Christians in the West continue to remain silent and indifferent to the Muslim persecution of Christians in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Why? A significant percentage of the Christians in Iraq were Chaldean Catholics. Yet the Catholic Church’s supine and pollyannish stance in the face of the advancing jihad, and active campaign to mislead Catholics about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat while moving to silence and marginalize those who speak the truth about the threat, is a moral failure the likes of which have seldom been seen in history, and poses a severe challenge to any claim it makes to moral authority.
“We have to understand that totalitarianism based on Islamic creed is the worst among all systems of government. Yes, my friends, the very survival of Christians in the cradle of Christianity is quite in danger.” So said the patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church of Antioch, Ignatius Joseph III Younan.
Yet the Church as a whole has said almost nothing at all. Why? Why are Church leaders in the West so uniformly silent about the Muslim persecution of Christians? Jean-Clément Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo, gave an interview to a French reporter in which he was highly critical of the mainstream media and even of his fellow bishops for ignoring the Muslim persecution of Middle Eastern Christians. “The European media,” he charged, “have not ceased to suppress the daily news of those who are suffering in Syria and they have even justified what is happening in our country by using information without taking the trouble to verify it.” And as for his brother bishops in France, “the conference of French bishops should have trusted us, it would have been better informed. Why are your bishops silent on a threat that is yours today as well? Because the bishops are like you, raised in political correctness. But Jesus was never politically correct, he was politically just!”
Archbishop Jeanbart was not the first to say this. “Why, we ask the western world, why not raise one’s voice over so much ferocity and injustice?” asked Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI). Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Ephrem Joseph III Younan himself has in the past appealed to the West “not to forget the Christians in the Middle East.” The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III has also said: “I do not understand why the world does not raise its voice against such acts of brutality.”
But the Patriarch should have understood, since he is a major part of the problem. After all, he recently said: “No one defends Islam like Arab Christians.” It is to defend Islam that Western clerics do not raise their voice against such acts of brutality. It is to pursue a fruitless and chimerical “dialogue” that bishops in the U.S. and Europe keep silent about Muslim persecution of Christians, and enforce that silence upon others. Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, said it on February 8, 2013 as he was suppressing a planned talk at a Catholic conference on that persecution: “Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.”
Remember that Mohamed Atta, about the plane he had hijacked on September 11, 2001, told passengers over the intercom: “Stay quiet and you’ll be OK.” The Catholic Church appears to have adopted that statement as its policy regarding Muslim persecution of Christians. When will Pope Francis canonize Atta?
“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)
“Christianity in Iraq is finished, says Canon Andrew White, ‘vicar of Baghdad,'” by Hollie McKay, Fox News, March 21, 2017:
He is one of the world’s most prominent priests, but Canon Andrew White – known as the “Vicar of Baghdad” – has reached a painstaking conclusion: Christianity is all but over in the land where it all began.
“The time has come where it is over, no Christians will be left. Some stay Christians should stay to maintain the historical presence, but it has become very difficult. The future for the community is very limited,” White told Fox News this week. “The Christians coming out of Iraq and ISIS areas in the Middle East all say the same thing, there is no way they are ever going back. They have had enough.”
Thirty years ago, there were approximately 1.4 million Christians in Iraq. The number dwindled to around 1 million after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and a year ago it was estimated that there were less than 250,000 left. Numbers have continued to decline as families flee, and today even approximate figures are difficult to obtain.
“If there is anything I can tell Americans it is that your fellow brothers and sisters are suffering, they are desperate for help,” he said. “And it is not just a matter of praying for peace. They need a lot – food, resources, clothes, everything. They need everything.”
For decades, Christians endured persecution in Iraq by hardline extremists as infidel “people of the book” – but their fate became significantly more dire in 2014 after ISIS overran Mosul and the many ancient Christian villages surrounding the city. Thousands of families overnight were forced to flee their home, and while some have sought refuge in the northern Kurdish region, many have left the country altogether….
Mac-101 says
Bush, Clinton, and Obama can be proud of doin Satan’s Work!
DFD says
Slow down! What about Merkel, Hollande, Sarkozy, May, Cameron, Blair, Rutte etc.?
Just black humor…
Mac-101 says
THEY are all puppets of the man behind the curtain who is a descple of Satan!
marina says
Don’t forget Pope Francis
Mac-101 says
Ya. We can’t forget to mention the “False Prphet” of Satan’s Beast!
AnneM says
Amen to that!
martin says
You missed out the UK traitor Tony B Liar, ex pm, bringer in with labour of millions from the religion of satan, islam into the uk…
A Harris USA says
Mac101, Yes I am sure they are proud. Add to that list the British PM who says they tolerate this crap. Really?? Seems to me the only man around the world who stand up to these savages, and plans to kill them to the last dog, is my President Donald J Trump!!! What do these fools here do? They spend their time screaming RUSSIANS, RUSSIANS, NO fools it was not Russians, it was the American Red Blooded strong people, who put him in office..Having lost an American in this attack, we now have another dog in this fight!! British of WW2 are gone, the weak knee cry babies over there are fools.. Soon to be a thing of the past.. what Hitler started his Muslim friends will finish in the UK
gravenimage says
A Harris, there are some strong patriotic Britons who post here.
Peggy says
Also let’s not forget the brave Viktor Orban who is doing all he can to protect his country.
Slovaks and Poles are little less obvious but they too are not in favour of helping the savages.
Now if Marine can be elected the world will have one more horse in this race.
Mac-101 says
Let’s Pray Trump can turn this ship around. All the Western European ‘Leaders” are bought and paid for with the Oil Tick dollars and for some reason the Internal Financial Elites who own us ALL! Trump not only has to fight these scum but the vast majority of the Donkeys and the entire RePug Establishment! We must ALL pray he is successful!
Frank says
Sorry to say as a Catholic I must include pope francis a modernized puppet that is not in line with Saint Peter. He is responsible for all Christians and he must take some of the blame of the current conditions in the middle east
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
I’ve lost track. Jihad started in Lebanon when, back in the 1960s? What percentage of the country’s population was Infidel, mainly Christians, when it started? Now, it’s a residual number. Lebanon has fallen to Islam, yet people act as if nothing has happened there.
Mac-101 says
Lebanon gaurenteed their demise when in 1972 or there about they took in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after they rebelled against the King of Jordan and he slaughtered over TEN Thousand.
Most likely he killed more Muslims than the Israelis in israels entire history!
Just proves no good dead doesn’t go unpunished!
Peggy says
That should have been a warning to all the west.
Example of what happens when you open your heart to the Muslims.
gravenimage says
APF, this is just Jihad in the modern period–the first I was aware of it was airplane hijackings and attacks on Israel in the 1960s when I was a kid. Of course, Jihad itself dates back to the “Prophet” himself.
Mac-101 says
And it goes back to the Swiss NAZI SS Banker François Genoud who unbelievably was appointed as a major official of the Red Cross after WWII and financed Odessa and the PLO terrorism. He died of suicide at a very old age suffering from a painful terminal cancer. The Mossad never touched him!
gravenimage says
Genoud was a nasty piece of work, Mac, who financed both the Nazis and “Palestinian” Jihadists. He did not invent Jihad, of course, but certainly did do a lot to fund it.
Crusades Were Right! says
I’m sure that Merkel, May, Hollande, Clinton, the UN, the EU, NATO, etc, are preparing measures to ensure that Christians in the Middle East are protected even as I type…
…in Bizarro-World, of course; not this one!
Jeanette says
The leader of the Catholics seems to be as concerned about Christians as the previous “leader” of America was about Americans.
AnneM says
Not surprised. Pretty much the Christian faith is gone from both Iraq and Syria, as well as both those countries.
Jeanette says
“… the Catholic Church’s supine and pollyannish stance in the face of the advancing jihad …”
I would say that their stance is much worse than that; their stance is anti-Christian.
Frank Szedlak Jr says
A Stealth War against Christianity?
I wonder why the Roman Catholic Church Hierarchy does not understand the war against our Church and Christianity. Indeed many sources speak of the terrors induced daily against members of the flock. This war was as intense in the 15th Century as it is now.
The historical record shows of the great battles between the two religions. The Ottoman Caliphate invades the European land mass after the defeat of the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople in 1453. They capture Buda in Hungary in 1541. However the battle of Lepanto on October 7th, 1571 with the victory of the Holy League becomes a turning point in this expansion. Further defeat of the Caliphate occurs in the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683 with the help of the Polish army and in 1699 the Ottoman Caliphate gives the Hapsburgs territory previously taken. This setback for Islam was not forgotten.
When I studied Turkish History in 1963, while a member of the U.S. Air Force stationed there, the Professor, a Turkish Judge, let us know the memory of these defeats burns in the hearts of the Islamic people. He further stated that the Turkish Flag with the Crescent Moon and star centered was chosen as it is a prophecy that when that sight occurs in the heavens, the Moslems will rise again.
My wife and I while vacationing in Egypt in September 1992 saw this sight during the day while riding a bus to our airplane to return to Cairo. It was less than two weeks later that attacks started against foreigners. Here is a summary of those attacks from Reuters for the first two years.
1992
• Sept. 30 – a spokesman for the main militant movement, the Gama’a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), warned tourists not to enter the province of Qena, which includes some of Egypt’s most famous Pharaonic temples & tombs.
• Oct. 1 — Gama’a gunmen fired at a Nile cruiser carrying 140 Germans near Assiut, injuring three Egyptian crew.
• Oct. 21 — Militants ambushed a tourist bus, killing a British woman & injuring two British men. The woman was the first foreigner to die in militant-related violence in Egypt.
• Nov. 12 — Five German tourists & two Egyptians were wounded when gunmen ambushed a bus in the town of Qena.
1993
• Jan. 7 – A man threw a bomb near a tourist bus in Cairo, the first attack ever in the nation’s capital. No injuries were reported.
• Feb. 26 – A bomb was detonated in a crowded coffee shop in central Cairo, killing a Turk, a Swede & an Egyptian & injuring 20 people of various nationalities.
• March 16 – A bomb damaged five tourist buses outside the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo.
• June 8 – A bomb exploded near a tour bus on Pyramids Road in Cairo, killing two Egyptians & injuring 22 people including five British tourists.
• Aug 16 – A lone gunman fired shots at tourist boat in southern Egypt, but nobody is hurt in the brief random attack.
• Sept 15 & 18 — Moslem militants fired at two Nile cruise boats, the first near the village of al-Qusiya, the second on a boat carrying 22 French tourists near Abu Tig, in Upper Egypt. Both attacks missed & nobody was hurt at all. No word on whether the attackers were nabbed by police.
• Oct. 27 — A man described as a mentally disturbed musician shot dead two American businessmen & an eminent French jurist as they ate dinner at a luxury Cairo hotel. An Italian injured in the attack later died, three other people were wounded. The government said the attacker was mentally retarded & was not a Gama’a member, but some sources described him as a militant sympathiser.
• Dec. 27 – A gun & bomb attack on a tourist bus in old Cairo left eight Austrians & eight Egyptians seriously wounded. Next day newspapers said Gama’a claimed responsibility, explaining that it launched the attack to avenge executions of its members.
The Western Media and many Church groups shrug off attacks to ‘fundamentalists’ or renegades. However the reading of the Koran shows it is not a Religion of Peace, but rather one of domination and its goal is world domination and Sharia Law. Look up a few versus of the Koran. Koran (8:12), (9:73), (8:15), (9:5) especially (2:191-193) “And kill then wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Finhan (disbelief) is worse than killing…And fight them until there is no more Finhan and worship is for Allah alone.” There are plenty of similar versus in the Koran. in fact more than 100. 1.
Can you Church leaders say that Islam is a true religion when it is one that rejects the Divinity of Jesus Christ? Koran (19:30) “I am indeed a servant of Allah,” Jesus is quoted. “He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet.” The Koran also states that Jesus was not crucified. “We killed Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah, but they killed him not, nor crucified him but so it was made to appear to them and those that differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of surety they killed him not.” (4:157) 2. How can a Religion of no tolerance and no Divine inspiration be worthwhile? How can a Religion which was founded by a person who was a murderer, rapists and pedophile be a true one? 3.
I say that because my Church does not recognize that we are in a war for not only hearts and minds but also souls. They are not working to prevent the slow down the stealth invasion of Western lands and societies. This invasion is not only of jihidists but in education, military life, government, culture and interfaith dialogue.
The Republic of Turkey after the end of the Ottoman Empire became a secular government and I remember in the 1970’s speaking with Turkish students at Michigan State University about their battle with Islamist who were making inroads to Turkish society by little steps, i.e. fight to allow wearing head scarf’s. The Madras were also making sure there students were the best educated, so that they could get the best jobs in the government. This battle lasted decades and the Islamist won.
