News

Religious Revival in Czechoslovakia

A religious revival in Czechoslovakia has brought about a government crackdown. Things started to boil last summer when more than 100,030 Czechs rallied in honor of St. Methodius, who helped to bring Christianity to the Slays. Just prior to last Christmas, police questioned 40 people, arrested five, and seized documents and typewriters.

Official figures released last year showed that 36 percent of Czechs over 15 years of age are believers.

Subsidized Mission Education, Anyone?

Saudi Arabia's new $4 billion King Saud University accommodates more than 15,000 students on its 3.5 square mile campus, built from scratch in less than 40 months. The 6.7 million square feet of academic buildings equal more than one and a half new York World Trade Center towers. There are 1,492 classrooms and labs, an 800 bed teaching hospital, and a medical college.

On the drawing board are plans for a women's university, because there is no mixing of sexes academically in Saudi Arabia. At their own college, women will be alt to take any course offered the men except engineering. Another women's college is planned for Dammm, an eastern coastal city, and an Islamic university is being built near Riyadh and another is planned in Medina.

All university students attend completely tuition free, are supplied with books at no charge, are provided meals and housing, and, in addition, receive living allowances. This is also tare to students from other Muslim countries and even for a small group of Americans enrolled to study Islamic culture.

Four Christians Released from Egyptian Prisons

Four Muslims who converted to Christianity have been set free from Cairo prisons where they had been held since January on charges stemming from their "crime" of converting from Islam to Christianity (see Mission Frontiers, July 1986, p. 16).

First to be released, in mid August, was Ibtisam Musrapha Mohammed Tawfik, mother of seven¬year old twins. Mohib and Eman. Tawlik's husband, Samir Abdul EarL a Cairo denlist, and her sisters, Eman and Nagwa Tawfik, were also released a few days later.

A growing outpouring of letters and petitions from concerned Christians around the world unquestionably was a factor in the release of the family, spokesmen for Ministry to Middle east Christians (MMC) said.

The Baby Brigade: An Italian Unreached People

In Naples, they call them the 'baby brigade." Most of them are 14 and under. But their business is anything but infantile. They kill for $l, intimidate shopkeepers for $75, and plant bombs for $50. Recruited by the infamous Neapolitan Carnorra, the kids are exempt from punishment under the Italian penal code. The State Statistics Institute reports that for every minor arrested in Naples, 91 others commit the same crime and are not arrested. The baby brigade gets larger every month, nurtured by the youngsters' almost morbid desires to become members of the feared Camorra

At best, when child criminals are caught they are tumed over to overworked probation officers, put up for adoption, or put in church run homes.

Human rights organizations and several governments were also involved in low key ways to see that these Christians were released.

White radical Muslim newspapers and extremists were calling for the executions of these prisoners, the Egyptian government, whose past human rights record has been commendable, was putting forth considerable effort in seeking a peaceful way out of this dilemma. Due to the extremists' fervor for the deaths of the converts, however, those who have been released are in a great deal of danger.

Further, as great a victory as their release has been, two Moroccans, Mr. Hassan Zerhouni and Mr. Abdul Haiti Haiji, and two Tunisians, Mr. palm Ben Nejma and Mr. Ali Hammami, still remain in prison. These four were arrested on April 24 after having spent several months in Egypt as students at a Campus Crusade for Christ leadership training school. They have been moved several times during their detention and, combined with the fact that Egyptian law slates that the government is not required to feed non Egyptian prisoners, this has spurred rumors concerning their fate,

The MMC spokesman said that "in the case of all the arrests, the Egyptian government has ignored its own 1982 ratification of Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. That agreement slates, 'Everyone shall have the right to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom ... to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observation, practice and teaching.'"

Readers are encouraged to write to the Egyptian Ambassador. Mr. HE. El Sayid Abdel Raouf El Reedy. (See sample letter on Letters page, p. 17)