The Holy Cross Monastery in Turkey

This is a fascinating account of a Syriac monastery and the town associated with it, abandoned following the 1915-1923 genocide committed by Turkish Muslims against Armenian, Assyrian, Chaldean and Orthodox Christians. 

Perhaps it should be mentioned that the current wave of genocidal persecution of Christians in the Muslim world may soon leave a great many more monasteries, churches and other ancient Christian sites and communities derelict and forgotten, as devoted followers of Islam continue their push to exterminate non-Muslims from the Middle East.

The Holy Cross Monastery in Turkey

AINA via OCP Media — 10/21/2013

To find Catalcam, access Google Maps and in the search engine type “Midyat, Turkey”. From the centre of Midyat, follow the main road north (the road goes through stunning Hasankeyf on its way to Batman) for about 6 kms to a junction for Dargecit on the right. Take the road to the right. After about 15 kms you pass beside the pretty village of Izbirak. Continue for another 5 kms and a turning to the left leads to Catalcam, which is about 4 kms from the main road. It is an asphalt road all the way from Midyat to Catalcam. Public transport exists between Midyat and Dargecit and the minibus driver will know where to drop you for Catalcam. It is a relatively easy walk across undulating plateau from the main road to Catalcam, but almost everyone with a motor vehicle will provide you with a lift all or part of the way.

Catalcam is the Turkish name for a village known to Syriac [Assyrian] Christians as Dayro Daslibo. Nowadays, the monastery is, but for one or two nearby buildings, all that remains of the village (although later, when touring the monastery, I was told that Dayro Daslibo is really an abandoned village that exists just over the ridge). From a distance of about 1 km, the monastic complex looks larger than some that remain in Tur Abdin, and its sturdy outer walls resemble those of a castle. It soon became apparent why it is so large and why it is protected by formidable walls. At times during the history of Dayro Daslibo, the monastery was also the village. For greater security houses were built within the complex, and evidence for such houses survives to this day.

An elderly Syriac Christian who has lived in the village for most of his life, and a young Syriac Christian man whose family live in Sweden, led me on an astounding tour of the monastic complex. The elderly man knew a vast amount about the history and the folklore associated with the monastery, and the young Swedish-born Syriac Christian kindly translated what he could from Turoyo into English. At one point we stopped to drink coffee and eat a platter of fruit prepared by the young man’s mother (the young man’s family were living in the monastery for a month so they could re-engage with their roots). When I asked about sayfo (the large-scale massacre of Syriac Christians that began in April 1915), the elderly man told stories from those terrible times as if the events had happened only a few weeks’ ago. It was obvious that sayfo (the year of the sword) has left an indelible mark on Syriac Christian consciousness, a mark comparable to the one that metz yeghem (the big calamity) has left on Armenian consciousness, and shoah (the holocaust) has left on Jewish consciousness.

VIDEO: Persecution of Christians in the Muslim World (OCN)

via Orthodox Christian Network

How the Muslim Brotherhood Is Winning in America

This is a highly informative, 'must read' interview which you will want to bookmark and share. Read all the way to the end.

Prominent Islamists in America: CAIR's National Communications Director and Spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper (left), Dalia Mogahed, Obama's advisor on Muslim affairs and Zaytuna founder and lecturer Zaid Shakir (far right). Background: federal agents involved in the investigation of the Holy Land Foundation.

Former FBI Agent John Guandolo: 'We're 5 minutes into the 1st quarter of the football game. The MB is winning 72-0.'

by Ryan Mauro — The Clarion Project — 10/20/2013

John Guandolo

John Guandolo is the author of Raising a Jihadi Generation: Understanding the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in America. He is also the founder of  UnderstandingTheThreat.com.

In 1996, Guandolo left the Marines to join the FBI’s Washington Field Office, focusing mostly on narcotics investigations until 2000. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, he began an assignment to the Counterterrorism Division.