This battle is on the verge of winning in some European countries and is making ground here in the U. S. While the Western societies have made it much easier for the Moslem take-over by their birth-control and abortions and hence no longer have a sustainable population, it is not to the point yet for the U.S. We are the last chance for the Western way of life to continue.
So when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board approved a plan to convert Holy Trinity Catholic Church into a mosque and U.S. tax dollars were used for the project, 4. It accomplished another goal of the Islamic Caliphate – “the breaking of crosses.” This belief is an end-time prophecy of Muhammad. “Isa (the Muslim Jesus) will return and ‘fight the people for the cause of Islam. He will break the cross, kill the swine and abolish jizya’ and establish the rule of Allah throughout the world.” (Hadith from Sunan Abu Dawud, Book of Battle, 37:4310) 5.
In conclusion our Church, our culture, our society, our people do not have long to wake up. We need to fight for souls. We need to pray for all people. We cannot stay silent and passive.
Otherwise there is a stealth war against Christianity; it is a war that the hierarchy does not see.
Frank T. Szedlak Jr
1. The Truth About Islam, Christians Against Radical Islam, Pg 4-5
2. ibid, Pg-23-24
3. The People vs Muhammad, J. K Sheindlin
4. Stealth Invasion, Leo Hohmann, WNDBooks, 2017, Pg62-3
5. ibid, Pg 64
Michael says
It’s a blessing for the Christians to be out of there, because now the nations can use weapons of mass destruction in the knowledge that they’re killing only Muslims.
dumbledoresarmy says
Yes. Israel has greater freedom of action now that there are basically no Jews left as de facto hostages within the dar al Islam (apart from the -very small – remnant still left in Islamic Iran; and who are NOT permitted to leave, precisely because they *are* being treated as hostages).
If all non-Islamic minorities were *out* of the lands dominated by Islam, then the mohammedans could not use them as ‘leverage’ against non-Muslim religious – *and* also political – leaders.
Get the de facto hostages out of harm’s way. Then if some city in dar al Islam needs to be flattened… flatten it.
A concomitant necessity is to STOP importing mohammedans into our own countires. The Mohammedan colonies – a massive Fifth Column, out of which murderous jihadis are swarming, more and more, faster and faster – needs to be gotten OUT.
No fifth column inside our gates and NO non-Muslim de-facto dhimmi hostage populations inside the dar al islam, would give infidel countries much greater freedom of action.
Walter Sieruk says
The malicious and murderous jihadists who compose the brutal land deadly jihad entity ISIS to gather in groups to kill Christians and even murder their children. This hideous and vicious wickedness is reflect in the Bible which describes such heinous villains as those of ISIS. For Psalm 94 21 reads “The wicked band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. [N.I.V.]
In addition this the evil and madness is the extreme Islamic delusion that the savages of ISIS are under in all the murdering wickedness. Therefore the following essay explains much of this.
An outlandishly false statement of extreme folly I saw for the first time on a tee-shirt a young man was wearing in the year 1974. Which had printed on it the saying “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as your sincere.” That was statement of total falsehood and complete nonsense. For example, in the book entitled DEFYING ISIS by Johnnie Moore on page 30 it informs the reader about the jihadists who compose ISIS that “They sincerely believe they are doing justice by ridding the world of another generation of Christians, so they massacre them with pure joy.” In other words, the jihadist /Muslims of ISIS are sincere and thus believe and feel that they are “doing the right thing” by their brutal, cruel mass murder of Christians. Therefore, since the ISIS jihadists are sincere it followers, naturally, in their delusional Islamic mindset and worldview they actually “good intentions .” As strange, odd and ironic as this is. A semi-good way to explain this would is in history many Marxists had murdered many people to obtain the goal of the “greater good for a workers paradise.” In that aspect those murdering Marxists had “good intentions.” So in contrast to that foolishness and falsehood of folly false statement ,just sited above , is the tragic but true reality based statement .Which is that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
gravenimage says
“Vicar of Baghdad” says Christianity in Iraq is finished
……………….
This is profoundly grim, but probably accurate. Certainly, I would not suggest to any Christian who had gotten out that they should try to return.
gravenimage says
The only irony is that most Western Christians do not understand that they are being targeted next…
Martel says
Can anyone give me accurate figures on the amount of Syrian, Iraqi and afghani refugees that Saudi,Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar and Oman have taken in over the last few years? It would be interesting to see their actual humanitarian intakes from these conflicts per country.
