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Another pastor, close friend of victim of acid attack, is also ambushed.

NAIROBI, Kenya, February 28 (CDN) — While a Ugandan pastor was fighting to retain sight in his remaining eye after an acid attack, Muslim extremists this month were shooting at his close friend, a leader of another church.

Doctors at Sheba Hospital in Tel-Aviv, Israel, are still not sure what kind of chemicals Muslim extremists cast on Bishop Umar Mulinde of Gospel Life Church International outside of Kampala last Christmas Eve, but they know that the acid is threatening the vision in his remaining eye.

“I am regaining my sight, though the healing progress is a bit slow,” Mulinde told Compass by phone. “Doctors are still looking for ways to save it, but it seems a complicated case. The chemical was very strong, and each day it was going deeper, with pain increasing day by day; even the doctors are interested to know which type of acid it was, because it really did great damage to me.”

Mulinde, a former sheik (Islamic teacher) who became the target of Islamic extremists after converting to Christianity in 1993, said his left eye has been getting better under the specialized treatment he has been able to receive since Compass publicized the attack on him (see www.compassdirect.org, “Muslim Extremists in Uganda Throw Acid on Bishop,” Dec. 28, 2011).

“The damaged right eye is somehow affecting the left eye,” Mulinde said. “The doctors are thinking of removing the right eye with hope of saving the left eye.”

Muslim extremists are opposed not only to his conversion from Islam but his outspoken opposition to sharia (Islamic law) courts in Uganda, he said. On Oct. 15, 2011, area Muslim leaders declared a fatwa against him demanding his death. He is known for debates locally and internationally in which he often challenges Muslims regarding their religion.

Mulinde said he was encouraged that ministry is continuing at his church in Namasuba, about 10 kilometers (six miles) outside of Kampala, though his friend Zachariah Serwadda, a pastor with an Evangel Church congregation, was ambushed on Feb. 4 after an evangelistic outreach in the predominantly Muslim town of Mbale.

Serwadda, who has been attacked by Islamic extremists before, told Compass he was not sure how many began firing guns at his car at 10:30 p.m.

“I only heard several voices as I dropped down when the windshield of my vehicle got broken,” said Serwadda, who was unhurt in the attack. “It could be the same group [that attacked Mulinde]. It seems it’s the same network, because after attacking Bishop Mulinde they threw down letters at the Gospel Life Church International there threatening to attack other preachers like him.”

The attack took place on Tirinyi Road, between Mbale and Kamonkole, he said. Three other Christians were with him at the time. Since the Feb. 4 attack, the only security precaution he has taken was to report the incident at Iganga police station, he said.

Serwadda said there seems to be a new wave of persecution against Christians in Uganda. Besides Mulinde, also attacked last year were church leaders Hassan Muwanguzi and Hassan Sharif Lubenga, he said, and there were two other serious incidents, one in 2010 and one in 2009.

“In 2010 pastor Jamada Kikomeko of Nateete Victory Church was attacked during a gospel outreach in Entebbe town – bullets were shot with intent to assassinate him while he was returning from the outreach that night,” he said. “He managed to escape, took his coat and ran on foot for safety.”

The assailants vandalized his car, smashing all the windshields, he added.

In 2009, evangelist Yazid Muwanguzi was assaulted in Nakaloke, in Mbale district, barely escaping with his life after Muslims attacked chanting “Allahu Akbar [Arabic for “God is greater”], Serwadda said.

“But some Christians were severely injured,” he said.

Serwadda also survived a barrage of gunfire in 1997. A Muslim extremist tried to stop him as he was coming home from an evangelistic outreach in Jinja, but Serwadda saw an armed group standing on both sides of the road, he said; refusing to stop, he drove through as 20 bullets struck his vehicle.

He called his survival “miraculous.”

See Mulinde’s story in video.

On January 21, 2012, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) hosted a conference “The Persecuted Church: Christian Believers in Peril in the Middle East.” At this conference, Raymond Ibrahim, author of The Al Qaeda Reader (Doubleday 2007), spoke about the doctrine and history that contribute to violence against Christians in the region. Below are all three segments, ranging between 5 and 10 minutes in length.

