The head of a Christian congress in Pakistan announced recently that he will send an appeal to the United Nations to allow refugee status for Pakistani Christians because they do not feel safe in their own country.

Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, chief of Pakistan Christian Congress, said the PCC is demanding that the Pakistani government opens its borders so that Christians may flee to bordering countries such as Afghanistan, India and China.

“The Christians in Pakistan do not feel safe, and they want to flee for the safety of their lives. We are asking that they be given refugee status,” Bhatti told the Pakistan Christian Post.

Bhatti said this will continue to be necessary unless the blasphemy law is repealed. He also said the Federal Minority Ministry must be restored, and there should be an end to kidnapping and enforced conversion of Christian women to Islam so that they can be married to influential Muslims against their will.

Kidnapping, forced conversion

The number of kidnappings, forced conversion to Islam and gang rape of Christian women has doubled in the year 2010-2011.

An example is the incident of nursing student Farah Hatim, 24, a Catholic girl who was kidnapped last May 7, by Muslim Zeeshan Iliyas and his brothers, Gulfam and and Ulran.

Hatim, who lives in south Punjab where most incidents of Christian persecution occur, was forced to convert to Islam so that she could forcibly marry her abductor.

Hatim’s abductors threatened to kill her family if she failed to cooperate. When her family tried to file a report of her abduction before Superintendent Police Ashfaq Guijar and SHO city Nazir Shah, they were threatened and the police refused to file the case.

The case was only registered after some 400 Christians protested in front of the police office. As the Justice and Peace Commission brought the case to court, the police constantly threatened Hatim’s family.

The case was then raised to the Supreme Court. On July 20, for the first time, Hatim saw her family. When she was asked if she went with her Muslim abductor freely, she wept and said, “Of my own will,” to protect her family.

After the proceedings she was granted a few minutes to meet with her family. Her brother told Asia News, “I am shocked … she was threatened … Why us? Why do we have to deal with it? Just because we are Christians?”

The Committee for Justice and Peace told Asia News, “Farah has become a victim of the prostitution racket. Zeeshan Iiyas tried to push her into prostitution when she was still a student at Sheikh Zaid Medical College, Rahim Yar Khan, but she refused. Zeehan Iiyas then took revenge.”

Farah is also fearful because she became pregnant after she was raped and she fears that if she tries to return to her community she will be rejected and her family will be killed.

Sisters kidnapped

In a separate incident, two Christian siblings were kidnapped by a band hired by a wealthy Muslim, and forced to convert to Islam. One of them was then forced to marry the rich Muslim.

Rebecca Masih and her sister Saima Masih were abducted by businessman Muhammad Wassem last May 24 in Faisalabad district. Waseem then forced Saima to marry him. Extremist group leader Muhammad Zubair Qasim was present. His band, Sip-e-Sahaba, specializes in kidnapping and forced conversions.

According to the Justice and Peace Commission, “thousands of girls from minority communities are kidnapped and forced to marry Muslims. We are fighting against the cancer of abductions and forced marriages,” Asia News reported.

The Catholic church has also condemned such acts, as have human rights organizations. Hatim’s family is appealing for action, or laws against the practice of abduction, forced conversion and marriage.

However, such acts prevail largely because of the blasphemy law which is often abused as pretext for this, as well as destruction of Christian homes, arrest and murder of Christians including women and children.

Courts are not mediums for true justice for Christians. Even government officials are not spared, including Shahbaz Bhatti, Christian Federal Minister who was gunned down in Islamabad. The Federal Minority Ministry has also been dissolved.

Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti of the PCC said because equal rights for minorities is not possible in Pakistan, the alternative he seeks is refugee status for its Christians.

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Two books are now available in the market that talk about the conversion of former Muslims to Christianity.

The first book, “Out of Darkness Into Light,” talks about the personal accounts of 13 men and women who were formerly Muslims, but who converted after experiencing Christ in supernatural ways through dreams, visions and miracles.

