MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Daniel 11:37a, “Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers [Yahweh], nor the desire of women …”

Al Rod Al Anf, Volume 2, Page 182: “You see [our god Allah] will soon make you inherit their land, their treasures and make you sleep with their women.” (The Words of Mohammed as Recorded by Ibn Hisham)

By Michael Carl, WND – “Syria’s young Christian women are bearing the biggest brunt of the two-year-old civil war, according to a human rights group.

The report by Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, released by Open Doors USA, estimates there have been more than 100,000 casualties since the war’s beginning in 2011.

Five thousand of those casualties are children under the age of 16.

Open Doors spokesman Jerry Dykstra told WND that a disproportionate number of the casualties are young Christian women and girls.

‘The fact is there have been reports of rape of women and girls in Christian communities of Syria. In some of the areas, students stay home from school and church. One report said 5,000 children 16 and below have been killed in the war,’ Dykstra said.

International Christian Concern’s Middle East area specialist Todd Daniels says that non-Muslim Christian women are the target of a fatwa, a religious instruction under Islam.

‘Women, especially those who are non-Sunni, have been particularly affected by the influx of militant Islamic extremists,’ Daniels said. ‘They have taken to abusing non-Sunni women who are viewed as infidels or worse.’

He said the fatwa is an ‘example of the kind of ideology that is not only permitting but in some instances even encouraging treatment of these women in what is really an inhumane way.’

The fatwa was issued by Jordan-born Salafi cleric Sheikh Yasir al-Ajlawni, who said Muslims fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can legally ‘capture and have sex with all non-Sunni women.’

Daniels says that means the sheik is permitting rape of all non-Muslim women. Even though the fatwa includes all non-Sunni women, he said, Syria’s Christian women are getting the worst treatment.

Daniels said he has met with Syrian who still have close links to the country and has heard a number of stories of attacks.

‘There have been a lot of refugees who have fled from the Qusair region to Damascus, and they have very bad stories of what they are experiencing,’ Daniels said.

A young Syrian Christian woman told WND through Open Doors that before the war, Christians were on the fringes. She said that now they’re rebel targets.” Read more.

Flashback: Raping Women In Syria Is Blessed By “Allah”

• 15-Year-Old Christian Girl Systematically Raped By Syrian Rebels
• Jordanian Cleric Issues Fatwa Permitting The Rape Of Non-Sunni Women In Syria
• Saudi Fatwa Permits Syrian Rebels To Rape Women To Solve Their ‘Sexual Problems’
• Cleric: Christian Women Who Refuse To Dress Like Islamic Women Should Be Raped
• ‘Religiously Sanctioned Prostitution’: Islamic Pedofiles The World Over Flock To Syrian Refugee Camps To ‘Marry’ And Rape Syrian Girls

AINA – “The recent upheaval in Egypt once again brings to the forefront the plight of the country’s Christians who have come under increased attack from Islamists since the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi.

Now they’re hoping and praying Egypt’s next government will do a better job of protecting them from attacks and the trafficking of Christian girls.

Funerals like the recent one at St. Mina Church in North Sinai have become all too familiar for Egyptian Christians. Friends and family recently paid final respects to Father Mina Aboud, a beloved Coptic priest. Islamist gunmen opened fire on Mina July 6 while he drove his car after shopping in the northern Sinai town of el Arish.

Father Mina’s murder was no surprise to Egypt’s Christians because they are frequent targets of attack during times of political instability. Christians have struggled for years–not only to protect their churches, homes and businesses, but also their daughters.

One of the challenges facing Christian families, particularly in Upper Egypt, is the kidnapping of young Christian girls. It generally happens when the girls enter their teen years.

To help avoid this tragedy, some families re-locate to Christian villages. But with that comes a whole new set of challenges.

Manel moved her family from a Muslim village to a Christian one near el Minya because she wanted to protect her oldest daughter Maryam from abduction and forced conversion. She made the decision after noticing some Muslim girls and boys attempting to lure Maryam away from her family and faith.

‘The girls used to tell Maryam, ‘Come with us, we will give you a some money, you are having a hard life.’ The young boys were sending the young girls to do this,’ Manel explained. ‘I feared they would kidnap her and then demand a lot of money to return her, or they would return her and she wouldn’t be in the same way as they took her.’ Now residing as strangers in a new town, Manel’s husband has difficulty finding work.

