Free Republic

AMMAN, Jordan (RNS) — Yasmine Faraa, a Jordanian of Palestinian heritage, was angered when an Israeli missile hit a building belonging to St. Porphyrios Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza, killing 18 and injuring 20. Faraa, a Muslim, came up with the idea to hold a vigil outside the Orthodox Christian Church, in the Jordanian capital’s Sweifieh neighborhood, to show solidarity. The numbers that turned out for the vigil on Sunday (Oct. 22) surprised even the Jordanian police, who had initially decided that they didn’t need to block the roads leading to the church. The crowd was largely composed of middle-...

Assad’s cleverly crafted narrative has for years gained acceptance from some DC policymakers, religious freedom communities, and Christian activists that my organization, In Defense of Christians, operates among. That is, he portrays himself as the protector of Syria’s Christians and other religious minorities, such as the Druzes, Yezidis, and his own Alawites, to name a few. In the face of the Islamic State scourge and many other Islamist rebels who despise Christians and other minorities, Assad was right. Christians were better off living in government-controlled areas and have stuck by, reluctantly, to his regime. But the narrative has quickly crumbled...

Evidence has emerged of another Islamic State militant group (ISIS) mass execution, this time in the Syrian Christian desert town of Al-Qaryatain. The militant group killed at least 116 civilians in executions committed in the days before the Syrian regime recaptured the town, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a U.K.-based monitoring group with an extensive network of contacts in Syria. “ISIS has over a period of 20 days executed at least 116 civilians in reprisal killings, accusing them of collaboration with regime forces,” SOHR chief Rami Abdelrahman told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The controversial Moroccan Christian preacher Brother Rachid has challenged Moroccan Salafi scholar Mohamed El Fizazi to debate Islam and Christianity. Brother Rachid posted a video on Youtube on Sunday alleging that El Fizazi has been avoiding a debate that they had agreed to hold back in 2014. He said that he recently called El Fizazi but the scholar refused to talk to him. According to the preacher, El Fizazi responded, “I have no time for you.” The Moroccan Christian preacher known for his opposition to Islam rejected El Fizazi’s apparent excuse not to debate him because he is an “apostate.”...

Christian Assyrians have been targeted repeatedly through history — and found themselves under attack again by ISIS forces in Syria. "They're coming! They're coming!" On that day, Feb. 23, 2015, a new page in the tragedy of the Middle East's Christians was written on the banks of the Khabur River, in northeastern Syria. Armed with heavy weaponry and armored vehicles, ISIS fighters swept down from the Mount Abdulaziz region and stormed local Assyrian Christian villages, sending panic-stricken residents fleeing for their lives. Thousands sought shelter in the area's major cities, Al-Hassakeh and Al-Qamishli. The fighting lasted several hours. Two local...

Abu Dhabi's crown prince ordered the change to 'consolidate bonds of humanity between followers of different religions'A mosque in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) capital, has been renamed “Mary, Mother of Jesus”. Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Abu Dhabi crown prince and deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces, ordered that the mosque be renamed to “consolidate bonds of humanity between followers of different religions.” Mary plays a prominent role in the Christian and Islamic traditions. Reverend Canon Andrew Thompson of St. Andrew’s Church, an Anglican parish near the newly renamed mosque, expressed is gratitude in an...

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)” Those are among Jesus’ last words on the Cross that first Good Friday. It was a cry of agony, but not despair. The dying Christ, to rise again in three days, was repeating the first words of the 22nd Psalm. And today, in lands where Christ lived and taught and beyond where the Christian faith was born and nourished, the words echo. For it is in the birthplace of Christianity that Christians face the greatest of persecutions and martyrdoms since the time of Vladimir Lenin and Josef...

Around Christmas 2015, numerous voices within the international community raised their concerns that the persecution of Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq reached the threshold of "genocide" under international law. The movement was highly visible in the United States, led by the Knights of Columbus, followed by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention Russell Moore, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Despite growing consensus on the issue in the United States, the U.S. Government has remained silent for...

A young boy, 10 years old or so, faces the camera.Like many young boys he is happy to be interviewed.This is war-torn Iraq, however, so he tells of the day ISIS came to his village. What took place, horror after horror, he starts to recount. It is hard to accept that one so young has already seen so much evil. Gradually, his urgent retelling of what happened slows and he breaks down. It is hard to watch as the tears flow down his cheeks. He tries to stem them, brushing them away Â… but to no avail. His grief...

A 16-YEAR-OLD Christian boy faces the death penalty after he was accused of insulting Islam in a Facebook post. The boy has been arrested and charged with blasphemy after a photo of the Kaaba in Mecca, one of the holiest sites in Islam, appeared on his profile. A Muslim man told police the image, which was part of an alleged derogatory post against Islam on the boy’s profile, was insulting and sacrilegious. The black cube-shape is built around an ancient stone at the centre of Islam’s most sacred mosque Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Locals reportedly claimed the image...

