Tag Archive for: Berlin

For Hamas Supporters in Munich This May, It’s Springtime For Hitler, and Germany

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Munich, where Hitler staged his attempted Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, was his favorite city, filled early on with Nazi true believers. He would have been pleased to see the 4,000 antisemites out in force in mid-May, marching along, baying their hate in front of the city’s main synagogue, scaring the Jews worshipping inside on Shabbat. They called for the destruction of the one, very small, Jewish state and of all of its Jewish inhabitants. If you’re a Nazi, what’s not to like? More on this horrifying spectacle can be found here: “Mass antisemitic rally in front of Munich synagogue calls for Israel’s eradication,” by Benjamin Weinthal, i24 News, May 19, 2024:

Nearly 4,000 anti-Israel protestors turned up on Saturday in front of the main Munich synagogue demanding the obliteration of the Jewish state, according to German media reports.

A mix of German Muslim, leftist and mainstream Germans appeared at the mass rally, according to the online German news organization NIUS.

So it has come to this: “Mainstream Germans” now unembarrassedly call for the obliteration of the Jewish state. These “mainstream Germans” have convinced themselves that they no longer need feel any guilt about the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, now that they can concentrate on the Holocaust being perpetrated, so they allow themselves to believe, by the Jews of Israel on their innocent Palestinian victims in Gaza. It’s preposterous, and sickening.

Signs were on display declaring “Israel has no respect for [sic] Holocaust.”

One eyewitness told NIUS that “The noise could be heard in the prayer room” in the synagogue. NUIS wrote that according to one eyewitness, “The demonstration was perceived by the Jewish community as threatening.” The eyewitness added, “What the city of Munich has achieved by approving this demonstration is to terrify the Jewish population.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told i24NEWS, “it is beyond an outrage that the local government allowed a pro-Hamas mob to march outside Munich synagogue, especially on the holy day of Shabbat. 4,000 antisemites given government sanction to curse Israel with tropes in front of a Jewish House of prayer! SWC urges State and Federal authorities to protect the Jewish community from antisemites and government officials who approved this attack.”

The Süddeutsche Zeitung paper reported one speaker at the anti-Israel protest rejected Israel’s existence, saying, “we do not recognize the right to exist if it means displacement and oppression. We only recognize the rights of the oppressed.” Israel was termed a “terrorist state” and a “Zionist regime” at the rally.

This was not a rally about a change in Israel’s boundaries, or about what a “two-state solution” should look like.It was a call for the obliteration of the Jewish state, which according to the protesters had no moral right to exist on land the Jews “had stolen from the Palestinians.” As for the Israeli Jews, the implication was that they would all have to be expelled, or killed.

NIUS reported one of the organizers from Palestine Speaks group equated Zionism with racism. “Together against Israeli fascism,” was charged at the event and reportedly a number of participants brought large keys with them, which is recognized as a symbol for the demand of the return of Palestinians to Israeli territory….

These keys are symbolic, meant to signify the properties left behind by Arabs who in 1948-1949 fled the state of Israel. They represent, too, the “right of return” of more than five million Palestinians who are demanding to be allowed back into the area where Israel now stands, thereby overwhelming the Jewish population.

Gerald Hetzel, a 27-year-old law student from Passau in Bavaria, set up a screen across from the tent encampment to show footage of Hamas’ brutality and murder spree on October 7.He told the Bild paper that “I think the camp is massively intimidating and stressful for Jewish students.” He added “It helps the most to show what happened. In the camp there is never any talk about the fact that more than 130 Israeli hostages are still being held in the Gaza Strip.”

Hetzel also oversees the German-Israel Friendship Society (DIG) in Passau. While Hetzel and DIG-Passau engage in energetic opposition to mushrooming hatred of the Jewish state in southern Germany, observers of pro-Israel activity in German say the DIG-Stuttgart in the neighboring state of Baden-Württemberg refuses to call on the mayor of Stuttgart, Frank Nopper, to delete information on funding Hamas via the Palestine Committee Stuttgart on the city’s website….

The mayor of Stuttgart, Frank Nopper, continues to show information on the city’s website that lists ways to fund Hamas.

Israeli lawyers told i24 that Nopper can delete all postings of NGOs, including Palestine Committee Stuttgart, on the city website to ensure that the city does not enable Palestine Committee Stuttgart to finance the terrorist entities, Hamas and Samidoun [the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network]. Nopper has refused to scrub the city’s website of NGOs, a move which would make Hamas and Samidoun terror financing much more difficult.

