The Jerusalem Post reports that a group of Christian evangelists have been arrested for preaching the gospel in Jordan.

Jordanian security forces arrested eight people, mostly foreigners, after they were caught distributing missionary material to Bedouin families north and east of the Jordanian capital, Amman, the Saudi daily Al-Watan reported.

Can’t have that now, can we? And the Saudis can’t let a story on Christian evangelization pass without spreading some religious libel:

Sources said they were “enticing” impoverished youngsters by paying them money and calling on them to marry foreign girls.

And then there is this winner in the “Understatement of the Day” category:

Evangelism is a practice frowned upon in the Muslim world

After 20 years of brutal Serbian oppression and occupation and an all-out attempt at ethnic cleansing by Serb paramilitary forces, the freely-elected Parliament of Kosova formally announced the country’s independence on Sunday. While I’m no fan of the Clinton Administration’s foreign policy, I would contend that the NATO intervention in Kosova to stop the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign in 1999 was one of the best U.S. foreign policy moves, and thus far one of the most successful, in the past half-century.

It should be noted that the Kosovars achieved their independence through peaceful and democratic means, fully acknowledging the rights of minorities and supported by NATO and the UN (note to the Palestinians). Here are a couple of quick personal observations:

• Many conservatives backing the Serbs in this situation have warned that Kosovar independence is the harbinger of a reestablished global Islamic caliphate. Many prominent anti-jihad activists, including Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom assert that the Albanian Kosovars are all closet Wahhabis under the influence of Osama bin Laden himself. In the evangelical world, Pat Robertson and Doug Bandow make the same argument. Evangelicals in Kosova have challenged this narrative. And the celebrations in Prishtina were centered around Mother Theresa and President Bill Clinton Boulevards, with free beer being distributed in front of the Parliament building and the Kosova Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Is this celebatory behavior intended to throw unsuspecting Westerners and an act of taqiyya to conceal their hidden Wahhabi sympathies as some claim; or are the pro-freedom, pro-Western, pro-U.S. sentiments authentic? I believe the latter…

(more…)

The second Islamic caliph, Omar ibn El Khattab, expelled all Christians and Jews from the Arabian peninsula in the 7th Century, implementing a directive issued by Mohammad years earlier. Since then, the official presence of Christianity there has been practically nil and strictly confined to the expat workers who do most of the work in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Only in recent years has there been even a hint of toleration for Christianity. Thus, the announcement that the first Christian church is set to open in Qatar (home to the U.S. military’s CENTCOM) this Easter has provoked intense debate, Middle East Online reports.

Former Qatari justice minister Najib al-Nuaimi has objected to the church on “social and legal grounds” (read: shari’a), and columnist Lahdan bin Issa al-Muhanadi writing in the Doha daily Al-Arab exclaims, “The cross should not be raised in the sky of Qatar, nor should bells toll in Doha.” The new St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church will also house four other Christian denominations, but actual worship services will not be allowed by authorities. Only “collective prayer.”

In what is billed as a “moderate” Muslim country, Roman Catholic priest Pierre Wallez has been convicted in an Algerian court for leading a private prayer service in violation of that country’s new anti-proselytization (read: anti-Christian) law, Religious Intelligence reports.

Archbishop Henri Teissier of Algiers told Vatican Radio Fr Wallez led a prayer service in a private home on Dec 29, 2006, and had been jailed even though he had not celebrated the Eucharist.

On March 20, 2006 the Algerian Parliament passed Ordinance 06-03 which limited non-Muslim worship to specific buildings approved by the state, banning house churches and other non-registered religious gatherings.

The new law also banned proselytizing, instituting a sentence of up to five years and a fine of £7,500 for those found to have converted Muslims. The code also prescribes a five-year term of imprisonment for anyone who “incites, constrains, or utilizes means of seduction tending to convert a Muslim to another religion; or by using to this end establishments of teaching, education, health, social, culture, training… or any financial means.”

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to denounce Algeria’s action.

An act so despicable that it needs no further comment. From BosNewsLife:

Rahima Beoa, who was planning to be baptized tomorrow in Cinatuly village in Rangpur district, 248 kilometers (154 miles) northwest of the capital Dhaka, suffered burns on at least 70 percent of her body, local villagers said. Suspected Muslim extremists set her home, made from bamboo and wood, ablaze on January 7, while she and her 9-year-old grand child were sleeping, reported Compass Direct News, a Christian news agency.

The pastor of the local evangelical Isha-e-Jamat (Jesus’ Church) Bangladesh denomination, Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, reportedly said the mob was also upset that Beoa’s daughter and son-in-law, 40-year-old Ashraful Islam, converted to Christianity and about their involvement in evangelistic efforts.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said in a public lecture this week that the official recognition of Islamic sharia courts in the UK is not only “unavoidable,” but necessary for “social cohesion.. In an interview with the BBC, Williams defended his comments, saying: “It’s not as if we’re bringing in an alien and rival system.”

