Free Republic

Centuries of persecution before Israeli "occupation." In the voluminous commentaries on the Middle East today very little attention has been given to the sad fate of Christians in the Arab and Muslim countries. Even less attention has been paid to the contrast between the treatment of Christians in Israel and their treatment in Arab countries. In Israel Christians have religious freedom and their numbers have increased. In Arab countries the religious freedom of Christians is restricted and their number has been reduced because of harassment, fear, and persecution. It is well to remember the words of Martin Luther King: "In...

Dear children, let us not LOVE with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18 This week we as Americans lost our right to freedom of religion. Thanks to the cult of liberalism they invented a right to healthcare as a way to strip every American church in the country their right to worship in the way they wish. Churches now have to get permission from a dictatorial edict which church doctrines can be worshipped and which cannot. Commie libs have always hated the Catholic Church just like they hate every institution that stands in their...

Dearborn police threw us in jail for having a peaceful discussion with Muslims at a public festival. They also took us into custody two days later for attempting to distribute copies of the Gospel of John outside the festival. The police seized our cameras for nearly a month and filed false police reports, while the mayor waged a smear-campaign against us. The city of Dearborn then had the nerve to try to have our civil case thrown out of court, arguing that police had "probable cause" to arrest us! Fortunately, our lawyers do not know the meaning of "sleep," and...

Washington, D.C. (February 7, 2012) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that earlier today Saudi Arabian officials sent a Muslim preacher to pressure Christian prisoners into converting to Islam. Saudi Arabia arrested 29 Christian women and six Christian men, all Ethiopian citizens, on December 15th after they held a prayer meeting in Jeddah. “The Muslim preacher vilified Christianity, denigrated the Bible and told us that Islam is the only true religion. The preacher told us to convert to Islam. When the preacher asked us, we didn’t deny about our Christian faith. I was so offended with her false teachings...

ICC Urges Saudi Arabia to Release the Prisoners Washington, D.C. (January 24, 2012) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that Saudi Arabian officials strip searched 29 Christian women and assaulted six Christian men after arresting them for holding a prayer meeting at a private home in Jeddah. The prisoners are currently being held at Briman prison in Jeddah. “We feel humiliated because the security officials stripped searched us. They used the same glove to search several of us at the same time. Some of my friends are suffering from physical pain to their private parts due to the unsanitary...

This year will probably see an increased exodus of Arab Christians fleeing the mounting tide of radical Islam in the Middle East -- a phenomenon that, as sad as it is, might bring a surge of new vitality to Canada's thriving immigrant communities. Some of these exiles will choose Canada as a haven, and many of them should qualify for refugee status. Nearly 100,000 Copts have fled Egypt since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, chased by a series of increasingly violent pogroms at the hands of fanatics while the military often looked the other way. The country's estimated 10 million...

Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith – even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity. Recent terrorist atrocities have seemed to confirm this received idea. But if we want a peaceful world, we urgently need a more balanced view. We cannot hope to win the "battle for hearts and minds" unless we know what is actually in them. Nor can we expect Muslims to be impressed by...

On January 24, during his State of the Union Address, the president of the United States has a chance to expose the plight of religious minorities living in Muslim majority nations. Doing so would not merely shed light on one of the most ignored humanitarian crises of the 21st century; it would help alleviate it. Why should the president speak up on the oppression of religious minorities? For starters, because it is the right thing to do, and reflects American values and principles. He should speak up because religious cleansing is currently underway in nations like Nigeria, where Boko Haram—"Western...

A tense atmosphere has prevailed in Perumbavoor, a satellite town of Kochi city and a municipality in the Indian state of Kerala, after a group of Muslims slaughtered a pregnant cow inside the compound of the Sree Dharma Sastha late Tuesday afternoon. The perpetrators slit the cow's throat. Cows are considered sacred in Hinduism, and killing them is prohibited. The killing of the pregnant cow inside the temple compound was a deliberate act of sacrilege designed to provoke local Hindus. A member of the Sree Dharma Sastha temple committee is reported to have said, “If they wanted the cow for...

The Rheine district court sentenced 21-year-old Ahmad Sherzai to prison for two years and nine months for interruption of a pregnancy in an especially severe case according to German Penal Code § 218 StGB. The chamber exceeded the request of the district attorney who had asked for two years and six months incarceration. Sherzai had boxed his erstwhile girlfriend forcefully in the belly, according to the belief of the court, because he disapproved of treatment by a male gynecologist. The unborn child of the pregnant mother in the seventh month suffered massive cranial hemorrhages from this and died two days...

