Four terrified Christian women, including one suffering from AIDS, remained inside a besieged evangelical church in an Ethiopian city Thursday, April 13, which has been attacked by militants fearing its growing influence in the region, investigators said.
Two female Christian students remained missing Monday, April 10, after hard-line Muslims attacked them last month in a case that has underscored concern over violence against young Christian women in the African nation, news reports said.
After three months, an Egyptian Christian has reportedly discovered his “kidnapped” sister living with a Muslim family near her hometown and professing faith in Islam, BosNewsLife monitored Wednesday, April 5.
“If you are forcing me to marry a man who is a Muslim simply because of my decision to become a Christian, then I will rather have you kill me than accept to marry this man.”
Evangelical Christians in Algeria faced another tense day Friday, March 31, after the Algerian parliament approved a law banning the promotion of other religions than Islam, BosNewsLife learned.
Florence Chuckwu, a Christian teacher at the Government Day Secondary School in the capital of Bauchi state, went to work on the morning of February 20 with no hint that her attempt to exercise classroom control would threaten her life and lead to the killing of more than 20 believers.
Several key Christian human rights groups have launched a united campaign against what they see as “widespread religious repression” in the Eastern African nation of Eritrea where they claim at least 1,700 Christians are detained for their faith.
A presidential order that establishes new conditions for the exercise of non-Muslim religious practice was passed in the Algerian Ummah council (Senate) on Monday 13 March, and in the Algerian National Assembly (Parliament) on 15 March. As a presidential order, the text would not have even been open to debate.
At least 21 people were killed and over 20 others injured when the roof of a church in the Ugandan capital Kampala collapsed during an evangelical worship service late Wednesday, March 8, police said.
At least 11 people were killed in three Nigerian cities Friday, February 24, as fighting between Christians and Muslims further escalated, rising the overall death toll to nearly 160, several news reports said.
A Nigerian state imposed a curfew late Monday, February 20, after new religious riots reportedly killed at least 10 people, while the death toll from a weekend of attacks against Christians was put at over 50.
Nigerian Christians on Sunday, February 19, mourned those killed in violent protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, which claimed at least 16 lives.
School authorities closed a nursing institution here yesterday following the suspected kidnapping of a Christian student by Islamic militants on Friday (February 10).
Christian aid workers were closely monitoring the situation in Kenya Saturday, February 11, amid reports that Christians are starving as famine spreads across the African nation and nearby countries, effecting millions of people.
Eritrean military authorities jailed 75 Protestant Christians yesterday at the Sawa Military Training Camp for ‘reading Bibles and praying during their free time,’ local sources in the small East Africa nation confirmed.
‘For your information, the state Governor, Alhaji Ahmed Sani, has ordered that your church should be demolished before his arrival in this town tomorrow. So, we shall carry out this directive tomorrow morning.’
There was concern Sunday, January 15, over the health situation of an evangelist in Ethiopia, who was nearly killed by an angry mob in the latest of a series of Muslim militant attacks against the African nation’s evangelical Christians, a religious rights group said.
At least 40 pastors, elders and leading laymen from five of Eritrea’s banned Protestant churches have been arrested from their homes or offices in the past two weeks in the capital of Asmara.
For Pastor Zacheous Habu Bu Ngwenche, time is running out. In the next two weeks he may find himself back in police detention if he does not produce a convert from Islam abducted from his house by Muslim militants in September.
For Ishaya Kpotun Shaba of Niger state in north-central Nigeria, the past four years have been a jumble of tears and pain. He has not set his eyes on his daughter, Saratu, since she was abducted in December 2001 at age 19 by extremists bent on converting and marrying her to a Muslim.