Anonymous Missionary: What it's like to be detained by the Egyptian police

Loved this (old) account of one missionary who was detained by the Egyptian police. One section:

Ala ‘The Terminal’, some people had been kept in that room for days if not weeks. The Bangledeshi men had no money and had been there for four days without eating. I was treated like a long lost Uncle after I bought them all bean sandwiches for breakfast (as much as they could eat!). In the midst of all this  – it was hard (although still possible) to dwell on my own misfortune for too long – and to tell the truth – feeding of inmates aside – I was very happy to see the comparatively kind manner with which the Egyptian police dealt with these people.

Read it all at SFM.

Bret Stephens @ WSJ: 'What comes after Europe?'

Great short article here:

And there was, finally, the whopping fiction that Europe had its own "model," distinct and superior to the American one, that immunized it from broader international currents: globalization, Islamism, demography. Europeans love their holidays and thought they were entitled to a long holiday from history as well.


All this did wonders, for a while, to mask European failures and puff up European pride. But there is always a danger in substituting grandiosity for achievement, mistaking pronouncements for facts, or, more generally, believing in your own nonsense.


Read it all at the WSJ.

Palestine to request recognition as a nation state by the UN.

Palestine to request recognition as a nation state by the UN.

Read it all at the IHT.

Abu Daoud says: this is a big deal. A really big deal. Palestine will not get full recognition because the USA will veto that at the Security Council level. But the General Assembly will certainly give Palestine non-member status, like the Vatican has. This means that technically Palestine will have international recognition to have its own currency, secure its own borders, issue passports, and so on--none of which it presently does.

The times they are a changin'...

Woodberry: 9/11 led to an increase in the number of missionaries to Muslims

One of the positive effects of 9/11 was that it forced Christians to seriously consider Islam and how they should respond to its growing global presence and authority:

The most significant missions development since 9/11 has been the increased number of students who want to be missionaries to Muslims. The first class I taught on Islam after 9/11 had 100 more students than usual. This interest built on the emphasis of the "AD2000 and Beyond" and Lausanne movements on the "10/40 window," the section of the world that includes major non-Christian religions. Increases in student numbers were also the result of interest in Muslims raised by the 1979 Khomeini Revolution in Iran. Todd Johnson, an editor of the Atlas of Global Christianity, has calculated a 26 percent increase between 2005 and 2010 in the number of missionaries working in Muslim-majority countries.

From Dudley Woodberry's article at Christianity Today, read the whole thing HERE.

'The Old Math' by Carol Catt, a poem about 9/11

The Old Math

Out of the East on stolen wings they came,
like raptors,
innocent of pity.
Self-righteous, single-minded,
they slit the air with hate keener than box cutters,
fell on unsuspecting prey,
on one,
then on its twin some minutes later.

They'd got it wrong,
of course -- the direct access into Paradise.
By another reckoning,
souls in their hundreds leapt up to God as one,
leaving a hole in the morning sky,
in a thousand thousand hearts.

By Carol M Catt
from Selected Poems


HT to VirtueOnline

Turkey to restore properties to Christian groups

Wow, and the good news for the Christians of Turkey does not cease. I recently posted on some good news HERE, and now we read this:

The Turkish government made a historic U-turn in state policy this past weekend, issuing an official decree inviting Turkey’s Christian and Jewish communities to reclaim their long-confiscated religious properties. [...] 

Within hours of the surprise announcement, the boards of Turkey’s minority religious foundations in Istanbul were scrambling to review the status of their confiscated immovable properties. They must apply within the next 12 months to the General Foundations Board to recover each individual property. 

Their former holdings include schools, churches, cemeteries, stores, hospitals, orphanages, houses, apartment buildings and factories that were seized by the Turkish state and re-registered as public or foundation properties. A number were later sold to third parties.

Read it all at CompassDirect, and good for Turkey. If you want to know more about the growth of the Protestant Church in Turkey, the best article I know of is James Bultema's article in IJFM, which you can read here.

Zakaria Boutros: 'Islam is not just a religion, it's a state.'

Islam is not just a religion; this is a misunderstanding in the West. You think that Islam is like Judaism or Buddhism, so we give Islam lots of opportunities to grow in the West. No, Islam is a State, and religion is a factor to establish this state. It is a Kingdom, the Kingdom of Islam. Non-Muslims in their country are invaders. The invaders brought missionaries with them.

From Bob Blincoe's interview with Father (Abouna) Zakaria Boutros (or Botros), my favorite Coptic priest out there :-) This is from the third post on Blincoe's blog containing his interview.

I have written about Fr Boutros HERE and HERE, if you care to learn more about this impressive man. The second link there is one of the most commented-on posts I've ever have, if I'm not mistaken. Also, I develop a similar concept to what Fr Boutros said HERE: Islam, Religion Plus.