I'd like to discuss something that happened to me while working in a department called "Women's Support Services." I was the only conservative (at least the only one who would stand up for conservative values) and the only Christian. The women in this department were militant feminists. This group was very diverse. Athiests, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims. We had a group of doulas who helped women through labor and birth. I taught childbirth classes and also setup /maintained the class database. I was continuously bulled and made fun of, but it was ok because Christians were not a protected class. I...

In Zanzibar, two church buildings razed; in Comoros, a Christian suffers disease, shunning. NAIROBI, Kenya, January 13 (CDN) — Far from the world media’s gaze in remote islands off the eastern coast of Africa, church buildings are razed and Christians are ostracized and imprisoned for their faith – leaving one with a skin disease. On Tanzania’s island of Zanzibar, in one week-long stretch last month Muslim extremists destroyed two church buildings, Christian leaders said. The extremists torched the building of the Pentecostal Evangelical Fellowship of Africa in Mtufani Mwera, about 12 kilometers (seven miles) from Zanzibar town, at 7 p.m....

Projecting Western ideas onto the Arab Spring seriously underestimates the danger of Islamism. Last July Matthew Kaminski opined in the Wall Street Journal that the transition to democracy in the Middle East would be as easy as it was for the democracies that emerged after the fall of the Soviet empire. Alas, this was predictably not so and has now been proven, as vote after vote has shown, the strength of the Islamists, most particularly in Egypt, where they have won some 70 percent of the ballot. With his article on January 3, "Arab Democracy Is the Best Bet for...

It’s funny in an Orwellian way that in Europe there are now militant groups with such cutesy names as Sharia4Belgium and Sharia4Holland. Less funny, but perhaps more Orwellian: Last month, the European Foundation for Democracy held an event in Amsterdam featuring two speakers who favor liberalizing Islam. More than 20 members of the pro-Sharia groups pushed their way in shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” They demanded the event be stopped, called the speakers apostates, spat on them, threw eggs at them and threatened to kill them. Now here’s the least funny and most Orwellian part: Few Europeans — few journalists, politicians, members...

Saudi Arabia’s feared religious police arrested a Filipina nurse for having what they described as an illegitimate meeting with an Arab man at a shopping mall in the conservative Gulf kingdom. Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice rushed towards the couple at a café in the western Red Sea port of Jeddah after suspecting they were lovers. “When he saw them, the man fled…the Commission members arrested the Filipina nurse, who told them the man is her boy friend and that she met him there to say good bye before returning to her...

A Pakistani Christian editor has said he receives hate mails and death threats on a daily basis from Pakistan for carrying reports on the persecution of Christians in the South Asian country. Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, editor of the Pakistan Christian Post who doubles as founder of Pakistan Christian Congress, Thursday received one such email in whch Aasia Bibi, who is languishing in jail for alleged blasphemy, and former Punjab governor Salman Taseer and minorities affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti, who were assassinated last year for crusading to end the blasphemy law, were called harami or bastards. A defiant Bhatti said...

The Nigerian church bombings, wherein the Islamic group Boko Haram killed over 40 people celebrating Christmas mass, is just the most obvious example of anti-Christian sentiment in December. Elsewhere around the Muslim world, Christmas time for Christians is a time of increased threats, harassment, and fear, which is not surprising, considering Muslim clerics maintain that "saying Merry Christmas is worse than fornication or killing someone." A few examples: * Egypt: The Coptic Church is being threatened with a repeat of "Nag Hammadi," the area where drive-by Muslims shot to death six Christians as they exited church after celebrating Christmas mass...

* The current sociopolitical eruption in the Arab world is the result of the total failure of Arab states to create a unifying national narrative and establish modern egalitarian polities. * Instead of seeking what is unifying, and constructing a society that mobilizes its resources to defeat backwardness and improve the economy, the elites have attempted through Arab nationalism and/or Islam to impose a unity that has always left parts of the population outside the majority community. * The 90 years since the Arab states were established have been fraught with discord between the different communities, political and economic discrimination,...

Malory Nye says he was forced out by Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education because he was 'not an Arab and not a Muslim' A principal and his wife have been sacked from a college whose stated aim is to promote multiculturalism because they are white Christians, they claim. Professor Malory Nye, 47, says he was dismissed from the Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education in Dundee, Scotland, because his race and religion were seen by his superiors as a threat to its core Muslim values. He says the college’s claims to pursuing multicultural values were a charade and that he was...

