Passion and Pain

and provides financial support to many worthwhile programmes. As a licensed attorney, Ms. Buwalda has represented numerous refugees who have fled their countries of persecution, and has played an active role in the release of religious prisoners and other prisoners of conscience throughout the world.

The goal of the Jubilee Campaign is to provide a vital voice for those suffering in silence. We hope that these stories will provide you with insight and inspiration and that as you meditate on the Suffering Church you will feel compelled to take action through prayer and deed.

Section One: Persecution of Christians in the Muslim World Before the events of September 11, 2001, few people in the Western world knew much about the existence of militant Islamic extremists engaged in a jihad or ―holy war‖ against Christians, Jews, and the West, and even less were aware of the passion of their hostility. Since then, the reality of religiously motivated ―terrorism‖ has become increasingly familiar. Unfortunately, Christians and other religious minorities throughout the Middle East, and parts of Asia and Africa, have been persecuted by Islamic governments and fundamentalist groups for years.

Section II: Persecution of Christians in Communist Asia Muslim governments and militant Islamic extremists are not alone in their persecution of the 21st Century Christian Church. Brutal Communist regimes continue to stamp out religious faith of all kinds, and Christians are targeted daily for suppression and elimination.

Section III: Persecution of Christians in India, Burma/Myanmar, and in Turkmenistan and the Other Successor States of the Former Soviet Union Although much of the religious persecution in the world today occurs in countries controlled by either Communist regimes or Islamic governments and extremist groups, these are not alone. In the countries described in the following section, Christians suffer persecution at the hands of Hindu Nationalists (India), Militant Buddhists (Burma/Myanmar), and the governments of relatively new republics still recovering from years of Stalinist domination (Turkmenistan and the successor states of the former Soviet Union).