Free Republic

Church leader RT Kendall has said that he believes Yasser Arafat may have accepted Christ before his death a decade ago. November 11 marks ten years since the death of the PLO leader, regarded as a heroic freedom fighter by many Palestinians and a terrorist by many Israelis. The first time RT Kendall was granted rare access to Arafat,the Christian writer and speaker told him he had prayed for him every day for 20 years. According to Kendall, the 20-minute appointment turned into an hour and 45 minutes, and an unlikely friendship began. The third time Kendall visited Arafat, the...

BAKUFA, Iraq (AP) — The flag of an Iraqi Christian minority party is hoisted high over the village of Bakufa in northern Iraq, less than a month after Islamic State militants were pushed out and the extremists' black banner was taken down. The predominantly Christian Assyrian hamlet of 95 houses that once had about 500 people, located some 390 kilometers (243 miles) north of Baghdad, was overrun by the Islamic State group during its shocking blitz this summer, along with 22 other villages nearby. In a counter-offensive, the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters swept in from the north, battling the Islamic...

Former Archbishop of Canterbury says ‘panic’ about the niqab is 'largely misplaced' even if young children cannot see their teacher’s face There is no need to “panic” about Muslim primary school teachers wearing the full-face veil in class, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams, has insisted. He said concerns that young children would struggle to learn from a woman whose face was covered were “largely misplaced” and that there are other ways to "read” what people are saying. The former Archbishop’s remarks, in an interview for the Christian think-tank Theos, reopen the debate about the place of the niqab...

All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. In a generation or two, the US will ask...

Leaders explore hospitality and relationship while stressing message to people of faith across the globeWASHINGTON -- Washington National Cathedral and five Muslim groups announced today the first celebration of Muslim Friday prayers (Jumaa) at the Cathedral on Friday, November 14. Leaders believe offering Muslim prayers at the Christian cathedral shows more than hospitality. It demonstrates an appreciation of one another's prayer traditions and is a powerful symbolic gesture toward a deeper relationship between the two Abrahamic traditions. What: Muslim Friday Prayers at Washington National Cathedral When: Friday, November 14, 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. Who: *The Rev. Canon Gina Campbell,...

Shahzad Masih was 28 years old and his wife, Shama, 25, two young Catholics with four children. She was pregnant with the fifth. She was working in a job in a brick making factory known for exploiting its workers, whose owner, a Muslim, had already brutally beat her. She worked in Kasur, near Lahore, in that Pakistan where Christians are considered as trash. Last November 4th the two young people were falsely accused of having profaned pages of the Koran. They were tortured for two days, lynched by a furious mob and at the end thrown into an oven and...

I should have fallen over by now from all the stuff I stumble upon looking for something else ...

In the battle for religious freedom, let's not forget Africa.Unless they have family ties to Nigeria, few Western Christians are likely to know the name of Maiduguri. That has to change. Maiduguri is presently the setting for one of the world’s most significant struggles for religious freedom, and even for Christian survival outside the West. In recent months, we have heard much of the ancient Middle Eastern communities devastated by ISIS and the Islamic State. Such coverage is necessary and appropriate, but it distracts attention from the quite comparable violence occurring in very different regions, especially in West Africa. The...

Recently the Vatican confirmed that Pope Francis will travel to Turkey Nov. 28-30, the official purpose for which is largely ecumenical. He’ll visit Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople on the feast of St. Andrew, considered their patron in much the same way Catholics regard St. Peter as the first pope. The trip is also a way for Francis to express concern for violence in the region unleashed by the self-proclaimed ISIS caliphate, and to expand his outreach to the Islamic world. But what’s not yet clear is how much of a push Francis will make on another front: An increasingly...

Maronite Bishop Gregory Mansour of Brooklyn has told students at Belmont University about the need for all Christians to respond to persecution with “profound defiance”.Pointing out that this was markedly different from vengeful retaliation or submissive inaction, Bishop Mansour said: “Jesus was not a passive victim. Christians are not just asked to be nice people and doormats.”He told the Belmont students that they are called to stand in solidarity with the persecuted Christians in the Middle East, and to join forces with other Christians, Jews and Muslims of goodwill to raise a voice against “the worst injustice you can...

Amman (Agenzia Fides) - Christians gave their own contribution to the building of Arab civilization. This is also why the forced displacement of the indigenous Christian communities in the Middle East is a serious problem, which must be curbed in any way possible. This is what King Abdullah II of Jordan said in his talks with the President of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, who on Wednesday 29 October, at the head of a large and distinguished delegation, began his official visit in the Kingdom of Jordan, the first regarding an Armenian Head of State. As Jordanian media reports consulted by Agenzia...

