Going away for a couple of months with the South African National Defence Force…
And I am really going to miss blogging, all of the blogs I read, and the bloggers I interact with on a regular basis (you know who you are). I would covet your prayers at this time and please do not forget about me (or this blog). God willing, I will be back…
Hopefully some weekends, I may get an Internet connection and the time to blog. If so, I’ll probably do something like a weekly roundup or something (just to empty my Google reader )…
Egyptian Maher El-Gowhary and his 15 year old daughter Dina never pray twice at the same church, never stay longer than a month in any one apartment. They are constantly under threat, always on the run because they converted to Christianity in a largely Muslim country.
Maher and Dina nervously agreed to meet us at a Church in Cairo. The priest at the Church said he feared problems from the Egyptian authorities and while he agreed to have us watch his Sunday mass, the Priest declined to speak to us about what is happening in Egypt and to the El-Gowhary’s.
They tell their story out of fear and desperation. Born Muslims they chose to convert to the Christian Church after both claim they had religious visions.
Now Maher says “Muslims try to kill us, and will kill us if they find us.”
Several religious fatwas have been issued for “spilling his blood” after Maher asked an Egyptian Court to legally recognize his conversion, so he can one day be buried as a Christian and so his daughter won’t be forced into a marriage by her Muslim mother.
The court ruled a legal conversion to Christianity would threaten public order. His lawyer told us it’s a dangerous double standard because in Egypt a Christian can convert to the Muslim faith in a week, but a Muslim cannot convert to the Christian faith.
Ten percent of Egypt is Christian, largely the Coptic Christians who increasingly say they face daunting discrimination and even death.
We had to hide our camera as we followed the El-Gowhary’s because we were told if the authorities discovered we were preparing our story we would be arrested.
“[Thanksgiving and Prayer] We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.”
According to Syrian media, archaeological expeditions working at North-eastern Syria have discovered several collective tombs and parts of seals with different shapes in addition to 27 cuneiform tablets dating back to 2500 BC.
In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the most magnificent intact tomb of any Egyptian Pharaoh ever found in the royal burial grounds of the Valley of the Kings in the Egyptian desert.
As is well known by readers of this column, scientists have been trying to create life in the laboratory—or, at the very least, a semblance of what many theorize to have been the original building blocks of life. As has also been discussed previously in this column, recent studies have suggested that the earliest life sprang from RNA, and two scientist […]
An ancient shipwreck discovered off the coast of uninhabited Polyaigos Island in the central Aegean Sea will be designated an underwater archaeological site by the Culture Ministry of Greece. By studying the style of amphorae found amongst the wreck, researchers were able to date the ship to somewhere between the end of the fifth and beginning of the fourth […]
Robin Gallaher Branch of Crichton College reports on the 2009 Society of Biblical Literature conference. Read an insider’s view of the latest in Biblical scholarship along with charming reflections of the conference’s host city, New Orleans.
Iranian Muslims are beginning to recognize and celebrate an ancient Persian religious festival that predates Iran’s Islamic era, Christianity and even Judaism. Sadeh, the celebration of the discovery of fire among the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism, which was the dominant religion before the seventh century Muslim invasion, is a nationwide festival that […]
Hopefully some weekends, I may get an Internet connection and the time to blog. If so, I’ll probably do something like a weekly roundup or something (just to empty my Google reader 
)…
