A group of Australian Christians who entered a government Minister’s office and held a prayer vigil protest have had all charges against them dismissed by a court.
The five Christians had pleaded guilty in court to the charges against them before the Magistrate dismissed them.
“The aim was to pray about the asylum seeker issue in public, to draw attention to Australia’s cruel policies of indefinite detention,” said Matt Anslow, one of the Christians involved in the protest.
The Magistrate said “If ever there was a peaceful protest this was it” as he dismissed the charges.
“Martin Luther King Jr spoke about there being times when civil disobedience is necessary to dramatise an issue of injustice so that it can no longer be ignored,” Anslow said. “For us to be silent in the face of injustice is to be complicit in the injustice, for us not to speak is to speak.”
Minister Scott Morrison was targeted for the protest because he has said that he is a Christian. The group wanted to encourage Morrison to act on his Christian beliefs.
The lawyers of a Christian couple accused of sending text messages insulting the prophet Mohammed released a new development.
The couple is illiterate.
The court and those connected with the conviction of Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar have not been able to say how a couple that cannot read or write could be sending text messages. They were basically convicted on the word of one Muslim mosque leader who had been trying to take the couple’s property.
A local Christian leader said incidents like this are increasing in the region.
“We are seriously concerned. Cases like these are common and cause great suffering. We continue to pray, while the issue remains unresolved,” Fr. Aloysius Roy, Superior of the Pakistani province of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, said in the Christian Post. “We express our solidarity, but Christians keep a low profile, because life is full of difficulties and dangers, and for us the first commandment is to survive. Christians are afraid and they move with extreme caution.”
Lawyers for the couple say they not only will use the couple’s illiteracy as the basic for the appeal but also to appeal to the international community.
The virulent anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation is attacking the police chief of Birmingham, Alabama because of his participating with a group that prays in the most crime-ridden sections of town.
Chief A.C. Roper, who is an ordained minister, is assisting a group called Prayer Force United. The group consists of the chief, members of the force, area churches and local residents. The goal of the group is to bring faith-based activities to parts of the community that have been negatively impacted by crime.
The anti-Christianists are demanding that the chief no longer participate in the events unless he makes sure to remove any reference to his position as a leader in the police department. The group claims that his participation in the events and allowing a police car to roll through the area as part of the “prayer walks” in crime-infested neighborhoods is a violation of the Constitution.
The FFRF did not address the presence of the police officers providing security and safety for the prayer walkers who are residents of the city the officers are sworn to protect.
Chief Roper told reporters that he is not ashamed of his association with the group and that working with faith-based groups is part of their overall plan to deal with crime in Birmingham.
A Christian husband and wife in Pakistan have been sentenced to death because they allegedly sent a text message with a comment that was insulting to the prophet Mohammed.
Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar from Gojra were sentenced after what has been described as a manipulation of the legal system to benefit a Muslim leader.
Maulvi Mohammed Hussain, a Muslim leader from a mosque in the couple’s home city, complained last year that Emmanuel had used his wife’s phone to send a message that insulted the prophet. Kausar, who did not send or receive the message, was sentenced to death because it was her phone.
The couple’s lawyer, Nadeem Hassan, said that the Islamists brought in a fake SIM card from a phone and claimed it came from the woman’s cell. However, Hassan said the “evidence” was just part of a well-orchestrated plot on the part of the Muslims.
“The complainant was involved in a dispute with the pair and had made a threat with the full knowledge that they would face the death penalty,” he said.
The area of Pakistan where the case was brought is notorious for Muslim residents claiming Christians insulted the prophet as a way to have them killed so their possessions and homes can be taken.
Islamic forces in Syria have killed a relative of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who had been commanding troops protecting a Christian city.
A coalition of Islamic extremist groups overran the defenses of the Christian town of Kassat, killing Christians they found in their path and chanting & praising Allah as they took control of the town.
A student from the town that is now living in the United Arab Emirates told the Wall Street Journal that most of the Christians have fled to a church in the nearby village of Latakia.
“They receive food from the Armenians that are living there,” the unnamed student told the WSJ.
Islamic extremists in Syria have been attempting to exterminate the Christian population in Syria during the civil war. Christians had made up 8 percent of Syria’s population before the Civil War began.
