Discovering Jesus through Asian eyes

Jesus through Asian eyes15 May 2014  |   Carey Lodge – Christian Today

The Evangelical Alliance has launched a new outreach programme specifically targeted at the UK’s growing Asian population.

‘Discovering Jesus through Asian eyes’ is aimed at presenting the Gospel in a way that addresses many of the issues and questions that Asian people may have about Christianity. It was trialled in churches last year before being officially launched this week in London.

Sanjay Rajo of Naujavan, a Christian organisation dedicated to serving 16-30 year-old Asians, said that until now there has been a real gap in the market for outreach designed for young British Asians.

“In the last forty years Asians came to the UK from overseas but now we are seeing more young people, who are born here, confused about their identity and hunger for something spiritual,” he explained.

“This course will attract a younger generation … such as university students and young professionals in their 20s and 30s, who are interested in going on a course a bit like Alpha or Christianity Explored, but with an Asian edge. It ticks that box and allows us to engage in a unique Asian British way, there is nothing else out there like it.

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New study: wealthy, better educated Muslims more likely to wage jihad

Robert Spencer – Jihad Watch

This study makes a statement that is absurd on its face when it says that “religious practice” plays no role in “violent radicalization,” when in reality we have seen time and time again that jihad terrorists are devout, observant Muslims who appeal to peaceful Muslims by invoking the Qur’an and the example of Muhammad and portraying themselves as the true Muslims. But nonetheless, this study debunks once again one of the core assumptions of the Washington foreign policy establishment: that poverty causes terrorism, and that therefore throwing money at the problem of jihad will make it go away.

“Risk factors for violent radicalization: youth, wealth and education,” from Medical News Today, March 21 (thanks to LA):

New research from Queen Mary University of London has found youth, wealth, and being in full-time education to be risk factors associated with violent radicalisation. Contrary to popular views – religious practice, health and social inequalities, discrimination, and political engagement showed no links.

The pioneering research assessed population prevalence of sympathies for terrorist acts – a key marker of vulnerability to violent radicalisation – and their relationship with commonly assumed causes of radicalisation. The community study surveyed over 600 men and women of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Muslim heritage in London and Bradford, aged 18-45.

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Why Are Christians the World’s Most Persecuted Group?

Why Are Christians the World’s Most Persecuted GroupRaymond Ibrahim – Frontpage Magazine

Why are Christians, as a new Pew report documents, the most persecuted religious group in the world?  And why is their persecution occurring primarily throughout the Islamic world?  (In the category on “Countries with Very High Government Restrictions on Religion,” Pew lists 24 countries—20 of which are Islamic and precisely where the overwhelming majority of “the world’s” Christians are actually being persecuted.)

The reason for this ubiquitous phenomenon of Muslim persecution of  Christians is threefold:

Christianity is the largest religion in the world.  There are Christians practically everywhere around the globe, including in much of the Muslim world.  Moreover, because much of the land that Islam seized was originally Christian—including the Middle East and North Africa, the region that is today known as the “Arab world”—Muslims everywhere are still confronted with vestiges of Christianity, for example, in Syria, where many ancient churches and monasteries are currently being destroyed by al-Qaeda linked, U.S. supported “freedom fighters.”  Similarly, in Egypt, where Alexandria was a major center of ancient Christianity before the 7th century Islamic invasions, there still remain at least 10 million Coptic Christians (though some put the number at much higher). Due to sheer numbers alone, then, indigenous Christians are much more visible and exposed to attack by Muslims than other religious groups throughout the Arab world.   Yet as CNS News puts it, “President Obama expressed hope that the ‘Arab Spring’ would give rise to greater religious freedom in North Africa and the Middle East, which has had the world’s highest level of hostility towards religion in every year since 2007, when Pew first began measuring it. However, the study finds that these regions actually experienced the largest increase in religious hostilities in 2012.”

