http://opendoorsuk.info/index.php/blog/ en ruthd@opendoorsuk.org Copyright 2010 2010-06-09T09:38:47+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/egyptian_couple_shot_by_muslim_extremists_undaunted_in_ministry/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/egyptian_couple_shot_by_muslim_extremists_undaunted_in_ministry/#When:09:38:47Z Left for dead, Christians offer to drop charges if allowed to construct church building.Left for dead, Christians offer to drop charges if allowed to construct church building. Rasha Samir was sure her husband, Ephraim Shehata, was dead. He was covered with blood, had two bullets inside him and was lying facedown in the dust of a dirt road. Samir was lying on top of him doing her best to shelter him from the onslaught of approaching gunmen. With arms outstretched, the men surrounded Samir and Shehata and pumped off round after round at the couple. Seconds before, Samir could hear her husband mumbling Bible verses. But one bullet had pierced his neck, and now he wasn’t moving. In a blind terror, Samir tried desperately to stop her panicked breathing and convincingly lie still, hoping the gunmen would go away. Finally, the gunfire stopped and one of the men spoke. “Let’s go. They’re dead.” ‘Break the Hearts’ On the afternoon of Feb. 27, lay pastor Shehata and his wife Samir were ambushed on a desolate street by a group of Islamic gunmen outside the village of Teleda in Upper Egypt. The attack was meant to “break the hearts of the Christians” in the area, Samir said. The attackers shot Shehata twice, once in the stomach through the back, and once in the neck. They shot Samir in the arm. Both survived the attack, but Shehata is still in the midst of a difficult recovery. The shooters have since been arrested and are in jail awaiting trial. A trial cannot begin until Shehata has recovered enough to attend court proceedings. Despite this trauma, being left with debilitating injuries, more than 85,000 Egyptian pounds (US$14,855) in medical bills and possible long-term unemployment, Shehata is willing to drop all criminal charges against his attackers – and avoid what could be a very embarrassing trial for the nation – if the government will stop blocking Shehata from constructing a church building. Before Shehata was shot, one of the attackers pushed him off his motorcycle and told him he was going to teach him a lesson about “running around” or being an active Christian. Because of his ministry, the 34-year-old Shehata, a Coptic Orthodox Christian, was arguably the most visible Christian in his community. When he wasn’t working as a lab technician or attending legal classes at a local college, he was going door-to-door among Christians to encourage them in any way he could. He also ran a community center and medical clinic out of a converted two-bedroom apartment. His main goal, he said, was to “help Christians be strong in their faith.” The center, open now for five years, provided much-needed basic medical services for surrounding residents for free, irrespective of their religion. The center also provided sewing training and a worksite for Christian women so they could gain extra income. Before the center was open in its present location, he ran similar services out of a relative’s apartment. “We teach them something that can help them with the future, and when they get married they can have some way to work and it will help them get money for their families,” Shehata said. Additionally, the center was used to teach hygiene and sanitation basics to area residents, a vital service to a community that uses well water that is often polluted or full of diseases. Along with these services, Shehata and his wife ran several development projects, repairing the roofs of shelters for poor people, installing plumbing, toilets and electrical systems. The center also distributed free food to the elderly and the infirm. The center has been run by donations and nominal fees used to pay the rent for the apartment. Shehata has continued to run the programs as aggressively as he can, but he said that even before the shooting that the center was barely scraping by. “We have no money to build or improve anything,” he said. “We have a safe, but no money to put in it.” Tense Atmosphere In the weeks before the shooting, Teleda and the surrounding villages were gripped with fear. Christians in the community had been receiving death threats by phone after a Muslim man died during an attack on a Christian couple. On Feb. 2, a group of men in nearby Samalout tried to abduct a Coptic woman from a three-wheeled motorcycle her husband was driving. The husband, Zarif Elia, punched one of the attackers in the nose. The Muslim, Basem Abul-Eid, dropped dead on the spot. Elia was arrested and charged with murder. An autopsy later revealed that the man died of a heart attack, but local Muslims were incensed. Already in the spotlight for his ministry activities, Shehata heightened his profile when he warned government officials that Christians were going to be attacked, as they had been in Farshout and Nag Hammadi the previous month. He also gave an interview to a human rights activist that was posted on numerous Coptic websites. Because of this, government troops were deployed to the town, and extremists were unable to take revenge on local Christians – but only after almost the entire Christian community was placed under house arrest. “They chose me,” Shehata said, “Because they thought I was the one serving everybody, and I was the one who wrote the government telling them that Muslims were going to set fire to the Christian houses because of the death.” Because of his busy schedule, Shehata and Samir, 27, were only able to spend Fridays and part of every Saturday together in a village in Samalut, where Shehata lives. Every Saturday after seeing Samir, Shehata would drive her back through Teleda to the village where she lives, close to her family. Samalut is a town approximately 105 kilometers (65 miles) south of Cairo. On the afternoon of Feb. 27, Shehata and his wife were on a motorcycle on a desolate stretch of hard-packed dirt road. Other than a few scattered farming structures, there was nothing near the road but the Nile River on one side, and open fields dotted with palm trees on the other. Shehata approached a torn-up section of the road and slowed down. A man walked up to the vehicle carrying a big wooden stick and forced him to stop. Shehata asked the man what was wrong, but he only pushed Shehata off the motorcycle and told him, “I’m going to stop you from running around,” Samir recounted. Shehata asked the man to let Samir go. “Whatever you are going to do, do it to me,” he told the man. The man didn’t listen and began hitting Shehata on the leg with the stick. As Shehata stumbled, Samir screamed for the man to leave them alone. The man lifted the stick again, clubbed Shehata once more on the leg and knocked him to the ground. As Shehata struggled to get up, the man took out a pistol, leveled it at Shehata’s back and squeezed the trigger. Samir started praying and screaming Jesus’ name. The man turned toward her, raised the pistol once more, squeezed off another round, and shot Samir in the arm. Samir looked around and saw a few men running toward her, but her heart sank when she realized they had come not to help them but to join the assault. Samir jumped on top of Shehata, rolled on to her back and started begging her attackers for their lives, but the men, now four in all, kept firing. Bullets were flying everywhere. “I was scared. I thought I was going to die and that the angels were going to come and get our spirits,” Samir said. “I started praying, ‘Please God, forgive me, I’m a sinner and I am going to die.’” Samir decided to play dead. She leaned back toward her husband, closed her eyes, went limp and tried to stop breathing. She said she felt that Shehata was dying underneath her. “I could hear him saying some of the Scriptures, the one about the righteous thief [saying] ‘Remember me when you enter Paradise,’” she said. “Then a bullet went through his neck, and he stopped saying anything.” Samir has no way of knowing how much time passed, but eventually the firing stopped. After she heard one of the shooters say, “Let’s go, they’re dead,” moments later she opened her eyes and the men were gone. When she lifted her head, she heard her husband moan. Unlikely Survival When Shehata arrived at the hospital, his doctors didn’t think he would survive. He had lost a tremendous amount of blood, a bullet had split his kidney in two, and the other bullet was lodged in his neck, leaving him partially paralyzed. His heartbeat was so faint it couldn’t be detected. He was also riddled with a seemingly limitless supply of bullet fragments throughout his body. Samir, though seriously injured, had fared much better than Shehata. The