Mike Christian and his wife lead a small congregation called the Afghan-American Church of the Bay Area. But their main ministry is not gathering with a dozen or so Afghan believers during the week. It is engaging with the tens of thousands of Afghan seekers from around the world who reach out through messaging apps, social media, and online outlets.
Mike, who was born in Afghanistan and worked alongside the US military there, adopted the name “Mike Christian” after his conversion. It was a signal to fellow Afghans that they could speak with him if they were curious about Christianity. His popular Facebook page shares Bible verses and Christian messages in Dari alongside an invitation to get in touch.
The recent Taliban takeover has created a unique opportunity for some Afghan Muslims to rethink their faith, just as a massive influx of Afghan evacuees are fleeing to the United States for resettlement. It ’s the younger generation, and especially the women, Mike says, who are most dis-enchanted with Islam, and most open to learning about the God of Christianity.
“We receive tons of text messages, emails, WhatsApp, and phone calls from Afghanistan,” Mike told in an interview. “They ’re saying, ‘We don ’t like Islam. We don ’t want that kind of religion. We want to become a Christian. Please help us. Show us how we become a follower of Jesus.’”
“I just keep praying,” he says, “‘Lord, you have the power to change Afghan people—to join your church, to seek you and believe in you, to pray and repent.’’”
The couple fields hundreds of questions a day from curious Afghans, describing the good news to them and connecting new believers to nearby house churches. But they are also part of the global network of believers with Afghan connections, helping create resources for churches to better serve their Afghan neighbors—both here and abroad.
“I’m engaged with 30,000 Afghans now,” said Mike. “I don ’t remember the Lord tell-ing me to stop. The Lord ’s mission is never stopped, so let ’s keep going.”
When Mike was working with the military during the War in Afghanistan, he found himself in a dark place and struggling after a deadly mission. He had a series of dreams about Jesus, who called him by name to share the gospel with his people. After joining the underground house church movement, Mike endured intense persecution, multiple imprisonments, and brutal torture for his evangelism efforts before he was able to escape Afghanistan and make his way to the United States.

The government in Pakistan celebrated the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan, a senior priest has said, stressing that “the brotherhood of the two countries” means they are prejudiced against Christians and other non-Muslims.
Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Father Mushtaq Anjum, the only Pakistani priest of the Order of St Camillus, explained that, following the Taliban’s victory, Christians are under serious threat.
He said: “The threat against them (Christians) has increased, since our government supports the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan consider the United States as an enemy. There is a deep-seated hatred of western countries where Christians compose a sizeable proportion of the population.
“The brotherhood of the countries is based on Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:51 of the Qur’an, which warns believers against becoming allies of Jews and Christians. It is largely because of the Taliban that religious minorities in Pakistan and Afghanistan live a subdued life.”
Pakistan’s Ministry of Reli-gious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony last month rejected a bill which sought to prohibit forced conversion of any indi-vidual of a religious minority, particularly underage girls, on the grounds that it “clashes with Islamic Shari’a.”
Father Anjum said: “We have always complained of mob rule and about the controversial blasphemy law which has been grossly abused, with many people making false accusations to settle personal scores, to obtain the victim’s property, or to attack the person’s faith. We have always demanded that the majo-rity of Muslims should respect and accept religious diversity in Pakistan…

Costs and lack of helpful resources are the most prominent barriers for religious minorities in accessing justice in Pakistan, according to a survey by a legal group.
“Religious minorities were less confident about attaining a fair trial compared to their Mu-slim counterparts. They foremost identified themselves as not aff-luent and powerful, and therefore not possessing the law to seek protection within its ambit, nor the law taking ownership of them. Consequently, they seldom approach the judicial system to seek justice,” found the Legal Needs Assessment Survey laun-ched on Oct. 20 in Islamabad.
“They repeatedly referenced poverty, and not religious dis-crimination, as their biggest problem. They identified their minority status as exacerbates of their poverty. Instead, a dearth of opportunities, corruption and administrative incompetence were the primary suspects.
“These problems are a direct result of poverty and dire living conditions. Structural discrimi-nation, including absence of employment opportunities and lack of provision of legal identities, creates and traps these communities in a problem loop by limiting avenues for awareness and information and thus altering legal behaviours.
“The majority of our res-pondents were unaware that their problems are legal issues with a predetermined solution. Majority versus minority rhetoric has made our respondents believe that this country is for Muslims and so is the law. The discrimi-nation faced by these marginali-zed communities is not only external but is also fuelled by ca-steism and socioeconomic dispa-rity within these communities.”

