Magic Statistics

Saudi Arabia’s crack religious police squad, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, ensure that no good deed goes unpunished.  The muttaweenies busted a Nigerian Muslim man for being alone with an elderly woman he had earlier taken to hospital.

Members of Saudi Arabia's controversial religious police have arrested a Nigerian man who converted to Islam for being alone with a woman he was not married to or related to. It happened after the African man helped the sick woman by taking her to hospital.
. . .
Arab News reported that Ibrahim Mohammed Lawal, a Nigerian student of Islam in Riyadh, learned that his 63-year-old neighbor was in need of medical attention and took her to hospital.

While checking on her condition several days later, he was arrested by members of the plain-clothed vice squad, known in Arabic as the muttawa or muttaween.

The poor guy was arrested fifty days ago, and he is still in the slammer.  He says he just wants to go back to Nigeria, and who can blame him?  I'd bet he's also thinking of converting out of Islam, but he's too smart to say that out loud.

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In 1998, Yukoner George Jansen pled guilty to his ninth drunk-driving charge but fled the territory after requesting permission to enter a rehab programme.  After almost a decade on the lam, BC police stopped him for speeding, discovered the outstanding warrant, and shipped him back here.

So, this week he had another day in court.  No guilty plea, however.  His lawyer argued for dismissal because his right to a speedy judicial process had been violated.  The judge wasn’t having any of it.

He argued the police and the courts took too long to bring him to justice but Chief Territorial Court judge John Faulkner says it defies common sense for Jansen to argue his rights were prejudiced because the police didn’t chase him hard enough. Now Jansen is back behind bars waiting to find out how long he’ll have to stay in jail.

Less than two weeks ago, a Yukon lawyer tried to get a judge to award his client a credit on jail time—and now this.  I know Yukon judges have a reputation for being more lenient than they are in southern Canada, but this is beyond the pale.

The block quote comes from this morning’s 7:30 am news broadcast on CBC Whitehorse.  Unfortunately, it’s not available online, so no link. 

Previous related post: Does this mean he can commit a free break-and-enter?

According to the World Christian Database, China has 111 million Christians, about 90% of them Protestant, mostly Pentecostal—more than the 75 million that belong to the Communist Party.  That would give China the world’s third highest number of Christians, behind only the United States and Brazil.

The Center projects that by 2050, there will be 218 million Christians in China, 16 percent of the population, enough to make China the world's second-largest Christian nation. According to the Center, there are 10,000 conversions in China every day.

If current growth trends continue, China could become the world’s largest Christian country well before the end of this century.

The growth of Christianity in China is even more remarkable in view of state discouragement and frequent persecution of religious activity.  Foreign missionaries were expelled after Mao Zedong led the Communists to power in 1949, so virtually all Christian growth is attributable to home-grown evangelism.

Asia Times columnist Spengler thinks that East Asian Christianity could overwhelm even Islam.

China may be for the 21st century what Europe was during the 8th-11th centuries, and America has been during the past 200 years: the natural ground for mass evangelization. If this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to recognize it. Islam might defeat the western Europeans, simply by replacing their diminishing numbers with immigrants, but it will crumble beneath the challenge from the East.

In the meantime, official persecution remains a constant threat for China’s Christians.  A recent instance: The military raided a house church in Xinjiang province, north-western China, detained several believers and their relatives, and confiscated Bibles and other religious materials.  China Aid has obtained a government document that holds families responsible for trying to “reform” Christian relatives and ensuring that they do not engage in religious activities or meet with other believers.

The document issued by agencies under Division 49 of 3rd Agricultural Division of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps holding relatives of Christians responsible if these Christians are found to be in a gathering, sharing Gospel materials, Bible studies, or other activities.  According to this document, the relatives of Christians have the obligation to help the Christians reform; they must always be watchful of the activities of the Christians; they must make sure these Christians don’t meet in a gathering and prevent them from establishing ties with each, sharing Christian literature, and materials, etc.

Employed family members who fail to fulfill those duties can be suspended from their jobs so they have more time to “educate their relatives until they become good citizens again”.

h/t for Asia Times link: Transfigurations

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St Catherines, Ontario, is a hotbed of satanic worship.  Who knew?

The Miami-based preacher who proclaims himself the Anti-Christ and whose followers believe he is the second coming of Jesus Christ (try to get your head around that juxtaposition) visited St Catherines last weekend for his organisation’s Canadian convention.  The man’s name is Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda, and his organisation (one hesitates to call it "ministry") is called Creciendo en Gracia, or Growing in Grace.

A controversial religious figure who some call a dangerous cult leader while others call Lord spent two days in St. Catharines over the weekend to nurture his Canadian flock.
. . .
The self-proclaimed Anti-Christ’s followers, who believe he is the second coming of Jesus Christ, sang his praises and danced with feverish joy.

“He is God on Earth, governing the nation,” they sang in their native Spanish tongue.

De Jesus Miranda, a Puerto Rico native, has created a religious empire around the globe through his contentious religious teachings, which espouses there is no devil and no sin.

Anti-Christ, head of Growing In Grace, teaches that there is no such thing as sin.  Then who needs grace?

The convention was attended by about 100 pitiable souls.

A final distasteful tidbit: Last March, 19 members of the man’s St Catherines flock had “666” tattooed on their skin.  Lovely.

h/t: Religion News Blog

An 24-year-old Egyptian man who was raised a Muslim converted to Christianity when he was 16.   The government refused to issue revised identification papers, and he filed suit in a bid to force official recognition of his conversion. Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy launched his court case now because he and his pregnant wife, also a Muslim convert to Christ, want their child officially recognised as Christian from birth.

Though Egyptian law does not forbid conversion from Islam to Christianity, it provides no legal means to make the change. Converts to Christianity usually hide their identity to avoid torture and forced recantation at the hands of family members and security police.

Hegazy, whose wife Zeinab is four months pregnant, said that he wants his child to be born with Christian papers. The couple, who were forced to hold an Islamic wedding ceremony because of their legal status as Muslims, know that a Christian ID card will allow their child to take Christian religion classes in school, marry in a church and even openly attend services without fear of harassment.
. . .
Hegazy, a native of Port Said, is the first Muslim-by-birth to openly challenge the government’s restriction of conversion away from Islam.

Not only that, Mr Hegazy’s lawyer has been sued and threatened for taking the case.

Mamdouh Nakhla of the Kalema Center for Human Rights has taken Hegazy’s case, telling Compass from Cairo today that the lawsuit has caused him “big problems.”

Several Muslim clerics and lawyers headed up by Sheikh Youssef el-Badry have opened a case against the lawyer on charges of causing sectarian strife and baptizing Muslims.

A source close to Nakhla told Compass that Egypt’s security police, the State Security Investigation (SSI), called the lawyer to tell him to withdraw the case or he may be killed.

The charge of “causing sectarian strife” is rich.  Egyptian Muslims frequently attack Coptic Christians for no apparent reason, other than anti-Christian animus, with few or no legal repercussions.

An average of over a thousand Egyptian Christians convert to Islam every year with no legal problems.  Converting from Islam to Christianity (or, indeed, any other faith) is legally impossible because, under Egypt’s constitution, sharia is the foundation of the legal system.  Sharia is generally interpreted as outlawing “apostasy” from Islam.

Previous related posts:

• Egyptian Christians document scores of attacks
• Egyptian Muslims attack Christians over church plans
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UPDATE (8 Aug.): The lawyer has succumbed to intimidation and withdrawn from the case, saying he does not want to offend Muslims.  Mr Hegazy has been forced into hiding after being denounced in the Egyptian press.