bullet went into her arm but otherwise left her uninjured. When she was shot, Samir was wearing a maternity coat. She wasn’t pregnant, but the couple had bought the coat in hopes she soon would be. Samir said she thinks the gunman who shot her thought he had hit her body, instead of just her arm. The church leadership in Samalut was quickly informed about the shooting and summoned the best doctors they could, who quickly traveled to help Shehata and Samir. By chance, the hospital had a large supply of blood matching Shehata’s blood type because of an elective surgical procedure that was cancelled. The bullets were removed, and his kidney was repaired. The doctors however, were forced to leave many of the bullet fragments in Shehata’s body. As difficult as it was to piece Shehata’s broken body back together, it paled in comparison with the recovery he had to suffer through. He endured multiple surgeries and was near death several times during his 70 days of hospitalization. Early on, Shehata was struck with a massive infection. Also, because part of his internal tissue was cut off from its blood supply, it literally started to rot inside him. He began to swell and was in agony. “I was screaming, and they brought the doctors,” Shehata said. The doctors decided to operate immediately. When a surgeon removed one of the clamps holding Shehata’s abdomen together, the intense pressure popped off most of the other clamps. Surgeons removed some stomach tissue, part of his colon and more than a liter of infectious liquid. Shehata could not eat normally and lost 35 kilograms (approximately 77 lbs.). He also couldn’t evacuate his bowels for at least 11 days, his wife said. Despite the doctors’ best efforts, infections continued to rage through Shehata’s body, accompanied by alarming spikes in body temperature. Eventually, doctors sent him to a hospital in Cairo, where he spent a week under treatment. A doctor there prescribed a different regimen of antibiotics that successfully fought the infection and returned Shehata’s body temperature to normal. Shehata is recovering at home now, but he still has a host of medical problems. He has to take a massive amount of painkillers and is essentially bedridden. He cannot walk without assistance, is unable to move the fingers on his left hand and cannot eat solid food. In approximately two months he will undergo yet another surgery that, if all goes well, will allow him to use the bathroom normally. “Even now I can’t walk properly, and I can’t lift my leg more than 10 or 20 centimeters. I need someone to help me just to pull up my underwear,” Shehata said. “I can move my arm, but I can’t move my fingers.” Samir does not complain about her condition or that of Shehata. Instead, she sees the fact that she and her husband are even alive as a testament to God’s faithfulness. She said she thinks God allowed them to be struck with the bullets that injured them but pushed away the bullets that would have killed them. “There were lots of bullets being shot, but they didn’t hit us, only three or four,” she said. “Where are the others?” Even in the brutal process of recovery, Samir found cause for thanks. In the beginning, Shehata couldn’t move his left arm, but now he can. “Thank God and thank Jesus, it was His blessing to us,” Samir said. “We were kind of dead, now we are alive.” Still, Samir admits that sometimes her faith waivers. She is facing the possibility that Shehata might not work for some time, if ever. The couple owes the 85,000 Egyptian pounds (US$14,855) in medical bills, and continuing their ministry at the center and in the surrounding villages will be difficult at best. “I am scared now, more so than during the shooting,” she said. “Ephraim said do not be afraid, it is supposed to make us stronger.” So Samir prays for strength for her husband to heal and for patience. In the meantime, she said she looks forward to the day when the struggles from the shooting are over and she can look back and see how God used it to shape them. “There is a great work the Lord is doing in our lives, we may not know what the reason is now, but maybe some day we will,” Samir said. Government Opposition For the past 10 years, Shehata has tried to erect a church building, or at a minimum a house, that he could use as a dedicated community center. But local Muslims and Egypt’s State Security Investigations (SSI) agency have blocked him every step of the way. He had, until the shooting happened, all but given up on constructing the church building. On numerous occasions, Shehata has been stopped from holding group prayer meetings after people complained to the SSI. In one incident, a man paid by a land owner to watch a piece of property near the community center complained to the SSI that Shehata was holding prayer meetings at the facility. The SSI made Shehata sign papers stating he wouldn’t hold prayer meetings at the center. At one time, Shehata had hoped to build a house to use as a community center on property that had been given to him for that purpose. Residents spread a rumor that he was actually erecting a church building, and police massed at the property to prevent him from doing any construction. There is no church in the town where Shehata lives or in the surrounding villages. Shehata admits he would like to put up a church building on the donated property but says it is impossible, so he doesn’t even try. In Egypt constructing or even repairing a church building can only be done after a complex government approval process. In effect, it makes it impossible to build a place for Christian worship. By comparison, the construction of mosques is encouraged through a system of subsidies. “It is not allowed to build a church in Egypt,” Shehata said. “We can’t build a house. We can’t build a community center. And we can’t build a church.” Because of this, Shehata and his wife organize transportation from surrounding villages to St. Mark’s Cathedral in Samalut for Friday services and sacraments. Because of the lack of transportation options, the congregants are forced to ride in a dozen open-top cattle cars. “We take them not in proper cars or micro-buses, but trucks – the same trucks we use to move animals,” he said. The trip is dangerous. A year ago a man fell out of one of the trucks onto the road and died. Shehata said bluntly that Christians are dying in Egypt because the government won’t allow them to construct church buildings. “I feel upset about the man who died on the way going to church,” he said. Church-for-Charges Swap The shooters who attacked Shehata and Samir are in jail awaiting trial. The couple has identified each of the men, but even if they hadn’t, finding them for arrest was not a difficult task. The village the attackers came from erupted in celebration when they heard the pastor and his wife were dead. Shehata now sees the shooting as a horrible incident that can be turned to the good of the believers he serves. He said he finds it particularly frustrating that numerous mosques have sprouted up in his community and surrounding areas during the 10 years he has been prevented from putting up a church building, or even a house. There are two mosques alone on the street of the man who died while being trucked to church services, he said. Shehata has decided to forgo justice in pursuit of an opportunity to finally construct a church building. He has approached the SSI through church leaders, saying that if he is allowed to construct a church building, then he will take no part in the criminal persecution of the shooters. “I have told the security forces through the priests that I will drop the case if they can let us build the church on the piece of land,” he said. The proposal isn’t without possibilities. His trial has the potential of being internationally embarrassing. It raises questions about fairness in Egyptian society during an upcoming presidential election that will be watched by the world. Regardless of what happens, Shehata said all he wants is peace and for the rights of Christians to be respected. He said that in Egypt, Christians have less value than the “birds of the air” mentioned in the Bible. According to Luke 12:6, five sparrows sold for two pennies in ancient times. “We are not to be killed like birds, slaughtered,” he said. “We are human.” Source: Compass 2010-06-09T09:38:47+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/trial_over_insulting_turkishness_again_yields_no_evidence1/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/trial_over_insulting_turkishness_again_yields_no_evidence1/#When:08:24:58Z Justice Minister says Article 301 defendants ‘presumed innocent’ until verdict.Justice Minister says Article 301 defendants ‘presumed innocent’ until verdict. The 11th hearing of a case of two Turkish Christians accused of “insulting Turkishness” closed just minutes after