Syria Militants Massacre Christian Village Population

Syria Report ^ | 12 Jun 2013 5

[Mount Athos]

More details of a massacre in Homs late last month have emerged following the global outcry of a massacre in Deir el-Zour yesterday.

The massacre, carried out by Free Syrian Army militants reportedly targeted men, women and children in the Christian village of al-Duwayr/Douar close to the city of Homs and the border with Lebanon. The incident received little media attention, having occurred at the same time as thousands of Syrian troops converged on the insurgent-occupied town of al-Qusayr.

According to sources, around 350 heavily armed militants entered the village, broke into homes and assembled residents in the main square of the village where they were executed. The final death toll is not known but photos show severe damage to property in the village.

Syrian army sources said that they reached the village after the massacre, resulting in clashes with militants. Sources also reported that Turkish and Chechen extremists were among the perpetrators. Chechen militants are known to have kidnapped two Christian bishops in Aleppo earlier this year. The following images show al-Duwayr/Douar village after the massacre:

Conditions for ethnic and religious minorities have been made increasingly worse as Free Syrian Army affiliated organisations including Jabhat al-Nusra increase ethnic and sectarian cleansing across Syria. Kidnappings, executions and assassinations are common.

Late last month, around the time of the massacre in Homs, a fifteen year old girl was kidnapped by militants in Damascus, who demanded $100,000 for her release. Miryam Jbeil, a niece Damascus-based Catholic priest Nader Jbeil, was released after a number of days in captivity.

In the aftermath of the Syrian army assault on al-Qusayr, the church was discovered to have been desecrated by Free Syrian Army militants.... [more photos here]

[Nowhere Man]

I never thought I’d ever find myself rooting for Bashir Assad of Syria and Sovietist Vladimir Putin.

Strange world, ain't it? I'm in the same boat as you. As bad as these dictators like Assad, Saddam Hussein, Kadaffy, etc., were, at least religious minorities were fairly protected under them although I admit the exception was with the Kurds under Saddam. Still, these dictators were cut from a different cloth than the mooselimb brotherhood rebels, they were more secular, basically 1950's era Pan-Arab socialists. Assad is the lesser evil here.

[Cronos]

this is what the scumbag obama wants for all Christians in the Middle East — then the Shias. he wants to step up from his job as POTUS to becomign the new Caliph.

[Cronos]

McCain is an idiot — anti-tank weapons will then be used against Israel and one anti-aircraft weapon will be used to bring down at least one commercial aircraft in the USA

[Cronos]

Correct, he wants what every Russian has wanted since 1453 -- to reconquer Constantinople and renew the Orthodox Empire

As a Catholic, I support him. As any type of Christian who is not Orthodox, we should support him on this -- whatever differences we have with the Orthodox, a CHRISTIAN constantinople is something we should hope, pray and FIGHT for...

[Cronos]

TA — I don’t know what you’re blowing about, but a strong Orthodox control of the Middle East is anyday better than a Moslem controlled one...

[Cronos]

Saddam's war against the Kurds was not a religious one as the Kurds were/are majority Sunni just as was the ruling elite in Iraq. But Kurds are Indo-Europeans, an Irani people. And they are spread over Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

Saddam just didn't like anyone who could oppose him. If you shut up and let him rule, he left you alone -- a common gangster

But the jihadis don't leave you alone, they'll kill you

We should supply weapons to assad to kill off the Saudi and Qatari sponsored alQaeda terrorist/jihadis...

[1010RD]

All dictatorships have a psychological/physiological basis for their rule. Understand that and you can moderate, negotiate and manage a dictatorship. Fundamentally they're all megalomaniacs with god complexes. They draw strength via a crony elite who are granted political and economic perks for supporting the regime. Enemies are cruelly punished, often along with their entire families up and down the family tree. It just takes a few public and relatively precise attacks to get people in line (e.g. Democrats in urban environments or Obama/Clinton and the media for two ubiquitous American examples).

