Pakistan’s government won’t abolish blasphemy law because it “fears the reaction of extremists”

June 25, 2015 By Robert Spencer – Jihad Watch

All over the world, the principle is being reinforced: terrorism works. To get what you want, threaten violence, and the “free world” will jump to comply with your wishes.

And Archbishop Coutts’ brother bishops in the U.S. are pursuing an illusory and self-defeating “dialogue” even to the extent of silencing those voices that speak honestly about the root causes of the Muslim persecution of Christians. They are heading the Church in the West off a cliff, and will bear the responsibility for that.

“Pakistan’s ‘fear of extremists’ prevents abolition of blasphemy law,” by Felipe Avillez and Abigail Frymann Rouch, The Tablet, June 24, 2015:

The Government of Pakistan might be willing to abolish the country’s draconian blasphemy law, if it were not for the fact that it “fears the reaction of extremists”, the President of the Pakistani Bishops’ Conference said.

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Rifqa Bary details transformation from Islam to Christianity

By JoAnne Viviano – The Columbus Dispatch – May 19, 2015

A woman who said she feared for her life after she converted from Islam to Christianity as an Ohio teenager has written a book through which she hopes to inspire girls and women who are desperate for freedom.

Rifqa Bary, 22, gained national attention in 2009 when she ran away from her northeast Columbus home to Florida, saying her father had threatened to kill her.

The book Hiding in the Light: Why I Risked Everything to Leave Islam and Follow Jesus tells her story. It was released on Tuesday by the WaterBrook Press division of Penguin Random House.

“Writing this book was so painful. I wept so much reliving everything again, and my hope is to save others who read it, to shed hope and light, and that it would cause other people to see that you can leave, that there is hope,” Bary, an evangelical Christian, said on Tuesday in a telephone interview.

“Even though I’ve had so much loss in my life, I’ve experienced more joy and love than I ever dreamed of, and I found that to be in my faith in Jesus Christ.”

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SIGNIFICANT IMPACT OF A FATHER HAS ON OUR HEALTH

The Significant Impact A Father Has On Our HealthView May 2015 Issue >> Joy

Latest medical research is tracing 87-95% of diseases back to “toxic mind-sets” upstream in our thought life, which come from a relationship breakdown on the following three levels:

  • A relationship breakdown with God – for example not being able to receive His love
  • A breakdown in relationship with yourself – for example a low self-esteem, guilt, shame, condemnation and self-hatred
  • A breakdown in relationship with others – for example hatred, bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, criticism, fault-finding, jealousy, envy and strife.

The key to healing is love
To recover from 95% of diseases, it is necessary to deal with the toxic-mindsets that cause them. Therefore the process of healing involves restoration in these three areas whereby you come back into a love relationship with God, yourself and others. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And the second greatest commandment is like it – love your neighbour as you do yourself. Upon this depends all the Law and the prophets” Matt 22:36-40.

So Jesus said, “What it is all about is loving God, loving yourself and loving others.” This is true, even in the area of healing! The key to divine health in one word is “love”! Because when you have a wholesome love relationship with God, yourself and others, you won’t have any of the toxic mindsets that cause disease!

The role of the father

Just as you cannot pour water into a glass from an empty jug – you cannot give out love to others if you don’t have it in you! You cannot love others without ‘loving yourself’ in a balanced way where you have a healthy self-esteem that is firmly rooted in the knowledge of who you are in Christ. If you don’t love yourself, you are going to have a hard time getting along with anybody else. The problem with many marriages today is two people who don’t know how to love themselves, who are trying to love each other! You cannot love yourself without first receiving the love of God the Father.

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UK Sharia courts “main aim” to “restrict & deny rights” of women & children

June 15, 2015 By Robert Spencer

What a surprise. “Britain must ban sharia ‘kangaroo courts’, say activists,” by Emma Batha, Reuters, June 15, 2015:

LONDON, June 15 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Britain’s new government must abolish Islamic sharia courts, campaigners said on Monday, describing them as “kangaroo courts” that deliver second-rate justice and trample over the rights of women and children.

They called for the government to stick to pre-election promises to hold an inquiry into sharia courts which first appeared in Britain in the mid-1980s.

“Over the years, we have witnessed with increasing alarm the influence of ‘Sharia courts’ over the lives of citizens of Muslim heritage,” nearly 200 women’s rights and secular campaigners said in a statement.

“Though the ‘Sharia courts’ have been touted as people’s right to religion, they are in fact, effective tools of the far-right Islamist movement whose main aim is to restrict and deny rights, particularly those of women and children.”

