ISLAMIC LEADER WANTS TO LEGALISE POLYGAMY IN ITALY

People gather in front of Milan's Duomo cathedral during a gay rights demonstration prior to a vote to change laws on same-sex unions (AP)

The leader of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy has said there is “no reason” for polygamy not to be legalised after the Italian government passed a law to recognise the union of same-sex civil unions.

In a Facebook status, Hamza Piccardo wrote: “There’s no reason for Italy not to accept polygamous marriages of consenting persons.

“When it comes to civil rights here, then polygamy is a civil right. Muslims don’t agree with homosexual partnership and still they have to accept a system that allows it,” he added.

The Facebook status proved to be controversial among Italians, who are deeply divided on the issue of civil partnerships. The Italian government voted in favour of allowing civil unions between couples of the same gender, despite opposition from the Catholic Church. This gives the couples the same rights as married people under Italian law except they are not allowed to adopt children.

According to Crux, Piccardo shared a photo of the mayor of Milan celebrating the civil union between two men. Underneath it he wrote: “If it’s only a matter of civil rights, then polygamy is a civil right.”

Crux also reported that the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy has been criticised for having links with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group in Egypt. Some members, however, showed solidarity with Catholics by attending Mass after the murder of Fr Hamel by ISIS.

RELEASING GOD'S WORD: DO COPYRIGHTS HELP OR HURT BIBLE TRANSLATION?

In the late 1800s, a team of British and American translators updated the King James Version (KJV). The resulting Revised Version was originally copyrighted just in England, and within years, unauthorized translations with slight changes cropped up in the United States.

In 1901, that Bible—the Revised Version, Standard American Edition (now known as the American Standard Version)—was copyrighted and printed by Thomas Nelson & Sons. It was the first Bible translation to be copyrighted in the United States.

Now, it is also the version that Wycliffe Associates (WA) is using to “lock open” a copyright-free version of the Bible for global translation.

“The bulk of the church around the world cannot access the resources they need to legally translate for themselves,” explained Tim Jore, WA’s director of translation services. “Copyright law worldwide reserves the right of translation for the owner of the content. This means the global church is in a dilemma unless each one of them is given a custom contract from the owner of the Bible translation they want to use.”

In order for local churches in minority languages to translate from a major-language Bible, they have to first get permission from and perhaps pay the publisher that copyrighted the version they want to use. This spring, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association shut down an Australian website that was offering more than 50 free Bible translations.

“Copyright issues are one of the greatest remaining challenges we have,” said Greg Pruett, president of Pioneer Bible Translators (PBT). Many of the minority languages are related to nearby major languages, which leads to questions of whether minority translations are derivatives of someone else’s intellectual property.

“In a number of ways, copyright issues limit our ability to distribute remaining translations,” he said.

WA’s solution is called “open sourcing” or “open licensing.” WA translators have created an updated English version of the American Standard Version, whose copyright expired in 1957. The translators are collaborating with Christians worldwide to translate it into 50 gateway languages. These versions are free for anyone anywhere to use, as long as they attribute the original source, and as long as they release translations they make from it under the same license.

“It sounds like it’s new, but it’s actually the oldest, most established approach to Bible translation distribution through the history of the church,” Jore said. “What’s new is the concept of restricting access to the Bible using copyright. For the first 19 centuries of the Bible’s existence, restrictions were never applied to it.”

Blaine Smith, associate publisher of Bibles at Tyndale House Publishers, disagrees with Jore’s assessment. (Tyndale holds the copyright for the New Living Translation and the Living Bible.) Christians have been protecting the gospel since it was codified, he said. “The official translations of the Roman Catholic Church were protected by the imprimatur. The [KJV] was protected by the King of England himself.”

The headaches of open sourcing range from irritating to heresy, Smith said. The KJV, for example, is copyrighted only in England. In the United States, it has been updated hundreds of times under the same name, so one person’s KJV might not match another’s.

Worse, a small change can lead to a doctrinal divide, Smith said. After all, Luther’s reinterpretation of “do penance” as “repentance” helped to ignite a reformation. And the KJV translation used by Jehovah’s Witnesses mutes Jesus’ divinity.

Copyrighting the Bible isn’t about staking claim to the words God has written, said Carl Moeller, CEO of Biblica. Moeller’s group holds 85 copyrights for Bible translations around the world—including the New International Version. “It’s to ensure that the Word of God is transmitted faithfully over time and over distant lands.”

