Investigators continue searching for suspects and a motive in four suspicious fires that broke out at black churches in rural Alabama early Tuesday. These blazes, added to the five that occurred in Alabama last Friday, bring the count in this string of suspected arson attacks against rural churches to nine so far.

Yellow crime scene tape surrounded the front parking lot and entryway into Dancy First Baptist Church outside Aliceville, Alabama, as agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and other state and local agencies collected evidence from the burned out church. While the exterior was not heavily damaged, flames, smoke and water have virtually gutted the building’s interior.

Pastor Walter Hawkins, who has served as the pastor of Dancy First Baptist Church for ten years, says other area congregations have reached out to his in the midst of this crisis. “We’ve been offered, by other churches, [an invitation] to come and worship with them,” he notes, “so we’re thinking in terms of maybe worshipping with other services this coming week. We just thank God for the support from other churches and from the community.”

The Alabama minister says he harbors no ill will toward the person or persons who set the fire. “We still love ‘em,” he asserts. “No hard feelings. God is about love, and we just pray that they will come forward and confess — we have no hard feelings for them.”

Still, Dancy First Baptist members are by no means untouched by the loss. Congregant Alice Woods rushed to the church after the burglar alarm was tripped and recalls, “When they opened the door, when all the police and the fire [department] got here … I saw the flames at the pulpit.”

In that moment, Woods points out, what she saw being destroyed was more than church property. She and other congregants have built many memories at their church over the past 30 years, she notes. “All three of my girls got baptized — and my oldest daughter was supposed to be getting married here [later this month],” the Alabama woman adds, “so we’ve got to make other plans for that.”

But Woods is confident God will provide. “He’s got a ram in the bush all the time,” she says. Already, she emphasizes, believers in the surrounding community are coming together to help, many offering the use of their facilities and other assistance.

Locals See Clues Suggesting Criminal Intent
Dancy First Baptist’s Pastor Hawkins agrees and says God is already bringing good out of the tragedy. Nevertheless, he advises all rural church members across the state to remain vigilant while the unknown enemy or enemies remain at large.

The vigilance of some local residents has already yielded a few clues. According to an Associated Press report, a member of Morning Star Baptist Church in Boligee said when he arrived on the scene of his church’s conflagration Tuesday morning, smoke was pouring from the windows and flames were visible near the pulpit.

The church member, Johnny Archibald, recalled seeing indications that a side door had been forcibly opened, and he noted that the fire looked to have been deliberately set near the altar. Also, he said an area resident told him a sport-utility vehicle had been seen speeding through an intersection near the church without stopping around the time when the Baptist sanctuary in Boligee was ablaze.

The FBI says its investigators are treating all nine church fires as though they are connected. But despite the apparent intentions of the person or persons responsible for the fires, several members of the burned out churches aver that the loss of the building will not keep them from doing the Lord’s work; nor has it stopped other Christians from reaching out to help.

- AgapePress

Despite some observers’ predictions in the western media, a terrorism expert does not expect Hamas to abandon violence for diplomacy following the group’s surprise victory in the Palestinian elections in January.

Jeremy Reynalds heads up Joy Junction, an Albuquerque-based homeless shelter that is the largest in the state of New Mexico. But for nearly four years now — in his spare time — Reynalds has investigated terrorists through American-hosted websites and forwarded his findings to authorities. His efforts have included two sting operations and the downing of a number of terrorist-related Internet sites — and have brought him several death threats from self-proclaimed jihadists.

“Tracking terrorism online began as a hobby for me. Now it has become a passion,” he says.

His online exploits have included monitoring of pro-Hamas sites, the terror-supporting group that came out on top in the recent Palestinian elections in Israel. While some officials in the western media have predicted Hamas will now turn to diplomacy, the online terrorist-hunter says recent Internet postings tell a different story.

“Anybody who believes that Hamas is going to change the way they act, react, deal with Israel, is living in a sort of Alice in Wonderland,” Reynalds states. “They have shown no signs of doing that. They are not willing to acknowledge the existence of Israel.”

Not only are they not willing to acknowledge the Jewish nation’s existence, says Reynalds, but recent postings on websites sponsored by terrorists are still calling for the elimination of all “Zionists.” He emphasizes the need to spread that word.

“I really hope that people get involved [in doing that],” he says. “And again, … as I said before, we are living in a post-9/11 culture — and we really encourage people to realize [that] Islam is not a good religion gone bad. It is a bad religion that is getting even worse.”

In May Reynalds will release a book detailing his online terrorist investigations. The title of the book is War on the Web: Fighting the Online Jihad.

- AgapePress