ALGERIA (ANS) — The Tafat Protestant Church building in Tizi Ouzou, Algeria, was set on fire on January 9, around 11:00 pm, according to the website for satellite broadcaster Channel North Africa (www.cna-sat.org ).

On its site, CNA states that “Tafat” means “light” in the Berber language.

According to the church’s pastor, Mustapha Krireche, “around twenty bearded men broke into the church, destroyed the chairs and doors and then set the building on fire.”

According to Pastor Mustapha, earlier that same day, the day they normally gather together to worship, church members were forcibly prevented from entering the church.

Mustapha said the same men who stopped them worshipping also started destroying facilities. The police came and wrote down details of the incident, but the attackers returned during the night to burn down the building.

CNA reported that already the Christians of the Tafat Protestant Church weren’t able to celebrate Christmas as they had planned.

On Saturday, December 26, while they were preparing a worship service in their new building to celebrate the birth of Christ, they were confronted by fifty Muslim demonstrators who threatened to kill Pastor Mustafa.

According to CNA, one man cried out: “This is Muslim land; go somewhere else to pray!” The police intervened to avoid any violence.

CNA says that for the Muslims protestors, the newly-built church in a residential neighborhood is an “offense” to Islam. The protestors also complained about the presence of foreigners and the noisy music.

Pastor Mustapha admitted to journalists that they use music in their services.

“It’s a part of our worship,” he explained, “but if someone complains, we’ll stop.”

For the time being, the church doesn’t know when it will be able to restart normal activities.

The President of the Protestant Church of Algeria, Mustapha Krim, stated: “This is the third time that the members of Tafat were prevented from worshiping. We’re going to file a legal complaint in the courts.”

Another Algerian church leader is alarmed by this turn of events. He said: “To my knowledge, this is the first time that such a thing has happened. Maybe it’s a new government tactic trying to keep Christians from meeting together. Instead of using force, the local police might be encouraging the Muslim extremists to put pressure on the churches.”

CNA explains that Algerian media present a negative image of Christians, and generally speaking, the Algerian people consider the church to be a threat to Algerian culture.

Nonetheless, CNA says no Christian of Muslim origin is in prison, even though a dozen cases are still being tried in the courts. In addition, of the 26 churches that received orders to close, 22 are still functioning.

CNA or Channel North Africa, is an association that started in the year 2000 by the efforts of several partners who wished to broadcast the Gospel into North Africa using audiovisual materals.

The vision of CNA is to see the peoples of North Africa reconciled with God, regenerated and transformed by the Gospel in the communities in which they live.

ISTANBUL – Convicted of blasphemy and evangelism in two separate cases this year, an Algerian Christian goes on trial in west Algeria for a third time tomorrow, again for evangelism.

Rachid Muhammad Essaghir previously reported as Seghir, 37, will be tried in Tissemsilt, 110 miles southwest of Algiers, for “distributing documents to shake the faith of Muslims.”

An evangelist and church elder for a small community of Muslim converts to Christianity in Tiaret, Essaghir believes that local police have targeted him for his religious work.

Police stopped Essaghir and another Christian in the vicinity of Tissemsilt in June 2007 and discovered a box of Christian books in their car. The two men said they were transporting the literature from one church to another.

Read the full story at Compass Direct News.

A state prosecutor in western Algeria demanded two-year jail sentences and large fines for six Muslim converts to Christianity yesterday in one of two trials against Christians that have caught the north African nation’s attention in the past week.

The same court in Tiaret city yesterday delayed the verdict of a Christian woman facing three years in prison for “practicing non-Muslim religious rites without a license.”

Under intense scrutiny from Algerian and international observers, the Tiaret judge delayed Habiba Kouider’s ruling to ask for further investigation. The case gained notoriety last week when Algerian newspapers reported that court officials in the agricultural town mocked the Christian for her conversion and pressured her to return to Islam.

Read more at Compass Direct News.

Over the last six months, Algerian authorities have closed half of the Protestant churches in the country. If the trend continues, the Algerian Protestant church will be non-existent by the end of 2008.

Algerian officials have closed 26 Algerian churches by either written order or verbal warning since November 2007. Ranging in size from several dozen to more than 1,000 members, 32 congregations in Algeria belong to the Protestant Church of Algeria, while another 20 small fellowships exist independently. Algeria, a country of 33 million in northern Africa, is home to at least 10,000 Protestants.

