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Mob beheads nun in Bagdad
UPI | 8/27/02 | UWE SIEMON-NETTO

Posted on 08/27/2002 7:30:54 PM PDT by kattracks

WASHINGTON, Aug 27, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- A nun belonging to Iraq's Christian minority that still speaks a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus, was found beheaded in Baghdad, the U.S.-based Chaldean News Agency reported Tuesday.

CNA blamed "Muslim terrorists" for this murder of Sister Cecilia Hanna, 70. According to this wire service of Iraq's Christian exiles, she "was knifed down savagely and her head was severed from the rest of her body by a group of thugs while she was staying in the Chaldean monastery located in Palestine Street in Baghdad."

When asked about this report, a State Department spokeswoman told United Press International Tuesday, "We are not aware of this case."

Shortly after the start of the U.S. war on terrorism, Albert Yelda, a London-based Iraqi opposition leader, had warned that Iraq's ancient Christian community would be made a whipping boy for this conflict.

Yelda told UPI at the time that Iraq's Christians "no longer dare to wear their traditional crosses. They are being called crusaders. They do not receive food rations. They are being told, 'Ask the Americans to feed you. You have no business being here.'"

In an interview, Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim of the Chaldean Church's Eastern diocese in the U.S. referred UPI to the CNA story Tuesday but denied that Christians in Iraq were being singled out for persecution.

However, CNA now ranks Sister Cecilia Hanna among the long line of martyrs in present-day Iraq, whose Christians are the descendants of one of the oldest known civilizations -- Mesopotamia. Collectively, these Christians are known of Assyrians.

Assyians say they were the first nation to adopt Christianity as state religion in 179 AD, more than 100 years before Armenia, which prides itself with being the first Christianized country. The Assyrians also claim were the ones to have built the first Christian churches and to have been the first to translate the New Testament from Greek into their vernacular, which still resembles the language of Christ.

The Chaldean Church, to which the murdered Sacred Heart of Jesus nun belonged, is in union with the Vatican and has approximately one million members, half of whom still live in Iraq, while the rest is spread around the world, Bishop Ibrahim said.

Another 300,000 to 500,000 Assyrian Christians belong to the venerable Church of the East. This denomination was once condemned as heretical because it followed the teachings of Nestorius, the 5th-century bishop of Constantinople, who taught that the Virgin Mary was not the "theodokos," or mother of God, but simply the mother of Jesus Christ.

Nestorian missionaries were the first the reach Mongolia, China and Japan in the 8th century. However, in the 16th century, a segment of the Nestorian Church recognized the Pope and united with Rome, which persecuted the remaining Nestorians for centuries, especially in India.

"Today, our two churches are very close," Bishop Ibrahim said. While not in full communion, they practice Eucharistic hospitality under certain circumstances. In other words, they commune each other's members if they have no church of their own denomination to go to.

"Our liturgies are very similar," Ibrahim explained. "Assyrian services consist of 99 percent liturgy with lots of incense," Yelda said. The difference is that while the Chaldeans allow icons in their churches, the Nestorian sanctuaries are as stark as synagogues. But for a simple cross above the altar, nothing adorns them.

There are other parallels between the Nestorians and the Jews as well. Nestorians call their priest "rabi" (teacher), and like orthodox Jews they eschew mixed marriages. "We want to preserve a Christian people in our country," Yelda explained.

While Bishop Ibrahim allowed that "Christians like all others suffer from the turmoil in Iraq, but are not targeted for persecution," the Chaldean News Service accused Saddam Hussein's government of appeasing "the rising tide of Muslim fanaticism."

This movement, it said, "has at its final goal not only the murder or the complete subjugation of non-Muslims but all those who do not measure up to its doctrine of terror and hatred."

According to Albert Yelda, Saddam Hussein, too, has set out to destroy the venerable Assyrian culture, "not out of any Muslim convictions but because, like every tyrant, he hates minorities."

Yelda described how Saddam had banned the Assyrians' cultural clubs, where their literary language was kept alive. "Saddam had hundreds of Assyrian villages razed, including recently a 2nd-century church."

Yelda also accused Saddam's son, Uday, of raping and killing an Assyrian woman and then making this act public knowledge.

