Voice of the Martyrs, 8 April 2021

The gospel was first brought to Ethiopia in the first century, but many Ethiopian Christians still face persecution today.

In southern Ethiopia, political unrest and the rise of an extreme branch of Islam among the Oromo people have resulted in attacks against Christians across the region.

Eastern Ethiopia has one of the largest Somali populations in the world, and Christians there are persecuted by both their communities and their families.

In northern Ethiopia, some Orthodox Christians persecute evangelical believers. Several majority-Muslim tribal groups throughout Ethiopia also persecute Christians.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed under Ethiopian law and the government generally protects the rights of Christians.

However, vestiges of Communist rule lead authorities to monitor the activities of churches and evangelical Christian organizations. Still, evangelical churches in Ethiopia continue to plant new churches and send missionaries to difficult areas.

When Muslims in eastern Ethiopia forced a small congregation out of the home used for meetings, they expected the Christian presence in their area to cease, but the number of believers has increased in the last year.

The church had no place to meet, and the believers were in great despair. However, with assistance from believers outside Ethiopia, the small church purchased a piece of land and built a worship space. Today, the church has grown from 58 people to more than 70.

Open Doors, 8 April 2021

Naida doesn’t celebrate Ramadan in the same way anymore. As a Christian from a Muslim background in Central Asia, she knew that leaving the practices of Islam behind would expose her to exclusion and discrimination from angry relatives and friends.

Naida, now in her 70s, came to know Jesus through her children. When they first became Christians in the ‘90s, Naida was angry and upset: “I was so worried for their safety because we had a lot of relatives and they were all Muslims. I thought my daughter and sons could be beaten or even killed by their Muslim father and uncles.”

Naida came to know the Lord herself when God healed her after a period of ill-health. Her children prayed with her, and that’s when she chose to invite Jesus into her life. “Since then, my life has completely changed,” she says.

For several years after becoming a Christian, Naida didn’t celebrate Ramadan – a festival which used to mean so much to her when she would visit neighbours and relatives, cook many traditional dishes and host a lot of guests in her house during Ramadan.

When she stopped celebrating Ramadan, her relatives were angry. They stopped inviting her to their homes and wouldn’t come to her house. She was upset and worried.  It was important for her to reach her Muslim sisters and brothers, cousins and other relatives with God’s love.

After a lot of prayer, study and advice from her pastor, Naida decided to celebrate Ramadan in a completely new way. Naida cooks different traditional dishes and invites her Muslim sisters, brothers, cousins and neighbours. In this way, she shows them her respect for their religious traditions and values, and at the same time she is able to share the gospel. She has found these celebrations really fruitful and an effective way to reach her Muslim friends and family – while remaining true to her faith and to Jesus.

World Watch Monitor, 17 March 2021

A Malaysian woman’s campaign for Christians’ right to use the word “Allah” for “God” has succeeded after almost 13 years of court hearings and delays.

Jill Ireland Lawrence Bill has campaigned for the right to use the word since immigration officials at a Kuala Lumpur airport seized 8 Christian CDs from her in May 2008 because they used the word “Allah” in a Christian context.

After a 7-year legal battle, Ireland was given back the CDs in 2015, but maintained that the court had failed to address her constitutional right as a Christian to use the word.

In October 2017, her lawyer noted that 60% of Malaysia’s Christians speak the Bahasa Malaysia (‘language of Malaysia‘), which uses “Allah” for “God”. The word (which predates Islam) has been used by local Christians for hundreds of years, since Europeans first spread the religion, long before Malaysia even came into existence.

He said Christians were never consulted when in 1986 the country banned Christians from using the word, and that the government’s blanket ban was unconstitutional and discriminatory.

The Court of Appeals judge Nor Bee ruled in Ireland’s favour  that the 1986 directive by the Home Ministry to prohibit Christians from using four ‘prohibited’ words, including ‘Allah’, was not a blanket ban.

Morning Star News, 19 March 2021

The Lahore High Court on March 10 changed a sentence of life imprisonment to the death penalty for a Christian convicted of sending a blasphemous text message in 2011.

The high court’s approval of an appeal by the KNF, or Movement for the Finality of the Prophethood, seeking the death penalty for such violations has raised fears of a surge in convictions under the controversial laws.

Relatives of Sajjad Masih, the convicted 36-year-old Christian, said Justice Malik Shahzad Ahmad Khan ruled in favour of the revised sentence and then sent Masih’s appeal to a division bench.

“Justice Shahzad has forwarded the appeal to a division bench to avoid pressure from KNF lawyers, and it’s most likely that this appeal, like other similar appeals, will continue to be delayed due to the fear factor.”

Masih’s appeal of the conviction has been pending with the Lahore High Court for the last seven years.

A large number of KNF lawyers swarmed the courtroom during a hearing on both Masih’s appeal and the KNF petition, an intimidation tactic designed to obtain convictions and harsh sentences.

“They told the judge that capital punishment was the only sentence for blaspheming against Islam’s prophet, and that Sajjad must be executed without delay,” said one source.

