Eritrea: 17 Christians Arrested And Taken To Unknown Location After Gathering Together For Prayer And Fasting

Hebrews 13:3, “Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”

Open Doors USA – “Would you take a moment to pray for these Christians from Eritrea? Thank you for being One With Them!

Eritrean security arrested 17 Christians in Emba-Derho on Wednesday, October 10. The arrest took place after the house, where the believers were gathered, was searched. Among the group were five married women who have children.

Emba-Derho is approximately 14 km from the capital Asmara. The families were taking part in a ‘prayer and fasting’ program at a fellow believers’ house when security officers interrupted the meeting. Everyone present was arrested and taken to an unknown location.

According to an eye-witness, the believers were beaten by the officers who marched them to the main road where a military truck waited. Women were heard crying and pleading for mercy.

Prayer Points:

1. Pray for God’s grace and protection on these Christians, especially on the women.

2. Please pray that family members would soon find out more about their beloveds whereabouts.” Source – Open Doors.

Flashback: Eritrean Christian in Saudi Arabia Faces Death Penalty for Sharing His Faith – “An Eritrean Christian is facing the death penalty in Saudi Arabia after being arrested for sharing his faith with Muslims. Mussie Eyob was detained by the authorities at a mosque in Saudi’s second largest city, Jeddah, on 12 February. He had gone there to meet and talk with local Muslims after speaking about Christianity at the Eritrean Embassy for three days. Eyob was arrested for preaching to Muslims, an offence that carries the death penalty in Saudi Arabia.”  Read more.

Flashback: Eritrean Christians In Cairo Abducted By Islamists, Told To Convert To Islam – “Christian Solidarity Worldwide has received alarming reports of the abductions of six Eritrean women in Cairo. The women were reportedly abducted in the Egyptian capital by men purporting to be police officers. The women, aged between 20 and 32, claim to have travelled in a white taxi that was stopped by men in police uniforms, who opened the vehicle and sprayed an unknown substance into their faces that caused them to lose consciousness. When they awoke, they were in an unfamiliar location.” Read more.

“De-Christianization”: European Muslims Turn Churches Into Mosques, “We’re Here To Stay … Convert To Islam, And You Will Find Peace”

The “religion of peace” defines the Muslim understanding of “peace” yet again: nothing less than complete and utter submission to Islam, or else …

1 Timothy 4:1, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons …”

By Giulio Meotti, INN – “Bouchra Ismaili, a Rotterdam city councilman: ‘Listen up, crazy freaks, we’re here to stay. You’re the foreigners here, with Allah on my side I’m not afraid of anything. Take my advice: convert to Islam, and you will find peace’.

The Middle East is full of churches turned into Islamic sites, like the Umayyad in Damascus, the Ibn Tulun in Cairo and the cathedral of St. Sophia in Instanbul.

In Hevron and on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the Muslims built their sites on the Jewish ones.

A sad prophecy of the writer Emile Cioran once cast a sinister prophecy on Europe: ‘The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque’.

This is now a reality. But unlike the Middle East, where non-Muslim sites were razed or violently converted to Islam, in Europe this process is voluntary.

The church of Saint-Eloi in the French region of Vierzon will soon become a mosque. The diocese of Bourges has put on sale the church and a Muslim organization, l’Association des Marocains, made the most generous offer to buy the site.

The church of Saint-Eloi is located in an area inhabited by Turks and Moroccans. It’s the ‘de-Christianization’ of Europe, which is naturally followed by its gradual Islamization and increasing anti-Semitism. Of 27.000 inhabitants in the town of Vierzon, only 300 go to church once a week.

In the past decade, French Catholic bishops formally closed more than 60 churches, many of which are destined to become mosques, according to the research conducted by the newspaper La Croix.

According to a recent report of the US Pew Center, Islam is already ‘the fastest-growing religion in Europe,’ where the number of Muslims has tripled over the past 30 years. One third of all European children will be born to Muslim families by 2025.

Demography is the most important symptom of exhaustion: without a cradle, you can’t sustain a civilization.

To understand this historic process one has to see the number of churches converted into mosques.

