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Kurdish evangelicals: Amidst the current war, here's one angle the media isn't getting

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Thanks to President Donald Trump’s stunning decision last week to allow the Turks to overrun northern Syria, my Facebook page is starting to fill up with photos of Kurdish “martyrs” and tearful notes in Arabic. The most prominent is Hevrin Khalaf, a female politician somewhere in her 30s, her dark hair pulled back, a half-smile on her face, framed by the dark, expressive eyebrows I’ve seen on so many Kurds.

The Turks blocked her car, pulled her out and executed Khalaf and her driver. I’ve attached a photo of her to this post. Reports indicate that Khalaf was raped and then stoned to death.

Things are changing pretty quickly on the ground. As of Sunday night, here’s what the New York Times said was going on, namely that the Kurds asked the Syrian government (with the Russians) to intervene.

Some of the biggest protesters of Trump’s decision have been evangelical Christian leaders, who are telling Trump that he’s basically sanctioned genocide of an entire people, while threatening the safety of other religious minorities in that region, including Christians in churches ancient and modern. I wrote about this possibility in August.

Trump had held off on allowing Turkey access to the region before but every time he gets on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he is bewitched into granting whatever Erdogan wants. Sadly, in his three years in office, Trump has basically given away every valuable American asset to everyone from the Chinese to the Turks, while avoiding any insistence that these nations toe the line on religious freedom.

Anyway, there is one huge point that reporters are missing when it comes to explaining why evangelical Christians care so deeply about northern Iraq. It goes way beyond the historic Assyrian Christian communities being allowed to function there.

Which is: The Kurds are the most open people group in the Middle East to Christianity and a number of these now-former Muslims are newly minted evangelicals.

Christianity Today is closest to pointing out this truth.

Christian voices are also keen to preserve the unique peace achieved between Kurds, Arabs, and Christians. Since 2014 a social charter has ensured democratic governance, women’s rights, and freedom of worship.

The town of Kobani, on the Turkish border, hosts a Brethren church composed of converts from Islam. Around 20 families worship there, and the church’s pastor, Zani Bakr, arrived last year from Afrin, displaced by an earlier Turkish incursion.

There were a bunch of news stories back in February about this new church.


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Religion ghost? Ethiopian refugee thrives with strong values, family and maybe something else

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Every now and then, I get a letter from a reader that is rather poignant. It's like this person is reading a good story in the local newspaper and then there is a passage that produces a kind of melancholy feeling, a sense of curiosity and loss.

Was there a religion ghost hiding somewhere in the story? Would anyone else read this news report and feel the same way? Would other readers have the same suspicion that there was crucial religious material missing?

So the reader sends me the URL to the story, often with a note that reads something like this:

Numerous media outlets have published stories about Oromo Ethiopian refugee Tashitaa Tufaa's success in the US. ... As a Greek Orthodox when I read the article I was curious as to whether his religion -- Christian or Islam -- had any effect on him. I reviewed many of similar articles. Religion was never mentioned.

In this case we are dealing with a story from the Star Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The double-decker headline proclaims, success-story style:

Minneapolis/St. Paul transit entrepreneur Tashitaa Tufaa is Entrepreneur of the Year
Tashitaa Tufaa, who built a $12 million school bus service in just a decade, is the Metropolitan Economic Development Association's 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year

Simply stated, this is a business story about -- from all accounts -- a remarkable man:

Tashitaa Tufaa, whose walk to school in his native Ethiopia was a 10-mile round trip in bare feet, now sees to the safe transit of thousands of schoolchildren daily as president and CEO of Fridley-based Metropolitan Transportation Network Inc.


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Sex-trafficked Nigerian teens: Why so little reporting on religious roots of this tragedy?

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There’s been some amazing articles out there about the modern-day slave trade involving Nigerians who think they’re fleeing to Europe for jobs, but end up getting forced into prostitution or crime.

The British press has been particularly astute in tracking this horrific trend, which involves west Africans, the majority who come from Nigeria, Gambia and Ghana and who head north via Libya only to end up in a tangle of slave markets patronized by Arab buyers. The Guardian, BBC, the Washington Post and many other media are describing how Libya is outdoing India in being the world capital of sex trafficking.

But not enough has been done when you consider there's a bizarre mix of voodoo and Pentecostalism undergirding it all. After all, CNBC calls Libya the “torture archipelago” for poor African migrants. The Guardian asks the world why it’s ignoring this African holocaust in its midst.

Possibly the best story of them all was the New Yorker’s “Desperate Journey of a Trafficked Girl” that ran in April. Now The Times of London did a piece on what happens to the few lucky Nigerian teenagers who get through this hell to reach Italy. 

 The Nigerian prostitutes working on street corners in Castel Volturno this summer look like schoolgirls dressed up for a fancy dress party in their mothers’ clothes and make-up.
The reason: they are schoolgirls, as young as 14, part of a new wave of children tricked into crossing the Sahara and forced by voodoo threats, beatings and gang rape to become prostitutes.
“No-one acknowledges what is going on, but customers are coming here from miles away just for a chance to have sex with these 14-year-olds,” said Blessed Okoedion, a Nigerian woman who escaped from prostitution and now helps working girls.

We’re not talking Sicily here; we’re only 12 miles south of Naples. And this is not a topic where one would expect religion to be an issue but the author does find a “Sister Rita,” who is an Italian Ursuline nun helping these girls. Then:


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