First Light Before the Dawn
ISTANBUL (Morning Star News) – Security forces this week arrested an Iranian pastor in Tehran and announced that his church was closed as a crackdown on Christians intensified ahead of June elections, sources said. Robert Asserian was arrested Tuesday (May 21) during a prayer meeting at his Central Assemblies of God Church after authorities entered his [...]
LAHORE, Pakistan (Morning Star News) – A Muslim political candidate suspected of murdering a Christian has instigated calls from mosque loudspeakers for attacks on Christians, whom he blames for his May 11 election loss. Tensions were high in Punjab Province’s Okara district after provincial assembly seat candidate Mehr Abdul Sattar, sought by police in connection with [...]
ZANZIBAR, Tanzania (Morning Star News) – Islamic extremist attacks and land grabs on this semi-autonomous island off the coast of Tanzania have continued unabated even as violence has increased on the mainland. The May 5 bombing of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Arusha killed a 45-year-old woman, a 16-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. Of [...]
JOS, Nigeria (Morning Star News) – Gunmen believed to be members of the Islamic extremist Boko Haram group yesterday killed the Rev. Faye Pama Musa, secretary of the Borno state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). He was 47. The gunmen reportedly followed the long-time Christian leader from his church building, where he was [...]
MIDLU SHALMI, Nigeria (Morning Star News) – Anti-Christian hostility drove an Islamic extremist killing spree in this village in northeastern Nigeria, though the attack was portrayed mainly as politically motivated, an area Christian leader says. In the course of an attempt to attack the deputy governor of Adamawa state last month, gunmen from the Islamic extremist [...]
ISTANBUL (Morning Star News) – An Iranian-American pastor spent his 33rd birthday in solitary confinement today, suffering from untreated injuries from beatings by prisoners and officials in an Iranian prison. Saeed Abedini has spent six months in Tehran’s harsh Evin Prison, known for housing political dissidents and government protestors, where he is serving an eight-year sentence [...]
NAIROBI, Kenya (Morning Star News) – Fear and grief rocked a predominantly Christian area of northern Tanzania yesterday after an unidentified man reportedly hurled an explosive device at the inaugural Mass of a new church building, killing two worshipers. The Vatican ambassador to Tanzania, Archbishop Francisco Montecillo Padilla, was in attendance as Mass was about to [...]
MILE BAKWAI, Nigeria (Morning Star News) – Hosea Mashaf was resting in his village of Chirang Mangor, Nigeria, when area Christian youths told him that armed, Muslim Fulani herdsmen were attacking the Christian village of Mile Bakwai. The 45-year-old farmer and other Christians rushed to Mile Bakwai, three kilometers away in the Bokkos Local Council Area [...]
NAIROBI, Kenya (Morning Star News) – By the time Lukia Khalid, mother of three and nearly seven months pregnant, was baptized on March 30, her Muslim husband had already forced her out of their home in western Tanzania for becoming a Christian. That was a week after the 38-year-old Khalid and her husband, Kassim Khalid, received [...]
NAIROBI, Kenya (Morning Star News) – Muslim militants still controlling part of the Lower Shebelle Region of Somalia have jailed and tortured a Christian for converting from Islam, sources said. Al Shabaab rebels seized Hassan Gulled, 25, on March 23 in Bulo Marer near Qoryoley District, they said. Gulled, who had fled to Kenya in 2007 [...]