VDARE.com readers are well aware of the War Against Christmas as an attack by the Left, wielding immigrants, on the Western cultural foundation of our society.
While this is vitally important, we also should not forget that millions of Christians suffer by being unlucky residents of Muslim countries, where their lives may be forfeit in Islam's 1400-year war against the West.
The key question: why does America continues to welcome Muslim immigrants at all, given their hostile behavior toward Christians in their own countries?
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Middle East was 20 percent Christian. Now, a hundred years later, the percentage is just five percent—due to Muslim terrorism and religious cleansing. So why do we foolishly assume good will on the part of Muslims when they are welcomed into our majority Christian society?
While Muslim immigrants (some, not all) can be enemies of America generally, they are particularly belligerent to specific groups—including Christians, Jews, women, the blind, supporters of free speech, and dog lovers (of both short-legged dogs and black canines).
It's not just the normal tribalism of all humans that affects Muslims. Their bellicosity, ranging from daily intimidation to murder, reflects the hunger of Muslims to remove all infidels from their territory.
And they regard the entire planet as their turf,—as expressed in their goal of universal rule by Islam, aka the one-world Caliphate as proposed by Osama bin Laden.
As a result, insistent jihadis are inserting themselves into places where they are not wanted, as they utilize immigration for conquest of Europe and beyond. Meanwhile, the formerly religiously-mixed Middle East is becoming more exclusively Islamic.
Certainly the American and other military forces have had their hands full in pacifying Iraq. But it's significant that the safety of Christians there has not been a priority. A recent news story in Iraq (No Christmas celebrations in Basra, Alsumaria, December 21) noted that local Christians could not celebrate the holiday because they feared offending the city's Shi'ites.
The reason: Christmas this year coincides with the bloody Ashura remembrance, which can be violent (15 were killed across the country last year). Sensitive Muslims might become angered that Christians were celebrating a joyful holiday while Shi'ites were in mourning mode about the death of Mohammed's grandson in the 7th century Battle of Karbala.
The daily stresses and threats have caused many of Iraq's Christians to give up and leave. It's a tragic denouement after a two-thousand-year history of Christianity in Iraq, and a population of one million Christians prior to the 1991 Gulf War. (Under Saddam, the #2 man, Tariq Aziz, was a Christian who helped keep the lid on anti-Christian violence. Totalitarian regimes are good at making people behave.)
"Behind the tinsel and carols lies the reality that Christians in Iraq are a community under threat of extinction. Proportionally more Christians are leaving Iraq than any other group.
"Last week 100 Christian leaders and politicians of all religions held an emergency meeting—just before fresh violence broke out in the northern city of Mosul, with attacks on churches and Christian schools. On Tuesday a baby was killed and 40 people, including schoolchildren, were injured in three simultaneous bombings. Two days ago a Christian man was shot dead as he travelled to work.
"'It is terrible', said Fadi, 26, an electricity worker from Mosul who asked that his real name not be used. 'Most of the Christians are staying at home, or when they go out they watch their backs'. In late 2008, killings of Christians in Mosul by insurgent groups left 40 dead and 12,000 fleeing their homes. Fadi reeled off a string of recent, smaller-scale attacks against Christians, fearful that the same level of violence would return." [Amid the carols and decorations, Iraq Christians fear extinction, U.K. Times, December 19, 2009]
A Human Rights Watch report released last month said that two-thirds of the million Christians in Iraq in 2003 had now left their homes. About half of those had left the country.
Iraqi Christians live in dangerous territory that anyone would want to escape. Attacks against them include bombing churches, like the Baghdad blast on July 12 that killed four and injured 21. On the same day, a Kirkuk city official was driving with his daughter through a Christian neighborhood when he was pulled from the car and shot dead in front of her.
That's the glorious Religion of Peace—the same one praised by the Dear Leader Obama in his June 4 Cairo speech to Muslims of the world, bringing "a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum". (Transcript) This message was supposed to soothe the angry beast of Islam, thanks to the magical persuasive ability of Barack Hussein Obama. The President believed that his personal charm campaign would find the Reset button for Islam's anti-West war that has raged for over a thousand years.
But Islam's daily murders and terror attacks around the world continue the same as they have since 9/11—as counted by The Religion of Peace website. It is informative to search for "Christian" on the body count list.
And a Rasmussen poll, released November 2, found that only 16 percent of Americans believed relations with the Muslim world would be better one year from now—the lowest level measured all year.
The Middle East is the home to three major religions. But one of those faiths is being run out of town because Muslims can't abide anyone who doesn't worship Allah. (For that matter, many don't even like fellow Muslims, as the centuries-long conflict between Shia and Sunni shows.)
For example, the town of Jesus' birth, once predominantly Christian, is now characterized as "O Muslim town of Bethlehem" (U.K. Daily Mail, Dec 16 2006) because of systematic persecution of Christians. Muslims have been successfully practicing religious cleansing for centuries, and know well how to drive out the unwanted tribe:
"Life for Palestinian Christians such as 50-year-old Joseph has become increasingly difficult in Bethlehem - and many of them are leaving.
"The town's Christian population has dwindled from more than 85 per cent in 1948 to 12 per cent of its 60,000 inhabitants in 2006.
"There are reports of religious persecution, in the form of murders, beatings and land grabs."
Elsewhere on the demographic warfare front: Palestinian Christians were one-quarter of the population in 1948. Now they are only 2 percent and have one small town, Tiabe they can call their own.
The largest community of Christians remaining in the Middle East: the Copts of Egypt. Their population is estimated in the CIA Factbook to be nine percent (of 83 million!). The persecution is ongoing and includes Islam's traditional oppression of non-Muslims plus violence against individuals and churches.
One recent example: the rioting of hundreds against Christians in the town of Farshoot over the rumor that a Muslim girl had been raped by a Christian. A few days later the damage was toted up: 65 Christian-owned shops were torched and vandalized at a cost of over $1 million. The community refused to open their businesses without help from the authorities, both financial restitution and prosecution of the rioters. Plus, the girl had only described her attacker as wearing a black jacket, and her family had not incited the mob.
Another day living as despised Christians under the Religion of Peace.
Why don't religious leaders speak out against this violence?
You may ask.
It can be dangerous for clerics to say anything unfavorable about Islam. In the 2006 Regensburg University lecture, Pope Benedict quoted a negative remark by a 14th century Byzantine emperor, suggesting that Islam might be a violent ideology. The worldwide Muslim squawk machine immediately provoked anger and violence, with thousands of people taking part in protests. Several churches were attacked in the West Bank and Gaza. A Pakistan terror group issued a fatwa calling for Pope Benedict's death. In Iraq, the priest Amer Iskender was kidnapped and beheaded in retaliation for the Pope's speech.
You see almost none of this anti-Christian persecution reported in the dinosaur media, since the press has chosen Muslims as designated victims because of nonexistent "backlash" against them and other liberal fantasies. So it was refreshing to see Sixty Minutes' recent segment on the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose predecessors have lived in Constantinople/Istanbul since the Emperor Constantine: Patriarch Bartholomew Feels "Crucified", December 20 (Watch).
There are no gangsters of Allah burning down the Patriarch's church. But the Turkish government is working in more polite fashion to exterminate the Orthodox Christians of Turkey, which now number only 4000 (down from two million in 1900). In 1971, the government closed the Halki School of Theology, the only Greek Orthodox seminary in Turkey. As a result, the church cannot train new priests. Since under Turkish law the Patriarch must be born in the country, the sad end is in sight.
"The hallways where 100 young seminarians roamed are desolate now; the library's priceless collection of old manuscripts lies untouched. Walk into a classroom and it seems as if the students had just gone home today, not 38 years ago.
"'This school prepared people who preached peace, preached unity, preached love. So not giving to the church the possibility to prepare these people, we offend human dignity,' Patriarch Bartholomew told Simon."
The Patriarch is the equivalent of Rome's Pope to 300 million Orthodox Christians around the world. But to the Turkish government, he is just a local bishop. Turkey is 99 percent Muslim and it would prefer to root out its tiny Christian diversity. Patriarch Bartholomew wants to remain in Istanbul because of history, and because he is a loyal Turk. But he is not welcome in his own country.
In fact, no non-Muslims are welcome in the land of Islam. Allah-free persons may not even enter the city of Mecca. Places touted by apologists as societies of "moderate Muslims" are rapidly becoming more radicalized.
Indonesia has seen an increase in burqas and bombings, such as the 2002 Bali attack that killed over 200, many of whom were foreign tourists. Turkey has pulled away from the secular democratic reforms of Ataturk, as indicated by its election of an Islamic government. Muslim jihadists are showing up in Thailand and are well established in the Philippines.
My analysis here concerns mainly Christians. But Islam also murders Buddhists, Hindus, African animists (in Darfur and elsewhere), Zoroastrians, Sikhs—anyone who comes into their sights.
Islam divides the planet into two parts: the lands of Muslims (dar al-Islam, where sharia prevails) and the lands of war (dar al-Harb). Referring to the latter, societies where other values rule (e.g. America) are considered obligatory targets for jihad where the people must be subjugated under the iron hand of Islam. The duty of Muslims is to pursue one-world Islamic government.
Islam calls itself the Religion of Peace because it isn't. The Koran promotes violence in at least 109 verses. What other religion feels compelled to repeat its peaceful bona fides? Religion by nature is supposed to represent the spiritual side of humanity that can reach toward universal values of tolerance and respect. But Islam insists on its way, period, no compromise, because it sees itself as perfect with no need of improvement, and the rest of the world must accept its superiority.
Do persons with such beliefs sound like good immigrant material? How likely are Allah's soldiers to accept the traditional American ideal of assimilation to our values of individual rights, representative government, gender equality and separation of church and state? The growing incidence of honor killings and "homegrown" terrorists indicates not.
The experience of Europe should be a warning. But the diversity enforcers in America's media and government still believe in a one-world mosh pit of multiculturalism—whether we little citizens like it or not.
If we must have immigrants and refugees at all—and the optimum number based on national security, environmental protection and the economy remains ZERO—then Washington might consider welcoming more Christian victims of Muslim violence instead of the perp tribe.
If Americans knew the extent of daily gratuitous violence and murder, they would insist that we choose new neighbors more wisely.
Why would we would continue to admit hostile Muslims when there are billions of friendlier people available?
Brenda Walker (email her) lives in Northern California and publishes two websites, LimitsToGrowth.org and ImmigrationsHumanCost.org. She realizes that there are too many Christians (and others) to be rescued by immigration to America. However, she thinks more Christian gun ownership in dar al-Islam might make the often cowardly sons of Allah think twice about attempting the traditional Islamic head removal.
As an example, Muslims residing in Switzerland were furious at the vote against minarets. But there has been no violence in the famously gun-loving country.
