RUTHFULLY YOURS

“They defend freedom of worship in the West in order to ban it in their homeland. They fight to build mosques in someone else’s homeland whilst destroying churches and synagogues where they have power.” — Kamel Abderrahmani, Arab journalist, Algeria.

“ISIS publicly caged and burned alive 19 Yazidi girls for refusing to have sex with ISIS fighters, according to local activists. Yazidi leaders last year showed Fox News photographs of the Islamic jihadists burning babies to death on a slab of sheet metal, photos that show tiny, roasted bodies side by side as flames engulfed them.” — ISIS in Iraq, Fox News, June 14.

The Erdogan government seized at least 50 Syriac churches, monasteries, and Christian cemeteries, many of which were still active, in Mardin province, and declared them “state property.” — Turkey.

A presidential order replaced Christian education with Islamic Studies in secondary schools. While the subject, “Christian Religious Knowledge,” no longer exists, Islamic, Arab, and French studies have been introduced in the new curriculum…. The Christian Association of Nigeria further denounced this move “to force Islamic studies down the throats of non-adherents of the religion,” as being an “agenda deliberately crafted towards Islamization.” — Nigeria.

Jesuit Father Henri Boulad, an Islamic scholar of the Egyptian Greek Melkite rite, pulled no punches in an interview concerning the motives of Islamic terror and Western responses to it. “Islam is an open-ended declaration of war against non-Muslims” and those who carry out acts of violence and intolerance are only doing what their creed requires, said the priest. The interview continues:

Those who fail to recognize the real threat posed by Islam are naïve and ignorant of history, he said, and unfortunately many in the Church fall into this category.

Citing a letter he wrote last August to Pope Francis, Father Boulad said that “on the pretext of openness, tolerance and Christian charity — the Catholic Church has fallen into the trap of the liberal left ideology which is destroying the West.”

“Anything that does not espouse this ideology is immediately stigmatized in the name of ‘political correctness,'” he said.

The priest went so far as to chastise Pope Francis himself—a fellow Jesuit—suggesting that he has fallen into this trap as well.

“Many think that a certain number of your positions are aligned with this ideology and that, from complacency, you go from concessions to concessions and compromises in compromises at the expense of the truth,” the priest wrote to Francis.

As can be seen in the region every day, it is not realistic to expect the Assyrians to be quiet and accept their “fate” under the tender mercies of Shiite or Sunni rule.

The future Assyrian regional government could be an independent state or autonomous region like the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. Even if it is city-state like Vatican City, it would be monumental in stopping the annihilation of Assyrian people and could also serve as a safe haven for other persecuted minorities.

“Thank God that Jews, a historically persecuted people just like us, now have Israel… After centuries of persecution, is it not the time for Assyrians and other persecuted Christians to finally have their own government?” — Sabri Atman, founder of the Assyrian Genocide and Research Center.

When ISIS invaded Iraq and its Nineveh Plain in 2014, one of the most victimized peoples were Assyrians, a Christian community indigenous to the region.

After the defeat of ISIS, some of the displaced Assyrians from the Nineveh Plain finally returned to their homeland, but today, they are fleeing their homes as their towns once again become a battleground — this time between Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

The Assyrian-Syriac-Chaldean people have inhabited the Middle East since the beginning of recorded history. We might now, however, be witnessing the disappearance of this community. The end of the Assyrians in Iraq means the eventual end of the Assyrians altogether.
The Threat of Iran

Christians are also increasingly facing threats from Shiite Iran as, after its gains against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, it attempts to expand its influence in the region.

“Iran is aggressively establishing schools and mosques and libraries and other structures within the main Christian towns,” said human rights lawyer Nina Shea, who once served on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

A UN- and US-protected region is needed in northern Iraq to help restrict the empowerment and Iranification of Iraq, according to experts in the region Andrew Doran, Robert Nicholson, Mark Tooley, and Stephen Hollingshead. They argue that U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley should call on the UN and US coalition allies to establish a protected zone for genocide victims in northern Iraq:

“The UN has a duty to protect Northern Iraq’s indigenous peoples. It can also promote stability and security in the Middle East by preventing Iranian expansion to the Mediterranean Sea. Such a zone would also be a bulwark against Iranian-backed militias in Northern Iraq.

“What is required for administrative, juridical, and economic functions to take hold in these communities is to be liberated from the immediate threat — Iran. The presence of a multinational coalition force would likely be sufficient to deter Iranian aggression…. There are already U.S. and other coalition forces on the ground in northern Iraq. The force required to deter external aggression would be small. It is also worth noting that these communities in Northern Iraq were rarely covered in the news from 2003 until 2014, when ISIS conquered them. This is because they were peaceful, productive, and proven allies of the United States. They have suffered much for that alliance. This is no time to abandon them to Iran.”

Right now, with marches and fiery speeches, the Islamic Republic in Iran is marking the 38th anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran and the holding of American diplomats as hostages for 444 days.

As the US Congress seeks new ways of tightening the screws on Iran, the Tehran leadership remains prisoner to old illusions. Most of those illusions are centered on the United States, which has frightened and fascinated the mullahs since they seized power almost 40 years ago.

The mullahs are frightened of the US because their view of history is shaped by their belief in conspiracy theories. They regard the US as a heavily-centralized diabolical machine controlled by a small coterie of conspirators, determined to rule the world. Internal political fights in the US are seen as part of a carefully scripted scenario to confuse the outside world.

According to one prominent mullah, President Donald Trump is “playing mad on advice from Henry Kissinger, with the aim of frightening the Muslims.” According to another leading mullah, even the duel between Trump and Hillary Clinton was “nothing but a show to confuse the world.”

At times, the US is depicted as “on the verge of destruction” because of its “lack of morality and deep-rooted corruption”. At other times, it is the “Great Satan”, as powerful and just as deadly as the diabolical personage depicted in scriptures.

For some mullahs, including Ayatollah Imami Kashani, hating the US is part of “true belief.” For others, for example Ayatollah Qara’ati, no prayer could be regarded as validated until it ends with “Death to America!” Every day, President Hassan Rouhani, a mid-ranking mullah, and all members of his Cabinet trample the US flag under feet before they enter their offices.

Since the mullahs seized power, hardly a day has passed without the Islamic Republic holding some US hostages. The raid on the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 is dubbed “The Second Revolution” and marked with government-sponsored marches and seminars, exhibitions and propaganda campaigns across the nation.

In “Reform Islam or Live the ‘New Normal’ Forever,” Roger Simon argues that Donald Trump’s often frustrated travel ban on problematic countries, though not illegal, is insufficient. “It’s only a meager beginning in dealing with a situation that has not changed in any real sense since 9/11, as the events in New York Tuesday testify. If we do not move even more seriously to prevent them, they will indeed become the ‘new normal.’ ” The violence, he continues, “will never be squelched until the ideology is defeated and reformed… We must all now be obnoxious, politically incorrect busybodies and get in Islam’s face, demanding reform in every way possible, economically, socially, theologically and, yes, militarily.”

This is a bravely unpopular stance to adopt vis à vis Islam that will surely be opposed and condemned by progressivists and offended Muslims. In fact, however, it does not go nearly far enough. Islam is a notoriously resistant and tentacular faith. I have long argued in book and article that Islam cannot be reformed. For starters, it features no single “pontifical” authority that could institute real change. Moreover, the canonical network is too intricate and too vast to admit of effective modification. Expurgating the Koran, were it even possible, is only the tip of the sand dune. The hundreds of thousands of Hadith would need to be reviewed and amended, as would the Sunnah and Sirah, the five schools of jurisprudence, Twelver Shia, centuries of ulemic literature, and the underlying cultural predispositions, beliefs, ideals, and orthodox practices that form the bedrock of 57 Muslim nations and the West’s Muslim populations.

Tightening immigration protocols, as Trump is valiantly trying to do, may be a welcome step in the right direction, but it cannot meaningfully address the problem of jihadist violence or creeping Islamization. Ilana Mercer reminds us that “Religion is The Risk Factor, not chaotic countries-of-origin… The data show that young, second-generation Muslims are well-represented among terrorists acting out almost weekly across the West.”

Trump’s initiative, then, would not have prevented truck-ramming Sayfullo Saipov, a legal Uzbek immigrant, from killing eight Americans; nor would it have prevented American Muslims, immigrant or native-born, such as the Fort Hood shooter, the San Bernardino couple, and the Orlando gay nightclub killer, from wreaking carnage and mayhem. The “new normal” will persist for the soldiers of Islam are already among us. Their agenda has been materially facilitated by a treasonable left-wing constituency and pandering political class in Europe and America, by the sentimental tolerance of current liberalism, and by the general ignorance of the tenets, doctrines and usages of Islam.