NEW DELHI (Compass Direct News) – Islamic extremists in India attacked a Christian prayer meeting in West Bengal state, beating a 65-year-old widow and other women less than a month after they helped drive a young woman out of her home and village for her faith.

Islamists in Nutangram, Murshidabad district forced their way into the home of Gaffar Shaike on March 30 at around 2 p.m., as 11 Christians from Believers’ Church were gathered for lunch and worship. In the same area of Nutangram on March 9, Islamic extremists drove 22-year-old Rekha Khatoon out of her village because she dared to give thanks for healing in Christ’s name in the predominantly Muslim village; her parents helped the Islamists to beat her nearly unconscious.

Initially seven extremists led by Mohammed Aanu Shaike stormed into the home of Gaffar Shaike and ordered the Christians to stop the meeting, said Pastor Bashir Pal, founder and pastor of the village Believer’s Church.

Gaffar Shaike said the extremists called them pagans as they kicked, slapped and pushed the Christians, adding that they reprimanded him and his wife for dismissing several warnings from them to stop leading prayer meetings in their house. A year ago, the extremists had burned Shaike’s crops for his faith in Christ, he said.

“I asked the radicals why they barged into my house and why they were not allowing us to pray in my own home,” Shaike said, adding that the extremists were so blinded by fury that they only continued beating them, calling them pagans and threatening to continue doing so until they returned to Islam.

“We want freedom to worship Jesus in our home,” he said.

As the extremists mocked and otherwise verbally abused the Christians, a mob of about 100 Islamists gathered and charged into the house entryway, which is 72 feet long and eight feet wide, shouting anti-Christian slogans and threatening to murder them as they pushed, kicked and slapped them.

When the Christians tried to flee, the extremists blocked their way. The son of Muslim extremist Ahammed Shaike, Mohammed Kuran, beat 65-year-old widow Moyazan Bewa, Christians present said. While Ahammed Shaike’s wife was called in from the front porch to beat a Christian woman at the meeting named Selina Bibi, Mohammed Aanu Shaike beat Gaffar Shaike’ wife, Aimazan Bibi, kicking her head and stomach and leaving a deep cut on her hand, they said.

Other Christians present received minor injuries. Two Christian children present at the meeting were crying in fear, the Christians said.

The Christians somehow made their way out and scattered, but Mohammed Aanu Shaike, brandishing a sickle, chased many of them, “hurling all kinds of insults and attempting to murder them all, but God saved the Christians at that moment,” said Pastor Pal.

By then about 500 Muslims had gathered and were watching in amusement as the extremists chased and harassed the Christians for about 90 minutes, the pastor said.

“The Christians were running in all directions for their lives, including the children who were crying in fear, but the [adult Christians] were stopped at every corner by the radicals who thrashed, bashed and verbally abused them,” Pastor Pal said; no children were attacked.

Aimazan Bibi said spectators took up many positions.

“Some were standing on the house roofs, some stood in front of their houses and on the road,” she said. “There was a huge number of people who were mocking, pushing and shouting at us while some were also just spectators.”

Pastor Pal added that at one point the extremists had trapped many from the Christian group.

“The Christians were cornered at one place, where they all stood petrified in fear, but somehow the almighty God saved them,” he said.

“We pleaded with the radicals to let us go, and eventually they freed us while they were still shouting at us to leave Jesus or face more sufferings,” said one of the trapped Christians, Moyazan Bibi.

The Christians fled to the outskirts of the village about two kilometers away and took refuge in the home of one of the participants in the prayer meeting, Nasima Bibi, meeting police en route and informing them of the attack.

Area Christian leaders also informed the station officer of Nutangram Thana, who immediately sent police force to the site.

“After realizing that the police had reached the village, I urged Moyazan Bewa to go out and meet the police,” Pastor Pal said. “She asked the police why the Islamic radicals were constantly attacking them.”

Assuring her that they would take action against the assailants, police took the 65-year-old widow to her home, where a furious mob of Islamic extremists had gathered, said the pastor.

Officers warned the Islamic extremists not to disturb the Christians again, but they continued to taunt and mock them, he said, treating them as criminals.