As if further proof were needed of the fecklessness of Western civilization when confronting savagery, consider the destruction of the Institut d’Egypte in Cairo this month. Once again, the world watched helplessly while a horde of Muslim rioters wantonly annihilated a piece of history, and thus served warning that its cultural jihad against the West will advance until we stop it. The Institut was founded by Napoleon in 1798 during his campaign in Egypt and Syria. Its ranks have included scholars from all walks of life, dedicated to researching Egyptian culture from antiquity to the present. The building, near Tahrir...

A Marietta grandmother who mailed a package containing a bloody pig foot to N.Y. Rep. Peter King and a Curious George doll to N.Y. State Senator Greg Ball earlier this year was killed by police on Christmas Day at her home. Her death came a few weeks after her indictment and plea of not guilty in federal court for mailing threatening communications. The federal judge had ordered her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation according to WSB TV. She was reportedly out on bond. According to reports of the incident, Jameela Barnette, 53, a self-described “Messenger of Allah,” was killed by...

  Christmas Lights David C. Stolinsky Dec. 28, 2011 The North Korean government recently warned South Korea not to put Christmas lights within sight of the border, because this would be “psychological warfare.” There are two ways to look at this odd situation: (1) What kind of government is so unpopular that it feels threatened by pretty lights? (2) What kind of lights are so powerful that they threaten tyrannical governments? I have always loved Christmas lights. The days grow short at this time of year, especially in the North, and colored lights in windows and on trees and...

Saudi authorities are investigating how Israeli pencils reached one of the kingdom's biggest retail chains. The Kravitz chain, which markets the pencils in Israel, was surprised to hear about the affair stirring up the Gulf kingdom. It turns out that Abu Rialin, a Saudi chain which offers all of its items for two riyals, is selling one of Kravitz's most popular products – a set of 12 pencils with an eraser. The pencils are sold with the Kravitz logo in Hebrew and without any attempt to conceal the fact that they are made in Israel. Kravitz learned about the incident...

The government has decided to tackle head-on the alleged “Arab refugees” issue by renewing efforts for compensation for Jewish victims of Arab pogroms . Estimates of property losses range from $16 billion to $300 billion in Arab countries where Arab leaders seized their property or took it over after Jews were expelled or forced to flee because of anti-Jewish violence and harassment.

Islamic "Tolerance" Of Other Religions If Egyptian Coptic Christians are lucky, the Muslims around them will tolerate letting them live. Lucette Lagnado writes in the WSJ: Kirolos Andraws had every reason to be excited about the January uprising in his native Egypt, figuring democracy would bring hope for young people like him. Copts Seek Asylum in America Then one day in February, says Mr. Andraws, a gang of thugs beat him and told him, "you deserve to die." His offense, he says: refusing to convert to Islam. In late March, Mr. Andraws, a 23-year- old engineer, used a tourist visa...

Interview with Kamal Fahmi, director of Set My People Free (10th of December 2011, Stockholm). What is the purpose of today’s event? Today, actually is the international day of human rights. This is one of the reasons we chose this day, and the second one also, that it is that we give the Nobel prize, so there is a lot of media attention, and what we want to bring the attention of the people to is the apostasy law in Islam, which not many people know about. Islam is a one way religion. If you are a Muslim you can...

After Kim Gaines found a small nativity scene in a box of old Christmas decorations, she decided it would look nice on her desk in the main office at Urbana High School. Almost a week after she placed the figures on her desk, the school's secretary of eight years said she was called into Principal Kathy Campagnoli's office, where Campagnoli said staff members had told her the display promotes Christianity and that Gaines should take it down. Gaines obliged and removed the nativity scene. "I didn't want a big fight on my hands, but I was very upset over it,"...

The U.N. General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution condemning the stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urging countries to take effective steps “to address and combat such incidents"

“At Hamline, students collaborate with professors invested in their success. They are challenged in and out of the classroom to create and apply knowledge in local and global contexts, while cultivating an ethic of civic responsibility, social justice, and inclusive leadership and service.” – From the Hamline University website Hamline University is not a liberal arts college as it claims to be. It is an illiberal arts college that has just disgraced itself in the national court of public opinion. Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer was hired to teach at the school but then abruptly canned by those who...

As he closed the door on American military involvement in Iraq, Barack Obama said: “Everything that American troops have done in Iraq—all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding and the building and the training and the partnering—all of it has landed to this moment of success.” He avoided declaring victory outright, but he did say: “Iraq’s not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people.” At the beginning of December in that stable and self-reliant Iraq with a representative...

