Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 096 | Wed 23 Feb 2011
By Elizabeth Kendal
WELCOME to the intercessors who have joined the list recently.
Let those who fear the LORD say, ‘His steadfast love endures
forever.’ (Psalm 118: 4 ESV)
FEBRUARY 2011 UPDATE — During February we prayed for . . .
ARAB WORLD, where minority Christians wait to see what will emerge out of
the chaos.
* UPDATE (1): POLISH PRIEST MURDERED IN TUNISIA. On Friday 18 February
Tunisia’s caretaker government approved a general amnesty of political
prisoners, some 2, 500 of whom were convicted under the former regime’s
tough anti-terrorism laws. The same day, Polish priest Father Marek
Rybinski (34), missing for several days, was found dead in a garage at
the Salesian school in the Manouba district of Tunisia where he had
worked since 2007. No group has yet claimed responsibility and the
government is reporting the slaying as a crime of ‘fascist terrorists’.
Motivated by the brutal murder of Father Rybinski, around 15,000
pro-secular Tunisians rallied in Tunis last Saturday 19 February.
Waving banners bearing slogans such as ‘Jews, Christians, Muslims: all
Tunisians’, they called for Tunisia to remain secular and tolerant. The
battle for Tunisia has begun.
* UPDATE (2): UNRELENTING VIOLENCE AGAINST COPTS IN EGYPT. On 8 February
in Elias Hanna, Minya Province, where there is no church for some 600
Copts, a mob of around 80 Muslims attacked a small group of Copts
praying together in a house owned by the Diocese, injuring five. In
Rafah (near Gaza) the Church of St George was torched on 16 February.
Walls left standing bore graffiti saying, ‘No to Christians in Muslim
Land.’ The next day Christians in El-Hathatah, Minya Province, huddled
together inside Saint George’s Church as Muslims surrounded and stoned
the building. Police did not respond to calls for help, leaving Coptic
youths to defend the property. On 18 February Islamic militants broke
into the home of the Coptic building contractor who built St Mary and St
Michael church in Talbiya. After scrawling ‘Islam is the solution’ and
‘The Church has to be demolished’ across the walls, they abducted his
18-year-old daughter, Nesma Sarwat.
ETHIOPIA, where the federal government, due to ethnic federalism, seems
unwilling or unable to intervene as Christians living in majority
Muslim autonomous regions suffer rising levels of Islamic intolerance,
violence and imposition of Sharia Law.
INDIA, where the dangerous ideology of fascist Hindutva (radical, militant
Hindu nationalism) advances unchallenged.
* UPDATE: HINDU NATIONALISTS REAP REWARDS IN MADHYA PRADESH. As reported
in RLPB 095, the combined Hindu nationalist forces, the Sangh Parivar,
held a social kumbh in Mandla, Madhya Pradesh, over 10-12 February.
Christianity was vilified and Christian ‘missionaries’ were portrayed as
blood-sucking bed bugs that must be killed. Militant Hindu nationalism
was proffered as the only path to equity, prosperity, harmony and
national security, although these are the exact opposite of what
Hindutva actually delivers. On Thursday 17 February by-elections were
held for the Assembly seats of Kukshi and Sonkutch, two of Madhya
Pradesh’s long-time Congress strongholds. In a crushing blow for the
Congress Party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
wrested both from it. State BJP president, Prabhat Jha, said the results
showed that the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes were ‘drifting
away from the Congress’, adding, ‘This has given us enough fuel to work
more vigorously towards the welfare of tribals and SCs in the state and
associating them with the party in a major way.’
FEBRUARY 2011 ROUND-UP — also this month . . .
* AFGHANISTAN: CHRISTIAN PRISONER APPEALS FOR PRAYER
According to reports, Said Musa (45), an Afghan Christian imprisoned in
Kabul, will soon be executed for the ‘crime’ of apostasy (rejecting
Islam). Musa was one of about 25 Christians arrested on 31 May 2010, after
Noorin TV screened scenes of Afghan Christians worshipping the Lord and
being baptised. Himself an amputee, Musa has spent the past 15 years
working for the Red Cross, fitting amputees with prosthetic limbs. A
father to six young children, Musa converted to Christianity eight years
ago. He was arrested as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy.
In jail he is being repeatedly mocked, beaten and sexually abused. No
local lawyer will defend him and the government refuses entry to the
country for any foreign lawyer who would. In a letter smuggled out of the
prison, Musa appeals for believers to pray that he will be transferred to
a safer prison and that he will be able to testify to his faith, encourage
other believers, and honour Christ as he gives his life.
* INDONESIA: INTOLERANCE AND VIOLENCE ESCALATING
On 8 February hundreds of enraged Muslim fundamentalists rioted in
Temanggung, Central Java, after Temanggung District Court ruled that
Antonius Richmond Bawengan, a Christian man convicted of blasphemy, be
imprisoned for five years. The mob was demanding he be handed over for
execution. Enraged, the Muslims stoned police, stormed the courthouse,
bashed a priest and torched two churches and a school. The riot came only
two days after a Muslim mob attacked a home in Banten, West Java, where
members of the Ahmadiyah Muslim sect were meeting. Sickening mobile phone
footage shows three Ahmadiyah men being stripped naked and stoned, stabbed
and bludgeoned to death while onlookers cheered and chanted ‘infidel’ and
‘Allah akbar’ (Allah is great). Police showed no sympathy, saying they had
warned the Ahmadis not to provoke trouble by upsetting the locals. One MP
even recommended that Ahmadiyah sect members be relocated to an
uninhabited island ‘for their own sake’. In Indonesia the Ahmadiyah are
the ‘canary in the mineshaft’ — it is first the Ahmadiyah, then the
Christians. The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) is planning to hold a mass
demonstration outside the State Palace on 1 March to call for an ‘Islamic
Revolution’.
* MACEDONIA: ALBANIAN MUSLIMS PROTEST ABOUT MUSEUM-CHURCH
Plans to build an archaeological museum in the style of a medieval church
in Skopje’s old Kale Fortress has led to ethnic-religious clashes between
ethnic Macedonians, who are mostly Orthodox, and members of Macedonia’s
large ethnic Albanian minority, who are mostly Muslim. Balkan Insight
reports: ‘The museum was being constructed on the foundations of a
recently excavated 14th-century Orthodox church in the old fortress . . .
.’ However, Albanian Muslims regard the church construction as an insult
and accuse ethnic Macedonians of trying to gain a foothold on ‘their’ side
of town. They said they would only support the project if a mosque were
built beside the church, a request that was rejected as the site has no
Islamic cultural heritage. On 11 February around 100 members and
supporters of the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) attacked and
demolished the partially constructed museum-church and the authorities
subsequently abandoned the project. (The DUI is Macedonia’s largest ethnic
Albanian political party, arising out of the ethnic Albanian National
Liberation Army (NLA) which fought Macedonian Security Forces in 2001. )
However, on 13 February clashes erupted between groups supporting and
opposing the museum-church project. Because Albanians organised further
protests for 19 February police have mobilised around the site to prevent
further clashes. Tensions simmer.
Discussion
No comments for “Christians in the Arab World”