Nigerian schoolgirls: Girl who escaped Boko Haram abduction speaks publicly about ordeal

ABC (Australia) ^ | 5/12/2014 by nickcarraway

A teenage girl who managed to escape kidnapping by Islamist group Boko Haram during a night raid in Nigeria last month has spoken publicly about the ordeal, as international assistance to locate more than 200 girls still held hostage ramps up.

Militants stormed a secondary school in the village of Chibok, near the Cameroon border, on April 14 and abducted the girls, who were taking exams at the time.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, one of the girls, who asked not to be identified, said the kidnappers were loading the girls into seven lorries when she escaped.

“He said go and enter this car – a big lorry,” she said.

We ran and ran and we were gone. I feel afraid. The unidentified girl who escaped abduction. “They say OK – enter this lorry, we go. I say I will drop down.

“We run in the bush. We ran and ran and we were gone.

“I feel afraid.”

More than 200 girls are still being held hostage, and Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau says the group intends to sell the teenagers.

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Upcoming Election in India Brings Fear, Insecurity for Christians amid Unrelenting Persecution

NEW DELHI, March 31, 2014 (Morning Star News)

With a report showing Christians in India faced at least 151 attacks last year, predictions that a Hindu nationalist party will win a general election beginning in April are stoking fears of more violence.

The New Delhi-based Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), which released its “Partial List of Atrocities on the Indian Christian Community 2013” earlier this month, says the number of attacks could be much higher than the 151 recorded. The report comes days before India’s nine-phase parliamentary election, to be held April 7 to May 12.

Opinion polls point to a victory for the opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that ruled the country from 1998 to 2004. Its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat state, has been one of the most prominent icons of the Hindutva ideology, which sees India as a Hindu nation with religious minorities as second-class citizens. Modi has been banned from entering the United States since 2005 due to failure to prevent the massacre of more than 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, a year after he became the chief minister.

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Islamizing Britain’s Schools

April 1, 2014 by Bruce Bawer – Frontpage Mag

Real Muslims understand the critical importance of teaching the young. The critical importance, that is, of teaching them the “right” things and not teaching them the “wrong” things. The most important single element of stealth Islamization is the effort to convert Western schools from centers of secular education into hubs of Islamic indoctrination. Fortunately, there are plenty of dhimmi teachers and school administrators eager to help out, convinced that they’re serving the interests of multicultural peace and harmony. These days, for some reason, this form of dhimmitude seems to be most prevalent – and to take its acutest form – in England.

Take, for example, Lynn Small, headmistress of a state elementary school in Huntington, England, who last November wrote a letter to parents of fourth- and sixth-grade students warning that if they didn’t let their children attend an “Explore Islam” workshop at Staffordshire University, a “Racial Discrimination” note would be placed in the kids’ permanent records. Fortunately, parents kicked up a fuss, and the media took notice, and Small backtracked – kind of – while still insisting that since some of the school’s “pupils and teachers…belong to the Islam faith,” it was only “right for the children to understand and appreciate their faith as well as their own.”

Obviously, Small realized she’d miscalculated. Slightly. Apparently there were no repercussions for her. She still has her job, and there’s no indication that school authorities even put a note in her permanent record chiding her for making Stalinist-type threats against parents. No, her heart was plainly in the right place, as far as the British educational establishment is concerned – she just went about things the wrong way, confronting parents directly instead of taking a more crafty approach.

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Racial Discrimination Act 1975 – Submission from Rise Up Australia Party

Dear friends and family in Christ, You may click the following link to read the official submission from Rise Up Australia Party on the proposed amendments to the Racial Discrimination…

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When Christian Arabs Reach Muslims With the Gospel

Teams visit Syrian and Bedouin camps in Lebanon to bring aid and relief and to pray with those who have gone through crisis. Kathryn Berry OM International3/26/2014 OM International

Gathered in a home in Jordan, 15 local believers discussed the life-altering experience of Arab-to-Arab outreach. These were Jordanian Christians who had gone on outreach trips to Turkey and Lebanon.

As the conversation progressed, it became apparent each of them had experienced a profound shift in faith. For the first time in many of their lives, their eyes were opened to the spiritual need of their Muslim neighbors.