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Imagine if Coke was sold by dozens of different companies that used different labels and slightly different recipes, Smith said. Open sourcing is like that. “No one’s minding the store.”

WA sees it differently: it says everyone is minding the store.

Any time a technology is created that enables more people to publish, average quality initially drops, Jore said. When Guttenberg invented the printing press, the ease of printing meant large amounts of new content, much of it of poor quality. But eventually, the “cream rises to the top,” he said.

The worst-case scenario has already played out, he said. After Luther changed “do penance” to “repentance,” a Catholic scholar switched it back.

“Luther’s translation is still with us today,” Jore said. “The other translation was discarded centuries ago.”

To cling to copyright as a way to preserve biblical integrity is a red herring, he said. The real issue is identity. As long as readers know where a translation originates, they can judge whether it’s trustworthy.

But choosing a Bible isn’t like choosing between a Honda and a Toyota, Moeller said. “It shouldn’t be seen like, ‘Do I trust this publisher or this text?’ Those kinds of things are very dangerous. People don’t know who to trust. They look to the Word of God to be the authority. . . . I don’t feel comfortable exposing cultures to translations that one day will sort themselves out.”

Next to protection, the biggest reason for copyright is finances.

The Bible says that a worker should be paid his wages (1 Tim. 5:18), and Bible translation projects can take multiple years and cost millions. But those wages don’t have to come from sales or fees, Jore said. WA uses alternatives like donations or business partnerships to finance its translation work.

That model doesn’t work for everyone, Pruett said. Groups that rely on donations can afford to be less restrictive with their content, but those that rely on revenue have to be “more locked-down.”

“It’s not that they’re trying to enrich themselves with Scripture,” he said. “If they gave it away, they’d cease to exist, and there would be no more Scriptures developed and distributed in the languages they’re working in.”

Besides protection and revenue, copyrights give organizations ownership, which PBT uses to give away content. “You can’t give away what you don’t own,” Pruett said.

Tyndale uses copyright profits to support Bible translation work in languages that could never afford a translation from a commercial standpoint. “There is a tremendous amount of good that comes out of Bible revenues from ministry-minded publishing houses,” Smith said. “But we have to have a profit side to help fund our not-for-profit side.”

In the midst of the debate, others are feeling out a third way.

Creative Commons licensing allows a publisher to walk a middle ground, with three “switches you can throw whichever way you want,” Pruett said. Organizations or individuals can allow others to use their work, choosing one of three conditions: that any use is attributed, that it isn’t used for commercial gain, or that it isn’t used for a derivative project.

“Everybody is charting this course the best they know how,” he said. “It’s good that somebody is experimenting with each of these.”

-                   By  Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra

REFUGEE CRISIS: A BURDEN TOO BIG FOR HUMAN HEARTS

Some problems are just too big for human hearts to handle. We’ve been talking about the refugee crisis for years now, and as violence continues, it’s not getting any better.

But despite the exhaustion of country resources and especially emotions for the refugees and those bringing aid, many organizations continue to work faithfully.

Vision Beyond Borders (VBB) has been helping with humanitarian aid in countries hardest hit by an influx of refugee populations. This includes container shipments to Jordan and Northern Iraq. The containers provide basic supplies—clothing, blankets, hygiene supplies, medical supplies.

They are collecting for their next shipment and hope to continue to provide relief. We spoke with Dyann Romeijn of VBB for updates on the situation.

There are often a few snafus along the way when sending supplies to other countries. While Jordan is relatively easy to reach, Northern Iraq presents a few challenges.

First, the shipments must be sent through Turkey. Then, they have a lengthy process of validation.

“Because ISIS is also working in that area, it has to go through a lot of checkpoints and be checked at each of those areas to make sure it’s not going to help terrorists, but that it’s truly humanitarian assistance.”

Romeijn says this is expensive because of the nearby danger. And, because it becomes expensive, relief agencies are not sending as much aid into Northern Iraq as other countries.

The need

It’s obvious that refugees are in need of physical aid as many of them fled home with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. What’s not often considered is the pain they face from having to leave their home in the first place.

“It is a difficult situation. Many of them may never be able to return home, and they’re beginning to face that now. So there’s a lot of physical need, and just because of the sheer number, it’s been difficult for countries to assimilate the refugees into their countries,” Romeijn says.

