Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 146844Unread post Gary Oak »

Here is more history that doesn't concern Obama in the slightest bit and I believe he actually likes it. If muslims are intent on having non muslim free zones then I would like to see the non muslim world be muslim free zones. Could a muslim only country be anything but a complete disaster ?

Christians 'Under Caesar's Sword' - Responding to Worldwide Persecution

News Image By Eric Metaxas/Breakpoint.org November 21, 2016
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One hundred years ago, one-third of the population of Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople, was non-Muslim. It was home to hundreds of thousands of Jews and Christians.

Today, Istanbul, the largest city of the modern state of Turkey, is less than one percent non-Muslim.

This did not happen by accident. What's more, the same forces that turned one of Christianity's great cities into a virtual Christian-free zone is still at work throughout the world.

These processes and possible Christian responses to them are the subject of an important new project, "Under Caesar's Sword," and a short documentary by the same name.

The project is a joint effort of the University of Notre Dame and the Religious Freedom Center of the Berkley Center at Georgetown University.

The goal of the "three-year, collaborative global research project" is to investigate "how Christian communities respond when their religious freedom is severely violated."

Note that I said "when" not "if" their religious freedom is severely violated. As the project's website tells visitors, "today Christians constitute by far the most widely persecuted religion."

It cites a study by The International Society for Human Rights, which states that Christians are "the victims of 80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world."

Christians are also "the only religious group that is persecuted in all 16 of the countries highlighted as egregious offenders by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2012."

All told, a Pew Research Center found "that between June 2006 and December 2012, Christians faced harassment and intimidation in 151 countries, the largest number of any religious group."

If you're a regular BreakPoint listener, some of these dismal numbers should be familiar to you. What won't be as familiar are the faces and voices behind the numbers. Nor will the localities featured in the 26-minute documentary.

The stories told by "Under Caesar's Sword" take place not in ISIS-controlled Syria or Iraq, but in Turkey and India, two ostensibly non-sectarian democracies.

In India, Christians who've been harassed or worse by their Hindu nationalist neighbors, have to file complaints at police stations festooned with Hindu idols covered in garlands and other offerings. Not exactly the stuff confidence in the legal system is made of.

In Turkish-controlled areas of Cyprus, all evidence of that island's rich Christian heritage, which began with Paul's companion Barnabas (check out Acts 4), is being systematically eradicated.

As the film tells us, "Everyone agrees that we're seeing religious cleansing, ethnic cleansing on a massive scale" in parts of the world.

So how are Christians responding? As an Indian Christian leaders says in the film, "The rst response [to the harassment and persecution] is prayer . . . We do not retaliate, we do not respond as possibly other communities would do."

It's not only Indian Christians who have foresworn retaliation. As Daniel Philpott of Notre Dame noted, this is, with very few exceptions, the standard Christian response to persecution, harassment, and humiliation.

What's more, Christians have not only foresworn retaliation, they are reaching out to their non-Christian neighbors in the hope that these neighbors will see them as fellow Indians or fellow Turks and understand the deep roots of Christianity in those countries. Watch the teaser here:

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/articl ... TTfBSVq.99


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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 146871Unread post Blue Frost »

People ignore the history today, and whats right in front of them for some retarded reason. many think it's just because the USA meddles. The thing is they did this a thousand years before there was a USA.
Most the middle east was Christian, and other religions, look today.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 148357Unread post Gary Oak »

It seems odd that muslims are so engrossed with killing Christians. Like do they not have anything better to do with their time ? Get a hobby or a job or read a book or at least do something or anything constructive and yet all they do is try to kill Christians and Jews or anybody else who does not believe what these lazy stupid assholes do.

Christians in the Crosshairs: Pastors Face Execution for Spreading Gospel
Four men, including two pastors, face the death penalty in Sudan a full year after they were arrested on what critics say are trumped-up charges targeting Christians.
TOM RHODES

