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Christians in a small north-western Pakistan town have received an unsigned, hand-written note warning them to shut their churches and convert to “the true Muslim faith” by 17 May.

Copies of handwritten letter with a May 17 ultimatum were reportedly delivered to two churches and several Christians' homes in Charsadda, a northwestern Pakistan town where the federal interior minister last month escaped a homicide attack that apparently killed 28 people.

"The ultimatum has further aggravated the sense of insecurity and fear among the Christians of Charsada," of Taliban style social structures imposed by militants, said Shahbaz Bhatti, the chairman of All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), a major advocacy group here. Christians are "spending their day and night in fear and many are thinking to vacate the area due to threats and possible attacks," Bhatti told BosNewsLife.

Charsadda's 600 Christians are anxious but defiant.  They say that no one will convert and no one will leave town.

The letter comes as Pakistan’s Parliament rejected a proposal to soften penalties for violating the country’s infamous blasphemy laws.

As the law currently stands, anyone convicted of blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad faces life imprisonment or the death penalty. The bid this week to amend the law, by a minority party MP, would have changed this to five years’ imprisonment and a fine. It was also proposed to extend the blasphemy law to other religions.

However, it was opposed by the Parliamentary Affairs Minister as un-Islamic. “Islam is our religion and such bills hurt our feelings. This is not a secular state but the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” the Minister said.

The government also plans to introduce a new anti-apostasy bill, under which a man leaving Islam could be sentenced to death, while a woman would face life imprisonment.  Those convicted would have 30 days to return to Islam.  The proposed bill also provides that that children and property of those found guilty of apostasy would be given to Muslim relatives.

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The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised to enact an anti-conversion law if elected to government in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India.  The party won the election and now looks set to fulfill that promise.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister B.C. Khanduri on April 15 said that his government would introduce a law to ban “conversions with allurement or fraudulent means” in the upcoming session of the Assembly . . .
. . .
A representative of the Christian Legal Association told Compass that the “sole motive” behind proposing anti-conversion bills is to make it easier for Hindu extremists to thwart Christian work, adding that it was “worrisome” that the number of states with an anti-conversion law was increasing.

If BJP goes ahead with the promised bill, Uttarakhand will be the eighth Indian state with so-called Freedom of Religion Acts.  Such anti-conversion laws are widely used by Hindu extremists as pretexts to harass and attack Christians.

A leader of the Hindu nationalist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP) has called for enactment of a national anti-conversion law.

h/t: Persecuted Church Weblog

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• British Hindu tells Christians to stop evangelising in India
• Hindu militants want conversions prohibited while they “re-convert” Christians
• Nationalist Hindus want Christian missionaries arrested
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• Christian conversions present “grave threat to Hindu society”

Muslims set upon Christians this weekend in the village of Bahma on the outskirts of Cairo, inflicting injuries and destroying homes.  Local Coptic Christians planned to develop a church on a property already owned by Christians, but Muslims went on a rampage when word got out.

The following information comes from a blog post written by an Egyptian Muslim, as translated by Global Voices Online.

Muslim Egyptians burned five shops which are the only means of livelihood for complete families. They also burned 25 homes which are the private property and shelter for their Coptic neighbours. The Muslims burned the shops and homes with Kerosene. They then hit their residents with sticks and pelted them with stones. According to the Masri El Youm newspaper, this is what happened in the village of Bahma and resulted in 11 Egyptian Coptics suffering from burns, fractured bones and bruises.
. . .
The reason for all this? A total of 300 Copts in the village wanted to transfer one of the homes, owned by a Coptic in the village, into a church. One of the villages, who is said to be an Imam (clergyman) of a mosque, distributed leaflets calling upon Muslims to defend their beautiful village.

Neither the Egyptian government nor the press paid much attention to the conflict.

Another Egyptian blogger points out that the disturbance started after Friday prayers at the village’s main mosque.  Is that a coincidence or what?

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The House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada recently issued a statement on same-sex blessings, which said that it is appropriate for homosexuals in “committed relationships” to receive confirmation and communion.  The ministry of the Zacchaeus Fellowship, a group of Canadian Anglicans who have struggled with same-sex attraction, has once again been ignored by our church’s leaders.  Today Zacchaeus Fellowship members issued an open response to the House of Bishops.  Here's an excerpt.

On October 27, 2005, several members of the Zacchaeus Fellowship made a presentation to the House of Bishops (available at www.zacchaeus.ca/hob.html), in which we spoke about our pasts, our struggles, our hopes and our hurts. Every member of the House of Bishops has also received a copy of our booklet Transformed by an Encounter with Christ.

Your statement has betrayed our witness to the House of Bishops. You bent over backwards to express sympathy for our brothers and sisters who openly espouse the gay lifestyle, yet your statement held not one word of pastoral sensitivity towards us. In the name of pastoral care, you have left us feeling spiritually bulldozed and utterly deserted by our church. We are not at all able to agree with the statement’s claim to consistency with paragraph 143 of the Windsor Report, which affirms “the duty of pastoral care that is laid upon all Christians to respond with love and understanding to people of all sexual orientations.” We point to your lack of so much as an acknowledgment that the Anglican Church of Canada contains a constituency of individuals who are ex-gay, ex-lesbian, or living chastely with same-sex desires.

We remind you that this is not the first time such rejection of this constituency has taken place. At General Synod 2004, Resolution A134 was passed, intentionally involving gay and lesbian persons in the dialogue and study. Yet, a second amendment which was proposed to include “those who identify themselves as ex-gay or ex-lesbian” was defeated.

Why does the Anglican Church of Canada continue to disregard and belittle those in our midst who struggle to obey Christian teaching on homosexuality?  Such marginalisation is quite disgraceful and unbecoming a church of Christ.

Read the whole thing.

The Rev Dawn MacDonald, Rector of St Mary Magdalene, Fort Nelson, and chair of the Zacchaeus Fellowship, wrote of the power of Christ to transform illicit sexual desires here.  See also the testimonies posted at the Fellowship’s website.

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