12 September 2006
Persecution on the Rise
CWNews.com – International (MNN) -- Five years ago yesterday, the world shook with the horror of the Islamic terrorist attacks on US-soil. "9/11" is a day that has changed history
Carl Moeller with Open Doors-USA, says, at the time, he thought it was a wake up call for the American church, "but unfortunately, if it was a wake up call, most Americans rolled over and hit the snooze button."
He continues, "We've kind of bounced back and forth between fear and apathy as a society. Our response to 9/11 has been either one of great fear of the terrorists, or apathy in pretending that everything is just normal and this is life."
But the biggest impact has been on the worldwide church, says Moeller, and the status of the church worldwide in relationship with Islamic community, "There's an increasing pressure on the Christian church in Muslim countries. And by that I mean really what's happened is, with the 9/11 attacks, Islamic radicals worldwide have become more bold. And they've been more bold in carrying out their attacks on the Christian church around the world."
Moeller says we're in a spiritual battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world, to show them the powerful love of Christ. Open Doors is doing that through Christians in those Muslim countries. "We're involved in providing the church with the resources it needs, on the ground, to do the work that God's called the church to do. We're not asking Americans to do the kind of work that only a native Iranian or a native Iraqi can get done. See, our job is to support the local believers, to strengthen them where they stand, and to stand with them in prayer and encouragement."
Later this month, Open Doors taking part in the dedication of a hospital in the area of Pakistan that was devastated by an earthquake last year. Moeller says that love and compassion are the best ways to reach into Muslims' lives. "Muslims are turning to faith in Christ because Christians showed up and built a hospital and started to take care of their physical needs. You see Jesus calls us to love, not hate. We need to wage this battle as a battle of love, and I consider that one of our strategic weapons in this spiritual battle."
It's about finding our place and carrying out our roles in the Body of Christ, in the worldwide church, says Moeller, "God has called all of us to a unique role, and while we might admire the spiritual courage and faith of the local pastor in Pakistan who's facing a mob simply for owning a Bible or proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ in his market, but we also have a role in the great Kingdom of God, and our job might be to pray for and to support the work that pastor is doing."
"You see," Moeller continues, "not everybody can be there. Not everybody should be there; if I can put it very bluntly. There are lots of places that an American face doesn't do us any good, doesn't help us. But when the local pastor there is able to stand up strong and we're able to come alongside him with resources and encouragement and strategy, then God is pleased because we've taken up our part in this cause."
Pray for Christians in Muslim lands who face persecution and difficulties because they are Christians, even as they seek to love others with the love of Jesus Christ. Pray for those who are still missing loved ones killed on 9/11, and pray for those believers around the world who have lost loved ones through terrorism and persecution directed toward the Church.
10:10 Posted in Real Islam | Permalink | Comments (14) | 
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See rare video of the female western journalist who was captured in the Middle East ==> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFZrSPUoH3I&mode=related&search=
Posted by: James grail | 19 September 2006
That website really exposes the truth about Islam. GBU, James!
Posted by: ilpapa | 19 September 2006
Thanks for the video james, it was truly incredible to hear that womans story.
Posted by: Peter Paul | 19 September 2006
Islam is showing its true colors. Lets hope a moderate islam can be born because the radical islam stinks to high heaven.
Posted by: George Astro | 20 September 2006
According to the christian dogma you can rob,steal,lie,even murder,or rape,and it is all paid for by the blood of christ so what is the incentive to cease evil deeds? :2 Timothy 2:10 Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
Posted by: SS | 20 September 2006
Actually SS thats not the "Christian dogma" that the TV Media's VERSION of the Christian "dogma" , you have been watching too much American evangelical TV preachers it seems. Try some real Christianity for a change. If you rob steal etc you are only showing you are not a real Christian. As for Islam you can jihad with the blessing of their holy book on you . Thats the point they are implying.
Posted by: Jill Gerber | 21 September 2006
Actually SS thats not the "Christian dogma" that the TV Media's VERSION of the Christian "dogma" , you have been watching too much American evangelical TV preachers it seems. Try some real Christianity for a change. If you rob steal etc you are only showing you are not a real Christian. As for Islam you can jihad with the blessing of their holy book on you . Thats the point they are implying.
Posted by: Jill Gerber | 21 September 2006
Jilly just for your information, Jihad (Fighting for the Cause of GOD Almighty) started with the Bible!
MASSACRE: At the hands of the Jews— "Now therefore KILL every male among the little ones, and KILL every woman (female) that hath known man by lying (having sex) with him. "But keep ALIVE for yourselves all the GIRLS and all the women who are VIRGINS." NUMBERS 31:17-18 "And the Jews salvaged for themselves 32,000 virgins, verse 35; see also verse 40.