it opened this week, due to lack of any progress. Prosecutors produced no new evidence against Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal since the last court session four months ago. Despite lack of any tangible reason to continue the stalled case, their lawyer said, the Silivri Criminal Court set still another hearing to be held on Oct. 14. “They are uselessly dragging this out,” defense lawyer Haydar Polat said moments after Judge Hayrettin Sevim closed the Tuesday (May 25) hearing. Court-ordered attempts to locate and produce testimonies from two witnesses summoned three times now by the prosecution had again proved fruitless, the judge noted in Tuesday’s court record. Murat Inan, the only lawyer who appeared this time on behalf of the prosecution team, arrived late at the courtroom, after the hearing had already begun. The two Protestant Christians were accused in October 2006 of slandering the Turkish nation and Islam under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code. The prosecution has yet to provide any concrete evidence of the charges, which allegedly took place while the two men were involved in evangelistic activities in the town of Silivri, an hour’s drive west of Istanbul. Both Tastan, 41, and Topal, 50, became Christians more than 15 years ago and changed their religious identity from Muslim to Christian on their official ID cards. Initially accompanied by heavy media hype, the case had been led by ultranationalist attorney Kemal Kerincsiz and a team of six other lawyers. Kerincsiz had filed or inspired dozens of Article 301 court cases against writers and intellectuals he accused of insulting the Turkish nation and Islam. Because of Kerincsiz’s high-level national profile, the first few hearings drew several hundred young nationalist protestors surrounding the Silivri courthouse, under the eye of dozens of armed police. But the case has attracted almost no press attention for the past two years, ever since Kerincsiz was jailed in January 2008 as a suspect in the overarching conspiracy trials over Ergenekon, a “deep state” operation to destabilize the government led by a cabal of retired generals, politicians and other key figures. The lawyer is accused of an active role in the alleged Ergenekon plot to discredit and overthrow Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party government. Two weeks ago, Turkish Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin commented before the United Nations Human Rights Council on the controversial May 2008 amendments to Article 301, under which Tastan and Topal are being tried. Ergin insisted that the revised Article 301 had provided “a two-fold assurance” for freedom of expression in Turkey. The most significant revision required all Article 301 cases to obtain formal permission from the justice minister before being prosecuted. This week Ergin released Justice Ministry statistics, noting that out of 1,252 cases filed under Article 301 during the past three years, only 83 were approved for prosecution. Stressing the principle of “presumption of innocence,” Ergin went on to criticize the Turkish media for presenting Article 301 defendants as guilty when they were charged, before courts had heard their cases or issued verdicts.  But for Tastan and Topal, who by the next hearing will have been in trial for four years, Ergin’s comments were little comfort. “At this point, we are tired of this,” Tastan admitted. “If they can’t find these so-called witnesses, then the court needs to issue a verdict. After four years, it has become a joke!” Topal added that without any hard evidence, “the prosecution must produce a witness, someone who knows us. I cannot understand why the court keeps asking these witnesses to come and testify, when they don’t even know us, they have never met us or talked with us!” Both men would like to see the trial concluded by the end of the year. “From the beginning, the charges against us have been filled with contradictions,” Topal said. “But we are entirely innocent of all these charges, so of course we expect a complete acquittal.” Source: Compass 2010-06-02T08:24:58+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/christian_woman_kidnapped_in_pakistan_escapes1/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/christian_woman_kidnapped_in_pakistan_escapes1/#When:09:55:50Z Impoverished father had received ultimatum from employer who loaned him money.Impoverished father had received ultimatum from employer who loaned him money. A Christian woman who was kidnapped, forced to marry a Muslim farmer and told to convert to Islam amid a dispute over a loan said today she has returned home after weeks of “captivity and torture.” Sania James, 33, was kidnapped April 5 by armed men who stormed her parent’s house in the small town of Rawat, just outside Rawalpindi, neighbors confirmed to Compass. The gunmen allegedly told her father that he would see his daughter again only if he paid off a loan of 250,000 rupees (US$2,930) plus 30 percent interest – a rate much higher than previously agreed upon. James said the armed men took her to farmer Mohammad Shahbaz Ali and forced her to marry him. “I have been tortured, forced to convert and forcefully married,” said James, who escaped earlier this month. She refused to convert to Islam and was continuously tortured, James said without elaborating. “One night I managed to escape and returned home,” she said. “I have contacted Christian rights groups to help me.” Shahbaz Ali reacted angrily when asked about the alleged incidents. “I refuse to say anything,” he told Compass. Neighbors who said they watched the kidnapping said they were unable to intervene. “We have been warned by Shahbaz Ali that if any one tries to help these Christians, they will have to face dire consequences,” said one of the neighbors, Mohammad Hamza. “Everyone is scared.” The kidnapping came five years after the woman’s father, James Ayub, allegedly took the loan from Shahbaz Ali, his long-time employer, to pay for his oldest daughter’s wedding. Ayub, who worked at Shahbaz Ali’s farm for two decades, was initially told that the interest rate on the loan would be 15 percent, but the rate was later doubled, family members said. Shahbaz Ali allegedly told Ayub in February that his family would be attacked unless he paid off the loan within two months. In a bid to raise the money, Sania James said she had begun to work on the farm along with her elderly, impoverished father. James said that her father was “thrown out of the farm,” and that she was subsequently kidnapped. Local Pastor Faraz Samson, who tried to mediate in the conflict, said he went to Shahbaz Ali to end “the injustice, but he didn’t listen.” Police officials reportedly said they were unable to halt the alleged kidnapping, saying Shahbaz Ali was a very influential man. “I am shocked that a daughter of a poor man has been kidnapped, and the law can’t do anything,” Pastor Samson said. The kidnapping was not an isolated incident, according to rights activists. They have expressed concerns that Christian women and girls have been kidnapped across Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim nation, often amid disputes over land and money. Advocacy organizations Life for All and Peace Pakistan have condemned the incident. Source: Compass 2010-06-01T09:55:50+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/pakistani_islamists_keep_two_newlywed_couples_from_home1/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/pakistani_islamists_keep_two_newlywed_couples_from_home1/#When:08:53:42Z Armed Muslims upset that Christians complained to police of false ‘blasphemy’ charge.Armed Muslims upset that Christians complained to police of false ‘blasphemy’ charge. Islamists armed with pistols and rifles waited for two Christian couples to return to their rented home this week, seeking to kill them after the newlyweds complained to police that the radical Muslims had falsely accused them of desecrating the Quran, according to a local Christian legislator. Christians Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William and their wives, who requested anonymity, went to an undisclosed location after Christians in Gulshan-e-Iqbal town, Karachi, warned them that the armed Muslims were stationed in front of their joint home on Friday (May 21), said Saleem Khurshid Khokhar, a representative of Sindh in the Punjab Provincial Assembly. “These 10 unidentified, armed Muslim men were still patrolling in front of the houses of Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William, waiting for them to return and shoot them to death,” Khokhar told Compass earlier this week. The Christians were returning from having tried to file a complaint against the Islamists at Peer Ilahi Bakhsh police station of Gulshan-e-Iqbal town – where Muslim police responded by shouting angry obscenities at the couples and began secretly planning to charge them under Pakistan’s widely condemned “blasphemy” laws, Khokhar said. Both couples were wed on April 2. Earlier that day (May 21), about 20 Muslim extremists had threatened to kill the Christian couples after accusing them of desecrating the Quran, the legislator said. Having just moved into the joint home in a predominantly Christian slum, the previous day the couples had gathered a large pile of garbage after cleaning up debris, including pieces of old newspapers, left by the previous tenants. On Friday (May 21), after Joseph and William had left for work, their wives threw the debris onto the pile of garbage, Khokhar said. An area resident, Bashir Pervezi, told Compass that a door of their home was open and anyone passing by could see the women at their household work. “I was standing in front of the new Christian tenants’ house while 20 bearded, armed Muslim men arrived and started searching for something in the garbage,” Pervezi said. “After about 35 minutes of searching, they started shouting at the women and hurling threats of dire consequences, threats of killing family members for desecrating the holy pages of Quran and Hadith [words and deeds of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad] by dumping them onto waste.”  