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Allah’s Sword of Terror

Raymond Ibrahim of Frontpage Magazine

The first time I heard about Khalid bin al-Walid—the 7th century Muslim jihadi affectionately known in Islamic history as “The Sword of Allah”—was when I was in college researching for my MA thesis on the Battle of Yarmuk, when the Muslims, under Khalid’s generalship, defeated the Byzantines in 636, opening the way for the historic Islamic conquests.

Nearly a decade and a half later, Khalid, that jihadi par excellence, has come to personify a dichotomy for me—how the jihad is understood in the West and how it really is: officially, Western academia, media, and politicians portray it as defensive war to protect Muslim honor and territory; in reality, however, jihad is all too often little more than a byword to justify the most primitive and barbaric passions of its potential recruits and practitioners.

Based on the English language sources I perused in college, Khalid was a heroic, no-nonsense kind of jihadi—fierce but fair, stern but just.  He was the champion of the Apostasy Wars, when he slaughtered countless Arabs for trying to leave Islam after the death of Muhammad.

Modern day Muslims writing about Khalid—see for example Pakistani army lieutenant-general A.I Akram’s The Sword of Allah—had naught but praise for him, the scourge of infidels and apostates.

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Christians form human shield around church in ‘China’s Jerusalem’ after demolition threat

By Tom Phillips, Wenzhou – 04 Apr 2014

Thousands of Chinese Christians have mounted an extraordinary, round-the-clock defence of a church in a city known as the ‘Jerusalem of the East’ after Communist Party officials threatened to bulldoze their place of worship.

In an episode that underlines the fierce and long-standing friction between China’s officially atheist Communist Party and its rapidly growing Christian congregation, Bible-carrying believers this week flocked to the Sanjiang church in Wenzhou hoping to protect it from the bulldozers.

Their 24-hour guard began earlier this week when a demolition notice was plastered onto the newly-constructed church which worshippers say cost around 30 million yuan (£2.91 million) and almost six years to build.

Officials claimed the church had been built illegally and used red paint to daub the words: “Demolish” and “Illegal construction” onto its towering facade.

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“My name is Layla Murad. I left Islam in April 2013”

Here is a fascinating and illuminating exposition of the journey of a mind, as a young Muslim woman explores and examines Islam, and ultimately decides to leave it altogether.

Her exercise of her freedom of conscience in this way has placed her life in perpetual danger, thanks to Islam’s death penalty for apostasy — an outrage to human rights that is greeted only with indifference by the world “human rights community.”

“My Journey In and Out of Islam,” by Layla Murad at Desperately Seeking Paradise, December 28, 2013:

1. Introduction

My name is Layla Murad. I left Islam in April 2013.

I’ve always been intellectually curious. My story is a long one. A lot of my infatuation with Islam was to do with my inquisitive nature… and of course… the internet.

2. Background

I was brought up in a practising but liberal Muslim household. My parents are Pakistanis, both hailing from Muhajir families in Karachi. Even the most religious among the Muhajirs are often highly progressive and secular minded when it comes to politics and global affairs. My aunt in Pakistan, for example, who started wearing niq?b after the death of her paralysed daughter, has the same zeal for Farhat Hashmi (a popular female Wahhabi preacher) as she does for the secular, ethno-centric policies of the MQM.

Islam was not an obvious, nor a quietist force in my life. It was just there…I didn’t, nor did anyone else, think too much about it. My parents were the kind of people who would be willing to drop me to a nightclub and pick me up again. Yet, they attributed the good in life to the One God, prayed five times a day, fasted during the month of Ramadan, gave charity. I saw my dad make the Hajj. The Islam that had been passed on to me was the basics: the Five Pillars.

But this approach had always seemed bland. I wanted something more….

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Why the Media Doesn’t Cover Jihadist Attacks on Middle East Christians

By Raymond Ibrahim  March 21, 2014  The Torch (Christians United for Israel, Winter 2014)

“To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace”—Hebrews 6:6

The United Nations, Western governments, media, universities, and talking heads everywhere insist that Palestinians are suffering tremendous abuses from the state of Israel.  Conversely, the greatest human rights tragedy of our time—radical Muslim persecution of Christians, including in Palestinian controlled areas—is devotedly ignored.

