"Any assessment of Islamic extremism will reveal a pattern of oppression and exclusion of any who differ from Islam's religiously intractable position. Therefore, any who operate under the delusion that Islamists will promote or even tolerate other faiths are badly mistaken."
But of course there is another born every minute.
"Gaza's Christians," by Elwood McQuaid in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Ruth King):
For years realists on Middle East affairs said a Palestinian state would become a platform for radical Islamist terror and that the most dangerous merchants of death would populate the ministate created by the disastrous decisions finalized in Oslo, Norway, on August 20, 1993.Fourteen years after Oslo, we are reaping the whirlwind of that awful agreement. Citizens of the Gaza Strip now know the force of diplomatic improprieties that crush lives and destroy future serenity.
[...]
A Hamas leader told WND that Christians can only live safely in Gaza if they accept Islamic law. The speaker was Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Jihadia Salafiya, an Islamic movement that recently opened a "military wing" to enforce Muslim law there.
Christians in Gaza, Saqer declared, who dare to engage in "missionary activity" will be "dealt with harshly," WND reported. Of course, women will be expected to follow the rules of Islamic dress and will not be allowed in the streets without acceptable garments. His threats came two days after a church and Christian school were attacked following Hamas's seizure of power in the territory.
[...]
About 2,000 Christians remain in the Gaza Strip. But those numbers will soon diminish significantly.
Any assessment of Islamic extremism will reveal a pattern of oppression and exclusion of any who differ from Islam's religiously intractable position. Therefore, any who operate under the delusion that Islamists will promote or even tolerate other faiths are badly mistaken.
To propose that organizations like Hamas be recognized as peace partners and responsible caretakers of the people over whom they rule is an embarrassment to freedom-loving people and sends a clear message to our enemies. The message is that it is okay to tell Christians and other minorities that they can kiss freedom goodbye, pack up, and get out - all with the blessing of liberal Western religionists and politicians who blindly countenance jihadist imperialism....
And in the "West Bank" under the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, the Christian population has been going steadily down ever since the "Palestinian Authority" came into being, and Bethlehem, 60% Christian within recent memory, is now 30% Christian, or less -- as the daily harassment and persecution and threats and attacks (Christian girls seized, or raped, Christian men killed) continue without protest, of course, by the the local islamochristians (Hanan Ashrawi, Naim Ateek, Michel Sabbagh) who have so deeply internalized the Islamic view in order to more effectively promote, as they all do, the Lesser Jihad against Israel, and would do nothing that all that might harm the image, as they see it, of the "Palestinian" cause even though, in front of them, the Christian "Palestinians" whose interests one might think would matter to them, are being harried either out of the "Palestinian Authority"-held territories and into the wekcinubg safety of Jerusalem, where under the Israelis the Christians know they will be safe, even if many of them still do not dare to speak about this publicly.
You see this pattern at various stages all over the world. Once Muslims get on top thay crush minorities. Kosovo, Nigeria and west bank. To get on top thay destablise the situation and get decent people to leave. Thialand and Lebenon.
Once you see English and French cops give up and leave the profession you will know the first phase is starting to work. Police in Sweeden (Memel) are at this stage now.
And we are allowing sheep loving muslims into this country? We have seen the initial signs--flying mams, the halal food stands, and the taxi cab drivers in Minn and elsewhere, the spread of the mosques, Islamberg etc., to name only a few here. They must be stopped..
A comic, The 99, promotes ideas, such as individualism, but Islamic fundamentalists ban the books. They are collectivists, and all glory and honor is only due to Allah. They reject individual heroism, problem solving, and accomplishment.
Source PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/kuwait605/video_index.html
Hugh - just to be clear, are you suggesting that the Palestinian Christians made their own bed and are not completely deserving of our sympathy for their current plight?
(As an aside, I have a friend who is very hostile to Israel. Her sister was married to a Palistinian Christian (divorced now) and she cites him as evidence for many of her anti-israel views. I couldn't possibly compete with that "personal connection" in trying to explain to her about the jihad against Israel. It all falls on deaf ears and things become extremely tense when we even try to discuss these things but at some time in the future I'll have to ask her how her brother-in-law sees things now.)
Caroline: Just say it straight to your friend:
Israel has every right to fight to survive, and if she doesn't agree, then she's an Arab supremecist racist at heart, who wishes the destruction of Israel and the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Jews.
usapatriot - I hear you but I fear the more depressing truth is that she's basically a pre-Vatican II traditional Catholic who still holds the Jews responsible for the crucifixion of Christ and it may be that her Palistinian brother-in-law has merely reinforced already existing anti-Semitic prejudices. I would be curious to know to what extent Palestinian Christians on the whole might share this view of Jews based on orthodox Christian teachings?
