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Islamic terrorism. As the Islamic rebel group Abu Sayyaf continues to hold New Tribes missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham in the Philippines, 10 southern Philippine Christian-majority provinces and 13 cities voted August 14 against joining an Islamic autonomous region, reports the Barnabas Fund. Believers there feared the Muslim authority would introduce Islamic sharia law. The Burnhams, who have served in the Philippines as support missionaries since 1986, were kidnapped May 26 from a Philippine resort where they were celebrating their anniversary. They are being held in dense jungle with about 20 other hostages on rainy Basilan island. NTM reports that the Filipino military is closing in on the Abu Sayyaf rebels. As of late August, “They are alive and well,” NTM spokesman Scott Ross told World Pulse.
Pentecostal conference tragedy. Filipino pastors and church workers accounted for 69 of the 73 deaths in an August 18 fire at Manor Hotel in Manila’s Quezon City suburb, reports Charisma News Service. Fire investigators have blamed a short circuit for the tragedy. The hotel’s owner faces criminal charges as investigators say that the hotel had a history of violating safety regulations, reports Mission Network News. Charisma reports that 172 of the hotel’s 236 registered guests were attendees of the four-day “Destiny Crusade” conference organized by Dallas Pentecostal evangelist Don Clowers and featuring Joyce Meyer. The fire injured another 51 people, AP reports. The conference at Manila’s Araneta Coliseum was expected to draw 40,000. Burglar bars on the hotel’s windows trapped victims in their rooms where they were asphyxiated, reports the BBC. “Local officials said many of the victims would still be alive if basic fire regulations, such as installing fire alarms, had been followed,” the BBC reports. “Sealed fire escapes made escape from the blaze virtually impossible.”
AFGHANISTAN
Grim plight improves for jailed missionaries. The Taliban foreign minister says that eight foreign Christian missionaries arrested for evangelism August 3 and 5 may have visits from the Red Cross, Christianity Today’s Weblog reports. The United Nations’ liaison representative for the Taliban, the fundamentalist Muslim group that controls 95 percent of Afghanistan, says that soon they will be able to go home. That’s good news for the foreign detainees, Americans Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, two Australians and four Germans with the German-based evangelical relief agency Shelter Now, but things are grim for the 16 Afghans also detained.
“The evidence considered most damning includes Bibles translated into Farsi and Pashto, dozens of video and audio tapes about the life of Jesus and a book entitled Sharing Your Faith With a Muslim,” reports the New York Times. In Afghanistan, proselytizing a faith other than Islam is punishable by death. “The two American women were caught, as you say, red-handed, in an Afghan’s house, where they know they were not to go, an Afgan official tells the Times. They were trying to show a video about Jesus, from his birth to his, what is the word, I think it is crucifixion.” But other Afghan Muslims told the Washington Post that Shelter Now’s arrested Afghan employees were all devoutly Islamic and the missionaries never tried to convert them. Says one employee, “We are all good Muslims and nobody can change that. I don’t know what all this trouble is about.”
The Times reports that for months, Shelter Now’s Kabul staff had been watched by the Taliban’s religious police from the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. An intensive investigation has been opened, and the authorities have announced the possibility of “a larger conspiracy.” The Taliban’s foreign minister is even suspicious of the UN’s World Food Program.
“The program is the sole source of nourishment for 3 million Afghans, about 15 percent of the population,” the Times reports. “Those woebegone people survive on little more than flatbread and weak tea. The potential of more arrests has left the aid agencies in fear. People say the Shelter Now episode could eventually lead to a huge withdrawal-or expulsion-of the agencies. That would be catastrophic for the needy.” The chairman of Germany’s Association of Evangelical Missions says that the Afghans appreciate the work of the relief groups. “They know who points the guns and who brings food and medicine,” the chairman tells Idea Evangelical News Agency.
NIGERIA
Christians condemndemolition of churches. Nigeria’s Muslims are destroying churches in their quest to entrench the Islamic legal code sharia in northern Nigeria, actions that the Northern Christian Elders Forum (NORCEF) is condemning, British newspaper The Guardian reports. NORCEF members agreed at a general meeting to resist more destruction, which the group says has become rampant in Bauchi, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina and Zamfara, with the government of the states providing support for such action. The group says the Muslims demolished the churches because they were built on land meant for homes. “NORCEF is dismayed that in spite of the solemn undertaking that sharia is applicable to Muslims only, Christians continue to suffer deprivation and molestation in all the so-called sharia states,” the newspaper reports. Ten northern Nigerian states have adopted sharia. Those who violate it are subject to punishments such as whippings and amputation.
MACEDONIA
Missionaries caught in Macedonian fighting. Macedonian government troops have been fighting ethnic Albanian rebels for six months, mainly near Mace-donia’s second-largest city, Tetovo. Religion Today reports that six Cooperative Baptist Fellowship workers evacuated Macedonia and are now safely in Greece because of fears that violence might spread to the capital city, Skopje. A national Christian worker still in Macedonia reports that the situation is worsening daily as Albanian terrorists are attacking.
In early August, the terrorists brutally murdered 10 army soldiers who were en route to defend civilians in the crisis region. “Today only a few kilometers from our home, eight army officers died and another eight were severely wounded by a mine. Right afterwards, the terrorist began shooting on the [survivors],” the worker says in an e-mail. Nor were civilians spared; they tortured four that same day, beating them with iron shovels until the shovels broke. They forced the four to swear [at] their own families, sing Albanian songs, shout pro-“liberation army” slogans, “and to call on the name of Allah if they wanted to drink some water,” the worker says. Terrorists used knives to write on their backs. “When these people later somehow reached the nearest clinic, the doctor on duty who was Albanian didn’t want to help them, and told them to go home.” Hundreds of persecuted families are upset, depressed and feel hopeless. “Even we as Christians often have the same feelings; we pray that we won’t have to leave our home and run for our lives. Therefore, please urgently pray for the peace in Macedonia and God’s protection over the innocent people. “… The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”
INDONESIA
MAF airplane crashes. A Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) Cessna 206 airplane crashed August 21 in Indonesia’s Irian Jaya, reports Voice of America (VOA). The plane’s American pilot Tom Hans and three passengers were injured, and the Cessna was destroyed. A MAF worker says the aircraft plowed into the ground while trying to land on a sloping grass airstrip near Koropum village. The injured were taken to the hospital for treatment. An accident investigation is underway, says an MAF spokesman. The California-based Christian missionary airline flies 15 small planes around Irian Jaya and operates more than 70 aircraft in its worldwide fleet. MAF transports missionaries and relief supplies for many Christian groups ministering around the world.
September 21, 2001