Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Londonistan: 423 New Mosques, 500 Closed Churches, tell story of rise of Islam, collapse of Christianity in England

How long before the black flag of Islam flies over Buckingham Palace? The advance of Islam and the collapse of England and the West is accelerating, and will soon pass a tipping point, shocking the world.

The below report on the Islamization of London is hardly surprising to regular readers of this blog, as these related posts document:

Gatestone Institute: 423 New Mosques, 500 Closed Churches in London
by Breitbart London, April 2, 2017:


Muslim Friday Prayers in London, circa 2013.
The Gatestone Institute reports Sunday on the striking rate of closures of churches in the United Kingdom’s capital city, a trend mirrored elsewhere in Europe, and the blooming number of mosques that have been established in their stead.

Reporting on the change in religious observation in London, the Gatestone Institute writes:

“London is more Islamic than many Muslim countries put together”, according to Maulana Syed Raza Rizvi, one of the Islamic preachers who now lead “Londonistan”, as the journalist Melanie Phillips has called the English capital. No, Rizvi is not a right-wing extremist. Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Laureate for Literature, was less generous; he called the UK “a cesspit for Islamists”. 
“Terrorists can not stand London multiculturalism”, London’s mayor Sadiq Khan said after the recent deadly terror attack at Westminster. The opposite is true: British multiculturalists are feeding Islamic fundamentalism. Above all, Londonistan, with its new 423 mosques, is built on the sad ruins of English Christianity. 

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Lenten Pop-Quiz #2: What Orthodox Saint condemned Islam as 'the abomination of desolation clearly foretold to us by the prophets'?

He also wrote of the Muslims: "Those God-fighters boast of prevailing over all, assiduously and unrestrainably imitating their leader, who is the devil..."

Hint: He was the author of the Life of St Mary of Egypt, and was Patriarch of Jerusalem during the First Wave of Islamic Jihad immediately after the death of Muhammad.


The Answer:  St Sophronius (commemorated March 11)

St Sophronius' descriptions of barbaric Muslim attacks on churches, monasteries, villages and fields, of their tearing down of the crosses and blaspheming the Name of Jesus Christ, give the lie to revisionist histories foisted today on our schoolchildren and in our universities that claim Islam advanced peacefully in its early years, spread by Muslim preachers and welcomed by local populations.

No, Sophronius and contemporaries also writing in the seventh century make clear that Islam spread by the sword, just as is commanded in the Koran:

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) 
Kill the mushrikun [unbelievers] wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. (Sura 9:5) 
I will cast terror into the hearts of those who have disbelieved, so strike them over the necks, and smite over all their fingers and toes. (Sura 8:12) 
Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemies of Allah and your enemies. (Sura 8:60)

St Sophronius set an eternal example for all Christians (but especially for clergy and bishops) by bravely confessing Jesus Christ and the True Faith during the horrific invasions by the bloodthirsty Arab Muslims in the late 630s following the death of Muhammad. His efforts to ensure peace and preserve the churches and shrines of the Holy City are recounted in this vignette from his Life:

"Toward the end of his life, St Sophronius and his flock lived through a two year siege of Jerusalem by the Moslems. Worn down by hunger, the Christians finally agreed to open the city gates, on the condition that the enemy spare the holy places. But this condition was not fulfilled, and St Sophronius died in grief over the desecration of the Christian holy places." (Source)

Thursday, March 30, 2017

The Westminster Jihad Attack: 'Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century'

Andrew McCarthy sees the writing on the wall, and what the escalating plague of Islamic jihad attacks really means: the rise of Islam and the End of the West as we know it.


Islam and the Jihad in London
It’s not non-Western. It’s anti-Western.


By Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review Online via AINA, March 25, 2017:




It was a careful choice of words, Bernard Lewis being nothing if not careful. In 2004, the West audibly gasped when its preeminent scholar of Islam famously told the German newspaper Die Welt,"Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century," if not sooner.

Listen carefully. He did not say that Muslims will be the majority population in what is still recognizably Europe. No, Professor Lewis said "Europe will be Islamic."

Khalid Masood acted "on unambiguous scriptural commands to war against non-Muslims."

We are not talking about Muslims here. We are talking about Islam. Lots of individual Muslims desire peaceful coexistence, even assimilation. But Islam's aim is to prevail. So, yet again this week, Lewis's foreboding has been brought to the fore by a jihadist mass-murder attack, this time in London.

As we go to press, five innocent people are dead after Khalid Masood, a terrorist acting on unambiguous scriptural commands to war against non-Muslims, rammed his rental Hyundai SUV into dozens of pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, many of them tourists taking in the iconic views of Parliament. About 50 people suffered injuries, some of them grave, so the death toll may yet rise.

Masood, a burly 52-year-old weightlifter with a long criminal record that included vicious stabbings, then crashed the car through the gate at Westminster Palace, home of the West's most venerable democratic legislature. He alighted brandishing two long knives, which he used to kill Keith Palmer, a police officer who, pursuant to British policy, was unarmed despite being assigned to provide security at one of the world's foremost terror targets. Masood was finally shot dead by a protection officer attached to England's defense minister.

There immediately began the ritual media pondering over Masood's motive. Yes, what could it possibly have been?

I'm going to stick with the patently obvious.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Can There Have Been Two Annunciations?


Islam claims the archangel Gabriel came to Muhammad commanding him to "Recite" and ushering in his prophetic calling. What are we to make of this "Second Annunciation? 



On March 25, the Orthodox Church commemorates the Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary.  As the hymn for the Feast says,

Today is the beginning of our salvation,
The revelation of the eternal mystery!
The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin
As Gabriel announces the coming of Grace...

Islam also begins with an annunciation of sorts, to Muhammad, (not) coincidentally by a spirit being also identified as the angel Jibril (Gabriel). However, the nature and outcome of that annunciation is quite different from the one to the Virgin Mary six centuries earlier. As St Gregory Palamas noted in the 14th century, Muhammad's actions were "instigated by the devil":

"[Muhammad] came with war, knives, pillaging, forced enslavement, murders, and acts that are not from the good God but instigated by the chief manslayer, the devil."  (Source)

This article contrasts the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, with that 'second annunciation', to Muhammad. This is one of the most significant and revealing facts about Islam, one which forces us to confront at least two very serious questions:

  1. If Muslims worship the Same God as Christians, how could that Same God possibly send two such radically opposed revelations and messages? 
  2. And, could the sender of those two messages be the Same God if He chose to send His revelation to Muhammad through such a dark, threatening and blatantly evil "annunciation"?

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Beyond the Cross

The Cross is God's final word on revealing Who He Is, through His Son Jesus Christ. The limitless, infinite humility and radical, self-emptying love through which Jesus restores us to the Father, is the most eloquent word ever spoken... uttered in silence as He lays down His life for us.

During this week at the mid-point of Great Lent, during which the Cross is brought out into the middle of the Church for the faithful to venerate, it seemed right to share this article I originally posted a couple of years ago.

+ + +

For the Veneration of the Cross, I'd like to share a selection from my book, Facing Islam. This is taken from the conclusion of the chapter on Muhammad, 'Prophet Motives - Was Muhammad a Man of God?'.


Beyond the Cross




By far the most compelling, overarching point to emphasize as we close this chapter is the Person and Mission of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the absolute, incontestable finality and divine pre-eminence of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, through Whom God the Father has wrought salvation for mankind.

Fr. Thomas Hopko expresses the essence of the Christian message through the centrality of Christ and the Cross as follows:

Beyond the Cross there is nothing more God can do. Beyond the Cross there is nothing more God can say. Beyond the Cross there is nothing more to be revealed. (Fr. Thomas Hopko, The Word of the Cross, SVS Press, emphasis added.)

The working out of salvation in each of our lives through our cooperation (synergia) with the Holy Spirit is “just details” as Fr. Hopko succinctly puts it, but God’s Act of Salvation—the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ (and of course, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost)—is without any doubt the central event in all of history.

Thus there is no need for a subsequent revelation after Christ, least of all one which seeks to enslave the world to a barbaric legalistic system of belief and practice (i.e. Islam and sharia law) after we have embraced and been embraced by the grace of God, “for [we] are not under law, but under grace” (Rom 6:14).

In short, after Christ, Islam has no place, no relevance, no raison d’etre. If we stand firm on the rock of our confession, on Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (cf. Mt 16:16-18), then we will never be shaken by the assaults against our Faith...

The spiritual forces behind Islam know this, that Islam has no reason for its existence because of Christ and the Cross. It is the centrality of Jesus Christ and His Cross against which Islam wages its desperate war.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Pop Quiz for Lent: What great Orthodox saint condemned Muhammad's actions as 'instigated by the devil'?

If you're a regular reader of this blog, or have my book, Facing Islam, you'll recall this was the bold statement of St Gregory Palamas, whom we commemorated last week on the Second Sunday of Great Lent.

Here is the full quote:

"It is true that Muhammad started from the east and came to the west, as the sun travels from east to west. Nevertheless he came with war, knives, pillaging, forced enslavement, murders, and acts that are not from the good God but instigated by the chief manslayer, the devil."  
(The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy, Holy Apostles Convent & Dormition Skete, Buena Vista CO, 1990, p. 352.)

It is not really a secret, yet I would suppose that most Orthodox Christians have no idea that St Gregory, during his later years as Archbishop of Thessalonica, was abducted by the Muslim Turks and held for ransom (an income generating crime still used by Muslims to this day, which observers of the Middle East will have to admit).

Suffering cruel hardships, deprivations, and beatings, and so weakened by the ordeal that he died a short time after being ransomed by the Serbs, the holy Gregory nonetheless boldly proclaimed the Orthodox Christian Gospel to his Muslim captors, even though he was putting his life at risk.

Friday, February 24, 2017

Raymond Ibrahim: 'Pope Francis Tears at History’s Ancient Walls against Islam'

Had it not been for Pope Leo IV in the mid-9th century, building high and massive walls to keep out the Muslim invaders, Rome — and indeed all of Europe — might have been conquered for Islam well before the Crusades were even launched.

We live in a new age of Global Islamic Jihad, being waged on multiple fronts. We live in an age that requires walls, wisdom, faith and strength — not multiculturalism, weakness, apostasy and foolishness.


Pope Francis Tears at History’s Ancient Walls against Islam

by Raymond Ibrahim, February 24, 2017:



Pope Francis continues to argue for two interrelated points that, while seemingly humane, compromise Western nations and expose their citizens to danger.

He reiterated his first point earlier this month when he said, “I appeal not to create walls but to build bridges.” Francis has made this appeal frequently, both figuratively (when imploring Western nations not to close their doors against more incoming Muslim migrants) and literally (for instance by characterizing Donald Trump’s proposal to build a U.S.-Mexico wall as “not Christian”).

Francis reiterated his second point a few days ago when he said, “Muslim terrorism does not exist.” His logic is that, because there are Christians who engage in criminal and violent activities—and yet no one blames Christianity for their behavior—so too should Islam not be blamed when Muslims engage in criminal and violent activities.

In this, the Catholic pope appears unable or unwilling to make the pivotal distinction between violence committed in accordance with Islamic teachings, and violence committed in contradiction of Christian teachings.

But there’s another relevant and often overlooked irony: every morning Francis wakes up in the Vatican and looks out his window he sees a very large and concrete reminder that gives the lie to both his argument against walls and his argument in defense of Islam. I speak of the great walls surrounding Vatican City, more specifically the Leonine Walls.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Muslims Targeting US Churches, using Interfaith Outreach to conduct 'Pre-Op Surveillance'

Two reports combine active FBI and local police investigations, with info from Christian pastors and civilian eyewitnesses from several states, to confirm an alarming nationwide trend, which indicates a serious threat to Christian churches in the US from Muslim jihadis.

See the second story below for detailed reporting on how an Islamic organization in Chicago is "using interfaith outreach with Christian churches and Jewish synagogues for the purpose of (1) studying them internally to determine how to best influence their congregations to soften them towards Islam, and (2) to conduct pre-operational surveillance."

Related:


Muslims Targeting U.S. Churches
UTT, December 20, 2016:

Graffiti on a Lutheran Church in San Antonio, Texas reads “Islam or Die” (OCT 2016). In one southwest US state there are at least a dozen investigations on different churches where this has happened.

In the shadow of the savage killing of a priest by muslims during Mass in Normandy, France (July 2016) and the bombing of St. Peter and St. Paul chapel – a part of St. Mark’s Coptic church in Cairo, Egypt – four weeks ago, UTT has received reports in the last several weeks from law enforcement, pastors, and citizens revealing muslims are conducting pre-operation surveillance inside U.S. churches during services. 
The information received by UTT from different states indicates the manner of the surveillance is similar in each case. 
Two muslim males will come into a church during the service and sit together in the back of the church.  They will often take pictures and record video.  When approached by concerned ushers they will either tell their questioners they are “interested” in becoming Christians or they will run. 
This information has been passed to appropriate law enforcement officials, and UTT is aware of a joint investigation between local police and the FBI in at least one of the cases. 
Relatedly, in February 2016, an FBI criminal complaint for Khalil Abu-Rayyan was filed in Eastern District of Michigan alleging he was a muslim who wanted to wage jihad in the U.S., and specifically quoted Abu-Rayyan as confessing his plan to kill Christians at a large church.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Expert warns 50 MILLION Muslims are willing to back violence and terror

The Dutch Professor and Research Director of Migration urges "zero tolerance" for those "here to spread their medieval beliefs... widespread in Islamic countries." 

Adds that "half [the world's Muslims] are attached to an arch-conservative Islam," and he is "very conservative with my estimate of 50 million violent Muslims."


MIGRATION WARNING: Expert warns 50 MILLION Muslims are willing to back violence and terror
By Allan Hall, Express UK, February 13, 2017:




Dutch Professor Ruud Koopmans warned the EU today to block the entry of any refugees whose identity cannot be categorically confirmed.

Prof Koopmans, who is the Director of the Research Unit Migration, Integration, Transnationalisation at the Berlin Social Sciences Centre, said that of the 1 billion adult Muslims in the world, “half of them are attached to an arch-conservative Islam which places little worth on the rights of women, homosexuals, and people of other faiths".

In an interview with a German news website he claimed that of these 500 million conservative Muslims, at least – and probably more – than 50 million are willing to sanction violence.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Canada on verge of passing alarming anti-‘Islamophobia’ motion

Passage of M-103 in the House of Commons on February 16 "would in effect set Canada on the path to imposing a form of Islamic Sharia blasphemy law on all of Canada."


by Steve Jalsevac, February 9, 2017 (LifeSiteNews)

There is an alrming [sic] government development in favor of Islam north of the U.S. border.

Canadian PM Trudeau participating in Islamic ritual that included Islamic initiation prayers. It is not certain if he actually said the initiation prayers, but he was praying during the initiation prayers in a Surrey, British Columbia mosque

A motion that threatens to later lead to a crushing of some core freedoms of all Canadians, resulting in an Islamist-favoring state next to the U.S., appears poised to overwhelmingly pass the House of Commons. This is happening at a time when the country's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, a firm internationalist, is far more amenable to Islam than any prime minister in the nation's history.

Parliamentary Motion M-103 is designed to advance the goal of adding to Canada’s hate crimes laws the undefined crime of “Islamophobia,” which would protect all Muslims and Islam itself from any criticism related to that religion and its Shariah law. The motion has been proposed by Islamic Member of Parliament Iqra Khalid.

All parties so far have indicated they will unanimously vote for M-103. Its passage in the House of Commons on February 16 would in effect set Canada on the path to imposing a form of Islamic Sharia blasphemy law on all of Canada.


Banner typical of many such signs displayed during numerous hate-filled Islamist demonstrations in Europe where the concentration of Islamist immigrants is greater than in North America - so far.

The federal House of Commons motion would likely lead to extraordinary, historically unprecedented special protections for the tenets of one religion in Canada, Islam, a religion radically different from and, with some exceptions, generally very hostile to Christianity and all other religions as directed by later verses in the Koran.