Tag Archives: Christians

Artist works to preserve Christian heritage in Hamas-run Gaza

Christian artist and sculptor Naser Jeldha crafts a sculpture in his studio in Gaza City

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Only about 1,200 Christians remain in Gaza — only a tiny fraction of the population in a territory run by Hamas Islamists — but artist Naser Jeldha is doing what he can to preserve its Christian heritage through art.

In his studio in the heart of old Gaza, not far from a 5th century Orthodox church, Jeldha spends his days carving religious figurines, chiseling low-relief carvings of Biblical scenes and painting portraits of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the saints.

“My message is about my religion,” said the gray-bearded 57-year-old, a member of the Greek Orthodox community.

“I want to make it visual, I want to make people see it, not only to be kept as texts in church.”

As he works, steel-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose, Jeldha listens to Byzantine prayer music that echoes softly around the studio, creating an atmosphere from another era.

The walls are covered in his pictures, with more laid out on the arms of chairs and sofas, and others propped on a 150-year-old Russian piano in the corner. As well as painting and sculpture, Jeldha plays the accordion, piano and guitar.

In the run up to Christmas – celebrated on Jan. 7 in the Orthodox church – Jeldha is busy making pieces as gifts for friends and relatives.

While he has been an artist for 35 years, he does not display his works or offer them for sale. Instead, he presents them as gifts at weddings or events on the Christian calendar. He does, however, have plans for a public showing soon.

In the next two weeks, he is also hoping he will be one of about 800 Christians granted a permit by Israel to leave Gaza and travel to Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to attend prayer services in Jesus’s birthplace.

“We have applied for permits and if we get them I intend to travel with my family,” said Jeldha, who is determined to remain in Gaza despite the departure of many Christians over the last decade in the face of rising economic hardship.

While Gaza’s Christians generally enjoy good relations with their Muslim neighbors, there have been isolated attacks by hardline Salafist groups on Christian tombs and symbols.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza since 2006, is keen to ensure the Christian community feels safe and protected. Its leaders occasionally visit the heads of the three Gaza churches to build stronger relations.

Jeldha acknowledged that the economy was suffering, with the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, a move to pressure Hamas, limiting trade, driving up costs and causing despair.

Despite that, Jeldha, whose white front door is adorned with a small cross painted in blue, said he would never leave.

“I have lived in this neighborhood for 54 years. I have brotherly and wonderful relations with Muslims,” said the father of four. “Gaza is beautiful and I will not leave it…I do not feel I am a stranger here.”

(Writing by Nidal Almughrabi, Editing by Luke Baker and Angus MacSwan)

Artist works to preserve Christian heritage in Hamas-run Gaza

Christian artist Naser in Gaza

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Only about 1,200 Christians remain in Gaza — only a tiny fraction of the population in a territory run by Hamas Islamists — but artist Naser Jeldha is doing what he can to preserve its Christian heritage through art.

In his studio in the heart of old Gaza, not far from a 5th century Orthodox church, Jeldha spends his days carving religious figurines, chiseling low-relief carvings of Biblical scenes and painting portraits of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the saints.

“My message is about my religion,” said the gray-bearded 57-year-old, a member of the Greek Orthodox community.

“I want to make it visual, I want to make people see it, not only to be kept as texts in church.”

As he works, steel-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose, Jeldha listens to Byzantine prayer music that echoes softly around the studio, creating an atmosphere from another era.

The walls are covered in his pictures, with more laid out on the arms of chairs and sofas, and others propped on a 150-year-old Russian piano in the corner. As well as painting and sculpture, Jeldha plays the accordion, piano and guitar.

In the run up to Christmas – celebrated on Jan. 7 in the Orthodox church – Jeldha is busy making pieces as gifts for friends and relatives.

While he has been an artist for 35 years, he does not display his works or offer them for sale. Instead, he presents them as gifts at weddings or events on the Christian calendar. He does, however, have plans for a public showing soon.

In the next two weeks, he is also hoping he will be one of about 800 Christians granted a permit by Israel to leave Gaza and travel to Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to attend prayer services in Jesus’s birthplace.

“We have applied for permits and if we get them I intend to travel with my family,” said Jeldha, who is determined to remain in Gaza despite the departure of many Christians over the last decade in the face of rising economic hardship.

While Gaza’s Christians generally enjoy good relations with their Muslim neighbors, there have been isolated attacks by hardline Salafist groups on Christian tombs and symbols.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza since 2006, is keen to ensure the Christian community feels safe and protected. Its leaders occasionally visit the heads of the three Gaza churches to build stronger relations.

