Volume 7 Issue 21

Six More Christians Executed by Terrorists in West African Church Attacks

Another church in West Africa's Burkina Faso was targeted by terrorists this Sunday leaving six dead.

According to Christianity Today, six Christians were killed in a Burkina Faso Catholic church in the town of Dablo, after people on motorcycles raided the church, executed five worshippers and the priest and then set the church on fire.

Reportedly, the motorcyclists entered the church during the Sunday morning Mass and opened fire on the churchgoers.

According to the Burkina Information Agency, the attackers “ordered the women and children to clear the scene before executing six men, including the priest.”

According to Reuters, the men also looted several stores in the town, including the pharmacy, before taking off.

This is the second attack in this area since Easter that have had nearly identical M.Os.

As Christian Headlines previously reported, six Christians were executed in a West African Protestant church on April 28, after they refused to convert to Islam.

Several armed motorcyclists opened fire on the Assemblies of God church in a Burkina Faso killing six people, including the church’s long-time pastor Pierre Ouédraogo, after they refuse to deny their Christian faith.

According to the Associated Press, no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in April, though violent Islamist extremism has increasingly become a problem in the country.

Reuters reports that Burkina Faso has seen a rise in religiously fueled attacks in 2019. Burkina Faso is a landlocked country that shares a border with Mali, a nation that has long been a center for conflict and terrorism.

Reuter reports that groups located in Mali with links to ISIS and al Qaeda have sought to “fuel local tensions and extend their influence” in Burkina Faso and the Sahel region.

Evangelical Russians Suffer Most from Law Restricting Religious Freedom

Religious persecution has grown in Russia since the country’s ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2017 with Russian Evangelicals feeling the pressure. Last year, over 100 Russian individuals and 50 organizations were prosecuted for any type of religious activity. 

“Believers don’t understand what they can and can’t do,” lawyer Mikhail Frolov told Forum 18, a news service covering religious freedom in Russia and surrounding countries. “Because of heavy fines, they don’t want to take the risk and therefore significantly reduce their activity, especially in public.” 

According to Christianity Today, Russian officials have interrupted worship services, charged pastors for hanging signs with church meeting times, and punished Baptists at a bus stop for discussing their faith. 

In 2016, Putin signed the Yarovaya laws, intended to prevent terrorism that also set tight restrictions on religious freedoms. Any person or organization accused of “missionary activity” can be prosecuted. Though the law strictly forbids “missionary activity”, officials are prosecuting any religious activity, including prayer meetings and church services. 

“There are potentially very wide-sweeping ramifications to this law,” Joel Griffith of the Slavic Gospel Association said in a Mission Network News report when the law was first introduced. “It just depends on, again, how it is going to be enforced, and that is a very huge question mark.” 

Believers are beginning to answer that question.

Government permits are required for all religious organizations in order to invite others to their church or discuss their faith. Fines for those punished can range from 5,000 rubles (approximately $75) to 50,000 rubles ($750). Since the law has enacted, more than half of all Russian regions experienced at least one prosecution. In 2019 so far, two Baptist pastors were punished for passing out literature at a bus stop and a Buddhist for hosting a meditation meeting.

Some churches are also required to submit sermons and reports of attendance. Yevgeny Kokora, an elder in a church along the coast of the Black Sea, told Radio Free Europe that they receive weekly calls requesting these documents. 

Jehovah’s Witnesses are also suffering. A Russian court recently sentenced Dennis Christensen, a Danish Jehovah’s Witness for six years in prison for exercising his faith. In 2017, the Russian Supreme Court deemed Jehovah’s Witnesses as an “extremist organization” and banned them from their country.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released a report last week on Russia’s continued prosecutions. “Religious and other communities can be financially blacklisted or liquidated, and individuals can be subjected to criminal prosecution for social media posts that are arbitrarily determined to offend the religious sensibilities of others.”

Despite the persecution, many churches are standing firm by refusing to seek government permits and approval. Griffith shared, “We are calling people around the world to please pray for churches.”

