<rss
xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"
><channel>
        <title>Christian Daily International | Religious Freedom</title>
        <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/religious-freedom</link>
        <description><![CDATA[Follow global news on religious freedom, from Christian persecution to legal battles over faith and worship. Explore reports on human rights, church-state relations, and efforts to defend freedom of belief worldwide.]]></description>
        <image>
            <title>Christian Daily International | Religious Freedom</title>
            <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/religious-freedom</link>
            <url>https://assets.christiandaily.com/img/logo.png</url>
        </image>
        <copyright>Christian Daily International © 2026</copyright>
        <language>en</language>
        <lastBuildDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 15:43:33 -0400</lastBuildDate>
        <atom:link href="https://www.christiandaily.com/religious-freedom?format=xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        <atom:link href="https://www.christiandaily.com/religious-freedom" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
        <generator>Xiaoman</generator>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Major public hearing in India reveals systemic anti-Christian violence]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/major-public-hearing-in-india-reveals-systemic-anti-christian-violence</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/major-public-hearing-in-india-reveals-systemic-anti-christian-violence</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Surinder Kaur]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4759.jpeg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Panel members at hearing on anti-Christian hostilities on June 1, 2026 in New Delhi, India.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Panel members at hearing on anti-Christian hostilities on June 1, 2026 in New Delhi, India. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:28:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[In central India’s Chhattisgarh state, followers of tribal religion in Bastar District recently dug up the grave of a tribal Christian buried 20 years before. They unearthed his skeleton, burned it and scattered the ashes.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
In central India’s Chhattisgarh state, followers of tribal religion in Bastar District recently dug up the grave of a tribal Christian buried 20 years before. They unearthed his skeleton, burned it and scattered the ashes.
The message to the living Christian community was unmistakable.
Degree Prasad Chouhan, a human rights attorney for marginalized communities in Chhattisgarh, brought this testimony to an unofficial public hearing known as a “people’s tribunal” on June 1.
The People’s Tribunal on Violence Against Christians in India in New Delhi was convened at the Constitution Club by Karwan-e-Mohabbat, an Urdu phrase meaning “Caravan of Love,” a civil society organization founded by human rights activist and author Harsh Mander that accompanies victims of communal and religious violence across India, along with a collective of concerned citizens.
More than 200 people attended the hearing. Survivors, lawyers, researchers, community representatives and human rights defenders from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Odisha states testified before a panel of eminent scholars, journalists and activists.
It was only the second such hearing since the Kandhamal massacres of 2008, when Hindu nationalist mobs burned hundreds of church buildings, killed dozens of Christians and drove tens of thousands from their homes in Odisha state.
John Dayal, a veteran journalist, human rights activist and one of the organizers of the hearing, opened the proceedings by reaching back through decades of violence to show that what was being documented was not new. He recalled the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons, Philip and Timothy, burned alive in their vehicle while asleep in Manoharpur village, in Odisha’s Keonjhar District, by a mob led by Bajrang Dal member Dara Singh.
Dayal reminded the gathering that the subsequent judicial inquiry initially contained language suggesting Staines had brought the crime upon himself by converting people, a line that civil society was forced to take to the Chief Justice of India to have struck from the record.
“What we have heard today is this design, this conspiracy of the government, to which the state is blind, to divide the community within and without, to isolate it from civil society, from the larger India that grew up governed by a constitution,” Dayal told Christian Daily International.
Vidya Dinker, a social activist who served on the tribunal panel and participated in field visits to Chhattisgarh and Odisha before the Delhi hearings, returned to Staines when she addressed the gathered survivors.
“When they went to the jeep and opened the jeep door, all that was left of Graham Staines was his spine that could not be destroyed by that fire of hate,” she said at the hearing. Turning to Christian leaders in the room, she added, “I think Christian leadership now needs to show some spine.”
She singled out bishops, cardinals and archbishops, saying the tribunal had repeatedly heard survivors describe how when violence came, established church leaders did not come with them.
“We do not hear them speaking enough for ordinary Christians,” Dinker said.
She warned that the communities being targeted today in remote rural areas and small evangelical congregations were simply the first.
“It is only a question of time,” she said. “Since you have decided that you follow the ultimate revolutionary, please lead the resistance.”
When the Dead Cannot Rest
Syeda Hameed, a recipient of the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors, and a former member of the Planning Commission of India, the country’s apex economic policy body, began her remarks at the hearing by describing the India of her childhood: a Muslim girl who attended a convent school and recited the Lord’s Prayer at home every day, with her parents’ blessing.
“We are leaving behind a conflict-ridden world for the next generation,” she said, “but we hope you find a way.”
Then she addressed what she had heard at the hearing all day.
“I am very moved by the whole question of burials,” she said. Of the Bastar exhumation that Chouhan had described, she was unequivocal. It was, she said, “the greatest atrocity” against a community.
Father Ajay Singh, former director of the Odisha Forum for Social Action of the Catholic Church, told the tribunal that the denial of burial rights represented “one of the gravest forms of humiliation inflicted upon Christian communities.”
He described cases in which funeral processions were obstructed, burial in village graveyards was denied, and the bodies of deceased Christians were allegedly removed and subjected to reconversion ceremonies against the wishes of their families.
Irfan Engineer, director of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, served on the tribunal panel. The son of the late Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, the renowned Islamic scholar and communal harmony activist, he said at the hearing that narratives around ghar wapsi, a Hindi term meaning “homecoming” used by Hindu nationalist groups to describe the reconversion of Christians and Muslims to Hinduism, were frequently deployed to legitimize coercion and discrimination.
Genuine freedom of conscience, he said, must remain central to India’s constitutional framework.
Prayer Meetings as ‘Crimes’
A.C. Michael, coordinator of the United Christian Forum (UCF), which monitors and documents attacks on Christians across India, described the growing normalization of hostility toward Christian worship.
Peaceful prayer meetings, he said at the hearing, are increasingly portrayed by authorities and Hindu nationalist groups as threats to public order and national interest. Christians gathering in homes or small halls to pray face accusations of conducting illegal conversion activities, charges that carry criminal penalties under anti-conversion laws enacted by more than a dozen states governed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The BJP is a Hindu nationalist party that has governed India at the national level since 2014.
Chouhan pointed to a pattern civil society organizations have documented for years: hundreds of incidents are reported annually in Chhattisgarh alone, but First Information Reports (FIRs), the official complaints that trigger police investigations in India, are filed in only a fraction of cases. Where complaints are registered at all, he said, they are frequently filed against victims rather than perpetrators.
The Supreme Court of India in October dismissed multiple cases brought under Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion law, finding they suffered from what it called “incurable legal defects” and appeared aimed at harassment rather than legitimate law enforcement. Despite the ruling, arrests and police interventions at prayer meetings and church services have continued.
Historian Tanika Sarkar of the tribunal panel noted at the proceedings that established churches with long institutional histories appeared relatively protected, while newer congregations, house churches and small evangelical groups bore the brunt of the hostility.
“It is the new churches which show the growth of Christianity, they are being attacked,” she said.
Minorities Enjoy ‘Full Freedom’
Three days after the tribunal concluded, Minister for Minority Affairs Kiren Rijiju stood at Bharat Mandapam, a government convention center in New Delhi, and told a celebratory gathering marking 12 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP government that minorities in India enjoy “full freedom.”
He called reports of persecution “propaganda” spread by opposition parties and foreign powers jealous of India’s growth. He challenged anyone to name a single person who had left India because of their religious identity.
The U.S.-based Pew Research Center published findings in 2024 that quietly addressed that challenge. Christians, who make up approximately 2.3 percent of India’s population of 1.4 billion people, account for 16 percent of Indian emigrants. Muslims, who make up roughly 14 percent of the population, account for 33 percent. Hindus, who make up 80 percent of the population, represent only 41 percent of those who leave.
The Rev. Vijayesh Lal, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), also addressed the hearing before giving CDI his response to the minister’s claims.
“The real question is not whether Christians have freedom on paper, but whether the poorest Christian in the most remote village can exercise that freedom without fear,” Lal said. “When families struggle to bury their dead, when prayer gatherings attract suspicion, and when victims struggle to access justice, the gap between constitutional promise and lived reality becomes difficult to ignore. A democracy is ultimately measured by how confidently its most vulnerable citizens can exercise the rights it guarantees.”
The EFI is the national umbrella body of evangelical Christians and a charter member of the World Evangelical Alliance, which represents more than 600 million evangelicals worldwide.
India’s overall persecution score on Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List stood at 84 out of 100. The country now leads the world in Christian detentions, with 1,622 believers arrested, imprisoned or detained without trial in the most recent reporting period, and its violence score reached 16.1 out of a maximum 16.7, the highest recorded since Open Doors began tracking India in 1993.
The EFI’s Religious Liberty Commission documented 747 verified incidents of violence, intimidation and discrimination against Christians in 2025, more than five times the 147 cases documented in 2014, the year the BJP first came to power nationally.
Harsh Mander, who founded Karwan-e-Mohabbat and steered the tribunal, told CDI he was not done.
“We will continue to speak out in different ways,” he said. “People listen to our voice.”
He recalled 2017, when his organization spent nearly a month traveling from Assam state to Andhra Pradesh, visiting families who had suffered lynchings and offering what he described as atonement and solidarity.
“It was a very useful attention probe,” he said. “We went on this journey, and we will try to do the same. The country needs to know, and we will keep speaking out about it, intervening in court, and various other ways.”
Concluding the tribunal’s proceedings, Mander said the incidents placed before the panel pointed to something more troubling than a series of unconnected attacks. The testimonies, he said, pointed to a coordinated effort to push India’s most vulnerable citizens to the margins of the republic that the Constitution promises.
He called on citizens, institutions and governments to act urgently to defend it.]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Free evangelical church in Leipzig closes its café after suffering 26 attacks by radicals]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/free-evangelical-church-in-leipzig-closes-its-cafe-after-suffering-26-attacks-by-radicals</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/free-evangelical-church-in-leipzig-closes-its-cafe-after-suffering-26-attacks-by-radicals</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Evangelical Focus]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4739.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Stay Cafe]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Photos: Stay Cafe ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Stones thrown at the windows of Stay Cafe and graffiti calling for a boycott. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4740.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Official answer of the City of Leipzig government]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Photo: Ratsinformation Leipzig ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Official answer of the City of Leipzig government to questions about attacks against Stay Cafe. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 05:53:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[‘Stay’, a café opened in 2024 by an evangelical church in the city of Leipzig (population of 630,000), will close at the end of June. The reason is the ongoing attacks and acts of sabotage by extremist groups, explained René Wagne, the pastor of Zeal Church.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
‘Stay’, a café opened in 2024 by an evangelical church in the city of Leipzig (population of 630,000), will close at the end of June. The reason is the ongoing attacks and acts of sabotage by extremist groups, explained René Wagne, the pastor of Zeal Church.
