Jordan Expels More Foreign Christians
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 (12:00 am)
By BosNewsLife News Center
AMMAN, JORDAN (BosNewsLife) — Jordan has expelled another group of foreign Christians for their alleged involvement in mission activities, including an Egyptian pastor with the Assemblies of God church in the city of Madaba – one of five evangelical denominations registered with the government, a Christian news agency reported Tuesday, February 26.
Compass Direct News said Sadeq Abdel Nour, married to a Jordanian citizen and father of two children, was handcuffed and blindfolded and taken to the port city of Aqaba. From there he was reportedly placed on a ferry to Egypt on February 10.
The previous week an Egyptian pastor from a Baptist church in Zarqa was detained, held for three days, and also returned to Egypt by ship from the port city of Aqaba, the news agency reported. The unidentified pastor, 43, is apparently married to a Jordanian woman and the father of three children.
Another foreign Christian, studying Arabic, left Jordan on February 18 after intelligence police ordered her to exit the country by February 20, Compass Direct News said. Officers allegedly accused the student of studying Arabic to conceal her work evangelizing Muslims, because she attended an Arabic-speaking church.
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Jordanian authorities were not immediately available for comment, however last week Minister of State for Information and Communication Affairs Nasser Judeh confirmed previous BosNewsLife reports on deportations of at least dozens of other foreign Christians.
He said targeted were preachers coming to Jordan under the "pretext of charitable a and voluntary activities, but who violated the law by undertaking preaching activities." The minister said that under Jordanian law, the government must sanction preaching and any religious activity, whether Christian or Muslim.
Judah did not mention how many people were expelled, but Christian sources estimate that Jordanian authorities deported and refused residence permits to at least 27 expatriate Christians from the United States, South Korean, Egypt, Sudan and Iraq for belonging to evangelical groups in this mainly Muslim nation.
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