While the neighboring state of North-Rhine-Westphalia has not hesitated to ban the pro-Hamas group Palestine Solidarity Duisburg, in Baden-Würtemburg it is a different story. There the mayor of Stuttgart, Frank Nopper, has refused to remove from the city’s website the list of NGOs that enable Hamas and Samidoun terror financing. He has refused to give an explanation for his failure to act. There needs to be pressure put on him to resign. Perhaps the Alternative für Deutschland anti-Muslim immigrant party, which is strong in Bavaria, will help remove Nopper from office.

Meanwhile, in Munich, 4,000 Muslims, leftists, and “mainstream Germans” have had a high old time trying to terrify Jews inside the city’s main synagogue. In front of the synagogue, they screamed “from the river to the sea/Palestine will be free,” which means, if rightly understood, that the Jewish state must be obliterated, and a 23rd Arab state be created in its stead. The Jewish inhabitants would, of course, have to be expelled or killed. Another slogan of the rioters was “No To Genocide,” which refers, of course, to the non-existent “genocide” supposedly carried out by the IDF on the people of Gaza. Never mind the 15 million text messages, the 16 million robocalls, the 100,000 telephone calls, and the 9 million leaflets that the IDF has sent or made or dropped in order to warn civilians in Gaza away from areas, and buildings, about to be targeted. Never mind the eight field hospitals that Israel has set up in Gaza to treat Gazan civilians. Never mind the civilian-to-combatant ratio of nearly 1:1 in Gaza, a figure that, according to Professor John Spencer of West Point, is lower than that of “any army in the history of warfare.” It’s all a Zionist trick to make us think well of the apartheid colonial-settler genocidal state of Israel. We’re not fooled.

AUTHOR

HUGH FITZGERALD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

GERMANY: Supporters of Hamas jihad massacre paint Star of David on Jewish homes in Berlin

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Germany has been here before. It didn’t end well. But this new resurgence of violent Jew-hatred in the country is their own doing. Angela Merkel opened the doors to a flood of Muslim migrants. Now Germany is celebrating diversity.

Star of David is graffitied on Jewish homes in Berlin after Hamas attacks on Israel – in chilling echo of anti-Semitic persecution of the Jews under the Nazis

by Elena Salvoni, Daily Mail, October 15, 2023:

The Star of David has been graffitied on the doors of homes in Berlin, in a chilling echo of anti-Semitic persecution of Jewish people under the Nazis.

Pictures circulating online show the symbol was drawn on several buildings, with four cases reported to German police in recent days.

Jewish people living in the German capital have reported a rise in abuse following Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel last week.

Among those targeted by vandalism was a young Jewish woman, who said she was shocked when she returned to her apartment on Thursday evening to find a star marked on her door.

The woman, who has a mezuzah – a Jewish house blessing – outside her flat, said that the incident was a ‘huge shock’ and left her ‘scared’.

‘I speak Hebrew, talk on the phone in Hebrew, and wear a Star of David… I really thought about whether I should stay at home,’ the woman told Bild.

Police said they are now investigating ‘whether the other houses have a Jewish resident and whether the incidents are connected.’

The incidents amount to a crime under German law, and seem to be an imitation of the persecution of Jews during the 1930s.

During the Holocaust, Nazi Brownshirts painted the Star of David in white on the doors of Jewish businesses to discourage non-Jewish Germans from going into them.

It comes as a German intelligence chief claimed that ‘some Palestinians are openly and blatantly calling for a kind of Kristallnacht 2.0,’ in reference to the Nazis’ violent coordinated attacks on Jewish homes and businesses in 1938….

Read more.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WATCH LIVE: Tens of Thousands Rally Against COVID-19 Restrictions in Berlin after Ban Overturned

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Ruptly has posted a live feed of tens of thousands of Germans rallying against COVID-19 restrictions.

Ruptly is live from Berlin on Saturday, August 29, as protesters skeptical of the government’s coronavirus measures are expected to gather for a rally. Thousands had signed up to attend the rally against coronavirus measures before it was banned by city authorities over health concerns. This decision was later overturned by the city’s administrative court, which allowed the rally to go ahead under the condition that social distancing measures should be respected by participants. A counter-protest by opposing groups is also expected to take place. German Chancellor Angela Merkel originally announced a series of measures in March, in order to curb the spread of coronavirus. The measures have been gradually eased nationwide, however in the past weeks the number of new infections has significantly increased.

