RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3041104/heads-influential-am

Tara Joseph, president of the American Chamber of Commerce, and group’s chairman Robert Grieves held at border for two hours, on their way to an annual ball
Refusal comes after chamber’s opposition to doomed extradition bill, and tension over US legislation on Hong Kong affairs

The heads of an influential American business group in Hong Kong were denied entry to Macau and detained for several hours on Saturday, before being sent back with no reason given.

According to a statement issued on Saturday night by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong (AmCham), its chairman Robert Grieves and president Tara Joseph were separately prevented from entering the former Portuguese colony as they travelled to the annual AmCham Macau Ball.

“Both Robert and Tara were given no reason for why they were delayed,” the statement read. “After several hours, and after having to sign a statement that they voluntarily agreed not to pursue entry into Macau, they both returned to Hong Kong without any difficulty.

“We are puzzled as to why this happened, given this was simply a social occasion to celebrate AmCham Macau’s annual gathering.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15047/fate-of-christians

• Why should it be anti-Muslim or “Islamophobic” to write about the effects of jihad or the conservative Muslim treatment of unbelievers? The facts are well established within international bodies, NGOs, national commissions, and verifiable journalistic reports. Reformist Muslims themselves are highly critical of the discriminatory laws and behaviours in countries from which they or their forebearers originated.
• Indeed, it is precisely Muslims of a reformist and liberal bent who are most vocal about radical restrictions on the values that other Muslims claim are universal.
• Let us be clear. No doubt, there will probably always be people, call them the real “Islamophobes”, who will use problems within Muslim states or communities to try to tar Islam or Muslims as a whole. But these and other issues still need to be faced as authentic human rights concerns.
• A particularly widespread problem for Christians in Muslim countries is the ban on Christian proselytization…. While Christian and secular countries rightly permit Muslims to preach, convert, and instruct non-Muslims, 25 Muslim states forbid proselytization and have laws saying that Muslims who convert to another faith may be put to death as apostates.
• Liberalized versions of Islam have in the past few decades been suppressed by fundamentalist takeovers of entire societies. It is therefore hard to believe that countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey will return quickly to the moderation they had developed in the previous century. If there is hope for good relations between non-Muslims and Muslims, it must rest, as has already begun, with the Muslims in liberal democracies…. The British organization Muslims Against Antisemitism, is a shining example; in America, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy is another. They should be treasured and helped.
A recognition of the religious freedoms offered by secular non-coercive states should be of particular importance to Muslims worldwide. It is a serious criticism of Islamic practice both historically and in the modern era that many Muslim countries seem to remain deeply intolerant towards the followers of other religions or the followers of differing branches of their own religion; toward people they regard as having left Islam, or even whom they perceive as having “offended” its followers, whether inadvertently or not. Persecution of religious minorities, and other Muslims seems common in many Muslim countries — from the highly restrictive Saudi Arabia to the more liberal Indonesia, and especially in countries where the religion is closely allied to the state.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15255/egypt-churches-fires

Preliminary reports from Egyptian authorities said that all three fires appeared to be accidents related to electrical or circuit failures, not arson…. General opinion among Christians, however, is that the fires were “not a coincidence.”

“The fire started from the wooden ceiling of the adjacent hall.” Video footage, he added, indicated that something from the market behind the church was hurled onto its roof. — Fr. Samuel, St. George Church in Mansoura, World Watch Monitor, November 11, 2019.

“Terrorists change their operations, from bombings to burning.” — Fr. Ephraim Youssef, a priest at St. George Church in Mansoura, World Watch Monitor, November 11, 2019.

Recently, over the course of two weeks, three Christian churches were torched in Egypt.

First, on Sunday, October 13, “a massive fire swept through a major Coptic church in a Cairo suburb causing heavy damage, but no casualties.” Online images and video of the St. George Church in Helwan — considered “one of the greatest and oldest churches belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church” — confirm that , to quote Bishop Bishara, it “had been completely destroyed.”

“I immediately rushed to the church and found it on fire with heavy smoke filling the place,” said Fr. Andrew, who personally served at the church for three decades.

“The old wooden building burned down very fast and the fire destroyed everything inside, even before the firefighters arrived…. Our loss is great. We have lost a great historical building and we can’t rebuild anything like it.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15254/iran-mullahs-losing

After initial hesitations the elite regained its unity by responding in the best way it knows, not to say the only way it knows: a brutal crackdown that claimed hundreds of lives and over 10,000 arrests.

Translated into simple terms, Khamenei is calling on the “prosperous 30 percent” not to take their current well-being for granted and to help the regime crush the mass of the poor who wish to upset the apple cart.

The danger to [the Shah’s] regime came from urban middle classes that in any society do not remain content with economic prosperity and social freedoms for long; they always end up demanding political rights commensurate with their economic and social status.

[I]f he [Khamenei] manages to crush the 70 percent, thus removing their threat, he would face the 30 percent’s increasing demands for social and political freedoms no clerical regime can grant. And, if he fails, the 30 percent in question will look for someone else who can do for them what the Khomeinist regime cannot. In either case, the “Supreme Guide” is playing a losing game.When popular protests erupted in Iran’s top 100 cities, including the capital Tehran, last month, it soon became clear that the ruling elites were at pains to decide what was really going on.

The faction led by “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei started by dismissing the uprising as a déjà vu version of the protests that have punctuated Iran’s history since the 1979 revolution. The daily Kayhan, reputed to reflect Khamenei’s views, dismissed the uprising as “sporadic disturbances fomented by a handful of hooligans.” Khamenei himself saw it as “a bump on the road” to the “Great New Islamic Civilization” he says he is building.

The official media dismissed what it claimed was “a blind riot with no leadership.”