LOVE AND PEACE FILES

Adherents to the religion of love and peace have been busy lately.

Daniel Pipes says that Christianity is dying where it was born. It isn't so much dying out as it is being murdered:

What some observers are calling a pogrom took place near Ramallah, West Bank, on the night of September 3-4. That's when 15 Muslim youths from one village, Dair Jarir, rampaged against Taybeh, a neighboring all-Christian village of 1,500 people.

The reason for the assault? A Muslim woman from Dair Jarir, Hiyam Ajaj, 23, fell in love with her Christian boss, Mehdi Khouriyye, owner of a tailor shop in Taybeh. The couple maintained a clandestine two-year affair and she became pregnant in about March 2005. When her family members learned of her condition, they murdered her. That was on about September 1; unsatisfied even with this "honor killing" – for Islamic law strictly forbids non-Muslim males to have sexual relations with Muslim females – the Ajaj men sought vengeance against Khouriyye and his family.

They took it two days later in an assault on Taybeh. The Ajajs and their friends broke into houses and stole furniture, jewelry, and electrical appliances. They threw Molotov cocktails at some buildings and poured kerosene on others, then torched them. The damage included at least 16 houses, some stores, a farm, and a gas station. The assailants vandalized cars, looted extensively, and destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary.

"It was like a war," one Taybeh resident told the Jerusalem Post. Hours passed before the Palestinian Authority security and fire services arrived. The 15 assailants spent only a few hours in police detention, then were released. As for Khouriyye, the Palestinian Arab police arrested him, kept him in jail, and (his family says) have repeatedly beat him.

Read the whole thing.

When the Palestinians aren't busy persecuting Christians, you can find them torching Jewish synagogues:

Thousands of celebrating Palestinians thronged through Neve Dekalim on early Monday just after Israeli soldiers withdrew, setting fire to a building that just last month served as a rabbinical college for Jewish settlers.

There were similar scenes throughout Gaza as Palestinians headed straight for empty synagogues Israel had decided to leave intact. The fires caused little structural damage in the fortress-like concrete and stone structures, but Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the buildings would be destroyed.

Flames shot skyward from the synagogue building in the isolated settlement of Morag in southern Gaza, minutes after Israeli soldiers left and hundreds of Palestinians stormed in.

"They (Israelis) destroyed our homes and our mosques," said a man who gave his name only as Abu Ahmed. "Today it is our turn to destroy theirs."

At Neve Dekalim, gunman from several militant factions stormed through the settlement, with some planting a flag from the ruling Fatah movement on the roof of the seminary as others set a fire inside.

Christians in a section of Lahore, Pakistan have fled due to one of their number being charged with blasphemy:

LAHORE: Some 50 Christian families have fled Waheed Park in Chungi Amer Sidhu fearing a backlash from the Muslim community after a Christian was arrested for alleged blasphemy.

Factory Area police registered a blasphemy case against Younis Masih, 40, on Saturday night after he allegedly made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) at a Qawali, arranged by another Christian, on Friday night. Following the incident, Younis was beaten up by local Christians who wanted him to apologise, and then by an angry mob of Muslims, but he refused to take back his comments, according to witnesses.

On Saturday night, some 200 protestors carrying sticks surrounded Factory Area police station demanding a case be registered against Younis, and refused to leave until they were shown copies of the FIR.

By Sunday, some 50 Christian families had fled the area.

Christians in the area beat up one of their own--out of fear that they would face a total pogrom. Which they probably would have. That fear and overreaction are called dhimmitude.

(thanks to JGEBGD)