Tag: persecution

DOJ cancels plan to ‘vigorously’ defend religious rights

Mary Margaret Olohan – June 10, 2021

Following backlash, the Justice Department has edited a court filing to remove a comment indicating that it will “vigorously” defend religious rights.

In the Tuesday court filing, the Justice Department said that it will defend the religious exemption of Christian schools, a religious exemption included in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as it applies to “‘sexual and gender minority students’ attending private religious colleges and universities that receive federal funding,” according to the filing.

The filing formerly mentioned that the Justice Department would “vigorously” defend religious rights — a comment that was taken out Wednesday following backlash against the Biden administration, the Washington Post reported.

The Biden administration’s filing opposed a motion from several Christian schools to join the court case in order to protect their religious exemptions. The federal lawsuit involves a group of students who sued the government for giving funding to religious schools that the students say discriminate against LGBTQ persons.

The Justice Department instead inserted the word “adequate” multiple times and removed four instances of the phrase “ultimate objective,” including part of a sentence saying that the Department of Education and Christian schools “share the same ‘ultimate objective’ … namely, to uphold the Religious Exemption as it is currently applied.”

“We welcome the Biden administration’s commitment to the Title IX religious exemption, but we do believe that the Christian colleges and universities whose rights are at stake should have a representative at the table, and in the courtroom, for these important conversations,” Council for Christian Colleges & Universities president Shirley Hoogstra said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

CCCU filed a motion to be an official participant in the case “so it can defend Title IX’s religious protections” in May.

Critics claimed that the move contradicts the Biden administration’s public statements on discrimination against LGBTQ persons. The Biden administration said in a March memo from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division that “[a]ll persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation,” according to CNN.

https://www.wnd.com

Girl has Bible confiscated by school officials

Bob Unruh – June 5, 2021

It’s been some 30 years or more since the U.S. Supreme Court established some of the most significant precedents for students in schools, including one that the First Amendment does indeed apply to students in schools.

But still sometimes educators don’t understand, as happened with a recent case in Illinois where officials confiscated a Bible from a second-grader simply because she was reading it during recess, and would talk about it with friends.

The documentation of the situation comes in a report from Francis J. Manion at the American Center for Law and Justice, whose founder, Jay Sekulow, argued some of those precedent-establishing cases at the Supreme Court.

“A little girl had her Bible confiscated by school officials. How could this still be happening in America?” the report wondered, then explaining it’s because “local school officials still don’t seem to have gotten the message.”

“We recently heard from the parents of Gabrielle, a second grader in Illinois. It seems Gabrielle likes to bring her Bible to school and read it during recess. Sometimes she reads it aloud, and sometimes other kids listen in and talk with her about what she’s reading,” the report said. “Constitutional crisis? It shouldn’t be; but little Gabrielle had her Bible taken away by a teacher and was told, ‘You just can’t be doing that.'”

The school then told the little girl’s parents she was not allowed to read the Bible during recess.

They objected, and the school changed its course slightly, determining she “could read it during outside recess but not during inside recess,” the report said.

That was after the school confirmed there were no complaints about the bible reading.

“It was a simple case of public school officials’ hypersensitivity to the specter of a threat from the ACLU or some similar spreader of long-debunked propaganda about ‘separation of Church and State,'” the organization reported.

https://www.wnd.com

A ‘Killing Field’ of Christians: 8 More Killed, Church Burned to Ground in Nigeria – 1,470 Christians in 4 Months

CBN News – May 25, 2021

Eight Christians were killed and a church was burned down on May 19 during an attack by gunmen in the Chikun area of Kaduna State of Nigeria.

International Christian Concern (ICC), a persecution watchdog, reports Samuel Aruwan, the Kaduna State Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, confirmed the report in a statement to the media.

Aruwan said “bandits” also burned down several homes during the attack, which consisted of unknown gunmen shooting sporadically at civilians.

As CBN News has reported, these “bandits” or “unknown gunmen” are often radical Muslims who target Christians in their relentless attacks on villages across the West African country.

