Archives

  • Pakistan Christian Woman Accused of Insulting Islam Awaits Blasphemy Trial

    A Christian woman charged with blasphemy nine months ago is still in prison in Pakistan. Last July, she was accused of insulting Islam in a WhatsApp conversation and has been awaiting her trial ever since. The trial is expected to be held today, but these trials have been known to go on for years or […]

  • Faith heroes: Marie Durand, who spent most of life in jail for her faith

    The story of the eighteenth-century French Christian, Marie Durand, who spent almost all her life in jail for her faith, is challenging. To understand Marie’s imprisonment we need some background. The Reformation of the sixteenth century, with its emphasis on the Bible and faith in Christ as the only way of salvation, was not just […]

  • UK Parliamentarians to advocate for persecuted Christians Naser Navard Goltapeh and Leah Sharibu

    Persecuted Christians Naser Navard Goltapeh and Leah Sharibu are among four prisoners of conscience to be “adopted” by the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Religious Freedom and Belief. The aim is to highlight cases in which individuals are unjustly imprisoned for their religious belief, and to ensure more effective advocacy in Parliament on their […]

  • 14 year-old Pakistani Christian girl kidnapped, forced to marry Muslim man

    Pakistani Christian rickshaw driver Gulzar Masih is appealing to police to take action after his 14-year-old daughter was kidnapped, converted to Islam and married to a Muslim man. The legal age for marriage in Pakistan is 16, except in the southern province of Sindh, where it is 18. Gulzar reported his daughter missing on 28 […]

  • Kidnapped ‘Chibok girl’ completes ‘forbidden’ education

    One of 276 girls abducted from their school in Chibok, northern Nigeria by the infamous Boko Haram has just graduated from university – the very thing her kidnappers fight to oppose, according to Open Doors UK & Ireland. “Boko Haram roughly translates as ‘western education is forbidden’,” says Open Doors UK & Ireland CEO Henrietta […]

  • Slave Labor in Chinese Jails: Christian Women Prisoners of Conscience Speak

    Uyghurs and other Turkic inmates submitted to slave labor in Xinjiang are very much in the news, and rightly so. However, slave labor is a grim reality for all prisoners of conscience, in all Chinese provinces. Three female members of The Church of Almighty God (CAG), a banned Christian new religious movement, found the courage […]

  • Covid-19 fuels ‘hidden pandemic’ of exploitation of women

    Covid-19 is fuelling a growing, hidden, “shadow pandemic” of gender-based violence, abduction and trafficking, directed towards Christian women and girls around the world, according to Open Doors. This is one of the findings of a new report commissioned by the Christian persecution charity. The “Same Faith, Different Persecution: WWR 2021 GSRP (Gender-Specific Religious Persecution) Report”, […]

  • Pakistani Christian girl raped by Muslims saves younger sister from assault

    A 16-year-old Pakistani Christian girl, brutally raped by a gang of Muslim robbers because of her faith, acted selflessly to save her younger sister from sexual attack. “Don’t do anything to my sister, whatever you do, do to me,” the older sister told the men as the two girls were led away. The younger child, […]

  • Pakistan High Court declares Christian girl’s “marriage” to Muslim abductor illegal

    Sindh High Court ruled on 9 November that Pakistani Christian girl Arzoo Raja is a minor and declared that her “marriage” to her Muslim abductor is illegal. A division bench directed that Arzoo be taken back to a safe shelter and ordered police to proceed against her alleged “husband”, Azhar Ali, for violating the Sindh […]

  • Pakistani court returns kidnapped Christian girl, 14, to Muslim man who forced her into marriage

    A 14-year-old Pakistani Christian girl, who was abducted at gunpoint and forced into marriage by a Muslim man, was returned to her kidnapper by the High Court in Lahore on 4 August. The court ruled that Maria Shahbaz, pictured below, had willingly converted to Islam, was legally married to Mohammad Naqash and should be “a […]