The two housewives went out and read every scrap of paper, said Pervezi, but they found no pages of the Quran or the Hadith, said both Pervezi and Khokhar.  The women did their best to reason with the armed Muslims, who only continued to insist that the new Christian tenants had desecrated the pages of the Quran and the Hadith, Khokhar said. “The armed Muslim men who had arrived from an unknown place terrorized both Christian women by threatening that they should prepare to face death for desecration of the pages of the holy Quran and the holy Hadith,” Khokhar said. Local Christian residents told Khokhar as well as Compass that they found no pages or excerpts of Quranic verses or of the Hadith. The area Christians confirmed Khokhar’s assertion that the armed Muslims went away hurling threats. The women immediately informed their husbands of the confrontation. Joseph and William consulted with local residents and decided to go to the police station for justice and protection. When they and their wives submitted an application to register a case against the 20 Islamic extremists for threatening them and leveling false allegations of desecrating the Quran and Hadith, the station house officer (SHO) and other Muslim police officers became furious, the couples told Compass. Police began to shout obscenities at them, they said. A sympathetic police officer aware of their innocence notified them that the SHO was secretly planning to register a First Information Report against them under Article 295-A of the blasphemy law – hurting religious feelings, which can bring life in prison – and would put them in jail, Khokhar said. The officer told them to hurry away.  As the couples made their way home, Christian residents warned them that 10 Muslims armed with pistols, Kalashnikovs and long-range rifles were waiting for them and kept them from returning home, Khokhar said. The two couples went to an undisclosed location to avoid danger. The SHO at the Peer Ilahi Bakhsh police station was unavailable for comment; after Compass made repeated requests to speak with him, a police station registrar said that the SHO could not comment because he was ill in the hospital. Khokhar called on the government to immediately repeal all discriminatory laws, including the controversial blasphemy laws – 295-A for injuring religious feelings, 295-B for defiling the Quran and 295-C for blaspheming Muhammad – as they have often been misused by fanatical Muslims against Christians. Maximum punishment for violation of Section 295-A, as well as for Section 295-B (defiling the Quran), is life imprisonment; for violating Section 295-C the maximum punishment is death, though life imprisonment is also possible. Source: Compass 2010-05-28T08:53:42+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/christian_forced_to_sell_kidney_to_pay_debt_to_boss_in_pakistan/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/christian_forced_to_sell_kidney_to_pay_debt_to_boss_in_pakistan/#When:14:20:25Z Employer charges non-Muslims at least 400 percent interest.Employer charges non-Muslims at least 400 percent interest. A low-wage Pakistani Christian said his Muslim employer last week forced him to sell his kidney in an effort to pay off a loan his boss made at exorbitant interest rates charged only to non-Muslims. John Gill, a molding machine operator at Shah Plastic Manufacturers in the Youhanabad area of Lahore, said he took a loan of 150,000 rupees (US$1,766) – at 400 percent interest – from employer Ghulam Mustafa in 2007 in order to send his 17-year-old daughter to college.  “I kept paying the installments every month from my salary, but after three years I got tired of paying the huge interest on the loan,” Gill told Compass. The employer denied that he had received payment installments from his Christian worker, although Gill said he had receipts for monthly payments. Mustafa confirmed that he took over Gill’s home last week after giving the Christian two weeks to pay off the outstanding interest on the loan. Then, on May 6, Mustafa came to Gill’s home with “about five armed men” and transported him to Ganga Ram hospital, where they forced him to sell his kidney against his will, the Christian said. “They sold my kidney and said that they will come next month for the rest of the money,” Gill said. The value of the kidney was estimated at around 200,000 rupees (US$2,380), leaving Gill with outstanding debt of about 250,000 rupees (US$2,976), he said. Recovering at home, Gill said he did not know he would repay the rest of the debt. Mustafa told Compass that Gill owed him 400 percent interest on the loan. “I only offer 50 percent interest to Muslim employees,” he said, adding that he refused to take less than 400 percent interest from any non-Muslim. ‘Kidney Bazaar’ There was no immediate confirmation from Ganga Ram hospital. Rights groups, however, have complained that hundreds of rich foreigners come to Pakistan every year to buy kidneys from live, impoverished donors. Kidney failure is increasingly common in rich countries, often because of obesity or hypertension, but a growing shortage of transplant organs has fueled a black market that exploits needy donors such as Gill and risks undermining voluntary donation schemes, according to Pakistan’s Kidney Foundation. Pakistani legislation aimed at curbing trafficking in human kidneys has not ended a business that has turned the country into the world’s “kidney bazaar,” critics say. Gill said he is trying to contact local Christian advocacy groups to help him recover and overcome his financial and spiritual difficulties. Christians are a minority in heavily Islamic Pakistan, where rights groups have lamented discrimination against Christian workers. Source: Compass 2010-05-27T14:20:25+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/egyptian_convert_endures_life_at_a_standstill_on_the_run/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/egyptian_convert_endures_life_at_a_standstill_on_the_run/#When:08:24:58Z Daughter unable to attend school, church; acid thrown on her jacket.Daughter unable to attend school, church; acid thrown on her jacket. From the mosque across the street, words blasting from minaret megaphones reverberate throughout the tiny apartment where Maher Ahmad El-Mo’otahssem Bellah El-Gohary is forced to hide. Immediately following afternoon prayers, the Friday sermon is, in part, on how to deal with Christians. “Do not shake their hands. Do not go into their homes. Do not eat their food,” an imam shouts as El-Gohary, a convert to Christianity from Islam, looks through his window toward the mosque, shakes his head and grimaces. “I hope one day to live in a place where there are no mosques,” he says. “How many megaphones do they need?” For nearly two years, El-Gohary and his teenage daughter have been living in hiding because he abandoned Islam and embraced Christianity. During this time he has been beaten and forcibly detained, and his daughter has been attacked. He has had to endure death threats, poverty and crushing boredom. Asked what gets him through the constant pressure of living on the run, El-Gohary said he wants to show the world how Christians are treated in Egypt. “My main driving force is I want to prove to people the amount of persecution that Muslim converts and Christians face here, and that the persecution has been going on for 1,400 years,” he said. When asked the same question, his 16-year-old daughter, Dina Maher Ahmad Mo’otahssem, pushed back tears and said one word. “God.” Hiding