Up to 26 attacks have been carried out against the small business linked to this evangelical church, which is conservative in its theology yet postmodern in its forms. A report in 2025 already mentioned more than a dozen incidents allegedly caused by far-left groups who, on social media, called for action against the Christian congregation for its supposed “queerphobia” in preaching the Christian view of human sexuality.
The attacks include smashed windows, threatening graffiti and the use of toxic substances against the premises. At Christmas, an attack on the café with butyric acid cost around €20,000 in repairs.
The pastor to the congregation: ‘Extremists cannot our mission’
During the service on 31 May, Pastor René Wagner explained that responding to this constant hostility had posed a financial challenge that was difficult to bear. Following discussions with the team, it had been decided to bring the project to an end, despite the “sadness” this entailed after a period of “sleepless nights” and jobs that would be lost.
However, he emphasised on several occasions that the decision to close the project does not change the mission of a church. “The far-left extremists in Leipzig have not won. I want to emphasise this once again. The far-left extremists in Leipzig have not won”, Wagner insisted before the congregation.
“They have not shut down a single church; they have not stopped a single congregation. They have not prevented a single revival. They have not deterred a single soul from encountering Jesus. What is coming to an end is a business operation, our coffee shop. What remains is this church”.

The fact that the café has been a constant target of hate messages on social media and physical attacks is part of a broader context of increased visibility for evangelical churches in Germany. This, Zeal Church believes, is not bad news.
“Churches in Germany are back in the spotlight. For decades, nobody talked about conservative Christians in Germany; we were irrelevant. We posed no threat to certain groups”, said the church’s pastor. “Last year, there were over six documentaries on all sorts of TV channels about conservative Christians. And I could get absolutely livid that something like that is even funded by my TV licence fee. But can I tell you something? We’re back in the public eye. Now, we are noticed, we are heard, we are seen”.
“We do not look back with bitterness or hatred”
In his seven-minute reflection, the leader of the local church—which, like many others, holds Sunday services, weekday Bible study groups, discipleship programmes and other ministries—emphasised the need to respond to attacks with an attitude that reflects the gospel.
“Our future lies in God’s hands, in the hands of the Holy Spirit. And that is why we do not look back with bitterness, unforgiveness, or hatred. We do not respond with hatred; we do not strike back”, said Pastor René.
“Yes, we insist on our rights, rights that the state also grants us”, he continued. “And we do everything we can to ensure that people who do such things in our country are held to account. Because things like this must not be allowed to happen. And the good news is, politicians are taking notice”.
Bad publicity? “Jesus is building his house”
But Christians in Leipzig should “not strike back”, he emphasised.
“Instead, we look forward with faith and hope, because our Lord Jesus will return and judge the living and the dead. And one of the greatest preachers of all time, Billy Graham, said there is no such thing as bad publicity for the Gospel”.
“If you are shocked by negative newspaper articles about us, brace yourselves. These will not be the last”.
Conversions to the Christian faith like those happening at Zeal Church and other free churches, the pastor said, “shake the spiritual world”, and attacks should not be unexpected.
He concluded: “Jesus is building his house, his church, and that won’t change”.
In recent months, dozens of people have supported a fundraising campaign for the ‘Stay’ café, raising over 31,000 euros.
Local authorities: Not a religious freedom attack
In January 2026, the local government of the city of Leipzig received questions about the attack occurred on Christmas against the café run by Zeal Church, urging the authorities to protect constitutional rights and freedoms.
In its response, the local government, said: “The attack – at least according to the claim of responsibility – does not constitute an attack on religious freedom. The target was a commercially run café used to fund a religious community. The attack is further motivated by the attitude of the operating association towards homosexuality”.

The official position of the City of Leipzig is that “regardless of the reasoning given in the statement of responsibility, the attack constitutes a criminal offence which must be condemned accordingly and for which there can be no justification. The City of Leipzig condemns violence and damage to property in all its forms, particularly against establishments that offer people a space for meeting, exchange and community. Such attacks are directed against the safety and peaceful coexistence of all people who work or spend time there. Accordingly, the City has a preventive interest in clearly condemning such incidents, ensuring they are investigated by the police and strengthening the protection of all religious communities”.
Originally published by Evangelical Focus]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Kenya's President directs Islamic Madrasa and Duksi learners to be integrated in the formal education system]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/kenya-s-president-directs-islamic-madrasa-and-duksi-learners-to-be-integrated-in-the-formal-education-system</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/kenya-s-president-directs-islamic-madrasa-and-duksi-learners-to-be-integrated-in-the-formal-education-system</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jim Olang]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4727.png">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Ruto in Wajir - Madrasa]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ William Ruto Facebook ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Speaking during the country’s independence day celebration in Wajir County on June 1, President Ruto said the move targets thousands of children in northern Kenya and other underserved predominantly muslim communities. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:14:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[President William Ruto instructed Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba to begin formal consultations on integrating madrasa, duksi and pastoral instruction programs into Kenya's Basic Education framework.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
President William Ruto instructed Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba to begin formal consultations on integrating madrasa, duksi and pastoral instruction programs into Kenya's Basic Education framework. 
The directive, reported by local media, does not alter existing curriculum subjects. Christian Religious Education (CRE), Islamic Religious Education (IRE) and Hindu Religious Education (HRE) remain optional, examinable subjects under the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC). The directive is a mandate to begin consultation, not a law.
Speaking during the country’s independence day celebration in Wajir County on June 1, President Ruto said the move targets thousands of children in northern Kenya and other underserved predominantly muslim communities who remain outside the formal education system.
"Some children in northern Kenya and other marginalized regions remain outside the formal education system because certain alternative learning pathways have not been adequately recognized or accommodated within our education framework," Ruto said.
"Today I direct the Cabinet Secretary for Education to engage all relevant stakeholders and take the necessary measures under the Basic Education Act, to consult widely and recommend appropriate measures for the formal integration of the same. Every child deserves a door into learning. It is our duty to open every door," he added.
A Duksi is a foundational Quranic school for young children, particularly in Somali-dominated communities, where learners are taught to recite the Quran, often in Arabic, before entering formal schooling. 
A madrasa is a more structured Islamic educational institution that provides religious instruction alongside some academic content. Both have operated entirely outside Kenya's formal education framework, meaning graduates have had no recognized pathway into the national examinations system. The Program for Pastoral Instruction similarly serves nomadic children in communities that follow livestock migrations and cannot attend fixed-location schools.
Muslim clerics and scholars in Mombasa welcomed the Government’s intention to integrate Duksi and Madrasa which will allow students under these two pathways from pre-primary to grade 12 to be recognized by the educational system.
“We call upon the ministry of education to ensure the full implementation of this directive. Its successful implementation will guarantee that all children irrespective of their background or location have equal, quality and recognised education,” said Sheikh Izzudin Alwy, an Islamic scholar.
Church response
Major church associations such as the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) and the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) are yet to respond to the pronouncement by the President. However, Evangelical Association of Kenya Chairman, Bishop Calisto Odede responding to a question during a radio show said the content of Madrasas is religious and not formal education similar to Sunday School. 
"It is important that matters like these be subjected to public participation so that the people understand the direction they are being led...the concern is whether this move grants special privileges to one religion," said the Bishop of Christ is the Answer Ministries.
Bishop Odede reminded the listeners that President Ruto once opposed the inclusion of Kadhi courts in the constitution. "Many are asking; 'what has changed now?'" posed Bishop Odede.
 Another leader in the evangelical movement, who asked to comment anonymously said the directive was “ill advised” and that it “will open a Pandora’s box.”
Members of the public and some clergy however raised questions about how the policy will be implemented with many comparing Madrassa and Duksi classes to Sunday School or Catechism classes. “We already have CRE (Christian Religious Education) and IRE (Islamic Religious Education) integrated in the formal education (system),” noted Muchoki Kennedy, in a post on social media, reflecting the debate that spilled over online.
Religious education teachers had already signaled concern before this directive. In November 2025, educators sent a formal letter to the KICD warning that Kenya's ongoing shift to a Competency-Based Education (CBE) framework was squeezing CRE, IRE and HRE out of student subject choices, particularly on the STEM pathway, as reported by Eastleigh Voice.
"Such a scenario would compromise schools' long-standing mission to offer both intellectual and moral guidance, undermining the holistic development of learners," the teachers wrote.
What the Constitution says
Kenya's 2010 Constitution addresses both sides of this debate. Article 8 establishes that Kenya has no state religion and requires the government to remain neutral in matters of belief. Article 32 guarantees every person the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion, and prohibits discrimination on grounds of belief.
The question of whether integrating faith-based learning institutions into a state-funded education framework creates tension with those provisions has not been tested in court in relation to this directive. 
Notably, the government's own framing positions the madrasa integration as an access and transition measure rather than an ideological or theological one: the intent, as stated by Ruto, is to provide a bridge for children already in these institutions into the national examinations system, not to introduce Islamic instruction as a compulsory subject.
However, the constitutional questions around the state's relationship with religion in education remain unresolved in Kenya. A 2019 Supreme Court ruling in a case brought by the Methodist Church of Kenya, which challenged a directive allowing Muslim girls to wear the hijab at its sponsored school, St. Paul's Kiwanjani Day Mixed Secondary School in Isiolo, set aside a lower court ruling on a procedural technicality rather than addressing the underlying constitutional questions. 
The court ordered the Ministry of Education to produce guidelines reconciling school dress codes with constitutional rights to freedom of religion. Those guidelines were never issued, as reported by Ghanamma.
That unresolved gap resurfaced as recently as February 2026, when a Grade 10 student, Samira Ramadhan, was sent home from St. Mary's Lwak Girls High School in Siaya County for wearing a hijab, triggering a High Court petition, a parliamentary committee intervention and a Ministry of Education order for her immediate reinstatement, according to Citizen Digital and The Star. 
The pattern is consistent: government directives on religious accommodation in education keep colliding with the autonomy of church-sponsored schools, and the constitutional framework for resolving those collisions remains incomplete.