What we are seeing with the Christians in the ME leaving in droves should be a message for those of us who are Christian to keep watch, pray, and be ready to go on the defensive because the Islamofacists will be coming our way in time.
Greetings:
Maybe if Pope Benedict mentioned something along these lines to President Bush....
And then President Bush mentioned something along these lines to Secretary Rice...
And then Secretary Rice mentioned something along these lines to President Abbas....
And then....
I understand that some Christians in the Muslim East, have faced great problems.
First, they no longer have the protection once afforded them by the Great Powers of Europe, the same powers that pressured the Ottoman government to officially do away with -- unofficially the system often remained in place --the Shari'a-sanctioned mistreatment, because unequal treatment, of its non-Muslim minorities.
Secondly, in order to survive they often had to take on, voluntarily, for protective coloration, the views of their threatening Muslim neighbors. Thus, when it came to Israel, many did not see the sinmilarity in the treatment of Jews and Christians as dhimmis -- though some did, such as Bishop Moubarac of Beirut, whose words on the rightness and necessity for Christians in the Middle East to support the Jews, to support Zionism. His speech can be found in an appendix to Bat Ye'or's "Islam and Dhimmitude" and it may also be retrievable on-line (I may have put it up myself -- just can't remember).
Thirdly, there are those Christian Arabs, especially among those who live among, and consider themselves to be, so-called "Palestinian" Arabs, for whom the pressure, explicit and implied, of Muslims watching their every move, so that they must make themselves as useful to the Lesser Jihad as possible, who also feel that their identity as Arabs, the Arabness or 'Uruba of their being, requires them to support, and defend, and protect Islam -- for Islam and Arabness reinforce one another. Islam, after all, is a vehicle for Arab cultutral, linguistic, and other forms of imperialsim.
Yet in the free and still non-Muslim West, Christians, including "Palestinian" Christians, should try to think through -- if they can - the real nature of the war on Israel, and the real nature of the war on them, the Christian Arabs, and why, despite all that Naim Ateek and Hanan Ashrawi and assorted "Palestinian" Christians have done, the only future for those Christians in the Middle East is in Israel, protected by, guarded by, the Jewish state. And if Lebanon could once again achieve a Christian majority -- if the Christians could leave Iraq en masse and re-settle in Lebanon as a Christian Zion.
And meanwhile the Alawite military caste in Syria might be persuaded by the Western powers, to stop trying to curry favor with both Sunni Arabs (by letting them travel freely to Iraq to conduct Jihad, against "Rafidite dogs" of the Shi'a as well as against the Infidel American torops) and Shi'a (by allowing the transfer of Iranian weaponry and money to Hezbollah in Lebanon).
At this point, those Christian Arab refugees who flee Islam for the freedom of Bilad al-kufr, but nonetheles continue to harbor and express islamochristian sentiments, are not deserving of sympathy, but should be regarded with the same wariness that one should regard all collaborators of, supporters of, any part of the Muslim agenda, anywhere in the world. It is up to them, the Arabic-speaking Christians, whether they wish to continue to be part of the support system for the very people who made their lives so difficult, and to weaken the Western world so that Muslims may expand their beachhead here -- which merely means that there will be no further place for those Arabic-speaking Christians to go, and they will be in the same boat as all other infidels -- or whether they will re-integrate fully into the Infidel world that has rescued them, and even offer, as a kind of recompense to their rescuers, aid in limiting the power and influence of Muslims by instructing the public in their own unhappy experiences, and in what Islam is all about.
What the Koran demands in black and white clear language is clear and cannot be interpreted any other way - so why does everybody keep making deals with the Muslims when the only way the Muslims could keep the deal would be to become Atheists to their own Bible? This is a great mystery - I do not know how to explain it except the think that great amounts of oil money are being used to keep huge numbers of people on this planet from knowing this easy to know truth. 'nother thing, why is it that everyone assumes that it is at all possible for Muslims to change and stop their savagery when such is clearly impossible unless they stop being Muslims? Why not be honest about it and say, "Stop being Muslims because it is a mainstream religion of Murder directed by a God who loves Murder? Why? Why? Why? These people allow this religion of murder to exist just because they are too frightened to tell the truth about it for fear that the Muslims will kill them - or stalk them and their family for the reast of their lives! Tell me this isn't true!
