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Egypt's Ministry of Endowments just announced a new record: in the last six months, yet another 964 mosques were opened, costing Egypt more than 21 billion pounds since 2014.
Today there more than 150,000 mosques in Egypt. The total number of prayer halls is easily tenfold that number—meaning almost 1.5 million.
The total number of churches and monasteries for all Christian denominations in Egypt, including those “licensed” since the issuance of the 2016 Law for Building and Restoring Churches, is currently estimated to be about 5800.
There is one mosque or prayer hall for every 40 or so Muslims, but only one church or monastery for every 2,400 Christians.
That’s a 1:60 ratio of blatant discrimination.
Moreover, 22 billion Egyptian pounds are annually paid to Al Azhar, which has a parallel educational system, or madrasa, from KG to university, with over 2.8 million pupils and students.)
Conversely, not only does Egypt make it immensely hard for Christians to open or maintain churches, but the government does not contribute a single penny to their survival. Churches are even required to pay their utility bills, which no mosque in Egypt does, as the government happily picks up their bill.
- Raymond Ibrahim
The narrow strait is the most important chokepoint for the world's oil supply. Some 21 million barrels — or $1.2 billion worth of oil — pass through the strait every day.
Will a closed Strait hurt Iran? In terms of international oil sales, yes, but in terms of daily life, no. Iran pumps 3.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. The situation at this hour:
Most people hear “Hormuz” and think gas prices.
That’s part of it. But it’s bigger. It’s a central artery for global trade, and we talked about how disruptions hit second-order systems fast, including inputs tied to food production (field work and fertilizers), trucking, and downstream shocks in everything from shipping insurance to medicine, medical supplies, medical treatments and regional stability.
This is why the “we’re energy independent so it doesn’t matter” line is naive. In a globally priced commodity world, you don’t get to opt out.
Former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes to Christ and discovers the supernatural Christian heritage of West, and how worldly families destroyed it. She is now married and living in the US.
"I like Os Guinness’s analogy of the cut flower civilization. I find it very vivid in regard to non-Christian conservative parents. Conservative non-Christian families are cutting themselves off from our foundational roots.
Let’s think about what happens to a plant when the roots die. What happens when you pick flowers and put them in a vase? Obviously, the flowers wither. And if you cut conservative morals off from Christianity, they fade.
"This decline is exactly what we have seen in the West over the last century and a half. Some people say the decay dates back to the Enlightenment. It’s a gradual fading that goes on and on. My fear is that we have landed in a place of moral wilderness.
"For the West to restore itself, it has to rediscover and revive its biblical roots. I insist that the biblical...
