Human rights officials in Europe and the United States expressed concern Wednesday, May 3, over the persecution of Christians in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, nearly a year after hundreds of people died when security forces opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators.
An avalanche of media coverage of an Afghan man facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity has apparently sparked the arrest and deepening harassment of other Afghan Christians in the ultra-conservative Muslim country.
A local council in West Java has warned several congregations in the Rancaekek Kencana housing complex in Bandung to abandon their “nomadic” cell group system, which allows limited numbers of Christians to meet together in private homes.
An Afghan man faced an uncertain future behind bars Monday, March 20, after a judge told him he may be executed for converting from Islam to Christianity.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday, February 18, asked the militant group Hamas to form the next Palestinian government but warned he would not accept attacks against the Christian minority.
Nigerian Christians on Sunday, February 19, mourned those killed in violent protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, which claimed at least 16 lives.
More anti-Christian violence was expected in Pakistan Thursday, February 16, as deadly protests against published cartoons of Prophet Mohammad spread across the country.
School authorities closed a nursing institution here yesterday following the suspected kidnapping of a Christian student by Islamic militants on Friday (February 10).
Complying with President Hugo Chavez’s order to leave Venezuela’s indigenous lands by today, the last two New Tribes Mission (NTM) workers left the area late last week.
Christians in Pakistan feared more attacks against them Sunday, February 5, after at least one church was attacked by militants as anger spreads throughout the Muslim world over Prophet Mohammad cartoons in European media.
Christian believers in the Philippines on Sunday, February 5, mourned 6 Christians, including an infant, who were killed by Muslim militants shortly after a missionary couple died in an ambush.
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.
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.
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.
‘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.’
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.
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.