Hat Tip to Creeping Sharia
MIDDLE EAST historian Tom Holland told a briefing in London last night that the world is watching the effective extinction of Christianity from its birthplace.In an apocalyptic appraisal of the worsening political situation in the region, a panel of experts provided a mass of evidence and statistics for the end of the region’s nation states under the onslaught of militant Islam.‘In terms of the sheer scale of the hatreds and sectarian rivalries, we are witnessing something on the scale of horror of the European Thirty Years War,’ said Holland.‘It is the climax of a process grinding its way through the twentieth century – the effective extinction of Christianity from its birthplace.’The event titled ‘Reporting the Middle East: Why the truth is getting lost’ at the National Liberal Club in Whitehall, sought answers to the ‘anaemic’ coverage of attacks on Egypt’s Christians on 14 August.
Pre-planned destruction of scores of ancient churches, monasteries, schools, orphanages and businesses had gone unreported for days across the West, Nina Shea, Director of the Hudson Institute Religious Freedom Centre in Washington said.
After the Islamists swept multiple elections during the first revolution in 2011, US newspapers asking how it would change Egypt suggested merely that women would be prohibited from wearing skimpy clothes, and Sharm el-Sheikh would close as a tourist destination.
This was ‘utterly trivial’ she said. Persecution of Copts, who dated their church to Gospel writer St Mark in Alexandria, was at its worst since the fourteenth century, with ‘horrific levels of violence’.
‘It has been the worst persecution in 700 years against the oldest, largest remaining Christian minority in the Middle East.’
The media had failed to ask the most basic questions, she said. ‘Why were the Copts singled out, what was the significance and purpose of the attacks?’
A fourth-century church dedicated to St Mary – whom Muslims were supposed to revere – and that was a UNESCO World Heritage site, had been destroyed and designated as a Muslim prayer space.
It was 200 years older than the Bamyan Statues in Afghanistan, yet the mainstream media had ignored its demise.
Yet there was enough evidence to show that the violence was part of a plan to ‘drive out the Copts, to terrorize them into leaving’, she added.
Lapido Chief Executive Dr Jenny Taylor who organized the event which was co-hosted with foreign policy think tank Henry Jackson Society, said the media’s job was impeded by ‘secular blinders’.
They tended to report the Middle East’s religions as a ‘variant of a Westminster debate’ with ‘left-wing underdogs versus right-wing overdogs and the Christians getting lumped in with the overdogs if they get mentioned at all.’
Holland said Egypt was not a developing nation, which needed help to emerge as a Western democracy but had been the world’s first state, with a civilization on a level with China and Iran. In Roman times, it had been the world’s bread basket.
Now it was the single largest importer of wheat anywhere on the planet.
In answer to a question from the floor he agreed there had been what felt like ‘silence’ from Western churches, governments and indeed Western Muslims after the attacks, which belied Islamist propaganda that the West colluded with Christians.
Shea also spoke about Syria.
Christians in Syria were now ‘caught in the middle’, she said. There was a shadow war against them by rebels, with jihadis and al-Qaeda factions deliberately attacking Christians.
‘When they conquer a town they set up sharia courts and mini sharia states. The Christians are fleeing. Given the choice to be killed or to leave, they leave. If they stay, the jizya tax is imposed, and then raised. If they cannot pay they are killed.’
She said Christians dared not go to refugee camps run by rebels as they would be recruited to fight.
The so-called Damascus Plan drafted by the Free Syrian Army for after the war ends, included retribution killings against any who did not oppose Assad.
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I feel sorry for the Churches of the Middle East. In every Muslim nation they are being destroyed. In Bethlehem, under the Palestinian Authority, Christians have gone from a majority population of 85% to a minority population of 10%. Pretty soon the only Christians in the city will be the priests, nuns, and tourists. Already the Palestinian Authority has decided to turn the Church of the Nativity into a mosque. The Church of the Nativity is one of the holiest sites in the Christian world. Yet there will be no protests when this happens.
The only place in the Middle East where there is total and free religious liberty is Israel. Yet the Christian Churches will not praise Israel for this, but condemns the Jewish State instead.
Between 1949 and 1955 every Arab nation forcibly removed most of the Jews from their nations. They laughed doing so, saying:
First the Saturday people.In most of the Arab world there are not enough Jews to satisfy their blood lust. For instance there are only 9 Jews in Egypt. (All elderly women.) So now it is the turn of the Sunday people to leave. And like with the Jews, the world is remaining silent.
Then the Sunday people.
Until Christian and World leaders cry out and demand a stop to the persecution, the murders, the rapes, the torture of their fellow Christians, the Muslims will keep doing what they want and laughing while we just sit back and do nothing.