In the Netherlands, more than

Syria: Car Bomb Timed To Detonate In Christian Quarter Of Damascus As People Were Travelling To Church, 10 Killed

By Ruth Sherlock, The Telegraph – “A car bomb exploded outside a police station in the Old City of Damascus on Sunday, drawing the city’s historical Christian quarter into the civil war.

Up to 10 people were killed and 15 wounded as the charge detonated at the historical gate of Bab Touma, a busy pick up point for taxis and buses.

‘The bomb exploded as people were moving to go to Churches for Sunday mass. It exploded just outside the police station. There was a bus stop right beside it,’ said a resident calling himself George who works in a hotel just a few streets away from the explosion. ‘I felt the explosion. The ground beneath me shook and I can see black smoke rising from the area.

‘Terrorists are doing this,’ said George, a Christian who, like many residents in Bab Touma lives in fear of the rebel fighters trying to gain control of the capital.

Encircled by thick rock historic city walls, the narrow alleyways and wooden roofed Damascene homes of the Old City had thus far remained largely insulated from the fighting that has reached the capital in recent months…

The bomb detonated as UN peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi met with President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.” Read more.

Flashback: Syria: Entire Christian Family Beheaded By Suspected Islamists In Damascus – “As reported by Fides sources in Damascus, the Christians in the suburbs of Jaramana (south-west of Damascus) and Zamalka (South-East of the city) are under pressure from armed groups jiahdisti and are terrified. Today in Zamalka a family of Armenian Christians was found murdered, and all members of the family horribly decapitated. The execution brings to mind the work of radical Islamist Salafis.” Read more.

Flashback: ‘Deliberate and Growing’: Christian Persecution From ‘Arab Spring’ Insurgents in Syria Becoming a Steadily Growing Reality, ‘It Will Never Be the Same Anymore’ – “Refugees who have fled to Jordan from Syria are telling mission leaders supported by Christian Aid Mission about deliberate, new persecution from the ‘Arab Spring’ insurgents who are seeking to overthrow the brutal Assad regime in Damascus. Nearly 100,000 Christians so far have fled from Homs and other cities being targeted by government forces, but it is no longer just to escape the crossfire. Now, more reports are revealing that a new wave of persecution is deliberate and growing… ‘It is over; we can’t get back what we lost … It will never be the same anymore for me or my family.’” Read more.

Australia: Convert To Islam Receives 40 Lashes As Punishment For Drinking Alcohol, ‘You Will Remember This Pain’

Drinking alcohol (which actually has some health benefits in small quantities) resulted in this convert to Islam receiving a painful lashing from his ‘spiritual adviser.’ But he would have been praised for drinking camel urine …

AAP – “A Muslim man who was whipped 40 times for drinking alcohol was told to remember the pain next time he thought of picking up a drink, a Sydney magistrate has been told.

Zakaryah Raad, 21, Tolga Cifci, 21, Wassim Fayad, 44, and Cengiz Coskun, 22, faced Burwood Local Court today charged with lashing Christian Martinez, 31, with an electric cable as punishment under sharia for drinking alcohol.

The four men have pleaded not guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and stealing CCTV footage from Mr Martinez’s apartment in Silverwater, in Sydney’s west, in the early hours of July 17 last year.

The court heard Fayad, also known as Fadi Alemaddin, carried out the alleged whipping while the three other men held Mr Martinez down on his bed.

Fayad had become Mr Martinez’s ‘spiritual leader’ after he converted to Islam before the alleged incident, prosecutor Sevinch Morkaya said.

Mr Martinez called Fayad on the evening of the alleged event, saying he needed help after he had drunk alcohol, the court was told.

‘It means I’m going to tie you up, brother,’ Fayad allegedly replied.

The court heard the four men then went to Mr Martinez’s apartment and carried out the whipping, pausing twice to allow Mr Martinez to vomit.

After the 40 lashes were administered, Fayad told Mr Martinez: ‘I did it because I love you. Next time you think of picking up a drink, you will remember this pain’, Ms Morkaya said.

Ms Morkaya said the court hearing was not about the Islamic faith.

Instead, it was about the ‘imposing of their view of sharia law’, she said.

The hearing continues before Magistrate Brian Maloney.” Source – The Sydney Morning Herald.

