"Churches and individual Christians have faced increased restrictions in recent months, raising concerns that these pressures signal a coordinated campaign of intensified action against churches by the governing authorities." — Middle East Concern, Algeria.

A Muslim man walked into a cathedral and threatened to blow it up for preaching the Gospel and not the Koran. — France.

"The Indonesian government should revisit the country's blasphemy law.... To honor religious freedom as enshrined in Indonesia's constitution, the government must respect all religions and stop criminalizing Christians when they are merely exercising their right to free speech." — International Christian Concern, Indonesia.

"I believe we are underestimating the potency and danger of the radicalizers who don't carry knives, guns and overtly plot terrorist attacks but who pollute the minds of young Muslim men." — Richard Walton, former head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command.

"I asked the guy who spoke to him if the de-radicalization program had worked and he said, 'No, he's got worse. He's hardened. He speaks in the mind-set of the victim. He sees himself as a martyr the state tried to silence.'" — Fiyaz Mughal, head of the anti-extremist group Faith Matters.

Choudary is now considering mounting a legal challenge to the strict conditions of his release, according to the Telegraph. It reported that he has applied for legal aid funding, at taxpayer expense, to bring his action against government ministers, and arguing the parole conditions breach his human rights.

As far back as 2013, Britain's Attorney General stated in the House of Lords that 27 police forces were then investigating no fewer than 54 alleged gangs involved in child sexual grooming.

Last year, Shahid Javed Burki, a former Pakistani finance minister and vice-president of the World Bank, spoke out about the treatment of women in his country, arguing that the low status given to women has had serious social, demographic, educational, and financial effects.

This problem is, in some measure, reflected in the UK, where Muslim women (mainly of Pakistani origin) face limitations on their participation in the workplace, in higher education, and even knowledge of the English language -- matters examined by Dame Louise Casey in her 2016 government review into opportunity and integration.

Bringing Pakistani attitudes into the UK, often within segregated communities, only serves to perpetuate the belief that women are intrinsically the inferiors of men in all respects.

According to Turkish media reports, the Turkish government's Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) gathered intelligence via its imams and other employees in 38 countries on the activities of Turks suspected of supporting the US-based Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen.

Peter Pilz, then an Austrian member of parliament, last year revealed that he had received documents from a Turkish source indicating the existence of "a global network of informants" -- spanning four continents -- reporting to Turkey's Diyanet on alleged Gülenists. In most cases, these informants were religion attachés at embassies and consulates.

In 2016, the Diyanet Center of America (DCA) completed the construction of a $110 million mosque complex in Lanham, Maryland. According to the DCA website, "The result is a small village that will be an important cultural hub for all visitors and residents of Washington DC area." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated the complex, one of many Diyanet-affiliated mosques in North America.

The Trump administration should be on guard. If Erdogan's mosques in Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia are being used as a conduit to spy on Turkish nationals who possibly oppose his rule, is it not safe to assume that similar activity has been going on in the United States?

In the absence of a parliament, the Palestinians have no address to express their grievances. They cannot write to or phone their elected legislators to complain about anything. All they can do is resort to social media, especially Facebook, to air their views.

As Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas does not tolerate criticism particularly well, he doubtless feels more comfortable delivering speeches at international forums such as the United Nations, the European Parliament and his own Fatah and PLO institutions than at the Palestinian parliament. The others are places where no one takes him to task for his tyranny.

In the past few years, scores of Palestinians have been harassed, arrested and interrogated by Abbas's security forces for posting critical comments on Facebook.

The Old Testament is read by Christians with the same reverence as the New Testament. Jesus did NOT send the money changers out of the Al Aqsa Mosque.

UNESCO votes inform the way people think about history. One can disagree with Israeli policies and practices while agreeing that the Land of Israel is the historic space of the Jewish people. But when UNESCO erases that connection, there remains no reason to posit that there should be a State of Israel at all. Which leaves the Hamas and Fatah position that "Palestine from the River to the Sea" as the natural arrangement of things.

To the extent that Europeans (and some Americans) dismiss their traditional, biblically grounded understanding of the Middle East, Israel and the free world are less secure. UNESCO's members understand that such dismissal by the West advances their goal toward the elimination of Israel. The United States should, too.

If the big social media companies choose what to publish and what not to publish, they should be subject to the same licensing and requirements as media organizations.

Google has decided it will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work because Google employees were upset that the technology might be used for lethal military purposes. Yet Google is planning to launch a censored search engine in China that will empower a totalitarian "Big Brother is watching you" horror state.

Freedom Watch filed a $1 billion class-action lawsuit against Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, claiming that they suppress conservative speech online.

A Media Research Center report found that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube stifle conservative speech and that in some instances staffers have admitted that doing so was intentional.

Chinese officials prevented a journalist, Liu Hu, from taking a flight because he had a low "social credit" score. According to China's Global Times, as of the end of April 2018, authorities had blocked individuals from taking 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed rail trips.

