Today’s Headlines:

MUSLIMS ATTACK ‘LAST CHURCH STANDING’ IN WEST JAVA’S CAPITAL

EXECUTIONS SET FOR 3 INDONESIAN CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AVOID CHARGES

BELARUS PUBLIC SCHOOL CURRICULUM HAS ‘ANTI-PROTESTANT MESSAGE’

Today’s Top Stories:

MUSLIMS ATTACK ‘LAST CHURCH STANDING’ IN WEST JAVA’S CAPITAL

About 30 officers, Muslim youth activists and fundamentalist Muslims disrupted worship services at Batu Zaman Baptist church in West Java, Indonesia, Sunday, July 16, demanding the church close down. They insisted that no church should be seen in a Muslim-dominated area and demanded to see the church’s permit allowing worship services. This is the “last church standing” in the Ciparay sub-district following a series of church closures in Bandung, the provincial capital of West Java. Mathias, the church’s pastor, explained that the church has attempted to obtain proper permits since opening in 1998, but local officials “were afraid to trigger social unrest.” He added that the church received verbal consent to operate and earned acceptance by providing various community development projects such as sewing and electronics training and offering 50 scholarships to needy students regardless of faith. “But lately it seems like the locals were provoked against us,” Mathias said. (Evangelical News/Open Doors)

* HCJB World Radio has worked with local partners to establish more than 14 local Christian radio stations across Indonesia since 2004. Broadcasts from HCJB World Radio-Australia’s shortwave station in Kununurra also encourage listeners nationwide. In addition, HCJB World Radio has helped with relief efforts since the Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake/tsunami and subsequent quakes that devastated parts of Indonesia.

The high court in India’s Rajasthan state extended the interim bail of Emmanuel Mission International (EMI) founder M.A. Thomas along with his son, EMI President Samuel Thomas. The bail was extended until Nov. 30 on two cases involving the alleged distribution of a controversial book called Haqeekat which is supposedly derogatory to Hindu gods. Anticipatory bail was granted to the two men in a third case against them based on charges that EMI’s orphanage illegally confined children. In contrast, EMI attorney Mohammad Akram asserts that officials with the social welfare department were not taking proper care of the children. “Last week several boys and girls fell sick, but the officials merely gave them painkillers without sending them to a doctor or hospital for proper check-up,” he said. “Even the water tank that stores drinking water has not been washed for a long time which is one of the reasons why children are falling sick.” (Compass Direct)

EXECUTIONS SET FOR 3 INDONESIAN CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AVOID CHARGES

An execution date of Saturday, Aug. 12, has been set for three Christian men who have been convicted of involvement in the long-running Christian-Muslim conflict centered near Poso in eastern Indonesia. While the three men have admitted their involvement in the conflict, large numbers of Muslims also participated without any charges directed at that side of the religious fence. International Christian Concern (ICC) found that between 1998 and 2003 entire Christian villages were attacked with government munitions and burned using government fuel trucks. Muslims both initiated and led attacks at the local levels, including the June 19, 2000, incident where more than 200 men, women and children were massacred in one church alone. “There are so many Muslims in the Poso area with blood on their hands that the governor of Central Sulawesi, where Poso is located, recently conveyed to the community that in order to attain peace it was necessary to implement a ‘general amnesty’ for those implicated in the Poso case,” said ICC President Jeff King. Approximately 10,000 Christians were killed and 1,000 churches burned down across Indonesia from 1998 to 2003 without any Muslims being charged. (Christian Newswire)

Iranian Christian Issa Motamedi Mojdehi has been jailed for abandoning Islam while officially being charged with drug trafficking. Secret police officials told Motamedi Mojdehi, 31, that he will remain in jail, facing possible execution unless he renounces Christianity and returns to Islam. Mojdehi converted to Christianity seven years ago and came to the attention of authorities when he and his wife, Parvah, chose the Bible name Micah for their son, culturally separating him from Islam. One officer warned Mojdehi that it might take “several executions” before Iranians understand the consequences of apostasy under Islamic law. Widespread drug use lends credibility to the false drug charges in Iran which has the highest drug addiction rate in the world. The jailed Christian and his wife attend a local house church known as the Rasht Free Evangelical Church. In addition to their infant son, they have an 8-year-old daughter named Martha. (Compass Direct)

BELARUS PUBLIC SCHOOL CURRICULUM HAS ‘ANTI-PROTESTANT MESSAGE’

The state education system in the Eastern European nation of Belarus continues teaching anti-religious, and in particular, anti-Protestant ideas. One 2005 textbook includes Christians of the Full Gospel Pentecostals in the text section called “other neo-cults” alongside Satanists and members of Aum Shinrikyo who were responsible for the 1995 attacks on the Japanese subways. Another Belarusian language text includes six pages on the dangers of “sects,” including Baptists who have “ignored state obligations such as the registration of marriages and births” and “been characterized by fanaticism and hostility to dissenters.” On Nov. 10, 2004, the leaders of the major Baptist, Seventh-day Adventist, Pentecostal and charismatic unions in Belarus wrote to leading state representatives in protest at the curriculum’s “false information about Protestant communities,” demanding its withdrawal from schools. As a result of the texts, Protestants have seen new resistance among young people who have been exposed to these negative images of religion. (Forum 18 News Service)