Iran's Proxy War Is The Real Problem         

Sunday night's landing of a Katyusha rocket less than half a mile from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was not merely the latest provocation on the part of Tehran in its battle of wills with Washington. More importantly, it verified Israeli intelligence revealing stockpiles of Iranian ballistic missiles in Iraq, poised to strike American targets. It also vindicated the dispatch of U.S. warships and fighter jets to the Persian Gulf, and the State Department's order that all non-essential diplomatic personnel evacuate Iraq immediately.

The rocket attack, then, did not come as a total shock. Still, it came two weeks after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suddenly canceled a trip to Germany and headed to Baghdad to warn Iraqi leaders about Iran's growing influence on their soil and threat to their sovereignty.

On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump made two statements that illustrate his administration's dilemma about when or whether to engage in actual battle with the Islamic Republic.

In the afternoon, he tweeted: "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!" Yet in an interview with Fox News that aired Sunday evening, he said, " ... They can't be threatening us ... and I'm not ... somebody that wants to go into war. ... I don't want to fight. But you do have situations like Iran. You can't let them have nuclear weapons--you just can't let that happen."

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif shot back at Trump on social media.

Alluding to U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--both of whom have been accused of trying to manipulate Trump into going to war, he tweeted: "Goaded by #B Team, @realdonaldTrump hopes to achieve what Alexander, Genghis & other aggressors failed to do. Iranians have stood tall for millennia while aggressors all gone. #EconomicTerrorism & genocidal taunts won't 'end Iran.' #NeverThreatenAnIranian. Try respect--it works!"

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, however, stated recently that "war is not in the offing. ... We do not want a war, and neither does the United States, which knows it does not stand to gain anything from a war. ... Iranian willpower is strong because Iran puts its trust in Allah. The boastful and bullying enemy has no real strength." In spite of Iran's "bluster and bluff"--as Jonathan Tobin has called the regime's attempt to extricate itself from the corner of crippling sanctions into which Trump has forced it--Tehran clearly knows that it is no match for the might of the U.S. military. Its leaders also are aware, however, that Americans are never keen on going to war. 

Especially when persuaded by propaganda that they are doing so in order to defend a third country. You know, like Israel, for instance, whose prime minister has been shouting about the global danger of a nuclear Iran for decades. And that brings us to the real problem facing the Trump administration right now. While a full-scale war with Iran does not appear likely in the near future, low-intensity conflict against the West and its allies already is being waged by Iran's proxies all over the world.

Indeed, Iran-backed Shi'ite militias and terrorist organizations have been committing atrocities well beyond the Middle East. Israel has been on the front lines of this incessant guerilla onslaught, attempting simultaneously to fight off genocidal groups and individuals along its borders without launching a military offensive on an actual country.

Fending off Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members in Syria, the only democracy in the region takes great care not to kill the civilians used by the terrorists ruling their governments (and living in their midst) as human shields and canon fodder. In such asymmetric warfare, definitive victory is elusive, if not impossible.

Herein lies Iran's current advantage over the United States. In an article on Friday in the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese daily, Al-Akhbaron--translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute--editor Ibrahim Al-Amin described Tehran's global tentacles as follows: "The Soviet leader of old, Josef Stalin, was once asked about the nature of the ties between the Soviet Union--the center of the communist movement--and other communist forces around the world. 

He replied: 'We support and sponsor all the communist parties in the world. Each of us operates according to his status and circumstances. If any [communist] party experiences a crisis in its country, we will see how we can assist it and figure out the best course of action. [And] if we are in crisis, the communists around the world will no doubt come to the aid of the Soviet Union.' "

According to Al-Amin, Iran not only "possesses an arsenal that threatens the farthest edges of Western Europe, and can also destroy all the centers of influence in the Middle East," but has allies that will join it in war: a real army in Afghanistan; an influential force in Syria and Iraq; Hezbollah, a party with state-like powers; and vast capabilities in Yemen, as well as allies in Palestine and other parts of the Arab world who will feel the need to come to its aid ... "

The good news is that the Soviet Union was eventually defeated by the United States without a war. The bad news is that America did not achieve victory over the USSR until nearly 40 years after Stalin's death. Let us hope that toppling the evil regime of the ayatollahs takes far less time--with or without troops on the ground or bombs from the air. Our lives depend on it.