In this mailing:
- Giulio Meotti: Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán: Europe's Solitary Defender of Persecuted Christians
- Raymond Ibrahim: Another Ignored Genocide of Christians Plagues Burkina Faso
- Amir Taheri: Despots of the Square-Kilometer Empires
by Giulio Meotti • December 15, 2019 at 5:00 am
"Those we are helping now can give us the greatest help in saving Europe. We are giving persecuted Christians what they need: homes, hospitals, and schools, and we receive in return what Europe needs most: a Christian faith, love and perseverance". — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Daily News Hungary, November 28, 2019.
"Our estimation is that more than 90 percent of Christian have already left Iraq and almost 50 percent of Christians in Syria have left the country". — Ignatius Aphrem II, Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church.
European leaders, rather than being embarrassed, should make the condition of Christians under Islam the starting point of their conversations with Muslims.
"The fate of Eastern Christians and other minorities is the prelude to our own fate." — Former French Prime Minister François Fillon, Valeurs Actuelles, December 12, 2019.
In Europe, there is a solitary defender of persecuted Christians: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whom the mainstream media love to attack. No other European government has invested so much money, public diplomacy and time on this topic. (Photo by Laszlo Balogh/Getty Images)
"There is an ongoing persecution of Christians. For months, we bishops have been denouncing what is happening in Burkina Faso" Bishop Kjustin Kientega recently said, "but nobody is listening to us." "Evidently", he concluded, "the West is more concerned with protecting its own interests".
In a recent series of a transnational tragedies, 14 Christians were murdered in an attack on a church in Burkina Faso, 11 Christians were murdered in an attack on a bus in Kenya and seven Christians were murdered by Boko Haram in Cameroon. These three deadly attacks by Islamists in the same week give an idea of the intensity and frequency of global anti-Christian persecution.
Bishop Kientega was reporting a fact: the West is not listening to their plight. "While the Belgian government decided in 2011 to send F-16s to Libya to protect civilians threatened by Gaddafi, in 2014 it took no concrete measures to help the minorities in Iraq", wrote Le Vif.
by Raymond Ibrahim • December 15, 2019 at 4:30 am
While a total of 12 Islamic terror attacks in Burkina Faso were registered in 2016, nearly 160 were reported in just the first five months of 2019.
The situation has reached the point where... the mainstream media habitually downplay the religious element whenever Muslims attack Christians, by referring to it as "sectarian strife....
[T]he militants told everyone to lie down and proceeded to look for Christians by asking for first names or looking for anyone wearing Christian insignia (like crosses). The deadly search yielded four men.... [W]hen they saw crosses, the assailants singled them out. All four were taken aside and executed." – June 27, 2019.
"There is no Christian anymore in this town [Arbinda]," said a local contact; "... they [terrorists] were looking for Christians. Families who hide Christians are [also] killed. Arbinda had now lost in total no less than 100 people within six months."
According to a local, "The assailants asked the Christians to convert to Islam, but the pastor and the others refused." So "they called them, one after the other, behind the church building where they shot them dead."
One can only hope that the response of the media and international community will be stronger than their usual one: ignoring the massacres. This slaughter has been already been characterized as a "genocide of Christians." When, then, will the media and the so-called human rights groups finally confront — or at the very least condemn or even report on — these religiously fueled massacres plaguing West Africa?
Pictured: Smoke rises from Embassy of France in Burkina Faso, March 2, 2018, during a jihadi terrorist attack that killed up to 28 people. (Image source: VOA)
On Sunday, December 1, 2019, Islamic terrorists raided a Protestant Christian church in Burkina Faso during the service and massacred 14 worshippers. The pastor and several children were among those killed.
This is but the latest of many lethal attacks on the Christian minority of the small nation located in West Africa, a region better known for the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.
Discussing the situation in Burkina Faso — which is approximately 60% Muslim, 23% Christian, and 17% animist or other — the BBC reported that "Jihadist violence has flared in Burkina Faso since 2016.... Fighters affiliated to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group as well as the local Ansarul Islam [Champions of Islam] have been active in the region."
However, while a total of 12 Islamic terror attacks were registered in 2016, nearly 160 were reported in just the first five months of 2019.
by Amir Taheri • December 15, 2019 at 4:00 am
The "Supreme Guide" is supposed to be excellent in everything. He has written on Islamic cuisine, the methodology of successful marriage, the destruction of Israel, the reform of human sciences, a new Islamic civilization to replace the old one that has decayed, and, as an afterthought, radical re-ordering of the global order.
Today, Syrian regime head Bashar Assad is confined to his square-kilometer close to Damascus with no chance of ever roaming in other parts of the war-torn country. General Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian master of PR, claims he prevented Assad from fleeing because Khamenei ordered him to stay put which, in practice, means the Syrian became a prisoner like Khamenei.
In autobiographical notes, Khamenei waxes lyrical about the joys of visiting Shiite "holy" shrines in Iraq. Today, he dares not set foot in an Iraq shaken by uprisings against his ideology. Worse still, fearful of visiting even Mash'had, Iran's own "holy" city, he has to be content with a hussainiyah he built near a "villa" confiscated by the revolution.
Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei is supposed to be excellent in everything. He has written on Islamic cuisine, the methodology of successful marriage, the destruction of Israel, the reform of human sciences, a new Islamic civilization to replace the old one that has decayed, and, as an afterthought, radical re-ordering of the global order. (Image source: khamenei.ir/Wikimedia Commons)
In a recent speech in Tehran, Ayatollah Golpayegani, Chief of Staff of "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei, claimed that his boss had reached a position from which he not only led the Muslim world but also dictated to infidel powers, now in retreat.
Critics of the ayatollah might dismiss that as hyperbole beyond limits, flattery being the bane of many Middle Eastern cultures.
What if Golpayegani believes what he says?
That cannot be dismissed, especially as a chorus of flatterers isolates Khamenei from the harsh realities of life.
Self-styled philosophers claim that Khamenei is the greatest philosopher since Aristotle or, not to ruffle Muslim feathers, since Ibn Sina. Versifiers praise Khamenei as the greatest Persian poet since Sa'adi or Hafez, although only a few courtiers have heard his compositions.
The "Supreme Guide" is supposed to be excellent in everything.
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