Reports of first church in Saudi Arabia are false, says Coptic Orthodox Church

Rumors and stories like this are likely to raise the hopes of those who don't know the history or doctrines of Islam, nor the extreme anti-Christian stance of Saudi Arabia. It would be highly unlikely for the Wahhabi-sect Saudis to ever allow a church to be built in their kingdom. Per the words of Muhammad:

"I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim." (Sahih Muslim 19.4366)

Recent news reports out of Saudi Arabia present a very consistent anti-Christian position. Follow these links for further reporting and info:

• Saudi Arabia Declares Destruction of All Churches in Region
• Saudi Arabia: Religious Police Confiscate Crosses from Christians
• Saudi Mufti again calls for Destruction of All Churches on Arabian Peninsula

Reports of first church in Saudi Arabia are false, says Coptic Orthodox Church
Christianity Today via Pravmir — Feb 23, 2014

The Coptic Orthodox Church has issued a statement refuting reports that the Coptic Pope has met Saudi Arabian officials over the creation of the first church in the country.

There are an estimated 1.5 million Christians in the strictly Muslim country but they are not allowed to worship publicly.

Muslims Demand ‘Right of Return’ to Spain

"Descendants of Muslims expelled from Spain are believed to number in the millions... Granting citizenship to all of them, Spain, virtually overnight, would end up with the largest Muslim population in the European Union."

Spain has one of the more fragile economies of Europe, struggling like Greece has in recent years. A massive Muslim immigration jihad could quickly overwhelm the shaky Western European country.

by Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute, Feb 21, 2014

Muslim groups are demanding Spanish citizenship for potentially millions of descendants of Muslims who were expelled from Spain during the Middle Ages.

The growing clamor for “historical justice” comes after the recent approval of a law that would grant Spanish citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.

Muslim supporters say they are entitled to the same rights and privileges as Jews because both groups were expelled from Spain under similar historical circumstances.

But historians point out that the Jewish presence in Spain predates the arrival of Christianity in the country and that their expulsion was a matter of bigotry. By contrast, the Muslims in Spain were colonial occupiers who called the territory Al-Andalus and imposed Arabic as the official language. Historians say their expulsion was a matter of decolonization.

In any event, the descendants of Muslims expelled from Spain are believed to number in the millions—possibly tens of millions—and most of them now live in North Africa. Observers say that by granting citizenship to all of them, Spain, virtually overnight, would end up with the largest Muslim population in the European Union.

Imagine Spain turning dark blue on this map, overnight. Imagine the end of 'Christian' Europe.

Much of the Iberian Peninsula was occupied by Muslim conquerors known as the Moors from 711 until 1492, when the Moorish Kingdom of Granada surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon), in what is known as the Christian Reconquest.

But the final Muslim expulsion from Granada did not take place until over a century later, beginning in 1609, when King Philip III decreed the expulsion of the Moriscos.

The Moriscos—Moors who decided to convert to Catholicism after the Reconquest rather than leave Spain—were suspected of being nominal Catholics who continued to practice Islam in secret. From 1609 through 1614, the Spanish monarchy forced an estimated 350,000 Moriscos to leave Spain for Muslim North Africa.

Today, up to five million descendants of the Moriscos are living in Morocco alone; there are millions more living in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Tunisia and Turkey.

PLO Official: Al-Qaeda To Target Lebanese Christians

By Jamie Dettmer — The Daily Beast via AINA — Feb 8, 2014

Foreign jihadists are recruiting among Lebanon's Palestinian camps and plan to start targeting Lebanese Christians with suicide bombings, according to a former top PLO official.

Al-Qaeda-affiliate jihadists are redoubling their recruitment in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and are likely to try to further fan sectarian tensions in the country by targeting Lebanese Christians in a suicide bombing campaign that until now has focused on Shia Muslims, warns a top Palestinian official.

NJ judge rules NYPD didn’t discriminate against Muslims with counter-terror surveillance

Related Story: NYPD Designates Mosques as Terrorist Organizations

Common sense still rules... for now. When the vast majority of all terrorist acts are committed by Muslims, and 80% of all mosques in the U.S. preach jihad and the overthrow of the Constitution, where better to catch "budding terrorist conspiracies" than in mosques.

