A Sudanese woman who was sentenced to death because she refuses to deny Christ gave birth to her daughter while chained to the wall.
Meriam Ibrahim’s American husband Daniel Wani said that while she was actually birthing their daughter Maya her legs were shackled to the wall. The guards refused to allow her to be unchained to make the birth safer for her or the child.
However, Wani said after days of refusing to allow him to see the child, the head of the prison not only allowed him in to see the child but released his wife so they could have a moment as a family together.
The local courts say they are going to delay her 100 lashes for two years to coincide with her execution. Initially, the courts ruled she was to be lashed as soon as she gave birth to her child.
Wani told the London Daily Telegraph that the moment was bittersweet knowing that she likely won’t live to see Maya live past age 2.
“I refuse to change. I am not giving up Christianity just so that I can live. I know I could stay alive by becoming a Muslim and I would be able to look after our family, but I need to be true to myself,” Ibrahim said.
On Sunday, Chinese authorities told Christians in Zhejiang province they are no longer allowed to gather and worship.
The government also demolished 10 church buildings using the same claim that all the buildings had violated “building codes” for the region. The government has now destroyed 64 churches since the forced demolition of a $4.8 million Sanjiang Church building on April 28th.
“There is a church building that also houses a grocery market about 1/3 miles from my home,” a house church worshipper from Yueqing County in Wenzhou told China Aid. “The people were notified to implement an order that all gatherings shall stop from this Sunday. If people there don’t stop their gatherings, the building…will be confiscated.”
Government officals have also been ripping down any crosses they find on buildings or along roadways.
Christians in the Wenzhou area say that the latest crackdown by the government is unlike any previous actions because they are trying to completely obliterate any sign of Christianity. Elderly residents noted in previous crackdowns, even when churches were turned into warehouses for the government, the crosses on the buildings are not removed and destroyed.
Christians who have challenged the government’s action have found themselves suspended from jobs, had their factories and businesses sealed and suffered tax audits that cause great expense.
A Facebook page dedicated to attacking and slandering Christians featuring a picture of an aborted baby Jesus was been taken down after protests from pro-life groups.
The web page featured a photo of the Virgin Mary holding an aborted Jesus who was wearing a crown of thorns. The Virgin Mary was smoking a marijuana cigar looking as if she was very satisfied with aborting God’s son.
A spokesman for the group Catholics & Protestants Against Facebook Religious Discrimination said that this wasn’t a case of shutting down someone’s First Amendment rights but rather a case of hate speech.
“It’s one thing to say we’re atheists and we’re proud of it,” Cary Bogue said in a statement, “It’s another to say that [Jesus’s] mother should have aborted him.”
Facebook’s policies say they encourage discussion and permit parody on their site but do have a line when it comes to hate speech.
“While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition,” Facebook’s Community Standards page states.
Despite an administrator’s attempt to get prayer removed from the Pima Unified School District’s graduation, students made sure that God was given praise during the event.
Superintendent Sean Rickert had ordered the removal of prayer from the graduation event because he wanted to make sure he wasn’t violating the rights of any student who didn’t want to participate in or hear a prayer at the event. He said that he made the decision on his own without any threats of legal action against the school.
Community members and students were outraged at Rickert’s actions, and when the Superintendent and other school officials refused to change their mind on the matter, students took the matter into their own hands.
Not only did students present prayers as part of the ceremony, many graduates made a silent protest by handing a marble to the superintendent as they graduated, an indication they believed he had “lost his marbles” with his actions.
“My class wanted God in our graduation and we weren’t going to take no for an answer,” said Esperanza Gonzalez, one of the students who prayed at the event. “The world keeps saying ‘no to God, no to God’ unless you’re in prison, so we said yes to God because He has helped us throughout our entire high school career.”
An appeals court has ruled a police officer that was ordered to attend a Muslim worship service and then was punished for refusing due to his Christian faith, did not have his religious freedoms violated by the police department.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals claims that despite being ordered to attend the worship service, “no informed, reasonable observer” could say the order was an endorsement of Islam.
Captain Paul Fields, who said that as a Christian he could not participate in an event that was worshipping what he considered a false God, was suspended for two weeks without pay, demoted and prohibited from receiving any kind of promotion for one year for refusal to attend the “Law Enforcement Appreciation Day” at the mosque.
Fields’ attorney Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center, plans to appeal the ruling saying that the court chose to ignore the truth that detrimental actions were taken against Fields solely for exercising his freedom of religion.
“He was singled out for discriminatory treatment and punished because he raised a religious objection to the order,” Muise said. “That is religious discrimination, pure and simple.”
