Not a Single Christian Church Left in Afghanistan, Says State Department

(AP Photo.)

(CNSNews.com) -- There is not a single, public Christian church left in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. State Department.

This reflects the state of religious freedom in that country ten years after the United States first invaded it and overthrew its Islamist Taliban regime.

In the intervening decade, U.S. taxpayers have spent $440 billion to support Afghanistan's new government and more than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in that country.

The last public Christian church in Afghanistan was razed in March 2010, according to the State Department's latest International Religious Freedom Report. The report, which was released last month and covers the period of July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010, also states that “there were no Christian schools in the country.”

“There is no longer a public Christian church; the courts have not upheld the church's claim to its 99-year lease, and the landowner destroyed the building in March [2010],” reads the State Department report on religious freedom. “[Private] chapels and churches for the international community of various faiths are located on several military bases, PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Teams], and at the Italian embassy. Some citizens who converted to Christianity as refugees have returned.”

In recent times, freedom of religion has declined in Afghanistan, according to the State Department.

“The government’s level of respect for religious freedom in law and in practice declined during the reporting period, particularly for Christian groups and individuals,” reads the State Department report.

“Negative societal opinions and suspicion of Christian activities led to targeting of Christian groups and individuals, including Muslim converts to Christianity," said the report. "The lack of government responsiveness and protection for these groups and individuals contributed to the deterioration of religious freedom.”

Most Christians in the country refuse to “state their beliefs or gather openly to worship,” said the State Department.

More than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in the decade-old Afghanistan war, according to CNSNews.com’s database of all U.S. casualties in Afghanistan. A September audit released jointly by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and the State Department’s Office of Inspector General, found that the U.S. government will spend at least $1.7 billion to support the civilian effort from 2009-2011.

According to that report, the $1.7 billion excludes additional security costs, which the report says the State Department priced at about $491 million.

A March 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service showed that overall the United States has spent more than $440 billion in the Afghanistan war. Christian aid from the international community has also gone to aid the Afghan government.

Nevertheless, according to the State Department, the lack of non-Muslim religious centers in Afghanistan can be blamed in part on a “strapped government budget,” which is primarily fueled by the U.S. aid.

“There were no explicit restrictions for religious minority groups to establish places of worship and training of clergy to serve their communities,” says the report, “however, very few public places of worship exist for minorities due to a strapped government budget.”

The report acknowledged that Afghanistan’s post-Taliban constitution, which was ratified with the help of U.S. mediation in 2004, can be contradictory when it comes to the free exercise of religion.

While the new constitution states that Islam is the “religion of the state” and that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam,” it also proclaims that “followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of the law.”

However, “the right to change one’s religion was not respected either in law or in practice,” according to the State Department.

“Muslims who converted away from Islam risked losing their marriages, rejection from their families and villages, and loss of jobs,” according to the report. “Legal aid for imprisoned converts away from Islam remains difficult due to the personal objection of Afghan lawyers to defend apostates.”

In this image made available from the Afghanistan Presidential Palace, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, center, shakes hand with new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday, July 25, 2011. (AP Photo/Presidential Palace)

The report does note that “in recent years neither the national nor local authorities have imposed criminal penalties on coverts from Islam.” The report says that “conversion from Islam is considered apostasy and is punishable by death under some interpretations of Islamic rule in the country.”

Also, in recent years, the death punishment for blasphemy “has not been carried out,” according to the State Department.

According to the State Department report, the United States continues to promote religious freedom in Afghanistan--even though the country no longer has even one Christian church.

“The U.S. government regularly discusses religious freedom with government officials as part of its overall policy to promote human rights,” according to the report.

11/10/11 - Christians under siege in post-revolution Egypt

CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's Coptic Christians have long felt like second-class citizens in their own country.

Now many fear that the power vacuum left after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak is giving Muslim extremists free rein to torch churches and attack Coptic homes in the worst violence against the community in decades.

An assault Sunday night on Christians protesting over a church attack set off riots that drew in Muslims, Christians and the police. Among the 26 people left killed in the melee, most were Copts. For Coptic scholar Wassem el-Sissi, it was evidence that the Christian community in Egypt is vulnerable as never before.