“The extremists were always passing insulting remarks against them even while they were simply walking on the road,” Pastor Pal said.

On April 5, Mohammed Aanu Shaike threatened to kill Aimazan Bibi after he found her talking to a Muslim woman on the street, he said.

“Some extremists soon gathered, and they were calling her pagan and they threatened to murder her if they ever find her talking to any Muslim again,” the pastor said.

The Muslims have since ostracized the Christians, prohibiting them to buy and sell in the area and keeping them from using the public bathroom and water well, he said. The extremists have sternly told all shopkeepers not to sell anything to the Christians, and at press time they were all complying with the order.

The Christians filed a police complaint against the assailants, but no arrests have been made.

Some of the victims have been attacked earlier. Last year Selina Bibi was beaten for her faith and, as the Muslims assumed she would have some mark on her body indicating her faith, they stripped her naked to search for one. They beat her in spite of finding no mark (see www.compassdirect.org, “Muslim Extremists in India Attack, Threaten Women,” Aug. 5, 2011.)

“Even though the radicals have beaten me many times and want to kill me, I will not leave Jesus,” she said. “I will worship Him as long as I live on this earth.”

CAIRO, Egypt (Compass Direct News) – In a show of partiality to Muslims who go unprosecuted for like offenses against Christianity, a juvenile court in Egypt on Wednesday (April 4) sentenced a Coptic Christian teenager to three years in prison for allegedly insulting Islam.

Gamal Abdou Massoud, 17, denies the charges. The court claimed that he posted cartoons on his Facebook account in December that mocked the Islamic religion and its prophet, Muhammad. The court also claimed that he distributed the pictures to other students.

After the incident came to light, Muslims in Assuit, where Massoud lives, rioted. They fire-bombed his home and burned down at least five other Christian-owned homes in several Assuit villages. Massoud’s family left their village. It is uncertain if they were ordered out, left from fear or left because they had no home.

The sentencing was considered significant not only because violates the free speech clauses of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Egypt is a signatory, but also shows another area where justice is executed unequally between Muslims and Christians in Egypt. The sentencing also shows that rights are given to the Christian minority in Egypt only when Islamic sensitivities are not involved.

When Muslim public figures violate Egyptian laws related to insulting Christianity, which happens often, the laws are ignored, Coptic Christians said. But when Christians are accused of violating the same laws against Islam, they pointed out, even a minor is usually punished to the full extent of the law.

The court also held Massoud responsible for inciting the riots. No one responsible for burning down any of the homes has been charged.

Samia Sidhom, managing editor at Watani newspaper in Cairo, said the sentencing was a clear example of the double standard. When Coptic lawyers bring cases before the court about alleged instances of inflammatory speech broadcast publicly by Islamic or government leaders against Christianity, the Bible or Christians, the charges “are simply sidelined,” with cases going on for years with no outcome.

“They never get any sentences,” Sidhom said.

The three-year sentence was the maximum Massoud could have received.

Sidhom also called into question the veracity of the charges. She said her reporters could find no evidence that Massoud had even had a Facebook page, calling him “almost computer illiterate.”

This is the third high-profile case of “insulting Islam” to be brought to court against Copts in Egypt in roughly a month. On March 3, a Cairo court dismissed a case against Naguib Sawaris, a Copt and telecommunications tycoon, who was accused of insulting Islam for placing a cartoon of Minnie Mouse in a veil on his Facebook site as a satirical comment on what Egypt would look like if Islamists gained political power in the country.

Two weeks later, on March 16, a group of Muslim lawyers blocked off a courtroom where Makram Diab, a Coptic Christian, was trying to launch an appeal against a six-year prison term levied against him for insulting Islam. A Salafi Muslim brought the accusations against him after the two had a quarrel at a school where the two worked. Salafists claim to practice the Islam of the first three generations after Muhammad.

Sentenced six days after authorities arrested him, Diab was not allowed to have a defense attorney present at his original court hearing. His appeal is pending.