In another unrelated incident, The Premium Times newspaper reports Nigerian Navy troops stationed in the Kujama General Area killed three bandits and arrested two accomplices after repelling an attack on Wakwodna community, near Kasso village, Chikun Local Government Area.

According to the Kaduna state government, the naval troops responded to reports of an attack on the village. The gunmen fled into the surrounding jungle when confronted by the troops, abandoning several rustled cattle. The cattle were rounded up by the troopers and returned to their owners.

“Two locals who were injured in the exchange were evacuated for medical attention,” Aruwan said.

According to the rights group Intersociety Rule of Law, 1,470 Christians were murdered and over 2,200 were abducted by radical Islamists in Nigeria during the first four months of 2021.

Of the 1,470 Christians murdered, 800 of those were killed by the Muslim Fulani Herdsmen, according to the group’s report.

https://www1.cbn.com

Judge sides with Biden, rules that Christian college must open women’s bedrooms and showers to biological males?

Phil Shiver – May 21, 2021

A federal judge this week rejected a Christian college’s request to bypass new rules under the Biden administration that force religious schools to open their dormitories — including shared bedrooms and shower spaces — to members of the opposite sex.

Judge Roseann Ketchmark issued the ruling Wednesday denying the College of the Ozarks a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, which would have provided temporary protection for the school while its federal court case is pending.

The school filed a lawsuit in April arguing that the Biden administration was forcing religious schools to violate their beliefs by opening up female dormitories to biological males, and vice-versa, under subject of punitive damages, six-figure fines, and attorneys’ fees.

After President Joe Biden issued an executive order titled, “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation” in January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development put forward a directive in line with the administration’s new interpretation of “sex.”

The directive holds that entities covered by the Fair Housing Act cannot discriminate against someone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Meaning that a transgender person who is biologically male but identifies as a female must be permitted to share dormitory spaces such as bedrooms, bathrooms, and showers with female students.

“The government cannot and should not force schools to open girls’ dorms to males based on its politically motivated and inappropriate redefinition of ‘sex,'” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake said in a statement. The religious liberty law firm is representing the school in its legal fight.

https://www.theblaze.com

Christian Pastor Arrested in London for Quoting ‘Homophobic’ Bible Verses

Kurt Zindulka  – April 29, 2021

Police in London arrested a Christian street preacher for allegedly causing “alarm and distress” to pedestrians for citing allegedly “homophobic” verses from Genesis.

On Friday, Pastor John Sherwood was preaching alongside Pastor Peter Simpson of the Penn Free Methodist Church outside the Uxbridge Underground Station — in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s own constituency.

Writing in the Conservative Woman on Tuesday, Pastor Simpson said that Sherwood preached on the final verses of Genisis 1, saying: “God’s design in creating mankind was to set human beings in families, headed by a father and a mother, not by two fathers or by two mothers. The distinction within mankind of just two genders, male and female, made in the image of God, constitutes the essence of God’s created order.”

Simpson said that the police informed them that three complaints were made in response to the street sermon.

He said that a police officer warned that he and Sherwood should avoid making any “homophobic statements” and that there is “no freedom to make statements which offend people”.

The police ultimately dragged Sherwood off his step stool and forcibly handcuffed the septuagenarian preacher.

“This dignified man of God, who is in his early 70s, was marched off to a nearby police car, as one of the helpers from my church cried out, ‘What has happened to us as a nation that a man can no longer preach from the Bible?” Pastor Simpson related.

https://www.breitbart.com

Report: 5.2 Billion People Face ‘Very Severe Violations of Religious Freedom’

Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. –  April 20,2021

Nearly one third of the world’s countries, where two thirds of the world’s population live, violate religious freedom, the pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reported Tuesday.

Christians are the most persecuted group in the world, according to ACN’s Religious Freedom in the World Report 2021, an 818-page compendium of the state of religious freedom and persecution in the world today.

