Asia Bibi, Christian Mother Sentenced to Death, Nominated for Prestigious Religious Freedom Prize

Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian mother of five who has spent seven years on death row due to blasphemy charges, has been nominated for a prestigious European Union religious freedom prize.

“Her case is a symbol for others hurt in their freedom of expression and especially freedom of religion,” Dutch Europarliamentarian Peter van Dalen of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group’s member faction ChristenUnion-SGP told BosNewsLife on Wednesday.

“It is good that my colleagues in the ECR and I continue to defend the rights of Bibi and many others.”

Bibi is now in the running for the $59,500 award that comes with the Sakharov Prize. The ceremony will be held on Dec. 10 in Strasbourg, France.

The mother’s ongoing legal saga began back in 2009, after Muslim co-workers accused her of blasphemy for praising Jesus Christ and allegedly insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Bibi denied the charge but was found guilty and sentenced to death in November 2010. Several appeals have since followed and the latest hearing, which Bibi’s attorney attempted to have scheduled for June, was delayed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar.

The Christian mother’s plight has drawn international attention and condemnation of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws by a variety of persecution watchdog and human rights groups.

Christian lawyer Naeem Shakir pointed out that Islamic hardliners are greatly invested in seeing her denied freedom.

“The plight of Bibi has had a dampening effect on minorities. Their grief cannot be addressed because of religious retrogressive and extremist groups,” Shakir said.

Unless Bibi’s death sentence is overturned, she is set to become the first woman in Pakistan to be executed under the blasphemy laws.

Previous recipients of the Sakharov Prize include Nadia Murad and Lamya Aji Bashar Taha, two young Yazidi women who were kidnapped by Islamic State extremists and forced to live as sex slaves.

Aji Bashar, who won the award alongside Murad in 2016, has spoken about IS’ abuse of children as young as 9 years old, describing them as “monsters.”

“I would really like to explain what happened to me there, not only for myself, but so others, the other women, are not treated like this, so that we Yazidis never have to go through anything like this again,” the Yazidi woman said.

Murad, who has been traveling around the world to raise awareness for the genocide of Yazidis, stated, “I’ve seen thousands of refugees go through the same thing as myself and my family. We are scattered all over the place. I also know that Islamic State is still trying to exterminate us. I think about this and this is what gives me the strength, all the strength, to continue.” 

PHOTO:(REUTERS)Asia Bibi (R) was sentenced to execution in 2010 after being accused by her former colleagues of blaspheming against the Prophet Mohammad.

[written by By Stoyan Zaimov ]

Church urged to restore the decaying levels of morality among the youths in Zambian society

The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) has called for the church’s cooperation in its efforts to restore the decaying levels of morality among youths in the country.

ZANIS Ndola reports that YMCA National president Thabo Kawana said this in Ndola this morning during a meeting with Ndola District Pastors fellowship at Ndola Baptist Church.

Mr Kawana explained that the recent development concerning youths that were rounded up at a sex-party in Woodlands area Lusaka was disheartening and that his organisation had since taken up a leading role in counselling the youths together with their parents.

“What happened in Lusaka is shocking. Infact it is disheartening. How can we have such types of parties where youths must be naked to enter? We have failed as parents. YMCA has since taken up a leading role in counselling the youths whose number has swelled to 138, together with their parents,” he said.

He added that the problem was that parents were only providers and had no time to be available for their children.

“The problem is that as parents we are only providing and not being present. If a child asks for money for a shoe we provide without knowing where they are taking that money to. That is why only rich people’s children were present at that party. We are failing as parents,” he said.

Mr Kawana further implored the church not to work in isolation with regards to issues pertaining to young people.

“As a church don’t work in isolation when it comes to youths. The church must lay the foundation and as YMCA, we shall build and then government shall out on the roof. Then we shall all be comfortable that we are raising responsible and God fearing young men, “ he said.

The YMCA National president furthermore challenged the church to be concerned with the reduction in the number of youths in church while bars and night clubs were recording increased patronage.