LR says
This story is so damn tragic…
There are so many missionaries and such around the world, I just have not understood why these suffering Christians have not been more helped by the worlds Christian communities..Or, the rest of the world at large…?…
dumbledoresarmy says
If you want to help them, start with Barnabas Fund.
There are also a couple of others – Open Doors is one that springs to mind.
In the UK, there is the small and feisty and steadfast “British Pakistani Christian Association” who are not letting the UK government forget about Asia Bibi who is in prison in Pakistan, on death row after being charged with “blasphemy”; UK jihadwatchers could look them up then make sure to attend all their protest rallies, and find ways of helping them with their consciousness-raising and their lobbying of governments. They are trying to persuade the UK to CUT the ‘aid’ (= jizya/ tribute) that it pours into the bottomless maw of Islamic Pakistan. They are also urging other western governments to similarly use their ‘aid’ as leverage. Muslim government countenances gross human rights abuses perpetrated on non-Islamic indigenous minorities? – then Muslim government should LOSE ‘aid’ and trade. I think this idea by the BPCA is an *excellent* idea and they need to be supported, loudly and visibly.
No reason why similar campaigning cannot be done on behalf of the Copts and the Syrian Christians, for example.
Lee Hicks says
What we’ve seen is that Islam is the only religious/political system that successfully eradicates Christianity and Judaism wherever it is in place. Saudi Arabia funds 90% of Islamic education and conversion efforts, and Mecca, as the current center of this evil religion fits the bill of Mystery Babylon to a tee.
Such wholesale slaughter of Christians and Jews will bring judgment on the entire Saudi empire, in which God will use other Muslims for his own purpose, as Muslims attack and destroy Mecca and it’s environs. To be sure, those who attack and destroy Saudi Arabia will still be God’s avowed enemies, serving the false god Allah, but God has worked through His enemies efforts in the past, and will do so in the future as well.
While Islam as a whole may prosper and succeed for a time, in the end, the fall of the entire religious/political system will be massive and far-reaching, when Christ Himself returns, not as a suffering servant, but as the true King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
gravenimage says
Lee Hicks wrote:
What we’ve seen is that Islam is the only religious/political system that successfully eradicates Christianity and Judaism wherever it is in place.
……………………
Actually, Lee, Islam eradicates and slaughters *any* non-Muslim faith. Pakistan, for instance, have been murdering and driving out Hindus and Sikhs as well as Christians. Afghanistan was majority-Buddhist at one time, but I know a lot of Westerners were surprised about the Bamiyan Buddhas, because they didn’t know that Afghanistan had ever been Buddhist. It is the same story in Iran with Zoroastrians, with the Middle East and North Africa with Jews and Christians. This is what Islam does anywhere it gains the upper hand.
D'Arcy says
This is why the first Iraq war was a mistake. The idea we can replace dictatorships with democracy in parts of the world that do not have the religion, philosophy and the culture necessary for a democracy, particularly Muslim dominated countries is foolish. We have to stop being policeman of the world doing more harm than good. We should have let Saddam Hussein keep Kuwait and instead of war with him had an oil contract for buying Irag/Kuwait oil.
dumbledoresarmy says
Some Christians – Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran – are currently in the season of Lent.
One of the spiritual disciplines of Lent is prayer; another is fasting; another is charitable giving.
Those of us here who are practising Christians in these traditions can make our suffering Christian brethren – right throughout the dar al Islam – a focus of prayer-and-fasting, but *also* of charitable giving – to charities such as Barnabas Fund, that engage in 1/ direct assistance to suffering Christians of all backgrounds, working through the local churches and clergy and 2/ advocacy – e.g. petitions and letter-writing campaigns directed toward our various governments.
There is nothing to stop us, for example, from praying – and fasting – and then… writing to our respective governments urging them to CUT ‘aid’ given to Mohammedan entities that are grossly abusing the human rights of non-Islamic minorities (notably Christians, but also others), and asking them to get on board with Barnabas Fund’s “Operation Safe Havens” which facilitates the escape and resettlement – in non-Islamic countries – of displaced and threatened-with-genocide Christians from Iraq and Syria.