Western World and the Wrong Implementation of Hate Law

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

CHRISTIAN UNION AT BRITISH UNIVERSITY BANNED, ACCOUNTS FROZEN

By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND (ANS) - Jan 25, 2006 - A Christian organization on the campus of a university in Britain's second largest city can no longer use meeting facilities for its gatherings. Its finances have also been frozen.

Birmingham University's Christian Union has been banned from using Student Union Guild rooms and facilities, and has had its bank accounts frozen by Guild authorities after refusing to make politically-correct changes to their charitable constitution on religious grounds.

According to a press release issued on behalf of the Students Union and obtained by ANS, the Students Union at Birmingham University wanted to impose one of their own leaders onto the CU executive, open membership to people of all faiths and beliefs and instructed the Christian fellowship to change its constitution from "men and women" to "people" to make it more inclusive for transsexual/transgender persons to become members.

The release says that when members of the CU tried to book rooms with the Guild after the summer break for normal CU activities, they were told the Guild couldn't accommodate them because the CU was involved in too many evangelistic activities.

It states: "Then, when Christians in Sport (whose high profile supporters include Olympic Gold Medallists Jonathan Edwards) attempted to book a room in the CU's name, the Guild insisted on checking the CU's constitution. The Guild objected to many clauses, even though the constitution has been consistent for many years, and its polices are not a new issue for the Guild. The CU has been operating at Birmingham University for the past 76 years, and currently has well over a hundred people attending the CU's meetings."

Andy Weatherley, CU staff worker in Birmingham, said: "The Guild insists our constitution must be amended to include 'mandatory clauses', insisting more control and more intrusion by the Guild and open membership to those who would not call themselves Christians.

"As a Christian Union, we restrict membership to only those people who profess faith in Jesus Christ, [and that leadership positions are also restricted to the same criteria and the beliefs outlined in the University and College's Christian Fellowship Doctrinal Basis].

"It is a fundamental right of any organization to be able to include in its membership only those who abide by the ethos and focus of the organization. We believe this to be true for all organizations within the Student Union, not just religious or ethnic ones. We are not a special interest group there to attract people with similar interest but a Union of Christians.

Weatherley added: "Whilst our meetings are open to all people, believers and unbelievers when it comes to being a voting member or leader of the Christian Union we feel it is perfectly respectable to restrict access to people who call themselves Christians."

The Vice Chancellors' report "Extremism and intolerance on Campus," advises Universities "some clubs of societies to have restricted eligibility, say on religious or nationality grounds. Otherwise, it could be open to a group hostile to the club or society to join and take it over in a way that would be quite wrong. But we urge care in this area."

The release states that despite the CU agreeing to consider some re-drafting of their constitution and to offer a re-draft to the Guild at their mid-January meeting, the CU were suspended from booking rooms for a week-long Christian Awareness event at the end of January named "Truth."

It adds that the Guild has de-recognized the Christian Union and frozen its bank account, including money donated by the public and churches to be used for Christian work in the university. The "Truth" week will only now go ahead because of the good grace offered by the university allowing the CU to place a marquee on a central location on campus.

Birmingham Christian Union has instructed solicitors, who have advised the Guild that unless funds are returned, and a democratic way forward can be found, they have been instructed to issue court proceeds against them.

Birmingham University Christian Union is affiliated to UCCF (Universities Christian College Fellowship), which has over 77 years experience of working with Christians at universities and colleges of higher and further education throughout the UK.

Pod Bhogal, its communications director said: "In all our years of working with hundreds of Higher Education establishments, this action by Birmingham's Guild is unique. We support the Birmingham CU 100 per cent and will back them in standing up for their rights, and the democratic rights of every student grouping in the university to be able to constitute themselves and to peruse any lawful aims and objectives in a free society. We would not dream of telling a Muslim student group how to elect their leaders or who could or could not become a member, that's entirely a matter to them, based on their own faith principles, the same applies to a CU."

A Christian Union group exists to help Christian students develop in maturity so that together they can engage in mission on their university campuses.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

ENGLAND GEARS UP FOR OPPRESSION OF CHRISTIANS

UK CHRISTIAN LAWYERS CALL MEETING OVER CONCERNS FOR RELIGIOUS HATRED LAW

By Tim Finch, UKChristianNews.tv
Special to ASSIST News Service

LONDON, UK (ANS) -AUG 25/05 - Christian Lawyers in the UK have called a meeting on September 7th at a central London venue after concerns have arisen that the UK Government will use the Parliament Act to force through the proposed Religious Hatred legislation this coming Autumn.

The law, which is similar to one already in force in Victoria in Australia, will ban incitement to hatred on the basis of religion. Whilst many believe in principle the law is a good idea, Christian lawyers in the UK are so concerned about the loose wording of the law that, in the wrong hands, the law could easily be used against Christians engaging in legitimate evangelism and preaching - as has already happened to two pastors in Australia where the law has been in force for some years. Those pastors were found guilty of the 'crime'.

The association, the Lawyer's Christian Fellowship, have recently published a letter inviting Christians in the UK from a wide spectrum of denominations to gather at Westminster Chapel at 1pm on the 7th of September where the meeting will be led by cross bencher peer, Baroness Cox. Their intention, according to the letter, is to allow debate and questions to a panel of experts and to encourage Christian to campaign over early Autumn. It appears though that the meeting is by invitation only and are asking that nominations for invitations be submitted to them before people turn up on the day.

