Will the Islamophobia never end? From The Associated Press (thanks to Jim):
A Palestinian Christian activist who had received repeated death threats was found stabbed to death in a street in Gaza City early Sunday.Rami Khader Ayyad, 32, was director of the Teacher's Bookshop, Gaza's only Christian bookstore, which is run by the Bible Society of Gaza Baptist church.
Ayyad had been missing since Saturday evening. Over the years he had received repeated death threats from unidentified people displeased with his missionary work.
The Interior Ministry run by Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers condemned the killing and said it launched an investigation.
"This grave crime will not pass without punishment," the ministry said in a statement.
"This grave crime will not pass without punishment," the ministry said in a statement.
The malefactor will get a "good talking to" and receive instruction in proper body disposal.
Any Christian doing what this man was doing knows that he has a death sentence hanging over his head. I applaud his courage and not backing down as this is true martyrdom--suffering faithfully without recanting unto death for the testimony of Christ. This is the likely risk/outcome in such an islamic sewer hole as Gaza.
Palestinian justice means that the murderer will never be identified in public for us to know who is. They will have a falafel and hummus dinner for him--they will ask how good it felt to go allahu-ackbar (as he cut this man up). Then he will get a big sloppy wet kiss and a hug and then will be told to go get some mo for allah and mo.
Or . . . the ministry will hunt down the criminals in view of Sharia . . .the enablers of
. . .since this is Sharia enforced Hamas territory and only Islamic Da'wa is permissible, all other proselytization is haram.
Thank you, Robert, for letting us know about this and about the general destruction of the Christian community in "Palestine" and the rest of the Muslim world.
We need to demand that our government hold the authorities in these countries responsible for what they are doing and stop turning a blind eye to jihad. Like it says in another post today, the elimination of non-Muslim elements in these areas is determined and planned as part of Islamic expansionism. They do it because they believe their religion demands it and because they can, not because of grievances against US foreign policy or the existence of the state of Israel.
We need to let others know about this.
What else can we do to sensitize people to the plight of the Christian minorities in these countries without making their plight even worse?
What the hell (no pun intended) is a Christian doing in Gaza? I assume they want to leave. Is that an accurate assumption? If so, we should be helping them to leave.
The Zionist and Crusader president of the USA will surelly condemn these attacks and advise the UN to put preassure on Muslim states to treat their religious minorities properly, in agreement with the Universal Declaration of HUman rights.
Any moment now............
And after Crusader Bush addresses these killings, Farfour Fibrahim will anounce that CAIR is sending $500,000 to help the Christian Community in Gaza.
The violent [Hamas in Hebrew means violence] murder cult organization is going to punish a murder cult member for obeying the Quran over a non submissive infidel?
HAMAS is an acronym of Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya or Islamic Peace movement. (They have this wonderful knack for inventing the most benign sounding names.)
If hamas also means violence in Hebrew, it's the first I heard. It may be a coincidence.
This was, obviously, someone who dared to actually try to spread Christianity, and not mererly a trimmer and a timeserver promoting the "Palestinian" agenda. Anyone who dared in the middle of Gaza to promote Christianity was a brave man, not a coward. But the islamchristians who use their so-called "Christianity" to promote the Islamic agenda, the Lesser Jihad against Israel -- such people as the sinister and smooth Naim Ateek (who works his way through the National Council of Churches here, and the World Council of Churhces), and Bishop Michel Sabbagh, and of course Peter Jenning's friend the distinctly unpleasant Hanan Ashrawi who worked with Arafat and has done nothing to protect the Christians of Bethlehem or anywhere else as the "Palestinian" Muslim Arabs no longer bother to conceal, for the sake of Westerners, their contempt and often murderous hatred even for "Palestinian" Christians.
What will the World Council of Churches, what will the National Council of Churches (is that the name?), what will the panjandrums of, say, the Presbyerian Church where Naim Ateek's Sabeel Center ("sabil" as in "fi sabil Allah" -- the "Path of Allah") has its cunning allies -- what will they all say about this murder of a Christian in Gaza?
