LONDON (Compass) — A “second Ambon” is brewing in Indonesia according to Christian leaders as a 3,000-strong Muslim jihad force closes in on 28,000 Christians in Tentena, Central Sulawesi. Ambon refers to an area in eastern Indonesia where thousands have died in Muslim-Christian conflicts.
The events in Central Sulawesi are finally beginning to get the attention of major newspapers. An article in the New York Times December 1 said, “Thousands of Christian villagers on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are fleeing attacks by armed Muslim paramilitary forces.” The article quoted a Roman Catholic priest, “Thousands have fled…What could they do? Their houses have been burned. The police came yesterday, but it was too late.”
Jihad terrorists have mounted a campaign on Christians in Central Sulawesi, according to reports from Indonesia. For the past three months, jihad militants have been pouring into the area.
A crucial paradox lies at the heart of China’s persecution dynamics. Over the past 30 years, conditions have improved for Christians in China. But during the past five years, they have deteriorated markedly.
LONDON, January 7 (Compass) — The forty-six-year-old founder of the “South China” house church movement, Gong Shengliang, was granted a reprieve from his death sentence, which was due to be carried out on Saturday, January 5. Gong was given a stay of execution, relatives said.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (ANS) — The German based Charity Shelter Now has warned the trial of its eight detained foreign Christian staff members in Afghanistan seems to have been put on hold. “No progress is being made,” the evangelical news agency Idea quoted Shelter Now’s Chairman, Joachim Jaeger, as saying.
The appointment of former Senator John Danforth as special envoy to Sudan could result in positive action, according to The Voice of the Martyrs, a ministry organization focussed on serving the persecuted church.
Former Taliban prisoners Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry told more than 1,800 attendees at the 42nd annual Minnesota Prayer Breakfast how they coped with their three-month incarceration in an Afghan jail.
The injured but rescued US missionary worker Gracia Burnham, who lost her husband but not her faith in Christ, hugged their three children Monday in Kansas City Monday June 10, after a year-long hostage drama in the jungle of the Philippines.
A Pakistani Muslim convicted of alleged religious blasphemy was shot dead by a fellow prisoner yesterday afternoon in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Central Jail.
Two lawyers known for defending Pakistani Christians and Muslims over alleged blasphemy charges received death threats over the weekend, part of a series of overt warnings dished out to perceived “enemies of Islam” by local extremists during the past two weeks.
The American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham turns one year old today under the captive of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), a terrorist group operating in the Southern Philippines and believed to have links to the Al Qa’ida network in Afghanistan.
Filipino Christians, Danilo de Guzman, 38, and Benjamin Diaz, 40, were deported to the Philippines last Saturday after spending more than a month in prison.
A group of Hmong Christians living in the highlands of Vietnam have filed a complaint about violent incidents that they say took place amongst this tribal group last year.
Christians in the Maluku provincial capital of Ambon are appealing to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to send peacekeeping forces in the wake of recent terrorist attacks.
A Yemeni court sentenced a man to death on Saturday for the murder of three U.S. missionaries last year because he wanted to get closer to God. Abed Abdel Razzak Kamel testified in court that he killed the Americans to defend Islam because he believed they were sterilizing Muslim women and trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.
A $300,000 ransom payment has failed to free American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham from a militant Muslim group in the Philippines linked to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.
An uncertain number of leaders of a major house church movement in China have disappeared in what at first was thought to be a massive government raid. Now cult activity is suspected.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Organization, VHP) is secretly conducting large-scale conversion drives in India’s Marxist-ruled state of West Bengal. More than 16 tribal Christians were forced to re-convert to Hinduism on April 22 at a purification ceremony in Chopra village in the Malda district about 300 kilometers from Calcutta, NGO sources said. Ten other animist tribals were also converted to Hinduism in the village.
Some time ago I was invited to present a two-day seminar in a church about the Middle East conflict. During the course of those sessions, we used an abundance of scriptures, carefully presented in their context, to clearly explain why the land is God’s, that He entrusted it to Israel as a permanent possession, and what are the challenges of Islam. At the end of the two days, the senior Pastor told a couple in his church: “Well, I’d like to hear the Palestinian side…”