The Chairman’s Report for February 26, 2021

In this issue of the newsletter
New: Post Card Campaign to Joe Biden successful. Thousands mailed so far!
New: Everyone receiving newsletter will receive a post card to mail to Biden.
Update: Diapers for Refugees programs in Iraq, Jordan and the Holy Land
New: Food program in Bethlehem helps Christian families in extreme poverty

Demanding that Biden continue Trump policy on Nigeria

Biden allows travel from Nigeria: President Donald Trump had stopped Nigerians from freely travelling to the United States because of increased Sunni Muslim terrorist activities there. Immigration from Nigeria was also banned by the Trump Administration.

Joe Biden, in his first week in office, issued an executive order to undo what he called the “Muslim travel ban.” Biden has ordered that the travel ban be lifted from Muslim nations that have active cells of Sunni Muslim terrorists including Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

It will now be exceedingly difficult to protect our nation from Muslim terrorists.

President Trump’s State Department had also added Nigeria to a list of “Countries of Particular Concern” in December of 2020 due to severe violations of religious minorities pursuant to the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA).

The travel ban proclaimed by President Trump, and his adding Nigeria to the “Countries of Particular Concern” list of nations that violate religious freedom, were steps toward confronting the Sunni Muslim president of Nigeria. President Buhari allows the attacks on Christians and actively suppresses the Shia Muslim minority (who are less violent than the Sunni Muslims) and much harsher action is needed from the U.S.

On January 15th – FIVE DAYS BEFORE BIDEN WAS SWORN IN – I mailed 65,000 letters to social conservatives, asking them to mail post cards to Joe Biden demanding action against Nigeria’s Muslim president to force him to stop the killings of Christians.

I also mailed every supporter of the Religious Freedom Coalition a survey asking what programs they supported for 2021. The vast majority of responses so far are in favor of continuing the post card program to pressure Joe Biden to take action on Nigeria.

My plan is to mail hundreds of thousands of letters with cards like the one shown duringI want to give social conservatives who believe in religious freedom and in protecting the lives of persecuted Christians the opportunity to tell Joe Biden to do something even if his farleft internationalist friends advise him otherwise.

Not all the supporters of the Religious Freedom Coalition have received personalized copies of the post card to send to Joe Biden.

Every supporter of the Religious Freedom Coalition and all those who receive my newsletters should receive their personalized post cards to send to Joe Biden by the end of March.

Your name, city, state and zip code will be on the card to be sent to Biden. You will only have to sign it, put a stamp on it, and mail it directly to the White House.

If you do not currently receive mail from the Religious Freedom Coalition but wish to participate in the post card campaign, you can sign up here.

More Legislative Work Despite Lockdown

Joint letter to Joe Biden: As president of the Religious Freedom Coalition, I was one of 110 signers of a joint letter to Joe Biden asking him to “affirm and strengthen the government structure created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998” and to appoint a new Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom after the departure of Sam Brownback.

Leftwing leaders for some reason have a problem with the concept of freedom of religion, often confusing it with freedom of worship. In the mind of a liberal, religious belief must be hung up on a hook on the way out of the church door on Sunday morning … unless, of course … you are a Muslim who promotes the killing of Jews and tossing gays off tall buildings.

In a liberal’s mind the Christian concept that all men are created equal in the eyes of God is racist — and true Christianity promotes hatred. The hard-core liberals believe that different racial, religious, and ethnic groups should be treated differently and allowed different sets of “rights.” It is hard to grasp the mental illness needed to come up with that kind of logic.

Regardless … The dozens of organizations on Capitol Hill that promote international religious freedom drafted the three-page letter to Joe Biden, giving him the reasons it is in the best interests of the United States and the peoples of the world that he continue the policy outlined in the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) and the Frank R. Wolf IRFA of 2016.

The language is strong, and the letter can be viewed at our Internet site. Other organizations signing the letter included 21 Wilberforce, Faith & Liberty, International Christian Concern and Jubilee Campaign.

We must work hard to keep those inside Joe Biden’s administration on some kind of path to assisting those persecuted for their religious beliefs.

Other Capitol Hill activity: On average the Religious Freedom Coalition is represented by Zoom in ten or more meetings per month having to do with some aspect of international religious freedom. Some of those meetings concern only one individual, for example the case of Tabitha Nazir Gill, a well-known Christian evangelical singer who works as a nurse at Sobhraj Maternity Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.

