Free Republic

Former Iranian Shiite Muslim Donald Fareed, now an evangelical Christian pastor and head of Persian Ministries International, has preached a radical religious and political message to millions of Muslims over satellite television in the face of religious persecution. He predicts that Iran, not Iraq, will undergo regime change and become the first democracy in the Middle East, and urges America to support the Iranian pro-democracy movement. San Jose -- Donald Fareed, a former Iranian Shiite Muslim and founder of the San Jose-based Persian Ministries International (PMI) (www.Persian Ministries.org), today announced his prediction that Iran, not Iraq, will undergo regime change...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, AUG. 22, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Preachers from U.S.-based religious sects are triggering a backlash of Muslim fundamentalism in Iraq, says the Latin-rite Catholic archbishop of Baghdad. Archbishop Jean Benjamin Sleiman, who has stayed close to his people before, during and after the war, said that "Christian preachers have arrived … who want to convert the Muslims." "They are those groups that harangue people on the streets and want money. They put a notice up anywhere and open a church," he told the Misna missionary agency. "They don't realize that they are creating an impossible atmosphere which, by offending the...

A new flock of missionaries has launched a campaign to take the Gospel to Islamic countries. But will they inspire more backlash than belief? She wasn't a Muslim, but she would do for now. Last March, at just about the time American troops were massing outside Baghdad, she shuffled, dressed in a dark burqa, into a cramped schoolroom in the New York City borough of Queens. The class she was addressing was organized by the U.S. Center for World Mission and packed with eager evangelical Christian students wanting to learn how to be missionaries in a foreign country. The black-clad...

Since colonial times to the present, the impetus for Christian proselytizing work in India has largely emanated from Western Christian Church groups and missions. The latter's continuing obsession for promoting religious conversions under the aegis of India's Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom has triggered a raging debate among religious and political leaders of that country. Many Hindus of the Indian Diaspora have also been drawn into it. Over seventy years ago, Mahatma Gandhi stated that: “proselytizing under the cloak of humanitarian work is unhealthy, to say the least. It is most resented by people here.[1]” The resentment that Gandhi alluded...

April 4, 2003 Groups Critical of Islam Are Waiting to Aid IraqBy LAURIE GOODSTEINwo evangelical Christian organizations whose leaders have outspokenly denounced the Islamic faith are among the aid groups waiting at Iraq's borders to take humanitarian relief — and a Gospel message — to a nation whose people are predominantly Muslim. The situation presents a dilemma for the Bush administration, which does not want to alienate its strong Christian evangelical constituency but cannot afford to have the war in Iraq perceived as a crusade to Christianize a Muslim nation. Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said yesterday that it...