Posted on 12/08/2014 6:49:09 AM PST by SJackson
Islam: Built on the Blood of (Christian Child) Martyrs
Posted By Raymond Ibrahim On December 8, 2014 @ 12:28 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments
In a recent interview on CBN News, Andrew White, an Anglican priest known as the “Vicar of Baghdad,” tried to recount the horrific atrocities Christians in Iraq are suffering at the hands of the Islamic State. After explaining how Christian minorities fled Baghdad to Ninevah when Islamic militants began terrorizing them and bombing their churches, White said:
Then one day, ISIS, the Islamic State, the Islamic caliphate came [to Ninevah] and they hounded all of them [Christians] out. Not some, all of them. And they killed huge numbers. They chopped their children in half; they chopped their heads off.
It should be noted that the targeting of Christian children in Iraq goes back years before the creation of ISIS. For example, in June 2008, a Canadian parliamentary committee heard about how “militant Muslims” were crucifying Christian children: “Since the war began in 2003, about 12 children, many as young as 10, have been kidnapped and killed, then nailed to makeshift crosses near their homes to terrify and torment their parents.”
During his interview, White offered the following, likely surreal to Western sensibilities, anecdote:
ISIS turned up and they said to the [Christian] children, “You say the words [shehada, convert to Islam], that you will follow Muhammad.” And the children, all under 15, four of them, they said, “No, we love Jesus [Yesua]. We have always loved Jesus. We have always followed Jesus. Jesus has always been with us.” They [ISIS] said, “Say the words!” They [children] said, “No, we can’t.” [White starts sobbing] They chopped all their heads off. How do you respond to that? You just cry. They’re my children. That is what we have been going through. That is what we are going through.
As callous as it is to say, perhaps these faithful children are better off. After all, ISIS members have been known to compel Christians to convert to Islam, and still cruelly hack their heads off—thus damning them twice.
Similarly, in one of his Facebook postings, White wrote:
Today’s Pictures are too awful to show. You know I love to show photos but the photo I was sent today was the most awful I have ever seen. A family of 8 all shot through the face laying in a pool of blood with their Bible open on the couch. They would not convert it cost them their life.
During his CBN interview, White also told of how ISIS members came to a Christian man saying, “Either you convert to Islam or we kill all your children.” The desperate father declared the words, the shehada, that “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah,” thus becoming a Muslim. Contrite at heart, he phoned White crying, “Abouna, abouna [father, father] I said the words! Does that mean Jesus doesn’t love me anymore? I’ve always loved Jesus but I said those words because I couldn’t see my children being killed!”
White responded: “No Elias, Jesus still loves you—he will always love you.”
The two types of anecdotes offered by White—Christians refusing to embrace Islam and dying for it, and Christians embracing Islam under duress—are an integral part of how the “Islamic world,” the majority of which was almost entirely Christian before the Islamic conquests, came into being: a historic fact Western people were once well acquainted with, before the current age of political correctness and alternate realities.
A historic anecdote that combines the twain—forced conversion to Islam followed by Christian remorse—comes from Egypt:
In 1389, a great procession of Copts who had accepted Muhammad under fear of death, marched through Cairo. Repenting of their apostasy, they now wished to atone for it by the inevitable consequence of returning to Christianity. So as they marched, they announced that they believed in Christ and renounced Muhammad. They were seized and all the men were beheaded one after another in an open square before the women. But this did not terrify the women; so they, too, were all martyred. (Crucified Again, pgs. 113-114)
First forced to convert and then forced to remain in Islam—both on pain of death: these are two facts of Islam, past and present; facts that, according to top ranking Islamic cleric Sheikh Qaradawi are responsible for the existence of Islam today. Just ask Sudan’s Meriam Ibrahim, Egypt’s Muhammad Hegazy, or Iran’s (rather America’s forsaken) Saeed Abedini.
Aside from the numerous historic accounts of Christians slaughtered for refusing Islam—whether 100,000 Georgian beheaded or burned alive, or a “mere” 813 Italians beheaded—Christians are still being forced to convert to Islam, and not just at the hands of ISIS:
•Palestine, July 2012: Christians in Gaza protested over the “kidnappings and forced conversions of some former believers to Islam.” The ever-dwindling Christian community banged on a church bell while chanting, “With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus.”
