News and Views 21st January 2026 

Iran

• Days of utter slaughter in Iranian ‘genocide’. Tragically, but by no means unusually, global mainstream media seems more concerned with the Beckham family feud and the Greenland saga than with the bloodbath happening in Iran. A new report from doctors on the ground claims that at least 16,500 protesters have died (perhaps many more) and 330,000 have been injured, most of them in two days of utter slaughter in the most brutal crackdown by the clerical regime in its 47-year existence. Most of the victims are thought to have been younger than 30. “This is a whole new level of brutality,” said one medical professor operating within Iran. “[In 2022] they were using rubber bullets and pellet guns taking out eyes. This time they are using military-grade weapons and what we are seeing are gunshot and shrapnel wounds in the head, neck and chest.” Security forces even targeted hospitals treating wounded demonstrators, while authorities are confiscating the assets of people backing protesters, to pay for damages incurred during the unrest. Equally tragically, hellish torture chambers await Iran’s protestors if they’re unlucky enough to be arrested and taken into custody.  Please pray for all Iranians affected by this draconian crackdown. 
• Iran is hungry for Christ. Many Christian believers are among the dead and missing amidst the violent crackdown, not least as Christians have been voicing their support for the recent wave of protests – constituting a recent shift, as Iranian Christians in the past tended to stay away from politics. Revival enthusiasts have long spoken of the explosive growth of the church in Iran. A 2020 survey of 50,000 Iranians - 90% residing in Iran – suggested there were nearly one million Christians in the country – with that figure likely to be considerably higher now. Dr Sasan Tavassoli - a former Shi'ite Muslim from Iran, now an ordained minister serving the underground church – says that so widespread is the revival that “Jesus is running around loose in Iran.”

World Events

• Students raped for years in Amsterdam refugee complex. A Dutch housing and migrant integration project was launched in 2018, housing 125 Dutch students and 125 refugees under one roof, encouraging students to “buddy up” with migrants to help them integrate into Dutch society. But an investigation by Dutch documentary programme Zembla reveals that things quickly turned sour, as terrified students shared horrific details of sexual assaults, harassment, violence, drug trafficking, stalking and even a suspected a gang rape through the years.
• Disastrous migrant integration project continues. Former residents have filed 20 reports of sexual assault and violence in the past 18 months. There were frequent fights in the hallways and communal living areas. One student was threatened by a refugee with an 8-inch kitchen knife. A Syrian refugee – Mohammed – was convicted of raping two women. Despite all this, the local authority has consistently refused to close the site, which will continue till 2028 when its operating contract expires. 

Christian Persecution

• Global rise in Christian persecution. The number of Christians across the world suffering high levels of persecution and discrimination has reached unprecedented levels according to the latest figures from Open Doors. 388 million Christians globally are suffering for their faith, 8 million more than last year. North Korea, Somalia and Yemen remain the most dangerous countries in which to follow Jesus. Sub-Saharan Africa is also regarded as “a death-trap for Christians”, with 14 countries in the region featuring on the World Watch List this year, including Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burkina Faso. Meanwhile Syria has jumped 12 places up to sixth in the top 50.

• In Egypt, a Christian YouTuber has been sentenced to five years of hard labour for defending Christianity online.
• In north-central Nigeria, 163 worshippers were kidnapped last Sunday when heavily armed bandits raided at least two churches during services in a rural Christian community in Kaduna state. Elsewhere in Central Nigeria, Fulani herdsmen killed 13 Christians in Benue state on Mon Jan. 12 and nine others on Jan 5th-6th.
• While Nigeria is the deadliest country for Christians, with more killed for their faith in 2025 than in all other countries combined, some on the ground fear that the already high death toll could double this year (2026) if sufficient action is not taken against the Islamist groups and bandits that plague parts of the country.
• Christian activists say that in China and India, religious freedom is under “unprecedented threat”, citing a sharp escalation in government actions and extremist violence targeting believers. In India, authorities have made moves to close camps for thousands of Christians displaced by violence in Manipur in 2023-24, when hundreds of churches and homes were burned down by Hindu extremists. And yet another wave of Christian persecution is under way in China with the arrest of church leaders and the demolition of a major Christian church building.
• In Germany, Bible-believing Christians are sometimes seen as dangerous cults and can face serious intimidation – or worse. This occurred to the pastor of a unique and growing church in the city of Duisburg in western Germany, when a German SWAT team raided the church and blew the door off his home, attacking him and breaking his nose.
• In America, political activists disrupted a Baptist church service in St. Paul, Minnesota last weekend, over allegations that one of its pastors serves as a federal immigration enforcement agent. The protestors were said to have “accosted members of our congregation, frightened children, and created a scene marked by intimidation and threat.” According to the Family Research Council, 383 churches across America endured a combined total of 415 hostile incidents in 2024, including vandalism, arson, armed aggression, and service disruptions. Armed incidents more than doubled from 12 in 2023 to 28 in 2024.

