Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives

GLOBAL: A recent UN report by Arab scholars links a lack of basic freedoms with social underdevelopment in the Arab League’s twenty-two nations. Compared to other world regions, Arab countries rate lowest in individual liberties, civil participation and press freedom. More than half of Arab women are illiterate and female participation in government is the world’s lowest. The combined GDP of all twenty-two countries is less than Spain’s. Labor productivity has been low and is declining; Arab countries have not developed as quickly as other comparable regions.

BANGLADESH: Some 35 million people are drinking arsenic-contaminated water, the poison amassing within them day by day. Despite efforts by the World Bank and government, the nation’s poor are dying from unsafe water in this race against time. The alternatives to tainted water require effort to educate villagers and pay for new equipment. Most of the country’s estimated eleven million wells have not yet been tested. Health specialists speculate that arsenic-related causes could claim between one to five million lives.

CONGO: Congo and Rwanda have signed a treaty aimed at ending Congo’s four-year civil war that has cost two million lives. Disarming Rwandan rebels in Congo could prove difficult. If the treaty works, Zimbabwe and Angola will also withdraw from Congo. The war has drawn in both Congolese and foreign-backed rebels. Of Congo’s nearly fifty-four million people, half are Roman Catholics and one-fifth are Protestants.

DENMARK: New laws have effectively halved the number of refugees seeking asylum in the last six months. Consequently, the Danish Red Cross is closing sixteen of its thirty-two reception centers. Danes complained asylum-seekers were exploiting the country’s generous welfare state and were to blame for rising crime. The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which got twelve percent of the vote in last November’s election, says Muslim immigrants are changing Denmark for the worse-asking for girls to be excused from gym at school and for pork to be removed from school menus, for example. Laws have cut benefits for asylum-seekers.

FRANCE: With Islam the second most-professed religion in France, the government wants to increase dialogue with its Muslim population. The 9/11 attacks have fostered fears that, unless Muslims are integrated, radical Islam may flourish. The country hosts Europe’s largest Muslim community-about five million. Half are not French citizens; many are North African immigrants who live in run-down suburbs and complain of discrimination. The French government is hoping that the Muslim community’s election of a council will help bring Muslim residents into mainstream society. Unfortunately, moves to create the council have been hampered by bickering between conservative and liberal imams, and older and newer mosques. The government is pushing for elections to the council by November.

IRAQ: Eighty-two children attended a vacation Bible school in Baghdad for two weeks this summer. Despite the embargo and the political situation, the Seventh-day Adventist church still holds the annual event. A large number of family and friends gathered with regular church members for the closing children’s program.

KAZAKHSTAN: The first Christian satellite TV channel was launched throughout the former Soviet Union, Central Europe and Asia. The channel broadcasts the gospel in Russian and English, reaching 84 million homes served via satellite and cable TV. Programming will be educational, evangelistic and discipleship-based. Today there are 300 million Russian speakers in the world, many who live in Israel, Germany, Greece, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Middle Eastern countries.

PAKISTAN: Murree Christian School’s 150 students-some of them children of US missionaries-escaped harm when gunmen attacked on August 5. They killed six people and wounded three. The school is located in a resort area in the Himalayan foothills. The school had received no threats and had never been attacked since it was founded in 1956. After being closed four months for security reasons, it had reopened last February. The student body includes some twenty nationalities and children of diplomats as well as missionaries’ children.

SOUTH AFRICA: Africa’s first and only Buddhist seminary is ambitiously building the largest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere. Seminary novices are drawn from as far away as Brazil, Congo, Kenya, Madagascar and Malawi. Training prepares students to become committed teachers of Dharma (universal truth) on the African continent. Funding comes from the Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan (Pure Land) Buddhist Order and some contributions from South Africa’s 14,000 Taiwanese immigrants.

TURKEY: Although Turkey is a secular state, tensions are slowly escalating within its 99.64 percent Muslim-majority society. The government’s aggressive promotion of secularism and its moves to join the EU are causing friction with those who desire stronger ties to neighboring Muslim states. Religious liberty is a constitutional right but some politicians, many police and all Islamists are hostile to Christianity, which they see as European and against all that is historically Turkish. They regularly use ambiguous laws to harass churches. In June, Turkish security police ordered the closure of a church that had been meeting for seven years in a location without any complaints. The directive alleged the church’s location had not been approved in the municipal zoning plan.

UKRAINE: Local authorities have ordered a stop to a first-time evangelistic campaign to bring the gospel to Jewish people in the city of Dnepropetrovsk. The effort that began on July 4th included distribution of gospel tracts and one-on-one conversations by a team of eighteen. Members of the team have been physically assaulted and have had some tracts stolen. Until the ruling to end the campaign came down, missionaries had prayed with ninety-six Jewish people and 196 non-Jews to receive Christ; another 2,100 people requested to receive information by mail.