I'll tell you what they'll say. They'll say nothing. For them, it doesn't fit their own agenda, their own essential and immutable worldview. It doesn't fit any more than does the killing of Christians by Muslims in the Moluccas, and the destruction of thousands of churches. It doesn't fit, any more than do the bombs that explode in Christian hospitals and schools and churches in Pakistan, or in Iraq. It doesn't fit any more than do the attacks and steady pressure on Christians in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Egypt, everywhere in the Muslim world.
No, it doesn't fit. So the Podsnaps snap their fingers, and will the world -- the World As Will and Idea -- to be not what it is, but as they would have it be, in order to keep seeing that Mighty Empire of Israel as the fons et origo of Muslim hostility toward Christians, when that hostility is older than the founding of the modern state of Israel by about 1300 years, and is merely a subset of the hostility that Islam inculcates, in Believers, against not only Christians, but all non-Muslims.
But why should the Truth matter? What, to a certian kind of organized bureacratic Christianity of the distinctly blame-Israel-and-blame-the-West self-flagellating variety, a kind that includes, at its core, that irreducible minimum, to be found everywhere in the Western world, of antisemites who will always be with us, for they are now part of the Western tradition, for once the scapegoat-role has been assigned, it is not changed, though the numbers of such antisemites can be minimized through proper education, intelligent exposure, and constant mockery -- who find what they have been led to believe is a socially-acceptable form of antisemitism -- that of "anti-Israel" propaganda and acceptance of such propaganda -- when in fact the mental pathology they exhibit, to those with any brains at all, should be perfectly transparent, perfectly recognizable, and perfectly unacceptable.
"Also, the complaint about the killings by Muslims does not carry much weight either. Historically, and since 9/11, more Muslims have been killed by the Judeo-Christian cabal than the other way."
Posted by: guru October 7, 2007 3:04 PM
Wow talk about leave out half the truth here and twist what remains into a sorry ass apology for Islam. The USA did not attack Iraq "in the name of Christianity"...Israel defending itself is not killing terrorists "in the name of Judaism". Funny Jihadists worldwide ARE killing in the name of Islam...SOLELY to advance Islam...to FORCE unbelievers to submit against their wills.
And you chime in with this "You want peace? Work for that. You don't want to follow Islam, don't. But don't trash the faith of other people. That only shows your lowliness"
...that statement only shows you are feeding off a politically correct whip cream that pervades the general media, and swallowed by those hiding in ignorance & fear of the threat of Islamic hatred.
You have the perfect Dhimmi posture if Islam reaches authority & power where you live.
Wake up....
Blessings on the memory of Mr Ayyad - yet another Christian martyred by the murderous Mohammedans.
The Jerusalem Post's leading Arab reporter, Khaled Abu Toameh, has a rather more detailed report on the same event, with some names and places and context provided, including mention of other recent attacks on Christians:
JERUSALEM POST 7.10.2007
Story by Khaled Abu Toameh –
Murder of a Christian Palestinian in Gaza –
The body of a Christian official who was kidnapped over the weekend was discovered in Gaza City early Sunday, Palestinian sources said.
The man was identified as Rami Ayyad, 31, director of The Teacher's Bookshop, which is operated by the Palestinian Bible Society [see United Bible Societies website, click on 'Societies', then on 'Middle East' and 'Gaza and West Bank' and you'll find the news story about a bombing on April 15 this year, in which the front of the shop was blown in and most of the inside - furniture, fittings and stock - completely destroyed. Later the same evening there was a second attack outside the shop, with a device being thrown from a passing car. There was exchange of fire and the attackers were chased by the police, but were not caught.].
Although no group claimed responsibility for the murder, a number of Christians in Gaza City told The Jerusalem Post that Ayyad had received several death threats in the past from radical Muslims who accused him of conducting missionary activities.
His bookshop and the Palestinian Bible Society had been the target of repeated attacks over the past two years. [NOTE - one of those 'attacks' involved the detonation of a bomb just outside the shop].
