Meriam Ibrahim, the 26-year-old Christian woman sentenced to death for converting from Islam when she had never been a Muslim, is reportedly being mistreated by her captors in a Sudanese jail.
Ibrahim’s husband, U.S. citizen Daniel Wani, was able to see his wife for the first time since her capture and trial on Monday.
“She was shackled and her legs were very swollen,” Wani told members of a U.S. based advocacy group that is fighting for his wife’s release. Wani said that the prison is keeping her shackled at all times and making no accommodations for her advanced pregnancy.
The courts are allowing the couple’s 18-month-old son to stay in the jail cell with his mother because they do not recognize Wani’s rights as the boy’s father. The government says the boy is automatically Muslim and because Wani is a Christian he cannot have custody or parent the child.
Witnesses say that her brother who recently converted to Islam brought Ibrahim to the attention of the authorities. The brother created a fake birth certificate for his sister that he used to claim she was born a Muslim.
The leader of the Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram has released a new video where he declares his group is at war with Christians throughout the world.
“We know what is happening in this world,” Abubakar Shekau says, “It is a Jihad war against Christians and Christianity. It is a war against western education, democracy and constitution.”
Shekau goes on to say that even with the kidnapping of the girls and spending the last few years launching terrorist attacks on towns throughout the northern part of the country, the Jihad has not yet begun in Nigeria.
“We have not started,” he says, “next time we are going inside [Nigeria’s capital] Abuja. We are going to refinery and town of Christians.”
He goes on to say the Koran tells him that he needs to kill anyone who is Christian or associated with Christians because that is Allah’s will.
The group, whose name means “Western Education is sinful”, is the subject of a manhunt by Nigerian military officials and western air forces after their kidnapping of over 300 Christian girls from a school and village last month.
A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews are protesting outside of the Last Supper near Jerusalem because of plans by Pope Francis to hold a mass at the site next week.
The Jews claim that allowing Christians to worship where Jesus held his last meal with his disciples is a violation of their beliefs.
“Under Jewish law it is a big problem,” Rabbi Avraham Goldstein told NBC News. “Basically they are taking over the place.”
Protests are also taking place because the Pope is simply planning to visit the site.
“When ‘the crusaders’ come here making the sign of the cross and all kinds of rituals, this place will become idolatrous for us,” protester Yitzhak Batzon told AFP news agency. “We will not have the right to pray there anymore.”
The head of the Catholic Church in Israel said he is concerned about security, especially following a rash of vandalism with anti-Christian and racist statements at various Cathedrals.
A pastor who was arrested for preaching the gospel at a train station has been found not guilty of defiant trespassing.
Pastor Robert Parker has been preaching at the Princeton Junction train station for five years. The station, part of the New Jersey Transit situation, is in the public transportation system and thus public space.
In June 2012, two officers confronted Parker and fellow evangelist Don Karns after the men had finished preaching for the day. The officers, Sergeant Kathleen Shanahan and Officer Sandy Crowe, also forced Karns and Parker to stop recording the incident on their cell phones in violation of New Jersey law.
The two police officers kept yelling at the preachers that they were potential terrorists. Parker was arrested when he refused to provide ID and asked the officer what law he had been breaking.
Sergeant Shanahan even told officers to place one of the preachers in a cell “with a pervert” when they brought them into the station. Shanahan then claimed in court that she had just taken a terrorist class and the men looked like a terrorist threat because they had backpacks and a bulge in their pants pocket.
Superior Court of New Jersey Judge Mark Flemming ruled Friday that the state failed to prove any crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Texas Department of Transportation is telling a Hemphill, Texas woman that she cannot have a sign displaying the Ten Commandments on her land.
TXDOT contacted Jeannette Golden and said that her sign showing the Ten Commandments with a web address on it where people could learn about Jesus could be classified as commercial advertising and was a violation of law. Golden then painted over the website address, leaving only God’s word and the phrase “With God all things are possible.”
TXDOT contacted the woman again, demanding the sign be removed because it was still “outdoor advertising” and she had not paid for a permit. When she tried to apply for a permit, TXDOT told her there was no permit possible and to remove the sign or face fines as high as $1,000 a day.
TXDOT wants to claim the sign is a violation of the Highway Beautification Act.
“I wasn’t advertising because that’s my freedom of religion and that’s what I believe,” Golden said. “It was just something that I stood for.”
The Liberty Institute has agreed to represent Golden against the state. Attorney Michael Berry said the state’s actions are in violation of the Federal Religious Land Use Act along with the U.S. and Texas Constitution.
A Sudanese judge has officially sentenced a Christian woman to death for not converting to Islam.
Meriam Ibrahim, a 26-year-old mother and currently pregnant with her second child, was convicted of adultery and apostasy for her marriage to an American Christian man. Ibrahim, a physician, was brought up in a Christian home and has never been a part of the Islamic faith.
The judge said Ibrahim will receive 100 lashes immediately following the birth of her child for the adultery. She will be hung to death for not accepting Islam once the child is nursed and weaned.
