Christian Family from Pakistan Begs British Prime Minister for Asylum

Dear Prime Minister, please grant this family their request.

06/12/2018 Pakistan (BBC) – A Christian man who has spent six years seeking asylum has appealed to the prime minister to allow him and his family to stay in the UK.

Maqsood Bakhsh fled Pakistan in 2012 with his wife and two sons after Islamic extremists threatened to kill him because of his religious beliefs.

They now live in Glasgow and fear their lives would be in danger if they returned to Pakistan.

The Home Office said every asylum case was assessed on its individual merits.

It said officials would contact the Bakhsh family to discuss their circumstances after their case was highlighted by the Church of Scotland.

The catalyst for Mr Bakhsh leaving Pakistan with his wife Parveen, their sons Somer and Areebs – then aged nine and seven – was the murder of two Christians shot outside a court in Faisalabad in 2010.

Pastor Rashid Emmanuel, 32, and Sajid, 24, were accused of writing a pamphlet critical of the Prophet Muhammad that flouted Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law, which carries the death penalty.

Mr Bakhsh, 50, claims the people responsible for the deaths believed he was in league with the two men and would kill him and his family if they had the chance.

The Home Office has rejected the family’s previous asylum applications and they have now been told they have exhausted the process and have no right to appeal.

However, they plan to launch a legal challenge (Go To Here).

British Christian Wins Case Over Facebook Gay Marriage Post

11/17/2012 Britain (FMT) - A British Christian who was demoted by his employer over comments he made on Facebook opposing gay marriage in churches won a High Court case for breach of contract yesterday. Judges in London found that Adrian Smith, who works for a local government social housing body, had not been guilty of any misconduct and awarded him token damages of less than £100 (US$158, 125 euros). Smith, 55, lost his managerial status, had his salary cut by 40 percent and was handed a final written warning after posting on Facebook that gay weddings in churches were “an equality too far”.

Although the remarks were not visible to the public and were posted outside work time, Smith’s Manchester-based employer, Trafford Housing Trust, said he had broken its code of conduct by voicing religious or political views that could upset his colleagues.

Judge Michael Briggs ruled that the trust had no right to demote Smith and had breached its contract with him, while the Facebook posts did not constitute misconduct. The judge said Smith could have won far more in damages if he had launched proceedings for unfair dismissal at the employment tribunal.

“The breach of contract which the trust… committed was serious and repudiatory,” Briggs said.
Smith said in a statement after the ruling: “The judge exonerated me and made clear that my comments about marriage were in no way ‘misconduct’.

“My award of damages has been limited to less than £100 – but that is for technical legal reasons.
“But I didn’t do this for the money, I did this because there is an important principle at stake.
“Britain is a free country where people have freedom of speech, and I am pleased that the judge’s ruling underlines that important principle(Source).”

Christian Bed and Breakfast Owner Sued For Refusing Gay Couple

9/18/2012 United Kingddom (The Christian Institute) - A Christian bed and breakfast owner appeared in court yesterday after being sued by a homosexual couple. The case began after Susanne Wilkinson refused to let Michael Black and John Morgan share a double room at her B&B in 2010. Mrs Wilkinson, 56, says her faith is not restricted to Sundays and that it affects “every area” of her day-to-day life.

After the case first hit the headlines Mrs Wilkinson and her husband were inundated with hate mail, including a hand-delivered note threatening to torch their house. Mrs Wilkinson, whose case was heard at Reading County Court yesterday, said: “All we ever wanted was to be able to live and work in keeping with our faith.

“Christianity isn’t just something we do in church on a Sunday – it affects every area of our life, including our home and our business. Surely there is room for that in modern British life.” Mrs Wilkinson, who runs the Swiss B&B in Cookham, is being supported by The Christian Institute’s Legal Defence Fund(Source).

UK Deputy PM Calls Christians Bigots?

09/12/2012 UK (Virtue Online)-In using the 'B' word against opponents of same-sex marriage, the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP, has revealed the depth of his hostility towards Christians and others who wish to retain the current legal definition of marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.

And yes Mr Clegg has called us bigots because that is the word that appeared in the Cabinet Office press release he approved in advance of last night's reception marking the end of the Coalition Government's same-sex marriage consultation.

British Christians would be to wise to note the strength of Mr Clegg's moral abhorrence against those he perceives as guilty of homophobia. In 2006, the Labour Government of Tony Blair tried to pass a religious hate speech law which, according to some legal experts at that time, could have earned British Christians who criticised Islam a seven-year prison sentence. Mercifully, it was narrowly defeated in the House of Commons.

It is surely quite conceivable that a future Labour government would want to outlaw criticism of same-sex marriage as 'homophobic hate speech' with the offence carrying a custodial sentence. Given the depth of hostility against opponents of same-sex marriage within the British political establishment, why should Christians who criticised the innovation not expect to risk prison?

Jesus told his disciples in his Sermon on the Mount: "But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" (Matthew 5v44 - Authorised Version).

So, however resentful one may feel at the unjust suppression of freedom of debate in our country (which I for one have no wish to see meted out on supporters of same-sex marriage), the right response as a British Christian, now and in the likely much more difficult future, is to pray for the redemption of Mr Clegg.
And to continue graciously and faithfully to uphold the biblical teaching that marriage, as God created it and as Jesus hallowed it, is exclusively between one man and one woman for life.

The above constitutes the two-fold Christian duty to God and to our country, even though the second part is perceived as bigotry by the political establishment. And may well become illegal to fulfill under the politically correct new moral order engulfing Britain. The Christian calling to pray, however, as the Apostle Paul wonderfully demonstrated in his prison epistles, is impossible to outlaw even in jail(Source).

No Wonder Christians Feel Discriminated Against In British Society, A Disturbing Trend Is Now Emerging

Note: This article was written by a non-Christian. And I have to agree with the writer, Britain is persecuting the religion that has made it what it is today. Christianity is the religion which has shaped Western Countries, like America, Canada, France and Great Britain. Now thanks to Secularism, it seems like the West is bent on marginalizing the religion of the risen Savior.

10/14/2011 UK (The Huffington Post)-Last month a Christian owner of a Café where bible verses were being displayed on television screens was told (quite incorrectly) by police that he was breaking the law.
The fact that British police would consider the displaying of Christian scripture an illegal offence is a concerning indication of the mentality that British society has come to adopt towards all things Christian.

For anyone who follows the British media's reporting of American politics, the continuous attempt to run down certain American politicians on account of their faith rather than engaging with their politics has now become a rather boring familiarity.

Bush and Palin are crazed evangelical fundamentalists we are forever being told, oh yawn, is this kind of cheap and lazy defamation really what we have to make do with for journalism? Yet what is far more concerning is what is happening to Christians here in our own country. It is only when one steps back and takes an overview of the litany of cases where Christians have been discriminated against for their religious convictions, that it is possible to appreciate what resembles a sustained assault against the Christian communities in Britain.

Whether it is the case of the nurse who was suspended for offering to pray for a patient, the van driver who faced disciplinary action if he refused to remove a palm cross from his dashboard, the couple who were prohibited from fostering because of their Christian beliefs or the supply teacher who was dismissed when she mentioned praying for a child's family. The list goes on and on.

It is as if there is a systematic effort to extrapolate British society from its Christian heritage and the values that have for centuries served as a basis for British culture and identity. Those who have been responsible for these moves have often advocated for them on the grounds of creating a more secular and therefore a supposedly more inclusive and pluralistic society for everyone.

Yet it is hard to escape the fact that it has often been the very same people who have promoted secular values when it has come to driving out Christian aspects of public life, who have simultaneously lent their support for the establishment of a parallel religious legal system in the form of Sharia law courts.


At our universities these speakers are often provided with an open platform on the grounds of free speech and freedom of religious expression. Those were the kind of arguments that many in the British media were at pains to stress when discussing the ground zero mosque in Manhattan.

And while our media obsessed over supporting the building of one mosque in America, it all but ignored the burning down of countless churches elsewhere in the world, not to mention the massacring of Coptic Christians in their Churches in Egypt or the murder of Iraqi Christians in their places of worship there.

Yet this is symptomatic of a growing double standard. We all remember the crowds who turned out for the protest at the Pope rally last year but where were the demonstrations against the then Mayor Ken Livingstone sponsoring the visit to London by the extremist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi?

As much as I am not a Christian, it still seems clear that all of us who value the rights and freedoms afforded by a liberal democracy should ensure that there is fair treatment for Christians in Britain. More than that, we as a society need to recognise that Christianity has played a major and for the most part extremely positive role, in forming our nation's history and national identity(Source).