A pattern across Africa
Kenya is not the first majority-Christian African country to face this question. In Uganda, where Christians make up approximately 85 percent of the population, a two-and-a-half-year project concluded in 2023 by the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) and other organisations produced a detailed roadmap for integrating madrasa learning into formal national standards, per ICRD project documentation. The published roadmap proposed a unified dual curriculum allowing students to combine religious studies with mathematics, science and digital literacy within a single, state-recognised pathway.
In Nigeria, where madrasa education predates British colonial rule in the predominantly Muslim north, federal integration attempts have been politically contested and uneven, varying significantly by state. In Senegal, government efforts to integrate Quranic schools known as daaras into the formal system have been described as "difficult and not always conclusive," according to a 2018 peer-reviewed comparative study published in the International Journal of Educational Development.
Across the region, where Muslim minority communities coexist within majority-Christian states, governments are under increasing pressure to formally recognize Islamic learning institutions that have long operated outside official frameworks.
Kenya’s education ministry  has been tasked with engaging all relevant stakeholders, including churches and educational institutions, and present recommendations under the Basic Education Act. The government says it will consult widely. No timeline has been announced.
Church-sponsored schools, run by evangelical, Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian bodies, account for a substantial share of Kenya's school infrastructure. The government has named them among the stakeholders it intends to consult. Whether they will engage that process or challenge it, and what legal ground they stand on when they do, will shape the outcome of one of the most consequential education policy debates the country has seen in years. ]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Hate crimes against Christians in Europe surge in May]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/hate-crimes-against-christians-in-europe-surge-in-may</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/hate-crimes-against-christians-in-europe-surge-in-may</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Chris Eyte]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4753.png">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Arson attacks were among anti-Christian hates crimes in May in Europe, according to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Screenshot of OIDAC May 2026 report ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Arson attacks were among anti-Christian hates crimes in May in Europe, according to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:04:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Arson attacks were prevalent among a surge in anti-Christian hates crimes in May, according to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe).]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Arson attacks were prevalent among a surge in anti-Christian hates crimes in May, according to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe).
The watchdog’s May report shows 37 verified anti-Christian hate crimes across 11 European countries. The crimes include 13 arson attacks, 10 acts of vandalism, three cases of desecration, three incidents of physical violence, three thefts targeting religious objects, three cases of vandalism and violence, one case of incitement and one disrupted worship service.
“This continued prevalence of fire-setting against Christian sites remains one of the most serious patterns documented during the year,” the report stated.
The 13 verified arson incidents represent the highest monthly total that investigators have recorded this year. The report dubbed the monthly figure “exceptionally high” as blazes hit properties across multiple countries, including attacks on church buildings, chapels, parish buildings and other Christian property.
In Germany, four arson attacks damaged properties in Marbach, Munich, Delmenhorst and Gladbeck. The country also saw severe property violations; in Knittelsheim, assailants scattered consecrated communion hosts across a church altar, while unknown persons daubed satanic graffiti inside the Barbara Chapel in Penzberg. Vandals in Bad Oeynhausen deliberately damaged church bells and live power lines, creating potential physical harm for the community.
In Italy, authorities recorded eight hate crimes, including four cases that carried an explicit ideological link. In Genoa, attackers defaced the Basilica of San Siro with anti-clerical and anarchist graffiti demanding that perpetrators “burn churches.”
Italian monitors also recorded a desecration at the parish of San Paolo della Croce in Rome, and heavy vandalism at the Church of Sant’Angelo Magno in Ascoli Piceno, where attackers destroyed a crucifix, sacred statues and a historic 17th-century organ.
Three arson cases in France included an attack at the Church of Notre-Dame de l’Assomption in Lentigny, alongside a highly dangerous suspected arson at a parish hall in Tergnier while children were inside the building.
French vandals also ransacked the Church of Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens during Pentecost at Pont-du-Casse near Agen. In Paris, thieves broke a crucifix and stole a figurine of Christ from Saint-Germain-des-Prés. In South Gironde, a wave of burglaries targeted several churches, resulting in altar desecration and tabernacle profanation. Assailants in Saint-Martin-la-Sauveté tore Christian statues from graves, while attackers in Poleymieux-au-Mont-d’Or near Lyon beheaded a statue of Mary holding the infant Jesus.
In Krosno, Poland, an attempted arson damaged an image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help inside a desecrated chapel, while vandals in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska defaced several chapels with physical damage and satanic inscriptions.
Arsonists and vandals also targeted two churches in Ireland. In Warrington, England, police launched an arson investigation after discovering fires inside a disused church building.
Violent crime targeted clergy as well, as robbers held a Portuguese priest hostage for 90 minutes while they looted a church building and parish house in Cantanhede. In Chania, Greece, a shotgun attack damaged a historic church bell tower. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, criminals forced entry into the Serbian Orthodox Church of St. George in Tuzla, marking another repeated act of vandalism against the site.
In Leipzig, Germany, a Christian-run café announced its permanent closure after organized harassment campaigns by left-wing extremists. The operators reported 26 attacks over the past two-and-a-half years, which included repeated vandalism, graffiti, and butyric acid attacks, making continued business financially impossible.
The report cited the closure as evidence of “the persistence of repeated and sustained campaigns targeting Christian institutions.”
“According to the operators, the attacks were carried out by individuals associated with the far-left extremist scene and ultimately made the continued operation of the café financially impossible,” OIDAC Europe stated.
Left-wing extremists reportedly also assaulted and seriously injured two Catholic fraternity students in Innsbruck, Austria. In Bielsk Podlaski, Poland, an assailant insulted and attacked a nun at a bus stop, tearing a cross necklace from her neck.
Perpetrators also fired steel and plastic balls during a Mass that approximately 200 worshippers attended at the Holy Spirit Church in Hanau, Germany. The projectiles shattered windows, and the report noted that the attack placed the congregation in immediate danger.
“The incidents recorded this month… illustrate that anti-Christian hostility is not limited to attacks against church buildings,” the report stated. “Several cases targeted Christian individuals, religious communities, and organizations directly, demonstrating that visible expressions of Christian faith and Christian presence in public life can themselves become targets of aggression or intimidation.”
The overall dataset includes widespread vandalism, desecration, physical assaults, and thefts targeting religious spaces and individuals. Germany led the continent with 10 reported incidents, followed closely by Italy and France with eight cases each. Poland recorded three cases, Ireland reported two, while Austria, Portugal, Spain, Greece, the United Kingdom, and Bosnia and Herzegovina each documented one verified incident.
“Germany also recorded numerous additional non-counted thefts, break-ins, damage incidents, and fires under investigation,” noted the report.
OIDAC Europe also noted widespread property damage that fell outside the official statistics due to unverified bias. This additional data included local authorities investigating nine church building fires alongside 14 unverified acts of vandalism, 24 break-ins, and dozens of thefts.
Separate figures confirmed last month to the Greek Parliament by the Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports reported 4,409 incidents involving Orthodox Church properties in the country between 2015 and 2024. This accounted for 96.05 percent of all recorded incidents involving religious sites in Greece over that 10-year period, covering attacks, vandalism, thefts, desecrations, and burglaries.
The publication of the data comes as the FIFA World Cup prepares to kick off across 16 cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico on Thursday (June 11). Anja Tang, the executive director for OIDAC Europe, wrote an introduction to the report noting a negative reaction to sports personalities expressing their faith in the public sphere in the run-up to the matches.
“With the beginning of the World Cup, debates surrounding Christian football players have once again highlighted how expressions of faith continue to attract public scrutiny,” Tang wrote. “While athletes are increasingly encouraged to bring their identities into the public sphere, openly expressing traditional Christian beliefs can still provoke disproportionate criticism and controversy.”
The organization stressed that the official numbers represent only a baseline of the issue across the continent.
“The figures presented in this report reflect only documented cases known to OIDAC Europe and therefore cannot capture the full extent of anti-Christian hostility in Europe,” the report noted. “Nevertheless, the incidents recorded during May point to a continuing pattern of attacks affecting Christian places of worship, religious symbols, and Christian organizations across a broad range of European countries.”]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Religious expression defense omitted from hate crime bill in Canada]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/religious-expression-defense-omitted-from-hate-crime-bill-in-canada</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/religious-expression-defense-omitted-from-hate-crime-bill-in-canada</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Chris Eyte]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4735.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Parliament building in Ottawa, Canada. A Senate committee on June 1, 2026 declined to restore a religious belief defense to hate crime legislation.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Pixabay ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Parliament building in Ottawa, Canada. A Senate committee on June 1, 2026 declined to restore a religious belief defense to hate crime legislation. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:09:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[The right to express religious beliefs in Canada remained in jeopardy after lawmakers declined to include a religious belief defense in a hate crime bill.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
The right to express religious beliefs in Canada remained in jeopardy after lawmakers declined to include a religious belief defense in a hate crime bill, rights advocates said.
The Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights on June 1 defeated a motion by Conservative Sen. Yonah Martin to restore the “good faith” religious belief defense to the Criminal Code under Bill C-9, also known as the Combating Hate Act.
The full Senate subsequently debated and passed Bill C-9 on Thursday (June 4) without adding the protections for religious expression. The bill now heads back to the House of Commons for a final vote on an unrelated amendment regarding hate symbols.
“We would welcome an approach that says upfront that good faith and expression and practice of religious belief is not a hate crime under any circumstance,” Julia Beazley, director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s Centre for Faith and Public Life, told the committee on May 28.
Beazley added that the clause in the legislation related to defense against hate crime charges does not provide the upfront interpretive clarity that officials discussed and promised, calling for a crucial amendment at a minimum.
Martin’s motion sought to reverse a previous House of Commons amendment that deleted Section 319(3)(b) of the Criminal Code. The deleted section protected people from hate speech convictions if they expressed an opinion on religious matters in good faith.
Senators opposing the motion argued that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms already fully protects ordinary religious expression without the specific clause.
The committee defeated Martin’s motion in a 4-3 vote. The bill then advanced to the wider Senate floor without the restored religious defense.
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) lobbied heavily alongside Martin for the changes before the committee vote. Following the vote, the EFC asserted in a statement that the committee failed to add clarity and protection for religious expression to the bill.
“Please pray as the bill returns to the Senate and there is a final opportunity for changes to be made,” the EFC added.
