Primate of the Anglican Church[Nigeria] , Most Rev. Archbishop Nicholas Okoh Friday in Abuja urged President Goodluck Jonathan not to derail in the task of unmasking the sponsors of the post-election violence that swept across some northern states after the announcement of the 2011 presidential results.
The Anglican head was speaking at the First Session of the Eight Synod of the Abuja Diocese.
Bishop Danbinta spoke on Thursday in a sermon at the opening of the first session of the 10th Synod of Remo Anglican Diocese….[He] disclosed that it was becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to openly carry the Bible in some areas in the North.
Although he did not mention such places, the Kaduna-born bishop said he had had nasty experiences of hostility against adherents of the Christian faith in Kano and Zamfara states, where he is currently a bishop.
“Those of you who are Christians in the South here do not know what it really means to be Christians. In the North, we live daily preparing to be killed for the sake of Jesus Christ. And we suffer a lot for Christ sake….”
In the end, there does not seem to be any single explanation for the church attack and the other recent incidents of violence. What is clear is that a confluence of forces””an army seeking the opportunity to consolidate power, remnants of a regime stirring havoc, a cabinet with little authority of its own, radical Islamists aspiring to an Islamic State, and deep-rooted currents of social intolerance that Egypt has long failed to confront””have created a situation in which the Copts, among other groups, have become particularly vulnerable. As the economy plummets, financial woes may lead to more instability””prices have already risen, and on the streets people are complaining they have no work. Reports indicate that many are already resorting to theft to feed their families.
Scores of mostly Coptic Christian protesters were injured when their weekend demonstration blocking a street near the heart of downtown Cairo was attacked by motorists and residents as riot police stood by, prompting new questions about the ability and willingness of Egypt’s military-led government to maintain security.
The attacks came hours after an explosion at the tomb of a Muslim saint in the northern Sinai town of Sheik Zweid and a week after sectarian clashes left 15 dead and 200 injured.
A fightback by repressive governments is putting at risk a historic struggle for freedom and justice in the Arab world, Amnesty International says.
Publishing its annual report, the rights group highlights the fight for control over communications technology.
It criticises Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen for targeting peaceful protesters to stay in power.
Egypt’s Christian minority looks toward the future with hope for greater freedoms for all citizens but continues to have some fear that the revolution will be hijacked by Muslim fundamentalists, said the Vatican’s nuncio to Egypt.
Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, the nuncio and former president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, spoke about the state of Christian-Muslim relations in Egypt just hours before Christians and Muslims clashed in one of Cairo’s poorest neighborhoods, leaving at least 12 dead and hundreds injured.
The revolution that led to the downfall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February and to promises of greater freedom brought young Muslims and Christians to the streets together, Archbishop Fitzgerald told Catholic News Service in Rome May 6.
Christian and Muslim clashes in Egypt have left 12 people dead, 238 injured and two Coptic churches in Cairo burned, the state media reported.
Faith and political leaders condemned the weekend violence, which was triggered by rumors that a woman who had converted to Islam was being detained at the sixth-century Coptic Church of St. Mena in the working-class neighborhood of Imbaba in northwest Cairo.
It’s the worst sectarian violence since protests in February overthrew Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s long serving president, and the clashes are presenting fresh challenges to the military-led government.
Greetings in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Thank you very much for your messages and prayers for us as we go through this difficult time.
With great sadness, I would like to tell you about the tragic situation in Imbaba, Giza. Imbaba is a densely populated area, a few kilometres south of Cairo. Over the past two days, there have been clashes in this area between Christians and Muslims. The outcome ofthe clashes was the death of 12 people, and more than 232 injured. Moreover, several houses and shops were burnt, cars were destroyed, and the church of st. Mary, in the same area, was completely burnt.
The clashes started because of a rumour that a Christian woman who converted to Islam was being hidden by Mar Mina Coptic Orthodox Church. As a result of this rumour, a group of Muslim fundamentalists that belong to the Salafi sect gathered around the church, and wanted to go inside to search for this woman. Young people from the church prevented them from entering, because they were afraid that they may burn the church as it happened a few weeks ago in Sole, Giza.
