RUTHFULLY YOURS

Christians, members of the largest religion in the world, have become the most persecuted faith group but lack a political voice.

The White House urgently needs to develop a clear vision of how to help Christianity survive — let alone thrive — in its homeland. At the moment, there seems to be no foreign policy based on this vision.

Without urgent action on the part of the United States, Christianity in biblically historic lands, such as Iraq, Syria and Turkey, will be clinically dead before the year 2030. The current administration in Washington has expressed, in words, that this situation cannot be tolerated. It is time now for deeds, as well, to reverse the previous administrations’ virtual abandonment of Christians in the Middle East to the fate of persecution at the hands of Islamists.

In September 2007, then-Senator Obama wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, expressing “concern for Iraq’s Christian and other non-Muslim religious minorities, including Catholic Chaldeans, Syriac Orthodox, Assyrian, Armenian and Protestant Christians, as well as smaller Yazidi and Sabean Mandaean communities.”

Obama warned:

“These communities appear to be targeted by Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish militants… And according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, ‘violence against members of Iraq’s Christian community occurs throughout the country’… Such violence bespeaks a humanitarian crisis of grave proportions. The severe violations of religious freedom faced by members of these indigenous communities, and their potential extinction from their ancient homeland, is deeply alarming… and demand an urgent response from our government.”

In spite of Senator Obama’s having addressed the growing threat to Christians and other ethno-religious minorities in Iraq, their situation would only deteriorate during the eight years of his presidency. While President George W. Bush may have opened the gates of hell for Iraq’s Christians, President Obama not only widened them, but unleashed the demons on Syria. The following give some idea of this downward spiral:

Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, after earlier underreported exoduses of Christians from the country, there were 1.4 million Christians in Iraq, making up 5.4% of its overall population of 26 million. Today, 15 years later, Iraq’s Christian population stands at less than 250,000, a drop of 82%, and a mere 0.65% of Iraq’s general and much larger population of 38 million.

In 2011, there were 1.8 – 2 million Christians in Syria, who made up 8% of the country’s total population of 23 million. Today, less than seven years later, no more than 500,000 Christians, out of a total population of 18.2 million can be found in their war-torn homeland — a drop of more than 72%.

Turkish jets began airstrikes on a Syrian Kurdish force allied with the U.S. in the fight against Islamic State, opening a new front in the seven-year Syrian war.

The assault on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria follows weeklong threats from the Turkish government to crack down on the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG.

The militia has proven to be the most effective partner on the ground in Syria to the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State. But Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, is troubled that the Kurds have gained strength, land and a greater degree of autonomy in a region along the Turkish border through their role in battles against Islamic State.

Turkey has fought the separatist Kurdish movement PKK at home for decades and views the YPG as an extension of the PKK, branding both terrorist organizations. While the YPG has been a strong American ally, the U.S. says it doesn’t directly support the Kurds in Afrin. Nevertheless, U.S. officials warned over the past week that a Turkish incursion into the area risked escalating tensions in northern Syria.

The top U.S. military commander in the region said Saturday he feared that the Turkish action could distract from efforts to counter Islamic State and urged a quick resolution and end to the hostilities.

“The fight against ISIS continues in Syria,” said Army Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command. “We’re still involved in day-to-day fighting with our partners against ISIS, trying to liberate the remaining parts of the terrain that they control.”

Gen. Votel said he spoke earlier Saturday with Turkey’s deputy defense chief, though he offered no details. “We would urge the parties to try to resolve this quickly and avoid escalation on it and try to get back to our common threat, which is ISIS,” he said.

Earlier Saturday, before the strikes began, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a military operation had “de facto” begun. He pledged to expand it to Manbij, another semi autonomous Kurdish area in northern Syria.

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The Young in Sweden website describes the group’s members by first begging for pity — explaining how tough it is to be a refugee and how desperately these young people long to make a lasting home in Sweden and contribute to the country’s future. It portrays them, in the American parlance, as “Dreamers.”

But in a way familiar to observers of the Islamic incursion into the West, the plea for sympathy abruptly gives way to something more aggressive. The group issues a series of what it explicitly calls “demands.”

It was reported that Muhammed Hussaini, an Afghan refugee who had participated in protests by Young in Sweden, had last August tried to murder a Stockholm policeman at one such event.

There exists an organization Sweden that goes by the name “Young in Sweden” (“Ung i Sverige”), which Radio Sweden has described as “one of the most notable protest movements in the country right now.” It is not just any group of young people — its members are from Afghanistan. According to its website, they fled “violence and persecution” in their homeland, only to find that they were “not welcome after all” in Sweden.

The Young in Sweden website describes the group’s members by first begging for pity — explaining how tough it is to be a refugee and how desperately these young people long to make a lasting home in Sweden and contribute to the country’s future. It portrays them, in the American parlance, as “Dreamers.”