As for the repression of Iraqi Christians in the name of Islam, Yelda said it ran counter the stated wish of the Prophet Mohammed, who was so impressed by the Assyrians' knowledge of medicine and sciences that he issued a Firman, or letter of protection, for them.

The Firman disappeared without trace over 150 years ago.

By UWE SIEMON-NETTO, UPI Religion Correspondent

Copyright 2002 by United Press International.






TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: banglist
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To: kattracks
But ... isn't Islam the religion of "peace"?
181 posted on 08/28/2002 5:14:13 AM PDT by JoeGar
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To: Bobby777
The Scriptures do not conflict.
I've clearly acknowledged Christ's eternal existance.

Your addition of non-Scriptural quotes to state Mary was
"considered" Christ's "earthly" mother, does not diminish her maternity.
She is "in Scriptural fact" His mother!

This isn't some movie plot which requires logical explanation.
It is one of the "mysteries" of the Bible, which requires faith.
Thus, no Scriptural conflict.
182 posted on 08/28/2002 5:48:49 AM PDT by G Larry
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To: vbmoneyspender; kattracks

<< It must make these tough guys feel real brave beheading a defenseless nun. >>

Yair.

And when their bedwetting becomes slightly more manageable and they reach and are, for the rest of their lifetimes, morbidly and pathologically frozen in puberty, they can immigrate to the British Ulster Province, change their names to O'Mohamid, graduate to the grandiosely-self-styled "i r a" -- and get their jollies blowing the arms and legs and guts of babies and little girls and boys and old ladies all over British Belfast's pubs and post offices.
183 posted on 08/28/2002 5:59:23 AM PDT by Brian Allen
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To: shaggy eel
RADICAL islam IS THE BEAST!
"Moderate islam" is its Trojan Horse"
[And we Civilized Peoples will allow our gummints to forget this only at our Judeo-Christian [IE: "Human"] Civilization's mortal peril!]

184 posted on 08/28/2002 6:07:50 AM PDT by Brian Allen
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To: Askel5
I appreciate what you are saying, and I'm not at all addressing the basis for the exchange between you and Senator Pardek, but I have a question or two about the following -

841. "The Church's relationship with the Muslims. 'The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.'[LG 16; cf. NA 3.]"

First of all, if one studies a comparison, it is easily determined that the god of Islam and the God of the Bible are NOT both "the one, merciful God." Allah is vastly different from Jehovah. It truly baffles me how the RCC can say this in the catechism. And if doing so is done simply for the sake of peace and unity, one - it is dishonest, and two - how does acceptance of false faith further the gospel? If anything, it indicates to Muslims that "their way" is just fine, and they don't need the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

185 posted on 08/28/2002 6:51:02 AM PDT by agrace
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To: Senator Pardek; Fred Mertz; Askel5
As a non-Christian, I find that Protestants at FR are quite aware that Islam exists to wipe out Christianity, yet Catholic Freepers more or less ignore this fact, because it's an ugly one.

I don't know which Catholic FReepers you observed, but I haven't observed any who are ignorant of Islam's implementation of its beliefs. For the record, this Catholic is quite aware of what the Muslims are up to.

As an aside, I even know non-FR Catholics who are well aware of reality. I attended a lecture by a Catholic priest who stated, in no uncertain terms, that we are in a spiritual war against Islam whether or not the politicians are willing to admit it.

186 posted on 08/28/2002 6:53:46 AM PDT by ELS
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To: knighthawk
Islam is at war with all non-Muslims. The idiots in Europe, the feckless, gutless wonders we had to rescue three times, twice from the Germans and once from the Soviets, are blind to this threat to their culture and existence. Without a single other major ally, and with united Islamic opposition to any effort to unseat Saddam, the likelihood any any success in doing so without extremely heavy U.S. casualities due to logistic problems is very remote.

Bush should ignore the "moderate" Muslim states and do everything diplomatically possible, even to the point of financial bribes to secure Russian and British assistance in a war with Islam. Perhaps even the Red Chinese and Indians can be brought in our side.

But he should stop trying to win over the Saudis, and the other Islamic Arabs. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution, and as much enemies of the U.S., their native non-Islamic populations, and the west as are the Iraqis and Iranians.

