Death row Christian Aasia Bibi will be allowed to leave Pakistan, after the country's top court upheld her acquittal on blasphemy charges. Ms Bibi, who spent eight years on death row, will now be free to join her daughters who fled to Canada and were granted asylum there. The 54-year-old was acquitted in October (eight years after she was convicted for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a dispute with her neighbours); but she has remained under guard at a secret place since her acquittal. Prime Minister Imran Khan's government has attempted to quell anger over her exoneration by radical Islamists, who staged nationwide protests and almost brought the capital Islamabad to a standstill. More than 3,000 members of the radical Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) group were arrested on charges of terrorism after the protest, with its leader and high profile members still in prison.

A London church, run by Steve Chalke, is launching an appeal to help the homeless by providing them with Oyster travel cards to offer them some respite from the cold as temperatures worsen. He said, ‘With the cold coming in, some of them will freeze to death. In fact, I know of one man who has frozen to death on the street near here since Christmas.’ The church are encouraging people to donate £20. The first £10 will go directly toward purchasing an Oyster card with adequate credit for rides on public transport and the second to help the longer-term response to homelessness. Chalke explained, ‘They can ride on the night bus, they can sit in the warm, they can get out of the bitter cold. We are also keeping endless cases out of our A&E departments in the already stretched and strained NHS system’. The cards allow people to travel widely on London's public transport.

Theresa May was handed a two-week deadline to resuscitate her Brexit deal last night and pledged to go back to Brussels to demand changes to the Irish backstop, with only 59 days to go until exit day. But within minutes of the Commons result, the European council president, Donald Tusk, announced that the EU was not prepared to reopen the deal. Steve Baker, the deputy chair of the backbench European Research Group, announced that its members could still reject any renegotiated deal she brought back. ‘A vote for the Brady amendment is a vote to see if the PM can land a deal that will work. If not then we are not committed,’ he said. Pray for the swirl of media comments around Brexit to be free from conjectures and distressing summaries.

In the past two months fifteen UK churches have been sent anonymous threatening letters telling them to stop services or be attacked. The letters were handwritten, threatening petrol bomb attacks and mass stabbings. ‘Stop all your services straight away’, said one letter sent to a Sheffield church. ‘If you don’t, your church will be petrol bombed while in service. Continue behind closed doors and your congregation members will be stabbed one by one. Blood on your hands. You have been warned.’ One of the handwritten letters, bearing a West Midlands postmark, demanded that they stop their services and threatened to bomb the church. Services are continuing, and police have been deployed to the churches affected. A local faith school decided to withdraw pupils from services after they received the threatening letter. A police investigation has been opened, and inquiries are ongoing. See also last week’s article on violence against clergy here

Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt recently launched a government review on the global persecution of Christians. He stated, ‘The UK can and must do more for the many Christians facing persecution and discrimination worldwide, but first we must look to our own discrimination against Christians at home’. The Sunday Times says that the Government is ‘repeatedly failing to provide sanctuary in Britain for a fair proportion of Christians’, and warns that this policy ‘appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims and risks embarrassing the Government’. Barnabas Fund is also calling for an end to discrimination against persecuted Syrian Christians seeking a safe haven in the UK. MP Sir John Hayes called for people to stand up for religious freedom and warned, ‘The “golden era” of religious liberty may be coming to an end. Religious believers are facing increased pressure to restrict their faith to the private sphere’.

Christian Concern for our Nation asks, ‘Is the widespread availability of halal products an example of Islamic religious freedom? Or does halal have a deeper effect on society?’ Its new report shows how halal spreads through supply chains impacting laws and economics, and recommends how to deal with the deepening roots of sharia. The report states, ‘The aim of Islam is to create a supreme worldview, whereby all other laws come under Islamic law. Halal food markets, Islamic dress markets, sharia-compliant finance and banking, Islamic education, sharia courts.’ See also article 1 in the Europe section, on sharia law.

Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, has called on social media giants to ‘purge’ material promoting self-harm and suicide, in the wake of links to teenager Molly Russell's suicide. They could be banned if they fail to comply. The 14-year-old took her life after viewing disturbing content about suicide on Instagram. Her father believed Instagram ‘helped kill my daughter’. Instagram owners, Facebook, said they were ‘deeply sorry’. The charity Papyrus, working to prevent youth suicide, had a spike in calls to their helpline after the BBC reported the link between suicide and social media. Meanwhile, Facebook removed 364 ‘fake’ pages (with 790,000 followers) for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour as part of a network that originated in Russia. Facebook said the page administrators and account owners represented themselves as independent news pages or general interest pages, but all were linked to employees of Russian-owned Sputnik and the facts were false. See

In 2019, its 40th anniversary, Spring Harvest’s theme is Unlimited: When You Pray. There will be many stands promoting prayer, and many talks and seminars to encourage people to grow in intercession. Musalaha, one of the exhibitors, will invite people to pray for its work. It is a non-profit organisation promoting reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. Palestinian Christians will be present on all three sites: manning stalls, participating in seminars, and even appearing the main stage at two venues. Please pray for Musalaha and for all the prayer organisations exhibiting this year. Pray for arrangements to go smoothly, for people to be inspired and responsive, and for a wave of intercession to sweep across the nations. See

In some European territories sharia law is applied, challenging human rights. Greek Muslims in Western Thrace use sharia judicial power to rule on disputes concerning inheritance. Muslims can choose between a mufti or Greek courts. In the UK, the ‘Islamic Sharia Council’ is an independent arbitration tribunal issuing private law decisions and able to grant Islamic divorces. These divorces may also be included in a civil procedure. There are believed to be some thirty sharia councils, affiliated to local mosques. In Russia’s Northern Caucasus: family and property matters are usually judged under sharia law under the guise of ‘tradition’. Women and girls are victims of violence and discriminatory practices such as early marriage, abduction for forced marriage, ‘honour’ killings, female genital mutilation and polygamy, despite the provisions of Russian federal law. In Turkey Muslim religious education is compulsory in schools. The government publicly favours a Muslim viewpoint, linking Turkish nationality with Sunni Islam.

Millions are fleeing tyranny of war, famine, and heartache in the largest movement of people in modern history since WWII. For most, Europe offers the only hope of safety, and many risk the very real threat of death on their journeys. Often these people are seen as a problem, and while our enemy can use people to kill, steal, and destroy, God sees each one as a unique and loved creation. Christian mission agencies working in refugee camps and across Europe want to introduce each refugee to the God who loves them. Meanwhile many European countries are rejecting them, the latest being the Dutch government who refused to accept 47 refugees currently on a ship run by a humanitarian group who rescued them off the Libyan coast over a week ago. Since then it has been sailing through high winds and seven metre-high waves.