President Barack Obama should be applauded for his risky””and lonely””decision to take out Osama bin Laden. But in announcing bin Laden’s demise, the president fudged a vital fact. Echoing George W. Bush, he insisted that al Qaeda’s icon “was not a Muslim leader.”
But this is untrue. Bin Laden and his followers represent a real interpretation of Islam that begs to be challenged relentlessly and visibly. Why does this happen so rarely?
“Moderate” Muslims are part of the problem. As Martin Luther King Jr. taught many white Americans, in times of moral crisis, moderation cements the status quo. Today, what Islam needs is not more “moderates” but more self-conscious “reformists.” It is reformists who will bring to my faith the debate, dissent and reinterpretation that have carried Judaism and Christianity into the modern world.
Schools and Christian institutions closed, churches and Christian areas guarded with utmost security measures, this is the situation that the Christian community recorded in the main city in Pakistan after the news of the killing of Osama Bin Laden. The leader of Al Qaeda was killed yesterday by American special forces in a military operation in Abbottabad, around 60 km from Islamabad.
Local Fides sources report that even civil authorities have provided such security measures at Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Multan and other cities, because they fear violent attacks against Christian targets and reactions by the Taliban groups.
The team leader at the centre for Gospel Health and Development in Jos, Nigeria, has warned that blankets, mattresses and medical care are urgently needed for victims of post election violence in Jos.
Ven. Noel Bewarang, who is also steering group member of the Anglican Communion’s Anglican Alliance, undertook a needs assessment on Easter Monday at the camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) at Jos East local government area. He found about 3,000 people, mostly Christians, who had been attacked in Toro, Tilden Fulani and Magaman Gumau in Bauchi state.
The State Department early Monday put U.S. embassies on alert and warned of the heightened possibility for anti-American violence after the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by American forces in Pakistan.
In a worldwide travel alert released shortly after President Barack Obama late Sunday announced bin Laden’s death in a U.S. military operation, the department said there was an “enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counterterrorism activity in Pakistan.”
Syrian security forces besieging the flashpoint city of Dara have been ordered to use “any means necessary” to crush the rebellion that sparked the weeks-long uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad, a Syrian military source said Saturday.
The claim by the military official, who has provided accurate information in the past, could explain the violent response of Syrian security forces in Dara over the last two days, which resembles the take-no-prisoners strategy used by Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, to put down a 1982 rebellion in the central city of Hama.
“There have been commands to attend to the situation in Dara as soon as possible and with any means necessary,” the military source told The Times in a brief conversation conducted over the Internet. “Even if this means that the city is to be burned down.”
There is a reason why Britain, in the words of one French official, is and remains the “Pakistan of the West”, an incubator, entrepot and exporter of Islamic radicalism. There is a reason why, according to MI6, we face a “unique” threat from home-grown extremists. There is a reason why Britain is the only country in the Western world to have been subjected to a successful suicide terror attack by its own citizens. These things have happened, in part, because the last government, and Britain’s security establishment, got its policy just about as wrong as it was possible to get. We were harsh where we should have been liberal ”“ and liberal where we should have been harsh.
Control orders, the push for three months’ detention without charge, random and blanket stop-and-search, and Britain’s complicity in torture did little or nothing to restrain terrorism. But they undermined the rule of law for which we are fighting, angered middle-of-the-road Muslims and gave the extremists priceless fuel for their favourite narrative, “Islam under attack”.
At the same time, we were crazily indulgent of some of the world’s most dangerous Islamist radicals….
Soldiers patrolled the streets in Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north and aid workers began to assess the toll from deadly rioting against President Goodluck Jonathan’s election victory.
The Red Cross said many people were killed, hundreds injured and thousands displaced in protests across northern Nigeria on Monday by supporters of Jonathan’s northern rival, former army ruler Muhammadu Buhari, who say the election result was rigged.
Churches, homes and shops were razed.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has appealed for an end to “unnecessary and avoidable” post-election violence across the north of the country.
Incumbent Mr Jonathan has been declared winner in the presidential poll, with the electoral commission saying he received about 57% of the vote.
Rioting spread across the Muslim north – the opposition’s powerbase – as the outcome became clear.
The justice system has its place, but I would argue if you want long-term solutions, then you must instead look at the root cause of the problem….
…we should not pretend that these crimes are caused solely by failures of society. These crimes are caused by the choices made by those holding the gun. They are caused by families not intervening. They are caused by those who turn a blind eye.
The role of the family is key. Parents must shoulder the responsibility for where their children are, who they are with and what they are doing.
The Archbishop of the province of Jos, Dr Benjamin Kwashi, said that “solidarity” with Christians in Nigeria, who have been subjected to violence in recent years, “is missing” from the wider Anglican CommunÂion.
Speaking in London on Thursday of last week, during his two-week visit to the UK, Dr Kwashi said that the Primate of Nigeria, the Most Revd Nicholas Okoh, had “shown deep interest and concern over the situation in Jos”. The Primate had “not only visited but . . . made rehabilitation possible for some of the displaced and suffering people.
“Unfortunately, you can’t say the same thing for the rest of the Anglican Communion,” Dr Kwashi went on. “We do get letters and encourageÂment, which is wonderful . . . but the solidarity is missing.”
The governments of the Netherlands, Great Britain, and other European countries have refused asylum to many Iraqis, including thousands of individual Christians. But this year, evangelical leaders and human rights groups are pushing to resettle Christian refugees in groups to help them maintain their church identity.
The stream of Christian refugees from Iraq and surrounding countries has increased in recent years, though exact numbers do not exist because refugees are not counted by religious affiliation, said Grégor Puppinck, director of the European Center for Law and Justice, the European arm of the American Center for Law and Justice.
At a recent demonstration held by Napa employees demanding better safety measures, finding people who had been attacked by patients wasn’t difficult.
There’s Chris Cullen, a psychiatric technician who says he was punched in the face; and Zach Hatton, a recreation therapist who recounted two injuries. “I was punched in the face about a year and a half ago,” Hatton says, “and then my wrist was twisted up pretty badly and just has never healed.”
Dr. Richard Frishman, a psychiatrist, was attacked while interviewing a new patient. “He came flying across the table, fists flying,” Frishman says. “He was able to hurl me against the wall where I struck my head and fractured my wrist.”
With great sadness we have been witnessing a day of tragedy in a school environment, at Tasso da Silveira elementary school, in Rio de Janeiro.
It is time for us to discuss our security system, especially the security in our public schools. It was a beautiful day, which looked like a normal day, just one more day of school for so many young students of Tasso da Silveira elementary, in Rio de Janeiro.
The recent visit to Pittsburgh of the Anglican archbishop of the Congo, Msgr. Henri Isingoma, calls attention to a problem that is largely being ignored, the country’s plight in the face of years of war and bad government.
Its population is estimated at 70 million and the nation is huge, about the size of the United States east of the Mississippi. It is rich, with copper, cobalt, coltan, gold, diamonds, oil, timber and hydroelectric power capacity as well as endless agricultural lands. It has an active press, with numerous dailies, weeklies and journals.
But the Democratic Republic of the Congo has known endless war from 1996 to the present….
Sexual, physical and emotional abuse not only devastates the victims but damages God’s mission, according to the spokesman of an Anglican network working to protect the vulnerable.
As well as being chair of the Professional Standards Commission of the Anglican Church of Australia, Garth Blake is a founding member of the Anglican Communion Safe Church Consultation. This is an informal network of Communion members working to prevent abuse in churches and their surrounding communities.
“Some Anglican Provinces have seen highly publicised lapses in behaviour by some clergy and church workers with tragic consequences for those who have been abused”, he said. “Our growing international group is committed to the physical, emotional and spiritual welfare and safety of all people involved in churches throughout the Anglican Communion.”
Herewith the BBC description of this section:
After 24 people died following two days of protests in Afghanistan in the wake of the burning of a copy of the Koran by a fundamentalist Christian church in Florida, William talks to Joel C Hunter, a pastor in Florida and a leader within the National Association of Evangelicals, to ask him how he reacted to the news that a pastor had burned a Koran.
William also reflects on the violence in Afghanistan which resulted from the Koran burning with the former bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, and he is joined by historian and analyst Professor Iftikhar Malik from Bath Spa University, to discuss what role the Taliban is thought to have played in these events.
Listen to it all (starts about 28:30 in and last about 15 1/2 minutes).