Barnabas Fund, 30 March 2021

Dozens of people have been killed and thousands forced to flee after hundreds of Islamist militants attacked a coastal town in Cabo Delgado, a province rich in oil and gas reserves in northern Mozambique, on Wednesday 24 March.

Islamist terrorist group Islamic State boasted on Twitter on Monday of killing at least 55 people, including Christians, Mozambique soldiers, state nationals and “crusaders” (understood to mean Westerners) in a prolonged assault on Palma.

The number of casualties is unclear because many are still unaccounted for; however, a witness said the town and beaches are strewn with bodies “with heads and without”.

Hundreds more people, including children, have fled on foot through the bush and are now arriving at Namoto, about 30 miles from Palma, on the border with Tanzania.

More than 2,500 people are estimated to have been killed and 700,000 displaced since 2017 when militant Islamists began a brutal campaign to establish an Islamist caliphate in Cabo Delgado province.

Christians who refuse to deny Christ are amongst the victims.

Morning Star News, 18 March 2021

Until her death last month at the age of 63, Bolivian attorney Ruth Montaño had done perhaps more than any living person to advance the rights of religious minorities in her Andean homeland.

A specialist in constitutional law and permanent legal counsel to the National Association of Evangelicals of Bolivia, the Cochabamba-based lawyer spent more than two decades defending Christian believers and congregations against discrimination and injustice.

Her greatest professional accomplishment was undoubtedly the passage in September 2019 of Religious Liberty Law 1161.

The product of nine years of research, litigation and negotiation with the government of former president Evo Morales, the Religious Liberty Law guarantees the independence of churches and other faith communities from government interference in their internal affairs.

The law prevents secular officials from dictating how non-Roman Catholic churches must organize their activities, choose leaders and manage their finances.

“It recognizes their freedom to preach, to teach the Word and to use mass communications media. Also, it guarantees the freedom to conduct religious education in accordance with their respective worldviews.”

Barnabas Fund, 12 March 2021

Twenty-four Christians, including two ministers, were attacked and killed by armed militants in western Ethiopia on Sunday 7 March.

The Christians were attending a church service in Horo Guduru Welega zone on the eve of Ethiopian Lent, which began on 8 March.

According to local contacts, members of the militant group OLF Shenie, an offshoot of the Oromo Liberation Front thought to be active in west and south Oromia, surrounded the church and forced members of the congregation to hand over their mobile phones.

The armed men then killed the two ministers outside the church, before taking the other Christians to a nearby forest where they too were killed.

The incident was confirmed by a regional official who said that security forces have been sent to the area.

Morning Star News, March 7, 2021

Church leaders have confirmed reports that Islamic terrorists who threatened to execute a pastor they abducted in northeast Nigeria freed him on March 3.

The president of the Church of Brethren in Nigeria, Joel S. Billi, told church leaders on March 4 that he had spoken to Pastor Bulus Yakura after he was freed.

“Speaking to Yakura over the telephone today was heart-touching,” Billi said, adding that Pastor Yakura told him, “I am fine, thank you for your prayers and concern,” according to Musa.

Nigerian newspaper the Premium Times had reported that Pastor Yakura, a pastor abducted from Pemi village near Chibok, Borno state in an Islamic terrorist attack on Christmas Eve, was freed after Christians met ransom demands.

Morning Star News, March 4, 2021

A court in Algeria has convicted and sentenced in absentia a pastor and another Christian to two years in prison and a heavy fine, accusing them of “shaking the faith” of Muslims with Christian literature at their bookstore.

Pastor Rachid Seighir and Nouh Hamimi learned by a written notification slipped under the door of their church building in Oran that they had been sentenced to prison and fined 500,000 Algerian dinars (US$3,745).

The pastor was the manager of the now-closed bookstore, where Hamimi worked as a salesman. The judgment reads that they are condemned for “distributing publications or any other propaganda undermining the faith of a Muslim.”

Pastor Seighir of Oratoire Church in Oran said the conviction was mere retaliation in a conflict over the bookstore going back to 2008, when he was convicted of the same charges and acquitted on appeal.

“This case is the logical continuation of the three judgments in our case that we have won against the Governor of Oran.  On April 12, 2018, the order was issued by judgment for the closure ordered by the governor to be effectively cancelled.  Unfortunately, the governor resisted and refused to comply.”

The Christians have appealed their conviction and sentence, he said.

Morning Star News, 28 February 2021

Local officials and other tribal animists in a village in eastern India locked council doors, tied up pastor Lakshman Oraon and beat him for more than an hour.

“I did not shout or cry before them,” Pastor Oraon told Morning Star News. “I was praying, praising the Lord, remembering His sacrifice for me on the cross.”

The elders of Jungur village, Latehar District in Jharkhand state had summoned him and other village Christians on Jan. 24 to demand that they help fund the ritual worship of tribal deities. When he refused, he said, they tied his hands behind his back, knocked him to the floor and struck his back, head and face.

“When they tied me and started kicking me, I was not at all angry. The Lord reminded me of the verses in Matt. 5:11-12,” Pastor Oraon said, reciting in Hindi Christ’s statement that followers are blessed when others revile and persecute them, and that they rejoice. “I received great strength from these words. There was a smile on my face all through.”