El-Gohary, 57, and his daughter were forced into hiding shortly after August 2008, when he sued the national government to allow him to change the religion listed on his state-issued ID from Islam to Christianity. El-Gohary followed in the footsteps of Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy, 27, also a convert from Islam, in filing an ID case because he didn’t want his daughter to be forced to take Islamic education classes or have her declared an “apostate” by Egyptian Islamic authorities if she decided to stay a Christian into adulthood. Dina is required by law to possess an ID card. The ID card is used for everything from opening a bank account to receiving medical care. The identification also determines whether Egyptians are subject to Islamic civil courts. Dina is the daughter of El-Gohary and his first wife, who is a Muslim. El-Gohary said that before he got married, he told his future wife that one day he would be baptized as a Christian. He said he now thinks she was convinced that he would eventually turn back to Islam. Over time, she grew tired of his refusal go back on his faith and complained to El-Gohary’s family, demanding a divorce. “She started crying. She went to my parents and my brother and said, ‘This is not going to work out, I thought that he was going to change his mind. I didn’t think he was that serious about it,’” El-Gohary said. “She started talking about it to other people to the point where they started calling me from the loudspeakers of the local mosque, asking me what I was doing and ordering me to come back and pray.” Eventually El-Gohary married another Muslim, and over the years she became a Christian. She has fled Egypt and lives in the United States; El-Gohary hasn’t seen her since March 2009. On April 11, 2009, El-Gohary’s lawyers presented a conversion certificate from the Coptic Church in court. He obtained the certificate under court directions after going to Cyprus, at great expense, to obtain a baptismal certificate. The next month, the State Council, a consultative body of Egypt’s Administrative Court, provided the court with a report stating that El-Gohary’s change of faith violated Islamic law. They instructed that he should be subject to the death penalty. In February 2009, lawyers opposing El-Gohary’s case advocated that he be sentenced to death for apostasy. On June 13, 2009, a Cairo judge rejected El-Gohary’s suit. On Sept. 17, 2009, authorities at Cairo International Airport seized his passport. He was trying to travel to China with the eventual hope of going to the United States. On March 9, 2010, the Egyptian State Council Court in Giza, an administrative court, refused to return his passport. He has another hearing about the passport on June 29. “I think it’s a kind of punishment, to set an example to other Muslims who want to convert,” El-Gohary said. “They want me to stay here and suffer to show other converts to be afraid. They are also afraid that if they let me go, then I will get out and start talking about what is happening in Egypt about the persecution and the injustice. We are trapped in our own country without even the rights that animals have.” Conditions As recently as last week, El-Gohary and his daughter were living in a small, two-bedroom apartment across the street from a mosque on the outskirts of an undisclosed city in Egypt. The floor was littered with grime and bits of trash. Clumps of dust and used water bottles were everywhere. El-Gohary had taped over the locks, as well as taped shut the inside of windows and doors, to guard against eavesdroppers and intruders. He had taped over all the drain holes of the sinks to keep anyone from pumping in natural gas at night. Even the shower drain was taped over. The yellow walls were faded, scuffed and barren, save for a single picture, a holographic portrait of Jesus, taped up in what qualified as a living room. El-Gohary motioned through a door to a porch outside. Rocks and pebbles thrown by area residents who recently learned that he lived there covered the porch. “I would open the window, but I don’t want the rocks to start coming in,” he said. El-Gohary has an old television set and a laptop with limited access to the Internet. Dina said she spends her time reading the Bible, talking to her father or drawing the occasional dress in preparation for obtaining her dream job, designing clothes. Even the simple task of leaving El-Gohary’s apartment is fraught with risk. Every time he leaves, he places a padlock on the door, wraps it with a small plastic bag and melts the bag to the lock with a match. El-Gohary cannot work and has to rely on the kindness of other Christians. People bring him food and water and the occasional donation. When the food runs out, he has to brave going outside. “Our life is extremely, extremely hard. It’s hard for us to attend a church more than once because people will know it is us,” he said. “We can’t go to a supermarket more than once because we are going to be killed.” Girl, Interrupted Possibly the worst part for El-Gohary is watching his daughter suffer. A reflective youth with a gentle demeanor, Dina is quick to smile. But at a time when her life should be filled with friends, freedom and self-discovery, she is instead confined between four walls. Even going to school, normally a simple thing, is fraught with dangerous possibilities. Dina hasn’t gone to school in about a year. She said that the last time she did, other students ridiculed her mercilessly, and a teacher hit her when she tried to attend religious classes for Christians instead of Muslims. Now she and her father fear she could be beaten, kidnapped and forcibly converted, or simply killed. She can’t even go to church, she said. “I don’t understand why I am being treated this way,” she said. “I believe in something, Christianity – I chose the religion because I love it. So why should I be treated this way?” Dina was a little girl when she starting hearing about Jesus. Her father used to sit with her and tell her stories from the Bible, and he also told her about his conversion experience. Like her father, she cites a supernatural experience as a defining event in her faith. One night, she said, she had a dream in which an enormous image of Jesus smiling appeared in a garden. She said the image became bigger and bigger until it touched the ground and became a golden church. She told her father about the dream, and since then she has believed in Christ. Under Islamic law, Dina is considered a Muslim because her father was born as one. Because, like her father, Dina has decided to follow Christ, she is considered an “apostate” under most interpretations of Islamic law. She gained national prominence in November 2009, when she wrote a letter, through a Coptic website, to U.S. President Barack Obama. She told the president that Muslims in the United States are treated much better than Copts in Egypt and asked why this was the case. She hopes the president will pressure the Egyptian government to ensure religious rights or let her and her father immigrate to the United States. One afternoon last month, Dina was walking to a market with her father. As the two walked, El-Gohary noticed smoke and vapors coming off Dina’s jacket. The canvas was sizzling and dissolving. Someone had poured acid over the jacket. El-Gohary ripped it off her and threw it away. “I asked people if they saw what happened and everyone said, ‘No, we didn’t see anything,’” El-Gohary said. Luckily, Dina was not physically injured in the attack, but since then she has been terrified to go outside. “I am very, very scared,” she said. “I haven’t gone outside since the attack happened.” Change of Faith El-Gohary, also known as Peter Athanasius, became a Christian 36 years ago while attending an academy for police trainees. During his second year of school, he became good friends with his roommate, a Copt and the only Christian in the academy. After watching cadets harass his roommate for praying, El-Gohary asked him why the others had ridiculed him. “For me, it was the first time I had heard something like that,” El-Gohary said. “I didn’t have any Christian friends before, and I didn’t know about the level of persecution that takes place against Christians.” Eventually, El-Gohary asked his friend for a Bible and took it home. His family tried to dissuade him from reading it. “No, you can’t read the Bible,” his father told him. “It’s a really bad book.” Undeterred, El-Gohary began reading the Bible in the privacy of his room. In the beginning, he said, the Bible was difficult to understand. But El-Gohary concentrated his efforts on the New Testament, and for the first time in his life, he said, he felt like God was speaking to him. El-Gohary read the account of Jesus meeting the woman caught committing adultery, and the level of mercy that Jesus showed her transformed him, he said. “Jesus said, ‘If anyone among you is without sin, then let him throw the first stone.’ The amount of forgiveness and love in this story really opened my eyes to the nature of Christianity,” El-Gohary said. “The main law that Jesus talked about was loving God ‘with all your heart, soul and mind.’ The basis of Christianity is love and forgiveness, unlike Islam, where it is based on revenge, fighting and war.” Also, El-Gohary said, when he compared the two religions’ versions of heaven, he found that the Islamic version was about physical pleasure, whereas for Christians it was about being released from the physical world to be with God. El-Gohary said his decision to follow Christ was final after he had a brilliant vision of light in his bedroom at his parents’ home, accompanied by the presence of “the peace of God.” El-Gohary said at first he thought he was seeing things, but then his father knocked on the door and demanded to know why the light was on. He told his father he was looking for something. Persecution Begins As a budding Christian convert, El-Gohary went back to the police academy and learned as much as he could about Christ and the Bible from his roommate. Persecution wasn’t long in coming. One day an upperclassman spotted El-Gohary absent-mindedly drawing a cross on a notebook. The cadet sent El-Gohary to a superior for questioning. El-Gohary avoided telling academy officials that his roommate had taught him about Christianity, but a captain at the school was able to piece together the evidence. The captain called El-Gohary’s father, a high-ranking officer at the academy, who in turn told the captain to make the young convert’s life “hell.” Officials were imaginative in their attempts to break El-Gohary. He had to wake up before all the other students. He was ordered to carry his mattress around buildings and up and down flights of stairs. They exercised El-Gohary until he was about to pass out. Then they forced him to clean bathroom facilities with a toothbrush. El-Gohary was not swayed from Christ, but he decided he couldn’t stay in what he said is the agency that “is the center of persecution against Christians” in Egypt. He tried numerous times to resign, but officials wouldn’t let him. Then he tried to get kicked out. Eventually, officials suspended the police cadet and sent him home for two weeks. At home, his family had a surprise waiting; they had hired an Islamic scholar to bring him back to Islam. The scholar started by yelling Islamic teachings into El-Gohary’s ears, then moved on to write Quranic verses on his arms. El-Gohary remained seated and bore the humiliation in silence. Suddenly El-Gohary stood up, pinned the man against a wall and started yelling at him; the convert had caught the distinct smell of burning flesh – when he looked down at his arms, El-Gohary saw the scholar burning his hands with thin, smoldering iron rods. “I said, ‘Enough! I have tolerated all of your talk. I have listened to all you have said, but this has gone too far,’” El-Gohary recalled. “The man said I had a ‘Christian demon’ inside me.” Hope As bad as things have been for El-Gohary and his daughter, their dedication seems rock-solid. They said they have never regretted their decisions to become Christians. El-Gohary said that eventually, he will triumph. “By law, my circumstance will have to change,” he said. “I have done nothing illegal.” Dina is not so sure; she said she doesn’t feel like she has a future in Egypt, and she hopes to move to a place where she can get an education. Whatever happens, both El-Gohary and his daughter said they are prepared to live in hiding indefinitely. “There are days that I break down and cry, but I am not giving up,” Dina said. “I am still not going back to Islam.” Source: Compass 2010-05-26T08:24:58+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/allegedly_raped_girl_family_in_pakistan_forced_to_flee_town/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/allegedly_raped_girl_family_in_pakistan_forced_to_flee_town/#When:09:51:19Z Death threats, ultimatum from powerful Muslims compel father of 12-year-old to move.Death threats, ultimatum from powerful Muslims compel father of 12-year-old to move. A Christian who accused a Muslim of raping his 12-year-old daughter has fled his town in Punjab Province with his family following death threats and police pressure to drop the case. Citing “continuous threats” to take his life, Zafar Masih left Gujranwala’s predominantly Muslim town of Nai Abadi Tatlay Aali within 10 days of accusing Ali Ahmed, a 28-year-old businessman, of beating and raping his daughter on May 12. His daughter, whose name was withheld, told Compass that her employer, Ahmed, beat and raped her when she went to his home, where she worked as a house servant. When she arrived she was surprised to find him at home in his room, she said. “He grabbed my hair and asked me to sleep with him,” she said, amid tears. “I refused to let him have sexual relations with me, which enraged him.”  Her body marred with bruises, she said he tore her clothes and she screamed, but no one else was in the home to hear her. “Ali Ahmed overpowered me, and all my efforts were futile even though I strained with all my energy to stop him,” she said. “After getting stigmatized, I was threatened with dire consequences and the slaying of my whole family if I told about the rape.” The oldest of four children, she fled the house and immediately sent her younger brother to call her father, who was working in a nearby field, she said. Masih, her father, said he immediately went to Tatlay Aali police station and submitted an application to file a First Information Report against Ahmed. Station House Officer Inspector Iqbal Ojjhra refused, he said, and began to pressure him to withdraw the application. A powerful local politician along with the area’s largest land owner, Imtiyaz Kharral, have since threatened to maim or kill him, Masih said. “I declined to withdraw my application, though I was being immensely pressured by both the leading Muslim men,” Masih said. “And Inspector Ojjhra had a new alibi every day for not registering the case.” Inspector Ojjhra denied all allegations against him. He told Compass that he declined to register a rape case because he did not want to harm the Christian girl’s dignity, so instead he had recommended trying to resolve the conflict in a public gathering or “punchayat.” Arif Masih, a Nai Abadi Tatlay Aali representative for local Christians, told Compass that the next evening, May 13, Kharral called a meeting at his farmhouse with Inspector Ojjhra, local Muslims and a contingent of police officers. Also summoned were Zafar Masih and his children, Arif Masih and the other Christian families of the town. “At Imtiyaz Kharral’s farmhouse gathering, none of the Christians were allowed to speak or express their opinion,” said Arif Masih, who said the wealthy land owner considered himself the head of the town. “Even I being representative of the Christians was not allowed to speak for [Zafar Masih’s daughter] or put forward the demands of the Christians.” Only Kharral spoke, saying that there were only two options – Zafar Masih could withdraw his rape charge, or he and the other Christian families in Nai Abadi Tatlay Aali could relocate elsewhere. “He ignored the fact that the girl would have to live her whole life with this irrecoverable loss and stigma,” Arif Masih said. “I was totally helpless in this showdown, because Imtiyaz Kharral and Ali Ahmed have the favor of the local police head, Iqbal Ojjhra.” Khalid Gill, chairman of the Christian Lawyers Foundation (CLF), condemned the dismissive police attitude toward marginalized Christians. He suggested that the chief justice of the Lahore High Court take suo moto action against the suspect, his associates and police officers as responsible for mental anguish of the area Christians. Tahir Naveed Chaudhary, a Christian member of Punjab’s legislative assembly, also denounced the alleged rape and pledged to extend legal and financial support to the family of Zafar Masih.  Most of the area Christians are construction laborers, sanitation workers and domestic servants working for daily wages. Zafar Masih said he could not afford to educate his children because he was living close to poverty level. “My eldest daughter worked as a maidservant for a monthly salary of 500 rupees [less than US$6] to lend a hand,” he said. “We Christians in Pakistan have no life even dogs live better life than us.” Source: Compass 2010-05-25T09:51:19+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/second_wave_of_deportations_hits_foreign_christians_in_morocco1/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/second_wave_of_deportations_hits_foreign_christians_in_morocco1/#When:11:36:49Z Muslim hardliners pressure government; nationals fears they may be next victim of ‘purging.’Muslim hardliners pressure government; nationals fears they may be next victim of ‘purging.’ In a second wave of deportations from Morocco, officials of the majority-Muslim country have expelled 26 foreign Christians in the last 10 days without due process. Following the expulsion of more than 40 foreign Christians in March, the deportations were apparently the result of Muslim hardliners pressuring the nation’s royalty to show Islamic solidarity. The latest deportations bring the number of Christians who have had to leave Morocco to about 105 since early March. Christians and expert observers are calling this a calculated effort to purge the historically moderate country, known for its progressive policies, of all Christian elements – both foreign and national. “I don’t see the end,” said Salim Sefiane, a Moroccan living abroad. “I see this as a ‘cleansing’ of Christians out of Morocco, and then I see this turning against the Moroccan church, which is already underground, and then persecution of Moroccan Christians, which is already taking place in recent days.” At least two Moroccan Christians have been beaten in the last 10 days, sources told Compass, and police have brought other Moroccan Christians to police stations daily for psychologically “heavy” interrogations. Authorities are enquiring about the activities of foreign and local Christians. Forcibly Ejected Legal sources said that according to Moroccan law, foreigners who have lived in the country for more than 10 years cannot be deported unless they are accused of a crime. They have the right to appeal the deportation order within 48 hours. With only hours’ notice and forced escort to the country’s exit ports, almost none of the deportees were able to appeal their deportations. “Most of these [deportations] are happening over the weekends, when the courts are closed,” Sefiane said. “Most of them are done in a way where they’re bringing them in [to the police station], intimidating them, and manhandling them out of the country. Many of them are not even going back to say goodbye to their wives, or even to pack a bag.” With the exception of three foreigners, in none of the forced deportations did authorities produce an official deportation order, sources said. In many cases, Moroccan officials used embassies to notify foreigners that they were being deported. In most cases, foreigners were presented with a document in Arabic for them to sign that stated that they “understood” that they were being deported. Compass learned of one case in which a foreigner was forced to the airport, and when he resisted he was forcibly drugged and sent to his native country. “The expats in the country are very vulnerable, and the way it has happened has been against the laws of the country,” said a European Christian who was deported last week after nearly a decade of running his business in Morocco. “When I tried to walk away from the situation, I was physically stopped.” The deported Christian said that authorities never informed any of the Christian foreigners of their rights, when in fact there are national laws protecting foreigners.  “Basically they are trying to con everyone into leaving the country,” he said. Deported foreigners have had to leave their families behind in Morocco, as well as their friends and communities. Many of the deportees were the male breadwinners of the family and have left their families behind as they try to decide their future. “It’s devastating, because we have invested years of our lives into our community, business community and charity sectors,” said the European Christian. “People flooded to our house when they heard I was bundled into the back of a police car by the local authorities. It was like a death in the family – forcibly ejected from the country without being able to say goodbyes, just like that.” The deportees have included Christians from North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, New Zealand and Korea. “It’s come out of left field,” said the European. “No one really knows why this is happening.” Internal Pressure A regional legal expert said on condition of anonymity that a small number of extremist Muslims have undertaken a media campaign to “get [Christians’] good works out of the public eye and demonize Christians,” in order to expel them and turn the nation against local Christians – some of whom are third-generation followers of Jesus. “There are too many eyes and ears to what they want to do to the native Christians,” said the expert. “They’re trying to get to them …They want to shut down the native Moroccan Christians.” Deportation orders are coming from the Ministry of Interior, and speculation on the reason for the sudden spike in expulsions has centered on the arrival of a new, hard-line Muslim interior director in January. Moroccan officials have cited “proselytism” as the reason for the deportations. Reuters news agency reported Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs Minister Ahmed Toufiq as saying “proselytism” and “activism of some foreigners” had “undermined public order.” On April 12 local media reported that 7,000 religious Muslim leaders signed a document describing the work of Christians within Morocco as “moral rape” and “religious terrorism.” The statement from the religious leaders came amid a nationwide mudslinging campaign geared to vilify Christians in Morocco for “proselytism” – widely perceived as bribing people to change their faith. Religious rights advocates point out that under Article 18 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the more than 100 foreigners who had lived in Morocco, some for decades, not only had the right to stay in the country but had contributed to the nation.  “They expelled people who helped build up the country, trained people, educated Moroccan children, cared for orphans and widows, increased the GDP and trade,” said the regional legal expert. “These people they expelled weren’t even proselytizing under their own law. There’s an international standard, yet they changed the definition of the terminology and turned it into this horrible ‘religious terrorism.’” One of the country’s most prestigious educational institutions, George Washington Academy in Casablanca, has come under fierce criticism from media and investigation by authorities. “The biggest problem is the image the Ministry of Justice is pushing about who the Christian foreigners are,” said another observer on condition of anonymity. “All the articles have been extreme exaggerations of the manipulative aspect of what foreigners were doing, and especially when it comes to minors.” Local Christians have reported to sources outside of Morocco that attitudes towards them, which used to be more tolerant, have also shifted as a result of the extremist-led campaign, and some are experiencing family and societal pressure and discrimination as well. International Forces While the deportations have perplexed the local Christian community, the regional legal expert said that in some ways this was calculated and inevitable. He said that the Organization of the Islamic Conference had been putting pressure on countries across the Middle East and North Africa to remove their Christian elements. Iraq, with its decline in Christian population from a few million to a few hundred thousand over the last decade, is a case in point. “Countries which have been more forward looking and spoken about rights, freedoms and equalities have been pressured to demonstrate their Muslim credentials, and the best way to do this is to sanitize [religious] minorities from the borders,” he said. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.), co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, has called congressional hearings on June 17 to examine the human rights situation in Morocco in light of the expulsions. On Wednesday (May 19) Wolf called on the U.S. government to suspend $697.5 million in aid it has pledged to Morocco based on criteria that it is “ruling justly.” “We’ve been told the Christians are a threat to the national security, so they are using terrorism laws against peace-loving Christians,” said the deported European Christian. “But it is massively backfiring.” The Christian described how the Moroccan friends of Christian foreigners have been asking why they are being deported for their faith. “They are being impacted by the reality of Christ through this, and it’s having more of an effect on the community than years and years of quietly demonstrating Christ peacefully and lawfully,” he said. “By breaking their own laws, they have opened the lid on the reality of the life of Christ.” There are an estimated 1,000 Moroccan Christian converts. They are not recognized by the government. About 99 percent of Morocco’s population of more than 33 million is Muslim. Source: Compass 2010-05-24T11:36:49+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/muslim_youths_in_nigeria_destroy_church_buildings_pastors_home/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/muslim_youths_in_nigeria_destroy_church_buildings_pastors_home/#When:10:37:17Z Attacks in Kano state said to stem from hostility by converts to Islam, land dispute.Attacks in Kano state said to stem from hostility by converts to Islam, land dispute. Scores of Muslim youths on Wednesday (May 19) besieged church property in Kano state in northern Nigeria, destroying two church buildings and a pastor’s residence.  