The country where Christians are murdered

Somalia is a country in the Horn of Africa where there has been no functioning national government for decades. Although the country is ethnically homogeneous, there is much conflict between the different Somali clans. About 80% of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic and travels with camels, sheep, goats and cattle through the semi-deserts that characterize Somalia.

Dangerous

Somalia is almost entirely Islamic. Only a few thousand Christians live in Somalia. Most of them are foreigners. There are probably only a few hundred Somali Christians. There is probably no country in the world where it is more dangerous to be a Christian than Somalia. If it becomes known that someone is a Christian, there is a good chance that he will be murdered within a few months. This is often done by one’s own family.

Secret House Church

Although GlobalRize does not yet have any activities in Somali, there is regular contact with people from Somalia. So far, 149 Somalis have contacted a mentor through an online Bible course. Many of them are Muslim, a minority are Christian and sometimes they have not found any other way to interact with other Christians. A good example is Ali*. Two years ago, he took a course at GlobalRize for the first time, but had no contact with other Christians. He now leads a secret house church with seven believers and has started his own internet ministry.

*pseudonym

A disgrace when a Yemeni Muslim becomes a Christian 

The Republic of Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula south of Saudi Arabia, is the poorest Arab country and one of the poorest in the world. The population suffers from tribal strife, overcrowding, unemployment, corruption (which does not improve health care, education and the economy), water shortage (more than half of the water supply is spent growing the narcotic khat), separatism, extremism and drug abuse that is disastrous for society. Yemen has been in a civil war since 2015 and the country is struggling with a humanitarian crisis.

Violent hold of radical Muslims

Christianity was once present in Yemen, but that changed when Muslims conquered the country in the seventh century. Now the population of nearly 30 million is 99.7 percent Muslim and radical Muslims have a violent grip on it. Only 0.3 percent of Yemenis are Christian, Jew, Hindu or atheist.

Not only is it illegal for Muslims to become Christians in Yemen, it’s also a disgrace. The country is home to some 6,000 Christians, often living under great family pressure – especially those born to Muslims – and burdened by Sharia law enforced in the country by the government.

Unreached Yemenis

Almost the entire population has never heard of the Lord Jesus as they belong to ethnic groups with less than 5% Christians. The country has almost 30 million unreached people, who mainly speak Arabic. GlobalRize distributes the gospel in Arabic on the Internet and offers courses on the Bible and the Christian faith, where students are assigned a personal mentor. The organization has more than 100 Yemeni social media followers, a few of whom are chatting or liking or sharing posts every month. Two Yemenis took GlobalRize’s online Bible course in 2020.

More than 83 million Turks have probably never heard the gospel

Over 83 million of the more than 84 million Turks have probably never heard the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus because they belong to an ethnic group with less than 5% Christians. Nearly 97 percent of Turkey’s residents are Muslim, and the country is home to only 173,000 Christians, mostly ethnic Turks and Kurds. Paul once brought the gospel to Turkey during one of his missionary journeys. Located in Southwest Asia, the country was a guardian of Christianity and the gateway through which Christianity came to Europe, but is now a champion of Islam. The number of Turkish Christians has fallen from 22 percent to 0.21 percent of the population in the last century.

Keeping Faith Secret

Religious nationalism in society puts a lot of pressure on Christians. Christians experience opposition from their family and friends, society and the government, making it difficult, for example, to obtain a permit for church building. Christians with a Muslim background often keep their faith secret, because their conversion affects family honor and Turkish identity.

Tanri’nin Sözleric

GlobalRize wants to bring the gospel to Turks and Kurds through the internet by offering Kurdish and Turkish Facebook pages, such as the Turkish Biblword Facebook page Tanri’nin Sözleri and the website Ankaraincil.org, which means Ankara Bible. GlobalRize’s social media pages have 43,000 followers, 500 of whom respond monthly to posts by liking or sharing them or by talking to the page’s administrator.

