You get What you pay for.....

Well, that is of course unless you have a government like ours that are the suckers of the world. Aren't we paying countries like our so called "ally" Pakistan to fight what our government calls Islamic extremism? How much longer will we pump billions of dollars into the Islamic world, only to have them persecute non-Muslims? The Bush administration continually speaks of freedom of religion, but obviously that does not apply to Islamic countries. I am not religious, but about 80% of our country identifies themselves as Christians. When will our so called leaders find the courage to confront the Islamic community on their worldwide persecution of Christians? What needs to be said is, no freedom for Christians in Islamic countries, then no freedom for Muslims here. Here is what we are getting in return for our money. What a bargain....



Pakistan court says the forced conversion of two kidnapped girls is legal
22 Jul 2008
A Christian father in Pakistan is trying without success to gain custody through the courts of his two pre-teen daughters who were kidnapped and made to convert to Islam - writes Anto Akkara.

On 12 July 2008, a judge in Pakistan's Punjab province ignored pleas that Saba Younis, aged 12, and her 10 year old sister, Anila Younis, who went missing on 26 June from the small town of Chowk Munda, had been kidnapped while on their way to their uncle's residence and ruled that their conversion to Islam was legal.

The kidnappers, who had married the girls, had also filed for custody of the girls at a local police station on 28 June, asserting that the sisters had converted to Islam and their father no longer had jurisdiction over them.

"We are shocked by this court order," Anita Maria, a lawyer and a spokesperson for a Pakistani Christian group told Ecumenical News International recently. "Poor Christians in remote areas have to live with that." Maria said that in some cases young women who have been abducted are charged with adultery if they refuse to convert and marry their abductors.

The police had been unable to trace the girls, and members of the local Christian community were shocked when their abductors came forward to claim that the girls had converted to Islam and that they had married the girls.

The Muzaffargarh district court on 12 July said the disputed conversion of the girls was legal, and it was this ruling that left the local Christians stunned.

"We will move the [Lahore] high court to challenge this order," said Maria, who works as the programme coordinator for Pakistan's Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement.

The Pakistan Minorities Concern network said in a statement that Younis Masih, the father of the kidnapped girls, was threatened by the local police when he went to complain about the kidnapping of his daughters. The statement noted that the village has only a few Christian families living among 150 Muslim families, and said that police refused to support the Christian family. The network pointed out that in 2005, nearly 50 Hindu girls and 20 Christian girls were kidnapped and the majority had been forcibly converted to Islam.

"This is a travesty of justice. But unfortunately, this is the practice here," lamented Victor Azariah, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Pakistan, which groups four Protestant churches. Azariah said, "The courts never help us."

Christians account for only about two percent of Pakistan's 168 million people, more than 90 percent of whom are Muslim.

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NEWS ALERT: Pakistan Clerics Threaten To Kill Christian For Marrying Muslim; Christian Girls Kidnapped
Thursday, 17 July 2008
By BosNewsLife Correspondents Stefan J. Bos at BosNewsLife News Center and Jawad Mazhar reporting from Pakistan
Members of Pakistan's tiny Christian minority join Easter prayers at a church in Karachi. Via BBC News ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (BosNewsLife)-- A Christian man was hiding Thursday, July 17, after Muslim clerics in Pakistan's Punjab province threatened to kill him for marrying a Muslim woman, while two Christian girls in the same region were forced to marry their Muslim kidnappers, rights investigators and local Christians said.



Asim Pasha, a Christian resident of the city of Attock, reportedly married Samina in 2004, despite objections from her parents. "Samina’s Muslim parents opposed the marriage due to Pasha’s Christian faith. That's why the couple fled the city and remained in hiding to protect themselves from Samina’s parents," said US-based rights group International Christian Concern (ICC) with Website www.persecution.org

The couple apparently returned to Attock in 2007 with a child and Pasha started a music business in his neighborhood. Soon after, local Muslim clerics reportedly claimed that Pasha had turned to Islam only to eventually force Samina to convert to Christianity.

They said he had "cheated a Muslim girl and made fun of Islam,” and therefore “must be hanged publicly," ICC reported.

CHARGES DENIED

Pasha has denied their charges. He has asked authorities to protect him and a human rights organization is providing him with a hiding place, ICC said. "Pasha is ready for exile along with his wife and child. He said he wants to live happily with his family without fear of disputes. This is not currently possible for him as the local police have refused to register a case against the clerics" or a news paper who made false allegations about him, ICC added.

News of Pasha's troubles, come as a Pakistani couple has appealed a court decision to award custody of their two daughters, 10 and 13, to the children’s alleged kidnappers. The court based its custody decision on the girls’ alleged conversion to Islam. Judge Main Naeem Sardar ruled Saturday, July 12, that Saba Masih, 13, and Aneela Masih, 10, had become Muslims, invalidating their Christian parents’ right to legal guardianship.

Under a common interpretation of Islamic law, a Christian cannot have custody of a Muslim. The sisters appeared in a Muzaffargarh District and Sessions court in the company of 16 Muslim men and were given five minutes to testify that their conversion was genuine, human rights activist Ashfaq Fateh told reporters.

FIRST TIME

It was the first time that Younis Masih and his wife had seen their daughters since they disappeared on June 26 while traveling to their uncle’s nearby home in Sarwar Shaheed, 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Lahore, trial observers said.

The chairman of advocacy group Rays Of Development (ROD, Ferhan Mazher, told BosNewsLife that the reported kidnapping underscored the need of police and government officials to "take notice of the lamentable episode and rescue the girls from the hard line Islamic elements," who he claimed could eventually even “kill the Christian girls.”

Several politicians have made clear this week they hope that the new government's efforts to allocate five seats to minorities in Pakistan's Senate will help to out the difficulties of religious minorities, including Christians, on the political agenda in this mainly Muslim nation.

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