But the archbishop’s comments have generated a firestorm of criticism, including from both Labour and Tories in Parliament, in addition to many Anglican clergy. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office immediately distanced the government from Williams:

“Our general position is that sharia law cannot be used as a justification for committing breaches of English law, nor should the principles of sharia law be included in a civil court for resolving contractual disputes. The Prime Minister believes British law should apply in this country, based on British values.”

While Williams envisions sharia applied in the UK to private law and financial transactions, sharia itself recognizes no divisions between the the religious and civil spheres - a principle for which his predecessor Thomas Becket gave his life. The UK media have already identified sharia courts being used in criminal cases, in one instance freeing a group of Somali “youths” accused of stabbing another man.

Is the official recognition of sharia necessary for a pluralistic society, even if it undermines the rule of law and human rights?

Sixty-five years ago this week occurred one of the largest Allied maritime losses of life during World War II, the sinking of the USAT Dorchester, which was sunk by a German U-boat in the icy waters of the North Atlantic in an area known as “Torpedo Alley.” Of the 902 men who left New York for England, only 230 would survive the ships sinking.

But the story of the heroism of four chaplains aboard the ship - one rabbi, one Roman Catholic priest and two Protestant pastors - would also survive the tragedy. As men scrambled to the deck, many without their life vests, all four chaplains surrendered theirs to other men on board. And survivors of the sinking recall the image of the four chaplains on the bow of the rapidly sinking, linked arm-in-arm in prayer before the ship slipped into the deep just 18 minutes after the torpedo struck.

The heroism of the four Dorchester chaplains has been commemorated in stained glass in a chapel at the Pentagon, a US Mail postage stamp in 1948, and a special Congressional Medal of Valor awarded to the mens’ families in 1961. NPR’s All Things Considered radio program dedicated a May 2001 segment to “The Sinking of the Dorchester,” and in 2004 the Hallmark Channel aired a documentary on the lives and testimony of the four Dorchester chaplains.

Best selling author Robert Spencer’s new article, “Slavery, Christianity, and Islam“, at First Things is must reading. He revisits the singular role of Christian abolitionists throughout history in ending slavery and the slave trade, noting that it was the “imperialist” West during the 19th Century that was responsible for ending those practices in the Islamic world. Spencer writes:

Likewise unacknowledged has been the role that Christian principles played in the abolition of slavery in the West, which was an enterprise unprecedented in the annals of human history. The roots of abolitionism can be traced to the Church’s practice of baptizing slaves and treating them as human beings equal in dignity to all others. St. Isidore of Seville (560–636) declared that “God has made no difference between the soul of the slave and that of the freedman.” His statement was rooted in what St. Paul told the slaveowner Philemon about his runaway slave Onesimus: “Perhaps this was why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, as a beloved brother” (Phil. 15–16)… Once it was recognized that the slave had a soul just as did the master, it could not forever be justified that he be another person’s chattel.

The abolition of slavery in the Christian West long ago notwithstanding, it still survives today in Sudan, Mauritania and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Following up on Harrison’s earlier post, “What do we call a spade“, concerning the ouster of Pentagon J2 analyst Stephen Coughlin for raising uncomfortable questions about Islamic law, its relationship to the War on Terror and the access given to extremist groups by the DoD, Claudi Rosett last week at NRO identifies some troubling inconsistencies with the personal narrative of Hesham Islam, the advisor to Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England who has been reported as the chief instigator of Coughlin’s ouster (Islam had called Coughlin a “Christian zealot with a pen”). CI Centre maintains a webpage with extensive background on the Coughlin affair.

Specifically, Islam has told reporters in vivid detail about the trauma of being a boy in Cairo watching as his neighborhood was bombed into oblivion by the Israelis. The problem is, however, that the only occasion when Israel bombed Cairo was during the 1948 War for Independence - more than a decade before Hesham Islam was born. Other inconsistencies appear, as do questions about his background before he arrived in the US (his initial naval training occurred in Saddam’s Iraq). Islam’s master’s thesis for the Naval Postgraduate School also reads like a rabidly anti-Jewish screed. Rosett reports extreme difficulties in getting a response from Islam or the Pentagon on these issues. Go figure.

Elizabeth Eldridge of the Washington Times reports today that Malaysian authorities have begun confiscating Christian children’s books under orders from the Internal Security Ministry headed by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi because they contain images of Moses and Abraham, alledgedly in violation of shariah law. Christian leaders in the country, however, say that the move is part of a larger campaign by Muslims in the government to chip away further at the rights of all religious minorities there, which account for 40 percent of the population. Last month government officials there prohibited a Catholic newspaper from using the word “Allah”, the common word historically used for “God”, because officials ruled that only Muslims were permitted to do so.

No word whether the Malaysian government will in the future also prohibit Christians from using the capital letter “A” or begin seizing copies of the equally blasphemous new VeggieTales movie, The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything, because shariah courts have ruled that singing animated vegetables are prohibited from wearing pirate clothes.