A press release from the World Maronite Union (thanks to Walid Phares):
The World Maronite Union strongly condemns the criminal attacks against the Copts of Egypt, particularly the aggression against the Churches in Alexandria last week.1) The Union blames the Jihadists who are planning and executing these attacks against unarmed and innocent civilians with in the Coptic Christian community of Egypt. The Maronite Union hold the Islamic Fundamentalist organizations in Egypt as responsible for incitement and support to the Jihadi networks, implicated in terrorism against Copts and moderate Muslims in Egypt and the region.
2) The World Maronite Union, on behalf of 12 million Maronites in the World stands firmly by the Coptic people and vow to support international initiative to extend protection to these communities under siege.
3) The World Maronite Union sees in the attack against the Copts of Egypt a global pattern of Jihadi persecution of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. It expresses its concerns for the increase of incidents against Christians in Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Iran and beyond.
4) The Maronite Union calls on democratic and humanist Muslims in Egypt and the Middle East to form a common front against the Jihadists.
Sami El-Khoury
President
Tom Harb
Deputy Secretary General
The question is, who gives a damn? Islam has already bought the RNC, the ACLU, the Pope, the Dalai Freakin' Lama, and the Bishop Of Canterbury. They are currently buying the Presbetyrians... when they get the Baptists, Mormons, Moonies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Methodists, I'm moving to the Moon.
The only people that give a damn about the Copts in Egypt, the Maronites of Lebanon, and the remnant biblethumpers of Iraq, Syria, etc. are bleedin' heart liberals like me... and you know how much pull WE (don't) have.
Now speaking of Maronites, everyone should go visit faithfreedom.org and watch the fascinating video interview of the unstoppable, indomitable, and quite lovely Ms. Brigget Gabrielle. You many remember her recent artical here, when she attempted to speak at some college in Nashville and the Li'l Jihadi Hate Club rushed the stage and harassed her away.
Muslims in this country have been attempting to exploit, for their own purposes, the good reputation, and influence, of those who are described usually as "Lebanese" in origin, a word that covers all those whose Maronite (or other Christian) ancestors fled present-day Lebanon, or Syria, beginning at the end of the 19th century. These people, or their descendants, make up more than 70% of all those described, quite cunningly, as "Arab-Americans" but, at least in the case of the Maronites, whose existence in Lebanon predates the arrival of the Arab Muslim invaders, a completely misleading description. They may use Arabic, they may have Arabic names (though of course the fashion in recent decades, to demonstrate that non-Arabness, has been French names -- Georges and Philippe and Antoine and Brigitte and so on). They are not Arabs, but rather Arabic-speaking descendants of those who managed to remain Maronites because the mountainous geography of the Lebanon, and proximity to both Byzantium (not fully under Muslim control until the fifteenth century), and to the Western world by sea, prevented the kind of islamization that, for example, Mesopotamia (also a center for Christianity) experienced, with the last indigenous remnants being harassed, persecuted, and murdered in Iraq today).
The falsity of this "Arab-American" identity is being used by Muslims to establish their own bona fides, to take advantage of the good will that accrues to Christians (and therefore Christian refugees, of one sort or another) from the Middle East, and above all, to attempt to swell the numbers, and perceived power, of those who may mistakenly be assumed by American politicians to be part of some Islamic lobby whose demands must be met -- when in fact these Lebanese, like the Copts with whom they now are making common cause, have nothing to do with, are the first victims of, Islam.
Perceiving the various methods of Islamic propaganda, and attempts to create a factitious connection between the Muslim who arrives from teh Middle East, and the Christian (or Jew) who arrives, the latter being victims of Islam -- requires vigilance.
And vigilance is what attempts by Muslim operatives, and their collaborators among the islamochristians (most of whom can be found among those Arabs who call themselves, and are seldom contradicted, by that recently-invented name, "Palestinians").
The victims of Islam, in the MIddle East itself, as Bat Ye'or has noted, seldom aided one another, so afraid were they of the circumambient Muslims, and so intent on striking their own deals and pleasing their Muslim masters or would-be masters. That phenomenon can be found among some Christians in the Middle Easst today. Do the Greek Orthodox Arabs sufficiently side with the Maronites? Or for that matter do the Catholic Egyptians stand up for the Copts? And have not the Copts in Egypt helped to prove their "loyalty" by being, at times, as fierce in their demonstrations of antipathy to Israel as any Muslim, in the vain hope that somehow that will improve their own lot in Egypt?
