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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| buL-buL |
| 01/13/05 at 18:54:41 |
| CAIRO, January 13 (IslamOnline.net) - Giving credence to fears that Christain missionaries are exploiting the tsunami distaster to proselytize poor and needy Muslims, The Washington Post reported Thursday, January 13, that a US missionary group plans to christianize 300 Muslim children from the Indonesian province of Aceh. While many religious charities have policies against proselytizing, Virginia-based WorldHelp is an exception raisning money among evangelical Christians by presenting the tsunami as a rare opportunity to make converts in hard-to-reach areas, said the American daily. “Normally, Banda Aceh is closed to foreigners and closed to the gospel,” the missionary group said in a fund appeal on its Web site, according to the Post. “But, because of this catastrophe, our partners there are earning the right to be heard and providing entrance for the gospel.” The Post stressed that the Web site was changed, and the appeal was removed after a reporter called to inquire about it. At least 156,000 people have been confirmed killed, thousands missing and millions displaced in several Asian countries in tidal waves triggered by a 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake - the world’s biggest in 40 years - which struck deep in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, lost 110,229 people to the killer sea surges. The Indonesian government estimated that 35,000 children have been made homeless, orphaned or separated from their parents in Aceh, where Muslims make up 98 percent of the population. Christianize In its fund-raising appeal, WorldHelp said it was working with Indonesian Christians who want to “plant Christian principles as early as possible” in the 300 Muslim children, all under 12. Rev. Vernon Brewer, president of WorldHelp in Forest, Va., said they raised about 70,000 dollars and were seeking an additional 350,000 dollars to build the Christian orphanage. John Budd, UNICEF Indonesia Communication Officer, said last week that UNICEF's Malaysian office had received an SMS advertising 300 orphans from Aceh aged between three and ten who could be bought. “It's chilling…What this indicates is that they have got children or they have a network where they can identify a child and take them,” he said. Also in reaction to the increasing missionary work, an anonymous electronic text message spread through Indonesia this week. “Please ask among friends who would like to adopt orphans from Aceh. 300 orphans coming soon. Need Muslim homes. Christian missionaries want them. Pls help!” it read. Immediately after the tidal waves devastated several countries, a number of Christian missionary groups rushed to the affected areas to offer not only relief aid, but more importantly spiritual counseling . Gospel for Asia, a group seeking to train and send 100,000 native missionaries into the most unreached areas of Asia, was working around the clock to bring food, clean water, medicines, clothing, shelter, and spiritual counseling “in the name of Jesus” to those who lost everything in the killer tidal waves. Backlash Acehnese children reach for pencils at a school in a makeshift refugee camp in Banda Aceh. (Reuters) Brewer, a Baptist minister, claimed that the Indonesian government gave permission for the orphans to be flown to Jakarta and was aware that they would be raised as Christians. Indonesian Vice President Yusuf Kalla announced last week a ban on adoption amid alarming reports about human traffickers spiriting children out of Aceh. He said the children would be placed in orphanages run by the government, Islamic foundations or Muslim boarding schools. The government also said that children under the age of 16 would not be allowed to leave Aceh without their parents. Rev. Arthur Keys, president of International Relief and Development in Arlington, Va., feared overt evangelizing could produce a backlash. “I think there's a danger that all international groups could be tarnished by this,” said Keys, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. “I think we have to go out of our way to assure people that we're there to help, period.” Indonesia asked all foreign troops to leave the country by March 26, a day after the army imposed sweeping restrictions on foreign aid workers in Aceh amid reports that some evangelical groups are mixing Christian missionary work with humanitarian aid. |
| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| Ember |
| 01/14/05 at 09:06:34 |
| [slm] This is their usual form. Not very surprising, is it. I am not sure if we should worry as much. Allah decides who is to be a believer and who is not, ultimately. No matter what people do only what Allah wills happens. I know that a lot of enemity arises between the two groups due to this. Since it is pretty unfair to influence the children since they know no better. Would we not do it, if we had a chance to convert 300 children??? When I heard of these conversions when I visited certain African countries, I was shocked and angry. Now I am not. Since some of the conversions in Africa and certain parts of India (through Mother Terresa) were of adults or young adults. They never reverted back, showing that they were not forced. Either they did not bother to look for Allah, they were pressured into staying in the religion that they were influenced into, or Allah just had not meant it to be. Which ever it is, finally as adults WE chose our religion by practicing it. |
| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| Ember |
