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Claiming that a Christian student in the northern Nigerian town of Kazaure blasphemed Muhammad, Islamic militants torched at least 13 churches, along with several homes and businesses Tuesday, police reported.

"The hoodlums then mobilized and went into town where they started looting and burning people's property," police commissioner Abubakar Sale told Reuters. No deaths were reported.

Meanwhile, 3,000 Chinese believers are without a place to worship as authorities in Jiangsu province have closed 125 churches since July. The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said that local administrators, not the national government, were apparently responsible for the crackdown.

Sad news in both the Nigeria and China cases, but even sadder is that there's not a whole lot of information on either story because such things happen so often; they're hardly news anymore. For example, compare today's Nigeria story with one earlier this month, where three students were killed and more than 30 injured when Muslims in the town of Maiduguri attacked Christians for what they considered inappropriate attire, and it seems like a relatively small development. Compare it to the "persecution" an American church faces in its zoning battle with the city, and it looks huge.

It's been a busy week over here on the CT hallway, so Weblog hasn't had time to fish for many articles. We're compiling them now for a large posting later on (with luck, this afternoon).

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November (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47