Thousands of Egyptian protesters have re-occupied Tahrir Square in the capital, Cairo, after a violent attempt by troops and police to evict them.
They returned less than an hour after the assault, chanting against Egypt’s ruling military council.
Demonstrators earlier fled as security forces fired tear gas and beat them with truncheons. At least four people have died since Saturday, reports say.
Where do most terrorist murders occur?
In three countries: Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Excluding those countries, the daily death toll from terrorism peaked at just over 20 per day. The 2010 figure for terrorist deaths outside those three countries is 13 per day. The figure for the U.S. is even more striking””since 9/11, terrorists have killed only 33 Americans.
Let me stress that each of these deaths is a terrible tragedy. By putting these numbers in context I don’t want to minimize them. But people are disproportionately focused on what is a relatively small factor globally and in the U.S.
How do you explain the relative rarity of terrorism?
Most Muslims do not want an Islamic government imposed by force….
A series of bomb and gun attacks in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Damaturu has killed at least 63 people, the Red Cross says.
Witnesses said the bombs hit several targets, including churches and the headquarters of the Yobe state police.
Many people are reported to have fled the town after a night of violence.
Times are tense for North Sudan’s Christians, said Episcopal Bishop of Khartoum Ezekiel Kondo, who was visiting the U.S. in October to meet with the Department of State and major nongovernmental organizations and to speak on a panel at an anti-genocide conference sponsored by Save Darfur.
Since July 9, when South Sudan became an independent country, Christians in the majority Muslim north have been under increasing pressure, Kondo said.
“As far as the north goes, the independence has brought a difference,” he said. Christian government officials and private sector workers have been laid off; the government is introducing full Islamic Sharia law which poses a challenge to the church; and South Sudanese are not being given citizenship. People are leaving or being forced out, and the church in Khartoum has been diminished.
Let us try to identify the new faces of violence and discord more closely. It seems to me that, in broad strokes, we may distinguish two types of the new forms of violence, which are the very antithesis of each other in terms of their motivation and manifest a number of differences in detail. Firstly there is terrorism, for which in place of a great war there are targeted attacks intended to strike the opponent destructively at key points, with no regard for the lives of innocent human beings, who are cruelly killed or wounded in the process. In the eyes of the perpetrators, the overriding goal of damage to the enemy justifies any form of cruelty. Everything that had been commonly recognized and sanctioned in international law as the limit of violence is overruled. We know that terrorism is often religiously motivated and that the specifically religious character of the attacks is proposed as a justification for the reckless cruelty that considers itself entitled to discard the rules of morality for the sake of the intended “good”. In this case, religion does not serve peace, but is used as justification for violence….
If one basic type of violence today is religiously motivated and thus confronts religions with the question as to their true nature and obliges all of us to undergo purification, a second complex type of violence is motivated in precisely the opposite way: as a result of God’s absence, his denial and the loss of humanity which goes hand in hand with it. The enemies of religion — as we said earlier — see in religion one of the principal sources of violence in the history of humanity and thus they demand that it disappear. But the denial of God has led to much cruelty and to a degree of violence that knows no bounds, which only becomes possible when man no longer recognizes any criterion or any judge above himself, now having only himself to take as a criterion. The horrors of the concentration camps reveal with utter clarity the consequences of God’s absence.
Yet I do not intend to speak further here about state-imposed atheism, but rather about the decline of man, which is accompanied by a change in the spiritual climate that occurs imperceptibly and hence is all the more dangerous….
Almost two weeks after the killing of around 25 Copts during an anti- discrimination demonstration in front of the headquarters of state TV on 9 October confusion continues to surround the carnage. There is no clear plan to punish the killers, who remain unidentified, and no guarantees that root cause of the problem is being addressed.
Immediately following the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) public denial during a press conference on 12 October of any culpability on the part of soldiers or military police in the killing of demonstrators protesting against the illegal demolition of churches, the Coptic Church questioned the council’s version of events. Speaking hours after the press conference, Pope Shenouda denied that military police had been forced to defend themselves after demonstrators shot at them. “The demonstrators were not armed,” he stated.
