Persecuted and Forgotten? - Christian wipe out

Please do not skip this heart-rending video

"Islamic State's daily abductions, murders and beheadings on Christians have come close to wiping out the faith completely in Syria" warns Jean-Clement Jeanbart, the Greek Melkite Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo who has been in London to call for action in Syria. Christianity has been almost completely destroyed by ISIS fanatics in Syria, he said. At least 1,000 Christians had been abducted and murdered in Aleppo. Report here. 

This is no exaggeration. The vast exodus of Christians from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East highlights the very real possibility that Christianity could soon all but disappear from much of its ancient homeland. Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has published a report 'Persecuted and Forgotten?' which assesses the deepening plight of Christians in 22 countries of concern. Drawing on testimony from witnesses of persecution, the report shows why Christians are the world’s most persecuted faith group. Executive Summary here.

There is no escape from this brutality. According to this report an Iranian man was severely beaten in a German refugee camp for converting to Christianity. The man is thought to have told some Afghan migrants that he had embraced Christianity. A few days later one Afghan beat him unconscious with a baton, declaring that his conversion was a "sin".

This is not an isolated incident. In August, riots broke out in an overcrowded German refugee camp after an Afghan resident tore pages out of a Koran and threw them in the toilet. At least 17 people were left injured when 20 Syrian refugees chased the man after he ruined the Islamic holy book. The crowd even turned their anger towards the camp's security guards who tried to protect the alleged offender. The migrants smashed car windows and ransacked buildings in a rampage which lasted several hours.

The 'holier than thou' Church of England  bishops who wrote to the Prime Minister demanding that tens of thousands of migrants be admitted to Great Britain should pay more attention to people who understand these matters such as the Archbishop of Aleppo and ACN. Migrants are not leaving Islam behind. It is being exported.

Postscript [25.10.2015]

Doubters read "Christians Persecuted by Muslims Even in the West" here.

Postscript [26.10.2015]

Christian refuges targeted by Muslim migrants. Mass slaughter of Christians in the Middle East should be recognised as “genocide” here.

The new black death

"For Muslims, the whole focus of the life on earth must be directed at securing a place to this Islamic heaven, full of sexual indulgence. And the way of securing a ticket to Allah's whoredom is outlined in Quran 9:111, which says:

'Lo! Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the Garden (Paradise) will be theirs: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain'

Verse 9:111 means what it means. A Muslim who is killed or who kills fulfilling teachings of 9:5, 9:29 and all the other verses of the Quran exhorting murder, rape, terror, and torture are guaranteed accession to Allah's paradise".

- From 9/11 is Enactment of Quran 9:111 here.

Death and destruction are rampant. People are beheaded, crucified and worse as a warning to others, churches are destroyed, what remains of ancient civilizations is obliterated, all in the name of Allah. If anyone questions how the 'Religion of Peace' can be responsible for such atrocities the response is the same: "Islamophobia"!

Islam is regarded as one of the great religions of the world. Numerically it is but given the perpetual carnage since its inception, people are entitled to investigate the root cause of the violence. While Islam means submission it does not mean that everyone must be kept in ignorance. On the contrary, if there is nothing to hide an open debate should be welcome.

If Islam were truly a 'Religion of Peace' we should expect Muslims be in the forefront of peacekeeping, extolling the wonders of the Quran and Hadiths.  The problem is that although there are peaceful verses in the Quran they have been abrogated by "at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule".

The UK Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK) claims: Muslims are going through an identity crisis, and have been for many decades... Muslims have suffered oppression for hundreds of years... and with such rampant injustices perpetrated against the Muslims all around the world... "Because the Muslim struggle has never been explained in this manner, the Muslim reaction to oppression is often misconstrued as acts of ‘extremism’ ‘radicalisation’ and so forth. For our Ummah’s struggle to be understood, Muslims must tell the world about their story and their struggle"!

Muslims are invited to "join the struggle for justice" and complain to the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) if they have been "verbally abused, harassed, discriminated against or even violently attacked because you are Muslim" or have been "mistreated by the police or security services or a victim of anti-terror laws". Meanwhile the IHRC has named the murdered Charlie Hebdo staff 'International Islamophobe of the Year'!

Do Muslims not understand what real persecution is? "There are few places on earth where Christianity is as old as it is in Iraq. Christians there trace their history to the first century apostles. But today, their existence has been threatened by the terrorist group that calls itself Islamic State. More than 125,000 Christians -- men, women and children -- have been forced from their homes over the last 10 months". Read the heart-rending story of their plight here. That is persecution.

Often funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia mosque building in Europe has shifted into high gear enabling Islam to spread in the West while in Saudi Arabia their Grand Mufti wants churches destroyed . The sad story of Muslim prayers being offered in an Anglican Church serves to emphasis the ignorance surrounding Islam. It is a supremacist, religious ideology which believes that everything belongs to Allah and all must submit or pay the price - as the people of Syria and Iraq know to their cost.

