Muslim martyrs feel the pinch

This story appeared in the Comments section of the 'Cranmer' Blog yesterday and is reproduced despite some obvious inaccuracies regarding virginity outside England:

"BBC World Service Flash

Muslim suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda have so far failed to produce an agreement

The unrest began last Tuesday when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death will be cut by 25% this February from 72 to only 54. The rationale for the cut was the increase in recent years of the number of suicide bombings and a subsequent shortage of virgins in the afterlife.

The suicide bombers' union, the British Organization of Occupational Martyrs ( or B.O.O.M. ) responded with a statement that this was unacceptable to its members and immediately balloted for strike action.

General Secretary Abdullah Amir told the press, "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of Jihad. We don't ask for much in return but to be treated like this is like a kick in the teethdanquot;.

Speaking from his shed in Tipton in the West Midlands in which he currently resides, Al Qaeda chief executive Osama bin Laden explained, "We sympathize with our workers concerns but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are simply not accepting the realities of terkini-day Jihad in a competitive marketplace. Thanks to Western depravity, there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It's a straight choice between reducing expenditure and laying people off. I don't like cutting wages but I'd hate to have to tell 3000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up."

Spokespersons for the unions in the North East of England, Ireland, Wales and the entire Australian continent stated that the strike would not affect their operations as "There are no virgins in their areas anyway".

Apparently the drop in the number of suicide bombings has been put down to the emergence of that Scottish singing star, Susan Boyle - now that Muslims know what a virgin looks like that they are not so keen on going to paradise.

***

(copied this in verbatim but apologies for the last sentence and to Susan Boyle as it is a bit gratuitous)"

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In season of warmth, a look at chilling, global war on Christianity

The aftermath of the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians   SourceTelegraph/Universal News

From The Rev. John Armstrong, Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Columbus, Indiana writing in The Republic:

Pope Francis acknowledges it.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, confirms it.

Foreign leaders recognize it.

Human rights advocates, along with more than 80 members of Congress, insist that it is real.

But will the leader of the free world publicly admit it?

?It? Refers to the genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in the Middle East.

Genocide involves the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious class.

In addition to outright murder, genocide includes preventing births within the class and forcibly transferring children of the class to another group.

Can you say ?Boko Haram??

Recently, Pope Francis said, ?Today we are dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith in Jesus.

?In this Third World war, waged piecemeal, which we are now experiencing, a form of genocide is taking place, and it must end.?

Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of the United Kingdom says, ?What is happening to Christians in (the Middle East) is the religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing.?

However, words such as ethnic cleansing and genocide are radioactive to many politicians, because they imply that we have a moral and legal obligation to use whatever means necessary, including military force, to end the atrocities.

Some in the West are slow to acknowledge Christian persecution because they are in the habit of thinking of Christianity as rich, powerful and socially oppressive, and therefore cannot imagine that Christians in many parts of the world are themselves oppressed.

But facts are stubborn things.

From West Africa to Indonesia, from Eritrea to North Korea, Christians are routinely subjected to violence, imprisonment and death, for no other reason than believing in Jesus.

German Prime Minister Angela Merkel declared that Christianity is ?The most persecuted religion worldwide.?

According to the International Society for Human Rights, a secular organization based in Frankfurt, Germany, 80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed against Christians.

Between 2006 and 2010, Christians faced some sort of discrimination in 139 countries, almost three-quarters of all countries on earth, according to the Pew Forum.

The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Massachusetts reports that over the past decade, an average of 100,000 Christians have been killed every year.

John Allen, associate editor of The Boston Globe, writes that the global persecution of churchgoers is the unreported catastrophe of our time.

According to Allen, it is ?The greatest story never told of the early 21st century.?

When will the world pay attention?

One church leader in the Middle East put it this way: ?Does anybody hear our cry? How many atrocities must we endure before somebody, somewhere, comes to our aid??

Silence in the face of evil is evil itself.

Pray for our government to use financial and diplomatic pressure against offending countries.

Pray for direct humanitarian assistance by our government and condemnation of these crimes against humanity.

Pray for Christian martyrs to be faithful unto death, and pray for their persecutors to be forgiven and to better understand the faith which they seek to destroy.

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Christianity erased from history and memory

(ANSAmed) - ROME, APRIL 27 - Rome's iconic Trevi Fountain will be lit up red on April 29 to

 highlight the plight of Christian martyrs  and victims of persecution in many parts

 of the world, including the Middle East, west Africa and Pakistan.

Anevent in Rome tomorrow highlights the plight of Christian martyrs and victims of persecution around the world. More here.  Subsequent report here.

While Christians are being persecuted and martyred today, all traces of Christianity are being "erased from the Middle East and expunged from memory".

Christian minorities throughout the Middle East have long maintained that "the history taught in public classrooms habitually suppresses the region's Christian heritage while magnifying (including by lying about) Islam".

"It sounds absurd, but Muslims more or less know nothing about Christians, even though they make up a large part of the population and are in fact the original Egyptians," said Kamal Mougheeth, a retired teacher in Egypt. "Egypt was Christian for six or seven centuries [before the Muslim invasion around 640]. The sad thing is that for many years the history books skipped from Cleopatra to the Muslim conquest of Egypt. The Christian era was gone. Disappeared. An enormous black whole."

"One of Islam's bitterest ironies: a great many of today's Middle East Christians are being persecuted by Muslims ? Including of the ISIS variety ? Whose own ancestors were persecuted Christians who converted to Islam to end their suffering. In other words, Muslim descendants of persecuted Christians are today slaughtering their Christian cousins. Christians are seen as "foreign traitors" in part because many Muslims do not know of their own Christian ancestry".

The article can be found in 'Middle East Forum' here.

An ISIS video released last month shows members of its religious police

in Mosul, Iraq, burning hundreds of Christian books it deems blasphemous.

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Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue

Instead of being surrounded in paradise by the 72 virgins he believed he was promised in the Quran the latest Islamic 'martyr' will have found himself disappointed along with all the Islamic 'martyrs' who did not know Christ.

Reporting on Interfaith Relations in 2013 the Pew Research Centre stated: "Muslims around the world agree that Islam is the one true faith that leads to salvation. Many Muslims also say it is their religious duty to convert others to Islam."

By contrast the Anglican Church shows no appetite for converting others to Christianity despite the Great Commission. Instead they provide space in churches and cathedrals for inappropriate interfaith meetings, the implication being that many senior Anglicans simply do not understand what they are doing.

If they watch edition 570 of Anglican Unscripted (starting at position 10.40) they should be left in no doubt that Islam is incompatible with Christianity and that Muslims along with other non-Christians need to be saved.

Postscript [05.02.2020]

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: "My Question in the House of Lords yesterday asking the government whether they will go to the root of the problem and encourage our Muslim leaders to reform their religion to stop it being used to carry out attacks like in Streatham on Sunday. Their answer shows they will not."

The answer given: "My Lords, it is a matter of regret that these outrageous attacks are not limited to any one section of the community and are not to be attributed to religious belief but to a corruption of that beliefdanquot;, indicating that some serious reading is required.

From Christian Concern: "What is Islam? Is it a religion of peace? Read this article by @TDieppe

https://christianconcern.Com/resource/is-islam-a-religion-of-peace/

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