SAT-7 honours murdered priest and answers questions of anguished Christians
October 2017SAT-7’s Arabic broadcasts have paid tribute to an Egyptian priest, stabbed to death on a Cairo street, and addressed the anger and anxiety of viewers with pastoral concern and biblical challenge. The channel’s live worship programme Keep on Singing last week paid tribute to Fr Samaan Shahata Rizkallah, the Coptic Orthodox priest who was killed by an assailant after he […]
Egypt: Christian festival goes ahead close to massacre site
October 2017Hundreds of Egyptian Christians recently gathered for a two-day worship festival in Egypt within 15 miles of a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 28 believers in May. The Days of Harvest event at Maghagha in Minya governorate (5-6 October) was one of at least six large-scale conferences that have drawn Christians for worship and teaching and that have […]
Cliff plunge survivor is a changed man
October 2017Anger at his family’s financial struggles led Shawky to drink and becoming a violent bully. Until one night, in a drunken haze, he drove the family truck over a cliff edge. Home for Shawky* is in northern Algeria in the mountainous coastal region known as the Kabyle. It’s a rugged area where the Berber minority he belongs to have staunchly […]
The Briefing – October 2017
October 2017A controversial referendum for Kurdish independence in Northern Iraq dominated the region’s headlines and triggered the rapid deployment of Iraqi forces to Kirkuk. As expected, on 25 September Kurds in Northern Iraq held a referendum for independence from Iraq. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Kurds have enjoyed a de-facto regional governance and since then have aspired to create an […]
Women and Wars
October 2017Supporting women survivors Modern wars, like those in Syria and Iraq, take place, not on battlefields, but in narrow streets and densely populated cities. Airstrikes on buildings, car bombs in markets, snipers on rooftops – these don’t discriminate between fighter and civilian. Over the 20th century the proportion of civilian casualties in war climbed from 5 per cent to 90 […]
Campaigning to change attitudes and end violence
September 2017Challenging commonplace cultural practices There are many inherited cultural practices that have a strong and harmful hold on society in parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Cruelty in classrooms and female genital mutilation (FGM) are two examples which are all too commonplace in the region. SAT-7’s newest channel, SAT-7 ACADEMY, which began broadcasting last month, seeks to create […]
Inspiring young people with a message of hope and healing
Breakthrough “My father and mother taught me how to pray. I used to go to church and attend Sunday school, but with my school friends I used to swear, lie and insult people,” 12-year-old Bassant Gad told viewers of SAT-7’s KIDS channel. Explaining the gulf between what she had been taught about God and the inward indifference she felt, she […]
Giving a voice to women’s hopes and fears
Vitally important For women in the Middle East and North Africa, who are often confined to their homes and close family relationships, television is vitally important. Not only does it provide a valuable form of companionship, but it is also often their only source of information about issues impacting their lives. SAT-7’s broadcasts seek to empower and equip women with […]