INTERNATIONAL NEWS 4th December 2006

AUSTRALIAN PRAYER NETWORK NEWSLETTER

* MUSLIM CONVERTS TO CHRISTIANITY PAY THE PRICE

* THE VATICAN CONFRONTS ISLAM

* MINISTERS ATTACKED FOR KEEPING TEENS OUT OF PROSTITUTION

* AL-QAEDA IN BID TO ILFILTRATE MI5

* INDIAN NUNS DETAINED ON ATTEMPTED CONVERSION CHARGES

* CHRISTIANS IN JAMAICA RISE TO PROTECT THEIR NATION THROUGH PRAYER

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MUSLIM CONVERTS TO CHRISTIANITY PAY THE PRICE

Countless ex-Muslims continue to face persecution across the world. Muslims march in anger threatening any they say have insulted Islam. But perhaps nothing is more offensive to Muslims than apostasy, when a fellow believer abandons the faith.

“The consensus among Muslim scholars for the past 14 centuries has been that those who leave the faith should be killed,” said terrorism expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. Gartenstein-Ross has studied Islamic law extensively. He says those who convert out of Islam–especially to Christianity–lead a lonely and dangerous existence. Even today, the view that apostates from Islam should not be killed — that people should be free to convert to another religion — is very much a minority view.”

Within the Islamic world there are at least 14 states where it is illegal to convert out of Islam. In at least eight of those states, it is punishable by death. That list includes western allies such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan where, by and large, there is no separation between mosque and state, and no rest for former Muslims.

What does the Koran say about it? Several verses in the Koran severely condemn apostasy but fall short of calling for the death penalty. But in the Hadith, Islam’s other holy book, Mohammed said those who leave Islam should be killed. Mohammed’s direct successors–the Caliphs–also said apostates should receive death.

Gartenstein-Ross said many Muslims take these verses literally and take it upon themselves to punish former Muslims– even in the west. CBN News spoke to one Christian convert we will call “Khaleed.” Khaleed’s story is one of rejection and abuse by Muslims in his own community in Western Europe. “A lot of people don’t even want to talk with me or even sit with me at the same table. I was like the reject of the community,” Khaleed said. It was not long before I was forced to defend himself against physical violence.

He said, “They’d get very angry and very abusive calling me “traitor” and things like that. And I’d even sometimes get into fistfights with some angry Muslims who hated the fact that I left Islam.” And when he began doing Christian missionary work in these European Muslim communities, things only got worse. “‘We will kill you. One day you’ll die. And you will die suddenly.’ It was death threats all the time. And I got more and more — actually physical attacks several times — from them.” Khaleed left Europe and now lives in the U.S., but he is careful not to advertise his Christian faith.

So what is being done to protect converts like Khaleed? According to one former Muslim, not nearly enough. Author and renowned scholar Ibn Warraq said, “I would find it difficult to give you precise statistics, but many people have been killed by the family to save the family honour if they discover the family member has converted to Christianity. You don’t hear about it because in many cases the police just turn a blind eye to it.”Fred Farrokh, executive director of “Jesus for Muslims”, was raised Muslim, he is now a Christian. Farrokh is opening a refuge center for Christian converts in New York City. “Muslim background believers who are suffering persecution can come live and receive discipleship, training, equipping and then, they will be among the greatest missionaries, to Muslim people,” Farrokh said.

Warraq says that the West needs more people like Farrokh–who are willing to stand up and protect the rights of apostates. But he says the West remains crippled by political correctness and largely indifferent to the plight of apostates. “All we would have to do in the West is to simply stick to our own principles,” Warraq said, “and we would bring about change in the Islamic world. But we don’t seem to be able to do that. We seem to be incapable of defending our own values.”

