In an Iraq torn by national and religious divides, there is no safe haven for Nuria’s family or other Arab families who convert from Islam.

Muslim family members, neighbors or employers who discover they are converts can make their lives unbearable.

Funeral services were held today in Cairo for some of the victims of a military attack against a group of Christian protestors that left 26 dead and hundreds wounded.

In the wake of what could be the worst act of violence against Egyptian Christians in modern history, leaders of the Coptic Orthodox Church have called for three days of fasting and prayer for divine intervention, along with three days of mourning.

Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani refused to recant his Christian faith today at the fourth and final court hearing in Iran to appeal his death sentence for apostasy (leaving Islam).

A court declared that although Nadarkhani was not a practicing Muslim before his conversion, he was still guilty of apostasy due to his Muslim ancestry.

About 70 Protestant Christians lived in the village of San Rafael Tlanalapan, Puebla state, until last week Monday, when they faced a frightening ultimatum – leave immediately or be “crucified or lynched.”

Traditionalist Catholics in the village reportedly threatened to burn down or otherwise destroy their homes.

After he became a Christian in the Netherlands, as well as getting free from drugs, Abrahamian returned to Iran to work with drug users.

Iranian authorities were incensed that Abrahamian worked with marginalized Farsi-speaking Muslims, and that he had connections with foreign Christians.

An evangelical pastor once jailed by the regime of Fidel Castro arrived in the United States from Cuba yesterday with his family under a special resettlement program for political refugees.

The Rev. Carlos Lamelas was granted asylum in the United States due to persecution he has endured for more than five years at the hands of Cuban authorities.

Convicting a Christian convert for insulting the prophet of Islam, a judge in Algeria last week stunned the Christian community by sentencing him beyond what a prosecutor recommended.

In Oran, 470 kilometers (292 miles) west of Algiers, a criminal court in the city’s Djamel district on Wednesday (May 25) sentenced Siaghi Krimo to a prison term of five years for giving a CD about Christianity to a neighbor who subsequently claimed he had insulted Muhammad. Krimo was also fined 200,000 Algerian dinars (US$2,760), according to Algerian news reports.

Seven Algerian churches face closure this week after the governor of their province sent them written notice that they were operating “illegally.”

According to the governor’s statement, if the churches do not comply, authorities may use force. The leaders of the churches in Bejaia have decided to conduct church services this weekend as scheduled and “see what happens.”

Sudanese National Security Intelligence and Security Service agents have arrested a Christian woman in a Darfur camp for displaced people, accusing her of converting Muslims to Christianity, said sources who fear she is being tortured.

At the same time, in Khartoum a Christian mother of a 2-month-old baby is wounded and destitute because she and her husband left Islam for Christianity.

Pakistani Christians have expressed concerns about renewed kidnappings and abuse of women and girls by Muslims in a country still reeling from the recent assassination of a Christian government minister.

Among those targeted was Sehar Naz, a 24-year-old employee with Pakistan’s State Life Insurance Corporation in Punjab province, who was recovering of her injuries Monday, May 23, after she was allegedly kidnapped and raped by a Pakistan Army officer.

Hundreds of Muslims, angered by the prospect of a government-closed church re-opening in their neighborhood, protested outside the church yesterday, causing the provisional military authority to back away from its promise to allow Orthodox clergy to reopen it.

Protestors started gathering on Thursday afternoon (May 19) outside the Church of the Virgin Mary and St. Abraam in Ain Shams, a poor section of northeastern Cairo. The church was scheduled to reopen that day, but protestors surrounded the building, preventing anyone from getting into it and trapping priests who were inside.

The government tried to portray several thousand Hmong followers of a sub-Christian messianic cult as orthodox Christians while the military forcibly disbanded their gathering yesterday and today.

The cult members recruited from orthodox Christian groups – vulnerable to false teaching in a country where Christians cannot print their own Bibles and are subject to other restrictions – had gathered for religious reasons in Muong Nhe district, Dien Bien Province, but it turned into a confrontation before local defense forces disbanded them, bolstered by Vietnam People’s Army reinforcements hastily dropped in by helicopters.

Chinese police harassed female members from one of Beijing’s largest underground Protestant churches before releasing them and most of other Christians detained Sunday, April 17.

They were among a group of some 30 members who were being detained Sunday morning when they tried to pray outdoors.

Police in China held “about two dozen” pastors and elders of Beijing’s Shouwang Church under house arrest or at police stations over the weekend to keep them from attending a Sunday worship service in a public location.

Three top leaders of the church remain in jail and several others are under strict surveillance. Chinese police arrested at least 160 members of the 1,000-strong church as they tried to assemble.

Two Indian Christians of a thriving Pentecostal house church in Saudi Arabia have been moved from pre-trial detention to a prison in the Saudi capital Ryadh where they are “forbidden to pray or read the Bible” and “suffer of a lack of food and medical attention.”

The two were initially detained in January and received 45-days of “pre-trial detention” on charges of attempted proselytizing.

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