On Refugee Crisis, Christian nations should be 'Wise as Serpents'

Muslim migrant influx strains Christian world’s tension between being "wise as serpents, innocent as doves." Bulgaria offers a way forward.

Migrant masses in Budapest.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has announced it will help migrants who have arrived in Bulgaria, but has urged authorities not to let any more migrants in, clarifying sharp differences between Eastern European Christian nations and Western secular/post-Christian responses to the mass Muslim refugee crisis.

by Ralph H. Sidway

It is very interesting that most Orthodox and Eastern Christian bishops have shown great restraint in responding to the Muslim migrant crisis overwhelming Europe. One exception was Coptic Bishop Angaelos of the UK, who promptly rejected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's position of allowing only Christian migrants, saying, “As a Christian I could never justify a policy which only supported ‘our own’... The distinction should be based on people’s need, not their religion.”

To the credit of Christians everywhere, it is primarily the post-Christian West which is stepping up to the humanitarian tragedy of millions of refugees fleeing the Islamic State and the unrest of the Middle East and Africa. 

Britain and France have made commitments to take in 20,000 and 24,000 Syrian migrants respectively, whereas Germany has  accepted over 100,000 in August alone, and if current numbers continue, will have absorbed 800,000 by year’s end. (In contrast to the European welcome wagon, most Muslim nations are accepting no refugees: zero, citing concerns over the terrorist threat.)

To be sure, the Western European sentiment is admirable, and seems the ideal Christian response. Yet even Jesus Christ cautioned his disciples to be "wise as serpents and innocent as doves." Note, Jesus does not urge them to be "vicious," "aggressive," or "poisonous" — other adjectives applicable to certain serpents — merely wise. Serpents protect themselves when they have to, slithering away into holes in the earth, hiding from danger, protecting themselves and their brood. There are times when self-preservation is appropriate, even for the followers of Him who voluntarily went to the Cross for all mankind.

Other observers of Europe's mass migrant crisis are starting to consider what such "serpent wisdom" might involve, even if they don't reference Jesus' specific words.

Rod Dreher (who has seemed lately to have become somewhat muddled on the jihad threat) even considered how wide open Christian Europe should throw its borders to an alien people, asking the question, "Is Christianity A Suicide Cult?" Dreher has been reading, as have other commentators, Raspail's novel, The Camp of the Saints, and offers an excerpt and some thoughts:

[Raspail writes in Chapter 20:] "Two opposing camps. One still believes. One doesn’t. The one that still has faith will move mountains. That’s the side that will win. Deadly doubt has destroyed all incentive in the other. That’s the side that will lose." 

Raspail, it seems to me, is deadly accurate in his diagnosis of the sentimental humanitarianism of the Europeans, and how their loss of faith in their own civilization compels them to behave in ways that guarantee its destruction by an invading force. The novel also implicitly raises a disturbing question: What cruelties, if any, are justified for the sake of a nation’s defense? 

These are extremely complex, morally harrowing questions, and we are seeing them on display now as Europe faces its refugee crisis.

Dreher also refers to an important article by British Christian Alistair Roberts, whose message essentially distills to this: "...As Christians, we certainly have an obligation to show charity to refugees, but that does not mean that we are morally obligated to allow them to settle among us."

This seems like the prudent course, serpent wisdom combined with Christian innocence. It doesn't take an especially wise person — just an honest one — to see the existential threat in all the videos and reports of huge mobs of Muslim migrants screaming "Allahu Akbar" and attacking trains and police in Hungary (and Slovenia), prompting a State of Emergency complete with deployment of tear gas and water cannons.

Al Azhar Promoting ‘Anti-Christian’ and ‘Anti-Infidel’ Violence

"The Islamic State [ISIS] is only doing what Al Azhar — the Islamic world’s oldest and most prestigious Islamic university — teaches."

Al Azhar is where President Obama made his famous address to the Muslim world in April 2009.

See also: Islamic State Relied on Egyptian Salafi book to slaughter 21 Copts in Libya

by Raymond Ibrahim, Coptic Solidarity — September 24, 2015

While discussing how the Islamic State burns some of its victims alive—most notoriously, a Jordanian pilot—Egyptian journalist Yusuf al-Husayni remarked on his satellite program that “The Islamic State is only doing what Al Azhar teaches… and the simplest example is Ibn Kathir’s Beginning and End.”