TOLERANCE AND mutual respect for different cultures and religions is great — as long as it is mutual. When it's not mutual, then tolerance becomes a self-destructive doctrine. When it is not mutual, one side gives and the other side takes. In normal parlance, it is called being a doormat. Islamic supremacism is religiously-sanctioned intolerance, and many in the West tolerate the intolerance out of a blind multiculturalism. But multiculturalism (respect for other cultures) need not be blind. The addition of one simple distinction is all that is needed. When I was younger, I lacked the same distinction in my...

This is yet further evidence of the bizarre Catalan Nationalist-Mohammedan alliance that seems to have been formed in parts of Catalonia. After a protest held by these “immigrants” in Las Garrigàs, a representative of the local authority assured them that the bell of the local church would be decommissioned if the priest continued to ring it each day. Although the article in Spanish does not further specify the character of these “immigrants”, I don’t think you need to be a genius to reach the obvious conclusion, particularly as Las Gallegas is part of Lérida, which is known to have been...

Archie Bell: "The spell of the Holy Land," pp. 229-230, (Archie Bell, 1915; 371 pp.) The Hills of Samaria[...]As we left Jacob and his people we soon found ourselves in the midst of Nablus hoodlums again. Although Nablus is the largest city in Palestine between Damascus and Jerusalem, it is isolated in the Valley of Shechem, untouched by a railroad and somewhat difficult to reach. Yet it has a population of nearly thirty thousand, is a prosperous city, and in many ways quite unlike any of the other towns one passes on the overland journey by the ancient caravan route...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Oct 11, 2011 / 03:34 pm (CNA).- Saudi Arabia’s religious police detained a Colombian soccer player at a shopping mall on Oct. 7 for not covering up an image of Jesus tattooed on his shoulder.Juan Pablo Pino, 24, who plays with the Al Nasr Soccer Club in Saudi Arabia, was wearing a sleeveless shirt while out with his pregnant wife at a mall in the capital city of Riyadh.Locals who saw the tattoo began insulting him, which drew the attention of the officers from a group known as the Police Force for the Promotion of Virtue of...

The scrubbing has begun on the Occupy Wall Street website as they realize their calls for genocide and hatred are being watched by millions of people. If you happened to come across the site just a few days ago, it is markedly different from today. Gone are articles such as, "Why so scared of naming the jew?" You can read it because Google cached it. If you try to go there now, you merely are greeted with a "four oh four, page not found" message. Here is the text of the original message: does it make you feel dirty to...

The number of dead in clashes between the army and pro-Coptic Christian protesters in Egypt over the weekend rose to at least 25, with at least 272 wounded, a Health Ministry official told CNN Monday. Conflicting reports from the two sides indicated the death toll could be as high as 29 in violence that an army spokesman speculated may have been guided by a "hidden hand" associated with neither side. Many of the casualties had been crushed by speeding military vehicles, said Dr. Adel al-Dawi of the ministry. The violence -- the deadliest in Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak...

I've got an idea for a new video game. I'm going to call it "Bloodsucking Progressives Must Die." Heroic tax-resisting players armed with crowbars will be able to bash in the heads of redistributionist parasites like President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Paul Krugman, George Soros, Nancy Pelosi, Warren Buffett and Rachel Maddow. (To satisfy unquantifiable but undeniable right-wing sexual kinks, Maddow will be dressed only in her underwear.) Can you say fun? Liberal blood and brains flying everywhere! Just kidding, of course. A game in which conservatives savagely beat in the heads of their political opponents would be wrong. Even...

The Washington National Cathedral, in its commemoration of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, has deliberately and carefully excluded evangelicals from their multi-religious commemoration. The service includes Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims, but not evangelical Christians. Mind you, I am opposed to interfaith services in any shape or form and that is why, in a previous blog, I stated that I was relieved that the mayor of New York spared us the agony of watching the One, True God of the Bible “worshipped” alongside false gods. National Cathedral (Washington, DC)The National Cathedral is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation. Having...

A North Carolina state university has put out a list of approved "gay-friendly" churches for faculty and students raising concerns by at least one professor that taxpayers are inadvertently involved in "telling people where to go to church." An office with the University of North Carolina's Wilmington campus began circulating the list late last month. It was compiled as part of a broader guide to gay-friendly businesses, nonprofits, health centers and other services in the area. The "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex and allied students, faculty, staff, and alumni" office described the document as a "local resource guide" for...

And in fact, you do LOVE all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more. 1 Thes 4:10 It is time to stop tolerating tolerance. Tolerance has become the number one tactic for the commie left to promote their agenda. Whether they are promoting homosexuality, abortion, immigration, islam or the worship of the earth everything is wrapped around tolerance and their manipulation of the language through social morality. To become a perfect person in the liberal world you have to become more tolerant than every other person while anybody who’s not tolerant is...

