Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Ninth Hagia Sophia Church converted into a mosque in Turkey

Rapidly re-Islamizing Turkey continues its push to eliminate all traces of Orthodox Christianity and literally recapture its supposed former glory of the Ottoman period. 




Pravoslavie - September 25, 2014

Muslim prayers are being performed in another ancient Orthodox Church, reports AgionOros

The Hagia Sophia Church in Eregli (the Greek form is Heraclea) has become the ninth Hagia Sophia Church converted into a mosque by Turks over recent years.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Mark Durie: Fear and the rhetoric of 'unprecedented' barbarity

Context and analysis from one of the foremost Christian writers on Islam.

By Mark Durie, September 26, 2014

Many leaders have been stating that the Islamic State’s actions are ‘unprecedented’, ‘extreme’, ‘unique’, or even ‘eccentric’.  Western leaders who are intervening in the Syria-Iraq conflict justify their actions by declaring the Islamic State to be uniquely evil.  In announcing military action and increased security measures, Australian Prime Ministry Tony Abbottsaid of the Islamic State that “To do such evil — and to revel in doing such evil — is simply unprecedented”. David Cameron stated that “ISIL is a terrorist organisation unlike those we have dealt with before.”  Barack Obama claimed “these terrorists are unique in their brutality.”

The actions of Islamic State’s adherents are morally repugnant in the extreme, but only by applying historical amnesia and selective vision could one claim that their evil is unique or unprecedented.

In recent decades, not dissimilar horrors have regularly been reported from around the world, for example the abuses of the ‘Lord’s Resistance Army’, or the genocide pursued by the government of  Sudan against the Christians and traditional believers in the Nuba mountains and  the Blue Nile region, and before that against tribal Muslims in the Dafur region.  Indeed for decades the Sudanese government has unleashed jihad – with all the atrocities of the Islamic State – against its own (black African) citizens, often assisted by jihadis from all over the Arabic world, just like in Syria and Iraq today. 

The Islamic State's actions are also not unique in history.  Quite apart from the horrors of Nazism and Communism, Andrew Bostom has rightly pointed out that the atrocities of the Ottoman Caliphate in exterminating Christians under their rule were greater in magnitude than what is currently being experienced in Syria and Iraq. He writes:
“Notwithstanding the recent horrific spate of atrocities committed against the Christian communities of northern Iraq by the Islamic State (IS/IL) jihadists, the Ottoman jihad ravages were equally barbaric, depraved, and far more extensive. Occurring, primarily between 1915-16 (although continuing through at least 1919), some one million Armenian, and 250,000 Assyro-Chaldean and Syrian Orthodox Christians were brutally slaughtered, or starved to death during forced deportations through desert wastelands. The identical gruesome means used by IS/IL to humiliate and massacre its hapless Christian victims, were employed on a scale that was an order of magnitude greater by the Ottoman Muslim Turks, often abetted by local Muslim collaborators (the latter being another phenomenon which also happenedduring the IS/IL jihad campaign against Iraq’s Christians).”
Bostom also points out that the Yazidi’s recent sufferings at the hands of the IS are nothing new, but are consistent with a pattern of genocidal assaults against them which stretches back to Ottoman times.

What is so disturbing to Western people about the Islamic State is not the extremity of the barbarity, which is far from unprecedented, but the fact that so many Western citizens have been signing up with IS, and the psychological warfare being directed by IS against the outside world, including the West, manifested, for example, in the videos of beheadings, and the way some enslaved, raped women have been forced to phone their families to tell them about their abuse, even while it is going on. 

What is unique for us in the West is the way the fear is now upon our doorstep: this is the fear that what is happening there will come back home to haunt us.

The challenge facing the West now is not simply stopping the Islamic State – as important as that is – but what to do about the fear.

Dropping bombs on the Islamic State will not do it.


Mark Durie is the pastor of an Anglican church, a Shillman-Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and Founder of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness.  His book The Third Choice explains the implications for Christians of living under Islamic rule.