Source: CBN News

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THE VATICAN CONFRONTS ISLAM

The Catholic Church is undergoing a dramatic shift from a decades-old policy to protect Catholics living under Muslim rule. The old methods of quiet diplomacy and muted appeasement have clearly failed. The estimated 40 million Christians living under Islam increasingly find themselves an embattled minority facing economic decline, dwindling rights, and physical jeopardy. Most of them are despised and distrusted second-class citizens, facing discrimination in education, jobs, and the courts.

These harsh circumstances are causing Christians to flee their ancestral lands for the West’s more hospitable environment. Consequently, Christian populations of the Muslim world are in a free-fall. Two small but evocative instances of this pattern are Nazareth and Bethlehem who no longer have Christian majorities. This reality of oppression and decline stands in dramatic contrast to the surging Muslim minority of the West. Although numbering fewer than 20 million and made up mostly of immigrants and their offspring, it is an increasingly established and vocal minority, granted extensive rights and protections even as it wins new legal, cultural, and political prerogatives.

This widening disparity has caught the attention of the Church. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican equivalent of foreign minister, noted in late 2003 that “There are too many majority Muslim countries where non-Muslims are second-class citizens.” Tauran pushed for reciprocity: “Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well.”

Catholic demands for reciprocity have grown, especially since the accession of Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, for whom Islam is a central concern. In February, the pope emphasized the need to respect “the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all.” In May, he again stressed the need for reciprocity: Christians must love immigrants and Muslims must treat well the Christians among them.

Obtaining the same rights for Christians in Islamdom that Muslims enjoy in Christendom has become the key to the Vatican’s diplomacy toward Muslims. This balanced, serious approach marks a profound improvement in understanding that could have implications well beyond the Church, given how many lay politicians heed its leadership in inter-faith matters. Should Western states also promote the principle of reciprocity, the results should indeed be interesting.

Source: Jerusalem Post

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MINISTERS ATTACKED FOR KEEPING TEENS OUT OF PROSTITUTION

Some Christian ministers helping keep girls out of a life of prostitution in India have been attacked by Hindu militants. The alleged assault occurred against ministers affiliated with Salem Voice Ministries (SVM), where Pastor Paul Ciniraj and his staff are engaged in an ongoing attempt to protect young people being forced, in some cases even by their parents, into a life of prostitution. Ciniraj said his workers have been threatened and attacked in an attempt to discourage the effort.

According to Ciniraj, thousands of Dalit girls work as prostitutes with the support of their families. According to SVM, the girls are usually aged between 12 and 15, though some are as young as 10. They reportedly stand at the roadside along with their fathers and brothers, who fix the “price” for them. Many of the girls contract sexually transmitted diseases. The brother of one teenage girl said, “The customers are mainly truck drivers here. The average ‘rate’ for one girl for half an hour is Rs.50. They take the girls to their trucks or thatched huts a few hundred meters away from the road.”

The violence associated with prostitution doesn’t deter families of the young girls, Ciniraj reported the father of a teenage girl who was sold some time ago in the national capital for Rs.150,000, said. “The better looking girls are sent to red light areas in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and other cities. They earn good money there and send it back to us.”

According to SVM, 58-year-old Bhagwan Das said, “What can we do? We have to send our daughters into this profession as there are no alternative means of livelihood. No one from our community in this village has a government job.” Daughters are trained right from the age of seven to become prostitutes. As soon as girls cross 10 years of age, they are sent to women relatives in the red light areas of big cities,” explained 45-year-old Shyama. She added, “Girls are sent to the cities to their sisters, aunts or mothers who are already in the flesh trade. They are continuously tutored right from the childhood so that they are mentally prepared to enter sex work.”

Fathers and brothers visit the girls at regular intervals in the cities to collect the earnings. Some families have even built multi-storeyed houses with the money earned. If a child is born out of wedlock to a prostitute, families bring the baby back to the village. If the baby is a girl, then there are celebrations for it means an additional “‘earning member” for the family in another 10 or 12 years.

