Do people choose their religion based on the country of their birth, or based on peer pressure from their local community, or based on pressure from their family?
An Afghan physiotherapist will be executed within three days for converting to Christianity.
Said Musa, 45, has been held for eight months in a Kabul prison were he claims he has been tortured and sexually abused by inmates and guards.
Mr Musa, who lost his left leg in a landmine explosion in the 1990s, has worked for the Red Cross for 15 years and helps to treat fellow amputees.
He was arrested in May last year as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy following a crackdown on Christians within Afghanistan.
He claims he was visited by a judge who told him he would be hanged within days unless he converted back to Islam.
But he remains defiant and said he would be willing to die for his faith.
He told the Sunday Times: ‘My body is theirs to do what they want with.
‘Only God can decide if my spirit goes to hell.’
Defence lawyers have refused to represent him, while others have dropped the case after receiving death threats.
Mr Musa was arrested after a TV station showed western men baptising Afghans during secret ceremonies.
And it’s not just Afghanistan and Iraq – now it’s Egypt. Jennifer Caballero linked to this Cubachi post that explains how Egyptian Christians are in fear of persecution.
The Obama administration has not shown us it cares about the persecution of Christians. This is obvious. At a time of rising persecution of Christians throughout Muslim lands, the president has nominated Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook — a “motivational speaker” with questionable qualifications — to hold the critical position of U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.
Respected diplomat Thomas Farr, who headed the State Department’s International Religious Freedom desk, has written in The Washington Post: “The Obama administration seems to have decided that other policy initiatives — outreach to Muslim governments, obtaining China’s cooperation, advancing gay rights — would be compromised by vigorous advocacy for religious freedom.”
The situation for Christians around the world is increasingly dire. In Afghanistan, a government we support and largely fund is hounding Christians, pursuing them, and threatening them with death.
Christians in Iraq are suffering more now than at any time since the dawn of the Christian era. Fully half of Iraq’s Christians have fled the country since the 2003 U.S. invasion. They can no longer survive where their ancestors lived for thousands of years.
Christians in Egypt were murdered at Christmas by Muslim militants. Christians in Lebanon are newly threatened by the rise of Hezbollah — backed by Iran.
In Iran itself, 100 Christians were arrested in 24 cities on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. The Iranian regime — to which this president extended an “open hand” and to whose people he sent Persian New Year’s greetings — is committed to a totalitarian variant of Islam. No wonder they want nuclear weapons.
It’s become very popular on the left to say that Islam is a religion of peace, and to include Islam as a mainstream religion alongside Judaism and Christianity. Somehow, I don’t think that the multicultural relativists have looked very deeply at Islam.
And I don’t think that Islam could have much going for it rationally or evidentially if it has to resort to violence in order to avoid people converting away from it. If membership in Islam isn’t voluntary, then how many Muslims really believe in it because they think it is true? Clearly, they don’t really care about presenting as rationally testable. It’s basically presented as “convert or die”.
Leading Chinese Christian dissidents blasted the Obama administration Thursday, saying it had done virtually nothing to advance the cause of religious freedom.
“For the past two years, in public it’s been almost dead silence,” said Bob Fu, founder and president of the China Aid Association, an international Chirstian human rights group.
He said private pleas to State Department officials to publicly mention names of jailed and “disappeared” Christian leaders had fallen on deaf ears.
“Although I see some similarities between this administration and the last one — of course, both put an emphasis on business and trade — at least President [George W.] Bush singled out religious freedom as a foreign policy priority. He was very vocal, he made lots of policy speeches, he was not ashamed to talk about it.”
Mr. Fu, whose organization has headquarters in Midland, Texas, was in Washington on Thursday to join a six-member delegation of Christian leaders from China at the National Prayer Breakfast. Chinese authorities barred three of the six from leaving the country.
Religious freedom in China has been a growing international issue in recent years as the nation’s Christian population has mushroomed. Though the Chinese government has given space to tightly controlled state-sanctioned churches, the vast majority of the country’s Christian population — more than 100 million, by some estimates — prefer to join independent “house churches,” which remain heavily persecuted.
Zheng Leguo, a prominent evangelist from Zhejiang province, said that house-church Christians “prayed for the re-election of President Bush because he cared about the religious-freedom issue and they thought having him in office would keep them further from prison.”
“The Chinese-government-sanctioned church was praying for Mr. John Kerry,” he quipped, referring to the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.
The article also notes that former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, an Obama-appointee, hasn’t done anything for the Chinese Christians. He is also pro-amnesty, a believer in man-made global warming, and a supporter of same-sex civil unions. Apparently, he is running for the 2012 Republican nomination! What a laugh.
WINTERY KNIGHT 