UK churches threatened
In the past two months fifteen UK churches have been sent anonymous threatening letters telling them to stop services or be attacked. The letters were handwritten, threatening petrol bomb attacks and mass stabbings. ‘Stop all your services straight away’, said one letter sent to a Sheffield church. ‘If you don’t, your church will be petrol bombed while in service. Continue behind closed doors and your congregation members will be stabbed one by one. Blood on your hands. You have been warned.’ One of the handwritten letters, bearing a West Midlands postmark, demanded that they stop their services and threatened to bomb the church. Services are continuing, and police have been deployed to the churches affected. A local faith school decided to withdraw pupils from services after they received the threatening letter. A police investigation has been opened, and inquiries are ongoing. See also last week’s article on violence against clergy here
Our shameful discrimination against Christians
Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt recently launched a government review on the global persecution of Christians. He stated, ‘The UK can and must do more for the many Christians facing persecution and discrimination worldwide, but first we must look to our own discrimination against Christians at home’. The Sunday Times says that the Government is ‘repeatedly failing to provide sanctuary in Britain for a fair proportion of Christians’, and warns that this policy ‘appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims and risks embarrassing the Government’. Barnabas Fund is also calling for an end to discrimination against persecuted Syrian Christians seeking a safe haven in the UK. MP Sir John Hayes called for people to stand up for religious freedom and warned, ‘The “golden era” of religious liberty may be coming to an end. Religious believers are facing increased pressure to restrict their faith to the private sphere’.
Islamisation through halal products
Christian Concern for our Nation asks, ‘Is the widespread availability of halal products an example of Islamic religious freedom? Or does halal have a deeper effect on society?’ Its new report shows how halal spreads through supply chains impacting laws and economics, and recommends how to deal with the deepening roots of sharia. The report states, ‘The aim of Islam is to create a supreme worldview, whereby all other laws come under Islamic law. Halal food markets, Islamic dress markets, sharia-compliant finance and banking, Islamic education, sharia courts.’ See also article 1 in the Europe section, on sharia law.
Facebook - suicide images - fake news
Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, has called on social media giants to ‘purge’ material promoting self-harm and suicide, in the wake of links to teenager Molly Russell's suicide. They could be banned if they fail to comply. The 14-year-old took her life after viewing disturbing content about suicide on Instagram. Her father believed Instagram ‘helped kill my daughter’. Instagram owners, Facebook, said they were ‘deeply sorry’. The charity Papyrus, working to prevent youth suicide, had a spike in calls to their helpline after the BBC reported the link between suicide and social media. Meanwhile, Facebook removed 364 ‘fake’ pages (with 790,000 followers) for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour as part of a network that originated in Russia. Facebook said the page administrators and account owners represented themselves as independent news pages or general interest pages, but all were linked to employees of Russian-owned Sputnik and the facts were false. See