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Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to be introduced in U.S. Senate

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 10, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)

A bill to prevent unborn babies from feeling searing pain during an abortion will be introduced in the U.S. Senate tomorrow.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, will introduce the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act before the world’s most deliberative body tomorrow, following a press conference with pro-life organizations at the Capitol Visitors Center.

“Right now in our country, a child can be killed in his or her mother’s womb for any reason, at any point, up until the moment of birth. We are one of only seven nations in the world, including China and North Korea, to allow such brutality,” said Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser, who will join Graham at tomorrow’s press conference. “We are a better nation than this.”

The move comes just one month after the House passed the bill, which would ban most abortions after 20 weeks, with a bipartisan 242-184 vote. The House passed the law on the second anniversary of Kermit Gosnell’s murder conviction.

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University of California-Berkeley student’s article about why she left Islam pulled from school paper over fears for her safety

June 12, 2015 – By Robert Spencer

I saw the piece when it first went up in the Berkeley student newspaper, marveled that it was published at all in such a place, and had planned to post an excerpt at Jihad Watch, but it was gone before I got a chance. Now we know why: there are concerns for the safety of the student who wrote it, and such concerns are entirely reasonable, given the fact (however often denied by dishonest Islamic apologists in the U.S.) of Islam’s death penalty for apostasy. The article was also noteworthy for the author’s frank admission that “yes, Islam does allow men to have four wives and sex slaves” — truths also often denied by Western Islamic apologists. In any case, “free speech” Berkeley ought to be in an uproar over the fact that this student is under threat, and the student paper ought to be filled with avowals of her human rights and declarations of how she must and will be protected. However, Berkeley ain’t what it used to be, if it ever was.

Terrorism Works, part 924,103: “Student’s Anti-Islam Article Retracted Due To ‘Safety’ Risk,” by Austin Petersen, Libertarian Republic, June 8, 2015:

An opinion piece written by a student at the University of California-Berkeley explaining her decision to leave Islam has been pulled from the school newspaper’s website over fears for the author’s safety.

The opinion piece, titled “On Leaving Islam,” recounted the personal story of the narrator (whose name we will withold) growing up a devout (though moderate) Muslim in Pakistan, but later abandoning the faith as she learned more about the world.

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Kurdish Courage: ISIS’ Evil Crushed This City, but Not Its People

Kurdish Courage ISIS' Evil Crushed This City, but Not Its PeopleGary Lane : Jun 8, 2015 : CBN News

“We really sacrificed and our uprising was not only for the people of Kobani, but for people everywhere.”

Kobani, Syria—[CBN News] As the Iraqi military struggles with ISIS, it could learn a lesson from Kurdish troops. In Syria, the Peshmerga helped free the city of Kobani, with help from American airstrikes.

CBN’s Gary Lane joined CBN Humanitarian and Disaster Relief workers as they brought help to the ravaged city of Kobani.

They were shocked by what we saw. Much of the town has been destroyed. The effort to drive ISIS from Kobani left much of this area just devastated.

But slowly, people are coming back. The town now has a population of about 20 percent of what it was once before.

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Marriage tide is turning in Australia

FamilyVoice Australia – Media Release – 14 July 2015

“A number of indicators suggest that more Australians are turning against Rodney Croome’s deceptive ‘marriage equality’ campaign,” FamilyVoice national research officer Ros Phillips said today.

“In Mr Croome’s home state of Tasmania, where the campaign has been waged relentlessly over several years, a new ReachTEL poll commissioned by The Examiner found that a minority of northern Tasmanians support same-sex marriage, and only a small percentage think it is important.  Liberal voters are at least 2:1 against same-sex marriage.”

Ros Phillips said another indicator of the nation’s change of heart is the big difference between the Crosby Textor poll of last August – where 72% of Australians said they backed “marriage equality” – and the Newspoll of June this year, where the figure had dropped to 58%.  “The trend is clearly down,” she said.

“Then there is the large volume of mail in support of natural marriage flooding the inboxes of federal MPs.  The Strewth column in today’s Australian noted that the Mamma Mia website published a ‘rogue’s gallery of the 10 people blocking marriage equality in Australia (all Coalition parliamentarians, apparently), complete with email addresses, last Monday.  By the end of the week the sole woman on the list, parliamentary secretary Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, was surprised by the volume of supportive emails coming her way…’

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Christian leaders in India protest recent spate of attacks after yet another incident

Barnabas Fund ^ | 05/12/2015|

Over 400 Christian leaders and social activists gathered together in Hyderabad, in India’s Telangana state, on 2 May, to hold a peaceful protest against a recent spate of attacks against Christians. The protest came in the wake of yet another brutal mob attack in the state, when at least 100 Hindu radicals stormed a Christian meeting shouting anti-Christians slogans and beating the believers with wooden clubs, iron rods, and knives.

