A seven-year-old Pakistani girl and her family have been given asylum in Canada after reports the child was raped and left to die when her Christian father refused to convert to Islam.
The identities of Baby Neeha and her family are being protected by immigration officials, said human rights lawyer Chantal Desloges and One Free World International, a church that was instrumental in getting the family here.
[…]Church founder Rev. Majed El Shafie said the family of seven have been hiding from extremists in Pakistan for about three years.
Baby Neeha, at the age of 2 1/2, was raped by the son of her father’s employer and left to die by the roadside, he said. No one was arrested for the crime.
“These horrific events took place because her father, who was Christian, refused to give in to pressure from his Muslim employer to convert to Islam,” El Shafie said.
The family went underground in Pakistan to hide from Muslim extremists who were seeking revenge for their non-conversion, he said.
“The family has lived for years in hiding and in constant fear of being discovered by the employer’s family or Islamic extremists,” El Shafie said. “We are thrilled that she’s finally in Canada.”
Click through to the story in the Toronto Sun to read about how my second favorite Canadian MP, Jason Kenney, is the hero of their story. He is a devout Christian, and a social conservative.
A panel of eleven judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in San Francisco will hear oral arguments tomorrow, December 16, concerning the constitutionality of the San Francisco Board of Supervisor’s resolution attacking the Catholic Church for its teachings against homosexual adoptions.
[…]The challenge was made on the grounds that the resolution expresses government hostility toward the Catholic Church and its moral teachings in violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.[…]The resolution refers to the Vatican as a “foreign country” meddling in the affairs of the city and proclaims the Church’s moral teaching and beliefs on homosexuality as “insulting to all San Franciscans,” “hateful,” “insulting and callous,” “defamatory,” “absolutely unacceptable,” and says that Church teaching shows “insensitivity and ignorance.”
And the second story also from LifeSiteNews about Quebec, the most secular and leftist province in Canada.
Excerpt:
The Quebec Government has promulgated a new provincial policy against “homophobia,” touted as the first of its kind from a North American jurisdiction. While homosexuality is already effectively fully normalized within Quebec law, the policy, released on Friday by the Ministry of Justice, is essentially a manifesto for normalizing homosexuality on the social level.
[…]They highlight at several points the need to target schools and youth, as did the original 2007 report. “Awareness-raising and educational measures must target young people and the institutions they frequent in order to increase their acceptance of sexual diversity,” the policy states.
Pulling the troops out of Iraq, free health care and tax increases on the “rich” sound good to many uninformed Christians during an election, but they need to be careful about losing their religious liberty.
Coming on the heels of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (Nov. 8), Christian religious-freedom groups celebrated a victory yesterday in Iran. Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad, 30, and Maryam Rustampoor, 27 — two Iranian converts to Christianity — were freed after being imprisoned for 259 days.
Authorities raided the women’s apartment, which contained “Christian literature,” on March 5. The women were charged with anti-state activity, spreading Christianity, and apostasy (deserting one’s faith), and were placed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
In Iran, apostasy alone is punishable by execution or life in prison.
[…]While in custody, reports came that the two women endured “intense interrogations which have reportedly included sleep deprivation and other psychological pressure.” In the past, Evin in particular has been accused of denying its inmates basic rights, and both women suffered from poor health that went untreated.
After a deputy prosecutor reportedly told them, “It is impossible for God to speak with humans,” Esmaeilabad apparently replied: “Are you questioning whether God is Almighty?” The prosecution was heard telling her that she is “not worthy for God” but Esmaeilabad countered: “‘It is God, and not you, who determines if I am worthy.” After they were told by a court to return to prison and think about their options, the two women were heard saying: “We have already done our thinking. If we come out of prison we want to do so with honor.”
Honor is a very important thing for Christians. To me, honor means “your reputation with God”. And Christians are expected to endure persecution at the hands of non-Christians while keeping their honor intact. But I think that the suffering and cruelty endured by these women goes above and beyond the call of duty. I hope that I will be as honorable as these women if I ever faced similar troubles. But to be honest, I don’t think I could do 1% as well as they did. This was amazing. I hope they can keep this up. So far, so good, but it must be very difficult for them.
So to show them my respect and admiration, I’m going to quote a Bible passage that describes them.
13“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
14“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
The Christianity Today article is a great summary of the entire story, in case you were not following it. The article notes that the two women will have to appear in court again at some point in the future.
WINTERY KNIGHT 