Help coming 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Brutal, barbarous machete attacks are reported repeatedly. People are killed and abducted from schools or churches by Muslim attackers who shout "Allahu Akbar!" Christians have asked the government for protection, but it doesn't seem to come.

Moderate Muslims who reject extremism are targeted as well. But Christians "are disproportionately targeted, being more than 5 times as likely to be killed [as] Muslims," according to a legal group.

Nigeria's president strongly denies that there's any religious persecution in his country, and his wife came to America on a mission to do the same--"despite all the evidence of widespread atrocities." Many Western journalists simply accept the Nigerian state's narrative.

But the reports got the attention of the U.S. president. Last November he sent this message: "If the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance," and may even take steps to "wipe out" Islamist terrorists. 

Some Americans have been sent and may now be working with the Nigerian government to give these targeted communities some help.

from The Free Press

Help coming

Christians have suffered loss and death for years in Nigeria. Officially, the government denies that they are targeted for genocide. But reports of people on the ground are graphic and specific. 

Christian media in the U.S. has reported it, as in this video. See the clip of Bill Maher who called out the slaughter on his show:

He makes the point that secular students and media name Gaza as a site of genocide but ignore the greater numbers in the Nigerian genocide. The point of showing Maher's clip is to demonstrate that the narrative is not just a Christian claim.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Nigeria ignored

Take a look at the trouble Christians face in their home country of Nigeria. Attacks on their farms and churches and schools, including murder, are horrifying and they're not few in number. 

My posts about the attacks go back for over a decade. I've gotten the information mostly from Christian sources. Big media continually highlights civilians dying in Gaza at the hands of Israel military, and it's called genocide. But Nigerian mass murders are usually ignored.

Surprisingly, an openly non-Christian entertainer heard about all this and called it out on his show. Watch the clip here. Here's what he says:

• "They are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria."
• "They've killed over 100,000 since 2009."
• "They've burned 18,000 churches."
• "These are Islamists, Boko Haram."
• "They are literally trying to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country," more of a genocide than Palestine
• "Where are the [university] kids protesting this??"

Open Doors 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

For reasons related to their faith, 4,998 Christians across the world were actually murdered. An amazing 83% of those were located in Nigeria, "the deadliest place to follow Jesus." (Deadly danger is nothing new in Nigeria, as I've written about for years.)

Attacks on churches and Christian-run schools, hospitals, cemeteries "exploded" to 14,766 in 2023, six times the number in the previous year. That number includes the closing of churches in China (church bombed in 2019) and mob violence in India. The global number of believers forced to flee their homes because of war or extremism doubled last year to 295,120. 

Though not in the first ten of the World Watch List, the African country Congo (DRC) was the site just days ago of terrible violence on July 24. More than 57 Christian villagers were beheaded by Islamic State Central Africa Province.

Open Doors was founded to pay attention to these things around the world; to help them, and to inform the West where we know next to nothing of the price some Christians pay to follow Jesus.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Open Doors 1

Open Doors is a global ministry with 25 national bases, all identifying this way: We share one mission, to support persecuted Christians worldwide and strengthen what remains.

It's not safe to be known as Christian in many places. Their annual report, World Watch List, is their ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution. The worst ten on this current list are North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Dangerous 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Open Doors USA says that Afghanistan is now the most dangerous nation on earth if you are a Christian. It's always been dangerous, but things got worse last August .

Leaving Islam is shameful, so a family will reject one of their own who converts, or may even kill him or her.  That's considered justice. Or, since leaving Islam is also considered insane, the believer could be committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Open Doors talked to a man who fled from Afghanistan to another unnamed country, a challenging thing in itself. Believers are either in hiding or leaving. A couple of recorded clips of his own voice explaining what things are now like is here.

One believer describing how it was right after the Taliban took over: "Attacks . . have always been a reality for us. It’s not a matter of if, but when, and when it comes, we are almost never ready to contend with what’s before our eyes. It’s always a terrifying thought—we are afraid—but it is only by the grace and mercy of God that we are able to go on.”

Afghanistan's Taliban leader (below) says executions and amputations of hands are coming  back.

photo

Taken 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

According to Rabbi Cooper and his co-author, the extremists are a small segment of the huge tribe of seventeen million Fulani. There were at least 47 attacks on churches or Christians in the first half of this year, with a sum of >12,000 Christians killed over the last five years.

Christians are not alone in being threatened by religious tensions and violence, kidnapping and criminality. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)  reports that religious freedom in general is poor in Nigeria. Minority Shi'a Muslims, too, are persecuted by the government.

Co-authors Cooper and Moore hope that American churches will "adopt" Nigerian churches (photo) as a way to bring global attention to their vulnerability. The rabbi says, “Nigerians feel like they’ve been totally forgotten. . . Speaking as a Jew, I think American Christians are the sleeping giant here who can help halt this violence.”

from The Stream

Taken for ransom

Last December another Nigerian Christian was abducted while traveling to her family for Christmas. Her pastor received a phone call during a church service from her kidnapper demanding enormous ransom. Shaken, he called the police to give them phone numbers, but they did nothing.

Seminary training didn't cover negotiation, but the pastor negotiated for this woman. He wound up selling his car/clothes/house to raise money, and the small congregation managed to come up with enough. She was returned unharmed though some Christian men with her were killed on the spot.

A Jewish Orthodox rabbi and a Christian met with her last February and tell her story in their new book, The Next Jihad. Rabbi Cooper, director for social global action at Simon Wiesenthal Center, has spent fifty years standing for human rights and against genocide.

from The Stream

(cont'd tomorrow)

Christian refuge 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

St. Matthew's Monastery (363 A.D.) is just 20 miles from Mosul, which Islamic State captured in 2014. 

They fully expected an attack on the monastery, with all the destruction IS had done in other cities. So the monks started evacuating their relics and art, including centuries-old Christian manuscripts and the (supposed) bones of Saint Matthew.

But the monastery was saved: "Bolstered by a U.S.-led bombing campaign, a force of Kurdish peshmerga fighters — who are Sunni Muslims — stopped the advancing Islamic State militants just 2.5 miles from the beige stone citadel of St. Matthew’s."

photo

"St. Matthew’s Monastery maintains a furnished dormitory available for Christians from anywhere in the world to come and stay free of charge."

Christian refuge

"When Islamic State conquered [2014] the ancient city of Mosul, Iraq, their videos trumpeted destruction of important works of art. Now they have conquered the city of Palmyra, Syria, and again they destroy [2015]."

So much destruction and violence just a few years ago. IS was militarily defeated in 2017, but many belonging to religious minorities have been afraid to go back.

There is a place the few Christians who remain feel safe to go to celebrate mass: it's St. Matthew's Monastery, established in the year 363 A.D. -- only about 330 years after Jesus Christ's death and resurrection.

Besman Naif, 42, a Christian man from a nearby village, says "It’s safe for us to pray here . . We aren’t safe anywhere else . . The [IS] mentality is still there, many well-known terrorists just blended back into the community."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Persecuted 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post about Nigerian Christians)

“I stand here for pleading the government of U.S.,” Rebecca Sharibu said in tears and broken English . . Please, help me. I need my daughter back. I need my daughter.”

Boko Haram kidnapped another 110 girls in February of 2018. Rebecca's daughter, Leah, is the only one who has not yet returned to her home. According to a family friend: "When [Leah] was told to renounce her faith and recite the Kalima-e-Shahadah — ’Kalima-e-Shahadah’ means the Islamic faith creed — she refused to do that . . . That was the only reason that she was kept back.”


Alheri Magaji says her tribe is nearly extinct. Almost 400 people of her mostly-Christian Adara tribe were killed by Fulani herdsmen (a Muslim tribe) just months ago. 

The Nigerian government describes the Fulani attacks as merely “retaliatory.” But Magaji said the Adara people never have attacked the Fulani.

She, like Rebecca, also pleads for U.S. intervention. She says, "There seems to be a systematic plan to take over . . Nigeria as a whole. It is purely religious. Purely. I’m living this. It’s not something I read in the newspaper. It’s what we’re living."

(Note: the linked story is graphic)

Persecuted

Open Doors USA ranks the level of persecution of Christians around the world. Their method considers non-violent pressure on private, family, community, national, and church life - and of course violence.



In horrible first place on this list for 18 years is North Korea. Nigeria is ranked #12 in the world. You may remember that almost 300 girls were kidnapped by terrorist group Boko Haram in the mostly Christian village of Chibok back in 2014.

Three Nigerian women came to the U.S. a month ago to present eyewitness reports from their own experience.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Release Uighurs

China has a huge number of Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group, in captivity at "training camps."

The U.S. State Department has called on China to release them.

Re-education

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Uyghurs are a mostly Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang. China has denied detaining hundreds of thousands of them in Xinjiang but now admits it: 

"Xinjiang quietly legalized "vocational skill education training centers" on October 10, which the law said would be used to "carry out anti-extremist ideological education."

Human rights advocates are calling these training centers "re-education camps." The "detainees" are treated to round-the-clock brainwashing and, according to authorities, come out happier.

Crackdown

CNN reports that human rights advocates are watching a progressive "crackdown" on religion in China.

"Sam Brownback, the US ambassador at large for international religious freedom, cited the actions against the Early Rain Church and the reports from Xinjiang when announcing that China was one of ten countries designated a "country of concern" when it comes to religious freedom Tuesday.

"Under President Xi, the government has further tightened control over Christianity in its broad efforts to 'Sinicize' religion or 'adopt Chinese characteristics' -- in other words, to ensure that religious groups support the government and the Communist Party," Human Rights Watch said."

Chinese government wants to control not only Christians, but other religious minorities:

"China has been accused of carrying out a systematic campaign of human rights violations against hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uyghurs in the far western region of Xinjiang."

image

(cont'd tomorrow)

Arrested pastor

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Pastor Wang Yi knew that the government would never allow him to go on speaking against their aim to bring speech and thought under their control. "Freedom of speech," "Freedom of conscience" are not permitted. Pres. Xi's government will decide what's permitted.

Read his letter here. Some highlights:

"As a pastor of a Christian church, I have my own understanding and views, based on the Bible, about what righteous order and good government is. At the same time, I am filled with anger and disgust at the persecution of the church by this Communist regime, at the wickedness of their depriving people of the freedoms of religion and of conscience."

"I hope God uses me, by means of first losing my personal freedom, to tell those who have deprived me of my personal freedom that there is an authority higher than their authority"

photo

Bravest pastor

China's ruler Xi Jinping is still ramping up his persecution of churches. 

Last week it was the Early Rain Covenant Church of Chengdu. Its Pastor Wang Yi and 100 congregants were arrested, and the freshmen of its college were sent to "re-education camp."


Xi is exercising his enormous power to silence dissent. Wang was in his cross-hairs not only because the church is not registered with the government, but because he openly opposes Xi's totalitarian controls. He published a call for Christians to resist regulations that contradict Christianity.

"Communist authorities have used the regulations as tools to carry out Jinping’s vision of sinicizing religion in China — which is to force all religions in the country to submit to the authority and teachings of the Chinese Communist party."

"He’s the bravest pastor in China today,” Rev. Hong Yujie, a friend of Wang in Vancouver, told WSJ.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Xi attacks

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

President Xi of China is being called "Emperor Xi" because of his growing grasp of power. He sees religion, all kinds, as a threat to his hold. Christian churches have been destroyed, even those that were supposedly approved. Thousands of crosses (symbols of Christianity) have been torn from churches. 



Fear creates social pressure:

"In one school in Xinjiang, 200 students in one high school identified themselves as Christians. After three rounds of threats and intimidation from parents, teachers and headmasters, only one 14-year-old had the strength to admit he was still a Christian. Everybody else was forced to deny their faith."

Xi oppression

Remember China's surveillance plan and the 600 million cameras for watching people?  The government judges behavior and they literally keep score. 

photo: stuff.co.nz

Now Pres. Xi is putting a facial-recognition camera on the pulpit of every "approved" church. 

So . . everyone who dares to go to church will be looking at the camera looking at them.

Oppressive much?

(cont'd tomorrow)

Violence 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

At the end of June, villages were destroyed in northern Nigeria and 200 Christians killed while about 3,000 were displaced - which means they ran from their homes.  Non-profit Open Doors came in to the extremely unstable area to help. A report from one of their staff:

"The displaced Christians were in a pathetic situation . . Life has become a living hell for them. They have lost loved ones, houses, and all they labored for in the twinkling of an eye. The agony they are going through is hard to describe. We saw people who were still in a haze over what they have just gone through. Children were crying hysterically, perhaps because of hunger or perhaps because of hunger and the trauma.”

The Open Doors team brought rice, oil, tomato paste, toiletries the next day. One of the displaced victims, Mary, wrote a thank you message and also said:

“My prayer is this: Wherever these resources are coming from, may God pay you back a thousand-fold . . We plead that believers all over the world will pray that God will bring an end to all these killings because we have become homeless, fatherless and orphaned due to the attacks."

(from Open Doors USA)