Nigerian Anglican Archbishop, Mr. Kattey, Kidnapped

http://pmnewsnigeria.com/2013/09/07/archbishop-kattey-kidnapped-by-gunmen/

Archbishop Kattey kidnapped by gunmen  

 

Published on September 7, 2013

Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt
 Most Rev Ignatius Ogboru Kattey, the Dean, Archbishop and Bishop of Niger Delta North Anglican Communion of Nigeria, was last night kidnapped by yet to be identified gunmen in Port Harcourt, capital of Rivers State.

The abduction happened at about 11.30pm Friday night.

The clergyman, along with his wife, Beatrice was captured on Aleto bridge, Eleme in Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State, but the wife was later found abandoned in their car.

The whereabouts of the archbishop remains unknown. 

Archbishop Kattey: kidnapped

Sources said the Archbishop and the wife were driving to Port Harcourt late on Friday to beat the traffic restrictions Saturday morning, occasioned by the monthly environmental Sanitation. Unknown to them, the exercise would not hold because of the GCE-WAEC examination taking place today.
Rivers State has been experiencing a rising tide of insecurity since Police Commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu was posted to the state.

Just last week, Felix Igwe, Commissioner for Sports was shot by unidentified gunmen around Eleme Inter-Change, Eleme axis of Port Harcourt and he is receiving treatment.

In the hierarchy of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Kattey who was made a Dean of Anglican Communion in Nigeria about a year ago, is next to the Primate, Most Rev.Nicholas Okoh.

Most Rev. Ignatius Crosby Ogborun Kattey (Justice of the Peace) was born in the small Nchia Town called Alode in Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State on 23 August, 1948. His father was Chief Amos Kattey who was himself a devout Christian, church leader, produce merchant, trader, farmer and Government Recognized Second Class Traditional Ruler of Nchia Kingdom. His mother was Mrs. Margaret Ada Kattey.

He attended St. Paul’s Catholic School Obigbo (now Oyigbo) from 1954 to 1959. For his secondary education, he attended the National High School Aba and graduated with a Grade One in West African School Certificate Examination.

He had his university education at Ahmadu Bello University Zaria (beehive of Academic excellence) where he graduated in Mechanical Engineering in 1976.

Arch. Bishop Kattey was born-again in 1971 through the ministry of the Scripture Union. He is the Chairman, All Anglican Clergy Conference of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) and also the Chairman of Christian Council of Nigeria, South South Area Council.

Archbishop of Uganda -- Anglicanism suffering from "spiritual cancer" | Anglican Ink

Archbishop of Uganda -- Anglicanism suffering from "spiritual cancer" | Anglican Ink

Archbishop of Uganda -- Anglicanism suffering from "spiritual cancer"

A call to prayer from Stanley Ntagali for GAFCON II

 

Article | August 13, 2013 - 3:59pm | By Stanley Ntagali

13th August 2013

Good Morning. I greet you in the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ!

I have an important message for you today.  Ten years ago this month, a gay man, who was a divorced father of two children, was elected a Bishop in the Episcopal Church in America.

This unbiblical decision on the part of a church threw the entire global Anglican Communion into chaos.

Two months later, the Archbishop of Canterbury convened an emergency meeting of the 38 Primates – Senior Archbishops – of the Anglican Communion to try to resolve the crisis. The Primates issued a statement that said that if the consecration of this gay man proceeded it would “tear the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level.”  Even the American Archbishop agreed to this statement.

Yet, immediately after the close of the meeting, the American Archbishop held a press conference just outside Lambeth Palace and told the world that he would proceed with the consecration. And, indeed, he did.

And, as the Primates predicted, the American consecration of a gay man as a Bishop did “tear the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level.”

There were many attempts by the Primates of the Anglican Communion to bring discipline to the American Church, but they were not implemented. And, so the spiritual cancer has spread. It has infected the Anglican Church in Canada, the Church of England, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Church of Wales, and even the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.


In America, they even have a Lesbian Bishop now!  Many Dioceses in the American Episcopal Church have approved the blessing of same-sex unions. And, with their recent Supreme Court decision to recognize same-sex marriage, we expect the American Church to promote this even more.

It isn’t any better in Canada – most dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada have also approved the blessing of same-sex unions.

In the UK the Civil Partnership Act was passed in 2005.   It allows same-sex partners to enter into a legal relationship with all the same benefits as marriage. Sadly, the Church of England supported this bill. 

In the first year after it was passed, more than 50 gay or lesbian priests were “joined” in civil partnership ceremonies and are living together in church housing.  Who knows how many more have been joined in such ceremonies in the seven years since then. 

In January of this year, the Church of England House of Bishops resolved that clergy in civil partnerships are eligible to become Bishops. I responded at the time by saying, “The recent decision of the [Church of England] House of Bishops to allow clergy in civil partnerships to be eligible to become Bishops is really no different from allowing gay Bishops.  This decision violates our Biblical faith and agreements within the Anglican Communion. When the American Church made this decision in 2003 it tore the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level. This decision only makes the brokenness of the Communion worse and is particularly disheartening coming from the Mother Church.”

I have taken time to give you this history because we are at the ten-year anniversary mark of this crisis, and I want to ask, “Where are we?”

We have a new Archbishop of Canterbury who is born again and has a testimony. I have personally met him and I like him very much.

But, the problems in the Communion are still there, and they don’t change just because there is a new global leader. In fact, ten years later, the crisis has deepened. It is worse, and shows no signs of improving.

This is why the Archbishop of Nigeria, the other Archbishops of East Africa, and I have come together and decided to organize a second Global Anglican Future Conference or GAFCON. It will be held in Nairobi at All Saints’ Cathedral from 21st to 26th October. The Church of Uganda will be sending 200 Delegates to this important revival meeting.

The first GAFCON – or, Global Anglican Future Conference – was held five years ago in Jerusalem, the place where our Lord Jesus lived, died, and rose again for our justification.
The first GAFCON was very significant because it created a global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans led by a Primates Council and it also called for the creation of a new Bible-believing Anglican Province in North America. That new Anglican Province has now been created and is thriving. It is called the Anglican Church in North America.

This second GAFCON conference is also very important at this time in the life of our church.  We are holding it in Nairobi this time because it is closer to the majority of the Christians who make up GAFCON.  

I have called you here today because I want all our Christians to know about it, to pray for it, and to support it financially.

GAFCON is to the Anglican Communion as the East African Revival was to the church in Uganda. At first it was small revival fellowships meeting outside the church structures and church services. But, as the revival spread, it became mainstream in the Church. Now, most of the Church of Uganda is led by clergy and Bishops shaped by the East African Revival.


In the same way, we are going to GAFCON 2 in Nairobi to see that the Biblical faith of GAFCON spreads like revival throughout the whole Anglican Communion, so that global Anglicanism is brought back to its Biblical and evangelistic faith.

So, I am calling on all Christians to get involved in three ways:

First, we need you to pray! Pray for me as your Archbishop. Pray for your Bishop. Pray for your clergy and lay readers that we will all uphold the authority of the Bible in our lives and in our church.  Pray for the GAFCON delegates that they will return from GAFCON and lead the Church of Uganda into Biblical truth and living.

Secondly, we need your financial support to ensure that your Bishop and other key clergy, women, and lay leaders from your Diocese are able to go to GAFCON.  Please go to them and offer your financial support.

Finally, we need you to ask your Bishop and GAFCON delegates to report back to you after the conference. Ask them to tell you what they are doing to keep the Anglican Church on track.
Thank you for listening. And, thank you for supporting your Church’s leadership in GAFCON.
 
The Most Rev. Stanley Ntagali

ARCHBISHOP OF CHURCH OF UGANDA.

Islamo-Facist Watch: "NIGERIA: Islamists Gun Down Six Christians at Midnight Mass Then Torch the Church"

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=16999

 

NIGERIA: Islamists Gun Down Six Christians at Midnight Mass Then Torch the Church

By Jim Hoft on Tuesday,
December 25, 2012,

Christmas in Nigeria.

Boko Haram Islamists carried out a series of attacks on Christians this time last year. (BBC)

Gunmen shot six Christians dead including the pastor at a Midnight Mass Christmas celebration this morning. They then torched the church.

The AFP reported, via Religion of Peace:

Gunmen attacked a church in northern Nigeria during a midnight mass on Christmas Eve, killing six people including the pastor, before setting the building ablaze, residents and police said Tuesday.

Gunmen killed six people attending midnight mass at a church in northern Nigeria on Christmas Eve, police and residents confirmed on Tuesday.

"A group of gunmen came into the village at midnight and went straight to the church... they opened fire on them, killing the pastor and five worshippers. They then set fire to the church," said Usman Mansir, resident of Peri village, near Potiskum, the economic capital of Yobe state.