They noted that attacks on members of the 2,500-strong Christian community in the Gaza Strip had increased in recent months, especially since Hamas took full control over the area.
Two weeks ago, an elderly Christian woman living in Gaza City was beaten and robbed by a masked man who accused her of being an "infidel."
In Bethlehem, Palestinian Authority police are investigating last week's stabbing of a 27-year-old Christian man, who was seriously injured.
Shortly after the Hamas takeover, a local Christian school and a monastery were looted and set on fire.
News of Ayyad's murder shocked members of his family and friends and raised fears that the Hamas government, despite repeated promises, was not able to protect the local Christian community.
Ayyad went missing over the weekend and his family and friends rushed to lodge a complaint with the Hamas security forces.
Ihab Ghissin, spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry, which is responsible for security, said the body was discovered in an agricultural field known as Dunum Abu Daf near the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City.
He refused to specify the cause of death, only saying that the body had been transferred to a local hospital for a forensic examination. However, Palestinian reporters told the Post that Ayyad had been fatally stabbed.
"This despicable crime won't pass without punishment of the perpetrators," Ghissin said. "We will pursue all those involved in this case and make sure that they are severely punished." [OH YEAH I'LL BET].
PS - To any and all Christians who happen to be reading or posting here.
The Vigil and Feast of All Saints approaches (31 October, 1st November). On 3rd November we remember nothing less than All Souls. Not just All Saints, but All Souls.
There are people in the church who are organising a Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, to be held on either the 11th or the 18th of November.
For anyone here whose priest or pastor is 'on the page' as regards Islam, any one of these dates - The Vigil (Hallowe'en), All Saints, and the Days of Prayer for the Persecuted Church - would be the perfect occasion on which to remember all those Christians who have been, and are still being, persecuted by Islam.
Those who have been killed, like Mr Ayyad, down through the ages, rather than renounce their faith; those who were raped, enslaved, kidnapped, forcibly 'Islamised' as children; those who were robbed and trampled upon, lifelong, as dhimmi slaves.
Such a commemoration - complete with requiem masses, prayer vigils, ringing of bells, lighting of candles, processions, perhaps even a special dinner with your Sudanese Christian or Greek Orthodox or Armenian or Coptic or Maronite Christian neighbours as testifiers and guests of honour, and your MP or Mayor or Congressman invited - could, if done properly, become a major 'teaching moment' for your church and for the wider community. (I'd love my own church to do this ...I'm working on it! My priest is seriously worried about Islam but is afraid to upset some 'interfaith' enthusiasts in the parish...I don't think we'll get there, this year, but give us time).
The Feast of All Souls could become the occasion for a poignant remembering of ALL the Tears of Jihad, the millions who have been destroyed by Islam - not only Christians, but Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, African animists, Persian Zoroastrians...
Let's remember these people.
Somewhere in England, on the Feast of All Souls, could not a SWAT team of bellringers emulate the feat of the team in Dorothy Sayers' The Nine Tailors, take over their church tower, and ring out, say, fifteen thousand eight hundred and forty Kent Treble Bob Majors (nine hours' worth)? Let each sequence represent one person.
Then, to the curious, exhibit a book-thick printout comprising 15 840 known and named victims of Jihad, starting with those non-Muslims who died on September 11, and making up the other twelve thousand from other sources. Samuel Zwemer's books, Patrick Sookhdeo and Barnabas Fund, the Armenians, Maronites, Greeks, Sudanese Christian and Indonesian Christian refugees, and Copts, could supply lots of names; as could the Israelis (list all those victims of pogroms, homicide bombs, stabbings and snipings, from the 1850s to 2007 ), the Thais, the Indians (those killed in Kashmir in recent years).
Show it to people, together with Surah 9 of the Quran, and say: this is only thousands, the real toll runs into hundreds of millions, if only we knew all their names, which we do not.
ddarmy:
Will do. Excellent idea.
There is a movement in the Catholic church to pray the rosary for victory over Islamofascism. Today is the feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary, whose intercession was implored for victory at Lepanto.
