Khazen

Suleiman Orders Stronger Measures as al-Beddawi Buries Dead

President Michel Suleiman ordered on Monday stronger measures to preserve security and stability in northern Lebanon a day after three men were killed in clashes over a clampdown on illegal construction. “Suleiman followed up the security situation in the country in general and specifically the North and met at Baabda palace with caretaker Defense Minister […]

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Thuggish Egyptian police participate in brutal attack on Christians

 

 

CAIRO, EGYPT (Catholic Online) – The images are compelling. They clearly show Egyptian police officers participating in the attack on the Coptic cathedral in Cairo. This is thuggish behavior and unbecoming of a civilized police force.  The images show Egyptian police officers standing by as protesters fire guns, wield machetes, and throw stones at Christians. The Muslims were attacking a Coptic funeral who were mourning the death of another who was killed in a previous clash with Muslims.  Another image shows officers standing by as a protester burns a Holy Bible. What would happen if the roles were reversed?

The government’s response has been embarrassingly lukewarm at best. Four Copts were arrested. Christians in Egypt are facing increasingly hostile discrimination and the government is not only failing in its obligation to protect them, it seems to be helping militant Muslims attack them.
Unfortunately, this is typical behavior for militant Muslims and those than enable them. These Muslims are not content with diversity and instead insist on destroying any institution that is not their own. Ever since a new, supposedly democratic government was formed in Egypt, the Muslims have taken advantage of every opportunity to discriminate against and suppress Coptic Christians.  The participation of the police in the religious violence does much to implicate the government in crimes against Christians. It is also quite revealing that four Christian mourners were arrested while the Muslim attackers who initiated the violence were aided by police.

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Iran Arrests Thousands Of Men For Claiming To Be A Fake Messiah

 

 

EARLIER this year Iran’s authorities arrested a score of men who, in separate incidents, claimed to be the Mahdi, a sacred figure of Shia Islam, who was “hidden” by God just over a millennium ago and will return some time to conquer evil on earth.

A website based in Qom, Iran’s holiest city, deemed the men “deviants”, “fortune-tellers” and “petty criminals”, who were exploiting credulous Iranians for alms during the Persian new-year holiday, which fell in mid-March.

Many of the fake messiahs were picked up by security men in the courtyard to the mosque in Jamkaran, a village near Qom, whose reputation as the place of the awaited Mahdi’s advent has been popularised nationwide by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When he took office in 2005 he gave the mosque $10m.

Iran’s economic doldrums may have helped to cause this surge in people claiming to be mankind’s saviour—and in women saying they were the Mahdi’s wife. “In an open atmosphere where people could criticise the government they would not believe these people,” says an ex-seminarian in Tehran, the capital, noting that most Iranians still get all of their news from state television and state-owned or -sanctioned newspapers.

Last year a seminary expert, Mehdi Ghafari, said that more than 3,000 fake Mahdis were in prison. Mahdi-complexes are common, says a Tehran psychiatrist. “Every month we get someone coming in, convinced he is the Mahdi,” she says. “Once a man was saying such outrageous things and talking about himself in the third person that I couldn’t help laughing. He got angry and told me I had ‘bad hijab’ and was disrespecting the ‘Imam of Time’,” as the Mahdi is known.

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Beirut bans award-winning Lebanese film shot in Israel

  Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri said Saturday the Lebanese authorities have banned his award-winning film "The Attack" from cinemas in his home country because it was partly shot in Tel Aviv using Israeli actors.  "I regret to inform you that the Interior Minister of Lebanon, Minister [Marwan] Charbel, has decided to punish us and the […]

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Rai calls for release of Syrian bishops

  BEIRUT: Maronite Cardinal Beshara Rai called Saturday for the release of two Syrian bishops who were abducted earlier this week. “I urge those concerned to release kidnapped bishops Boulos Yaziji and Yuhanna Ibrahim,” Rai said during a speech he made at a church in Argentine leg of his Latin American tour.   Ibrahim, the Syriac […]

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Israel shoots down drone, Hezbollah denies responsibility

  An Israeli fighter plane shot down a drone from Lebanon over the Mediterranean sea on Thursday as it was approaching the Israeli coast, the military said. Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, which sent a drone deep into Israel in October, said it was not behind the latest incident. Israel’s military held back from accusing the group, […]

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First Ever Civil Marriage approved in Lebanon

  Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel signed the civil marriage certificate of Kholoud Succariyeh and Nidal Darwish, the state-run National News Agency reported on Thursday. "By this, Succariyeh and Darwish’s union becomes the first civil marriage registered in the records of the Directorate General for Personal Affairs in Lebanon,” the NNA noted.   Charbel, however, pointed […]

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U.S. lists Lebanese firms as ‘money laundering concern’

    BEIRUT: The U.S. Treasury Department has designated two Lebanese money exchange firms as a ‘primary money laundering concern’ alleging the groups may be laundering millions of dollars of narcotics profits and funneling the money to Hezbollah, according to a press release issued Tuesday. The Treasury Department claims that Lebanese narcotics kingpin Ayman Joumaa […]

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Suleiman Slams Calls to Send Fighters to Syria

  President Michel Suleiman called on Wednesday on the Lebanese to abide by the dissociation policy and not to send arms shipments or fighters to the neighboring country Syria. The president called on different parties not to send “arms shipments and fighters to Syria and not to establish any training bases in Lebanon." He pointed […]

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