Niger: US aid worker Jeff Woodke faced ‘brutal’ treatment in captivity

Jeff Woodke with his wife Els addressing the media after his release, in McKinleyville, CA,on 31 March 2023
Jeff Woodke, the US Christian aid worker who was released from captivity in West Africa last month, has told reporters that that his abductors treated him “brutally and with inhumanity” during the “6 years, 5 months, 5 days and [some] 12 hours” they held him. Woodke had been living and . . . Read More

Perpetrators of Minya bus attack and the beheading of Coptic Christians captured in Libya

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One of the “most wanted” Islamic extremists suspected of participation in the gun attack on a bus convoy of Coptic Christian pilgrims in May 2017 has been captured by Libyan security forces, the BBC reports. The attack killed 28 people, including two children. Twenty-five others were injured. Hisham Ashmawi is . . . Read More

Attacks against Copts ‘among deadliest acts of religious persecution’ – report

This is one of the fifty five photos that is part of the photo story "Renewed day by day," commissioned by World Watch Monitor, exploring the extensive damage to churches in Egypt's Minya region that took place in late August 2013.
Attacks by members of the Islamic State group against Egypt’s Coptic Christian community “were among the deadliest acts of religious persecution” last year, according a new report presented in Washington DC yesterday, 13 September. “Fifty-three per cent of ISIS attacks against the public in 2017 were aimed at the Coptic . . . Read More

Syrian village bombed: five children under 15 – three from same family – among 12 killed

Syrian village bombed: five children under 15 – three from same family – among 12 killed
The children were still playing in the streets on Friday night. Then the rebels bombed the village. On Saturday, they should have celebrated a wedding in Mhardeh, a Christian village in northwest Syria. Instead they had to carry ten of their own to the grave; two more later died in . . . Read More

Imam calls for radical reforms to end extremism and safeguard Eastern Christians

appearing to show IS slave market
Sexual slavery practised by Islamic State (IS) jihadists is condoned in literature that is available at Islamic institutions and should be burnt, a leading imam in France has said. Hocine Drouiche, vice president of the Conference of Imams of France and an imam in Nimes, said that the ideology behind the . . . Read More

Bangladesh orders removal of ‘jihad’ from madrassa textbooks

Bangladesh orders removal of ‘jihad’ from madrassa textbooks
In a move to curb the growth of Islamic extremism in Bangladesh, the government has ordered chapters on jihad to be removed from next year’s textbooks for madrasas (Islamic schools), reports UCAN. According to the news agency, the National Committee on Militancy Resistance and Prevention, which advised the government on . . . Read More

US Vice-President says Trump will protect Middle East Christians and flush out ‘terrorists’

US Vice-President says Trump will protect Middle East Christians and flush out ‘terrorists’
US Vice-President Mike Pence has said that the Trump administration is committed “to defend[ing] Christians, and those of all faiths, whose freedom of religion is threatened”. He was speaking on the first day of the World Summit In Defence of Persecuted Christians in Washington DC, which has been organised by . . . Read More