In 2006, Guandolo created and implemented the FBI’s first Counterterrorism Training/Education Program focusing on the Muslim Brotherhood. He was designated a “Subject Matter Expert” by the FBI and his program was praised by the FBI Executive Assistant Director in a brief to the Vice President’s National Security Staff.

The following is Clarion Project National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro’s interview with John Guandolo:

Ryan Mauro: In your new book, you estimate that about 2,000 non-profits in the U.S. are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. How did you come up with this estimate?

John Guandolo: First, we must begin by remembering that the Islamic community in America continues to be led by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) here. The first national Islamic organization in the U.S., the Muslim Students Association (MSA), was created by the Brotherhood in 1962-1963.

When the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was indicted in November 2001, it was the largest Islamic charity in America, and it was a MB/Hamas entity. Hamas is the MB in Palestine.

In 2004, the FBI raided the residence of a senior Hamas/MB operative, Ismail Elbarasse, in Annandale, Virginia. In his home, the FBI discovered the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Much of the evidence, as you know, was entered into the U.S. v. HLF trial—the largest terrorism-financing trial ever successfully prosecuted in U.S. history.

Of the many documents, records and other items that were discovered, one was a recording of a senior MB leader—Zeid al-Noman—speaking to a group of Brothers in Missouri in 1981. This tape and the corresponding transcript were entered into evidence at the HLF trial and stipulated to by the defense.

While there are numerous documents discovered that make my point, this recorded discussion is, in my opinion, one of three pivotal finds at the Elbarasse residence. Al-Noman tells the entire story of how the Muslim Brotherhood came to America.

They first settled in Indiana, Michigan and Illinois, which explains why the MB’s largest organization, the Islamic Society of North America, is headquartered in Plainfield, Indiana. It explains why Detroit and Dearborn are points for significant jihadi activity, and why Chicago is the hub for Hamas in the U.S.

When The Jihad Comes, Whose Side Will You Be On?

File this with my article, "Message to Muslims: Time for some Serious Questions."

by Kenneth Roberts, Associate Writer, Political Islam, 10/19/2013

There’s good reason to ask this question to ‘nice’ Muslims. It invites Muslims to declare their true values and loyalties: “When jihad comes, whose side will you be on?”

Shoppers at Westgate Mall in Nairobi and Christian students in Nigeria have recently been killed because they had the wrong religion. What will our Muslim neighbors do when the jihadists come to our neighborhood schools, churches and shopping centers in Europe and North America? Will Muslims protect non-Muslim neighbors from death or will they side with the jihadists? A shopping mall jihad has already occurred in the U.S., but it was largely ignored.

You mean, it’s already happened in America?

Yes, an event similar to the Westgate Mall attack occurred on the evening of Feb. 12, 2007. A young Muslim man walked into the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City with a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun and a 38-caliber revolver and opened fire on shoppers, killing five and wounding four others, including a pregnant woman. The death toll at Trolley Square was higher than in the Boston Marathon Bombing, but the killings were misattributed to insanity, rather than jihad.

Will jihadists attack shopping centers across America? Undoubtedly! They will do so because it is the Sunna, the perfect example of Mohammed. In 627 AD, Mohammed beheaded 800 unarmed male civilians in Medina in a single day. He did so in a market.

Allah as Sociopath?

Fr Lawrence Farley published an excellent essay on the OCA website recently which described a debate between a Christian and an atheist over the existence of God.

The atheist's rejection of a God who would consign him to eternal damnation — even if he was a good person who strived to do good to others — simply because he didn't worship God immediately made me think of Allah©, because that is exactly the premise behind Islam's notion of judgment. Plus, devout Muslims are commanded to persecute and subjugate non-Muslims in this life as well. Worst of all worlds for non-Muslims if Islam is true.

The god of Islam is, indeed, a sociopath.

I'll intersperse a few comments below...

God as Sociopath?

by Fr Lawrence Farley — OCA — 9/23/2013

I recently saw a brief on-line debate from the show “Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell,” featuring a debate about the existence of God.  The segment featured two comedians, Jamie Kilstein (arguing for atheism) and John Fugelsang (arguing for Christian theism).  Although lacking in intellectual substance, the debate was good-tempered and funny in spots, as you might expect when you bring in two stand-up comedians.

I was particularly interested in the arguments of the atheist Jamie Kilstein (with whom I had greater sympathy than my ostensibly Christian brother).  Jamie seemed to be genuinely humble and open.  At one point in the short exchange he admitted, “If the ceiling came crashing in and someone was like ‘I’m God!’…I’d be like, ‘I apologize’.  But if I get up to heaven and there is a God, and He’s like, ‘You were wrong!  How did you live your life?’ And I’m like, ‘I tried to help people, I tried to give to charity.  I didn’t know if You were real, there was no evidence’, and He’s like, ‘Well, you didn’t worship Me everyday!’, then I’d be like, ‘Fine.  Send me to wherever’s as far away from You as possible, cause You’re a sociopath!”  Jamie’s objection seems to be not to the idea of God’s existence per se, but to the idea that God would damn a good person who was trying his best simply because that person did not worship God.  If all God cared about was whether or not He was worshipped, and that He would damn people regardless of how they lived, it would seem to Jamie that God was an egotist.  Or, to used Jamie’s term, a sociopath.

So, what’s the deal?  Is God a crazed egotist?  Does He demand to be worshipped simply because He enjoys the attention?  Is our religious worship and praise all He cares about?  

[Actually, in Islam, that is exactly all Allah© cares about. Man's highest calling is to be a slave of Allah. Allah commands Muslims to wage war against infidels and strike terror into their hearts until and unless they submit to Islam. The goal of Islam is not life, but slavery and domination.]

CAIR’s Guide to Media Manipulation

Because journalists are busy and up against deadlines, CAIR positions itself to pitch stories while simultaneously becoming 'the source.'

by Ryan Mauro — The Clarion Project — 10/17/2013

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, is a master media manipulator. And it is passing on its skills to aspiring activists in ways that should offend and wake up every journalist.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism obtained a CAIR presentation about influencing the media and presented it in an online video (see below). The presentation bears the name of Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s communications director.

In 1993, Hooper was working for CAIR’s predecessor when he said, “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. In 2003, he allegedly said on a radio program that sharia law would replace the Constitution if Muslims became the majority.

Allah © 2013 — Malaysian Muslims clear up the confusion over who Allah is

A critic of mine recently wrote me the following:

Do you not realize that “Allah” is not a proper name? it is the Arabic word for “God” and it should be used, lest the Muslim teaching be distorted unfairly. Arabic-speaking Christians use the word “Allah” when they pray in Arabic, just as not Arabs use God. 

If you wish to read my full reply, you can find it here. In it I trace the etymological roots concerning "Allah," and present reasons why it should be thought of as a proper name for the Muslim deity (who, incidentally, may have started his divine career as but one of many Arab pagan gods prior to Muhammad's elevation of him). It's a complex issue, in any case, and well worth a read of my post.

Of special interest, therefore, is this ongoing case in Malaysia, where Muslims have now successfully won in court the exclusive right to use the proper name "Allah" when referring to their deity. No other religion, Christian or otherwise, can use "Allah" when referring to God.

In effect, the Malaysian Muslims have copyrighted "Allah." The Muslim deity's name could now be represented as:

Allah ©2013 (or just Allah©, for short).

Amid new attacks, Egypt’s Copts preserve heritage

"Our persecution will continue indefinitely. It always has.”

by Hamza Hendawi, Star-Telegram via Pravmir — 10/17/2013

THE RED MONASTERY, Egypt — Locked inside a 6th century church in a desert monastery are some of the jewels of early Christianity — ancient murals in vivid pinks, greens and reds depicting saints, angels and the Virgin Mary with a baby Jesus, hidden for centuries under a blanket of black soot.

Italian and Egyptian restorers are meticulously uncovering the paintings, some of the earliest surviving and most complete examples of early Coptic Christian art. But the work, in the final stages more than a decade after it started, is done quietly to avoid drawing attention — and there’s no plan to try to attract visitors, at least not now.

“This is our heritage and we must protect it,” said Father Antonius, abbot of the Red Monastery where the Anba Bishay Church is located. He takes it as a personal mission to protect it. The church’s heavy wooden door has only two keys. He keeps one and a young monk he trusts keeps the other.

“I don’t think there is a church anywhere in Egypt that even begins to match the beauty of this one,” Antonius said, beaming like a proud father.

The little known Anba Bishay Church offers a striking example of how Egypt’s Orthodox Coptic Church jealously guards its heritage against formidable odds — whether decades of neglect, discrimination by the Muslim majority or the violence by Islamic militants, who have gained significant power since the 2011 ouster of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

The protection of its heritage took on greater urgency when 40 churches were wrecked, burned and looted in a pogrom-like wave of attacks in August, blamed on Islamic militants. Coptic leaders say the attacks are the worst in centuries.

The attacks laid bare a worrisome failure or unwillingness by authorities, as well as moderate Muslims, to protect the churches. Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million citizens, were left with their deepest sense of vulnerability in recent history. Egypt’s powerful military pledged with great fanfare to restore the churches. But Christians say that, two months later, they are still waiting for concrete steps.

Syria: Islamic jihadists plant bombs in confessional box of one of the world's oldest churches

Telegraph via Jihad Watch — 10/17/2013 — Thanks to Val
by Colin Freeman

Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III

Bombs have been planted in the confessional box of one of the world's oldest churches in a Syrian town hailed as the country's last remaining centre of religious tolerance, Syria's most senior Christian leader has disclosed.

On a visit to London to highlight the persecution of Christians in the civil war, Patriarch Gregorios III said the two devices were found at the Cathedral of Constantine and Helen in the rebel-held town of Yabroud.

Not only is the church one of the oldest in the world, but it lies in a town where Christians and Sunni Muslims have so far resisted efforts by al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel groups to drive a wedge between them.

As The Telegraph reported on a visit to Yabroud earlier this month, a self-appointed local council has tried to keep both foreign jihadists and local mafia gangs at bay, as well as government forces. Only last week the Syrian army shelled the church.

The Patriarch said that early on Tuesday morning, two remote controlled bombs were discovered planted in the church, one of them in the confessional box. Challenging the town's image of harmony, he also claimed that local Christian families had been asked to pay a monthly protection tax of $35,000 by local "armed groups".

"Yabroud is under the control of armed groups, and Christians are asked for protection money, yet in spite of this, there are these bombs being placed in the church," he said.

[Robert Spencer writes:] "Protection money," i.e., jizya: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." -- Qur'an 9:29

He added that in the event of a rebel victory in the country's civil war, life for Christians could get even harder because of the hardline Islamist elements in the anti-government ranks.

"The extremists are against even the normal rebel opposition," he said.

"This is an issue for Muslims as well as Christians. I am not afraid from Islam, I am just afraid of chaos, which will allow these groups to play a very destructive role."

The patriarch was speaking as part of event organised by Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic charity that supports Christians facing persecution around the world. In a new report, it has highlighted particular concerns about the Christian minority in Syria, who are at risk from al-Qaeda factions in the rebel movement fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

President Obama: 'All of us need to stop focusing on the bloggers...'

—Excerpt from the President's speech following the deal in Congress to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government. 

I'm sure the President would also urge Americans to stop focusing on bloggers who report on his Islamophilia and his administration's open persecution of Christians here and abroad.

Here are a few recent headlines, with links to the respective blogs, which the President might like for people to "stop focusing on" (full disclosure note: a couple of these are original articles here at Facing Islam!):

Obama praises Muslims, threatens chaplains with arrest during government 'shutdown'

Egyptian Human Rights Organization to charge Obama with 'Crimes Against Humanity' for his support of the Muslim Brotherhood

Repealing the Edict of Milan: Obama as the Anti-Constantine

New Study: Anti-Christian Sentiment in America Growing Rapidly