Pastor Bike encourages house church despite persecution

ChinaAid (www.chinaaid.org) is reporting that this morning (Monday, September 20, 2010), during the trial of house church Christians Liu Yunhua and Gao Jianli, Pastor “Bike” (Zhang Mingxuan) and his wife, who had come to see the trial, were detained by the Public Security Bureau (PSB), reports Dan Wooding, founder of ASSIST Ministries.

“The passionate evangelist, known for riding his bike across the country on missions of encouragement, has been detained, arrested, and interrogated countless times over the past 10 years in his efforts to strengthen house church Christians. He is the Chairman of the China House Church Alliance,” said the ChinaAid story.

“The court session for the trial of second instance in the Christian persecution case of Liu Yunhua and Gao Jianli of Xuchang City, Henan province began at 9 a.m. today Monday local time, at the Intermediate People’s Court of Xuchang City. Pastor Bike and his wife arrived at the court today to watch with the audience, but were detained by the local PSB of Xuchang City. At 11:30am, they were released.”

Other Christians from Yucheng, Hennan, who had come to see the trial, were also detained by the Yucheng Public Security Bureau on their way home. They are Liu Fulan, Hua Cuiying, Li Yuxia, Ma Keai, Liu Sen (the son of the defendant Liu Yunhua). There is as of yet no record of their release.

ChinaAid urges Xuchang local government to respect Pastor Zhang Mingxuan (“Bike”) and his wife’s rights as citizens, and we call on the Yucheng local government to release the house church members who are still detained.

“We ask Christians worldwide to join us in prayer for their protection and encouragement,” a spokesperson said.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

Muslim Militants Slay Long-Time Christian in Somalia

Al Shabaab extremists shoot 69-year-old after finding Bibles on him at checkpoint.

NAIROBI, Kenya, September 18 (CDN) — The faith journey of a long-time underground Christian in Somalia ended in tragedy this week when Islamic militants controlling a security checkpoint killed him after finding Bibles in his possession.

Militants from the Muslim extremist al Shabaab killed 69-year-old Omar Khalafe on Tuesday (Sept. 15) at a checkpoint they controlled 10 kilometers from Merca, a Christian source told Compass. A port city on the Indian Ocean 70 kilometers (45 miles) from Mogadishu, Merca is the main city of the Lower Shabele region.

Leaving Mogadishu by bus at 7:30 a.m., Khalafe was carrying 25 Somali Bibles he hoped to deliver to an underground fellowship in Somalia. By 10:30 a.m. he had arrived at the checkpoint controlled by al Shabaab, a rebel group linked with al Qaeda that has taken over large parts of the war-torn country.

A source in Somalia who spoke on condition of anonymity told Compass that the passengers were ordered to disembark from the bus for inspection. The Islamic militants found 25 Somali Bibles in one of the passengers’ bags; when they asked to whom the Bibles belonged, the passengers responded with a chilled silence.

As the search continued, the militants found several photos in the bag. The source told Compass that the militants began trying to match the photos with the faces of the passengers, who were all seized by fear as they knew the inevitable fate of the owner.

The Islamic extremists saw that the elderly Khalafe resembled a face in one of the photos, the source said. They asked Khalafe if he was the owner of the Bibles; he kept quiet. They shot him to death.

Khalafe had been a Christian for 45 years, sources said.

The body was taken to Merca, according to the source, and there the al Shabaab militants placed the 25 Somali Bibles on top of Khalafe’s body as a warning to others.

Christian sources said that at 4 p.m. an al shabaab militant was heard saying on Radio Shabele, “Today we caught Omar, a Somali Christian, with 25 Bibles at Merca checkpoint. He has been converting Somalis to Christianity, and today he has been shot dead at 12:30 p.m.”

Khalafe’s family in Mogadishu learned of his death through the radio report, the source said. The family members then contacted a leader of an underground church in Somalia and informed him of the murder.

“The news of the death of Omar shocked me,” the underground church leader in Somalia told Compass by telephone. “We have long served Christians in Somalia. It is unfortunate that the Bibles did not reach the intended audience. I am sure if they had not got the picture, our brother would be still alive.”

Khalafe was a Somali Bantu who had served with various Christian agencies. Underground church members said he was instrumental in the spread of Christianity and had baptized many converts from Islam in Somalia.

He left behind a widow and seven children. His family was unable to participate in his burial due to the risk of being killed, according to the source, who said one of Khalafe’s sons said, “It is unfortunate that we were not there to give our dad a decent burial. God knows how He will reward him.”

Already enforcing sharia (Islamic law) in large parts of southern Somalia that they control, al Shabaab rebels have mounted an armed effort to topple President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s Transitional Federal Government.

Last month al Shabaab extremists seeking evidence that a Somali man had converted from Islam to Christianity shot him dead near the Somali border with Kenya, according to underground Christians in the war-torn nation. The rebels killed 41-year-old Ahmed Matan in Bulahawa, Somalia on Aug. 18, said Abdikadir Abdi Ismael, a former leader of a secret Christian fellowship in Somalia to which Matan belonged. Matan had been a member of the underground church since 2001.

In Mahadday Weyne, 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, al Shabaab Islamists on July 20 shot to death another convert from Islam, Mohammed Sheikh Abdiraman, at 7 a.m., eyewitnesses told Compass. They said the Islamic extremists appeared to have been hunting the convert from Islam.

The sources told Compass that Abdiraman was the leader of an underground “cell group” of Christians in Somalia. He is survived by two children, ages 15 and 10; his wife died three years ago due to illness.

Intent on “cleansing” Somalia of all Christians, al Shabaab militia are monitoring converts from Islam especially where Christian workers had provided medical aid, such as Johar, Jamame, Kismayo and Beledweyne, sources said. Mahadday Weyne, 22 kilometers (14 miles) north of Johar, is the site of a former Christian-run hospital.

The militants reportedly beheaded seven Christians on July 10. Reuters reported that they were killed in Baidoa for being Christians and “spies.”

On Feb. 21 al shabaab militants beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father refused to divulge information about a church leader, according to Musa Mohammed Yusuf, the 55-year-old father who was living in a Kenya refugee camp when he spoke with Compass. He had been the leader of an underground church in Yonday village, 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Kismayo in Somalia.

Militants from al Shabaab entered Yonday village on Feb. 20, went to Yusuf’s house and interrogated him on his relationship with Salat Mberwa, leader of a fellowship of 66 Somali Christians who meet at his home at an undisclosed city. Yusuf told them he knew nothing of Mberwa and had no connection with him. The Islamic extremists left but said they would return the next day.

Yusuf fled for Kismayo, and at noon the next day, as his wife was making lunch for their children in Yonday, the al Shabaab militants showed up. Batula Ali Arbow, Yusuf’s wife, said the Islamic extremists took hold of three of her sons – 11-year-old Abdi Rahaman Musa Yusuf, 12-year-old Hussein Musa Yusuf and Abdulahi Musa Yusuf, 7.

They killed the two older boys as the youngest one returned crying to his mother.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Decline of traditional media

Should the threat to traditional media from the internet really be a cause for concern?

The new social media — blogging, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube are current faves — revolutionising the publishing world, for better and worse. Let’s look at both the better and the worse in perspective.

The current tsunami of personal choices in communication is slowly draining the profit from mainstream media. These media traditionally depend on huge audiences who all live in one region and mostly want the same things (the football scores, the crossword, the TV Guide, etc.). But that is all available now on the Internet, all around the world, all the time.

One outcome is a death watch on many newspapers, including famous ones like the Boston Globe. As journalist Paul Gillin noted recently: “The newspaper model scales up very well, but it scales down very badly. It costs a newspaper nearly as much to deliver 25,000 copies as it does to deliver 50,000 copies. Readership has been in decline for 30 years and the decline shows no signs of abating. Meanwhile, new competition has sprung up online with a vastly superior cost structure and an interactive format that appeals to the new generation of readers.”

Traditional electronic media are not doing any better. As James Lewin observes in “Television audience plummeting as viewers move online” (May 19, 2008), mainstream broadcasters “will have to come to terms with YouTube, video podcasts and other Internet media or they’ll face the same fate as newspapers.”

Radio audiences have likewise tanked. Overall, the recent decline of traditional media is remarkable.

Some conservative writers insist that mainstream media’s failure is due to its liberal bias. But conservatives have charged that for decades — to no effect. Another charge is that TV is declining because it is increasingly gross or trivial. True enough, but TV’s popularity was unaffected for decades by its experiments with edgy taste.

