Tag: Religious Intolerance

Hundreds of Muslims from outside the area where a 600-member church meets in West Java staged a protest there to call for its closure this month in an attempt to portray local opposition.

Demonstrators from 16 Islamic organizations, including the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), gathered on Feb. 15 to demand a stop to all activities by the Galilea Protestant Church (GPIB) in the Galaxy area of Bekasi City.

Amid protests against reported church destructions, the city of Hanoi has ordered one of its districts to stop construction work on land claimed by the Catholic church.

The move was seen as a surprise turnaround by Communist authorities who since March demolished at least one historic church building in the Central Highlands, Christians said.

Government work crews reportedly destroyed a Protestant church building of Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South), or ECVN(S), in the area of Banmethuot om March 11.

In a surprise move, a Saudi Christian arrested in January for describing his conversion from Islam and criticizing the kingdom’s judiciary on his blog site was released on March 28 with the stipulation that he not travel outside of Saudi Arabia or appear on media.

The country’s penalty for “apostasy,” or leaving Islam, is death, although in recent years there have been no known cases of kingdom citizens formally convicted and sentenced with capital punishment for the offense.

Instead of investigating a reported burglary, a posse of cops reportedly committed a variety of hate crimes against members of a Sikh family.

One deputy reportedly asked them if they’d “heard about the bombings in Bombay.” Another allegedly said he had been to Kuwait and “knew about Muslims.”

Since 9/11, misperceptions about Sikhs’ religiously mandated turbans and beards have led to an increase in discrimination against Sikhs, according to the New York-based Sikh Coalition.

Mrs Panda and thousands of others like her are victims of the worst communal violence between Hindus and Christians that India has seen for decades.

For a country that boasts of its mutual religious tolerance, the long-simmering tension that has erupted in the Kandhamal district of the state of Orissa — a nun being raped, churches being burned, at least 35 people killed and thousands forced from their villages — is both a belated wake-up call and a mounting embarrassment.

The burning of 200 New Testament bibles underscores growing tensions in the Jewish state between the mainstream religion and Christian Zionists.

It was the latest in a string of incidents targeting Messianic Jews in Israel, a trend that has alarmed Christian Zionist organizations.