The Christian Legal Fellowship (CLF), representing 800 Christian attorneys, law students, retired judges and others in the legal profession, also expressed concern about the bill.
The CLF previously called on policymakers to clarify the meaning of “hatred,” to maintain and clarify protections for good faith religious expression and to refine a proposed offense from motivation by hatred to one committed with the intent to incite hatred.
In its May 2026 brief to the committee, the CLF warned of the dangers of labeling speech found controversial and offensive as hateful. The legal group also expressed disquiet over the potential lack of protections to prevent majorities from consciously or unconsciously silencing unpopular minorities in the public square.
“The protection of free expression and the fight against hatred are not conflicting goals but share a common objective: that of upholding human dignity,” the CLF stated in its brief. “Canada’s efforts to uphold human dignity in one context must not undermine those efforts in another.”
Ultimately, the CLF said commitments to human dignity require the pursuit of truth to be guarded, even when that pursuit is messy and difficult.
“Challenges to our truth claims can sometimes be (mis)interpreted as an attack on us. It can be tempting to label such speech as ‘hate,’” the CLF stated. “But if we are serious about the search for truth – and upholding our core commitments to human dignity – we must preserve freedom to dialogue, examine and even challenge and criticize one another’s claims without fear of sanction or censure.”
The CLF argued that the bill must draw a clear line between expression seeking to mobilize others to vilify groups and expression which simply challenges ideas.
“Such protections ensure that all Canadians, especially minority communities, are protected from the ‘tyranny of the majority,’” the group added.]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Young Christian woman in Somalia recovering from assault]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/young-christian-woman-in-somalia-recovering-from-assault</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/young-christian-woman-in-somalia-recovering-from-assault</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Morning Star News]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4713.png">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Location of Lower Juba Region, Somalia.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Map data © 2026 Google ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Location of Lower Juba Region, Somalia. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:44:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[A 22-year-old woman is recovering from serious injuries in a hospital in Somalia’s Lower Juba Region after Muslim relatives beat her for putting her faith in Christ, sources said.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
A 22-year-old woman is recovering from serious injuries in a hospital in Somalia’s Lower Juba Region after Muslim relatives beat her for putting her faith in Christ, sources said.
Sofia Ahmed suffered a broken nose and significant loss of blood after the attack on May 28 in her home on the outskirts of Hagar (also spelled Xagar), said a source who visited her in the hospital.
Ahmed accepted Christ on March 25 after learning the gospel from a Christian leader. When an uncle, Sharif Hussein, visited her and questioned her about her absence from Friday mosque prayers, she told him she was engaged in some tasks away from home, sources said.
Hussein visited her several more times, emboldening Ahmed to share about Christ. When he appeared to show interest, she suggested to him that he also put his faith in Christ, the sources said. Hussein departed without responding.
On May 28, he returned with three other male relatives. Hussein asked her again if she had converted to Christianity.
“I kept quiet,” Ahmed told a Morning Star News contact, adding that immediately they began attacking her.
The relatives beat her with sticks and struck her nose with a sharp object, the sources said. The attack drew the attention of neighbors who came in large numbers, seized the assailants and called police.
Officers arrived and arrested the four men, but Ahmed’s Muslim parents intervened and persuaded police to release them, the sources said.
“Family members later advocated for the release of the suspects, believing the actions were justified because of Ahmed’s decision to leave Islam and embrace Christianity,” the Christian leader said.
Underground Christians described her as an enthusiastic young Christian with aspirations of community outreach and church planting.
Ahmed was admitted to Hagar Maternal Centre in the Lower Juba Region of Jubaland, southwestern Somalia, where she underwent two surgeries. She remained under medical care and may require several more weeks of hospital treatment, the sources said.
She has remained committed to her faith despite pressure to renounce it, they said, adding that she has experienced periods of isolation during her hospitalization and faces mounting medical expenses.
Her condition has improved, one source said, but her recovery is expected to take weeks.
“We appeal for support for Ahmed’s medical needs and for greater protection of individuals facing persecution because of their religious beliefs,” the source said.
Local underground Christians said they are committed to assisting her with their limited resources through upcoming challenges and were hopeful that justice through lawful processes will be achieved.
Somalia ranked No. 2 on Christian support group Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. The country’s constitution establishes Islam as the state religion and prohibits the propagation of any other religion, according to the U.S. State Department. It also requires that laws comply with sharia (Islamic law) principles, with no exceptions in application for non-Muslims.
The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to mainstream schools of Islamic jurisprudence. An Islamic extremist group in Somalia, Al Shabaab, is allied with Al Qaeda and adheres to the teaching.
Converts from Islam face significant social pressure, family conflict and isolation, and human rights organizations have frequently highlighted these concerns.]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[‘Cow vigilantes’ get Catholics in prayer arrested in India]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/cow-vigilantes-get-catholics-in-prayer-arrested-in-india</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/cow-vigilantes-get-catholics-in-prayer-arrested-in-india</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Morning Star News]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4707.png">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Hindu nationalists disrupt prayer service at grotto in Kalinjara village, Rajasthan, India.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Morning Star News screenshot from video ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Hindu nationalists disrupt prayer service at grotto in Kalinjara village, Rajasthan, India. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:21:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Catholics in India arrested in May under Rajasthan’s new “anti-conversion law” are still trying to obtain bail from the state High Court after lower courts denied their petitions, sources said.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Catholics in India arrested in May under Rajasthan’s new “anti-conversion law” are still trying to obtain bail from the state High Court after lower courts denied their petitions, sources said.
Their arrests followed a disruption of their Mass by “cow vigilantes” – self-styled protectors of cows regarded as sacred in Hinduism – in Kalinjara village, Kushalgarh Sub-Division, Banswara District on May 1. About a dozen vigilantes disrupted and filmed 80 Catholics gathered at a Marian grotto on private property for the traditional nine days of prayer at about 5:30 p.m.
“The vigilantes said we had gathered to perform mass conversion and blamed us for possessing beef [cow meat],” said Reetu Rawat, whose husband and father-in-law were among 14 Catholics named in a First Information Report (FIR). A Protestant Christian was also charged for a total of 15 named persons, and the FIR was registered against 100 unnamed people.
Six of the nine Catholics arrested under Rajasthan state's new “anti-conversion law” are awaiting a bail decision from the state High Court after subsequent denials from the lower courts, while 11 others named in the FIR but yet not arrested are in hiding and seeking interim bail, sources said.
“This is a real bad news for Christians,” said Mukesh Rawat, a Protestant Christian in the nearby village of Kushalgarh. “People in the village are living in constant fear, as they too can be arrested anytime of the day or night, and their names can be placed under the 100 unnamed list in the FIR.”
The 15 named and the 100 unnamed persons on May 2 were charged under the anti-conversion law and other laws with various crimes, including attempted murder.
“There were women and children besides men attending the celebration of the Eucharist, and they [the intruders] started to film by walking all over the place and disrupting the service,” Reetu Rawat told Morning Star News.
Kalinjara is a majority-Catholic, tribal village where Catholicism has been practiced for more than a century. Besides some Protestant families, the remaining villagers follow tribal religion.
Those attending the prayer service questioned the vigilantes, demanding an explanation for the disruption. The vigilantes accused them of “converting people” – which is not a crime in India – and later in the FIR charged them with “allurement.” Rajasthan’s “anti-conversion law” criminalizes “force, allurement or fraudulent” conversion.
A video on social media shows the Catholics, in response to allegations of forced conversions, telling the vigilantes to ask those present if any of them is not a Catholic or “if anybody is coaxed to attend the service.” The vigilantes continue to record video and admit that “we will film you and frame you.”
When the worshippers request the vigilantes to report their grievances and doubts to police, the intruders respond that it was the police that sent them, the video shows.
As the argument went on for about half an hour, one of the Catholics noticed a vigilante hiding a black dagger in the folds of his garment.
“When he confronted the vigilante, the vigilante slapped him,” Reetu Rawat said.
The Rev. Balveer Rana, district president of Masih Sewa Samiti, a Christian community service and welfare committee of Banswara, said those attending the Mass defended themselves in the ensuing altercation.
“Fearing he might use the dagger to attack the community, they restrained the vigilantes from attacking them,” Rana told Morning Star News. “There was a scuffle between the two groups. The vigilante began to hit the Catholics, and in self-defense they too retaliated.”
Reetu Rawat said there was a little blood on the forehead of the vigilante.
The vigilantes immediately fled, and police arrived within a few minutes.
“It was quite evident that the police were stationed somewhere nearby, and if the vigilantes are to be believed, they confessed that they had come with the full knowledge of the police,” the Rev. Arvind Amliyar, priest of Bandaria Parish in Kushalgarh told Morning Star News. “Kalinjara does not have a parish building, and so the congregants attend Mass with the Bandaria Parish in Kushalgarh and on some occasions gather at the grotto in the village for special prayers.”
Mukesh Rawat, who lives four miles from Kalinjara, said his Catholic mother, father, relatives and friend were visiting him that day for the inauguration of his house that had undergone renovation. It was a full day program from 9 in the morning till 6 in the evening. About 150 people were invited. 
His father, brother and sister-in-law left early to join the 6 p.m. Mass in the village, while his mother stayed back. 
While Mukesh Rawat was in his own house when the scuffle between the Hindu nationalist cow vigilantes and the Catholics broke out, his father Anil Rawat, his brother and sister-in-law were at the grotto at the time. 
Police arriving during the altercation immediately arrested Mukesh Rawat’s 67-year-old father, who is a retired school principal, and Catholics identified only as Aatish, Devchand and Nilesh and took them to the Kalinjara Police Station.
“Though they were arrested around 6 in the evening,” Mukesh Rawat said, “an FIR was registered after midnight 12:17 a.m. on May 2 against 14 named Catholics, me – a Protestant – and 100 unnamed people.”
They were charged under FIR No. 154 under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita [BNSS] 2023 for general rioting, punishable by up to two years in prison, a fine or both; involvement of weapons, punishable by up to five years in prison; wrongful restraint, punishable by up to one month in prison, a fine or both; attempted murder, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine; intentional insult and provoking to breach peace; and unlawful assembly. Under the Rajasthan Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2025, Section 3, which prohibits attempting to convert through force, coercion, undue influence, misrepresentation, allurement, fraudulent means, or marriage; and under Section 5, which requires mandatory advance declarations for religious conversion.
“We were all gathered for the Mass, how can they book us for carrying weapons?” said Reetu Rawat, whose husband is named in the FIR.
