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Their first interview was with a group of young boys whose village had been attacked by Islamic soldiers. The elderly and infants were killed on the spot. Twenty-seven children, 14 boys and 13 girls, were taken to a military camp about 9 miles from their village. That evening, the boy's hands and feet were tied behind their backs and they were ordered to deny Christ. Each refused. Burning coals were piled on the ground in front of the boys. As they refused to deny their faith, they were held over the burning embers. Still, they refused to deny their faith....

The evangelicals who like to giftwrap Islamophobia The world's largest children's Christmas project has a toxic agenda Giles Fraser Monday November 10, 2003 The Guardian It all sounds innocent enough. Operation Christmas Child "is a unique ministry that brings Christmas joy, packed in gift-filled shoeboxes, to children around the world". Over the past 10 years, 24 million shoeboxes have been delivered, making it the world's largest children's Christmas project. Every US president since Ronald Reagan has packed a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child. In the UK, thousands of schools, churches and youth clubs are doing the same. Some will fill...

Apology to Muslims and censure of Boykin: Resolution H. Res. 419, introduced by Rep. John Conyers Please write your congressional representative about Resolution H. Res. 419, introduced by Representative John Conyers (D-MI). Click here for the Congress.org link. The language concerning “religiously intolerant remarks” amounts to censorship of Christian, as well as other beliefs. The resolution is a knee-jerk reaction to Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin’s exercise of Free Speech and Freedom of Religion in his own church. Proposing such a bill is the worst kid of appeasement to a group that is aggressively intolerant to non-Muslims around the...

October 20, 2003 Contact: Joel Schwarzjoels@u.washington.edu 206-543-2580University of Washington Gay, lesbian couples can teach heterosexuals how to improve relationships Married heterosexual couples can learn a great deal from gay and lesbian couples, far more than the stereotypical images presented by the television show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," according to the first published observational studies of homosexual relationships. "Gay and lesbian couples are a lot more mature, more considerate in trying to improve a relationship and have a greater awareness of equality in a relationship than straight couples," said John Gottman, a University of Washington emeritus professor of...

Bible may be banned from city hospitals Health region wants to be fair to all faiths Robin Summerfield Calgary Herald Monday, October 20, 2003 Rev. Robert Greene ADVERTISEMENT Bibles in bedside tables may become contraband at hospitals under a proposal from the Calgary Health Region. If the policy is approved, the Gideons International Bible, a bedside staple, will be removed from all hospital rooms in the city and all distribution and display of any printed religious materials in hospitals will be banned. The policy, which is still under review and likely won't be decided for at least two months,...

KABUL, September 28 (Online): Members of a federal panel are warning that religious freedom and other human rights remain seriously imperilled in Afghanistan even under a United States-backed government. Members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, reporting on an August visit to Kabul, said Sept. 24 that the U.S.-backed interim government is in danger of allowing the nation to return to the patterns of severe repression of religious freedom that characterised the Taliban's rule there. The Taliban were deposed by U.S.-led forces in 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden and other members of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Noting...

An Egyptian Christian who married a Muslim convert to Christianity was pulled off an international flight this afternoon in Cairo, Egypt, and is being held by Egyptian secret police. Bolis Rezek-Allah had an immigrant visa to Canada, according to the U.S.- based monitor Voice of the Martyrs, or VOM. His wife, Enas Badawi, also is sought by police but has not been apprehended, VOM said. Egypt bars Christian men from marrying Muslim women. The government, refusing to recognize Badawi's conversion, still recognizes her as a Muslim. "It is interesting that the Egyptian government has no problem with Muslim men marrying...

An award-winning Georgia paramedic has filed a religious-discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, claiming she was terminated for merely inviting a co-worker to church. Sherry Lambert, formerly of MedStarOne, a private ambulance company operating in Screven County, Ga., said she was working a 24-hour shift Oct. 31, 2001, when she invited the co-worker to a church service. Lawyers for Liberty Counsel, a national civil-liberty education and legal-defense organization representing Lambert, said the co-worker did not object to the request, but managers at MedStarOne terminated Lambert less than a month later – Nov. 14 – after learning of the invitation. "As...

Kosovo gunmen attack swimming teenagers 13/08/2003 - 15:21:35 Gunmen sprayed bullets on teenagers swimming in a Kosovo river today, killing at least one and injuring five others.“The gunfire was directed against children swimming, and all those hit were youths,” said Derek Chappell, a UN police spokesman in Kosovo. Chappell said. A Serb teenager died and four Serb teenagers and one ethnic Albanian girl were injured, some of them seriously, he added. He did not confirm a report by Belgrade television that said two children had died, one on the scene and one en route to a hospital. UN spokesman Andrea...

Moslems restricted Christian to pray twice a year at Jerusalem holy site [IMRA: While it certainly sounds radical that the Moslems allowed Christian prayer only twice a year at a holy site, this is "generous" as compared to the Moslem policy regarding Jewish access to holy sites - an absolute ban on Jewish prayer at Jewish holy sites that became also Moslem holy sites after the Moslem invasion.] The Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives by Archimandrite Ioakim Strogilos The Jerusalem Times (independent Palestinian weekly) 7 August 2003 http://www.jerusalem-times.net/article/news/details/detail.asp?id=3783 The Jerusalem Times Religious Affairs Correspondent Abu Anton...