Originally posted at: http://blog.markdurie.com/2014/09/fear-and-rhetoric-of-unprecedented.html


Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Amvrosios: 'Your children will surely be slaves of Muslims'

More clear-headed warnings about Islam by another revered hierarch in a traditional Orthodox nation. The Greek people suffered for centuries under brutal Muslim tyranny during the Ottoman period. Numerous Ecumenical Patriarchs, bishops and priests were among the countless thousands martyred by the Turkish Muslims (not counting the Armenian and Orthodox Christian Genocide, which spread from 1894 to 1922, and claimed over 3.5 million lives). The warnings about Islam from Metropolitans Amvrosios and Anthimos (see my recent post) should be taken very seriously by Orthodox Christians everywhere.

Pravoslavie - September 23, 2014

(Athens) Metropolitan Amvrosios of Kalavryta and Aigialeia has spoken out against the “Anti-racist law” passed in Greece.

“With the entering into force of the anti-racist bill, all who talk about the motherland and patriotism will risk jail.

“A priest who will speak up against Jehovah’s Witnesses and other religions from the ambo, may be declared a racist and imprisoned,” said the hierarch, cited by AgionOros with the reference to Rua.gr (”Russian Athens”).

“Soon we will become aliens in our own home country. I do not know whether I will live to see these times, but your children will surely be slaves of Muslims. Greece is disappearing, faith is disappearing… Keep the flame of the motherland and faith. Globalization is not knocking at our doors any more – it has already entered our home,” he added.

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/73925.htm


Saturday, September 27, 2014

Muslim Beheads Woman in Oklahoma: A Sign for Muslims as well as Christians

Islam's mask is slipping. And in spite of absurd denials by presidents and prime ministers, bishops and priests, more and more Christians are waking up to the truth about the "religion of peace":


  • Islam is a false religion, and Muhammad was a false prophet;
  • Islam is innately violent and supremacist, and has been so from its creation fourteen hundred years ago, as evidenced by the Quran, the Sira, and hadiths about Muhammad;
  • Islam is dangerous, and has become a global threat to all non-Muslims;
  • Islam especially targets Christians and Jews, as evidenced in the Quran, etc.
  • The Islamic State is drawing large numbers of Muslims to its ranks from all around the globe, including from Europe and North America, due to its adherence to pure,  orthodox Islam, and especially due to its apocalyptic, eschatological orientation. (See articles by Timothy Furnish.)

While it is perhaps easy for Christians to see the resurgence of pure Islam as a sign of the dark times we have entered into, I believe it is also a sign for those Muslims who are shocked and fearful to discover through such horrific headlines just what their religion and prophet really teach.


Here are just a few current headlines:

That such pure evil is unleashed upon the world is indeed a sign of the end times. But what are we to do? What does this sign mean?

Clearly it is a call to repentance, for Christians first but also for Muslims.

Christians, and especially Orthodox Christians who have received the fullness of the apostolic faith, are being called to repent and live an authentic Christian life in Christ and His Church. If we are friends with the world, then we are at enmity with God. In the words of Fr Seraphim Rose:

"Now one cannot be a half-hearted Christian. Only entirely, or not at all."

Put in its apocalyptic context, the beheading of Christians by the Islamic State is a sign and a warning to us to strive to be faithful witnesses and confessors of Jesus Christ, in all our deeds, words and thoughts, that we may be found worthy of Him at His Return. 

But the meaning of this sign for Muslims is also a call to repent. 

Just as we Christians must repent of our lukewarmness and our easy friendship with the world, so Muslims who in their heart of hearts long to know the truth and honor God must repent of their false religion and false prophet, and turn to the True God, who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to restore us to the Father, granting us to be co-heirs with Him, even co-reigning with Him, even unto becoming partakers of the divine nature. Muhammad and Allah lower you to the level of mere slave. But in Christ we are no longer enslaved,  but are set free, becoming children of God. This is the high calling that is offered to everyone who turns to Jesus Christ.