Twisted Appeasement: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Assumes America Is Not The Enemy Of Islamists, But Islamists Say Otherwise

By BARRY RUBIN, Jerusalem Post – “One of President Barack Obama’s main themes is to convince Middle East Islamists that America is not their enemy. But the reason this strategy never works is that the radicals know better. The United States is their enemy.

No amount of sympathy, empathy, economic aid, apology or appeasement will change this fact. Nor did such efforts succeed in making either Obama or the United States popular in such circles and the tens of millions of people influenced by them. The only thing surprising about all of this is that so few ‘experts’ and politicians seem to comprehend it.

There are a number of reasons why this is true, though many people mistakenly think they must find just one factor that explains this reality. The causes of this enmity include:

• American policies. True, the United States has supported Israel and also many Arab regimes over the years – including countries like Morocco, Tunisia, post- Gaddafi Libya, Egypt, pre-Hezbollah Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, post-Saddam Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. The Islamists are equally unhappy with the US support for the Palestinian Authority.

In short, US support for any non-radical regime makes radicals angry and will always do so.

So what if the United States is nice to radical or Islamist regimes? Will that help? No. The radicals still keep their goals – which include throwing US influence out of the region and overthrowing its allies – no matter what Washington tries to do to please them. In the context of their ideology, they interpret US concessions as signs of weakness which thus invite them to become even more militant and aggressive.

In Libya and Iraq, the governments have been pretty much directly installed by America. Thus, anyone who wants to overthrow those governments has a strong vested interest in hating and attacking Americans. The assassination of the ambassador to Libya wasn’t an accident or the result of a video but the inevitable and logical outcome of the political situation there.

As for Israel, giving that country less help would not change the radical view. Only if the United States had the same policy as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood might it be forgiven. Merely putting more space between the United States and Israel, to paraphrase Obama’s stated intention, won’t do it. Even brokering a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which isn’t going to happen of course, won’t help.

On the contrary, the radicals – especially Hamas, its Egyptian backers and Iran – would go into a frenzy of denunciation and attempt to destroy the arrangements, the failure of which would then be blamed on America. In the Middle East, peacemakers aren’t blessed, they’re assassinated.” Read more.

IPT: ‘Scores Of Known Radical Islamists Made Hundreds Of Visits To The Obama White House, Meeting With Top Administration Officials’

By Steve Emerson and John Rossomando, IPT – “A year-long investigation by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has found that scores of known radical Islamists made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, meeting with top administration officials.

Court documents and other records have identified many of these visitors as belonging to groups serving as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic militant organizations.

The IPT made the discovery combing through millions of White House visitor log entries. IPT compared the visitors’ names with lists of known radical Islamists. Among the visitors were officials representing groups which have:

• Been designated by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorist trials; Extolled Islamic terrorist groups including Hamas and Hizballah;
• Obstructed terrorist investigations by instructing their followers not to cooperate with law enforcement;
• Promoted the incendiary conspiratorial allegation that the United States is engaged in a ‘war against Islam’— a leading tool in recruiting Muslims to carry out acts of terror;
• Repeatedly claimed that many of the Islamic terrorists convicted since 9-11 were framed by the U.S government as part of an anti-Muslim profiling campaign.

Individuals from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) visited the White House at least 20 times starting in 2009. In 2008, CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist money laundering case in U.S. history – the trial of the Holy Land Foundation in which five HLF officials were convicted of funneling money to Hamas.

U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis later ruled that, ‘The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the association’ of CAIR to Hamas, upholding their designations as unindicted co-conspirators. In 2008, the FBI formally ended all contact with CAIR because of its ties to Hamas.

In January 2004, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles office, publicly defended Palestinian terror attacks in comments before Muslim students at the University of California – Los Angeles, saying that terrorists were exercising their ‘legitimate right’ to defend themselves against Israeli occupation.

Ayloush, who was a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., casts the United States as controlled by Israeli interests. At a 2008 CAIR banquet in San Diego, he imagined ‘an America that respects and humanizes religion. It’s an America that is free to act on its values and not on the interests of any foreign lobby.’ In 2004, he said that the war on terror had become a ‘war on Muslims.’ Ayloush attended at least two White House meetings.

The logs show Ayloush met with