No Future for Christians in Iraq
More than 4,000 U.S. soldiers died in and nearly a trillion dollars spent on a country and people who kill Christians.
ISTANBUL, November 14 (Compass Direct News) – In this Turkish city’s working-class neighborhood of Kurtulus, Arabic can be heard on the streets, signs are printed in the Arabic alphabet and Iraqis congregate in tea shops.
In 99-percent Muslim Turkey, most of these Iraqis are not Muslims. And they are not in Turkey by choice. They are Christian refugees who fled their homeland to escape the murderous violence that increasingly has been directed at them.
It is hard to tell how many of Mosul’s refugees from the recent wave of attacks have made their way to Istanbul, but finding these residents here is not hard. A middle-aged Iraqi refugee who fled Mosul five months ago now attends a Syrian Orthodox Church in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of Tarlabasi, where gypsies, transvestites, and immigrants from Turkey’s east live in hopes of a better life in Istanbul.
Declining to give his name, the refugee said there is no future for Christians in Iraq and that nearly everyone he knew there wanted to leave the country. He said the only hope for Iraqi Christians is for Western countries to open their doors to Christian Iraqi refugees.
“We don’t have hope,” he said. “If these doors aren’t opened, we will be killed.”
Since October, violence in Mosul has pushed more than 12,000 Christians from their homes and left more than two dozen dead, according to U.N. and Christian organizations. In the face of Mosul violence, Iraqi Christians flee to Turkey before settling permanently in another country, usually in a place where their family has gone out before them.
Expecting democracy and freedom, especially freedom of conscience, in a place like Iraq is sort of like planting roses in a bucket of rock salt. Maybe we should have left Saddam Hussein in charge of things over there. Islamic nations and their citizens deserve the brutal dictatorships under which they suffer.
Whole story here.
ROP Update
An article in German magazine Der Spiegel describes Iraqi Christian trying to flee their country to avoid Muslim persecution.
Since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Christians in Mosul have had to fear for their lives. Churches have been set on fire, and priests, doctors, engineers and businesspeople have been murdered. In March, aides found the body of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho on the outskirts of the city. A new series of killings that began in late September has already claimed 18 lives.
To stop the Christians who are fleeing Mosul, their persecutors set up fake checkpoints along the roads leading out of the city. They are often robbed, beaten and even killed. In the Sadik neighborhood, masked men recently stopped a man with his child. When they saw a Christian name on his identification card, they shot the man on the spot. When the boy said the man they had just killed was his father, they shot him as well.
Church members who have not yet fled are finding flyers in their apartments with a “Warning to all Christians.” “If you do not leave,” the flyers read, “you will be slaughtered in three days.”
After all the U.S. blood and treasure poured into the ground in Iraq, it’s depressing to think that we have given power to those who kill our Christian brethren. Perhaps the greatest failure of the Bush administration and U.S. foreign policy has been an inability to recognize and deal effectively with the threat of Islamic brutality.
America as the Last Man Standing
Back in March I posted a video entitled, “Fitna,” by a Dutch politician named Geert Wilders. The post was called “Fitna: Watch While You Can,” because the good folks of the Religion of Perpetual Outrage (ROPO) were threatening Internet service providers who allowed the 16 minute video to air. Some ISPs actually took the video down.
Wilders was in the U.S. a month ago and gave a speech entitled “America as the Last Man Standing,” wherein he talks about the Islamization of Europe.
I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing.
His message is simple. The Europe of tourist destinations like the Eiffel Tower, Brandenburg Gate, Trafalgar Square is changing through Muslim mass migration into a parellel society where Western traditions of rule of law, freedom of speech and justice no longer exist.
All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.
The following are some highlights from the speech:
In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighbourhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II.
The future of Europe is dark:
It is very difficult to be an optimist in the face of the growing Islamization of Europe. All the tides are against us. On all fronts we are losing. Demographically the momentum is with Islam. Muslim immigration is even a source of pride within ruling liberal parties. Academia, the arts, the media, trade unions, the churches, the business world, the entire political establishment have all converted to the suicidal theory of multiculturalism. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a ‘right-wing extremists’ or ‘racists’. The entire establishment has sided with our enemy. Leftists, liberals and Christian-Democrats are now all in bed with Islam.
Civilization under attack:
This is not the first time our civilization is under threat. We have seen dangers before. We have been betrayed by our elites before. They have sided with our enemies before. And yet, then, freedom prevailed.
These are not times in which to take lessons from appeasement, capitulation, giving away, giving up or giving in. These are not times in which to draw lessons from Mr. Chamberlain. These are times calling us to draw lessons from Mr. Churchill and the words he spoke in 1942:
“Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy”.
ROP Update
U.S. presidential politics has knocked news of the Religion of Peace (ROP) off the front page. But the usual suspects in the usual places are up to their usual activities.
Yesterday, CNN reported that Chritian families are fleeing an Iraqi city because of Islamic violence against them. From Dhimmi Watch blog:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — At least 900 Christian families have fled Mosul in the past week, terrified by a series of killings and threats by Muslim extremists ordering them to convert to Islam or face possible death, officials said Saturday.
The attacks may have been prompted by Christian demonstrations ahead of provincial elections, which are to be held by the end of January, the deputy governor of Nineveh province said.
Deputy Gov. Khasro Goran said 13 Christians have been slain in the past two weeks in Mosul, about 260 miles (420 kilometers) north of Baghdad. Fleeing Christians have sought refuge in monasteries and churches and with family members in other towns, an Interior Ministry official said.
The attacks began after hundreds of Christians took to the streets in Mosul and surrounding villages and towns, seeking greater representation on provincial councils, whose members will be chosen in the local elections.
Duraid Mohammed Kashmoula, Nineveh’s governor, told The Associated Press that the exodus was “a major displacement.”
“Of course, al Qaeda elements are behind this campaign against Christians,” Kashmoula told AP.
The Interior Ministry official said the homes of three families were destroyed with explosives Saturday after the occupants left. No injuries were reported.
A week ago, leaflets were distributed in several predominantly Christian neighborhoods, threatening families to “either convert to Islam or pay the jizyah or leave the city or face death,” said the Interior Ministry official.
Historically, jizyah is a tax paid by non-Muslims in exchange for protection.
Yea, that’s sort of like the protection money business in Chicago pay the mob. But at least the mob protection racket protects you.
Offending the Perpetually Offendable
Don’t normally read TheHuffingtonPost.com but the good guys over at Ace of Spade HQ linked to a post by Sam Harris on the ROP’s reaction to the Geert Wilders’ film Fitna. Wilders is, according to Harris, “a conservative Dutch politician and provocateur, has become the latest projectile in the world’s most important culture war: the zero-sum conflict between civil society and traditional Islam.”
Fitna, or “strife,” in Arabic was “deemed offensive because it juxtaposes images of Muslim violence with passages from the Qur’an. Given that the perpetrators of such violence regularly cite these same passages as justification for their actions, merely depicting this connection in a film would seem uncontroversial. Controversial or not, one surely would expect politicians and journalists in every free society to strenuously defend Wilders’ right to make such a film. But then one would be living on another planet, a planet where people do not happily repudiate their most basic freedoms in the name of “religious sensitivity.”
He goes on to cite several instances, including one involving the publication of his own book where the mere thought of offending the delicate sensibilities of murderous Islamic thugs brought about “prior restraint” or self censorship by people who would otherwise be shouting from the rooftops for free speech.
But later in the piece, he makes an interesting comparison between the ROP and the fundamentalist Morman wackadoos under investigation in Texas.
A point of comparison: The controversy of over Fitna was immediately followed by ubiquitous media coverage of a scandal involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). In Texas, police raided an FLDS compound and took hundreds of women and underage girls into custody to spare them the continued, sacramental predations of their menfolk. While mainstream Mormonism is now granted the deference accorded to all major religions in the United States, its fundamentalist branch, with its commitment to polygamy, spousal abuse, forced marriage, child brides (and, therefore, child rape) is often portrayed in the press as a depraved cult. But one could easily argue that Islam, considered both in the aggregate and in terms of its most negative instances, is far more despicable than fundamentalist Mormonism. The Muslim world can match the FLDS sin for sin–Muslims commonly practice polygamy, forced-marriage (often between underage girls and older men), and wife-beating–but add to these indiscretions the surpassing evils of honor killing, female “circumcision,” widespread support for terrorism, a pornographic fascination with videos showing the butchery of infidels and apostates, a vibrant form of anti-semitism that is explicitly genocidal in its aspirations, and an aptitude for producing children’s books and television programs which exalt suicide-bombing and depict Jews as “apes and pigs.”
Any honest comparison between these two faiths reveals a bizarre double standard in our treatment of religion. We can openly celebrate the marginalization of FLDS men and the rescue of their women and children. But, leaving aside the practical and political impossibility of doing so, could we even allow ourselves to contemplate liberating the women and children of traditional Islam?