©Ruptly. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: LIVE aus Berlin: Protest gegen die Corona-Politik

Asylum!

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Adam Ghahramani, a digital product and marketing director in New York, is an Iranian-American who penned his concerns on VentureBeat, that President Trump will prevent all Muslims from seeking asylum in these United States. He maintains that Iranians have the talent and potential to become successful, productive, good citizens, and he joined mainstream media, sundry entertainers and city officials in expressing his unfounded fears of this new administration.

An asylum of sorts may indeed be needed by the rioters who appear to be in perpetual meltdown. 

VIDEO: Tracing the path of four terrorists sent to Europe by the Islamic State (video courtesy of the Washington Post).

They articulate their doubts even when President Trump clearly iterated that he is following through on his campaign promise of security for all citizens – Christian, Jewish, and Muslim alike.  In fact, based on reports by the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) for the previous administration, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia were identified by President Obama as the source of increasing terrorism.  This is clearly a terror-prone region, home to only 8% of Muslims worldwide.  Since January, 2009, we have had 32 terrorist attacks, with 83 fatalities and 402 injuries in the U.S., attributed by President Obama to these seven countries.

  • Iran: The US government classified the Islamic Republic of Iran as the “most active state sponsor of terrorism since 1948, both by direct attacks and by proxy through providing weapons, funds, training, and sanctuary to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and militias in Iraq.  The year 2012 showed a marked resurgence of state-sponsored terrorism not seen since the 1990s.
  • Syria: Classified the world’s worst state sponsor for terrorism since 1979, Syria also gives asylum for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and arms Hezbollah forces in Lebanon with SCUD missiles.  Syria was responsible for movement of foreign Al Qaeda affiliates into Iraq.
  • Iraq:  Provides safe haven, training, financial support to terrorist groups, and support to some Islamist Palestinian groups. Iraq played a role in the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and provided financial support for  Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Palestine Liberation front, Arab Liberation Front; and finances families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
  • Libya: Our State Department warns US citizens against all travel to Libya; our embassy in Tripoli is closed and extremist groups continue to plan terrorist attacks against US interests in Libya and the Middle East.  Violent activity against civilian commercial interests, US officials and citizens remains high.
  • Yemen: US government describes Yemen as an “important partner in the global war on terrorism.”  A Yemini Al Qaeda masterminded the USS Cole bombing (2000); Al Qaeda militants have threatened the Jewish community (2007) and attacked the US Embassy (2008); bomb devices have been found on aircraft (2010), deadly terrorist strikes are a continuous threat since 2001.
  • Sudan: Designated a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” in 1993, the Sudanese government continues to harbor international terrorist groups.  President Bill Clinton prohibited transactions with Sudan; US bombed Sudanese Al-Qaeda network; Sudan maintains direct relations with Iranian Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Popular Resistance Committee.  Sudan is key transit route of weapons to Gaza.
  • Somalia:  Radical Islamist terrorist group al-Shabab targets to recruit Minneapolis Somali- American refugees to become jihadists, with the intent of imposing strict sharia law on Somalia and to attack the United States.

That we cannot vet all refugees for ties to terror has been confirmed by FBI Director James Comey, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, former Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich), and Hillary Clinton.  With such verification, it is no surprise that President Trump, a man of his word, would issue a travel ban on those countries (only) so that the DHS may establish a comprehensive vetting process. He had promised to institute a policy designed to protect our sovereignty and citizens once he took office, and within days of his inauguration, he began to fulfill his promise by taking the steps needed to defend our values.

It would be irresponsible to continue to accept untold unidentified migrants, of which any number could bring with them the instability and hostility that permeates their homelands, endangers our women and children for the dishonest cause of multiculturalism that has befallen Sweden and Germany.  Unvetted immigration has turned Sweden into the Rape Capital of the West and Germany appears to be competing for the title.

But while some of our population has been provoked to deep anxiety about this brief and insignificant hiatus, we can’t help but wonder at the absence of outrage when Christians are raped and murdered by Muslims or when the entire Muslim world enacts a travel ban against travelers’ bearing passports with Israeli connections that has thus far lasted for seven decades.

Still, Mr. Ghahramani warned that America would experience a dearth of talented, industrious workers from the Middle East, exampling successful children of those refugees – Steve Jobs (Apple), Pierre Omidyar (eBay), Omid Kordestani (Google), Salar Kamangar (YouTube), Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox), Kordestani and Ali Rowghani (Twitter), Bob Miner (Oracle), Shahram Dabiri (World of Warcraft), and Sean Rad (Tinder).  Yet the ban has nothing to do with a success potential.

