The man, Sabah, is an “Arab” Catholic Cardinal.. What do you expect! Historically, the Catholic Church did much to undermine the Christian presence in the Middle East by using their financial recourses through bribes to Ottoman rulers to wage a proxy war on the native denominations in their attempt to bring them under the fold of Rome. The Catholic hierarchs are the biggest Dhimmis in the Middle East and are a disgrace on Christians the world over. The Roman Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria is not only a Dhimmi, but he is a complete heretic who should be excommunicated for writing a poem in praise of Mohammed who came to the world to establish mercy and justice, describing him as a prophet. Also, the Cardinal Sabah guy sounds like he is card carrying member of Hamas… He went so far as to ban the teaching of the Old Testament to children because of its Jewish origin.

I am not saying that there are not Dhimmis from other denominations, but the Catholic leaders take the cake on that one. Among Middle Eastern Christians living in countries where Catholics are a small percentage of the Christian population, they are considered a bunch of carpetbaggers who came to bring trouble and shake the foundations of the beleaguered community. I am strictly speaking about the hierarchs and not the poor suffering Catholic populations of the Middle East.

Posted by: have_mercy at December 24, 2005 6:04 AM

When I was in Kurdish controlled North Iraq (Assyria), I was told by community leaders that Catholic Charities did not do any project to help the poor Chaldo-Assyrian community. All the aid went to Kurds and their corrupt leaders. If it was not for the Chaldo-Assyrians living abroad sending back money, the community would not be able to do much at all.

I know that the same thing happens in Egypt because I had friends working for Catholic relief. All the aid is stolen by the Muslims. I mean if you can not or do not care enough to help the local Christians, why are you there? If you are so eager to help Muslims, send checks to the Red Crescent, stay home and save the local Christians the frustration. The Catholic Church is biggest organization bringing indigent Muslims to the West, sheltering them into its churches which they promptly turn into mosques and utterly desecrate them. How about bringing to the US some of the vulnerable Christians in Sudan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iraq, and Egypt for a change! I know that the church, priest abuse scandal payouts not withstanding, has more money than God… But, why oh why, do not you start helping out your people first and work your way back to other groups until you get to the Muslims and Nazis in the end of the line…. Or, does the Catholic Church's leaders believe that they earn more purgatory indulgences by helping the worst elements of mankind first!

Posted by: have_mercy at December 24, 2005 6:29 AM

Have_Mercy: Do you have your own website where you have more information on Catholic Charities and like-minded organizations and the recipients of their aid? I think that is an issue worth exploring and publicizing. Several years ago, I was visiting some family in Des Moines, IA. The Catholic Church where I attended Mass mentioned that they needed clothing and furniture for the Muslim family, a mother and five children, that they had sponsored from Afghanistan. I support giving food, water, medicine to anyone who is in need. I do not support "sponsoring" Muslim families to relocate with so many Christian families living in desparation in Muslim countries. Cardinal Michael Sabbah is a disgrace. He should be called to Rome and called on the carpet for his remarks. Then, he should be removed and replaced by someone who is not in the back pocket of Hamas.

Posted by: maryrose at December 24, 2005 9:32 AM

What a Dhimi...He may be along the lines of Judas???

Peace loving religion my arse.

Posted by: chuck at December 24, 2005 10:17 AM

Arabic-speaking Christians vary in their response to Islam, and their willingness to accept, internalize, and promote -- as Michel Sabbagh does, or as did the Melkite Bishop Hilarion Cappucci, who helped steal icons from churches to fund arms-buying and arms-smuggling for the PLO, until discovered and stopped by the Israelis. Or take the sinister and very active Naim Ateek, who successfully toils in the vineyards not of the Lord, nor of Allah exactly, but those of Islamochristianity, , an islamochristian wolf among Christian sheep (some of them no doubt prompted by older animosities and pathological mental conditions), ensuring that they will not learn about Islam. And why not? Well, to learn about Islam thoroughly is to understand the real nature of the opposition to, and campaign against, Israel (the Lesser Jihad).

Where the local Christians in "Arab" countires are sufficiently large in numbers, and have retained their autonomy, and managed (possibly because of a retreat into mountain fastnesses, like the Maronites) they may also be less susceptible to the attitudes summed up by the word "dhimmitude." The Arabic-speaking, but not "Arab" -- save for those who have chosen to confuse the two -- Maronites were much larger in numbers, and in the 19th and first part of the 20th century were protected from their Muslim overlords and neighbors (not always successfully, for there were attacks by Muslim mobs on Maronites, most famously in Damascus in 1860) have probably been the least affected.