Turkish authorities repeatedly have threatened Europe with an influx of migrants. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's threats should not be ignored.

Ever since the migrant crisis started to escalate in 2011 -- with the onset of civil war in Syria -- those who were critical of mass, unchecked immigration have been called "racists," "bigots" or "Islamophobes."

Today, however, the continued chaos in many European countries caused by immigration, and accompanying increase in crime -- including murder and rape committed by Islamist extremists -- appear to have proven the critics right.

The policy of multiculturalism, which emphasizes the benefits of cultural diversity for society and the state, is an example of the exploitation of others based on a fantasy of virtue. Those at whom the sweet talk of multiculturalism is aimed, can see that it has done nothing to improve their lot, and are now realizing that their future is bleak.

If we bring in highly qualified immigrants to our workforce, we would be taking away from poorer countries the best they have to offer, and the situation in those countries will further deteriorate. The result will be an even greater flow of unskilled migrants escaping those countries.

The proponents of the new multiculturalism want to share their welfare states with masses of refugees who -- through no fault of their own -- will be unable to participate in financing themselves for a long time to come.

To execute the IPO of Saudi Aramco in a successful and timely way, the Saudi government needs to deal appropriately with definite issues.

These include claims that Saudi Aramco has been overvalued by Saudis; "concerns about minority shareholder rights, the transparency of oil reserves," and "how the Saudi government will balance national interests and its duty to shareholders" ; meeting the New York Stock Exchange's stringent transparency standards; and the possibility that a New York listing places the IPO at risk of being seized in lawsuits claiming Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11 attacks.

While Palestinian hatred for President Trump and his administration does not come as a surprise, what is strange is that the two Palestinians factions -- Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip -- are now using the US president's awaited plan to throw mud at one another.

Mahmoud Abbas evidently wants the world to believe that Hamas is working for Trump and Israel. Hamas, for its part, wants Palestinians to believe that if anyone is part of the Trump administration's "conspiracy," it is Abbas and his Fatah faction.

Guess who gets caught in the crossfire -- again. The Palestinians. It is they who continue to pay the price for the vicious strife between their "leaders" -- in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

According to the Princeton University disarmament group, Global Zero, an agreement on "No First Use" would be in a new treaty -- one in which everyone "sincerely vows" never to use nuclear weapons first.

If warheads were actually removed from both submarine- and silo-based missiles, however, it would take months to put them back on the missiles, assuming the storage facilities used for the warheads were not destroyed in a preemptive Russian or Chinese attack. Talk about painting a bull's-eye on your nuclear forces.

In response to the latest abuses against Christians, Amnesty International has initiated an "urgent action" appeal. It has called on the Iranian regime to "quash the convictions and sentences of Victor Bet-Tamraz, Shamiram Isavi, Amin Afshar-Naderi, and Hadi Asgari, as they have been targeted solely for the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedoms of religion and belief, expression, and association, through their Christian faith." However there are far more stories of Christian persecution throughout Iran, than just these four.

What is important to note is that in countries, run by sharia law, the constitution becomes inferior to the Islamist laws of the land. When radical Islam gains power, every article in the constitution becomes contingent on compliance with sharia. The rights that are promised in the constitution therefore become null and void.

It is not enough to hope that one day Christians will be able to practice their faith in Iran without fear of persecution or death; action must be taken by the global community to ensure that the Iranian regime stands by its own constitution and provides its Christian citizens with equal rights and protections.

Two days later, Christian homes in the region were attacked again. "Some Muslim villagers had a meeting in one of the mosques. They incited people against us. After the meeting they set fire to a wood store owned by my brother, and four other houses," said another Christian resident. Police responded by arresting five Christians as they tried to put out the fire. — Egypt.

On April 27, the government made the death penalty "mandatory" for anyone who blasphemes against Islam... And in the case of blasphemous remarks or sacrilegious acts, according to the law, the death penalty is now mandatory." — Voice of the Martyrs, Mission Network News, Mauritania.

A Christian nun who was driven out of her convent in Qaraqosh, Iraq by the Islamic State was denied a visa from the nation that provided refugee status to tens of thousands of Muslim men. — United Kingdom.

One is amazed by the audacity wherewith those foreign interveners who have caused the most destruction in Syria call upon the rest of the world to foot the bill for rebuilding what they themselves have demolished. So the First Clause of the Responsibility Principle is that those foreign countries which intervened in Syria to pursue their own political aims – primarily Iran, the Russian Federation and Turkey – should pay up to rebuild everything that they destroyed.

The Second Clause of the Responsibility Principle is that any other country or international factor should condition any further financial assistance upon the replacement of the current Syrian regime with a plausible alternative, be it through free elections or the installation of a temporary international regime, followed by Nuremberg-type trials of the chief criminals of the current regime and the repatriation and resettlement of all refugees without any form of discrimination. The Russian Federation has the military power to keep Assad the titular president of Syria forever, but it cannot expect the rest of the world to pay for such a Syria.