Tag: Middle East

The diffuse nature of evangelical charitable giving makes fundraising figures elusive, but anyone who spends a little time reading, talking, or worshipping with evangelicals can’t miss the fact that they have a zeal for honoring martyrs and connecting with persecuted Christians abroad. They love a good sermon on the afflictions of the righteous. Their churches sponsor persecuted congregations abroad and screen movies with titles like Tortured for Christ. To give the youngsters a more vivid taste of virtual martyrdom, one organization offers an activity kit called “Locked Up,” “a 12-hour simulation of a prison-like setting” to challenge youth groups “to live their role in God’s great story of the Church around the world.” Although homegrown martyrs are scant these days, American evangelicals never stop feting the few they have: One of the most famous evangelical women of the 20th century is ex-missionary Elisabeth Elliot, whose 1957 account of her husband’s martyrdom at the hands of a hostile Ecuadorean tribe is still selling briskly a half-century later.

Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared Turkey with Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution, saying Israel will “not be Turkey’s punching bag.” Writing in Thursday’s Jerusalem Post, Mr Lieberman blamed the crisis in bilateral ties between Jerusalem and Ankara on internal developments in Turkey.

Excerpt from a memoir of life in an Israeli Kibbutz with discussion of the author’s growing disillusionment with Labour Zionism. “What I did, however, come quite quickly to understand if not openly acknowledge was just how limited the kibbutz and its members really were. The mere fact of collective self-government, or egalitarian distribution of consumer durables, does not make you either more sophisticated or more tolerant of others. Indeed, to the extent that it contributes to an extraordinary smugness of self-regard, it actually reinforces the worst kind of ethnic solipsism.”

The Islamist group Hamas is masterminding efforts to have senior Israeli leaders arrested for alleged war crimes when they visit European countries including Britain, a top Hamas official involved in the effort has told The Times. The claim comes amid continuing diplomatic fallout after a British arrest warrant was issued last week against Tzipi Livni, who served as Foreign Minister during Israel’s Gaza offensive last winter.

Abdel-Latif Moussa, the leader of a radical Islamist group in the Gaza Strip, has been killed during a gun battle with security forces that killed 22 people. The fighting erupted on Friday night when Hamas security men surrounded a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egypt border where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, were hiding out.

Scientists must leave Arab countries to find success, and even proponents of science in the Middle East must kowtow to Islam wherever their knowledge comes into conflict with the Koran. There are many reasons for the near-death of science in Arab countries, but a failure to put universal truths above religious ones must be one of them.

David Kerr, professor of cancer therapeutics at Oxford university, sees renewed scientific leadership as a way for the Obama administration to make diplomatic inroads in areas where America is not popular, such as the Middle East. He points out that a recent forum on particle accelerators had representatives from Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey all sitting around one table.

Most practitioners of Islamic finance pride themselves on their modesty. But not Adnan Yousif, the chairman of the Union of Arab Banks, a regional club for financial firms. He has recently struck a tone more reminiscent of greed-is-good Wall Street, with a grand plan to build the biggest Islamic bank yet seen, spanning the world and providing Muslim countries with new financial services their people have barely heard of.

As Pope Benedict XVI wends his way across the Holy Land this week, he is addressing a dwindling and threatened Christian population driven to emigration by political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam.

Rights groups in Egypt call for an inquiry after they say followers of the minority Bahai religion have been assaulted.