EU Religious Leaders react to 'naive' West facing Jihadi threats

4, December, 2016

A century ago, 15 percent of the Middle East were professing Christians. Today only 4 percent remain. Following bloody murder, violence and mass persecutions, millions have left the region. Most of the changes have taken place in recent years. The Jews went first. Nearly a million were expelled from Arab and Muslim counties after WW2.
Barnabas Fund for persecuted Christians says 80 percent of Christians in Iraq have fled the country. Why? It says:

“During the 1970s, western politicians tended to view Islam as a gentle, peaceful, primarily eastern religion, a naïve view that ignored the periodic massacres of Christians that had been happening in the Middle East over the previous 150 years. This view still informs the policies of the Obama administration who even now flatly deny that there is any link between Islamic ideology and violence against non-Muslims. Consequently when it talks about being committed to seeing a “whole, unified, pluralistic, nonsectarian Syria”, it unwittingly embraces jihadist groups who routinely target Christians.”

How did a relatively peaceful region become such a cauldron of violence? The Barnabas Fund report says:

“During the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, the US supplied vast amounts of arms to radical Islamist groups fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, notably the Taliban. It was the Pakistan Taliban who later carried out attacks on Christians such as the 2013 bombing of the All Saints Church in Peshawar that killed over 80 and injured more than a hundred others.
After the 9/11 attacks George W. Bush assumed that military intervention – initially in Afghanistan and then Iraq – would bring about western-style democracy that would in turn neutralise radical Islam.
In fact, almost the exact opposite was true.”

Today Christians and Jews worldwide are faced with another pernicious attack — that of changing or destroying Jewish and Christian history. Muslim clerics are destroying archaeological facts by the truck load. Four hundred trucks of them! Tons of archaeological earth was removed from under what in the West is commonly called “The Temple Mount” in Jerusalem and thrown on the city’s dumps. After patient sifting of this rubbish, Israeli archeologists found bullae or seals, coins and arrowheads of the Roman Tenth Legion dating back to the Israelite kings and their Secretaries of State, mentioned in the Bible and the Roman siege of Israel’s capital.
Ancient churches on the “Temple Mount” built by the Byzantine Romans and later by the Crusaders were destroyed. Muslims re-used the Dome of the Rock or columns for their own purposes. The Dome of the Rock retains an onion-shaped dome typical of its earlier Byzantine architecture. It has the octagonal structure of Byzantine churches and contains features and texts some scholars take to be pre-Islamic.

It was reconstructed half a century into the Muslim era by Abd al-Malik on a Christian church site, the Church of the Holy Wisdom. Texts are mainly non-koranic and contain many propagandist references to Jesus on the inside. They encourage Christians (then by far the majority in Jerusalem) to turn to Islam and physically face south towards Mecca.
History cannot be buried with propaganda. Truth is unearthed, even in our times. On the mounts of Jerusalem a bulla of King Hezekiah of Judah was found. It dates the legality of Jewish occupiers to around 2700 years ago.
Jerusalem is the capital of Judeo-Christian and European civilization, its education, science and culture.
United Nations agencies now collude in the Muslim propaganda that undermines Western culture. Both the USA and Israel have refused to fund UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) any more. Why? Because It has thrown out objective rule books about education, science and culture. Faced with Muslim disinformation attacks, UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee have passed resolutions denying Hebrew or Christian names for sites in Jerusalem.
It reiterates that Israel is an occupier. That is true in the sense Israel is the legal occupier as I am of my own house. But the resolutions imply that there is something nasty, illegal or unjust about it. That is rubbish. Israel is recognized as a Jewish Homeland.
An Arab who claims that his house was given him by Saladin in the twelfth century has no rights. Saladin was a foreign military invader. This Kurdish leader was born in Tikrit, (in modern day Iraq, the home of Saddam Hussein). He founded the Ayyubid dynasty in the twelfth century and was proclaimed sultan of Egypt and Syria. He conquered Syria and fought the Crusaders.
Saladin, like the Romans before him, had no legal rights. Nor has the pope. Nor has anyone in Poland who says the land of a former synagogue is his because the Nazis gave it him! The highest courts of Europe re-affirm this principle of legitimate ownership.
It makes absolutely no sense to deny the fact that the Jewish and Israelite capital was at Jerusalem from the time of Israelite King David. He bought it. He paid for it in gold and silver. No one disputed in the coming centuries that David was the legal occupier and owner. It remained legally occupied by Jews until centuries after Jesus Christ walked and worked in the Temple.
After Jerusalem was conquered and burnt by pagan Rome, the Byzantine Roman Empire built churches and ruled the land. The Persians also tried to conquer it. Muslims have no patent to change the names and heritage of places.
If the names of the places in Jerusalem should be defined by military conquest, they should all be in English. British forces were the last major power to conquer the land in 1917 during the First World War. The global powers meeting at San Remo after WW1 decided by law what to do. They recognized that the land of Israel was the Jewish Homeland. It did not belong to Turks, Arabs, Muslims or the Roman Empire. That international decision has recognition by scientific, cultural authorities. It is a historical fact. It has the force of international law. Those who disagree with it must also disagree with the Iranian State, the State of Syria, the kingdoms of Iraq and Saudi Arabia which were founded by the same authorities at the same time.
Jerusalem and Israel were not made by the League of Nations. The League and later the United Nations recognized the legitimacy of Jewish ownership. The same principle of international law is used after any military conqueror has left a country. Departing armies have no rights on the property of the owners who lived there before the conquest. That is what happened in Nazi-occupied Poland. It is what European courts affirm today about property rights in Cyprus, where the Turkish army intervened and Greek-speaking owners abandoned their houses.
The UNESCO resolutions thus attack the foundation of European law. They attack the Educational principles of Western society that says “might is not right”. They attack the Scientific principles that say archaeology and historical documents give proof of ownership, not the fables about dreams of peacock-winged mules who supposedly flew to an area then without either mosque or Temple.
The UNESCO resolutions attack the founding Culture of Western civilization.
Robert Schuman in creating the European Community helped define real democracy that has brought a diverse, warring Europe its longest peace. The European Commission holds a regular dialogue with high-level religious leaders. So I put these questions to them. Here are their answers.
http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=I12994
Besides Vice-President Frans Timmermans, those attending included:
H. E. Archbishop Polycarpus Augin AYDIN, Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch in the Netherlands – Arie FOLGER, Chief Rabbi of Vienna – Bishop Heinrich BEDFORD-STROHM, Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD) – Imam Yahya PALLAVICINI, Vice-President of the “Comunità religiosa Islamica” in Italy – Jan FIGEL, Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion and Belief outside the European Union – H. E. Albert GUIGUI, Chief Rabbi of Brussels and Permanent Representative to the EU Conference of European Rabbis – Antje JACKELEN, Archbishop of the Protestant Church in Sweden – Elder Patrick KEARON, First Counsellor in the Europe Area – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – Imam Benjamin IDRIZ, Islamische Gemeinde Penzberg – Bishop Robert INNES, Anglican Bishop in Europe

Jihad1 : 'Islam awakes!' Europe falls asleep, comatose on its Energy addiction

'Islam Awakes!' That's what the news ticker said on the monitors of the press area of the European Council building on 4 February. Mubarak had already announced he was going. The European Council was in its usual secret session, closed to the press and closed to the public. On its agenda the topic of most vital interest to the public: Energy.

The European Union is the world's greatest importer of energy. That is not a boast. That is a mark of shame. It is also a sign pointing to Europe's greatest danger: Energy Blackmail. Europe has already experienced the effects of an oil embargo in the 1970s.