Later on he writes:
The connection between the doctrine of Islam and Islamist violence is simply not open to dispute. It’s not that critics of religion like myself speculate that such a connection might exist: the point is that Islamists themselves acknowledge and demonstrate this connection at every opportunity and to deny it is to retreat within a fantasy world of political correctness and religious apology. Many western scholars, like the much admired Karen Armstrong, appear to live in just such a place. All of their talk about how benign Islam “really” is, and about how the problem of fundamentalism exists in all religions, only obfuscates what may be the most pressing issue of our time: Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world’s Muslims, is antithetical to civil society. A recent poll showed that thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) believe that a person should be killed for leaving the faith. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should have been brought to justice. And these are British Muslims.
Someone, I forget who said the U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact. I am a First Amendment absolutist. I think all speech no matter how obnoxious is protected under our U.S. Constitution. I also think people should be free to practice any religion or no religion as they see fit. I draw the line at pedophilic wackjobs like the Mormon fundamentalists in Texas, however. They can be a weird as they want, but when some old perve decides to marry a 12-year-old, he ought to be hauled off to jail.
But at some point, we have to conclude that any accommodation with Islam is unacceptable and even harmful to the freedoms upon which this country was founded. Islam should not be allowed in the U.S. Period. It is the enemy of the U.S. Constitution. It is the enemy of freedom, especially freedom of conscience and religion. And you cannot have a peaceful coexistence with people who believe it’s not only ok to lie to pacify and decieve an opponent, but that it is the moral and right thing to do.
You cannot compromise with these people, unless the compromise is on their terms and ends with you losing your head. They cannot and should not be allowed in this country nor allowed to practice their religion and spread their hatred.
I wish we had at least one presidential candidate who had the balls to say as much.
Top 9 Muslim Complaint About ‘Fitna’
Folks at The Nose on Your Face list the top nine complaints by Muslims against Geert Wilders film “Fitna.”
Enjoy.
9. Live Leak keeps acting all uppity about their “freedom to express different viewpoints” attitude.
8. Portrays Muslims as violent and murderous; but in a negative way.
7. Thought the lead role should have gone to Shatner.
6. Upset with the big push by the producers to get it ready in time for Cannes.
5. Forces Muslim rioters to craft yet another batch of poorly-spelled, though surprising neat, protest signs in English.
4. Very poor lighting during the flag burning sequences.
3. Too one-sided. Never gave non-partisan groups like CAIR, Al Qaeda, or Hezbollah a chance to tell their side of the story.
2. Refuses to show the “kinder, gentler side” of bloodthirsty jihadists.
1.Takes call for “violent, painful death to all Jews and non-believers” out of context.
If Organized Crime Ran the World…
Great post by Pilgrim on his Say Anything blog comparing Islam to organized crime.
…..there wouldn’t have been the type of news coverage that told us all about the John Gotti trial and his history of extortion and murder. Freedom of the press would be a thing of the past. No gang wants the truth told about them.
There wouldn’t be the freedom to critisize the way they do things. Threats and intimidation and even murder would be the price you’d pay if you dared speak up.
There would be no compromise. You’d have to follow in rigid lockstep with their dogma or accept a status as a second or third class citizen. If you wouldn’t or couldn’t become a “made man” you’d have to pay the vig, a tax just to live.
Your women would become property. Crime syndicates are notoriously male oriented, often to the point of mysogyny. A woman’s place is to do what she’s told when she’s told to do it. It can pretty rough on her if she doesn’t.
The world wouldn’t put up with any of that if it were the mafia trying to take over, so I’m wondering just how it is that Islam, with its blatant thuggery and downright viciousness, is being allowed to bully its way into the lives of so, so many.
Pilgrim goes on to talk about the Geert Wilders film, Fitna, which was posted on LiveLeak and then taken down because of Islamist death threats against the company’s employees. LiveLeak reposted the film, but it has been again removed due to copyright issues. Pilgrim says the kind of threats that Wilders and other critics of Islam get, if made by some mafioso would draw immediately reaction by all sorts of law enforcement officials. But not so with Islamic threats.
This is an incredible thing we’re watching develop right before our very eyes. Western civilization is being openly threatened by what is basically a murderous cult. They don’t even hide or attempt to hide their intention to destroy our way of life and to use murder, even mass murder, to do it. And. We. Do. Nothing.
