World in Brief

The official notice that a village pastor in Algeria received on 30 December confirmed that his church had been ordered to close.

Pastor Rabah Messaoudi had won a legal battle in 2017 after local officials in the Muslim country tried to close his church. Those acting for the pastor have said they will appeal again, as the church is affiliated to an organisation of 45 churches through which the national commission confirms their authenticity.

Five Christians in Algeria were acquitted on 25 December of the charge of inciting a Muslim to change her religion.

A judge acquitted Rachid Ouali, whose Muslim wife had filed the charges against him under pressure she claimed from Muslim relatives, police officers. The Christians’ attorney, Badjib Sadek, said five defendants were acquitted of worshipping in an unauthorised place and inciting a Muslim to leave his religion because the judge strictly followed the law.

In Oran city, a provincial government order to close a Christian bookshop in 2017 was cancelled on 4 December.

The closure order was cancelled but no compensation for the year’s worth of losses was given.

Police stopped a Baptist husband and wife from singing and offering Christian literature outside a market, it was reported in December.

‘We were detained like criminals and brought to the police station,’ Andrei Fokin complained. A court fined the couple one month’s average wages each. Bailiffs are seeking to confiscate property and ban him from driving.

Egyptian President al-Sisi’s Government has continued the process of legalising church buildings, approving 168 applications in November.

This follows a series of approvals of Christian places of worship in September and October, bringing the total number up to 508 for 2018 so far.

On the evening of 12 December, Egyptian police officer Rabi Mustapha Khalifa shot and killed Coptic Christian Emad Kmal Sadeq and his son David.

The police officer was stationed as a security guard at the Nahded al-Qadasa Church in Minya City, Upper Egypt. He has since been detained in custody pending an investigation. At the time of writing, no charges are believed to have been filed.

It was reported in December that one Christian family a month is leaving the southern Iraqi city of Basra in the face of violence and increasing tension on the streets.

Only 10% of the previously 3,000-strong Christian community remains in Basra, although its community has not suffered the same level of persecution experienced in the north of the country, where Christian communities in the Nineveh plains were targeted in a campaign of genocide by Islamic State.

An investigation by an Iraqi television network uncovered the theft of at least 350 Christian-owned homes, it was reported in December.

This is in addition to the many Christian properties already seized by Islamic State terrorists. The problem is particularly serious in the historical Christian heartlands of the Nineveh Plain surrounding the northern city of Mosul. Church organisations have tried to intervene, but have ‘run up against powerful people’ as they sought to restore homes to their owners.

The Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) made an announcement in January stating that a mass grave with the remains of 34 Ethiopian Christians was found in Libya.

The grave, which held nearly three dozen Christians who were executed by ISIS in 2015, was found after the department was able to get information from arrested ISIS members. Reportedly, the Christians in the mass grave are the victims shown in a video that was posted to social media in 2015 that showed them being shot or beheaded.

Ladi Yakubu was left widowed and without the ability to feed her children after Muslim Fulani herdsmen destroyed crops on their farm in Kaduna state in November and shot and killed her husband.

Church members were helping the family to harvest rice when they offered food to a herdsman. He returned later with another man and people ran back to the village when they heard gunshots. After the shooting they returned the next morning destroying crops, machines for irrigation, herbicide sprayers and even the food warmers the family had taken to the farm.

A lower court in Punjab sentenced two Christian brothers to death for ‘blasphemy’ on 13 December.

Qasir and Amoon Ayub have been in jail since 2014 and are accused of allegedly posting ‘disrespectful’ material online in 2011.

In 24 hours, a convert to Christianity in eastern Uganda lost his livelihood, wife and children to irate relatives and other Muslims, it was reported in December.

A leader of the village mosque led a mob to Muhamud Gusolo’s banana plantation and destroyed it after Gusulo’s father objected to him leaving Islam for Christ. Since Gusulo was expelled from the community no one has come to his aid.

Apple removed a Christian ministry’s app from its store in December after LGBT supporters said the app was ‘dangerous’ and ‘bigoted.’

Living Hope Ministries created the app three years ago and says it helps people deepen their relationship with Jesus through Bible study and accountability and is entirely voluntary. The gay rights group, Truth Wins Out, thanked Apple for ‘exemplifying corporate responsibility and taking swift action to remove a dangerous app that stigmatises and demeans LGBT people’.

A Texas-based aviation ministry announced in December they are working to become the first Christian airline in the world.

Called Judah 1, the Federal Aviation Administration accepted the application to become its own airline as opposed to a private operator. Currently, Judah 1 is providing services to Christians travelling domestically and internationally for mission trips and religious tours. Their website states they want to help people reach the ‘estimated two and a half billion people who do not know Jesus’.

Christina Ginther, a man who identifies as a woman, was awarded $20,000 in damages and emotional distress after winning a discrimination lawsuit in December.

Ginther, a transgender ‘woman’, initially played for the Minnesota Vixen American football team, but was later barred when the team owner found out that he was a biological male. The International Women’s Football League states in its policy that a player must be a biological female.

Cannabis-based medicines are being distributed to pregnant mothers in the US, despite evidence that the drug harms babies, it was reported in January.

Cannabis use has been linked to birth defects including gastroschisis, where the intestines develop outside the body, congenital heart conditions, and anencephaly, a condition where a large part of the brain is missing. Only once has a known teratogen like cannabis been marketed globally. That was thalidomide.

A Kansas hospital reported that it sees 1,000 children each year who have been sexually assaulted, with almost half assaulted by other children.

Little girls between the ages of four and eight are the most likely victims. Other national figures state that 25% of all sex crimes are committed by minors.

In early January, South Carolina introduced a Bill that would make aborting a baby with a foetal heartbeat illegal.

The Bill requires all women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound to see if a foetal heartbeat can be detected. If a heartbeat is found and the patient wishes to go through with the abortion without having a ‘physical medical threat’, the doctor who performs the procedure can be fined up to $10,000 and sentenced to two years in jail.

A draft resolution discussed and voted on during the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe 21-25 January laid out the incompatibility of Sharia law with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The draft resolution also required Turkey, Azerbaijan and Albania, members of the Council of Europe, to consider withdrawing from the Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, signed in Cairo in 1990, which is a juridical (administrative) formulation of Sharia. A petition was raised in support of the draft resolution.