In this season of celebration and contemplation, we are publishing a series of articles about Christians who are imprisoned and in some cases threatened with death because of their beliefs. Such religious persecution is not limited to Christians. Indeed the most intense fury of zealots like those of the so-called Islamic State is directed against fellow Muslims deemed heretical. But Christians find themselves targeted not only for their faith, they are treated as symbols of the West, even if their history in a country like Egypt goes back millennia. Thus ISIS hopes attacks like the suicide bombing of a Coptic cathedral in Cairo earlier this month will help draw clear battle lines between Islam and what it calls “crusaders”—the soldiers who bear the cross. A few cases like that of Asia Bibi, a mother of five now serving her seventh consecutive Christmas in jail in Pakistan on blasphemy charges, have drawn international attention. But many others have not. As advocacy groups have made clear, Christians are under pressure from non-Muslim Mexico to non-Muslim China, but they face the most ferocious persecution in the Muslim Middle East, South Asia, and parts of Africa.
For more than 365 days, two Sudanese pastors, a Czech aid worker, and a Sudanese civil rights activist have seen their loved ones only at court sessions and only in passing, says the Rev. Kuwa Shamal, one of the detained pastors who spoke to Nuba Reports by phone from prison.
“We are considered to be spies,” said Shamal, who shares a cell at Al Huda Prison in Omdurman with fellow pastor Hassan Abdelrahim. Both are from Sudan’s Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan State, where civil war has raged for the last five years.

The four suspects face seven separate charges including espionage, waging war against the state, and provoking hatred among sects. Yet human rights observers and religious leaders say the case is baseless—just the latest example of growing persecution of Christians in the Islamic country since the 2011 secession of South Sudan.
“They don’t have any political relationships, their work is religious and they are not supposed to be arrested for simply spreading the gospel,” said Pastor Emmanuel Ofendi, who runs the Cush Theological College in the Nuba Mountains. “We send our message to the whole world of what is happening—to release these men. They have done nothing wrong.”
Sudanese national security in December 2015 arrested the two pastors and civil rights activist Abdelmoneim Abdelmoula at home. Petr Jasek, an aid worker from the Czech Republic, was on his way out of the country when authorities detained him at Khartoum International Airport.
The court case began in August, more than eight months after the men were first detained. According to defense lawyer Muhanad Nur, the arrest stems from state suspicions that they are trying to encourage Muslims to convert to Christianity and for publicly speaking out against the ill treatment of Christians in Sudan.
During the last hearing at the Khartoum Centre Court on Dec. 19, national security officer Sayed Abdel-Rahman claimed the group had aired radio and online YouTube videos by two “hostile foreign organizations” and that Jasek was a member of one of these organizations. One of the YouTube videos alleged that the Sudan government had killed Muslim converts to Christianity.
In October, the state prosecutor presented video footage and photographs taken from Jasek’s laptop as evidence. The prosecutor’s case included footage of the Nuba Mountains and the four suspects in Khartoum North assisting a student, Ali Omer, as he suffers from skin burns from a teargas bomb during a 2013 university protest. Abdelmoula, an engineer and activist from Darfur, is Omer’s brother and sought help from the two pastors and Jasek. The trio are accused of helping Omer with his costly medical bills after the incident.

Shamal suspects authorities had wished to arrest the Darfur activist for some time—Abdelmoula’s collaboration with the pastors and Jasek fulfilled this desire.
Authorities also arrested Omer last December, imprisoned him for six months and questioned him repeatedly about the source of the money used to cover his medical treatment, the human rights organization Amnesty International reported.
Jasek, with over 20 years of medical experience, had assisted the Christian aid organization Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) on different occasions, VOM spokesman Todd Nettleton said. He has given medical assistance to persecuted Christians in Sudan and Nigeria, according to the spokesman.
The two indicted pastors suspect their participation in a Christian conference in October 2015 based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, may have triggered their arrest.
“There were 10 pastors from Sudan who attended the conference to discuss the situation of Christians in Khartoum after secession of South Sudan,” Shamal explained from prison. Abdelmoula presented a paper on the oppression of Christians in Sudan.
The current trial appears at loggerheads with the October conclusions of the National Dialogue, a state-led peace initiative ostensibly designed to end Sudan’s internal conflicts. The conference attendants, including government and some opposition parties, concluded the event by issuing a National Document that makes at least four references calling for religious diversity, the freedom of worship, and to end religious discrimination in Sudan.

Both pastors can speak from past experience about state-led targeting of Christians and Christian institutions. In June 2014, the state demolished Shamal’s church, the Sudanese Church of Christ in Thiba Al Ahamida, Khartoum North, claiming the land was reserved for a private hospital.
Land authorities rejected ownership documents he presented, including receipts of fees paid for the church over 30 years ago. Incredibly, authorities visited him on a Sunday before they leveled the church, requesting that he sign a document calling for the church’s demolition.
“I refused to sign the paper,” Shamal said over the phone from prison. “How can someone come to us asking us to demolish our own church?”
The following day vehicles and a bulldozer accompanied by dozens of police, military, and security personnel came and tore the building down. Now, the 400-odd parishioners worship in the open air despite repeated requests to many government ministries for permission to rebuild their church.
The Sudan government has demolished at least six churches since 2011, according to Morningstar News, a faith-based news service that monitors Christian persecution. In the last few months, authorities have demolished a popular Christian school serving Christian and Muslim students alike and detained the school staff twice for resisting their school’s destruction.
The targeting of churches and Christians ratcheted up after South Sudan gained independence in 2011. Once the predominantly Christian South Sudanese populace seceded, considerable institutional support previously used to defend Christians against state authorities diminished in Sudan.
In April 2013, the minister of Guidance and Endowments announced that no new licenses would be granted for building new churches in Sudan, citing a decrease in the South Sudanese population. Two years later, government officials stiffened penalties for apostasy and blasphemy.
And more churches are sure to face challenges in the future. In August, the Chief of Office for the Khartoum State Ministry of Planning rejected a request from the Sudanese legal firm, the Justice Centre for Advocacy and Legal Advice, calling for an end to state-sanctioned church demolitions in Khartoum State. Instead, the state ministry issued a letter ordering four churches to be demolished in Khartoum. The officer accused the four churches, based in Al-Baraka, Al-Bashir, Arta Kamul and Dar el Salaam Jedidah of being built too close to “community areas.”
While these events take place, Pastors Shamal and Abdelrahim continue to be awakend at 5 a.m., surviving on two meals of beans per day, and worry over their respective families outside. Shamal is especially worried over their children who are no longer receiving any support from them.
The Nuba pastors, along with Jasek, spend their days teaching in the prison church—all the while suffering frequent verbal abuse by the prison staff, Shamal said.
The Nuba community, where it is not uncommon to find inter-faith families living together, has largely denounced the four men’s continued incarceration. A court hearing scheduled on November 14, for instance, was postponed after a large group of the four suspects’ supporters attempted to attend the hearing.
Shamal still manages to remain hopeful and prays for their release and forgives those who arrested them.
“We know it is not out of the will of God that we are in prison,” Shamal said from behind its walls, “but God knows that we are in prison.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ospel.html
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 148367Unread post Blue Frost »

Congress is pushing to save the Christians over Islamist which they should do over them, they are in the real danger, and always was.
I know if I lived in one of those Islam countries I would either start me an army, or pack up, and leave. With family I would leave.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 148379Unread post Gary Oak »

It is about time some leaders admit the obvious. Islamists are far too much trouble and have beliefs that should make them inadmissible.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 148439Unread post Blue Frost »

They still need vetted in, and that's hard to do with little info. Some of these Muslims can say anything to get what they want, lies are condoned by the Koran for that.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 148530Unread post Gary Oak »

Exactly and as their religion calls for them to kill infidels, urges kidnapping infidel boys and girls for sex slaves and rape,etc.... they need a whole lot of vetting too.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 148533Unread post Blue Frost »

We need a big island to camp them out on till we could make sure. The ones lying need to be told they are going to be dumped at sea, maybe they wouldn't try.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 148535Unread post Gary Oak »

maybe a tin island near the north pole could be rented by the USA to hold them :thumbsup:
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 148540Unread post Blue Frost »

We have places overseas they can be held, like Iraq, or Afghanistan.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 151439Unread post Blue Frost »

I'm glad i voted for Trump just for this, the other stuff so far has been good that I know of also.
I still have some reservations about him, but this is a great start.
Obama is responsible for so many of these people being slaughtered, raped, and mutilated.
Still though, how do you know they are not radical Muslims lying to come here.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 151536Unread post Gary Oak »

There hasn't been one case of a Christian refugee committing any murders as an act of terror. Christians aren't kidnapping for or farcing muslim girls into conversion marriages either. It's long overdue.The Christians are constructive citizens and muslim nations should be thankful for them.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 151546Unread post Blue Frost »

It's sick that Obama denied them entry, and sent them back when he knew they would be slaughtered. .
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 152590Unread post Gary Oak »

Christian Converts From Islam Face Beheading In Somalia

Somalia is second only to North Korea in the level of danger to its Christian population and a recent series of beheadings and other gruesome public murders of Christians has underscored this fact.

Somalia has for decades been a country plagued by extreme poverty and lawlessness but as al-Shabaab Islamic extremists struggle to exert control of towns outside the control of the weak central government, the level of violence directed toward Christians has increased.

Ironically, Somalia's constitution officially allows for religious freedom while at the same time establishing Islam as the State religion.

So, it comes as no surprise that the persecution suffered by Christians tells a far different story. Al-Shabaab militiamen and other radicals, spread throughout the country, seize anyone suspected of converting to Christianity and accounts of public beheadings are becoming all too common.

n a country where 73% of the population of 11 million live under the already low poverty line and the government maintains only loose control over its territory, little is being done to bring the murderers of these Christians to justice.

Churches have been destroyed and congregations targeted to an extent that Christians are forced to worship in secret throughout the country.

Those who travel to neighboring Kenya, which is 83% Christian, for business or to visit family, often arouse suspicion that they may have been converted while abroad. In most cases suspicion is enough for the Islamic death squads.

On March 4th of 2014, Islamic al-Shabaab radicals in the port town of Barawa in southeastern Somlia learned that two women had returned from Kenya and they suspected the cousins of being Christian.

They seized 41-year-old Sdia Ali Omar and 35-year-old Osman Mohamoud Moge and brought them to the town square.

As witnesses have reported, Mrs. Omar's two daughters, ages eight and fifteen, were forced to watch as the militants pronounced their sentence, "We know these two people are Christians who recently came back from Kenya; we want to wipe out any underground Christians living inside jihadist areas.

The daughters screamed for villagers to stop the men as their mother and aunt were beheaded, but no one dared to intervene. The girls were taken to safety by a relative for fear that al-Shabaab would watch them and come for them next and they are now both living in hiding. Their case is far from unique.

Witnesses to the murders told journalists that the Islamic militants have spies everywhere. Not strictly observing Friday prayers, as the women claimed they were praying at home, is often reason enough to arouse suspicion.

In October of 2013, gunman in Mogadishu threated to kill a Christian, Abdikhani Hassan, for spreading his faith. They soon after made good on their threat when two men shot Mr. Hassan seven times with pistols near his home after closing his pharmacy for the day. Hassan left behind a pregnant wife and five young children.

A month before that, a woman named Fatuma ISak Elmi was murdered in her own home in the city of Beledweyne in south-central Somalia.

A threatening note from al-Shabaab had been received by her husband only hours before. In June of 2013, also in southern Somalia, terrorists accused Hassan Hurshe of being a Christian.

They brought him to a public place in the town of Jilib and shot him in the head. In February of that year, a 42-year-old father of four named Ahmed Ali Jimale was murdered for his Christian faith just outside the city of Kismayo.

In November of in 2012, the al-Qaida-linked militants of al-Shabaab beheaded 25-year-old Farhan Haji Mose, a father of four, after accusing him of leaving Islam and being a spy.

The list goes on in a country that is almost entirely Muslim and where the mere suspicion of converting to Christianity can be a death sentence.

Ranking second worst on the recent World Watch List for 2016 published by Open Doors USA, Somalia has become an incredibly dangerous country for Christians.

Now is the time to offer up your prayers for this forgotten community of believers that face life or death decisions over their faith.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 152689Unread post Blue Frost »

So moderate, gotta love moderate Islam around the world.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 152699Unread post Gary Oak »

The issue I have with moderates is that they don't protest the radical fanatics which tells me that many if not all silently approve.
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 152869Unread post Blue Frost »

80% was the number that support Sharia, then you count in the ones who wont answer you likely have 90%, then the ones who could care less another 5% what do you have then ?
Moderate Islam is a fantasy
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 152996Unread post Gary Oak »

At least now with Obama gone and Donald Trump in these Christians will be able to get refugee status in the USA. Justin Trudeau doesn`t seem to care if they aren`t muslim as Obama did, he seems more concerned with diminishing British heritage in Canada as his dad was.

Egypt's Christians flee Sinai amid Islamic State killing spree

Christian families and students fled Egypt's North Sinai province in droves on Friday after Islamic State killed the seventh member of their community in just three weeks.

A Reuters reporter saw 25 families gathered with their belongings in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia's Evangelical Church and church officials said 100 families, out of around 160 in North Sinai, were fleeing. More than 200 students studying in Arish, the province's capital, have also left.

Seven Christians have been killed in Arish between Jan. 30 and Thursday. Islamic State, which is waging an insurgency there, claimed responsibility for the killings, five of which were shootings. One man was beheaded and another set on fire.

"I am not going to wait for death," Rami Mina, who left Arish on Friday morning, said by telephone. "I shut down my restaurant and got out of there. These people are ruthless."

Sectarian attacks occur often in Egypt but are usually confined to home burning, crop razing, attacks on churches, and forced displacement.

Arish residents said militants circulated death lists online and on the streets, warning Christians to leave or die.

"My father is the second name on their list; anyone Christian they put on the list" Munir Adel, a vegetable seller who fled on Friday, said as he huddled with four family members at the Evangelical Church, waiting for church officials to find them a place to stay.

Adel's parents did not leave Arish because of their old age, he said. "They could be killed at any moment."

VIDEO THREAT

Islamic State released a video on Sunday threatening Egypt's Christians and vowing to escalate a campaign against them after it bombed a chapel adjoining Cairo's St Mark's Cathedral, the seat of the Coptic papacy, in December, killing 28 people. [nL8N1G40PW]

"Oh crusaders in Egypt, this attack that struck you in your temple is just the first with many more to come, God willing," said a masked man in battle-dress the group said blew himself up in the chapel.

Orthodox Copts, who comprise about 10 percent of Egypt's 90 million people, are the Middle East's largest Christian community. They have long complained of persecution.

The Coptic Orthodox Church denounced "the recurring terrorist incidents in North Sinai targeting Christian citizens" in a statement on Friday.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told military and police chiefs "to completely eradicate terrorism in northern Sinai and defeat any attempts to target civilians or to undermine the unity of the national fabric", in reference to the killings, his office said on Thursday.

Egypt is battling an insurgency that gained pace in 2013 after its military, led by Sisi, overthrew President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed.

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Major General Mostafa al-Razaz, North Sinai's deputy police chief, said security forces were capable of handling the "crisis" and that they added more patrols and checkpoints.

But Sinai's Christians say security forces on the ground are unable to protect them and are overwhelmed by the militants.

"The government does nothing. There is no security in Sinai, they can't even protect themselves," said Adel.

"It was an officer who told us to leave."

(Refiles to delete extraneous word "was" in paragraph 11.)

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Mohamed Hassan, Ali Abdelaty, and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Editing by Alison Williams)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-egypt- ... AY?rpc=401&
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 153007Unread post Blue Frost »

Protecting Christians, fighting terror? Russia's on it
Syrian priest: 'It is miraculous that we are still alive. We owe that to Vladimir Putin'
Published: 2 days ago http://mobile.wnd.com/2017/02/protectin ... ias-on-it/
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Aleksandar Pavic contributes to WND from Yugoslavia. A former presidential adviser in the Serb entity in Bosnia, he is currently executive director of the Prince Tomislav Karageorgevich Fund.


A few years ago, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who then was Russia’s ambassador to NATO, warned that a new influence had appeared that was becoming a major threat to large segments of the world, namely, Asia, Europe and America.

“There is a new civilization emerging in the Third World that thinks that the white, Northern Hemisphere has always oppressed it and must therefore fall at its feet now. … If the northern civilization wants to protect itself, it must be united: America, the European Union and Russia. If they are not together, they will be defeated one by one,” he said.

He was primarily referring to radical Islam. And America, with its Christian foundation, Europe, with its own Judeo-Christian heritage, and even Russia, with its historic Russian Orthodox Christian church, would appear to have reason to join ranks.

So why would the American political elite be so averse to pursuing better relations with Russia, as President Donald Trump has suggested?

After all, every president in recent years has stated essentially the same goal. Remember then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “reset” under President Obama?

But opposition to Trump’s suggestions have been loud and long, despite what some have seen as extraordinary efforts on the part of Russia to protect Christians.

It was a 76-year old Flemish priest from the sixth-century Mar Yakub monastery in the Syrian city of Qara who put the issue in the context he understood best, his own life.

“It is miraculous that we are still alive. We owe that to the army of Assad’s government and to Vladimir Putin, because he decided to intervene when the rebels threatened to take power… Between ordinary Muslims and Christians, there is no problem. It is those radical Islamic, Western-backed rebels who want to massacre us. … Trump understands that radical Islam is a bigger threat than Russia.”

Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea have collaborated to create “Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians,” which confirms that groups like Pew Research, Newsweek and The Economist also identify Christians as “the world’s most widely persecuted religious group.”

In Europe, many of the newly sprung nationalist, anti-globalist and anti-EU parties have expressed admiration for Russia’s defense of traditional values, along with European Christian intellectuals, who despair over Western Europe’s abandonment of its spiritual roots.

In the Balkans, Russia is the sole power standing up for Christians persecuted by Islamists and has refused to recognize the Western condoned secession of Kosovo from Serbia and the Muslim Albanians ISIS-like destruction of the millennial Christian Church heritage there.

And Archbishop Vsevovlod Chaplin declared, “Any fight against terrorism is moral; we can even call it a holy fight.”

He said Christian countries “can oppose pseudo-Islamic extremism only by basing themselves on traditional religious values.”

“Secularism will never be able to cope with the challenge of religious fanaticism and extremism coming to Europe today,” he said. “Secularism will always lose to religious or pseudo-religious extremism. Even if secularism successfully beats off religious and public radicalism with the help of power and money for some time, it won’t last long, only for 20-30 years.”

But at the recent Munich Security Conference, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said, “2017 is going to be the year of kicking Russia in the a** in Congress.”

He cited claims Russia hacked Democrat computer systems and thus tainted the 2016 president election.

He said Trump “should be working with us to punish Russia.”

Graham and fellow Sen. John McCain, another Munich Conference attendee, are spearheading a broad effort to challenge and possibly derail Trump’s oft-expressed goal of improving relations with Russia.

McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed hope in January that the new U.S. president would give up on the idea of lifting the sanctions against Russia imposed by Barack Obama.

“If he does not, I will work with my colleagues to codify sanctions against Russia into law,” McCain said.

Graham reinforced McCain in Munich, announcing that he planned to introduce a bipartisan motion for new Russia sanctions that would get “north of 75 votes.” He also openly explored the possibility of invoking Article 5 of the NATO Treaty that “an attack on one party is an attack on all.”

Graham’s fiery rhetoric comes on the heels of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s resignation amid allegations that he and other members of Trump’s team had improper contacts with Russian diplomats, government and intelligence officials, something that both Flynn and the White House have denied.

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But Russians, in the voice of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have challenged those making such claims to “Give us some facts” regarding the claims of hacking.

“I have seen no facts, there were just some accusations that we tried to hack some Democratic Party website,” he said.

Congress is debating the issue and the FBI is investigating.

But Trump’s American First Foreign Policy states, “Defeating ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups will be our highest priority,” which is in parallel with one of the points from Russia’s recent official foreign policy statement, dated just a few weeks ago.

That states, “The global terrorist threat has reached a new high with the emergence of the Islamic State international terrorist organization and similar groups that have descended to an unprecedented level of cruelty in their violence. They aspire to create their own state and seek to consolidate their influence on a territory stretching from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to Pakistan. The main effort in combating terrorism should be aimed at creating a broad international counter-terrorist coalition with a solid legal foundation, one that is based on effective and consistent inter-State cooperation without any political considerations or double standards, above all to prevent terrorism and extremism and counter the spread of radical ideas.”

Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin talked on January 28, and the White House said both “are hopeful that after today’s call the two sides can move quickly to tackle terrorism and other important issues of mutual concern.”

The Kremlin said, “The two leaders emphasized that joining efforts in fighting the main threat – international terrorism – is a top priority. The presidents spoke out for establishing real coordination of actions between Russia and the U.S. aimed at defeating Islamic State and other terrorists groups in Syria.”

The conflict then appears between the two presidents, whose focus is on terrorism, and the liberal elite in America and Europe, as well as the media entities such as the New York Times, CNN and others, who apparently want to deepen the rift between the U.S. and Russia.

Some think the tension is a leftover from the Cold War.

Russian officials have often expressed dismay at such sentiment, which Sergei Lavrov reiterated at the Munich Conference, opining that the U.S.-led NATO alliance has “remained a Cold War institution” aimed at restraining Russia, a continuation of the anti-Soviet policy of containment conceived by American diplomat George Kennan in the now famous ‘Long Telegram” of 1946, the essence of which was later published in “Foreign Affairs” magazine (under the byline “X”) in 1947, and became a pillar of U.S. Soviet policy in the years that followed.

Yet, it was Kennan himself who expressed grave concern exactly fifty years later that further NATO alliance expansion to the east, driven by the Clinton administration, would be, as the title of his New York Times article described, “a fateful error,” i.e., “most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”

As Kennan put it: “Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

Furthermore, Kennan wondered: “Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?”

NATO, however, did expand, in 1999, 2004 and 2009, adding 12 more countries to the alliance (with tiny Montenegro being the latest to be invited, pending ratification by several more NATO countries, including the U.S.). In addition, in support of secessionist efforts of majority Muslim Albanians in Serbia’s southern Kosovo province, NATO unilaterally bombed traditional Russian ally Yugoslavia in spring of 1999, which was viewed by top Russian circles as a harbinger of things to come.

Putin told the Russian Federal Assembly in 2014, “Despite our unprecedented openness back then and our willingness to cooperate in all, even the most sensitive issues, despite the fact that we considered… our former adversaries as close friends and even allies, the support for separatism in Russia from across the pond, including information, political and financial support and support provided by the special services – was absolutely obvious and left no doubt that they would gladly let Russia follow the Yugoslav scenario of disintegration and dismemberment. With all the tragic fallout for the people of Russia.”

Then there is the issue of Ukraine, which is the latest source of Western-Russian tension, with both sides pointing to it as “proof of aggression” on the part of the other, with Western leaders claiming that Russia has “illegally annexed Crimea” and is supporting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, and Russia accusing Western powers of engineering a coup in Kiev and installing anti-Russian extremists in power, and claiming that Crimea was illegitimately attached to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev during the Soviet era.

And, in the context of the Ukrainian crisis, NATO is deploying thousands of additional troops towards the Russian border, as a response to perceived threat of Russian aggression, even though Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Gen. Petr Pavel, conceded at the Munich Conference that he believed “that Russia doesn’t have a serious intent to attack NATO.”

And Russian has continued pursuing initiatives that would jointly benefit the two sides in the Cold War, including a policy proposal for a “European Security Treaty” launched by then-president Dmitry Medvedev in November 2009.

Although the proposal has met skepticism and outright rejection in the West, Russian leaders have not taken it off the table. For example, at the latest Munich Conference, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov repeated the call for a “common space of good neighborly relations from Vancouver to Vladivostok.”

At the root of these value- and civilization-based views is a process that has gone almost unnoticed by the rapidly secularizing West, that of Russia’s rapid re-Christianization. The Russian president has reportedly authorized over 2 billion rubles (U.S. $100 million) of tax money to rebuild churches that were destroyed under the previous Soviet regime. Furthermore, over the past quarter century, since the fall of communism, the ROC has built or restored from ruins more than 25,000 churches.

“This means that a thousand churches a year have been opened, i.e., three churches a day,” according to Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, chairman of the Department of External Church Relations.

Not unlike Donald Trump, Putin regularly professes his religiosity, even in a 2013 New York Times article, written on the anniversary of 9/11, and calling for a cautious approach to Syria, which ended with the following line: “We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

And just several days later, in a widely reported speech at Russia’s conservative Valdai Club, Putin called on Russians to “strengthen a new national identity based on conservative and traditional values such as the Orthodox church, warning that the West was facing a moral crisis,” criticizing Western countries for “putting on the same level multi-child families and single-sex partnerships, belief in God and belief in Satan,” as well as the “excesses of political correctness.”

Even Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, noted, “What Russia is doing may save the lives of Christians in the Middle East.”

Regarding Syria, he explained, “You understand that the Syrian government for their good and for their bad over the history of this country, they have protected Christians, they have protected minorities from the Islamists.”
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
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Gary Oak
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Re: Christianity 'Close To Extinction' In Middle East

Post: # 153010Unread post Gary Oak »

This I believe is more proof that the arab spring was an attempt to take control away from the leaders who actually controlled their nations. All those leaders protected their Christians and other minorities. The muslim brotherhood after they moved in to fill the vacuum went on a genocidal slaughter to which the liberals give a pass.Assad is the only one which has held on. Anti Soros Putin no doubt has informed Assad on many things that are going on. I suspect that Donald Trump will do the right thing and will back Assad if it is the right thing to do. I suspect that Donald Trump knows what is going on far better than I do.
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