Maybe the world is beginning to wake up. The New York Daily News (thanks to DFS), which has hitherto never shown much interest in departing from the mainstream media lockstep about Islam as a religion of peace, has now published "The Muslim world's new martyrs," a piece by Richard Z. Chesnoff that identifies the oppression of Christians in Islamic lands as a manifestation of orthodox Islamic law.
It's one of today's most compelling news stories, yet it's all but ignored by most of the international media. I'm talking about the growing persecution of Christian minorities in the Islamic world.It briefly made headlines last month when machete-armed Egyptian fanatics attacked worshipers in three Coptic churches in Alexandria and murdered one aged man at prayer. Then of course, there was March - when an Afghan man escaped a death sentence for the "crime" of converting to Christianity.
But how many people heard about the recent arrest and jailing in Saudi Arabia of a group of Filipino guest workers for holding Christian prayer services in the privacy of their home? Or who knows about the three Sunday School teachers charged in Indonesia last year with the crime of "Christianization" and summarily sentenced to three years in prison?
The story is similar wherever Sharia - orthodox Islamic law - reigns supreme. From Pakistan to Darfur, Christians have become regular targets for Islamic gangs who shoot at worshipers, then torch their houses of worship.
Even in Islamic countries not strictly run by Sharia law, pressures mount on local Christians to leave the homes they've known for centuries. Iraq's Christian sects, among the oldest Christian communities anywhere in the world, have been directly targeted by terrorist bombs, and Christians are now high on the list of those fleeing Iraq's sectarian strife. Thirty years ago, Lebanon was 60% Christian. Since then, an estimated 3.5 million Christians have emigrated, reducing the country's Christian population percentage to barely 25%. And in the Palestinian territories, direct and indirect pressures have also led to an increasing Christian exodus. One striking result: Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus and once a predominantly Christian Arab community now has an overwhelming Muslim majority.
Read it all. There's a small nod to that fictional golden age of Islamic tolerance in there, but it's otherwise a good piece.
At least a msn newspaper is getting it right.
This is, well...simply amazing that this story got published in a newspaper such as that. I am grateful that the word is getting out there more, one thing that mass media exposure is good for (and would never have happened in the Middle East if we hadn't gone to war there...).
Better late than never I suppose but I’m afraid this will be one of a few lonely articles lost amongst the journalistic pap usually published. I hope I’m wrong on this.
Re: ” From Pakistan to Darfur, Christians have become regular targets for Islamic gangs ..”
Since when did Darfur become Christian?
You'll never get any of this reported in the ultra-PC MSM here in Britain (Fjordman could almost swap the word Britain for Sweden in his blogs). These words he uttered in 1933 about the chattering classes, professors and other educated elites are all too true and all too relevant to the Britain of 2006:
"The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians....Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told."
The Press and media are too interested in trying to bring down Tony Blair than to find time and space to report anything important like that. Britain must now have the most PC folks in Western Europe, and thats saying something when you look at the lemming-like tendencies of the Swedes. Nobody seems to have heard of Churchills quotes, and it is impossible to believe that this is the same Britain which stood alone 66 years ago, and saw off Germany's best pilots. Churchill would have an insurmountable task in trying to rally the British people today. The Britain of 2006 is vastly different from 1915, 1940 or even 1982. Today, we turn into celebrities the sorts we would have hung 60 years ago as traitors. It seems the surest way to get into the celebrity Big Brother house is to call for the deaths of British servicemen and women - and to think that had he been around 60 years later, Lord Haw Haw might have followed in Galloways treacherous footsteps on his return from the Radio Tehran studios. How long before Sheikh Abu Hamza appears in Dumb TV's Big Brother house? The folks I see every day whether it is on a bus, train, in the pub or wherever would have been a pushover for battle-hardened Waffen SS troops had they been born 60 or 70 years earlier. Britain is totally ill-suited to fight a war against Islamism. It sees its leaders as more of an enemy than Ahmadinejad, Bin Laden, Zarqawi, Zawahiri, indeed anyone who fancies destroying huge chunks of London real estate. We are trying to topple the best leader we've currently got bar none. Cameron has stayed as quiet as a trappist monk as regards Iran and Iraq, whereas we know all about the appeasement of the Lib Dems, SNP etc (I wouldn't describe them as being like Chamberlain because Chamberlain himself finally acquired a spine and declared war on Nazi Germany three days after they invaded Poland).
Corrrection: "These words he uttered in 1933 about the chattering classes, professors and other educated elites are all too true and all too relevant to the Britain of 2006" should have read: "These words Churchill (not Fjordman) uttered in 1933 about the chattering classes, professors and other educated elites are all too true and all too relevant to the Britain of 2006". My mistake.
What annoys me about the attitude in the West, is that we have accepted the idea the foreign born, non-citizen Muslims might need a place to worship, but we haven't asked why that same right is not extended to resident Christians in Saudi Arabia. What is even worse is that the Saudis are funding Western mosques, but would not allow the building of churches in their own god forsaken sand box.
It seems the surest way to get into the celebrity Big Brother house is to call for the deaths of British servicemen and women
While licking his Rula and sporting a red leotard that played havoc with his gravitas.
In a generation, if present trends continue, non-Muslim and Christian Europeans will start fleeing Europe for America. Oh, wait, didn't Bruce Bawer report a poll of Dutch that said 1 in 3 native Dutch already want to leave Holland? Aren't non-Muslims already starting to leave? Read Bawer's solidly researched and fascinating page-turner While Europe Slept and you'll see why. - Omar
While licking his Rula
I have just eaten my tea, if you don't mind.
