Israel: ‘Study the Bible’, says Netanyahu
16 Sep 2016
At a cabinet meeting ahead of the new school year, Benjamin Netanyahu urged students to study the Bible and their Jewish heritage. ‘Our objective is to carry out an education revolution,’ he said. ‘This will be based on two things: excellence and Zionism. Excellence, to enable every child to realise their potential, and Zionism, based on the study of the Bible and Jewish heritage, to understand why the Jews are in Israel. First of all, the study of the Bible. We must make a major effort - this is the basis for why we are here, why we have returned here, why we stay here.’ Education Minister Naftali said, ‘We need to highlight our national values, Zionism, love of country and service to the state, and the strengthening of our shared Jewish roots. Knowledge is a critical word.’
UN global tax?
16 Sep 2016
A UN tax on all foreign exchange transactions is being considered, with a move towards new models of funding, ‘believing that in our interconnected world there is a need to find new ways to fund solidarity that goes beyond national borders’. The UN have considered the political feasibility, costs and benefits of a ‘Financial Transaction Tax’ (FTT) or Tobin Tax, to raise between US$25 and 34 billion annually in Europe. However, many believe that the tax is a danger to national sovereignty and to the necessary transparency of the UN; so they are calling upon policy-makers at all levels to reject the Global UN Tax. A global tax has long been on the UN radar; they proposed it in the annual Human Development Report as early as 2011. A global tax on financial transactions would bring trillions of dollars into the UN and countries would have no say on how it is spent.
Iraq: new UN goodwill ambassador
16 Sep 2016
A young Yazidi woman who survived trafficking and gang-rape by IS is to be appointed a UN ambassador. Nadia Murad, who is also a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, will become the UNODC goodwill ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. Her appointment marks the first time a survivor of atrocities has been given this distinction. Ms Murad was captured in Iraq in 2014. Six of her brothers were murdered. The 23-year-old told the BBC she had also been subjected to sexual and physical abuse, including being gang-raped, but managed to escape. Since then she has been advocating for the end of human trafficking. Her ambassadorship ’will focus on advocacy initiatives and raise awareness around the plight of the countless victims of trafficking in persons, especially refugees, women and girls’, the UN said.
Two new prayer guides
09 Sep 2016
The Ethne Prayer Workgroup are seeking God for wisdom as they work towards producing two new prayer guides. Christians have been using the booklet 30 days of prayer for the Muslim world during Ramadan for the past 25 years. As increasingly more people pray for Muslims, we are seeing God answer in miraculous ways beyond what we could have asked or imagined. How many more lives could be changed with annual informed intercession for 30 days for the Hindu world and 30 days for the Buddhist world? The Ethne team are at the early stages of consultation and team building, with a vision to see these two intercessory tools produced and distributed globally.
Nigeria: only weeks left for Boko Haram?
09 Sep 2016
Nigeria's army expects to seize Boko Haram's last few strongholds in the northeast over the next few weeks, the commander in charge said on Wednesday. The army has retaken most of the territory - at one point the size of Belgium. Major General Lucky Irabor said the jihadists are now holed up in a few pockets of the Sambisa forest - where more than 200 girls kidnapped from the town of Chibok in 2014 are believed to be held - and two areas near Lake Chad, and they would be flushed out ‘within weeks’. ‘Almost all of the locations held by the Boko Haram terrorists have been reclaimed. We are talking only of a few villages and towns,’ Irabor said.
Many refugees coming to Christ
09 Sep 2016
Disillusioned by the horror perpetrated by followers of Islam, Muslim refugees in Switzerland and Germany are converting to Christianity at a dramatic rate after experiencing the love of Christ and hearing the truth of the Gospel, said Switzerland's Counselling Centre for Integration and Religious Affairs. 2,000+ Muslims have turned to Christ since 2014, and the number keeps rising. Recently it’s mainly Afghans and Kurds who have converted. One reason why refugees embrace Christianity is that they have witnessed brutal extremist groups carrying out horrific acts in the name of Allah.
Dementia: Living in the Memories of God
09 Sep 2016
The Michael Ramsey Prize, which is sponsored by the Lambeth Trust and administered by SPCK, was inaugurated in 2005 to encourage the most promising contemporary theological writing and to identify it for a wider Christian readership. This year the prize was awarded to John Swinton's Dementia: Living in the Memories of God at a ceremony at the Greenbelt festival. The Archbishop said, ‘It is a cross-disciplinary book that goes straight to the heart of tackling one of the most profound failures of our society - the failure to value people in other than economic terms and to see the dignity of the human person.’ The book is challenging, with a coherent theological approach and a clinical understanding. Dementia is one of the great issues of our society and Justin said, ‘He has done the church and our country a huge service.’
Muslims and the media
09 Sep 2016
A Muslim family were accused of being terrorists on their trip to Skegness. They won't be returning: they said, ‘It didn’t really bother us until a man shouted “terrorists”.’ A survey found a 326% rise in anti-Muslim hate crime last year. Is the media responsible for this rise in Islamophobia? The press regulator, IPSO, judged the Daily Star Sunday’s headline, ‘UK mosques fundraising for terror’ to be ‘significantly misleading’ - the mosques were not involved in any way. A week earlier The Sun was forced to acknowledge that its headline ‘1 in 5 Brit Muslims sympathy for jihadists’ was similarly misleading. The Times claimed Muslims were ‘silent on terror’. This allegation was unequivocally rebuffed by Theresa May and senior counter-terror officers. See: