But Not of the World

This may be about your fellow believers:

  • The world’s worst persecutor of Christians in the world is North Korea.
  • In Saudi Arabia, practicing Christianity can result in death by beheading or stoning.
  • Over 90% of China’s Christians worship in hidden, underground house churches to avoid government regulations and restrictions.
  • There is only one Christian church left in the Gaza Strip, and its membership has dwindled to less than 100.
  • Algeria is about a quarter of the size of Texas, and only 3% of the population are Christians.
  • There are 69 languages in Iran, and only three of them have a completed Bible. Iran is also the third worst persecutor of Christians in the world.
  • It is believed there are less than 500 Christians living in the Maldives.
  • Open preaching in Sudan is punishable by beatings or imprisonment.
  • Christians make up less than 1.7% of the population in Pakistan, and over 70% of them are the poorest of the poor.
  • It is estimated that there are 1,100 Christian missionaries living in Turkey.

Source document: OpenDoorsUSA

UK’s first official sharia courts

Of camels and noses?

UK’s first official sharia courts

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

HT: Dunker Journal

Headlines…and Perspective

Before the headlines, something to give you perspective: It’s What Disciples Do

In the News

Some of these stories I’ve scanned. Some I’ve read no further than the first paragraph or two. Some I’ve only read the headline.

Human Error?

I know this hardly qualifies as breaking news anymore, but…

At least 25 people were killed in the head-on crash of a commuter train and a freight train near Los Angeles that officials on Saturday attributed to the failure of the passenger train engineer to stop at a red light.

The crash, which occurred in the Los Angeles suburb of Chatsworth, was the worst U.S. rail tragedy since 1999.

[…]

“At this moment we must acknowledge that it was a Metrolink engineer that made the error that caused yesterday’s accident,” Denise Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for the train line, said at a news conference.

She said the engineer, who was not identified, worked for a subcontractor used by Metrolink. He was believed to have died in the crash.

Maybe it was human error.

Or human sleepiness.

Or human health malfunction.

Or suicide.

Or homicide.

Or terrorism.

One-Year 64-Member Surge

Record 259 corporations honored for ‘gay’ support

The newly released Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index, which ranks hundreds of businesses on their “treatment” of employees who have chosen homosexual, lesbian, bisexual and transgender lifestyles, awards a record 259 corporations perfect scores, including newcomers Campbell’s Soup and Target.

The total in the 2009 report is up one-third from the 195 corporations so honored in 2008, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which explained that now an estimated nine million workers “are protected from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression because of their employers’ policies on diversity & inclusion, training, health care, and domestic partnership benefits.”

The report notes that when the evaluation was begun in 2002, there were 13 corporations with such perfect scores – a total of 100 out of 100 possible – and that rose to 26 in 2003, 56 in 2004, 101 in 2005, 138 in 2006 and 195 in 2008.

If I were into boycotting, I would have to quit doing business with some outfits:

  • US Airways
  • Dell
  • Target
  • Campbell Soups
  • Visa
  • American Express
  • Bank of America
  • Best Buy
  • Chevron
  • Citigroup
  • Coca-Cola
  • Eastman Kodak
  • eBay
  • Google
  • Intel
  • JC Penney
  • KeyCorp
  • Levi Strauss
  • Macy
  • MasterCard
  • Microsoft
  • PepsiCo
  • Sears
  • UPS
  • Yahoo!

Wow!

Time to join the Amish or the Hutterites.

Or move to the Amazon.

Or forget the whole notion of boycotting.

Private
Above all, love God!

since November 9, 2005