I share the above two examples on purpose. Our topic is Islam and its strict adherents, but Islam is more like liberalism/progressivism than most Americans realize. Both have a universal scope and worldwide area of operation. Both are without limits as to means as their ends are ‘righteous’. Both will terrorize, torture and kill to get their way. Lying in both is actually seen as a virtue as the enemy is of the ‘devil’ and deserves what they get.

Yet, when confronted one with the other they are naturally in conflict. The people being beaten, raped, tortured, imprisoned and killed in Egypt and Turkey are ‘liberal/progressives’. Note that the history of these two movements is one in which Islam's fanatics are more violent and more furious than liberalisms. Liberalism is softer and thus gives way to Islamism.

What makes American liberals so dangerous isn't just their very bad ideas, nor is it their tolerance for failure of those ideas and the real horror it inflicts on the ‘served’ populations. It is their superiority complex. They really believe they can manage radical Islam. This massive blind spot is deadly. It is really killing people as well as America.

Liberals have been poisoning the country for a long time, but because reality eventually hits Americans America can make course corrections. With Islam there isn't any course correction. Every act of appeasement, tolerance and compromise is simply an invitation, an encouragement to demand more. Muslims thought leaders and organizations have stated that they respect America, its Constitution and aren't working to change its institutions. Yet, they regularly opposed laws blocking Sharia enforcement at the local and state level. Why?

Liberals support Obama, despite the fact that he consistently supports Sunni Islam no matter what the human rights record, works against real liberty in the world, and prefers strict Islamists to secular Islamists at every turn. Their superiority complex makes them think they can manage Obama. When Sharia comes to America, and do not doubt for a moment that that's not the goal, liberals will be the first in line for beatings, rapings, imprisonments, torture and murder. That information isn't just from ancient history, but current events. Liberals don't see it. Their superiority complex isn't a shield, but a blinder.

[1010RD]

Fine, but to me it’s just a different label on the same contents.

[Westbrook]

> a strong Orthodox control of the Middle East is anyday
> better than a Moslem controlled one...

I vigorously disagree, Cronos. Vigorously.

Moslem hegemony, wherever it is manifest, is the most violent, most oppressive, most retrograde religious force that ever emerged on the planet, and that by orders of magnitude.

While the totalitarian statists have shown brutality and senseless disregard for life on an almost unimaginable scale, with an almost religious zeal, the Moslems have surpassed even them, and they have been doing it for 1400 years.

Consider Moslem brutality, just for the month of May, taken from http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

Monthly Jihad Report
May, 2013

Jihad Attacks: 277

Countries: 25

Religions: 5

Dead Bodies: 1423

Critically Injured: 2667

This goes on month after month, year after year, and has been going on for centuries.

[Westbrook]

In reply to http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3031564/posts?page=24#24

> Yeah, lots of that going around. Try to get a Lutheran
> “pastor” to explain how this...

Indeed. You’ll get no contest from me on that one. I am aware of Luther’s anti-Semitism. And while he was able to root it in Scripture, I submit that it was Scripture taken out of context, and furthermore without considering that Jesus and all the first Christians, as well as all but two of the authors of the New Testament, were Jews. Even worse, he omitted God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants that He would “bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee.” Even a cursory examination of world history shows this to be true.

Moreover, all Lutheran pastors I’ve ever met, even in the most conservative Lutheran congregations, hold Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a hero of the faith and a Christian martyr.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

Virtually all conservative Evangelical Christians today believe that the Jews still hold a special place in God’s economy, that His promises to them are eternal, and that there remain promises to the Jewish people yet to be fulfilled.

The Jewish people and the state of Israel figure very prominently in the prophecies of the books of Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Olivet Discourse in the Gospels, and The Revelation of Jesus Christ. Those of us with premillenial perspective are watching current events unfolding as the fulfillment of those prophesies and look to the Jewish people and the state of Israel as sacred in the sight of the Lord.