Because Ibrahim was born in Sudan, the government says she’s Muslim even if she never worships Allah. Thus, they say she illegally converted to Christianity.
Amnesty International called the action a “flagrant breach of international human rights law.” Several U.S. State Department and Congressional officials expressed their outrage at the actions.
“The refusal of the government of Sudan to allow religious freedom was one of the reasons for Sudan’s long civil war,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House congressional panel that oversees U.S. policy in Africa, said in a statement. “The U.S. and the rest of the international community must demand Sudan reverse this sentence immediately.”
A statue of the Virgin Mary was taken from its platform, decapitated and thrown on the ground in front of a Knights of Columbus building.
Long Island police say the “Statue of the Blessed Mother” was vandalized sometime between Tuesday lunchtime and Wednesday morning.
“Someone’s got to have hate in their heart,” Knights of Columbus Grand Knight Austin Cannon told CBS New York. “Members equate this to maybe a person of the Jewish faith coming out and finding a swastika on the side of a building. The Blessed Mother is an integral part of our faith, and to find her statue pushed over really upset our members.”
The statue that was destroyed was a replacement for one that was damaged last July by vandals. Police say that three separate Knights of Columbus locations have had statues vandalized in the last year.
The attacks have done nothing to discourage the Knights.
“You can break it as many times as you want,” added Knights of Columbus Deputy Grand Knight James Ruescher. “But at the end of the day it’ll always be bigger and better.”
A Nigerian girl from the same village as 270 of the girls kidnapped by Islamic extremists Boko Haram is speaking out about her family being slaughtered by the terrorists.
Deborah Peters delivered a talk at the Hudson Institute where she talked about her brother and father getting gunned down by the terrorists. Peters said that she was at home with her brother on December 21, 2011 when gunfire broke out in her hometown of Chibok.
“So my brother called my dad and told him not to come home because they are fighting and my father told him to just forget about it,” Peters said.
Her father came home and a few hours later the terrorists stormed into their home and demanded her father, a Christian pastor whose church had been destroyed earlier in the year by the Islamists, renounce his faith in Christ.
“He told him that he would rather die than to go to hellfire,” Peters said. The terrorists then shot him three times in the chest while she watched. Then they turned their guns on her younger brother because they said he would grow up to be a pastor if they didn’t kill him.
Emmanuel Ogebe, an international human rights lawyer, attended the event and said that what we’re seeing now has been happening for years.
“What is happening now is this is persecution on steroids. Northern Nigerian Christians are used to being killed a couple of times a year,” Ogebe said. “But for terrorists to come out and abduct 300 kids, this is where Northern Nigerian Christians are saying ‘okay, we didn’t sign up for this.'”
A pregnant Christian woman in Sudan has been sentenced to 100 lashes and then death for adultery and apostasy.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, 27, had been working as a doctor at the time she was seized by government officials. The graduate of Khartoum University has been a Christian her entire life and married a Christian man from South Sudan.
However, because Sudan is largely Muslim and controlled by Islamists, Ibrahim was considered Muslim by the government regardless of what she said was her faith. Therefore, they said her marriage to the Christian man was invalid and her having his child is adultery and apostasy.
“We grieve today at the sentencing to death of a mother, pregnant with her second child, for the expression of her faith and legal marriage to a practicing Christian,” said International Christian Concern Regional Manager William Stark.
“The handing down of such an extreme punishment under a law inspired by the al-Turabi radicalism of the early al-Bashir regime brings into question the direction Sudan intends to head following South Sudanese succession. Having embraced policies of Islamization and Arabization in the past, ICC fears Meriam could be the first of many more Christians to suffer under an increasingly radicalized Sudanese government intent on enforcing Sharia law throughout the land.”
The international director of the Barnabas Fund said that anti-Christianism in Sudan is increasing to the point women are being picked up off the street and beaten by authorities if they do not meet Sharia guidelines for dress even if they are not Muslims.
NBA observers were surprised when the Golden State Warriors dismissed coach Mark Jackson despite his very successful run with the team.
Now reports are surfacing that the coach’s strong Christian faith may have played a part in his dismissal from the team.
Mark Jackson, a pastor before being hired to coach the team, was asked on 95.7 FM in the Bay Area about comments Jackson’s strong Christian faith caused problems between himself and ownership that lead to his firing.
“I was hired when I was a pastor. I think it’s unfortunate because if it was true, you don’t encourage media to come do a piece on my church, on my ministry, the work on my faith. Don’t do it when it’s convenient and you’re searching for something. I never went around beating people in the head with a Bible,” said Jackson.
Jackson, the first coach to take the Warriors to the playoffs in consecutive seasons since 1991-1992, said that he is thankful for the opportunity God gave him with Golden State.
“I’m grateful…Maybe that doesn’t sell but I’m grateful for the opportunity and we move on. And God-willing another opportunity will present itself but if not, I’m totally at peace being a husband, a father, a pastor,” Jackson said.
Jackson and his wife Desiree Coleman are co-pastors of the True Love Worship Center International in Reseda, California.
