18.00 hrs Sunday 15th June 2008
Well over twelve hundred leaflets explaining the Christian faith were given out in the Alum Rock suburb of
Birmingham
yesterday morning, together with hundreds of Christian booklets in Urdu.
Alum Rock
is predominantly Muslim, with a population estimated at 90% Pakistani origin.
Two Christian preachers were told to leave the area earlier this year by Naeem Naguthney, a Muslim activist working as a Police Community Support Officer for West Midlands Police. Rev Joseph Abraham and Arthur Cunningham have now launched legal action.
http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press084.html
Naguthney helped set up the West Midlands branch of the National Association of Muslim Police Officers which is calling for Muslim police to be involved in anti-terror operations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7215431.stm
The response of Christian Voice to was yesterday's street witness. With the exception of Christian Voice National Director Stephen Green, all the other twenty Christians were from Birmingham, with local churches well represented.
Other local churches had a stall on the Alum Rock Road.
Christian Voice is known for its peaceful street witness events. The group's evangelism dogged the 2006 theatre tour of Jerry Springer the Opera, leading to financial disaster for the blasphemous show, and Christian Voice has been prominent at homosexual events. Yesterday's event was the first-ever outreach into a Muslim area.
http://www.birminghammail.net/news/birmingham-news/2008/06/16
Stephen Green said:
'Despite the crude attempt to create a Muslim 'no-go' area for Christians, we found people were more than willing to take literature. Most of us stayed on
Alum Rock Road
, but a couple of brothers went door-knocking down
College Road
. There were some good conversations. but as the average Muslim is said to take seven years to convert to Christianity, and given the severe impact of conversion on family, job prospects in the community, and even life itself, there were understandably no dramatic conversions.
'Muslims like to challenge us on doctrine as well, so we tried to clear up some misconceptions about the divinity of Jesus Christ and the nature of the Trinity.
'As the Koran affirms the authority of the Bible, it is difficult for Muslims to say they 'respect' Jesus Christ after his obvious declarations of divinity in the Gospels. And that goes for others as well. Attempts to pigeon-hole Jesus as a 'prophet' or 'great moral teacher' fall in the face of him forgiving people their sins, claiming to be one with the eternal Father, and claiming to have the power to lay down his life and take it up again. Either Jesus was a fraud, or God. You can't just 'respect' Him.
'All credit to the local churches for coming out and I am delighted they recognised the sincerity of our intentions and the sensitivity of the way we went about it. God must take the glory for any good that was done.
'As for the National Association of Muslim Police, they are now on notice that if any of them try to misuse their position to try to create Muslim ghettos or bar the Gospel again, we shall be there, preaching the love of God and the certainty of the forgiveness of sins by the precious blood of the incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended, glorified Lord Jesus Christ.'
View text of leaflet
ENDS
