Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei spoke to graduating cadets of Imam Ali Military Academy over the weekend stating the Iranian Army can help them “ascend [to] divine heights” through “determination and resolve.”
By Gregory Katz
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Middle East Bureau
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - The old man was already bleeding to death on the pavement outside the Church of the Saints when the attacker with the two daggers turned on Michael Adib and started to slash.
“When he came to kill me, he said: ‘Accept the Prophet Muhammad,” said Adib, a Coptic Christian who had just walked out of the church after a Friday Mass. “I was trying to see how to save my life and defend the others. It was an organized plan to kill all of us in the church.”
The 22-year-old reacted fast, parrying the dagger thrusts with his rucksack. He managed to deflect the two blades aimed at his heart into the fleshy parts of his left arm, where they severed muscles and left two gaping wounds.
Then the attacker, a Muslim, knifed a third victim, who also survived, before going to another Coptic Orthodox church to use his knives on other worshippers.
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By GREGORY KATZ
Copyright Houston Chronicle Middle East Bureau
When Marise Saweris left Egypt for the United States, she was a 19-year-old newlywed who didn’t speak English or have a college degree. She considered herself fortunate to find a job in the Merrill Lynch mailroom.
Today she is a senior marketer at the AIG insurance company in Houston. And that’s not all. Her daughter is a pediatrician, her eldest son is a project manager and her youngest boy is getting ready for law school.
So it’s no wonder that Saweris believes the future is bright for the growing number of Egyptian Copts who are moving to Houston and other parts of the United States to get free of Egypt’s rising sectarian tensions and chronic economic woes.
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By Judith Latham
Washington
For nearly two thousand years, the Middle East has been home to many Christian communities, especially in Palestine where their ancestors were the original followers of Jesus of Nazareth, but also in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. However, with the increasing Islamization of the region and most especially in recent years as the result of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the numbers of indigenous Christians have dwindled.
Edmund Ghareeb, professor of Middle East history and politics at the American University in Washington, notes that Christianity was the dominant religion in the region until the rise of Islam, spreading out of Arabia in the 7th century after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Speaking with host Carol Castiel of VOA News Now’s Press Conference USA, Professor Ghareeb, who is from a Lebanese Christian family, says the first established Christian churches were in Antioch (in present-day day Syria) and Jerusalem. The schism in the 11th century between the Eastern Orthodox Churches, headquartered in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), and the Catholic Church of Rome, set the stage for further fragmentation among the Christian communities.Â
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Canadian Press
Immigration Minister Monte Solberg says his department is looking into allegations an Egyptian man denied refugee status in Canada was tortured after being deported to his homeland, CTV News reported Wednesday.
“Anytime these kinds of allegations are made and people produce evidence, obviously we take it very seriously,” Solberg told CTV. “My department is looking at it and we are gathering the facts.”
“Obviously, if we find there are grounds to it, we will take appropriate action,” he added, though he declined to discuss what those actions might be.
The man, a Christian from Egypt whose name was withheld in the CTV report, came to Canada in 2002 seeking asylum.
CTV News reported he made a refugee claim, alleging he was persecuted in his home country, but was deported in September.
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In a closely watched case that has become the focus of a national debate on religious freedom, Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court today ruled against the right of Baha’is to be properly identified on government documents.
The decision upholds current government policy, a policy which forces the Baha’is either to lie about their religious beliefs or give up their state identification cards. The policy effectively deprives Egyptian Baha’is of access to most rights of citizenship, including education, financial services, and even medical care.
“We deplore the Court’s ruling in this case, which violates an extensive body of international law on human rights and religious freedom to which Egypt has long been a party,” said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations.
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December 14 (Compass Direct News) - The government of Eritrea wrested financial and personnel control away from the Eritrean Orthodox Church last week, the day after security police jailed nine staff of a Christian aid agency. In an ultimatum delivered to the church’s Asmara headquarters on December 5, the state demanded that all offerings and tithes collected through the Orthodox Church be deposited directly into a government account. Asmara sources also confirmed that on December 4 security officials arrested nine truck drivers working for Samaritan’s Purse, an international aid agency ordered to leave the country last month. Finally, local Christians report that gospel singer Helen Berhane, released in late October after more than two years in jail for refusing to recant her faith, is recuperating at her home in Asmara.
A Christian priest in Iraq was dismembered and beheaded by radical Islamists a few weeks ago as a reaction against Pope Benedict’s August comments about Islam. But Western church groups, more focused on denouncing the U.S. presence in Iraq than on criticizing radical Islam, have said virtually nothing about the atrocity.
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By James L. Lambert
December 8, 2006
SAN DIEGO, CA (AgapePress) - An Egyptian doctor-turned-pastor shares that he is witnessing a different kind of healing in his church and his country — a healing of people’s lives brought about through the knowledge of and salvation through Jesus Christ.
Persecution of Christians today in Muslim countries is well documented. Many Arab countries prohibit Christians from evangelizing among their predominantly Islamic populations. Open display of Bibles and Christian tracts is forbidden. Muslim converts to Christianity are often castigated and ostracized from family members, acquaintances, and friends; in extreme cases, they are even subject to death. In addition, because of U.S. oil interests in the Middle East, religious persecution in that area of the world is frequently ignored by State Department officials.
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December 4 (Compass Direct News) - Grieving Christians in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul completed three days of mourning for a murdered Presbyterian Church elder yesterday, only hours before another Iraqi clergyman was grabbed off the streets of Baghdad this morning. Identified only as 69-year-old Elder Munthir, the murdered Christian had been kidnapped after leading worship services at the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Mosul on November 26. His body was found four days later. According to one Mosul source who described the kidnappers’ conversations, “They said, ‘We will cut his throat. We will take revenge for the Pope’s words . . . We will kill all the Christians, and we will start with him.’” In Baghdad, the Chaldean Catholic Patriarchate confirmed that another clergyman - Father Samy Abdulahad - was kidnapped this morning from his car as he left his church in the Al-Sinaa district of the capital, near the University of Technology.
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