The facts speak for themselves. Reliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations.

In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is. {except in Israel. DAS}

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Faith Rising in East, Setting in West? Europe and Christianity

Bestselling author Eric Metaxas address industry leaders at the National Religious Broadcasters dinner in Nashville, Tenn., on Sunday, March 3, 2013.By Eric Metaxas, Christian Post Contributor – February 1, 2014|

If I asked you to describe the state of Christianity in Europe, you’d probably answer “not good.” And there’d be ample reason to do so. Most of us are familiar with the depressing statistics regarding church attendance in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

But there is more to Europe than Britain, France, and Sweden. And in Central and Eastern Europe, a different story is being written.

This story was the subject of a recent First Things article by Filip Mazurczak. In it, Mazurczak reveals to readers what is going on in former communist societies such as Hungary and Croatia. For instance, while the European Union notoriously omitted any mention of Europe’s Christian heritage in the preamble to its constitution, Hungary’s new constitution “ties Christianity to Hungarian nationhood.”

By way of additional contrast to the secularized E.U., the document “defines marriage as the union of a man and woman, [and] speaks of the rights of unborn Hungarians.”

An even more encouraging story is unfolding in Croatia. In December, two-thirds of the population there voted to amend the constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. For a nation aspiring for E.U. membership, this definitely went against the grain.

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7-Year-Old Boy in India Tortured, Murdered for Christian Faith

 The son of a believer, Anmol went missing after attending Sunday school at a Believers Church on Nov. 17 in northern India. His body was found the following day. (11/27/2013 Taun Cortado – Charisma

The body of a 7-year-old boy in India retrieved from a pond last week revealed horrific details of torture before he was brutally murdered because of his Christian beliefs.

The son of a believer, Anmol went missing after attending Sunday school at a Believers Church on Nov. 17 in northern India. His body was found the following day. Previous threats and persecution of his family indicate he was targeted because of his family’s faith.

“The unprecedented torture and death of this innocent child sadden our hearts incredibly,” says K.P. Yohannan, Gospel for Asia founder and international director. “Persecution of Christians is a weekly occurrence, but this intensity of brutality against a child is unthinkable. In this horrible tragedy, we find strength and hope in Jesus.”

According to Yohannan, persecution of Christians has increased by more than 400 percent in the past few years.

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200,000 march for marriage in Taiwan protesting proposed same-sex ‘marriage’ law

200,000 march for marriage in Taiwan protesting proposed same-sex ‘marriage’ law

LifeSiteNews.com Life, Family and Culture News by Peter Baklinski – Dec 03, 2013 

TAIPEI, Taiwan, December 2, 2013 ( LifeSiteNews.com) – About  200,000 people marched in front of Taiwan’s Presidential Office on Saturday, according to organizers or the march. The crowd was protesting a proposed law that would allow same-sex couples to ‘marry’ and adopt

“God created human beings as male and female. Only the union of a man and a woman can create the next generation, and the ability to create offspring is an important function of a family,” said 40-year-old Ann Huang, who joined the rally with her friends,  reported  Focus Taiwan.

The protesters, consisting mainly of families with their children, held signs that read “Made by Daddy and Mommy”, “Defend Marriage”, and “Oppose Amendment to Civil Code Article 972”, the current law which holds that marriage is between a man and woman.

The event was organized by The Coalition for the Happiness of Our Next Generation.

“We worry that this alternative family formation idea will confuse children’s concepts on education and sexual identity,”  said Yu Yen-hung, one of the founders of the organization, to  The China Post. “Therefore, we decided to stand up and fight against this bill that will affect the next generation.”

