Reinstating 'Columbus Day' - Raymond Ibrahim sets the record straight (VIDEO)

 Let's celebrate Columbus for defending the West against Islam:

More videos, articles and books by Raymond Ibrahim here.

Raymond Ibrahim re-launches YouTube Channel (VIDEO)

In a witty and dynamic 5-minute intro, Islam scholar and critic, and respected political analyst, philosopher and raconteur, Raymond Ibrahim today announced the (re)launch of his YouTube channel.

Even while underscoring his background in writing about Islam, Raymond makes it clear that he will be covering a much wider range of topics than he is typically known for, including "philosophical, theological, and secular" ones, historically and in the here and now. He also hints at his new book which he is working on, which viewers will get to hear more about over time.

In my estimation, Raymond is one of the most solid Islam commentators out there. With this energetic announcement, he presents a compelling invitation for us to join him for conversations about some of the most important topics of our time.

Akathist to Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev

Akathist to Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev - 

Since his martyrdom the night of November 19, 2009, "the story of his life, teachings, and martyrdom has spread throughout the Orthodox Church, far beyond the bounds of his native Russia. Though he has yet to be formally glorified as a saint, popular veneration has produced a number of icons of him, and even an akathist.

"As witness to his growing veneration, the akathist presented below was originally written in Romanian, and only then translated into Russian. This English text was translated from the Russian version."

"Holy Hieromartyr Daniel, pray to God for us!"

Proceed to the Akathist...

'Pleading for Permanence' - The Plight of the Armenian Christians

Fr Benedict Kiely, founder of Nasarean.org, a charity helping persecuted Christians, makes a powerful appeal for Christian Armenia, at risk of being wiped off the map by the Islamic nation of Azerbaijan, which is waging a brazen cultural genocide to complete the physical Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1917.  

Pleading for Permanence

The Turkic Azerbaijanis seek to eradicate all signs of the ancient Christian history of Armenia

Fr Benedict Kiely,  The European Conservative, Sept 8, 2024

When the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS) swept through Syria and Iraq, beginning in 2014, they immediately began destroying both churches and the Christian symbols within them. Visiting both Syria and Iraq many times, I have seen every Cross in a church defaced, statues broken, and icons scratched and damaged. There was a reason, for example, that ISIS used churches in Mosul as torture centres, prisons, and often places for target practice. It was not only to blaspheme and insult their true purpose, to gloat over the defeated Christian populace, but also to deny the building ever had a sacred use. There was far worse to see. In many places, ISIS destroyed Christian graveyards, something I saw with my own eyes. They not only destroyed the graveyards; they dug up the bodies of the Christian ancestors and threw them away. If there are no graveyards, it means the people were never there. The policy was not merely cultural vandalism; it was deliberate and planned.

Scruton wrote that “sacred spaces are steeped in the hope and sufferings of those who have fought for them. And they belong to others who are yet to be.” To eradicate hallowed ground not only denies the reality of an historical presence but also attempts to ensure that those who are “yet to be” will never return.

This policy is happening in another part of the world at this very moment. This time, not the work of a revolutionary force, but the work of a nation feted across the globe, especially because it has seemingly unlimited amounts of oil and gas. The oldest Christian nation on earth, Armenia, is suffering an historical and cultural genocide to accompany not only the physical genocide of 1915 to 1917 but the forced expulsion of all the Armenian citizens from the territory of Artsakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh, in 2023. In every area that the Islamic nation of Azerbaijan takes from Armenia, churches, monasteries, and religious signs and symbols have been destroyed. Graveyards are desecrated. The famous Armenian khachkar’s, the decorated stone Cross so typical of Armenian culture, some from at least the 9th century, have been broken, moved, or vandalised. Following the example of their Turkish overlords, who accompanied the Armenian genocide of the last century with a similar policy of the destruction of memory and presence, the Turkic Azerbaijanis are seeking to eradicate all signs of the ancient Christian history of Armenia, present since the 4th century. It is, in fact, the prevailing policy and the absurd fantasy of the government of Azerbaijan that the very state of Armenia has never existed, which is precisely why all historical signs must be eliminated. Meanwhile, the world watches and fills the oil tanks and pays the petrodollars...

