Islamic Tolerance Alert from CWNews.com (thanks to Twostellas):
Jakarta, Dec. 20, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The Indonesian Catholic bishops have called public attention to rising Islamic pressure against Christian churches, Vatican Radio reports.Bishop Martinus Situmorang of Padang, the president of the country's episcopal conference, is the co-author of a new report on the campaign by Muslim activists to close down Christian churches. The report shows that from 2004 through 2007, 108 churches have been closed because of Islamic pressure.
The report notes that Indonesia's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and challenged the government to honor that promise, protecting the Christian minority from Muslim extremists.
Don't hold your breath.
Don't worry, folks, David Xavier assures us that Muslim countries are becoming more and more westernized so we just have to wait a little longer for them to be just like us. (See 12/19 Dhimmi Watch: Iran:Top cleric says women who are unveiled must die.)
I guess the story above is just a figment of some Islamaphobe's imagination.
We ARE ultimately responsible, through our elected executive and legislators. Our government MUST be roused to action--pressure on the Indonesian (or Malaysian, or Bangladesh) authorities--through monitoring, initiatives, and sanctions, as needs be, WILL have a positive effect.
Isabella, Dear,
I posted a pair of comments at the end of that thread that I think will be of interest to you, or the general reader. Happy Sol Invictu--I mean, MERRrrY CHRISTMas and a Joyous NEW YEAR!
Maybe it's time for a martial division at the Vatican akin to the Templars of the Middle Ages. I would be happy to sign up to fight back against the oppressors (in this case that would be the Muslims who are slaughtering Christians all over the world).
Sign me up!!
I think we can all see that the Middle East controls Indonesia and that the Indonesian government is really mosques located in the Middle East and southern Asia.
A recent JW article mentioned that in the Maldives all non-Muslims are to lose their citizenship. Islam is on the march everywhere, grabbing, demanding and taking away freedoms wherever and whenever they can. How soon after the Islamic country of Kosovo is founded, with the blessings of Europe and the US, will it announce that Kosovo is a Muslim-only country?
distantsmoke,
THIS IS the place (for now) to enlist in a new crusade against the tide of Islamic Supremacism.
This is an unconventional war against our enemies, and cyberspace is one of the battlegrounds. (Besides, the Vatican disbanded all but the Swiss Guards.)
This, then is a cybercrusade and citizens' committee, rather like the committees of correspondence in our War of Independence.
Long Live The Counterjihad! On with our just Crusade! DEUS VULT!
" 108 churches have been closed because of Islamic pressure."
...they want your church too....Ban Muslim Immigration...
My God. We have GOT to stop the March of the BARBARIANS. WHY has the West become so stupid?
Don't know, darcy. I susect it's because there are a ton of liberal diplomatic types that think Islam can be reasoned with--regardless of how many people they kill. One would think that after witnessing AQI killers there and in Pakistan that kill fellow Muslims only because they are of a different sect, the libs would learn that reason has little effect on Islam.
Considering the recent tsunami and the extraordinary humanatarian effort to save people by the US Navy, which is probably 99% Christian, Indonesians would have a more positive attitude about the infidels and our religion. Of course not!!! And never mind the millions of dollars of western aid. Where was aid by their brothers in the Middle East? Virtually nonexistant.
Perhaps next time we should suggest that Indonesia turn to the Saudi or Iranian navies to rescue their sorry butts. Oh gee. No Islamic country seems to have a functioning navy. Maybe the Chinese? They are near by and are building up their military, including their navy- for some reason, though I don't think it's to provide humanitarian aid.
Indonesia needs a reminder of reality. And so do we!
Ms ...er ..Crusader , Isabella if I may.
"Don't worry, folks, David Xavier assures us that Muslim countries are becoming more and more westernized so we just have to wait a little longer for them to be just like us."
Indonesia is a country that has emerged from a Dictatorship and is slowly evolving into a democracy. Its institutions are strengthening , and the proof is that the Christians who have been "dudded" can seek address through the legal system by reference to the Indonesian constitution. Wow ,relative free press , rule of law , democracy and its institutions , constitution ....sounds like Westernisation to me. As we have seen in America , minority rights sometimes lag behind the intent of the laws and usually there is a fight to be won. I was in Indonesia recently and found it typically S.E. Asian. Yes there are home grown terrorists that have done bad things.....there is an underground movement that insists on the fascist interpretation of Islam ( as opposed to the apathetic interpretation) , but there's no national movement to take back East Timor , there's is almost no lingering resentment against Australians, The Government always resisted the aspirations of Islamists in Aceh ... in fact after the massive aid package given to Indonesia after the Tsunami by the West... and the pittance offered by the Middle Eastern coreligionists , the divide between Indonesia and Arab was greater than the divide with the West.
The beheading of the Christian girls was a horrible crime that used Islam to justify itself. The criminals and the instigators were caught and punished as were the Bali bombers. There is no popular support for this in Indonesia .. A good proportion of those caught cooperate with police and repent... humanity can reassert itself.
Ah, David Xavier is here right on cue, waving his wand and reciting Obliviate! - to tell us to do nothing, say nothing, since there's nothing to worry about, things are getting better and better all the time, Islam is a lovely peaceful religion full of wonderful people that's merely been hijacked, recently, by a tiny minority of extremists.
One hundred and eight churches shut down, in Indonesia, in three years, sounds like a lot to me. I suggest we check back in a year or so, with the Catholic bishop of Padang, and find out whether ANY of them have been allowed to re-open. Let's write and ask the bishop how easy it is for Christians to build a new church , anywhere in Indonesia - and how that might compare to the ease of building a new mosque.
We could check recent history, too, and find out how many hundreds of churches were BURNED DOWN in the formerly-Christian-majority regions of the Moluccas and Ambon, in the 1990s; and whether any of those have been rebuilt, since, and whether anyone's been punished for acts of vandalism and murder.
There's a lot of churches been burnt down, and Christians killed or beaten up, by Muslim mobs, in northern Nigeria, lately, too.
There seem to be a terrible lot of people running about, in a terrible lot of countries, doing things EXACTLY like those beheaders of Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia, and they are ALL quoting the Quran and other Islamic texts to justify what they're doing.
In nice, 'moderate' Turkey three people were tortured to death for working in Christian publishing, and a Catholic priest was shot, and another Catholic priest was stabbed, and a group of Christians quietly handing out leaflets were arrested...
In Ethiopia a Christian evangelist was dragged into a mosque, and beaten to death.
In Egypt the apostate Mohammed Hegazy and his wife are in hiding, fleeing death threats because they want to change their religion, on their ID cards, from 'Muslim' to 'Christian'.
In the UK - IN BRITAIN! - at least two ex-Muslim women who became Christians live in hiding, perpetually changing their address, because their ever-lovin' families are pursuing them with death threats.
In 'moderate' Malaysia Lina Joy, convert from Islam to Christianity, was not permitted to publicly register her change of religion, and was loudly threatened with death.
I seem to recall someone machine-gunning a congregation in a major town in Pakistan, not so very long ago; and a jihad raid on a Christian boarding school, that killed a number of people.
Was the murder of Mr Rami Ayyad, Christian bookseller, in Gaza, purely an act of random thuggery - or did it, just perhaps, have something to do with the fact that under sharia law, which Hamas has frequently declared they intend to implement, Christians would be prohibited from displaying their books in the Muslim marketplace?
Mr 'David Xavier' - how do you explain this remarkable consistency of behaviour, this persistent hostility and aggression toward Christians, by people identifying themselves as Muslims, in Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Turkey and even in Britain - all of whom explicitly justify their conduct by Islam?
Just a few random criminals here and there, eh, whose behaviour has NOTHING whatever to do with the core teachings of Islam?
Whose behaviour, nevertheless, conforms EXACTLY to patterns of behaviour abundantly recorded of Muslim dealing with non-Muslims throughout the last 1350 years of Islam, on three continents.
Pull the other leg, mate, it's got bells on.
Gee DUMBledoresarmy
Like I said , Indonesia is emerging from its troubles , it is stable , anti -jihadist and has generally a apathetic interpretation of Islam. My thesis has been things are genrally improving despite Hugh Fitagerald's shriller denouncations. I will concede one caveat , nothing is ever going to be rosy in the nations of Islam ..but Islam is a reality so we wish for the best for Indonesia and Malaysia. All the "death" and "torture" examples you cite are discrete , non systemic , non governmental sponsered , punishable criminal acts within the respective nations...the Gaza crime was by known terrorist organisation. So I am confident that reason not irrational fixated ranting hatemongering that Hugh "yoda" Fitzgerald seeks to elict will prevail in the Wests accommodation and transformation of Islam.
Dear 'David Xavier'
I do not trust your judgement, nor your information. If that is displeasing to you, then so be it.
Rather, I trust the information and the judgement of Bishop Patrick Sookhdeo, formerly Muslim, now Christian, and founder of the "Barnabas Fund" which supports persecuted Christians in Muslim countries.
Please consult the 'Barnabas Fund' website and read their current news and their newsletter archives.
You may then understand why I am not at all convinced by your threadbare and entirely predictable argument - which I have seen presented here before, on many occasions, by out-and-out apologists for Islam - that the many hundreds of attacks upon Christians, by Muslims, that have taken place in recent years in many Muslim-majority countries are, all of them, purely random criminal attacks that have nothing whatever to do with anything taught by the Quran or the Hadith, or by authoritative Muslim jurists, or by preachers in any mosque.
By the way: do you seriously think you have improved the plausibility of your argument, by beginning your latest post with a childish personal insult against myself, and by concluding it with an abusive tirade against the formidably rational, well-read and lucid Hugh Fitzgerald, calling him an 'irrational fixated ranting hatemonger' and referring to him as 'yoda'?
By the way, other people here may be interested in the following report from the grassroots, posted by an Indonesian Christian, last year, on this very website:
"I've read Brigitte Gabriel's book [i.e., 'Because They Hate']. It is so true what she said about the Muslims, I can relate to that based on what has happened to the country I'm originally from.
It *used* to be secular, and now the islamists/jihadists are very strong, it permeates every level of society, up to the very top.
That's why the authorities are not doing much to prosecute the jihadists because they basically agree with them, it's all because of their religion, Islam.
We have also had id checks by individuals/mobs. In Indonesia it's called 'sweeping'.
Right now, depending on the 'piousness' of the neighborhood you're in, very often they don't want you to have prayer/religious meetings in your house. The more 'pious' the neighborhood, the more threatening they are when you have a [Christian] prayer/religious meeting."
- Posted by: jasmine at December 4, 2006 2:38 PM