Chinese house church leader Samuel Lamb, persecuted for his faith, dies.
Former porn star Jenna Presley, now a Christian, joins XXXChurch. And punk rockers are speaking out against Buddhism’s neo-Nazis.
Religious intolerance is growing in Indonesia Indonesia’s positive image of a country where different communities and cultures interact peacefully with each other contrasts heavily with the reality of the past 10 years, reports the Deutsche Welle. Many of the country’s Christians fear for their lives, as there has been an increase in attacks on religious minorities in recent years. It’s not just Christians who are under attack in the Muslim-dominated country. Extremists from Indonesia’s 200 million Sunni Muslims have also been attacking the country’s Muslim minority sects, including the estimated 100,000 Shiites and 400,000 Ahmadiyyas. The Deutsche Welle says, “according
Vietnamese officials in Muong Cha district, Dien Bien Province, destroyed two new church buildings of ethnic minority Hmong Christians this month and threatened to tear down a third.
Lao officials arrested two Lao and two Thai Christians in Luang Namtha Province earlier this month, seizing them from a private residence in Long district, according to Human Rights Watch for Lao Religious Freedom.
Officials also arrested a pastor in Luang Namtha and dismissed two civil servants in Savannakhet for converting to Christianity.
In Nigeria’s Plateau state, Christian leaders said more Christians have died at the hands of Muslim extremists than the 35 that the military reported thus far in May.
The Nigerian president took pointed criticism for the government’s handling of Muslim extremist violence against Christians.
Amid global euphoria over reforms in Burman-majority parts of Burma, life has changed little for more than 3 million Christians and other minorities left to suffer from one of the world’s longest running civil wars.
While it is largely a struggle for self-determination in all ethnic states and all civilians suffer in the crossfire, the Burman-Buddhist dominated Burmese troops are often accused of being harsher on Christian civilians than on their Buddhist counterparts.
Christians faced increased hostilities in Sudan over the past few weeks, culminating in an attack on a Christian compound in Khartoum by a throng of Muslim extremists armed with clubs, iron rods, a bulldozer and fire.
Breaking down the compound wall with a bulldozer, the assailants set fire to the Gerief West Bible School and the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) building; they also damaged three other places of worship and other buildings in the same compound.
A recent “reconciliation meeting” between members of a Muslim mob that attacked a Christian-owned school in Egypt and school administrators was nothing less than an attempt at legalized extortion, the director of the school said.
In exchange for peace, members of the sword-wielding mob that stormed the school last month without provocation — and held two nuns hostage for several hours — initially demanded in the meetings that the school sign over parcels of land that include the guesthouse the Muslim extremists attacked.
The mother of a 6-month-old girl has been wrongly jailed for more than a month, as Pakistani authorities have failed to file a charge sheet within the mandatory 14-day period against the young Christian woman falsely accused of “blaspheming” the prophet of Islam, her attorney said.
Sentiment against Christians in Turkey has persisted long enough for a U.S. religious rights monitor to recommend it as a “Country of Particular Concern.”
Many in Turkey see Christians as corrupt elements of the West out to shake the integrity of Turkey and Islam.