"In the absence of law, you can understand how demolishing a church goes unpunished," he said. "I have not heard of anyone who got arrested or prosecuted."

Once a majority in Egypt, Copts now make up about 10 percent of the country's 85 million people. They are the largest Christian community in the Middle East. Their history dates back 19 centuries and the language used in their liturgy can be traced to the speech of Egypt's pharaohs. Proud of their history and faith, many Copts are identifiable by tattoos of crosses or Jesus Christ on their right wrists, and Coptic women do not wear the veil as the vast majority of Muslim women in Egypt do.

Under Mubarak, the problems of Copts festered even if they faced less violence than they do now. Their demands for a law to regulate construction of churches went unanswered and attacks on churches went unpunished.

Copts shared in the euphoria of the 18-day revolution that ousted Mubarak and like so many other Egyptians their hopes for change were high. Mainly, they wanted to be on equal footing with Muslims.

At Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolution against Mubarak, there were glimpses of a fleeting utopia where coexistence and mutual respect between Muslims and Christians was the rule. The iconic image of Christians forming a human shield around Muslim worshippers during Friday prayers to protect them from thugs and pro-Mubarak loyalists spoke volumes to the dream.

But shortly after Mubarak's ouster, a series of assaults on Christians brought home a stark reality: The fading of authoritarian rule empowered Islamist fundamentalists, known here as Salafis, who have special resentment for Christians.

While the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood has long been Egypt's best organized opposition movement, the Salafis are a new player in politics. They are ultraconservatives, close to Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and more radical than the Brotherhood. They seek to emulate the austerity of Islam's early days and oppose a wide range of practices they view as "un-Islamic" - rejecting the treatment of non-Muslims as citizens with equal rights as well as all forms of Western cultural influence.

The Salafis persistently accuse the Copts of trying to spread Christianity in a Muslim nation, echoing Wahhabism's deep distrust and hostility of other religions.

Mubarak's regime tolerated the Salafis and they expanded in numbers and power over the years. However, after Mubarak's overthrow, they enjoyed more freedom than ever before to go after their No. 1 target - Christians.

Now rarely a month passes without a sectarian incident - a Muslim-Christian love affair or battles over constructing a church.

On Feb. 23, less than two weeks after Mubarak's ouster, a priest was found dead with several stab wounds and witnesses say masked men shouting Allahu-Akbar (God is Great) were seen leaving his apartment. The incident triggered protests in the southern city of Assiut where Christians scuffled with Muslims.

Not long after in March, a Muslim-Christian love affair led a Muslim mob to torch a church in Soul village to the south of Cairo and set it on fire. When Christians held a protest denouncing the attack on the church, they were attacked by Muslim mob wielding guns, knives and clubs. When it was done, 13 were dead and 140 injured.

The next month, thousands of protesters, most of them Islamic hard-liners and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, protested in front of the governor's office in the southern city of Qena to denounce the appointment a day earlier of a new Coptic Christian governor. In the face of the protests, the government replaced the Coptic governor.

Then in May, Islamic ultraconservatives burned a church in the working-class district of Imbaba in Cairo and clashed with Christians leaving 12 dead.

Those riots were triggered by a Christian woman who had an affair with a Muslim man. And when she disappeared, the man spread rumors that Christian clergy had snatched her and were holding her prisoner in a local church because she converted to Islam.

Then a few months passed with no attacks, until Sunday night, now known as the "bloody Sunday."

The Christians were protesting in Cairo over the events of Sept. 30 when a Muslim mob that set fire on a church in southern village of Marynab in Aswan province because they believed the Christians were illegally constructing a new church. Church officials had documents showing they had permission to build a new church to replace a previous, run-down one at the same site.

Under Mubarak-era rules, the building of a church or repairs for an existing one required permission from local authorities and the state security agency but since permission was rarely given, Christians at times resorted to building churches in secret, often in parish guesthouses.