Across the West, there is a destruction of memory, a denial of the past, exemplified by the refusal to acknowledge the foundational role of Christianity in the European Constitution; there is a reason why the European Commission is probably the most secular institution in Europe. Although churches, as they rapidly empty, are not being bulldozed, or at least not many, they are being used for other purposes, increasingly as mosques in Britain.

For those of us who care, this increased denial of people and place, their history and culture, as a weapon of war, must be fought vigorously. The defence of Christian Armenia is an imperative for all who claim the name of Christian. As in the Middle East, they belong where they have always been, where they deserve to be. As Roger Scruton noted, “By bearing the imprint of former generations, a corner of the earth pleads for permanence.”

Read the full article here.

Support Fr Benedict Kiely and Nazarean.org here...

New Priest-Martyr Nikolai Kotelnikov of Derbent, Dagestan

New Martyr Father Nikolai Kotelnikov of Derbent. A Muslim extremist slit his throat in church. He and his church guard were both murdered. Holy Martyr Fr Nikolai, pray to God for us!

PRIEST KILLED IN TERRORIST ATTACKS ON CHURCHES IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA

Derbent, Republic of Dagestan, Russia, June 24, 2024, OrthoChristian.com

A priest who has been serving the Church since Soviet times received a martyric end in a terrorist attack against churches in Russia’s southern Dagestan Republic yesterday. 

Militants attacked two churches, a synagogue, and a traffic police post in the Dagestani cities of Derbent and Makhachkala, reports RIA-Novosti. 

Early on Sunday, a group of armed men opened fire on a church and synagogue in Derbent, while others attacked another church in Makhachkala. According to preliminary data, one priest, Archpriest Nikolai Kotelnikov, 66, a church guard, and six police officers were killed. Another 12 officers were injured. 

According to the Dagestan branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, six militants were killed. 

Fr. Nikolai served as a priest for 40 years, beginning in Soviet times. They slit Fr. Nikolai’s throat at Holy Protection Church in Derbent, then set it on fire. 

Fr. Nikolai is survived by his wife, three children, and grandchildren. 

The terrorists also killed the guard at the Holy Dormition Cathedral in Makhachkala. The guard, named Mikhail, sacrificed his own life, attempting to stop the terrorists. Though he died, he gave the worshipers enough time to barricade themselves safely inside. 

A terrorist attack also took place in Dagestan on Forgiveness Sunday in 2018, in which five women were killed.

Cardinal Dolan equates Easter with Ramadan in new Pan-Ecumenist statement

“Ramadan is a month in which Muslims are to redouble their efforts to please Allah... The idea that this is a time to seek friendship and cooperation with Muslims is laughably naive and demonstrates abject ignorance of Islam.”

— Robert Spencer, cited in article below

Cardinal Dolan equates Easter with Ramadan, Passover, says all are about ‘triumph of light and life’

LifeSite - Thu Mar 14, 2024 - 2:51 pm EDT

NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Timothy Dolan has equated Easter with the Islamic season of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover, saying that all three are about the “triumph of light and life.”

In a video message posted on X, formerly Twitter, Dolan said, “Does it dawn on you that Lent and Ramadan and Passover always occur close to each other?”

While the Catholic Church [and the Orthodox Church, ed.] commemorates the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ during the Easter Triduum, Judaism and Islam both reject the truth that Jesus is the Son of God and the Redeemer of mankind...

Moreover, the comparison of Islamic Ramadan to Easter is absurd since Islam is diametrically opposed to Christianity.

On March 11, Dolan published a video commemorating the beginning of Ramadan in which he wrongly claimed that Muslims are “a good example” to Catholics “on our Lenten journey.”

As the Islamic scholar Robert Spencer explained, Ramadan is a season in which Islamic attacks against non-Muslims, including Catholics, increase every year.

“[T]he idea of Ramadan providing a possibility of outreach to Muslims is a tragicomic display of the failures and inherent limitations of the ‘dialogue’ imperative,” Spencer said in comments given to the Catholic Herald.

“Ramadan is a month in which Muslims are to redouble their efforts to please Allah,” the author of more than 20 books continued. “The highest form of service to Allah, according to Muhammad, is jihad, which principally involves warfare against unbelievers.”

“Every Ramadan, therefore, we see an increase in jihad attacks. The idea that this is a time to seek friendship and cooperation with Muslims is laughably naive and demonstrates abject ignorance of Islam,” Spencer stated.

