Turkish Textbooks: 'Christians are Instruments of Hostile Forces'

Rapidly Re-Islamizing Turkey applies Quranic teachings in its supposedly 'secular' schools:

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. (Sura 9:29) 

Let believers [Muslims] not take for friends and allies infidels [non-Muslims] instead of believers. Whoever does this shall have no relationship left with Allah — unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions. (Sura 3:28)

Turkish Textbooks: 'Christians are Instruments of Hostile Forces'

Pravoslavie — Istanbul, September 19, 2014

The Ministry of Education of Turkey is continuing to carry on an ideological and intensified struggle against Christianity and Christians using history textbooks, reports the Copts Today news portal with the reference to Agos Armenian newspaper.

According to the study published by the media, school textbooks describing the Turkish history of the 19th – 20th centuries avoid any talk on the subject of the genocide of the Armenians, referring to the victims as well as nearly all Christians in the world as to “the instruments of hostile occupant forces, intended for undermining the state.”

Professor at Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome: Islamic State not un-Islamic, 'Model is Muhammad himself'

This brave Roman Catholic professor sounds amazingly like St Gregory Palamas in the 14th century, or Archbishop Mark of Berlin in our own day. 

Hierarchs and leaders of the Orthodox Church, take courage from such bold voices and speak out against the heresy of Islam and its demonic assault against Jesus Christ and His Body, the Church! The flock will follow if you speak truth and lead with righteousness!


Professor at Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome: Islamic State not un-Islamic, “model is Muhammad himself”
Posted at Jihad Watch — October 6, 2014

Translation via 10news. For more translation, newsletter and support: 10news.dk.

Where is the border between Islam and Islamism? The media says that the two are different as night and day; Islam is a religion of peace, and the Islamists have stolen the name. Others believe that Islamism represents the traditional, pure Islam, true to the Koran.

This latter view is advanced, remarkably enough, by a theologian Martin Rhonheimer from a university endorsed by the Pope. He is a professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome and wrote an essay on this particular distinction in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

You do not hear many official Muslim voices condemning Islamic State, says Rhonheimer. And when it finally happens, it is usually only to condemn the bestiality because it harms Islam’s reputation. The Islamic State is no heresy, but “a recurring pattern in the history of violent expansion. The model is Muhammad himself.”

“Islamic State’s legitimation finds its basis in the Koran and Islamic law, the Sharia,” believes the Catholic professor. He states: “You will find no arguments within Muslim theology that can be used to condemn Islamic State’s behavior as un-Islamic.”…

Has Your Bible Become A Quran?

"The Quran is what a misinformed desert preacher thought the Christian and Jewish holy books looked like. It is a poor substitute and a caricature of those writings."

by Fr. Stephen Freeman — Glory To God For All Things
October 1, 2014

Those who engage in debates on a regular basis know that the argument itself can easily shape the points involved. This is another way of saying that some debates should be avoided entirely since merely getting involved in them can be the road to ruin. There are a number of Christian scholars (particularly among the Orthodox) who think that the classical debates between Christians and Muslims during the Middle Ages had just such disastrous results for Christian thinking.

Now when engaging in religious debates it is all too easy to agree to things that might make for later problems. It is possible, for example, to agree to a comparison of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and the Book of the Quran. After all, Muslims have a holy book – Christians have a holy book. Why should we not debate whose holy book is better?

It is even possible to agree with the Muslim contention that Christians (and Jews) are “People of the Book.” Of course Muslims meant that Christians and Jews were people of an inferior book, but were somehow better than pagans. Again, it is possible, nevertheless, to let the matter ride and agree that Christians are “People of the Book.”

And it is also possible to give wide latitude to the Muslim claim that the most essential matter with regard to God is “Islam,” that is “submission.” After all, if God is the Lord of all creation, then how is submitting to Him, recognizing and accepting that He is God, not the most important thing?

