This spread of ‘holy fascism’ is a disaster

Sunday 18 May 2014 – Patrick Cockburn

Earlier this month, Saudi liberal activist Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, 10 years in prison and a heavy fine for insulting Islam. In fact, his crime was to establish an online discussion forum where people were free to speak about religion and criticise religious scholars.

He had been charged with “apostasy” in 2012, because of his writings and for hosting discussion on his Saudi Arabian Liberals website, and was sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes but on appeal a heavier sentence was imposed.

Mr Badawi will appeal against the verdict, but it is complicated by the fact that his lawyer and brother-in-law, Waleed Abulkhair, is himself in jail. He was detained without explanation last month when on trial for damaging the image of the kingdom and breaking his allegiance to the king. Under Saudi Arabia’s harsh Sharia code, almost any critical word or deed makes a person liable to severe punishment.

Lashings and beheadings generally get little publicity except where a foreigner is involved. The local media is muzzled and foreign press for the most part excluded. This contrasts with the blanket coverage of the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, the al-Qa’ida type movement in northern Nigeria.

(more…)

Continue ReadingThis spread of ‘holy fascism’ is a disaster

RUAP Media Release: A selfless Federal Budget affects the selfish mind set We must think of our children and grandchildren – If not we might have to depend on Islamic Sharia Finance

Rise Up Australia PartyGeneral Immediate Media Release 27th May 2014

Today from his office in Melbourne the National President of RUAP, Daniel Nalliah, called on people in Australia not to be selfish but instead to be selfless.

He stated, “in the past 2 weeks I have been watching many protesting the Federal Budget. Let me ask you a question, ‘Why are you protesting against the budget??

Is it because you are being led by organised gangs in Universities and Unions? Is it the media hype? Is it because you are a member of the opposition (Labor or Greens, etc.)?

Or, is it simply because we are so selfish?’

One of Rise Up Australia Party’s election campaign policies was to ‘Keep Australia debt free’. So how can we do it, and more importantly why should we do it??

I took a good look at the federal budget over the past few days and realised, that this is quite a hard hitting budget for our back pocket, but it is worth paying the price in order to Keep Australia debt free. Unfortunately, we also have very short memories. Whenever Labor takes office they dole out large sums of money, which they have promised to give before elections, in order to get elected. Perhaps, we can call it a bribe. Then of course they do what they are very good at doing, guess what?? Run the country into debt.

The Coalition Government (Liberal & National) have a reputation of putting the country back in order by cleaning up the mess Labor & Greens have created. But this is hard work. It does not come with bags of lollies, or claps and cheers.

Well, the budget is hard hitting, but let’s be self-sacrificing and think of our children and grandchildren. Are you willing to pay the price now?? Or are you going to leave our country in a mess for them??

What is most interesting is the creeping in of Islamic Sharia Finance into the Western world. Today the West is in debt to the Middle East, in particular Saudi Arabia, which demands the promotion of Islam (the worst type of Islam known as Sunni / Wahhabism) in return for their petro dollars.

(more…)

Continue ReadingRUAP Media Release: A selfless Federal Budget affects the selfish mind set We must think of our children and grandchildren – If not we might have to depend on Islamic Sharia Finance

Saudi Arabian Sheiks Legally Importing Bibles

Saudi Arabian Sheiks Legally Importing BiblesBreaking Christian News – Mar 24, 2014

(Saudi Arabia)—The following is from a worker in the Middle East who wishes to remain anonymous:

For the last 30 years, people have smuggled Bibles into this Islamic country in the Arabian Peninsula in suitcases, been increasingly caught and deported and the Bibles destroyed. Six years ago, I decided that if I could make one contribution to the Gospel, I would import them legally.

I was a neighbor to some very powerful sheiks. As my Arabic steadily improved, I became more interesting to them. I would meet them regularly for conversation over tea. One of the sheiks, older than I am, invited me weekly to his house, as I was friends with his son and a cousin. They often asked my reason in living in the Arabian Peninsula. I operate a bona fide business providing services the locals cannot.

Love is patient

In conversation, as we talked about the Qur’an, I would mention the Injil (Gospel) and the position of the Bible in the Qur’an. It says that we should read the Torah, the Zabur (Psalms), the Injil—all of God’s books. So I challenged them to read the Injil, saying that we in fairness could not dialogue about them unless all of us have read them, as I would have an unfair advantage as the only one in our group to have done so. The Qur’an does not speak of only one volume; it is a multi-volume work. In my view, many Muslims have been disobedient to the Qur’an by not reading all of the volumes God has given us. In humility, as an outsider who has read all the books, I don’t want to enter into discussions until they also have read them.

(more…)

Continue ReadingSaudi Arabian Sheiks Legally Importing Bibles

Report: Entire Families Coming to Christ in Saudi Arabia

Greg Kernaghan/OM International

We’re hearing of women and whole families coming to Christ, which is significant. Normally we would know of individual men but, as the culture places such importance on the family unit, this is a major step forward.

One girl is writing hymns and posting them on the Internet. That was where she learned of Christ and has “met” workers, although she has yet to meet other Christians face to face. Two of her sisters also believe in Christ. A Bahraini across the country is gifted in playing local Arabic instruments. He puts her hymns to music and posts them on YouTube.

Media Makes a Difference

Another young girl came to Christ through media. When her parents found out, they were incensed and made attempts to marry her to a fanatical Muslim. People began to pray for her, and their prayers were answered when the wedding to this man was canceled. The family’s emotional abuse ceased, and her sister, having seen her bear up under suffering, has come to Christ.

One brother, Yazid*, was introduced to Christ through visions and dreams. Bored, he was surfing the Internet at work when the Holy Spirit spoke clearly to him to read the Injil and learn about Christ. He downloaded it and began to read the Scriptures. Every time he returned to his desk, God told him to read more. At first it was like a dark cloud, as he began at Genesis, but he read through until the Gospels when the darkness lifted and he understood.

(more…)

Continue ReadingReport: Entire Families Coming to Christ in Saudi Arabia

US should condemn Saudi Arabia religious abuses

Christian Today –  24 August 2013  |  Mark Caplin

The World Evangelical Alliance has said the US government must do more to hold Saudi Arabia to account on religious liberty.

Saudi Arabia has been on the US State Department’s Country of Particular Concern (CPC) list since 2004.  Countries on the list can be subject to economic sanctions but the WEA states in a new report that these have been waived in the case of Saudi Arabia since 2006.

The WEA suggests the US is having little impact in improving religious rights in the Wahhabi Sunni kingdom and points to the recent sentencing of cyber activist Raef Badawi to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for offending Islam and violating the kingdom’s cyber crime law.

Similar sentences this year include that handed to a Christian Lebanese man accused of helping a Saudi women convert to Christianity. The Saudi Gazette reported that he was sentenced to six years in prison and 300 lashes, and the daughter sentenced to six years and 300 lashes, although she reportedly fled to Sweden.

(more…)

Continue ReadingUS should condemn Saudi Arabia religious abuses

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.

(more…)

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