‘I’m much happier now because it is safe for my daughters here, but the working opportunities for my husband are little because few people know my husband,’ she said.

Maryam’s family borrowed money to buy food and make their house payment. They prayed God would provide help.

She and her family are not alone. Last year, a Helsinki Commission hearing revealed the number of disappearances and abduction of Christian girls is increasing. Human trafficking expert Michel Clark told of more than 800 cases.” Read more.

Flashback: Heartbreaking Video Gives Viewers A Taste Of The Growing Plight Of Egypt’s Christians – “A procession of Christians bravely vows to stand firm in the faith of Christ, even unto death. An anguished church leader cries out to the Lord to deliver His people from their turmoil. A Christian mother languishes over the abduction of her daughter. This is but a mere drop in what has now become a sea of Christian persecution …” Read more.

Those believing in Truth will certainly make a nation whose foundations are based upon lies feel insecure …

Christianity Today – “Eight Iranian Christians received heavy jail sentences on July 16 after being found guilty of ‘action against the national security’ and ‘propaganda against the system’.

According to a story by Morning Star News, human rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reported that the eight members of the Church of Iran were sentenced in Shiraz, 571 miles south of Tehran.

Seven of them were originally arrested in Oct. 2012, when security forces raided an evening prayer service. The eighth, Massoud Rezaid, was arrested six days later.

Sentences ranged between one and six years.

Morning Star News said Iranian Christian leaders denied the eight were involved in politically subversive activity.

‘In accordance with the gospel, the church is apolitical,’ said a statement released by the National Council of the Church of Iran.

‘While individual Christians are entitled to hold political opinions, the church does not. These charges are entirely without foundation.

‘However, as loyal citizens we will continue to pray for our leaders and for peace and reconciliation in our nation.’…

Morning Star News said the sentencing comes a month after the presidential election of Hassan Rouhani. Many international analysts believed he would be a modernising force after the eight-year presidency of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his crack-down on religious minorities and political dissidents.

Little has changed in terms of religious freedoms for non-Muslims since Rouhani’s election, CSW Press Officer Kiri Kankhwende told Morning Star News.” Read more.

Flashback: Iran Intensifies Violent Crackdown On Christians, Even Imprisoning Nursing Mothers For Being Non-Muslim – “Iran’s hard-line regime has intensified its violent crackdown on Christians and other religious minorities, even imprisoning nursing mothers for practicing their faith, according to a new UN report. The March report provides a rare, detailed view into the shocking treatment of Christians in Iran, where American Pastor Saeed Abedini is serving an eight-year sentence for his alleged work with Christians. ‘The persecution of Christians has increased,’ said Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s expert on human rights in Iran.” Read more.

Flashback: Unable To Buy Or Sell: Iran Refusing Business License For Convert To Christianity, Orders Businesses Not To Employ Christians – “Iranian authorities refuse to allow a young man to start his own company because he converted to Christianity and was previously detained on charges of ‘apostasy’, or ‘abandoning Islam’, Iranian Christians said Saturday, July 14. The Iranian Christian, who was not identified, had reportedly been trying to obtain a business license for ‘a technical company’ in northern Iran… Outside prison, government offices are reportedly ordered not to employ Christians and Christians have been deprived from high school or university education, or running their own schools, according to Iranians with close knowledge about the situation.” Read more.

Romans 8:35-37, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Morning Star News – “Gunmen killed six Christians in an early morning attack yesterday on Dinu village in southern Plateau state, a month after  Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot a Christian to death in a nearby village, Christian leaders said.

The identities of the gunmen and the victims were not immediately known, though the Rev. Johnson Kikem, chairman of a nearby Regional Church Council of the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN), reported that church members who fled the village in Wase Local Government Area said the assailants were Muslims.

‘Some of our church members there who escaped from the village and ran to us here in Langtang brought the news of the attack,’ Kikem said. ‘We have been told that six of our members have been killed.’

On June 18, ethnic Fulani Muslims killed Toma Vongjen, 40, in a village in Bakin Rijiya of the Wase area, 216 kilometers (134 miles) southeast of Jos in Plateau state, and left church buildings in four villages in ruins (see Morning Star News, June 21).

Fulani Muslims have long fought over property with Christians of other ethnicities, and Islamic extremist groups are suspected of inflaming the herdsmen’s anti-Christian sentiment. The Fulani herdsmen and the predominantly Christian, ethnic Tarok farmers have accused each other of castle-rustling and retaliatory violence in recent months...