But each of these proposals had disastrous results in the history of Christianity and may very well be the source of a number of modern distortions within the Christian faith.

Thus, at the outset I will state:

1. The Bible is not the Christian Holy Book.
2. Christians (and Jews) are not People of the Book.
3. Submission to God is not a proper way to describe the Christian faith

Further, any and all of these claims, once accepted, lead to fundamental distortions of Christianity. An extreme way of saying this is that much of modern Christianity has been “Islamified.” Thinking critically about this is important – particularly in an era of renewed contact with Islam.

Inside Oklahoma Beheading Suspect's Mosque (VIDEO)

This interview rings true, and perfectly echoes the interview I recently conducted with a former Muslim, which you can read here.

Both these interviews corroborate, in their anecdotal manner, four separate studies over the last 10-15 years, which report that upwards of 80% of mosques in the United States teach/preach offensive jihad warfare and call for the institution of sharia and the overthrow of the U.S. Constitution.

I know there are many good-hearted readers out there who find all this very hard to believe. I wish that it weren't so, but sadly, we are seeing the fruits of Islam in these Quran-inspired crimes, in the steady stream of Western Muslims traveling to Syria/Iraq to join the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and wage jihad, and in the many jihad terror attacks and thwarted plots here in the U.S.

The Lord Jesus Christ warned us about false prophets: "By their fruits you shall know them." 1400 years of Islam provides ample fruit.

Leaked Video of Imam Teaching Muslims How To Cut Off Heads

While we're posting about mosques, here is another shocker about another of the 80%-ers. Mosques are "synagogues of satan" (Rev. 3:9).

Leaked Video of Imam Teaching Muslims How To Cut Off Heads

Creeping Sharia — October 1, 2014

How many U.S. mosques, storefronts and backrooms is this being taught in? via Shoebat.com.

What we stated from the Manifest was the term Ihsan and “Ihsinu Al-Qatla” (Perfect Your Killing).

أن الأصل في القتل الإحسان:
فقد ثبت في الصحيح عن شداد بن أوس رضي الله عنه قال: قال رسول الله صلى

الله عليه وسلم: (إن الله كتب الإحسان على كل شيء؛ فإذا قتلتم فأحسنوا القتلة، وإذا ذبحتم فأحسنوا الذبحة، وليحد أحدكم شفرته وليرح ذبيحته).

In English:

Oklahoma beheader’s mosque taught caliphate, destruction of US and Israel

Apparently the Oklahoma mosque which catechized and nurtured Oklahoma beheader Jah’Keem Yisrael was one of the 80% of mosques in the United States which support jihad and call for the institution of sharia law and the overthrow of the US Constitution, as documented in four separate studies over the last 10-15 years. 

Related: 

• Oklahoma beheader’s mosque once led by imam of Boston jihadis’ mosque
• Islamic State (ISIL) propagandist was regular worshiper at Islamic Society of Boston
• Islamic State tie to Boston mosque: massive FBI failure

Time for Muslims who sincerely wish to know the truth and be pleasing to God to repent and turn to Jesus Christ in the Orthodox Church.  Mosques are "synagogues of satan" (Rev. 3:9).

Oklahoma beheader’s mosque taught caliphate, destruction of US and Israel

by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch — September 27, 2014

The Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City is in full damage-control and victimhood mode, saying they hardly knew Oklahoma beheader Jah’Keem Yisrael, and asking for protection against “backlash.” But here is a look inside that mosque, courtesy an ex-Muslim who attended there and still lives nearby, and who sent me this information directly:

I went to the same mosque the Oklahoma Muslim who beheaded his co-worker today.  I live ten minutes away! 

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.

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

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:

• Oklahoma: Muslim Beheads Co-Worker, had tried to convert colleagues to Islam
• Italy: Imam gets prison for jihad terror plots
• Spain, UK, Morocco: 11 Muslims arrested for jihad terror plots

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...