2,000 people attended Christmas Mass at the Mar Eliya Church in Baghdad. “The church, which is located next to a Shiite mosque, hosted their neighbors for Christmas mass as a gesture of friendship.”
Much more at the link, as well as here.
2,000 people attended Christmas Mass at the Mar Eliya Church in Baghdad. “The church, which is located next to a Shiite mosque, hosted their neighbors for Christmas mass as a gesture of friendship.”
Much more at the link, as well as here.
Peace on earth…
Shhh, we ain’t supposed to hear about stuff like that.
Jeesh, don’t you guys get the memos?
Gee I’m confused Kate…weren’t we were told by anti-Christian trolls in the Christian thread that if you are born in a Muslim country you gotta be Muslim…what’s with all these Arabian Christians screwing up a good anti-Christian theory 😉
Nice.
Meanwhile, further down in the comments:
“CBS’ 60 Minutes had a shocking story last night on the almost total obliteration of the Christian community in Iraq, all of it happening under the US occupation.”
Islam, the religion of cowards.
Christian minorities exist everywhere, including Islamic countries. An interesting book I recommend is “Prisoner of Tehran” about a Christian woman who was arrested as a girl for the crime of not being Muslim. She was forced to convert and forced to marry a Muslim. Aside from that she was tortured and incarcerated for two years for no crime. Marina Nemat now lives in Aurora where she’s free to practice Christianity.
While it is true that persecuted christians exist in hiding throughout the world, and I would love to hear more about Marina’s story, this represents an openly Christian assembly in harmonious co-habitation with both Sunni and Shiite communities.
Definitely not the party-line we hear repeatedly from the liberal MSM.
Umm, where are all the women?
soccermom, good point. Shocked I didn’t notice that. I would suspect that the cultural gender apartheid extends even to Arab Christians in that part of the world. Maybe they’re in the back?
I see at one of the links that women were indeed relegated to the back, and there were actually a few kids there. Yes, it’s good to see a church so full in a place like Iraq, but it’s disturbing to me that women and children would still be considered second-class citizens/worshippers in a church, no matter where the heck that church is!
In a very imperfect world, and a very imperfect but definitely improving Iraq, I’ll settle for this. A Christian church in Baghdad, next door to a Shia mosque, had Christmas mass and a whole bunch of Shia attended as a gesture of solidarity with their Christian fellow Iraqis.
No attacks, no car bombs, just Christian and Muslim Iraqis expressing brotherhood and worshipping God together on Christmas Eve.
Right, it’s definitely baby-steps in a place like the M.E.
“A Creche Without Christians”
Christian Persecution in the Middle East.
By Nina Shea
In the two millennia since the child’s birth in a humble manger in Bethlehem, the good news of Christianity has spread to every continent, inspiring more followers than any other religion today. But the lands that once were the cradle of Christianity have turned distinctively inhospitable to the faith. Fiercely intolerant variants of Islam are taking hold in the region, many of them fueled with ideology and funds from Saudi and Iranian extremists.
From Morocco to the Persian Gulf, we are seeing the rapid erosion of Christian populations, thought to now number no more than 15 million. These are the communities that have disproportionately been the region’s modernizers, the mediators bridging east and west, its educators and academics, as the Lebanese Catholic scholar Habib Malik observes. For empirical evidence he has to look no further than his own father, a principal drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The loss of Middle Eastern Christianity has profound meaning for the Church. But it should not be a matter of concern to Christians only. These Christian communities, along with a handful of other non-Muslim minority groups, such as the Bahais, Mandeans, Yizidis, Jews, together with the anti-Islamist Muslims, are the front-line in the terrible worldwide struggle taking place today between Islamist totalitarianism and individual rights and freedoms. The extinction of these ancient church communities will lead to ever more extremism within the region and polarization from the non-Muslim world. This will hurt us all.
The new religious survey, Freedom in the World, produced by the Center for Religious Freedom shows that while some Muslim governments do respect religious freedom, none are to be found in the Middle East. Israel is the only “free” country, and their Christian numbers are increasing.
The survey ranks Jordan, Oman, Morocco, and Lebanon as “partly free.” Here the Christian populations are either miniscule and largely foreign, or, in the case of Lebanon, shrinking precipitously from majority to about a third of the population in recent decades.
The rest of the region is further down the freedom scale. In Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, and Tunisia there are virtually no indigenous Christian communities left, though some converts there carry out religious lives in the catacombs and expats quietly hold services. In Saudi Arabia, religious intolerance is official state policy.
Over half of Iraq’s one million Christians have fled since a coordinated bombing of their churches in August 2004 was followed by sustained violence against them. A Catholic Chaldean bishop raised the possibility last month that we may now be witnessing “the end of Christianity in Iraq.” Anglican Canon Andrew White, who leads a Baghdad ecumenical congregation, agrees: “All of my leadership were originally taken and killed — all dead,” he asserted in November.