Jeldha acknowledged that the economy was suffering, with the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, a move to pressure Hamas, limiting trade, driving up costs and causing despair.

Despite that, Jeldha, whose white front door is adorned with a small cross painted in blue, said he would never leave.

“I have lived in this neighborhood for 54 years. I have brotherly and wonderful relations with Muslims,” said the father of four. “Gaza is beautiful and I will not leave it…I do not feel I am a stranger here.”

(Writing by Nidal Almughrabi, Editing by Luke Baker and Angus MacSwan)

Christian heritage ransacked as monastery retaken from Islamic State

Fighters from the "Kataeb Babylon", a group of Christian fighters who fight alongside the Hashd Shabi, Shi'ite fighters, gather at the Mar Behnam monastery after the town was recaptured from the Islamic State, in Ali Rash, southeast of Mosul, Iraq

By Stephen Kalin

KHIDIR ILYAS, Iraq (Reuters) – The history pages of Iraq’s Christian community lie in charred fragments on the floor of a fourth-century monastery near Mosul which Islamic State militants ransacked during a two-year occupation that ended over the weekend.

The jihadists at the Mar Behnam monastery burned a collection of books about Christian theology, scraped off inscriptions written in Syriac – the language used by Jesus – and demolished sculptures of the Virgin Mary and the monastery’s patron saint.

They removed the site’s crosses and tried to erase any mention of Behnam, the son of an Assyrian king who, according to popular legend, built the monastery as penance for killing both his children after they converted to Christianity.

“Their fundamental goal was to destroy Christian history and civilization in the Nineveh plains,” Duraid Elias, commander of the Babylon Brigades, a Christian militia that helped retake the site, told Reuters during a visit on Monday.

The Nineveh plains, a sprawling region north and east of Mosul, are a mosaic of ethnic and religious communities with roots dating back to ancient Mesopotamia.

The Sunni Muslim hardliners of Islamic State have targeted the adherents and religious sites of those minority groups across the area, which it seized in 2014 during a blitz across Iraq and neighboring Syria.

At the time, the group issued an ultimatum to Christians: pay a tax, convert to Islam, or die by the sword. Most fled toward the autonomous Kurdish region, including a few dozen monks who left Mar Behnam with only the clothes on their backs.

As a 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi forces now attempts to oust Islamic State from the city of Mosul, the scale of destruction in nearby Christian areas is gradually being documented.

The jihadists had converted Mar Behnam, Iraq’s largest monastery, into a headquarters for the Hisba — morality police, which enforced strict rules against such things as smoking, men shaving their beards and women baring their faces in public, according to Elias.

A sitting room had been turned into a medical clinic, and the monks’ bedrooms were used to hold transgressors. A remote corner of the complex was filled with dozens of satellite dishes the commander said had been confiscated from residents nearby.

Islamic State graffiti covers the monastery’s walls, including the group’s motto: “Remaining and expanding”. Another scrawl includes the date Dec. 24, 2014 – one of two Christmases the jihadists spent in control of the site.

Five weeks into Iraq’s long-awaited offensive to retake Mosul, which itself once had a sizeable Christian population, the city is nearly surrounded, but government forces have established only a small foothold in a few eastern districts.

Fighting has laid waste to entire towns and villages, while Islamic State booby-traps, including in and around the monastery, mean it could be months or even years before some residents can return home.

The Mar Behnam monastery is seen after the town was recaptured from the Islamic State, in Ali Rash, southeast of Mosul, Iraq

The Mar Behnam monastery is seen after the town was recaptured from the Islamic State, in Ali Rash, southeast of Mosul, Iraq November 21, 2016. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

EYE FOR AN EYE

The Baghdad-backed Babylon Brigades are the type of force that Iraq’s Western allies have pushed to participate in the Mosul campaign in an attempt to secure local support for the expected rollback of Islamic State.

The Christian fighters at Mar Behnam monastery on Monday wore an assortment of military uniforms, carried large wooden crosses in their pickup trucks and flew banners including, incongruously, flags used by Iraq’s powerful Shi’ite Muslim militias.

Many of the gunmen sported black headbands declaring devotion to Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and one had affixed a religious icon to his bulletproof vest, next to a hand grenade and two single bullets.

Elias, the commander, said his unit had fought alongside the Iraqi army to retake the monastery and the village of Khidir Ilyas where it is located. But the regular troops had since departed, leaving his men in apparent control of the area.

After showing Reuters around the site as gunfire rang out in the distance, he welcomed six new volunteers into the Babylon Brigades, issuing them with uniforms and weapons in exchange for a simple vow to protect the area.