Let’s look more closely at the structure of the system to better understand current steep declines. Due to the low cost of modern media technology, no clear distinction now exists between a mainstream medium and a non-mainstream one, based on either number of viewers or production cost. Today, anyone can put up a video at YouTube at virtually no cost. Popular videos get hundreds of thousands of views. Podcasting and videocasting are also cheap. A blog can be started for free, within minutes, at Blogger. It may get 10 viewers or 10,000, depending on the level of popular interest. But the viewers control that, not the providers.

The key change is that the traditional media professional is no longer a gatekeeper who can systematically admit or deny information. Consumers program their own print, TV, or radio, and download what they want to their personal devices. They are their own editors, their own filmmakers, their own disc jockeys.

Does that mean more bias or less? It’s hard to say, given that consumers now manage their own level of bias. So they can hear much more biased news — or much less. And, as Podcasting News observes, “Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development.”

Understandably, traditional media professionals, alarmed by these developments, have constructed a doctrine of “localism” and, in some cases, called for government to bail them out. That probably won’t help, just as it wouldn’t have helped if the media professionals had called for a government “bailed out” of newspapers when they were threatened by radio, or of radio when it was threatened by TV. Video really did (sort of) kill the radio star, but the radio star certainly won’t be revived by government grants.

Still, the news is not all bad. Yes, new media do sometimes kill old media. For example, no one seriously uses pigeon post to send messages today. But few ever thought birdmail was a great system, just the only one available at the time. However, radio did not kill print, and TV did not kill radio. Nor will the Internet kill older media; it will simply change news delivery. Sometimes in a minor way, but sometimes radically.

Media that work, whether radio, TV, newspapers, books, blogs, or any other, thrive when there is a true need. Today’s challenge is to persuade the consumer to look at alternatives to their own programming decisions.

Denyse O’Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

The original news article can be viewed at:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/decline_of_traditional_media/

Article from MercatorNet.com

TURKEY: CHRISTIAN HELD HOSTAGE AT KNIFE POINT IN ISTANBUL

Young Muslim threatens to slit throat of convert; police arrest him after short standoff.

ISTANBUL, August 6 (Compass Direct News) – In a bizarre show of Turkish nationalism, a young Muslim here took a Christian Turk at knife point, draped his head with the national flag and threatened to slit the throat of the “missionary dog” in broad daylight earlier this week.

Yasin Karasu, 24, held Ýsmail Aydýn, 35, hostage for less than half an hour on Monday (Aug. 3) in a busy district on the Asian side of Istanbul in front of passersby and police who promptly came to the scene.

“This is Turkey, and you can’t hand out gospels,” he yelled, according to the daily newspaper Haberturk. “These godless ones without the true book are doing missionary work.”

About 99 percent of Turkey’s population is at least nominally Muslim, and in the popular mindset the religion is strongly connected with being Turkish.

Karasu threatened to slit Aydin’s throat if anyone came near him and commanded those watching to give him a Turkish flag. Within minutes, Aydin told Compass, bystanders produced two flags. Karasu, who has known Aydin for a year, wrapped the larger of the two flags around Aydin’s head, making it difficult for him to breathe in heat that reached the low 30s Celsius (90s F) this week.

“Do you see this missionary dog?” he yelled at the crowd. “He is handing out gospels and he is breaking up the country!”

Karasu placed the smaller flag in Aydin’s hand and commanded him to wave it.

“Both flags came at the same time,” Aydin told Compass. “The big one he put very tightly over my head, and in the heat I couldn’t breathe.”

The whole time Karasu held a large knife to Aydin’s throat.

“You missionary dogs, do you see this flag?” he said, commanding Aydin to wave the flag. “This is a holy flag washed in the blood of our fathers.”

Aydin said he told Karasu, “Yasin, in any case this flag is mine as well! I’m a Turk too, but I’m a Christian.”

Karasu insisted that Aydin was not a Turk because he had betrayed the Turkish flag and country by his evangelism, according to Aydin.

Aydin said he told Karasu, “No, Yasin, I’m a Turk and I’m waving this flag with love. This is my flag. I’m a Turk.” He said Karasu replied, “No, you can’t be – you are breaking up the country, and I won’t allow it.”

Police managed to convince Karasu to put down the knife and release Aydin, telling him that if he killed the convert Turkey would be ridiculed around the world, and that as a last resort they were authorized to shoot to kill him.

“If you love this country, leave the man,” they told him.

A member of the Turkish Protestant Alliance’s legal team said Karasu was evidently trying to get attention.

“He was the type of person who would commit a crime,” said Umut Sahin. “He had just gotten out of the army, he probably didn’t have a job … Anyway he achieved his goal of putting on a show.”