The EU pays 2.5% of its GDP on imported energy -- money that could be used stimulate its own innovations, an energy efficiency economy and native energy production. On oil alone the EU spends an enormous 270 billion euros. It cost only a fraction of that to produce, as it flows freely from wells. The surplus profits are used too often against the welfare of Europeans and Americans. Instead Europe's economy is still driven by Arab oil. Moreover it mostly comes from the Persian Gulf countries and is exported through a narrow and dangerous strait.

The poorer Arab States are now being aroused by their richer religious cousins. North African States are now much more mosque-orientated than only a decade ago. Daily habits and clothes have changed. More than piety is involved. Egypt is a key State between Saudi and Iranian power grabs. No wonder that the 86-year old Saudi King Abdullah was reportedly apoplectic at naive American attempts to unseat Mubarak.

'The events in Tunisia and Egypt are the sign of the Islamic Awakening' and 'an Islamic liberation movement' -- these were the words of Iran's Supreme Leader Khomenei. He addressed the Friday crowds for the first time in seven months. These movements will spell an 'irreparable defeat' for the United States, he said to cheering crowds raising their fists and shouting 'Death to America! Death to Israel!'.

Did the Europe's 27 leaders closeted in secret hear about Iran's pronouncement on the Mediterranean revolution? Did anyone tell them that the leader of nuclear Iran was laying ideological claim to Europe's southern frontiers? Are they talking about it now the Council has dispersed? We don't know.

Through Egypt by ship and pipeline comes 5 per cent of the world's oil and much of it destined for European and American consumers. Around 8 per cent of the world's exports comes through the Suez canal. It is the major umbilical that attaches marine trade of Europe, the Near East and Asia. Who is behind this revolt? There are many factors, such as wanting the freedoms of the West across the water, a sense of purpose, work and an end to grinding poverty.

Others are more dangerous, including the Muslim Brethren, an organisation that for decades has spawned jihadi spin-offs worldwide. It has been called the mother of modern jihadis, including Iran and Al Qaida. Like Communism, Nazism and other isms, it is ideological to the core. It still retains its poisonous ideological connection with Nazism and the Arabic version of Hitler's Mein Kampf and the fictitious propaganda The protocols of the Elders of Zion are widely published. Danish cartoons are not.

Its slogan is Islam is the Solution. But what is the question? What is life's purpose? To die as a so-called martyr? It has not brought happiness, peace, satisfying work, productive industry or the conservation of Nature and the ecological betterment of the planet. Europe has rejected the Islamic solution intellectually and physically with great loss of blood at Tours, Vienna and many other times over a millennium and half. Internal documents of the Brotherhood cite that the goal is a kind of 'grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.'

Is the only way to show this solution to destroy the successful alternatives? How about a good example? A weak ideology turns to immoral action and illicit expansion, often by violence, intimidation or sabotage. That distracts people from deeper analysis that exposes its false assumptions. The weakest spot of such an ideology is exposed in a public debate.

Why do these 'solutions' require the death of Israel? Because Israel has allowed freedom of worship. The Israeli government also pays for the maintenance of mosques. It did not desecrate them or build synagogues on top of them. It has produced a high tech society out of penniless Jewish refugees expelled from Arab lands. It has turned a barren land into an exporter of food. It is an example that many tyrants want to hide from their populations.

The interest of Iran should be kept in mind. Its regime can only stay in power at home by attacking and eliminating all its opponents at home and attempting to expand abroad. Its propaganda is powerful and contrasts with the weak reply of the West.

Consider how Iran has created a sphere of influence and propaganda in the Near East in the last few years. This now nearly surrounds Israel. It has gained a decisive interest in Gaza where it has often supplied arms and rockets by sea and by land. This has overexcited the whole of the Muslim world. Iran has also paid for and trained the militant Hizballah movement in Lebanon and has succeeded to make this militant Shi'ite jihadist army an integral part of the government of the once peaceful country. Iran's influence in Syria is also growing.

