Executing three Christians

Almost none of you were there when Pastor David taught the T&T groups last Wed. But in his teaching, he mentioned this situation. Be prepared to do something about this on Wed.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 Executing three Christians The Indonesian government is preparing to execute three Christian farmers tomorrow for their supposed role in Muslim-Christian fighting that resulted in the deaths of scores of Muslims. There has been much concern voiced internationally over the fairness of the trial, which appears to have been a kangaroo-court situation rigged by the government to appease the Islamic majority. It's interesting to note that the protesters don't claim that the three Christian men are innocent, only that they did not receive a fair trial, and that they were the only ones charged when Muslims had a key role in the strife as well. The bloody Muslim persecution of Christians in Indonesia is nota new story, but it's not one you hear much about in the West, not from our media. This from a National Review piece I wrote four years ago, about the indifference of the West to the intense persecution of Christians in the Muslim world: An Indonesian man with a lined, anxious face hands me a photograph from a magazine report on events in his homeland. I am looking at a photograph of the burned and decapitated corpse of a Christian man who was murdered in a Christmas Eve pogrom in his village. His killers were members of Laskar Jihad, a heavily armed Islamist terror group. "They cut off his genitals too," the Indonesian man explains. "He died at his church." My informant, a Christian human-rights activist who refused to be identified, in order to protect his family, has photographs of Christian villages burned to the ground by Laskar Jihad. Numerous sources say the group has killed as many as 10,000 Indonesian Christians, forcibly converted thousands more, and demolished hundreds of churches. Activists say the Jakarta regime has only sporadically shown an interest in protecting the nation's Christian minority, and some accuse elements of the government and military of sympathy with the jihadists. "I was in Indonesia when 9/11 happened, and I followed the statements of Muslim political leaders," says my informant. "They were encouraging Muslims to help Osama bin Laden. I was crying in my heart for New York, but I'm telling you, 9/11 happened once in New York, but it's happening every day to Christian villages in Indonesia." [snip] You try going over there and facing these Christians, like I did recently in Indonesia, and answering them when they ask, 'You're supposed to be our brother Christians, why aren't you doing anything? Why are you letting them kill us?'" says [Ann]Buwalda[ director of the DC-based human rights group Jubilee Campaign USA]. "You can see how angry and upset they are, and they're right to be. They say they just hope September 11 wakes us up to what they have to live with every day." Three Christian farmers are going to be murdered by the government of Indonesia tomorrow to pacify Islamists. If you can, take time out of your preparation for Friday's planned "Day of Rage" across the Muslim world, set to protest the Pope's mentioning of a Byzantine emperor's judgment of Islam's peacefulness, to give these poor souls, and all those persecuted by Islamic rule, a thought.