Ruebacca wrote: " Police in Sweeden (Memel) are at this stage now."
You mean the city of Malmö, I presume?
Not less than what "tom" says up there is done - exactly as tom says (I'm tom) will the terrorist problem ever be solved - why is it that no one will address the idea above as anything but some sort of crazy idea that no one is likely to ever try when the absolute truth of the matter is that there is absolutely nothing else that can work to solve the terrorist/Muslim problem? Why? Why? Why?Nothing Else Will Work - and in your heart of hearts, (in case there is something wrong with your brains) YOU KNOW IT!
Hugh,
You continually bring up the same three or four individuals like Hanan Ashrawi, Naim Ateek, and Michel Sabbagh. Individuals who are loudly promoted in the West but have absolutely ZERO influence among Christians actually in Palestine.
While well over 90% of Palestinian Christians are Orthodox or Melkites, Ateek and Ashrawi are Protestants. Ateek, an Israeli, was trained in the Nazareth Baptist School and at very liberal Protestant colleges in Texas and California after which he returned to Israel as an Anglican Canon. Hanan Ashrawi, a former girlfiend of Peter Jennings when they both were students at American University in Beirut, is a "non-religious" Anglican completely on Fatah's payroll.
Monsignor Sabbah is a little more complicated. He was appointed Latin-rite "Patriarch of Arabic and Hebrew Roman Catholics" by John Paul II in 1988. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Catholics
Interestingly, his appointment was with the recomendation of the then Israeli PM. Like many pacifist Catholics, his dedication to peace often blinds him to reality. Fortunately, he is soon to retire and will probably be replaced by the current Franciscan Custodian of the Holy Land, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who is quite young and understands the Islamic threat.
http://laotraorilla.blog-city.com/a_vatican_representative_describes_antichristian_harassment.htm
It is sad that the real voice of the Palestinian Christians is rarely reported. Rather than focusing on corrupt dhimmis like Ashrawi and Ateek, look at real peacemakers like the Archbishop of Nazareth, Elias Chacour, who shows the love of Christ equally to Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Your blanket criticism of all the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land because of a few Westernized dhimmis is like blaming the Jews for the holocaust by pointing at a few kapos.
Instead, we should be supporting this oppressed people by empowering them in their own land. Israel could do for Palestinian Christians today what they did for Lebanese Christians 20 years ago. Arm and train them to resist the Muslim destruction of Bethlehem, Ramallah, and yes, even Nazareth. This Kataeb Filistin would give a true voice the Christians who are the only real Palestinian nation anyway.
Unfortunately, the Palestinian Christians can see how Israel betrayed its Lebanese Christian allies to Hezbollah and so why should they trust Israel not to betray them to Hamas. This is especially the case as long as Israel is led by arch-dhimmi Islamo-Jews like Ehud Olmert. In the past, Christians in Israel have voted as a united bloc only twice. First, for Menahem Begin and second for Yitzhak Rabin. Both times they were betrayed. So why should they trust anyone today?
"Your blanket criticism of all the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land because of a few Westernized dhimmis is like blaming the Jews for the holocaust by pointing at a few kapos."
-- from a posting above
I made no "blanket criticism." As for your attempt to limit the "islamochristians" among the local Arabs to those who are Protestants, this is idiotic. Archbishiop Cappucci, who stole icons from churches in order to help buy guns for the PLO, was Catholic - and was subsequently freed in a deal with the Vatican, which deal was not observed for Cappucci continued to make political statements. Ateek, whom you identify as an "Israeli" -- which is bizarre since what is being discussed is the phenomenon of the islamochristian which transcends the trivial (for Arabs and Muslims) nation-state borders, may be a Protestant, and so may Hanan Ashrawi. And so is Michel Sabbagh -- to whom you are too kind in describing him merely as a "pacifist." He's one more shill for the Muslim Arabs and the "Palestinian" cause that disguises the Lesser Jihad. In this country, among the Presbyterians, a "Palestinian" islamochristian in this country (who has obtained American citizenship), now a minister, has risen high in the bureaucracy and helped to push that declaration, a year or two ago, by that same bureaucracy (full of those who appear to have much more interest and sympathy in the "Palestinian" cause of Jihad than they do in the mistreatment of Arabic-speaking Christians).