Of all the horrors we've witnessed from our comfortable homes over the past year nothing hurts more than the attempted annihilation of Christians of the Near East, along with buildings, churches, sacred ruins, precious relics of the past that have been utterly destroyed by the ISIS conquerors. The suffering these people have endured and are enduring is recorded at numerous websites but the world has remained deaf, dumb and blind until recently when with one eye open it had no choice but to acknowledge the specific targeting of Christians. By that time it was too late. Carnage, decapitations, torture, eradication...

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is in a snit, and on a tear. Having survived last Friday’s military coup, the Turkish president has declared a three-month “state of emergency” and claimed a free hand in steam-shoveling old enemies. As of this writing, he has “detained” 6,000 military personnel and 3,000 judges. Some are being held in a sports stadium, “a development,” observes The Independent, “that has ominous similarities with mass arrests in South American coups in the last century.” Political prisoners are being refused contact with family and legal counsel, even by phone. For good measure, Erdoğan’s revoked the licenses of 21,000...

The head of the Syriac Catholic Church—an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See—offered strong criticism of “American, French, English, [and] European Union politicians” whose efforts to remove President Bashar al-Assad have led to a nightmare for the region’s Christians. Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Yonan told the National Catholic Register that Syria was a place “where they were fighting against illiteracy, where you had medical care for all, a peaceful country, where you could go wherever you wanted to go, 24 hours a day without any problem — they [the Western powers] find it has a dictatorship...

Christians in Turkey have become a tiny minority. The few remaining Christian churches in Anatolia are also on the path to total annihilation. Christians in Turkey have – throughout the centuries -- been turned into a tiny, dwindling minority. The remaining few Christian churches in Anatolia are also on the path to total annihilation. Hagia Sophia in Trabzon: Church-mosque-museum and now mosque again. The Hagia Sophia, Greek for “Holy Wisdom,” was one of the many historic Orthodox churches located in the city of Trabzon. ... The city of Trabzon .. is located in the ancient land of Pontos, in the...

New Haven, Conn., May 7, 2016 / 05:44 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The future of Christianity in the Middle East remains uncertain, and it is critical that the international community remain engaged, said a Melkite Catholic archbishop from Syria. Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart of Aleppo delivered these comments during a two-day visit to Connecticut that culminated with meetings at the international headquarters of the Knights of Columbus in New Haven. The visit began Sunday night with a talk by the archbishop at St. Mary’s Church, where he recounted Syria’s deep Christian history, including as the place where St. Paul was transformed from...

Interview with Dr. Raji Srouji begins at 25:30 http://usatransnationalreport.org/2016/02/18/usa-transnational-report-february-20-2016-guest-dr-raji-srouji/ Ever wonder what life in Israel is like for Arabs, especially Christian Arabs? Here's your chance to find out. Topics include: - Relations between Israeli Arabs and Israel - Relations between Christian Israeli Arabs and Israel - Relations between Muslim Israeli Arabs and Israel - Potential areas of possible improvement(s) - Problems faced by Israeli Christian Arabs Earlier in the program, the panelists discuss: - Scalia's death - ramifications and possible successors - South Carolina's primary - Apple vs. the FBI

Hasakeh (Syria) (AFP) - Babylonia has no regrets about leaving behind her two children and her job as a hairdresser to join a Christian female militia battling against the Islamic State group in Syria. The fierce-looking 36-year-old in fatigues from the Syriac Christian minority in the northeast believes she is making the future safe for her children. "I miss Limar and Gabriella and worry that they must be hungry, thirsty and cold. But I try to tell them I'm fighting to protect their future," she told AFP. Babylonia belongs to a small, recently created battalion of Syriac Christian women in...

Attendance at the Southern Baptist church on Scenic Drive had dwindled to about 15 most Sundays... There was another congregation...that had been meeting in living rooms and whose pastor carried business cards that quoted from John 4:35: “Look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” Maybe they wanted to buy the church... .... selling to the Arabic Baptists might be their best hope of keeping the church from closing. They prayed and then took a vote, and now, a few miles away in a suburban living room, the members of the fledgling Arab congregation were considering an opportunity they...

Smoke billows after a Saudi-led airstrike on the Yemeni capital Sanaa (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File) 'You are not alone,' Bishop Paul Hinder tells faithful who must remain 'invisible' in order to stay safe. The few Christians remaining in war-torn Yemen gather for liturgies and prayer meetings in the basement of a villa in the city of Sanaa where they remain “invisible” in order to stay safe, Bishop Paul Hinder has told Vatican Radio.Bishop Hinder, the apostolic vicar of southern Arabia, said that it is not specifically Christians who are at risk in the conflict, but foreigners who have been...