Amliyar added, “We did not breach peace, but it was the cow vigilantes who breached our peace and cause havoc.”
Besides Mukesh Rawat, who was not even near the scene but in his own house four miles away, also named in the FIR was Premchand, who was in the Civil Hospital Banswada donating blood at the time and has documentation to prove it. A person identified in the FIR only as Kishor, son of Josaf – the owner of the property where the grotto is built – is deaf and mute. Another identified only as Rajesh was also named, though he is a non-Christian tribal who was a mere bystander.
“I have documents to prove that I had a huge program in my house, with several guests as witnesses to the event,” Mukesh Rawat said. “The tent house and the caterers who fed the guests are all evidences to my absence at the grotto.”
Police returned on the night of May 3-4 and arrested five others under the “unnamed” category: Nitesh, 30, son of Premchand; Dilip Haliya, 34; Vardesh Babu, 26; Praveen Shamji, 33; and Pankaj Damore, 27.
“Police came in the night at 2 a.m. and barged into homes, picked people who were fast asleep with their families and arrested them,” said a source who requested anonymity.
He also said that police got two men on May 2 around 6 p.m. and made them stand near the grotto to video record their testimony. Witnessed by several bystanders, the two men were recorded falsely saying that they were offered money to convert to Christianity.
Reetu Rawat said the two men were not present on the day of incident.
“The several videos shot of May 1 clearly show the vigilantes and all of us present there,” Reetu Rawat told Morning Star News. “The videos also show the kind of conversations both the sides had.”
The nine Catholics arrested were sent to jail and have remained there. Of the 15 “named people” in the FIR, 11 have been in hiding since May 2.
Police are searching for the others in and around the village to arrest them.
“For fear of getting arrested, some are spending their nights on trees, others in the forest amidst the threat of being attacked by wild animals,” said Mukesh Rawat. “It has become very, very difficult for us to stay away from home each day, and it seems that this torture is not coming to an end.”
Catholic leaders applied for bail for six of the people.
“We thought on the basis of the bail orders of these six, we will apply for the other three and an interim bail for those who are on the run for the fear of being arrested,” said Amliyar.
Their bail, however, was rejected in the District Court and then in the Sessions Court and is now pending in the High Court.
“With every hearing, the date is being extended,” Amliyar said. “Their last hearing was on May 26, but a next date of June 8 has been given to them.”
A source informed Morning Star News that police presented the same video they recorded as testimony of “allurement” near the grotto as evidence, and thus the judge did not grant them bail. The attorney then requested the further date.
Hindu groups called for a complete shutdown of the entire Kushalgarh block on May 4 and carried out a protest rally shouting slogans and demanding that all the Catholics be arrested for butchering a cow and carrying out forced conversion.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma visited the Kushalgarh area on May 20, and Christians fear his visit was designed to pressure authorities to strictly prosecute those attending the Mass.
Tribals have had cordial relationships with each other, said social activist Varji Rawat, who lives a mile away from Kalinjara village.
“Two in a family are Christ followers, two in the same family are Shiva followers, and another two are animists. Yet they live peacefully under the same roof,” Varji Rawat told Morning Star News. “It is a tribals’ choice to have faith on whom ever he/she wants to. It’s a personal choice, like some tribals choose to worship Hindu gods [though they are not Hindus], they are not stopped from putting their faith in Hinduism.”
He objected to villagers questioning worshippers’ faith.
“These people have been practicing Catholicism for more than 100 years; some of them are fourth-generation Catholics, but they are being treated as if they are recent converts,” he said.
India ranked 12th on Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian, up from 31st in 2013 before Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power.
(Story modified on June 5 to reflect corrected information from sources.)]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Open Doors Canada launches campaign to remember those in prison for their faith]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/open-doors-canada-launches-campaign-to-remember-those-in-prison-for-their-faith</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/open-doors-canada-launches-campaign-to-remember-those-in-prison-for-their-faith</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/43/4378.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Ehsan Iran Creative Commons ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 08:27:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[More than 8,000 Christians worldwide were abducted, arrested, imprisoned or sentenced without trial last year because of their faith, according to the 2026 World Watch List. Many of their stories never make headlines. Open Doors Canada is asking Canadian Christians and churches to mark June 28 by remembering the people behind those numbers.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
More than 8,000 Christians worldwide were abducted, arrested, imprisoned or sentenced without trial last year because of their faith, according to the 2026 World Watch List. Many of their stories never make headlines.
Open Doors Canada is asking Canadian Christians and churches to mark June 28 by remembering the people behind those numbers.
The organization's "One With Them: A Day for Christian Captives" campaign draws on Hebrews 13:3: "Remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison." This year's theme moves away from statistics and toward the names and stories of individual believers — fathers, mothers, pastors, students and children — who are imprisoned for following Jesus.
"For many persecuted Christians, prison is intentionally designed to make them feel completely invisible and forgotten," said Jared Vander Meulen of Open Doors Canada. "One With Them is refusing to let them fade into the shadows. It is an active declaration by the global Church that these believers are known by name, deeply loved by God and firmly sustained by our prayers."
The campaign highlights several cases. Hakop Gochumyan was arrested in Iran in 2023 during a family holiday and sentenced to 10 years in Evin Prison. His conviction stemmed from visiting local churches and possessing seven Persian-language New Testaments.
In Nigeria, Leah Sharibu was abducted by Boko Haram at age 14 and remains in captivity more than five years later. She was the only student from her captured group not released after she refused to renounce her faith.
In Cuba, 16-year-old Jonathan David Muir Burgos — the son of a pastor — was detained in March 2026 following local protests. He faces charges of "sabotage," which carries a potential 15-year sentence.
In Yemen, a believer named Magid was arrested in 2026 without formal charges and has since been moved to a restricted prison facility, leaving his wife and young children behind.
Open Doors estimates 60,000 Christians are imprisoned in North Korean labor camps. Possessing a single page of Scripture can result in the lifelong imprisonment of an entire family.
As part of the campaign, Open Doors Canada is launching a six-day One With Them Challenge for individuals, families, small groups and congregations. Daily practices include keeping a Bible hidden for a week in solidarity with North Korean believers — retrieving it to read, then returning it to its hiding place. The package includes guided prayer, daily reflections and other practices.
The campaign culminates June 28 at 7 p.m. EDT with a virtual One With Them Live Event, where Canadian Christians can join guided prayer, worship and updates from the persecuted church. Video testimonies will also be available.
"When believers disappear into prison systems, the world quickly moves on," Vander Meulen said. "One With Them is about refusing to let these Christians be forgotten. We may not be able to sit beside them physically, but we can stand with them in prayer, in remembrance and in faith."
More information and campaign resources are available at OneWithThem.ca.]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Alton calls on UK government to show 'strength on world stage', stop depending on dictatorships committing genocide]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/alton-calls-on-uk-government-to-show-strength-on-world-stage-stop-depending-on-dictatorships-committing-genocide</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/alton-calls-on-uk-government-to-show-strength-on-world-stage-stop-depending-on-dictatorships-committing-genocide</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Chris Eyte]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4705.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 20: Lord Alton of Liverpool speaks during a protest against the new Chinese embassy in Victoria Tower Gardens on January 20, 2026 in London, England.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 20: Lord Alton of Liverpool speaks during a protest against the new Chinese embassy in Victoria Tower Gardens on January 20, 2026 in London, England. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:02:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Lord David Alton of Liverpool has called upon the U.K. government to “mean what it says” and take measures to show “strength on the world stage.” He urged the government to stop facets of the country’s international trade from depending on dictatorships that use slave labor, and to support survivors of mass atrocities—including Christians—by legally classifying those experiences as genocide in international courts.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Lord David Alton of Liverpool has called upon the U.K. government to “mean what it says” and take measures to show “strength on the world stage.” He urged the government to stop facets of the country’s international trade from depending on dictatorships that use slave labor, and to support survivors of mass atrocities—including Christians—by legally classifying those experiences as genocide in international courts.
Alton, chair of the U.K. Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights, is widely known for championing the rights of persecuted Christians and other human rights causes. He has even been sanctioned by the “deadly quartet” of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea after publicly vocalizing his concerns over freedom issues.
The Genocide Determination Bill is a private member’s bill brought by Alton, with a debate tabled in the upper House of Lords in London on June 4. A complementary bill, called the Genocide (Prevention and Response) Bill, is tabled for the same day.
Alton told Christian Daily International that his bill aims to provide an avenue for victims and survivors to petition the court to have a judicial consideration of potential risk, actual evidence, and formal determinations of genocide.
“Once such a court determination is made, the Secretary of State will then have to take decisive steps, including by engaging the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council, among others,” Alton said.
“The avenue will be open to all potential victims and survivors of genocide, including Christians in countries where they may be subject to genocide or at risk thereof.”
Alton acknowledged that the chances of his private member’s bill becoming law are “low.” However, he pointed out that the bill is eighth in line for debate that day, meaning it should make definitive progress through the parliamentary process.
“Along the way, we will also learn whether it has enough support in both Houses,” Alton said.
Alton noted that details from the bill had been “overwhelmingly supported” in the House of Lords when previously included as an amendment to the Trade Bill 2021.
“However, the Tory government at the time would oppose it in the Commons,” Alton added. “As such, it is key to ensure greater engagement, including understanding what the Bill can and cannot do, and how it can support victims/survivors in their pursuit of justice.”
The bill puts victims and survivors at the center of the process, according to Alton who has previously tried to get legislative measures regarding genocide legalized via the House of Lords. 
He first introduced an iteration of the Genocide Determination Bill during the 2016–2017 parliamentary session, launching it on June 13, 2016. He later reintroduced the bill on Feb. 5, 2020, again on June 8, 2022, and most recently on Dec. 4, 2023.
Alton has also closely supported the complementary Genocide (Prevention and Response) Bill, championed alongside Baroness Helena Kennedy. 
That bill advanced through the House of Lords in the spring of 2024, leading up to the renewed legislative push for both bills ahead of the debates scheduled for June 4, 2026.
Speaking in the Lords at the King’s Speech Debate on May 21, Alton urged the U.K. government to strengthen financial resilience away from supply chains dependent on slave labor in countries like China, pointing to a stark trade deficit of £43.5 billion (~$55 billion).
