Lebanon’s Interior Minister resigned late Sunday, February 5, after an estimated 20,000 angry Muslims not only torched the Danish Embassy but also attacked the Christian community in the capital Beirut over published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.
Extremists encouraged Hindu residents of a village in Malkangiri district, Orissa state, to attack Christian residents on January 24. At least 10 Christians were injured and two were hospitalized.
Two young Coptic Christian women whose father had converted to Islam when they were infants have won a court battle in Egypt to retain their official religious identity as Christians.
Three separate attacks on Christians in Madhya Pradesh, central India, have occurred within a period of four days, leaving a number of people needing hospital treatment. Latest reports suggest that yet more attacks on Christians have since taken place in the communally tense state.
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.
Armed Islamic groups angered by cartoon drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammad in European media, threatened to attack churches and closed down the European Union Commission office in Gaza Thursday, February 2, as anger over the published caricatures spread across the Muslim world.
Iraqi Christians have urged Westerners to be carefull with public comments on Iraq after three people were killed in apparently coordinated bomb attacks against churches over the weekend, a major religious rights group said Tuesday, January 31.
The British Government was considering its options Wednesday, February 1, after parliament voted against its version of a religious hatred bill, amid pressure from evangelical Christians and others who feared the law could lead to religious persecution.
At least 18 Christians, including children, were injured when Hindu militants armed with sticks, rods and other sharp weapons broke up a Christian seminar in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, the fourth such incident in as many days, a Christian news agency reported Monday, January 30.
‘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.’
Two churches in Sri Lanka were attacked last weekend as threats from Buddhist monks continued amid tensions between the government and Tamil rebels.
A US-based religious rights group said Friday, January 27, that violence against the tiny Christian minority in India’s north-central state of Madhya Pradesh increased by 45 percent during the last two years.
The Evangelical Alliance United Kingdom (EAUK), an umbrella group representing one million evangelical Christians in the UK, prepared Tuesday, January 24, a major campaign to “alert” believers to “the dangers of the proposed religious hatred (law) and other legislation.”
A pastor and his cousin charged with attempted forced conversion in Matiapada village, Orissa state, were released on bail yesterday, while five Hindu villagers charged with assault and setting fire to the pastor’s house are still in custody.
Judges at Indonesia’s Constitutional Court on January 17 ruled that the Child Protection Act is in line with the constitution and should not be amended. The Rev. Ruyandi Hutasoit had challenged Article 86 of the Act, used as the basis for sentencing Dr. Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti and Ratna Bangun to three years in prison on September 1, 2005. The Christian Sunday School teachers were arrested in May 2005 after members of a local Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI or Muslim Clerics Council) in West Java accused them of trying to convert Muslim children. Judge Jimly Asshiddique said Rev. Hutasoit had no right to contest the Child Protection Act, since he had not experienced any ‘direct losses’ under it.
The government of India’s largest northwestern state, Rajasthan, has withdrawn criminal procedures against most militants of an influential Hindu nationalist organization involved in the massive distribution of ‘tridents’, three-sponged spears that have reportedly been used to intimidate the Christian minority, BosNewsLife learned Monday, January 23.
At this time last year, Noor Jehan Ahmed, 55, lived peacefully in the village of Nagaon, in the northeastern state of Assam. She and her extended household of 29 people formed their own Christian enclave within the majority-Muslim community.
Prosecuted Chinese house churches on Saturday, January 21, were expecting more legal support after a group of top Chinese lawyers and legal scholars announced the establishment of an association dedicated to defending Chinese Christians.
Hindu extremists attacked Christians in two incidents in the same district of Andhra Pradesh state on January 12 and 13, in one case dragging a pastor from a child’s birthday party and kicking him unconscious.
Local government officials in Bandung, West Java, have ordered eight house churches in the Rancaekek Kencana housing complex to cease meeting in private homes starting last Sunday (January 15).