Mansir specified that a branch of the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) was the congregation that was targeted.

A senior police official in Yobe confirmed the details to AFP, but declined to be named.

Boko Haram Islamists have carried out several attacks in Yobe, which borders the state of Maiduguri, where the insurgent group is based.

Jihad-Watch: Christian Students Executed by Boko Haram in Nigeria; Believers Pray for 'Change of Heart'

This was the Romanist slaughter of French, Calvinistic
Protestants in Paris, 1572, called the
"St. Bartholomew Massacre."  While inapplicable
to the Nigerians in this article, it reminds us
that Christians will find answers to murders
one day, vis a vis Rev. 6.9ff.  Barring the second
coming and Final Judgment, may the earthly
authorities find these Sharia-Islamo-facists
and STOP THEM! 

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=16624

 

Christian Students Executed by Boko Haram in Nigeria; Believers Pray for 'Change of Heart'

By Katherine Weber,
Christian Post Reporterhttp://www.christianpost.com/news/
October 3, 2012

Multiple sources have confirmed that about 25 to 30 Christian college students were massacred at a university in northeastern Nigeria late Monday night, causing Christians to pray for a "change of heart" among the extremist Islamist group Boko Haram to put a stop to the continued violence.

While there is speculation as to the motive of the massacre, sources close to the human rights watchdog Open Doors USA confirm that the massacre was performed by Boko Haram.

Emily Fuentes, the communications and public relations coordinator for Open Doors who recently visited Nigeria and spoke to Christian leaders about Boko Haram, told The Christian Post that believers around the world can agree that prayer is the "only thing that will change the people of Boko Haram."

"There are people who are turning to Christ who used to be in the Boko Haram, and God is changing their hearts," Fuentes told CP.

"A lot of Christians believe that God will change these peoples' hearts," she added.

The killings reportedly occurred in the late night hours on Oct. 1, when masked gunmen went door-to-door in the off-campus housing section of Federal Polytechnic College in Mubi, a city in the remote Adamawa State in northeastern Nigeria.

Open Doors USA sources confirmed that the gunmen separated the Christian students from the Muslim students, addressed each victim by name, questioned them, and then proceeded to shoot them or slit their throat.

"Open Doors is calling on Christians in the West to bear this horrific burden with our brothers and sisters in Mubi and Adamawa state," Open Doors USA spokesman Jerry Dykstra said in a press release emailed to The Christian Post.

"Nigeria is becoming a killing field," he added.

Fuentes told CP that according to a local Nigerian police chief, Monday night's killing were performed by Boko Haram as an act of reprisal after 156 Boko Haram members were arrested in Mubi in late September.

Fuentes told CP over the phone interview that the goal of the terror group, which has reportedly overtaken 13 of Nigeria's northern states, is to make the country a completely Islamic nation and rid it of all western influence.

"In these [Nigerian] states to be a Christian is of grave danger," Fuentes said, adding that killing Christians is "Boko Haram's way of wiping out western influence."

Fuentes confirmed that in Mobi, where Monday's massacre took place, there has been some form of violent attack on Christians nearly every day since Nov. 2011.

Fuentes shared the testimonials involving a change of heart by two Boko Haram members. In one testimonial, a former Boko Haram member found the Gospel of Jesus Christ and converted. He now serves as a witness to other Boko Haram members, and although he receives threats to his life daily, he has managed to stay alive.

Other Boko Haram members, according to Fuentes, have not converted to Christianity but have seen the "goodness of the Christian religion" and now warn Christians before there is an attack.

In light of Monday's attack, Open Doors USA requested that all Christians pray for the families of the deceased students, who have been "thrown into mourning" and are reportedly in "indescribably pain right now."

"Please pray for the parents, families and friends of the innocent victim of this slaughter. Pray that they will receive the comfort only our Lord can give. Pray that justice will prevail. Pray that Christians will not retaliate," Open Doors said.

Boko Haram has yet to openly claim responsibility for Monday night's massacre.

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-students-executed-by-boko-haram-in-nigeria-believers-pray-for-change-of-heart-82646/#o0j3k9UDxmvgVBDr.99

(BBC) Jihad Watch: 1400 Dead at Hands of Nigerian Islamo-Facists

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19691781

Nigeria church bombed in Bauchi, Boko Haram flashpoint

Continue reading the main story

Nigeria under attack

• Fuel on Jos fire
• Boko Haram's shadowy leader
• 'My city of fear'
• Who are Boko Haram?