A Florida school district that was openly discriminating against Christian athletes has reversed course and will now allow the Fellowship of Christian Athletes access to the schools.
Students at Mount Dora High School attempted to form a chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes when the officials at the school denied them the same rights given to other student groups. Those rights included access to school facilities and the right to hang promotional posters for events in the school hallways.
The students reached out to the Christian legal organization Liberty Counsel who filed a complaint with the school, saying that denying the students access because they approach things from a religious perspective is a clear violation of their First Amendment rights.
“Equal access means exactly what it says: equal access to every school facility used by other clubs,” Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel said. “This includes the use of classroom facilities, intercom systems, bulletin boards, yearbook, financial sponsorship and any other benefit afforded to secular clubs.”
Lake County School Board voted to support an agreement to end the lawsuit that gives the FCA the same access as other non-curricular student groups.
An anti-Christian group is demanding that the state of Iowa rescind funding for a park in Sioux City that would have a Christian theme.
The virulently anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter demanding the state’s Vision Iowa Board rescind a $140,000 grant awarded to The Shepherd’s Garden. The park with a Christian theme is due to be completed in the downtown Sioux City area by the end of the September.
The park, which will have a stone path with Bible Verses and prayer stations available to visitors, will also have a significant amount of green space, trees and flowers. Vision Iowa authorities say the funding is going to develop the green space and agricultural aspects of the park, not the religious aspect.
Tina Hoffman, the Communications Director for the Iowa Economic Development Authority, which oversees Vision Iowa, said that the contract for the grant has not been drafted but will be written to explicitly prohibit government funds from paying for any of the religious elements of the park.
The unrest among the Nigerian people regarding the government’s inability to rescue 300 kidnapped girls from the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram is starting to have nationwide impact.
The National Union of Teachers announced their members will not show up to teach as a general strike against the government’s failure to rescue the Christian girls kidnapped from a school April 14th.
“All schools nationwide shall be closed as the day will be our day of protest against the abduction of the Chibok female students and the heartless murder of the 173 teachers,” Union President Michael Olukoya told reporters.
The teachers say that the kidnapping of the girls and the government’s apparent weakness in stopping the Islamic terror attacks on Christians puts all youth in the country in danger.
“Children’s lives are being threatened, kidnapping all over the place, stealing, maiming of life, that’s what we are saying should stop,” said teacher Ojo Veronica.
Nigerian citizens in the northern part of the country have now reportedly begin taking up arms and forming militias for the sole purpose of seeking the kidnapped girls. One group attacked a Boko Haram encampment and killed 10 terrorists.
A group of Senators are stepping up to stand for religious freedom not only in the United States but around the world by calling on the Obama administration to offer political asylum to a Sudanese woman sentenced to death for being a Christian.
Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, the wife of an American citizen, is still facing death because she stands by her Christian faith despite the Sudanese government refusing to admit she had never been a Muslim. The government says that after she gives birth, when that child turns 2 she will be hung to death.
“I am disgusted and appalled by the inhumane verdict Ms. Ibrahim has received, simply for refusing to recant her Christian faith,” said Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
A bipartisan group of Senators introduced a resolution condemning the death sentence for being a Christian. Republican Senators Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Chris Coons of Delaware and Bob Menendez of New Jersey joined Rubio.
“Through our U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, the White House and the State Department have communicated our strong concern to the highest levels of the Government of Sudan over this case,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “We’ve also joined with other embassies in Khartoum to express our concern in a widely distributed public statement. U.S. Embassy officials have been engaged in the case from the earliest days.”
Ibrahim’s husband Daniel Wani is confined to a wheelchair and according to his family “depends on her for all the details of his life.”
The family of wrongly imprisoned Pastor Saeed Abedini says that he has been beaten while in an Iranian hospital and then taken back to prison.
Iranian family members have reported that Pastor Abedini was beaten by Iranian jailers while shackled to his hospital bed and then rushed back to Rajai Shahr prison. No explanation was given to the family or hospital staff for the immediate removal of Abedini.
Abedini had been hospitalized because of beatings taken at the hands of jailers and prisoners at both Evin and Rajai Shahr prisons. Untreated internal bleeding had caused massive complications and heavy pain for Abedini and he had been scheduled for surgery until the Iranian government stopped it.
“It is a very disturbing development that underscores what we have known from the very beginning. There is much upheaveal and uncertainty in Iran,” Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice said. “This unexpected move raises great concern.”
The Obama Administration has not yet made any comment regarding this sudden reversal in treatment of American citizen Abedini by the Iranian government.
