News Articles by Staff/Morning Star News

JOS, Nigeria (BP) -- The bombing of a mosque by the terrorist group Boko Haram sparked destruction at two churches in Jos, a major city in Nigeria’s north-central state of Plateau. The churches were attacked the night of July 5 amid a week of violence attributed to Boko Haram in which as many as 300 people were killed, both Muslims and Christians. The terrorist group’s stated aim is to impose sharia (Islamic law) throughout the country.

ISTANBUL, Turkey (BP) -- Authorities in Egypt are regularly beating and dragging across a concrete prison floor noted convert Bishoy Armia Boulous, formerly known as Mohammed Hegazy, his attorney said. Imprisoned by Egyptian authorities on trumped-up charges for photographing Muslim attacks on Christians and then held illegally after his sentence was complete, Boulous is beaten several times a week, said attorney Karam Ghobriel.

ISTANBUL, Turkey (BP) -- Iranian authorities heightened pressure on U.S.-Iranian pastor Saeed Abedini in April, threatening to keep him in prison indefinitely, Morning Star News reported May 1. Authorities seem to be taking a "carrot-and-stick" approach to Abedini -- leveling new, petty charges while promising him freedom if he abandons his faith in Christ and returns to Islam, Tiffany Barrans, international director at the American Center for Law and Justice, told Morning Star, a news service focusing on the persecuted church.

NEW DELHI (BP) -- The number of violent and nonviolent attacks against Christians in India has increased 55 percent since Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi became prime minister last year, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI).

LAHORE, Pakistan (BP) -- Pakistan's Punjab province has excluded Christians from a list of people accused of blaspheming Islam whose cases will be expedited for acquittal, according to the Morning Star News service dedicated to persecution issues. Pointing to several Christians languishing in jail on blasphemy charges, Christian rights and political activists say discrimination against religious minorities was behind the Punjab Prosecution Department's short list of 50 cases of alleged blasphemers who have been victimized by complainants.

AUSTIN, Texas (BP) -- In one of at least three instances of persecution of evangelical Christians in southern Mexico's Chiapas state last month, village leaders reneged on their agreement to allow 47 evangelicals who were expelled for their faith to return to their homes and land.  In accordance with the agreement arranged by state officials, Protestants from Buenavista Bahuitz village on Jan. 20 tried to return to their community after syncretistic Catholics expelled them in 2012 for their faith.

ISTANBUL, Turkey (BP) -- A noted convert in Egypt who was sentenced to five years in prison for documenting attacks on Christians has won a partial victory on appeal but remains in jail on prior blasphemy charges. An appeals judge ruled Dec. 28 that Bishoy Armia Boulous, known as Mohammed Hegazy until his conversion in 1998, was not guilty on a charge of spreading information meant to "cause harm or damage to the public interest" and not guilty on the related charge of spreading false news "bound to weaken" Egypt's prestige or harm the "country's national interests."

DHAKA, Bangladesh (BP) -- Two pastors in northwestern Bangladesh could each face two years in prison if convicted of "hurting religious sentiments." Police arrested the pastors Nov. 9 along with 41 people listening to their preaching at a rented house in Nabinagar village 186 miles northwest of Dhaka after at least 100 Muslims disrupted the meeting and began "jabbing" at the church leaders' faces, sources said.

ISTANBUL, Turkey, (BP) -- In what was deemed an effort to silence house-church leader Behnam Irani, Iran has sentenced him and two other Christian leaders to six years in prison for their involvement in house churches, human rights groups have learned.

LAHORE, Pakistan (BP) -- In spite of protests within Pakistan and abroad against the country's blasphemy laws, the Lahore High Court upheld Thursday (Oct. 16) the death sentence for a Christian mother accused of insulting Islam's prophet Muhammad. Aasiya Noreen, commonly known as Asia Bibi, is the first woman to be sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan. The mother of five was arrested in June 2009 after Muslim co-workers beat her when she refused to convert to Islam; her death sentence was announced in November 2010.