As the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz said, “ain’t it the truth.”
Winston Churchill on Islam
Before becoming Prime Minister of England and leading that nation through its “darkest hour” in World War II, Winston Churchill spent many years warning his countrymen of the threat building in Germany.
Curiously, Churchill also had something to say about Islam. In his book 1899 book “The River War,” he wrote the following:
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science – the science against which it had vainly struggled – the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
I’m reading the e-book version of “The River War,” which is available from The Project Gutenberg.
The Suicide of the West
Below a British man recounts his arrest and imprisonment for writing “hate speech” against the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. He doesn’t provide the details of exactly what the charges are that landed him in jail, only that he made some kind of “mistake” with his words.
The post on his Lionheart blog is a chilling reminder of what we in the West are up against.
Standing waiting to go through to the custody suite before being placed in the cell, so that I could be arrested, read my legal rights and stripped of my possessions and anything else I could hang myself with, I stood there thinking, look at the sacrifice I have made to write about the most serious threat to our way of life in 50 years, I was being arrested for it with the possibility of going to prison for my actions, for standing up for myself, for others and for my Christian belief.
I had my life threatened by Moslems, they are pumping their heroin and crack cocaine into my community, killing and destroying my friends, they are actively at War with British society from where I live, and here I am being arrested for a few words on a computer screen – There is something wrong there don’t you think?
I thought to myself about every other person who is standing up and speaking out against Islam and its Jihad against us, our society and way of life and thought; what sacrifice would others make?
What kind of sacrifice are we willing to make? What kind of sacrifice will we be forced to make? Will our inaction, silence, acquiescence allow an aggressive, brutal and savage enemy of Western civilization to triumph?
Either those of us who write and speak about Islam and Jihad are wrong or we are right, there is no middle ground, and if you care anything about the future society you want to live in and bring children and grandchildren up in, you have a responsibility to find out – You are reading this for a reason!
Moslems will tell you everything I am saying is rubbish that I am a scaremonger, Islamaphobe, racist or a hate filled person, this is because they are allowed to lie to the infidel (non-Moslem), they force their critics back and seek to silence them with these labels. Their religion teaches them that it is ok to lie to lead the kuffar into a false sense of security as they follow and carry out their duty of Jihad – This is called Taqqia and is a teaching of Mohamed
Come on, how can any peaceful religion teach that it is ok to lie to someone in their pursuit to dominate the person by all means necessary?
As Lionheart points out, every day in the U.K. and even here in the U.S. a war is being waged against the West, against democracy, against Judeo-Christian civilization. On our side are those who value tolerance above all, who believe negotiation and accommodation are the reasonable and right posture before a belligerant aggressor. Our enemy, and indeed Islam is the enemy of the West, knows no compromise nor negotiation, uses our rules and laws against us, to manipulate us into granting them special status from which they can continue their quest for dominance.
I’ve often wondered what lesson the German experience prior to World War II has for us here in the 21st Century. I’m beginning to think it is one of sleeping walking into a long national, or in the modern case, global nightmare. If you read William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” or Corrie Ten Boom’s “The Hiding Place“, or even fiction like Herman Wouk’s “Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance“ and Leon Uris’ “Mila 18,” a unifying theme emerges in each of those books of how every day people, Germans and Jews, almost whistfully slumbered into perhaps the greatest slaughter and cataclysm in the history of mankind.
Indeed the sense of melacholy is well captured by Woulk who writes about Poland’s national radio playing Chopin nearly nonstop on the eve of the German invastion. It was almost as if, everyone knew what was coming, but no one had the will, or even imagination to stop it. Christopher Browning in his “Ordinary Men” writes about how ordinary guys, fathers, brothers, sons, neighbors were anesthesized into partaking in atrocities that even at the distance of more than half a century take your breath away.
What lesson is there for us? Are we allowing ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security, denying the reality that every day confronts us? Even the stories and images that do make it through the filters of a media so fearful of causing offense that it censors itself, even those images paint a picture impossible to ignore. There is nothing untrue or distorted in Geert Wilders censored 15 minute film, just images and words, true and spoken, that portray a reality that we are too fearful to believe.
Believe we must.
Lionheart, if by some happenstance you read my post here, know brother that you are a courageous man and have my full support.
I Cannot Forget…Because I Am Not Allowed to Remember
Very thoughtful post on Ghost of a Flea about the Fitna controversy:
Here again the overt content of the depictions was less important than the fact of violating the taboo against depiction in itself. Here again bleeding hearts misread Muslim outrage at blasphemy as the hurt feelings of a minority suffering from the insensitivity of “racists”. The second, our media’s refusal to show the atrocities the jihadis have carried out against us; this out of fear of upsetting our sheltered sensibilities and for fear of fueling reprisals. Psychologically, morally and spiritually this media practice is an epic fail. I cannot forget the sound of bodies hitting the pavement of Manhattan precisely because I am not allowed to remember it.
Also, stole this link from Ghost: A list of things that offend Muslims from The Amboy Times, a long list at.
The West needs to come to grips with this fact and start standing up for our God-given rights of free speech, free expression and freedom of religion, lest we surrender those rights to a theocratic movement bent on removing our Constitutional freedoms that we hold dear. In this case, our tolerance will lead to intolerance.
Fitna: Watch It While You Can
Here’s the short film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders that has the Religion of Perpetual Outrage up in arms.
Hopefully our beloved ISP won’t suspend Knucklehead Ijdit Galoot for posting.
The folks over at Say Anything have the film.
Muslims Denounce Film Criticizing Islam, So What Else Is New?
Looks like another cave in to the dirt bags from the Religion of Perpetual Outrage (ROPO) means that “Fitna,” a 15-minute fill by Dutch politician Geert Wilders got pulled from an Internet hosting site, because the owners were afraid of reprisals against their employees. According to the AP story carried by Breitbart.com the film carries images that Muslims find offensive.
Employing elements and symbols calculated to offend Muslims, it draws on recycled footage of terrorist attacks and anti-Western, anti-Jewish rhetoric meant to alarm the native Dutch.
The film begins with the Danish cartoon image of Muhammad with a fuse in his turban—an image that provoked violent protests in Islamic countries when it was published by European newspapers two years ago.
The same image appears at the end of film, although the fuse is lit and a ticking clock counts down the seconds, then fades into blackness broken by flashes of lightning and thunder.
In another provocative image, a hand turns a page of the Quran as the screen darkens and the sound of tearing paper is heard. A printed text says it is only a telephone book being torn, and adds: “It is not up to me, but to Muslims themselves to tear out the hateful verses from the Quran.”
It cited verses from the Quran interspersed with images of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the 2004 commuter train bombings in Spain, and the slaying later that year of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim radical for perceived insults to Islam.
The film concludes with a scrolling text saying that the West had defeated the Nazis and communism, and now must defeat an Islam that “wants to dominate, subject and seeks to destroy our Western civilization.”
I’m always amazed how quickly we in the West back down in confrontations like this. Doesn’t sound like any Muslims are contesting the accuracy of the pictures and quotes from the Quran. But merely pointing out that these people, that this ideology is the mortal enemy of the West is enough to get the film banned. Here’s the typical Islamic reaction:
“It is not Islam that should be stopped, it is fear-mongers like Geert Wilders who should be stopped from spreading their hatred,” said Zakaria al-Sheik of the Rassoul Allah Yajmana, a Jordanian group formed to protect the image of Islam.
It is not hateful to speak the truth about this awful religion and the barbarians who practice it, and who kill thousands of innocent people in its name.
The World Council of Churches said the film failed to distinguish extremism from mainstream Islam.
That’s because there is no difference between extreme and mainstream Islam. Where are the “moderate” Muslims taking to the streets to protest the murders, bombings, beheadings and such perpetrated by their “extremists” brethren? There is none.
Every day in lands controlled by Islam, Christians are murdered, jailed, beaten, burned, hanged, beheaded and raped. Everywhere Islam rules there is no freedom of conscience. There is no freedom of religion. There are no churches, synagogues or temples, only Islamic mosques and their hateful religion.
Islam is a cancer, a pestilence on a global scale. We in the West are sitting on our thumbs while these barbarians attack the very bedrock of our culture, the culture that has given the world freedom and prosperity for more than 500 years. We should never back down, never stop calling barbarism barbarism, and never quit shining light on the slaughter perpetrated in the name of Islam.We must always expose this ideology for the lie from hell that it is. I wish there were pictures on television, in magazines and newspapers every day of Islamists murdering people, pictures of them teaching their children to cut the heads off of people or burn them alive, film of those poor people jumping to their deaths prior to the Twin Towers collapse in New York City. We need to see the ugliness and horror that are daily occurrences in Islamic lands.And we should never back down confronting this the biggest threat to civilization in 200 years or more.