The website of the book says that Out of Darkness is not so much about changing one’s religion, as it is about the experience of becoming one of God’s children and entering the family of God through Jesus.

The book is described as “easy to read and inspiring,” and it offers the reader a glimpse into a culture that people who grow up in the Islamic faith experience.

It is advised as a good read for those who would like to share the gospel with Muslims, and may also be useful for those who feel that they don’t reflect God’s love for Muslims in their own hearts.

The author of the book uses the pseudonym, Ali Abdel-Masih, which means “believer in the Messiah.” The author describes himself in the book as a strong Muslim who initially worked to convert Christians to the Islamic faith.

Masih describes his conversion as the experience of a presence when he was alone in his house. “The Holy Spirit fell on me. I knew Jesus was standing in the room with me and that He was the Son of God.”

Masih said in the book that he was such a strong Muslim that only an experience like this could help him to know Jesus in a personal way and to be changed by him.

As a result, Masih ministered to other Christians in the Middle East, and was surprised to hear many stories similar to his own, of people who experienced God through visions and dreams.

Masih’s book contains nuances and questions that Muslim readers may relate to. He contends that many Muslims most likely had experienced visions but may not yet fully understand its meaning.

At the same time, Christians stand to benefit from this book by becoming acquainted with the heart that God has for Muslims and learning of the openness that Muslims can have to the gospel when they have a touch from the Lord.

From Terror to Freedom

A second book on the market is entitled “From Terror to Freedom,” authored by Mano Bakh (a pseudonym), who formerly worked with the Imperial Navy of Iran.

The book tells of how Bakh escaped from the Navy when Islamic radicals took over the country in 1979. Included is a graphic description of the slaughter of some of the brightest citizens in the country, and of his personal experience as a hunted man.

Bakh also describes his life before 1979, including friendships that he made as a serviceman for 26 years, and how these same bonds were critical in his darkest hours in aiding and abetting his escape from the country.

Bakh cites in his book the need to separate Sharia law from Islamic spirituality, and calls on moderate Muslims to take their religion back from extremism.

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In what may be preparation for a 2012 bid for the White House, Newt Gingrich talked recently about his Catholic conversion to an audience in Washington.

Gingrich, 67, told participants of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington about his Catholic conversion after being a Southern Baptist for 65 years, ABC News said.

The former House speaker said, “It would be more accurate to say that I gradually became Catholic and then realized one day that I should accept the faith that surrounded me,” according to ABC News.

Gingrich said the main impetus for his conversion was the time he and wife Callista spent at her Washington D.C. church, and the inspiration he got from the way the Catholic Church in Europe waged war against a “crisis of secularism” in that continent that he says is now taking place in the U.S., ABC News said.

Gingrich said, “The American elites are guided by their desire to emulate the European elites, and as a result, anti-religious values and principles are coming to dominate the academic, news media and judicial class in America,” ABC News reported.

Common Era

One example cited by Gingrich of the “crisis of secularism” is pressure from secularists to replace the phrase ‘Anno Domini’ or A.D. with ‘Common Era,’ or C.E., Fox News said.

The former Georgia congressman stressed, “There is no ‘Common Era,’ adding, “The year 2011 is a Christian date,” according to Fox News.

Gingrich also lashed at “coercive secularism dominating our courts,” ABC News said. Citing ‘activist judges,’ he said, “The courts have been especially powerful engines of coerced secularization, from the 1962 school prayer decision on,” Fox News reported.

Gingrich added, “There has been a decisive break with the essentially religious nature of historic American civilization,” according to Fox News.

Documentary

During the Catholic breakfast, Gingrich talked about the documentary, Nine Days That Changed The World, which he co-produced with his wife Calista. The film is about Pope John Paul II’s trip to Poland in 1979, Fox News said.

Poland, then under the communist Soviet Union, did not have any freedom of religion. However, after the late pope’s visit, the country stood up to the Soviet Union and became independent. Eventually, there followed the Soviet Union’s downfall, Fox News reported.

