Sharon, yep, evil is good and good is evil.
At 07:43 PM 4/5/2019, Sharon Hooley, wrote:
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Begin forwarded message:
From: "Helena"
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Date: April 4, 2019 at 12:08:10 PM MDT
To:
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Subject: [talk] This makes me Furious!
Reply-To:
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It just shows to what extremes people are taking Christian
persecution. I have to admit that never, in my wildest dreams, did
I think my own native country could be a part of this.
UK: Radical Muslims Welcome, Persecuted Christians Need Not Apply, by
Raymond Ibrahim
Share this article
In two unrelated cases, the United Kingdom denied asylum to persecuted
Christians by bizarrely citing the Bible and Jesus. Both Christians, a
man and a woman, are former Muslims who were separately seeking asylum
from the Islamic Republic of Iran, the ninth-worst persecutor of
Christians -- particularly of those who were Muslims and converted to
Christianity.
UK asylum worker Nathan Stevens recently shared their stories. In his
rejection letter from the UK's Home Office, which is in charge of
immigration, the Iranian man was told that biblical passages were
"inconsistent" with his claim to have converted to Christianity
after discovering it was a "peaceful" faith.
The letter cited several biblical excerpts, including from Exodus,
Leviticus, and Matthew, presumably to show that the Bible is violent; it
said Revelation was "filled with imagery of revenge, destruction,
death and violence." The governmental letter then concluded:
"These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted
to Christianity after discovering it is a 'peaceful' religion, as opposed
to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge."
In response, Nathan Stevens, the asylum seeker's caseworker,
tweeted:
"... I've seen a lot over the years, but even I was genuinely
shocked to read this unbelievably offensive diatribe being used to
justify a refusal of asylum.
Stevens added:
"Whatever your views on faith, how can a government official
arbitrarily pick bits out of a holy book and then use them to trash
someone's heartfelt reason for coming to a personal decision to follow
another faith?
There seemed no awareness that, despite occasional verses of violence in
the Bible, its main message, in both the Old and New Testaments, is to be
found in Leviticus 19:18: "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
In rejecting the claim for asylum of this man who converted from Islam to
Christianity, and presumably compelling his return to Iran, the British
government is effectively sentencing him to death.
In the second case, an Iranian female asylum seeker was informed in her
rejection letter:
"You affirmed in your AIR [Asylum Interview Record] that Jesus is
your saviour, but then claimed that He would not be able to save you from
the Iranian regime. It is therefore considered that you have no
conviction in your faith and your belief in Jesus is
half-hearted."
Recently interviewed on BBC Radio 4, the woman, who wishes to remain
anonymous, said:
"When I was in Iran I converted to Christianity and the situation
changed and the government were looking for me and I had to flee from
Iran.... In my country if someone converts to Christianity their
punishment is death or execution."
Concerning the asylum process, she said that whenever she responded to
her Home Office interviewer, "he was either chuckling or maybe just
kind of mocking when he was talking to me.... He asked me why Jesus
didn't help you from the Iranian regime or Iranian
authorities."
These two recently exposed cases appear to be symptomatic not only of a
breathtaking lack of logic that flies in the face of history -- God
obviously did not always save those who believed in Him -- but also what
increasing appears to be a venomous Home Office bias against Christians.
For instance, when Sister Ban Madleen, a Christian nun in Iraq who had
fled the Islamic State, applied to the Home Office to visit her sick
sister in Britain, she was denied a visa -- twice. Another report cites a
number of other Christian orderlies who were denied visas, including
another nun with a PhD in Biblical Theology from Oxford; a nun denied for
not having a personal bank account, and a Catholic priest denied for not
being married.
In another case, the Home Office not only denied entry to three heroic
Christian leaders -- archbishops celebrated for their efforts to aid
persecuted Christians in Syria and Iraq who had been invited to attend
the consecration of the UK's first Syriac Cathedral, an event attended by
Prince Charles -- but also mockingly told them there was "no room at
the inn."
Even longtime Christian residents are being deported. Earlier this year,
Asher Samson, 41, a Christian man who had been residing in the UK for 15
years and undergoing theological studies, was deported back to Pakistan
-- where he had earlier been "beaten and threatened by Islamic
extremists." (Such treatment is normative for Christians in
Pakistan, the world's fifth-worst persecutor of Christians.) Samson's
former UK pastor said:
"I've received some messages from him. He's very scared, he's
fearful for his life.... He's in hiding in Pakistan and his family are
terribly worried for him.... At the moment he has no funds to live on --
he can't work .... The UK is sending people back to these countries where
their lives are in danger."
