Turkey-EU ties are currently marked by mutual resentments and appear to be going nowhere. In a sign of the times, Brussels is withholding 175 million euros in pre-accession funds for Turkey, which on paper remains a candidate for EU membership. Ankara says it doesn’t need EU money or membership, but it is developing ties with individual EU members, which seems to be a search for another kind of relationship with Europe. French president Emmanuel Macron, who has emerged as Erdogan’s principal European speaker, said Turkey is a partner in many crises Europe faces, notably the immigration challenge and the terrorist threat. Countries such as Germany and France are angry about EU citizens arrested in Turkey on what they say are trumped-up charges linking them to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) or the so-called Fethullah Gulen Terror Organisation (FETO). They are accusing Ankara of holding these people hostage.

In 1995 the US passed the ‘Jerusalem Embassy Act,’ which formally recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and called for their embassy to move there from Tel Aviv. With overwhelming support it passed the Senate by 93 to 5. President Trump has now implemented that decision. Israel’s intelligence services minister Yisrael Katz said, ‘The Palestinian reaction is a rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, just as Arabs did 70 years ago.’ He also said that this action will make it clear to Palestinians that they too must recognise Israel, which is necessary for the peace process. He said Israel would take economic steps to help the Palestinians, singling out the regional railroad project currently being proposed. Manuel Hassassian, Palestinian representative to Britain, warned, ‘Trump is effectively declaring war in the Middle East’. See also

Jesus is the central character in the Christmas story. But 15 million Mormons have a false understanding of Him, believing that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three gods. They believe the lie that salvation depends on their works instead of on the work of Jesus Christ; and the Heavenly Father began as a spirit child, came to earth to gain a body, and earned his way to godhood. Many good works are required for Mormons to earn the privilege of living with the Heavenly Father in the next life. One ‘good work’ is temple work for the dead - a person can be saved after they have died when temple works are completed by those still living. Mormonism teaches that man is not born in sin and cannot sin until the age of eight; and Eve’s disobedience was ‘a fall upward, a necessity for eternal progression toward godhood’.

Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who has been on death row for blasphemy since 2010, has been nominated for this year’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The 2017 report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, presented on 5 December, should be alarming to all who care about freedom of thought and expression, as it shows ‘a pattern of regression on a global scale’. It shows that 85 countries have at least one law or symptom of ‘severe discrimination’ against those who think or believe differently; the free thinkers. Thirty countries are guilty of ‘grave violations’ such as prescribing the death penalty for apostasy, or ‘religious instruction in a significant number of schools, of a coercive fundamentalist or extremist variety’. See also the next article, about Canada’s religious freedom in schools.