This is the third church in Muslim-majority East Jerusalem to be forced shut in recent years.
"You think all men are equal... Islam does not say that all men are equal. Your values are not their values. If you do not understand this soon enough, you will become victims of the enemy you have welcomed into our home." — Archbishop Amel Shimoun, Exiled Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Iraq.
As usual, after filing a complaint about a gang rape with the local police, her family received threats of more violence. "In Pakistan, rape is used as an instrument of arbitrary power over Christian girls... It is a form of violence that wants to reiterate the submission to Muslims. The rest of society is not outraged because the victims mostly belong to religious minorities. Rarely rapists are punished." — Sardar Mushtaq Gill, lawyer, Pakistan.
American Pastor Saeed Abedini's young children have submitted a video to President Barack Obama pleading with him to being their father safely home from Iranian prison. "Now we understand that ISIS members in the prison have said that he is their number one target."
Around 45 churches in Mosul... were destroyed and converted into mosques.
Muslims beheading Christians was a visibly growing spectacle throughout the month of August. Islamic State [IS] militants cut off a Christian man's head—after compelling him to say the
shehada, the Islamic profession of faith, "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger." When the
shehada is spoken before Muslim witnesses, the speaker becomes Muslim and thus, in theory,
safeguards his life and possessions from the jihad. Not so for this hapless man, who, after renouncing his Christian faith for Islam, was still slaughtered on camera (graphic video can be
viewed here).
The
Christian Post has the story: