Christian Today report– The Islamic State has stated that its goal is to establish an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, but an interview with a former captive revealed that the group apparently does not care about religion.

French journalist Didier Francois told CNN‘s Christine Amanpour that discussions with his Islamic State captors were never religious in nature.

“There was never really discussion about texts or — it was not a religious discussion. It was a political discussion,” Francois stated in the interview. “It was more hammering what they were believing than teaching us about the Koran.”

Francois also said that he and his fellow captives were not even given copies of the Koran to study.

“We didn’t even have the Koran,” the former ISIS captive revealed. “They didn’t want even to give us a Koran.”

Francois concluded that the Islamic State’s beliefs have “nothing to do with the Koran.”

In addition to the discussions, Francois also told the CNN anchor that ISIS subjected them to beatings periodically.

“Of course we were beaten up. But it was not every day. I mean, it’s hard enough — you don’t have to overplay it,” Francois revealed. “The beating is strong, but it’s not every day. It happens sometimes.”

He also revealed that the British jihadists, whom the rest of the Islamic State’s fighters refer to as “The Beatles,” were “harsher in their violence” towards the captives. They provided the captives with better food than the other Islamic fighters, Francois said, but they also beat them harder.

Francois, together with Edouard Elias, Didier, Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres, were released in April 2014 after 10 months of captivity at the hands of the Islamic State. He and his colleagues were one of the few hostages that the ISIS ever released.

There was speculation that France paid a ransom for their release, but Francois denied that during the CNN interview. He called the rumours “utterly ridiculous.”

“We were lucky,” he said.

Source: Christian Today

Christian Today  report– The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s immolation of a Jordanian pilot on Tuesday triggered a wave of outrage among the top clerics in the Islamic world.

Leading the condemnation is the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, who expressed “deep anger over the lowly terrorist act” in a statement issued to Reuters on Wednesday.

Al-Tayeb further described the Islamic state as a “Satanic, terrorist” organisation and said that the Islamic State’s fighters should also be “killed, crucified or to have their limbs amputated” as punishment for burning the young Arab pilot, Lt. Mouath al-Kasaesbeh.

Other Muslim clerics around the world joined Ahmed al-Tayeb in condemning the immolation.

Youssef al-Qaradawi and the International Association of Muslim Scholars called the burning a “criminal act” and told Reuters that ISIS “does not represent Islam in any way and its actions always harm Islam.”

The Washington Post reported that Iyad Madani, who heads the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, described the burning of the pilot as an “affront to Islam.”

“[ISIS] utterly disregards the rights of prisoners Islam has decreed, as well as the human moral standards for war and treatment of prisoners,” Madani told the Washington Post’s correspondent.

Even other jihadists have spoken out against the burning. Reuters interviewed Abu Sayyaf, who said that the latest atrocity “weakens the popularity of Islamic State.” Sayaf said that filming the video and releasing it to the public has “turned society” against the Islamic State.

Sayaf, also known as Mohamed al-Shalabi, is a Jordanian salafist who served 10 years in prison for jihadist activity that included a bomb plot against the United States.

Hishan al-Hashimi, a top advisor in the Iraqi government, however, told the Washington Post that ISIS may have “gained more from this than it has lost” despite widespread condemnation of the burning. According to Al-Hashimi, the group managed to turned public attention away from its defeats in Kobani in Syria and in Diyala in Iraq when it released the video of the immolation.

Source: Christian Today

Christian Today report-A group of church women from Minnesota have undertaken an ambitious and unusual project to count every word spoken by women complete one of the biggest projects that involve the Holy Bible.

According to Star Tribune, the group led by Minnesota Reverend Lindsay Hardin Freeman documented and catalogued the words spoken by women in the Bible and kept track of each woman’s word count.

Freeman was joined in this endeavour by three women from the Trinity Episcopal Church in Excelsior: Susan Webster, Joyce White and Christy Stang.

Freeman, a former pastor at the church, said in an interview: “We were stunned nobody had done this before.”