On January 28, Tabitha was reported to the authorities by her co-workers at the hospital who accused her of “blasphemy”. She was beaten and tortured by the Muslim hospital staff and visitors until police officers arrived and took her into custody.

The police did not charge those who beat and tortured Tabitha but instead charged her under article 295 C of the Pakistani Penal Code for “having used derogatory comments pronounced or written, directly or indirectly, which offend the name of Muhammad or of the other prophets”.

This is one of the articles of the infamous blasphemy law that has been used to sentence Christians to death. Often Christians are held in jail for many years with not so much as a trial. I wrote many times about Asia Bibi who was starved and tortured in a Pakistani prison for more than ten years before she was released due to external pressure from the European Union and the United States.

These blasphemy laws, which contradict international law, have imprisoned 238 Christians and 31 Hindus I know of, under various clauses. There are probably more victims.

The United States gave Pakistan an overage of $2 billion a year in military aid, and about 800 million in civilian aid, until President Donald Trump cut most of the military aid in 2019. Pakistan is still handed almost $1 billion a year for “humanitarian aid” which is s joke because nothing that happens in Pakistan is humanitarian.

I continue to work with other groups in Washington, DC to expose the brutality of Sunni Islam on a government level not only in Pakistan and Nigeria, but in Saudi Arabia and other areas as well.

Missions

Diapers for Refugees: The Covid-19 situation and continued lockdowns in the Middle East have stalled much of our Diapers for Refugees efforts, particularly in Iraq. Lockdowns are a real problem for many ministries operating in Middle East nations. Because medical care is so limited in some, the only solution the governments can seem to come up with is lockdowns.

A reality check: California had nearly total lockdowns with even public parks and beaches closed. Florida had virtually no lockdowns. The result? The numbers of infections per 100,000 residents were almost exactly the same in both California and Florida.

Charts of month infection rates shows the two states as almost identical although Florida had fewer cases of Covid-19 and fewer hospitalizations per one million residents than California overall. The lockdowns did little to help, and many people were infected in their homes by someone that had to work.

It isn’t getting better in the Middle East because many of those nations cannot afford to buy any Covid-19 vaccines. They do lockdowns instead making economic measures worse.

Because of the lockdowns our Diapers for Refugees program came to a halt except inside some churches. In the Iraqi city of Dohuc we have one church distributing infant diapers, and the Assyrian Aid Society distributing both infant diapers and adult diapers to the neediest Christians.

Our diaper and food programs in the areas of the Holy Land controlled by the Palestinian Authority continue, but again the number of cases there continues to climb.

Although Israel had inoculated over half its population by mid-February, only 5,000 doses of vaccine had made their way to the West Bank where 2.9 million Palestinians live. None of the 5,000 vaccine shots were given to Christians in the West Bank. (Note: Our worker there, and his entire family have already suffered from Covid-19. )

The Christian population of the West Bank has dropped under Palestinian Authority control and is now about 50,000, far too few to maintain a self-sustaining population.

We have a food program for those Christian families most in need in Bethlehem and in the Christian town of Beit Sahour. Each month our worker and volunteers deliver packages of food to impoverished Christian families.

Lists of families in great need are obtained from churches and each has a story.

One of the families consists of a widow who has 5 children. Her husband died 10 years ago at the age of 35 due to cancer. She was left all alone to raise and provide for her 5 children.

Another family we help consists of a widow named Nadia, 71 years old, living with her 2 sons. Her eldest son is 50 years old and is unable to work due to being almost completely blind. He can only see within a yard and with a blurry vision. The other son has been handicapped most of his life and unable to move his body on his own at all.

Nadia is now unable to work due to her age and physical health and is constantly in need of support as there isn’t any source of income for the family. When we knocked on her door and provided her with the food packages and told her that we will see her in a month, she was both confused and happy, with tears in her eyes that she was holding back in front of us.

There is no help for Christian families such as these from the Palestinian Authority. In the next newsletter I will share more stories of these families with you.

Orphanage in Nigeria: The farm was a great success this year and I will share details in the next newsletter. Please pray for the children as there have been deadly attacks nearby.

William J. Murray, President