Part 1: Context and Continuity

Part 2: Apostacy

Part 3: Pact of Omar

By Sara Westhead www.RoyalGazette.com

A young man is forced to squat on the floor of a small, closed room. Soldiers cock their rifles. Bound and blindfolded, the man does not know if a shot will ring out, or if that it will be the last sound he hears.

A young woman is arrested for no reason and held, isolated, in a solitary room, and interrogated for 14 hours straight, not knowing whether she will ever see her family again.

An entire family is on edge as they are warned to not turn off their phones, so they can receive their daily threat of interrogation and incarceration.

As terrible and unreal as these three situations may sound, they are regular occurrences for Christians living in Iran in 2012, as testified to by Pouya and Tarsa, two young people presently visiting and ministering in Bermuda at local churches with international missions group, Youth With A Mission (YWAM).

Over the last few years, many in Bermuda have received e-mails or seen posts on the internet requesting urgent prayer for Christians in Iran and for people to sign petitions to encourage the release of release of religious prisoners.

One recent e-mail highlighted the plight of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was arrested in October, 2009 for speaking out against changes to policies in the Iranian education system, which would force his children to read from the Quran while at school, after he attempted to register his church. After being arrested, the charge against the 34-year-old father-of-two was changed to that of apostasy, and he was also accused of attempting to evangelise Muslims, a crime in Iran (see Levitt Letter, September 2011, p. 32).

Then, in June 2010, his wife, Fatemah Pasindedih, was also arrested under pressure to convert to Islam, and the couple were threatened that their children would be taken away and given to a Muslim family if they continued to refuse to convert to Islam. Pasindedih was later released, but the case against Pastor Youcef continued and the court convicted the pastor of leaving his Islamic faith and sentenced him to death in November 2010.

Despite appeals against the court’s ruling that apostasy is not a crime under Iran’s penal code, the Supreme Court held in June 2011 that apostasy was still punishable under Sharia law. The court also asked a lower court to review whether Pastor Youcef was a Muslim when he became a Christian at the age of 19.

During the proceedings, which took place in September 2011, the pastor was told he would be given three chances to renounce his Christian faith in order to have the charges removed, which he refused, and on September 26, the court determined that, because he was born into a Muslim family, he was a Muslim, and therefor a national apostate, in spite of witnesses testifying that he never practiced Islam.

Pastor Youcef continues to remain in prison, and in spite of international pressure, including a petition by 200,000 Americans and a call by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton for the pastors release, remains under a death sentence.

Watching world news and hearing about the atrocities that occur, Iran seems a world away from Bermuda. How can Westerners support change in Iran?

Pressure from international news organizations has definitely made a difference in many cases, as world attention has been spotlighted on specific abuses within the country. According to friends of Tarsa, when the world found out about the mass arrest at her church, interrogations decreased from four or five a day, to only one a day.

There have also been far fewer killings, both murders and executions, however torture and sexual abuse still remain rampant within the prisons and detention centres.

“The hope of most local Christians is that their Western brothers and sisters… will continue to put pressure,” on Iranian authorities, according to Pouya.

Learning more about what is going on, and supporting organizations that support persecuted Christians, are excellent ways to support persecuted Christians within the country.

“The church in Iran needs practical help,” Pouya explained.

Revival has been taking the country by storm.

According to Elam Ministries (which works specifically to support the Church in Iran): “In 1979, there were less than 500 known Christians from a Muslim background in Iran. Today, the most conservative estimate is that there are at least 100,00 believers in the nation.”

“We are very strong for evangelism,” Pouya explained, but the church there desperately needs training and discipleship materials.

“Eighty percent of active believers are under 30, and under five years in the faith.”

He suggests that one of the best ways is to bring Iranian church leaders out of the country to receive the Christian discipleship and ministry training they desperately need, and then send them back home to do the work.

However, it is prayer that Christians in Iran most seek from their Western brothers and sisters–prayers for boldness in the face of fear, for wisdom and for freedom.

* For her protection, Tarsa’s name has been changed. Some details from Pouya’s and Tarsa’s stories have also been left out, for the protection of family members and church associates remaining in Iran.