Christians workers attacked in Rajasthan
About 30 Hindu extremists on September 4 assaulted two Christian workers from Gospel for Asia and chased them into the jungle near Banswada.

EFI correspondent reported that the extremists waylaid the two Christians as they were returning from a prayer meeting. They mercilessly beat and verbally abused them. The Christians fled and hid in the nearby forest.

A Christian search team found the duo at midnight and gave them shelter. Church representative said their names could not be disclosed for security reasons.

Muslim threats to Christians rise in Pakistan
LAHORE, Pakistan | Christians in Pakistan are feeling increasingly insecure after several violent attacks by Muslim extremists in the past two months.

In one case, eight Christians were burned to death by a Muslim mob after reports that the Muslim holy book, the Koran, had been desecrated.

Growing Talibanization of the country and a blasphemy law in place for two decades make non-Muslims, especially Christians, easy targets for discrimination and attacks, Christian and human rights activists say.

“The attacks on Christians seem to be symptomatic of a well-organized campaign launched by extremist elements against the Christian community all over central Punjab since early this year,” Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Chairwoman Asma Jehangir said at a press conference last month.

The situation has become so serious that Pope Benedict XVI and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari discussed it during a meeting at the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, the Associated Press reported.

The Vatican said the two stressed “the need to overcome all forms of discrimination based on religious affiliation, with the aim of promoting respect for the rights of all.”

Most of the attacks on Christians’ houses and churches followed claims of desecration of the Koran. Subsequent investigations generally proved the claims to be false.

Pakistani Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian himself, said that no Christian would even think of desecrating the Koran. Some elements wanted to create an atmosphere of disharmony, but the government would not allow anybody to play with the lives and properties of the Christians, he said.

On June 30, a mob attacked Christians’ houses in the village of Bahmani Wala in Kasur district of Punjab province, destroying more than 50 houses after looting.

On July 30, eight people were burned alive in the village of Gojra, also in Punjab, after a purported incident of desecration of the Koran in the nearby village of Korian Wala. Churches were attacked and copies of the Bible and hymn books were burned in both villages. In Korian Wala alone, more than 50 houses of Christians were ransacked.

Pastor brutally attacked in Andhra
Hindu extremists allegedly from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Shiv Sena (Religious Army) on September 10 attacked a pastor identified only as Ramanjaniah, accused him of cheating people, of forceful conversion, then beat him, and paraded him on the street in Tumkur, Karnataka.

The pastor was conducting a prayer meeting at a Christian’s house when the intolerant Hindus stormed into the house and assaulted him, reported our correspondent, Rev. Noel Kotian

They tore a Bible and beat, punched and kicked the pastor and keep beating him as they marched him about one kilometre. The pastor received hospital treatment for fractures in his face and leg.

The extremists pressured police to restrain the pastor from future preaching, but officers only requested the pastor to inform them before he conducts worship meeting in future. They promised police protection should the need arise.

Don’t ignore Christian persecution in Iran
One ministry doesn’t want Christians in Iran to be overlooked, as media attention is focused on that country’s president and his address to the United Nations.

On Wednesday (23/9), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the U.N. General Assembly. Several delegates walked when he accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Several others — the U.S., Israel, and Canada — were already outside the hall, having boycotted the speech in protest of Ahmadinejad’s persistent denial of the Holocaust.

His speech this week came as crowds of Iranians clashed with security forces. Many citizens there are frustrated, 30 years after the Islamic Revolution. Open Doors USA president Carl Moeller says the Christian minority in Iran is often over overlooked and forgotten.

“It is important that the issue at the United Nations is raised — that there is a sizable and growing Christian minority in that country, and their rights need to be respected,” says Moeller. “Just on a human level, they need to be protected and respected, and their ability to worship freely, to even evangelize needs to be affirmed.”

Iran was number three on the annual World Watch List of persecuted nations released by Open Doors.

Islamic Extremists in Somalia Kill Another Church Leader

NAIROBI, Kenya, October 1 (CDN) — Islamic militants in Somalia this week killed a woman who led an underground Christian movement in the war-torn country.

Sources told Compass that a leader of Islamic extremist al Shabaab militia in Lower Juba identified only as Sheikh Arbow shot to death 46-year-old Mariam Muhina Hussein at 2 p.m. on Sept. 28 in Marerey village after discovering she had six Bibles. Marerey is eight kilometers (five miles) from Jilib, part of the neighboring Middle Juba region.

Local sources said that on Sunday (Sept. 27) Arbow sent his wife to the house of Hussein, a Somali Bantu, to confirm the presence of the Bibles. Pretending to be interested in Christianity, the militia leader’s wife confirmed the existence of the Bibles.

The sources said Hussein readily agreed to discuss Christianity with Arbow’s wife and read parts of the Bible with her. When Arbow’s wife requested one of the Bibles, however, Hussein demurred. “She told her that it might not be safe for her, preferring instead that she could visit her regularly for discussions,” said one source. “She then left and promised to visit again soon.”

The next day, Arbow arrived at Hussein’s house with other men and, in a friendly manner, claimed that he wanted to check something in the Bible. Knowing only that Arbow was a fellow ethnic Somali Bantu and having met his wife the previous day, Hussein innocently gave one to him, sources said.

“Immediately, Arbow told her that their mission was to look for Christians who have defiled the Islamic religion,” a source said. “There and then she lacked words to say. She was ordered to get the other Bibles out, and she did.”

Upon receiving the Bibles, Arbow fired three bullets at Hussein, who died instantly.

The Bibles were published in Swahili; besides this East African lingua franca, Bantus in Lower Juba also speak Kiswahili.

Compass has confirmed the killing with various sources in Nairobi and Somalia who cannot be identified for security reasons.

Hussein’s death comes a few weeks after the rebel militants killed another one of the leaders of Somalia’s Christian movement for distributing Bibles. Al shabaab militants shot 69-year-old Omar Khalafe on Sept. 15 at a checkpoint they controlled 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Merca, a Christian source told Compass.

Al Shabaab, said to have links with al Qaeda terrorists, controls much of southern parts of Somalia, as well as other areas of the nation. Besides striving to topple President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, the militants also seek to impose sharia (Islamic law)

In August al Shabaab extremists seeking evidence that a Somali man had converted from Islam to Christianity shot him dead near the Somali border with Kenya, sources said. The rebels killed 41-year-old Ahmed Matan in Bulahawa, Somalia on Aug. 18.

In Mahadday Weyne, 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, al Shabaab Islamists on July 20 shot to death another convert from Islam, Mohammed Sheikh Abdiraman, eyewitnesses told Compass. The militants also reportedly beheaded seven Christians on July 10. Reuters reported that they were killed in Baidoa for being Christians and “spies.”

On Feb. 21 al shabaab militants beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father refused to divulge information about a church leader, according to Musa Mohammed Yusuf, the 55-year-old father who was living in a Kenya refugee camp.