by Reuven Berko
On
November 3, 2013, Christian figures from around the Middle East
gathered in Beirut to hold an emergency meeting. Most of them came from
Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq, seeking to create a dynamic to improve
and reinforce the defenses of Arab Christians, who are currently being
persecuted by radical Islamists in their own countries.
The atmosphere at the meeting was one of extreme
distress. The representatives reported that the so-called Arab Spring
had led to the strengthening of violent Islamist movements which were
now targeting the Christian sects in the Arab-Muslim world, especially
in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Attacks on Christians reflected the refusal
to recognize other religions, especially Christianity, as having the
right to exist in the Arab-Muslim world, and damaged the delicate fabric
of unity, "coexistence, forgiveness and dialogue," according to Lebanese MP Michel Aoun, that had existed until now among the various religious sects in the Arab countries.
The conference was motivated by the increasing lack of
tolerance displayed by violent Islamists in their efforts to deprive the
Christian sects, which until now were part of the Arab national
identity, of their right to religious and physical existence in the
Islamic territories of the Middle East. Syrian novelist Colette Khoury
said that Syrian Christians could no longer be silent. They would no
longer be the victims of the situation in Syria caused by the Islamist
takeover and its political agenda. She said that the Christians in Syria
would do whatever necessary to prevent the disintegration of Syria as
their homeland and keep it from falling into the hands of the Islamists.
She accused the United States of apathy and indifference to the fate of
the Christians, who had always been a target for Islamist
extermination.
In fact, the spread of Islamism throughout the Middle
East has accelerated since the days of Muhammad. In the seventh century,
Islamic jihad fighters overcame the Persian and Byzantine Empires,
after they had exhausted one another in battle, and conquered Christian
Egypt as well. The Christians remaining in the resulting Islamic
Caliphate were regarded as second class citizens, dhimmis, with their rights, especially political rights, restricted and paid taxes no Muslim had to pay (jizya), retaining that status for hundreds of years.
The Crusades temporarily bolstered the position of the
Christians in the Middle East, once Jerusalem had been liberated from
Islamic occupation. However, the Crusader state was abandoned by its
supporters after less than a century and receded into the mists of
Middle Eastern history. In the 12th century Saladin defeated
the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin, effectively ending European
presence, and the Christians were subsequently beaten and returned to
their historic status as dhimmis, dependent on the mercies of various Islamic rulers.
Since the collapse of the Crusader state and the
reconquest of the region by Islam, Christians have lived in uncertainty,
in an atmosphere of hostility and discrimination and in fear of
extermination, new emigrating from the Middle East in an ever-increasing
tide. Coptic churches in Egypt are torched by Muslims so often it is
barely reported by the news, and the Copts themselves are subjected to
deadly attacks by Muslim mobs that kill the men and violate the women.
The same is true of Christian communities in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Resurrection
The artificial establishment of new states in the wake
of the Ottoman Empire's downfall of (creations of the Sykes-Picot
Agreement of May 1916) was a new Christian illusion. The dissolution of
the Ottoman Empire led to the renewed involvement of Christians in the
political life of the newly created national Arab states, which came
into existence by the stroke of pen to erase the Empire's militant
Islamic base and introduce a sense of pan-Arab nationalism to protect
all the local sects, religions and ethnic groups.
The recent so-called Arab Spring shattered the illusion of the Arab nation (qawmiyya) and national Arab homelands (wataniyya) and restored the runaway horses of reaction, violent extremist Islamist nationalism (ummah)
and the Caliphate. Extreme Islamists decided the time was right to
settle accounts with the Christians who collaborated with the secular
regimes in an attempt to create a national alternative to Islamist rule
and its mission to take over the world. The Christians in the West Bank,
mainly in Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip, suffered a similar fate after
the United States brokered an Israeli withdrawal.
The Oslo Accords took the Israeli forces out of the
Palestinian Authority-administered territories, exposing the Christians,
with Palestinian Authority sponsorship, to the ruthlessness of the
Palestinian terrorist organizations, the abuse of Hamas and endless
scheming, attacks, robbery and rape carried out by Islamic street thugs
from Hebron and its environs. The attempts of the Christian leadership
to represent their communities as anti-Israeli pro-Palestinian in order
to satisfy extreme Palestinian Islamists failed miserably.
The attempts of the Palestinians to invade Jerusalem,
the capital of the State of Israel, are repelled by the Israeli security
forces. Therefore, the Christian churches and the few remaining
Christians in united Jerusalem are as safe and secure as its synagogues
and mosques, its Jews and Arabs. The government of Israel preserves
freedom of religious worship and the sensitive status quo of all the
city's residents. The Israel Police Force prevents the occasional
attempts made by the Muslim Brotherhood, led by Sheikh Ra'ed Salah, to
"represent" and take over Christian property and holy places, especially
in Jerusalem and Nazareth.
