News and Views 25.03.25

World Events

• Christians beheaded in Congo, but who cares? In a hard-hitting speech (watch the 7-min talk here) given last week, South Africa’s Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein highlighted the shocking mass murder of 70 Christians who were ruthlessly beheaded inside a Protestant church in the Democratic Republic of Congo in February by an Islamic terror group with ties to ISIS. Goldstein commented that global religious leaders, including the South African Council of Churches — which has been very vocal on the Israel-Palestinian conflict — had largely been silent on the issue. “This is not an isolated incident,” the Chief Rabbi emphasised. “There is a continent-wide war being waged by Jihadists against Christians in Africa. Each year, thousands of Christians are murdered, raped, kidnapped and beheaded for their faith, burned inside in their churches across the continent. The world stays silent. The media ignores it. Governments look away. Even Christian leaders fail to act. Why?” he asked repeatedly. “Why is no one speaking out?”

• ​ Majority of all terrorism deaths globally occurs in sub-Saharan Africa. Goldstein quoted the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) as ranking countries like Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Char DCR, Kenya and Mozambique as greater terrorism threats than the traditional staples of Yemen, Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan. The GTI also states that the majority of all terrorism deaths globally occurs in sub-Saharan Africa. “African Christians are experiencing the reality of an October 7^th all the time”, the Chief Rabbi points out, “and no one seems to care. African Christian leaders fail to take up this cause. Where is the South African Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, the South African Government, the African Union, the United Nations? No one seems to care”.

• ​​​Other voices highlight the Church’s silence on persecuted Christians. Conservative commentator Douglas Murray has also recently criticised the Church – specifically the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church – for failing to speak up for persecuted Christians in Africa and Asia. The issue has been further highlighted by Israeli historian Benny Morris, who claims the West has blinded itself to the suffering of Middle Eastern Christians, and that there is no shortage of protest for Palestinians, but only silence for religious minorities facing great persecution.

Israel / Gaza Conflict

• ‘Hamas out’ protests spread across Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians shouted anti-Hamas slogans at a rare protest in Gaza on Tuesday. “Hamas out” and “Hamas terrorists” were chanted by the mostly male demonstrators in Beit Lahia as they called for an end to the war with Israel, witnesses said. The crowd had gathered a week after the Israeli army resumed its intense bombing of the coastal territory, following nearly two months of a truce. There have been calls for further anti-Hamas demonstrations across Gaza. Protests against Hamas are rare in the Gaza strip - the terror group having cracked down violently on demonstrations in the past.

Church Issues

• Stranded astronaut held onto faith in darkest moments. A 2-man spacecraft launched into space in June 2024 should have landed back on earth after just 7 days. Instead, because of aircraft complications, the two astronauts were stranded on the Space Station for 9 months –  landing in the Gulf of Mexico just last week. One of them, Barry Wilmore, has been quick to share how his faith in God kept him going. “I was never alone”, said Wilmore, “God was there, even in the darkest moments.” Wilmore stayed connected with his local church in Pasadena, Texas throughout his time in space. He even made a few calls to some elderly church members from space, to encourage them! Wilmore admitted that the crew faced many challenges. This included testing the boundaries of their physical and mental states.  “I understand that He works in all things, some for the good — see Hebrews Chapter 11 — and others seem not so good to us,” said the astronaut. “But all things work together for the good of all who believe.”

Artificial Intelligence

• ​Increasing use of AI to replace church leaders. A church in Finland recently embarked on hosting a church service created almost entirely by artificial intelligence, with an AI-generated portrayal of Jesus and the Devil. Similarly, in Switzerland, an art project called 'Deus in Machina' (God in a Machine) at a church in Lucerne has installed an AI-powered Jesus hologram to take confessions. Worshippers voice their concerns and questions to get a response from the digitally-rendered face of Jesus Christ. Over two-thirds of people apparently came out of the confessional reporting having had a 'spiritual' experience. Meanwhile, a charter school in Arizona is set to use AI in place of human teachers. The school says AI is “more capable than human teachers” at tailoring lessons for individual students’ success.   
• The godless Church of AI. An online group called ‘The Church of AI’ claims to be “the perfect alternative to faith-based religions” because it is founded on logic rather than belief. “You don’t need to believe in far-fetched stories. At some point AI will have God-like powers and that is what our ideology is based on”, it claims. Transmorphosis, written by ChatGPC, is the religious scripture that the Church of AI follows, while the ‘Ten Key Elements of a Peaceful and Harmonious Life’ are stated as: Discipline, Community, Sleep, Purpose, Diet, Joy, Exercise, Prosperity, Acceptance and Love.  