From Jordan

Jordan is 98 percent Muslim, leaving the minority Christian population noticeably weak and vulnerable. Despite living in a Muslim society, most of the Jordanian Christians who participated in the outreach had never been in a Muslim home, much less shared the gospel with a Muslim. Being outside their country to minister to Muslims opened their eyes to the need for ministry in their own country.

For many of the local believers, they came to understand the spiritual needs of Muslims by first addressing the physical needs of Syrian refugees. The tragic war in Syria has left millions of suffering families around the region. Jordan, along with other countries bordering Syria, has been flooded with refugees. Traveling to Lebanon and Turkey opened the Jordanian believers’ hearts to the plight of the refugees. Moreover, it helped them realize the spiritual need of the Muslims around them back home.

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Police in India Rebuke, File Case against Christians Fleeing Hindu Extremist Attack

Photo Pastor Tilas Bedia, left, with the family of his brother Chandra Bedia center Morning Star NewsNEW DELHI, March 26, 2014 (Morning Star News) – A police station official in India’s Jharkhand state this month reviled Christians who sought protection after Hindu extremists beat and threatened to kill them for refusing to convert to Hinduism, area church leaders said.

Accusing Christian leaders of forcible conversion, the Hindu extremists earlier this month attempted to forcibly convert several church members after disrupting a home worship service, beating them and parading them half-naked through the street, area pastor Rampath Nath told Morning Star News.

Police subsequently registered a case of forcible conversion against four Christians, he said.

Virender Singh, the police official at the station in Patratu Thana, Ramgarh District, verbally abused the Christians who fled their homes, rebuked them and sent them away without taking their complaint after the Hindu extremists beat them on two consecutive days, stripped off their clothes and chased them from Pali village, Nath said.

Some 10 Hindu extremists stormed into the March 4 worship meeting at the house of pastor Tilas Bedia at 7 p.m. and began beating the Christians, including the pastor’s 60-year-old mother, Christian leaders said.

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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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Israeli Christians say EU is ignoring ‘holocaust’ against believers in the Middle East

by Yaakov Levi, Israel National News-  March 24, 2014 - Posted in: Israel & the Middle East, News, Persecution Protesters gathered Sunday afternoon outside the embassy of the European Union in…

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Beauty from Ashes: Thousands of Syrians are Coming to Christ Reports Middle East Ministries Assisted by U.S. Non-Profit Christian Aid Mission

A Syrian refugee steps outside her makeshift housing. Syrian refugees are finding hope in the midst of suffering as they seek answers to their questions about Christ, the cross, and forgiveness.January 29, 2014 – CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (ANS)

Are the conversions real?

That was the question posed by Cynthia Finley, president of Christian Aid Mission, after staff received another round of encouraging, if not glowing, reports from Middle East ministries that stated “thousands” of Syrians have committed their hearts to Jesus Christ.

Christian Aid Mission is a U.S. non-profit organization that assists hundreds of ministries overseas that have tens of thousands of indigenous missionaries in the field. These ministries are currently engaging more than 1,000 unreached people groups in over 100 countries around the world. Christian Aid Mission is a 60-year-old organization and one of the first to support native missionary ministries overseas

Challenged to dig deeper, Christian Aid Mission staff contacted ministries they assist in the region, ministries that have invested wholeheartedly in outreach to war-weary Syrians through personal interaction.

Their gospel workers have done far more than hand out blankets and bags of groceries. They listened as a young widow with children described the day a stray bullet flew through their kitchen window in Syria and struck her husband in the head. They consoled a 15-year-old orphan and helped him find safe passage into Eastern Europe, where he can receive an education. Others have sat shivering with refugee families in their threadbare tents as they offered prayers for God to restore their once beautiful country.

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You must listen to this ABC radio interview as Ps Daniel debates prominent Muslim leader and Interfaith campaigner

Dear friends & family in Christ, You may click the following link to listen a very interesting debate on ABC Radio with John Cleary as Ps Daniel takes on prominent…

Continue ReadingYou must listen to this ABC radio interview as Ps Daniel debates prominent Muslim leader and Interfaith campaigner

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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China: Christianity’s sleeping giant

Praying For ChinaPraying For ChinaUC Observer | 02/17/2014 | By Alex Jürgen Thumm

Churches — both legal and illegal — are booming in China. Some view them as a welcome counterpoint to rampant materialism. Others see ghosts of a colonial past.