Gingrich said, “Imagine how hard it must have been for the Polish people, with a government that would not allow school prayer and kept tearing down crosses. It’s hard to imagine that kind of government in a free society,” according to Fox News.

Gingrich told the audience, “The more I looked at this historic phenomenon, the more I had to come to grips with my own beliefs and my own tolerance of the increasingly aggressive secularization of our country,” ABC News reported.

Presidential run

Critics see Gingrich’s change of faith as a way to seek public clemency after two failed marriages and an admission of having an affair with a Capital Hill staffer, Callista Bisek, who is now his third wife, ABC News said.

Sources close to Gingrich say he may soon reach a decision about running for president. He is slated to visit Iowa and South Carolina, where religious conservatives are influential, ABC News said.

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Amid stepped up violence against Christians in Iraq, many Iraqis have fled to neighboring Jordan as a stepping stone to get to the U.S., Australia, Canada or Europe.

According to the AFP, many Christians fled to Jordan because of threats from the radical Shiite Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr. However, after the Oct. 31 attack on Baghdad’s Syriac Catholic cathedral, the numbers have increased.

One Christian, Moayed (who would not give his last name), told the AFP he fled Iraq after the radical Shiite Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr blew up his supermarket and told him to leave because “there is no room here for Christians.”

Mohannad Najem told the AFP, “Churches in Iraq no longer issue birth certificates in order to contain the exile of Christians.” He fled to Jordan with his wife and four little children because the Mahdi Army told him that unless he paid $1,000 a month, his children would be killed one by one.

Uday Hikmat, 33, told the AFP he and his parents left Iraq three days after the church massacre. With his birth certificate, he hopes to complete documentation for an emigration visa to Canada.

Flawed U.S. State Department report

Meanwhile, Muslim and Christian leaders in Jordan disputed report recent U.S. State Department report on religious freedoms, which said Jordan discriminates against citizens who convert to other faiths, The Jordan Times said.

The report said, “While relations between Muslims and Christians generally were good, adherents of unrecognized religions and Muslims who converted to other religions faced societal discrimination and the threat of mental and physical abuse,” The Jordan Times reported.

According to The Jordan Times the report said, “The [Jordan] government continued to harass some citizens and resident foreign groups suspected of proselytizing Muslims and a few Muslim converts to Christianity, including by attempting to induce them to revert to Islam. But the intensity of the harassment declined during the reporting period.”

Muslim and Christian leaders said the report cites individual cases that don’t represent the country. Father Nabil Haddad of the Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center told The Jordan Times, “We have never had any difficulties in setting up churches or religious schools to teach our congregation the rituals of Christianity.”

Hamzah Mansour of the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood told The Jordan Times, “Muslims and Christians…are one people and we have never had any problems with coexistence.”

Both faith leaders agreed that the resistance is against foreign missionary activities in Jordan–not against both faiths, according to The Jordan Times.

The U.S. State Department report said Jordan’s Constitution, penal code and civil law do not ban conversion, nor proselytizing Muslims. However, because primacy is given by the government to Sharia law, it takes precedence over Muslims’ personal lives and prohibits conversion, The Jordan Times said.

The State Department report said that Sharia “infringes upon the religious rights and freedoms laid out in the Constitution by prohibiting conversion from Islam and discriminating against religious minorities in some matters relating to family law.”

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Convert, a former fighter in Afghanistan, had protested Islamic attack.

SARGODHA, Pakistan, November 5 (CDN) — Muslim extremists in Islamabad on Monday (Nov. 1) beat with bricks and hockey sticks a Christian clergyman who is the subject of a fatwa demanding his death.
The Rev. Dr. Suleman Nasri Khan, a former fighter in Afghanistan before his conversion to Christianity in 2000, suffered a serious head injury, a hairline fracture in his arm and a broken bone in his left ankle in the assault by 10 Muslim extremists; he was able to identify two of them as Allama Atta-Ullah Attari and Allama Masaud Hussain.