The law is already over half way through Parliament, with the Bill clearing is third reading in the House of Commons back in June, just before the Parliamentary session ended for summer. The Bill moves to the House Of Lords in October where it is felt by many Christians the law has its "last chance saloon" of being rejected. However, if the House of Commons, which always has the last say, chooses to invoke the Parliament Act - a piece of legislation that permits the Government to force something they consider is very important onto the Statute books regardless of final voting - then its largely irrelevant how the Lords vote anyway in October.

Christian who work closely with political issues in the UK believe the law, should it be passed, will be on the statute books before the end of the year. The Christian lawyers believe that Churches and Christians should act now to put as much pressure as possible on the Government to change its mind.

Monday, August 22, 2005 

ISLAM & THE MESSAGE OF WILLFUL HATE

By Charles Gardner
Special to ASSIST News Service

MOGGERHANGER, BEDFORDSHIRE, UK (ANS) - AUG 22/05 - Plans to protect Britain’s Muslim community with a bill to outlaw incitement to religious hatred could backfire on the very people it is designed to help.

So says Dr. Clifford Hill, a clergyman sociologist who is Research Director of the Family Matters Institute. (Pictured: Dr. Clifford Hill).

Believers in the Muslim holy book, the Koran, could well be accused of breaking such a law should it be passed.

For though most British Muslims have never read the book but rely on what their imams tell them (they are forbidden to read it in English), its message is not the peaceful one politically correct politicians and church leaders would have us believe.

Commenting on the link between Islam and terrorism in the wake of the London bombings, Dr. Hill said: “There are a number of verses in the Koran that are used by fundamentalist Muslims as justification for acts of terrorism against non-Muslims. For example, ‘You who have believed, do not choose Jews and Christians as friends; they are friends to each other; whoever makes friends of them is one of them.’ (Surah 5.56)

“And another: ‘Fight against those who do not believe in Allah nor in the last day and do not make forbidden what Allah and his messenger have made forbidden and do not practise the religion of truth.’ (Surah 9.29)

“Though it is demonstrably true that the vast majority of Muslims are decent, law-abiding and peace-loving citizens, it is a dangerous lie to say there is no connection between Islam and Muslims who carry out acts of indiscriminate murder in the name of the Islamic faith. This only obscures the path to any solution of the problem.”

One of the problems, he says, is that Muslim scholars, who believe that such passages are not binding upon its adherents today, dare not say so publicly for fear of their lives. Writing for his Bedfordshire-based Centre for Contemporary Ministry web-site, he said: “Only if Islamic scholars are brave enough to say in public to their own people what they say in private will there be peace in the 21st century world.

“Islam needs to move away from its medieval stranglehold and allow free and fair scholarly discussion of its beliefs without the threat of violence. Their theologians need to state clearly that the passages in the Koran exhorting the faithful to kill Jews and Christians do not apply to Muslims today any more than the instructions to Moses to kill all the Midianites encourage us to murder Arabs.”

But the so-called "war on terror" was not the way to go about rooting out terrorists, he warns. It only spawns more of them.

The trouble is, he adds, the decadence of the West weakens its resistance to spiritual attack, with a faith vacuum encouraging disillusioned westerners to seek alternative solutions.

Dr. Hill blames the church for the spiritual mess that produced the London bombers… “for the political correctness that has created a great wall of silence around Islam, for missing the opportunity of evangelizing the Muslim immigrants in the first place and for the dangerous false teaching of misguided liberal theologians who say there is no difference between Islam and Christianity.”

And he hopes that Muslims who respect Jesus will allow his teaching – that you should love your enemies – to modify the medieval war passages in the Koran.

Until September 11 2001, he says, the West has largely ignored Islam’s record of cruelty to Christians and Jews. “In Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Sudan, Christians are regularly persecuted, tortured, even crucified and forcibly converted to Islam. Christian pastors are doused with petrol and burnt in front of their churches, their homes torched, their churches destroyed, their congregations butchered. Many thousands of Christians have suffered in this way every year since the 1970s, yet these atrocities are rarely reported in the western press.”

ADL Foxman Fear of the name of JESUS

By Hillel Halkin
The Jerusalem Post | November 14, 2005


FrontPageMagazine -  Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League - the one major American Jewish organization whose primary goal is fighting anti-Semitism - is worried. American Jews, he believes, are threatened, not by anti-Semites, but by the non-anti-Semitic Christian Right. In an address to the League's national commission in New York last weekend, Foxman said: 

"Today we face a better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before. Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America. To save us!" 

That the Christian Right's vision of America is different from Abraham Foxman's, and from that of most and perhaps all American Jews, is indisputable. What is not so obvious, however, is, firstly, whether the Christian Right is doing anything that the American Jewish community and the Anti Defamation League have not been doing for decades; secondly, whether it is not therefore absurd to attack Christians for such things; and thirdly, whether there is any wisdom, from the American Jewish perspective, in declaring war on a Christian public that in recent years has been Israel's strongest supporter in the United States. 

Full Story Here

THERE IS NOT ONE CHRISTIAN NATION ON EARTH WHERE MUSLIMS ARE PERSECUTED.

Yet in most nations where the majority of the population are Muslims, there is systematic government persecution of Christians.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

--Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--

Christian Conversions - According to the Bible - Can NEVER be forced.

Any Conversion to Christianity which would be "Forced" would NOT be recognized by God. It is in His True and KIND nature, that those who come to Him and choose to believe in Him, must come to Him OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL.



Don't Let anyone tell you that Christians support Forced Conversions.

That is False. True Christianity is NEVER forced.

Core Universal Rights

The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one's belief or religion
The right to join together and express one's belief