Ozzone 12-09 > Do you belong to Christ? Have you crucified the flesh? Have you surrendered your right to yourself?

 

Ozzone 8-18 > Do you have riches of some sort that you are not willing to sacrifice?

 

Have you ever studied the contrast between the rich, young ruler and the thief on the cross? The thief realized who Jesus is and humbly asked to be remembered although he knew he didn’t deserve it. The rich, young ruler also realized who Jesus is, but came to him confident that he had kept the Law and probably expected to hear the Lord praise him. But the Lord pulled the rug out from under his feet and sent him home in dismay. Peter said, “We have left all and followed You.” And Jesus praised those who have done so. Luke 18:28-30. Do you have riches of some sort that you are not willing to sacrifice?

Islam - Current Day - ISIS Bride; Afghan Car Bomb; Islamic Rage; Women's Rights Activist Goes Silent

ISIS bride Shamima Begum’s UK return put on hold after British government wins right to appeal decision

Shamima Begum’s return to UK shores has been cast in doubt after the British government dramatically won a court battle allowing it the right to appeal an earlier decision. The appeal will be heard by the UK’s Supreme Court.

Begum, now 20, who was one of three east London schoolgirls who traveled to Syria to join Islamic State in 2015, won a High Court appeal earlier this month, allowing her to return to the UK and challenge the withdrawal of her British citizenship.

However, on Friday, the Court of Appeal ruled that the case raised a point of law of public importance, meaning that Begum’s return must be paused while the UK government appeals the decision.

Begum left the UK five years ago and lived under IS rule for over three years, having married Dutch-born Islamic State fighter Yago Riedijk. She was found in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019, and was discovered to be pregnant.

Then-UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked her British citizenship later that year on national security grounds. Last year, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) said that Begum had not been unlawfully rendered stateless while she was living in Syria because she was entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.

Afghanistan car bomb kills 8, injures 30

By Danielle Haynes

Afghan security officers stands guard outside the emergency hospital in Kabul after a car bomb blast targeted
a crowded market in Logar province of Afghanistan, on Thursday. Photo by Jawad Jalali/EPA-EFE

July 30 (UPI) -- A car bomb exploded in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing at least eight civilians and injuring dozens more, the Interior Ministry said.

Multiple children were among the victims.

"The incident occurred at 7:40 p.m. local time in Sharwal Square of Pul-e-Alam city, capital of Logar [province]. The initial information indicated that eight civilians were martyred and 30 wounded," tweeted ministry spokesman Tariq Arian, according to a translation by Xinhua news agency.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack; the Taliban denied involvement, Tolo News reported.

The explosion comes ahead of a planned three-day cease-fire between the Afghan government and Taliban militants for the Eid al-Adha holiday.

Pol-e-Alam, AFG

Egyptian kills brother in row over Eid meat

Accused had warned his family against accepting meat being distributed to the poor

Ramadan Al Sherbini, Correspondent
Gulf News

The accused told prosecutors in the Delta province of Beheira that he flew into rage on learning that his family had accepted the meat given away to the poor during the Eid of Sacrifice, private newspaper Al Masri Al Youm said.

He added that his family had ignored his earlier warnings against accepting such gifts. In a fit of rage, he flew the meat piece out of the house window, triggering a fight with his brother. Wielding a knife, the accused reportedly fatally stabbed his brother and inflicted wounds in the abdomen of his sister.

Local prosecutors ordered him to be kept in custody for four days pending further interrogation.

During Eid Al Adha, Muslims, who can afford it, sacrifice animals such as sheep, goats, camels and cows, honouring the Prophet Ebrahim’s willingness to slay his son Ismael at Allah’s command. As the Prophet Ebrahim and Ismael showed unwavering obedience to the divine order, Allah sent a ram slaughtered in the son’s stead.

Was it that he was too proud to accept meat given to the poor? Did his pride exceed all common sense and love for his brother and sister? 