Persecution on the grounds of religious belief is a growing global phenomenon, the biennial report declares, and religious freedom violations have accelerated and expanded to the point where “systematic and egregious attacks are coming from governments, lynching mobs, as well as international terror groups,” such as Boko Haram or the Islamic State.

The report found the populations of 62 countries out of a total of 196 face “very severe violations of religious freedom,” adding that the number of people living in these countries “is close to 5.2 billion, as the worst offenders include some of the most populous nations in the world (China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria).”

Moreover, during the past two years since the publication of ACN’s last report, “there has been a significant increase in the severity of religiously motivated persecution and oppression which is the principal category of concern,” the report noted.

https://www.breitbart.com

Pagan arch of Palmyra that was dedicated to Baal being reconstructed, Some see it as harbinger of Messiah

Ricky Scaparo – April 14, 2021

(OPINION) ETH – After six years of laying in ruins, Russians have now begun the reconstruction of the Triumphal Arch of Palmyra in Syria that once served as a gateway to a major pagan temple to Ba’al, and some Rabbis state that the rebuilding of this arch is predicted in the Talmud as preceding the “Messiah”.

According to Israel 365 News, The ruins of this ancient city of Palmyra was located about 135 miles north of Damascus, Syria, and the temple and much of the site were destroyed by the Islamic State (ISIS) back in 2015. “The Syrian experts have put in place some plans, and there is no precise timetable for the completion of the work, but studies on restoration, rubble, and so on may be ready within six or eight months.”

According to the report, Restoration work has already begun this week after a memorandum of understanding was reached between the Syrian Ministry of Culture and the Association Stone Industry of Russia. What many may not be aware of is the fact that the Temple of Palmyra was dedicated back in 32 CE to the worship of Ba’al.

Ba’al was a false god that was worshipped in many ancient Middle Eastern communities, especially among the Canaanites, who considered him a fertility deity and the earliest known inhabitants called the Amorites hosted many monumental projects including the Temple of Bel (or Ba’al).

This arch stood at the entrance to the temple that was used to worship Ba’al. which was mentioned more than 90 times in the Bible, One of the most notable accounts of this was when Elijah defeated the priests of Ba’al, also known as Moloch, where he called down fire from heaven to burn a sacrifice, Ba’al was the centerpiece of idol worship in that time. worshippers of Ba’al partook of bisexual orgies and sacrificed human infants, burning them alive. Jewish tradition teaches that this Arch of Palmyra may be a harbinger of the Messianic era.

https://endtimeheadlines.org

The Most Tragic Story Never Told: The Muslim Persecution of Christians

Raymond Ibrahim – April 7, 2021

Few phenomena are as horrifically widespread as they are virtually unknown—at least in the West—as the Muslim persecution of Christians.

The general facts are undeniable and have been and continue to be documented in a number of reports issued by a variety of human rights organizations around the world.  According to one of the most recent compilations, Open Doors’ “World Wide List, 2021”—which was published in January 2021 and which annually ranks the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted for their faith—13 Christians are killed for their faith every day around the world; 12 are illegally arrested or imprisoned; 5 are abducted; and 12 churches or other Christian buildings are attacked.

About 309 million of these Christians “suffer very high or extreme levels” of persecution.  “That’s one in 8 worldwide, 1 in 6 in Africa, 2 out of 5 in Asia, and 1 in 12 in Latin America.”  More specifically and for the reporting period covered (Oct. 2019 – Sept. 2020), “4,761 Christians were killed for their faith”; an additional 4,277 Christians were unjustly arrested, detained, or imprisoned; 1,710 were abducted for faith-related reasons; and 4,488 Churches or Christian buildings were attacked.

The worst category, “extreme persecution”—the harassing, beating, imprisoning, raping, and/or slaughtering of Christians on sight—occurs in 12 of the 50 nations.  Nine of these top 12 worst persecutors are Muslim: Afghanistan (#2), Somalia (#3), Libya (#4), Pakistan (#5), Yemen (#7), Iran (#8), Nigeria (#9), Iraq (#11), and Syria (#12).  (That these nations are racially, culturally, politically, and economically very different—Arab, Asian, Iranian, sub-Saharan African, etc.—should be indicative that something else accounts for their commonality towards Christians.)