In other words, there are all kinds of islamochristians, and there was no attempt by me to specify what denominations Ateek or Ashrawi or others belong to, because it is irrelevant. The real point is this: those local Arabs who can be called "islamochristians" identify with Islam out of fear, that is out of long dhimmitude and the habit of agreeing with or parroting the menacing Muslims, but also because the ethnic identity of being an Arab, of "Arabness," and "Islam" are felt to go together, and "Arabness" demands pushing the Muslim line against the Jews of Israel.
Maronites, on the whole, and Copts, if they are safely in the West, tend not to exhibit this "islamochristian" behavior. And more and more Arabic-speaking Christians, when they get to the West are less-inclined, than they would have been a few years ago -- now that the mistreatment by Muslims is obvious, and known in the West, and connects to the larger Muslim threat, to keep up the pretense that the PLO, that the Muslims, are just swell, and it is the Israelis who have come along to spoil everything.
Hugh,
Re: "As for your attempt to limit the "islamochristians" among the local Arabs to those who are Protestants, this is idiotic"... and "there was no attempt by me to specify what denominations Ateek or Ashrawi or others belong to, because it is irrelevant."
The fact that the most prominent dhimmis come from Western Christian denominations and not from Churches indigenous to the Holy Land, rather than being idiotic, is highly relevant. These individuals represent the ideologies of their liberal American educators, not the interests of the native Christian community. As for Ateek, the fact that he is an Israeli citizen who knows little of the conditions of the majority of Palestinian Christians and carries out his activities from the safety of Israel is very important. This makes him the polar opposite of Saedna Elias, who is also an Israeli, but refuses to isolate himself from any of the local communities.
I agree with you that I was, perhaps, too kind to Sabbagh. He is primarily a politician looking only after his own interests. Fortunately, he will soon be retired and Benedict XVII will appoint a more worthy successor.
As for the Maronites, their record was excellent before Israel and the West sold them out. Now they are in the same boat as the Christians of Palestine. Because of this, even once heroic Maronite leaders like Michelle Aoun are now completely in bed with Hezbollah. As for Maronites "if they are safely in the West, tend not to exhibit this 'islamochristian' behavior" this may be true. But the key is "safely in the West". The most destructive of islamo-christians are the current Maronite President of Lebanon, Emile Lahoud, and his immediate predecessor, Elias Hrawi, who disarmed the Christian forces but refused to disarm Hezbollah.
what good is all this sophisticated banter when the only thing that could possibly matter is willfully ignored because of 'religious correctness'. why not admit that you are, in affect, requesting Muslims to abandon their religion because the only way you can remain true to your Muslim religion is to be in total agreement with the murder of innocent people. Murders which are directed and approved of by the only God, Allah, who tells us to be murderers of innocent people in a book that is perfect and cannot be changed named the Koran. Why not just brand the Koran with the Truth? There is a main stream religion that sanctions and approves of out and out murder - the people who follow this religion should never be trusted until they change their religion. Tell me I'm wrong! Go on! You know you can't, so why don't you also tell the truth - there is no other way to stop the Islamosavagry and you know it!
I'd ask how their plans for World Domination are going, but I already know the answer...
Tom - is that you Henry??
Provoslavni and Hugh - I profess my complete ignorance here but just wanted to say that both of your comments are extremely interesting, especially Provoslavni's comment that "The fact that the most prominent dhimmis come from Western Christian denominations and not from Churches indigenous to the Holy Land, rather than being idiotic, is highly relevant" as well as his comments that eastern Christians really don't know who to trust at this point.
I am sorry that more people are apparently not educated enough about the issues (myself included) to have been able to participate and expand upon this debate at the current time. I do look forward to more broaching of this interesting and vital topic in the future, however. After all, the remaining Christians in the ME are some of the last surviving voices of the Islamic institution of dhimmitude, at least in the ME. And they're almost gone.
Caroline ! I love you xxxoxoxoxoxo Yes it is me. Ive been banished many times (name Heck and others)just for saying exactly what I Have said here. Sympathy is not enough for me, i demand PITY - but I love the wonderful attention you give me, LOVE, Tom
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Caroline,
Thanks for your kind words. If you read Hugh and my "debate" here, you will notice that we don't disagree about the issue, only about the examples. I believe that self-promoting dhimmis like Ateek and Ashrawi are irrelevant and giving them attention takes away from the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Christians who deserve our focus.
The Palestinian Christians are the original church. Many of them are the direct descendants of those Jews, Gallileans, and Hellenes, who first followed Christ or became Christians during the time of His apostles. These are the actual descendants of the people we read about in the Gospels and Acts. If this community is wiped out, it would be a tragedy not only for them, but for all Christians everywhere.