Alton also highlighted a recent parliamentary meeting with Thae Yong-ho, the former deputy North Korean ambassador to the UK, who defected in 2016 after “choosing democracy over dictatorship.” They discussed a United Nations commission of inquiry report documenting North Korea as a state with atrocities that do “not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”
“The report called for its crimes against humanity to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court,” Alton said. “It never has been. In its political prison camps, hundreds of thousands continue to perish.”
Open Doors, a charity supporting persecuted Christians, states that North Korea is arguably the most dangerous place on earth to follow Jesus.
“If someone is discovered to be a Christian, the consequences are unimaginably stark: either imprisonment in one of its notorious labor camps, with little hope of release, or immediate execution,” an Open Doors country profile states. “The same fate is likely to await other family members.”
Alton mentioned he has personally visited persecuted Christians in China, witnessed Buddhists being suppressed in Tibet, and “met Uyghur Muslims enduring genocide.” He called for wider support from policymakers for his forthcoming bill.
“A resilient democracy must bolster its citizens and its international alliances, acting confidently in promoting the rule of law and democratic values,” Alton said during the debate.
“To that end, the Government should accept, for instance, the JCHR [Joint Committee on Human Rights] recommendation to extend universal jurisdiction against perpetrators of mass atrocity crimes—an issue to which I will return in the balloted debate which I have secured for June 4 and through my Private Member's Bill on genocide determination."
“I hope that, when those measures come forward, the Government will demonstrate that they mean what they say when, in the words of the gracious Address, they will take measures which contribute to the UK's 'strength on the world stage’,” he said.]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[‘Sacrilege law’ in Punjab, India further threatens Christians]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/sacrilege-law-in-punjab-india-further-threatens-christians</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/sacrilege-law-in-punjab-india-further-threatens-christians</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Morning Star News]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/46/4697.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Sikh ceremonial reader reciting from the Guru Granth Sahib.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Hari Singh, Creative Commons ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Sikh ceremonial reader reciting from the Guru Granth Sahib. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:12:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Thanks to misuse of a law against “outraging religious feelings,” a Christian pastor in Punjab state, India still cannot return home. His church is shut.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Thanks to misuse of a law against “outraging religious feelings,” a Christian pastor in Punjab state, India still cannot return home. His church is shut.
He survives on daily physical labor, and some months there is not enough money to feed his family or pay his children’s school fees. A second pastor who was arrested alongside him lives the same way, moving from place to place, doing what he can find and living constantly in fear.
What happened to them in police custody in 2023 nearly killed one of them.
Both were wrongly charged under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings,” with a maximum sentence of three years, no mandatory minimum and the right to seek bail. Punjab has had a state sacrilege law since 2008, but its criminal provisions were limited and police routinely used the IPC instead.
A 2026 amendment to that law changes everything, transforming a limited regulatory framework into a powerful criminal instrument with life imprisonment, mandatory minimums, non-bailable offenses and complete immunity for enforcement officers.
“What happened to these two men happened under a law that prescribed three years maximum,” a pastor who knows both men told Morning Star News on condition of anonymity. “Under this new amendment, with life imprisonment possible and police fully protected from accountability, I do not want to think about what could happen to the next person who is accused.”
On April 13, the Punjab state assembly passed the Jaagat Jot Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar (Amendment) Act, criminalizing sacrilege, meaning desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of the Sikhs, revered by them as a living guru. Gov. Gulab Chand Kataria, a constitutional appointee of the central government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), granted assent within days. The law came into force on April 20.
The new amendment prescribes a minimum of seven years imprisonment, extendable to 20 years, with fines between 2 lakh and 10 lakh rupees, approximately $2,150 to $10,750. For sacrilege carried out as part of a criminal conspiracy to disturb communal harmony, the ceiling is life imprisonment with fines up to 25 lakh rupees, approximately $26,900.
All offenses are cognizable, meaning police can arrest without a warrant, and non-bailable, meaning the accused cannot seek release as a matter of right. They are also non-compoundable, meaning the matter cannot be settled out of court. Section 6 shields state government officers from any suit or legal action for anything done under the law.
One of the two Christians punished under the law, a pastor, spoke on condition of anonymity because his case remains before the courts. Both were arrested in 2023 after torn pages of a Gutka Sahib, a Sikh prayer book, were found scattered on a road near their village. Police cited CCTV footage as the basis for their identification. Both were sent to police custody.
What followed, sources say, left one of them so physically and psychologically shattered that he came close to death while in custody. He spent weeks in a hospital before being transferred to jail, too weak to walk.
In jail, facing a complete crisis of faith, he stopped praying. Both men were broken. But in the prison where they were held, they found ways to meet. Together they began to remember who they were in Christ.
They read the Bible together, prayed together and refused to let go of hope. For the pastor, it was a very real spiritual experience, he said.
They were eventually granted bail, which their community saw as nothing less than a miracle. Their churches have not reopened. Every time a new sacrilege incident is reported in the region, sources said, police contact them and threaten to accuse them. The legal proceedings continue.
“They are barely surviving,” the pastor who knows them said. “Their families are suffering and paying the cost, but they are alive and they are still in the faith. That is what matters.”
Their ordeal, which predates the 2026 amendment, illustrates what Punjab’s Christian communities fear the new legislation could make faster, more certain and far harder to survive.
The amendment’s origins lie in the Bargari sacrilege of 2015, when more than 110 pages of the Guru Granth Sahib were found strewn outside a gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, in Faridkot District, triggering protests in which two men were killed in police firing.
Of 597 sacrilege cases registered in Punjab between 2015 and early 2026, only 44 ended in conviction, a rate of barely 7 percent, according to Punjab Police data. A government study found the failures were due to investigative gaps and systemic delays, not the absence of legal provisions.
The Aam Aadmi Party, or AAP, government of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann passed the new Act, calling it “a historic correction of past regimes’ failures.” What the government did not reveal is that the AAP itself had failed to deliver on earlier sacrilege-related promises after coming to power in 2022.
The party’s record on religious politics tells a more complicated story. In January 2022, AAP then-national convener Arvind Kejriwal called for an anti-conversion law while campaigning in Punjab. By March 2026, his own chief minister, Mann, was publicly warning that the “religious card” would never work in Punjab.
Gov. Kataria, a BJP appointee, told the Hindustan Times in a May 14 interview that religious conversion was “a cause of big worry” and called on the state government to “think seriously about bringing a law against religious conversions which exploit economic or social vulnerabilities.”
Explaining why he approved the bill so rapidly, Kataria said, “I went by the spirit and intent behind the law. I counselled the state government that a similar law needs to be framed to safeguard the sentiments of other religions to raise public satisfaction.”
Punjab does not yet have an anti-conversion law. But the governor’s words have done little to reassure Christian communities that one is not coming.
Long before the 2026 Act was passed, the atmosphere in Punjab’s villages had already turned hostile toward Christians. Amritpal Singh, a self-styled Sikh preacher who heads Waris Punjab De (Heirs of Punjab), and who supports the Khalistan movement, a Sikh separatist campaign seeking to carve an independent Sikh homeland out of India’s Punjab state, made religious conversion one of his central campaigns in 2022 and 2023.
In October 2022, the Christian community in Jalandhar organized a major protest demanding an FIR against Singh for allegedly making derogatory remarks about Christ. Punjab Police launched a crackdown against him in March 2023, eventually detaining him under the National Security Act, India’s preventive detention law. He was nonetheless elected to Parliament in 2024 while still in detention and remains a significant political presence.
Albert Dua, former member of the Punjab State Minorities Commission and president of the Christian United Federation in Punjab, said Singh’s movement had lasting consequences.
“After Amritpal Singh’s movement around conversion, an atmosphere was created in interior villages and inaccessible neighborhoods,” Dua told Morning Star News. “People began targeting local Christians, banning pastor visits in some villages, ostracizing families for being Christian. This law will only deepen that fear.”
Dua also challenged the law’s selective scope.
“This law ignores every other religion completely,” he said. “If such legislation had to be made, it should have covered all holy scriptures equally. As it stands, it is discrimination written into legislation.”
Pastor Robert Masih Khosla of Peace Makers Foundation Church in Chandigarh concurred.
“This is a partial law – the same punishment should apply to anyone who disrespects the Holy Bible or any other scripture,” Pastor Khosla told Morning Star News.
Khosla added a ground-level warning.
“When the law was not this stringent, it was already being used against pastors and Christian community leaders,” he said. “Now that it is far more severe, it will be used as a dhaal, a shield or pretext, by those who want to stop Christians from moving freely and speaking in villages. We have seen it happen. We will see it happen more.”
John Dayal, spokesperson of the All India Catholic Union and a veteran human rights activist, said communities most at risk are Dalit and Mazhabi Sikhs. At the lower end of Punjab’s entrenched caste hierarchy, for over two decades they have quietly found their way to evangelical Christianity.
“When a family converts from Sikhism to Christianity, the household copy of the Guru Granth Sahib must be returned to a gurdwara or disposed of with an appropriate ceremony,” Dayal told Morning Star News. “Under this new law, that deeply private moment becomes legally treacherous. A WhatsApp message about the scripture’s relocation, a spoken word misconstrued by a hostile neighbor, all fall within the law’s provisions.”
The non-bailable character of all offenses means a malicious complaint filed without evidence translates into police custody before any court examines its merits. This pattern is already established across the 12 Indian states that have enacted anti-conversion laws, where non-bailable provisions have repeatedly enabled arrest before investigation.
Arjun Sheoran, an attorney at the Punjab and Haryana High Court, noted in the publication LiveLaw that unlike Section 295A of the IPC, which requires prior government sanction before prosecution can begin, the new act contains no such filter between accusation and arrest.
Dua pointed to neighboring Rajasthan, a BJP-governed state that passed its own anti-conversion law in September, as a warning of what lies ahead. Since that law came into force, attacks on Christians have surged, with pastors arrested on false charges and prayer meetings raided by Hindu extremist groups.
“What is happening in Rajasthan is a khatre ki ghanti, a warning bell, for us,” Dua told Morning Star News. “Ultimately they will bring this law to Punjab also. As a community we have to stand united. We are Masihi (Christians), followers of Christ. We have to reclaim that identity, not say I am Catholic or I am Pentecostal or I am CNI [Church of North India]. We are one.”
The law has encountered resistance even within Sikhism. On May 8, the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikh authority, gave the government a 15-day ultimatum to remove objectionable clauses, particularly provisions placing Sikh religious officials within a criminal legal framework and a requirement to publish online the locations of all scripture copies in private custody.