[Cronos]

Westbrook -- evidently you misinterpreted what I said. I agree with you that Islam is evil

What I said was that an Eastern Orthodox (i.e. Russian) controlled Middle East is preferable to a Moslem one -- this was due to T's post slamming our Orthodox Christian brethren.

[TArcher]

“I haven’t read all of “On the Jews and their Lies” by Martin Luther “

Uhuh. Thanks.

[TArcher]

“Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?”
—Martin Luther

>>scare quotes around “pastor”

Scare? LOL. Nah, its just a recognition that the LCMS’ Jackwagon has jumped the shark like all FALLIBLE and UNINSPIRED human religious concoctions.

What’s the “pastoral” retirement plan paying out these days?

[TArcher]

[but a strong Orthodox control of the Middle East is anyday better than a Moslem controlled one...]

Governance that secures the freedom of the Individual ala a 1st Amendment prohibition against state-established temporal punishments or burthens being imposed upon the Individual's relationship with their Creator is anyday better than EITHER of those.



Don't you agree?

[butterdezillion]

Give some context. I’d bet that he was saying this is what the Jews of his day were acting like - as if their blood line makes them hot stuff, before whom even the Lord would bow. Today we’d call it racism. Semitic supremacy, maybe.

The Lord said that it was not because Israel was so great that He chose them to be His people, but because of His own grace, and Luther, like the apostles, pointed out the error of anybody who based their hope on their own goodness rather than on the promise of the Lord Himself - be they Jews, Christians, philosophers, Muslims, or whatever. What Luther was willing to lay his life on the line for was the Biblical teaching that it is God’s grace alone which saves, and that His grace comes to us by God through His gift of faith in God and His Word and promises.

And you obviously don’t know much about Lutheranism if you imply that Lutherans believe in the infallibility of anything human. That’s why Luther got in trouble with the popes; he believed they were fallible and that the Word which God preserved over thousands of years was to be trusted above the teachings of any one man. The Bible is full of the fallenness of man, including the very apostles who were witnesses of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. As Paul wrote, we have this treasure in earthen pots to show that the transcendent power comes from God, not from us. Our trust is not in man, but in the Lord. That’s why Luther was disgusted by the arrogance of the Jews in his day who placed their trust in their own greatness or the greatness of their blood line/race/culture. And there have always been Christians who have done the same thing. That’s why Luther was wary of pietism as well. Anything that places hope in something other than the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and in the promises of God is a waste of time at best. We count everything as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing our Lord and becoming like Him in His death so that we also rise with Him in His resurrection. I could give you Scripture after Scripture, from both Old and New Testaments, saying that our hope is in the Lord and His redemption of us in spite of our fallenness.

But Scripture is your gripe, isn’t it? You don’t trust Scripture. I wonder why that is.

In any event, you have not shown racism against Semites on the part of Luther or of Lutherans - but rather the objections to a theology or attitude held by some Jews as well as some non-Jews.

What you are showing is your own apparent bitterness. I’m sad about that. Man is fallen and fallible. Man’s speaking and hearing can both be messed up. What, then, do you put your hope in? Where’s the rescue? Anything that comes into your mind could just be your own fallenness speaking. Who will rescue you from your own fallenness?

[butterdezillion]

Congratulations. You just supported the natural conclusion to Martin Luther’s doctrine of the left-hand and right-hand kingdoms.

[TArcher]

I trust scripture just fine. Wolves in the pulpet, not so much.

[TArcher]

>>Who will rescue you from your own fallenness?



Where in the curriculum is the text in question likewise exposed?

[TArcher]

>>Give some context.

” What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom...”
—Martin Luther
http://www.google.com/search?q=on+the+jews+and+their+lies

[TArcher]

Well, I don’t know if they’re Left or Right handed — but I think the LIFERs perched on the temple steps in Seward and St. Louis got some s’plainin’ to do.