His men, part of a dwindling population of Arab Christians across the Middle East, are driven by a desire to keep their community alive after Islamic State threatened to destroy it for good.

“We are proving to the world that Christians are not weak. We are stronger than they imagined,” said Elias.

He told Reuters his forces had so far demolished three or four homes thought to belong to Islamic State fighters in Khidir Ilyas to keep them from ever returning.

“There are others. We are going one by one: for every Christian house they blew up, we blow up a house next to it,” he said from atop the monastery, pointing out one such pair of buildings.

“This is war. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin; editing by Giles Elgood)

Eight suicide bombers target Lebanese Christian village

A general view of the Saint Elias church taken in the afternoon, before four suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the church after a series of suicide attacks in the village earlier in the day, in the Christian village of Qaa, Lebanon

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Eight suicide bombers attacked a Lebanese Christian village on Monday, killing five people and wounding dozens more, in the latest violent spillover of the five-year-old Syrian war into Lebanon.

Security sources said they believed Islamic State was responsible for the bombings in the village of Qaa on Lebanon’s border with Syria, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

A first wave of attacks involved four suicide bombers who struck after 4 a.m., killing five people, all civilians.

The first bomber blew himself up after being confronted by a resident, with the other three detonating their bombs one after the other as people arrived at the scene. The Lebanese army said four soldiers were among the wounded.

A second series of attacks, involving at least four bombers, took place in the evening as residents were preparing the funerals of those killed earlier. Two of the four bombers blew themselves up outside a church, security sources said. Nobody was killed. Medics put the number of injured at 15.

“It is clear from the pace of explosions that we have entered an episode from hell,” Wael Abu Faour, the health minister, told Reuters.

In comments to local media, the head of the Qaa local council urged residents to stay at home and shoot anyone suspicious. The provincial governor meanwhile imposed a curfew on Syrian refugees in the area.

Lebanese security services have been on heightened alert for militant attacks in recent weeks. Islamic State had urged its followers to launch attacks on “non-believers” during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began in early June.

Lebanon has been repeatedly jolted by militant attacks linked to the war in neighboring Syria, where the powerful Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah is fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday warned of a threat posed by militants based in the border area between Syria and Lebanon, saying they were still preparing car bombs in the area.

(Additional reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Tom Perry and Laila Bassam; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Egypt Muslims attack Christian woman, burn houses after affair rumor

CAIRO (Reuters) – Hundreds of Muslims have set fire to homes of Christians in southern Egypt and stripped a 70-year-old woman naked after rumors her Christian son had an affair with a Muslim woman, the local church and witnesses said.

The Christian man fled with his wife and children on May 19, said Ishak Ibrahim at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. His parents went to the police, fearing for their lives.

The next day, around 300 Muslim men set fire to and looted their house in the southern province of Minya and stripped the mother naked out on the street. They also set fire to and looted six other houses, eyewitnesses told Reuters.

“They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes. I was just as my mother gave birth to me and was screaming and crying,” the woman, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi condemned the attack in a statement on Thursday and ordered authorities to bring those behind it to justice. He also ordered local authorities and the military to rebuild all damaged properties within a month at state expense.

Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II called for calm and restraint in a statement on Thursday. He said he was pursuing the matter with Egyptian officials and that he had spoken to the woman and all those whose homes were attacked.

The woman accuses three Muslim men of stripping her and dragging her in front of her house, her lawyer Ehab Ramzi told Reuters.

Security sources said police arrested five men in connection with the incident and the public prosecutor had ordered their detention and the arrest of 18 others.

Ten members of parliament put forward a motion to cross-examine Interior Minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar over the incident.

Orthodox Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people, are the Middle East’s biggest Christian community. They have long complained of discrimination under successive Egyptian leaders.

(Reporting by Mohamed Abdellah and Ahmed Aboulenein; Additional reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Evangelical Vote Key In Election Wins

A report on election polling shows that many of the major victories by pro-life and pro-Christian candidates on Tuesday were a result of an increased turnout by evangelical voters.

Public Opinion Strategies found that nearly 1/3 of the total voters on election day said they were conservative Christians.

Ralph Reed of the Faith & Freedom Coalition said at a press conference it was no accident the turnout of people of faith made a difference at the polls in key races.

“The [evangelical] vote was critical in 2010, it was critical in 2012 and it was critical in 2014. If you look at where the Republican Party was on election night 2008 and you look at where it is today, without a muscular turnout of evangelical voters in these kinds of margins, it just simply does not happen,” Reed said. “Joni Ernst just does not beat Bruce Braley. David Perdue does not avoid a runoff in Georgia yesterday.”

