While the reason for this sharp rise, and its source, is generally ignored or obfuscated, here’s a clue as to what group is responsible for this:
Christians in Europe are not simply experiencing social discrimination, prejudice, or restrictions on freedom. Christians, including clergy, have been attacked or killed for their faith. As in previous years we have continued to see threats and attacks against Christian converts from Islam.
In Islam, the penalty for apostasy is death.
Western countries are increasingly resembling the countries from which their masses of migrants have come. The same hatred, Islamic supremacism, intolerance and violent persecution that was once seen largely in Africa and the Middle East has found a new home in countries that were once characterized by freedom and the rule of law.
Jews are facing the same plight from the same source, with a surge in violent Islamic antisemitism in Europe.
“Report: Anti-Christian Attacks in Europe Rose 285 Percent Since 2008,” by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, July 22, 2020:
ROME — The number of officially recorded anti-Christian incidents in Europe has risen by 285 percent between 2008 and 2019, according to Ellen Fantini, director of the Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe (OIDACE).
Speaking with the Catholic News Agency (CNA), Fantini said that the trend of increasing attacks is particularly noteworthy in France, such as the recent arson attack on the Nantes Cathedral, but is evident elsewhere as well.
Citing data provided to the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), anti-Christian crimes in the UK doubled from 2017 to 2018, Fantini said. “We know they are rising in Spain, Germany, and Sweden, as well.”
In its 2019 report, OIDACE chronicled the increase in Christian persecution throughout Europe, pointing to “a rise in the number of churches, Christian symbols, and cemeteries across Europe being vandalized, desecrated, and burned, compared to previous years.”
Moreover, the report states, across Europe, “Christians have been fired, sued, and even arrested for exercising their freedom of expression or conscience.”
“As we have noted in the past, Christians in Europe are not simply experiencing social discrimination, prejudice, or restrictions on freedom. Christians, including clergy, have been attacked or killed for their faith. As in previous years we have continued to see threats and attacks against Christian converts from Islam,” the report stated.
The 64-page report offered summary descriptions of more than 325 cases of intolerance and discrimination against Christians in Europe for the year 2018.
The report also cites the official annual crime statistics for 2018 provided by the French Interior Ministry, which included 1063 “anti-Christian acts” and showed that in the ten-year period from 2008 to 2018, there was an increase of some 250 percent in attacks on Christian sites.
Christian sites in Europe suffered a record number of attacks in the year 2019, with some 3,000 Christian churches, schools, cemeteries, and monuments vandalized, looted, or defaced.
Another report compiling the anti-Christian acts perpetrated during 2019 revealed a range of profanation including arson, defecation, desecration, looting, mockery, Satanism, theft, urination, and vandalism.
The greatest number of acts of violence against Christian sites occurred in France, where churches, schools, cemeteries, and monuments “are being vandalized, desecrated, and burned at an average rate of three per day,” according to reports.
According to Wednesday’s CNA report, the French Interior Ministry registered 996 anti-Christian acts in 2019 — an average of nearly three per day — while noting that the true figure may be higher, since officials do not count fires of undetermined cause at churches across the country.
Last month, arsonists set fire to the Saint-Pierre cathedral in Rennes but were thwarted by firefighters who arrived in time to put out the blaze before serious damage was done. The 15th-century Nantes cathedral was not so fortunate, suffering substantial damage….
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