Christians in India meet to pray together

First breaking the lights and sound system, the assailants then proceeded to attack the Christians who had gathered together in Pebber town, in Telangana state, at around 9.30 pm on 8 April. According to International Christian Concern, the Christians ran outside and into the bushes to hide from the attackers, but at least 15 were wounded, some of them sustaining serious injuries.

The believers had been concluding an event in which they had organised three days of open-air revival meetings from 6 to 8 April. Over 300 Christians from nearby villages had come especially for the event.

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More Reclaim Australia Rallies in July 2015 / Must watch transformation testimony of a former lesbian activist / Fred Nile MP speaking against same-sex marriage on ABC Q&A tomorrow Thursday night

Dear friends & family in Christ, 1) You may click the link above to watch a 6 minute video of Rise Up Australia National President Daniel Nalliah promoting Reclaim Australia…

Continue ReadingMore Reclaim Australia Rallies in July 2015 / Must watch transformation testimony of a former lesbian activist / Fred Nile MP speaking against same-sex marriage on ABC Q&A tomorrow Thursday night

200 Chibok Mothers Do Not Know Whether Their Daughters Are Dead or Alive This Mother’s Day – Keep Them In Your Prayers

May 09, 2015 -The Christian Post – David Curry

As mothers around the world celebrate Mother’s Day with flowers and homemade gifts from their children, there is a community of 200 mothers who do not know the fate of their daughters.

On the night of April 14, 2014, an Islamic militant group kidnapped more than 200 female students from the Government Secondary School in Chibok, Nigeria. There has been no sign of the girls since.

The government has rescued hundreds of women and children from Boko Haram camps in the Sambisa Forest, and for that we praise the Lord. But the Chibok girls are still missing, and it is their mothers that I will be thinking about on Sunday.

Can you imagine not knowing the fate of your child, but being reminded by daily news reports of the cruelty of her captors? They are the ones who have killed thousands in one attack, have assaulted several of their female victims and have then sold some of these women into Islamic marriages.

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From Monnica to Susanna Wesley: Remembering Great Mothers In Church History

May 09, 2015 – Baptist Press – David Roach

Augustine of Hippo is known by Christians the world over for standing against heresy in the fifth century and laying a foundation for the Protestant Reformation a thousand years later.

Lesser known is the fact that Augustine might never have become a Christian if not for his mother Monnica, who prayed for his salvation for years before eventually sailing from North Africa to Italy to beg her son to attend church. He honored her wishes and was saved when he heard the Gospel under the preaching of Ambrose of Milan.

Monnica — as her name is spelled on her tomb despite commonly being rendered as “Monica” — is one of many noteworthy mothers in church history.

“Some of Christian history’s greatest preachers, theologians and missionaries owe the first fruits of their ministries not to their exegetical insights, homiletic abilities or spiritual zeal, but instead to the faithful prayers of their godly mothers,” Christian George, assistant professor of historical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Baptist Press in written comments. “In the lives of countless Christians throughout the ages, God has often granted second births as a result of those who gave them their first.”

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Earthquakes of Faith

By Brian C Stiller , Global Ambassador, World Evangelical Alliance – April 28, 2015

A shaking is taking place in the Muslim world with tectonic rumblings. Signs are early and evidence is anecdotal, yet stories abound and are persuasive. The unsettling of entrenched Islamic faith is making its way into places and with people we assumed were closed to conversations about the Christian faith.

Returning from the Middle East, a journey I’ve made regularly in the past few years, I spoke with those engaged in Christian witness about some possibilities they would not have verbalized twelve months ago. I begin with a story from meeting with Syrian refugees on the Lebanese side of the border.

A worn, gnarled hand gently stroked the bruised face of her two-year-old granddaughter whose front teeth had been broken and face scraped by a serious fall. I sat next to them in their scrabbled together shack in a Syrian refugee camp in the Beqaa Valley, just over the mountains from Syria. The life of “Fadwa” had been shattered first by her husband having been taken prisoner in Syria. Then her daughter died in childbirth because Syrian soldiers at a checkpoint refused to let her go to the hospital in time. Then to stay alive Fadwa was forced to flee from her home in Lebanon and walk three days over the mountains. Today she cares for five adults and six children in a makeshift abode, the main room curtained off from the sleeping room.

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