Mann refused. “There will be no withdrawal of the Sacrilege Act 2026 at any cost,” he said, launching a statewide Shukrana Yatra, or Thanksgiving procession, to celebrate the law’s passage.
The Akal Takht’s deadline expired on Tuesday (May 26) with no government response.
The law also faces challenges in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The Anglican Church of India, known as CIPBC, associated with GAFCON, the Global Anglican Future Conference and distinct from the Anglican Communion and from the mainstream Church of North India and Church of South India, has filed a petition through its metropolitan bishop, Rockes Bernabas Sandhu of Amritsar. The petition argues the law creates a religion-specific penal regime violating the constitutional guarantee of equality before law and seeks both quashing and a stay on implementation.
India ranked 12th on Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian, up from 31st in 2013 before Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power. Hostilities against Christians reached 747 incidents in 2025, according to the Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, more than five times the 147 cases documented in 2014.
For the two pastors living uprooted lives, statistics are an abstraction. They were charged under a law that prescribed a maximum of three years in prison, were never convicted, and returned to a world that no longer has a place for them.
The amendment that has now come into effect prescribes life imprisonment, grants enforcement officers complete immunity and leaves no gate between an accusation and an arrest.
They still have faith in Christ, something that is increasingly difficult in Punjab state.]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Secret police deport, ban tortured Kyrgyzstan pastor]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/secret-police-deport-ban-tortured-kyrgyzstan-pastor</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/secret-police-deport-ban-tortured-kyrgyzstan-pastor</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack Bethel]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/35/3521.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[The Rev. Pavel Shreider in prison in Kyrgyzstan.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ The Rev. Pavel Shreider in prison in Kyrgyzstan. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:31:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Secret police in Kyrgyzstan have deported and banned a jailed pastor who suffered a traumatic brain injury from torture, according to rights group Forum 18.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Secret police in Kyrgyzstan have deported and banned a jailed pastor who suffered a traumatic brain injury from torture, according to rights group Forum 18.
National Security Committee (NSC) officers deported the Rev. Pavel Shreider, 66, on April 9, Forum 18 reported. Shreider’s wife, Nelya, chose to leave the country with her husband, who was born in Kyrgyzstan but holds a Russian passport.
“They put him in a car, took him to the land border and banned him from re-entering the country,” an unnamed acquaintance of Shreider told Forum 18. “There were no deportation documents, and they put no mark in his passport.”
Forum 18 reported that the True and Free Reform Adventist pastor is now seeking asylum elsewhere, though he prefers to remain in his home country of Kyrgyzstan. NSC secret police declined to answer Forum 18’s inquiries on May 26 regarding the deportation.
On March 25, the Supreme Court in Bishkek commuted the remainder of the pastor’s three-year prison term to a fine equal to three months of an average wage. Prison authorities freed him the same day, and Shreider reluctantly paid the fine. While authorities initially expected Shreider to pay for his own deportation, NSC officers did not demand any money on the day they expelled him.
The deportation followed months of severe medical decline for the pastor while in state custody.
Vera Shreider, the pastor’s daughter, appealed to Prison No. 21 officials on Sept. 12, pleading for medical care for her father. On Sept. 22, prison chief Major Azat Kudaybergenov informed Shreider’s relatives in a letter that doctors had examined the pastor multiple times and diagnosed him with a “traumatic brain injury” that resulted in “cognitive impairment.”
Prison authorities on Sept. 25 transferred Shreider from Prison No. 21, where they had held him for 10 months, to a secure medical unit at Prison No. 31 in the capital city of Bishkek.
“As also seen from the official medical examination paper, he has developed encephalopathy, which is brain damage, and which has affected his general health,” the family said in a statement to Forum 18. “We already saw him very weak during the Sept. 9 appeal hearing in the courtroom and in writing demanded the prison authorities to transfer him to the medical unit for treatment. They only transferred him more than two weeks later.”
Shreider was serving a three-year sentence on what supporters called fabricated charges of “inciting enmity.” The case began in November 2024, when NSC secret police raided the pastor’s home in Bishkek, along with the homes of 10 church members, before making arrests.
Forum 18 reported that NSC officers tortured Shreider and three other church members during interrogations following their arrests. Police officials have denied the abuse.
“Five officers gave me blows on my head, chest and gave me kicks in my spine from behind,” Shreider wrote in a November 2024 complaint to the National Center for the Prevention of Torture. He added that officers “hit me with an iron pipe to force me to confess that I committed crimes.”
NSC officers also used a stun gun to try to coerce church member Igor Tsoy to write a statement against Shreider, according to Forum 18. The stun gun caused Tsoy multiple injuries, but he refused the officers’ demands.
The treatment of the church group drew international condemnation. On July 23, five U.N. Special Rapporteurs, including Nazila Ghanea, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, wrote to the government citing the arrests, detentions and alleged torture of the True and Free Reform Adventist Church members.
“Serious allegations of torture and ill-treatment have been made with regard to Mr. Schreider and the other male members of the congregation during their detention,” the Special Rapporteurs stated to officials. “It is reported that the male and female members of the group witnessed officers striking the heads and bodies of the seven male members of the group...It is reported that Mr. Schreider and Mr. Tsoi were additionally subjected to strangulation with cellophane bags and the use of tasers.”]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Egypt legalizes 191 churches and affiliated buildings]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/egypt-legalizes-191-churches-and-affiliated-buildings</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/egypt-legalizes-191-churches-and-affiliated-buildings</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Daoud Kuttab]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/46/4692.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[St. Virgin Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church, also known as the Hanging Church (El Muallaqa), in Cairo, is one of the oldest churches in Egypt.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Przemyslaw “Blueshade” Idzkiewicz, Creative Commons ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ St. Virgin Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church, also known as the Hanging Church (El Muallaqa), in Cairo, is one of the oldest churches in Egypt. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:58:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Christian leaders in Egypt were pleased with progress of a government effort to approve the existence of churches in the country following an executive order on May 19 legalizing 191 churches and affiliated buildings.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Christian leaders in Egypt were pleased with progress of a government effort to approve the existence of churches in the country following an executive order on May 19 legalizing 191 churches and affiliated buildings.
The order was issued following a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli.
The Rev. Khalaf Barakat, president of the General Evangelical Baptist Assembly in Egypt, said Christians in Egypt welcome the ongoing efforts of the Egyptian state to legalize the status of churches and service buildings belonging to various Christian denominations.
“Baptist churches, like many others, have benefited from these measures, while some churches are still awaiting the completion of the legalization process according to the schedules and mechanisms approved by the state,” Barakat told Christian Daily International. “We appreciate the spirit of cooperation shown by the relevant authorities in dealing with this matter over the past years.”
The order brings to 3,804 the total number of churches and buildings granted legal status since the government in 2016 created a committee to oversee the process. This systematic review process is part of a broader state strategy to resolve the status of thousands of unlicensed religious buildings constructed over previous decades.
At the same time, a bill that would regulate personal status issues of Egyptian Christians is making its way to becoming law.
The Egyptian government on May 4 referred two bills regarding the family and personal status of Muslims and Christians to the Egyptian Parliament: the Personal Status Law for Muslims and the Personal Status Law for Egyptian Christians. Both bills address family law matters, including child custody and divorce.
The bills are under review by a joint parliamentary committee composed of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee and the bureaus of the Committees on Social Solidarity, Family and Persons with Disabilities; Religious Affairs and Endowments; and Human Rights. During the committee’s deliberations, the provisions in the draft law remain subject to amendment through the parliamentary discussion process.
The draft personal status law for Christians would, for the first time, establish a unified written code of personal status applicable to Christian communities in Egypt. The draft law would apply to several denominations, including the Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Evangelical, and Catholic communities. It covers family law matters such as engagement, marriage, divorce, annulment, civil dissolution for certain denominations, child custody and visitation, parental guardianship in education, lineage, missing persons and inheritance.
The law would formalize engagement as a notarized contract and require a church announcement prior to marriage, according to a recent report. It would allow marriage contracts to include agreed-upon conditions, such as provisions regarding the wife’s employment status or financial obligations. The law would also regulate annulment, dissolution of marriage and divorce.
A recent news report in the Egyptian newspaper of record, Al Ahram, states that the law would grant men and women equal inheritance rights. Under the current framework, Islamic inheritance rules apply, resulting in a man receiving double the share of a woman.
The draft law also would introduce “host visitation,” allowing a child to stay overnight with the father and travel with him for one week each year. It would also allow electronic communication for noncustodial parents.
Under Egypt’s Church Construction Law (Law No. 80 of 2016), which was approved by the Egyptian Parliament on Aug. 30, 2016, the power to approve the building and renovation of churches was extended to provincial governors, having previously been limited to the country’s security agencies.]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Islamic extremists halt church service in Indonesia]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/islamic-extremists-halt-church-service-in-indonesia</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/islamic-extremists-halt-church-service-in-indonesia</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Morning Star News]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/46/4679.png">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Muslims stop Prosperous Mission Church (GMS) service in Panggungharjo village, Bantul Regency, Special Capital Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia on May 24, 2026.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Screenshot from video on Facebook ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ Muslims stop Prosperous Mission Church (GMS) service in Panggungharjo village, Bantul Regency, Special Capital Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia on May 24, 2026. ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 10:58:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[A Muslim mob in Indonesia led by members of the Islamic extremist Islamic Jihad Front (FJI) on Sunday (May 24) stopped a church from worshiping at the congregation’s new location, sources said.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
A Muslim mob in Indonesia led by members of the Islamic extremist Islamic Jihad Front (FJI) on Sunday (May 24) stopped a church from worshiping at the congregation’s new location, sources said.
More than a dozen FJI members along with local residents forced their way into the newly rented building of the Prosperous Mission Church (GMS) in Kampung Glugo, Panggungharjo village, Sewon Sub-District, Bantul Regency, in the Special Capital Region of Yogyakarta just prior to the start of the service.
The church previously met at the Ros-In Hotel but recently switched to the new site due to rising costs. The mob objected that the congregation had not yet obtained permission for worship at the new site and that its presence in a Muslim-majority area was disturbing and could harm interfaith relations, according to multiple sources.
The intruders wearing masks, jackets bearing the FJI logo, hoodies and helmets pushed their way toward the church’s main door just before 8 a.m., as the congregation was preparing for the service. The mob protested the church presence with chants, shouts including the jihadist slogan, “Allahu Akbar [God is Greater],” and threats, with shoving between them and church leaders as police stood by.
