‘Remarkable’: Dreams And Visions Bringing More Middle East Muslims To Faith In Christ ‘Since The Birth Of Islam’

Psalm 70:4, “Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; And let those who love Your salvation say continually, ‘Let God be magnified!'”

CBN Host: “In both Egypt and Syria we’re seeing Christians deciding to leave, some of those who are leaving Syria were actually [Christian] refugees from Iraq. With all this trouble going on, are these Christians running out of safe havens?”

Chris Mitchell – “They are.  …[In] 2003 when the Iraq war started, and then the sectarian violence — the Muslim against Christian violence — thousands left. Some of them fled to Syria. Now those Christians in Syria, they really don’t know where to go. Some may be going to Jordan, which might be the last safe haven for Christians in the Middle East …”

CBN Host: “… Despite the turmoil we know that the Lord always finds a way to reach people. We hear about Muslims having dreams and visions of Christ. Share some of those stories.”

Chris Mitchell: “I think that’s one of the most remarkable things happening in the Middle East right now, and the missionaries that I’ve … talked to … say that more Muslims are coming to faith in Jesus Christ than any time since the birth of Islam 1400 years ago. Many of them are coming through dreams and visions, literally, people having dreams of a man in white who calls Himself Jesus and says ‘Follow Me’ for example. It’s happening in Iran. In fact Iran, some say, is the fastest growing church in the world today and that most of the people that are coming are influenced by a dream or a vision that tells them about Jesus, and then through that they may get a Bible, they may meet a Christian, and it’s sort of [the] initiation of their faith in Jesus Christ …”

Update: Old video no longer available. Here is a related video:

Tanzania: Muslim Men In Zanzibar Still Beating Their Wives Despite Efforts To Minimize Domestic Violence

BY ISSA YUSSUF, allAfrica – “DESPITE ongoing efforts to minimize domestic violence, promote gender equality and empower women, new study in Zanzibar indicates that many women are still beaten and bullied by men including Muslim clerics!

In its report, the Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA) – Zanzibar revealed that although men beat women, but the number of cases being reported to the police remain few, mainly because most women opt to tolerate violence in order to keep her family together. ‘Women have testified to have been bullied and beaten by men, but they think it is improper to report the case.

Some get hurt severely in the domestic violence, but treat themselves silently to save the husband or partner,’ the report says. The report says that women beating in Zanzibar are linked to love jealousy, disputes over wealth and family care, alcohol, neglect in marriage, and men superiority in the family. The report further says that most of the women asked during the survey held in ten districts of Zanzibar, agreed that beating and bullying is common but done under secrecy.

However, with the help from gender activists like the Zanzibar Female Lawyers Association (ZAFELA) and TAMWA through its programme of WEZA, many women in both urban and rural have been transforming gradually and can now at least argue with men and defend their rights. ‘In fact, the awareness about women rights, by TAMWA has helped me and other women. We can now dare to ask men when there is misunderstanding in the family.

We try to educate our husbands to respect our rights,’ Ms Khadija Hassan, 41, from Bumbwini village, North Unguja says. She said that most males are short-tempered and therefore disputes in families end in intimidation and beating. ‘It sometimes ends in divorce and split in family,’ she said. What if my wife is stubborn and intimidates me to either beat her or divorce her when she is angry?

The study has revealed that some husbands/men in Zanzibar, Muslim dominated islands, are violent and say that Islam through the holy book of Quran and Prophet Muhammad allows them to beat disobedient women.” Read more.

Muslim Cleric In Egypt: Islam Teaches A Man To Beat His Wife So That She’ll Treat Him With Kindness, Respect, And Know He Is Superior – “Islam instructs a man to beat his wife as a last resort before divorce, so that she will mend her ways, treat him with kindness and respect, and know that her husband has a higher status than her… Allah said: ‘Admonish those of them on whose part your fear disobedience, refuse to share their beds, and beat them.’ … A good woman, even if beaten by her husband, puts her hand in his and says: ‘I will not rest until you are pleased with me.’ This [is] how the Prophet Mohammed taught his women to be.” Watch Video.

Muslim Persecution Of Christians: July, 2012

Matthew 10:22, “And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.”

By Raymond Ibrahim – “Several reports appearing in July indicate that Christian minorities all around the Muslim world—especially women and children—are being abducted, tortured, raped, forced to convert to Islam, and/or enslaved. In Egypt, at least 550 such cases have been documented in the last five years, and have only increased since the revolution. Christians who manage to escape back to their families often find the government siding with the Muslim abductors. One young mother who recently testified before the Helsinki Commission explained how she was snatched in broad daylight, as her abductor shouted to bystanders while dragging her to a waiting taxi, ‘No one interfere! She is an enemy of Islam.’