Seriously, I keep posting this link, because it is the main source of news and help that I know.
The Barnabas Fund for beleaguered Christians
Perhaps the article should have spelt out the difference between a Christian martyr, who suffers and dies for his faith but harms nobody, and an Islamic "martyr" or suicide murderer. Obvious as this should be, it does no harm to state the obvious.
As Granny W has mentioned the Barnabas Fund, I'll plug their book Islam in Britain:
It's also a snip at £5.99. And it gives me great pleasure to use the word "snip" in close proximity to a reference to George Galloway.
(Granny W - hope that didn't spoil your tea - perhaps it just made you skewer your meatball with relish.)
And just look at how good I'm getting at them neat links.
Is this a hyperlink?
Granny
You might have come across this site on anti-slavery. Along with the Barnabus Fund, I support both, whichever way I can
http://www.iabolish.com/slavery_today/index.html
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/GallowayBLOG.jpg
(Sorry, GW, if you're still eating.)
The testimonies of the redeemed slaves in the Sudan make harrowing reading.
My father-in-law was stationed in Khartoum during the war for a period. It was partly due to things that he witnesses at the leper colony in Omdurman that persuaded him that he should present himself for ordination when the war ended. Things have got far worse in those 63 years.
Strangely enough, the Spectator did a telephone survey of celebrities at Easter, asking them whether they believed in the resurrection or not, and Galloway said he did. I read his reply a couple of times, trying to gauge whether he was being sarcastic or not, and concluded that he was not.
Very curious. Why would someone have a literal belief in a Christian doctrine while simultaneously colluding with a belief-system that would see Christianity wiped off the face of the Earth if it could?
Even that's not the end of it: he still seems enamoured of old-fashioned (undemocratic) socialism (surely yet another different and incompatible vision) - and he's filling his pockets on the side as well. All this at the same time.
The mind boggles.
Yojimbo
I wondered that myself. I have had him down as a Muslim for some time, and one prepared to attend church as an act of taqyyia at that, but his statement at Easter caused me to wonder.
More on that survey here.
I have had him down as a Muslim
A novel approach to inter-faith outreach.
MSM in Germany:
Copts hold a protest and no MSM comes.
Ten days ago Coptic Christians held a demonstration against the oppression, persecution and forced conversions of their co-religionists in Egypt. The media - press, internet, radio, TV - although informed of the event, reported nothing about it.
One of the organisers said: Over 100 Copts marched through the centre of Frankfurt and demanded an end to Muslim violence... They sang 'Kyrie Eleison" and the Martyrs' Song 'We are not afraid of your swords'. Entire families travelled to Frankfurt to take part and the loudest voices were those of the children. They handed out leaflets: 'Solidarity with the Christians in Egypt', 'Stop the murder of Christians and attacks on churches'.
The same text was sent to the press and other media, who, with the exception of Christian press agencies, were conspicuous by their absence. Only a Syrian TV crew was present to film the peaceful protest. ARD [German TV channel], which recently pulled a report on persecuted Christians in an islamic country, also kept its distance from eastern Christians. When Muslims take to the streets, nobody is so fussy. They are usually considerably louder and more aggressive, which makes E. Shenouda from the Coptic community of Kroffelbach ask "Are we, the Copts, too quiet? Are only the noisy listened to in this world?"
Speaking of their grieving for Atta Girgis, slaughtered outside a church in Alexandria, Copts say "Our grieving is quiet... we don't throw ourselves like Furies on the coffin. We don't shout hate-filled slogans. We don't insult others, we don't burn flags. We don't swear or take revenge. We don't push toy guns into our children's hands and teach them eternal enmity. The bottom line is, we only want to be allowed to live in peace in the country where we have been for centuries. The attacks on the churches has ushered in an attack on our last place of refuge. |Our freedom of movement was taken away from us long ago, Coptic women can barely go outside their doors without a veil or a male 'protector'...
(Very rough translation)
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Speaking of dhimmitude and the application of sharia laws:
Muslims disturb church procession
The disturbance of a Catholic procession by a group of Muslims has caused enormous anger in P.
According to Father Arthur Zuk a group of Muslims stood on the footpath yelling and shouting during the Palm Sunday procession. The hymns and prayers had to be stopped.
On Easter Sunday the procession to the Easter Fire (Osterfeuer) was disturbed by loud Turkish music blaring from a parked car...
The Muslims, from a group called the Muslim Society (Verein) later apologised to the priest. Apparently the troublemakers were from
Munich. One of them was mentally handicapped and made inarticulate noises..
According to the police, the incident with the music was an unfortunate coincidence.
The mayor said this was the last warning. If this were to happen again, stronger measures would be taken. "Several Christians came up to me and said they were afraid they were going to be attacked."
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This did not take place in Egypt, or in any other Muslim country, but in Germany a couple of weeks ago. The title of the piece: No Freedom of Religion in Pappenheim.
With thanks to The Politically Incorrect Blog in Germany:
http://www.myblog.de/politicallyincorrect
"non-Muslim and Christian Europeans will start fleeing Europe for America"
I definitely agree with this -it has already started - people like myself - highly educated and skilled and able to change country at will, will be the first wave of imigration to the states -result - the states will became stronger and Europe weaker.
Unless of course Europe changes course which could happen - look out for the local elections in the UK - should be a litmus test.