A suicide bomber has attacked a church in northern Nigeria , killing at least two people and injuring 48, according to the Red Cross.

Witnesses at the scene in the city of Bauchi said they heard a blast near St John's Church, possibly in a car park.

Bauchi has often been targeted by the Islamist Boko Haram group, which wants to impose Sharia law across Nigeria.

Sunday attacks on churches took place regularly earlier this year but had eased in recent months.

Attacks in central and northern Nigeria blamed on Boko Haram have killed some 1,400 people since 2010.

On 16 September, Nigerian security forces said they killed Boko Haram's spokesman Abu Qaqa in a gun battle in the northern state of Kano.

However, the group has not confirmed his death.

Meanwhile, the military in Yobe state imposed a 24-hour curfew on two cities as soldiers went door-to-door, searching for Boko Haram members.

"Residents of the two cities are to remain indoors until further notice to enable security personnel to fish out Boko Haram terrorists," a military spokesman told the AFP news agency.

Jihad Watch: Islamo-Facists Murdering Christians in Nigeria

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=16552

Posted by David Virtue on 2012/9/22 17:40:00 (221 reads)
 

US CANA Bishop Reports Suffering and Killing of Christians in Nigeria

McLean, VA (September 21, 2012) - The Rt. Rev. Julian M. Dobbs, Anglican Bishop in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America has recently returned from a visit to Nigeria where he reports on the suffering of Christians as a result of the attacks orchestrated by Islamist group Boko Haram.

In a recent report, Bishop Dobbs talks of congregations in Bauchi being completely wiped out and described the situation as "butchery on a daily basis."

His video report can be viewed at this link https://vimeo.com/49781288

Bishop Dobbs spent time in the north of Nigeria where Christian homes and businesses have been destroyed, churches burnt and Christians killed. He met with survivors of these attacks and many of their church leaders. The Church of Nigeria [Anglican Communion] is the largest Anglican province in the world with over 20 million Anglicans.

Dobbs reports that 25 churches in the Anglican Diocese of Jalingo have been destroyed, a recent bomb was detonated in the cathedral, and members of the diocese cannot find employment because they have Christian names.

"In Maiduguri, 100 bombs have exploded, fathers have been killed by their own children if they do not agree with their religious views, and schools have been blown up."

The Bishop of Maiduguri reported, "We will keep the faith...If we perish, we perish."

To schedule an interview with Bishop Dobbs please contact Mrs. Annie Rothgeb at (703) 678-7371 or email: Annie.Rothgeb@CanaConovcation.org

The Convocation of Anglicans in North America http://www.canaconvocation.org/ currently consists of more than 90 congregations, 200 clergy and additionally 150 military and civilians Chaplains. CANA was established in 2005 to provide a means by which Anglicans living in the USA who were alienated by the actions and decisions of The Episcopal Church could continue to live out their faith without compromising their core convictions. Created as a missionary initiative of the Church of Nigeria, about a dozen of the congregations are primarily expatriate Nigerians. CANA is a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America, an emerging Anglican province that includes about 700 congregations.

Next Archbishop of Canterbury Should Be African

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5824/why_the_next_archbishop_of_canterbury_should_be_african/

Why the Next Archbishop of Canterbury Should Be African

There are probably more Anglicans in any given Nigerian neighborhood than in all of Switzerland

By Jesse Zink

Fifty years ago, Howard Johnson, a priest at the cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, visited the nascent Anglican Church in Nigeria. He was distressed at the the unnecessary “Britishness” of the church—“are cutaway coats and Gothic slits of the essence of Christianity?” he asked—and the church’s inability to keep pace with the growth of Islam. “Unless we change our tactics and treble our efforts, Christianity may be doomed to play a diminishing role in the drama of African development,” he concluded.

But Johnson was wrong. Today, the Anglican church in Nigeria is a central player in a vibrant and aggressive religious marketplace. Along with Pentecostal churches, other so-called “mission denominations,” and, yes, Islam, something like twenty million Nigerian Anglicans compete for attention. And they do so as part of a world church. The church’s official name is Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), indicating the way in which they see themselves as part of the worldwide family of churches who look to the Archbishop of Canterbury as their “focus of unity.”