Located in Cairo, Egypt, Al Azhar is the Islamic world’s oldest and most prestigious Islamic university.  Ibn Kathir is one of Sunni Islam’s most renowned scholars; his Beginning and End is a magisterial history of Islam.

'The Cross is ISIS' main enemy; today no trace of a Cross can be seen in Mosul'

This story provides further proof — if any is still needed — of the Islamic religious roots and motivations of the Islamic State. 

The Cross is symbolic of Islam's main enemy: Christianity. Under the terms of the dhimma contract and the Pact of Omar, Christians may not display the Cross openly, either on their buildings or on their person. 

The breaking of crosses is a potent symbol of Islam's global supremacy in the end times. Muhammad prophesied that when Isa (the Muslim Jesus) returns, he will  "fight the people for the cause of Islam. He will break the cross, kill the swine and abolish jizya” and establish the rule of Allah throughout the world (Hadith from Sunan Abu Dawud, Book of Battles, 37:4310).

Demolition of churches and crosses, or converting churches into mosques, is a classic trait of Islam's treatment of Christians wherever it has conquered for fourteen centuries now. In our days, Muslims are even taking to breaking crosses in cemeteries, as seen in the infamous YouTube videos of 2012.

In Syracuse NY we recently saw the "breaking of the crosses" on a huge scale; a venerable Roman Catholic church was converted into a mosque, the crosses removed from the spires, and 10,000 crosses in the interior covered over in a hugely symbolic victory for Islam.

See also Raymond Ibrahim's recent article, 'Islamic Hate for the Christian Cross', and my own piece 'Islam's Hatred of Holy Icons — and what that means for Persecuted Eastern Christians'. 

"The Cross is ISIS' main enemy; today no trace of a Cross can be seen in Mosul"

Pravoslavie, September 26, 2015:

(Mosul, September 23, 2015) A war is currently being waged against Christianity on the territory of the Biblical city of Nineveh, which is currently under control of the “Islamic State” militants: according to eyewitnesses’ evidence, the fanatics are trying their best to eliminate the very memory of the Christian presence in Mosul, reports Ankawa news agency.

In his report, sent to the Ankawa agency’s staff writer Yunus Zanoun, the journalist A.S. from Mosul gave information about ISIS’s intention to wipe out all the Christian symbols from Nineveh, and that they are working hard in order to achieve this ambition. “The cross is ISIS’s main enemy; that is why today no traces of crosses can be seen in Mosul,” A.S. noted.

Archbishops From Middle East Charge Discrimination Against Christians

"Since October 2014, 906 Muslim refugees from Syria were granted U.S. visas, while only 28 of Syria’s estimated 700,000 Christian refugees were provided with visas."

This further supports Raymond Ibrahim's important article, Obama Throws Christian Refugees to Lions.

by Warren Mass, The New American — September 16, 2015

Two archbishops from the Middle East have complained that the United States unfairly discriminates against Christians from their region when they apply for U.S. visas.

Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, Iraq, and Melkite Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart of Aleppo, Syria, aired their grievances at an August 4 press conference at the 2015 Knights of Columbus Convention in Philadelphia.

The archbishops cited federal data indicating that, since October 2014, 906 Muslim refugees from Syria were granted U.S. visas, while only 28 of Syria’s estimated 700,000 Christian refugees were provided with visas. They said that even considering that Christians account for just 10 percent of the population of Syria, the number of visas granted to Christians seems widely disproportional.

Although the U.S. government does not track the religious affiliation of immigrants, Christianity Today nevertheless reported that the bishops gathered their information “from official U.S. government sources.” 

Obama Throws Christian Refugees to Lions

The anti-Constantine's support for Muslim genocide against Christians is undeniable. 

by Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute — September 25, 2015

Members of California’s Iraqi Christian community and their supporters protest the months-long detention of Iraqi Christian asylum-seekers at the Otay Mesa detention center.

The fate of those Iraqi Christians who had fled from the Islamic State only to be incarcerated in the United States has finally been decided by the Obama administration: they are to be thrown back to the lions, where they will likely be persecuted if not slaughtered like so many Iraqi Christians before them.

Fifteen of the 27 Iraqi Christians that have been held at a detention center in Otay Mesa, California, for approximately six months, are set to be deported in the coming weeks. Some have already been deported and others are being charged with immigration fraud.