Sahin added that Karasu had previously gotten into trouble for selling pirated CDs.

Religious Conversations

Aydin, who escaped with a slight cut on his throat, said that he never would have believed that Karasu would do such a thing.

The two men have known each other for about a year. While in the army, Karasu showed interest in learning more about Christianity and would call Aydin, a convert from Islam, to ask questions and talk, saying he was interested in other religions.

“He would call me often, because while in the army he was really depressed and he would often call me to tell me,” said Aydin. “He wanted relief and to talk to someone, but at the same time he was researching about religions.”

After his release from compulsory army duty, Karasu called Aydin and the two planned to meet at a Protestant church in the district of Kadikoy. Karasu came with a friend identified as Baris, who preferred to stay outside while the two of them had tea alone in the church basement.

Aydin said they spoke for nearly 20 minutes about Karasu’s life in his hometown of Erzurum and his financial and family difficulties, as well as some spiritual matters, but since his friend was outside they made it short. Karasu was smiling, in good spirits and not at all the way Aydin remembered him from their meeting nearly a year earlier when he was depressed, he said.

“He looked so healthy, and he was smiling, he was dressed well, he was talking comfortably, he looked so cheerful,” recalled Aydin with disbelief. “He was not at all depressed! I was so surprised!”

Karasu thanked Aydin for the conversation, and the two got up from the table to go up the stairs. Aydin led the way, walking ahead of Karasu about a meter. Just as Aydin reached the stairway, he felt an arm grab him around the neck.

“At the first step he violently grabbed me, putting his arm around my neck, and gripped me tightly,” recalled Aydin. “I was surprised and thought someone had come up from behind me to tease me, but then I remembered it was just the two of us downstairs. ‘Yasin,’ I said, ‘Is that you? Are you playing a joke on me?’”

“What joke!” he said, pulling out a knife, according to Aydin. “You’re a missionary dog, and I’ve come to cut your throat.”

Karasu told Aydin that he planned to make an example of him in the eyes of the nation by killing him in public. Two members of the church tried and failed to stop Karasu. The two church members and Karasu’s friend followed them to a busy street down the road.

“He took me down to the busy street by the sea, threatening to kill me,” Aydin said. “The funny thing about it is that I had the impression that we were playing a part in a film. Not a single person on the way down tried to stop him or told him to stop. They just all looked on with consternation.”

Within one or two minutes, he said, police and a television crew arrived.

“Within a minute, both police and cameras showed up – how quick was that?” he said. “I was surprised.”

Suspicion of ‘Terrorism’

Although Aydin said he believes the act was an isolated incident, other Christian Turks as well as police suspect it may have been an act of propaganda to frighten Turkey’s small Protestant community, most of whom are converts from Islam.

“I don’t think it was planned,” said Aydin, “but it is possible that it was.”

The police section on terrorism combat is researching the possibility that the attack was planned by a wider group. Aydin has decided not to press charges, telling Turkish media that he forgave Karasu.

“I think it was an isolated case, but I have to see the police report,” said Sahin of the Turkish Protestant Alliance. “If this was a provocation he would have killed him. He just wanted to show off … with the Turkish flag.” He added with a chuckle, “As if we don’t like waving it.”

According to Article 24 of the Turkish Constitution, people of all faiths have the right to spread information about their faith.

Aydin, who was convinced he was going to lose his life, said he feels the experience instilled new life into him.

“On Aug. 3 I died and was reborn,” said Aydin. “That was my date of death and birth. I was sure I was going to die. It’s like a new opportunity, a new life. I really think the Lord gave me a second chance, because if you think of it, after other events, like Hrant Dink or the Malatya killings, those brothers weren’t so fortunate, right?”

Police found two knives on Karasu’s person, along with two cell phones and the two flags he got from his audience. He is still in police custody with his friend.

In February 2006 an Italian Catholic priest was killed in the Black Sea coastal town of Trabzon, and Armenian Christian editor Hrant Dink was shot in front of the weekly Agos three months before three Christians – two Turks and a German – were killed in Malatya in April 2007.

Last month a German businessman was also murdered for being a Christian on a busy Istanbul street (see  “Christian Murdered on Busy Street in Istanbul,” July 28).

All murders were committed by Turkish men in their 20s.

Report from Compass Direct News 

TANZANIA: ZANZIBAR EVICTS CONGREGATION FROM GOVERNMENT BUILDING

Officials on island cite ‘renovations,’ but pastor sees pandering to Muslims.

