A pregnant Christian woman in Sudan has been sentenced to 100 lashes and then death for adultery and apostasy.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, 27, had been working as a doctor at the time she was seized by government officials. The graduate of Khartoum University has been a Christian her entire life and married a Christian man from South Sudan.
However, because Sudan is largely Muslim and controlled by Islamists, Ibrahim was considered Muslim by the government regardless of what she said was her faith. Therefore, they said her marriage to the Christian man was invalid and her having his child is adultery and apostasy.
“We grieve today at the sentencing to death of a mother, pregnant with her second child, for the expression of her faith and legal marriage to a practicing Christian,” said International Christian Concern Regional Manager William Stark.
“The handing down of such an extreme punishment under a law inspired by the al-Turabi radicalism of the early al-Bashir regime brings into question the direction Sudan intends to head following South Sudanese succession. Having embraced policies of Islamization and Arabization in the past, ICC fears Meriam could be the first of many more Christians to suffer under an increasingly radicalized Sudanese government intent on enforcing Sharia law throughout the land.”
The international director of the Barnabas Fund said that anti-Christianism in Sudan is increasing to the point women are being picked up off the street and beaten by authorities if they do not meet Sharia guidelines for dress even if they are not Muslims.
Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has released a video where they offer to release some of the girls they kidnapped in return for terrorists behind held in Nigerian prisons.
Terrorist leader Abubakar Shekau says in the 17-minute video that he will only release the girls that have not “submitted” to the terrorists, which from the video implies they have converted to Islam and are serving as slaves to the terrorists.
“The girls, these girls you occupy yourself with…we have indeed liberated them,” Shekau said. “These girls have become Muslims. We will never release them until after you release our brethren. Here I mean those girls who have not submitted.”
The international search for the kidnapped girls is now increasing in speed as teams from the United States and Great Britain arrive in Nigeria. The international effort is very diverse with countries as small as Israel sending in special forces units to help try to find and save the girls.
The head of terrorist group Al Qaeda is calling on members worldwide to kidnap Americans to use for bargaining chips for the release of Muslim terrorists.
Ayman al-Zawahiri told the As-Sahab news service that Muslims should kidnap Westerners, especially Americans, so that they can be exchanged for what he called “captives” in Western prisons.
Al-Zawahiri spoke specifically of Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the “blind sheikh”, that is serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.
“I ask Allah the Glorious to help us set free Dr. Omar Abdel-Rahman and the rest of the captive Muslims,” al-Zawahiri said, “and I ask Allah to help us capture from among the Americans and the Westerners to enable us to exchange them for our captives.”
Al-Zawahiri also called on warring Muslim factions in Syria to come together in unity to overthrow the “criminal al-Assad regime.”
The controversy surrounding a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee is having a surprise impact on the church next door.
Pastor Dan Watts of Grace Baptist Church says that attendance has tripled and weekly giving has doubled since the construction of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro began in 2011.
Watts says that his church has been active in trying to reach out to the Arab Christians in the community who have been feeling pressured because of the controversy surrounding the mosque. He said that the Arabic Evangelical Church, which Grace Baptist allows to meet on their campus, has been a safe place for Arab Christians and even some of the neighboring Muslims who are curious about Christ.
The church has also been very vocal about their faith and has built over a dozen large crosses on their property as a statement of how they feel about their faith in Christ.
Murfreesboro, a town of 100,000 residents, has a population that is roughly 25% Muslim. Many of the residents are Somalian or Kurdish refugees who fled Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War.
Young Christian women in Egypt are being abducted, tortured, raped and forced to convert to Islam in record numbers.
The report from International Christian Concern says that since the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, it has been open season on Christian girls by the Muslim population of the country. At least 500 confirmed cases of kidnapped Christian girls being forced into Islamic marriages have been reported and many other incidents have not been confirmed.
The ICC reports that Christian girls who resist and refuse to convert to Islam are then brutally killed including being thrown off buildings by their captors.
An ICC spokesman told Fox News that the government is doing more than turning a blind eye.
