In this mailing:
- Raymond Ibrahim: UK: Radical Muslims Welcome, Persecuted Christians Need Not Apply
- Amir Taheri: Brexit's Message to European Union
by Raymond Ibrahim • March 31, 2019 at 5:00 am
In rejecting the claim for asylum of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity, and presumably compelling his return to Iran, the British government is effectively sentencing him to death.
"[O]ut of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian, representing just 0.2% of all Syrian refugees accepted by the UK." — Barnabas Fund.
At the same time, the Home Office allowed a Pakistani cleric, Syed Muzaffar Shah Qadri, considered so extreme that he is banned even from his native Pakistan, to come and lecture in UK mosques.
"It's unbelievable that these persecuted Christians who come from the cradle of Christianity are being told there is no room at the inn, when the UK is offering a welcome to Islamists who persecute Christians.... There is a serious systemic problem when Islamist leaders who advocate persecution of Christians are given the green light telling them that their applications for UK visas will be looked on favourably, while visas for short pastoral visits to the UK are denied to Christian leaders whose churches are facing genocide. That is an urgent issue that Home Office ministers need to grasp and correct." — Dr. Martin Parsons, Barnabas Fund.
In rejecting the claim for asylum of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity, and presumably compelling his return to Iran, the British government is effectively sentencing him to death. (Image source: iStock)
In two unrelated cases, the United Kingdom denied asylum to persecuted Christians by bizarrely citing the Bible and Jesus. Both Christians, a man and a woman, are former Muslims who were separately seeking asylum from the Islamic Republic of Iran, the ninth-worst persecutor of Christians -- particularly of those who were Muslims and converted to Christianity.
UK asylum worker Nathan Stevens recently shared their stories. In his rejection letter from the UK's Home Office, which is in charge of immigration, the Iranian man was told that biblical passages were "inconsistent" with his claim to have converted to Christianity after discovering it was a "peaceful" faith. The letter cited several biblical excerpts, including from Exodus, Leviticus, and Matthew, presumably to show that the Bible is violent; it said Revelation was "filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence." The governmental letter then concluded:
by Amir Taheri • March 31, 2019 at 4:00 am
The first problem with the EU is that, though it is called a union, it isn't really one. The EU is essentially an economic club; not a state.
Brexit has highlighted the key challenges that the EU faces. The first challenge concerns a widespread overestimation of the EU's role. This is due to its perception as a supra-national state, which it certainly is not.
The EU is also facing the challenge posed by the return of the nation-state as the most popular model of socio-political organization across the globe. Right now all supra-national and/or international organizations, from the United Nations to NATO, are regarded with suspicion, if not outright hostility, not only in Europe but also throughout the world.
(Image source: iStock)
With the Brexit saga's denouement still uncertain, the European Union would do well to re-examine its performance as a daring experience in socio-political engineering on a grand scale. Even if, as expected, the United Kingdom somehow manages to fudge Brexit and remain tied to the EU, the fact remains that millions of Brits and other Europeans are unhappy with aspects of the experience.
The first problem with the EU is that, though it is called a union, it isn't really one. To be sure it has a flag, an anthem, a parliament, a council of ministers, and even pseudo-embassies in many countries, but despite such trappings of a state, the EU is essentially an economic club; not a state.
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