For too long, the Church hierarchy has held consultations between bishops and priests, and between Bishops and the pope, without involving the laity seriously. However, unless the hierarchy identifies with the pains of the people, it would not be able to come up with solutions that are effective, practical and uplifting.
Archbishop William Goh of Singapore made this point during his homily at an online Mass on October 17 to launch the synodal process in the Southeast Asian archdiocese. This process of Church consultation, launched simultaneously by dioceses around the world, is part of a two-year process leading to the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 2023. The event has the theme: “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission.”
“The Church is not just simply constituted of the hierarchy,” stressed Archbishop Goh in his homily. “The Church is the People of God including the bishops and the priests. And so it is very important that this synodal process must begin by including everyone.”
He noted that many Catholics had left the Church “because they feel that the Church lacks compassion, the Church did not listen to them,” he said. “They have been hurt, they are angry.”

After months of threats and attempted kidnappings, Arushma Ejaz, a young woman from Rabbani Colony, turned to Human Rights Focus Pakistan (HRFP) late last month for help after her complaints to the police proved useless. A man named Ghulam Jelani has been stalking her for a while, going so far as to try to kidnap her back in mid-July in order to convert her to Islam and force her to marry him.
To this end, Jelani broke into Arushma’s home, armed, forced to leave only after neighbours intervened. In this incident, the police arrived too late.
In the following days, Jelani continued to follow the young woman in an attempt to kidnap her.
He threatened to kill the young woman’s brothers if she refused to marry him, and then attempted to intimidate her family by saying that he would accuse them of violating the blasphemy law.
At this point, Arushma’s mother contacted HRFP, which immediately brought the case to the Faisalabad District Court. However, the human rights organisation was able to file a First Information Report with police only on 2 September.
Under maximum security, Arushma and her mother testified before the court 10 days later.
For HRFP President Naveed Walter, “kidnappings, forced conversions and forced marriages are not yet considered a serious matter by the state. The government sometimes talks about high-profile single issues, but never addresses the underlying causes, much less tries to eliminate them.”
A big problem continues to be police reluctance to get involved in such cases. In Jelani’s, he was held in custody for a while, then released without trial.
“From the first call to the police to actual action, 47 days passed,” Walter pointed out.
The HRFP told that it was concerned by how free and fair trials involving girls from religious minorities are, given the fact that “often political and religious figures publicly support the culprits.”
“Muslims who convert [to other religions] would be called murtads (apostates), so that only non-Muslims can convert,” the organisation added.
For the HRFP, the authorities must stop “protecting kidnappers and rapists who hide behind forced conversions and marriages to save themselves from punishment.”

Asian nations are failing to effectively interpret and imple-ment freedom of religion and belief for their citizens despite having constitutional provisions and guarantees, Christian legal experts said during a regional consultation.
“Although a majority of Asian countries have strong constitutional provisions and guarantees to secure their citi-zens’ freedom of religion and belief, there are severe short-comings in interpretation and implementation, or in upholding such principles in practice,” observed two legal experts during the Asia Regional Consultation on “Freedom of Religion, Rights of Religious Minorities and Constitutional Guarantees in Asia” organized by the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA).
The five-day consultation from Oct. 3-5 drew 50 partici-pants from various Asian nations.
“In order for freedom of religion and belief to be secure, enhanced and applicable to all human beings, we must comply with constitutional provisions and be consistent with international declarations,” said Eugene Yapp, senior fellow of the Religious Freedom Institute’s Southeast Asia team. “If constitutional guarantees are to be meaningful, there is a need for more context-ualized or localized approaches based on ground realities – such as cultural particularities and contingencies of a local nature.”
Yapp, former secretary-gen-eral of the Evangelical Alliance of Malaysia, also emphasized the role of churches and missionaries in Asia, stating that churches must seek concrete expression for the flourishing of “diversity of cultures in social engagement and creative dialogue for the well-being of everyone for the common good.”

A Pakistan-born Catholic nun who worked in Afghanistan until the Taliban takeover says the plight and lack of freedom of women in the country still trou-ble her. Women are considered inconsequential in Afghanistan, said Sister Shahnaz Bhatti from the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne-Antide Thouret, who fled the troubled Central Asian country following the Taliban victory on Aug. 15.
Young women are forced against their will to marry men selected by the patriarch of the family, said Sister Bhatti, who served in Afghanistan as part of the pontifical mission set up by Pope John Paul II in May 2002.
“The most trying thing was not being able to move about freely because, as women, we always had to be accompanied by a man,” Sister Bhatti said in an interview with papal charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) on Sept. 22.
The congregation, founded by St. Jeanne-Antide Thouret in 1797 in France, ran a school for children with intellectual disa-bilities and Down’s syndrome in the capital Kabul. Sister Bhatti served in the school along with Sister Teresia of the Sisters of Maria Bambina (Sisters of Holy Child Mary) and Sister Irene of the Missionary Sisters of Consolata.
“It was my job to complete all the necessary paperwork at the banks or other government agencies, but I always had to be accompanied by a local man,” she added.
Women religious had to dress like the local women and were constantly being monitored, Sister Bhatti said, recalling her experience in Afghanistan, where US-led forces were engaged in a 20-year war and humanitarian assistance.
Afghans consider all foreigners to be Christians, she added.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, founder of the news website Rappler, and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov.
In announcing the award, the Nobel committee chair, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said: “Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda.
“Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time,” she added.
Maria Ressa, the first Filipino to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. She founded Rappler in 2012, an online news website that “has focused critical attention on [President Rodrigo] Duterte regime’s controversial, murderous anti-drug campaign,” the committee writes.
What is more, Ressa and Rappler ”have also documented how social media is being used to spread fake news, harass opponents and manipulate public discourse,” it added.
In recent years, the journalist has been the target of a series of attacks. For her cover of Duterte’s ruthless “war on drugs”, she ended up in jail twice.
Her tenth arrest warrant for cyber libel in less than two years shows “definitely a pattern of harassment,” Ressa, a former CNN correspondent, laments.
Despite the risks, Maria Ressa, whose book “How to stand up to a dictator” will be released in April 2022, has decided to stay in her country.
“I don’t think this is me, I think this is Rappler. I have – we have – all along said this since 2016, that that we are fighting for facts,” the journalist said upon hearing about the award.
If the news becomes debatable, she warns “then journalism becomes activism”, a “battle for facts”. For her, “the Nobel peace prize committee realised that a world without facts means a world without truth and trust.”
The Philippines is ranked the seventh most dangerous country in the world for journalists. As a sign of things to come, when he took office in 2016, President Duterte said that “Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong.”

Pir Abdul Haq, alias Mian Mithu, specializes in marrying off Hindu women to Muslim men in Pakistan and converting them to Islam simultaneously. His certificates preceded court verdicts before the partition of British India. “Even at that time, my father was jailed for four months when the local Hindus protested. The British gave us a logbook to keep a record of newly converted Muslim girls or any person and share its receipt,” he said at a Sept. 15 press briefing.
“I don’t return Hindu girls even if their community offers money. My faith is bigger than millions. I even refused Asif Ali Zardari [former president of Pakistan] on this issue. Do whatever you want, I told his minister. Allah will help me. I am performing his duty. I live and die for Islam.
“Girls, most of them housemaids, often come to us. Urgent marriages are organized so that they can live with a mehram [male guardian]. We keep the couple until the husband gets a job. I guarantee them protection at the seminary. Many courts forcefully return girls to Hindus. Those who protest these conversions have an agenda to defame Pakistan.”
Another speaker accused the Catholic bishops’ National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) of getting foreign funding and raising an outcry. Their annual monitor is based on media reports of alleged victims of forced conversions, he said.
Mithu, 85, is the custodian of Dargah Bharchundi Sharif seminary, one of two major hubs in Sindh province for converting religious minorities to Islam. The former member of the National Assembly was a candidate of Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party at the 2008 general election. In 2017, his photos with Prime Minister Imran Khan went viral on social media. He also leads mobs over blasphemy allegations.
“Women of this country, especially non-Muslim women, and especially underage girls, don’t stand a chance,” author Maria Rashid said in a recent tweet sharing photos of Mithu with Khan and Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa.
The Council of Islamic Ideology invited him to discuss forced conversions during a session. The Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony later rejected a bill that proposed regulations on conversions to Islam. On Sept. 24, Lahore High Court ruled that Muslim jurists regard the mental capacity of a child as of crucial importance for conversion to Islam. The age of discernment is generally reckoned as the age when one attains puberty, said Justice Tariq Nadeem while dismissing a petition filed by Gulzar Masih, a rickshaw driver from Faisalabad seeking recovery of his daughter Chashman Kanwal.