Turkish is the official language of Turkey, but also of Cyprus and some places in North Macedonia. Moreover, it is spoken by Turkish minorities in the Balkans and the Caucasus and by immigrants in the Netherlands, for example. Descendants of Turkish emigrants in the Middle East, such as in Iraq and Syria, speak Turkish dialects.

‘I believe that Jesus is my Saviour’

The Turkish Hazel attended GlobalRize’s Bible course, as one of eight Turkish Bible students. ‘You made me feel comfortable during the Bible study,’ he writes to his mentor. ‘I looked forward to our conversations and was happy when you checked my work, which made me happy to continue with the Bible course.’ Hazel reports that he learned a lot about the life of Jesus Christ: how He lived and died for us. ‘I believe that Jesus is my Savior because the Bible study showed me that Jesus gave His life as a sacrifice for me. I will recommend this course to my friends as it is a good way to learn more from the Bible.’

A desert land without churches

Mauritania is a large North African country on the Atlantic Ocean. It is about twice the size of France, but less than 5 million people live there. The population falls into three groups: 30% Bidhan (‘white Moors’), 40% Haratin (‘black moors’, who still live in slave-like conditions) and 30% black Africans. The vast majority of the population lives in the extreme south, as the Sahara occupies the rest of the country.

Great Pressure

The different ethnic groups in Mauritania have in common that they are almost all Muslim. There are about ten thousand Christians in the country. These are mainly African guest workers. It is very dangerous for the Mauritanians themselves to become or be a Christian. Family, society and government exert great pressure on the approximately 1000 Mauritanian believers to return to Islam.

Difficult to Reach

For GlobalRize, Mauritania is one of the more difficult countries to reach. Only a third of the population has access to the internet. Until now, there have been virtually no applications for a bible course from Mauritania. However, several thousand Mauritanians have liked a GlobalRize Bible page on Facebook. In this way, also in this very closed country, something of the gospel is heard.

North Korea has more than 25 million unreached atheists

Once upon a time, Pyongyang’s skyline was dotted with churches. Around 1900, many people in northeast China, where 40 percent of the population is Korean, became Christians. They moved to Pyongyang, then called the Jerusalem of the East. Sometimes someone still sings from an old church hymnbook.

Dangerous Christianity

Today, North Korea has 400,000 Christians out of a population of nearly 26 million, nearly 65 percent of whom are non-religious. More than 25 million North Koreans hardly have a chance to hear the gospel in this atheistic country, because they belong to nations with less than 5% Christians. They have to worship dictator Kim Jong-un wholeheartedly and at most they have contact with aid workers from organizations that offer development projects. Their love and care are of great significance to many North Koreans.

Cut off from the internet

Christianity is seen by the regime as dangerous to the state, but the number of Christians is still growing. By 2000, according to a survey of 1,231 North Koreans, 16 North Koreans had read the Bible, less than one percent of the North Korean population. That number has now risen to 559 people. GlobalRize is not (yet) active in North Korea because the country is virtually cut off from the internet.

Nearly 40 million Iraqis have probably never heard the gospel

Iraqi Christians mainly live in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, where the Islamic State has been defeated, but where the ideology is still alive among the largely Muslim population. Of the more than forty million Iraqis, almost 96 percent are Muslim, with radical Islam gaining influence. Muslims are not allowed to convert to Christianity in Iraq. Muslim converts are threatened, ostracized or mistreated by their families or neighbors.

Arabic and Kurdish

‘I grew up in a Christian village in northern Iraq, where we lived fairly safely,’ says Yousif. He enjoys reading from the Bible and came into contact with GlobalRize through Facebook, which shares the gospel over the internet in Arabic and Kurdish, languages ​​spoken in Iraq. ‘There are churches in Iraq and we can go there, but it was difficult for us Christians to live in Baghdad because we never knew if we were going to be kidnapped or killed. We could not speak freely about our faith, only to our closest friends, and we could not express our own ideas to Muslims.’