The position of the Church has received support from across civil society, with videos emerging that purport to reveal the details of bloody Sunday….
Catholic leaders said they could not rejoice at the death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, but they recalled some of his more brutal moments and speculated on the future of Christians in the region.
“Gadhafi brutalized people for 42 years. He lived by the sword and, therefore, it’s not surprising that he would die by the sword,” said Habib Malik, associate professor of history at the Lebanese American University, Byblos campus.
“The manner of his death was gruesome and, no matter how evil a person might have been, such an ending is never something to rejoice about; however, he is now dead and his people are justifiably relieved and hopeful about starting a new chapter in their history,” he said.
The Church at its second Synod in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, also expressed concern over the fact that the reports of panels set up to investigate major crisis in the country have not been released to the public.
This may have also contributed to the reuption of more violence.
Delivering the Bishop’s Charge at the Synod, the Bishop of the Diocese of Egba West, Anglican Communion, Rev. Samuel Ogundeji, deplored the spate of violence and other forms insecurity in the land. He named Boko Haram, post election killings, bloodletting in Jos, the beleaguered Plateau State State capital and other parts of the city, as well as other forms of insecurity rocking parts of the country.
A spokesman for the Somali militant group al-Shabab is threatening Kenya with suicide attacks like those that killed 76 people in Uganda last year.
Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told a news conference in Mogadishu on Monday that Kenya must pull its troops out of Somalia. Lines of Kenyan troops poured into Somalia over the weekend. Kenyan officials say the country has the right to defend itself from Somalia’s most powerful militant group.
Mecca, we have a problem.
It is not America, nor Europe, and no, it is certainly not Israel.
The problem is Christian persecution. Some 14 centuries after the prophet Mohammed wrote, “Christians are my citizens, and by God, I hold out against anything that displeases them,” Christian persecution has become the norm in too many Muslim-majority nations.
A few days ago, 25 Christians were killed in Egypt after state television falsely accused them of creating violence ”” while they peacefully protested violence against their churches. Rather than fight for the rights of Christians, the Muslim mob attacked them.
The villages and farming communities that surround Uganda’s capital, Kampala, are gripped by fear.
Schoolchildren are closely watched by teachers and parents as they make their way home from school. In playgrounds and on the roadside are posters warning of the danger of abduction by witch doctors for the purpose of child sacrifice.
The ritual, which some believe brings wealth and good health, was almost unheard of in the country until about three years ago, but it has re-emerged, seemingly alongside a boom in the country’s economy.
I happened to catch this on the BBC World News this morning. Be warned the content is disturbing–read it all; KSH.
The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba, said today that the dispute within the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe was “a result not of schism but of thuggery.”
In a statement issued after visiting Zimbabwe with Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury at the weekend, Archbishop Makgoba said members of a pro-Mugabe breakaway faction of the church under deposed bishop Nolbert Kunonga were being “helped to steal church property without recourse.”
A new push is under way to get people reading the Bible ”” a sensible antidote to Americans’ well-documented biblical illiteracy. Behind the drive are influential Texas pastors Randy Frazee and Max Lucado, who both have new books out to guide people through the Scriptures. As capable as these read-your-Bible champions are, however, theirs is not the most straightforward task.
For starters, they are fighting against a social current that is making book-reading of any sort a harder sell. But perhaps even more significant are the disturbing discoveries awaiting readers who are lured back to the “the good book” ”” content that might come as an unpleasant surprise to Christians convinced it’s only certain other religions that must account for violence in their sacred texts.
As becomes unavoidably clear from a stroll through the Old Testament, the Bible can be gruesome, too.
(Via email–KSH).
Dear Friends,
Greetings in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ!
I do request your urgent prayers as the situation here in Cairo is very inflamed. Many Christians demonstrated after the incident of the burning of a church building in Mari Nab near Aswan (Egypt). The demonstrations started peacefully as the people were requesting that investigations for the incidents of burning and demolishing churches would be completed and the new law for building churches, that was promised four months ago, would be passed.
This evening it turned to be very violent between demonstrators and the military. More than 20 people were killed and more than 100 were injured.
Tomorrow there will be a large meeting for the House of Bishops of the Coptic Orthodox Church and political leaders will have a separate meeting to discuss a way out of this very difficult situation. I would appreciate your prayers for our beloved country.We will hold prayer meetings tomorrow and I hope that I can meet with Muslim religious leaders in order to discuss a way forward for the situation.
Thank you for your prayers.
–The Most Rev. Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis
Bishop of the Episcopal / Anglican Diocese of Egypt
with North Africa and the Horn of Africa
President Bishop of the Episcopal / Anglican
Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East
At least 17 people have been killed and scores injured after a protest in Cairo against an attack on a Coptic church.
Egyptian TV showed protesters clashing with security forces, with army vehicles burning outside the state television building.
Christian Copts blame Muslim radicals for the partial demolition of a Coptic church in Aswan province last week.
The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, plans to travel to Zimbabwe this weekend as part of a central African tour and will seek to persuade President Robert G. Mugabe to help end a bitter rift among the country’s Anglicans, according to the archbishop’s office here.
Archbishop Williams, the spiritual head of the world’s Anglicans, wrote to Mr. Mugabe earlier this year, urging him to stop “the continuing bullying, harassment and persecution” of Anglicans who support the global Anglican Communion rather than a breakaway group led by Nolbert Kunonga, an excommunicated bishop and close ally of the president.
China and Russia have vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria over its crackdown on anti-government protesters.
The European-drafted resolution had been watered down to try to avoid the vetoes, dropping a direct reference to sanctions against Damascus.
But Moscow and Beijing said the draft contained no provision against outside military intervention in Syria.
Abu Elias sat beneath the towering stairs leading from the Convent of Our Lady of Saydnaya, a church high up in the mountains outside Damascus, where Christians have worshiped for 1,400 years. “We are all scared of what will come next,” he said, turning to a man seated beside him, Robert, an Iraqi refugee who escaped the sectarian strife in his homeland.
“He fled Iraq and came here,” said Abu Elias, looking at his friend, who arrived just a year earlier. “Soon, we might find ourselves doing the same.”
Evictions of Zimbabwean priests from properties owned by the Harare Diocese of the Anglican church continued following a High Court decision late last week refusing to stop the removals by a faction led by the former Harare Bishop Nolbert Kunonga.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku recently gave Kunonga control of all church properties until a final ruling is made on control of the church’s assets.
Muslim extremists have sent text messages to at least 10 church leaders in Khartoum saying they are planning to target Christian leaders, buildings and institutions, Christian sources in Khartoum said.
“We want this country to be purely an Islamic state, so we must kill the infidels and destroy their churches all over Sudan,” said one text message circulating in Khartoum last month. The text messages were sent in July and August.
Apologists, both Western and Muslim, claim that Islamist extremism and terrorism have been bred by resentment of Western power. The military dominance of Israel, the roots of the Kashmir dispute, the megalomania of the Shah of Iran, and Suez are all seen to be examples of Western hubris and ill-will towards the Muslim world.
We can acknowledge that these have contributed to anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, but it would be a serious mistake to believe this provides a complete account of the extremism and the terror that has resulted from it.
At the heart of extremism is an ideology, a world-view ”“ and not just concerning the perceived wrong done to the Muslim Umma (or people). Such an ideology expects Islam to dominate rather than to accept a subservient place in world affairs. It promotes pan-Islam and the ultimate rejection of nation-states, even Muslim ones. It may be that some extremists chatter about an Islamic state, in this part of the world or that; however, its ultimate aim is a single Islamic political, social, economic and spiritual entity.
Shortly after 9/11, I visited the father of Muhammad Atta, the ringleader of the hijackers, in Cairo. Muhammad al-Amir Atta, the father, told me that, against all evidence, his son was still alive, that it was the Mossad that had framed him. He was angry and aggressive, but also seemed gripped by melancholy, and I sensed he knew the truth: That his son was a mass murderer, and that he was dead. We spoke for a few minutes, and I asked him a question he answered as if it were theoretical. I asked, What would motivate your son to do such a thing to innocent people? He answered, “You can’t be a human and do this thing. It’s impossible.”
That is the crucial truth of 9/11. Osama Bin Laden had gathered to him men who were devoid of love, and who found in al Qaeda a vehicle for expressing their hatred of humanity. On the 10th anniversary of the murderous rampage committed by soulless men, we should remember the victims, and count our own blessings, and recommit ourselves to the suppression of evil and the protection of the innocent.
Israel sent a pair of military jets into Cairo at dawn on Saturday to evacuate its embassy staff after six members had been trapped in the embassy overnight by thousands of protesters who invaded the building and tossed documents from the windows.
As an angry mob stormed the embassy and tore down its flag for the second time in a month, Israel appealed to the United States for help. Coming a week after Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador over its refusal to apologize for a deadly raid on a Turkish ship, the attack left Israel facing crises in relations with its two most important regional allies, and ambassadors in neither country.
The violence also raised concerns about whether Egypt’s military-led transitional government would be able to maintain law and order and meet its international obligations, and to what extent popular rage unleashed by the Arab Spring would send a chill over the region.
The Archbishop’s visit, even though the Church insists it is purely pastoral, could carry more weight than an official visit by a senior politician because the Church is so strong in southern and central Africa. More than 85 per cent of Zimbabweans are Christian.
Given that many no longer recognise Mugabe as their leader, the Anglicans, at least, certainly regard Dr Williams as being in possession of comparable if not greater authority, secular as well as moral and spiritual….
Dr Williams is walking into a den as bad as Daniel’s, where he has no guarantee of achieving anything. But speaking to Anglicans in Zimbabwe yesterday, their hope for what the visit might bring was palpable. For that alone, for bringing the gift of hope to those traumatised Christians, the visit is a risk worth taking.
Levels of violence against women in parts of the Pacific are “horrific” and must be addressed if development is to have any chance in the Pacific region, said an Australian aid agency head today. Speaking from the Solomon Islands, CEO of Anglicord Misha Coleman said that over 60% of women in Solomon Islands report some kind of violence by an intimate partner.
“Over half of the women in the Solomon Islands have been forced into sex against their will,” she said.
Ms Coleman, responding to a campaign released yesterday by Amnesty International, “Change the Lights on Women’s Rights”, said that women in many parts of the Pacific were especially vulnerable to gender based violence because few of the countries had effective laws specifically to tackle it, and those countries which do have legislation to prevent domestic violence don’t necessarily enforce them.
The central Nigerian city of Jos was the site of violent Christian-Muslim clashes as Ramadan drew to a close last week.
Fighting Aug. 29 left some 20 dead and some 50 wounded; the next day, another 10 were killed. And dozens of cars, homes and businesses were destroyed and set on fire.
Although the particulars of the incidents are unknown, according to the local media, including the daily The Vanguard, pandemonium broke out after a dispute between groups of young Christians and Muslims. “There was a disagreement between a group of Muslims who were heading toward a particular area, and another group of young Christians who went to pray in the same area. A discussion over who owned the area broke out,” Archbishop Ignatius Ayau Kaigama of Jos told the Fides agency. He added, however, that he did not have all the details.
You can find the audio here (about 4 minutes). Listen to it all.
(ACNS) The Archbishop of the Province of the Anglican Church of Burundi, the Most Rev. Bernard Ntahoturi, and the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, the Most Rev. Onesphore Rwaje, have co-hosted an interdenominational conference for Church leaders in collaboration with UNAIDS and Tearfund in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura, to consider the role of the Church in the fight against sexual violence in Burundi and Rwanda.
In March 2011 the Most Rev. Bernard Ntahoturi, along with the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Congo, was present at the launch at Lambeth Palace of the ”˜We Will Speak Out’ coalition, initially comprising the Anglican Communion, Tearfund, Christian Aid, and Restored. The coalition was established to urge the Church to speak out against sexual violence and came about as a response to the findings in Tearfund’s research report, ”˜Silent No More’, which documented the role of the church in response to sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Liberia, with some later study in Burundi. It concluded that the Church had largely failed to respond adequately to sexual violence and had sometimes been unintentionally instrumental in marginalising those who have experienced its devastating consequences.