Mali: 200,000 Christians flee country as Islamic supremacists impose Sharia

It is possible that a good few of these Mali Christians are apostates from Islam. There *have* been conversions from Islam to Christianity in Mali over the past 20 years.

In Algeria, they would be advised to try to make their way to the Kabylia area, in the Atlas Mountains, where there is a significant indigenous church, much of it of Berber ethnicity and composed entirely of apostates from Islam...

You wrote: "How about the pope call an international press conference and demand an end to all Christian persecutions by Islam through out the world."

Yes.

It's time.

Me, I'd like to see Pope Benedict XVI, attended by his Swiss Guards and by every cleric, monk and nun from the whole of Vatican City, plus the clergy of the city of Rome, calling upon every practising Catholic and all persons of goodwill and decency to join him in a march upon the Pakistani Embassy in Rome, there to form picket lines and hold a huuuuge rally and to demand that Rimsha Masih, Asia Bibi and all other non-Muslims currently languishing in jail and/ or on death row because of Pakistan's abominable and cruel 'Blasphemy Law', be released and permitted, with their families, to leave Pakistan.

Let's see Benedict in full regalia with his crozier upheld, bearding the sly, scowling Pakistani Ambassador in his den and channelling Moses to Pharaoh "Tell that evil government of yours: 'Let My People Go!!'"

Pakistan is currently in the spotlight, but a rolling series of similar Papally-led 'visits to serve notice' to assorted other embassies of Islamic countries that are similar offenders in the area of human rights violations generally and persecution of Christians in particular, would not go astray.

There's something else Pope Benedict could do, by way of consciousness-raising; he could command Catholic churches the world over to ring their bell or bells, if they have one, at midday *every day*, as a summons to prayer for the defeat of the global jihad and for the preservation and deliverance of Christians and of all non-Muslims who suffer persecution within lands dominated by Muslims. And throw in prayer for the conversion of Muslims...

This would be reviving and adapting for our modern situation a 15th/ 16th century custom which was, so far as I can see, the one good idea of one Pope Calixtus III; which was later adapted by Pius XIII for use in the Cold War, focusing on the communists rather than on 'the turks' [i.e. muslims] but which surely could do with being revived in its original form today (though focusing not on 'the Turks' but on the Global Jihad):

"[the angelus is distinguished from]...the "Turkish bell" ordered by Pope Calixtus III (1455–58) in 1456, who asked for a long midday bell ringing and prayer for protection against the Turkish [that is, the Turkish Muslim - dda] invasions of his time.

" In his 1956 Apostolic Letter Dum Maerenti Animo about the persecution of the Church in Eastern Europe and China, Pope Pius XII recalls the 500th anniversary of the "Turkish bell", a prayer crusade ordered by his predecessors against the dangers from the East. He again asks the faithful throughout the World, to pray for the persecuted Church in the East during the mid-day Angelus." [see wikipedia, in the section discussing the Angelus].

It would annoy the hell out of Muslims in the West if, every day, at midday, in big cities or in small towns, they heard church bells ringing out - a thing which sharia forbids, dhimmis are not allowed to ring church bells, and the sound of church bells is supposed to drive away the entities that Muslims call 'angels' (but which we might call by other names...) - and knew that this meant there were Christians praying all around them. They **hate** the very thought of Christian prayers.

Re the prayer.

actually, not always. Most times. But not always.

I have met an African Archbishop who has been in exactly the situation of the man in your fictional TV episode.

Surrounded by al Shabaab thugs who had raided his house, he closed his eyes and knelt in prayer, convinced that at any moment the stroke was going to fall.

Time passed. And passed. And passed. And nothing happened. Not a sound.

Eventually, he opened his eyes and discovered that - for some unknown reason - they had gotten thoroughly spooked, and ...bolted.

He still doesn't know what happened; why he wasn't killed.

But it happened. He's alive to tell the tale.

Post script.

For similar narrow escapes, see Gulshan Esther 'The Torn Veil' and Bilquis Sheikh, 'I Dared to Call Him Father'.

I read those many years ago, before I had even read the Koran myself, and they taught me about Islam's Apostasy Law, for both are the stories of Pakistani women of well-to-do backgrounds - from pious, but also superficially westernised and sophisticated families - who converted to Christianity and then found their previously quite pleasant families of origin transforming into murder-minded strangers. And yet - again - both women lived to tell the tale, having been on a number of occasions a hair's breadth from being killed.

Just what I was thinking. Arab Spring is going very, very wrong...

dda,

For the purposes of a popular drama which has as part of its responsibility an education of society, the far more bleakly, grimly common denouement in that situation should have been depicted -- particularly in a wider context where popular arts & entertainment (and higher-brow art) contain virtually no accuracy at all concerning Islam.

The broader pedagogy, which all influential members of our societies should promote in one way or another, should be geared to helping to minimize the ability of Muslims to go around doing violence against people. Christian churches would be the more appropriate venue for the pedagogy of instilling the brave faith that would be prepared to suffer the worst whenever, and wheresoever, that broader pedagogy fails.

I.e., were there a Westerner (whether N.A.T.O. member, or American military, or just some armed civilian) standing off in the distance amid some mango leaves at the moment the ER doctor was on his knees, we all should support and counsel that Westerner to take out his gun without a second thought and shoot to kill the African about the behead the doctor; rather than wait for God (or some television director following a script) to spare his life.