By contrast, a report from the Barnabas Fund found that in offering
asylum, the UK "appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims"
instead of Christians. Statistics confirm this allegation:
"Figures obtained by Barnabas Fund under a Freedom of Information
request show that out of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement
by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian, representing just
0.2% of all Syrian refugees accepted by the UK."
Statistics from earlier years have shown the same disparity. Although
Christians accounted for approximately 10% of Syria's prewar population,
the overwhelming majority of Syrians granted asylum by the Home Office
were Sunni Muslims. Such an imbalance appears even more bizarre when one
realizes that the Islamic State (ISIS) is itself a Sunni organization
that targets non-Sunnis, primarily Yazidis, Christians and Shiite
Muslims, all minority groups that the U.S. government acknowledges have
been targets of genocide.
As Lord David Alton of Liverpool, a life peer in the House of Lords,
wrote to Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who heads the Home Office:
"It is widely accepted that Christians, who constituted around 10
per cent of Syria's pre-war population, were specifically targeted by
jihadi rebels and continue to be at risk.... As last year's statistics
more than amply demonstrate, this [ratio imbalance between Muslim and
Christian refugees taken in] is not a statistical blip. It shows a
pattern of discrimination that the Government has a legal duty to take
concrete steps to address."
Considering that persecuted Christian minorities -- including priests and
nuns -- are denied visas, one might conclude that perhaps the Home Office
just has extremely stringent asylum requirements. This notion is quickly
dispelled, however, when one sees that the Home Office regularly grants
visas and refugee status to extremist Muslims. One has yet to hear about
Muslim asylum seekers being denied visas because the Koran is too
violent, or because they do "not have enough faith" in
Muhammad.
Ahmed Hassan, despite having no papers -- and despite telling the Home
Office that "he had been trained as an ISIS soldier" -- was
still granted asylum two years before he launched a terrorist attack in a
London train station that left 30 injured in September 2017.
The Home Office also allowed a foreign Muslim cleric, Hamza Sodagar, to
enter and lecture in London, even though he advocates beheading, burning,
or throwing homosexuals from cliffs.
In addition, according to another report, "British teenagers are
being forced to marry abroad and are raped and impregnated while the Home
Office 'turns a blind eye' by handing visas to their [mostly Muslim]
husbands."
The case of Asia Bibi -- a Christian mother of five who has spent the
last decade of her life on death row in Pakistan for challenging the
authority of Muhammad -- is perhaps emblematic of the immigration
situation in the UK. After she was finally acquitted last November,
Muslims rioted throughout Pakistan; in one march, more than 11,000
Muslims demanded her instant and public hanging.
As Pakistanis make up the majority of all Muslims in the UK -- Sajid
Javid the head of the Home Office is himself Pakistani -- when they got
wind that the UK might offer Asia Bibi asylum, they too rioted. As a
result, Prime Minister Theresa May personally blocked Bibi's asylum
application -- "despite UK playing host to [Muslim] hijackers,
extremists and rapists," one headline read.
The UK, in other words, was openly allowing "asylum policy to be
dictated to by a Pakistan mob," reported the Guardian, "after
it was confirmed it urged the Home Office not to grant Asia Bibi
political asylum in the UK..."
At the same time, the Home Office allowed a Pakistani cleric, Syed
Muzaffar Shah Qadri, considered so extreme that he is banned even from
his native Pakistan, to come and lecture in UK mosques. Qadri celebrated
the slaughter of a politician because he had defended Asia Bibi.
In short, local Muslim opinion apparently plays a major role in the UK's
immigration policy: radical Muslims are welcomed with open arms;
Christian "infidels" need not apply.
Commenting on the difficulties Christian minority asylum seekers have
with the Home Office, Dr. Martin Parsons, the head of research at the
Barnabas Fund, remarking that "visas were granted in July to two
Pakistani Islamic leaders who have called for the killing of Christians
accused of blasphemy," summarized the situation:
"It's unbelievable that these persecuted Christians who come from
the cradle of Christianity are being told there is no room at the inn,
when the UK is offering a welcome to Islamists who persecute
Christians....
There is a serious systemic problem when Islamist leaders who advocate
persecution of Christians are given the green light telling them that
their applications for UK visas will be looked on favourably, while visas
for short pastoral visits to the UK are denied to Christian leaders whose
churches are facing genocide. That is an urgent issue that Home Office
ministers need to grasp and correct."
Blessings,
Helena.
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