NAIROBI, Kenya (Compass Direct News) – An 8-year-old boy died today from injuries after suspected Islamic extremists on Saturday (March 31) threw a grenade into a Christian revival meeting near Kenya’s coastal town of Mombasa that instantly killed a woman and injured at least 30 people.

Kenyan Internal Security Minister George Saitoti said Islamic extremists from the rebel al Shabaab militia in Somalia were suspected of carrying out the deadly blast, although the group has not claimed responsibility. The government, which began military operations against al Shabaab in Somalia last October, today issued a warning of a possible attack by al Shabaab during Easter celebrations in Kenya this weekend.

The names of the boy and the woman who died after the suspected Islamic extremist threw a grenade into the open air meeting in Mtwapa have not been released.

Christians in coastal areas of Kenya were gripped with fear after the attack, which took place between 7 and 7:30 p.m., according to an eyewitness. The meeting, organized by the Mtwapa Pastors’ Fellowship, brought together 500 Christians from 16 denominations at the Kandara event site in Kilifi County, 16 kilometers (10 miles) from Mombasa. It began on Friday and would have continued through Sunday were it not for the attack.

“Someone inside a moving Nissan vehicle threw a hand grenade towards the podium where the preaching pastor, the Rev. Daniel Mwendwa of the Miracle in the Village Church, was ministering, and there was a group of singers close by,” said eyewitness Harrison Tembo Chome, pastor of the Holy Jerusalem Church. “Everything came to a standstill. There was wailing and immediately the police, the army and ambulances arrived.”

More than 30 people were seriously injured, mostly singers leading worship, he said.

Three people have been arrested in relation to the explosion, but it was not clear what relation they had with al Shabaab, if any.

“What we as the church are almost certain of at the moment is that the incident seemed to be a religious fight against Christians,” said another pastor who asked to remain unnamed.

About 300 meters from the Christian evangelistic meeting, a Muslim gathering near Kipingo Pharmacy Road took place throughout the week and continued during and after the blast, Christian sources said.

“Why were only the Christians affected and not the Muslim gathering, which had been going on for a longer period of time?” said one Christian. “On Sunday we the Christians could not continue with our meeting, but the Muslims continued. Why did they continue when they knew that such a terrible incident had happened close to where they were holding their religious meeting?”

A police investigation is continuing.

The attack comes after attacks and kidnappings in the area and elsewhere last year prompted the Kenyan military to strike at al Shabaab targets in Somalia. At press time Kenyan soldiers were moving towards Kismayo, an al Shabaab stronghold not far from Mombasa.

With estimates of al Shabaab’s size ranging from 3,000 to 7,000, the insurgents seek to impose a strict version of sharia (Islamic law) on Somalia, but the government in Mogadishu fighting to retain control of the country treats Christians little better than the al Shabaab extremists do. While proclaiming himself a moderate, President Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed has embraced a version of sharia that mandates the death penalty for those who leave Islam.

CAIRO, Egypt (Compass Direct News) – As Christians across Egypt continued to mourn the loss of Pope Shenouda III this week, Islamist leaders of the Salafist movement issued a litany of insults, calling the late leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church the “head of the infidels” and thanking God for his death.

The vitriol indicated the level of hostility the Salafists, who now make up 20 percent of Egypt’s parliament, have toward Christians. In a recorded message released on the Facebook page of one leading Salafi teacher, Sheik Wagdy Ghoneim, the sheik celebrated the pontiff’s death.

“We rejoice that he is destroyed. He has perished,” Ghoneim said on Sunday (March 18), the day after Shenouda died at the age of 88. “May God have His revenge on him in the fire of hell – he and all who walk his path.”

After the cleric issued his statement, several others followed suit, releasing insults throughout the week. On Monday (March 19) in the lower house of Egypt’s parliament, the People’s Assembly, several Salafi members refused to stand in remembrance of Shenouda during an official moment of silence. Others left before the moment of silence took place.

Bishop Mouneer Anis, head of the Episcopal and Anglican Diocese of Egypt, North Africa and the Horn of Africa, said that insulting people after their death is considered one of the rudest things someone can do in the Middle East. Anis, a close friend of the pontiff, told Compass the comments and actions were “very sad.”