It was my last Sunday morning in China, my last chance to experience church in a Communist country where, as far as I could tell, Christianity was basically forbidden. It was 2011, and I had been in Beijing for five weeks to study Mandarin. In that time, I hadn’t seen a single cross, church or Bible. In fact, I read at customs that you couldn’t bring in more than four Bibles from abroad. I had no idea that I was in the third-largest Christian country in the world.

In Liangmaqiao, a Beijing neighbourhood that’s home to the foreign and the wealthy, I arrived at the 21st Century Hotel, where the Beijing International Christian Fellowship (BICF) holds services. The parking lot was full of Rolls-Royces and BMWs bearing Jesus-fish decals. At the building entrance, two parishioners acting as doorkeepers asked me for ID — by government order, only foreigners may attend church. I had forgotten my passport, so the doorkeepers made me sign a slip of paper attesting to my alien status.

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Where is Evangelical Outrage for the Persecuted Church?

Believers around the world are dying for their faith. Where's the evangelical groundswell for themBy CLG on December 30, 2013 –  Halee Gray Scott

Believers around the world are dying for their faith. Where’s the evangelical groundswell for them?

Swiftly on the heels of Christmas comes the feast of the Holy Innocents. On December 28, churches around the world commemorate the first Christian martyrs–those who lost their lives when King Herod ordered the execution of all males two and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. (Greek liturgy maintains that 14,000 boys were killed, while several medieval writers claimed 144,000. Given the small population of Bethlehem, most modern scholars agree the number to be closer to 20.)

We consider such atrocities relegated to the ancient past, a barbaric time of intemperate, megalomaniac rulers. In today’s enlightened era of diplomacy, such evil would not go unchecked.

And yet, Christians today are massacred on a far greater scale than from any edict issued from Herod. According to Open Doors, which provides support for Christians around the world, Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world today, with 100 people martyred for their faith each month. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reports that Christians suffer persecution, discrimination, and harassment in 133 countries–a full two-thirds of all countries worldwide.

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Despite Strong Prayer Movement, Indonesia’s Religious Freedom ‘In Peril’

The Batak Protestant Church near Jakarta was torn down in March 2013, just after being built. World Watch Monitor2/26/2014 World Watch Monitor

A new report paints a bleak picture of religious freedom in Indonesia.

Indonesia: Pluralism in Peril, which was launched at the U.K. Parliament Tuesday, says that in the world’s most populous Muslim nation (251 million, 86 percent Muslim), minority religious groups such as Christians are subject to “spiraling intolerance,” which threatens to destroy Indonesia’s erstwhile reputation as a place of inter-religious harmony.

The report, written by Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s East Asia team leader Benedict Rogers, says extremist ideology has spread nationwide; that local, provincial and national authorities have been guilty of inaction and complicity; and that the majority of Indonesia’s Muslims have failed to speak out against intolerance.

While stressing that he deeply admires all Indonesia’s achievements as a multi-faith society, Rogers says that as it approaches national elections this year, it is “crucial” that the new President, who in July will replace Susilo Bambang after a decade in office, steers the country back towards its roots as a pluralistic nation whose founding motto was “Unity in Diversity.”

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New York Times and politically correct Islamist hate

Slaughter_of_Christians17 February 2014 – Raymond Ibrahim

The New York Times has finally found a victim of Islamic aggression in Nigeria worth reporting on: homosexuals. In a big spread complete with pictures appearing last week, the NYT’s Adam Nossiter wrote “Wielding Whip and a Hard New Law, Nigeria Tries to ‘Sanitize’ Itself of Gays.”

While it’s all well and good to expose the persecution of any group, why does the NYT remain silent about the much more endemic and savage jihad to “sanitize” Nigeria of Christians—a jihad that has seen countless Christians butchered and countless churches destroyed?

A 2012 meeting of Nigerian church heads concluded that “the pattern of these killings [of Christians] does suggest to us a systematic ethnic and religious cleansing.”

Among other things in the group’s bid to cleanse the Muslim-majority north of all Christian presence, it has threatened to poison the food eaten by Christians and “to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women.” The group frequently storms areas where Christians and Muslims are intermingled—from villages to colleges—and singles the Christians out before slitting their throats.

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