Not just the ignorant are manipulated. A news report claims that: "Nine British medics feared to have crossed into Syria". The contagion is spreading but the problem is not being tackled. The Ebola virus disease has claimed 10,000 lives. A United Nations report highlighting the human rights violations of the Islamic State's jihadist campaign in Iraq found that over 24,000 Iraqi civilians have been injured or killed by ISIS in the first eight months of 2014, and the extremists have taken up the practices of recruiting 12- and 13-year-old soldiers and forcing women and girls into sex slavery.

Now linked with IS, Boko Haram killed 6,347 civilians in 2014 while endless killing goes on in Pakistan (56,867 fatalities in terrorist violence 2003-2015) and elsewhere. If this were a virus huge resources would be made available to prevent it spreading but Islam is not only allowed to spread it is facilitated by politicians and church leaders who have preferred to bury their heads in the sand rather than ask themselves if the world wouldn't be far more peaceful without Islam.

Today, Theresa May has has made it clear that the UK will not tolerate extremists. Watch here. There can be no going back. The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres blamed a "global coalition of inaction" which led to "tragic consequences" with the spread of Ebola. We cannot afford to make the same mistake with Islam.

"Speak up. Of course, there is good people of the Islam people. There is not all Muslim people they are bad. I believe. But there is the good people? Where is their voice? Nothing. Few. Few."

- Archbishop Nicodemus Sharaf, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Mosul

Leaving Islam

This video by an ex-Muslim neatly sums up how people use religion to satisfy their human desires. It considers the basic question of why any Creator would want some of those he created to destroy others he had created. It makes no sense except when the messenger wishes to distort the message for personal gain, sucking in the ignorant and ill-informed to believe that they too can benefit from the suffering of others. How could such a cruel God be worthy of worship?

Christianity is often accused of perpetrating evil acts similar to those now being carried out by warriors for Islam today. There is no denying that, in the past, appalling acts of cruelty were perpetrated in the name of Christ but the errors were of the messenger, not the message. With Islam it is both the messenger and the message and it is not history. It is being inflicted now in the name of one regarded in Islam as the perfect man which raises the question of how much Muslims really know about their messenger.

The following video lists twenty problems with the this belief:

If Muslims know but deny these facts it raises serious questions about their honesty. If they do not, they are being used unwittingly to support jihad against non-Muslims and need to escape before they too find that they are on the list to be cleansed for being the wrong kind of Muslims.

The 2014 Memri TV clip here shows the 'right kind' of Muslim (in their eyes), a Russian ISIS fighter justifying Islamic State massacres based on texts from the Quran. Some quotes from the transcript:

"With regard to the Islamic State, the Caliphate and the numerous accusations we have been accused of by those who sit idly by instead of going on Jihad, or those who do nothing for the religion of Allah, except for praying the five prayers, believing that by doing so, they are helping the religion of Allah… You are not helping yourselves or the religion of Allah. Anyone who sits idly by and does not help the Islamic State today will be held accountable on Judgment Day.
[…]
"You accuse us of the mass killing of Muslims, saying that we are blood-shedding murderers. Didn't the Prophet Muhammad and his companions shed blood? Haven't you read his biography, written by Ibn Hisham, which says that the Messenger of Allah killed 700 people in a single battle? He slaughtered 700 people – that is our Prophet and our religion.
[…]
"I say to all our Muslim brothers and sisters: Join the Islamic State. Join your brothers. Do not wait until death comes to you. Do not wait until the path is blocked. As long as you can, perform hijra. The hijra is a duty. If you read any book on Islamic faith, you will see that it is a duty to perform hijra from Dar Al-Kufr to Dar Al-Islam. Do not procrastinate. Do not delude yourselves. Do not say to yourselves that you will perform the hijra tomorrow or the day after."

More recently there has been an obsession in the media with how 'Jihadi John' was radicalized. He didn't need to be radicalized. Based on his knowledge of Islam he simply responded to the  claim "Anyone who sits idly by and does not help the Islamic State today will be held accountable on Judgment Day". He has been following the message of the messenger without any pretence that Islam is the 'Religion of Peace' in the normal accepted sense of the word peace. Despite his heinous crimes attempts have been made to portray Jihadi John as the victim. Similar efforts were made in respect of the deluded youngsters who set off to join the IS group in Syria. Like their founder, among others, this group believes that a girl of nine is of marriageable age! The IS guide to life for female jihadis is here. Any female who wants to embrace such a regime must be severely deluded or must have been indoctrinated by an ideology which rewards the guilty at the expense of the innocent.

Islam has been at war with non-believers since the seventh century, falsely claiming that the West has invaded their lands. They are not Muslim lands. They were obtained by conquest. For years the plight of the Copts was ignored. Now we are witnessing The Twilight of Middle Eastern Christianity. The message is blindingly obvious but there's none so blind as those who will not see - something of which President Obama is persistently accused.

It doesn't have to be like this. Muslims are held captive by fear. Execution for apostasy is still regarded as acceptable in Islamic states. Apart from accepted abrogations, "No change can there be in the Words of Allah (Sura 10:64) "There is none that can alter the Words of Allah (Sura 6:34). So if the religious ideology cannot be adapted to allow Muslims to live peaceably with others in the twenty-first century, its adherents must change if the carnage is to stop.

Listen to an Ex-Muslim terrorist who has found what other Muslims seek and follow his example. Eternal life, without slaughtering the innocent.

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

If everything else fails, read the instructions

Mock-slave market where niqab-wearing women were seen chained together while
 masked men used loudspeakers to auction them off to the highest bidder.

The newspapers and television reports are full of it. "UK police launch hunt for London schoolgirls feared to have fled to Syria". At least these "academically gifted" girls had a choice. Unlike the young Yazidi woman forced into sex slavery by the Islamic State who "begged the West" to bomb the brothel where she was being held after militants raped her 30 times in just a few hours (here). As for their menfolk their fate was to be expected.

Slavery is nothing new to Islam. The plight of the Yazidi people is slipping from the memory as each blood curdling atrocity tops the previous act of depravity. According to a study released last month by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue "There is no doubt … that the women who migrate to the territory controlled by Isis revel in the gore and brutality of the organisation. They appear desensitised to the horrific nature of the violent acts being committed."

Where will it end? Will anyone speak out? A 'Brave German woman' did here when an Imam began his call to prayer in a Christian Church. But where are the other voices? As Christianity becomes sidelined Islam advances. People are too paralysed to question how Islam can be the 'Religion of Peace' despite all the evidence to the contrary. Pat Condell does here when 'Islam is Dismantled In 6 Minutes' but his is just another lone voice crying in the wilderness.

So what about you and me? Today's reading in Marianne Dorman's 'Living Lent' is "Follow me". She writes "The Gospel reading [Luke5:28] tells of the calling of Levi, a tax collector for the Roman government, who immediately left his desk after hearing Christ's words "Follow me". How can we imitate Levi's example and be a true follower of our Lord in all the perplexities that modern society offers?

Good question! It is central to Christian belief that God was made man. This being so, Muslims must be deluded about their faith which is based only on the word of one man who claimed to hear the word of God which just happened to support his lifestyle as a warlord. Does the casual Muslim know this let alone non-Muslims? Probably not, because questions are discouraged. Islam means submission. Accusations of Islamlophobia are designed to put Islam above criticism. Consequently people remain baffled.

British people with no religion usually have a basic, inherent Christian understanding based on the British way of life and the process of law, hence their live-and-let-live attitude to a religious ideology which, unknown to them, seeks to convert them to Islam, subjugate them or, as is evident in Syria and Iraq, dispatch them. People need to be educated about this. Some good advice for people who are baffled is 'if everything else fails, read the instructions'.  Unlike the Bible which is a collection of stories developing over time until the prophecies were fuliled in Jesus Christ, the Quran, which apparently can only be properly understood in Arabic, is a book of instructions emanating from a single source said to be the word of God. Where verses differ the later verse abrogates the earlier verse but it is common for Muslims to quote earlier, peaceful verses rather than the 109 or so verses that call Muslims to war with non-believers for the sake of Islamic rule. Hence the need to look at various topics to guard against "popular misconceptions".

It was no surprise to read that the Archbishop of Canterbury is to visit a school in Birmingham where 80 per cent of its pupils are Muslim and just eight per cent of its pupils are Christian. The school been declared "outstanding" by Ofsted, just like the Bethnal Green Academy which the "academically gifted" girls attended before boarding a flight to Turkey.

Along with the Prime Minister Muslim leaders at the East London Mosque are "extremely concerned". Not so concerned though that they will permit their faith to be held up to the same scrutiny as others. Pity really. If anyone needs to see the Light it is our Muslim friends, especially the "devastated" families of children who, despite all the advantages offered to them in this country choose submission.

Christianity before Islam

The spread of Christianity by the 7th Century when Islam was being established in Arabia.

On Newsnight Last night Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury spoke about the plight of Christians and Muslims in the Middle East under the IS threat. Link here [advance to 14.47 - sadly not available outside the UK but the message in the picture is clear]. There is a narrative of 'How Christianity's Eastern history has been forgotten' here. An interesting perspective with a follow-up interview by Evan Davies offering a more balanced view of the problem after President Obama's recent reflections.

Prince Charles has expressed his alarm at young people being radicalised yet he still suggests that as King he should defend all faiths: "He believed an important part of the role was to be a 'protector of faiths', defending every religion in multicultural Britain". Why anyone would want to protect a faith which seeks to do away with all others is a mystery, especially coming from the heir to the throne and future Defender of the Faith given The Great Commission.

"All of our people are suffering.They lost everything but they didn't loose their faith in Christ. Christ is in their hearts." - Archbishop Athanasias speaking of Christians in the Syrian Orthodox Church.