A new era of Christian persecution: Pat Buchanan exposes why Islam is not a religion of peace

"If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you." So Christ told his disciples, and so it has again come to pass.

Not since Stalin's time have Christians been so savagely persecuted. But it is no longer communists who are the great persecutors, but Islamist mobs from Africa to the Balkans to Indonesia.

Last Sunday during evening services, terrorists detonated car bombs outside five Catholic churches in Mosul and Baghdad. A dozen worshipers perished. Scores of women and children were injured.

Now the Christians are fleeing. In Damascus, Rita Zekert, who heads the Caritas Migrant Center, says that where, a year ago, the refugees were Shiite, Sunni, Christian and Kurd in rough proportion to each's share of the population, "nowadays, 95 percent of the people coming to us are Iraqi Christians."

According to the New York Times, these refugees "tell of Christian shopkeepers killed by Islamist gangs for daring to sell alcohol, of family businesses sold to ransom stolen children ... They left Iraq, they say, only because they were too terrorized to stay."

"All Sunday's attacks were against Catholics rather than Eastern Orthodox churches, suggesting that Christians who owed their allegiance to Rome had become targets in the anti-Western campaign, Catholic clerics said," says the Financial Times, adding, "Iraq's 650,000-strong Christian community is depleting fast. Most of the 3 million Christians of Iraqi origin now live abroad, mainly in the U.S. and Western Europe. Tens of thousands have moved to Syria and Jordan, many crammed into tenement blocks, living on charity, banned from work and waiting for visas out of the Arab world."

From Lebanon, scores of thousands of Catholics have fled in recent decades, leaving those behind as a shrinking minority in a Muslim land where they once flourished and, indeed, led.

Last May, in Nigeria's second city, Kano, Muslim youth went on a midnight rampage with cutlasses, clubs and machetes, massacring 600 Christians and leaving their bodies in the streets. Sixteen churches burned to the ground. The senior Muslim cleric in the city ordered all Christians out. Some 30,000 were driven from their homes.

In Kosovo in March, Albanian mobs, enraged over false rumors that Serbs were responsible for the drowning of three Muslim boys, looted and torched 17 monasteries, churches and convents. To protect these same Kosovar Albanians, the United States launched a 78-day bombing campaign on Belgrade and Serbia in 1999.

All the world is today focused on Darfur in the western Sudan. Forgotten are the millions of Christians in the southern Sudan who suffered torture, slavery, mutilations, rapes, starvation, massacres and exile at the hands of Sudanese soldiers after Khartoum declared Islamic law for the nation.

Between 1974, when Indonesia invaded East Timor, and 1999, when East Timor voted for independence, the United Nations has documented at least 120 massacres, with many involving hundreds of dead in this small Catholic country. After independence, Indonesian troops slaughtered over 1,000 East Timorese in rage over their decision to break free of Jakarta.

In Egypt, the 6 million Christian Copts have begun openly to protest persecution by Muslim fanatics and local authorities. If, as President Bush has assured us, "Islam is a religion of peace," what is going on? Why the persecutions? Why the rampages and massacres to force peaceful Christians to flee their homes in Nigeria, Sudan, Kosovo, Iraq, Egypt, Indonesia?

Answer: What is going on in the Islamic world is something akin to what happened in Europe from the Spanish Reconquista in 1492 through the Thirty Years War. As Isabella was determined to expel the Moors and de-Islamicize all of Spain, militant Muslims are today determined to expel all Christians and to de-Christianize the Islamic world.

They intend not only to drive Americans out of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Arab lands, but to drive the Christian minorities out – as aliens, traitors and collaborators of the West. Islamic terrorists are engaged in what has been called Fourth Generation warfare, warfare by non-state actors, warfare that will not be defeated with Tomahawk missiles and F-16s. And the militant Islamists conducting this form of warfare against Christian minorities in their midst are only confirmed in the justice of their jihad by America's imperial presence in Iraq and our domination of the Middle East and Arab world.

The Western empires came and conquered the Islamic world in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They then departed or were driven out in wars of national liberation. But the Christian minorities who had lived peacefully there for 20 centuries, and who were left behind when the West went home, are now paying the price of our occupations and of militant Islam's determination to purge and purify the Dar al Islam of all the hated residue of the Christian West.

One of the most shameful acts in our history, and done with the overwhelming support of congress.

Not since Stalin's time have Christians been so savagely persecuted. But it is no longer communists who are the great persecutors, but Islamist mobs from Africa to the Balkans to Indonesia.

? Stalin ?

Who is Stalin,..... asks Amerika?

A new rock group?

What's a 10 Commandment?

(Under the Chestnut Tree world)

'V'

/sarcasm

And the militant Islamists conducting this form of warfare against Christian minorities in their midst are only confirmed in the justice of their jihad by America's imperial presence in Iraq and our domination of the Middle East and Arab world. ........ the Christian minorities are now paying the price of our occupations

Pat waited to the end to get to the meat of his argument -- he thinks all this is OUR fault! ....that our "imperialism" is causing the world's Muslims to kill and persecute Christians by the millions.

"Not since Stalin's time have Christians been so savagely persecuted."

Compared to Muslims, the Romans in the Colossuem were pikers. Eventually, even THEY were converted by what they saw.

But in no Islamic Country has anything but the reverse occurred. With the exception of the Reconquista and the military cleansing of southern Italy and Sicily and part of the Balkans, Muslims have continued up to the very present to wage a highly succesful war of total intolerance, persecution and forced conversion against all non-Muslim people in their dominions.

I don't fault Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Mojo. He just tells it like it is.

What the article is about: "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. So Christ told his disciples, and so it has again come to pass."