•Pakistan: In 2004, a-two-year old child was raped because her Christian father “refused to convert to Islam.” Another “devoted Christian” was butchered by Muslim men “with multiple axe blows [24 per autopsy] for refusing to convert to Islam.” In April 2014, A Muslim security guard murdered a Christian worker who refused to convert to Islam.
•Uganda, July 2014: After a gang of Muslims brandishing machetes stormed a church during service, hacking one 18-year-old woman to death and leaving three others, including a one-year-old baby, injured, the pastor explained that the attackers belong to a local “group of Muslims” which seeks “to transform [Christian-majority] Uganda into an Islamic nation and would kill anyone who refused to convert.”
•Nigeria, May 2014: A Christian teenage girl told of how Boko Haram came to her household and slaughtered her father and brother because they refused to convert to Islam. After abusing her, they tied her up and left her in a state of shock between the two corpses.
•Bangladesh, October 2013: After shutting down the construction of a church, a local government official threatened Christians with eviction from their village unless they renounced their faith and embraced Islam. Said one of the Christians: “Their threats chilled me to the bone. That is why I pretended to accept Islam, but faith in Christ is the wellspring of my life.” Another said: “The chairman is clipping the wings of our faith. I do not know how long we can grin and bear it. We want religious freedom. We want to practice our religion freely.”
•Russia, 2013: In Tatarstan, a Muslim-majority republic in Russia, seven churches were burned and “increased pressure on Christians to convert to Islam” was widespread.
•Uzbekistan, August 2012: A 26-year-old Christian woman, partially paralyzed from youth, and her elderly mother were violently attacked by invaders who ransacked their home, confiscating “icons, Bibles, religious calendars, and prayer books.” At the police department, the paralyzed woman was “offered to convert to Islam.” She refused and was accordingly fined almost two years’ worth of her wages.
Pakistan, Uganda, Russia, Nigeria, Palestine, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh: these are not “ISIS.” Yet Christians there are experiencing the same intolerance and violence that Christians under ISIS are experiencing.
The lesson? If all around the Muslim world Christian minorities are being forced to embrace Islam, the very least the non-Muslim world can do is embrace the fact that Islam is inherently hostile—a costly lesson that countless innocents have been paying for nearly 1,400 years.
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....And even before, when Abraham’s wife Sarah threw both Hagar and her son Ishmael out after the birth of Sarah’s son Issac. If you want to know when the conflicts between the Jewish/Christian faiths vs. Islam began, go back even further to the time of the Holy Bible itself.
Correction: When Sarah told Abraham to have a child via Hagar. That was when what I call the Middle Eastern version of the “Hatfields vs. the McCoys” really began.
And it continues, and Christianity bows down in abject submission and says “do it to us”
If a Christian gets drawn into this argument I feel they should say we get our marching orders from the NEW TESTAMENT.
Show me where there is an exhortation to violence against non believers in Christ. - Tom
Agree! I often state that my “In the beginning” starts with the Gospel of John.
Islam is an evil scourge upon humanity.
and should be dealt with accordingly...when the NAZI's and the Japanese empire got out of control in the 40's we kicked both their butts and nuked them out of existence...it is past time to do the same thing to the islamists.
We knew where the American hostage was being held and went after him...great....however, that entire area, at least 1/2 square mile, should no longer exist...call it urban renewal or clearing land for a garden space...whatever! Nothing taller than 6 inches should exist there and that would be just to get their attention!
Remember the massacre of Christians by Muslim in Otranto in the 5th century and Famagosta in the 6th century
THE CHRISTIAN MARTYRS OF OTRANTO (1480) AND FAMAGOSTA (1570)
History repeats itself…
On May 12, 2013, Pope Francis Set to Canonize 800 Christians Slaughtered By Muslims in Otranto in 1480.
Those who depict Islam as a “religion of peace” are ignoring History, and as Spanish philosopher, George Santayana said: “Those who do not learn from history are damned to repeat it.”
OBAMA: ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE
THE REAL FACE OF ISLAM
OTRANTO - MASSACRE OF CHRISTIANS BY MUSLIMS (1480)
THE SIEGE OF FAMAGOSTA (1570)
800 Italians Men Beheaded in Otranto in 1480 for Refusing Islam, by the Turks, with the Approval of Sultan Mehmet II
On August 14, 1480, a massacre happened on a hill outside the city of Otranto, in southern Italy, here 800 of the town’s men were taken to a place called the Hill of the Minerva, and, one by one, beheaded in full view of their fellow prisoners. It became known as the Hill of the Martyrs.