Just after World War II, when the Maronites were still a majority in Lebanon, and had statesmen in their ranks, including Charles Malik (whose son Habib Malik continues to write and lecture on Islam and Christianity), an "SOS Lebanon" calling for "A Homeland for Chrsitians of the Near East" was issued. Excerpts from that document can be found as Appendix 3 in Bat Ye'or's "Islam and Dhimmitude."

Here are some excerpts:

"Why does one talk about 'Arab countries' when the nations invovled display no ethnic homogeneity, have nothing in common except their langague, but for whom, on the other hand, Islam is the official religion -- with the exception of Lebanon.

"For the champions of Arabism, Arab Unity can only mean Islamic Unity, as is shown in chaptres 11 and 12 below.

"That being so, why should the solution of the problem continue to ignore the existence of the msot ancient inhabitants fo those countries, who are neither Arabs nor Muslims? The Eastern Chrstiaisn deserve that their fate be the object of concern and that in tomorrow's world a secure and peaceful homeland be reserved for them, worthy of their past and their spiritatual values."

........

"...Lebanon, the Christians' refuge, only experienced relative tranquillity amidst its Muslim neighbors as aresult of constant vigilance by its armed men. Lebanon can therefore be said to have been living under a regme of armed peace during this entire period.

"In all other parts of the Ottoman Empire, the Christians had to live n a state of subjection bordering on servitude. The regmie of inequality between Muslims and Christians was raised tothe height of an Institution in Public Law.

.........

"No community of memories exists between Muslims and Eastern Christians. This has been the case throughout the hsitory o fthese countries since the advent of Islam. The glorious periods of Muslim domination correspond to years of misery and humiliation for the Christians. Conversely, periods of decadence are matched by a respite for the Christians and a transitory relaxation. There are still Christians today who hae not forgotten the very recent period when they had to step off the pavement and bow their heads on meetng a Muslim.

.........

CONCLUSION: It emergences from the evidence of the three precediing chapters that:

1) Arabism can not be dissociated from Islamism.

2) The Arab state is governed by the Sacred Muslim Law for all rules of public life, private life and religions practice;

3) Islam, as a theocratic state, recognizes only Muslims as true citizens.

4) Freedom of conscience whereby a man is free to lead a private life in harmony with his innermost spiritual convictions wihtout the possibility that this could entail any inequality for him in public life or the social milieu is expressly rejected by Islam. In the Muslim theocratic state absolute equality beteeen Muslims and non-Muslims is an intolerable shame."

The cynical manner in which the persecutors -- Arab Muslims -- attempt to enroll in their own efforts to establish themselves in the Infidel lands (especially in the United States, Canada, Australia) by pretending to a "common identity" with the descendants of MIddle Eastern Christians, is something to behold. Those who themselves fled, as Arabic-speaking Christians, from Muslim pressure and persecution in the Middle East, or are the descendants of those who did, are asked to express a supposedly shared identity with those who themselves, being Muslim, see nothing wrong with the harsh treatment of non-Muslims in what is now so incorrectly called "the Arab world." Particularly blatant is the attempt by so-called Muslim "Arab-Americans" to exploit the reputation of the long-established, well-integrated, and loyal communities -- where they still exist -- of Lebanese-Americans, in order to serve as cover or camouflage for a very different, because Muslim, kind of immigrant. If Lebanese Christians could enroll in the army and fight unreservedly for the United States, had no trouble (and often sympathy for) Jews in America and for Israel (which many understood would have a future fate, good or ill, that would likely be that of the Maronites as well). The tenuous connection of Lebanese Maronites, tending to the non-existent, because their only sign of "Arabness" was the use of the language, and once that was dropped, "Arabness" as a handmaiden to islamization, no longer was of moment. Many Lebanese were careful to keep calling themselves "Lebanese" and to reject, without always explaining why, the designation "Arab" or "Arab-American" -- and with good reason. As the Maronites predate the invasion of Arab Muslims all over the Middle East, it makes more sense for them, as many do, to consider themselves the descendants of the sea-going Phoenicians, famed from the days of Sidon and of Tyre. Those Lebanese (or "Syrians" as they might be labelled on their Ottoman cards of identity) who arrived in the Western world between 1880 and 1950, were fleeing from , but not only do not reject, but many work to promote the universal agenda of Arab Islam.

