i just wondered if it has strengthened anyones resolve in thier religion

or maybe weakened it

or if anyone was looking to join a religion would this be a deciding factor

I noticed no one had voted yet, so i did, however the results are probably less than stellar. i do not ascribe to any formal religion, so my emotions are not affected in any real manner...

Perhaps it's the late hour, however my guess if others are like me they didn't vote because they have no idea what you're talking about.

Afgani Convert?
relative to a poll pertaining to Christians and Muslims and "it" makes me feel better about my...

Either I'm half asleep here or the "it" is what is missing to let us know what we're suppose to vote on having happened.

*Edit* Well I found the article that should have been included here so Christians and or Muslims, could make an informed choice in the poll. Nothing says "love" in a family quite like intollerance at this level!

Afghan Christian Convert May be Executed
March 22, 2006 10:22 AM EST

By Sher Zieve – Afghani convert to Christianity Abdul Rahman could be executed for rejecting the Muslim religion. Islamic Shari’a law calls for the death of anyone who refuses to remain Muslim.
Unless Rahman “reconverts” and again becomes Muslim, he is subject to the death penalty. While an aid worker in Pakistan, sixteen years ago, Rahman converted to Christianity. Rahman said: “They want to sentence me to death and I accept it, but I am not a deserter and not an infidel. I am a Christian which means I believe in the Trinity."

Deputy spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai Khaleeq Ahmed commented: “The judicial system is an independent system. This is a case that the family of the person brought against him. We are watching it closely and Afghanistan also respects human rights."

Germany, Italy and Canada have voiced their concerns and called upon Afghanistan to practice freedom of religion and to uphold its obligations of practicing basic human rights.

US Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said: "We believe in universal freedoms and freedom of religion is one of them. But I should also note, more particularly concerning this case, that the Afghan constitution as we understand it also provides for freedom of religion." (article source)

I'm assuming it's pertaining to an afgani who converted. whether it be faiths, or from imperial to metric is yet to be validated...still my point rings true, i need no definition if i have no real faith to lose...

Ya know, you have to answer both those questions in the poll. I'm not really sure how the second question applies to me. Regardless, to both questions, I voted that it doesn't change my opinion either way.

Regards, PA

I tried to vote that it strengthens my faith as a Christian but it won't let me vote, maybe because I didn't vote on the (if your a muslim) poll too?

Anyway, the poll and topic are about the current situation of an Afgani who converted from being a muslim to being a Christian, after people found out he converted they imprisoned him and they are saying they're going to execute him for being a Christian. I saw the story on cnn yesterday, the reporter said that they'd asked lots of afgani people what they thought and they all said that the person should be killed, one even said he should have gasoline poured all over him and burned.

All I know is, after that display, every Christian should consider the majority of the afgani people their enemies. And something should be done to prevent any harm from coming to the newly converted Christian.

On the news somebody said something about how the afgani people are self governed now and that the united states doesn't have the right to interfere in their affairs. LIKE HECK WE DON'T! We put together and maintained the afgani govt. after we took out the taliban, we have every right to step in and stop this, we still have troops and bases all over there, if they're self governed then why the heck are we there running the show behind the scenes? All I have to say is....if the U.S. doesn't step in and stop this we know without a doubt that we are in the end times and things are about to get really rough.

The whole thing strengthens my faith as a Christian because it rings true with everything Jesus talked about, how we'll suffer for is names' sake, take on the burden of shame and reproach by taking up our crosses, and now that something like this is happening in a place the U.S. is set up in we know that we're in the end times and edging on Rev. because Christians are now starting to be persecuted even when the U.S. is standing by. (if the guy gets killed it should silence alot of critics who don't think the illumanti has a hold and is in control of the U.S. as well as pretty much every other nation in the world)

I've been saying for a few days now, probably about a week, to myself and my family, about how I was sure something big and bad was about to happen. With Bush going out and talking 5 days straight about Iraq, getting publicity and trying to improve him and his adminstration's image, with all the crazy false alarms when it comes to car bombs and people on roof tops with guns talking crazy....I just felt like something was getting ready to happen, and now I think that this incident may be the start of it.

That's not what happen, it's your own interpretation of what happened.
They don't want to kill him for becoming a Christian, they want to kill him for converting out of Islam, which is forbidden according to that religion.
They would have reacted the same if he converted to any other non-Islamic religion, or even if he joined another branch of Islam, as some branches do not recognize one another as truly muslim.

Enemies of Christianity? Please.
That has nothing to do with Christianity, it has anything to do with Islam.

You pointed it out before I could.

Yah, you have to vote in both answers to validly answer the poll. I don't know if the topic starter knew that or not.

Anyhow, you might be interested in this site. and an article on that site - here. It's an old article (around Christmas time), but the information is just as currrently relevant.

Regards, PA

I'm not muslim or christian, but voted "makes me feel worse" on both, because I think this is a battle none of them can win, and both of them will lose

PA the links you gave only talks about Christian being persecuted. Nothing about other religions being persecuted.....
Have you forgotten Christianity doing the dirty deed also?

Not at all. I acknowledge that the site is biased! However, it is a fact that Christian's in the East (not so much the West) ARE persecuted.

So you have a link for me of current atrocities being committed by REAL CHRISTIANS!

Makes you appreciate "Separation of Church and State" and a liberal (as in inalienable, civil rights and guaranteed freedoms) Constitution, doesn't it?

And, the US has no right whatsoever to intercede in any other sovereign nation's business unless that nation poses an immediate threat to our national security.

If anything, perhaps the UN or another global organization ought to offer some diplomatic reasoning towards this particular situation.

I like you. You make my belly jiggle.

Diplomatic reasoning was what prompted the intelligence that gave life to the mouthpiece that said at the outset, you are either with us or you're with the enemy. Making anyone not in accord with the party line of diplomatic reason(ing) as to why we should undertake this latest god given campaign, a traitor.

And then after the mouthpiece speaks , they close the damnation of liberty and justice for all, save themselves, with a prayer of "god bless". As in make it so. And so it is. I could make a snide innuendo that it's akin to history repeating itself from the religious into the secular, as if there really is a separation possible. However to do so would mean I would need malleable ego's ensconced in ordained power, like unto a god. A mighty all powerful visage of robed absolute....like unto the Supreme Court of Judges.

Judges.... quite an interesting read in itself.

Imaginary friend - are you serious? Do you honestly believe every word a politician says? Bush is doing what he does for political reasons alone. Oh, he plays the God card as a form of justification, but that is completely different to the truth.

Regards, PA

PA, I can see you have little experience reading others possessed of a fondness for sarcasm.

Show me where you pointed that out?




20th Century Church Atrocities
Catholic extermination camps: Surpisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveliç, a practising Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!

In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdient der SS", watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV]

Catholic terror in Vietnam: In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters - the Viet Minh - had finally defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to all (most non-buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]

Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman Catholicism.
The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read:

"Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp."

Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest dozens of buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly in street riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-89].
To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of American GI's lost their life.

Christianity kills the cat: On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student of a teachers college in Germany, died: she starved herself to death. For months she had been haunted by demonic visions and apparitions, and for months two Catholic priests - with explicit approval of the Catholic bishop of Würzburg - additionally pestered and tormented the wretched girl with their exorcist rituals. After her death in Klingenberg hospital - her body was littered with wounds - her parents, both of them fanatical Catholics, were sentenced to six months for not having called for medical help. None of the priests was punished: on the contrary, Miss Michel's grave today is a place of pilgrimage and worship for a number of similarly faithful Catholics (in the seventeenth century Würzburg was notorious for it's extensive witch burnings).

This case is only the tip of an iceberg of such evil superstition and has become known only because of its lethal outcome. [SP80]



Rwanda Massacres: In 1994 in the small african country of Rwanda in just a few months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.
For quite some time I heard only rumours about Catholic clergy actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in Catholic church journals, before even anybody had openly accused members of the church.

Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated:

"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda's capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish. Even two years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold of their church, because to them the participation of a certain part of the clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally butchered facing the crucifix.
According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis and turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia.
In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the meantime to avoid prosecution. According to survivors one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report that she watched the slaughtering of people in cold blood and without showing response. She is even accused of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set on fire and burn their victims alive..."

LINK

Afghan court dismisses case against convert
Officials cite lack of evidence, say man accused of apostasy to be freed soon

BREAKING NEWS

Updated: 8:50 a.m. ET March 26, 2006
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released soon, officials said.

msnbc.msn.com

I didn't point it out. I said I acknowledge (present tense), as opposed to acknowledged (past tense)!

Like they say, it's not what you know it's who you know. Good news!

Though I wonder if they dismissed the case that got him taken into custody, why is it that he'll be released....soon? How about right now!? Since without a case there is no reason to hold him any longer.
In the meantime I wonder if he'll live to see, "soon". After all, this decision claims they can't kill him on the record. (after trial. But it was his family that wanted him dead because he violated Muslim law. Somehow I figure if they imagine god's law higher than love for their kin, a court decision that there isn't enough evidence to prove him an infedel when he clearly is, is going to change the minds anyone that think him worthy of death.

The news said that ONE source is telling them that he'll be released.

BUT, other afgani sources (in afganistan's Judiciary) are saying it is just until the case can be sent back to prosecutors to gather more evidence.

So no, the guy hasn't been released yet, and this thing is not over.

Yeah, it's because the guy converted from Islam, they probably would have acted the same against any other religion..........but just because (most of) the afgani people hate all other religions along with Christianity, doesn't mean that they still aren't a Christian enemy, it just means that they shouldn't be considered 'just' a Christian enemy.

I wonder if there would have been such an out cry if the guy would have been a Pagan?

I have every confidence, yes! There would have been; "Goddess Bless, that's a very sharp knif...." THUD!

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