Conclusion: "But the Christian minorities who had lived peacefully there for 20 centuries, and who were left behind when the West went home, are now paying the price of our occupations and of militant Islam's determination to purge and purify the Dar al Islam of all the hated residue of the Christian West."

Christians are doing what Christians are suppose to do... teach the Word in love and peace. Meanwhile, Satanic evil does what it has always done. Our presents is simply an excuse for the persecution. Jesus Christ is the reason for the persecution.

Islam... of any kind, militant or not, is Satanic evil.

He's not saying that our presence - "imperial" presence - is an excuse for the persecutions, he's saying it's the reason for them. And that it would likely stop if we turned tail and became the isolationist nation he's been dreaming about since the end of the Cold War. That's the gist of his argument, as it always is.

All Sunday's attacks were against Catholics rather than Eastern Orthodox churches, suggesting that Christians who owed their allegiance to Rome had become targets in the anti-Western campaign,

Iraqi Catholic Priest Francis Sheer walks past a charred vehicle left after a bomb blast outside of a church in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites) Monday Aug. 2, 2004. Assailants triggered a coordinated series of explosions outside five churches in Baghdad and Mosul during evening services, killing 11 people and wounding more than 50 in the first major assault on Iraq's Christian minority since the 15-month-old insurgency began. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list

I wouldn't say it's "our" imperialism. I would loudly question whether Roman Catholic behavior may have anything to do with this. Behavior such as the recorded incidents which occur down in South America where "protestants" are run out of towns, off their lands, ect for merely trying to congregate and build churches. Rome as Walter Martin used to say, Is a chamelion that is a different beast on whatever surface you sit it on. They act differently here because they'd never be allowed to get by with the way they act elsewhere. I don't know that this is at issue in this case; but, it is an issue to weigh in the balance. And for those who wish to slap a catholic, take care. I'm sure the accusations will fly at me; but, then I'm rather used to being bashed for stating the truth lol. It just Seems rather perplexing that there is such emphasis on Catholics in the article when Christians and Roman Catholics are being persecuted. One wonders why the difference is being noted so markedly..

It just Seems rather perplexing that there is such emphasis on Catholics in the article when Christians and Roman Catholics are being persecuted. One wonders why the difference is being noted so markedly..

3 things, really.

#1, Pat is Catholic.

#2, the point he is trying to make is that Catholics are seen as "the West" in a way that Orthodox and other Christians in the area are not. He notes that Catholic churches were attacked, and not Orthodox.

#3, as usual you bring your own perverse sense of idiocy to the conversation.

Done with with the combined efforts of Albright, McVain and the neocon "intellectuals" such as Bill Kristol. Frankly, I believe that Clinton would not have involved the US without the push of these characters, because it is simply not in Clinton's nature to step up to the plate for any reason other than political expediency.

Perverse sense of idiocy.. What, that I note that the article blatently draws distinction and speaks of persecution of Roman Catholics, and then we are to just forget how Rome acts in other countries... Sense of idiocy must be that I am taking the step of actually questioning whether the Islamicists are responding to something being done by Roman Catholicics or just acting on whims. Or are we supposed to ignore the other side of the equation because the word Catholic has entered the picture..

Merely saying that Catholicism more represents the west than does orthodoxy may be true; but, it's rather weak. And on the whole unsubstantial. As I've noted, Roman Catholicism in America is a different thing than it is elsewhere in the world. I've stated why. I will not repeat as I think the point is well made.

So then, one wonders what perverse sense of idiocy you are beguiled with that you can't see the import of asking whether Rome has instigated something here or not. Guess that's too obvious, huh.

Merely saying that Catholicism more represents the west than does orthodoxy may be true; but, it's rather weak. And on the whole unsubstantial.

Try thinking outside of your own little box. To those in Islam all of us are infidel Christians. And that is Catholic. The Pope and the Catholic Church are the West to them.

It's the same enemy to them that it was 500 years ago. They make no distinction between church and state and recognize no such distinction among us. It's just that in this go around of the feud we've got to take on more shots from our own side. The fools who think that the Catholic Church is more of athreat than Islam, that we can maintain a civilization if the Church is destroyed.

So then, one wonders what perverse sense of idiocy you are beguiled with that you can't see the import of asking whether Rome has instigated something here or not. Guess that's too obvious, huh.

Yeah, I didn't think "what did the Catholics do to upset the Muslims?" I must be the idiot.

Try thinking outside of your own little box. To those in Islam all of us are infidel Christians. And that is Catholic. The Pope and the Catholic Church are the West to them.

Not precisely true. Islam has never much cared about the label beyond "christian" whether properly applied or not. So, what you're saying doesn't ring true historically.

Yeah, I didn't think "what did the Catholics do to upset the Muslims?" I must be the idiot.

You must be. Is this a journalistic piece we're looking at here - yes. Does it address an issue and make some peculiar statements - yes. Should we examine both sides of the story - yes. Instinct doesn't go out the window because Roman Catholicism is part of the story - except, apparently, if you happen to be a Roman Catholic apologist. Mere politics? I don't know... lol

Is this a journalistic piece we're looking at here - yes. Does it address an issue and make some peculiar statements - yes. Should we examine both sides of the story - yes. Instinct doesn't go out the window because Roman Catholicism is part of the story - except, apparently, if you happen to be a Roman Catholic apologist.

Your theory is that the Muslims are upset about Roman Catholic's being unfair to nascent Protestant momvements in South America, and therefor they blew up 5 Catholic Churches in Mosul?

Is that it? Cause that's just stupid. Havoc, no matter how much you hate the Catholics, you're going to have to stop projecting it onto Islam. They have no distinction between you and I. They have declared war on us. Deal with it and stop trying ot blame everything in the world on Catholics.

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