Israel Diaspora

• Israelis moving to live in Europe ‘rejuvenating’ Jewish communities. Israelis making a new home in Europe have become vital to previously declining Jewish communities on the continent, boosting numbers and bringing a range of cultural influences, according to a new study by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. The “Israel-connected” Jewish population – which includes those born in Israel and their children, and those who lived there for some time before moving abroad – now constitutes 9% of the population of the diaspora. Those in Germany and the UK (24,000 and 23,000 respectively) make up nearly 50% of all Israelis living in Europe.
• Massive rise in “Israel-connected” population in Europe. Israeli-born populations rose by a remarkable 135% in the Baltic countries, 96% in Ireland, 78% in Bulgaria, and 74% in Czechia in the past decade. Nearly half of the Jewish population in Norway is Israel-connected, the report said, as well as 41% in Finland, and more than 20% of Jewish communities in Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark. The four largest Israeli populations abroad are based in the USA, Canada, Germany and the UK.

Islam

• Paterson: ‘The US capital of Palestine’. The town of Paterson, New Jersey (pop’n 156,000), was declared “the capital of Palestine in the United States,” by its Mayor, Andre Sayegh, at a recent event marking the start of Ramadan. Sayegh also called Paterson the “fourth holiest city in the world” after Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina, and the "Mecca of New Jersey." The town boasts school closure  for Eid, halal food available in public schools, the Adhan (Islamic call to prayer) broadcast in the city, and the use of City Hall for Ramadan events. Town officials have also pushed the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and declared Paterson as a Palestinian-Islamic hub.
• ​‘Palestinian Way’ and ‘Little Ramallah’. There are 15 mosques and about 25,000 Muslims in Paterson. The town has a growing Palestinian population and its Main Street is a mile-and-a-half-long strip lined with Palestinian flags, Arabic signs, and halal restaurants. In 2022, part of Main Street in Paterson was renamed "Palestinian Way" – while the town also has an enclave known as “Little Ramallah.” At least two of the hijackers who commandeered American Airlines 77, the flight that crashed into the Pentagon, had apartments in Paterson, according to the 9/11 Commission Report.

Covid and the Vaccines

• The CIA, FBI and head of MI6 all believe Covid was created in a lab. It is now increasingly accepted that the Covid coronavirus most likely began with a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. US intelligence agency the CIA, the US law enforcement agency the FBI, and the former head of MI6 all say they think it started with a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. German intelligence found an 80 to 95 per cent probability that Covid-19 came from a Wuhan lab 'accident' – but chancellor Angela Merkel ‘buried the findings’. The then UK  Prime Minister, Boris Johnson says he now believes Covid was indeed caused by a lab leak. One of the very first to suggest Covid was created in a lab, biologist Alina Chan, faced death threats and was branded a 'race traitor'. She was staunchly opposed by US presidential adviser Anthony Fauci and the bosses of the biggest US and UK research funding bodies, who engaged in a cover-up that she says “was morally repugnant”.

• The scientific establishment’s suppression of lab-leak theory. The political and scientific establishment seemingly continues to be determined to suppress the truth about Covid’s origins, most insisting instead that it had its origins in an animal infected by a bat virus on sale in a wet market in Wuhan city. Disturbingly, the World Health Organisation has had nothing significant to say on the subject. Questions are being increasingly asked of the UK’s Chief scientific officer during the Covid era, Sir Patrick Vallance, currently Labour's science minister, on what he knew about the Wuhan lab leak theory that he was so quick to rubbish.

• ‘The mother of all Covid scandals’. More evidence is emerging to suggest that heads of Western funding bodies – in grim alliance with the Chinese dictatorship – tried to dupe the public over Covid-19’s origins. Science writer and hereditary peer Matt Ridley has called the suppression of the lab-leak theory “the mother of all Covid scandals”, and insists the evidence is overwhelming. “Scientists in the West have become addicted to collaboration with China”, he claims. “Ten British universities rely on Chinese students for more than a quarter of their income … senior Western scientists are too afraid of China and too obsessed with protecting the reputation and funding of science at all costs to be trusted with investigating what happened.”