Whatever false stratagems for survival, both understandable and yet deplorable, were empoloyed within the Middle East, they should not be employed in the Infidel lands. There, and esepecially in the United States, all the victims of Islam should spend their time making alliances with one another, and above all in alerting the naive indigenes about the real nature of Islam -- lest that Islam follow those Maronites, those Copts, those Assyrians, those Jews, those Armenians from Haleb or Beirut -- right to this country, where they had believed they would at last be safe from the persecution s of Islam, the power of Islam, the menace of Islam.
KJ, have you not been following the Pope's actions since becoming the head of the Catholic Church. This Pope will fight the Jihadists and Dihimmitude as his appointments at tof new church leaders has shown, he understands unchecked Islam and it's threat to the world.
KJ if only liberals cared about the plight of the Copts and other religious minorities in Muslim majority parts of the world, if this is true why haven't the liberal press followed this story more forcefully.
Sadly, as I commend your concern for "biblethumpers" of Egypt (Copts), I wish this view were shared by more people on the left, one's as prominent as Jimmy Carter or Howard Dean. The struggle against Da'wa and Jihad needs all the help it can muster from every corner.
El Cid, I think you misunderstand, there's a difference between being a liberal, and being a socialist that calls ones self a liberal, which is the case with the "liberal" news. Other "liberal" organizations like the ACLU haven't sold out to Islam, they're working on their goals, toppling capilatism and christianity (since communism loathes religion). Islam has an ally of convenience with organizations that have a few decades of momentum already built up in the infidel lands.
Hugh said
It almost seems like there is a conscious effort to blur or erase the line between ally and enemy. Listening to our politicians and media, I am very confused about who our allies are, and who our enemies are. And if you don't know who you are fighting against (or who is fighting against you), you cannot develop an effective strategy, which leads to muddled execution of ill-conceived goals. One example of which, is that Light Unto the Islamic Nations, Iraq.
El Cid said
And the previous Pope John Paul II has been described as apologizing to the Muslims for the Crusades, when in fact I think his apology could be taken as an apology for the Fourth Crusade, which was subverted into an attack on Constantinople and the Eastern Orthodox Christians, instead of the intended Muslims. I don't think the Pope (current or previous) has "been bought" as KJ puts it, and I don't think he's a stalwart enemy of the jihad either. He's doing the same nuanced dance that all major politicians are doing these days (not that the Pope is a politician, but he may be subject to the same pressure to be inclusive and non-confrontational that politicians are).
All maronists are catholics, but here, the people who have to say and make something, aren´t the Pope but the politics of the West, they will do something. The Pope hasn´t army, money or power to change this. He is a religious figure, for many people including me He is the vicar of Christ. But the politicians have the key to solve this, not the Pope. And the politicians have to do a lot. And they don´t almost nothing.
I am glad the maronites are speaking out. Before 1975 the christians were a clear majority in lebanon today they are less than 30%. For the Christians of the middle east to have any power and unite they need outside help. They are a minority with no arms or power at the mercy of the jihadists. If the west were to firmly back them. This too will be hard for there will be resistance from the christians for fear of another Clinton being elected and leaving them abandoned. It will take years if not generations to win there trust back. Also there will be politicians in the west who will lose their nerve as they know this action will cause bloodshed. But the only way forward is to take the short term pain for long term gain. Since no politician is willing to take this gamble and most Christians know this I see more dhimmitude amongst Eastern Christians.
To me they are the bravest Christians they fought under horrible conditions for years its sad they are in this situation.
I just signed up on the american congress for truth site. I looked up Ms Gabriel Briggette and found the site. Excellent interview. I must say I actually was scared to give my real name its the first time I ever felt exposed to a jihadist. YOu never know what moles work these sites.But I figure people got to take a stand.
Thanks for referencing her KJ she is a brave woman with a good story to tell. Well the story is in pure evil, the evil she had to endure but it was very informative.
Maronites, Copts, Assyrians, Chaldeans and other Mid East Infidels should simply assimilate in the US. It's not likely that large expanses of the Middle East are going to suddenly become non-Islamic, except conceivably a post regime Iran. They are Christians, so there's no reason for them to seek a distinct identity. If they don't remember their original languages through no fault of theirs (a la Maronites), they should simply adapt English. They should also have their own churches in the proximity of other mainstream churches, so that the mosques cannot chase them here.
kj
I wish that most Democrats (and I'm talking the populace, not the politicians), if not most Liberals, shared your opinions on Islam. Regardless of what our other differences are, if both the GOP and the Dems can get it right on this one issue, we could at least breathe easy that our society isn't going to get overrun by the modern day Tamerlanes anytime soon.
Nothing has been more maddening and more depressing than see this Left-Islam alliance. And before you pounce on us for Bush's Quranic recitals, note that most of us have written him off, if not the GOP itself. If both the parties are done, you'll see quite a line waiting for the moon. Back here on earth, Muslims will be claiming that we are there to recite the Shahada, a la Neil Armstrong.
KJ, I appreciate your sticking up for the Christians of the Middle East.
Infidel pride, I am more of the mind that it would be better for the world if the Maronites, Assyrians, Copts, Arab Protestants, and others (including the Jews, Mandaeans, and Zoroastrians) could be at home and safe in the countries where their ancestors lived even before they had to learn Arabic.
Everyone:
As for Bush and/or any other US president, his choices in prosecuting a war on terror include (a) telling the blunt, ugly truth about Islam and associating all Muslims with it, no matter how they may try to waffle and wheeze their way out of it, and no matter how some of them have served the USA well versus (b) trying to isolate the crazies within Islam.
This is hard, I grant, but does the USA really want a hostile confrontation with over a billion people? We tried it during the 1940's to 1970's, when, thanks to the stupidities of their 20th century intellectuals, most thinking Far Eastern people badly, badly, badly wanted to try the scientific and nationalist promises made by their various COmmunist parties. We lost badly in the Cold War in Asia; do we really wish to alienate for a generation the whole of the Muslim world from Morocco to Mindanao?
Kepha
That's a danger we Infidels risk running into as long as Muslims are Muslims. The more aware they become of Islam, two outcomes are possible:
As a part of dar ul Harb, is this a risk that any responsible leadership anywhere in the world ought to take? FDR is pilloried for the WWII Japanese internment, but that's the sort of thing we need throughout dar-ul-Harb: either intern them or expel them. Otherwise, we see them run amok like in Europe, and even in the US, where PC reigns supreme, it's gotten rotten to the extent that you have public schools teaching that garbage about Islam. Granted that the truth about Islam is ugly and therefore inappropriate for kids, and given that, why not simply not teach them about Islam until, say, the 9th grade?
Also, if a president tells the blunt ugly truth about Islam, that doesn't necessarily associate all Muslims with it, since they have the choice of rejecting Islam, especially in dar ul Harb. Rather, it forces them to pick one side or the other. Those with a real conscience will pick humanity, like Ali Sina, while others will sign up for the Brothel in the Sky program.
But it's a choice that absolutely has to be forced on them. Otherwise, we might as well all start reciting the Shahada while we are at it.
"We lost badly in the Cold War in Asia; do we really wish to alienate for a generation the whole of the Muslim world from Morocco to Mindanao?"
-- from a posting above
Fear of offending Muslims is a fear that has already lead to the embrace of false solutions, including the colossal waste in tarbaby Iraq, in which the dreamy hope of making Iraq an attractive well-funcitoning nation-state and true friend of the United States (see that $700 million embassy being built on that assumption about the future). Only when Infidels fully comprehend the nature, scope, and menace of Jihad will there be a chance for appropriate measures to be taken, above all in Western Europe, to halt Muslim advances, including demogrpahic conquest, and to reverse or otherwise undo them.
It is not necessary to "offend Muslims" -- by leaving them to their own devices, by ceasing to provide them with aid of every kind (a disguised Jizyah), the poor Muslims will be forced to ask for aid from the rich ones. They will never receive what they think is their due, and the resentments of donee for donor and donor for donee will only grow, thereby causing divisions within the camp of Islam. And the removal of Infidels -- save as buyers of oil, which cannot be forgone -- will allow the natural fissures, sectarian and ethnic, to widen and widen. In Asia, everything possible should be done not to openly attack Islam, but to attack Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism, which it is, so that non-Arab Muslims may begin to see Islam in a new, far less pleasing, light.
As for the notion that "we lost badly in the Cold War in Asia" -- what losses there were reflected the gigantic tasks that could not be assumed. It would have been impossible to invade China in 1949 or at any time. Saving South Korea was barely manageable. Vietnam was not salvageable. But in the end -- have we "lost"? Vietnam and China become freer in their markets everyday, and one wonders if they will not also become at least as free, politically -- as post-Communist Russia? Not because of American intervention, but because of a certain logic to economic activity of certain kinds carrying with it the need for certain kinds of political expression if those damaged or dispossessed are not to become violent. One will see, in a decade or so, who actually "won" the war in Vietnam -- Communism, or something else? And what has finally prevailed in China -- Communism, or something else? That "something else" may not be the kind of capitalism now being practiced in the United States, which leaves a good deal to be desired, especially in the ridiculous sums that executives are permitted to demand and receive (see Lee Raymond, and his $700 million take from Exxon Mobil), but it bears little relation as well to what Ho Chi Minh, or Chairman Mao, favored and assumed would prevail.