Many of the Iraqi Christian community in San Diego—including U.S. citizen family members vouching for the refugees—had hopes that they would eventually be released.  Mark Arabo, a spokesman for the Chaldean community, had argued that “They’ve escaped hell [IS]. Let’s allow them to reunite with their families.”  One of the detained women had begged to see her ailing mother before she died.  The mother died before they could reunite, and now the daughter is to be deported, possibly back to the hell of the Islamic State.

Why are Christian minorities, who are the most to suffer from the chaos engulfing the Middle East, the least wanted in the United States?

The answer is that the Obama administration defines refugees as people “persecuted by their government.”  In other words, the only “real” refugees are those made so due to the actions of Bashar Assad.  As for those who are being raped, slaughtered, and enslaved based on their religious identity by so-called “rebel” forces fighting Assad—including the Islamic State—their status as refugees is evidently considered dubious at best.

St Silouan: On Love for One's Enemies

Icon of St Silouan (Sept 24)
by Fr Andrew Tregubov 

Today is the feast of St Silouan, who came to love and pray for the whole world, and whose teachings on loving our enemies present us with a great challenge.

The world does not understand what love is. But the saints, because they are united to Christ, do grasp the mystery of love. Even love for one's enemies.

We must love our brother, our neighbor, our enemy. Yet one cannot love evil itself, one cannot love falsehood, for to do so would be to affirm it, to say "Amen" to it, and thus to wrongly and mistakenly give it validity, power, enthronement in the hierarchy of values.

The saints understand this, the difference between loving my neighbor, the person right in front of me, and honoring what he stands for. I must love my neighbor, even if he is my enemy, even if he has dressed me in an orange jumpsuit and is sawing my head off with a serrated blade because of my love for Jesus Christ. "Father forgive him, for he knows not what he does!"

I must forgive him because what he does to me is evil. I cannot say that the evil is not evil. I cannot honor the evil, for by doing so I dishonor the good. I cannot honor the lie without dishonoring the Truth. But I can and must love and forgive the person himself.

The saints understand that we must stand for Truth. It was his confession of the Truth for which Jesus was condemned and crucified.

And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, saying, “Do You answer nothing? What is it these men testify against You?” But He kept silent and answered nothing.
Again the high priest asked Him, saying to Him, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”
Jesus said, “I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”
Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy! What do you think?”
And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death.

— Mark 14:60-64 

Jesus said, "I AM." Ego Eimi, in this simplest statement, equating himself with "He Who Is." Jesus speaks the Truth for He is the Truth, and He cannot deny the Truth, for then He would be a liar. John presents this confession of Jesus in a different context, in Jesus' discussion with the Jews.

Resurgence of Islam threatens ancient St Catherine's Monastery on Mt Sinai

Threat of Muslim jihad terrorist attacks forced closure of the monastery in 2013, shuttering the entire local, micro-economy.

Apparently, even the spurious "Charter of Privileges" — supposedly written by Muhammad for the monks at St Catherine's and conveying his protection and favor upon them and all Christians under Muslim rule for all time — has not had sufficient influence on the Islamic State nor on any jihadist group to prevent their relentless and fierce persecution of this ancient and revered monastery and Christians throughout all Islamic lands.

You can help support St Catherine's Monastery through Friends of Mount Sinai Monastery, a special foundation collecting donations for St. Catherine and its monks. Learn more and donate via the following link: www.mountsinaimonastery.org/donate/

St. Catherine Greek Orthodox monastery needs financial help to survive

by Ioanna Zikakou, Greek Reporter via Pravmir — September 22, 2015

The monastery was also shut down by Egyptian authorities in 2013 fearing a terrorism attack, according to Al Monitor.

The Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai city, Egypt is located at the very place where according to Christianity God appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush, beneath the Mount of the Decalogue. It is the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery, with a history that can be traced back over seventeen centuries.

The monastery offers job positions for numerous people in the area helping the local economy flourish. St. Catherine’s Monastery employs 400 workers at its olive groves, grape farms, honey bee farms and several processing facilities. When Egyptian authorities decided the monastery’s complete shutdown in 2013 the locals were left struggling, and since then the situation remains harsh. The Bedouin residents were forced to sell their camels, since they were not able to feed them and in order to provide for their families.

