Posted on 05/12/2009 6:32:06 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the Palestinian movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions. Across the region, their orientation was a vital link to the West, a counterpoint to prevailing trends.
But as Pope Benedict XVI wends his way across the Holy Land this week, he is addressing a dwindling and threatened Christian population driven to emigration by political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam. A region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian is about 5 percent today and dropping.
Since it was here that Jesus walked and Christianity was born, the papal visit highlights a prospect many consider deeply troubling for the globe’s largest faith, adhered to by a third of humanity — itsmost powerful and historic shrines could become museum relics with no connection to those who live among them.
“I fear the extinction of Christianity in Iraq and the Middle East,” the Rev. Jean Benjamin Sleiman, the Catholic archbishop of Baghdad, said in a comment echoed across the region.
The pope, in a Mass on Tuesday at the foot of the Mount of Olives, addressed “the tragic reality” of the “departure of so many members of the Christian community in recent years.”
He said: “While understandable reasons lead many, especially the young, to emigrate, this decision brings in its wake a great cultural and spiritual impoverishment to the city. Today I wish to repeat what I have said on other occasions: in the Holy Land there is room for everyone!”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oversimplified speculation: The Middle East is toast, and Europe seems not far behind. Resistance to Islam will depend on the U.S., India, China, and Japan. At least in the country of my parents (India), there are hundreds of million of Hindus who are not deluded about Islam. The Chinese aren't sentimental either.
The NYT sure did take a long time to say that Christians are a persecuted minority in the Middle East being driven into extinction by the replacement religion islam.
Christians need to continue to pray for the Muslim world, the NYT story not withstanding. The NYT doesn't even get the things of man correct - how could we expect it to be any better with the things of God?
Islam = Submission
Lan astaslem = I will not submit.
This was so predictable. Muslims are taking over. It’s all in the the numbers. See: http://www.nmatv.com/video/2258/Muslim-Demographics
A tragedy. Christianity was born in the Middle East before Islam.
Near Damascus lived the Ghassanid Arab tribe, which was Christian and fought alongside the Byzantine Empire.
In the Arabian peninsula was the Kinda tribe, another Christian tribe, friendly to Christian Ethiopia. More Christian Arab tribes were the Banu Bakr, Banu Taghlib, Dhays, and Abs.
The Himyarite Arab empire (southern Yemen) was converted to Christianity by monks from the Byzantine empire, and three churches were built in Aden. Prior to that they embraced Judaism, and the last king Dhu Nuwas was a Jew.
Christians and Jews lived in what is now Syria, Israel/PA, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, and North Africa.
The Bani Nadir, Qurayzah, and Qaynuqa Arab tribes were the most prominent Jewish tribes (among several others).
Jewish Arab tribes lived in Madinah (then called Yathrib), Mecca, Khaybar, Fadaq, Tayma and other Arabian peninsula cities.
There were several prominent Jewish & Christian Arab poets, and the Jews introduced the palm tree to Arabian agriculture. Its Arabic name was tamr, from Hebrew tamar, meaning dates. Tamar is also the Arabic word for dates.
Then along came Muhammad who killed as many as he could and forced the others to leave their homeland. Everything that Islam currently occupies it does not own. It was taken by force from people—many of them fellow Arabs—who already lived there.
>Resistance to Islam will depend on the U.S., India, China, and Japan.<
Don’t depend on the US to resist Islam. We continue to love them so much even after 9/11 that we allow them in by the plane load. (Go visit any international airport in the afternoon when planes from Europe land and watch the ragheads disembark.)
Saw a program the other day where a bunch of American Muslims already predicted that by 2050, the US will be mainly Muslim. Of course, electing 0 only sped up the process.
That Europe has a death wish I can believe, but that America has one just as pressing I shall never understand.
Any thoughtful person who knows history and religion would be anti-Islam. Along with Communism, Naziism, and the Black Death, Islam has been responsible for more death and destruction on the face of the planet than just about anything else since the last asteroid impact. Islam was started by predators. It has spread by predation. It has lived off the decaying corpses of the civilizations it has destroyed. It is a vast, ancient sea of corruption, oppression, fanaticism, and ignorance lapping up against the shores of the present, kept alive by the fortuitous accident of living above huge reserves of petroleum.
They are not holding sway. One Christian is stronger than an army of Muslims.
Well said!
The good news is that humanity will quickly go extinct if that happens so you don’t need to worry. Muslims have a habit of exploding so put a whole bunch together and we’ll have a chain reaction to cover the planet surface in fire.
Ya know, I’m not the best or brightest of persons, to state the obvious about how certain folks bent on certain religious “practices” may actually push, impune, or oughtright kill beleivers of other religions is absolutly moot, But he is the Pope, and He’s gotta say what He’s gotta say.
But I gotta say, that as soon as there is a revolt within religous public opinion about how one religious leader gets invited to another religions house of worship, just so they can make more excuses to kill. Well, if I were the Pope, I’d be outta there as soon as anyone would try to capitalze(sp) any more on that.
I CAN’T STAND ANYBODY THAT WANTS TO CUT MY HEAD OFF FOR WHAT I BELEIVE, OR WHAT I DISBELIEVE.
Christians are fleeing certain nations? DUH!
Maybe they like where thier head is, you know, connected to the rest of thier body...
I wonder what will happen with the muzzies when the libs “go green”? Hmmmm
according to wiki, the worlds greatest genocide was by muslims against Hindus
I have heard the thing from two sources very close to the situation. Apparently, Muslims in massive numbers are having dreams of Jesus...and making religious decisions as a result. Nothing further, to protect them.
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