The other thing we should do is purge our population of all Muslims by immediate deportation to wherever they or their ancestors came from and ban all further Islamic immigrants,

The only other alternative is to sit tight and wait until the next inevitable attack against the U.S. by Islamic forces.
187 posted on 08/28/2002 7:01:32 AM PDT by ZULU
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To: Senator Pardek
...This is merely an observation. As a non-Christian, I find that Protestants at FR are quite aware that Islam exists to wipe out Christianity, yet Catholic Freepers more or less ignore this fact, because it's an ugly one....

Oh, I don't know Senator Pardek. Maybe it's because those sweet wrinkled old nuns taught us to read. We read too much and it causes us to think. And thinking is a thing a human being should not do......

.....Explaining American policy regarding Kosovo, Senator Lieberman said: "Both America and KLA do fight for the same principles - democracy - the struggle of the KLA is therefore also the struggle for human rights"....

New York Post, June 19, 1999
By Uri Dan

BELGRADE - Three days after NATO troops refused a mother superior's pleas for protection, Kosovar rebels looted her monastery and raped a young nun, officials said yesterday.

French commandos and members of the French Foreign Legion arrived as the Kosovar Liberation Army guerrillas were leaving the isolated mountain religious community in Devic, about 30 miles northwest of the Kosovo capital of Pristina.

The Post reported Monday how Mother Makariadrove to Pristina on Sunday to plead with arriving British troops for protection for herself, a priest and nine nuns at Devic.

"Please come and save us. You have the guns, all I have is a cross," she told an Irish Guard lieutenant. But she was told that no protection was possible until NATO reinforcements arrived.

Three days later the unguarded medieval monastery was raided by KLA members, French officers confirmed yesterday.

The French gave few details but a spokesman for Serb Orthodox Patriarch Pavle said the guerrillas showed no mercy.

"They desecrated the church, including the altar and icons, and humiliated the nuns," Deacon Luka Novakovic told The Post.

He said a 24-year-old nun was taken to a back room and raped.

The rebels looted the building of anything valuable and fired guns into the air as they left, just as the French arrived Thursday.

"When they saw us, they stopped a while, shouted 'NATO, NATO,' and then beat a hasty retreat," the officer said.

Among the evidence of the attack were the initials "UCK" - which stands for KLA - scratched into a pane of glass over an icon.

"The monastery had been stripped bare," a French officer told CNN. He added that the priest had been beaten...."

September 27, 1999

US Complicity in Timor

While the Indonesian military's thugs continue their rampage in East Timor, most foreign reporters have fled the country. As of September 7, frequent Nation contributor and award-winning journalist Allan Nairn was believed to be the only US reporter still there. Nairn left the besieged UN compound and walked the streets of Dili, where he hid in abandoned houses as he observed troops and militia burning and looting. Nairn has been writing about the troubles there for years. In 1991, after being badly beaten by Indonesian troops while witnessing the massacre of several hundred East Timorese, he was declared a "threat to national security" and banned from the country. He has entered several times illegally since then.....

--The Editors

Dili, East Timor

It is by now clear to most East Timorese and a few Westerners still left here that the militias are a wing of the TNI/ABRI, the Indonesian armed forces. Recently, for example, I was picked up by militiamen who turned out to be working for a uniformed colonel of the National Police. [Editors' note: The Indonesian government has denied any connection between the militias and either the police or the military.] But there is another important political fact that is not known here or in the international community. Although the US government has publicly reprimanded the Indonesian Army for the militias, the US military has, behind the scenes and contrary to Congressional intent, been backing the TNI.

US officials say that this past April, as militia terror escalated, a top US officer was dispatched to give a message to Jakarta. Adm. Dennis Blair, the US Commander in Chief of the Pacific, leader of all US military forces in the Pacific region, was sent to meet with General Wiranto, the Indonesian armed forces commander, on April 8. Blair's mission, as one senior US official told me, was to tell Wiranto that the time had come to shut the militia operation down. The gravity of the meeting was heightened by the fact that two days before, the militias had committed a horrific machete massacre at the Catholic church in Liquica, Timor. YAYASAN HAK, a Timorese human rights group, estimated that many dozens of civilians were murdered. Some of the victims' flesh was reportedly stuck to the walls of the church and a pastor's house. But Admiral Blair, fully briefed on Liquica, quickly made clear at the meeting with Wiranto that he was there to reassure the TNI chief. According to a classified cable on the meeting, circulating at Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii, Blair, rather than telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, instead offered him a series of promises of new US assistance.