Of course, the son Abraham nearly sacrificed was Isaac. Ishmael had been sent away by Abraham as an illegitimate son after Isaac, the promised son was born. The Ishmael sacrifice story was invented by Mohammed thousands of years after Isaac's story was written.

'It's psychological torture': Saudi activist's family say she hasn't been heard from in 6 weeks

..

UBC graduate Loujain Alhathloul turned 31 on Friday in a Saudi jail

Michelle Ghoussoub · CBC News 

Alhathloul, a graduate of the University of British Columbia, was arrested in May 2018 along with nine other high-profile women's rights activists. (Loujain Alhathloul/Facebook)

Women's rights activist Loujain Alhathloul, currently jailed in Saudi Arabia, hasn't been heard from in six weeks — the longest time she's been silent since she was arrested over two years ago, according to her brother.

Alhathloul, a graduate of the University of British Columbia, has been detained since May 2018, when she was arrested along with nine other women's rights activists. She turned 31 in prison on Friday.

"We don't know anything about her well-being and we don't know anything about where she is exactly," said her brother Walid Alhathloul, speaking on the phone from Toronto.

He said she was previously detained in Ha'er Prison, a maximum-security prison and the country's largest, but the family now isn't sure whether she's been moved to a different location.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, her family was able to visit her weekly. But those visits were replaced by weekly phone calls when Saudi Arabia tightened restrictions on prison visits to prevent the spread of the virus.

Alhathloul says the family now hasn't heard from her since June 9. "I would say it's a way to torture us, the family. Loujain knows that we are doing fine, but we don't know if she's doing fine," he said.

"We're safe — she's not safe. It's psychological torture."

Detained since 2018

Alhathloul was first accused of attempting to destabilize the kingdom. Since then, those charges have been changed to communicating with foreign journalists and attempting to apply for a job at the United Nations.

Her trial was indefinitely postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We're expecting that we're not going to get any updates from the court, or from the judge," said her brother, who said that even two years on, the family maintains hope that she will be released.

"We're holding up. We're used to that and we know that the target is us. This was difficult at the beginning, but right now it's becoming part of our DNA."

Loujain Alhathloul's birthday triggered an outpouring of support on social media, and protests

outside of the Saudi embassy in Washington DC. (Loujain Alhathloul/Facebook)

Alhathloul was a vocal activist known for her vivacity and spirit even prior to her high-profile arrest.

In 2014, following her graduation from UBC, Alhathloul was arrested for live-streaming herself breaking Saudi Arabia's female driving ban by driving across the border from the United Arab Emirates.

The stunt, which captured the world's attention, earned her 70 days of detention. She followed that up by running in Saudi Arabia's first election open to women.

After 14 months of detention, she was offered to sign a deal that would have let her walk free if she posted a video statement denying that she'd been tortured. She tore up the document.

She had previously told her family that she'd been held in solitary confinement and suffered electrocution, flogging, and sexual assault

Alhathloul's birthday triggered an outpouring of support on social media and protests outside of the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C.

Nobel Peace Prize nominee

Walid Alhathloul said he believes his sister, who in February was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by United States Congress members, has become a symbol for women's rights across the world.

"People saw that when she got involved, she didn't have to, because she had all her own privilege," he said. "And despite that, she sacrificed her own privilege for the sake of greater women's rights in Saudi Arabia. She did that unconditionally."

Tortured Evangelist Supernaturally Escapes High-Security Chinese Prison by Simply Walking Out

Author: Paul Steven Ghiringhelli

Charisma

 Brother Yun (Vimeo/Back to Jerusalem)

Liu Zhenying fell to the floor convulsing, his frail body coursing with electricity. Prison guards, electric-shock batons in hand, stepped back unashamedly as he lost consciousness.