Source: Assist News Service

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AL-QAEDA IN BID TO ILFILTRATE MI5

Al-Qaeda sympathisers have been trying to infiltrate the British security service MI5. Whitehall officials confirmed what some had long suspected, says BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. But those with al-Qaeda sympathies had been weeded out during a six- to eight- month vetting process, officials added.

Officers at a Scotland Yard briefing said they continued to be very concerned by the intelligence picture, with 70 investigations continuing and some of the information received described as “very sinister”. The head of the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terrorist branch, Peter Clarke, said 60 people were awaiting trial in the UK for terrorist-related offences. But he warned: “This is unprecedented, and the flow of new cases shows no sign of abating – if anything it is accelerating.”

MI5 believes, from polls, that around 400,000 people in the UK are “sympathetic to violent jihad around the world”, said Frank Gardner. Within that number 1,200 people have been identified as being activists the security service believe are engaged in acts of terrorism at home and abroad, he said. As investigations continue, MI5 is expanding from its current level of 2,600 officers to an eventual 3,500, to cope with the terrorist threat. It is also setting up eight new regional offices to build up a “richer picture” of what people are thinking and doing on the ground, he added.

The security service now publicly advertises for staff as part of a major expansion plan to combat terrorism, ending decades of secrecy. Tens of thousands apply to join MI5 each year, with 400 making it through to final selection. Applicants are first assessed by an outside agency, then those shortlisted invited to MI5’s London headquarters, where their backgrounds and sympathies are intensively investigated for six to eight months. He added that the profile of the terror suspect was changing, including “many” British people willing to mount attacks on fellow citizens.

Source: BBC

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INDIAN NUNS DETAINED ON ATTEMPTED CONVERSION CHARGES

Police have detained four Missionaries of Charity (MC) nuns on charges of attempting to convert people. The nuns were on a regular visit to Ruia hospital in Tirupati town, a popular Hindu pilgrimage centre, 2,060 kilometres south of New Delhi. Police detained the nuns in the hospital and later took them to a police station, keeping them there for several hours. Christian leaders say police acted at the request of a fanatic Hindu group. Sister Rosaria, regional superior of the congregation, which Mother Teresa founded, told UCA News the nuns have been visiting the hospital regularly for the past 20 years and provide medicine to poor patients who cannot afford it.

Recently however, about 50 people, some with video cameras, approached the four nuns and accused them of trying to convert patients, Sister Rosaria said. The crowd swelled to about 300, before the nuns were detained and transferred to a police station.

Archbishop Joji, who heads the Catholic Church in the state, termed the incident a “violation of human rights” and an “infringement on the nuns’ religious freedom.” G. Alfred, executive secretary of Andhra Pradesh Christian Federation, told the press conference that the incident was part of increasing harassment of Christians by fanatic Hindu groups. The Christian federation demanded that the government probe the incident and act against those who took the nuns to the police station.

Source: UCANews

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CHRISTIANS IN JAMAICA RISE TO PROTECT THEIR NATION THROUGH PRAYER

A Christian Newswire report says the mandate of the Jamaican group, “Called to the Kingdom International,” is to help the government fight crime through prayer, fasting and social intervention. Carone Gordon, founder of Called to the Kingdom International issues the following statement: “We will, for the month of December, be launching a prayer walk across the length and breadth of our island which is 150 miles long and 50 miles wide. We have a population of approximately 2.7 m people.

We will encourage Christians across the island to prayer walk a mile a day morning and or evening. On the 31st of December we will take the watch night service to the streets with the theme for this month long event, ‘WOE IS ME’. It will be held at the Mandela Park in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. We will also encourage churches island wide to take their watchnight service to the streets, as well as to participate in the march on the 1st of January 2007. On the 1st of January we will conclude the prayer walk, walking to the House Of Parliament where we will pray for our leaders and the future of our country. We have invited our Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition to close this leg of the prayer walk. We are still awaiting a response.”

The group asks for worldwide prayer in the month of December for a successful 2007 Jamaica.

Source: Christian Newswire

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