Our pastor wrote the parish a letter asking us to pray the rosary every day against what he called the "violence of an ersatz religion". I was gratified that he recognizes the danger.
We need our prayer warriors as much as we need material warriors. This war has a spiritual dimension.
...I am not ashamed to say...Bay Muslim Immigration....
This is a sad loss.
Whoever this person was, he was one of our bretherin.
But then, what else could one expect from these jihadi bastards ?
islam is truly evil and should be fought everywhere, especially at home, and excised whereever possible.
What the hell (no pun intended) is a Christian doing in Gaza? I assume they want to leave. Is that an accurate assumption? If so, we should be helping them to leave.
Posted by: Seymour Paine
--------------------------------------
What he was doing in Gaza was working in his own home. Christians have been there for two-thousand years. Why should they be forced to leave. This is true not only of Gaza but ALL of Palestine. In 1967, Bethlehem was a completely Christian city. Nazareth, Ramallah, Bir an Zeit, etc were ALL Christian cities until, in the last three generations, outside Muslim squatters moved in and usurped not only the land, but also Palestinian identity.
The real Palestinians are the descendants of those ancient Jews and Helenes who followed Christ in the first centuries of Christianity. The Muslims are simply outside Arab invaders who have no right to Palestine at all! We all know about the Jews who returned from all over the world to make Israel their home but few noticed the tens of thousand of Muslims who have also immigrated to the Holy Land in the last century.
Only Jews and Christians are indigenous to Israel/Palestine and it is far past time that the remnants of Christian Palestine ally formally with the Jews to expel the Muslim invaders. Unfortunately, I fear that there are way too many dhimmis among both Christians and Jews to make that possible right now. Let's pray that this changes before it's too late for both communities.
Rami knew the risks and embraced them, without welcoming them. The right response to this is to pray for the perpetrators' repentance.
In the words of one of the Malatya widows, that would be the 'sweetest revenge' on our real adversaries, who are the unseen puppetmasters of these vicious but deluded slaves of a demonic ideology.
Although I did not know him well, I have had the privilege of know Rami Ayyad. Numerous other Palestinian Christians who worked with Rami are among some of my best friends!
ALL of our hearts should be broken for the barbaric murder of this gentle man who simply wanted to help his own people, the Palestinians. But radical Muslims cannot countenance allowing a Christian like this to live in their midst. They are determined to "slay the infidel where ever they find him"!!
Let us remember his grieving young wife and two sweet children, with a third child on the way. Let us never forget.
To the person who said "what is a Christian doing in Gaza....I assume they wanted to leave!"
How ARROGANT of you!!
WHY should he be forced to leave his HOME?!!?! WHY should he be forced to leave simply because he was a Christian and Muslims wanted him to leave? WHY should he be forced to leave or face death at the hands of barbaric Muslim terrorists? WHY should his children grow up without a father because of the bloodlust of Muslims? Why should he be forced to quit giving humanitarian help to fellow Palestinians because some Muslim said he could not because he was a Christian second class citizen (dhimmi).
WHY? WHY? WHY?
Although I did not know him well, I have had the privilege of know Rami Ayyad. Numerous other Palestinian Christians who worked with Rami are among some of my best friends!
ALL of our hearts should be broken for the barbaric murder of this gentle man who simply wanted to help his own people, the Palestinians. But radical Muslims cannot countenance allowing a Christian like this to live in their midst. They are determined to "slay the infidel where ever they find him"!!
Let us remember his grieving young wife and two sweet children, with a third child on the way. Let us never forget.
To the person who said "what is a Christian doing in Gaza....I assume they wanted to leave!"
How ARROGANT of you!!
WHY should he be forced to leave his HOME?!!?! WHY should he be forced to leave simply because he was a Christian and Muslims wanted him to leave? WHY should he be forced to leave or face death at the hands of barbaric Muslim terrorists? WHY should his children grow up without a father because of the bloodlust of Muslims? Why should he be forced to quit giving humanitarian help to fellow Palestinians because some Muslim said he could not because he was a Christian second class citizen (dhimmi).
WHY? WHY? WHY?