Over all, the persecution Christians experience in 39 of the 50 nations making the list is also either from “Islamic oppression” or is occurring in Muslim majority nations.  This means nearly 80 percent of the Christian persecution around the world—including of those 13 Christians killed for their faith every day—is committed by Muslims.

https://www.frontpagemag.com

YouTube Intensifies Attack on Religion, Removes ANOTHER Faith-Based Channel

Kayla Sargent – April 1, 2021

YouTube removed yet another faith-based channel as the platform continues its relentless assault on religious liberty.

YouTube has a long history in deplatforming channels with dissenting opinions, and Christian media organization theDove alleges that it is the latest victim in the platform’s crusade. “On March 22, 2021 the Dove was permanently banned from YouTube,” theDove’s website stated. “Over 15,000 interviews and segments have been posted to YouTube and the Dove has experienced millions of views. In today’s cancel culture YouTube has deleted every video.”

YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi told Free Speech America that “In accordance with our long standing three-strikes system, we terminated the channel theDove for repeatedly violating our COVID-19 misinformation and presidential election integrity policies.”

It appears as though theDove plans to fight back. “We are dealing with two fairly significant law firms, one in Washington D.C. and one in California, to see if there’s any recourse we may have to retrieve our 15,000 videos,” Perry Atkinson, the organization’s CEO and president, told NewsWatch 12. “We are looking into three other platforms as to whether or not we can re-establish a way to distribute our videos.”

TheDove’s removal was not the first time that YouTube targeted a conservative, or even a faith-based organization. The platform recently removed LifeSiteNews’ channel, and even censored Senate testimony from doctors on COVID-19. YouTube additionally censored a Newsmax interview with former President Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, Google’s massive video-sharing platform does not appear to be slowing down its censorious campaign anytime soon. TheDove was not the first religious organization censored by YouTube, and it likely won’t be the last.

https://newsbusters.org

Calif. bill could ban conservative Christians from serving as police

Press California – March 16, 2021

SACRAMENTO – A Bay Area assemblyman wants to ban from service police officers and police officer candidates who are members of hate groups or have used hate speech in the past, even in “a private discussion forum” online.

Yet the definition of a “hate group” and “hate speech” used by Assemblyman Ash Kalra’s (D – San Jose) new bill, AB 655, is incredibly broad. Not only does it include armed militia groups and white supremacists promoting “domestic terrorism,” it also includes police officers expressing conservative religious or political views on abortion, marriage, and gender or with membership in a political party or church that does.

One legal expert said the bill would “usher in a new era of McCarthyism” where Muslim, Catholic, Evangelicals, and even registered Republicans would be blacklisted from law enforcement jobs.

“Under the guise of addressing police gangs, the bill at the same time launches an inexplicable, unwarranted, and unprecedented attack on peaceable, conscientious officers who happen to hold conservative political and religious views,” wrote Pacific Justice Institute Senior Staff Attorney Matthew McReynolds.

“Indeed, this is one of the most undisguised and appalling attempts we have ever seen, in more than 20 years of monitoring such legislation, on the freedom of association and freedom to choose minority viewpoints.”

According to a bill fact sheet provided by Kalra’s office, AB 655 is needed to root out “extremist infiltration” into our police departments as evidenced by “the apparent cooperation, participation, and support of some law enforcement,” gave to insurrectionists during the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.

The document goes on to say that California sheriff departments all over the state have been “plagued by texting, email, and social media scandals where officers exchanged racist and homophobic messages.”AB 655 would require police candidates to receive a background check for “official membership in a hate group, participation in hate group activities, or other public expressions of hate.”Public complaints of employed police officers would result in the same investigation, “and if sustained, could lead to termination.”

https://presscalifornia.com