Before passover, we had 3 young rabbis over at the house. The older one knows where I'm coming from, and he gets it.
The 2 younger ones were baffled, stirred & shaken when I told them that I had read the Koran, sira & hadith.
Took me quite a while to make them understand that 'if you want to defeat the enemy, you have to be able to understand the enemy..."
Still, I had the impression when they left they were more worried about me then about the Pali's...
Last night we had a whole bunch of young Israeli's over ( backpackers, travelers, whom I met & invited) at the seder.
Most of them had been in the IDF and had the most horrible experiences. Still, they told us that they hadn't given up hope that there would be peace, somehow... someday...
When they told me that the "Arabs are just like us..." I became increasingly agitated.
When I told them that couldn't be, that it just wasn't possible, that I read the Koran, the sira & hadith, that the Mohammedans suck the hatred in with the mothers-milk, etc. etc. hudna, treaty of Hudayba, Quaraiza Jews....
.... again, they were more worried about me and that I was going off the rails & made sure that I knew what my faith was all about...
How can you fight & defeat your mortal enemy with such a mindset? Eliyahu, do you hear me?
Hugh, can you make sense of that?
"Hugh, can you make sense of that?"
-- from a posting above
Despair. Denial, because of that despair. Refusal to find out, because they know what they will find out, and want to keep denying, so as to keep from despair. Despair at having to face up to reality, the same despair many feel about all kinds of things, as they evade reality about their non-existent pension plans, their refusal to change their ways for health reasons, or any number of things. Individual despair, and collective despair. Israelis, in particular, not wanting to face the prospect of war without end, and not willing to consider that open warfare is not necessary, that the kinds of demoralization that occured within the Soviet camp could also work their magic, much more slowly, within the camp of Islam.
One can understand Israelis wishing not to see the full problem. But what has prevented those who, until recently, were far less threatened or who seemed (incorrectly) not to be threatened at all -- as in Western Europe for the first, in North America for the second? What is now the excuse in official Washington for not clearly coming to grips with Islam, and what is in Qur'an and Hadith, and what the long history of Islamic conquest tells us?
Sheikh
You could have told them that the 'someday' would be the day that Islam ceases to exist. The 'somehow' would be when the Infidel world at large figured out that that is necessary.
See, your Israeli friends were right after all.
P.S. Will your songs be there on Islam Comic Book?
sheik yer ma'mi: "When they told me that the "Arabs are just like us..." I became increasingly agitated."
I feel that there's some misunderstanding here in one party claiming "they are not like us" and the other party claiming that of course "they ARE like us".
In no way should the statement "they are not like us" be mistakenly taken to imply that the "other" is some sort of alien creature or "sub-human" or what have you! Of course not!
What is all TOO human about both parties is the fact that IDEAS play a central role in human behavior. Human beings are all absolutely alike in coordinating their everyday actions on the basis of IDEAS - ideas which give meaning and which regulate their conduct.
But that said it is also an undeniable fact that 4/5 of the global, human population has come over time to regulate their conduct by a set of meanings and symbolic expressions - ideologies, in short - that have something in common - namely the idea of tolerance, non-violence except where truly justified for self-defense and so on.
To say "they are not like us" doesn't deny that we are completely like "them" in coordinating our human actions on the basis of symbol systems and ideologies ultimately. It is to claim that they are manifestly driven by a completely different IDEOLOGY which is completely INCOMPATIBLE with the ideology/set of meanings/symbol systems which are shared by the rest of the 4/5 of the planet.
It is, in short, to acknowledge that the ideology of Islam is radically different enough from the ideologies shared by the rest of the human race - and different in a manner that represents a mortal threat to the rest of us - to indeed make the claim "they are not like us" - which should always be accompanied by a footnote - AS LONG AS THEY BELIEVE IN ISLAM.
To merely point out that, well ALL human beings have their ideologies and on that basis they are just like us and so what difference does it make - is moral relativism. So turning the other cheek is JUST LIKE shredding a human being alive because he's a threat to your political power? Adopting a child in need is JUST LIKE carrying out a clitorectomy on that child? Obviously not.
And I don't think your friends would buy that either. So next time someone makes the claim that all people are alike, make the counterargument that of course all people are alike in that their actions are driven by beliefs and ideologies but what separates them is the ideologies believed in. And the fact that different ideologies give rise to different actions and outcomes means that for all intensive purposes, all people are not alike. And if they still don't get it, threaten to do a clitorectomy on your female friends and a 100 lashes on your gay friends and threaten to saw off the heads of your straight male infidel friends and see if they get it then.