Posted on 06/02/2016 7:07:07 PM PDT by marshmallow
Moscow, June 2, Interfax - The Russian Foreign Ministry is concerned over a sharp increase in discrimination on religious grounds in Europe, predominantly towards Christians.
"Despite the measures taken by states, the OSCE area saw a severe increase in intolerance based on religion towards Jews, Muslims and, especially, Christians, over recent years. Christianity, its relics and followers have been subjected to oppression, violence, persecutions and discrimination," Russian Foreign Ministry Ombudsman for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law Konstantin Dolgov said at the conference titled The Role of Religion in the Modern World, the Russian ministry's website said.
Manifestations of intolerance and discriminations take place even in those OSCE member states where Christians make up the majority, Dolgov said.
"Among such manifestations, there are attacks on clergy, obstructing from holding religious events, destruction and desecration of Christian temples and cemeteries, attempts to remove religious symbols from public places, infringements of the freedom of expression of Christians, discrimination in the economic life and other fields. There are a growing number of acts of vandalism, arsons, thefts of Christian treasures and objects of cultural heritage," he said.
Under the guise of freedom of expression, some media take the liberty to "openly scoff at Christian values" and "it runs to the absurd, the prohibition to wear religious symbols, set up Christmas trees and so on, and so forth", according to Dolgov.
"The aggressive Western neoliberalism and militant secularism aimed to compromise spiritual, moral and traditional foundations of society", as well as the imbalances in implementation of the multiculturalism policy amid the increasing immigration are due in no small part to the growth of such negative trends, he said.
"The ECHR [European Court on Human Rights] is primarily concerned over the problem of tolerance despite the Court is, essentially, engulfed with complaints from individuals over discrimination based on religion, including Christianophobia (250,000 lawsuits, while ECHR reviews no more than 40 per year)," Dolgov said, adding that the EU legislation on non-discrimination and hate crimes "is more and more actively used for marginalization of Christians and Christian values".
Dolgov described as depressing the scale of intolerance based on religion in the U.S., and also referred to the data of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which said that while followers of Islam account for less than 1% of the U.S. population, they are the target of 14% of all cases of religious discrimination investigated by the government. U.S. sociologists believe that 15-20% of the country's residents can be classified as absolute xenophobes and according to a study conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, about 15% of Americans (approximately 35 million) hold radical anti-Semitic views.
"In recent years, ahead of Christmas, voices appear in U.S. media saying that it is inappropriate to publicly demonstrate religious attributes during the period of festivities. Their number is constantly growing. American conservatives, for instance, started, in anger, drawing attention to the fact that the traditional greeting "Merry Christmas" has lately given place to the politically correct "Happy Winter Holidays" in the U.S., Dolgov said.
Imagine.
I wish we had been as mindful to pray for the conversion of America.
Let us pray.
Taking the position that our American-Kenyan-muslim administration should be supporting.
God can take me now. I’ve seen everything now. And the world is upside down from when I started on this earth
So you buy it? I don’t know if I do. We’ll see, and I hope it is exactly what we hope. But let’s see them do something like ban abortion. They might be the first ones to do it after it has been made legal, they have both security reasons and hopefully moral reasons to do it.
Freegards
Up is down, Left is Right, Russia makes sense.
Excellent point. Especially, for those who insist Fatima was all but ignored (for geo-political reasons) and that the consecration never properly occurred.
America is in the Dark Ages and the world knows it. Shameful, but we slept, and let it come upon us.
The Russians do what's best for Russia; end of story.
The NERVE of them, acting in their own best interests.
In this case, and for the time being, the Russian Orthodox Catholic Church has been given carte blanche in Russia, as per Putin.
Putin continues to do what is best for Putin and Russia, but this other thing is going on, too. It is strange, but it is true. Many of the churches of antiquity have been restored and embellished in Russia, as well. The faith is renewed after decades of persecution and destruction.
Uncanny.
The West really doesn’t have a lot to boast about these days.
Lol.
In THEORY, being Christians, they are supposed to love all of us, not just themselves. Besides, acting ONLY in their best interests hasn't seem to have worked for them so well, has it?
Their country was demolished by communism. They just really bought into Prussian Karl Marx's theory. It's done just WONDERS for them, hasn't it?
All the commie countries are just flourishing like crazy, aren't they?
China
Cuba
Laos
North Korea
Vietnam.
Also:
Formerly Communist countries (by current name):
Formerly part of the Soviet Union: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
ALL flourishing? Hmmm, I doubt it.
That was/is the essence of communism: mememe. Great stuff.
And, I almost forgot: "There is no God." THAT was a really good one for them to live by.
There HAS to be some happy medium between MEMEME and the early Christian martyr.
WAIT!!! I think we have it: United State of America!
HooooYAH!!
Oh, man, you said it. Depressing.
And frankly, it is all so insidious and consuming, that it will be too much for any one man to ever roll back. Poor TRUMP.
God Himself must be under TRUMP’s wings to bear him up. There is no one else to save us, but Him. I have HOPE for that bearing up, and that’s about it.
So the USA doesn’t act in her own best interests?
Actually with this administration we sure haven’t been doing that.
Putin continues to do what is best for Putin and Russia, but this other thing is going on, too. It is strange, but it is true. Many of the churches of antiquity have been restored and embellished in Russia, as well. The faith is renewed after decades of persecution and destruction.
Uncanny
========================================
Do YOU trust Putin? If you do, I have some really great property, right near the Okefenokee swamp. GREAT price and well irrigated land! You'll love it.
I trust Putin like I trust Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping. All VERY nice folks, aren't they?
Uncanny:
1. having or seeming to have a supernatural or inexplicable basis; beyond the ordinary or normal; extraordinary: uncanny accuracy; an uncanny knack of foreseeing trouble.
2. mysterious; arousing superstitious fear or dread; uncomfortably strange: Uncanny sounds filled the house.
Uncanny certainly describes those three very nice men Czar Putin, Chairmen Kim and Xi.
I wonder how their armies are doing these days?
***As for the restoration of the churches, maybe Putin is hoping to lure some $$$touri$m to his that wonderful country.
My husband and I visited St. Petersburg in 2009. It was VERY expensive, all around: with EXTREMELY mediocre and EXPENSIVE meals, no hot water in the cheapskate hotels, two-star hotels for normal tourists like us or five stars for important people... and they have a knock-off of the "Louvre," called the Hermitage. PARIS is 1000 times better than St. Petersburg...and St. Petersburg was supposed to be Russia's best place to visit.
When we visited the Hermitage, my husband needed a wheelchair. To make sure that we didn't steal it, the TOUR GUIDE had to surrender HER PASSPORT as "ransom" for his wheelchair. What a SWELL place.
This was predicted in David Wilkerson’s 1973 book, THE VISION.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.