“I see this as being moved by hatred,” Anis said. “To be honest, I feel sorry for members of the Salafi – to criticize such a remarkable man.”

The provocative comments are not a good sign for Egypt’s Christians. Adherents of the Salafist movement, which obtained that one-fifth of the People’s Assembly through the Nour Party, have led most of the recent attacks against Christians in Egypt. The comments were thought to reveal the utter disdain the Salafists have toward Egypt’s Christian minority.

The Salafist movement claims it patterns its beliefs and practices on the first three generations of Muslims.

Shenouda, formerly know as Nazeer Gayed Roufail, died due to complications from kidney disease and other health issues. A former theology teacher, Shenouda was enthroned on Nov. 14, 1971 as the 117th Pope of Alexandria and head of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

He led the church through some of its most challenging times, often coming into conflict with the government. In 1981, he criticized then-President Anwar Sadat for what Shenouda characterized as an inadequate response to the rise of what is now called “political Islam” in Egypt. For this and the Coptic protests against Sadat that followed, Sadat banished Shenouda to a monastery in the desert.

Shenouda was released three years later, after Islamic militants assassinated Sadat, and after his successor, Hosni Mubarak, granted the pope amnesty. Last year, Mubarak was deposed after a series of pro-democracy protests roiled the country.

Shenouda’s passing leaves many questions unanswered as to how the leaders of the Coptic Orthodox Church will direct its followers to deal with the persecution leveled against them. Mubarak’s removal from power brought heretofore unfulfilled promises of change by the transitional military-run government, but it has also unleashed a tide of violence against Copts unheard of in recent history.

In his statement, Ghoneim made a long list of accusations against Shenouda that, put together, portray the former pope as waging a war against Muslims in Egypt. The accusations were considered either twisted by lack of context or were blatantly false, such as the claim that Shenouda was holding two female Coptic converts to Islam against their will in a monastery. Ghoneim characterized Shenouda’s well-known desire to see Egyptian society protect the human rights of Christians as impudence.

Most surprising was the claim that the former pope was somehow orchestrating the religiously motivated violence against Christians in Egypt.

“He wanted the sectarian strife,” Ghoneim said. “He wanted to burn Egypt.”

The irony of the comments has not been lost on most Copts. In May, Salafist leaders publicly threatened to kill Shenouda over the rumors about hiding the two women against their will. This was after groups of Muslims, led by members of the Salafist movement, held massive protests in April and blocked rail and road ways because the transitional military government appointed a Copt to be governor over the province. The rioting stopped only after the appointment was withdrawn.

Though it all, Anis said, Shenouda remained ardent in trying to engage Muslims in a peaceful way.

“He was a friend of many Muslim leaders. He was a peacemaker,” Anis said. “He was even criticized by Christians for making peace with those who persecuted the church.”

The last public meeting Shenouda had was with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a little more than a week before he died.

“Pope Shenouda met members of the Muslim Brotherhood even when he was in pain,” Anis said.

Most Muslims in Egypt did not share Ghoneim’s sentiments. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamic group in the country, issued a statement expressing his condolences over the Coptic pope’s death.

Shenouda was buried on Tuesday (March 20) in the Monastery of St. Bishoy in Wadi el-Natrun, with several thousand followers attending. Before Shenouda was buried, Naguib Ghobrial, lawyer and head of the Egyptian Union for Human Rights, filed suit on Monday (March 19) against Ghoneim for contempt of a revealed religion.

Undeterred, Ghoneim released a statement the next day denying any wrongdoing and issued a challenge to all Christians.

“You believe in your Bible and say its words are holy,” he concluded. [Your Bible teaches] ‘Love your enemies and bless all who curse you.’ Your enemies – you love them and those who curse you – you bless them. So I say, God curse you! Bless me now. Bless me. Isn’t this your religion? I am going to say it again – I am your enemy, and I say, God curse you. Now, say it, ‘We love you Wagdy. And God bless you Wagdy.’”

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, declared on 12 March that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region”. His statement came in response to a query from Kuwait about proposed legislation to prevent the construction of churches in that country.