“You must be concerned with the way youths have reduced in number during your Sunday services and yet take a tour of bars and nightclubs they are always crowded with the same youths who have be at church. These are the issues that you should be addressing,” he advised.

PHARISEES AND CHRISTIANS ARE THE SAME

Christ reproved some Pharisees calling them hypocrites, and most “Christians” have mistakenly taken that to mean the word “Pharisees” denotes hypocrisy. Christ’s criticism of the Pharisees as recorded in “Mathew 23” does not imply that all Pharisees were pretenders. As a matter of fact, Christianity and Phariseeism have many things in common. To begin with, the word Pharisees stands for “separated ones,” Christians also claim to be the “called-out ones”.  Just as the Christians have different denominations; the Pharisees were also of diverse groups during Christ’s time. The Jewish Talmud- Ṣota 22b shows that there were seven different categories of the Pharisees and they all had different characters, surprisingly Christians have the same characteristics of the seven groups of the Pharisees.

[Part 1 of a 10 part series, written by Babylon Today staff writer]

Satanic Temple and Planned Parenthood Advocate for Abortion in Missouri

Missouri has significant restrictions on abortion, but Planned Parenthood, along with Missouri Satanists, are working to change that.

According to Slate.com, Missouri has enacted multiple laws restricting abortion, including mandating a 72-hour waiting period for an abortion, requiring abortion clinics to obtain hospital admittance privileges for patients, and requiring that patients be notified that “abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”

Planned Parenthood is working to get these restrictions overturned, and members of the Satanic Temple are helping.

In 2015, a pregnant Satanist went to court to argue that requiring her to travel to a clinic twice (once for the initial appointment and once after the 72-hour waiting period to get the abortion) placed an undue financial burden on her. She also argued that the abortion restrictions hamper her “sincerely held religious beliefs” that her body is “inviolable.”

Although the case was ultimately tossed out because the plaintiff was no longer pregnant, the Satanists efforts, along with those of Planned Parenthood, have caused Missouri to relax some of its abortion restrictions.

Two new abortion clinics have opened and others will likely follow suit. Before this month, Missouri only had one operating abortion clinic.

[written by Veronica Neffinger]

 

Militant Attack in Iraq Kills at Least 45 People

A militant attack at a checkpoint and nearby restaurant in southern Iraq on Thursday killed at least 45 people, officials said. Yahya al-Nassiri, the governor of Iraq’s southern Thi Qar province, said the attack also left 83 people wounded. The militants opened fire at the checkpoint along the highway linking Baghdad to the country’s southern provinces, and two suicide bombers then set off their explosives, including one car bomb, al-Nassiri said. He said some of the dead likely included Iranian pilgrims who were at the restaurant. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

[by Onize Ohikere]

International Furor Erupts Over Embryo Jewelry Business

LIFE | Company that makes pendants from discarded embryos vows to forge ahead. Written by Samantha Gobba

An Australian company has pledged to continue creating jewelry from human embryos despite facing international backlash.

Baby Bee Hummingbirds, which founder Amy McGlade told me is a “two-mama small business,” hand makes rings, necklaces, and earrings using baby hair, breast milk, “loved ones ashes,” and discarded embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF).

After couples succeed in having a child with the help of IVF, they often have a number of unused embryos. If the couple doesn’t want to implant any more of their children, they pay a yearly fee to leave them frozen, donate them to another couple to implant, thaw them and have them thrown away, or now, thaw them and have them made into jewelry.

Family Research Council’s Arina Grossu told me she found the work “sickening and disturbing,” and she’s not alone.

Last month, Baby Bee Hummingbirds offered a discount for jewelry made with embryo ashes to “make the process more affordable and easier on families.” After the Australian site Kidspot featured their products in a story of one of their customers who now wears the ashes of seven embryos around her neck on a pendant, people flooded the company’s inbox with disapproval.