The next step would be to close mosques proven to be a hotbed for jihad terror plots.

The judge ruled: “The police could not have monitored New Jersey for Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring the Muslim community itself. … The motive for the program was not solely to discriminate against Muslims, but to find Muslim terrorists hiding among the ordinary law-abiding Muslims.”

NJ judge throws out NYPD spying lawsuit

Washington Post, Feb 20, 2014 —  (h/t Jihad Watch):

NEW YORK — The New York Police Department’s intelligence unit didn’t discriminate against Muslims with far-reaching surveillance aimed at identifying “budding terrorist conspiracies” at Newark mosques and other locations in New Jersey, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.

In a written decision filed in federal court in Newark, U.S. District Judge William Martini dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought in 2012 by eight Muslims who alleged the NYPD’s surveillance programs were unconstitutional because they focused on religion, national origin and race. The suit had accused the department of spying on ordinary people at several mosques, restaurants and grade schools in New Jersey since 2002.

The plaintiffs, including the former principal of a grade school for Muslim girls, “have not alleged facts from which it can be plausibly inferred that they were targeted solely because of their religion,” Martini wrote. “The more likely explanation for the surveillance was to locate budding terrorist conspiracies.”

Has the Church in the U.S. Succumbed to the Charms of Islam?

William Kilpatrick on the dangers of Muslim-Christian 'interfaith dialogue'.

I admire Kilpatrick's writing, and included the following passage from him in my book, Facing Islam:

Although many won’t admit it, we are in the midst of an ideological war with Islam. And since the advantage goes to the side that fully realizes they are at war, the West is losing. The propaganda war is going in favor of Islam precisely because the West doesn’t realize it is supposed to be fighting one... 

Even those who see the danger clearly rarely talk in terms of victory; they talk mainly in terms of resisting cultural jihad. You know you’re in trouble when your ideological opponent is a primitive seventh-century belief system, and yet the best that your top strategists hope for is to put up a good resistance... 

In past ideological struggles we wisely sought ideological victory—the discrediting of the belief system that inspired our enemies. Because the driving force behind Islamic aggression is Islamic theology, it makes no sense to treat Islamic theology like a protected species. Rather, we should hope that Muslims lose faith in Islam just as Nazis lost faith in Nazism and Eastern-bloc Communists lost faith in communism... Of course, it would be all the better if we had something to offer them in its place. — William Kilpatrick, Losing Their Religion, Front Page Magazine, June 14, 2010.

Excellent observation at the end (and a rare one for counter jihad writers), and one of the reasons why we must never think of Islam and Muslims in terms of "coexistence" or "interfaith harmony." Such notions imply that we don't think we have "something to offer them in its place." Such notions make it seem that we really don't believe in our Christian faith, but rather that all religions are basically equivalent.

For an Orthodox Christian, such an attitude is absolute apostasy. The Risen Lord commanded us to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." He did not tell us to be "nice" and get along, but that we would be persecuted if we truly followed Him. And He pronounced a severe warning: "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so they did to the false prophets..."

The Orthodox Church emphatically does have "something better to offer" Muslims in place of the false religion of Islam. And if we have a heart for the Gospel and care for the lost and perishing, we will at some level grieve for the powerful deception which holds 1.6 billion Muslims under its sway.

By living authentic Christian lives, and supporting Orthodox Christian mission efforts (such as in Muslim countries like Indonesia and Pakistan), we are supporting the Great Commission, we are following our Lord Jesus Christ, and we are daily strengthening both our own faith, as well as the global Orthodox Christian witness. We will show that we fervently believe we have something much better to offer Muslims and all people, and that we wish to invite them to eternal life in Christ.

But such authentic, evangelical Christian faith is rare, perhaps because so many consider Islam a sister-religion to Christianity.

Returning to William Kilpatrick, in the below article he critiques recent pan-ecumenist fantasy remarks by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and the broader context of Roman Catholic inter-faith relations with Islam. Kilpatrick's warnings should equally be heeded by Orthodox Christians, who as a rule can be overly generous in their assessment of Islam, its doctrines, and its purpose.


Has the Church in the U.S. Succumbed to the Charms of Islam? 
by William Kilpatrick, New Oxford Review — January 2014

New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan paid a visit last summer to the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center in Tompkinsville on Staten Island, where he met with a large group of Muslim leaders. As is often the case when Catholic prelates meet with Muslims, his theme was the common ground shared by the two faiths. Cardinal Dolan told his Islamic audience, “You love God, we love God, and he is the same God,” and he thanked them “for making me feel like a friend and a member of a family...” He went on to tell them how much they share in common with Catholics: “Your love of marriage and family, your love of children and babies, your love of freedom — religious freedom particularly — your defense of life, your desire for harmony and unity and your care for others, your care for God’s creation and your care for those who are in need.”

Perhaps this is true of the Muslims of Tompkinsville, but unfortunately the cardinal’s words will be taken as an endorsement of Islam in general. I say “unfortunately” because what he says about the common values and beliefs of Muslims and Catholics is highly misleading.

Christians Fight for Middle East Religious Freedom Watchdog

"The most common denominator [behind global persecution of Christians] is Islam and, specifically, the commandments of Sharia. These aren’t ethnic conflicts where Christian and Muslim armies are battling. The motivation is the institution of Sharia-based governance."

by Ryan Mauro — FrontpageMag via OCP Media — Feb 20, 2014

Global persecution of Christians, especially in the Muslim world, is one of the most overlooked human rights disasters of the 21st century. Christian activists are demanding that the State Department add a new envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East, but their campaign is stymied by those concerned about government redundancy.

Christians United for Israel, Coptic Solidarity, the North American Religious Liberty Association and other groups are fighting for the Near East and South Central Asia Religious Freedom Act of 2013. They believe that the crisis warrants a specially-focused diplomatic post.

Ironically, one of the supporters is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a member of the Shoulder-to-Shoulder interfaith coalition that is allied with the Islamic Society of North America, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

The opposing side is Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT). Their position is that this is already the duty of the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, who also heads the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom.

Their argument is that adding to the bureaucracy isn’t the proper solution. If the U.S. is failing to address Christian persecution, it’s a failure of policy and leadership and not the configuration of the government.

At the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama spoke out against persecution of Christians, calling for the release of a Christian missionary held in North Korea for 15 months and a Christian pastor in Iran that’s been imprisoned for over 18 months. He also criticized blasphemy and defamation laws that are used to suppress religious freedom.

However, words have not been met with action. The perpetrators of the persecution do not face serious consequences for their actions. It is not a significant part of American global diplomacy and international relations and the American public is not educated about the scale of the problem.

About 100 million Christians around the world live in a state of persecution because of their faith, according to the Open Doors organization. It is estimated that a Christian is killed every five minutes. The Pew Research Center finds that Christians are the most persecuted religious group, facing oppression in 110 countries.

John Kerry tours Giant Indonesian Mosque...

... panders to Muslims by spouting 'Same God' and 'Abrahamic Faith' Heresies

Someone please send Mr. Kerry copies of Mark Durie's books, Which God? and The Third Choice. 

While the U.S. Secretary of State is openly endorsing Islam in Indonesia, Muslims in Indonesia (and the world over) are openly persecuting Christians, often with government support. (Regarding Indonesia, see here, here and here for starters.) 

Mr. Kerry is also calling for urgent action on climate change on his Asian trip, claiming it to be a "weapon of mass destruction." It's a shame he and President Obama don't have any sense of urgency concerning Muslim warfare against Christians in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Sudan and elsewhere. Instead, they support the Muslim jihad groups and are complicit in the persecution of Christians. These are very ominous signs... 


via John Kerry Tours Giant Mosque, Meets with Sharia Students
Creeping Sharia — Feb 18, 2014

via Kerry Tours Giant Mosque In Indonesia – Carbonated.TV. h/t TROP

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spent part of his Sunday in his stocking feet at an Indonesian mosque, at one point beating a huge drum used to call Muslims to prayer.

Kerry’s visit to the modern Istiqlal Mosque in central Jakarta, said to be the largest mosque in Southeast Asia with a capacity of 130,000, was designed to demonstrate his respect for Islam as he visited the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.

Kerry spent about 20 minutes touring the mosque, chatting briefly with women studying Islamic law and admiring the blue ceiling of its dome.

