
A Christian father nearly killed twice by Islamist extremists now celebrates Christmas in safety, exposing a persecution crisis global elites worked hard to ignore.
Story Highlights
- A Christian survivor of two Islamist assassination attempts has finally found refuge in Canada in time for Christmas.
- His journey reflects a broader pattern of Christian persecution by ISIS and other jihadist groups across the Middle East and Africa.
- Canada’s private‑sponsorship system can offer real sanctuary, but Western governments long downplayed faith‑based persecution.
- Trump’s renewed focus on religious freedom stands in stark contrast to years of globalist silence and woke distraction.
From Near Execution To A Quiet Christmas In Canada
Michael’s story begins in a region where Christians have been systematically targeted by Islamist militants, forced to choose between conversion, crippling “protection” taxes, or death. He survived two separate murder attempts, including an attack outside his church and later a night raid on his family home. Each time, neighbors found him bleeding but alive, a reality many Western media would reduce to a statistic. For Michael’s children, every Sunday service felt like walking into a war zone.
After the second attempt on his life, Michael joined the millions of displaced Christians pushed from ancestral homes once central to Middle Eastern civilization. His family fled first to a nearby city, then across a border, joining other believers crowding makeshift shelters and UN registration centers. In those camps, his children heard stories of churches bombed, relatives kidnapped, and believers executed on video. For years, Christmas meant plastic tents, ration lines, and constant fear of being discovered again.
Global Christian Persecution That Elites Prefer Not To See
Michael’s ordeal is one face of a much larger reality: hundreds of millions of Christians now live under high levels of persecution or discrimination for their faith in countries dominated or destabilized by Islamist movements. Detailed reports document how ISIS and affiliated jihadist groups carried out mass murder, forced conversions, sexual slavery, and the destruction of churches, hollowing out Christian communities from Iraq to Syria and beyond. In some places, historic Christian populations have crashed by more than ninety percent in barely a decade.
Analysts now speak bluntly of Christians “disappearing” from parts of the Middle East, where they lived centuries before Islam existed. Demographic data show Christian populations shrinking across the broader region as believers flee violence, blasphemy laws, and relentless social hostility. Yet for years, Western institutions wrapped this crisis in sterile language about “sectarian conflict,” avoiding honest discussion of Islamist ideology, failed governments, and the price ordinary families pay. Michael’s near‑execution twice over stands as a rebuke to that sanitized, globalist framing.
How Canadian Refuge And Western Policy Collide
Michael’s eventual resettlement to Canada came through the slow machinery of refugee processing, aided by Christian advocacy groups and local sponsors willing to vouch for his family. Canada has long presented itself as a haven for the persecuted, but the reality is complicated. Caseworkers juggle competing priorities while officials rarely admit that targeted Christians from Islamist‑dominated zones often face unique risks. Only persistent documentation from religious‑freedom organizations kept Michael’s file from getting lost in bureaucratic fog.
His first Canadian Christmas looks ordinary from the outside: a small apartment, a borrowed tree, a local church offering hugs instead of hiding places. Yet behind that simplicity lies a moral contrast. In his homeland, Islamist gunmen treated his faith as a capital crime; in Canada, he can attend a Christmas Eve service without scanning every doorway for assassins. That basic freedom is what many Americans fear losing as old elites flirt with speech codes, soft blasphemy norms, and restrictions on traditional religious expression.
For American conservatives watching from across the border, Michael’s journey raises hard questions. Why did it take years of documentation, advocacy, and private sponsorship to move a clearly persecuted Christian to safety, while past globalist governments seemed far quicker to wave through migrants without serious vetting? Why did international bodies and legacy media bury the specifically Christian character of this persecution behind vague rhetoric about “extremism,” even as worshippers were gunned down in pews?
What This Means For Trump’s America And Its Values
Under President Trump’s renewed leadership, Washington has again put religious freedom and border security back into the same conversation. Recognizing Christian persecution in Muslim‑majority or jihadist‑infiltrated states is not “Islamophobic”; it is moral clarity grounded in documented facts. When policymakers name the problem honestly, they can prioritize genuinely endangered families like Michael’s while closing the door to bad actors who exploit chaos and lax screening to spread violence into the West.
For Trump‑supporting readers who have endured years of woke lectures, open‑border propaganda, and media gaslighting, Michael’s first peaceful Christmas offers both warning and encouragement. It warns that unchecked Islamist extremism and weak Western leadership can erase ancient Christian communities in a single generation. It encourages because one principled policy shift, one vigilant church, and one determined sponsor group can still save a family and preserve the freedom to worship that our Constitution enshrines and our opponents so often take for granted.
Sources:
Persecution of Christians by the Islamic State
Christian Population in MENA is Shrinking Due to Religious Disaffiliation
Are Christians the Most Persecuted Religious Group Worldwide?
Open Doors World Watch List – Persecution by Country
Open Doors US – Persecution Countries Overview
H.Res.594 – Condemning the persecution of Christians in Muslim‑majority countries
Shocking Statistics on Christian Persecution
Christian Persecution 2025: Countries Where Faith Costs the Most
Are Christians Disappearing from the Middle East?










