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July 18, 2007, - 1:33 pm
IMPORTANT–Religion of Eradicating Christianity: "Last Rites in the Holy Land"
By Debbie Schlussel
If you're a Christian concerned with the viability of your religion and you still don't think we're fighting the fight of our lives against Islam, then you need to read "Last Rites in the Holy Land" from the July 23, 2007 issue of Newsweek (most of which is posted below).
Arabia's Christians are now meeting with the same fate meted out to Arabia's Jews. This is not a new development, as Muslims have attacked Christians throughout the centuries since Islam's inception. But the attacks are once again at their height and in a revivalist phase. I've written about this many times, but it bears repeating. And in many ways, Christians who foolishly allied with Islamists against the Jews and Israel are "getting it back" in spades.
Read this distrubing article, and tell me whether you still believe that Islam is the "Religion of Peace" or, more accurate, the Religion of Pieces:
He refused to leave Baghdad, even after the day last year when masked Sunni gunmen forced him and eight co-workers to line up against a wall and said, "Say your prayers." An Assyrian Christian, Rayid Albert closed his eyes and prayed to Jesus as the killers opened fire. He alone survived, shot seven times. But a month ago a note was left at his front door, warning, "You have three choices: change your religion, leave or pay the jeziya"–a tax on Christians levied by ancient Islamic rulers. It was signed "The Islamic Emirate of Iraq," a Qaeda pseudonym. That was the day Albert decided to get out immediately. He and the other 10 members of his household are now living as refugees in Kurdistan.
Across the lands of the Bible, Christians like Albert and his family are abandoning their homes. According to the World Council of Churches, the region's Christian population has plunged from 12 million to 2 million in the past 10 years. Lebanon, until recently a majority Christian country–the only one in the Mideast–has become two-thirds Muslim. The Greek Orthodox archbishop in Jerusalem, where only 12,000 Christians remain, is pleading with his followers not to leave. "We have to persevere," says Theodosios Atallah Hanna. "How can the land of Jesus Christ stay without Christians?" The proportion of Christians in Bethlehem, once 85 percent, is now 20 percent. Egypt's Coptic Christians, who trace the roots of their faith back to Saint Mark's preaching in the first century, used to account for 10 percent of their country's population. Now they've dwindled to an estimated 6 percent. "The flight of Christians out of these areas is similar to the hunt for Jews," says Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-Italian author and expert on Islam, himself a Muslim. [DS: Allam was a Maronite Christian last name, so his family was likely forcibly converted to Islam at some point.] "There is no better example of what will happen if this human tragedy in the Arab-Muslim world is allowed to continue."
Nowhere is the exodus more extreme than in Iraq. Before the war, members of the Assyrian and Chaldean rites, along with smaller numbers of Armenians and others, constituted roughly 1.2 million of the country's 25 million people. Most sources agree that well over half of those Christians have fled the country now, and many or most of the rest have been internally displaced, but some estimates are far more drastic. According to the Roman Catholic relief organization Caritas, the number of Christians in Iraq had plummeted to 25,000 by last year. Of the 1.7 million Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria, half are Christians, says Father Raymond Moussalli, a Chaldean vicar who now says mass every night in a basement in Amman. "The government of Saddam used to protect us," he says. "Mr. Bush doesn't protect us. [DS: Of course, not. He's too busy uttering his "Islam is peace" mantra and taking his shoes off at extremist mosques.] The Shia don't protect us. No Christian was persecuted under Saddam for being Christian."
Over the centuries, the region's Christians have frequently made common cause with their Muslim neighbors. Leaders of some Christian factions even backed Hizbullah during last summer's Lebanon war, and Arabic-speaking Christians in the Palestinian territories have regularly sided with the Muslim majority against the Israeli occupation. Five years ago Palestinian militants found sanctuary from Israel's tanks inside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.
Nevertheless, old relationships are crumbling now. When Pope Benedict XVI quoted a medieval scholar's critical comments on the Prophet Muhammad, last September, furious Palestinians reacted by torching at least half a dozen churches on the West Bank. About 3,000 Christians remain in Gaza–many of them seeking new homes somewhere else. "We're living in a state of anxiety," says Hanady Missak, deputy principal of the Rosary Sisters School in Gaza City. Militants ransacked the school's chapel during the battle between Hamas and Fatah last month. Crosses were broken and prayer books burned. . . .
"There is no future for Christians in Iraq for the next thousand years," says Rayid Paulus Tuma, a Chaldean Christian who fled his home in Mosul after two of his brothers were gunned down gangland style. His pessimism is shared by Srood Mattei, an Assyrian Christian now in Kurdistan: "We can see the end of the tunnel–and it is dark."
We bear part of the responsibility of that darkness. We've allowed our President to repeatedly gush over, comfort, and enable the princes and kings of the darkness–the rulers of Islamic nations and their co-conspiratorial imams on our shores.