According to the cable, which was drafted by Col. Joseph Daves, US military attache; in Jakarta, Admiral Blair "told the armed forces chief that he looks forward to the time when [the army will] resume its proper role as a leader in the region. He invited General Wiranto to come to Hawaii as his guest in conjunction with the next round of bilateral defense discussions in the July-August '99 time frame. He said Pacific command is prepared to support a subject matter expert exchange for doctrinal development. He expects that approval will be granted to send a small team to provide technical assistance to police and...selected TNI personnel on crowd control measures."

Admiral Blair at no point told Wiranto to stop the militia operation, going the other way by inviting him to be his personal guest in Hawaii. Blair told Wiranto that the United States would initiate this new riot-control training for the Indonesian armed forces. This was quite significant, because it would be the first new US training program for the Indonesian military since 1992. Although State Department officials had been assured in writing that only police and no soldiers would be part of this training, Blair told Wiranto that, yes, soldiers could be included. So although Blair was sent in with the mission of telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, he did the opposite.

Indonesian officers I spoke to said Wiranto was delighted by the meeting. They took this as a green light to proceed with the militia operation......"

(I don't think this is a Protestant/Catholic thing. It's more of a thinking thing. Or the earnest search for the Civilizations that are really clashing in this round of the Clash of Civilizations.

188 posted on 08/28/2002 7:03:18 AM PDT by LaBelleDameSansMerci
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To: Terridan
the media are too busy reporting on the indiscretions of the US and israel. ....and don't forget as pres. bush has told the american public, islam is a religion of peace.
189 posted on 08/28/2002 7:11:46 AM PDT by contessa machiaveli
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To: kattracks

"We have this God. You cannot stop us."

190 posted on 08/28/2002 7:11:50 AM PDT by Spandau
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To: ELS
Yes, but one might as well say the same thing about the Calvinism (a sense of being "elect" who've the option of any means they deem necessary) that's been perverted into pragmatism where the West is concerned.

I think to err on the side of spiritual warfare ignores two things:

(1) the militance we see at present is primarily communist radicalisation of Islam effected in large part thanks to the arrogance of the West and their falling hook, link and sinker for the sucker punch that was Israel.

(2) that we have far more in common with Peaceful, faithful Muslims than we do many of our own where issues of human life, marriage and family are concerned. It was a real blow to the Church -- she was seen as weak, conspiratorial, stupid, what have you -- when she pulled out of her partnership with Uncle Sam to engage in ostpolitick with communist nations.

Who better than the Church to recognize the Spiritual Warfare being waged almost exclusively for souls (particularly in the West) once the great purges and slaughters waned?

Yet she reached out to those people (and had a tremendous effect, I believe, having seen the fruits of faith blooming again after 80 years of militant atheist rule) because she realized the greater danger was coming from the West who -- as has been born out -- was preparing to wage world revolution by proxy. Not only moving the United States proper left but imposing its Culture of Death on the globe and conditioning folks to demand its precepts -- from abortion to euthanasia -- as "rights".

If we're going to talk spiritual warfare, let's not forget the Church is focused also squarely on the United States. Our population control, our rabid individualism, our "saving graces of western materialism" ... the way any objective observer had to conclude we were in league (to great extent) not only with the Chicoms we appeased, nourished and with whom we sought to "co-exist" but also the Soviets whose drug offensives and gramscian-marxist assault from within (at the break points that were academia, the media and government agencies and most-favored Interlock foundations and thinktanks) seemed to have the protection of the most powerful in the west.

Simply put, I'm not prepared to demonize Muslims en masse or ascribe to the heresy of Islam any powers it's actually assumed thanks only to the radicalizing by militant atheists from the East whose job was made infinitely easier by our assuming Israel's battles and our arrogant imposition of our "western values" (or lack thereof) on others.

