Posted on 08/09/2004 3:43:53 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
"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.
You discredit yourself everytime you hit the "Post" button. And I do understand that correction is an act of love. Which makes your hissy fit about the Church labeling anathemas even more hysterical.
You apparently recognize when you string together non sequiturs and bring up unrelated acts of violence by nominal Catholics in South America to blame victims of Church bombings in Iraq on the Church's alleged "policies" that it is just "loving correction" from you.
But you throw a fit if the Church, in a calm and rational matter declares "this is a bad thing to believe."
SD
What did you expect? I'm only surprised he didn't go on and blame our "imperial presence" on the Jews. But he's probably done that in plenty of other contexts.
BTW, was Communist persecution of chr*stians caused by American anti-Communism, and would it have ended if we had bowed out of that fight?
Well, lets see, who's discrediting who each time he hits the post button - would that be you. I didn't blame attacks on Christians overseas by islamists on Rome. Didn't come anywhere near that. I asked if Rome had done anything to cause a retaliation by the islamists.
Most everything you've said is ad hominem. Why is it so difficult for you to simply address the original question without running us on a merry chase and attacking?
Havoc,
i know and knew it was recent but my point still stands...what iwas saying is it is patently wrong but i cant answer for what someone has done or not done in south america. what i am saying is it is wrong, makes no difference to me what religion they are.
as for catholic doctrine -- my point was : i dont agree with it and i make a CHOICE not to. surely that is the point. Christianlty offers a CHOICE.
As for this :
'And Roman Catholics not only believe it is Rome's right to murder whomever they deam to be a heretic, they look upon any christian who doesn't bow to Rome as a heretic'
ahem..i see we are all some type of midless zombie... ALL OF US ..EVERYWHERE...well im not...so you can no longer say ROMAN CATHOLICS..as it patently doesnt apply to me. I dont like speaking for others but i guess i am not alone.
i CHOOSE not to follow..and if ALL CATHOLICS did...surely we would not be having this discussion as we would rampage all over the planet...like mindless zombies...??
this is the back and forth discussion i was talking about. the he said /she said. I SUPPORT and ALWAYS WILL SUPPORT your right to think what you want. As a christian (even the supposidely mindless one i am ) I dont care what the pope says on issues i dont agree with. But HOWEVER i expect the same from you.
Now i think if you want to start a thread on catholcs and their issues, i will respond, BUT the issue of this thread is in my opinion....we (you and me and everyone here who is christian) is a target...it just so happens your brothers and sisters in DHARFUR need your help. I for one am prepared to help. Are you?
I don't particularly see it as speaking for others when it is their clergy that sets policy which they are obliged to adhere to. So while I can't speak for Soothingdave, save for where I am bloody familiar with a given position he specifically holds, I wouldn't say that Soothingdave believes I'm a heretic unless he'd already at some point said as much. Far be it from me to say that Dave would believe anything that Rome told him he must. LOL
i CHOOSE not to follow..and if ALL CATHOLICS did...surely we would not be having this discussion as we would rampage all over the planet...like mindless zombies...??
That is good to hear; but, makes me wonder why you're catholic instead of Christian? Guess I'll leave that for another discussion.
this is the back and forth discussion i was talking about. the he said /she said. I SUPPORT and ALWAYS WILL SUPPORT your right to think what you want. As a christian (even the supposidely mindless one i am ) I dont care what the pope says on issues i dont agree with. But HOWEVER i expect the same from you.
So, you're one of the ones that other Roman Catholics I talk to regularly tell me is a "catholic in name only". Picking and choosing what to follow means you're using your head. I have to applaud you loudly for that. I would like to think it will lead you down the usual path; but, I'm sure God will take care of that ;)
Now i think if you want to start a thread on catholcs and their issues, i will respond, BUT the issue of this thread is in my opinion....we (you and me and everyone here who is christian) is a target...it just so happens your brothers and sisters in DHARFUR need your help. I for one am prepared to help. Are you?
I for one think this situation can be helped and will be helped. Doesn't really matter if they are brothers in Christ, they are fellow human beings - that is the standard. At the same time, this is a news story like any other we disect here daily when something doesn't smell right. And something don't smell right about the story. Who is involved doesn't matter. I happen to think the truth is more important than any bloody label whether it's one I wear, my friends wear or my enemy wears. Fix the problem and get to the bottom of it. Either someone here is stretchin things a bit, or there's a reason for it. If we know why, we can know what to expect for the long term.
Buchanan points out something that has bothered me for some time recently.
The Sudan has been engaged in a program of starvation and slavery against Christians living in the southern part of Sudan. And the press has paid very little attention to it. I don't recall Kofi Annan making any pronouncements on it either.
But when Muslims in Darfur are targeted, suddenly the inhumane policies (towards the people of Darfur) of the Sudanese government become a real cause celebre.
This is not to suggest that a light should not be shone on what is happening in Darfur. It should.
But it bothers me that the press and the UN have ignored the lpight of the Christians in southern Sudan for a long time.
Havoc,
thanks..i think ;)
okay im irish and maybe a bit slow, so i will take it as a compliment.
i am catholic and a christian but thats just me...and good for you and a good point..they are all human. I could not agree more..i stand corrected.
My concern about this thread is it just alwwyas appears to me that Islam has become some type of uncritizabile religion that we all have to bow before that makes no mistakes (or rather will admit to none). I dont believe (and as you have said) that any religion is perfect (well i think you said that -- if you didnt pleasde pretend you did!) and certianly what people do in the name of a religion is in some cases frightening.
so the issue i have is that islam is going thru the growing pains that christianty went thru 600 years or so ago..
my concern (and i definitely know you have said this ::is the PRESENT) 600 odd years ago the damage you could do with a sword was terrible but localised...however today the issue is one of the same moronic mindset except mixed with 500 tons of niger yellowcake...the odd WMD stockpile
but one final thing...good name :)) LOL...certainly the best name...and living up to it i see!!!! HA HA HA
Ok, we are on the same page. LOL. Salute. BTW, I have Scotch/Irish background in my family. Is it me or are bagpipes a genetic thing? I mean I used to think like Harry Truman - "sounds like pigs being murdered." But something about the sound of them just seems to draw me back home. Anyway, Glad we see eye to eye.
And I do tend to live up to my handle. LOL.
HA HA HA...i will never be able to watch bagpipes again without that image HA H A HA excellent...
as for yer grandmother being irish...sorry about that...we are everywhere...its a secret irish plan for domination of the universe....just thought id let you know..i will show you the secret handshake soon...
LOL. I loved the guy in Braveheart, pretty representative of us in general, isn't it - "It's my island, yup". Bold and unwavering. Gotta love it.
The Reconquista was about the Spaniards taking back their country, ousting their Islamic captors. What's going on in the Islamic world is more akin to Nazi Germany planning to take control over all of Europe.
What are you talking about?
Covered a lot of area in that post, is there a specific issue you're questioning?
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