RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13341/turkey-cyprus-christian-culture

“Turkey has been committing two major international crimes against Cyprus. It has invaded and divided a small, weak but modern and independent European state… Turkey has also changed the demographic character of the island and has devoted itself to the systematic destruction and obliteration of the cultural heritage of the areas under its military control.” — from “The Loss of a Civilization: Destruction of cultural heritage in occupied Cyprus.”

“More than 550 Greek Orthodox churches, chapels and monasteries located in towns and villages of the occupied areas, have been pillaged, deliberately vandalized and, in some cases, demolished. Many Christian places of worship have been converted into mosques, depots of the Turkish army, stockyards and hay barns.” — Cyprus Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“UNESCO considers the intentional destruction of cultural heritage a war crime.” — Artnet News, 2017.

A sixth-century mosaic of Saint Mark, stolen from a church after Turkey’s military invaded Cyprus in 1974, was recently recovered in a Monaco apartment and returned to Cypriot officials. The ancient masterpiece was described by Arthur Brand, the Dutch investigator who located it, as “one of the last and most beautiful examples of art from the early Byzantine era.”

Many other cultural Cypriot relics, from churches and other sites, were stolen from Cyprus by Turkish invaders and smuggled abroad. Some were recovered and returned in the past. In 1989, mosaics stolen from the Church of Panagia Kanakaria, discovered in the United States, were returned to Cyprus.

In the summer of 1974, Turkey mounted two major military campaigns against Cyprus and occupied the northern part of the island (which Turkey now calls the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,” recognized only by Turkey). Since the Turkish invasion, much information has emerged not only about the atrocities committed against the Cypriots, but also of the destruction of historic, cultural and religious monuments.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13348/we-will-displace-you

There were 128 incidents of church vandalism or other anti-Christian attacks in France during the first five months of 2018, according to a Paris-based Roman Catholic non-profit organization that tracks attacks against Christians.

Zanzibar “has concealed Christian persecution for decades…. issues that the international community knows too little or nothing about….[T]he Christian body has been persecuted for so long.” — Simon, pastor of a church, quoted by International Christian Concern.

Extremist Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Egypt: Police stood by and encouraged a Muslim mob attacking a church. After local Muslims in Ezbet Sultan Pasha village learned that Christians, who form about 20% of the population, were on their way to legalizing a church building, they surrounded it on July 6, after Friday prayers. “The protesters were chanting slogans against us [Christians], such as ‘We don’t want a church in our village,'” said one resident. “We locked ourselves in our homes during the demonstration because we were afraid that they would attack us. Police didn’t do anything to disperse the demonstrators and didn’t arrest anyone of them.” Demonstrations continued into the next day with no police intervention.

On the following Friday, again after Muslim prayers, local Muslims and others from neighboring villages, surrounded the church again and hurled stones and bricks at it and a at nearby Christian home. “They were shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ [‘Allah is greater’] and chanting hostile slogans against Copts, such as: ‘We will not allow any church to exist in our Muslim village,’ ‘We will not allow any other prayers to be held in our Muslim village except our prayers,'” said another Christian resident. According to the report:

“While police did not intervene, one of the officers apparently promised the protesters that no church would be allowed in the village. … [T]his declaration encouraged the protesters who clapped shouting ‘Allahu akbar’…. There are at least approximately 3000 pending applications from churches that still need to be examined by the government commission set up to verify whether they meet legal requirements.”

Archbishop Makarios released a statement saying, “We are saddened by official appeasement of and acquiescence to demands by some who possess no right to such demands [the demands to have no church in the village], to the detriment of Coptic rights.” A local said, “Terror dominates the village because the Muslims can demonstrate and gather at any time. We are in great fear and in anticipation of the situation.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13335/fracturing-france

In a new program, Macron’s government is offering Arabic lessons in France’s public schools to children as young as six years old, purportedly to facilitate integration.

French authorities seem to ignore that the vast majority of terrorists from France have been French citizens, who spoke a perfect French and, unlike their parents, were born in France. They were perfectly “integrated”. They rejected it.

US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron engaged in a public diplomatic clash just days before Trump visited France this month. The spat began when, in a radio interview, Macron suggested that Europe needed an army to protect itself from the US. “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,” said Macron.

Protecting France from the United States? In a November 11 speech commemorating World War I, Macron in a diplomatic welcome to his guest, attacked “nationalism”. President Trump had proudly called himself a “nationalist” less than three weeks before.

Macron, it seems, was using the armistice signed in 1918 to forget what is going on in France in 2018.

Gérard Collomb, France’s Interior Minister until last month and currently Mayor of Lyon, is apparently pessimistic about the situation in his country, according to comments reported by Valeurs Actuelles. “People do not want to live together,” Collomb lamented, continuing that the responsibility for security during the recent immigration has been “huge.” Collomb also warned that there is only a “little time” to improve the situation. “It’s difficult to estimate but I would say that in five years the situation could become irreversible. Yes, we have five, six years to avoid the worst,” he added.

And the worst will be a “secession”, or as Gilles Kepel, the French specialist on Islam, called it: “La fracture.”

Macron, however, does not seem particularly receptive to Collomb’s warning. A man reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed a police officer in Brussels this week, during a state visit by Macron to the Belgian capital — the first for a French president since Mitterrand visited there in the 80s. Macron also went to Brussels’ Molenbeek district, which he defined “a territory marked by the image of the terrorist drama and also a place of initiatives, sharing and integration”. Sharing and integration?

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch posted an interesting article about how a Pakistani UN member is proposing that a war on “islamophobia” be waged to eradicate this form of “hate speech” for good and forever and ever.

Make no mistake: by “defamation of religions,” the Pakistanis mean “criticism of Islam,” as neither they nor anyone else care when Judaism, Christianity, or any other religion is criticized. And make no mistake about another point as well: once anything — anything at all — is established as off-limits to criticism, you are not living in a free society, but in a tyranny, for those who adhere to the ideology that cannot be criticized can do anything they want to you and others, and you won’t be able to say a word about it. So what Pakistan is trying to do with this initiative is establish over the entire world the tyranny of Sharia and its blasphemy laws that forbid criticism of Islam.

Make no mistake: by “defamation of religions,” the Pakistanis mean “criticism of Islam,” as neither they nor anyone else care when Judaism, Christianity, or any other religion is criticized. And make no mistake about another point as well: once anything — anything at all — is established as off-limits to criticism, you are not living in a free society, but in a tyranny, for those who adhere to the ideology that cannot be criticized can do anything they want to you and others, and you won’t be able to say a word about it. So what Pakistan is trying to do with this initiative is establish over the entire world the tyranny of Sharia and its blasphemy laws that forbid criticism of Islam.

She also stressed the importance of countering “Islamophobia” and incitement to violence and hatred that is being witnessed in some parts of the western world by the negative depiction of Muslims.

One must ask oneself: Where and when have the “denigrators” of Islam run riot, attacked mosques, beaten up Muslims, raped Muslim women, or otherwise incited anti-Islam and anti-Muslim violence?

Of hatred of Islam there is aplenty, especially when individuals grasp the totalitarian nature of Islam and Sharia law; naturally they would hate Islam as much as they would Nazism and Communism. They do not want to live under it, nor do they want it next door in a submissive country like Canada. “Peace and harmony” are not analogous or equivalent to Islam’s 1400 year record, as Robert Spencer writes in detail in The History of Jihad.

Ambassador Lodhi also called for greater respect for each other’s religious beliefs, symbols and revered personalities.