To Muslims and Christians alike, the Lord calls us to Himself, that He may save us and strengthen us for the horrific tribulations yet to come, and grant us eternal life.

Let us all run to an Orthodox Christian church, turn to the priest, confess our sins, and prepare for trials, for it is coming quickly...


Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Metropolitan Anthimos of Thessaloniki: 'We are against the presence of Islam in our city'

AXIOS! Bold words from a righteous hierarch, right up there with Archbishop Mark of Germany.

Pravoslavie — September 23, 2014


Thessaloniki, September 22, 2014 — In his interview with the Greek television, one of the most authoritative hierarchs of the Church of Greece made a number of tough statements, reports AgionOros:
“We are against the presence of Islam in Thessaloniki. We have already lost so much… When the Turkish minister entered the Church of Holy Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki in our city, he announced at once: 'Here is a suitable mosque for Turks'. Another Turkish official came to the historical Greek province of Thrace and called this region ‘a severed hand of Turkey’.”

Saturday, September 20, 2014

The Scandal of the Cross for Islam



The Leavetaking of the Feast of the Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Lifegiving Cross is tomorrow, Sunday September 21. On this solemn occasion it is essential to revisit Islam's vehement and violent stance against Christianity.


The Universal Exaltation of the Cross, and its Scandal for the World

by Fr. Steven C. Kostoff — Orthodox Christian Meditations
September 13, 2014

As we behold the Wood of the Cross exalted on high, let us magnify God who in His goodness was crucified upon it in the flesh.  (Small Vespers of the Feast)

We are approaching the Feast Day of The Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross - to give the Feast its full title – this coming Sunday, September 14. This is the day that we liturgically commemorate and venerate the Cross that will be placed in the middle of the church toward the end of Great Vespers on Saturday evening.   The Feast will then have a full "octave" for its celebration – thus making it an eight-day Feast which serves to stress the importance of the Cross in the life of the Church and in our personal  lives.  To further turn our attention toward the Cross, we recall the Third Sunday of Great Lent - the Adoration of the Cross; and the less well-observed Feast of the Procession of the Cross on August 1.  And, importantly, every Wednesday and Friday is a day of commemorating the Cross, one of the reasons that we fast on those two days on a weekly basis.

Prominent though that the Cross may be for Christians, it is the Apostle Paul who very succinctly and profoundly captured the unbelieving world's attitude toward the Cross in his well-known text:


For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  (I COR. 1:23-24)

This leads the Apostle to one of his most astonishing and paradoxical insights:

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.  (I COR. 1:26)

The "scandal" for the unbelieving Jew would be the claim that the Messiah was crucified.  The "folly" for the Greek/Gentile would be the claim that the divine would even enter the realm of flesh and blood and "become" human, let alone suffer death on a cross.  Yet God, in and through Christ, transformed what is shameful, weak, lowly and despised - a crucified man - into "our righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (I COR. 1:30)  The entire passage of I COR. 1:18-31 deserves careful, close and constant study. 

It remains fascinating, and highly instructive, that even non-Christians who profess to have a great respect for Jesus Christ, struggle terribly with the scandal of the Cross.   This is clearly the case with Islam.  Jesus is treated with great respect in many passages in the Qur'an:  even to the point of acknowledging His virginal conception in a passage that clearly resembles the Annunciation form the Gospel According to St. Luke! (Qur'an, 3:45-47)  However, the Crucifixion is treated in a way that bears no resemblance to the Gospel accounts:

"yet they did not slay him, neither crucify him, only a likeness of that was shown to them." (Qur'an 4:156-159)

The Muslims believe that someone else - a figure unidentified by the Qur'an - was crucified in the place of Christ, but not Jesus Himself.  The Muslim scholar Dr. Maneh Al-Johani wrote:  "The Qur'an does not elaborate on this point, nor does it give any answer to this question." 

