Humanitarian Lord David Alton of Liverpool criticized a move to create an “Islamaphobia board” as a potential ploy leading to laws against blaspheming Islam in the United Kingdom.
India’s famed Emperor Ashoka was an ancient convert from Hinduism to Buddhism. He demonstrated that a person is NOT forced by others to convert from one religion to another. Today, “religious conversions are forced,” is the flawed premise of all anti-conversion laws of India. Who could have forced mighty Emperor Ashoka to change his religion? The Emperor’s famous religious conversion was his choice.
The situation for Iranian people is more dangerous now than before the recent war with Israel and the United States of America. Even more so for Christians who represent a growing minority religion in the staunchly Shia theocracy. Under threat, the ruling regime has increased its morality terror with brutal force.
In a perfect world, where legal systems hold political power to account and protect minorities against human rights abuses we might expect an end to persecution. But we do not live in a perfect world. People with power continue to act with impunity against those who think and live differently to them. Christians have a way to cope with this reality and a real and living hope for a future free of persecution.
New political winds are blowing with increasing force as the push-back against globalization grows with increasing nationalisms. The demand to pledge allegiance to something other than God in Christ will put renewed pressure on the Church and we need to be prepared to hold true to our faith. Here is a stern warning that Christians must take to heart.
Hardline Muslims in eastern Uganda on Feb. 15 beat and stabbed an evangelist after he and his team led a Muslim widow to Christ during open-air gospel preaching, sources said.
Church leaders and others in Pakistan lauded the producers and cast of a TV drama for risking their lives to broadcast an unprecedented, national media portrayal of the violent injustice resulting from blasphemy laws.
An 18-year-old Christian in Pakistan imprisoned for more than 17 months on blasphemy charges was expected to be released on bail next week, his lawyer said.
Seventy Christians were discovered beheaded inside a Protestant church in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu Province, according to reports, which say the victims had been kidnapped by suspected Allied Democratic Forces terrorists.
Christian converts from Islam are among migrants from countries hostile to Christianity who have been deported from the United States – initially to Panama, where they are isolated before possible deportation to their home countries, according to The New York Times.
A church active in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi Province for two years began facing unexpected opposition to proposed construction of a larger worship building this month, sources said.
The continent of Africa looks different depending on which calculations you choose to make a three dimensional reality into a two dimensional representation, and the choice is largely determined by who is in charge and what narrative they wish to portray. The African Union has decided it is time to take charge and give the world a better perception of the African continent. Jim Olang hopes this will help lift African confidence in the wider world.