Tags: Amman, archbishop, author, Baghdad, Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, Bush, Caritas, deputy principal, Egypt, Egyptian- author, Fatah, Gaza, GAZA CITY, Hamas, Hanady Missak, Iraq, Israel, Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, Magdi Allam, Mosul, Newsweek, President, Rayid Paulus Tuma, Raymond Moussalli, Rosary Sisters School, Syria, Theodosios Atallah Hanna, West Bank, World Council of Churches
Posted in Blog Posts
Condi recently announced that there would be no preference for Christian refugees over Muslims. In fact, they are to be discriminated against in preference to allowing more Muslims to gain refugee citizenship in America. Clueless Condi and King Jorge, such a pair. A pair of dunces.
DISGUSTING. THAT MUST BE PUBLICIZED (THE LATEST CONDI CLUELESS MOVE). CAN YOU PLEASE SEND ME A LINK TO THAT? IS IT ON YOUR SITE?
John Sobieski on July 18, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Now I know how to respond when some knucklehead asks me, "Is Iraq better (safer) with Saddam gone?"
Not, if you are a Christian living in Iraq.
zyzzyg on July 18, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Tell that to Robert Novak (he thinks the problems facing Christianity in the West Bank are the Jews fault).
BOB NOVAK IS A SELF-HATING, ANTI-SEMITIC JEW WHO ALSO SAID THAT HE SUPPORTS HAMAS. I SUPPOSE HE BLAMES THE MUSLIM CRUSADES AGAINST CHRISTIANS, CENTURIES AGO, ON THE JEWS, TOO. NOVAK LOVED YASSER ARAFAT.
Ripper on July 18, 2007 at 2:48 pm
"There is no better example of what will happen if this human tragedy in the Arab-Muslim world is allowed to continue."
Allowed to continue???? You fight, or You die – those are the only choices if you don't want to be subjugated by Islamists in the Arab-Muslim world. Turning another cheek shouldn't mean your Butt cheek. Turn your other cheek while you're reloading.
Sioux on July 18, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Just goes to show you, islam and democracy do not mix. The whole idea of spreading democracy in the islamic world was ill-concieved from the very beggining by people not only ignorant about islam but also dangerously deluded. The only concrete results of the "Iraqi democracy" project are:
1) The killed, maimed and wounded
2) Stronger Iran
3) Christians in Iraq all but wiped out
Way to go George. You certainly made the ordinary moms and dads in the Middle East happy.
Witch-king of Angmar on July 18, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Debbie, thanks for this post, I am a Christian, I know every day life is bad for Christians in the Middle East, but this article REALLY drives the point home. Far too many Christian churches and congregations just donít get it when it comes to Islam.
Anyone who will truly take an honest look at the Quran and weigh what they read, along with the history of Islam, will realize that Islam propagates a religious philosophy of dictatorial aggression. Indeed, a theology of coercion, horrific violence, and murder.
For far too long, we Christians have allowed ourselves to be slaughtered by the Islamists.
On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus told his apostles;
"But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.î (Luke 22:36, NIV)
This statement from Jesus demonstrates that He wasnít ìJesus, meek and mildî and He doesnít expect Christians to be either.
Rocky on July 18, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Thats why its extremily crucial for christians and jews,liberals and conservatives,(republicans and democrats),hidus and buddists,blacks,hispanics,asian and whites,(including homos and heteros),or just anyone who cares for the survival of the west to all unite in solidarity to fight off the muslim crusading 7th century throwbacks who seek to destroy our democracy that we enjoy living in.
Jew Chick on July 18, 2007 at 6:10 pm
An Assyrian orthodox priest told me long before the Iraq war that their Christians had been 80% martyred over history. The current situation must really cut into their ranks.
code7 on July 18, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I spent 7 years in Egypt and heard of several incidents in which Muslim mobs attacked and killed Copts. There are districts in Cairo and surrounding areas where we expats were forbidden to travel because of the militancy of the local Muslims. We were told that Friday was a bad day to visit the Khan-al-khalilli bazaar because of it's proximity to the al-azhar mosque. Friday sermons blaring from loud-speakers were clearly full of hate-filled shouting (although I couldn't understand a word – it was obviously not "have a nice day"). And we are supposed to believe it's only a tiny percentage of radicals who hate our guts. Yeah, right.
Once on a train during Ramadan, a Muslim man was alternately reading his Qur'an, getting worked up into a hate-filled lather, then staring at me with pure murderous rage.
Another time I met a Muslim coworker on the street with his 10 year old son. When Sameer insisted his son shake my hand, the boy stared at him in horror. "You want me to be nice to an infidel??" was etched all over his face.
But, it's only a tiny percentage. Right?
stevecanuck on July 18, 2007 at 7:04 pm
I guess if you're a powerful elitist, looking down on all us peons, we all look pretty much the same. That's the only way Bush and Co. could look at people and not see any differences.
steve ventry on July 18, 2007 at 11:48 pm
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