Nigeria is hardly the only African country where Anglicanism is growing quickly. In the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, the Episcopal Church of Sudan is a critical voice for peace in a divided and unstable nation. Nearly half the population identifies as Anglican, following rapid growth during the country’s recently-ended civil war. Across southern Africa, the Anglican church, following the model of its onetime leader Desmond Tutu, continues to be a voice of reconciliation in countries like Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, of course, the opposite is true for the church in the Euro-Atlantic world. Johnson’s disappointment about the future of the Nigerian church could best be applied to England, where fewer and fewer people attend church and surveys show young people don’t see the need for faith. The European Union’s constitution omits any mention of Christianity, the historic faith of the continent. Yet Europe still controls the leadership roles in the church. The pope and the archbishop of Canterbury—leaders of two of Christianity’s largest groupings—are European.

The World Council of Churches is headquartered in Geneva, even though there are probably more Christians in a neighborhood of Lagos or Nairobi than all of Switzerland.

It is in this context that the attention of the Anglican Communion has again turned to Canterbury. The bishop’s chair there will soon be vacant, even as Rowan Williams takes full advantage of the months preceding his December retirement. And while speculation as to his successor runs hot, most observers place their bets on current occupants of English sees. That would be a mistake. As the Anglican Communion continues its growth in the non-Western world, I believe its nominal leader must reflect that change: it is time for an African Archbishop of Canterbury.

But who?

Take Thabo Makgoba, archbishop of Cape Town, who sits in the chair once occupied by Desmond Tutu. Makgoba trained as a psychologist and is young (by the standards of bishops), educated, and eloquent. He has been outspoken on the continued deterioration in Zimbabwe and the persecution of the church there by the Mugabe regime, as well as racial and inter-ethnic violence in South Africa.
Nigeria has more bishops than any other church in the Anglican Communion and some deserve consideration for the vacancy in Canterbury. Cyril Okorocha, bishop of the diocese of Owerri, was a leading evangelist in the Nigerian religious revival that began after the Biafran War. In the 1990s, he worked for a previous Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, coordinating the Anglican Communion’s Decade of Evangelism. Forgotten or derided in the Euro-Atlantic church, where evangelism seems to have become a dirty word, Okorocha’s efforts are more fondly remembered in the non-Western church.

Elsewhere in Nigeria, Josiah Idowu-Fearon, bishop of Kaduna, is a serious scholar of Islam. He has put his education to good use in his two decades as bishop of a diocese on the frontlines of tensions between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. At one point, he looked likely to scale the hierarchy of the Nigerian church until he criticized the decision by Nigerian bishops to boycott the 2008 Lambeth Conference, the decennial gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world. Idowu-Fearon has continued to urge senior Nigerian bishops to remain in conversation with Anglican leaders from around the world, and been excluded from the corridors of power in the Nigerian church as a result.
(One candidate often mentioned as a favorite for Canterbury is John Sentamu, Archbishop of York. Sentamu is Ugandan but has a long history in the Church of England that has left him enmeshed in the current politics of the national church. Moreover, his public opposition to same-sex marriage in England is controversial.)

Anglicans have been consumed by sexuality-related issues for the last decade. The next archbishop’s past statements will be read closely for clues as to his views on the role of gay and lesbian people in the church, though the archbishop’s role is best seen as one of holding space open for conversation, not imposing a single view (not to mention the fact that the archbishop of Canterbury, lacking the authority of the pope, has only “persuasion and good will” at his disposal, as Peter Stanford recently explained in the Telegraph).

The views of each of these bishops in this ongoing debate are not entirely clear, though Makgoba has said sexuality need not be a church-dividing issue. More importantly, each of these men (and the next archbishop will certainly be a man, given the Church of England’s continued opposition to women in the episcopacy) has the potential to shift the conversation in the church to other significant topics—church growth, for instance, or interfaith relations, global poverty or state-sanctioned violence—that have been neglected.

Any of these candidates—not to mention any of the young, educated, and inspiring bishops in South Sudan who are at the forefront of rebuilding that shattered and devastated country—could galvanize the attention of a global church.

None would be without his own set of difficulties—the role is famously thankless. None, certainly, would conform to the traditional expectations for the Archbishop of Canterbury. But that, perhaps, is precisely the point. The current pattern of appointing a grey- or no-haired white male as Archbishop of Canterbury has produced little in the way of progress for the Anglican Communion.
It is time for something different.