The attack in Chashma, near Iqbal Town in Islamabad, followed Islamic scholar Allama Nawazish Ali’s Oct. 25th fatwa (religious ruling) to kill Khan, pastor of Power of the Healing God’s Church in the Kalupura area of Gujrat city. A mufti (Islamic scholar) and member of Dawat-e-Islami, which organizes studies of the Quran and Sunnah (sayings and deeds of Muhammad), Ali is authorized to issue fatwas.

Khan, 34, had relocated to a rented apartment in Islamabad after fleeing his home in Gujrat because of death threats against him and his family, he said. The fatwa, a religious order to be obeyed by all Muslims, was issued after Khan protested anti-Christian violence in Kalupura last month.

Muslim extremists who learned of his conversion had first attacked Khan in 2008 – killing his first child, 3-month old Sana Nasri Khan. He and wife Aster Nasri Khan escaped.

“During the Kalupura Christian colony attacks, once again it came into the attention of Muslim men that I was a converted Christian who had recanted Islam, deemed as humiliation of Islam by them,” Khan said.

In this week’s attack, Khan also sustained minor rib injuries and several minor cuts and bruises. He said the Muslim radicals pelted him with stones and bricks while others kicked him in the chest and stomach. They also tried to force him to recite Islam’s creed for conversion; he refused.

On Monday night (Nov. 1) Khan had gone out to buy milk for a daughter born on July 19 – named after the daughter who was killed in 2008, Sana Nasri Khan – when during the wee hours of the night five unidentified Muslim extremists began kicking and pounding on the door.

“When my wife asked who they were, they replied, ‘We have learned that you have disgraced Islam by recanting, therefore we will set your house on fire,” Khan told Compass. “When my wife told them that I was not at home, they left a letter threatening to torch the house and kill my whole family and ordered me to recant Christianity and embrace Islam.”

Khan had sold some of his clothes at a pawnshop in order to buy milk for the baby, as he has been financially supporting six Christian families from his congregation who are on a Muslim extremist hit list. Islamic militants have cordoned off parts of Kalupura, patrolling the area to find and kill the families of Allah Rakha Masih, Boota Masih, Khalid Rehmat, Murad Masih Gill, Tariq Murad Gill and Rashid Masih.

Often feeding her 5-month-old daughter water mixed with salt and sugar instead of milk or other supplements, Aster Nasri Khan said she was ready to die of starvation for the sake of Jesus and His church. Before her beaten husband was found, she said she had heard from neighbors that some Muslim men had left him unconscious on a roadside, thinking he was dead.

The Rev. Arif Masih of Power of the Healing God’s Church in Islamabad told Compass that he was stunned to find Khan unconscious in a pool of blood on the roadside. Saying he couldn’t go to police or a hospital out of fear that Muslims would level apostasy charges against Khan, Masih said he took him to the nearby private clinic of Dr. Naeem Iqbal Masih. Khan received medical treatment there while remaining unconscious for almost four hours, Masih said.

Born into a Muslim family, Khan had joined the now-defunct Islamic militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which later emerged as Jaish-e-Muhammad, fighting with them for eight and half years in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

While fighting in Afghanistan’s civil war in 2000, he said, he found a New Testament lying on the battlefield. He immediately threw it away, but a divine voice seemed to be extending an invitation to him, he said. When he later embraced Christ, he began preaching and studying – ending up with a doctorate in biblical theology from Punjab Theological Seminary in Kasur in 2005.

Upon learning of the Oct. 25 fatwa against him, Khan immediately left Gujrat for Islamabad, he said. He was living in hiding in Chashma near Iqbal Town when Muslims paid his landlord, Munir Masih, to reveal to them that Khan was living at his house as a tenant, he said. A young Christian whose name is withheld for security reasons informed Khan of the danger on Oct. 29, he said.

The young Christian told him that Munir Masih revealed his whereabouts to Allama Atta-Ullah Attari, a member of Dawat-e-Islami.

Khan said he confided to Christian friends about the dangers before him, and they devised a plan to hide his family in Bara Koh, a small town near Islamabad.

“But as I had sold and spent everything to help out Kalupura Christians,” he said, “I was penniless and therefore failed to move on and rent a house there.”

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British columnist and former atheist, Peter Hitchens, has written a book about his conversion to Christianity.

Hitchens, a London Mail political columnist and former Marxist revolutionary, has penned “The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith.” The book has a different subtitle in the U.K., namely Why Faith is the Foundation of Civilization, the Washington Times said.

A Cain and Abel scenario has unfolded with Hitchens’ new faith. His older brother Christopher, who remains an atheist, and he have had heated public debates. Christopher has authored the tome God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, CBN News said.

Both brothers were raised in a Christian home with a devoutly Baptist grandfather. Their paternal grandmother, whom they never met, was Anglican. Peter said they had “an extremely religiously conscious household,” CBN News said.

Both brothers became Marxists but today Peter considers himself a conservative member of the Church of England. He attends a small church that still uses an “old prayer book,” the Washington Times said.

The brothers are estranged. Peter suggests that his brother is a “repressed seeker”. He hopes his brother “might one day arrive at some sort of acceptance that belief in God is not necessarily a character fault – and that religion does not poison everything,” the Washington Times said.

Peter said that when he was an atheist, “We were full of our own righteousness. We knew what was right. We knew we were right. We knew we were good. We defined our own goodness,” CBN News said.

He had no Christian friends at the time. “There is a lot of scorn in revolutionary socialism.  There’s a lot of scorn for the people who aren’t up for it. There is a lot of scorn for the people who are opposed to it. There’s a feeling that you are the vanguard and you know best, and everyone else is ignorant and stupid,” CBN News said.

“You see that scorn in the new atheists, in the way they treat their opponents – not with any kind of respect at all. They still act as if Christianity is a kind of stupid aberration that only an idiot could follow,”    CBN News said.

Peter’s return to Christian faith took place in stages through the years. There was a time he remembers distinctly when he genuinely felt a fear of God though he was still an atheist. He was looking at Rogier van der Weyden’s painting, The Last Judgment, depicting the terror of Hell. ”One of them was actually vomiting with fright,” Hitchens told CBN News.

At that point, Peter feared for himself. “One of my reasons for my change is that I am scared. But then again, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Ironically, after the CBN interview it was learned that Christopher Hitchens had been diagnosed with cancer, CBN News said.

The Washington Times has speculated, “If Christopher turns out to be right, he won’t be able to tell his brother, “I told you so.” And if he’s wrong, well, he probably won’t be in any mood to admit it.”

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Persecution, conversion and healing continue in Israel, even as some dwell on the possibility that Jesus may eventually come to be a uniting force for peace in the Promised Land.

Persecution of the Levin family began when they held prayer meetings in the house they were renting.  The landlord filed charges to oust them, but the Levins stayed, confident the law is on their side.

Still, neighbors isolated them.  Sugar was placed in the tank of their minivan and eventually both of the Levin’s vehicles were burned, according to The Christian Telegraph.

Another story is told in Christianity Today is of Muslim teenagers threatening a teen for wearing a cross.

Most Arab Christian men stay silent when Muslims heckle their wives for not wearing a veil.  They fear their families will be harmed.  One Arab Christian complained, “We always have to suck up to the Muslims,” the report said.

Stories also abound in Israel of conversions, or at the very least of Jews or Muslims  looking towards Christians with a kinder eye.

Christianity Today tells of Maoz Inon who founded the Jesus Trail in Israel after he had a vision, though he is not religious.

Still, Inon says the Jesus Trail boosts understanding between Israelis and Palestinians.  “I believe in the power of Jesus. In our day, he can still change the world and make it a better place for us and our children,” Christianity Today reported.