Freeman said she had read other books on women in the Bible, but she had not encountered a book that looked specifically at the words that women in the Bible had said.

“We wanted to hold up their words, and bring them to life,” the priest said.

The team has worked on their research for three years and is gaining significant ground.

Among their findings are:

• The women with the most words spoken in a single book is Judith, who had a total of 2,689 words.
• Although the most important woman in the New Testament, the mother of Jesus Christ, Mother Mary, spoke 191 words.
• The first woman, Eve, had only 74 words attributed to her in the Book of Genesis.
• Women in the Bible spoke a total of 14,000 words out of the roughly 1.1 million words in he Bible.

In addition, Star Tribune reported, the team intended the book to be an in depth approach to describing the role that women played during Biblical times, including how they dealt with issues “such as poverty, faith, infertility, marriage, prayer, rape and war.”

“These are real people with real personalities,” Freeman described the women in the Bible.

The rest of the group’s findings have been published in a book titled “Bible Women: All Their Words and Why They Matter.”

As a second phase of the project, her team is currently developing a Jeopardy-based board game based on their findings.

Source: Christian Today

Christian Today report– Religious leaders have urged the government to include Humanism in the new religious studies GCSE.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Rowan Williams is among 28 faith leaders who signed a letter to Schools Minister Nick Gibb, calling on him to add Humanism to a list of faiths included in the proposals.

Under the current plan, students will have to study two major faiths out of Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. It is hoped that this will increase religious literacy among the younger generations. Critics, however, believe that pupils should have the option to study a non-religious or humanist worldview.

“As religious leaders we are writing to express our support for proposals to allow students to have the option for systematic study of Humanism…and for an annex setting out content on Humanism to be added alongside existing GCSE annexes on the principal world religions,” the letter reads.

“Such a change would not compel anyone to systematically study non-religious worldviews or make it possible to do so for the whole of a qualification, but it would allow young people to study a more representative sample of major worldviews that are common in Britain today.”

Signed by representatives including the Rt Rev Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok, a Professor of Judaism, and Raheed Salam of the Interfaith Youth Trust, the letter adds that including Humanism “would be fair, popular, and add rigour to the subject”.

“We see no reasonable or persuasive argument to oppose it,” it concludes.

The call has been welcomed by the British Humanist Society (BHA), which was asked by the Department of Education to produce the content of an annex on Humanism.

The group has branded the later decision not to include it “inexplicable”.

In a statement released today, Chief Executive of the BHA, Andrew Copson, commended the letter, saying it was “great to see religious leaders of good will” fight for the cause.

“A Government decision not to include the annex will make a joke of the idea that Religious Studies will be accessible to every child, undermines the contemporary relevance of the qualification, and reduces the meaningfulness and rigour of the subject,” he added.

“It is completely inexplicable to us why the Government would take this arbitrary and counter-educational decision in the face of public opinion and professional support.”

The BHA has previously argued that including Humanism in GCSE religious studies courses is vital because pupils must learn “that there are many who do not believe or practise a theistic or religious worldview”.

“Indeed if pupils did not learn this, it could be said they were victims of indoctrination,” the group has said. “It is vital that RE stays relevant to our population if it is to maintain its place within the curriculum.”

Dr Farid Panjwani, Director of the Centre for Research and Evaluation in Muslim Education at the Institute of Education, also offered his full support to the campaign.

“Such an inclusion would contribute to promoting intellectual autonomy among students by giving them opportunity to learn about a broader range of ways in which humans have grappled with existential questions,” he said.

Teaching of the new GCSE qualification will begin next year. According to the BBC, the Department of Education says it worked with “all the major faith groups” to plan the syllabus, and it will help students to form a more rounded view of beliefs in modern society.

A Department for Education spokeswoman said that students who wanted to study Humanism at GCSE level would have the option to do so.

“The proposed new GCSE requires students to have an understanding of the beliefs, teachings and practices of two religions but still allows them to spend up to 50 per cent of the course studying philosophy and ethics; which can include studying humanism and other non-religious beliefs,” she said.

Source: Christian Today