Interreligious
Muslims and Christians: clash again
By Insight Staff

Hardcopy Issue Date: January/February 2002
Online Publication Date: Feb 20, 2002, 18:09

Indonesian violence continues between Muslims and Christians, the latest outbreak being blamed on the arrival of hundreds of Jihad fighters belonging to a paramilitary Muslim group . . . . The Missionaries of Charity of Calcutta are being targeted by at least two Muslim terrorist groups who say that the nuns are receiving economic aid from the U.S. to convert Muslims to Christianity . . . . At the Quetta airport, near the Afghanistan border in Pakistan, a Catholic security guard was shot dead. He was the only Christian working at the airport and there are speculations that his death is closely connected to the killings of 16 Christians in Bahawalpus, the dead man's home town . . . . Two days later, another Catholic was shot to death in Peshawar, capital of the northwest frontier province near the Afghan border. Married, with two small children, Waheed Paul was last seen by his wife on the morning of November 9, as he went in the gates to his office . . . . Iraq's Christians, mainly Chaldean Catholics from the Assyrian Christian minority, are facing a backlash in the wake of America's attacks on Afghanistan. They are no longer wearing crucifixes, they are being verbally taunted, and those eligible are not receiving food rations. . . . In the Philippines followers of Muslim leader Nur Misuari have taken 160 people hostage and are using them as human shields in combat, a Philippine army officer said yesterday. He said the rebels are using the hostages, most of whom are Christians, to thwart a military operation to drive them from a government complex in the south . . . . In the Republic of Georgia, a group of armed Muslims from Chechyna kidnapped six Orthodox monks and demanded a ransom of $1 million, police in Tbilisi reported . . . . Arson attempts against Catholic churches in Malaysia might be a reaction to the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan, unofficial Church sources reported. Molotov cocktails were thrown at the door of St. Philip's Catholic Church in Segamat, in the state of Johore, and burnt the door of the church.