Ethics · Society · Theology · Mission · Sociology of Religions
Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right. Where it is violated, other human rights are also in a bad state. This view was proposed by Thomas Schirrmacher (Bonn), Associate Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, on November 1st in Wuppertal.
The president of the International Council of the ISHR and Director of the IIRF, Professor Thomas Schirrmacher, thanked the 40.000 participants of the Ahmadiyya Jalsa Salana in Karlsruhe for not only enjoying religious freedom in Germany after having fled death threats in Pakistan, but in turn loud and insisting called for religious freedom and against any violence or compulsion in religion.
As was announced only now due to security reasons, the Syrian-Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II and the Associate Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, Bishop Thomas Schirrmacher, two days before Christmas 2017 addressed the highest Muslim leaders of 40 countries and called upon them to protect their Christian minorities.
Thomas Schirrmacher published his speech at the opening of the religious freedom chair at the Gießen School of Theology. In it he thanks Hermann Gröhe for the “most momentous rebuke in all my life”.
On April 7th, the “Stephanus-Prize for Persecuted Christians” was awarded in Bonn to Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the former bishop of Hongkong, for his courage and his persistence in decades of strong engagement for the rights of freedom, notably of religious freedom.
Whoever was thinking, that the claims of converts from Islam to Christianity of being threatened, whether it be by relatives and by fellow countrymen, or by their home countries are overstated or ostensible, has now once more received evidence, that this is a matter of bitter reality.
“The Persecution of Christians Concerns Us All” is currently the most comprehensive and biblically theological analysis of Christian persecution worldwide.