by CFI Field Staff on March 12, 2013
“We are in much grief and pain that Christians have no safety or freedom in this Islamic country,” says Pastor Shahzad Babar with Gospel of Christ Ministries in Pakistan, in a letter recently sent to Christian Freedom International.
“On Saturday, March 9 . . . a mob of 4,000 angry Muslims in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore attacked a Christian neighborhood and set fire to homes, after hearing accusations that a Christian man blasphemed against Islam’s prophet,” Pastor Babar’s letter continues. “Police arrested Sawan Masih, a sanitary worker, on… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on May 15, 2012
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CFI recently received news of Christians being abducted and church property destroyed in Egypt:
Almahe Fareed Isa, a 25-year-old Christian girl, was abducted by a Muslim mob in the village of El Masarch;
Mina Abdo Shahat, a 23-year-old pharmacist, was abducted at gunpoint in the city of Sadfa. The Muslim group responsible for the abduction then called the young man’s father, demanding a ransom of 5,000 Egyptian pounds. They also threatened to kill his son and burn the pharmacy if the police were called;… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on March 30, 2012
Joel Shrum, a 29-year-old native of Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, was shot to death on March 18 in Yemen for allegedly attempting to spread Christianity in the Muslim-dominated nation.
Shrum, who had been a teacher at the International Training and Development Center in the central city of Taiz, had been living in Yemen with his wife and two sons since 2010. He was gunned down while driving to work, reportedly by two men dressed in military uniforms that approached his car on motorcycle before opening fire.
Al-Qaida’s Yemen branch has claimed… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on February 17, 2012
Fear is spreading throughout many regions in Egypt as Christians become the recent victims of numerous kidnappings and attacks by fundamental Muslims.
CFI’s co-worker in the region recently reported that three Christian doctors have been kidnapped in El Minya, and three more doctors have received threats by telephone.
Another report indicates that four Coptic Christians have been kidnapped in the cities of Qena and Nag Hammadi. In Nag Hammadi, the Christians were taken as churchgoers were gathered around the Church of the Archangel Naga Hammadi, after the attackers set fire… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on November 30, 2011
Caught in the grip of mounting political conflict, Egypt has quickly become a nation known for growing instability and desperate uncertainty. Unfortunately, like many of its Middle Eastern neighbors, Egypt has also become a land where anti-Christian sentiment is steadily on the rise, in the face of increasing Muslim domination and a trend of suffering and persecution for millions of believers that has become known as the “Christian Winter.”
And yet, despite great risk to their lives, many of these saints have stood unified against their own persecution. In recent… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on November 9, 2011
Millions of Christians around the world are enduring what has been dubbed a “Christian Winter” in the midst of the “Arab Spring,” a movement of political unrest that has given way to Muslim domination — and rising hostility against Christians — in numerous Middle Eastern and African nations.
Secular regimes that once ruled many of those nations are being replaced with Islamic states that have instituted a form of sharia law, or Muslim legislation, which is enforced on all citizens regardless of their religious affiliation. For thousands of minority Christians,… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on October 11, 2011
Just days after St. George’s Church in Egypt was burned to the ground, thousands of Egyptian Christians are now left to deal with the aftermath of last Sunday’s riots that killed at least 24 believers and injured 200 others.
More than 1,000 Christians, who were protesting the church burning by staging a peaceful demonstration in front of a TV station in Cairo, were violently assaulted when attackers began throwing stones and firing pellets at them. Although security forces arrived on the scene when the confrontation escalated, eyewitness reports claim that… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on August 10, 2011
Nearly a third of the world’s population lives in countries where it is becoming more difficult to freely practice religion, a private US research group reported on Tuesday. Most of these incidents occur against Christians, and it is getting worse.
The Pew Research Centre’s forum on religion and public life said government restrictions and public hostility involving religion grew in some of the most populous countries from mid-2006 to mid-2009.
The Pew Centre looked at laws or other government policies aimed to ban particular faiths, limit preaching, give preference to… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on August 8, 2011
In a new episode of violence against minority Christians, a car bomb that detonated outside a Syrian Catholic church in central Kirkuk has injured 23 people.
The bombing took place in the early morning hours of Tuesday, August 2, severely damaging the church as well as nearby homes. Only one person, parish leader Rev. Imad Yalda, was inside the building at the time of the explosion. He, along with 22 other individuals whose homes were hit in the blast, was wounded in the attack.
Police have reported that two other… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on June 1, 2011
Amid increasing sectarian tensions, many Coptic Christians have become concerned about the rise of extremist Islam and its effects on the Christian community throughout Egypt.
Hundreds of Christian citizens, who demonstrated alongside Muslims earlier this year to call for the removal of former president Hosni Mubarak, are now fearful that a conservative Islamic presence in Egypt is ushering in an era of discrimination and violence against the church — one that will become virtually unopposed as it gains strength.
Recent incidents of church burnings and physical attacks against Christians have… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on May 17, 2011
An angry mob of over 100 people rushed into a crowd of Christian protesters who were assembled outside a TV station in Cairo, Egypt last Sunday, hurling rocks and fire bombs and setting fire to vehicles in the middle of the street.
According to an anonymous security official at the scene, the attack was in retaliation for an earlier conflict that took place between the protestors and motorists who had attempted to pass through the demonstration area. One demonstrator claimed that the motorists had refused to be searched before entering… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on May 11, 2011
New episodes of violent turmoil have caused thousands of Egyptian Christians to protest the growing religious persecution that has plagued the country in recent months.
The latest attacks took place last Saturday, May 7, and were the result of a rumor that a Christian woman who wanted to convert to Islam was being held against her will at the St. Mena Coptic Orthodox Church, one of the oldest churches in Egypt. When a crowd of angry Muslims descended upon the church on Saturday, hundreds of Christians rushed to defend it,… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on March 17, 2011
CFI has received news from a Bangladeshi co-worker*, reporting that his home was recently broken into while his family was away, attending the funeral of his father’s wife. According to his account, all of the possessions in the home were stolen.
Like many other countries around the world, Bangladesh has become an increasingly dangerous place for Christians who are targeted for acts of violence and injustice, such as kidnapping, assault, and robbery. Although he and his family have suffered material loss, we are grateful that no one was harmed in… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on March 15, 2011
An ill-fated romance between a Coptic man and a Muslim woman has led to a new surge of anti-Christian violence in the village of Soul, Egypt.
According to a recent report from the Assyrian International News Agency, a family controversy began when the woman’s father failed to kill her in order to preserve the family’s honor. On March 5, a mob of nearly 4,000 Muslims attacked local Christians in retaliation for the relationship, terrorizing and forcibly displacing Copts from their homes and setting fire to the St. Mina and St.… Read more
by CFI Field Staff on March 1, 2011
Father Daoud Boutros, an Orthodox Coptic priest, has become one of the latest victims of the continuing violence against Christians in Egypt.
A neighbor, who had been asked by the priest’s daughter to visit his apartment because she had been unable to contact him by telephone for two days, discovered the priest’s mutilated body in his home on February 23, 2011. According to a report released by Catholic Bishop Kyrillos William, Fr. Boutros had been stabbed 22 times and beheaded. In addition, a safe in the priest’s apartment had been… Read more