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 22 (Compass Direct News) – A pastor in Zanzibar City said his church is without a worship place after government officials, at the instigation of radical Islamists, evicted the congregation from their rented building on Tanzania’s Zanzibar Island off the coast of East Africa.

With just two days’ notice, government officials ordered Christians of the Church of God Zanzibar from their rented government building effective April 19, ostensibly to pave the way for renovations. But two months later, said pastor Lucian Mgayway, no renovation work has begun and none appears to be forthcoming.

The government has not only failed to renovate the building but has since turned it into a business site, Pastor Mgaywa said. The church had been worshipping in the building since October 2000.

In evicting the church from its building in the Kariakoo area of Zanzibar City, Pastor Mgaywa said, the government gave in to partisan demands.

“Our being told to vacate the premise by the government was a calculated move to disintegrate the church and to please the Muslims who do not want us to be in this particular area,” he said.

Forced to rent different worship venues each week, the congregation can no longer bear the financial burden that comes with it, said Pastor Mgaywa.

“Hire venues are available, but we can no longer afford it due to limited finances,” he said. “Reasons for our being kicked out are purely religious.”

The church’s 50 members had seen signs that the eviction was coming. With increasing frequency Muslim youths had passed by the church hurling insults because they felt Christians had intruded on their territory, Pastor Mgaywa said.

“The church had been experiencing stone-throwing on the roof of the building by the Muslims during worship service,” he said. He added that since the eviction notice, members of the congregation have been increasingly harassed by area Muslims.

Pastor Mgaywa said that after receiving the order on April 17 to vacate by April 19, the congregation sought an audience with the acting director of the Zanzibar Social Security Fund, identified only by his surname of Hassan. Officials, however, rejected the church’s request to continue using the premises.

Otherwise, when the government gave two days’ notice to vacate the premises for “renovations” to be carried out, the congregation obliged; they did not seek legal redress, he said, as they had trusted that officials’ stated intentions were genuine.

Now that the congregation is left without site options, the pastor said, he has been visiting members in their homes to worship together.

Shut-downs and attacks are not unknown on the predominantly Muslim, semi-autonomous island as a resurgent Christian movement makes inroads. On May 9 Muslim extremists expelled Zanzibar Pentecostal Church worshippers from their rented property at Ungunja Ukuu, on the outskirts of Zanzibar City (see “Radical Muslims Drive Church from Worship Place in Zanzibar”).

The attackers had been angered by a recent upsurge in Christian evangelism in the area. Radical Muslims had sent ominous threats to the Christians warning them to stop their activities.

The church had undertaken a two-day evangelism campaign culminating in an Easter celebration. On the morning of the assault, more than 20 church members had gathered for Saturday fellowship when word reached them that Muslim extremists were about to attack. As the radical group approached, the Christians fled in fear of their lives.

In predominately Sunni Muslim Zanzibar, churches face other hurdles. There are restrictions on getting land to build churches, open preaching is outlawed and there is limited time on national television to air Christian programs. In government schools, only Islamic Religious knowledge is taught, not Christian Religious Education.

Zanzibar is the informal designation for the island of Unguja in the Indian Ocean. The Zanzibar archipelago united with Tanganyika to form the present day Tanzania in 1964.

Muslim traders from the Persian Gulf had settled in the region early in the 10th century after monsoon winds propelled them through the Gulf of Aden and Somalia. The 1964 merger left island Muslims uneasy about Christianity, seeing it as a means by which mainland Tanzania might dominate them, and tensions have persisted.

Report from Compass Direct News

EGYPT: CONVERT AIRS DECLARATION OF PRIEST’S INNOCENCE

Christian woman tells TV audience imprisoned clergyman did not know of false ID.

ISTANBUL, May 22 (Compass Direct News) – An Egyptian convert from Islam who forged Christian identification papers and later used them to marry a Coptic man has appeared on a television show declaring the innocence of a priest serving a five-year sentence for marrying the couple.

The priest’s lawyers, Ramses El-Naggar and Peter Ramses, submitted a recording of convert Mariam Nabil’s TV interview to Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud in support of their appeal of the Rev. Mattaos Wahba’s conviction for conducting a marriage ceremony with false documents.

“We are sure that if we can review that case in front of the high court, Father Mattaos will be free, because the decision from the court is the wrong decision,” said Ramses. “But until now we didn’t present the case.”