Nigerian Christians Undeterred by Islamo-Fascism

A few asides. First, where is the U.S. State Department? Where is the national media? Where is MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, or NBC? Second, 18 million Anglicans live in Nigeria and they are old school, 1662 Prayer Book Christians.   There are also other Christians under attack.  These ruthless bigots don't draw the distinctions.  Third, where is the U.N.?  Fourth, where is the international court in the Hague?  Fifth,  we continue to monitor these depraved Islamo-fascists and murderers.   These are murders or homocides in the first degree--with premeditation, malice aforethought, ill will, spite, and the calculating and specific formation of "intent," the necessary elements to prosecute these criminals. These are unjustiable and genocidal homocides.

http://nazmissions.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/nigerian-christians-undeterred-by-violent-attacks-on-churches/

Nigerian Christians undeterred by violent attacks on churches

Posted on May 9, 2012 by nazmissionsi

Christians in Northern Nigeria are refusing to let the threat of attack keep them away from Sunday services as security is stepped up after a spate of deadly bombings.

Going to church on a Sunday has become a highly dangerous activity for Nigerian Christians, who are being targeted by suspected Boko Haram militants. The Islamist group in March declared“war” on Christians, and since then a number of church attacks have left dozens dead.

Read More: http://barnabasfund.org/US/News/News-analysis/Nigerian-Christians-undeterred-by-violent-attacks-on-churches.html

Black, Racistic Non-Reverend, Irreverend, Tub-Thumping Jeremiah Wright: Obama's Stupid Pastor of Choice for 20 Years

A premier African-American, racistic, hate-mongering, hustling, fast-talking, opportunistic, and tub-thumping racist and "backwoods Hillbilly" (the black version) of the first order magnitude, the ever-Irreverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's Pastor of choice for 20 years.  Jeremiah is the black equivalent of the KKK.  This wildcat's buddy is Louis Farrakhan, another racist. Obama chose this racist.  What does that tell anyone?  Importantly, we revere thoughtful, intelligent, educated, deliberative and scholarly African Churchmen, e.g. the Archbishops of Nigeria, Rwanda, and Kenya.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1554207000001/?intcmp=obinsite


More bigotry, hate, anger, ignorance, non-Confessionalism, non-Biblicality, non-catholicity, enthusiasm, non-liturgy, ignorance, hucksterism, divisiveness, racistic and despicable speech from Obama's former minister of choice for 20 plus years, the ever-Irreverend and ever-unBiblical Jeremiah Wright.

Thank God for our careful, kind, deliberative, scholarly and educated brethren, African Anglicans, for their mature and careful reflections...unlike these African Anabaptist enthusiasts. Who cannot love these black brothers and sisters in Africa?  We love em.'  However, who, pray tell, can love race-hucksters like Wright, a hater of the first order.

Islamo-Fascist Watch: "Death to Churches"

http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11530/death-to-churches

Death to Churches: Christian Holidays in the Islamic World by Raymond Ibrahim

Originally published by the Gatestone Institute
April 11, 2012

http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11530/death-to-churches

Last Sunday, many Christians around the world celebrated Easter, taking it for granted that they can congregate and worship in peace. Not so; in the Islamic world, where top religious officials call for the destruction of churches, Christian holidays celebrated in church are increasingly a time of death and destruction, a time of terror.

One of Nigeria's many bombed churches.

Nigeria, for example, saw some 50 Christians killed "when explosives concealed in two cars went off near a church during Easter Sunday services in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna…. the casualty figure may go up because some injuries were really critical." The church targeted was "the Assemblies of God's Church near the centre of the city with a large Christian population and known as a major cultural and economic centre in Nigeria's north." According to the pastor holding Easter services at the time, "We were in the Holy Communion service and I was exhorting my people and all of a sudden, we heard a loud noise that shattered all our windows and doors, destroyed our fans and some of our equipment in the church."
There is little doubt that the Islamist group Boko Haram is behind the terror strike. The group has long been targeting churches—most notoriously, last December 25, when several churches were bombed in the Muslim majority areas of Nigeria, in what was described as "Nigeria's blackest Christmas ever": then, over 40 Christians were slain, "the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church [in Madalla near the capital of Abuja] after celebrating Christmas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion." As usual, the charred and dismembered remains of Christian worshippers were seen scattered in and around the destroyed church.
While the Christmas—and now Easter—church attacks may be Nigeria's most known, they are certainly not the only ones. Consider just the last few weeks:

• Sunday, March 11: A Boko Haram suicide car bomber attacked a Catholic church, killing at least 10 people. The bomb detonated as worshippers attended Mass at St. Finbar's Catholic Church in Jos, a city where thousands of Christians have died in the last decade as a result of Boko Haram's jihad.
• Sunday, February 26: A Boko Haram suicide car bomber killed at least three people, including a toddler, at another church in Jos. Witnesses said the jihadist drove his car into the prominent Church of Christ during morning prayers.
• Sunday, February 19: A Boko Haram bomb attack outside a church in Abuja left at least five people seriously injured and many more hurt, when a parked car filled with explosives detonated outside the Christ Embassy Church.