Learning why people emigrate from the Middle East to the West will shed much-needed light on the subject because people do not migrate when life is good.  These families left an oppressive existence in a tyrannical Islamic regime, an all-encompassing social, political and legal system that breeds hate against Jews, Christians, and all non-Islamic civilization – and even among themselves.  Such theocratic governments confine their people into a narrow uniformity.  Medieval suspicion is instilled toward the modern world, stifling creativity in the arts and sciences. Five-times-daily rituals of prescribed prayer further drain the vitality of creative energy.

“The influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.” “No stronger retrograde force (than Islam) exists in the world.” – Winston Churchill.

This enervating process is the daily background to the practice of FGM (female genital mutilation), honor killing of daughters, parents wrapping their children in explosives, and husbands stoning their wives to death.  The frustrated human spirit protests in hatred and savagery.  From the earliest age, they are taught and urged to stab, kill, rape, humiliate, stone, and drive vehicles into crowds of Jews and Christians, and homosexuality and apostasy are punishable by death.

The peoples of the current Islamic territories were once Zoroastrian, Christian, Pharoahan, Berber/Imazighen, Jewish, Baha’i, etc.,  until the Arabs swept out of the Arabian Peninsula in all directions, conquering and confining their victims to the life-denying cult known euphemistically as Islam.  It is they who now seek American freedoms, longing for the light, as does all life, and that is why we must remain vigilant.  But a significant percentage wants to enslave us under the same mortifying system that they had and to fulfill their ingrained obligation of hijra – conquest by numbers and the gradual imposition of sharia law in schools and workplaces across America.  Their national goal is Islamic world domination.

How devastating if our founding fathers had escaped their authoritarian monarchy to establish a freer government, only to find themselves in another repressive dictatorship.  How cruel and ironic if our ancestors had fled from Europe’s socialism, Marxism, and communism only to find themselves overcome by domination under the same doctrines.  Our society is not only a haven for the talented and creative, but it is also a seedbed that we have the duty to preserve.

Should we allow the new jihadists or enemy from within to turn this Constitutional Republic into an Islamic theocracy, a caliphate, with all the intolerable restrictions of Sharia law that the new Americans thought they left behind?

We must not fail our citizens through negligence or a misplaced sense of compassion and think that we should accept all who alight on our shores.   Egyptian-American author Nonie Darwish reminds us that some of the unhappy populations must stay behind and work to reform Islam and restore the Middle East.  Here, we must vet every entrant to ensure their embrace of our values and that they will become a productive member of our society – for those who will not, will continue to teach their children their own tenets of obsessive hate, and we have enough troubles already.

The purpose of the Islamic ideology is to rule the world – and to destroy Israel, a stubborn bastion of freedom.  Failure to perform jihad will lead to “spiritual death.”  The Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Society of North America, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Muslim Student Association, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and other affiliates are bound to insinuate into our society, and slowly implement Sharia changes into every facet of our lives.  We already have a Sharia-compliant Muslim population of 3.3 million in more than 300 American cities and towns.

Only extraordinary measures will save the West from the extraordinary threat to her survival.

RELATED VIDEO: Muslim Leaders Declare Aim Of World Domination. Rome, London, Spain, Paris, America, ISIS.

Mama Merkel: Boo-hoo! We tried to help them and they attack us

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a bad year ahead.  On December 19th, a failed asylum seeker killed a dozen people celebrating a Christmas tradition in Berlin. Here we learn that a Syrian refugee (who had been granted permission to stay in dear old Deutschland) has been arrested on terror charges, and she is up for election later this year. To top it off Donald Trump, rather than her soulmate Barack Obama, will be in the White House.

From Reuters:

barackobamaangelamerkel

President Obama German Chancellor Merkel

A Syrian migrant who arrived in Germany two years ago has been arrested on suspicion of seeking funds from Islamic State to drive truck bombs into a crowd, a German state prosecutor’s office said on Monday.

The arrest follows an attack two weeks ago when a Tunisian whose asylum request had been rejected rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people. The man, Anis Amri, 24, was later shot dead by Italian police.

In the latest case, the prosecutor in the western city of Saarbruecken said the 38-year-old Syrian was detained on Saturday and a formal arrest warrant was issued on Sunday on suspicion that he was trying to raise 180,000 euros ($189,000) to fund an attack.

