Back in June and July I wrote about “Rescue Christians”, an organisation created by Walid Shoebat and his handler Keith Davies with the aim of providing safe houses for persecuted Christians in Pakistan and elsewhere. Shoebat’s friend Joel Richardson reports that he has spoken with at least one unnamed man who has been working on the issue in Pakistan, but Shoebat’s publicity linked the organisation to specific high-profile cases:
Qamar David’s family are regularly been threatened by the Islamic extremists, therefore they are kept in hiding by RC. Same in the Case of Rashid Emmanuel and Sajid Emmanuel and Fanish Robert.
As I noted when I first read this, the Emmanuel brothers were gunned down in court premises in July 2010. Robert died in police custody in September 2009 in circumstances that the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan described as “judicial murder”, while David died in suspicious circumstances in prison in February 2010. These are cases which have received international media attention, yet for some reason the role of Rescue Christians, and the specific details reported above, have not been reported anywhere.
I raised concerns about accountability, and I asked a few questions: why would Christians in Pakistan not turn to an organisation such as Open Doors or Release International, which have a track-record in this area, rather than a man known only for anti-Muslim punditry? And why is there no apparent liaison with groups such as Christian Solidarity Worldwide or International Christian Concern, which have both worked on the specific cases mentioned by Rescue Christians?
Shoebat’s handler Keith Davies has now stopped by with an explanation:
Mission Statement of Open Doors and all the other so called “reputable” aid charities for Christians:
“Serving Persecuted Christians Worldwide; We are an organization aimed at strengthening persecuted believers worldwide through community development, Bible & literature distribution, leadership training & education and ministries of prayer and advocacy.”
Notice there is no mention of actual rescue work. How can distributing Bibles save peoples’ lives. That is like giving Jews a copy of the five books of Moses before being herded into the gas chamber. The only reason we took on this work Mr Bartholomew is we went to all these organizations that are “reputable” and asked them to save one family we were working with but every one refused. All Open Doors wish to do is collect money to pay their directors wonderful salaries in order to make people “aware” and pray. Not one organization we approached out of the 5 “reputable” ones had any interest in giving practical assistance to families needing help. So we decided to do something ourselves. We take zero as a salary and 100% of the money is used to help the Christians with the money going directly to each family wired by Western Union. Our registered NGO who replicates the work of Rauol Wallenberg sets up the safe houses and coordinates the distribution of money. He himself is under threat and was recently physically attacked sustaining a broken arm and severe bruising, his camera equipment and money stolen
We have on record for any major donor that wishes to support “Rescue Christians” as well as for the IRS if they feel it necessary to check every dollar we have spent and who it was sent to…
In fact, both the British and American websites for Open Doors make numerous references to “safe houses” operated by the organisation.
If organisations such as Open Doors have “refused” to help with Shoebat and Davies’ project, I suspect that this is because of the controversy around Shoebat: not just the questions about his past and activities, but his excessive utterances as an anti-Islam activist: after all, this is the man who claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist, and who wishes there were more violent extremists so that “nukes” could be deployed against “the Muslim world”.
The Rescue Christians website has now for some reason disappeared.
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