According to your bible Massacre is you doctrine so wake up and smell the holy crap, You desperate housewife!!
Posted by: SS | 22 September 2006
SS wow your hatred shines right through huh? Desperate housewife? watching a little bit too much TV are we? I am 22 and a stone cold fox you masturbating nerd! im the kind of girl youll never get to have you weenie!
Anyway I read the other posts you use the same quote when you are "exchristian" how imaginative. Jihad is what muslims use against the USA and I read my bible its not in there you idiot. And those verses you quote where are they from ? I think that is an old testament quote where the men didnt listen to God isnt it.
Yes well "holy crap" exchristian/SS why dont you go to hell?
My doctrine ? You idiot if it was my doctrine you would have been dead now!
Jihad is islam
and islam is evil
And you are a weenie little gimp who needs to chill out emo kid!
Posted by: Jill Gerber | 26 September 2006
Thanks to Johnny Blaze for the tip. TO: "exchristian"/raheem (an angry muslim who hates Christians):
I have noticed your responses are a perfect example of "lying to the infidels in order to support Islam is okay" doctrine so im wasting my breath talking with you . Unlike you I have a very busy life (fighting islam in real life not just online!) so I will end this with a link to those who are interested. Its for a website created by exmuslims (this is not a Christian site most of the writers are secular now). And it reveals all the evil that is Islam TODAY (not "Christianity yesterday as muslims love to harp on!)
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles.htm#morality
bye for now
George Astro
Posted by: George Astro | 26 September 2006
PPS I notice on your website a free exchange of ideas is NOT allowed while on this christian site the christian owner allows your comments AND mine. in your site www.turnto islam.com all comments contrary to islam are NOT allowed. What you are exchristian (and people like you) is so obvious by your being contrary to freedom of speech on your site unlike this site where anyone can comment even if they are against Christianity and post lies about it (like you do!) How come you cant do that on your muslim sites? your hypocrisy is showing ...
Posted by: George Astro | 26 September 2006
Early in my teens, I began to lose my faith. It was a gradual process of asking myself questions until one day I realized that religion simply did not make sense to me.
I was a child, and religion and Islam – or God – was not something I had thought much about. Till then, my experience of religion was to a large extent similar to other people. It was something that was just there. I knew that I was muslim, that this involved learning Arabic as it was the language of the Quran, namaz (which everyone should do, but was mostly just performed by the elder relatives, my grandparents, and especially for men, was enough once a week at Jumma), and being muslim also meant eid and shab-e-barat. Gorgeous food, the brightness of mehndi on my palms, shiny new clothes and the crackle of new shoes. There were other things of course, the bits and pieces we learnt at school, the suras and hadiths, the anecdotes of the Prophet’s life, learning good and evil – guna and sowab, halal and haram, pak and napak. That was just the way things were – just as I knew that I was a child who would grow up one day and that parents knew everything. I just knew that Allah was there and would remain so until I was good and ready to deal with him. Except that when the time came, he was not there.
But all that came later – the doubt, the self doubt, the compromises I made with myself and within myself to retain a semblance of faith, so that I did not feel too lost and too alone. The whole process of not accepting without question all that I am told, or given began with what happened one spring morning when I was 11 or 12 years old.
I was a maktab student then. My parents, in an attempt to educate us in more ways than one, enrolled my brother and myself in the maktab nearby. We would wake up intolerably early and trudge to the maktab with our Kaidas. Still at the frock wearing age, I would put on a shalwar and an orna for the occasion. One morning I was late. To hurry things along mom sent me off to the maktab in my nightie. She didn’t forget my orna though. It was a long dress reaching down to my toes. Which is why mother thought it was ok for me to wear it without a shalwar. I mean the point was that my body be covered neck down to my ankles and that my head be covered. My dress and my orna did that. When I got to the maktab, our Hujoor called me and asked (in front of all my friends), ‘Tomar jamar niche ki?’ (What’s under your dress?) Then he went on to yell about the various improprieties carried out by university teachers and their children and that I should get out of his maktab and only dare come back when I was properly clothed. I could feel my ears burning in shame and rage. I could hear all the children sniggering and I remember running straight home.
The shame I felt was two-fold – there was the fact that I had been humiliated in front of the other children; and then there was the fact that though I wasn’t sure why, there was a niggling feeling in my mind that there was something almost indecent in the way Hujoor had asked what I had under my dress. I cried my eyes out and being very stubborn told mom that I would never go back . She, being more understanding than I gave her credit for, never forced me back.
I recount this episode for two reasons. First, because it set me thinking. As far as I could learn through careful questioning, the idea was to cover my body. That had been accomplished. Then why did Hujoor embarrass me like that? This question nobody logically answered. Then overcoming my initial embarrassment I asked father. My father, a teacher, has long inculcated the habit of producing a lengthy lecture on being asked a question – it’s become a reflex action.
He told me that it was hard for people to look beyond the immediate facts. To the Hujoor’s mind, I was a girl and should be wearing a shalwar. He probably didn’t intend to make any indecent innuendo, it was only that he was a man of limited education, and his choice of words was unfortunate. To his mind if I was not wearing a shalwar I was inappropriately dressed. That was all he was attempting to ascertain. But my legs were covered with my dress, I argued. I was appropriately dressed. Theoretically, I was correct, my father replied. But the Hujoor wasn’t thinking rationally, most people didn’t. To him I was a girl and should be dressed in a specific way. If I wasn’t, then whether whatever else I was wearing was accomplishing the same purpose did not matter to him – I would still be inappropriately dressed. It was as if with that incident, a lot of things that had been bothering me crystallized and began a process.
If my wearing a long dress was inappropriate then wasn’t my wearing a frock (which left my legs uncovered) even more so? But all the other girls of my age wore frocks and that didn’t seem to bother anyone. Yet my wearing pants (like boys) seemed to bother everyone – yet pants kept my legs totally covered. How could I possibly make sense of that? I began to see the illogicality of religion as practiced by most people. However, notice that I made that distinction – religion as practiced, religion itself had still not lost its place in my eyes.
The second process that the maktab incident set off was that I began to realise what small men these “Teachers of Faith” were. Of the Hujoors I had known till then, one I have mentioned. Among the others there was a wife beater, otherwise a kindly man, and another who excelled in devising punishments for children especially young boys. I now realise that there is more than one way of “beating” a woman (as the saying goes in Bangla, Hate Na mere Bhate Mara) and that probably other men were no better husbands than he was and that the propensity for bullying the weak is not the domain of religious teachers – but at that time these sins seemed the lowest of the low.
These, I questioned myself, were people we were supposed to respect? Because they carried the word of God to us? These men of limited understanding, these men of tarnished souls who reduced the glory of this god-given life to a set of blind rules and customs to be observed without understanding.
Atheism treats human beings as adults – religion does not. Atheism believes that humans are capable of living a good life, and are capable of doing good because it is in our nature to do good. That humans need no stick of eternal and divine punishment or carrot of eternal and divine bliss to achieve goodness. Religion limits our capacity to be human. Religion believes that a man will not treat his wife, children, family or friends as he should, or that a woman will disgrace herself and betray her family if he or she is not afraid of burning in hellfire.
Posted by: atheist | 26 September 2006
I'm an 18 year old student, I'm studying Financial Services at college and hope to study Social Science at university next year. Now i like to think of myself as a freethinker too. I was raised in a very strict upbringing, my father is a very strict Islamist, he reads all namaz, carries out all the traditions which they do in Islam and according to sunnat of the prophet. My mother is a person who welcomes thought, but has said on numerous occasions that our thinking shouldn't go too far that we should go out of bounds basically. My brothers are older than me and I'm the youngest, they agree to our freethinker's view to an extent, but they are too involved in they're jobs anyway and I don't talk to Islam with any1 really.
I came to question Islam recently now, it started 2 years ago....this is when i pledged i would start reading 5 prayers and read Quran with translation in English.....I bought a book at this point 'the spectacle of death', lol - much to the terror of my friends who thought id become a devoted islamist (this still brings a smile to my face). By reading this book I slowly slowly become to the conclusion that this book was contradicting itself!!!! its stories weren't accurate. Another thing that really got me thinking was Islam's treatment of women.
One day i was sitting in the mosque when our Mosque imam read out a hadith after prayers.....he said something like "All women are going to hell" he said this after reciting a hadith and that "a women will take her husband and son, father etc. to hell because they didn't look after her islamically" now this hadith basically made me jump and i thought to myself - "how could my mother ever go to hell???" i was very angry about this. From this day on i never bothered listening to the imam.....
This imam also brought my dad and his brother to breaking point in relations, because of an "un-islamic" marriage he claimed. This was all mumbo jumbo relating with the sunni-shia cause.
thanks for your time,
Raza
Posted by: Raza | 26 September 2006
you are wrong if you think that in islam is evil for killing unbelievers. muslims have every right to kill so called "innocent" americans and others. If you dont believe in Islam you do not have a right to live. so believe with us or we will kill you whenever and however we can.
islam is the future
you stupid christians and jews and others we will kill you because you refuse to turn your kaafir states into islamic ones holding onto the truth of Allah!!
I will dance on your blood and give your heads to my friends and we will use them as footballs.
Islam is the future of Britain and the world
Posted by: islam is the future | 26 September 2006
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