[….]

The Syrian is from the city of Raqqa, Islamic State’s main stronghold in the country. The prosecutor’s office in Saarbruecken, near the French border, had been alerted to his activities by the BKA federal crime office.

The Syrian came to Germany on Dec. 5, 2014, just before a wave of more than 1.1 million asylum-seekers arrived from the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2015. He was given permission to stay in Germany on Jan. 12, 2015.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who made the now-controversial decision to open the country’s borders to refugees in September, 2015, described Islamist terrorism on New Year’s Eve as the greatest test facing Germany.

She has also said she is sickened by the prospect that refugees Germany has tried to help could mount attacks.

Continue reading here.

For all of our ‘Invasion of Europe’ posts, click here.  This archive extends back many years.

For fun, search photos of Angela Merkel and Barack Obama (steamy!).

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Bishop Mark Arndt: A Rare Example of a Christian Hierarch Speaking the Truth about Islam

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Islam is at its core anti-human… Reading the Quran, you will see that all of this [extremism] lies at the foundation of Islam. One must look truth in the eye: this is all anti-human, it is directed against humanity… Yes, there were times when Muslims tried to live in peace with their neighbors, they even acknowledged that we Christians are people, too. But for many, those times have passed, and now they reveal who they really are.  

— Archbishop Mark (Arndt) of Berlin (Full interview below.)

Regular readers of Jihad Watch are likely familiar with the refusal of Roman Catholic bishops to address the global issue of Muslim persecution of Christians and Jews (and other non-Muslims) and its grounding in the Quran and the example of Muhammad. The prime example may be that of Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester Mass., whose infamous quote reads more like a parody from the Onion every day:

Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.

Pope Francis of course leads this disturbing trend, his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudiumincluding the emphatic affirmation that  “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

It seems many Muslims have failed to read that particular epistle.

Sadly, things are not much different in the Orthodox Church. The world’s second largest Christian communion, comprising between 225 and 300 million members (source), retains a dwindling remnant in the Middle East, the “cradle of Christianity,” and is one of the main bodies suffering most from the resurgent global jihad.

Perhaps because of this suffering Levantine presence, there exists in world Orthodoxy what I would call a “latent dhimmitude.”

Globally, Orthodox Christian leaders, from priests, professors and theologians to bishops and patriarchs (bishops over a national Church, such as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia), almost to a man shy away from ever openly ascribing the motivation behind Muslim terrorism and persecution of Christians to Islam, and instead offer unconvincing, pious platitudes, such as from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who has written of a “dialogue of loving truth” with Islam, of Orthodoxy having for centuries “coexisted peacefully” with Islam, and of an “interfaith commitment… still felt and lived by Greeks [and] Turks.” ( Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew,Encountering the Mystery, Doubleday, 2008, pp xxxvii, 196, 174.)

Yet he writes this in spite of fourteen centuries of Islamic jihad against Christians, the enslavement of the Greek Orthodox after the conquering of Constantinople in 1453, and the blood-stained parade of neo-martyrs from the 15th to 19th centuries (including dozens of Ecumenical Patriarchs); in spite of the Turkish Muslim genocide against Orthodox Christians from 1894 to 1922, in which over 4 million Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and others were killed; in spite of the Turkish Muslim pogroms against the Greek Orthodox (e.g., Istanbul, 1955) up through the present day, which includes the conversion of the great Hagia Sophia Church of Constantinople into a mosque, together with numerous other ‘Hagia Sophia’ churches throughout Turkey.

Here’s another whopper:

“Christians and Muslims are two lungs of one Eastern body,” the Greek Orthodox Patriarch said, “and we condemn anything that harms the reputation of the forgiving Islamic religion, with which we have experienced the peace and fraternity.” (Daily Star)

I am not familiar with any “forgiving Islamic religion.”  I am familiar with the supremacist and militant Islamic religion, whose holy book and prophet have set forth commands which determine its reputation:

Fight against those who believe not in Allah…  (Quran 9:29)

Kill the mushrikun [unbelievers] wherever you find them…  (Quran 9:5)

I will cast terror into the hearts of those who have disbelieved, so strike them over the necks, and smite over all their fingers and toes. (Quran 8:12)

“I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah…” (Hadith from Sahih Bukhari, cited inReliance of the Traveller, Entry on Jihad, o9.0, o9.1, o9.8, o9.9.)