The same report says there are many anonymous Arab Christians.  Conversion stories are compelling, for example Rani Espanioly talks of a figure of light approaching and clothing him in light, as he heard the voice of God.

“We Arab Christians can be ambassadors for reconciliation and peace in this country,” Espanioly says.

There are also a growing number of Jewish conversions, with some 10,000 to 15,000 Messianic Jews.  Yossi Ovadia, a Messianic Jewish pastor, said he was converted while walking along the Sea of Galilee.

He was surprised when a British Christian said God loves Jews—Yossi thought everyone hated Jews.  He envied the close personal relationship Christians had with Jesus, so he got what they had.

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Serving Jesus Christ Is Full Of Painful Excitements

In Luke Chapter 22, we read of that scenario in verses 31,32, where Jesus is informing Peter that he is about to be sifted, but Jesus also reassures this man who is to lead the early church that he is being prayed for. We need to know this too in these challenging and peculiar days when so much of what we have been used to is being undermined and shaken just as the Scriptures depict.

There are times when we are sifted like flour, and put through the mill and pummelled as the dough is prepared. And after all that it is the fire to bake the bread! Read how the showbread was prepared for the table in the Tabernacle. There are profound lessons there for us, and particularly as we remember the thousands across the world who are being sorely and severely persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ in these present times.

Make sure you have access to the information provided regarding those who are having a hard time. “Release International” or “Open Doors” with Brother Andrew, or “Christian Solidarity Worldwide” or the “Barnabas Fund” are all excellent sources and resources. If you have come all this way with me through Acts and Luke then make sure you are praying for those who are suffering in a way that few of in the West experience.

But returning to our passage in Luke Chapter 22 – almost before the words of Jesus have come out of His mouth, Peter is saying, “You can count on me. I'll be with You. Some of the others in the room may not stick with You Jesus, but I'll be there.”

All this has to go. All this has to be dealt with, and dealing with this pride and arrogance and cockiness can be sore. That very night – within an hour or so – Peter went and wept bitterly, when he realised that he had denied Jesus three times.

It did lead to his conversion – to his coming back – to his becoming a new man – a man who could strengthen others. It was Peter who ran to the tomb three days later when he heard that something had happened to the body of Jesus.

From the text it looks as though they were all going to go through it to some degree, and don't we all. This has been our experience. There come times of testing and sifting, when Jesus allows things to happen to shake out the lumps, and knock off the rough edges, in order to refine us. How much more has he still to do?

Remember, it is to this man Peter, at the end of John's Gospel, that Jesus says three times, “Feed My sheep, and feed My lambs.”

Very often those who are able to minister and strengthen their brethren, and truly edify and build up the Church, are those who have experienced falling and failing.

Those who know what it is to have been through the mill and who have gone through a time of sifting and pummelling, know what it is all about, and once Jesus has dealt with them, He has lifted them up, and restored them, and given them a ministry, which otherwise would have been impossible.

Is this not one of the painful excitements of serving in the front line of the Kingdom of God?

I write this article during the week when I recall that it is now forty one years ago since the risen living and ascended Lord Jesus Christ baptised me in the Holy Spirit when I was on the point of resigning and returning to Motor Insurance. I thought I had got this ‘Call Thing’ all wrong, and then the caring concerned living Christ, who had called me when I was eight years old, met me in a room in Cowdenbeath, Scotland.

What a joy and amazing privilege it has been to know the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, for over forty one years.

Originally here:
Word from Scotland

Author bio:
Alexander “Sandy” Shaw is pastor of Nairn Christian Fellowship in Nairn, Scotland. Nairn is 17 miles east of Inverness – on the Moray Firth Coast – not far from the Loch Ness Monster!
Gifted as a Biblical teacher, Sandy is firmly committed to making sure that his teachings are firmly grounded in the Word.
Sandy has a weekly radio talk which can be heard via the Internet on Saturday at 11:40 a.m., New Orleans time, at wsho.com.

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