But in a way familiar to observers of the Islamic incursion into the West, the plea for sympathy abruptly gives way to something more aggressive. The group issues a series of what it explicitly calls “demands.” First, it demands that Sweden stop returning to Afghanistan those Afghans whose asylum requests have been rejected. Second, it demands a meeting with Mikael Ribbenvik, Secretary General of the Swedish Migration Agency. Third, it demands that politicians pass laws granting amnesty and residence permits to Afghan refugee claimants.

To be sure, Young in Sweden does not just make demands. It holds illegal public protests, which have been marked by acts of vandalism and violence. It also arranges language courses. Swedish language courses for Afghans? No — courses in Persian and Dari for native Swedes. The group’s Facebook page describes these courses as an “integration project,” explaining that as Afghans become part of Swedish society, Swedes need to “take responsibility to be a part of that society as well.” Which is to say that if native-born Swedes wish to be full members of the new Swedish society, they must learn Persian and Dari.

In fact, in Canada, “Islamophobia” comes in only fourth behind crimes against Blacks, Gays and Jews. Hate crimes against Muslims actually have dropped, even as the overall number of hate crimes increased, according to the last Statistics Canada reporting.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM, formerly CAIR CAN) was founded with the mission of supporting its American parent organization, CAIR USA, which in turn was formed to support Hamas. According to the Hamas Covenant, the group is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is listed as terrorist group by the US and Canada. CAIR USA was also listed as a terrorist entity by the United Arab Emirates in 2014.

The current Executive Director of CAIR CAN/NCCM, Ihsaan Gardee, has tried to claim that CAIR USA and its Canadian chapter CAIR CAN/NCCM have no relationship. This view is misleading. Most tellingly, CAIR CAN/NCCM made the following statement on its own website in 2003 referring to CAIR USA: “This Washington-based organization is CAIR CAN’s parent organization.”

With respect to the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada, newspapers such as the Toronto Star have printed that there is no such thing as the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada or the US. A 2015 piece by Haroon Siddiqui, the Toronto Star’s editorial page editor emeritus, stated that: “Muslim Brotherhood is not a registered entity in Canada or the USA, nor does it have any branch in North America.” For this assessment, Siddiqui was quoting Jamal Badawi. What Siddiqui did not mention was that Badawi is a member of the North American Muslim Brotherhood’s Shura Council, according to the Muslim Brotherhood itself.

It is extremely difficult for angry, misinformed citizens to distinguish between lies and the truth, particularly when there is much more than a grain of truth to the terrorists’ claims that the Greek legal system is corrupt.

The judiciary has played, and still plays, an active role in the economic and political deprivation of the Greek populace. It is the Greek people’s sense of injustice that is being exploited by far-Left activists, whose real goal is to spread a radical anti-Western ideology, including open hostility to Israel and the United States.

The radical leftist Greek organization, the Group of People’s Fighters (OLA), which claimed responsibility for the December 22 bombing of the Athens Court of Appeal, has been committing terrorist attacks on governmental targets since 2013, when the country entered its serious debt crisis. According to the Greek authorities the OLA has ties with the terrorist organization “Revolutionary Struggle” (EA), and attacked at the past the offices of New Democracy political party, a Bank, the Greek Industrialists Association and the German Ambassador’s home in Athens.

The OLA boasted of this and other attacks on the “bourgeois, imperialist and capitalist” government institutions, the media and businesses in a 4,500-word manifesto published on the anarchist website Indymedia. Among the declarations in its lengthy rant is a message of

“solidarity to the Palestinian people who accept the raging attack of American imperialism and Zionism, after Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In this context, it is our imperative international duty to sabotage by any means the reactionary axis of Greece-Cyprus-Israel-Egypt, as well as all kinds of Greece’s cooperation with reactionary regimes such as that of Saudi Arabia. The weapons of the Palestinian Resistance organizations, the stones, the knives and the Molotov cocktails of Intifada will win!”

Just like the Christian, Jewish, and Yazidi communities in Turkey, Alevis have also been victims of Islamic supremacism for centuries — both in the Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Turkey.

In Istanbul, the door of an Alevi family was vandalized with a red symbol. “Get out, heathen” and “Islam” were written on the door.

Turkey’s membership in the NATO since 1952, its negotiations for full membership to the EU since 2005, and its countless military, economic, and diplomatic agreements with the West, have done nothing to reduce the persecution against religious minorities in the country.

Pressures against the Alevi community in Turkey are becoming alarmingly commonplace.

Just like the Christian, Jewish, and Yazidi communities in Turkey, Alevis have also been victims of Islamic supremacism for centuries — both in the Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Turkey.

Alevis are a religious minority Turkey with a distinct faith, philosophy, and culture that largely upholds secularism and humanism. Turkey’s Alevi community is estimated in the tens of millions — up to 25% of the population, making up the country’s largest minority. But the number is only an approximation, because legally, Alevis in Turkey are “non-existent”. The Turkish government does not officially recognize them, so it does not include them in a census and counts them as “Muslims.”

Recently, officials at the Istanbul airport seized the passport of Fatma Tunç, the wife of a dissident author, Aziz Tunç. Mrs. Tunç was preparing to board a plane to Germany when she was told by officials that her passport has been cancelled because “there are dangerous people in her family” and that for her to travel outside of Turkey, her husband and son would have to return. Aziz Tunç’s passport has also been cancelled due to his being prosecuted at a political trial in Turkey.

Mr. Tunç, a columnist and the author of two books about the 1978 Alevi massacre in the city of Maraş in southeastern Turkey, and his son, have been living in exile in Germany for the past two years, as a result of government persecution. “This is downright hostage-taking,” he said.

The alliance between Saudi Arabia and the United States seems intended to contain the Iranian regime, and not, as falsely advertised by President Barack Obama, to prevent a nuclear program.

Leaders of Western Europe know exactly what the mullahs’ regime is, and what its goals and activities are. They know it is the world’s main sponsor of Islamic terrorism. They know the disastrous state of Iran’s society and economy, but they prefer to play deaf and dumb. All they think about, it seems, are the contracts they sign with the mullahs to get more money. They do not care about the suffering of Iranians; the chaos, massacres and destruction caused by the regime. They know that the nuclear deal is constantly violated by the self-policing regime, and that a nuclear bomb is in the making. They are aware that the regime has close ties with North Korea, and that both are global threats.

The EU’s chief diplomat, Federica Mogherini, has hypocritically called “all parties concerned to abstain from violence”, as if there were a moral equivalence between unarmed protesters and killer militias with weapons of war. Meanwhile, in Iranian prisons, protesters were being arrested and tortured to death.

Leaders of Western Europe like to boast how they respect human rights, yet they are the ones trampling on them.

It is hard to know exactly the current situation in Iran, but the uprising seems to be fading . The mullahs’ regime might survive a little longer.

The overthrow of a totalitarian regime takes place when the security forces — which ensure the survival of a regime that has been ruling through repression and fear — begin to falter, or else when the number of angry people becomes so big that a tidal wave sweeps away all in its path.

This time, Iranian security forces remained loyal to the regime and angry people were too few. The regime could manage the situation by killing a few dozen protesters, arresting four thousand more, torturing and murdering some of them, and cutting off access to digital networks. It is a defeat not only for the Iranian people, but for all who defend freedom.

Fifty years ago Alexander Dubček began the ill-fated bid to reform the government of what was then Czechoslovakia. In August, 1968, the experiment was crushed by Soviet tanks. Today, with communism’s apologists still peddling myth and equivalency, a refresher course in tyranny.

I’ve had a couple of non-tourist encounters with Czechs from the Communist era. One I recall well from seven years ago; the other more spectacular encounter was 50 years ago and I have no memory of it whatsoever. Still, it’s detailed in print in The West Australian of June 14, 1969, so it must have happened.[i]

In late 2010, my wife and I were on a slow train from Munich to Prague and got talking to an elderly Czech lady, who gave us her potted life story. She told it all as though it was nothing exceptional. Her husband was arrested in the Communist era for saying something uncomplimentary about the regime and was sentenced to two years hard labor digging out underground coal from seams little more than half a metre thick. On release he couldn’t get a normal job anywhere and in desperation he took work in a uranium mine. After a while the uranium dust gave him cancer and he died, she said. Their five children also couldn’t get higher educations or jobs because they were tainted by their father’s prison record. Four got out to West Germany and settled there. She’d just been visiting them.

She was talking about the time before the “Prague Spring” of liberalization that began in early 1968 and ended abruptly in late August when the Soviets and their Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian allies invaded with 200,000 troops and 2000 tanks. There was only minor resistance but 70 Czechs were killed and about 250 wounded. Passive resistance continued well into 1969. This is the background to my other Czech encounter.

To suppress any vestige of free speech, the Soviets’ first target was the Czech TV, radio and press. Editors were forced to agree to a new ‘temporary’ censorship regime where the media’s prime role was to support the new hard-line Communist leaders. Any dissent led to closure of the media outlet or worse. By April 1969 censorship became total and continued until the ‘Velvet Revolution’ twenty years later, which brought democracy to the republic.

Forty years before our chat with the lady on the train, I had spent an afternoon interviewing a young Czech journalist stuck in Perth a few days on his way back to Prague. At that point the last liberties in the Czech republic were being snuffed out by the pro-Soviet regime.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has earned a deserved reputation as a no-nonsense opponent of appeasement. His expansion of the India-Israel relationship and personal affinity with President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have strengthened that perception. The latest evidence that it is more than a perception came this week, when Modi’s government discontinued half-century-old government subsidies provided to Muslim pilgrims going on the Hajj. The Hajj is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims must carry out at least once, so long as they are physically and financially able – artificial conditions that the subsidy is intended to create.

That’s right: the government of India has been spending badly needed funds for one religious community’s annual pilgrimage. (There is even a special terminal in New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport exclusively for Hajj pilgrims, which is closed for most of the year.) Since 2008, about 120,000 Muslims have utilized the government money to go on the Hajj, according to the Indian government, costing the Indian people almost a half-billion dollars in the last five years alone. This money now will be used for educational purposes, especially for girls who have been particularly underserved in accordance with community practice.