[...]

Pope Francis has also made similar remarks and been accused of promoting religious indifferentism during his pontificate, especially through his encyclical on “human fraternity,” Fratelli tutti, and the controversial Abu Dhabi declaration that Francis signed together with Ahmad el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar Mosque. The declaration, officially called “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” states that “pluralism and the diversity of religions… are willed by God in His wisdom.”

Much more in the full article on LifeSiteNews...

Raymond Ibrahim: 'Why Pope Francis’s Claim that the Virgin Mary ‘Unites’ Christians and Muslims Is Wrong'

 More false teaching from the Heresiarch of Rome.

Weeping Icon of the Theotokos, the 'Mother of God',
Our Lady of Cicero

Why Pope Francis’s Claim that the Virgin Mary ‘Unites’ Christians and Muslims Is Wrong

by Raymond Ibrahim, June 12, 2024

Originally published at LifeSiteNews on May 31, 2024

Catholics may be surprised to learn that the Vatican is exaggerating the similarities between the Virgin Mary and the figure of Mary, Mother of Jesus, as she appears in the Koran and Muslim hadiths (traditions about Muhammad, the founder of Islam).

On May 18 this year, Pope Francis paid a visit to detainees at Verona’s Montorio Prison, and upon bestowing an icon of the Madonna and Child upon the apparently multi-faith jail, he stated to applause that “the figure of Mary is a figure common to both Christianity and Islam. She is a common figure; she unites us all.”

If this seems innocuous, it also falls in line with the Vatican’s many attempts to convince Catholics that Islam is somehow a “sister faith,” when, in fact, Islam appropriates the names and sacred auras of biblical figures, but then recasts them with completely different, anti-biblical attributes.

In early 2021, for example, the Marian academy in Rome launched a 10-week webinar series titled “Mary, a model for faith and life for Christianity and Islam” in collaboration with the Grand Mosque of Rome and the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy.

Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel - Why did a Muslim attack and try to kill him?

You have probably seen the news reports of the shocking knife attack against Assyrian Christian Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Sydney, Australia on Monday, April 15.  Thanks be to God, His Eminence survived with non-life-threatening injuries, and is doing well.

Bishop Mar Mari — a powerful preacher and now a confessor for Christ — has openly forgiven his attacker, and another report states, “It is the Bishop’s and Father’s wishes that you also pray for the perpetrator."

Here are a few additional links to get up to speed:

• Australia: Muslim stabs priest during mass, “He kept saying ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar'”
• The miracle that saved Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel's life and kept his alleged attacker from killing him: 'Act of God'
• Australia: Muslim teen who attacked priest while screaming ‘Allahu akbar’ was recent convert to Islam

But why would a Muslim attack and try to kill Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel? Perhaps because he powerfully preaches against the false religion of Islam and the false prophet Muhammad, and invites Muslims to convert to Jesus Christ. The fearless David Wood goes point by point for us in this analysis:

Here is a talk by Bishop Mar Mari in which he explains his interpretation of a passage of Revelation, and how Islam is prophetically revealed to be a false religion:

So, it is easy to see why Muslims would be angered by Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, but why would they want to kill him?

Perhaps because it is commanded in the Koran:

Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth [i.e. Islam] among the people of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (9:29)

I will cast terror into the hearts of those who have disbelieved, so strike them over the necks, and smite over all their fingers and toes. (8:12)

Perhaps also because that's what Muhammad would do, as related in this foundational Islamic hadith:

Allah’s Messenger said: “I have been ordered [by Allah] to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah...” (Sahih Bukhari, 1:2:25, also Sahih Muslim, 1:10:29-35)

Such is zeal according to the false religion of Islam.

Timothy R. Furnish: On Osama Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’

Tim Furnish pens a sober critique of Osama bin Laden's 'Letter to America', and reveals how OBL's western supporters don't realize what they're cheering for.  

A Letter to My Sons And Their College Classmates on Osama Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’

Or, Why My Sons Won't Buy TikTok's Bin Laden Worship

By TIMOTHY FURNISH , The Stream

Published on November 21, 2023


To my sons (and their fellow college students):

By now you’ll have seen Osama Bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to America” being promoted on TikTok. I don’t use that platform, so I learned of it from news stories. This morning I watched some TikTokers’ responses. Then I re-read OBL’s dispatch. Allow me to share my reactions to both.

TikTokers’ Takes

The clips I saw were the ones posted on X by Yashar Ali on November 15, 7:08 PM. A blonde woman led off, saying she was “ashamed” she’d never known of or read UBL’s letter before now. It left her “disillusioned,” feeling the same way she did when “deconstructing Christianity.” Like all the other TikTokers, she recommended everyone read it.

Next up was a black woman who said UBL’s words caused her an “existential crisis.” And that after reading it she “would never look at life the same way again.” Her entire worldview “changed in the last 20 minutes.”

Another black woman followed, expressing much the same sentiments. Then a wild-haired white man raged against “settler colonialism.” And how anyone resisting it was deemed a terrorist. The next TikTokker was another black woman. She dropped numerous f-bombs, then ended with blaming the mass murders of 9/11 on “our nation” having “failed other nations.” And said that UBL showed her how “deeply propaganda is embedded in our DNA.”

Another black woman simply recommended, between deep sighs, that everyone “go read it.” A pensive white woman was then shown, with the label “mood since reading Osama’s ‘Letter to America:’ rethinking things I grew up learning.” A black man then declaimed, simply, “I read Osama bin Laden’s letter to America.”

Then a Muslim woman appeared. “The way this letter is going viral right now is giving me the greatest sense of relief.” Also, “if you’re Muslim and you’ve lived in the US since 9/11, you know more truth than the typical citizen.” The last clip was of another white woman, under the heading “you just read Bin Laden’s letter to America and notice the media is trying to bury it.”

Why Race Matters Here

Why did I note the races of these OBL enthusiasts? Remember, one of you asked me recently why college professors obsess about race. I told you that it’s because so many of them are so far left. And such Marxists have replaced class struggle with race conflict. Which they have turned into a global issue, not just an American one.

And the biggest component of that is their “Red-Green Alliance,” Marxists allying with Muslims, both here (mainly in universities) and abroad. Although the former would be promptly dispatched, legally and probably literally, if the latter took power. So the professors pretend that isn’t true. And their students never learn any different. But trotting out a diverse cast of sympathetic TikTokers is part of the “progressive” plan in this regard. Differing skin hues cover over a multitude of Marxist-Muslim cognitive dissonance.

So are these al-Qaeda admirers on to something? Has the West really been ignoring OBL’s pearls of wisdom for two decades? Let’s take a look.

Leading, and Closing, With the Quran

First, note that OBL opens and closes with Quranic passages. Five of them mandate fighting against “disbelievers.” The other three predict the victory of Islam over all other religions, via “martyrdom.” Which actually means dying to kill others, not the Christian idea of accepting death in the name of Christ. I wonder why TikToker #1 can’t deconstruct Islam, as she says she did Christianity. OBL then gives his version of why “we are fighting and opposing you.” Followed by “what do we want from you?”

The Christian Response to Hamas' Jihad Terror: Jerusalem Patriarch offers to be exchanged for Gaza hostages

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (JN 15:13)

Jerusalem Catholic Patriarch offers to be exchanged for Gaza hostages

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa made his comment in response to a question during a video conference with journalists in Italy.

By The Jerusalem Post via REUTERS  |  OCTOBER 16, 2023

Pope Francis' representative in the Holy Land said on Monday he was willing to exchange himself for Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas and held in Gaza.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, made his comment in response to a question during a video conference with journalists in Italy.

"I am ready for an exchange, anything, if this can lead to freedom, to bring the children home. No problem. There is total willingness on my part," he said.

"The first thing to do is to try to win the release of the hostages, otherwise there will be no way of stopping (an escalation). We are willing to help, even me personally," he said.

He stressed, however, that he and his office had not yet had any direct contact with Hamas, the terrorist group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,300 people.

"You can't talk to Hamas. It is very difficult," he said.

About 200 people were taken hostage and about a dozen of them are believed to be children.

Pizzaballa oversees Roman Catholic activities in Israel and the Palestinian territories as well as Jordan and Cyprus, a region which is home to an estimated 300,000 Roman Catholics.

Read the full article... 

PHOTO CREDIT:

• Msgr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa the day of his episcopal consecration
• Giovanni Zennaro, via Wikimedia Commons