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Will Graham Outreach Draws 12,000 People in “Non-Christian” Thailand

Teresa Neumann (Nov 15, 2013) "On of the key things I've tried not to do is bash other religions," he said. "I will make distinctions, at times, but I never…

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Bangladeshi Christians told to close church, convert to Islam

Published 03 October 2013  |  World Watch Monitor

A local government official in central Bangladesh has halted the construction of a church, forced Christians to worship at a mosque and threatened them with eviction from their village unless they renounce their faith.

The Tangail Evangelical Holiness Church in Bilbathuagani village, Tangail district, about 100 kilometres north of Dhaka, was created Sept. 8 by a group of about 25 Christians who had been meeting secretly for three years.

However, local council chairman Rafiqul Islam Faruk joined around 200 demonstrators September 13 to protest against the start of the building of the church.

The following day, the Christians were summoned to his office. More than 1,000 Muslims waited outside, following an announcement at all local mosques to gather at the chairman’s office.

Ordered to embrace Islam

Mokrom Ali, 32, told World Watch Monitor he was forced to accept Islam. (more…)

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A “Miracle” and Heroic Actions bring Hope out of Typhoon’s Desolation in the Philippines

Philippines TyphoonAimee Herd (Nov 12, 2013)TOPSHOTS A surivor walks among the debris of houses destroyed by Super Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban in the eastern Philippine island of Leyte on November 11, 2013. The United States, Australia and the United Nations mobilised emergency aid to the Philippines as the scale of the devastation unleashed by Super Typhoon Haiyan emerged on November 11. AFP PHOTO / NOEL CELISNOEL CELIS/AFP/Getty Images

(Central Philippines)—Some help is arriving for those devastated by last week’s Typhoon Haiyan which slammed the central islands of the Philippines, but more help is desperately needed. The huge storm tore apart whole cities and left at least 1,774 confirmed dead so far, though officials fear the death count could rise to around 10,000.

As survivors of Typhoon Haiyan wait and plead for assistance after being overwhelmed by the massive storm surge; accounts of heroism and a “miracle” baby’s birth bring a glimmer of hope into the horrendous scene.

According to the SkyNews report, 21-year-old Emily Ortega—also eight months pregnant—had evacuated to a shelter when the typhoon slammed into her city of Tacloban, flooding it.

Clinging to a post, Emily was able to survive the surging water, and eventually she reached “relative” safety in the airport, receiving help from a military doctor there. Emily told officials how eleven of her family members, including two daughters, had reportedly “vanished” in the storm, which may have triggered her labor.

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The war on Christians – The global persecution of Christians is the unreported catastrophe of our time

5 October 2013- The Spectator

Imagine if correspondents in late 1944 had reported the Battle of the Bulge, but without explaining that it was a turning point in the second world war. Or what if finance reporters had told the story of the AIG meltdown in 2008 without adding that it raised questions about derivatives and sub-prime mortgages that could augur a vast financial implosion?

Most people would say that journalists had failed to provide the proper context to understand the news. Yet that’s routinely what media outlets do when it comes to outbreaks of anti-Christian persecution around the world, which is why the global war on Christians remains the greatest story never told of the early 21st century.

In recent days, people around the world have been appalled by images of attacks on churches in Pakistan, where 85 people died when two suicide bombers rushed the Anglican All Saints Church in Peshawar, and in Kenya, where an assault on a Catholic church in Wajir left one dead and two injured.

Those atrocities are indeed appalling, but they cannot truly be understood without being seen as small pieces of a much larger narrative. Consider three points about the landscape of anti-Christian persecution today, as shocking as they are generally unknown. According to the International Society for Human Rights, a secular observatory based in Frankfurt, Germany, 80 per cent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians. Statistically speaking, that makes Christians by far the most persecuted religious body on the planet.

According to the Pew Forum, between 2006 and 2010 Christians faced some form of discrimination, either de jure or de facto, in a staggering total of 139 nations, which is almost three-quarters of all the countries on earth. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, an average of 100,000 Christians have been killed in what the centre calls a ‘situation of witness’ each year for the past decade. That works out to 11 Christians killed somewhere in the world every hour, seven days a week and 365 days a year, for reasons related to their faith.

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