Clearly, the "scandal" of the Cross is too much for Muslim sensibilities, since Jesus is for them a great prophet sent by God.  Muslims further believe that Jesus was raised to Heaven, yet before He died, clearly an odd teaching that again is meant to completely distance Jesus from His crucifixion.  If there is anything that is agreed upon today among New Testament scholars - believers and skeptics alike - it is that Jesus of Nazareth was put to death by crucifixion by orders of Pontius Pilate in the early 30's of the Christian era.  This lends a certain fantastic quality to these claims of the Qur'an.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Jihad in Australia: 600 police in huge counter-terror raid in Sydney and Brisbane

"This network was apparently connected to the Islamic State — again illustrating the appeal of the caliphate to so many young Muslims worldwide."

Related:



Australia: 600 police in huge counter-terror raid in Sydney and Brisbane
by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch — September 17, 2014

“It is believed that a terrorist network had been planning to carry out a series of attacks in Australia.” This network was apparently connected to the Islamic State — again illustrating the appeal of the caliphate to so many young Muslims worldwide.

“ASIO and hundreds of police raid Sydney and Brisbane homes in biggest counter-terrorism raid in Australia’s history” 
by Simon Benson, The Daily Telegraph, September 18, 2014:

ASIO and counter terrorism police have swooped on homes across north-western Sydney and other states this morning in what is believed to be the largest anti-terrorism bust in the nation’s history.

Several arrests have reportedly been made in the secret pre-dawn raid, which is still in progress.

The arrests follow the execution of a number of search warrants in Beecroft, Bellavista, Guildford, Merrylands, Northmead, Wentworthville, Marsfield, Westmead, Castle Hill, Revesby, Bass Hill and Regents Park.

The raid is believed to have been mounted following months of surveillance of people linked to the terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Obama's "not Islamic" Islamic State Claim Ridiculed

Not included in the IPT article was this satirical cartoon, which sums it up nicely (h/t Jim).

by IPT News — September 11, 2014

President Obama's assertion Wednesday night that the Islamic State terrorist group "is not 'Islamic'" is drawing derision from a number of quarters.

The claim, also made by Obama's predecessors, is "preposterous," Daniel Pipes wrote for the National Review Online. "To state the obvious: As non-Muslims and politicians, rather than Muslims and scholars, they are in no position to declare what is Islamic and what is not."

Orthodox Christian Nun warns against Islam, slams media silence (with video)



“The reason for all this disaster is the Qur’an.” Sister Hatune Dogan - See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2014/09/muslims-slice-off-the-breasts-of-kidnapped-christian-girls-in-syria-and-iraq.html/#sthash.Os3VIOmb.dpuf

"The reason for all this disaster is the Quran." 
— Sister Hatune Dogan


via 'Muslims Slice off the Breasts of Kidnapped Christian Girls in Syria and Iraq'
Sharia Unveiled, September 16, 2014

Sometimes it takes a David to defeat a Goliath – or, in this case, unassuming nuns to speak where the media remain silent. Speaking out for Christians persecuted in the Middle East, Mother Olga Yaqob and Sister Hatune Dogan slammed the American media for keeping silent. 

The nuns spoke with MRC (Media Research Center) during the In Defense of Christians (IDC) Inaugural Summit in Washington, D.C. Sept. 9-11. Both told the stories journalists ignore: of refugees displaced and Christian girls “repeatedly raped” and “misused” – some as young as 5-years-old. 

Mother Olga of the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth, an Iraqi native recognized by the Iraqi government for her care of the poor, recently established a religious order in Boston.

Raised in Germany after fleeing from Turkey, Sister Hatune Dogan, is an Orthodox Christian nun who aids Christians in Syria and Turkey through her organization, “A Helping Hand to the Poor.” Addressing the American coverage of Christian persecution in the Middle East, Mother Olga stressed, “In the early months, there wasn’t much coverage.” “Some of the Christian networks – media networks – were covering [the persecution]. But not very much the secular media.”