Unbeknownst to many Christians, anti-Christian apologetics and propaganda are prominent fixtures of Islamist recruiting sites and social media. On October 20, a 25-year-old convert to Islam named Martin Couture-Rouleau ran down two Canadian soldiers, killing one and injuring the other. In the chase that followed, his car ran into a ditch and he was fatally shot by police as he came at them with a knife. Rouleau’s story is similar to that of other homegrown jihadists, including Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the 32-year-old Canadian citizen who, just two days after Rouleau’s attack, shot and killed a soldier before running into Canada’s parliament...

Brethren, Peace be with you and a'salaam aleikum! William Kirkpatrick over at the Catholic World Report asks the following question Are We Losing the Apologetics War with Islam? in light of recent lone-wolf terrorist attacks in Canada and the United States, as well as the romance many attach to the depredations of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. One of the Canadian terrorists had this illustration displayed in his Facebook page: That got me thinking because that very day I stumbled upon this tweet by the Muslim Times on-line publication: An inspection of The Muslim Times reveals a...

Erbil, Iraq, Oct 28, 2014 / 02:01 am (Aid to the Church in Need).- Bombs are falling and the sound of the explosion is sending shock and fear into the hearts of the people. Amid the sound of crying and frenzied activity, people pack up what belongings they can carry and make off into the night. In the midst of it all, on the night of Aug. 6, stands Martin Baani, a 24-year-old seminarian. It’s dawning on him that this is Karamlesh’s last stand. For 1,800 years, Christianity has had a home in the hearts and minds of the people...

A young Kurdish refugee from Kobane, the Syrian town attacked by ISIS (CNS) More than 100 Muslim leaders — clerics and laypeople alike — have signed an open letter criticising terrorist group ISIS.In the 17-page letter, the leaders quote extensively from the Quran to rebuke ISIS’s tactics and actions.Since the letter was issued last month more than 125 Muslim leaders around the world have signed the letter. Twenty of them come from the United States, where the Council on American-Islamic Relations circulated the letter.More signatories hailed from Egypt than anywhere else, although signers also came from Jerusalem and Palestine, as...

The American Center for Law and Justice has started a petition asking the U.S. government to stop sending foreign aid to Pakistan, the country that recently upheld the death sentence for Christian mother Asia Bibi for blasphemy. Figures have shown that the U.S. sent close to $8 billion to Pakistan in the past five years while Bibi has been imprisoned. "We must stop sending billions of our taxpayer dollars to nations that persecute Christians. It's that simple. Not one more dime for persecution. Cut off American foreign aid to any country that persecutes Christians," reads the petition, which has close...

This week a Canadian Muslim gunman went on a rampage in Ottawa, killing a soldier and storming into the Parliament building before he was shot dead. Authorities have since said he had applied for a passport to travel to Syria. Three Muslim schoolgirls from Colorado were intercepted in Germany apparently on their way to Syria, the base for attacks there and in Iraq by the terror group Islamic State, or ISIS. An Aug. 20 article in Newsweek estimated that perhaps twice as many British Muslims are fighting for ISIS as are serving in the British army. What could possibly inspire...

Patriarch says moves to the US were never approvedSAN DIEGO - The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church has suspended 10 priests, including one from El Cajon. Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako issued a decree a month ago, demanding the priests return to Iraq or be suspended. Wednesday was the deadline. The priests, though, are refusing to leave and are now waiting on Pope Francis to tell them what to do next. Dozens of devout Chaldean Catholics attended an emergency mass Wednesday at St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Church in Rancho San Diego, to pray for the 10 priests who have...

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani clerical panel has endorsed polygamy, saying a woman cannot object if her husband remarries. The body that advices the government on religious affairs has long been condemned for its retrograde and misogynist outlook. "A woman cannot demand a divorce over a second, third or fourth marriage of her husband. Islam has given a woman right to separate from her husband, but another marriage could not be a valid ground for doing so," local media reported Islamic Council of Ideology (CII) chairman Shah Ahmed Sheerani as saying. He observed the Muslim Divorce Act, 1939, was against the Sharia....

Islamic State militants have publicly crucified and murdered a teenager they accused of taking photographs of the terror group's headquarters in Syria. Sickening images purportedly taken in the central square of the extremists' de facto capital Raqqa show the battered and bloodstained body of an unnamed 17-year-old boy strapped to a cross. A handwritten placard hangs around the teenager's neck, accusing him of 'apostasy' - the abandonment of his religion - and says he had been crucified for three days after being caught receiving 500 Turkish lira for every photograph he took of an Islamic State military base. The image...