Having removed his shoes in keeping with Islamic custom, Kerry at one point was shown a gigantic, skin-covered drum which rests sideways on the mosque’s floor and stood several feet taller than his head.

After witnessing a demonstration by the Grand Imam, identified by the State Department as K.H. Ali Mustafa Yaqub, Kerry then used a club to beat the drum, which is used to call Muslims to prayer.

“It has been a special honour to visit this remarkable place of worship,” Kerry said in a handwritten note to memorialize his visit. “We are all bound to one God and the Abrahamic faiths tie us together in love for our fellow man and honour for the same God.”

Egypt: Christian Syrian Family Slaughtered

by Raymond Ibrahim — Feb 18, 2014

Slain 6-year-old Michael

A Christian Syrian family of four living in Alexandria, Egypt, was barbarically stabbed to death Sunday in their home in al-Ibrahamya neighborhood, Arabic media are reporting.

The family consisted of a father, 44, his wife, 35, their 6-year-old son, Michael, and the wife’s brother.

After the murders, the house, where the family had been living for years, was set on fire by the murderers in an attempt to hide the crime but was put out by authorities.

All four bodies were found bearing many stab wounds and other signs of extreme violence.

The wife and child had their throats slit, while the father appeared to have been stabbed to death, with stab wounds all over his body.

The crime was not motivated by theft, as the home was not robbed, and preliminary reports say the family was slaughtered for being supporters of the Bashar Assad government in Syria.

The wife was said to be a vocal supporter, often arguing politics.

Islamists all around the Middle East and especially in Egypt strongly oppose and are supporting a jihad against the moderate Assad government in an attempt to oust it and set up a Sharia state in Syria.

Most religious minorities, including Christians, are supportive of the secular Assad regime, having seen the great violence done against fellow Christians by the Islamic rebels who deem them “infidels.”

Father, mother, and son, in happier times

Lebanon: Drastic reduction of land belonging to Christians

Independent Catholic News via Pravoslavie — Feb 18, 2014

After the proclamation of independence in the Lebanon, 8130 square km of land belonged to the Lebanese Christians. Today, however, Lebanese Christians have about 4,000 km of land. These figures were provided by Talal al-Doueihy, head of the Movement 'Lebanese Land-Our Land Movement' and reported by the The Daily Star newspaper.

The drastic decrease in landed properties belonging to Christians in the country of the Cedars has various causes. Many Christians are emigrating and when they leave they have no choice but to sell their land to Muslims buyers.

In addition, during the years of the government of Rafiq Hariri - Prime Minister from 1992 to 1998 and then from 2000 to 2004, who was killed in a suicide bombing on 14 February 2005 - the law regarding the sale of land which guaranteed the right of first refusal to owners of adjacent lands was canceled. The Hariri government wanted in this way to encourage investments in Lebanon from the Arab Gulf countries. The result is that almost all of the lands sold during those years increased from Christian owners to Muslim owners.

Several legislative proposals have been presented in parliament to try to block the erosion of the land ownership of Christians in Lebanon. One presented by MPs Sami Gemayel and Ibrahim Kanaan aims to regulate the ownership of land property in Lebanese territory by foreign buyers. Another prepared by the Parliamentary Joseph Maalouf aims to curb the change of ownership of plots of land above 3,000 square meters, and to limit the room for maneuver of intermediaries in the sale of land.

Egypt: Sinai Islamists say all tourists must leave by Feb. 20 or face attack

NBC News via Pravoslavie — Feb 18, 2014

A militant Islamist group has warned tourists to leave Egypt and threatened to attack any who stay in the country after February 20, raising the prospect of a new front in a fast-growing insurgency.

Related: SINAI ATTACKS: ISLAMIST CLAIM TOURIST BUS BOMB ATTACK

The Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis group, which claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed two South Korean tourists and an Egyptian on Sunday, made the statement on an affiliated Twitter account.

"We recommend tourists to get out safely before the expiry of the deadline," read the tweet, written in English.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has said in the past that it does not post statements on social media sites but statements that appeared on the Twitter account in the past have afterwards surfaced on jihadi websites the group does say it uses.

Islamist militants have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the army deposed Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in July, but Sunday's attack on a tourist bus marks a strategic shift to soft targets that could devastate an economy already reeling from political turmoil.