The "Palestinian Jesus" and Western Betrayal
Radical Islamist operatives, not content with attacks on
the lives and property of Christian and Jewish "infidels," have now
turned their efforts to undermining the foundations of the Christian and
Jewish faiths. They have always claimed that the Jews are the
descendants of pigs and monkey, that they forged the Bible and were
cursed by Allah to be persecuted, and that they certainly do not have
the right to a country of their own. The so-called "Zionists" in Israel
("Palestine") are not even Jews, they claim, but imposters. In their
eagerness to vilify the Jews they conveniently ignore the passages in
the Qur'an that give the Jews exclusive, divine right to Jerusalem and
the Land of Israel. They ignore the fact that Muhammad changed the
direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca and they deny the Islamic
interpretation that the holiness of Jerusalem is a Jewish concept and
forbidden to Muslims (Israilyat). To deny the historic rights of
the Jewish people to Israel and Jerusalem, Islamic clerics claim that
Jesus was a Palestinian and that the existence of Second Temple is a
Zionist fabrication.
The Muslim Brotherhood not only attacks lives and
property, it also wants to negate Christian spirit and faith, one of
whose pillars is Jesus' work as a reformer – for example when he threw
the money-lenders out of the Temple. By denying the existence of the
Jewish Temple and calling it a "Jewish fake, they deny Jesus and crucify
him again. In one of their recent protest demonstrations, the Muslim
Brotherhood in Suez held signs proclaiming that their firm opposition to
the interim government was part of their plan to liberate Jerusalem
from the hands of the "infidels."
Anyone who denies that Jerusalem is the capital of the
Jews and ignores the Temple Mount, the Jews' most holy place cannot
continue believing in Jesus, and thus crudely rejects the entire
Christian faith. At no time in its history was Jerusalem ever the
capital of any people other than the Jews, it was the Jewish capital
before the existence of Athens or Rome, London, Paris or Washington.
There was never a Palestinian state in the Land of Israel. The Land of
the Jews was conquered again and again, but it was liberated in the last
century by the Jews. The newly created and basically non-existent
"Palestinian people" is not so much as mentioned in the Qur'an, but the
Jews are, and they are called the exclusive heirs of the Land of Israel.
There is no precedent in Islam for a holy city as state capital. Mecca,
which is sacred to Islam, is not Saudi Arabia's capital. Riyadh is.
That is known to every Muslim who faces Mecca when he prays on the
Temple Mount, and turning his rear end to the remains of the holy Second
Jewish Temple. Jesus, who brought the world Christianity, began as a
reformer in the Holy Land, that is, Israel. That is not only a tenet of
the Christian faith, it is also a historical fact, but it is denied by
the Muslims in their efforts to expel both Christians and Jews from the
Middle East as they wage their jihad to take over the world.
Radical Islamism has its own code of action, taken
directly from the actions of Muhammad as described in the Qur'an and in
the oral tradition (sira and hadith). As far as the Islamists are
concerned, the Qur'an contains the solution for every problem, they
only have to adapt what is written to current needs. By analogy, for the
Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, the State of Israel represents
the Jewish community living in Khaybar in the Arabian Peninsula,
slaughtered by Muhammad in the seventh century and buried in a mass
grave in the city of Al-Madinah. By analogy, the Islamists feel
compelled to destroy the State of Israel today. Its existence as an ally
of the West represents the European Crusader state destroyed by
Saladin. Thus, by denying both history and the tenets of Christian and
Jewish faith, along with the physical destruction of the Jews in Israel
and the Christians in the Middle East in general, the Islamist
ideologues wage their jihad for the Islamic takeover of the world, while
the leadership of the Western world closes its eyes to the seriousness
of the threat.
From the Vatican Back to Khaybar
Looking at the monumental Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, a
church turned into a mosque, it is hard to believe that Turkey was once
the Eastern Christian Byzantine Empire and that it converted to Islam.
For its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a sworn Islamist and
Muslim Brotherhood supporter, the megalomanic Islamic desire to take
over the world is not a personal interpretation; it is a grand Islamic
plan. The persecution of Christians and Jews and their expulsion from
Islamic territories is an Islamic religious imperative to which Erdogan
is committed, as are the rest of leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and
the other radical Islamist terrorist organizations.
For the Muslim Brotherhood and ideologues like Erdogan,
the mission of "cleansing" the Middle East of the Christians and Jews is
entirely within the bounds of the possible and will promote the Islamic
mission begun by the followers of Muhammad. As the Byzantines were
destroyed and converted to Islam, so will the Europeans be destroyed and
converted, and eventually the Americans, north and south, as well. The
tunnel recently dug under the Bosphorus linking Turkey to Europe is
symbolic of the age-old Islamic desire to conquer the Holy Roman Empire,
especially Rome and the Vatican to include Europe in Islam.
If Turkey is allowed to join the EU it will accelerate
the inevitable Islamization of Europe. It will accelerate the emigration
of Turks and enable them to unite the already growing Islamic enclaves
in the European countries. Radical Islamism is laying the tracks for an
Orient Express that will run from Iceland to Iran, its engineers and
conductors Islamist terrorists and its shackled passengers Christians
and Jews on their way to another mass grave in Al-Madinah.
Dr. Reuven Berko has a Ph.D. in Middle East studies,
is a commentator on Israeli Arabic TV programs, writes for the Israeli
daily newspaper Israel Hayom and is considered one of Israel's top
experts on Arab affairs.
Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/4209/the-orient-express-from-mecca-to-the-vatican
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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