The Jordanian authorities are faced with a stark existential choice -- bend to Tehran or be broken. That seems to be the ground why they have urged America to go to war against Iran, even though this would bring war and destruction to the entire region. The Jordanians see this catastrophe of war as a lesser evil than an inevitable total Shi'ite take-over of the whole region through intimidation and small arms. That would only lead to further major war elsewhere, a global jihad. The Iranian theocracy has as its avowed aim the destruction of America and Europe as the great satans.

Is Iran behind the troubles in Egypt? Is it taking an opportunistic hand in the uprising against Mubarak? Iran rather gave its hand away. Last week it accused Israel of supplying plane-loads of anti-riot material to Mubarak's regime. That was swiftly denied by Jerusalem as nonsense. The fact of the matter is that in October last year -- for some unknown reason -- plane flights were resumed between Tehran and Egypt. Who authorized it? Strangely no one seems to know. Why is it significant? Simply because plane flights between the Shi'ite state and Egypt have been stopped not for a year or two but for thirty years.

For years President Mubarak had already warned the Muslims in neighbouring countries of the plans of the sectarian leaders of the Iranian Islamic Republic. 'The Persians are trying to devour the Arab states,' he said. 'A nuclear armed Iran with hegemonic ambitions is the greatest threat to Arab nations today,' Mubarak told the Arab Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2009.

Now we know from WikiLeaks that all the neighbouring States are worried about what they consider the malevolent influence of Iran. The Saudis are calling Iran a 'snake' whose head needs to be cut off. Why then did the Egyptians -- the fiercest enemy of the Persians -- do this most extraordinary thing? They chose this moment to agree to resume airflights with Tehran. They were cut in the days of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Revolution of 1979-80. At that time the Shah left Iran and in a final trip between the capitals took his plane to Egypt. It is an indication of the growing power of Iran in Egypt.

The revolutionaries have a longer memory than many European leaders -- the Crusades are common talk. Are Europeans equally familiar with their past struggles with militant jihadis over 1500 years?

The Iranians can recall the vital need to control supply routes. At one stage, 2500 years ago, Egypt fell under the sword of the Persian monarchs Darius 1 and Cambyses of Persia. A three-language monument, unearthed by de Lesseps and now in Paris, declares the words of Darius that his men re-excavated the canal that links the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.

King Darius says:

I am a Persian; setting out from Persia, I conquered Egypt. I ordered to dig this canal from the river that is called Nile and flows in Egypt, to the sea that begins in Persia. Therefore, when this canal had been dug as I had ordered, ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, as I had intended.

This was when the natives of the land were mainly Egyptians -- that is Copts, whose language is similar to ancient Egyptian. Only later when the Egyptian Empire had been destroyed did the Greeks, the Romans and then the Arabs take over the land. Prior to that Egypt was one of the world's greatest Christian countries. Many Arabs tend to believe civilisation only existed with Islam. The Persians remember they not only had a great civilisation but were controlling Egypt long before the Arabs arrived.

The Suez Canal itself can be seen as a historic goal for the Iranian regime. Today the Iranians have decisive influence in all the countries surrounding Israel, the only democracy in the entire Middle East.

The Iranians have no reason to be nice to those trying to thwart its nuclear plans. Europe is trying to impose crippling sanctions on the regime. If the Iranians gain influence on the Suez Canal they will have an additional stranglehold on Europe and its oil imports. The other route for oil from the Persian Gulf is by super-tanker around Africa. This too is becoming more dangerous. Witness the capture of hundreds of ships including a couple of tankers with enough oil for a fifth of the daily needs of the USA.

Who are these Somali pirates? They told Reuters: 'We are Muslims. We are marines, coastguards -- not pirates.' Really? They are jihadis. They are at war. One terrorist leader of the al-Shabaab-linked Mu'askar Ras Kamboni (also designated by the US State Department as a terrorist) said on Somali radio: 'I can say the pirates are part of the Mujahedeen [religious fighters], because they are in a war with Christian countries who want to misuse the Somali coast.' Guilty people have poor reasoning. Stealing super tankers worth hundreds of millions of euros shipping oil peacefully hundreds of kilometres out in the Indian Ocean has nothing to do with the coast guards. Osama bin Laden was more frank when he praised the Somalis' war of Islam against Christianity.

Maybe Europe's leaders in the European Council briefly discussed the rising demand for 'democracy' across North Africa. 'Democracy'? Islam? Who is right? They cannot both be right because there is no example of Islamic democracy in history. Democracy-- that is the equality of everyone under law -- is based on Judeo-Christian principles. Islam is based on the supremacy of the Islamic believer over the unbeliever. Effectively the voter may get one vote as in late Weimar Germany but only once. Iran shows that once the theocratic power has taken over they are not willing to give it up regardless of what the people vote. Hamas in Gaza is another example where those voted in to power then proceeded to kill and attack their electoral opponents of the Palestinian Authority. Gaza is one of the tentacles of Iran's Shi'ite octopus -- to use the Jordanian description.

The other Sunni countries have not been willing to allow overtly religious political parties (who might take over forever) or anti-religious parties (that religious fanatics oppose with suicide 'martyrs' as it would expose their methods, logical deficiencies and intolerance). With no philosophical or constitutional separation of secular from the religious powers, usually the military is needed to separate political competitors. The sword of Islam has been used frequently against unbelievers but also believers of the wrong hue.

Democracy as we know it is based on a religious or spiritual concept. Europe's democracy allows atheists or secularists to survive and even thrive. It allows them to pose the most probing questions and make even blasphemous criticism of Christianity. A Judeo-Christian society thus provides tolerance of antagonistic views of its own religion. The reason is that truth is valued above all and must be examined with all critical faculties. Truth will out. The results are clear. Christianity in all its multiple human imperfections is growing worldwide without the sword, intimidation or blackmail.

That is not true for an atheist State. A secular regime like Soviet Communism was at war with spiritual values and the freedom of religion. Only a Judeo-Christian system can produce democracy. Atheistic 'people's democracies' were hollow and false. The core of dialectic materialism was intellectually rotten.

As Schuman explained, democracy is not something that arises by spontaneous generations by mobs, by demonstrations or by revolt. It requires a moral base and a soundly founded concept of where ultimate authority comes from. That is not a false god or false religion.

Democracy is above all not something made quickly; Europe has taken more than a thousand years of Christianity to fashion it. In Africa we were forced to burn our bridges. Not only did we give the vote to an often illiterate population but what is worse, we turned power over to men who often had no training and who were exposed defenceless to all temptations of capriciousness and injustice. We tried to slacken the rhythm, to bring in controls; these were only frail preventive measures against the thrust of nationalism. I would like to be able to quote on this subject what Jacques Maritain, following Bergson, wrote more than twenty years ago, at the time when a more generous and Christian policy on our overseas territories was being elaborated. I will just keep to a few pertinent phrases:

'We must realise that the part that instinct and irrationality plays is much larger role in the animation of a group than an individual. At a time when one people enters history claiming their political and social adulthood, large sections of mankind remain in a state of immaturity or suffering from an unhealthy reactions accumulated during the course of time and are still only sketching out or preparing themselves culturally to be called a people. Let us understand that to enjoy one's privileges as an adult person without the risk of bankruptcy, a people must be capable of behaving as adults...

'Nothing is easier for political fraudsters to exploit good principles for an illusion, nor is anything more disastrous than good principles badly applied...'

I conclude with Bergson that 'democracy is essentially evangelical as it has love as its motor.'

Schuman summed up several thousand years of history: 'Democracy will be Christian or it won't exist. An unchristian democracy is a caricature which sinks into tyranny or anarchy.'

We should have no illusions about installing a real democracy or where a tyranny or anarchy in the Mediterranean can lead.