Pray for facility in travel for me and my family, please. --AD

Nulla Celebrior and the Crusades

Kudos to T L Winslow who found this obscure papal document (which you can read HERE). This is the document whereby the Bishop of Rome (aka the Pope, aka the Greatest Bridge-builder) announced that the Patriarch of Jerusalem was to be residential, that is, the Patriarchate was no longer simply an honorary title but a real bishopric where the Patriarch had to live in what was then the diseased cesspool that was Jerusalem. A key reason for this decision was that the Protestants had established a bishopric there a few years earlier when they sent Rabbi-Bishop Michael Solomon Alexander there.

So here is what the pope said about the Crusades, just to show you that back then the West did not hate its own history:

The eyes of Christians are focused on Palestine, particularly on the Holy Sepulcher. When the city fell into the hands of the barbarians, European princes stood up to fight for it in harsh and repeated wars so as to liberate it and to rid the faithful from the enormous difficulties and extreme injustice they were suffering. We have stated all these facts to indicate that it was only fair that the Christian people treat Jerusalem with reverence whether in the old ages or at the present age.

PS: SPecial thanks to Fr Hanna Kildani for posting that document.

Good news for Christians in Turkey

Turkish leaders smooth way for Christians

TURKEY The recently reelected Muslim prime minister of Turkey is making the country more comfortable for its Christian minority. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has granted Turkish citizenship to a number of young Eastern Orthodox bishops around the world. This makes the bishops eligible for leadership in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, currently run by 71-year-old Patriarch Bartholomew and an aging cohort. Erdogan's government has also allowed Christians to reclaim land they had lost illegally, restored old churches, and criticized ultranationalists responsible for recent violence against Christians.

From Christianity Today.

Trivia: the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem

What was the name of the papal bull whereby the residential Latin patriarchate was re-established in the city of Jerusalem?

What pope issued it?

In what year was it issued?

What development in Protestant missions occasioned this event?

Answers will be posted in the comment section once I have some guesses. If anyone can actually find the text to the papal bull online (in any language), they will earn my eternal gratitude! Heaven knows I have looked...

--AD

Christian ex-Muslim to be executed in Iran

Iran’s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that Yosef Nadarkhani, a 32 year-old Iranian evangelical pastor, must reject his Christian faith or be put to death. It’s the latest incident in the Islamist Republic’s continuous and increased assault on its small Christian population.

Nadarkhani was first arrested on the charge of apostasy (leaving Islam for another faith) in October 2009 and sentenced to death by hanging for his refusal to teach Islam to Christian children. While Nadarkhani hadn’t practiced any faith before he became a Christian at age 19, he was born to Muslim parents and thus considered to be a Muslim under Islamic law.

Coming to a European city near you soon! Read it all at Front Page.

'...Islam is violent'? What do you think?

It is forbidden to criticize Islam because Islam is violent, intolerant and world-conquering. Islam demands submission, and the West, decultured, indoctrinated, terrified, deluded, de-Christianized and in moral limbo, submits… because it cannot conceive of fighting back and saving its own civilization. How can it save a civilization that it hates, that it never really knew, and that is a constant reminder of the qualitative differences that inevitably exist between people, nations, ethnic groups, religions and races?

From Brussels Journal. Strong words. What do you think.

Read it all here.

The new St Francis Magazine

Well, the August 2011 SFM just came out. This is the one and only journal which explicitly deals with questions related to Christian witness in the Muslim (and especially Arab) world. While I enjoy other publications like IJFM and IBMR, I do think SFM is able to offer more for multiple reasons, but I won't go into that right now.

Anyway, have by now read most of the new issue. Here are my thoughts:

Basil Grafas, 'Year of the Lab Rat'. Well, Grafas doesn't pull any punches, his main point is that converts from Islam to Christianity are the most vocal opponents to what is often, incorrectly, called 'contextualization', ie, using Islamic forms and Islamic identity while proclaiming to be Christ-centered. My experience with Arab and Iranian MBB's totally backs this up, but then again, the insider movements I read about are mysterious and no details are given about them, so I have no way to evaluate them.

JS William, 'Inside/Outside: getting to the center of the Muslim contextualization debate'. Well, this is the main article of this SFM, imho. The writer (using another lame pseudonym...come on, William as a surname? Good grief...) has read most of the material about 'contextualization' in IJFM, SFM, and Evangelical Missions Quarterly (EMQ). But he has a huge chink in his armor. What is it? He doesn't know where the word contextualization comes from, and appears to be unaware that how his sources are using the word is incorrect. Ouch. Well, evangelicals have always been really good at not knowing history (hint: if you have not read Shoki Coe, don't even try to write about the topic). Still, the best article in this issue.

Duane Alexander Miller, 'Book Review: Charles Thorley Bridgeman, The Episcopal Church and the Middle East (New York: Morehouse-Gorham, 1958)'. A brief book review on an obscure book. But still, as an Anglican I am glad to see anything on the topic of the history of Anglicanism in the Middle East.

Download the whole issue here if you like.