“We have received thousands of vile, cruel, and unimaginable emails and messages,” the company posted on Facebook on Saturday. “Death threats and hate have flooded our accounts.”

The owners vowed to ignore the outcry and “follow our hearts and those that seek our service” to keep making embryo jewelry.

In the Kidspot article, the featured couple chose not to donate their embryos created during six years of IVF treatment, pay the yearly storage fee, or have any more children themselves. The embryo jewelry “brought me so much comfort and joy,” Belinda Stafford said.

“My embryos were my babies—frozen in time. When we completed our family, it wasn’t in my heart to destroy them,” Stafford said. “Now they are forever with me in a beautiful keepsake.” Grossu sees it differently.

“In creating the jewelry, she’s actually destroying them,” she said. “I think what this couple is grappling with is that they have made human beings and, in a sense, they are trying to assuage their own consciences about them.”

She said she fears the publicity the company is getting may encourage others to start making embryo jewelry and promulgate the “philosophy of commodification,” or making and destroying humans at will.

“We have to go back to an understanding of the dignity and value of each human life, even when that human being is just a few days old, and respect the dignity, the beauty, of that human being,” Grossu said.

Christians should walk alongside those couples who struggled with infertility and have undergone IVF treatment, showing them options that don’t destroy embryos, she said: “We have to act differently toward those new human beings, those little embryos.”

 

Rabbi YITZCHOK ADLERSTEIN says Christians and Jews need each other in the new cultural battle

Yitzchok Adlerstein(Anacleto Rapping/Genesis Photos)

 

Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of interfaith affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, is an Orthodox rabbi who says he used to propagate “untruth” about Christians but is now “addicted to the goodwill of Christians.” I met him at a ceremony commemorating the legacy of William E. Blackstone, a pioneer Christian advocate for the Jewish community. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation in his West Los Angeles office: It took place before recent desecration’s in Jewish cemeteries.

As director of interfaith affairs, what kind of interactions have you had with other religious communities?We have been available to all kinds of religious groups to talk about the Jewish experience as a minority. I’ve spoken to many Korean, African-American, and Latino Christian groups, and I also speak to Muslim groups—sometimes people with whom we don’t always see eye to eye politically, as some hate Israel as much as I love Israel. But as long as they’re not endorsing terrorism, we will talk to them.

How do you assess the response to persecution of Christians?When we see hard-core religious persecution, we as Jews have to be the first to respond. We’ve succeeded in raising consciousness to the persecution of Christians around the world. Christians are being persecuted for their faith in the Middle East, yet the State Department has in the past refused to call it religiously motivated. So we kept on pushing back, writing pretty condemning letters to State. Until recently, we’ve been more aggressive about this issue than other Christian groups.

Are these efforts motivated by empathy or self-interest?Both. People would surmise that it’s the latter. I can’t prove it to them, but I can tell you it’s not. It is primarily an issue of principle. These endangered Christian communities in the Middle East whom we are trying to protect often do not like Jews or Israel. However, as people who were victimized by the Holocaust, we recognize that we can’t tell the world or our kids and our grandchildren, “Where was the world when they were silent about the killing of Jews?” and then be silent when the world is doing the same thing to Christians.

‘Ironically, traditional Christians and traditional Jews are now in the same boat. Not only politically, but culturally: How do you keep the next generation committed to the Word of God?’

What was your previous perception of Christians?I had a deep-seated revulsion to anything Christian. When I was growing up in Manhattan, I got beaten up by Irish Catholics after school. My mother was a Holocaust survivor. I believed Christians were either evil or out to convert me.

What changed?Along came a Catholic woman who started attending my Torah classes. After a while, she pointed out all the mistakes we were making in our publications in regard to Christian beliefs. Because of her, I researched more of Christianity: I read lots of articles, parts of the New Testament, and spoke to Christians from a variety of denominations. Since then I’ve learned that the strongest supporters of the State of Israel are Bible-believing Christians.

What did you think about the New Testament?I think Romans 9 to 11 is crucial, because that’s the section where Christians leave room for Jewish significance.

