Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

In this mailing: Raymond Ibrahim: The Indonesian Jihad on Christian Churches George Phillips: Sex Trafficking: The Abuse of Our Time The Indonesian Jihad on Christian Churches by Raymond Ibrahim  •  November 11, 2015 at 5:00 am "We will not stop hunting Christians and burning churches. Christians are Allah's enemies!" – Islamic leaders, Aceh region. In other parts of Indonesia, where Islamic law, or Sharia, is not enforced, churches, even fully registered ones, are also under attack On Dec. 25, 2012, with all required paperwork in place, when the congregation assembled on empty land to celebrate Christmas, hundreds of Muslims threw rocks, rotten eggs, and bags filled with excrement at the Christians. Police stood by and watched. For Indonesia, the country once hailed as the face of "moderate Islam," the "extremist" behavior one would expect of ISIS has apparently become the norm. The remains of a church in the Aceh region of Indonesia, still on fire, after hundreds of Muslims attacked it on October 13, 2015. (Image source: CCTV video screenshot) In compliance with Islamic demands, Indonesian authorities in the Aceh region have started to tear down Christian churches. Their move comes after Muslim mobs rampaged and attacked churches. At least one person was killed; thousands of Christians were displaced. On Friday, October 9, after being fired up during mosque sermons, hundreds of Muslims marched to the local authority's office and demanded that all unregistered churches in Aceh be closed. Imams issued text messages spurring Muslims from other areas to rise up against churches and call for their demolition. On Monday, October 12, authorities facilitated a meeting with Islamic leaders and agreed to demolish 10 unregistered churches over the course of two weeks. Continue Reading Article  Sex Trafficking: The Abuse of Our Time by George Phillips  •  November 11, 2015 at 4:00 am The State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report estimates that more than 44,000 trafficking victims have identified throughout the world, out of which the Department of Justice has gained convictions in just 184 cases. Compare this to the International Labor Organization 2012 estimate of a total of 20.9 million trafficked victims in the world and hundreds of thousands in the United States. The media usually pays scant attention to their plight. Sina Vann (left) and Esperanza (upper right) were both kept as sex slaves and forced into prostitution as children, in Cambodia and the United States respectively. Esperanza was a sixteen-year-old girl when she was brutally raped by a man named Rey. He forced her to become a sex slave, and eventually brought her to New York, where she was raped, beaten and threatened in brothels day after day Like so many other trafficking victims, Esperanza could not speak English. A man who saw the bruises on her body connected her with Safe Horizon, a program that specializes in helping trafficking victims; they helped to rescue her. On the other side of the world from Esperanza, Sina Vann, in Cambodia, was taken as a sex slave when she was 13. Sina and the other girls were kept in underground cages -- not able to see the difference between night and day. They were then brought into a room where they were raped by man after man. Sina was rescued in a raid organized by a former sex slave, Somaly Mam, who now runs an anti-trafficking program. Continue Reading Article