Never heard the gospel

After the mass exodus from Iraq due to the war with Islamic State, Iraq still has 202,000 Christians. Most of them belong to the Chaldean Church associated with the Catholics. Others are part of the Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church, Armenian Apostolic Church, and Protestant denominations. Anyone who evangelizes in Iraq is at risk. Yet that does not stop Iraqi Christians from sharing the gospel with Arab and Kurdish Muslims. The number of (extremist) Arab and Kurdish Muslims who are touched by the Christian message of peace, love and hope is increasing, but does not yet exceed the number of Christians who emigrated because of the war with IS. Still 39,245,000 of the more than 40 million Iraqis have never heard the Good News from the Lord Jesus, because they belong to an ethnic group with less than 5% Christians.

To chat

GlobalRize brings the gospel to Iraq through the internet, especially through its partner Home for Kurds. The organization has 152,000 Iraqi social media followers, some 13,000 of whom chat with the page’s administrators or like and share posts. Four Iraqis took a GlobalRize Bible course in 2020.

Gradually more churches with former Muslims

Tajikistan is a Central Asian country that gained independence after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The country is extremely mountainous: more than half of its surface is above 3000 meters. Tajikistan’s development has lagged far behind due to the autocratic regime. In addition to cotton exports, the country is heavily dependent on money sent by Tajiks living in Russia.

No religious freedom

There are over 60,000 Christians among Tajikistan’s 9 million residents. Their numbers are declining, as the majority of them are ethnic Russians who, as in other countries in the region, immigrate to Russia. There are probably about 5,000 Christians of Muslim background in the country. Gradually there are more (house) churches among the Tajiks and the Uzbek minority in the country. Because there is no religious freedom, these Christians from a Muslim background have a hard time.

About a third of the population in Tajikistan has access to the internet. GlobalRize has no activities in Tajik yet, so it hardly reaches this country yet.

Iranian youth are open to the gospel

Christians belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Assyrian Church, Zoroastrians and Jewish Iranians are, according to Article 13 of the Iranian Constitution, the only recognized religious minorities in Iran, for which five of the 290 seats in parliament are reserved. These four traditional ethnic minority denominations are not allowed to hold religious services in Islamic Iran that can be followed in Farsi, nor are they allowed to admit new members ‘from outside’. To please the government, Jews convene in Hebrew, Armenians in Armenian, Assyrians preach in Assyrian and Zoroastrians in an ancient dialect of Farsi. There is officially no room in Iran for other religious minorities.

Muslim converts

Christians who are caught evangelizing can be arrested and churches evangelizing among Muslims closed, because Muslims are not allowed to say goodbye to their faith. Muslim converts fear for their safety.

Christians from churches that are not recognized by the Iranian government are not allowed to practice their faith freely in Iran. They hold secret church services, about eight hundred, at people’s homes. The scientific research bureau Gamaan estimates the number of Iranians who call themselves Christians at 1.5 percent of the population, which amounts to 1.27 million. They speak the official language of Iran: Persian, or Farsi. GlobalRize has this language in its language package, just like Kurdish and Turkish, which are also spoken in Iran.

Underground Church

The Iranian government is responsible for the persecution of Christians, which it sees as a Western threat to Islamic Iran. The Iranian population tends to be less hostile to Christians from traditional churches, with 117,700 believers.

Especially young people in Iran are open to the gospel and a large part of the underground church consists of this young generation. Some four million of the 84 million Iranians live outside of Iran, mainly in Canada, the US, Western Europe, Turkey and the Gulf States. Many of them visit Iran regularly and support their former compatriots, nearly 83 million of whom have probably never heard the Good News of the Lord Jesus, because they belong to an ethnic group with less than 5% Christians. GlobalRize wants to tell the gospel to Iranians in a different way than usual, because it currently has no coverage in Iran. GlobalRize does reach Iranians outside Iran.