Even before the attack, Muslim protests prompted priests to turn to security officials, who arranged a meeting with local elders and Salafis. In the face of their demands, the priests agreed to take down a cross and bells on the church, according to church officials. Still, after the Christians erected a dome, the mob attacked, setting the church and nearby homes and shops on fire.

Aswan's governor, Gen. Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, escalated the tensions by telling the media that the church was being built on the site of a guesthouse, suggesting it was illegal.

In response, hundreds of Christians marched in front of the governor's office last week, demanding those behind the attack be prosecuted and families who lost homes be compensated. Christians also protested in Cairo, cutting off a main avenue in the heart of the capital, demanding the governor's ouster, until soldiers dispersed them by force.

Days after the Aswan attack, Muslim villagers in the southern province of Sohag tried to storm Saint Girgis church, shouting "No to church construction," as Christians on rooftops rained stones down on them. The assault was prompted by construction of a church in a guesthouse.

On Monday, the Coptic church declared three days of morning for those killed the night before and blasted authorities for allowing repeated attacks on Christians with impunity. The statement lamented "problems that occur repeatedly and go unpunished."

Outside the Coptic Hospital in Cairo, where bodies of 17 slain protesters were brought, a Coptic woman named Iman Sanada with a small cross tattooed on her wrist, lamented the deaths and shrieked: "It's my right to live as a citizen and not a second-class citizen."

3/10/11 - Criminalizing Christianity, in Iran and the West

We rightly condemn the persecution of Christianity in Iran -- so why do we react with such dull silence to the creeping criminalization of Christian beliefs and practices in the West?

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By the time this column appears, we may know the earthly fate of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, the Iranian Christian who is under sentence of death for apostasy from Islam. As of Wednesday, September 28, Nadarkhani had declined his final opportunity to renounce Jesus Christ before a regional court. He could be executed at any time.

Iran's leaders are in a difficult spot, if one of their own making. Whatever they decide, they will be crossing a Rubicon. For a regime riven by internal dissent and despised by much of the population, there are no low-cost options. Killing Nadarkhani has the feel of stepping over a precipice, perhaps setting in motion forces that will operate according to an unpredictable logic of their own. The extremists in Iran who believe Christians will have to die are not necessarily prepared at the moment to start killing them. And there are some officials and clerics, even in the revolutionary Islamic government, who recoil from the prospect of executing one, much less many.

Yet the religious authorities in Iran must be concerned about letting the Christian church grow unchecked. According to the American Center for Law and Justice, more than 280 Iranian Christians were arrested for practicing their faith in the first half of 2011. Others have documented previous cases of arrest and persecution from the last decade. The outside world knows the stories of some, like Farshid Fathi, arrested in September 2010, whose current status is unknown; Mehdi Forootan, a friend of Fathi who spent 105 days in the notorious Evin prison; and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad and Maryam Rustampoor, two young women held for eight months in 2009. The names and histories of others are unknown.

The Optimistic Christian

Criminalizing Christianity, in Iran and the WestThe Politics of ComplaintHeroic Warriors, Heroic CitizensAre the Bones of American Society Broken?The Dangerous Erosion of AuthorityAuthor Bio »

But what is known is that more and more Muslims, from Iran and elsewhere, are reporting dreams and visions of Jesus. The trend is so pervasive that there is a websitededicated to encouraging Muslims who have had such encounters. There is an energy and hope in these reports that is mirrored in the letter sent from Youcef Nadarkhani a few weeks ago. The letter is written in the accents of a pastor, urging and exhorting his flock:

O beloved ones, difficulties do not weaken mankind, but they reveal the true human nature.

It will be good for us to occasionally face persecutions and abnormalities, since these abnormalities will persuade us to search our hearts, and to survey ourselves.

So as a result, we conclude that troubles are difficult, but usually good and useful to build us.

Dear brothers and sisters, we must be more careful than any other time.

Because in these days, the hearts and thoughts of many are revealed, so that the faith is tested. . . .

As a small servant, necessarily in prison to carry out what I must do, I say with faith in the word of God that he will come soon. "However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"