Here is an especially scandalous statement from a few decades ago:

“The Prophet Muhammad is an apostle, He is a man of God, who worked for the Kingdom of God… When I speak against Islam, then I am not found in agreement with God.” — Patriarch Parthenius of Alexandria (Orthodoxos Typos 854, May 1982)

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Patriarchs and bishops who seek to cover over the anti-human bloodlust inherent in Islam do not help, they merely confuse, frustrate and demoralize the faithful, who see for themselves what Islam is all about. The faithful need clear Christian teaching and inspiring examples of confessors and martyrs, to help them stand firm in their own trials, when the challenge comes to their doors.

This is why it is essential to extol those rare Christian hierarchs, like Bishop Mark of Berlin, who choose to ignore the politically correct climate of the day, and instead pattern their statements after fearless Church teachers of every age, such as Sophronius of Jerusalem (7th c.), John of Damascus (8th c.), Gregory Palamas, (14th c.), Kosmas of Aitolia (18th c.), Fr. Seraphim Rose (20th c.), and New-Martyr Fr. Daniil Sysoev (21st c.).

The below article, which I originally posted a year ago, is worth revisiting in the hopes that other Christian leaders — whether Catholic, Coptic, Protestant or Orthodox — will take courage and find again that authentic Christian voice in this titanic struggle against the temporal and spiritual tyranny of Islamic jihad.

Interview with Archbishop Mark (Arndt),  Pravmir,  July 31, 2014

Q – How should Christians react to the terrible epidemic of the genocide of our brothers and sisters in Christ in Syria, Metochia, Kosovo and Serbia? Is this active Islamization or the actions of radical extremists, bandits who only assume the mantle of Islam? His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, during a Liturgy in Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow read to his Russian flock the epistle of the Antiochian Patriarch, in which he painfully called to the whole world for help, stressing that the situation is at such a horrifying stage that help is needed not only through prayers to God, but in action. But in Christian society the reigning opinion is that we can help exclusively by prayer.

A – I reject the expression “help exclusively by prayer.” That we Christians are only capable of prayer is a false notion. Of course, prayer is our foundation and greatest strength. But if we think that all we can do is pray, we will go astray. Yes, we must pray, but we must also understand that people are often forced by circumstances to soften one’s language. If the Antiochian Patriarch says this, he bases it on the experience of his own nation, where Christians and Muslims always lived in peace. I think that it is incorrect to say that there are only extremists at work there. 

Reading the Quran, you will see that all of this lies at the foundation of Islam. Extremism exists, of course. Other Eastern hierarchs openly state that they have known about this particular aspect of Islam all their lives. I often serve in Jerusalem. There, for instance, on the feast of the Holy Trinity, right next to the church a muezzin cries from his tower that they believe in the One God Who has no children, no Son and Holy Spirit, etc. He has no compunction to do so, though these people are not really extremists. What is this? Open, unabashed propaganda against Christianity! They know full well what they do, spewing these slogans during the main Christian holiday of the Pentecost, the celebration of the birth of the Church Herself.

Islam is at its core anti-human. Look at Ramadan—this is the mortification of the human being, of the human body. I saw how people were taken to hospitals during their observance of Ramadan. All day they eat nothing, drink nothing even during baking heat, and at night the cram there stomachs to the point of losing consciousness—it is madness! One must look truth in the eye: this is all anti-human, it is directed against humanity.

Yes, there were times when Muslims tried to live in peace with their neighbors, they even acknowledged that we Christians are people, too. But for many, those times have passed, andnow they reveal who they really are.

Q – In other words, when some say that what is happening in Syria and other fundamentally Christian nations, it is only political, not a religious war against Christianity, it is untrue? Regardless, can we say that the Christians who are murdered for their faith today are martyrs.

A – There is an intentional war being waged against Christians. Kosovo was the first in the list of such genocide from Christian territory. Then Chechnya. Understand what happened, a Christian nation was simply given away to the Muslims. The destruction of churches continues, tortures, wild fanaticism, murder. Kosovo, Chechnya, Syria, Egypt…

Q – The next goal for these people, whether they are extremists or not, is to declare Russia Muslim. What are we to do, strengthen our prayers?

A – The most important thing is to be real Christians. This means constant participation in the Mysteries of the Church. If the Lord grants someone the crown of martyrdom, it means the person earned it and must accept it with dignity.

EDITORS NOTE: Ralph Sidway is an Orthodox Christian researcher and writer, and author of Facing Islam: What the Ancient Church has to say about the Religion of Muhammad.  He operates the Facing Islam blog.

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