Religious Affairs Minister Bu’Abdallah Ghoulamullah has called on Christian groups in Algeria to re-register according to Algerian associations’ law. But Algerian Christians have claimed that the government has blocked them from carrying out the required re-registration of their churches. “The administration offices in Tizi-Ouzou did not want to or could not say which measures to take in order to obtain the ‘certificate of conformity,’” church leaders say.

Nevertheless, authorities require the certificate to show that a church is in line with the March 2006 law governing non-Muslim places of worship. But because these regulations are unclear, churches are closed and services are forbidden. Expressing the Christian faith in a church service, by worship and prayer, has become almost impossible. Earlier this year an Algerian Christian was detained five days for carrying a personal Bible and study books. He was fined $460 and handed a one-year suspended prison sentence. On April 29 a court charged the Muslim Background Believer with “printing, storing and distributing” illegal religious material.

Algeria’s official state religion is Islam, and religious minorities are seen as a threat to the government’s internal affairs. Anyone found trying to convert a Muslim to Christianity can receive a sentence of two to five years imprisonment and given a fine up to $15,430. Christianity has been compared to terrorism, and Muslim schools and mosques have been encouraged to continue the attack that threatens to wipe out the Christian community in Algeria.

Open Doors has launched a worldwide advocacy campaign asking supporters to contact their local Algerian Embassy. Supporters can send a message to Algerian Ambassador to the United States Amine Kherbi directly from the Open Doors Website, asking that the Algerian government stop church closures and reopen those that have already been closed. This is an important way for Christians in the United States to stand up for the religious rights of Christians in Algeria. To send a message, go to the Open Doors Algeria 2008 website.

An Algerian public prosecutor has demanded a three-year sentence for a convert to Christianity in western Algeria for practicing her faith “without license.”

Habiba Kouider, 35, was plucked off an inter-city bus outside of her home town of Tiaret on March 29 when police found several Bibles and books on Christianity in her hand bag. Held for 24 hours and interrogated by police regarding her conversion, Kouider was eventually brought before a state prosecutor.

“You reinstate Islam and I will [drop the case]; if you persist in sin you will undergo the lightning of justice,” the prosecutor told her, according to French daily Le Figaro.

Algerian daily el Watan reported on Wednesday (May 21) that Kouider “refused to give up her new faith under the pressure,” prompting the prosecutor to bring charges against her. She is accused of “practicing non-Muslims

The full story can be read at Compass Direct News.

Algerian authorities have charged six Christians with distributing illegal religious material after detaining them as they left a prayer meeting in a western city last week.

The Protestants were charged with “distributing documents to shake the faith of Muslims,” according to a written court summons issued Saturday May 10 prior to the men’s release in Tiaret city. Their first hearing is scheduled for May 27.

During the detainees’ overnight stay at a local police station, officers repeatedly threatened them for converting from Islam to Christianity, one of the Christians said.

“They said we were accomplices and the spies of the Jews, thus we deserve to have our throats cut without pity,” said Djillali Saibi.

Though the court summons did not specify which law the men had violated, the charge quotes a February 2006 law, Ordinance 06-03, internationally criticized for restricting religious freedom. Algerian police and provincial governments have cited Ordinance 06-03 to justify a number of arrests and church closures in recent months.

The full story can be read at Compass Direct News.

An Algerian Christian detained five days for carrying a Bible and personal Bible study books was handed a 300-euro (US$460) fine and a one-year suspended prison sentence last week, an Algerian church leader said.

Last Tuesday (April 29) a court in Djilfa, 150 miles south of Algiers, charged the 33-year-old Muslim convert to Christianity with “printing, storing and distributing” illegal religious material. A written copy of the verdict has yet to be issued.

The Protestant, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told fellow Christians in his home city of Tiaret that police pressured him to return to Islam while in custody.

The conviction is the latest in a wave of detentions and court cases against Algeria’s Protestants and Catholics. Since January police and provincial officials have ordered the closure of up to half of the country’s 50 estimated Protestant congregations.

Read the full story at Compass Direct News.

An Algerian Christian was handed a two-year suspended sentence for “proselytism” yesterday amid an ongoing government crackdown on 26 of Algeria’s 50 Protestant congregations, a church leader said.

A court in Tiaret, 150 miles southwest of Algiers, delivered the written verdict yesterday after convicting the Christian on April 2, said Mustapha Krim, president of the Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA). Prosecution of “proselytism” violates Article 18 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms the inherent right to publicly manifest one’s faith.

The full story is at Compass Direct News.