The priest of Archangel Michael Church at Kerdasa, in Geza, and two other men were charged with converting Nabil and aiding her in forging a Christian ID card. The other two men are in hiding.

Wahba was arrested last October, with the added charge of knowingly conducting a marriage ceremony with false documents. He was convicted of this charge and sentenced to five years in Cairo’s Tora prison.

Nabil maintains that Wahba had no involvement in obtaining the false documents and was not aware that they were forged when he married the couple.

Safwat El-Baiday, spokesman for the Evangelical Church in Egypt, said priests should not be made responsible for verifying documents.

“We as a church do not believe that a priest who sees the documents and the witnesses can be put in jail,” El-Baiday said. “If there are witnesses and a bride and a groom, it is not our job to investigate if their documents are right or wrong.”

The conviction met with a public outcry, and international Coptic rights groups have petitioned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to release Wahba.

Consequences of Conversion

Despite the risk to herself, her husband and his family, Nabil went public with her story on April 24, appearing on the TV show “Daring Questions,” which is produced outside of Egypt and airs weekly on the Christian Al-Hayat station.

Nabil, born Reham Abdel Aziz, originally converted from Islam to Christianity in 2004. After suffering harsh treatment from her family due to her conversion, she sought to leave them and live freely as a Christian, leading to her need for new identification documents. Using the birth certificate of a deceased woman, she managed to obtain a government identification card stating her religion as Christian in 2004.

Later she fell in love and married. Shortly after their marriage in 2006, Nabil and her husband fled Egypt to escape her family members, who had threatened to kill her. When Nabil’s relatives learned of her marriage, they informed police, who discovered the forgery. She left Egypt before the falsified ID was discovered, and authorities still seek to arrest her and her husband for forged documents.

The host of “Daring Questions” told Compass via telephone that because there is no legal means for converts from Islam to designate it on identification papers, they are often left with no option but to break the law. In Egypt, a Christian man is not allowed to marry a Muslim woman.

“From one side I am against forging documents, but from the other side I think that the government is pushing Christians from a Muslim background to forge documents,” he said. “They give them no choice.”

Officially changing one’s religious status away from Islam is not legally possible in Egypt. Two Christian converts involved in a legal battle for this right, Maher El-Gohary and Mohammed Hegazy, are in hiding under threat of death.

Report from Compass Direct News

TALIBAN THREATENS POPE IF CHRISTIANITY IS SPREAD IN AFGHANISTAN

In the lead-up to his coming trip to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI has been warned by Islamic extremists that he must stop any attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity or face “the consequences of a severe reaction,” reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

ANSA news service reports that the Taliban issued the statement on an Islamic website after the Islamic news service Al Jazeera showed American soldiers holding copies of the Bible translated into the two local languages.

“The Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan asks Pope Benedict XVI to act to stop the foolish and irresponsible actions of the crusaders upsetting the feelings of Muslim rebels, without awaiting the consequences of a severe reaction,” said the message on the website, alemarah1.org.

“The Taleban forcefully exhort the mujaheddin [jihadis], scholars and all religious circles to control the activities of the invaders and crusaders, and not allow anyone to preach religions except Islam,” the message continued.

The US army later responded, “Any form of religious proselytism by troops is prohibited,” and assured that the bibles pictured had been “confiscated and destroyed.”

At the same time, Islamic extremists in Jordan condemned the Pope’s visit, claiming that he had failed to apologise for what they regard as insults to Islam in a speech at Regensburg in 2006. The Pope is scheduled to arrive in Jordan on Friday for the first stage of a tour that will include Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Zaki Bani Rusheid, head of the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the international organisation the Muslim Brotherhood, told Reuters, “The present Vatican pope is the one who issued severe insults to Islam and did not offer any apology to the Muslims.” The Islamic Action Front is the Jordan’s largest mainstream Islamist party.

In 2006, Pope Benedict spoke to an audience at the University of Regensburg where he had once served as professor of theology, on the inherent unity of faith and reason. In it he quoted the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who wrote in 1391, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The emperor was writing on jihad and of forced conversions of Christians by conquering Muslims.

The comments, after careful management by liberal western news media, prompted a wave of riots and violence by Muslims around the world, including attacks on Christian churches in Israel, the murder of a nun in Somalia and the beheading of a priest in Iraq.

Observers note that there are early signs that the same media that instigated the “Muslim outrage” in 2006 are setting the stage for another round.

The Huffington Post reported at the end of April that in the town of Nazareth a large banner has been stretched across the main square condemning anyone who insults Mohammad. HP’s Diaa Hadid wrote, “The pontiff may have to tread carefully with his visit to Nazareth,” and said that “many Muslims” are still angry over the Regensburg speech. Hadid quotes an Anglican head of a local ecumenical group that Christians in the area fear more violence if the Pope makes any other “contentious” statements on Islam.

The Guardian’s religious affairs correspondent Riazat Butt wrote on Tuesday that Pope Benedict “must” go to Jerusalem as a “penitent pilgrim.” Butt cites 35 Christians, Jews and Muslims who claim that “papal blunders” are sending out “‘divided messages’ on anti-Semitism and inter-faith activity.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph

SHARIA COURTS OPERATING IN BRITAIN RECOGNISED BY BRITISH LAW

Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, said he was shocked at the furor that arose after he told an audience earlier this year that he thought it “seems unavoidable” that some accommodation for Islamic sharia law would be implemented in Britain. However, Williams’ statements evidently were prophetic, as a report in the Sunday Times has revealed that the Islamic law is already operating in Britain, not only in domestic disputes, but also in criminal cases, reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

The Times said this weekend that the government had officially accepted the existence of sharia law courts to officiate in Muslim civil cases. The rulings of a network of five sharia courts, in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, are now enforceable “with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.”

Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, a barrister and head of the Muslim Action Committee, told the Times that the Arbitration Act 1996 allows rulings by his Muslim Arbitration Tribunal to be enforced by county and high courts.

“The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals. This method is called alternative dispute resolution, which for Muslims is what the sharia courts are,” he said.

Siddiqi said he expected the courts to handle a greater number of “smaller” criminal cases in coming years as more Muslim clients approach them. “All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases,” said Siddiqi.

The Times said that these Muslim courts started operating in August 2007 and have dealt with more than 100 cases, ranging from Muslim divorce and inheritance cases as well as six cases of domestic violence, normally a criminal procedure under British law. The Times quoted Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who said that since Jewish tribunals operate in Britain, parity should be given to Islamic courts.

Dominic Grieve, the opposition’s shadow home secretary, told the Times that courts operating in criminal and family law cases outside the regular system would be “unlawful.” “British law is absolute and must remain so,” he said.

Melanie Philips, writing on her blog at the Spectator, wrote that “confusion abounds” over the report, because there is “nothing new here at all” and said that the story is “overheated and misleading.” Decisions of sharia courts, she said, have always been enforceable under the Arbitration Act.

But, she said, this does not “dispel the serious concern about the spread of sharia law and the scope of these courts.” Philips is the author of “Londonistan”, a book that examines the incursions of violent Islamic extremists into British society with the assistance of British government and courts.

She said the comparison between Islamic courts and Jewish tribunals were misleading, since the latter operate completely within the framework of British law and do not seek to set up an alternate judicial system.

Moreover, she said, “given the inferior status of Muslim women under sharia, any sharia arbitration in respect of domestic violence can hardly be viewed with equanimity.”

“The key point,” she said, “is that sharia law is not compatible with English law or the principles of equality and human rights that it embodies. The result … is that Britain is allowing the development of a de facto parallel legal system in Britain, thus destroying our society’s cardinal principle of one law for all.”

She added, “Indeed, if this continues Britain will break up as a unitary state governed by one law for all … This is the way a society fractures – and then goes under.”

Damian Thompson, the editor of the Catholic Herald, wrote on his blog at the Daily Telegraph website that he not only agreed with Dominic Grieve that the idea of a parallel Muslim system of law was “unlawful”, but that it is an “outrage.”

“There’s something creepy about the way the police allow sharia ‘courts’ to persuade women to withdraw allegations against their husbands.”

A BBC Radio 4 report found that the cases covered by these tribunals are not restricted to domestic disputes. Radio 4 quoted a Somalian youth worker who lives in London who said that in one case a group of Somali youths were arrested on suspicion of stabbing another Somali teenager. The victim’s family told the police it would be settled out of court and the suspects were released on bail. The matter was considered settled when an unofficial “court” ordered the assailants to compensate the victim’s family. Scotland Yard said they had no record of the incident.

In his book Islam in Britain, Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, wrote, “Sharia courts now operate in most larger cities, with different sectarian and ethnic groups operating their own courts that cater to their specific needs according to their traditions.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph