One of the best decisions I have made, if not the best, was to resign from my job after 20 years of work there. I moved on and now work in a lesser paid job – however, my health has improved across the board as a result and I am far happier now than I was back then. I no longer work the excessive hours and have more time to do my own thing. What’s not to like.
Brother of Muslim who insisted on having beard cut, seven others, break hair-cutter’s bones.
SARGODHA, Pakistan, April 28 (CDN) — A Christian barber in this Punjab Province city is still recovering from broken bones and other injuries sustained earlier this month after eight Muslims allegedly beat and sodomized him for cutting the beard of a Muslim.
Marwat Masih, 29, initially refused the request of 19-year-old Qandeel Cheema to cut his beard in Sargodha’s Gulshan-e-Bashir town on April 13, knowing that area Sunni Muslims believe the Quran prohibits it. But Cheema, a high school student, told Masih that he had lived and studied in Lahore and therefore wanted a more modern look, the bed-ridden and feeble Masih told Compass.
“I refused to shave his beard, but he showed me his packed bags and said that he would leave the town straight after the shave, and so no one would ever know that I had shaved his beard,” Masih said.
Eyewitnesses told Compass that as Masih was cutting Cheema’s beard, the client’s older brother – local radical Muslim land owner Shakeel Cheema – was returning by tractor from his fields and, noting the family Jeep in front of the Marwat Hair Stylist shop, stopped in.
“When Shakeel Cheema saw me shaving his younger brother’s beard, he became angry and started vandalizing mirrors, the sound system and chairs, and he desecrated a wooden cross perched on the top of the front mirrors,” Masih said. “He also started beating my head with his shoes.”
Eyewitnesses told Compass that Shakeel Cheema shouted orders to his companions to tie Masih up and throw him into the wagon attached to his tractor, and that he ordered his younger brother to leave for Lahore at once.
Masih said that he was blindfolded with a black cloth and taken to an unknown place where he was locked in a room. An hour later, Shakeel Cheema and seven others arrived and began striking him with clubs, breaking his ribs, a wrist and leg bones.
“Shakeel Cheema said, ‘Now we are going to teach you a real lesson for shaving the beard of a Muslim man,” Masih said, and after a long, pained pause he related how Cheema and the seven others sodomized him. “I started bleeding and fell unconscious.”
His father, Laal Masih, older brother Hassrat Masih and other relatives had begun searching for him, and after midnight that night they found him lying half-naked and unconscious off the main street of Gulshan-e-Bashir town, his father told Compass. They immediately took him to Rural Health Centre, where doctors kept him under observation for two days and treated him for internal bleeding and the broken ribs, leg bones and wrist.
“We submitted an application to the Saddr police twice, but they took no action against Shakeel Cheema and his accomplices,” Laal Masih said. The family is appealing to Christian ministers and parliamentarians for assistance.
Still receiving threats of harm if they do not leave the area, family members also said they cannot afford the fees of a standard physician and have resorted to help from lesser trained doctors.
Police have refused to file a First Information Report against Cheema and his accomplices, who all remained at large at press time.
A shopkeeper next to Masih’s barbershop told Compass that the barber deserved the abuse.
“He deserves such punishment, as he did something that is forbidden according to the teaching of the Quran and the sunna [arabic word for the sayings or habits of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam],” said Muhammad Maqsood, who has a long, white beard. “Marwat Masih paid for his crime.”
Masih’s 36-year-old brother Hassrat Masih emphasized that Gulshan-e-Bashir town is inhabited mainly by radical Muslims.
“Therefore, almost all of them are against shaving, especially the beard,” Hassrat Masih said. “Having a beard is seen as holy practice because it is a standard prescribed for all Muslims in the sunna, or teachings or actions of the prophet of Islam.”
Report from Compass Direct News
Citizens increasingly enlightened about world’s worst violator of religious freedom.
DUBLIN, April 26 (CDN) — As refugees from North Korea and activists from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) gather in Seoul, South Korea this week to highlight human rights violations in the hermit kingdom, there are signs that North Korean citizens are accessing more truth than was previously thought.
A recent survey by the Peterson Institute found that a startling 60 percent of North Koreans now have access to information outside of government propaganda.
“North Koreans are increasingly finding out that their misery is a direct result of the Kim Jong-Il regime, not South Korea and America as we were brainwashed from birth to believe,” Kim Seung Min of Free North Korea Radio said in a press statement. The radio station is a partner in the North Korea Freedom Coalition (NKFC), which is holding its annual North Korea Freedom Week (NKFW) in Seoul rather than Washington, D.C. for the first time in the seven-year history of the event.
“We set out to double the radio listenership of 8 or 9 percent, and we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of people who have access to information,” said NKFC Co-Chair Suzanne Scholte. She described the flow of information as “pinpricks in a dark veil over North Korea. Now those pinpricks are becoming huge holes.”
The radio station now air-drops radios into North Korea and broadcasts into the country for five hours a day, adding to information gleaned by refugees and merchants who cross the border regularly to buy Chinese goods.
In recent years the government has been forced to allow a limited market economy, but trade has brought with it illegal technology such as VCR machines, televisions, radios and cell phones that can detect signals from across the border. Previously all televisions and radios available in North Korea could only receive official frequencies.
“The government hasn’t been able to stamp out the markets, so they begrudgingly allow them to continue,” Scholte confirmed. “This means North Koreans aren’t relying solely on the regime anymore.”
Holding the annual event in Seoul this year sends a significant message, Scholte told Compass.
“This is a spiritual conflict as well as a physical one – some people didn’t want us to call it freedom week,” she said. “But we’re making a statement … God gives us freedom by the very nature of being human and North Koreans are entitled to that too.”
All people say they would never allow the World War II holocaust to be repeated, Scholte said, “but this is a holocaust, a genocide. I firmly believe we will be judged if we fail to intervene.”
The coalition hopes this week’s event will empower the 17,000 strong North Korean defectors in South Korea, awaken the consciousness of the world about human rights conditions in North Korea, and inform all who are suffering in North Korea that others will “work together until the day their freedom, human rights and dignity are realized,” Scholte said in the press statement.
As part of the week’s activities, the coalition will send leaflets into North Korea via balloon stating in part, “In the same year the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed, Kim Il-Sung was ensuring that you wouldn’t have any of those rights.”
Religious freedom in particular is almost non-existent. The only accepted belief is Juche – an ideology that strictly enforces worship of the country’s leaders.
“The regime is a perversion of Christianity,” Scholte told Compass. Juche has a holy trinity just as Christianity does, with Father Kim Il-Sung, son Kim Jong-Il, and the spirit of Juche said to give strength to the people.
“Kim Il-Sung is God; a real God can’t replace him,” a former North Korean security agent confirmed in David Hawke’s 2005 report, “A Prison Without Bars.”
While four churches exist in the capital, Pyongyang, experts believe these are largely showpieces for foreign visitors.
The government has allowed token visits from high-profile foreign Christians such as Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, who preached at Bongsu Protestant church in Pyongyang in August 2008; and two U.S. Christian bands, Casting Crowns and Annie Moses, attended and won awards at the Spring Friendship Arts Festival in April 2009.
Worship outside limited official venues is simply not tolerated, giving North Korea first place on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2010 World Watch List for persecution of Christians.
Ordinary citizens caught with a Bible or in a clandestine prayer meeting are immediately labeled members of the hostile class and either executed or placed in prison labor camps, along with three generations of their immediate family. Every North Korean belongs to either the “hostile,” “wavering” or “core” class, affecting privileges from food and housing to education and physical freedom, according to Hawke’s report.
There are no churches outside the capital, but the regime in 2001 estimated there were 12,000 Protestants and 800 Catholics in North Korea. In July 2002 the government also reported the existence of 500 vaguely-defined “family worship centers” catering to a population of approximately 22.7 million, according to a September 2009 International Religious Freedom report issued by the U.S. State Department.
By contrast, South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo newspaper in July 2009 put the estimate at 30,000 Christians, some NGOs and academics estimate there may be up to several hundred thousand underground Christians.
Uncertain Future
As North Korea celebrated the birthday of Kim Jong-Il on Feb. 16, rumors spread that the elderly leader, currently battling heart problems, had chosen third son Kim Jong-Eun as his successor.
Documents extolling the virtues of Kim Jong-Eun began circulating as early as November, according to the Daily NK online news agency. An official “education” campaign for elite officials began in January and was extended to lesser officials in March. One document obtained by the agency described the “Youth Captain” as being “the embodiment of Kim Il-Sung’s appearance and ideology.”
“Kim picked this son because he’s ruthless and evil,” Scholte said, “but I don’t think they’re quite ready to hand over to him yet. There is an uncertainty, a vulnerability.”
Scholte believes this is the ideal time to “reach out, get information in there and push every possible way.”
“There are many double-thinkers among the elite,” she explained. “They know the regime is wrong, but they have the Mercedes, the education for their kids and so on, so they have no incentive to leave.”
The coalition is trying to persuade South Korea to establish a criminal tribunal, she said.
“North Koreans are actually citizens of South Korea by law,” she said. “We have to let these guys know there’s going to be a reckoning, to create a good reason for them not to cooperate [with authorities].”
Those in other countries have an obligation too, Scholte concluded. “When people walk out of the camps, it will haunt us. They’ll want to know, ‘What were you doing?’ We will be held accountable.”
Article 26 of North Korea’s constitution declares that the people have freedom of religion. The organizers of this year’s freedom week fervently hope that this declaration will soon become a reality.
SIDEBAR
The Cross at the Border: China’s Complicity in Refugees’ Suffering
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) estimate anywhere from 30,000 to 250,000 refugees from North Korea are living in China, either in border areas or deeper inland. Few are Christians when they emerge from North Korea, but the whispered advice among refugees is to “head for a cross,” signaling a Chinese church that may assist them, according to a February 2009 National Geographic report.
Since China will not allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees access to border areas, Chinese Christians work with Christian NGOs to provide an “underground railroad” moving refugees via several routes to safety, most often in South Korea.
Chun Ki-Won, director of Christian NGO Durihana, admits that some of the refugees adopt Christianity to win favor with their rescuers, but others retain and strengthen their faith on arrival in South Korea.
China insists that the refugees are economic migrants and pays police a bounty to arrest and return them to North Korea. On arrival, North Korean officials pointedly question the refugees about contact with Chinese Christians or Christian NGOs. If any contact is admitted, execution or imprisonment is likely, according to David Hawke’s 2005 report, “A Prison Without Bars.”
As one refugee told Hawke, “Having faith in God is an act of espionage.”
Still others choose to return to North Korea with Bibles and other Christian resources at great risk to themselves. For example, officials in June 2009 publicly executed Ri Hyon-Ok, caught distributing Bibles in Ryongchon, a city near the Chinese border, South Korean activists reported.
China remains impervious to the refugees’ plight.
“China fears being flooded by refugees if they show compassion,” said Suzanne Scholte, co-chair of the North Korea Freedom Coalition. “But refugee flows aren’t going to collapse the [North Korean] regime. If that was going to happen, it would have happened already during the famine, so their argument doesn’t hold water.”
She added that North Koreans don’t want to leave. “They leave because of Kim Jong-Il,” she said. “Those [North Korean refugees] in South Korea want to go back and take freedom with them.”
Two U.S. Christians entered North Korea in recent months with the same goal in mind. Robert Park, an evangelical Christian missionary, crossed the border on Dec. 25 with a letter calling for Kim Jong-Il to resign.
Officials immediately arrested Park, according to the regime’s Korean Central News Agency. He was later sentenced to eight years of hard labor but released in late February after making what many experts believe was a forced confession.
Fellow activist Aijalon Mahli Gomes entered North Korea on Jan. 25, the same news agency reported. Officials sentenced Gomes to nine years of hard labor and fined him 70 million new Won (US$518,520). At press time Gomes remained in detention.
Report from Compass Direct News
Religion is alive and well in Australia. Christianity on the other hand is not doing anywhere near as well.
If Christianity is to be measured by the Bible and not by mass opinion in churches (or by some other measure such as professing Christians, etc), the Australian experience of Christianity is not too good at all. In fact, most of what goes by the name of ‘Christian’ is anything but Christian in the Biblical sense.
Automatically I would count out all the usual cults and heretical groups, such as the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is of course a possibility that some within the confines of such heretical groups are indeed saved, but it is difficult to believe that any such true believers would willingly stay inside groups of these types.
Roman Catholicism is often viewed as a legitimate part of historical Christianity, but this is far from the case. Indeed, Roman Catholicism is another grouping that belongs within the category of being a cult. Certainly that is my opinion and this is the historical opinion of Evangelical Christianity and Protestantism.
Sadly, it has been my growing experience that many who profess Christianity, see Roman Catholicism as just another stream of true Christianity. Certainly these people cannot agree with some of the teachings of Rome, but none-the-less they view Roman Catholicism as just another legitimate stream of Christianity that is a bit divergent from Protestantism. These people think that unity with Rome wouldn’t be such a bad thing, even if we can’t agree on anything.
It is disappointing to note that a number of people within the Reformed camp also agree with such sentiment regarding Roman Catholicism. I am stunned by how quickly these people forget the past and the truths that the Reformation sought to establish once again as being the true backbone of Christianity.
Leaving the Roman Catholics aside, let me briefly comment on Protestantism in Australia. There is a good section within this grouping (which would include Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Uniting, etc) that would be equally happy within the Roman Catholic communion and it would be better for Protestantism if they were. These people are merely nominal at best and quite openly hold to Papist ideals and teachings. Let Rome have them if they will not cast off their heretical ideas and take hold of Christ and His teachings.
The majority of Protestants these days are not of the breed of Protestants that brought Protestantism into being. They no longer hold to the Scriptures as being the standard of belief, faith and practice. These days Protestantism is ruled by the leading of sentimentalism, mediocrity and pragmatism, being concerned more for religion and obtaining numbers within the building, rather than Biblical Christianity and salvation of the lost through the proclamation of the Biblical Gospel. This then is the Christianity of today within Australia.
I know of people raised in Christian homes and churches that are openly embracing heresy, believing that they have been misled from their youth. Such expressions of Christianity are being broadcast over social networks, as ever increasing numbers fall victim to every wind of doctrine as a result of poor or even no teaching within churches, having become the victims of chatter from the pulpits that comes nowhere close to being the preaching that the Bible expects to be delivered (if indeed preaching and teaching are regarded as being necessary at all within the church concerned).
In the Reformed churches there are varying issues that are robbing the movement of its potential power to transform the country through the truth that it possesses. There are problems with Lording it over the church and being caught up on matters of lesser importance (if they are indeed important at all), of attempting to match it with the general malaise of religion (but in a more covert manner while trying to maintain the reformed name) and simply imbibing the mediocrity of religion surrounding the churches.
We are in a bad way in Australia and we need God given revival (as opposed to what goes by the name revival in cranked up programs and services throughout the country). We need God given preachers who will preach God given truth with God given power and God given life. We need to go back to Bible basics before religion is nothing more than a man-made shell (if we haven’t already reached that point) and true Christianity is extinct in this country.
With bushfires still burning in Victoria, residents are being warned that conditions are set to deteriorate dramatically overnight as gale force winds strike the state. Winds are expected to reach 150 km (95 miles) an hour from tonight.
With conditions expected to be as bad as ‘Black Saturday’ about a month ago, residents in areas still under threat from the bushfires are being told to flee before the winds arrive. The Black Saturday fires claimed at least 210 people (confirmed dead – 37 are still missing) and there are real fears that the expected conditions of the next day or so may add to the already shocking death toll.
Fire-fighters fear that the winds will send the still burning four major bushfires (as well as the lesser sized bushfires) across containment lines and there will be little that they will be able to do about it. Fires may spot across containment lines and change direction rapidly without warning. These conditions are extreme and grave.
The fires are the same ones that have so far taken 210 lives (confirmed), over 2000 houses and 450 000 hectares (1.1 million acres) of farmland and bushland.
In preparation for the worsening conditions the government has closed schools across the state. A total fire ban is also in force across the state. Text messages have been sent to mobile phone owners urging them to be prepared for the frightening conditions.
BELOW: Footage of the firestorm in Clonbinane on the 7th February 2009
Random Thoughts 