| 01/14/05 at 10:22:47 |
| [slm] just an update on this story http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7535-2005Jan13.html |
| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| jannah |
| 01/14/05 at 10:27:52 |
| Can you post the gist of the story... I'm not registered with the Wash.Post... wlm, |
| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| Ember |
| 01/14/05 at 10:42:40 |
| [slm] Tsunami Orphans Won't Be Sent to Christian Home By Alan Cooperman Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 14, 2005; Page A01 The Virginia-based missionary group WorldHelp has dropped its plans to place 300 Muslim "tsunami orphans" in a Christian children's home, the group's president, the Rev. Vernon Brewer, told news agencies yesterday. The children were still in the Muslim province of Aceh and had not been airlifted to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, according to an e-mail under Brewer's name circulating yesterday among his supporters. In an interview Tuesday for an article published in yesterday's Washington Post, Brewer said that the children already had been airlifted to Jakarta and that the Indonesian government had given permission for them to be placed in a Christian children's home. Brewer did not return calls from The Post yesterday to his home, office and cell phone to address the discrepancy. In the e-mail, as well as in statements given to Reuters and Agence France-Presse, Brewer said WorldHelp had raised $70,000 to place 50 of the children in a Christian orphanage but had halted its efforts when it learned on Wednesday that the Indonesian government would not allow it. "Once we became aware that the government had refused to let these children be placed in a Christian home, we immediately stopped all fundraising efforts for the remaining 250 Indonesian orphaned children and appeals were removed from our website," the e-mail said. The group's plan to raise children from Muslim families in a Christian home struck a nerve in Indonesia, which had regulations in place even before the tsunami requiring orphans to be raised by people of their own religion. This rule was adopted in large part to ensure that Muslim children were not converted. In response to fears that Acehnese tsunami orphans would be trafficked, the Indonesian Department of Social Affairs adopted a further prohibition on people taking children out of the province. Officials said the only exemptions were for relatives. Despite these restrictions, radical Muslim activists in Indonesia have warned against the operations of some Christian relief groups, arguing that their ultimate motive is to convert the Acehnese away from Islam, which has long been a part of the province's cultural identity. Though most Indonesians do not share the radicals' extreme agenda, these concerns have resonated among many in the country, who remain suspicious of foreigners and particularly Westerners. In Brewer's e-mail yesterday, which was forwarded to The Post by a WorldHelp supporter, he said WorldHelp thought it had the Indonesian government's permission for its plans because of a report from the charity's Christian partners in Indonesia, Henry and Roy Lantang. On Jan. 3, he said, the Lantangs sent WorldHelp, based in Forest, Va., near Lynchburg, a message saying they had "just received news that approximately 300 children under the age of 12 who had become orphans are at the airport in Banda Aceh and Medan waiting to be transported to Jakarta." The Lantangs added that the "rescuers of these children" had issued an open invitation to "any organization or family willing to adopt or take care of" the children. "It was our understanding that this was done with the permission of the Indonesian government," Brewer's e-mail said. But because of "a huge backlash from the Islamic community in Aceh, the government of Indonesia is now refusing to allow the orphaned children to be placed in any non-Muslim homes," the e-mail said. Reuters and AFP quoted Brewer as saying WorldHelp learned of the Indonesian government's refusal Wednesday, the day the fundraising appeal was taken off the group's Web site, and the day before The Post's article was published about the group's plans. Before WorldHelp changed its Web site, it contained an appeal for funds that described the Aceh people as "strict Sunni Muslims" who "have been very instrumental in spreading Islam throughout Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia." Normally, it said, "Banda Aceh is closed to foreigners and closed to the gospel. But, because of this catastrophe, our partners there are earning the right to be heard and providing entrance for the gospel." The fundraising appeal went on to say that WorldHelp was working with Christian partners in Indonesia who want to "plant Christian principles as early as possible" in the 300 Muslim children. "These children are homeless, destitute, traumatized, orphaned, with nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. If we can place them in a Christian children's home, their faith in Christ could become the foothold to reach the Aceh people," it said. In the message yesterday, Brewer said he makes "no apologies for the fact that World Help is a Christian organization." He said the organization is seeking other orphaned children in need of a home and is making every effort to ensure that all funds raised for tsunami children are used as designated. "We're really not trying to proselytize," Brewer said in an interview with Reuters. "It's no different than what Mother Teresa did by taking Hindu orphan children and placing them in a Roman Catholic children's home in Calcutta, and she won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing that." Correspondent Alan Sipress contributed to this report from Jakarta. |
| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| jannah |
| 01/14/05 at 11:00:16 |
| [wlm] Alhamdulillah it didn't work in this one case, but no doubt there will be others that will continue. If you've read some of these missionary organization's websites you'd know there's no underhanded method they wouldn't take if it got them to their objectives. (I know many christians who deplore their methods as well.) I think this just underscores the need of Muslims doing more charity work for their own people and adopting orphaned children. Really doesn't our deen put a huge emphasis on charity and even our prophet was an orphan. |
| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| Ember |
| 01/14/05 at 14:21:18 |
| [slm] I agree. If we would adopt more we would not have to complain about such stuff. It is sad that we talk more about procreating when a couple gets married than this kind of thing. Unfortunately single people like me cannot adopt :( |
| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| Moe_D |
| 01/15/05 at 13:14:39 |
| Sat, January 15, 2005 Cleric warns relief groups Christians converting Muslims? By AP and CP AN ISLAMIC leader warned foreign relief workers yesterday of a serious backlash from Muslims if they bring Christian proselytizing to survivors of the tsunami along with humanitarian help. Masked health workers, meanwhile, sprayed insecticide to kill mosquitos and prevent malaria in Aceh's refugee camps, where poor sanitation and contaminated water pose a health risk to tens of thousands of survivors. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would name a special envoy next week to co-ordinate relief and reconstruction in the 11 countries hit by last month's earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 150,000 people, two-thirds in Indonesia. At prayers yesterday in the main mosque of Banda Aceh, a Muslim leader, warned against any attempt by Christian aid workers to evangelize. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. "All non-governmental organizations, either domestic or international, with hidden agendas coming here with humanitarian purposes but instead proselytizing, this is what we do not like," said Dien Syamsuddin, secretary-general of the Indonesian Council of Ulemas, or religious scholars. Later yesterday, teams with insecticide sprayers began working in refugee camps around Banda Aceh, where the tsunami and heavy rains have left pools of stagnant water that are perfect breeding grounds for mosquitos. "Short-term, we're trying to prevent an epidemic," said Richard Allan of the Mentor Initiative, a public health group that fights malaria epidemics. "And it may already be too late." Allan warned that 100,000 people could die of malaria in the Aceh region. Other major health risks in Aceh include dirty drinking water that could give people cholera, typhoid, dysentery and other waterborne diseases. In Sri Lanka, more than 25,000 people left relief camps over the preceding 24 hours to return to their villages and begin rebuilding, UN officials said yesterday. Just over half the 800,000 Sri Lankans left homeless by the tsunami remain in camps on the island, where the waves killed 31,000. Canada's 200-member Disaster Assistance Response Team is in the Ampara region of Sri Lanka, providing medical care, water-purification systems and engineering expertise for reconstruction. |
| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| mohawkbearclan56 |
| 01/15/05 at 23:13:07 |
| What can be done to put a stop to this before it gets out of hand? Taking advantage of a tragedy such as this to advance your cause is a crime in itself. Where are the Muslim organizations? Everyone reacts favorably to kindness. If these children are allowed to be taken, they will never return. mohawk |
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| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| freaksterrrrr |
| 01/16/05 at 07:54:26 |
| [slm] Indeed this a serious issue. We really hope this has been really stopped. But as for those who have fallen victim to these if missionaries, if any have, May Allah save them from the evil that is about to overtake them and guide them unto the right path. Amiin. Indeed he(Allah SWT) is the best of guiders and only he can guide. But I also think this should be achance for Muslim Orphan Org. to adopt these children. Indded as the hadith says that the prophet [saw] said that he who takes care of an orphan on the day ressurection will be like this (putting his two index fingers together). MayAllah help All of the children. Amiin. |
| Re: 300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized |
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| Bangachi |
| 01/18/05 at 19:24:38 |
| I hope this is not true, however in instances like this in asia...generaly local villagers are accustomed to living in a very multi religious region. The Red Crescent and muslim villagers will ensure that these children are not subjected to this sort of thing. After the incident millions of internationals offered to adopt the children but The relief agencies stressed the fact that this will only do more trauma to the children. They need to stay with what is left after everything they ever knew is gone. That means staying close to the language and faith of their parents. In Shalla the muslim relief agencies will watch over the orphans. |
| NS |
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