Inside Nanyang Prison, located in China's Henan Province, 25-year-old Liu was beginning the 75th day of his fast from both food and water. Although he was 5 feet 5 inches, he weighed less than 70 pounds and had to be carried to a room where officials had arranged for his family to see him. The Public Security Bureau (PSB), China's secret police, was hoping Liu's wife and mother would convince him to renounce his "superstitious" beliefs and reveal the identities and locations of his unregistered house-church contacts.

When Liu regained consciousness, his head was in his mother's lap. She was sobbing. His young wife and sister peered at him in horror. He was an unsightly pile of skin and bones, covered in crusty blood and filth. His ears were shriveled like raisins, and portions of his scalp were exposed because the prison guards had ripped his hair out.

Only a birthmark convinced Liu's mother that the man she was holding was her son. Soon they were all crying. Liu broke his fast by sharing communion with his family. Then he cried, "I will see you all in heaven!"

That was April 7, 1984. Liu believed he would soon die for the Lord in that prison, but God had other plans. He was released four years later but imprisoned and tortured twice more before escaping China in 1997.

Today, Liu Zhenying, 49, is known to Christians around the world as Brother Yun (pronounced "Yoon"), a name Chinese believers gave him to protect his identity. Thousands have been inspired by his account of supernatural intervention and miraculous survival, which he detailed in his autobiography, The Heavenly Man (Piquant Editions and Monarch Books).

Co-authored by Paul Hattaway, the book has been translated into 33 languages and has sold more than 800,000 copies. In 2003, it won the United Kingdom's Christian Booksellers' Book of the Year Award.

But more than being a testimony of one man's spiritual journey, The Heavenly Man offers a glimpse inside the Chinese underground house-church movement, a Christian community that is poised to reach the world with the gospel.

China's Christian Awakening

Although the numbers vary, observers estimate between 100 million and 130 million Christians live in China, an indication that nearly 10 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion people may be believers.

Protestant missionary work to South Asia began exactly 200 years ago when Robert Morrison landed in Macao in 1807. The Scottish missionary eventually translated the Bible into Chinese from his base in the coastal city of Guangzhou. Later, missionaries such as Hudson Taylor, who founded the China Inland Mission in 1865, carried the gospel into interior provinces such as Henan.

There were roughly 1 million Christians living in China when Mao Zedong's community army took over in 1949. But Mao's regime looked to turn back the tide. "The first thing Mao did was expel all missionaries, throw pastors in prison or labor camps where most of them died, destroy church buildings and burn Bibles," Yun says. "By the 1970s, it was said the only Bibles left in China were in history museums in Beijing."

Yet when Mao's bloody Cultural Revolution ended with his death in 1976, an underground Christian movement erupted. It was around this time that a proselytizing 17-year-old Yun first became a wanted criminal in China, having led 2,000 people to Christ in his native Henan Province during his first year as a Christian.

He says his zeal came from his mother, a poor and backslidden woman who, while caring for her cancer-stricken husband and near suicide herself, tearfully turned back to God one night in 1974. The prodigal gathered her five children (Yun was the fourth of five) and told them Jesus would save them. They prayed all night for their father, and he was healed. Yun says God then told him to be His witness "to the south and the west."

The young evangelist continued to preach despite the constant threat of arrest. Even after Mao's brutal reign ended, Chinese authorities continued to persecute Christians. In 1983 after a secret house-church meeting in a village, PSB officers arrested Yun.

As he was being kicked and dragged through the snow, Yun feigned insanity to warn other believers to run, shouting, "I am a heavenly man! I live in Gospel Village! My father's name is Abundant Blessing! My mother's name is Faith, Hope and Love!"

One of several Christians to be arrested that night, Yun spent four years in Nanyang Prison. There he rejected numerous enticements to join the government-sanctioned Three-Self Church, as do most Christians in China. Members of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement or the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association face legal restrictions on core Christian practices, including evangelism, youth outreach and home groups.