The ruling is in accordance with sharia; it is based on a hadith in which Muhammad on his deathbed declared, “There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula”.

Churches have always been banned in Saudi Arabia, but they do exist in other Arabian lands, albeit subject to severe restrictions. The grand mufti’s statement not only justifies the destruction of churches in the region but requires it. He is the president of the Supreme Council of Ulema (Islamic scholars) and chairman of the Standing Committee for Scientific Research and Issuing of Fatwas. Ironically, Saudi Arabia has recently partnered with Switzerland on an institute of tolerance.

There has been no condemnation of the grand mufti’s pronouncement by Saudi Arabia’s Western allies. The Washington Times wrote on 16 March:

If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.

The declaration comes as Christians in the Middle East are under intensifying pressure as a result of the Arab Spring, which has resulted in increased political influence for Islamist groups

It was triggered after Kuwaiti MP Osama Al-Munawer said last month that he plans to submit a draft law calling for the removal of all churches in the country. He later explained that existing churches should remain but that the construction of new non-Islamic places of worship should be banned.

The population of Kuwait is around 82% Muslim, and Sunni Islam is the state religion. Christians comprise almost six per cent of the population and Buddhists eight per cent. There are few official meeting places for Christians, and much of the Church is “underground”. But it is growing both numerically and in maturity; more believers are now gathering and witnessing openly.

They have until April 8 either to leave the strongly Islamic and Arab northern country or to be treated as foreigners under a regime that is extremely hostile to non-Muslims and non-Arabs. The deadline was announced last month.

An estimated 500,000-700,000 people, who are mainly Christians of Southern origin, are affected by the ultimatum. Many of them fled north during the long civil war and have been there for decades. Few have ties with the South.

A senior Church leader said:
We are very concerned. Moving is not easy … people have children in school. They have homes… It is almost impossible.

After the South voted to secede in January 2011, Sudan removed citizenship rights from all those of Southern origin. The Khartoum government considers that people in the North whose parents, grandparents or great-grandparents were born in South Sudan, and those who belong to any Southern ethnic group, are nationals of that country.

There are fears that Christians who remain in Sudan after the deadline may face increased persecution or even forced repatriation. An influx of hundreds of thousands of people to South Sudan is likely to trigger a humanitarian emergency.

Barnabas Aid has been supporting Christians in what are now the separate countries of Sudan and South Sudan for many years, and is on hand to help meet their needs in this latest crisis.

New state under strain
It comes as the nascent state of South Sudan is struggling to cope with escalating needs and problems. A major food shortage is pending, as drought has ruined crops. The UN World Food Program (WFP) says that nearly five million people in South Sudan could suffer from food insecurity in 2012, with an estimated one million in severe need.

The country’s resources are also strained by the arrival of refugees from South Kordofan and Blue Nile in the border region between Sudan and South Sudan. Around 185,000 people have fled to South Sudan and Ethiopia to escape the ongoing aerial bombardment of civilians by the Sudan Armed Forces. Many more, over 400,000, are internally displaced. The region has been under attack since mid-2011. The Nuba Mountains area, which is around 30 percent Christian, has been one of the worst hit.

This is the latest genocidal campaign by the Sudanese government, which wants a purely Arab and Islamic state.

Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of Barnabas Aid, said:
Despite the end of the long civil war and independence of South Sudan, Christians in both nations continue to suffer grievously. South Sudan is taking the strain as hundreds of thousands of people flee from President Omar al-Bashir’s ongoing brutal campaign to Islamize and Arabize Sudan completely. Our brothers and sisters need our help and prayers as they are forced to leave their homes and rebuild their lives elsewhere.

Officials are holding the Christians at an unknown location, they said.

The sources put the number of the arrested Christians, who belong to one of Iran’s many underground house churches, at between six and 10. Authorities often detain, question and apply pressure on converts from Islam, viewing them as elements of Western propaganda set against the Iranian regime; as a result, the converts are forced to worship in secret.

The identity of only one of those arrested on Wednesday (Feb. 8), Mojtaba Hosseini, was known. Authorities arrested Hosseini in 2008 along with eight other Christian converts on charges of being Christians, according to Mohabat News.

“I guess they have been watching Hosseini since then,” an Iranian Christian who requested anonymity told Compass.

Shiraz is not a particularly “religious” part of predominantly Shiite Islamic Iran, the Christian explained, but persecution against Christians in Iran stems from the government more than from local religious sentiment. The families of the victims have requested information about their whereabouts, but authorities have refused to provide it, according to Mohabat News.

In past years authorities have arrested Christians around Christmas time, and the Compass source said that the international community and media monitoring religious rights in Iran were expecting another crack-down last December. Instead, he said, the government was more cautious and arrested small groups over a wider period of time.

In December authorities arrested a group of Christian converts in the city of Ahwaz, about 874 kilometers (542 miles) southwest of Tehran in Khuzestan Province. Of those arrested, three Christians remain in prison: Pastor Farhad Sabokroh, Naser Zamen-Defzuli and Davoud Alijani. They are held in Ahwaz’s Karoun Prison, according to Mohabat News.

Sources have expressed concern for Sabokroh’s health. Prior to his arrest, which took place at his church’s Christmas service on Dec. 23, Sabokroh underwent cataract surgery. In prison he does not have access to the medication he needs for his eyes. His wife visited him briefly on Jan. 27 and said she was concerned about his health, as he has lost a lot of weight, according to Mohabat News.

Authorities had also arrested Sabokroh’s wife at the Christmas service and released her on Jan. 1 when she submitted the deed of a house as bail, according to Mohabat News. Christians are forced to put their homes up as bail in Iran, a practice that sources say is an extortion tactic to erode them of their finances and to better control them.

Authorities have not formally charged Sabokroh, Zamen-Defzuli and Alijani.

Noorollah Qabitizade, whom authorities arrested on Dec. 24, 2010, is also held at the Karoun prison in Ahwaz. Mohabat News reported that interrogators have put psychological pressure on Qabitizade in the last year and have forced him to sign statements in an effort to make him renounce his faith.

Farshid Fathi, who was arrested on Dec. 24, 2010 in Tehran, remains in the capital’s notorious Evin prison. Sources said a court hearing had been scheduled this month but were unable to provide more information.

Iranian authorities continue to arrest and subject Christians to harsh treatment, but many of these cases remain unknown to the outside world. At the end of January, Mohabat News released information on the case of Leila Mohammadi, whom authorities had arrested in July last year.

She spent 74 days in solitary confinement at Tehran’s Evin prison. On Jan. 18 a judge sentenced her to two years of prison for “collaborating with foreign-dependent groups, broad anti-Islamic propaganda, deceiving citizens by forming house churches, insulting sacred figures and acting against national security,” according to Mohabat News.

Authorities released her on bail on Dec. 28, 2011, and her attorney has sent her case to Tehran Province’s high court.

Iran applies sharia (Islamic law), which dictates that converts from Islam to other religions are “apostates” and thus punishable by death. Although judges rarely sentence Christians to death for leaving Islam, one Christian, Yousef (also spelled Youcef) Nadarkhani, is appealing such a decision in the northeastern city of Rasht.

Nadarkhani has been in prison since October 2009. A Rasht court found him guilty of leaving Islam and handed him the death sentence in September 2010.

Behnam Irani, who belongs to the same denomination as Nadarkhani, The Church of Iran, has been in prison in Karaj since May 2011; he turned himself in after authorities issued a warrant for his arrest, according to rights group Middle East Concern.

Irani was previously arrested in April 2010 and released on bail after a few months. In January 2011 a court found him guilty of “crimes against national security” and sentenced him to one year in prison. Authorities told him he must also serve a five-year sentence handed down in 2008.

Asked if there was a change in persecution trends from previous years, the Compass source said, “Nothing has changed, the issue is the same,” explaining that the attitude of the government toward Christians remains hostile.

Authorities have prohibited musical worship and Bible distribution at the Central Church of Tehran, the largest and most visible Assemblies of God church in the country. Last December officials enforced a policy under which only invited guests could attend a Christmas service at the church, and in December 2009 the church succumbed to intense pressure by authorities to discontinue its Friday services, which had attracted the most converts to Christianity.