Pressure Grows to Declare War Against Christians a Genocide

"Christianity in the Middle East is shattered," Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska Republican, told the IDC [In Defense of Christians] conference on Sept. 9. "The ancient faith tradition lies beaten, broken and dying. Yet Christians in Iraq and Syria are hanging on in the face of the Islamic State's barbarous onslaught. This is genocide."

As I repeatedly strive to emphasize, "genocide" is a secular term, and while it is accurate in a forensic way, for us, as Orthodox Christians, we must school ourselves to speak of this as a "New Age of Martyrdom." 

Our brothers and sisters in Iraq, Syria and the Middle East — as well as in Egypt and throughout North and Central Africa, as well as in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia and throughout the entire Islamic world — are ascending a real Golgotha. Christianity is being crucified anew, and the evil is increasing in vast waves of persecution. Europe and North America are next. 

We must wake up, stand with our suffering brothers and sisters, pray for them, honor them as confessors and martyrs, and prepare ourselves for the trials to come through diligently living and practicing our most holy faith.

And, we must clearly state that this "New Age of Martyrdom," this "genocide," is the direct result of devout Muslims following the commands in the Qur'an, imitating Muhammad's example as extolled in the ahadith and the Sira, and applying the doctrines of Islamic jurisprudence. It is not just the Islamic State waging war against and persecuting Christians. It is also ordinary Muslims — neighbors of Christians — who are taking their religion more seriously and acting according to its commands. 

Islam itself is the direct cause of the first genocide of the 21st century, this "New Age of Martyrdom."

Pressure Grows to Declare War Against Christians a Genocide

by Douglas Burton, Washington Times via AINA, September 23, 2015:

Memorial to martyrs killed in 2010 church bombing; Baghdad, Iraq.

Human rights activists see it. Foreign leaders see it. And more than 80 members of the U.S. Congress see it. Together, they are pressuring the leader of the free world to declare there is a Christian genocide going on in the Middle East.

Their campaign -- which was discussed at a Capitol Hill conference earlier this month hosted by the two-year-old In Defense of Christians nonprofit -- has an influential ally on its side.

Pope Francis, making his first visit to the United States on Wednesday, has noted the number of Christians being martyred today exceeds the number martyred during the days of the Roman Empire.

In fact, the sheer numbers of Christians murdered and tortured every year in a dozen countries in the developing world is only getting worse, thanks to the relentless campaign of the ISIS and al-Qaeda terror groups.

For example, in 2014, 2,000 Christians were murdered in Iraq alone, which is the number cited by historian Edward Gibbon as the total number of Christian martyrs in the first three centuries of Christianity.

In Iraq, where Christian churches were planted 1,800 years ago, Christianity has been wiped out except for 200,000 refugees sheltering in Kurdistan and a few in Baghdad. Their language, Aramaic; their homeland, the Nineveh Plain; and their calamity are Biblical in scale. Hundreds have been publicly tortured and executed in Mosul while women and children have suffered severe levels of sexual violence since the Islamic State took control in 2014.

"Christianity in the Middle East is shattered," Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska Republican, told the IDC conference on Sept. 9. "The ancient faith tradition lies beaten, broken and dying. Yet Christians in Iraq and Syria are hanging on in the face of the Islamic State's barbarous onslaught. This is genocide."

“Wake Up!”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, July 2015

During celebrations of St Peter and St Paul, the Iraqi priest Fr Douglas Bazi further reflected that “We cannot celebrate the feast of two martyrs without remembering the living martyrs of our time.”

by Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute — September 21, 2015

Not only is the Islamic State (IS) persecuting Christians but so are the U.S.-supported “rebel” forces, which the Obama administration assures are “moderate.”  According to a recent NPR report, “With backing from U.S. allies, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, this [U.S. supported] rebel coalition fights both the Syrian regime and the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS. But the coalition has extremists in its own ranks who have mistreated Christians and forced them out of their homes”—just as IS has done.

In response, Mideast Christian leaders made clear that, far from expecting the West to intervene on their behalf, they merely wish that the West stops arming, supporting, or simply facilitating the Islamic terrorists making their lives a living hell—as plainly spelled out in a Christian Today article titled, “Syrian Christian leader tells West: ‘Stop arming terror groups who are massacring our people.”

According to the Patriarch of Antioch, Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, “If the West wants to do something about the present crisis, the most effective thing would be to support local governments, which need sufficient armies and forces to maintain security and defend respective populations against attacks.  State institutions need to be strengthened and stabilized. Instead, what we see is their forced dismemberment being fueled from the outside.”

Another Christian leader had another message to the West.  According to Iraqi priest Fr Douglas Bazi, once a torture victim who takes care of thousands of refugees forced to flee Mosul since the Islamic State took over the city last year, the West needs to “Wake up!”  During celebrations of St Peter and St Paul, the Iraqi priest further reflected that “We cannot celebrate the feast of two martyrs without remembering the living martyrs of our time.”

Nor are these martyrs limited to the Middle East.  Among the many Christians slaughtered in Nigeria in July was a young girl who was stoned to death for refusing to renounce Christ and convert to Islam.  Pastor Mark lost his daughter, Monica, in the Chibok abduction which involved almost 300 predominantly Christian girls kidnapped at the hands of the Islamic organization, Boko Haram.  He was told that his daughter refused to change her religion, and so was buried from the neck on down and then stoned to death.

The rest of July’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following accounts, listed by theme.

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Nigeria: Dozens of Christian churches were attacked in the Muslim-majority northern regions of the nation, where Boko Haram is headquartered:

• Thirty-two churches and 300 houses were burnt when Boko Haram jihadis attacked Mussa community in Borno State.  Thirteen people were also killed in the jihad.

• A female Muslim suicide bomber blew herself up in the Redeemed Christian Church of God on Sunday, July 5, in the town of Potiskum.  The priest and a woman and her two children were killed.   “People were just going to the church when the bomber entered, otherwise the casualty figure would have been higher,” said a Red Cross worker.   Earlier it was revealed that some of the nearly 300 Christian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram last year were being beaten, forced to convert to Islam, and indoctrinated into believing that their mission is to “slit the throats of Christians and to carry out suicide attacks.”

• On Sunday, July 12, explosives planted at a church in Jos went off but there were no casualties as the bomb was detected by the church’s security personnel.

• In response to a mosque explosion that killed 20 people—part of Boko Haram’s “Ramadan killing spree”—rioting Muslims burned down two churches on July 6 in Jos.  According to the report, the mosque attack “has revived historic tensions between members of both faiths in Jos.  Christians in Nigeria now not only fear Boko Haram, but also attacks from their Muslim neighbors.”

Iraq:  The Islamic state blew up another Christian church under its authority, the Mother of Aid Church which had stood in central Mosul for thousands of years.  The blast also killed four children who were near the church at the time.  IS also transformed the St. Joseph Church, an ancient Chaldean church in Mosul, into a mosque.  Pictures of St. Joseph show that the dome has been painted black and the church has been stripped of all crosses and Christian symbols and images.

Egypt: Three church related attacks occurred:

Time to tell the Truth about Islam

"Islamic radicals have a very good case that their version of Islam is truer to the original than the moderate version. The proper way to undermine their ideology/theology is not to cast doubts on their interpretation of Islam, but to cast doubts about the truth of Islam itself."

by William Kilpatrick, The Turning Point Project — August 30, 2015

The important thing about a religion, said C.S. Lewis, is not whether it makes one feel good, but whether it is true. This observation came to mind while reading a recent piece by Rev. James Schall, S.J., titled “Speaking Honestly about Islam.”

Schall suggests that we haven’t been telling the truth about Islam because to do so violates the feel-good principle that currently rules Western societies. According to the feel-good principle, self-esteem is the highest value. And therefore every person, culture, and religion has an inalienable right to feel good about oneself/itself.

People hew to the Islam-is-peace line because they don’t want to give offense and also because they don’t want to be accused of a hate crime. It’s a well-founded fear. In many Western societies, numerous individuals—and some of them very prominent individuals—have been put on trial for the crime of criticizing Islam: Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant in Canada, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Lars Hedegaard in Denmark, and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria, to name a few. In several cases, the defendants were informed that truth was no defense. The accuracy of their criticism, they were told, was beside the point (the point being that they had said hurtful things).

Honesty is the best policy, according to the old maxim, but many Western governments have adopted a deliberate policy of prevarication in regard to Islam. Hardly a day goes by when some Western leader or other isn’t explaining away the latest jihad attack as having nothing to do with Islam.