Because Yun refused to conform, prison officials resorted to beatings and electric shocks in an attempt to penetrate his house-church connections. "They wanted me to reveal names of co-workers and meeting places," Yun told Charisma. "With thick needles they squeezed acids under my nails, and I fainted from the pain. I woke up and told them nothing."

Unlike many Western teachers who equate Christianity with comfort and abundance, Yun preaches a gospel that emphasizes suffering and ruin. He sees affliction as a way to commune with God.

"I did not really suffer for Jesus while in prison—I was with Jesus," he writes in his book. "The ones who really suffer are those who never experience God's presence."

Revivalist Rolland Baker—who with his wife, Heidi, ministers among the poorest of Africa—says Yun's life is one "so totally captured by [Jesus] that no imaginable hardship or persecution can stop him from being more than a conqueror."

Yun says there was a time when he allowed ministry "to become an idol." After being released from Nanyang Prison in 1988, Yun says he temporarily lost sight of God and became overzealous and obstinate. He ministered around China at a breakneck pace, ignoring his wife's pleas to slow down.

Yun later admitted that he had forgotten his "first love." Of his second imprisonment in 1991, he says, "The Lord graciously allowed me to rest in Him behind bars."

Released in 1993, Yun says he soon developed a burden to see unity among China's house churches, a passion he shared with his mentor, Peter Xu Yongze, who at that time led China's large house church, the Born Again Movement.

The unity movement, later named Sinim Fellowship, spread so quickly that by early 1997 word of it reached the office of high-level communist officials in Beijing. Subsequently, the PSB raided a clandestine Sinim meeting in Henan's provincial capital of Zhengzhou.

Trying to avoid arrest, Yun leaped from the second-floor window but fractured his leg. He was met on the ground by the PSB, who beat him and issued electric shocked. Sharing a wall between their cells, Yun and Xu, who also was arrested during the raid, were tortured for several days at Zhengzhou's Number One Maximum Security Prison. Yun's legs were beaten with clubs to rule out an escape attempt.

Yun says torture taught him an important lesson: "Even though God did not speak a word to me, no matter how much I cried; even though God didn't immediately set me free from the pain and terror; I have come to understand that He was there."

CHARISMA is the only magazine dedicated to reporting on what the Holy Spirit is doing in the lives of believers around the world. If you are thirsty for more of God's presence and His Holy Spirit, subscribe to CHARISMA and join a family of believers that choose to live life in the Spirit. CLICK HERE for a special offer.

After six weeks on the prison's third floor, Brother Yun believed God wanted him to escape. So on the morning of May 5, 1997, after his wife in a vision that morning told him to "open the iron door" and after Zu whispered to him that the time had come, Yun asked the guard for permission to use the bathroom.

Although he barely could stand on his battered legs, when the iron door opened, Yun says he suddenly was able to walk on his own, which he did, right past the first guard. On the stairwell he says he grabbed a broom to pretend he was tidying up the place, then proceeded past the second guard, who looked straight through him. Praying with every step, Yun says he reached ground level and found the third iron door open as well. Stepping onto the courtyard and into broad daylight, Yun thought he would be shot in the back at any moment.

But amazingly, when he reached the prison's main gate, it was open too. He walked onto the busy Zhengzhou streets and a taxi pulled up. The driver asked, "Where to?"

Yun later learned that no one had ever escaped from Zhengzhou Prison.

There is much more on this story at Charisma

UK Funding 33,000 Teachers Promoting Jihad & Martyrdom in Palestine Schools, Minister Admits

AntiSemitism rears its ugly head again - in UK

FILE PHOTO: Palestinian schoolchildren attend a lesson inside a tent in the West Bank village of Jubbet Al Dhib, near Bethlehem August 24, 2017. © Mussa Qawasma / Reuters

Millions in UK taxpayer money being spent on helping Palestinians is also funding schools teaching a curriculum that promotes martyrdom and jihad against Israel, a government minister has confirmed.

In his answers given to the UK Parliament, Minister of State for International Development Alistair Burt confirmed that British taxpayers’ money is funding the wages of some 33,000 teachers who use the new curriculum.    

Earlier last week, Burt said that “all of their [the Palestinian Authority’s] schools in the West Bank are using the revised 2017 PA curriculum. UK-funded public servants and teachers … are therefore involved,” the Sunday Times cited him as saying, adding that £20 million (US$24.6 million) was spent on supporting Palestinians last year alone.

Study material from the schools in Palestine pushes children toward violence, a review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) discovered back in October 2017. It said the school program not only demonized Israel but also “provided a rationale for war.”

"The curriculum exerts pressure over young Palestinians to acts of violence in a more extensive and sophisticated manner," IMPACT-se wrote. "The discourse is couched in terms of nationalist and religious martyrdom, across science, literature, history and religious education textbooks." The report provides numerous illustrations supporting the claim. It describes how violence has even penetrated physics textbooks.

"A science textbook teaches Newtonian gravity through the image of a boy with a slingshot targeting soldiers, to explain power, mass, and tensile strength," the watchdog wrote in the report. "An eleventh-grade physics textbook teaches circular motion through the use of a slingshot in another clash with IDF soldiers."

Another textbook encourages nine-year-olds to be martyrs with a picture of students looking at their friend's empty desk with the sign "The Martyr." A poem in a history book meanwhile calls for violent resistance against Israel: "I vow I shall sacrifice my blood to saturate the land of the generous and will remove [uzilu] the usurper from my country will exterminate [ubidu] the remnants of the foreigners."

Sacrifice of life is also widely encouraged, as dying is "better" than living: "Drinking the cup of bitterness with glory is much sweeter than a pleasant long life accompanied by humiliation." Martyrdom and jihad are "the most important meanings of life," claims one fifth grade Arabic-language textbook.

"Giving one's life [fida'], sacrifice, fight, jihad and struggle are the most important meanings of life, especially for a people suffering from the scourge of occupation, of siege, repression, harassment, demolition and arrest," another page says.

The Palestinian Authority introduced the new school curriculum for grades 5-11 in August. It is the first full reform of the Palestinian curriculum since 2000.

MP Joan Ryan, chairwoman of Labor Friends of Israel, has slammed the funding of Palestinian schools that use the curriculum.

"It is absolutely appalling that UK taxpayers' money is helping to support the teaching of a curriculum which incites violence and terrorism and spreads anti-Semitism," she told the Sunday Times. "The government must immediately suspend all aid to the Palestinian Authority until it commits to wholesale and urgent revisions of the curriculum."

The Department for International Development said in a statement to the newspaper: "Our support is helping around 25,000 young Palestinians go to school each year. The UK government strongly condemns all forms of violence and incitement to violence."

If that is so, then do something, don't just talk about it.

The Palestinians should also be held accountable for this evil. This is child-abuse and goes against everything modern societies stand for. Yet, such societies tolerate this evil, even support it as the UK does, because modern societies are becoming more and more AntiSemitic as they actually believe the propaganda that comes out of Palestinians. Palestinian propaganda is the flag ship for the fleet of fake news that propagates social media today. Israel should sue!

Swiss Girl vs German Army 1499

I came across this brief but delightful story of a young Swiss girl who literally brow beat several German knights who threatened her life. I love it!

Swiss battle, dornach 1499

In 1499 the Swiss fought their last great war in the north. Their battle-hardened democratic armies proved superior to the pitiful Habsburg forces and by Autumn, the end of the campaigning season, the Germans were begging for peace. 

Here is a lovely episode from the middle of the war that gives some sense of the mettle and spunk of the Swiss forces against their German neighbours. A young Swiss girl (Mädchen) had been used, in July 1499, as a go between, and had been sent to the Emperor Maximilian with a letter. However, the Imperial forces decide to milk her for information, intimidating her in every way possible: she was perhaps ten. 

The dialogue was caught by Wilibald Pirckheimer (obit 1530), the famous German writer, who was on the Imperial side but who was clearly, for the purposes of this melee, with the Swiss. The child is surrounded by knights.

The girl is asked what the Swiss are doing: ‘Don’t you see they are awaiting your attack?’

The girl is asked how many men the Swiss had: ‘Just enough to repel your advance.’ 

She also noted that the men of Constance, Habsburg allies, could have counted the Swiss in a recent battle there had they not been blinded in flight.

The girl is asked whether the Swiss are hungry: ‘How are they able to live if they do not eat or drink?’

The girl is told that she will have her head cut off if she does not answer questions properly: 

‘Truly you are a hero that you threaten a young girl with death. When you have such a great desire to draw a sword, why don’t you throw yourself on the enemy positions? There you will meet a man who will answer your courage. But it is easier to confront an unarmed and innocent girl than put yourself before an armed enemy who knows how to conduct himself not with words but with deeds.’

At this point the conversation seems to have broken down! It is not the dialogue of a Greek hero with a Trojan hero in the Iliad. It is far more impressive than that: a child raised among citizens talks down to warriors raised in a feudal society. The modern age is about to blow the old world away. 

Dornach, Switzerland

Fake News is Rapidly Reaching the Point of Absurdity

Fox News caught with their pants down - not for the first time by any means, but criticism is coming from all sides and it results in the suppression of the real truth

Fake Fox News? Network ridiculed for bogus ‘Swedish Defense and National Security’ guest

Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly © Brendan McDermid / Reuters

Bill O’Reilly and Fox News have been lambasted for providing fake news after interviewing a “Swedish Defense and National Security adviser,” in relation to Trump’s #LastNightInSweden gaffe, who no one had ever heard of.

Fox News host and controversial peddler of alternative facts Bill O’Reilly interviewed “Swedish Defense and National Security Adviser” Nils Bildt on Thursday, in an effort to back up the claims made about Sweden’s immigration in a Fox segment that is thought to have inspired Trump’s #lastnightinSweden comments.

Bildt dutifully echoed the claims made by Trump, claiming Swedish authorities were failing to socially integrate refugees, leading to a problem with “socially deviant activity” and “hotspots of crime.”

In an awkward turn of events, both the Swedish defense and foreign ministry have denied having any knowledge of who Bildt is.

The problem here is that Fox greatly overstated the man's credentials. Instead of being honest, or making the effort to find someone who actually is an expert and is willing to talk, O'Reilly faked it and deserves the blame and loss of credibility. But it's worse than that!

Trumps now famous #lastnightinSweden gaff resulted from that interview and resulted in another level of lost credibility in the President, which is totally deserved. He should not be getting talking points from Fox News; he should be getting them from his staff. If he took the time to get briefed on issues he decides to talk about, he might be able to speak the truth with some authority. You cannot run the Whitehouse off the top of your head. But it's worse than that!

Because of all this the truth of the conspiracy of silence in ultra-politically correct Sweden is now a joke and no bonafide news network has the guts to report on it or even investigate it. Swedish girls are being raped, gang-raped and beaten senseless every day and the police are covering it up - (see police code R291), by migrants. They are being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness and stupidity by the government, police, judiciary, and media. 

There is such a conspiracy of silence that neither Swedish girls nor their parents are aware of the extreme dangers facing them on the streets of Stockholm, Malmo, Gothenburg, and every other city in Sweden.

A couple of policemen, (see links above) both very near retirement have come forth and outed the conspiracy. A Swedish professor has backed them up (migrants are fiercely over-represented in violent crimes), but there is a mentality in the establishment that criminal migrants are more important than a generation of Swedish girls and women. 

The MSM will never report on that because Fox and Trump have so thoroughly abused the truth that MSM would be seen supporting them if they did report the truth - and that's not going to happen. That's the tragedy of this. 

Photo published for Fake Sweden expert on Fox News – has criminal convictions in US,

no connection to Swedish security...

Fake Sweden expert on Fox News – has criminal convictions in US, no connection to Swedish security...

Fox News continues to focus on the debate about how immigration is breaking Sweden.

Good. At least someone is.

"We have no spokesman by that name," Marie Pisäter, of the Defense Ministry, told Dagens Nyheter.

"We do not know who he is," the Foreign Office said. The Swedish Armed Forces have also stated he is “definitely not a spokesman for the Armed Forces.”

In fact, Bildt left Sweden in 1994, and changed his name from Tolling in 2003. In 2014, Bildt was convicted for assaulting a law enforcement officer and threatening an official by the Arlington General District Court in Virginia, and given a one-year prison sentence.

He runs security companies in the US, although Dangens Nyheter said it is unclear if those companies are in operation.

Bildt later denied claiming he was a Swedish security expert, taking a leaf out of Trump’s book in blaming Fox.

"I had no control over the choice of title, which was made by Fox News' editor,” he told Dagens Nyheter. “I am an independent analyst based in the USA."

A little humour does help one to stave off madness when reporting on stories like this. This tweet emerged which one can't help but laugh at:

Well, they also had this French expert who confirmed everything Nils Bildt said. So, fake?! I think NOT!

470 People ‘Die of Grief’ in Wake of Indian Politician’s Death – Party Claims

In the "Whaaaat?" category...

People pay homage to the body of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaraman, who died on Monday, in Chennai, India, December 6, 2016. © Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Nearly 500 people have died because they were “unable to bear the death” of one of India’s most powerful politicians, Jayalalithaa, her party said. However many people are questioning the claim

Thousands mourn death of leader from

India's 3rd-largest party

Jayalalithaa Jayaram, commonly referred to as Jayalalithaa or Amma (mother), passed away at the age of 68 on December 5 after more than two months in hospital. She served five terms as the Chief Minister of the state of Tamil Nadu between 1991 and 2016.

A former actress who starred in around 140 films, Jayalalithaa was a Tamil cultural icon whose life was more unbelievable than even the most dramatic screenplay.

She was brought into politics by former Tamil movie star and state chief minister, MG Ramachandran.

In 2000 she was convicted of embezzlement and monetary fraud and had to spent time in jail. She was elected the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for the third time in the 2011.

On Sunday, AIADMK said that 470 people died due to the shock and grief of her passing.

"[In] total 470 people died, unable to bear the death of Puratchi Thalaivi Amma, Rs 3 lakh ($4445.44) aid will be given to each family,” the party tweeted.

3 lakh is a lot of money in India. I think I might have lost a family member or two also.

The tweet garnered a huge number of sarcastic responses as numerous people took to social media to express skepticism about the number of people supposedly dying because of overwhelming grief.

"People don't die of shock over their own mother's death but here we are told 280 died of shock over Jayalalithaa's demise. Too much to believe," Anshul Saxena said.

Especially when she's been dying for two months. Seriously!

Many more questioned where the money would be coming from to pay the families and labeled the idea a scam.

The party previously said it would be pay the medical expenses of a man who attempted to kill himself when news of her illness was released. The bill is reportedly Rs 50,000 ($741). They also said they would be paying a similar amount to a man who chopped his finger off when she died.

Strangely that wasn’t the first time someone chopped off a finger for Jayalalithaa. In 2003 a man made one of his an offering at a Hindu temple so that she would live a long life.

How did that work out?

Not sure how to critique this, but it's certainly apparent that Muslims are not the only people prone to hysteria. But I suspect, as many Tweeters do, that this is one big scam. Poverty causes people to do some pretty desperate things; pretending you're dead for a big check is not so far fetched.

Instead of honouring her, they make a mockery of her.