Today, we get a rare inside look at what Christians have faced under Hamas rule in Gaza. One Christian who escaped the region tells CBN News that intimidation and religious pressure have reduced Gaza’s Christian community to just a few hundred people.
Naji grew up as a Christian in Gaza. He says Hamas changed life dramatically after seizing control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.
He told us, “They completely restructured how everyday Gazans thought. They pushed a whole new set of ideas through mosques, teachings, periodic sermons, and structured religious circles.”
This system also affected the way Gazans looked at Christians.
“Through these religious channels, people were taught to view non-Muslims through an Islamic lens, categorizing them as dhimmi. According to the Koran, they consider them ‘People of the Book’, infidels, destined to go to hell,” Naji explained.
“There have been cases when Christians were abducted. In one such case, a man fled to Cyprus after they forced him to convert to Islam on live TV. He didn’t want to be a Muslim, but he was under intense pressure,” Naji recalled.
He observed that Christians became increasingly seen not as fellow Palestinians, but as outsiders.
“They didn’t know what a Christian was,” he said. “All they heard about us was that we are related to the Crusaders, or that we ‘worship the cross.’ They didn’t grasp that we were Gazans just like them or fellow citizens of Gaza City. But no, for them, we’re merely guests.”
Recent reports indicate that years of war and extremism have led to a steep decline in Gaza’s Christian population, from several thousand to between three and four hundred.
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Another Christian, Ahad, told CBN News, “You are different, you are strange, you are weird, and they were subjected to bullying at school. Sometimes during their church services, people would stone the church,” he claimed. “It’s a very common practice for us as Christians living in the Middle East, whether we are in Syria and Lebanon, in Egypt, in Sudan. We have always suffered from these practices.”
Ahad grew up in Syria. He says the problem began long before October 7th, 2023, the day of the Hamas massacre and kidnappings.
We asked, “Would a Christian become what they call a dhimmi or like a second-class citizen?”
Ahad replied, “This is what they want us to be. You’re either a dhimmi, a second-class citizen that you accept being, that the Muslim is superior to you, or you cannot live. They tell us, they tell us in our faces.”
For Ahad, Gaza is part of a much larger story. Although Christianity began in the Middle East, in parts of the region, some of the world’s oldest Christian communities are shrinking. He fears that without greater attention, this will cause the Christian presence in biblical homeland to disappear.
“I think this should really ring a bell to all the Christians around the world,” he urged. “The area which witnessed the birth of Christianity is really going to become with no Christians.”
He gave us a direct message for Christians in the West.
“Listen to us,” he exhorted. “We exist over there. We are the one. Our ancestors are the one who brought Christianity to the whole world. And because of the sacrifice of the early Christian martyrs, Christianity became very well known all over the world and spread the Word of God all over the world. You cannot forget about us.”
Ahad sees a troubling trend spreading in Europe and the U.S.
He remarked, “I would say this culture of superiority and the culture of death, I would call it, is really coming from the Middle East to, to the Western countries. People are exploiting the democratic institutions in the West in order to organize themselves and to work to achieve unconstitutional goals. They want Muslim supremacy in the West and in Europe.”
He believes that should be a warning.
“You can tell that there is, like, an Islamic majority in a lot of European cities, even here in the US. And we as Christians of the Middle East who experienced what does it mean to live under Christians, under Muslim rule, Islamic rule. We always want to educate and tell what is it to be living under Islamic rule,” Ahad insisted.
For Naji, this means reminding the world that Gaza’s Christians are not foreigners. They are an ancient community trying to survive war, religious extremism, and discrimination in the land they have called home for generations.
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