Identical reports are emerging from Pakistan, where ‘persecution, kidnapping and abduction of Christian women and girls,’ including many married women with children, are on the rise. Last year the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said that 1800 Christian and Hindu girls were forcibly converted to Islam. Most recently, the sister of a pastor was ‘kidnapped raped and forcibly converted to Islam.’ She ‘was kidnapped around a month ago by some Muslim men while returning home from college. She was held for days, suffered sexual abuse, threats and violence. In such a state of terror and exhaustion, first she was coerced into converting to Islam, and then marriage. Her family reported the incident to the police station in Chunian, but no investigations have been conducted and instead her abductors have presented a report to the court attesting to the girl now being Muslim and legally married. Among other things, the girl is a minor and, according to the law, marriage is not permitted to minors.’

The tiny Palestinian Christian community in the Hamas-run Gaza strip is also under siege, and charges that five Christians were abducted and pressured into converting to Islam. Because they made this forced conversion charge known, ‘members of the Christian community now fear reprisal attacks by Muslim extremists.’ Some have appealed to the Vatican and Christian groups and churches in the West for help. Yet ‘we only hear voices telling us to stay where we are and to stop making too much noise,’ said a Christian man living in Gaza City. ‘If they continue to turn a blind eye to our tragedy, in a few months there will be no Christians left in Palestine. Today it’s happening in the Gaza Strip, tomorrow it will take place in Bethlehem.’

Categorized by theme, July’s assemblage of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity

France: Marseille Mayor Calls For Military To Be Deployed To Tackle Muslim Gangs In ‘No-Go Zones’

I don’t want to say I told you so, so I won’t. And remember, Dhimmedia, don’t point out the fact that ‘Muslims’ are a major contributor to the problem. Because that would be insensitive and Islamophobic. Let’s simply characterize it as ‘gang drug violence’ and look the other way instead …

Marseille Mayor Samia Ghali

By Henry Samuel, The Telegraph – “The appeal highlighted the escalating drug violence in the Mediterranean port city that claimed its 14th victim in eight months earlier this week.

Kalashnikov-wielding gangsters shot dead Walid Marzouki, 25, a suspected trafficker, at close range on Wednesday night as he drove his black Twingo in the streets of France’s second biggest city.

It was the second gangland killing this month and the latest in a wave of deaths to hit Marseille Nord, one of the city’s toughest drug-infested suburbs, sparking Samia Ghali, the Socialist mayor of two local districts, to call for military intervention.

‘Faced with the weapons of war being used by these networks, only the army can intervene,’ Miss Ghali, also a senator, told local newspaper La Provence.

She said that the army should set up roadblocks around neighbourhoods to vet inhabitants for weapons and drugs ‘like in times of war’.

‘It no longer makes any difference to send in a police car to stop the dealers. When 10 of them are arrested, 10 others take up the torch. It’s like fighting an anthill.’…

Speaking from Madrid, President Hollande said: ‘The army has no place in controlling the districts of the French Republic’, pointing out that gendarmes, who have a military status, are already present in many areas.

Manuel Valls, the interior minister, said: ‘It is out of the question for the army to respond to these tragedies and crimes. There is no internal enemy.’…

On Thursday, Marseille’s Right-wing mayor, Jean-Claude Gaudin, slammed Miss Ghali’s remarks as ‘irresponsible’, saying the city needed ‘police reinforcements, not a call to civil war’.” Read more.

Flashback: French Suburbs Becoming ‘Separate Islamic Societies’ – “France’s decrepit city suburbs are becoming ‘separate Islamic societies’ cut off from the state, according to a major new study that examines the spread of Islam in France… This, in turn, is turning France into a ‘divided nation.’ Most Muslim youth are ‘not employable.’ More than 20% of the residents of Clichy and Montfermeil leave school without a diploma (about 150,000 people per year), according to the report. The unemployment rate for Muslim youth in the suburbs of Paris is around 43%. These drop-outs enter a cycle of social exclusion negatively shapes their lives and those of their children. Many Muslim youth turn to ‘deviant behaviors across the range of incivilities in a parallel economy in which drug trafficking is the most prominent.'” Read more.

Flashback: Turkish Drug Mafia Conquering Europe – “Turkish criminal gangs are ruling over the streets in the UK, controlling much of the drug market in Germany, as well as providing political influence in the Netherlands… Turkish mafia is influential especially in Germany and the Netherlands. According to annual report of the German police, Turks as well as migrants from Nigeria and Sierra Leone are playing major role in coordination of crime among the immigrants… Back in 2010 Militant Islam Monitor website wrote that Turkish criminal gangs are controlling the streets of Berlin… Turks are controlling major part of the black drug market in Europe – about 93%… Muslims from African countries are also joining… ” Read more.

Germany: Muslims Assault Jews In Berlin, Jews Cautioned To No Longer Dress Like Jews

The Jewish Press – “After an attack on a rabbi in Berlin, Gideon Joffe, the head of the Berlin Jewish community, said he would ‘not recommend that any Jew go around in parts of Berlin with a kipah.’

On Tuesday, Rabbi Daniel Alter of Berlin was violently attacked while picking up his daughter from a piano lesson. He currently is recovering from surgery for a broken cheekbone. The attackers, reportedly Arab youths, asked Alter – who was wearing a kipah – if he was Jewish before hitting him in the face. They then allegedly verbally threatened Alter’s 6-year-old daughter.

Many Jewish religious leaders in the country advise their congregants against openly wearing Jewish garb in public; men routinely wear baseball caps or other hats over their yarmulkes when in public. Concern about openly wearing the skullcaps grew following an anti-Semitic attack on the Chabad Jewish kindergarten in Berlin in 2007.” Read more.

Flashback: ‘Muslims Are The New Nazis Of Europe’ – “Well, we already knew it, but now there’s confirmation: Muslims are the new Nazis of Europe. They are responsible for at least 50% (and probably far more) of the anti-Semitic hate crimes in Europe. Don’t be shocked if that number gets mirrored here (the FBI refuses to keep publicly-released statistics on the heritage of hate-crime perpetrators here–gee, I wonder why; might get in the way of their ‘outreach’ to extremist Muslims)…” Read more.

Flashback: Downfall Part 2: German Politicians Welcome Introduction Of Sharia Law In Germany, ‘Good For Integration’ – “Most politicians in Germany have gotten the message: The quickest way to spark a career-damaging controversy is to make a facile comment about Nazis or the Holocaust. Media critics and political opponents are quick to pounce. But that isn’t the only way to attract unwanted attention, as Jochen Hartloff, the interior minister of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, found out this week. In an interview with the Berlin tabloid BZ, Hartloff said that Sharia law, in a ‘modern form,’ would be acceptable in Germany.” Read more.

Flashback: Hamas Islamist MP: Allah Used The Nazis To Punish The Jews, Now It’s Our Turn – “Allah punished the Israelites many times throughout history. He punished them by means of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. He punished them by means of the Companions of the Prophet in the Arabian Peninsula, at Al-Madina, and at Khaybar. He punished them by means of the Germans, and before that by means of the Romans. Today, it is the turn of the Islamic nation to punish them once again.” Watch Video.

Russia: Female Actress And Break Dancer Converts To Islam, Trades In Boom Box For Suicide Vest

Romans 3:16-17, “Destruction and misery [are] in their ways; And the way of peace they have not known.”

By Nikolaus von Twickel, The Moscow Times – “The female suicide bomber that killed prominent Dagestani cleric Said Atsayev earlier this week had been a theater actress and member of a breakdance troupe before joining the republic’s Islamist movement, national media reported Thursday.

Aminat Kurbanova, born with the ethnic Russian surname Saprykina, graduated from Dagestan State University’s drama school in Makhachkala and went on to work in the city’s Russian-language Gorky Theater, Kommersant reported, citing an unspecified law enforcement source.

Together with her first husband, fellow actor Marat Kurbanov, she also was a member of a local breakdance ensemble that called itself ‘Snatch,’ the report said.

A number of videos of Snatch performances are available on YouTube, but none show female participants.

A video published by the Lifenews.ru tabloid website showed a woman resembling Kurbanova performing a classical dance with a man at an unidentified location.

Reports said Kurbanova converted to Islam after marriage and became a member of Dagestan’s radical Islamist insurgency after her husband was killed in an anti-terrorism operation in 2009.

Kurbanova subsequently married twice, and her last husband, Magomed Ilyasov, died when handling a self-made bomb, the state-run RIADagestan.ru news site reported.

Ilyasov is suspected of organizing a double suicide attack that killed two policemen and injured almost 30 in the Dagestani town of Gubden in February 2011. The two bombers were later identified as Vitaly Razdobudko and his wife Maria Khoroshyova, thought to be the first ethnic Slavs to carry out suicide attacks.

Investigators had put Kurbanova on a list of potentially dangerous persons last year, and she was erroneously thought to be a participant in a twin suicide car bomb that killed at least 13 people and wounded over 100 in Makhachkala this May, the Kommersant report said.

On Tuesday, Kurbanova detonated a bomb fixed to her body while posing as a pilgrim wishing to meet Atsayev in his native village of Chirkei.” Read more.

Christians In Pakistan Told To Convert To Islam Or Leave, ‘Otherwise They Will Face Consequences’

“A story of fear and blasphemy is in making in one of the Muslim majority area of Lahore like Mehrabad, a slum of Islamabad from where 600 hundred Christian families fled from home after Muslim mob attack after arrests of minor disabled Christian girl under blasphemy charges.

The venue of new horror and fear is reported by Christians via e-mails and SMS by Christian residents of LDA, Walton Road, Lahore, where Muslims sprayed bullets on homes of Christians on night of August 30, 2012, issuing warning ‘Convert to Islam or leave this neighborhood’. Today on August 31, 2012, Muslims are gathered in hundreds around Christian’s homes and chanting slogans ‘Naara-e-Takbeer’ which is used by Jihadists before attack to kill.

Rev. Dr. Jamil Nasir of Church Of Pentecost Lahore Pakistan, resident of same locality of Walton Road Lahore, says ‘It happened two nights ago when I was at a meeting and my family was alone at home. Some Maulvis (Islamic Clerics) came to my house and started banging and kicking the door. They wanted to meet me. My family was very scared and my children were crying and praying inside. They left and came back again. One of them said to me, ‘I want to become Christian’. I said, ‘I do not make anybody Christian’. The other one said ‘I was a Muslim and now I have become Christian, I need your help’. I understood the situation and knew that they were trying to harass me. So I did not answer them. They threatened me when they left’

It all started when a Muslim man named Ahmed Bhatti who owns a butcher shop next to the place where we hold our tent Church started a madrasah on his property. He started Melad (Islamic verses singing) there.

Last Sunday when Church service was over, more than dozen Muslim criminals gathered in front of Church and started harassing Christian girls who were leaving after services.

Ahmed Bhatti and Muslim home owners of area ordered their Christians tenants to convert to Islam otherwise vacate their properties. They have vacated some shops that were run by Christians. One Christian man had his Gospel music on in the shop; they beat him up and kicked him out from that shop on gunpoint.

Ahmed Bhatti on his microphone was shouting, ‘I am giving Christians this invitation to convert to Islam otherwise they will face  consequences’ while announcement was made gathering of Muslims were raising Islamic Slogans.

Rev. Dr. Jamil said ‘We called the Police who came but left after few hours’. The Christian community is contacting their leaders for intervention and support for their safety and security.” Source – Pakistan Christian Post.

TIME: US Scales-Back Military Exercise With Israel, Affecting Potential Iran Strike

By KARL VICK AND AARON J. KLEIN – “Seven months ago, Israel and the United States postponed a massive joint military exercise that was originally set to go forward just as concerns were brimming that Israel would launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The exercise was rescheduled for late October, and appears likely to go forward on the cusp of the U.S. presidential election. But it won’t be nearly the same exercise. Well-placed sources in both countries have told TIME that Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation, slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile interception systems at the core of the joint exercise.

‘Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’ a senior Israeli military official tells TIME.

The reductions are striking. Instead of the approximately 5,000 U.S. troops originally trumpeted for Austere Challenge 12, as the annual exercise is called, the Pentagon will send only 1,500 service members, and perhaps as few as 1,200. Patriot anti-missile systems will arrive in Israel as planned, but the crews to operate them will not. Instead of two Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships being dispatched to Israeli waters, the new plan is to send one, though even the remaining vessel is listed as a ‘maybe,’ according to officials in both militaries.

A Pentagon spokesperson declined to discuss specifics of the reduced deployment, noting that planning for the exercise was classified. But in an e-mailed statement, Commander Wendy L. Snyder emphasized that the Israeli military has been kept informed of the changes. ‘Throughout all the planning and coordination, we’ve been lock-step with the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and will continue to do so,’ Snyder said.

U.S. commanders privately revealed the scaling back to their Israeli counterparts more than two months ago. The official explanation was budget restrictions. But the American retreat coincided with growing tensions between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations on Israel’s persistent threats to launch an airstrike on Iran.” Read more.

Israeli Paper Details Alleged Tense Confrontation Between Netanyahu, US Ambassador Over Obama Policy: ‘Lightning and Sparks Flew’ – “Two new signs point to the deepening rift between the Obama administration and the Israeli government over how to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts: a reported confrontation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the U.S. ambassador to Israel and a statement by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey that he doesn’t want to be ‘complicit’ in an Israeli strike on Iran.” Read more.