A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:
Random Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum – Better off without you
CIFWatch – What the Guardian won’t report: Christians in Iran, Syria face rising persecution
Religion and the Media – Religion = Religious Affiliation?
ListVerse – Top 10 Suicidal Writers
Francis Sedgemore – Nutter on mushrooms
A Minor Friar – The Indifference Within
It beggars belief that while OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference] members insist they are the epitome of tolerance and shine at the zenith of global religious liberty, the reality is that they are the most intolerant of Christians and Christianity, and the suffering and despair they inflict places them at the nadir of humanity.
A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:
pmphillips’s posterous – The Way of Death is paved with…
Left Foot Forward – 2012 – the year the world must wake up to Christian persecution
NewScientist – The hard way: Our odd desire to do it ourselves
Trinitarian Dance – Dealing with personal sin is like extracting an ingrown toenail.
USAToday – The God effect: ambition drops with temptation
Linen on the Hedgerow – Be Gay friendly – or go to jail!
Science and Religion Today – How Can You Tell How Humble Someone Is?
Cranmer – The quest for the elusive ‘Conservative Particle’ in the Coalition Collider
Christian medical Comment – Lessons from Stephen Hawking and Kathryn Higham about assisted suicide
News broke late last night of eight Christians gunned down in a church in northeastern Nigeria. This follows hot on the heels of the Christmas Day church bombings in which nearly thirty Christians were killed.
It is widely suspected that Islamic extremist group Boko Haram are behind these attacks and it is no coincidence that last nights shooting took place a few days after an ultimatum Boko Haram issued giving Christians three days to leave Northern Nigeria.
In response to this upsurge in violence the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency.
You might be interested to read a short article on this over on Christian Today, which I found informative and addresses the standard mainstream media narrative that this is all just ‘religious tensions’, with everybody behaving as badly as everybody else.
This region is in desperate need of our prayers.
Just as a quick reminder the Egyptian Christian Copts will not be celebrating Christmas unti the 7th Jan and it was on that same night last year, that a drive-by gunman blew away 6 Copts leaving the midnight Mass service.
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) said in its Wednesday statement that it will send a high-profile delegation led by Dr. Mahmoud Ezzat, Vice Chairman of the MB, to convey their wishes and greetings to the Christians for Christmas in the New Year.
Moreover, MB called on SCAF and Police to protect the churches just as it had protected the polling stations during the elections. “We are prepared to cooperate with the authorities and form a neighbourhood watch and popular committee from the MB members to help protect the churches”, the statement read.
Boko Haram, which wants to impose Islamic sharia law across a country of 160 million split roughly between Christians and Muslims, has increased the sophistication of the explosives it uses this year and has increased the number of its attacks.
St Theresa’s Catholic Church in Madala, an Abuja satellite town about 40 km from the center of the capital, was packed when the bomb exploded just outside.
“We were in the church with my family when we heard the explosion. I just ran out,” Timothy Onyekwere told Reuters. “Now I don’t even know where my children or my wife are. I don’t know how many were killed but there were many dead.”
[.....]
Hours after the first bomb, blasts were reported at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church in the central, ethnically and religiously mixed town of Jos, and at a church in northern Yobe state at the town of Gadaka. Residents said many were wounded in Gadaka, but there were no further details.
A Reuters reporter on the scene of the explosion close to Abuja saw the church’s front roof had been destroyed in the blast, as had several houses near it. Five burnt out cars were still smoldering.
“The officials who counted told me they have picked 27 bodies so far,” Father Christopher Barde, Assistant Catholic Priest of the church, said.
There were scenes of chaos after the incident.
“Mass just ended and people were rushing out of the church and suddenly I heard a loud sound ‘gbam’. Cars were in flames and bodies littered everywhere,” Nnana Nwachukwu told Reuters.
“The blast occurred on the road by the church and not inside the church. I happen to also live close by the church. Help was very slow in coming to the injured.”
The later blast in Jos, a tinderbox of ethnic and sectarian tensions that sometimes sees deadly clashes between Muslims and Christians, was accompanied by a shooting spree by militants, who exchanged fire with local police, said Charles Ezeocha, special taskforce spokesman for Jos.
More over at the BBC and the AFP
We must continue to remember and pray for our beleaguered brothers and sisters around the world at this sensitive time:
IRAQ’s Christians will spend Christmas in “great fear” according one of the country’s leading bishops.
Archbishop Louis Sako, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Kirkuk, northern Iraq, told Aid to the Church in Need that Christians are scared of fresh attacks.
He said that it will not be possible to hold Midnight Mass because of the high security risk – all services over the festive period will be held in daylight – and Christians will not display Christmas decorations outside their homes.
Speaking to the Catholic news agency Asianews he said: “Midnight Christmas Mass has been cancelled in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk as a consequence of the never-ending assassinations of Christians and the attack against Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cathedral on 31st October, which killed 57 people.”
However, as I pointed out in a previous post, the ONLY place in the Middle East where the Christian population has grown since the end of WWII is Israel, and the flight of Christians from Palestinian controlled areas, such as Bethlehem, is primarily the result of persecution by the majority Muslim population.
This is super news folks.
On Monday, for the first time in more than a decade, the U.N. General Assembly condemned religious intolerance without urging states to outlaw “defamation of religion”.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – comprising 57 Islamic nations – have been trying for years to introduce a ‘Defemation of Religion” UN resolution. This would have only favoured Islam, violated free speech, and ushered in a dangerous global blasphemy law.
I think we have all seen how blasphemy laws are used in some Islamic nations to terrify, subjugate, imprison, and in some cases, murder religious minority groups.
I’ve blogged about the “defamation of religions” many times in the past; most recently: here, here and here.
The resolution approved on Monday declares that “discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief constitutes a violation of human rights.” It also expressed concern about the incitement to religious hatred and the failure of some states “to combat this burgeoning trend.”
The General Assembly adopted the resolution by consensus without a vote. The versions passed in previous years had enjoyed increasingly less support in assembly votes due to Western and Latin American opposition to the “defamation” idea. The resolution barely received a majority of yes votes in 2010.
The New York-based rights group Human Rights First welcomed the resolution prior to its adoption, describing the new version as “a decisive break from the polarizing focus in the past on defamation of religions.”
“Governments should now focus on concrete measures to fight religiously motivated violence, discrimination and other forms of intolerance, while recognizing the importance of freedom of expression,” Human Rights First’s Tad Stahnke said.
Earlier this year Western countries and their Latin American allies joined Muslim and African states in backing a new approach that switched the focus from protecting beliefs to protecting believers. That new approach led to Monday’s resolution.
So, the end of the Iraq war has been announced.
In the years since the operation began to ‘liberate’ Iraq an estimated 2,000 Christians have been murdered. Examples include:
3-year-old Adam murdered in a church
A 2 month old infant kidnapped, beheaded, roasted and returned to its parents on a bed of rice
14 year old Ayad Tariq decapitated because he is a “dirty Christian sinner”
A 14 year old boy crucified in his own village in Mosul
Dozens massacred in a Mass service celebrated in the Syrian Catholic Church of Our Lady of Deliverance in Baghdad
70 churches have been attacked or bombed since June, 2004: 43 in Baghdad, 19 in Mosul, 7 in Kirkuk and 1 in Ramadi.
The UN reports that although Christians comprise less than 5% of Iraq’s population, they make up nearly 40% of the refugees fleeing Iraq. More than 50% of Iraqi Christians have already left the country. In 1987, the last Iraqi census counted 1.4 million Christians, but as the war radicalized Islamic sensibilities, Christian numbers have slumped to around 500,000.
Was it worth it?