Reed said that the election results from Tuesday should show conservative Christians that their vote matters on election day.

“Conservative voters of faith were the largest constituency in the electorate in 2014,” Reed said. “Their share of the electorate exceeded that of the African-American vote, Hispanic vote, and union vote combined. Religious conservative voters and the issues they care about are here to stay. They will be equally vital in 2016. Politicians of both parties ignore this constituency at their peril.”

North Korean Christians Say It’s Not World’s Worst Place For Christians

A ministry that works with Christians in North Korea says that those in that country who follow Christ do not believe that their country is the worst in the world for Christians.

The Reverend Eric Foley says that North Koreans actually embrace their sufferings as a means to show their love and dedication to Christ.

“If you are a Christian in a country where no Christians are suffering for Jesus you probably ought to be more concerned than if you are a Christian in a country where nearly every Christian is suffering for Jesus,” he said.  “Christians are ambassadors. If one truly understands one’s identity as an ambassador, one glories in that identity rather than grumbling about the country where one got posted.”

North Korea has been listed at number one on the Open Doors list most oppressive countries for Christians for the last 12 straight years.

North Korean Christians have told Open Doors that despite the persecution, God is moving strongly in their country.

“Of course God is at work! Of course prayers help. I am such a weak person. I hardly had any Bible knowledge, but God used me to explain the Gospel to others. Sometimes, God sent me on the road. I clothed my six-month-old baby, fastened him on the back and I walked for miles and miles and miles,” a refugee identified only as Hana told Open Doors.  “Until I saw some stranger and I knew this was the person I needed to talk to. Because of him or her God had sent me out on the road. I said what I needed to say and went home. Do you think that would be possible without God? Please, tell your friends that they need to continue to pray. God is answering their prayers.”

German Homeschool Family Given Permission To Stay

The Department of Homeland Security has stepped in and saved a Christian family from being deported to Germany where they likely would have lost custody of their children.

A spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Fox News that they were going to allow the Romeike family to remain in the United States despite efforts by the Obama administration to have them deported.

Just days after a federal judge ruled the administration could deny the family’s request for asylum based on the grounds they were being discriminated against in Germany because of their Christian beliefs, DHS said that they would use “prosecutorial discretion” and officially drop any actions to deport the family.

Germany forced all children to attend state-approved schools and prohibits the homeschooling of children in an attempt to keep religious groups from being able to teach their faith to their children.

The family had initially been given asylum in 2010 on religious grounds but the Obama administration appealed that decision and won when the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal on Monday.

Pope Calls For Charity In Lenten Message

In a Lenten message to the world, Pope Francis called for fair distribution of wealth and equal access to education and health care for the poor in the world.

He called on followers of Christ everywhere to make an effort to lessen “the poverty of our brothers.”

However, the Pope did not just focus on monetary poverty.  The Pope also had harsh words for Christians that he termed as suffering from “moral poverty” such as alcohol abuse, drug use, pornography and gambling.

The Pope said that those who are caught in alcohol or drug abuse, pornography or gambling are in “slavery to vice and sin” and said that “in such cases, moral destitution can be considered impending suicide.”

The Pope said that while Lent was “a fitting time for self-denial” he was tired of what he called superficial acts by Christians to try and show they were sacrificing something of benefit.

“Our consciences…need to be converted to justice, equality, simplicity and sharing,” The Pope said.

Christian Apologist Says Most Christians Unprepared To Defend Beliefs

A Christian apologist and university professor says that the church is in desperate need of churches who will prepare their members to address the tough questions about faith and God.

Dr. William Craig of the Talbot School of Theology says that Christians should be concerned about recent studies like the Pew survey that showed nearly 20 percent of Americans consider themselves “religious” but not affiliated with any religious group.

Dr. Craig alluded to social changes in the world that have removed the stigma of being an atheist and making them bolder in working to remove Christians from society and shouting down any Christian with hate speech when they defend the faith.

“I think that many Christians are intimidated because atheists are often very aggressive,” Dr. Craig told the Christian Post. “They will attack you personally, and they will do so in the name of reason and intellectual arguments. And many Christians feel utterly unprepared to give a defense of what they believe, and feel unprepared to answer the tough questions that their unbelieving friends will put to them.”

Dr. Craig has defended the faith in many venues with atheists and noted atheist author Richard Dawkins continues to be afraid to debate Dr. Craig in a one-on-one setting. Atheist author Sam Harris said in a recent article Dr. Craig has “put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists.”