However, with these physical and emotional needs, there are spiritual needs as well. Nominal Muslims want to hear about Jesus. In many cases, refugees are coming from countries where it’s not okay to talk about Jesus at all. So in these camps, they’re hearing the Gospel for the first time.

“It is a time when we as Christians need to step up. We need to be out there, we need to be showing the love of Christ and meeting the needs of these people, and it gives us the opportunity then to speak into their lives and to show them the truth of Jesus Christ.”

Vision Beyond Borders assists with Bible printing and distribution in these countries. This project and the containers require funding.

Another way you can help is by donating humanitarian goods. Some churches have organized hygiene pack drives; others have ordered bulk supplies sent directly to Vision Beyond Border.

Perhaps you don’t have the resources to help with either of the first two action points.

But, you can pray

“We need a lot of prayer support for the workers who are on the ground, for our contacts who are actually working there day in and day out with the refugees. They need prayer support. There are a lot of needs, and so it can become overwhelming and discouraging.”

As mentioned, this is an ongoing crisis that seems to have no end. It’s easy for all of us, those who see it firsthand and those who watch the headlines, to have compassion fatigue. Romeijn says this is why it’s crucial we remember who we are in Christ and be confident in Him.

“The burdens are too big for any person to carry, and it’s too big for anyone to solve. So, if we start looking at it from a human standpoint, it can be overwhelming.

“But yet, to understand who God is and His sovereignty and His power and that even in these most horrible things we can imagine, what we see is when people show the love of Jesus, when they show the compassion, it actually defeats and dispels the darkness.”

- BY JULIE BOURDON

TURKEY: SEARCH FOR HOPE IN STATE OF EMERGENCY AND CRACKDOWNS

Turkey is set to release 38,000 prisoners jailed before a failed July 15 coup attempt to make room for new detainees.

The government declared a three-month state of emergency on July 21 and began a sweeping crackdown, arresting more than 23,000 people.  The purge has also led to more than 81,000 people being dismissed or suspended from their jobs, including police officers, judges, teachers, soldiers and journalists.

During the state of emergency, Turkish lawmakers also granted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sweeping powers as a means of countering the ‘threat to Turkish democracy’.  Under the Turkish Constitution, the emergency measures allow the government to “partially or entirely” suspend “the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms,” so long as that doesn’t violate international law obligations.

However, as the government has taken steps toward Islamizing the country, imams were whipping the Sunni faithful into a frenzy of nationalism that led to attacks on churches.  Persecution watchdog groups like Open Doors USA and Voice of the Martyrs have noted that Turkey, which once boasted two million Christians, has barely 120,000.

For those remaining, the threat of the crackdown has a ‘chilling effect’– a situation where behavior is suppressed by fear of reprisal, often affecting free speech.

That’s where SAT-7TURK comes in.  Their platform is unique in a time of uncertainty.  SAT-7 USA’s Rex Rogers explains, “We are the only Christian channel broadcasting on Türksat National satellite. And now we’re on something called D-Smart, which is a digital kind of provider. We’re there and we’re able to speak truth to power without attacking current regimes. We don’t get political or partisan, but we do talk about human rights and all referencing who Christ is and what Christianity is about.”

“We’re still licensed. We’re still broadcasting, in the sovereignty of God.  He’s protecting us.  There are no direct threats at this point in Turkey, to our station, our channel,” says Rogers.

They’re speaking truth, talking about human rights and it’s a message that resounds with the audience. “We have the talent; we’re speaking directly to whatever given audience there is at this moment. They’re calling, they’re responding. All of those are positive indicators.”

Broadcasts serve a potentially huge audience of 4.5 million at a critical place and time.  On top of trying to settle Turkey down internally, there is the brutality of ISIS on its doorstep and the subsequent two million who have sought refuge in Turkey.

As each crisis bears down, Turks grow hungrier for the truth.  In fact, the response has been more than they had anticipated, which also means, “People are hungry. It means they’re curious. It means they may be (as we say over here) ‘seekers’.  They’re asking more about Christianity. They want to read a Bible. They get access to a Bible. So, absolutely, there’s openness.”

“There’s considerable concern and anxiety. They’re human beings.  They may be Christians who believe in a sovereign God, but they’re still human beings experiencing those emotions.  Worry for their children, for women, in particular, who are more vulnerable, so the anxieties are high.”