191 posted on 08/28/2002 7:25:10 AM PDT by Askel5
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To: Senator Pardek
I suspect that you sense that most Catholics who do apologetics here, and thus are most visibly Catholic, don't spend a lot of time on the nuke Islam threads. That doesn't mean we don't recognize the threat. It also doesn't mean that many of the posters on those threads, as well as the tamer threads, aren't Catholics. Many just don't wear their Catholicism on their sleeves like some of us zealots.

patent

192 posted on 08/28/2002 7:30:40 AM PDT by patent
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To: jammer
Propaganda is not necessarily lies. It can be quite factual, as I believe the story about the nun is. What makes it propaganda is how it's fed to the media to affect a certain public reaction.

If we weren't gearing up to hit Saddam, this story would probably never be heard.

There are probably more such cases going on today in Indonesia - But we don't hear about it because we're not about to invade Indonesia.

Did you ever hear if the castration story was a fabrication? It sure sounds like one.

You may remember, the American opinion polls swung around in favor of attacking Iraq when a Kuwaiti princess masqueraded as a neonatal nurse in testimony to the US congress.
193 posted on 08/28/2002 7:42:47 AM PDT by Barnacle
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To: Savage Beast
"'We want to preserve a Christian people in our country,' Yelda explained."

Curiously enough, during Gulf War I, no mosques were touched -- while hundreds of churches got bombed. The Christian community in Iraq has, I've heard, been reasonably decently treated. For the longest time, the PM of Iraq was a Christian; this isn't the casein any other muslim-majority nations that I'm aware of.

194 posted on 08/28/2002 7:50:03 AM PDT by TomSmedley
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To: Askel5
I'm not prepared to demonize Muslims en masse

Good point. I agree and I venture to guess that the priest I mentioned would also agree. My previous post was in response to Senator Pardek's inaccurate assupmtion that "silence" on the part of Catholics was due to ignorance or denial of the motives of some "Muslims."

195 posted on 08/28/2002 8:11:49 AM PDT by ELS
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To: ELS; Senator Pardek
If we could get Pardek back in the Church where he belongs, maybe he wouldn't be quite so prone to making such errors. =)

I'll be sure to ping him next time I'm posting Belloc on the subject of Mohammedans ... even if I'm also inclined to post the thoughts of someone like Peter Kreeft as well despite my not always agreeing with his particular ecumenism or tolerance where Catholicism and Islam are concerned.

196 posted on 08/28/2002 8:20:12 AM PDT by Askel5
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To: Bobby777
I'm not your friend and your posts belie your ignorance and heresy. None of what you have written here refutes the fact that Mary is the Mother of God. I, along with others, have used Scripture to show you are wrong and in error in following a man-made doctrine. Even those who invented Sola Scriptura say you're wrong. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Alexander of Alexandria, St. Ephraim, St. Athanasius, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nazianz, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Epiphanius of Salamis, St. Jerome, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. John Cassian and St. John Damascene all say you're wrong. Nestorian tried floating your balloon in the fifth century and he was wrong too. Scripture is not ambiguous. Mary is the Mother of Jesus. Jesus is God. Mary is the Mother of God. Mary gave Jesus His body, which was the instrument of our redemption. She carried Him in her womb, she gave birth to Him, nursed Him, clothed Him, fed Him and protected Him. She was not simply a safe deposit box. I'll bet that you don't consider the biological vessel that carried you in it's womb to be a mother either since she didn't give you a soul.

As Scripture tells us so, Jesus is the Son of Mary, thus Mary is the Mother of Jesus. Again, Scripture tells us that Jesus is God, Mary is the Mother of God, your failure to comprehend or outright rejection of Scripture notwithstanding. The syllogism is quite simple.

197 posted on 08/28/2002 9:25:20 AM PDT by SMEDLEYBUTLER
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To: SMEDLEYBUTLER
Nestorian= Nestorius
198 posted on 08/28/2002 9:52:59 AM PDT by SMEDLEYBUTLER
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To: Jorge
These are some miserable people.

At what point do we consider them to be 'animals' . . . and NOT 'people' ???

199 posted on 08/28/2002 9:55:30 AM PDT by GeekDejure
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To: ChadGore
Every time support Iraq has a chance, he does something dumb.

Translation, please.

200 posted on 08/28/2002 9:57:45 AM PDT by Steve0113
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