Hundreds of Egyptian Muslims: "We will kill the priest, we will kill him and no one will prevent us." Another one of those "misunderstandings" seems to have cropped up again. Funny how that keeps happening. The crime this time? The priest received a license to renovate his church, and moved ahead with it. "Muslims Surround Church in Upper Egypt, Threaten to Kill Priest," by Mary Abdelmassih for the Assyrian International News Agency, June 24: (AINA) -- Hundreds of Muslims surrounded the church of St George today in the village of Beni Ahmed West, 7 KM south of Minya, vowing to...

ANN ARBOR (AP) — Lights-out time is approaching at the University of Michigan, where a campuswide ban on smoking outdoors and indoors takes effect next month. The school says it is the first major university in the state to adopt such a ban, while Big Ten rivals Indiana University and the University of Iowa already have them in place. “We are approaching this issue with great respect for the difficulty in discontinuing tobacco use,” said Robert Winfield, the university’s chief health officer. “It is our expectation that this will entail a culture change that will take a number of years...

San Francisco's anti-circumcision measure will be decided by voters in November, but the literature for the movement aims to sway them with some disturbing images -- including dark, evil-looking rabbis and a blonde superhero saving babies from their clutches.The measure, supported by self-described "intactivists," would make circumcision performed on anyone under 18 a misdemeanor, even if it is done for religious purposes. It would be punishable by a $1000 fine, or up to a year in jail.But that's not the half of it: check out the eye-opening "Foreskin Man,'' the comic book for this anti-circumcision movement that uses images critics...

Days ago in Egypt, throngs of Muslims (henceforth, "Islamists"), estimated at 3,000, fired guns and rifles and hurled Molotov cocktails at Coptic churches, homes, and businesses in the Imbaba region near Cairo: twelve Christians were killed -- some shot by snipers atop rooftops — 232 injured; three churches were set aflame to cries of "Allahu Akbar," while Coptic homes were looted and torched. ...

...most of the front page news you will see is about a loony Pastor of a small Florida Church burning a Koran…..Bizarro World I tell you. I wonder what the Obama doctrine says about this? At least 1,000 Christians were slaughtered this week in at the Salesian Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus mission in Duekoue, Ivory Coast by Muslim troops loyal to Alassane Ouattara. The state-run media has been slow to report the story. The conflict in Ivory Coast began in 2002. The country is divided between the Muslim north and Christian south. This is a conflict that has...

ALISO VIEJO – Members of a local church are saying an ad for their Easter service was deemed too controversial to run because it named Jesus.

On March 5, Muslims attacked, plundered, and set ablaze an ancient Coptic church in Sool, a village near Cairo, Egypt. Afterwards, throngs of Muslims gathered around the scorched building and pounded its walls down with sledge hammers -- to cries of "Allahu Akbar!" Adding insult to injury, the attackers played "soccer" with the relic-remains of the church's saints and martyrs and transformed the desecrated church into a mosque (a live example of history, which witnessed countless churches seized and transformed into mosques). As a result of Christian girls being abducted and raped and overall terrorization of the Coptic community, thousands...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- A Jewish Minnesota lawmaker is asking Senate leaders to allow only nondenominational prayers to open sessions, after feeling "highly uncomfortable" when a Baptist pastor repeatedly mentioned Jesus Christ and Christianity in one of the invocations. Democratic Sen. Terri Bonoff says she wants Republican Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch to change the letter submitted to all visiting chaplains to say they are "required," rather than "requested," to make prayers nondenominational.

Faith Without Works? Do Calvinists Actually Read the Christian Bible? Is anyone as mystified as I am at this contradictory and unbiblical Calvinist “Sola Fide” idea that faith without works is sufficient for salvation? How can Calvinists reject James Chapter 2 which states that; “What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?” (James 2:14) and "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:26). To do so is antithetical to Scripture. The Calvinist rejection of James is at best substitutional, permitting Calvinists to conclude that works naturally follow...

HATE-FILLED preacher Anjem Choudary is holding an anti-Christmas protest on Britain’s busiest shopping street. The nut is heading to London’s Oxford Street on Christmas Eve to try to convert a million “lost souls”. The ranting cleric will lead disciples in a protest against the “promiscuity and materialism” of Christmas on a day when more than a million shoppers will in the world’s most famous shopping district. And the Muslim rabble rouser hopes his actions will boost his evil plan to fly the “Black Flag of Sharia” over yet another British institution. Last night Choudary, 43, said...“For us these are the...