While the mainstream media, analysts, government officials, etc. try to portray these attacks as products of Nigerian poverty—most recently, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs insisted that "religion is not driving extremist violence" in Nigeria—the fact is, wherever in the world there are significant numbers of Muslims (Nigeria is essentially half Christian, half Muslim), churches are under siege (see sections dealing with church attacks in my "Muslim Persecution of Christians" reports for February, January, December, November, October, September, August, and July).

Some of the more spectacular ones include the Baghdad church attack where 58 Christians were killed; likewise, the New Year's Eve church bombing in Egypt that saw over 20 Christians killed (when several more churches were bombed and attacked and thousands of Egyptian Christians demonstrated, they were slaughtered by their own military); earlier, in 2010, eight Egyptian Christians were shot dead by drive-by Muslims as they were leaving church on Christmas Eve.
Incidentally, Muslim attacks on churches during the holiest of Christian holidays are not limited to Nigeria and Egypt, but occur throughout the Muslim world—for instance, in distant, "moderate" Philippines, where another church was bombed during Christmas.

Of course, there are some Muslim nations—Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and soon possibly Kuwait—where one rarely hears of church attacks; but that is because they have nipped the "church problem" in the bud by not allowing them to exist in the first place. In other words, the hatred for churches is still there, but in an unseen form.

Speaking of hatred, while church attacks are efficient ways to ensure the deaths of maximum numbers of Christians—in that worshippers are tightly gathered in one spot—intentionally targeting churches during the highest Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter, is also a reminder of the malevolency that drives such attacks.

Islamo-Fascists ("Religion of Peace") Target Nigerian Schools by Arson

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/world/africa/in-nigeria-boko-haram-targets-schools.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1#.  As we learn below, insurgent Islamo-Fascists are striking official targets, police, army officers, elected officials, high-ranking civil servants, United Nations workers and other supporters of the Nigerian government.   First degree homocides have been carried out.  Now, by felonious arson, these fascists have a new front: a war against schools. From the NY Times, we read the following.

Wielding Fire, Islamists Target Nigeria Schools

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — The teenager in the immaculate white robe stood in the ruins of what had been his school. There were no classrooms, no desks or chairs, no intact blackboards — there was, in fact, no longer any reason for him to be there.

 

Yet the teenager, Aruna Mustapha, and a friend had come to sign in anyway, just as they did every morning before the fire, expressing a hunger for education and a frustration with the insurgents bent on preventing it.

“We can’t stay at home any longer; we want to come to school, to learn,” explained Aruna, 16. “I’m fed up. I want to be in school.”       

Public and private schools here have been doused with gasoline at night and set on fire. Crude homemade bombs — soda bottles filled with gasoline — have been hurled at the bare-bones concrete classrooms Nigeria offers its children.

The simple yellow facades have been blackened and the plain desks melted to twisted pipes, leaving thousands of children without a place to learn, stranded at home and underfoot, while anxious parents plead with Nigerian authorities to come up with a contingency plan for their education.

Today, this dusty metropolis in northeastern Nigeria’s desert scrub is dotted with the burned-out shells of what were school buildings. The sun pours in as sheets of charred corrugated metal roof hang down into empty schoolrooms, clanging in the hot wind. In the sunny afternoons small children play in the ruins.

In recent weeks, at least eight schools have been firebombed, apparently the work of Boko Haram, the Islamist group waging a deadly war against the Nigerian government and suspected of cultivating links with Al Qaeda’s affiliates in the region. The group’s very name is a rallying cry against schools — “Boko” means “book” or “Western learning” in the Hausa language, and “haram” is Arabic for forbidden — but it has never gone after them to this degree before, analysts say.

“‘We are Boko Haram, and we will burn the school,’ ” the elderly watchman at Aruna’s school, the Abbaganaram Primary School, recounted the arsonists saying after they appeared out of the darkness, ordered him at gunpoint to lie down, doused the school with gasoline and set it on fire, lighting up the night sky.