It is hope, in the face of fear, he says.  “We don’t like adversity. I would never pray for adversity for you or my children or me. None of us like it. But we also know God works in and through it. So He is clearly at work in this time of pressure there in the nation of Turkey.”

In response to the current situation in Turkey, a SAT-7 TÜRK spokesperson says in an earlier report, “The beauty and mysteriousness of God gives us hope and joy. There is a reason why SAT-7 TÜRK is here. There are no other channels on Türksat that speak of the hope we have. No one else talks about love and joy. Other channels show tension and violence, which spreads fear. We are the only alternative.”

What can we do, as believers living thousands of miles away?  We should  pray.  Just because they haven’t had any specific threats does not mean they’re invulnerable.  There were several hours when the channel was off air on July 15 because the Türksat broadcast center came under pressure from coup organizers.

Rogers asks “Prayer for the security and safety of, not only for our people, but also of churches, of Christian people, in general.  Particularly, if they’ve been converted from the background of another religion, they’re vulnerable to even their family members.”

Pray for those who are labeled and treated as traitors after embracing the Christian faith.

Pray for God to enable those whose lives are threatened to place all hope and trust in Him.

Pray for converts from a Muslim background (MBBs) to minister graciously to their families.

               - BY RUTH KRAMER

WHY ARE YOUNG GIRLS LIKE KADIZA SULTANA ATTRACTED TO THE ISIS PHENOMENON?

“What we must try to find out following the death of this ISIS bride”

It now seems a certainty that one of the three Bethnal Green schoolgirls who travelled to Syria via Turkey last year, in order to join ISIS, Kadiza Sultana, is dead.

Given the difficulty of securing hard news from Raqqa, we cannot know the exact circumstances of her death, but the story seems clear enough. Raqqa is, after all, a very dangerous place.

The details so far seem to indicate that Miss Sultana, despite her marriage to a jihadi warrior, did not find the Caliphate the paradise she had hoped for.

Whichever way one looks at this story, it is a tragic one. Some may feel some sense of schadenfreude at the thought of her fate, but this is to be resisted. Rather we should try to understand what this tells us about the ISIS phenomenon and the way that it attracts young people born and bred in the West.

First of all, it should be clear that a teenage girl from Bethnal Green can have little appreciation of what life is really like in Syria, a country where even in peace time, conditions were markedly different from London. Whatever romantic ideas Sultana and her friends might have had about the Middle East in general and Raqqa in particular would have been rapidly dissipated by the heat, dust, flies and inadequate sanitation, to say nothing of food shortages and shortages of other things they would have been brought up to regard as normal. A trip to Raqqa would have been a lesson in the way the other half lives.

Moreover, being married off to a jihadi warrior who was more or less a complete stranger could well have been more traumatic than romantic.

Again, living under the restrictions that ISIS places on all women, including its female adherents, would have been a shock to any East London girl. After all, Sultana and her friends were at an English school where they were free to do as other English girls. There would have been none of that in Raqqa.

Finally, while Sultana and her friends might well have thought they supported ISIS from a distance, the actual close up experience of the ISIS regime with its draconian punishments such as beheadings and crucifixions, might well have caused them to think twice.

If Sultana had managed to return to London, the Guardian tells us: “In March last year, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said the teenagers could return home without fear of being prosecuted for terrorism, as long as no evidence emerged of them being engaged in violence.”

One wonders why the Commissioner made this statement. The “engaged in violence” caveat seems pretty meaningless. Anyone who supports ISIS is engaged in violence, as ISIS is an intrinsically violent organisation: to make common cause with them is to make common cause with murder, which is surely criminal.

Should returnees from Syria be prosecuted? Yes, they should, as should anyone who encourages people to go to Syria in the first place. Sorry as one must feel for Miss Sultana, the truth remains that duped as she was, she was also responsible for her actions and should have known better. But the greater fault must belong to those who persuaded her to go to Syria.

The Commissioner’s words seem to indicate that one can go to Syria to join ISIS without incurring blame. To believe that would be to indulge in a misleading moral fantasy.

By Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith

CHRISTIANS IN INDONESIA STAND STRONG DESPITE VIOLENT THREATS

Despite facing threats of violence in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, a group of Christians in Indonesia is standing strong.

According to Bruce Allen of Forgotten Missionaries International, a group of believers, led by FMI-supported church planter Pastor Yudianto, was holding a meeting when about 20 radical Muslims interrupted.