One of the buildings and the pastor’s house were set ablaze on the premises of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) at Kwasam, in the Kiru Local Government Area, while another building under construction was demolished. Youths reportedly numbering more than 100 in the predominantly Muslim area stormed the church grounds. “The problem started when some Christian youths of ECWA church were converted to Islam,” the Rev. Lado Abdul, chairman of ECWA district in Kano, told Compass. “They swore that the ECWA church would not remain in the area, as they would do everything possible to chase Christians out from Kiru.” The ECWA pastor whose house was demolished, Gambo Mato, has found shelter in another Christian’s home. No life was lost during or after the incident as police and State Security Service officers intervened, and traditional rulers, religious leaders and government officials held an urgent meeting to quell potential skirmishes and establish security. Abdul, however, lamented the denial of rights to Christians in Kano by area Muslims. “Here in Kano, nobody gives you land to build a church,” he said. “The old churches built before now are being demolished for reasons no one can easily grasp. We have taken our complaint to Sarki Kano [traditional emir of Kano] Alhaji Ado Bayero, and he assured us that something would be done about it. We are looking to the state government to come to our rescue.” Kano State Police Commissioner Mohammed Gana said that the attack on the church buildings grew out of a land dispute. “The old church was a mud house, and the ECWA people wanted to rebuild it with blocks,” Gana said. “In the process, there was a disagreement, but we moved in to ensure peace and order.” Four suspects have been arrested, and an investigation continues, the police chief said. Elsewhere in Kano state, in Banaka of the Takai Local Government Area, a Baptist church was reportedly demolished on Saturday (May 15). Kano state, one of 12 states in Nigeria where sharia (Islamic law) is in effect, has been the site of periodic Islamic aggression against the minority Christian community. Last year, when an Islamic extremist sect known as Boko Haram instigated rioting in Bauchi state that killed at least 12 Christians, the firestorm of violence spread to Kano state as well as Borno and Yobe states. In 2008, hundreds of Muslims took to the streets of Kano city on April 20, attacking Christians and their shops and setting vehicles on fire based on claims that a Christian had blasphemed Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Thousands of Christians were trapped in church buildings until police could disperse the assailants. An unidentified Christian was said to have written an inscription on a shop wall that disparaged the prophet of Islam. Muslims at a market in the Sabon Garia area of the city reportedly attacked the Christian, whom police rescued and took to the area police station. Muslims in large numbers soon trooped to the police station, threatening to set it ablaze unless officers released the Christian to be stoned to death in accordance with sharia, sources said. Source: Compass 2010-05-24T10:37:17+00:00 http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/more/muslim_teachers_in_pakistan_allegedly_abuse_christian_students/ http://www.odshockwave.org/index.php/blog/muslim_teachers_in_pakistan_allegedly_abuse_christian_students/#When:08:25:57Z Derogatory remarks, beatings, pressure to convert to Islam drive two girls to drop out.Derogatory remarks, beatings, pressure to convert to Islam drive two girls to drop out. Muslim teachers at a girls school here have derided Christian students for their faith, beat them, pressured them to convert to Islam and forced them to clean school bathrooms and classrooms after class hours, according to area Christians. Muslim teachers at Government Higher Secondary School in village No. 79-NB (Northern Branch), Sargodha, in Punjab Province, have so abused Christian students that two of the dozens of Christian girls at the school have dropped out, said a 16-year-old student identified only as Sana. “Christian students are teased and mocked by radical Muslim, female teachers from the start of the school day to the end,” she said. “Due to the contemptuous behavior on religious grounds by the fanatical Muslim principal and staff, Christian students feel dejected, depressed and frustrated. I am totally broken-hearted because of the intolerance and discrimination.” Rebecca Bhatti, a 16-year-old grade 10 student, told Compass she left the government school because her main teacher, along with an Islamic Education & Arabic Language teacher identified only as Sumaira, a math teacher identified only as Gullnaz, other Muslim teachers and Ferhat Naz, the principal, would call Christian girls in to the staff room at recess and demand that they polish their shoes or wash their undergarments and other clothes.  “If any girl turned down the orders of any of the Muslim teachers, they were punished,” Bhatti said as she spilled tears. “The Muslim school teachers ordered us to wash lavatories daily and clean the school compound and classrooms, even though there is staff to keep the school clean.” She said that the school also denied Christian students certificates of completion when they had finished their studies. “This was to bar Christian students from gaining admission to other educational institutions or continue their education,” she said. The principal of Christian Primary School in the village, Zareena Emmanuel, said that Naz and Sumaira subjected Christian students to beatings. Emmanuel also said that Muslim teachers at the secondary school derided Christian students for their faith. “I regret that it is the only government school of higher education for girls at the village and adjoining areas,” Emmanuel said, “and therefore Christian girls have to experience such apathy, religious discrimination and bitterness each day of their schooling, which is supposed to be a time of learning and imagination.” Christian residents of the village said they have been longing to bring abuse at the school to light. The Rev. Zaheer Khan of Maghoo Memorial United Presbyterian Church and Emmanuel of the primary school have asked education department officials of Sargodha Region to investigate, he said. Khan also said that Naz and Muslim teachers including Gullnaz, Sumaira and Muzammil Bibi have treated Christian students contemptuously and have frequently asked them to convert to Islam. “The attitude of the Arabic & Islamic Education teacher, Sumaira, toward the Christian students is beyond belief,” he said, “as she has forced the Christian girls to wash toilets, classrooms and clean the school ground, saying they must not be hesitant to do sanitation work because it’s the work of their parents and forefathers handed down to them.”  Questioned about the abuses, Naz told Compass that she would immediately take note of such incidents if they had occurred. “Any of the teachers held responsible of forcing Christian students convert to Islam will be punished according to the departmental rules and regulations,” Naz said. “A few Christian girls have abandoned their education because of their domestic problems, but even then I’ll carry out a departmental inquiry against the accused teachers, and no one will be spared if found guilty.” Naz said the inquiry would focus especially on the accusations against Sumaira, Muzammil and Gullnaz. Protesting residents gathered outside Naz’s office last week said she had no real intention of investigating the alleged abuses; some said she was making weak excuses to defend her staff members. They urged an independent investigation of Sumaira, Gullnaz, Muzammil and Naz. “This cannot be tolerated, as it’s a matter of their girls’ careers and education,” said one protestor. Noureen Austin, a 19-year-old Christian student in grade 12, described the school environment as discriminatory, depressed, gloomy and agitated.” “No Christian student can get a quality education there,” she said. “Most of the school faculty are fanatical female Muslims who would not waste any chance to target Christian girls because of their belief in Christ.” Source: Compass 2010-05-20T08:25:57+00:00