Transgender rights advance in Penn. and San Diego Tue Jul 29, 8:37 PM ET Add Community - Planet Out to My Yahoo! Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network SUMMARY: Advocates for transgender rights hailed two developments on Monday that extended nondiscrimination protections for transgender people in Pennsylvania and San Diego. Advocates for transgender rights hailed two developments on Monday that extended nondiscrimination protections for transgender people in Pennsylvania and San Diego. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell signed an executive order that bars discrimination among state employees based on "gender identity or expression." Rendell, a Democrat, called the order "an important step...

THE DHIMMI - JEWS AND CHRISTIANS UNDER ISLAM Today we often hear Muslims in the Middle East charging Israel with unfairness and discrimination in regard to the administration of Israel's Muslim populations. At times, there may seem to be some justification for these charges. However, there is no way to fairly assess today's situation without looking back over the last 1,300 years. Then the present tables were turned and Muslims ruled exclusively in the Middle East. The little-known facts of this dark and gruesome history have been well concealed and are only now gradually being brought to light. One excellent...

Another Christian's Blasphemy Trial Starts in Pakistan Jailed Schoolteacher Faces Death Penalty ISLAMABAD, JULY 23, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Trial proceedings against Christian schoolteacher Pervaiz Masih began on July 17 in northeast Pakistan, two years and three months after the high school principal was jailed for alleged blasphemy. Now 35, Masih has been refused bail since his arrest in April 2001,when teenage boys reportedly claimed he had made slanderous remarks against the Muslim prophet Mohammed while tutoring them two months earlier, Compass Direct reports. But a report, issued two weeks after the teacher was arrested, quoted by the same source, Masih's accusations...

"Birgitta, six-year-old, lesbian," reads the advert with a photograph of a little girl in a swimsuit and armbands, alongside some childish drawings. "Not all princesses choose a prince," it adds. A campaign by a Swedish gay group to promote awareness that non-heterosexual orientation can start from an early age caused a backlash yesterday from a child protection group that said the sexual depiction of children could encourage paedophiles. Stockholm Pride, a volunteer group that organises an annual gay, lesbian and transsexual festival, launched the campaign on its website and plans advertisements in the mainstream and gay press. Pride's chairman Anders...

WASHINGTON - The destruction of marriage in Canada was announced with Jean Chrétien's usual insouciance. "You have to look at history as an evolution of society," said the Prime Minister, eating his cake and having it too. Without a fight he sweeps aside an institution more ancient than the history he invokes, yet asks to be treated as a spectator. "According to the interpretation of the courts, these unions should be legal in Canada." I've led the country for a decade, he suggests, but don't shoot me -- I'm only the piano player. Looking at events from the American side...

<p>The photos from Pakistan were anything but travel brochure material. One showed a 9-year-old girl with dark eyes, large black burns on her legs and a heavily bandaged right arm. Another showed a 14-year-old girl with a face partly melted away like candle wax. The right side was a mass of charred skin after an assailant threw acid into her eyes. Their attackers said the girls' injuries are payback for the American invasion of Iraq. Americans may not have seen much retaliation on their own soil because, several human rights groups say, Christians in Pakistan are taking the brunt of it. The 9-year-old, Razia Masih, was beaten and raped on April 26 in the town of Faisalabad, near Lahore, ending up in the hospital with multiple burns, a lacerated left eye, a broken right arm and rope marks around her hands and mouth. "She was working as a maid in a Muslim house," said Shabazz Bhatti, chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance. "When the Iraq war happened, it was on the TV," he said. "The family [that she worked for] would call her into the TV room and start torturing her. Her skin was burned by the irons, her body wounded by a cricket bat and a medical report showed 15 wounds on her body. She was told by them, 'You are Christian and infidel, and we will take revenge on you for the killings of Iraqi children.'</p>

INDONESIA: PERSECUTION IN WEST JAVA & UPDATE ON REV. DAMANIK 'S TRIAL AUSTRALIA -- In Bekasi, about 20 km southeast of Jakarta in West Java, churches are being threatened and intimidated by local radical Muslim groups, and local authorities are taking no action to protect the Christian minority or reign in the Islamist militants. The Islamist campaign in Bekasi has intensified in recent months and is related to unconstitutional local legislation. The original legislation dates back to 1969 and simply requires Christians to apply for a license before building a church. However, recent legislation is highly restrictive and requires Christian...

Two Christians Murdered: Long Feared Anti-Christian Violence Begins in Iraq? As Shia Muslims become more aggressive and vocal in their demands for an Islamic State based on Shari'ah the anti-Christian violence which Christians in Iraq have long feared seems finally to have arrived with the brutal murder of two Christian men. Britain's Daily Telegraph reports the deaths of Sabah Gazala and Abdul Ahed who were shot and killed by two Islamic gunmen within ten minutes in separate incidents in Basra on 8 May. Like a number of Christians in the city and in other parts of Iraq they were involved...

<p>RICHMOND, Va. — In an important victory for First Amendment groups, a federal appeals court ruled Monday that the traditional prayers said before evening meals at the Virginia Military Institute (search) are unconstitutional.</p> <p>The decision upholds a lower court ruling and emphasizes that the extraordinary obedience demanded of VMI cadets doesn't give them the freedom to choose not to participate in what's been called a non-denominational, voluntary dinner prayer.</p>

MULTAN: A court in Pakistan has sentenced a minority Christian to life in prison for blasphemy, police said Sunday. Ranjah Maseih was convicted Saturday in a court in Faisalabad, 280 kilometers northeast of Multan, in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, police official Nazir Ahmed said. Maseih was arrested on May 8, 1998, when he allegedly smashed a neon sign bearing a Quranic verse at a rally called to mourn the death of a Catholic clergyman. The maximum penalty in Muslim-majority Pakistan for blasphemy is death.