Iraq’s Christian community, which dates from the Apostle Thomas, is not simply caught in the cross hairs of a sectarian civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. It is targeted for its non-Muslim faith — a reality U.S. policy fails to acknowledge. An extremist Sunni fatwa issued to Christians this year in a Baghdad neighborhood could not be clearer: “If you do not leave your home, your blood will be spilled. You and your family will be killed.’”
article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWEwZGJiMDEyOWU0ZWM0YWNmMThmMmQyOWQyZDM1OGI
Noticed that right off the bat soccermom.Maybe the Christians had to adopt the Islamic segregation of men and women to get the men to show up front? Or are the gals out back shoveling clear paths through the IED’s for when the guys leave?
I am with Dave
That there are no women in the picture should come as no surprise. Many Christian sects keep the genders apart during worship. If fact over the centuries it could be said that our practice of “combined” worship is the exception and not the rule. I also found it interesting that they gave the women head scrarves to wear yet some of the men in the picture were wearing headcoverings. Almost a reverse of what we have in North America where men and women are bare headed during worship.
It may come as a shock to some, but the ancient Christian Church did NOT start in Rome.
Considering much of Christ’s ministry was in present-day Israel … start there and head out in all directions and you will find the basis of the Pentarchy (just google the word).
The five ancient capitals of the Church were Jerusalem, Alexandria (Egypt, a jursidiction also headed by a pope), Antioch and Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul and the capital of Byzantium.)
These were capitals based on geographic territory. Rome, being the furthest away from Jerusalem, was the furthest-flung capital and managed to be far enough away from the seventh-century Islamic expansionism to meet the threat when it came its way.
The Crusades, of course, was the response to four centuries of Islamic expansionism.
Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and those middle east areas embaced Christianity much quicker than the western geographical regions of modern-day Europe and those 2,000-year traditions exist to this day.
Ahhhhh…it’s eyewash like this that makes you think Muslims are sweethearts after all! Of course they miss their Christian neighbours. Both Sunni and Shia could be sure and safe on the degree they are allowed to milk and suppress Christians. It’s harder to suppress each other and you cant collect Jizya from Muslims.
If you like this kind of eye wash you should know that if you drink it, it is a laxative too.
There are security reasons, also, in the placement of children (and their mothers) apart from the men (and the moslem guests) near the front where the leadership of the small congregation were either serving near the altar or in the front pews.
In the comments so far, I don’t see any mention of Palestine. The “peace-loving” palys are driving the Christians out of the area. First the Jews and then the Christians is one of Hamas’s slogans. Not long ago someone from the Vatican said that Christianity is facing the bleak prospect of having no Christians living around its most holy shrines.
Yup, eyewash.
Must be a bit of a dent in the jizya!
Shouldn’t all paranormal believers get together?
But please!Continue not to read much.
Stun your little fantasies
That picture MUST be a fake !
At least according to many regulars here,Islam is the religion of death,mired in hatred.
It is IMPOSSIBLE for these death merchants to show any sincere fairness to infidels,they are all extremists under the skin.
Again,at least according to numerous regulars here.
The two dopes above have a reading and comprehension problem they’d unabashedly like to share with everybody.
Read history. Read the Quran, Hadith and Sira. Idiots.
Then come back and comment.
Teddy read the life of Mohamad. He was a general that justified violence. Dont believe me ask a Muslim they will agree only justify his actions. If a Muslim converts it is the duty of Muslims to kill him. Ask your Muslim friends if this is true if you dont believe me.
irwin,
You are a bigotted asshole,with no interest whatsoever in hearing any viewpoint you do not agree with.
Please do not waste my time again.
Perkunas,
We currently have legions of muslims in Canada.Since you seem to believe that muslims can only be extremists,what do you propose we do about them?(I at least thank you for making your point without childish namecalling)
BTW,just to keep the record straight,I have very little respect for Islam and am on record with my disgust of moderate muslim’s general inaction,but will not be bullied out of highlighting the hatemongering that goes on by some here.
Muslim DOES NOT equal terrorist.
“Irwin,
You are a bigotted asshole,with no interest whatsoever in hearing any viewpoint you do not agree with.
Please do not waste my time again.
Perkunas,
We currently have legions of muslims in Canada.Since you seem to believe that muslims can only be extremists,what do you propose we do about them?(I at least thank you for making your point without childish namecalling)”
Oh boy, where do you begin with these secretions of the lowliest of minds? Wollowing as it is in hypocrisy, stupidity and ignorance.
teddy, go get help. Your world doesn’t exist. And your opinion (read, feelings) are irrelevant.
Teddy
Your comment to Irwin confirms Irwin’s assessment of your intellectual capacity.
“Containment” is the general answer to your comment to Perkunas along with “Protective Custody” of female children wishing to exercise basic freedoms of association and dress available in Canadian society.
Teddy
As Irwin says, educate yourself about Islam. Come back, apologize for looking like a buffoon and then seriously begin to discuss the defense of our culture from Islam.
My hypocrisy was intentional.How else do you communicate with a narrow-minded idiot who cannot counter a point he disagrees on without tossing insults but to talk back in their own terms.
In contrast,my comments to Perkunas were respectful because he chose to refer to me without chucking immature rantings.
To those here whose intellectual depth cannot excede the following logic…
All terrorists are muslims.
Therefore…all muslims are terrorists.
I no more consider all muslims as hateful than I do all christians as honest or loving.
“Containment” is the general answer to your comment to Perkunas along with “Protective Custody” of female children wishing to exercise basic freedoms of association and dress available in Canadian society.”
stephen,
You’d make a top-notch lefty with close-mindedness like that.People who think like you and call themselves conservatives are Harper’s worst nightmare(You actually endorse seizing muslim children from their parents…stunning).But what I find really disturbing is that most of my fellow conservatives don’t have the balls to call bigots like this out on their hatemongering.
BB,
I have merely been encouraging others to stop thinking in such weakminded and childish black and white terms.People who talk in absolutes generally cannot comprehend the other side of any discussion.I have proven I can.
Do you have that ability?
soccermom asked
“”””Umm, where are all the women?””””””
ahhhhhh, in the middle east, the kristiams treat their wimin only marginally better than most muzzle-ems doo
now were did I hear such nonsense, ahhhh, from a kristian whom wuz born in the ME,and would never marry a man, of any persuation, from the ME
…funny the men don’t remove their head coverings inside the church, but if we were to visit their church, off with your shoes and no short pants.
teddy,
Your feeble excuse for a brain exposes itself over and over.
Once again, I have never argued that “all Muslims are terrorists.”
I do argue that the foundationally violent ideology of Islam as proven in the Quran, Hadith (words and actions of Mo) and Sira (bio of Mo) is the root cause of historical Islamic violence to this day.
As long as this ideology is aided in repelling moral and intellectual criticism and hopefully from it, exposure and reform, the violence will only get worse.
You, in your ignorance, are as much to blame as the false doctrine of multiculturalism.
You claim:
“How else do you communicate with a narrow-minded idiot who cannot counter a point he disagrees on without tossing insults”
Would you care to share your point with “those here whose intellectual depth cannot excede the following logic,” please?
Certainly irwin,
Though this thread is near death,I’ll try once again to help you understand my point and hope you find it.
My problem is not that you believe the quran aids in fostering evil,I can actually understand your concerns and agree in principal.
The problem I have is your arrogant refusal to consider that ANY GOOD can be found in the quran or it’s followers whatsoever and the hatemongering that encourages.
You once asked me if I ever read the quran.My honest answer is no.When I take time to read fiction,I prefer King,Cussler or someone else who can give me a few hours of entertainment.
You certainly must realize that your reading the quran without any spiritual guidance accompanying you is as intellectually useless as me reading the bible without a priest to explain what the hell it all means.
In other words irwin,opening a holy book and selecting only the negative sounding quotes that back up your agenda is a dishonest game.You know as well as I that you can also find quotes full of peace and love and other such feelgood bullshit in there too.Out of context,all these words mean absolutely nothing.
Which takes me to my MAIN point…
The problem western civilization faces is IMAMS who purposely abuse the quran for evil and those RADICAL muslims they create.THEY are the enemy which threatens our way of life.
And I will fully support any sensible plan you have to eradicate them.
BUT,To sit and preach at a website that the Islamic faith can foster nothing but evil is misleading,arrogant and hateful.Thus my repeated claims of bigotry.
When idealogues such as yourself actually help create an atmosphere where dimbulbs can feel comfortable suggesting that removing children from Canadian citizens(for no reason other than them being muslims)is an acceptable strategy in dealing with radical Islam,I’d say things have gone a bit far.
Wouldn’t you?
Finally,I am not here to tell you what to believe,I am simply rebelling against your nasty habit of generalizing and hoping,without attacking you personally,that you can actually find some grey amongst all that black and white.
At least that is what my “feeble brain” has attempted.
I do not generalize teddy.
I have clearly stated the problem. Muslims are the first victims of a foundationally violent ideology that commands and rewards violence through the Quran, Hadith and Sira. That commands Muslims to emulate Mohammad, a violent and vicious man, by any rational persons standards.
By your own admission you have not read it. I have a suggestion, you cannot just read the Quran. It must be accompanied by the other texts mentioned. It’s the only way the Quran has any context, whatsoever.
You must also understand the convenient Islamic tenets of abrogation and dualism when reading.
May I also suggest you read Hirsi Ali, Bat Ye’or, Abul Kasem, Ali Sina, Amil Imani, Ayesha Ahmed, Azar Majedi, Ibn Iblis and other ex-Muslims.
As well as the scholar, Robert Spencer – starting with Islam 101 and Quran blog.
Same for Andrew Bostom and Craig Winn.
Conquered nations and murdered victims have all looked to “find some grey amongst the black and white.” They were unknowledgable and therefore unprepared.
“where dimbulbs can feel comfortable suggesting that removing children from Canadian citizens(for no reason other than them being muslims)”
To any thinking, decent person, this suggestion is not rational. However, to Muslims following strict Islamic doctrine it is:
Have you heard of the Janissaries? Also, do you understand the Islamic concept and rules of dhimmitude?