A Let-Them-Into-the-EU Alert: "Fear Prevails after Priest's Murder," from Der Spiegel, with thanks to Mathew:
Christians are a vanishing minority in predominately Muslim Turkey. The murder of a priest in February shows that the situation has become precarious -- both for Catholics and for Turkey's EU bid.Father Pierre Brunissen is deeply immersed in thought as he bumps along in the night bus along the Black Sea coast from Samsun to Trabzon in northern Turkey. There is, on this trip, little for the priest to be happy about. He is hurrying to a Christian congregation in Trabzon -- a city of 250,000 Muslims -- which boasts barely a dozen members. And he is needed because the former priest in Trabzon, Father Andrea Santoro, was murdered in his church.
It's a church which is now casting about for a caretaker. In the vicarage, which gives off a distinct air of neglect, a small plastic tree left over from Christmas gathers dust in the visiting room. Because no one volunteered to replace the murdered priest, the 75-year-old Father Pierre was instructed to travel the 250 kilometers by bus from Samsun to Trabzon once a month to look after things in the city's tiny congregation.
The Catholic Santa Maria Church was founded by Capuchin monks 150 years ago. Santoro had the church restored, and now colorful ornaments and images of the saints once again grace the building's walls and ceilings. But in early February, Santoro was shot dead by two gunshots while he was praying in the last pew of the church. The first shot penetrated his lung and the second went straight to his heart. In the dark wood of the pew, a splintered mark made by one of the bullets can still be seen. On this day, Father Pierre will celebrate the first mass in the church since Santoro's murder, but the church bells remain silent -- there is nobody there to ring them.
Trebizond was once a thriving Christian center. Read it all.
http://www.acage.org/news/?day=04162006&id=0005
In Turkey, to spread the word of christianity or any other religion leads to an immediate deportation or prosecution.. The hypocrisy muslims practice is standing out like dogs balls.
Though considered as a moderate Islamic country,Turkey is still a Anti-Christian country. They attack Christian priests,and once sizable Chirstians were living in Turkey,now it is dwindling to few hundreds, due to the systomatic persecution. If the EU annexes Turkey,it will open up the master gate to the Terror planning Islamists to enter Europe without any Visa or passport. More over,since the voting system depends upon the number of population of a country in the European Union, Turkey,being the most populous country will outbeat the other Europen countries,in any decision making,and will impose Islamic favourable situations in Europe. That will pave way to the early demise of a Christian Europe and its culture,and what the Ottoman Empire failed to do in the past,Turkey will do it much more easily,if it is admitted into the EU.
Trebizond was once a thriving Christian center.
Istanbul/Constantinople/Byzantium was once a thriving Christian center.
Turkey/Anatolia/Asia Minor was once a thriving Christian center.
The East was once a thriving Christian center.
Cyprus was once a thriving Christian center.
Alexandria was once a thriving Christian center.
Egypt was once a thriving Christian center.
Lebanon was once a thriving Christian center.
Syria was once a thriving Christian center.
Ethiopia was once a thriving Christian center.
Afghanistan was once a thriving Buddhist-Greco center.
Pakistan was once a thriving Hindu center.
Persia was once a thriving Zoroastrian center.
Bangladesh was once a thriving Hindu center.
...
Anyone see a pattern here?
There is no "moderate Islamic country." Eventually, these modern Islamic nations revert to barbarism. Why? Check the Koran for the source of the problem.
sofia:
This is what I fear. Either that way or in some other way.
Here in the UK, Channel 4 ran a feature on the Turin Shroud as part of the "Secrets of The Dead" series. The main point of such a program is the intrinsic interest of any investigation into ancient artifacts and not any moral that can be drawn. Nevertheless, I came to feel that there was also a lesson to be drawn - a cultural and not a religious one I hasten to add.
Current thinking is that the earlier radiocarbon dating that put a 13th-century date on the artifact was flawed, because a sample from a much-handled corner that was contaminated with bacteria had been used. However, the stains on the shroud appear to match those on a cloth in a cathedral in Spain and the blood in both cases is of the same rare blood group. This cloth, known as the sudarium, can be traced to Jerusalem in the 6th century - or so the investigators claim. Such a cloth might have been have been wrapped around the head of a condemned person in accordance with Jewish beliefs about blood. Moreover, during repairs a seam has been found on the shroud that exhibits a type of stitching not known in Europe. It has also been shown by a microbiologist that the image on the shroud could have been produced by natural bacterial processes if it had been laid over a dead man.
The final experiment showing this brings you up short. The artifact need be neither a fake nor a miracle, and it really may be the relic of a man who died a horrible death in the Holy Land at some time before the 6th century. All this, I think, helps to bring that time closer for us. And in the end, it doesn't matter if the relic is what it has been believed to be or not. It's a reminder that our civilization has been shaped, albeit fitfully and uncertainly, by the teachings of a man who told people to love one another and who was brutally executed by the Romans. And, pace the likes of Nietzsche, one could do far worse.
I saw that as well Yojimbo. I watched all of it the last time it was shown and caught quite a lot of last night's repeat. I want to know how the seamstress did that seam. I have never seen anything so neat.
On the evidence I find it easier to believe that the shroud is genuinely old than a 14th century forgery.
I expect it's a conspiracy. Dan Brown will probably write a book about it. (joke)
From the article
A population exchange is what I would like to see. Muslims in the West who are openly hostile to liberal democracy, for Christians in muslim nations.
What your tour guide won't tell you! I spent a few hours in Trabzon a few years ago and saw that church.
It's a strange town, like many in Eastern Turkey, in that you wonder how they reproduce - there are no visible women. Peaceful, on the surface.
Kemalism, rigorously enforced, is the only guarantor of the rights of Christians in Turkey. Equality is not part of the Muslim mindset.
It had an interesting (in a manner of speaking) way of guaranteeing the rights of Armenians.
Soviet Communism was actually better in this regard - and Uzbegistan's (whose Communist status I'm not sure on) Islam Karimov has done what Kemal didn't - simply ban the practice of Islam in this largest country in Turkestan.
Which proves that it takes an Islam to squelch Islam.
When you hear the word "Istanbul" do you see behind it the word "Constaninople" -- for half a millennium the richest, most advanced, most powerful city in Western Christendom? When you hear words like Ephesus, do you think of classical antiquity, or only of the Turkish Office for Tourism, trying to lure Europeans to spend their money by offering up, not the handful of Sinanesque mosques, but rather the pre-Islamic riches of the West's classical antiquiyt? When you read of troubles in "Diyarbakir," described as a "Kurdish city," do you forget to remember, or do you remember to carefully forget, that before the past century Diyarbakir was an Armenian city, once even the capital of an ancient Armenian empire, and known as Dikranakert (or "Tikranakert").
Can you pierce through the Muslim veil of the presence to sense what once was? In 1914 Constantinople's population was 50% non-Muslim. Professor Miliukov, a great liberal, looked forward to seizing "Tsargrad" and not he, but other Russians, looked forward to having the cross ("krest") yet again raised over Hagia Sophia ("nad svjatoj Sofii"). But the past century has seen the emptying out of lands under Muslim rule of their non-Muslims -- in Constantinople and Cairo and Alexandria, in all of North Africa, in Mesopotamia, and a diminishment of the Christians (and disappearance of the Jews) in Syria and Lebanon. And the same horrific decline in non-Muslims, in this case Hindus, can be observed in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, the numbers of Muslims within the Bilad al-Kufr, both relative and absolute, goes up and skyrocketing up. And nothing is said, nothing is done, no notice is officially taken, and one is always and everywhere discouraging from taking such notice, and worrying aloud about it.
Sigh,
As someone who is an enthusist of Eastern Christian history the destruction of the Christian East depresses me to no end. I am also depressed that the West does'nt care, either. When I have tried explaining the destruction of Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Mandean, Yazid and Zoroastrain communities to people I have actually been accused of lying and being a promulgator of right wing Islamophobic propaganda. Someone actually told me that they had never heard of any of this in their college classes dealing with Islam and that there was no way something this important would not be taught in college.And that they would rather trust their professors,than me, because they payed thousands of dollars, and professors are crediable.LOL. Off course this person, my protagonist "knew" all about the crusades and how bad Isreal is to the Palestinians.
The West wants all the Eastern Christians to go away, because they believe that they are an annoyance. As an example West in an act of appeasement decided to make the Serbian Christians disappear. We have aided and abeted the myth of an Albanian Kosovo, we have in the most Orwellian allowed a pseudo-history to be written by literally allowing the KLA to physically erase all traces of Christianity, in the name of some false peace.
Same goes for the Chaldens and Assyrians in Iraq, they are the invisiable people. The Bush administration, has only cared for the Muslims. The calclus of the new Iraq had no place for Christians,the West has written these Middle Eastern Christians out of existance as well.May the Lord have mercy upon us.
Meanwhile as Hugh's last post points out Muslims countinue to swell in numbers in the Bilad al-Kufr.Tragically famous monastaries and Churches in Europe such as Monte Cassino may one become piles of overgrown broken stone, like the remains of once great Christian cultures strewn through out Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq,and North Africa.Rome,London,Colgne, Geneva will join Merv, Antioch, Alexandria,Constantinople in being Islamicized.
abdulalshirk,I understand your agony,which we all Westerners feel and share,but our Politicians play a second fiddle to these Islamists. Our Judges are so partial in dealing with Chritians,as with Muslims. In UK,a judge sent a 'son of the soil' Britisher to six months jail for just uttering a sentence- "dont disturb the neighbourhood-go back to your countries" to the bleatings inside the mosque,near his house.
Added to this,our own people,make fun of our religion,by publishing books like the davici Code,and Jesus Papers. Their main aim is to amase money at any case,including at the expence of millions of Christians world wide. Can these authors-Brown of Davince Code fame,and Mickale Baigent of Jesus papers,who procalim that Jesus is an ordianry person,had love affairs with Mary Magdaline,and there is no Trinity. These boods are a boon to the Islamists who proclaim that Jesus is an ordinary prophet,inferior to Mohamed ,and there is not Trinity ,and the Bible is corrupted. These Brown and baigent take advantage of our tolarance and mint money at our expence. If they write anything about Islam,their heds will be rolling to the ground,which I wish.