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GUNMEN attacked worshippers leaving a Coptic Orthodox church on the southern outskirts of Cairo on Dec. 29, 2017. Subsequently claimed by ISIS, the assault—which took place some 10 minutes after the conclusion of Mass at St. Mina Church—killed nine people. One of the victims was a young mother of 32, Nermeen Sadiq. Her 13-year-old daughter Nesma Wael was at her side when she was shot. Nesma gave the following account of her mother’s death: “After Mass ended, I left the church with my cousin and my mother. My mom wore a cross around her neck, and all three of us...

IN MOSUL, Iraq’s second largest city, Christmas bells rang out again this year for the first time in four years. During the preceding years this once so familiar sound had no longer been heard. Now, thanks to the ouster of ISIS from the city, Christians were able to celebrate Christmas Mass in the church of Mar Boulus (Saint Paul) in the Al-Mundshen suburb of Mosul. However, the joyful event almost didn’t happen. Right up until Christmas it had been nearly impossible for Christians to clean their church in Mosul. But then a group of young Muslims took the initiative, helping...

Last year, Jason Jones and I wrote at The Stream to Pope Francis. We begged him to reconsider his statements on Muslim immigration. This in the wake of the murder of French priest Fr. Jacques Hamel. Muslims slit that priest’s throat while he was saying Mass. Not in Egypt or Iraq. In France. Now a much more powerful document has appeared. The authors? Men and women who risked Fr. Hamel’s fate. Indeed, from an orthodox Muslim point of view, they invited it. The signers are converts from Islam to Christianity. There’s a penalty for that in Muslim sharia. And hence...

Local authorities decided to close down the Saint Catherine Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on January 5 and January 6, when Christmas church services are held according to the Coptic Orthodox calendar. The general directorate of tourist police further ordered all tourist companies not to lead tours to the historic monastery. Although the official reason for temporarily closing down the building and canceling Christmas is due to the establishment of a plan for the development of the surrounding area as befits a World Heritage Site, it is believed that the order came as a precautionary...

For centuries, Catholic Syriac monks have been the faithful guardians of the tomb of Mar Behnam, a symbolic site for Christian prayer and pilgrimages, situated between Mosul and Erbil. For over 1,700 years Christians have been the indisputable sons of Iraq. Contrary to the wild imaginings of ISIS, their presence largely preceded the Islamic conquest. Christians, who were evangelized very early on by St. Thomas, set about forming a church straight away. One of these early Christians was Mar Behnam, a legendary saint who was one of the first Assyrian princes to convert to Christ. He initiated his people in...

As ex-Muslim converts to Catholicism warn the Holy Father on the inherent dangers of Islam, it's notable that Cdl. Raymond Burke has been warning Catholics that Muslims' Allah is not the Prince of Peace heralded in Isaiah 9:6. In their sobering letter to Pope Francis, the former Muslims quoted the Quran: ‬ For the Qur'an, ‬Christians "‬are only impurity" (‬Qur'an ‬9.28)‬," "‬the worst of Creation" (‬Qur'an ‬98.6)‬, ‬all condemned to Hell (‬Qur'an ‬4.48)‬, ‬so Allah must exterminate them (‬Quran ‬9.30)‬. They added, "We must not be deceived by the Quranic verses deemed tolerant, ‬because they have all been repealed by the verse...

In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban called the migrant crisis an invasion. He said: “We do not consider these people to be Muslim refugees, we regard them as Muslim invaders.” “One has to cross four countries to arrive from Syria in Hungary”, Orban said. “Those people do not run for their lives but seek a better life. The refugees should have requested admission in advance, but instead they had breached the border illegally.” According to Orban what Europe has seen was not a wave of refugees, but an invasion. He mentioned that he never...

January 9, 2018What, Indeed, Is the Quran?Rev. James V. Schall, S.J. Most people know that the Quran (Qur’an, Koran) is the holy book of the Muslim religion, hence of about a fifth of the world’s population. But knowing this much, we still must grasp the peculiar nature of this famous book, if, indeed, because of its origins, it can be called precisely a “book.” If we ask just when this book was written, or even, who exactly wrote it, we soon run into difficult issues.First, we have to ask: “What do Muslims think the book is?” Then we have to...

January 08, 2018 » Continue to this story on Libero Quotidiano CWN Editor's Note: More than 1,700 converts from Islam to Christianity have signed an open letter to Pope Francis, protesting the Pontiff’s public statements affirming the value of the Muslim faith. “Don’t your words shed doubt on the solid basis for the choice we have made?” the converts ask.The above note supplements, highlights, or corrects details in the original source (link above). About CWN news coverage.

They were martyred, probably by Islamic extremists, in the early 1990sA bishop, seven Trappist monks and 11 other religious men and women killed by extremists in Algeria in the 1990s will soon be recognized as martyrs, the postulator for their causes said. The decree for their beatification should be published sometime in January, Trappist Father Thomas Georgeon said on January 1 in an interview with Mondo e Missione (World and Mission), a monthly magazine and website run by the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions. A 10-year-long armed conflict between government forces and extremist Islamic rebel groups left tens of thousands...

DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - A group of ex-Muslim converts to Catholicism are criticizing Pope Francis' approach to Islam. In an open letter to the Holy Father recently published online, the former Muslims say the pope's teaching on Islam as it appears in the apostolic exhortation ‬Evangelii Gaudium (EG) implies that Islam is a good religion in itself. "‬If‭ ‬Islam is in itself a good religion,‭ ‬as you seem to teach,‭ ‬why did we become Catholic‭?" they ask. "‬Do not your words question the goodness of the choice we made‭ ‬…‭ ‬at the risk of our lives‭?" Paragraph 252 of EG declares:...

Islam in the Public SquareWilliam Kilpatrick Secularists like to advise Christians that, for the sake of social harmony, they ought to keep their religion to themselves. Religion, they argue, is a private affair between an individual and his designated deity, and ought not to be dragged into the public square. Moreover, they helpfully add, it’s an imposition on others to confront them with beliefs that they may find offensive.As for themselves, secularists have no qualms about imposing their own values on everyone within reach. They are convinced of the rightness of their beliefs, and consequently they don’t think twice about...

"I think we are heading towards disaster." * Reports of alleged links between Islamic charities and terrorism or extremism surged to a record high, according to the Charity Commission, a charity watchdog. * Azad Ali, an Islamist who has said that he supports killing British soldiers, was named a director of Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), a controversial Muslim pressure group which advises the British government. Ali said that the jihadist attack at Westminster on March 22, 2017 was not an act of terrorism. * "Politicians tell us they are unafraid, but they are never the victims. How easy to...

Nigeria’s fire power against insurgent Boko Haram was enhanced wednesday as the United States (US) government gave its final approval to purchase the A29 Super Tucano Aircraft, promising to assist in defeating the terrorists. US Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Stuart Symington, while presenting the Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) to the Chief of Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, explained that the approval underscored the new commitment and cooperation between the US and Nigeria. Symington stressed that the LOA would go a long way in assisting Nigeria to acquire the A29 Super Tucano Aircraft for the operational use...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Police in Iran’s capital said Thursday they will no longer arrest women for failing to observe the Islamic dress code in place since the 1979 revolution. The announcement signaled an easing of punishments for violating the country’s conservative dress code, as called for by the young and reform-minded Iranians who helped re-elect President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, earlier this year. But hard-liners opposed to easing such rules still dominate Iran’s security forces and judiciary, so it was unclear whether the change would be fully implemented.

Among present-day American leftists (who prefer calling themselves progressives), a curious characteristic is their sympathy for Islam. They deplore what they call Islamophobia, regarding it as a sin as bad as racism or sexism or homophobia or transphobia; and they are horrified that a man they consider to be an Islamophobe, Donald Trump, should be in the White House. Why is this sympathy for Islamic “curious”? Because no religion could be more at odds with progressive ideas than Islam. For one thing, Islam believes in God, an all-powerful God who controls everything in the created world. Progressives, on the other...

One day back in October 2012 we woke up to the news that the mosque under construction in Poitiers, where Muslims had been defeated in 732 by the forces of Charles Martel, was in the process of being “occupied” by a group of young Frenchmen belonging to the Génération Identitaire, an association of patriots determined to rescue France from the latest, and possibly most threatening, Islamic invasion. The fact that the mosque was still under construction meant that it had not been consecrated, and so the young patriots did not consider themselves guilty of desecrating a sacred place when they...

A democratic decision to ban the sale of non-stun halal meat in Lancashire schools could be blocked after Muslims threatened a judicial review, forcing its continued supply for the time being. Lancashire County Council voted to stop using the meat in 27 council-run schools, including Church of England and Roman Catholic faith schools, in October 2017. Currently, up to 12,000 children across the county are served around 1.2 million meals a year containing the shariah-compliant meat, the Burnley Express reports. Taking the decision, the council agreed with the vast majority of animal welfare groups in saying it was “cruel” and...

TELESKOF, Iraq — Inside the newly renovated Church of Saint George in the northern Iraqi town of Teleskof, Hayat Chamoun Daoud led children dressed as Santa Claus singing “Jingle Bells” in Aramaic. Like every other resident of Teleskof, this was Daoud’s first Christmas back home in three years, since Islamic State militants overran her town and forcibly displaced its 12,000-strong Chaldean Christian community. “It’s so special to be back in my church, the church where I got married, the church I raised my children in,” the school headmistress said, with tears in her eyes. Faced with a choice to convert,...

St Thomas Werneth in Oldham has been given the green light to remove the pews so it is able to hold more events within the wider community. In a ruling last month, Geoffrey Tattersall QC said the church would be allowed to remove the pews as the proposals would have “major public benefit outweighing any harm resulting from the loss of the pews”. The area, which is close to Manchester, has an 88 per cent non White-British population. Its website encouraged people of all nationalities to attend the services. They said: “We usually have at least six nationalities represented in...