A self-described spokesman for Boko Haram who frequently phones journalists in Maiduguri recently claimed responsibility for the school attacks. The spokesman, who calls himself Abul Qaqa, said they were in response to what he called a targeting of this city’s abundant open-air Islamic schools by authorities. Officials here have denied any such campaign. Indeed, young boys can be seen receiving Koranic lessons, untroubled, all over Maiduguri.

Around 2,600 students had gone to school at Abbaganaram, at the edge of a neighborhood considered a Boko Haram stronghold. Now, the quadrangle enclosing a sandy courtyard looks like a roofless war ruin. Fragments of a lesson, scrawled on what remains of a blackboard, can be glimpsed through a windowless opening.

A lone teacher, as eager to resume work as young Aruna, hung about in the school’s remains. “There is no public holiday. We are on duty,” said Babagana Kolo, who had taught primary school there. “We are supposed to be on duty.”

For several days after the attack in early March, students had come to be taught in the open air, under the hardy light-green neem trees in the courtyard, Mr. Kolo said. But he said the government had failed to provide materials, like chalk for a remaining blackboard, so the students had stopped coming.

“They bombed everywhere,” said Aliyu Adamu, a longtime teacher at Abbaganaram. “Everything. All the classes.”

Nobody has been killed in the school attacks, a notable exception amid a campaign of shadowy aims in which virtually anything associated with the Nigerian state is considered fair game. More than 900 people have been killed by Boko Haram in the last two years, according to Human Rights Watch.

 

Maiduguri, the birthplace of the Boko Haram insurgency, has become used to living under siege over the last two years. Fear and an army-enforced curfew empty the scruffy low-rise streets well before dark. Nervous public officials — prime assassination targets of the insurgents — avoid speaking the group’s name or blaming it. Army checkpoints are omnipresent. The soldiers, also a favorite target of snipers, are grim-faced and brusque.

“The Boko Haram are the ones controlling the state here,” said one of the lone human rights activists in Maiduguri, Maikaramba Sadiq of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organization. Residents fear that Boko Haram and its informants are everywhere.

“They are working 24 hours, looking, observing,” said Mr. Sadiq, who has been an intermediary between suspected Boko Haram members here and lawyers willing to represent them.

Yet the destruction of Maiduguri’s schools has bewildered and demoralized students, parents and teachers here in a way that the near-daily attacks, including one on a crowded market in February that killed 30, have not. The targeting of children, even indirectly, is seen as a new and sinister twist.

“I can’t even explain this,” said Musa Adam, a teacher at the Gwange III school, which endured a firebombing attempt but was not destroyed. “Is it an act of wickedness, or what? How can somebody destroy a school where children come to learn?”

Meanwhile, thousands of parents have seen one more prop supporting the illusion of normal life here destroyed.

“No one knows what this thing is all about,” said Musa Abakar, 39, father of two boys and a girl, ages 8 to 15, who attended the Abbaganaram Primary School before it was destroyed. “Burning schools, burning markets. How can one understand these things?”

Parents also wonder what to do about their marooned children since the Nigerian government has made no provision for them. The official in charge, Abba Ali Tijjani, the commissioner of Borno State schools, acknowledged as much in an interview.

“All our children are just staying at home,” said Isa Dauda, 27, who works in an open-air mattress workshop and has four children. “We don’t know what to do now. It’s more than a difficult situation.”

Opposite the Kulo Gumna Primary and Junior day school, where eight classrooms were destroyed in the heart of a Boko Haram-infiltrated neighborhood, Mamadou Youndusa, a barber cutting a child’s hair, lamented his own children’s newly imposed idleness.

He had children in both sections of the school. Now, “They are all at home. Which means a bleak future for them.”

A few of the classrooms at Kulo Gumna were untouched, but most of the students in them have not returned.

“They are afraid something will happen; that is why they are not coming back,” said a teacher, Fatouma Tujjani. Fewer than half of her 46 students have returned, she said. “They are just afraid.”

Elsewhere in Maiduguri, though, the will to resume schooling is overcoming fear, government lethargy and the absence of a plan. Early this month, several hundred children — laughing girls in blue-checked head scarves, and some white-shirted boys as well — showed up at the Abbaganaram ruins, preparing to trek a mile or so to another school that had agreed to take them in.

One of the older students, Adam Abagana, 18, expressed outrage at what had befallen his school.

“It’s an abomination. There is no justification for it,” he said. “We never thought the excesses of the gunmen would come down to burning schools.”

He added, “The only hope is, God has destined it.”