The four men were reportedly shot in a vehicle as they were migrating southwards to rejoin their families, who had already moved to that area to escape the violence. Previous attempts to join them had been hampered by the indefinite general strike against the removal of a government fuel, which has brought the nation to a halt.

On the same day, Boko Haram also threatened to attack Kukargadu and Dagare villages, both of which have large populations of indigenous Christians. However, extra security personnel were deployed to the villages, which were consequently kept safe through the night.

On Tuesday, eight men and a woman were killed by suspected Boko Haram gunmen in Potiskum. All nine are thought to have been Christians. The group, which included a lecturer at the Federal College of Education/Technical in Potiskum, four policemen and a young man employed by Jam’a Clinic, were in a bar in the Dorawa Ward when they were shot at by gunmen who escaped on motorcycles. On the previous day, two Christians were also shot at by gunmen on a motorcycle in the Barracks area of Potiskum, but escaped unhurt by falling to the ground and playing dead.

A 24-hour curfew has now been imposed in Yobe, and motorcycles have been banned due to Boko Haram’s regular usage of these vehicles.

The deteriorating security situation has led to rising speculation that Yobe State could soon be entirely emptied of its Christian population as entire lorry-loads of people have been departing the state. One source, who informed CSW-Nigeria he was assisting over two hundred families of indigenous Christians with relocation, said, “If this continues unabated, in the next few months or weeks there may be no Christians in Yobe State. Though our houses, jobs and churches are here, we have no choice but to leave”.

In several instances, fuel subsidy removal protests are being used for alternative agendas. On Tuesday, a fuel protest in Gusau, Zamfara State, degenerated into an attack on Ebenezer Baptist Church as rioters removed equipment and other valuables from the premises and set them on fire. A 24-hour curfew was imposed in Kaduna City and its environs yesterday, after Muslim youths went to the governor’s official residence on Tuesday claiming they wanted to seize control. Yesterday a 6am to 6pm curfew was imposed in Niger State after rioting broke out in the capital, Minna, and the governor’s campaign headquarters was attacked.

Meanwhile, retaliatory attacks on Hausa-Fulani neighbourhoods in Benin City in southern Nigeria on 9 and 10 January during fuel protests resulted in five deaths, mass displacement and the destruction of an Islamic School attached to the central mosque. This worrying development follows a week of violent events in Adamawa State that left at least 37 people dead in which southerners were specifically targeted.

Sofia Osman, a 28-year-old Christian from Janale city in Somali’as Lower Shabelle region, had been taken into custody by Islamic extremist al Shabaab militants in November; the public whipping was meant to mark her release. She received 40 lashes on Dec. 22 while jeered by spectators.

“Osman was whipped 40 lashes at 3 p.m., but she didn’t tell what other humiliations she had suffered while in the hands of the militants,” an eyewitness, told Compass, adding that whipping left her bleeding. “I saw her faint. I thought she had died, but soon she regained consciousness and her family took her away.”

The whipping was administered in front of hundreds of spectators after Osman was released from her month-long custody in al Shabaab camps. Nursing her injuries at her family’s home, in the days after the punishment she would not talk to anyone and looked dazed, a source close in touch with the family said. She has since been relocated.

“Please pray for her quick recovery,” the source said.

Janale, one Somalia’s major cities, is about 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Mogadishu.

Osman became a Christian four years ago and was a member of the underground church in the war-torn Horn of Africa country largely controlled by the al Qaeda-linked militants from al Shabaab.

The al Shabaab militia is being hunted down by Kenya Defense Forces in southern Somalia following the extremists’ incursions into Kenya. They had killed and kidnapped tourists and aid workers inside Kenya, prompting military forces to formally enter into war to secure its borders.

In response, the al Shabaab militants have targeted churches in northern Kenyan towns such as Garissa in the hope of dividing Kenyans along religious lines. The Kenyan public, however, is largely backed the government decision to pursue the militants deep into Somalia.

NIGERIA (ANS) — The militant Islamist group Boko Haram has issued an ultimatum giving Christians living in northern Nigeria three days to leave the area amid a rising tide of violence there.