Antisemitism

• West Midlands Police ignored string of anti-Semitic incidents. While the West Midlands Police force has become notorious for its handling of the Maccabi Tel Aviv / Aston Villa football match, it has emerged that they – along with their Prevent unit –  ignored a string of extremist and anti-Semitic incidents raised by members of the Jewish community in Birmingham over the past 4 years. To give just two examples, a former police volunteer claims she was dismissed after raising concerns, while the force allegedly failed to act after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was punched in the face and kicked in the stomach by a classmate shouting “free Palestine”, leaving her in need of medical attention. While the force’s Chief Constable, Craig Guildford, announced his retirement “with immediate effect” last week, there are calls for the scandal-hit force to be “placed into special measures” and for a “total change in leadership”.
• US considering asylum for British Jews. The Trump administration is discussing the possibility of offering the US as asylum to Britain’s Jews to allow them to flee the antisemitic UK, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Robert Garson has said – though this has not been confirmed by the US government. Garson, who was born in Manchester, said that the UK was “no longer a safe place for Jews” and laid much of the blame on Keir Starmer for allowing anti-Semitism to flourish. Garson claimed areas of Britain would succumb to Sharia law if fundamental Islamism went unchecked. “Mark my words, they are coming for the Jews and then they are coming for your pubs. You are going to have sharia-compliant areas very, very soon,” he said.

Antisemitism and the NEU

• Jewish MP’s invite to school cancelled after pro-Palestine campaign. It has emerged that the visit of Jewish MP Damien Egan, Labour MP for Bristol North East, to a school in his own constituency in September was cancelled after the Bristol branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign intervened, reportedly helped by Left-wing members of the National Education Union (NEU). The local teaching union celebrated this as “a win for safeguarding, solidarity and the power of the NEU trade union staff group”. Steve Reed, the UK Communities Secretary, described the news as “an outrage …. you cannot have people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children”.  In PM’s Question time, Sir Keir Starmer promised: we will be holding to account those who prevented this visit to this school.” Following the incident, the Education Secretary has said she will investigate anti-Semitism in schools, while Ofsted inspectors have launched an emergency inspection of the Bristol school in question (which, to its credit, has scheduled another date for Mr Egan to visit).
• The NEUs history of anti-Semitism. While many unions have flaunted the issue of Palestine, the National Education Union (NEU), Britain’s biggest teaching union, is known to have a lengthy history of antisemitism, with Jewish members having long complained that the union fails to protect them from anti-Semitic abuse. The NEU has sponsored more Palestine marches than any other union, with teachers often having their own bloc. Its leader, Daniel Kebede, was forced to apologise after calling on crowds to “globalise the intifada” in 2021. Last spring, the NEU announced plans to train members in how to ‘advocate for Palestine’ and to bring the ‘Palestinian struggle’ into schools.
• NEU members’ loathing of Israel. A steady stream of Jews have walked out of the NEU in recent years, some having been told that “Israel doesn’t exist.” The union has even had to go to the extraordinary length and vast expense of employing a top lawyer to investigate allegations of ‘institutional anti-Semitism’. Notes Spiked commentator Joanna Williams, “The bigotry in the NEU is there for all to see: no expensive lawyers or lengthy inquiries are needed. The problem is that from Kebede down, so many union members are consumed by loathing of Israel, they are unable, or unwilling, to acknowledge what’s in plain sight.” Read also this pertinent article.

UK Broken Society

• Even Muslim countries seem terrified of Britain’s Islamists, given the news that the United Arab Emirates has removed UK universities from its approved list over fears of Islamist indoctrination.
• A grooming gang victim who was raped and abused by at least 50 men in Bradford says she feels insulted after her compensation claims were denied by authorities.
• New research suggests that 1 in 3 students now say Reform UK should be banned from speaking on campuses, suggesting that university 'wokery' and political intolerance is getting worse.
• Talking of 'wokery', a playful podcast image, Hanging Out with Ant and Dec, showing the TV stars hanging from a washing line, has been removed after angry protests that it includes “suicidal imagery”.
• A ‘posh’ pressure group – Take Back Power – that threw custard at the crown jewels - is planning mass thefts from the high-end supermarket Waitrose in coming months.
• It has been estimated that the police have spent 660,000 hours in the last 11 years investigating non-crimes.
• An Imam who admitted to the 'forced marriage' of two underage children in the UK has avoided jail.
• In what has been termed ‘Sadiq Khan's great London exodus’, someone moves out of London every 75 seconds (nearly half a million residents in 2024), amid the cost-of-living crisis and London’s spiralling crimewave.
• Information published by think tank Enlighten reveals that Scotland runs a fiscal deficit that by a margin is the weakest in all Europe at 12% GDP, which, without the support of the UK, is utterly unsustainable. No other country in Europe comes close to this.

Climate Change

• Global warming meltdown. Dozens of scientists have left the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in recent times due to the corruption of science within the organisation. Among the many reasons given are the following: