This is the saddest Easter in the long epic of Arab Christianity: The cross is near extinction in the lands of its origin. The much-vaunted diversity of the Middle East is going to be reduced to the flat monotony of a single religion, Islam, and to a handful of languages.
In 1919, the Egyptian revolution adopted a green flag with the crescent and the cross. Both Muslims and Christians participated in the nationalist revolution against British colonialism. Now, according to the Egyptian Federation for Human Rights, more than 70 Christians a week are asking to leave the country due to Islamist threats.
The numbers are telling. Today there is only one Middle Eastern country where the number of Christians has grown: Israel. As documented in the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the Christian community that numbered 34,000 people in 1949 is now 163,000-strong, and will reach 187,000 in 2020.
In the rest of the Middle East, the drive for Islamic purity is going to banish all traces of pre-Islamic pasts. This has affected not only Christians, but other non-Islamic communities too, such as the Zoroastrians and Baha’is in Iran (the late also found refuge in Israel, in Haifa.)
The silence of the global forums, the flawed conscience of human rights groups, the self-denial of the media and the Vatican’s appeasement is helping facilitate this Islamist campaign. According to a report on religious freedom compiled by the US Department of State, the number of Christians in Turkey declined from two million to 85,000; in Lebanon they have gone from 55% to 35% of the population; in Syria, from half the population they have been reduced to 4%; in Jordan, from 18% to 2%. In Iraq, they will be exterminated.
Should the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem continue in the next two or three decades, there may be no clergy left to conduct religious services in Jesus’ birthplace. In Iran, Christians have become virtually non-existent since 1979, when Khomeini ordered the immediate closure of all Christian schools. In Gaza, the 3,000 who remain are subjected to persecution. …
In Lebanon, the Maronites, the only Christians to have held political power in the modern Arab world, have been reduced to a minority because of Muslim violence and Hezbollah’s rise. …
In 1948, the Middle East was cleansed of its ancient Jews. Today is the Christians’ turn.
Many Westerners remain scandalously uninformed of what’s happening. The Western media often couch anti-Christian violence as sectarian strife between Christians and Muslims. …
Christians flourished in the Middle East as recently as a century ago, when they made up close to 20 percent of the population. Today, they comprise less than five percent of the region – a share that’s seemingly ever decreasing. …
In Jordan (where Christ was baptized), Christians have dropped from 30 percent of the population in the 1950s to less than two percent today. …
In the Muslim world, Christians are being murdered, churches are being torched, entire ancient Christian communities — the Iraqi and Palestinian, for example — are disappearing. And, again, 2 billion Christians react with silence. …
Christians should organize an international day or week of solidarity for persecuted Christians in the Muslim world. And not only Christians should attend these hopefully large events. Jews and Muslims should also be in attendance, and their representatives should speak. Jews should because it is right and because of all Christians did for Soviet Jewry and do for Israel; and Muslims should because it is right and because nothing would protect the good name of Muslims like joining non-Muslims in voicing solidarity with the many Christian victims of persecution in Muslim countries.
[A]nti-Christian violence is sustained by a widespread culture of Muslim supremacism that extends far beyond those who pull the triggers and detonate the bombs. …
Naively projecting Western values on Muslims, U.S. leadership continues to think that “people-power” will naturally culminate into a liberal, egalitarian society—despite all the evidence otherwise. The fact is, in the Arab/Muslim world, “majority rule” traditionally means domination by the largest tribe or sect; increasingly, it means Islamist domination.
using a mobile phone at 9 a.m. on Good Friday, just when service at the 3,000-seat Catholic church would begin.
Authorities were led to the bombs’ location after arresting 19 suspects in alleged connection to a suicide bombing in West Java, and parcel bombs mailed to advocates for religious pluralism. Last week, a suicide bombing at a mosque within a police compound left more than 30 people injured, mostly officers – marking the first suicide bombing in Indonesia.
Muslim rioters burned homes, churches and police stations in Kaduna after results showed Nigeria’s Christian leader beat his closest Muslim opponent in Saturday’s vote.
@ Shy Guy #2 : Yawn.
Hello Andrew, I get what you mean, and things are going to get even worse, everywhere. Believers were not promised a rose garden and through the ages many Christians and Jews, have perished at the hands of even so-called “Christians”, and for many years, at the hands of muslims, for their faith in the God of the Bible. It can happen anywhere anytime, whether in Israel or wherever muslim savages are. The souls of those Nigerian Christians, together with countless others before them are at the foot of God’s altar crying for the judgment and avenging of their blood upon those who killed them so savagely. There is coming a day of reckoning with Almighty God and that day will be much worse than anything we have ever seen. In the mean time we should all endeavour to expose islam for what it is, even if it means putting horrific pictures on the internet and in the media. We owe it to those poor souls,
so the world can SEE and not just hear, what islam is all about.
Hello Shy, I think it was clear I was referring to the being forced out bit. Not the individual acts of depravity that’s driving it. Thank you for the link, as harrowing as it is, hadn’t seen that one before. cheers.
Andrew’s blessing (warning: graphic photo)
Hello Sonia, its actually a blessing, We are all being forced out of the Mid East before Gog and Magog goes down. What Christian would want to be in a muslim country when that happens. Like the old saying, the Lord moves in mysterious ways.
Panties in a wedgie again, Sonia?
Shy Guy et al must be very happy.
I notice a dearth of comments. At least Ted posted, thank you Ted.