The "Arab-American" construct nowadays is intended to exsploit, for Muslim purposes, in all senses, of the 80% of those so-called "Arab-Americans" who, as Christians from Lebanon and Syria, were in most cases not really Arabs at all, but Arabic-speaking, and furthermore, were refugees from islam) is becoming more transparent to all concerned, and will be so even more, as the treatment of Christians by Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere becomes harder to hide. Imagine CAIR hiding behind the uniform of General John Abizaid, and you have an emblematic picture.

Visits to the websites of a convert to Chrstianity, Walid Shoebat, or that of Nonie Darwish, or of a Lebanese Christian, Brigitte Gabriel, help enlighten. So do visits to the websites of a "Free Lebanon," the sites of the Copts, and of the Assyrians. For sample lists, look at the list of links at JW. The essays of Jacob Thomas, an American Christian who is likely of Arab descent, also repay reading. So do the articles of Habib Malik, whose name can be googled. The best book on the legal status of non-Muslims under Islam is by the late Antoine Fattal, a Maronite law professor and a member of various Lebanese government missions. That's a start for those who want to find out more about Arabic-speaking Christians, the Lebanese, and islamochristians like the sinister but in the end transparent Michel Sabbagh. He and his ilk are described perfectly in the books of Bat Ye'or -- see "Islam and Dhimmitude," see "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam." It's all there.

Posted by: Hugh at December 24, 2005 10:23 AM

An American born Islamochristian, is James Zogby of Lebanese Maronite heritage. He has been with various "Arab-American" organizations and consistently identifies with Muslims/Palestinians. Never one word from him about the appalling treatment of Christians under Islamic rule. I am sure that he will be on talk shows in the next few days commenting on the wiretaps and measuring radiation levels in the areas of mosques. I believe that his son is a lawyer in the Justice Dept. and his brother, John Zogby, runs a national polling company out of Utica, New York. Both brothers seem to have ties to the Democratic party too, and at times, James Zogby appears with a byline of a "Democratic consultant." Beware of this background when listening to the Zogby brothers comments.

Posted by: maryrose at December 24, 2005 10:35 AM

Hugh,

Particularly blatant is the attempt by so-called Muslim "Arab-Americans" to exploit the reputation of the long-established, well-integrated, and loyal communities -- where they still exist -- of Lebanese-Americans, in order to serve as cover or camouflage for a very different, because Muslim, kind of immigrant.

After following events in Lebanon, of the plight of its Christian community, in the seventies, especially the massacre of the people of the town of Damour in 76 by Muslims (mainly Arafat and Syria), it sticks in my craw to watch the support and reverence for the Palestinians at the expense of Israel (which helped the Christians close to its border), by former Lebanese Christians and Syrian Christians. The case in point being the Syrio-Lebanese community in Brazil.

The almost complete absence of comment from the Christian world at the time was one thing being relatively far removed from the scene, but Hilarion Cappucci smuggling arms in the door panels of his Mercedes across the border, from Lebanon into Israel to help the very PLO that slaughtered his flock was hypocritical to the extreme.
Has the community in the West no pride in its roots that it succumbs to this despicable behaviour?

Posted by: Cynic at December 25, 2005 7:48 AM

An American born Islamochristian, is James Zogby of Lebanese Maronite heritage. He has been with various "Arab-American" organizations and consistently identifies with Muslims/Palestinians. Never one word from him about the appalling treatment of Christians under Islamic rule. I am sure that he will be on talk shows in the next few days commenting on the wiretaps and measuring radiation levels in the areas of mosques. I believe that his son is a lawyer in the Justice Dept. and his brother, John Zogby, runs a national polling company out of Utica, New York. Both brothers seem to have ties to the Democratic party too, and at times, James Zogby appears with a byline of a "Democratic consultant." Beware of this background when listening to the Zogby brothers comments.

I have seen James Zogby on C-Span portraying himself as an Arab-American.He's also an apologist for the "Palestinians" who's careful to identify himself as Christian not Muslim.His brother John Zogby was discredited as a pollster during the last election cycle when he was exposed as a shill for the democrat party. John Zogby who's a pollster not a prophet called the presidential race for John Kerry back in March 2004.He also attempted to influence the presidential election when on election day before polls had closed he projected Kerry as the winner with over 300 electoral votes.Needless to say John Zogby looked like a fool after Bush won. The reality is John Zogby is a partisan who should not be confused with a credible unbiased pollster.

Posted by: Roxane at December 25, 2005 11:52 PM

The patriarch seems to be right in tune with tony kushner and spielberg. Israeli violence begets more violence, blah blah blah. He doesn't want to acknowledge that the violence began with the Arabs-Muslims.

Posted by: Eliyahu at December 27, 2005 4:43 PM