A pastor of the Central Assemblies of God (AoG) Church in Tehran was detained Tuesday, May 21, as part of Iran’s wider crackdown on evangelical believers, Christian rights activists confirmed. The arrest of Reverend Robert Asserian came as his church prepared for possible closure by the end of June due to pressure from the feared Iranian Intelligence Ministry, said advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).
A Christian prisoner suffering internal bleeding has been denied proper medical attention in Iran, according to Barnabas Aid.
In April, two senior clerics caught in the Syrian civil war were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen and remain in captivity, their whereabouts unknown.
A new report by the International Campaign for Human Rights shows that many Christian customs in Iran are criminalized by the authorities, according to Barnabas Aid.
An American pastor sentenced to eight years in an Iranian prison for planting house churches in the Islamic Republic a decade ago recently wrote that prison officials have told him to either deny Christ, or remain incarcerated indefinitely, according to the Christian News Network.
Within hours after Pakistan’s Supreme Court condemned police for not stopping rampaging Muslims from destroying nearly 200 Christian homes in the Joseph Colony of Lahore, another Muslim mob damaged Christian-owned shops and a church in the Francis Colony of Gujranwala on April 3.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing the U.S. Treasury Department to remove “In God We Trust” from all its currency.
The Leadership for Environment And Development (LEAD) has just released an initial report concerning a case of alleged blasphemy in Pakistan that resulted in the repeated burning and destruction of Christian homes and property at the St. Joseph Colony in the neighborhood of Bedami Bagh, north of Lahore, Punjab.
A Muslim mob attacked a Christian neighborhood in eastern Pakistan torching up to 100 homes and injuring dozens, after hearing reports that a Christian man committed blasphemy against Islam.
There was uncertainty Tuesday, March 5, about the situation of 125 Eritrean Christians who were “beaten and detained” in western Eritrea as part of a new government campaign against Christians worshiping outside the state-backed churches, rights investigators said.
Two Christian converts are already over 50 days in Tehran’s feared Evin prison as part of a crackdown on spreading Christianity in heavily Islamic Iran and it remains unclear when they will be released, Worthy News learned.
Eight of the top 10 persecutors of Christians worldwide are Islamic states, according to the Open Doors’ 2013 World Watch List.
An American pastor already imprisoned in Iran for evangelizing was sentenced Sunday to eight years in prison for attempting to entice Iran’s youth away from Islam through his network of underground house churches.
In their battle to topple the Assad regime, rebel jihadists of the Free Syrian Army have also looted religious sites in Northern Syria, according to Human Rights Watch.
The wife of a jailed Iranian-American pastor has denied Iran’s claims that her husband will be released on bail as an attempt to “silence the international media.”
Iran has launched the “systematic persecution and prosecution” of “Protestants and Christian converts” with a Muslim background, closing churches, detaining believers and threatening some with execution, a new report claims.
Iran on Monday, January 7, released Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was jailed on Christmas Day to serve the remainder of a sentence for evangelism among Muslims, his evangelical house church movement confirmed.
Beleaguered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was to deliver a speech on Sunday, January 6, a day after rights activists said a shell hit a Christian area of Damascus and a car bomb exploded elsewhere in the Syrian capital.
Up to 13 people were crushed to death and some 120 injured as they tried to enter an overcrowded stadium for an evangelism gathering of a Pentecostal church in Angola’s capital Luanda, officials confirmed late Tuesday, January 1.
In Iran, an Iranian-born American pastor with dual citizenship remains behind bars in Evin prison for the holidays.