The Muslims told the Christians to disperse and never meet again, threatening them with machetes and taking their pictures for future intimidation. Later, when the police arrived, Allen says boxes of weapons were found outside for quick access.

Pastors like Yudianto persevere under difficult conditions.

“Pastor Yudianto stayed a while longer with the family who had hosted the church meeting,” Allen says. “They just shared their heart with him, wondering, ‘How do we go on from here? We’re nervous, we’re scared, but what do we do next? We still want to be discipled by you.'”

Yudianto has a fairly well-established ministry site in Central Java, and has recently been pioneering evangelism in this second village where the attack occurred. Yudianto individually disciples about 15 believers in this village, and had gathered them together in one of their homes to discuss the idea of beginning a formal church when the attackers broke in. Despite the possibility of being killed, Yudianto plans on returning to the village later this month to continue his ministry.

“He’ll hold a meeting with all those Christians again, several different families and parts of families represented in that new congregation, and really encourage them, saying, ‘This is what we face as Christians in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim dominant country,'” Allen shares.

“Even though Christians enjoy protection constitutionally, on a local level, practically, they may not enjoy that because of radical elements that like to go from village to village and hunt down Christians.”

It’s hard for them to know who to trust. This past summer, Yudianto told Allen that in the village of his primary ministry site, there is a police officer affiliated with a radical extremist mosque, which stirred doubts in the Christians about their safety.

“So if the Christians need the protection of the police, if there is an attack, or churches are burned or bombed, or a Christian is physically harmed or threatened, sometimes they wonder, ‘Will the police really come to my aid?'”

That’s where FMI comes in. Allen says Yudianto will need to get creative to continue having an effective ministry, so the team is working to give him the training he needs to succeed.

 The congregation meeting at this site continues to gather for weekly worship as the walls of their church building grow up around them. (Photo and caption courtesy of FMI)

 “FMI’s leadership is helping him think through those types of issues, and in fact, even during my visit to Indonesia this summer, part of our ongoing training conference was talking about how our identity in Christ makes us more than conquerors,” Allen says.

“That whole concept is still what Paul says. We are like sheep led to the slaughter, but even in the middle of all these hardships and difficult circumstances, we can remain more than conquerors. We do not have to let these difficulties — tribulations, famine, persecution, things like that — they don’t have to defeat us. We can have victory even in the middle of them.”

BY REAGAN HOEZEE

SCIENTISTS CONFIRM THAT THERE IS LIFE AFTER DEATH

Life after death:  Scientists say they have found proof that people are still alive even after they have been declared clinically dead.  The research studied over 2,000 people and around 40% of them confirmed that even after they were already ‘dead’, they were aware of all that was happening around them.

The research was carried out at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.

After years of massive studies, scientists have finally confirmed in a ground-breaking research that there is indeed, life after death. According to report in Daily Star UK, scientists at the University of Southampton found that consciousness continues even once someone dies. The scientists reached this conclusion after studying more than 2,000 people. They say that thoughts remain after the heart stops.

Daily Star reports that the extraordinary research also uncovered the most convincing evidence of an out-of-body experience for a patient declared dead. It wrote: “Of 2,060 patients from Austria, the US and the UK interviewed for the study, who had survived cardiac arrest, almost 40 per cent said that they recall some form of awareness after being pronounced clinically dead. Of all those who said they had experienced some awareness, just two per cent said their experience was consistent with the feeling of an outer body experience – where one feels completely aware and can hear and see what’s going on around them after death. “Almost half of the respondents said the experience was not of awareness, but rather of fear. But the most significant finding of the study is that of a 57-year old man who is perhaps the first confirmed outer body experience in a patient. “The man was able to recall with eerie accuracy what was going on around him after he had “died” temporarily,” Daily Star wrote.

In the past, it was believed that the brain stopped all activity 30 seconds after the heart stops pumping blood about the body and with that, awareness ceases too.

But lead researcher, Dr Sam Parnia says, things are now seen differently as the new study now shows people still experience awareness for up to three minutes after they had been pronounced dead. “Contrary to perception, death is not a specific moment but a potentially reversible process that occurs after any severe illness or accident causes the heart, lungs and brain to cease functioning.

If attempts are made to reverse this process, it is referred to as ‘cardiac arrest’; however, if these attempts do not succeed it is called ‘death’,” he said.

By Ibizugbe Osahon