizens to be guarded. He said protecting the lives of Muslims and Christians was a state responsibility and added: ‘I consider any attack on the cathedral as an attack on me, personally.’…”

Reuters reports: “Five Egyptians were killed and eight wounded in clashes between Christians and Muslims in a town near Cairo, security sources said in some of the worst sectarian violence in Egypt for months.

Christian-Muslim confrontations have increased in Muslim-majority Egypt since the overthrow of former president Hosni Mubarak in 2011 gave freer rein to hardline Islamists repressed under his rule.

Four Christian Copts and one Muslim were killed when members of both communities started fighting and shooting at each other in El Khusus north of the Egyptian capital, the sources said. State news agency MENA put the death toll at four.

An angry crowd smashed shops belonging to Christians, residents said. A Reuters reporter saw a burned-out Coptic day care center and several damaged shops belonging to Christian traders. An apartment inhabited by Muslims was also burned.

Residents said the violence broke out on Friday when a group of Christian children were drawing on a wall of a Muslim religious institute.

A Reuters reporter saw what looked like a swastika drawn on the wall. Muslim residents said it had offended them because it looked like a cross.

‘I saw the kids drawing on the wall after afternoon prayers so I grabbed them and told them to remove what they’d just written,’ said Mahmoud Mahmoud al-Alfi, a Muslim resident.

Then another man arrived and started beating the children, drawing a large crowd, he said. The situation escalated when someone drew a gun and fired into the air, killing one boy with a stray bullet…”

WND.com reports: “Patriarch Louis Sako of the Chaldean Church said there are only 57 churches left in Iraq compared to 300 churches in 2003, and those that remain continue to be targeted.

According to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, attacks by extremists on churches, especially that on Our Lady of Deliverance Church, contributed to forcing Christians to emigrate abroad.

Former Minister of Displacement and Migration, Pascal Warda, said a lot of young Christian people want to emigrate to find safety and jobs.

Christians live in the provinces of Baghdad, Nineveh and Kirkuk, as well as in Dohuk and Erbil in the autonomous Kurdistan region. There are limited numbers in the southern Iraqi province of Basra.

‘The last ten years have been the worst for Iraqi Christians because they bore witness to the biggest exodus and migration in the history of Iraq,’ said William Warda, the head of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization.

‘The number of Christians has fallen from about 1,400,000 in 2003 to nearly half a million now, which means that more than two-thirds have emigrated,’ Warda explained…”