The Bantul Police Chief said officers were on standby and had secured the area to prevent potential escalation of the conflict, according to rri.co.id. TimesIndonesia.com reported that the church, police and officials had discussed how to stem potential conflict on Saturday (May 23).
In a video of the incident, a voice from the mob is heard shouting, “If the police weren’t there, you wouldn’t be standing here forever. If the police leave you for more than 24 hours, I will burn this church down.”
The mob issued demands that frightened the congregation, causing them to leave the site at about 8:30 a.m.
“Suddenly, they entered the building, wearing FJI T-shirts and jackets,” a member of the congregation reportedly said. “They forced us to stop the service. There were many children and elderly people in the church, and the atmosphere was very tense.”
The intruders said the area was predominantly Muslim and that the church’s presence – the site is located behind the renowned Grapyak Islamic Boarding School – and activities could disrupt interfaith and social harmony, mudanews.com reported.
Church spokesman Josiah Michael said the intimidating acts, along with verbal and physical threats, hurt and traumatized the congregation, especially the children. Freedom of religion and the peaceful practice of worship, he said, are fundamental human rights, guaranteed and protected by the state through the Indonesian policy of Pancasila (cohesion amid ethnic, religious and cultural diversity) and the 1945 Constitution.
The secretary of the Bantul Regency National Unity and Politics Agency, Deni Ngajis Hartono, said the GMS church has a Reporting Certificate from the local Ministry of Religious Affairs office that grants it the right to conduct church activities, though permission for a worship site is still required in Indonesia, according to TribunJogja.com.
“The GMS congregation believes that once they have a Reporting Certificate from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, they are permitted to conduct worship activities,” Deni said, according to TribunJogja.com. “However, this perception differs from that of the organization that disrupted the worship service, resulting in undesirable events.”
Muhamad Guntur Romli of Indonesia’s largest Muslim and cultural organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), posted on Instagram, “Worship activities cannot and should not be disbanded even if the house of worship is unlicensed. There are two fundamentally different issues at hand, each with distinct legal consequences. Disbanding worship services is a crime. That is a criminal matter.”
By contrast, the issue of unlicensed houses of worship is an administrative matter, Muhamad said.
“Once again, disbanding worship services is a crime, an attack on the most fundamental constitutional right, namely, the right to connect with God,” he reportedly said. “There are no regional regulations. There are no national regulations. There is no justification for a group of people to disperse a group of people praying, worshipping.”
Local police promised to take firm action against those that pre-empted the worship service.
Gugun Gumelar, special staff to the Minister of Religious Affairs, condemned the intrusion and called it a criminal act via his Instagram account @gugungumelar89.
“I just called the Yogyakarta Regional Police Chief to arrest the perpetrators. This is a criminal act,” Gugun said. “The legal offense is evident according to the Criminal Code. I have coordinated with the Yogyakarta Regional Office, GMS, and fellow activists in Yogyakarta. We have deployed a team since last night. God willing, I will be in Yogyakarta this Sunday.”
The disruption of worship sparked criticism from various religious groups. Communion of Churches in Indonesia (PGI) Chairman Jacklevyn Fritz Manuputty strongly condemned the intrusion.
“This disbandment must not be allowed. The government must therefore intervene,” Jacklevyn said on his Instagram account pgiofficial.co.id. “The government must guarantee a sense of security in worship, which is a constitutional right. Freedom of worship is a right of every citizen guaranteed by the Constitution. There must be no intimidation, persecution, or disbandment of religious services under any pretext.”
Amnesty International Indonesia noted fissures in religious freedom in the country.
“This act of intolerance once again serves as a reminder that the state has not yet guaranteed freedom of worship for every citizen,” the group stated on its website, amnesty.id. “The right to freedom of religion and worship is an absolute human right fully guaranteed by the Constitution.”
A Bantul City police public relations officer reportedly noted, “The Constitution guarantees freedom of worship, and all forms of unilateral acts of intimidation are not justified by law.”
FJI Response
Abdurrahman Abu Zaki of the FJI of the Special Region of Yogyakarta confirmed that it stopped the service at the Prosperous Mission Church due to objections from residents and incomplete permits.
“Well, the point is, the church wanted to hold an inauguration ceremony, but they had already been warned by the Bantul Office of National Unity and Politics, and the residents also refused,” Abdurrahman said, according to Times Indonesia.com. “The National Unity and Politics Agency summoned the pastor [before the incident], and the pastor only received a permit from the Ministry of Religious Affairs” but did not obtain a permit for the new worship site.
Abdurrahman told Times Indonesia that the service was disbanded to prevent conflict with residents from escalating.
“There’s a lot of distorted news that we’re accused of disbanding the worshippers, a problem of intolerance,” he said. “Because the residents have already rejected it, if we don’t disband it immediately, the conflict will escalate.”
Abdurrahman said church worship there had to be stopped immediately because the majority of the residents are Muslim and the site is close to the Al-Munawwir Islamic Boarding School in Krapyak.
“Even if they really want to build a church, that’s fine, but it has to be done according to procedure,” he reportedly said. “Residents’ permission, signed by residents. Right? If the residents don’t have a problem, we don’t have a problem either, right?”
The Bantul government is working to resolve the case. A mediation meeting was held on Monday (May 25) by Bantul Police Chief Bayu Puji Hariyanto and representatives from the Bantul Regency Government, which brought together the FJI and the GMS church.
Apart from the police continuing to guard the church site, it was agreed that the church would complete the application process for obtaining a permit for it before using the building, which would mean obtaining the required permission from 60 local residents and showing signatures from 90 members of the church. 
GMS Bantul is the 114th branch of the GMS Synod, both domestically and internationally, serving approximately 370 congregants in Bantul Regency. Led by pastors Sudaryanto and Yuli Setyowati, the church, KRJogja.com reported, was inaugurated on Sept. 10.]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
                                                        <item>
                <title><![CDATA[Islamist attacks in Northern Mozambique kill Christians, destroy churches]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/islamist-attacks-in-northern-mozambique-kill-christians-destroy-churches</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/islamist-attacks-in-northern-mozambique-kill-christians-destroy-churches</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Vincent Matinde]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/46/4670.png">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Islamic State Mozambique]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Barnabas Aid ]]>
                                </media:credit>
                                                                                        <media:description type="plain">
                                    <![CDATA[ According to Barnabas Aid, five Christians were killed in the village of Namecala on May 9 during an attack claimed by Islamic State Mozambique ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Thu, 28 May 2026 15:12:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Fresh attacks linked to Islamist militants in northern Mozambique have left at least nine people dead and several churches destroyed, according to church groups and religious aid organizations monitoring the violence in Cabo Delgado province.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Fresh attacks linked to Islamist militants in northern Mozambique have left at least nine people dead and several churches destroyed, according to church groups and religious aid organizations monitoring the violence in Cabo Delgado province.
The latest violence took place in Ancuabe District, an area that has seen repeated militant raids in recent years as insurgents tied to the Islamic State group continue expanding operations across northern Mozambique. 
According to Barnabas Aid, five Christians were killed in the village of Namecala on May 9 during an attack claimed by Islamic State Mozambique, also known as IS-M. The group reportedly burned a church building and more than 160 homes during the assault. 
The organization also reported that two Christians were captured and beheaded near Namecala on May 8, while another believer was killed near Nanoni village a day earlier. Other villages in Ancuabe District were also attacked, with houses and churches set on fire. 
The attacks come amid growing concern over the targeting of Christian communities in Cabo Delgado, a northern province that has been at the center of a violent Islamist insurgency since 2017.
In recent propaganda messages, Islamic State Mozambique has reportedly referred to Christians who refuse to convert or submit to extremist rule as “combatants,” language that analysts and church groups say reflects an increasingly direct threat against Christian civilians. 
The violence has not received widespread international attention, but church agencies, conflict monitors and humanitarian groups say attacks have intensified again in recent months.
Earlier this month, militants attacked the historic St. Louis de Montfort Church in Meza village in Cabo Delgado, burning the church building, a missionary residence and a kindergarten operated by the Catholic Church, according to Vatican News. 
Bishop António Juliasse Ferreira Sandramo of Pemba described the attack as “a scene of genuine terror,” saying churches and chapels in the region have faced repeated destruction for nearly nine years. 
The insurgency in Cabo Delgado began in October 2017 when armed militants launched attacks on police stations in Mocímboa da Praia. The group, locally known as al-Shabaab though unrelated to the Somali extremist organization of the same name, later pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and became known internationally as Islamic State Mozambique. 
Since then, thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as militants carried out raids on villages, beheadings, kidnappings and attacks on churches, schools and government facilities. 
According to conflict and humanitarian groups, the insurgency has been fueled by poverty, weak state control, youth unemployment and long-standing frustrations in Cabo Delgado, one of Mozambique’s poorest provinces despite its vast natural gas and mineral wealth.
The conflict escalated sharply between 2020 and 2021, when militants briefly seized strategic towns including Palma, an area near major natural gas projects led by international energy companies. The violence forced foreign companies to suspend operations and triggered a regional military response involving troops from Rwanda and southern African countries.
Although military operations helped retake several towns, attacks have continued in rural communities across Cabo Delgado.
Christian organizations say Christians have increasingly become targets. Open Doors, a group that monitors persecution against Christians worldwide, says militants in northern Mozambique have burned church buildings, destroyed homes and killed civilians in attacks directed at Christian communities. 
Mozambique’s Christian population has long played an important role in the country’s social and political life. Churches were heavily involved in peace and reconciliation efforts during Mozambique’s civil war, which ended in 1992 after nearly 16 years of fighting.
But the rise of Islamist violence in Cabo Delgado has placed many Christian communities under renewed pressure, especially in remote northern districts where security remains weak.
Humanitarian agencies say the conflict has displaced more than 1 million people over the last 9 years, while many villages remain vulnerable to sudden attacks.
Despite regional military support, analysts say militants have adapted by carrying out smaller raids on isolated communities instead of trying to hold major towns.
Recent attacks in Ancuabe suggest the insurgency remains active and capable of targeting civilians despite years of military operations.
Local church leaders have continued calling for international attention and humanitarian support for affected communities.
“We ask for attention and solidarity,” Bishop Sandramo said following the destruction of the Meza church earlier this month. “The faith of these people will never be destroyed.” ]]></content:encoded>
            </item>
            </channel>
</rss>