And what have you found is the biggest difference between Christianity and Judaism?You expect me to say Jesus. And that’s true—that’s a huge one. And yet! While it’s true we reject the divinity of Jesus, when we listen to you talking about Jesus, we think, “Oh, you mean God!”—without abstracting that into a Triune godhead.

No, the real difference is how we look at the Bible itself: Christians look for messages and deeper understanding in the Bible. Orthodox Jews see the Bible—particularly the first five books—as law. One consequence of this difference in outlook is that Christian seminary students study the Hebrew Bible a chapter at a time, but Orthodox Jews dissect it three words at a time, convinced that every letter, every nuance, is pregnant with meaning and instruction.

How do you study the Torah?I’m usually at the synagogue by 6 a.m. Then in the evening I study the Torah and Talmud some more. I am an addict of the Torah, particularly the Talmud—they’re my daily dose. Jews who don’t digest their daily dose of Torah can be just as ornery as males are reputed to be before dinner. My wife will warn the kids, “Don’t talk to abba before he’s fed!”

What most attracts you to your daily dose?We’re in the presence of God when we study the Torah. It’s engaging the mind of God and applying it to the human situation in all of its nuanced details. It’s absorbing it in a way that you can pass on to your children and build a sense of community.

If only more Christians studied the Bible as seriously as you do.Something I’m most concerned about is that too many Christian millennials just don’t have the same interest, intensity, and love for the Word of God as the older generation did. They say, “Just give me a message! Put it on a six-second Vine, a 140-character Twitter, a three-minute YouTube.” They just want to know what the “message” is—and they want it to be social justice and tikkun olam (a Reform Judaism phrase meaning “world repair”).

So …That’s not going to work! If people say the message is, “just be a better person,” what happens when you spot a Buddhist who’s doling out soup to homeless people with the same passion? You’ll start wondering, “He’s doing what I’m doing … so what does my faith have to do with it?” Even doing good things can be self-serving: It makes you feel good. If your beliefs are not related to the rest of your lifestyle, you can’t really hope to build lasting community and transfer your beliefs from generation to generation.

Why do you as a Jew care what’s happening to young Christians?Christians and Jews need each other. Today, America is not only looking down upon religion, but sees it as a countercultural force. American Christians have become vaguely aware that they’re no longer a cultural majority, but a minority. I won’t use the word “persecuted” just yet, but we’re getting there, and in some places, that’s true. Evangelicals are now waking up to the idea that they can’t afford to lose anything more. Ironically, traditional Christians and traditional Jews are now in the same boat. Not only politically, but culturally—which is the more important battle: How do you keep the next generation committed to the Word of God, committed to the idea that there are some things in culture that don’t change?

Many Jews are committed to secularism.If we Orthodox Jews had to choose between a Christian America and a hedonistic secular America … well, that’s not even a contest. I don’t have an invested interest in Christianity, but I have an invested interest in preserving human reverence for God, both because I don’t want to live in a society where God becomes a joke, and because I do believe it’s my Jewish mission—just as you believe it’s part of your Christian mission—to bring God-consciousness to as many people as possible on the face of the earth.
‘Ironically, traditional Christians and traditional Jews are now in the same boat. Not only politically, but culturally: How do you keep the next generation committed to the Word of God?’

[written by  Sophia Lee]

 

Sexual Scandals in the Roman Catholic Church

VATICAN CITY — A Vatican diplomat working in Washington has been recalled to the Holy See after the U.S. State Department said the priest may have violated child pornography laws, the Vatican said on Friday.

Prosecutors in the Vatican have opened an investigation into the case, which represents a fresh blow to the Roman Catholic Church as it struggles to overcome repeated sex abuse scandals among its clergy.

The State Department notified the Holy See in August “of a possible violation of laws relating to child pornography images by a member of the diplomatic corps of the Holy See to ensure full implementation of its reforms and policies designed to protect minors and provide justice regarding allegations” the spokesman said.