“Not only are they turning a blind eye, they are often compliant,” Issac Six said. “It’s pervasive; police at the local level are not stopping the abductions. There needs to be more pressure from the top. We have seen cases before where we’ve seen victims returned when the police put pressure on the kidnappers. We know it’s possible, unfortunately, the police are often complacent.”
The actions are reportedly being taken by radical Islamists connected to the Muslim Brotherhood who are angry they have been thrown out of power in the country.
The lawyers of a Christian couple accused of sending text messages insulting the prophet Mohammed released a new development.
The couple is illiterate.
The court and those connected with the conviction of Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar have not been able to say how a couple that cannot read or write could be sending text messages. They were basically convicted on the word of one Muslim mosque leader who had been trying to take the couple’s property.
A local Christian leader said incidents like this are increasing in the region.
“We are seriously concerned. Cases like these are common and cause great suffering. We continue to pray, while the issue remains unresolved,” Fr. Aloysius Roy, Superior of the Pakistani province of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, said in the Christian Post. “We express our solidarity, but Christians keep a low profile, because life is full of difficulties and dangers, and for us the first commandment is to survive. Christians are afraid and they move with extreme caution.”
Lawyers for the couple say they not only will use the couple’s illiteracy as the basic for the appeal but also to appeal to the international community.
A church in upstate New York that once held designation as a historical landmark will now be stripped of that designation and have the crosses on the building ripped down so that a Muslim group can turn the building into a mosque.
The Syracuse History Preservation Board has given permission to the Muslim-driven North Side Learning Center to destroy six crosses that were placed at the top of the century-old building.
German immigrants seeking freedom of worship built the church.
The Catholic Church closed the church in 2010 because of decreasing attendance, merging the congregation with another parish. The building still had been designated as a historic landmark by the city after the closure.
A spokesman for the city said that the city did not have an opinion on the loss of the historic status for the building, saying that they wouldn’t stop the destruction of the crosses because it would inhibit the worship of the Muslims.
A Christian man has been sentenced to death after a Muslim man claimed he insulted the Prophet Mohammed.
Islamic officials seized the man last year after a Muslim mob burned down the homes and fields of Christians because of the alleged slight. Over 3,000 men went through the streets of the area called Joseph Colony attacking Christians.
The Christians in the region say that the man never actually insulted anyone but rather the Muslim man in question had been trying to take over the Christian’s land and when he wouldn’t sell made the accusation of blasphemy.
“In Pakistan even being accused of blasphemy is equivalent to being sentenced,” Xavier William, president of the Christian group Life for All Pakistan said. “The blasphemy laws in Pakistan are used to settle personal vendettas.”
Amnesty International and other international aid groups are calling for the Christian man to be freed and for the Muslims who beat Christians and burned their homes to be tried for their crimes.
In a first of its kind collaboration, leaders of the Christian and Muslim faiths are banding together to take a stand against slavery.
The new Global Freedom Network has the support of Pope Francis & the Vatican, the Church of England and al-Azhar, the Cairo based center of Sunni Muslim learning. It’s the first time the leaders of all three major religious groups have worked together with a single goal.
The GFN says that over 30 million people around the world are trapped in slavery and Pope Francis said it was a “crime against humanity.”
The group has vowed to make sure no organization under its control has tied to slavery-related business or groups and they will press governments to work to eradicate slavery within their borders.
“We are struggling against evil in secret places and in deeply entrenched networks of malice and cruelty,” said Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
The Global Freedom Network will be coordinated by Australian based anti-trafficking charity Walk Free Foundation.
A report says the National Security Agency has been tracking the website use of anyone they consider having a “radical view” with the intent of releasing the information to discredit them.
A document released by fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden shows the agency tracking two Muslims with “radical beliefs” and marking websites they visited that are not in line with strict Islamic teachings.
Online privacy advocates Privacy International said the revelations from Snowden of the NSA’s activities should cause major concern.
“This is not the first time we’ve seen [United] States use intimate and private information of an individual who holds views the government doesn’t agree with, and exploit this information to undermine an individual’s message,” the group said in a statement to the BBC.
None of the men listed in the report as being tracked by the NSA were accused of being directly involved in terrorism or with a terrorist group.