They died because they refused to convert to Islam. The 800 men of Otranto were martyrs. But due to their sacrifice, however, the Ottoman invasion was slowed and Rome was spared the same fate that had befallen Constantinople only 27 years before.
The people of Otranto knew of the siege of Constantinople and that when that city fell the Muslims pillaged the city, but the key moment came when they reached Hagia Sophia.
In Constantinople, after breaking down the church’s bronze gates, they found inside a huge throng of Byzantines who had taken refuge and who were praying that the city might be delivered by some miracle. The Christians were seized and separated according to age and gender. The infants and elderly were brutally murdered; the men, including some of the city’s most prominent senators, were carted off to the slave markets; and the women and girls were taken by soldiers to be raped or sent into a life of slavery.
At Otranto, the terms of the Muslims were ostensibly generous. If the town surrendered, the defenders would be permitted to live. They said no, it was repeated and again it was no. It was the city against 18,000 Muslims and it lasted 2 weeks.
Slaughter, Sacrilege, and Slavery
Turkish troops entered and killed anyone in their path. They made their way to the cathedral. As in the Hagia Sophia, the invaders found the church filled with people praying with Archbishop Stefano Agricoli, Bishop Stephen Pendinelli, and Count Largo, the commander of the soldiers. The Ottomans commanded:
1.The archbishop to throw away his crucifix, abjure the Christian faith, and embrace Islam. When he refused, his head was cut off before the weeping congregation.
2.Bishop Pendinelli and Count Largo likewise would not convert and were also put to death, reportedly by being slowly sawed in half.
3.As was the custom, the priests were murdered and the cathedral was stripped of all Christian symbols and turned into a stable for the horses. The Ottomans then gathered up the surviving people of Otranto and took them as captives.
The people of Otranto faced the same end as the Christians of Constantinople. All of the men over the age of 50 were slaughtered; the women and children under the age of 15 were either slain or sent away to Albania to be slaves.
According to some contemporary sources, the total number of dead was as high as 12,000, with another 5,000 pressed into slavery.
800 Men who survived told to Convert to Islam or Die
The Muslim commander ordered the men of Otranto, 800 survivors of the battle, those who were not over 50 and had not been already killed in battle or later, or were not children and had not be killed or enslaved, to be brought before him.
He gave them one chance to convert to Islam or die. To convince them, he instructed an Italian apostate priest named Giovanni to preach. The former priest called on the men of Otranto to abandon the Christian faith, and they would get many benefits.
One of the men of Otranto, a tailor named Antonio Primaldi (he is also named Antonio Pezzulla in some sources), came forward to speak to the survivors. He called out that he was ready to die for Christ a thousand times. He then added, according to the chronicler Giovanni Laggetto in the Historia della guerra di Otranto del 1480:
“My brothers, till today we have fought in defense of our country, to save our lives, and for our lords; now it is time that we fight to save our souls for our Lord, so that having died on the cross for us, it is good that we should die for him, standing firm and constant in the faith, and with this earthly death we will win eternal life and the glory of martyrs.”
At this, the men of Otranto cried out with one voice that they too were willing to die a thousand times for Christ.
The Execution
The next morning, August 14, the 800 prisoners were bound together with ropes. The victims repeated their pledge to be faithful to Christ, and the Ottomans chose the courageous Antonio Primaldi as the first to be executed.
The old tailor gave one final exhortation to his fellow prisoners and knelt before the executioner. The blade fell and decapitated him, but then, as the chronicler Saverio de Marco claimed in the Compendiosa istoria degli ottocento martiri otrantini (“The Brief History of the 800 Martyrs of Otranto”), the headless corpse stood back upright. The body supposedly proved unmovable, so it remained standing for the entire duration of the gruesome executions.
Stunned by this apparent miracle, one of the executioners converted on the spot and was immediately killed. The executioners then returned to their horrendous business.
The bodies were placed into a mass grave, and the Turks prepared to begin their march to Rome.
How long, Lord? How long?
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