A State Department spokesman said the United States had requested that the man’s diplomatic immunity be waived to open the way for possible prosecution, but the Vatican refused.

The priest, who was not named, has returned to Vatican City and is awaiting the outcome of the Holy See investigation, which could lead to a trial in the tiny city state.

The U.S.-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said possession of child pornography was not a victimless crime because the children involved were being abused.

“(Pope Francis) must bring the diplomat back to the United States in order to adhere to his promises of complying with investigations by civil authorities in cases of child sexual abuse,” SNAP managing director Barbara Dorris said.

Pope Francis has declared zero tolerance over abuse scandals that have beset the Church for decades, but has appeared to struggle to overcome resistance within the Vatican hierarchy.

The State Department spokesman said the pope had promised to “act decisively with regard to cases of sexual abuse” and punish those found guilty of wrongdoing.

“The United States encourages the Holy See to ensure full implementation of its reforms and policies designed to protect minors and provide justice regarding allegations,” the spokesman said.

Two years ago the Vatican put the former papal ambassador to the Dominican Republic on trial for child sex offences, a case that was seen as showing the pope’s determination to clean up the Church.

The priest, Jozef Wesolowski, was charged with paying boys to perform sexual acts, of downloading and buying pedophile material. He died before a verdict was reached.

He was the first high-ranking Catholic official to stand trial in the Vatican on such sex charges and the case was closely watched by victims of priestly abuse, who have accused the Vatican of repeatedly hushing up previous scandals.

Just last month, in the foreword to a new book written by a Swiss man who was raped by a priest when he was 8 years old, Pope Francis said sexual abuse of children by priests was a “monstrosity” and pledged to take action against perpetrators.

[Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome and David Alexander in Washington; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg]

Oklahoma Police Chief Defends Posting Bible Verses After ACLU Threatens to Sue

Mounds, Oklahoma, Police Chief Antonio Porter defended himself amid lawsuit threats from the American Civil Liberties Union, which criticized him for posting Bible verses on the police department’s Facebook page and questioned whether the department can protect non-Christians.

Porter said in an article in News on 6 on Friday that he starts each day by reading his devotional.

“Right after that, I immediately post them on Facebook and on LinkedIn,” the police chief said.

He said that his intention at first was not to get a “bunch of likes,” but revealed that the response from the town community has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I would hear stuff like, ‘Wow, I needed this.’ It would just hit right to their heart,” he said.

The ACLU, which often challenges institutions it deems are violating the separation between church and state, sent Mounds Mayor Rosa Jackson a letter on Wednesday, arguing that the Facebook Bible verses represent “direct advocacy for the Christian religion,” calling them “inappropriate” and “unconstitutional.”

“By promoting one specific religion on its official Facebook page, the Mounds Police Department has established clear preference for that faith above other faiths and above no religious faith at all. This kind of government interference with our religious freedom is simply not permissible under United States or Oklahoma law,” wrote Brady Henderson, the ACLU of Oklahoma’s legal director.

“In addition to the clear violation of one of the central tenets of American government, freedom of religion, the actions of the Mounds Police Department call into question whether or not the department can be trusted to adequately protect all those living under its jurisdiction, including members of minority faiths and those of no religious faith at all,” Henderson continued.

“By establishing a preference for the Christian faith, the department undermines confidence in their ability to perform their duties in a manner consistent with our understanding of one of our most basic and cherished liberties.”

The Mounds Police Department Facebook page features a banner depicting a police officer with angel wings, and has continued posting Bible verses and calls for prayer despite the controversy.

“Matthew 21:22: All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive,” one post on Friday read.

Another one from Wednesday quotes 2 Corinthians 4:8-10: “We are pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, yet not to despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; struck down, yet not destroyed; always carrying in the body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”

Porter said in an interview with FOX23 that he is not concerned about ACLU’s letter.

“With all the negativity in the world, it is time for people to start coming together with positive words and prayer,” he stated.

[written by Stoyan Zaimov]