A Christian man has been sentenced to death after a Muslim man claimed he insulted the Prophet Mohammed.
Islamic officials seized the man last year after a Muslim mob burned down the homes and fields of Christians because of the alleged slight. Over 3,000 men went through the streets of the area called Joseph Colony attacking Christians.
The Christians in the region say that the man never actually insulted anyone but rather the Muslim man in question had been trying to take over the Christian’s land and when he wouldn’t sell made the accusation of blasphemy.
“In Pakistan even being accused of blasphemy is equivalent to being sentenced,” Xavier William, president of the Christian group Life for All Pakistan said. “The blasphemy laws in Pakistan are used to settle personal vendettas.”
Amnesty International and other international aid groups are calling for the Christian man to be freed and for the Muslims who beat Christians and burned their homes to be tried for their crimes.
As the Obama Administration ramps up negotiations with Iran to ease international sanctions in return for permanent reductions in their nuclear program, the United Nations has released a report showing that Iran’s persecution of Christians is worse than at any level in the country’s history.
UN investigators found that Iran continues to imprison Christians strictly because of their faith and has designated house churches and evangelical Christians as “threats to national security.” At least 49 Christians were found by the investigators to be held in Iranian jails only because of their Christian faith.
“These are indicators that President Rouhani has no influence over hard-liners, who remain fully in charge of the judiciary and security apparatus, government entities that are responsible for the most severe abuses against religious minorities,” Dwight Bashir, Deputy Director for Policy at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom told Fox News.
“The situation of Christians and other religious minorities in Iran is very dire because the Iranian regime is a Sharia state. This dictatorship oppresses viciously all these precious groups with the abhorrent justification of Islamic law and by that it violates Iran’s constitution and a long-lasting tradition within Persian culture of peaceful tolerance and respect towards fellow Iranians with diverse religious backgrounds,” Saba Farzan of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy added.
Christians arrested for their faith have been sentenced to up to 10 years in jail.
A vehement anti-Christian group is targeting Wisconsin’s governor because he tweeted a reference to the Bible on the social media networks Twitter and Facebook.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation released a statement calling on Governor Scott Walker to immediately remove the reference from his social media account. The group’s co-Presidents say because the tweet came from the official account of the Governor, it means the state is endorsing Christianity.
Walker had written “Philippians 4:13” which reads, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
“This braggadocio verse coming form a public official is rather disturbing,” the FFRC wrote in their letter. “As governor, you took an oath of office to uphold the entirely godless and secular United States Constitution.”
The governor’s office has not commented on the anti-Christian group’s demand.
A group of Muslims attacked Christian farmers near Kano, Nigeria on Sunday, killing more than 100 and injuring dozens more.
The attackers also destroyed all the property of the Christian farmers, burning their homes to the ground.
The admission of the deaths by the government was complicated by the additional news this was the second straight week of Christian farmers being slaughtered by Muslim groups.
Chenshyi village chief Nehu Moses told journalists that gunmen slaughtered the church’s pastor, his wife and then gunned down their children. After that, they ransacked through the area killing at least 50 in his village.
Local government acting chairman Daniel Anyip told Time that at least three villages were destroyed during the assault.
In response to the Air Force’s assault on the religious freedom of Christian cadets, a group of Christian organizations have banded together to protect the cadets.
The Restore Military Religious Freedom Coalition announced they will defend any cadet brought up on charges for exercising their religious rights.
The formation of the group comes after the Air Force bowed to the demands of the virulent anti-Christian activist group Military Religious Freedom Foundation and their extremist leader, Mikey Weinstein. The group demanded the whiteboard of a cadet be scrubbed of a Bible verse he had displayed outside his dorm room.
Friends of the cadet who had the verse (Galatians 2:20) removed from his whiteboard say it had been posted for months and the cadet saw the verse as inspiration.
The anti-Chrsitian group was not satisfied with the removal of the verse and is demanding that disciplinary action be taken against the student for exercising his religious freedom.
The Air Force is claiming the cadet remove the verse on his own, however other cadets who spoke to Fox News said that was a pure lie. The Air Force also said after removing the verse that cadets may only place things that are respectful on their whiteboards, thereby saying the Bible is not respectful.
