MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Barnabas Fund – “A 119-year-old church was torched by Muslim extremists in an Indian state where Christians are under mounting pressure; over 400 have fled their homes as a result of threats from Muslims.

The church in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, was set ablaze on 23 May; while the guard was away, the offenders threw a petrol bomb into the building.

Bishop Peter Celestine Elampassery of Jammu-Srinagar said that the Muslim fundamentalists want Christians to leave the state, and because they are a minority, cannot resist the pressure.

He said that the church had filed a case with the police but had been advised not to ‘play up’ such incidents.

Earlier this year, the church minister’s motorcycle was set on fire while parked on the veranda of his residence.

Christians are coming under growing threat from Kashmir’s Muslim majority. A Christian human rights group in India said that over 400 Christians have been displaced as a result.” Read more.

Flashback: India: Christian Couple Distributing Pamphlets About Christianity Arrested in Muslim Kashmir for ‘Promoting Enmity’ – “The Jammu and Kashmir Police has arrested a Christian couple on charges of ‘promoting enmity’ while they were allegedly distributing pamphlets about Christianity in the border township of Bandipora in north Kashmir. The police said the couple from Delhi, along with a local girl, was distributing pamphlets in the Bandipora market when people raised a hue and cry and called the police. Sensing trouble, the police seized the pamphlets and immediately whisked them away for sustained questioning.” Read more.

Flashback: India: Police Detain, Beat Converts from Islam to Christianity in Muslim-Majority Kashmir Valley – “Police in India’s Kashmir Valley detained and beat converts from Islam and were expected to arrest Christian workers after Muslim leaders alleged that Muslim youth were being ‘lured’ to Christianity. Police in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley picked up seven converts who were recently baptized in All Saints Church in Srinagar, a local Christian who spoke to the converts after their release on Nov. 2 told Compass… The source, who requested anonymity, said police beat the converts and asked if Christians had given them money for their conversion. Most of the converts were from Budgam district, about 18 miles from Srinagar, and pastors there fearful of being arrested were in hiding, he added.” Read more.

Compass Direct News – “The number of violations of Christians’ religious rights in Indonesia reached 40 in the first five months of the year, nearly two-thirds the amount of anti-Christian actions in all of last year, according to the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum.

The Christian minority in Indonesia faced 64 cases of violations of religious freedom last year, up from 47 in 2010, said Theophilus Bela, president of the group. Bela said he was worried about the growing incidence of violence and church closures, as his group recorded just 10 anti-Christian incidents in 2009. There were 40 such incidents in 2008, he said.

At least 22 churches have been forced to close this year, including 18 in the Singkil regency of Aceh Province that were sealed last month (see http://www.compassdirect.org, ‘Harsh Era Looms in Aceh, Indonesia,’ May 16), as local authorities either sided with or came under pressure from extremist Islamist groups in this Southeast Asian archipelago that is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, according to Bela.

The closures in Aceh followed last month’s election of a hard-line Islamic governor. Bela said that after his organization’s intervention the closed churches in Aceh began worshipping again on May 13, but unconfirmed reports indicate other churches in the area have since been forced to close.

Violence against Christians has also increased, with most incidents taking place in areas surrounding Jakarta and Singkil, said Bela, who is also secretary general of the Indonesian Committee on Religion and Peace, a group that promotes inter-religious dialogue.” Read more.

Flashback: Massive Increase of Radical Islamism Spreads Throughout Indonesia, Including ‘Top-Quality’ Universities – “The suicide bombing of a church in Central Java on Sept. 25 pointed not only to a new level of attacks on religious minorities in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country but to a political bent that accommodates Islamist extremism. ‘Radicalization of Islamic teachings and understanding is a problem in Indonesia,’ admitted Dr. H. Nasaruddin Umar, director general of Islamic Community Guidance under the Ministry of Religious Affairs. ‘There’s a need to re-explain the concept of jihad.’ Pino Damayanto, aka Ahmad Yosepa Hayat, who blew himself up wounding over 20 members of the Sepenuh Injil Bethel Church (Bethel Full Gospel Church) in Solo on Sept. 25, apparently believed it was his religious duty to kill ‘the enemies of Islam,’ according to his understanding of ‘jihad.’” Read more.

John 16:2b, “… the time is coming when those who kill you will think they are doing a holy service for God.”

Qur’an Sura 8:12b, “… terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.”

By Raymond Ibrahim – “Liberal talk show host Tawfiq Okasha recently appeared on ‘Egypt Today,’ airing a video of Muslims slicing off a young man’s head off for the crime of apostasy — in this instance, the crime of converting to Christianity and refusing to renounce it …

A young man appears held down by masked men. His head is pulled back, with a knife to his throat. He does not struggle and appears resigned to his fate. Speaking in Arabic, the background speaker, or ‘narrator,’ chants a number of Muslim prayers and supplications, mostly condemning Christianity, which, because of the Trinity, is referred to as a polytheistic faith: ‘Let Allah be avenged on the polytheist apostate’; ‘Allah empower your religion, make it victorious against the polytheists’; ‘Allah, defeat the infidels at the hands of the Muslims,’ and ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.’

Then, to cries of ‘Allahu Akbar!’— Allah is greater!’—the masked man holding the knife to the apostate’s throat begins to slice away, severing the head completely after approximately one minute of graphic knife-carving, as the victim drowns in blood. Finally, the severed head is held aloft to more Islamic slogans of victory.

Visibly distraught, Tawfiq Okasha, the host, asks: ‘Is this Islam? Does Islam call for this? How is Islam related to this matter?…These are the images that are disseminated throughout the electronic media in Europe and America…. Can you imagine?’ Then, in reference to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis, whose political influence has grown tremendously, he asks, ‘How are such people supposed to govern?’

Only the other day, a prominent Egyptian Salafi leader — referring to the canonical hadiths, including Muhammad’s command, ‘Whoever leaves his religion, kill him’ — openly stated that no Muslim has the right to apostatize, or leave Islam.

Any number of Islamic legal manuals make explicitly clear that apostasy is a capital crime, punishable by death. The first ‘righteous caliph,’ a model of Muslim piety, had tens of thousands of former Muslims slaughtered—including by burning, beheading, and crucifixion—simply because they tried to break away from Islam. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the most authoritative reference work on Islam in the English language, ‘there is unanimity that the male apostate must be put to death.’

Finally, a word on the ‘prayers’ or supplications to Allah made by the Muslim executioners in the video: these are standard and formulaic. In other words, these are not just masked, anonymous butchers who pray to Allah as they engage in acts of cutting throats and holding up heads, these are top-ranking Muslim leaders, who appear regularly on TV, who invoke such hate-filled prayers. See here for examples of Muslims supplicating Allah to strike infidels with cancer and disease ’till they pray for death and do not receive it;’ there are even formalized prayers in Mecca, blasted on megaphones as Muslims honor their obligation to go on a pilgrimage at least once in their lives, supplicating Allah to make the lives of Christians and Jews ‘hostage to misery; drape them with endless despair, unrelenting pain and unremitting ailment; fill their lives with sorrow and pain and end their lives in humiliation and oppression.’

‘Is this Islam?’ You decide.” Source – Gatestone Institute.

Related: The Mark of the Beast – What Your Church May Not Be Telling You