CNN reports that Boko Haram spokesman, Abul Qaqa, also said late Sunday that Boko Haram fighters are ready to confront soldiers sent to the area under a state of emergency declared in parts of four states by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday.

“We will confront them squarely to protect our brothers,” Abul Qaqa said during a telephone call with local media. He also called on Muslims living in southern Nigeria to “come back to the north because we have evidence they will be attacked.”

CNN said that recent weeks have seen an escalation in clashes between Boko Haram and security forces in the north-eastern states of Borno and Yobe, as well as attacks on churches and assassinations. Nearly 30 people were killed on Christmas Day at a Catholic church near the federal capital, Abuja — a sign that Boko Haram is prepared to strike beyond its heartland.

Human rights activist Shehu Sani told CNN that the latest Boko Haram threat is credible, but many Christians born and raised in the north have nowhere else to go.

“The killings will continue,” he said, and Boko Haram may respond to the state of emergency by taking its campaign of violence to areas not yet affected.

Sani said the state of emergency and an enhanced presence of the security forces would not improve the situation, alleging that troops had already been involved in human rights abuses and had done little to reduce violence.

CNN explained that Nigeria has almost equal numbers of Christian and Muslims, with the south predominantly Christian. Boko Haram and other Islamic groups claim the north has been starved of resources and marginalized by the government of Jonathan, who is a Christian.

Boko Haram (which according to the group means “Western civilization is forbidden”) is demanding the imposition of Islamic sharia law across Nigeria.

CNN goes on to say that Christian leaders have demanded a stronger response to the attacks from the government and the Muslim community. Ayo Oritsejafor, head of the Christian Association of Nigeria, complained last week that the response of Islamic leaders had been “unacceptable and an abdication of their responsibilities.”

“The Christian community is fast losing confidence in government’s ability to protect our rights,” Oritsejafor said.

David Cook of Rice University, who has studied the rise of Boko Haram, said that “if radical Muslim violence on a systematic level were to take hold in Nigeria … it could eventually drive the country into a civil war.”

CNN said corruption, poverty and a lack of government services have helped Boko Haram gain support, especially among young Muslims out of work. So has a perception that the Muslim north has been marginalized by a political establishment drawn largely from the Christian south.

Cook says the group has been responsible for at least 45 major attacks, which have included assassinations — frequently using gunmen on motorbikes — and, more recently, suicide bombings beyond its northern heartland.

Beyond the security forces and Christian targets, it has assassinated Muslim clerics who oppose the group, and even killed a prominent Boko Haram member who had attended talks to explore a truce. Boko Haram’s presence in the city of Maiduguri has made it almost ungovernable, according to analysts.

Analysts say its ability to inflict mass casualties has grown fast. In August, a suicide bomber struck the U.N. building in Abuja, killing 23 people. In November, some 150 people were killed in a series of bombings and shootings in Damaturu, capital of Yobe state.

CNN also stated the commander of U.S. Africa Command, Gen. Carter Ham, has suggested Boko Haram may have developed links with other Islamic jihadist groups in the region, especially al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Sani agrees, and says Boko Haram’s leaders have established sanctuaries across the desert borders in Niger and Chad, out of reach of the Nigerian security forces.

CNN added that the former U.S. ambassador in Nigeria, John Campbell, says that Boko Haram is able to finance itself “through bank robberies and is arming itself by thefts from government armories and purchases — there is no shortage of weapons on the market.”

Less than two months ago, President Jonathan described attacks by Boko Haram as a temporary setback, which would soon be a thing of the past, CNN said.

CNN said Jonathan now appears to see the group as a lethal threat that demands the full attention of the security services. But since Yusuf’s death, Boko Haram has had no obvious leader or structure, and appears to act as loosely connected cells. And it is feeding on deep-seated grievances that the government seems unable to address.

According to CNN, Cook warns that “as more and more territories become ungovernable, such as Maiduguri, then Muslims more and more will want to join Boko Haram, if only because it represents the one group that can actually project power and hold out the illusion of security to the people.”