Sister Hatune expressed similar dismay. “The media make a mistake,” she began, “Because they don’t say the truth.” She criticized, “But the media has big duty to tell the truth, to make Americans see what is really going on.”

That truth, she explained, consists of “slaughtering, raping, kidnapping, taking ransom, killing, crucifying, and ridding the Christians of what they need.”

As one of her “thousands of stories” of Christian persecution, Sister Hatune began:

Monday, September 15, 2014

Raymond Ibrahim — Beheading Infidels: How Allah ‘Heals the Hearts of Believers’

Essential article on the Muslim jihadi mind. As gruesome as the below pictures are, this article is ultimately about Islamic and Koranic spirituality. It reveals starkly how Muslim jihadis are avidly following pure Islam. Read and share widely.


"When young Muslims express their anger and frustration at the state of affairs of the Islamic world, their clerics council them to go to the jihad in Iraq and Syria and decapitate themselves an infidel—which, according to the Koran, should “heal their hearts.” [...] 
"Such Muslims join the jihad, and not only do they decapitate, but they mutilate, humiliate, and laugh at the disgraced enemies of Allah—in perfect emulation of the Islamic glory/gory stories they grew up on. 
"This is the true cult of jihad which few non-Muslims can begin to comprehend..."

by Raymond Ibrahim — September 11, 2014

What will “heal” and “remove the rage” from “the hearts of the believers”? Infidel carnage, says the Koran.

To understand why the Islamic State not only decapitates its “infidel” captives, but also mutilates and mocks their corpses—and all to sadistic laughter—one need only turn to the Koran and deeds of Islamic prophet Muhammad.


The Koran exhorts believers to “Fight them [those who oppose Islam], Allah will torment them with your hands, humiliate them, empower you over them, and heal the hearts of the believers, removing the rage from their hearts” (Koran 9:14-15).

As usual, to understand the significance of any Koran verse, one must turn to the sira and hadith—the biography and anecdotes of Muhammad, respectively—for context.

Thus we come to the following account concerning the slaughter of ‘Amr bin Hisham, a pagan Arab chieftain originally  known as “Abu Hakim” (Father of Wisdom) until Muhammad dubbed him “Abu Jahl” (Father of Stupidity) for his staunch opposition to Islam.

After ‘Amr was mortally wounded by a new convert to Islam during the Battle of Badr, Abdullah ibn Mas‘ud, a close companion of Muhammad, saw the “infidel” chieftain collapsed on the ground.  So he went to him and started abusing him.  Among other things, Abdullah grabbed and pulled ‘Amr’s beard and stood in triumph on the dying man’s chest.

According to Al-Bidaya wa Al-Nihaya (“The Beginning and the End”), Ibn Kathir’s authoritiative history of Islam, “After that, he [Abdullah] slit his [‘Amr’s] head off and bore it till he placed it between the hands of the Prophet. Thus did Allah heal the hearts of the believers with it.”

This, then, is the true significance of Koran 9:14-15: “Fight them, Allah will torment them with your hands [mortally wounding and eventually decapitating ‘Amr], humiliate them [pulling his beard], empower you over them [standing atop him], and heal the hearts of the believers, removing the rage from their hearts [at the sight of his decapitated head].”

The logic here is that, pious Muslims are so full of zeal for Allah’s cause that the only way their inflamed hearts can be at rest is to see those who oppose Allah and his prophet utterly crushed—humiliated, mutilated, decapitated.  Then the hearts of the believers can be at ease and “healed.”

This is surely one of the reasons behind the Islamic State’s dissemination of gory videos and pictures of its victims: the new “caliphate” is trying to heal the hearts of every believer inflamed for the cause of Allah.

If this sounds too farfetched, consider the following picture of a decapitated “infidel” from the Islamic State’s websites.  The Arabic caption to the left says “healing for hearts”—a clear reference to the aforementioned Koran verse: