Churches, Monasteries Abandoned in Small Syrian Christian Town Following Rebel Fighting

Christian Post via AINA — 9/17/2013
by Katherine Weber

The fate of the small, predominantly Christian town of Maaloula, Syria, remains uncertain after remaining rebel factions continued to clash with the occupying Syrian army over the weekend. Reports from the area indicate that most of the village's cathedrals and worshipping spaces were abandoned Sunday due to the threat of a continued rebel presence linked to al-Qaeda.

Imperial Orthodox Society to Extend Humanitarian Aid to Syria

Pravoslavie.ru — 9/11/2013

The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, which is the oldest public organization in Russia, "intends to continue giving humanitarian aid to the Syrian people no matter what circumstances which may arise in Syria", reports ITAR-TASS. This has been stated today at a press conference by its deputy chairwoman Elena Agapova.

Syria "now relies on Russia and our people," she said, stressing that the society intends "to extend its humanitarian activity, to bear the spirit of peacemaking to the Biblical region using public diplomacy as a means of mild force".

Since the beginning of this year, the Imperial Orthodox Society has sent humanitarian aid to Syria in the amount of 58.8 million rubles. This was reported today at the press conference by the chairman of the IOPS Moscow office Sergei Baidakov.

"Six batches of humanitarian aid were sent; they were given in equal parts to Patriarch of the Church of Antioch John X and Grand Mufti of Syria Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun for distribution among the needy, regardless of their faith," said Baidakov.

Another batch of humanitarian aid was transferred early in August to the central hospital for children in Damascus; it included medicaments, medical technical equipment, food, and other primary necessities.

Today the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society has announced the beginning of fundraising for purchase and delivery of baby food to Syria. All those wishing to help can leave dry milk formulas in the Church of Holy Prophet Elijah in the Obydenny lane in Moscow or transmit monetary funds to the account of IOPS.

Ecumenical Patriarch decries persecution of Christians in Middle East

"Violence and persecution against Christians cannot leave the rest of us indifferent and inactive."

Catholic Culture via Pravmir — 9/17/2013

Speaking at an ecumenical gathering during a pastoral visit to Finland, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople decried the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

“One of these crucial challenges is undoubtedly the rise of so-called religious fundamentalism, culminating in unjustifiable acts of violence and destruction as a result of religious hatred,” said Patriarch Bartholomew, who holds a primacy of honor among the Eastern Orthodox churches.

“The image that is particularly critical and lasting in our minds is the example of persecution endured today by Christians, irrespective of confession, in the wider region of the Middle East, where even the simple admission of Christian identity places the very existence of our faithful in daily threat,” he added. “These exceptionally extreme and expansive occurrences of violence and persecution against Christians cannot leave the rest of us – who are blessed to leave peacefully and in some sense of security – indifferent and inactive.”

Russian Christians dig deep to help Syrians

VOR via Pravmir — 9/14/2013

Humanitarian aid collection for the people of Syria at Moscow’s

Martha and Mary Convent. Photo: RIA Novo

Ordinary Russians are largely opposed to any military action in Syria. But that doesn’t mean they’re indifferent to the plight of people there. Parishioners up and down the country have been collecting money to send to troubled Syrians. In the past few months Russian churchgoers have sent $1.3 million to Syria.

They’ve dispatched the money to a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, which will buy Syrians basic goods like food, clothes, and mattresses.

The collection started when Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Orthodox Church in Russia, called upon Russian Christians to donate cash in June.

Since then Russians in churches as far away as Vladivostok and Murmansk have given money to be sent to Syria.

Vasily Rulinsky is from the Orthodox church’s charitable projects department in Moscow.

“It all started when a message from the Patriarch Kirill was read out in all the Orthodox churches in Russia. It was read out on 25 June, 2013. And in this message the Patriarch described the situation in Syria, described the needs of the people and called for anyone who is not indifferent to the suffering of our brothers to donate in order to help our brothers in Syria and other countries of the Middle East where they are forced at the moment to live as refugees.

Struggling with the Scandal of the Cross

Orthodox Christians are celebrating the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, which was last Saturday (September 14). In this reflection, Fr Steven Kostoff discusses how Islam struggles with the historicity of the crucifixion of Jesus, and what that means for Christians who worship Jesus as the Son of God, and venerate the Cross. 

Struggling with the Scandal of the Cross

by Fr Steven Kostoff — Orthodox Christian Meditations — 9/16/2013

On September 14, we began our festal celebration of the Feast of The Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross, to give the Feast its full title.  This feast has a full octave (Leavetaking on September 21), thus stressing the importance of the Cross in the life of the Church and in our personal lives.  It is up to us to maintain our concentration on the Cross throughout this week, and hopefully to remain vigilant in our approach to the Cross in our personal prayer life, including the veneration of the Cross within our households.  To further stress 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.

It was the Apostle Paul who already experienced the rejection of the Cross within his lifetime; and who thus anticipated this rejection throughout the centuries, when he very succinctly and profoundly captured the unbelieving world’s attitude toward the Cross in this 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 Jews who were contemporary with the Apostle Paul 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, for it was “the Lord of glory” who was crucified according to the Apostle Paul.  As the biblical scholar Richard Kugelman put it:

The gospel message shocks Jewish nationalism and Greek intellectualism.  The Jews expected and demanded signs, i.e. spectacular miracles that showed divine intervention.  They looked for a messiah who would inaugurate their nation’s sovereignty over the Gentiles by a display of miraculous power (Mt. 12:38; 16:4; Jn. 4:48; 6:30-31).  The Greeks searched for “wisdom,” i.e., philosophies that pretended to give a satisfactory explanation of man and the cosmos.

God, in and through Christ, transformed what was 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 from 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”  (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 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.

Syrian jihadists murder dozens of Alawites after Muslim cleric urges them to "kill the enemies of Allah"

The Alawite branch of Islam is that to which the ruling Assad family belongs. They also tend to live peacefully with their Christian neighbors in villages throughout Syria, and are considered a heretical sect by the Sunnis.  

"Syria jihadists claim they killed Homs Alawites" 

AFP via Jihad Watch — 9/16/2013

The jihadist Al-Nusra Front said in an Internet statement on Sunday its fighters attacked three villages in Syria's Homs province and killed dozens of Alawites five days earlier.

“The people's wall of fear has been broken, as this was the first time these villages were entered and such a high number was killed,” the Al-Qaeda-linked group said in the statement published on a jihadist forum.

Al-Nusra said its fighters entered the villages of Massudiyeh, Maksar al-Hissan and Jab al-Jerah on Tuesday and killed 30 members of the Alawite community, to which President Bashar al-Assad's clan belongs.

The statement said Al-Nusra fighters were urged by an Islamic jurist “to kill the Nusairis, enemies of God”, using a pejorative term for Alawites.

Syrian opposition says Christians will live as dhimmis in Sharia state

Jihad Watch — 9/16/2013

Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III and other clerics at a funeral

for three Christians murdered by Syrian jihadis in Maaloula

"The commanders of the Islamist brigades, who have declared more than once that their project was to establish a caliphate, have repeatedly indicated that no one will persecute the Christians or drive them out of their homes because they are 'people of the book' and dhimmis (non-Muslim citizens of the Islamic state), so there are no problems with them, unlike the rest of the communities such as Shiites, Alawites and Druze."

So apparently they want to subjugate the Christians, in accord with the cornerstone of the dhimmi system, Qur'an 9:29, which mandates that Muslims fight against the "People of the Book" until they "pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued" (9:29). And the Shiites, Alawites and Druze will evidently just be massacred.

"Syrian Opposition Fails To Reassure Christians," by Tareq al Abed, translated from As-Safir (Lebanon) in Al-Monitor, September 11 (thanks to AINA):

Syrian Christians as a whole have not thrown their support behind either side in the Syrian war. Nevertheless, Christians in Syria have been subjected to a lot of pressure by both the regime and the opposition, which failed to give them (or any religious or ethnic Syrian component) any assurances or support.

Some armed groups have accused the church of supporting the regime. And many of the opposition’s statements and video clips do not reassure minorities that they will be participants in the new Syria.

The political opposition: failure without borders

In the revolution’s first months, Christians did join the protests in various towns and villages. One day of protests was even called “Good Friday.” In several areas, the churches opened their doors to displaced persons and those affected by the war, as in Daraa, Aleppo and Hama. But when the revolution was militarized and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was formed, Christians started fearing for their future role in light of the growing Islamist trend in the various armed opposition battalions.

Matters became worse after some oppositionists in the field accused the regime of supporting the Christians, citing celebrations in al-Kassa’a and Bab Touma in Damascus. Christians’ fears were reinforced after bombings, shelling and clashes broke out at churches in Damascus and other sites such as Irbeen in the Damascus countryside, Homs and Deir ez-Zor.

In addition to all that, the political opposition has failed miserably to reassure the Christians and has neglected to address many worrisome events. Father Fadi Haddad was killed in Katana, in the Damascus countryside. Bishops Boulos al-Yazigi and Youhanna Ibrahim were kidnapped in Aleppo. Father Paolo Dall’Oglio disappeared in Raqqa. Clashes recently reached Maaloula in the Qalamun. And there was news about attacks on churches and monasteries in Ras al-Ain.

Mikail, a young Coptic who fled Minya: Christians persecuted by Muslim Brotherhood, but also Mubarak

"With Mubarak maybe there was more security for us Copts because the Brotherhood was relegated to illegality, but on a social level, nothing has changed... The percentage of Muslim democrats is poor and of little influence, the police still do not listen to our complaints, the problem is deeply rooted."

Asia News via Pravmir — 9/15/2013

Amir Tadros coptic Church in Minya, some 250 kms south of Cairo, which was set

ablaze by Muslim Brotherhood supporters on August 14, 2013.

AFP PHOTO / VIRGINIE NGUYEN HOAN

Rome (AsiaNews) – Mikail, a 23 year old Coptic Egyptian, left his country to seek political asylum in Italy. He is originally from Minya, one of the cities of Upper Egypt in which, after the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi, the Islamist retaliation against Christians has been particularly cruel. “At least 50 churches were destroyed – he tells AsiaNews – our homes and our stores have been marked with a cross. I had a carpenters shop and it was set on fire on Friday, the day of prayer for Muslims, the Georges supermarket (his friend and traveling companion ed.) was set alight in front of his eyes. ”

He describes another Egypt, one in which – in spite of the media exaltation – the fall of Hosni Mubarak and overthrow of Mohammed Morsi have had a negligible weight on the difficulties that Christian minority is forced to deal with every day . “Under Morsi the economy collapsed and Islamists have had more freedom – he explains – with Mubarak maybe there was more security for us Copts because the Brotherhood was relegated to illegality , but on a social level , nothing has changed .” And he continues: “The percentage of Muslim democrats is poor and of little influence , the police still do not listen to our complaints , the problem is deeply rooted .”

His story shows that the violence against the Christian minority has escalated in recent months. But it was already a nationwide reality long before the Brotherhood ascended to government. Although the 30-year dictatorship of Mubarak kept taps on radical Islam , discrimination and hostility have always marked the relationship between faith groups especially in the south of the country. ” In Egypt, it is forbidden to build churches , a ban that was in force under Mubarak and continues to exist – says the young man – three years ago, a cousin in Giza spent 40 days in jail because he was helping to build a parish; the police killed two Christians then and the news was reported on websites . ”

“We must strengthen the foundations of Christian-Muslim coexistence”, His Holiness Aram I

OCP Media — 9/15/2013

His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan invited the Heads of Christian Communities in the Middle East to meet in Amman from 3-4 September 2013 to discuss the challenges they are facing as a result of the conflicts in the region.

His Holiness Aram I appointed Archbishops Sebouh Sarkissian, Prelate of Armenians in Iran, and Nareg Alemezian, the Ecumenical Officer, to represent him and read his message.

After thanking the King for the initiative, His Holiness Aram I stated that he regretted the absence of Muslim Religious Leaders. Catholicos Aram I then identified some issues for the consideration of the participants:

1. Referring to the theme of the gathering “Challenges that Christians are facing today,” the Catholicos said that the challenges arising from the conflicts affected everyone in the region, because the people of the Middle East are one.

2. As one of the Presidents of the Middle East Council of Churches, he said that although historically Christians have sometimes disagreed on theological issues, they have always had a common mind on basic issues.

3. The moral and ethical values of Christians and Muslims, as two Monotheistic religions, are rooted in similar principles, which transcend political tensions.

4. Christians and Muslims have lived in mutual recognition and respect for centuries; their basic principles are founded on their common Monotheistic religious roots. Today, religious communities should not emphasize differences and incite mistrust and fear.

REPORTS FROM MA'LOULA: EITHER ISLAM OR BEHEADING

This is the classic form of Islamic Jihad for fourteen centuries: convert or die. The Obama-supported Syrian jihadi 'rebels' do not even offer the former 'Third Choice' of dhimmitude, paying the jizya tax and accepting humiliating second-class status under Muslim domination.

Pravoslavie — 9/13/2013

Christians from Ma'loula, seized by militants, are being forced to accept Islam, reports Linga. Sources in Ma'loula informed the agency that the militants were threatening to kill them unless they accept Islam.

"Where is President Obama to see what is happening to us?" the agency's spokesman says.

One of the residents has reported that a great number of bearded militants entered the town, shouting "Allahu Akbar", and attacked the Christian houses and churches. They killed several people soon after Ma'loula had been seized. "We heard shooting and I saw corpses in the middle of Balharh street," he said. "Where is Obama to see what is happening to us?!"

Another resident has related: "I saw five bearded people who were threatening Christians and saying that they must accept Islam or they would be beheaded". Another citizen has reported that he saw one church burning, and how a militant entered another Church and stole something from it.

The residents of Ma'loula are asking for prayers.

Go here for two videos with the original post.