In February 2006 a band of people reportedly hired to kill me came to my house. Believing that I was there although I was in another country, they tortured my wife, Gloria, from 1:30 to 3:30 a.m. They left Gloria half-dead and blind. Our son Rinji was left unconscious and our little boy Nanminen had a broken mouth. Through the miracle of medical science, Gloria healed thoroughly and regained her sight in five months.
The next year the attackers were back: this time they met me. They took me downstairs to the field outside my house, where they were going to kill me. They changed their minds and decided they would rather kill me in my bedroom. They brought me back to my bedroom and I pleaded with them for an opportunity to pray. They agreed and I got on my knees to pray. A few minutes later my wife was holding my hands in prayer.
A few more minutes later my son Rinji walked in. I screamed at him, “What are you doing? Why are you here?” He said, “Daddy, they’ve gone.” We got up and brought the whole family together and we praised the Lord until the police and the soldiers came, and throughout the day it was a song of praise.
Read it all (or watch the video which was posted a while back).
The commitment by Primates at the January meeting in Dublin to work to eliminate violence against women and girls has been warmly welcomed by the Communion’s International Anglican Women’s Network (IAWN).
IAWN members were part of a delegation of 80 Anglican/Episcopal women and girls who were in New York for the Fifty-fifth Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW55) at the beginning of March.
IAWN steering group member the Revd Canon Alice Medcof of the Anglican Church of Canada said the decision of the Primates’ Meeting to put in writing a range of commitments to address violence against women and girls would serve as a new impetus for the churches of the Communion to act for change. She added, however, that in discussion with IAWN women around the Communion it was clear that different cultural contexts amongst the Provinces needed different responses.
A report recently published by Aid to the Church in Need gives a round-up of how Christians are being persecuted in many countries. In particular it looked at the very difficult conditions in the Middle Eastern countries.
In his foreword to the report, “Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians Oppressed for their Faith: 2011 Edition,” the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal, commented that “Calvary is not a name that belongs only to archaeology and antiquity.”
“It is a contemporaneous reality that describes, to differing degrees, the suffering of many churches in the Middle East where to be Christian means accepting that you must make a great sacrifice,” he added.
The first page of the first chapter of Henning Mankell’s latest (and apparently last) Wallander novel The Troubled Man is sheer misery. Inspector Kurt Wallander, divorced for 15 years, lives in a flat “where so many unpleasant memories were etched into the walls”; he “reminded himself over and over again of his father’s lonely old age … now it seemed as if his father was taking him over … he had no religious hopes of anything being in store for him … nothing but the same darkness he had once emerged from … he would be dead for such a long time … he had seen far too many dead bodies in his life”.
Wallander novels might be prefaced by the sign Dante imagined above the gates of Hell ”“ “lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’ intrate”: “all hope abandon, ye who enter here”: for in these books, the descent is often through deepening layers of horror. The same could be said for much of rest of the now enormously popular, critically acclaimed school of Scandinavian noir ”“ for noir they are, set in the bleakness of towns and forests, dark for much of the year. The cult BBC hit of the year so far, the Danish-made Copenhagen-set The Killing, which ends this weekend, is shot almost wholly at night….
…the most striking commercial success in novel writing in the past five years has come from Marxists who write of people beset with misery who either commit or must deal with acts of extreme sadistic violence. It is not a development that a publisher or an agent would naturally have arrived at as a formula for success. So what explains its extraordinary appeal?
The Silent No More coalition consists of the Anglican Communion, Lambeth Palace, Tearfund, Christian Aid and Restored.
Its formation coincides with the launch of the Silent No More report documenting the role of the church in response to sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Liberia.
The report was launched today at Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the coalition’s first step towards addressing the silence, pain and stigma faced by survivors of sexual violence.
Dr. Paul Bhatti, elder brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, the slain federal minister for minority affairs in Pakistan, has expressed his “grave concern” over the probe into the murder of his brother.
Dr. Bhatti, the newly elected Chairman for the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), said, “Three weeks have been passed, but nothing has been shared with the nation and mourning minorities in Pakistan. No replacement has been announced yet in the National Assembly after the martyrdom of Mr. Bhatti.”
Dr. Bhatti has demanded that government of Pakistan establish a “judicial commission” to probe his brother’s murder which took place at the start of this month.