In Langtang Local Government Area 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Wase, however, more than 30 Christian men, women and children were slain in three villages in southern Plateau state on June 27 by suspected Islamic extremists from outside of Nigeria, authorities said.

Initially a Muslim spokesman for the military’s Special Task Force (STF), Capt. Salisu Mustapha, said the Christian residents of Magama, Bolgong and Karkashi were attacked by Fulani herdsmen in apparent retaliation for cattle theft. The extent of the massacre and the STF’s firestorm response – killing 20 of the assailants in gun battles, and tracking down and killing another 100 – indicated the attacks resulted from more than tribal conflict, and a week later a more authoritative STF officer denied the attack grew out of ethnic tensions.

‘This is not a case of ethnic crisis between [Muslim] Fulani and [Christian] Tarok, it was a case where some gunmen came to attack residents of three communities of Langtang South Local Government,’ Maj. Gen. Henry Ayoola, commander of the STF in Plateau state, told reporters in Jos on July 3. ‘We found that most of the attackers were not even Nigerians; also, many of them wore talismans and all manners of things over their bodies.'” Read more.

Flashback: Islam In Africa: ‘An Invisible Genocide Where Sadistic Killers Slaughter And Execute Thousands Of Christians’ – “The UN does nothing, the world is silent, and most Western citizens, who know little about Africa, do not know it is happening. The goal is creating a big African-Islamic continent. Christians must be killed or expelled. Fom Nigeria to Sudan, it is raging, the ‘Odium Fidei’, the war of religion. A genocide epitomized not by the images of Sydney Pollack’s ‘Out of Africa’, which presents a continent that is rich and attractive, but by the Nigerian village of Dogo Nahawa, where Islamists, armed with machetes, killed 300 Christians, mostly women and children.” Read more.

By Mathias Hariyadi, AsiaNews – “The Islamist pressures against Christian communities in Aceh ‘have become intolerable. Within a year, with non-existent legal pretexts, 17 house churches have been closed: these also include Catholic chapels. The islamization of the province continues , just as promised by the governor Abdullah.’ It is the sense of the Annual Report published by IndonesianChristian.org, Protestant organization which monitors the situation of the Christian community in Indonesia.

The forced closure of places of worship and threats against Protestant congregations, says the text, ‘increase unabated. But this will only create tensions manipulated from the outside between the Christian and Islamic communities. The government must guarantee religious plurality and respect: or risk clashes and violence’. Favor Bancin, of the Synod of the churches in Indonesia is of the same opinion, adding: ‘The behavior of local authorities is a potential threat to the tolerant atmosphere we see deteriorating over time.’

Indonesia is the most populous Muslim nation in the world and, while guaranteeing the constitutional principles of religious freedom, it is more and more often the scene of attacks and violence against minorities, whether they are Christians, Ahmadi Muslims or of other faiths. In the province of Aceh – the only one in the Archipelago – the Islamic law (sharia) applies and in many other areas the influence of the Muslim religion in the lives of citizens is becoming more radical and extreme. In addition, certain rules such as the building permit – the infamous IMB – are exploited to prevent the building or close Christian places of worship, as is the case for some time in Bogor regency, West Java, for the faithful of the Yasmin Church .

Behind this upsurge is the current governor of Aceh, Zaini Abdullah, who has spent years in exile in Sweden for his activities within the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). During his election campaign, the Islamic politician stated several times that ‘he would not hesitate to apply the Koranic laws in the province.’ And a few months after his election his words have become reality.” Read more.

Flashback: Welcome to Moderate Indonesia

• Indonesia: Covert Persecution Of Christians On The Rise
• Islamists Attack Christian Church, Police Jail Church Minister
• Indonesia: Twenty Churches In Aceh Face Threat Of Demolition
• Islamic Protesters in Indonesia Force Church To Close Due To ‘No Permit’
• Six Christian Schools Threatened With Closure … For Not Teaching Islam
• Hundreds Of Muslims Attack Christians Gathering Near Site Of Future Church
• Islamic Extremists in Central Java Demand Destruction of Christian Churches
• Hundreds Of Muslims Attack Christian Prayer House During Worship Service
• Massive Increase of Radical Islamism Spreads Throughout Indonesia, Including ‘Top-Quality’ Universities