Islamic jihadists have been looting, torturing, and killing Christians in the Middle East, Africa (esp. Nigeria), and across the world. The jihadist terror organization ISIS (aka ISIL; IS or the Islamic State), in particular, has been slaughtering Christians across the Middle East. The result is that Christianity is going extinct in the Middle East, its birth place.
But it took ISIS's beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians to finally penetrate the MSM's news wall.
The Coptic Church is founded on the teachings of St. Mark who took Christianity to Egypt during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero. Christians make up only 10% of Egyptian's predominantly Muslim population.
Three days ago on Sunday, Feb. 15, 2015, ISIS's Al-Hayat Media Center released a gruesome video, "A Message signed with blood to the nation of the cross," on the Twitter feed of a website that supports ISIS.
Comment: ISIS, which suddenly emerged out of nowhere mere months ago, has a Media Center!The video shows 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in orange jumpsuits, whom ISIS had taken hostage last December, being forced to kneel on a beach in Libya before they were beheaded. Each of the victims is paired with a masked, knife-wielding "terrorist."
Note: "terrorist" is NBC News' word, taking their cue from NBC's overlord Obama, who insists on calling ISIS "terrorists" instead of "Islamic" or "jihadists".
The ISIS group leader, a man dressed in military fatigues proclaims in American-accented English : "All praise is due to Allah the strong and mighty. And may blessings and peace be upon the ones sent by the sword as a mercy to all the worlds." His fellow jihadists then proceed to behead the 21 Christians, after which their leader declares war on Christianity, threatening that " we will conquer Rome , by Allah's permission, the promise of our Prophet, peace be upon him," ()
And yet, incredibly, both the Obama administration and its lapdog MSM still refuse to call ISIS "jihadist"!
Flashpoint Intelligence, a global security firm and consultant, made this insightful (~sarcasm alert~) analysis: "This undeniably means that the group now views Christian populations as not only targets but also part of the bigger 'Crusader plot,' not separate from the US-led coalition or aggressors. The group's message is highly intimidating and it somewhat challenges the Western nations to intervene and save the Christians as it intervened to save the Yazidis and others."
Comment: By chopping the heads off the 21 Christians, the message sent by ISIS only "somewhat challenges the Western nations to intervene"? How many chopped heads will it take for their message to be "challenging" or "very challenging"?Let's look at how three world leaders reacted to the beheadings, after which please vote in our poll on who is the biggest enabler of ISIS's slaughter of Christians.
#1: Obama
After an initial reaction by a White House spokesperson that the beheadings are "heinous," the Obama administration lapsed back into fantasy-land lunacy. Despite the fact that study after study has shown that "terrorists" jihadists do not come from impoverished family backgrounds, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on "Hardball" with Chris Matthews:
"But we cannot win this war by killing them [ISIS]. We cannot kill our way out of this war. in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it's a lack of opportunity for jobs ...."
In other words, ISIS is a problem for social workers!
One must also ask why Obama is not similarly concerned about "a lack of opportunity for jobs" here in the United States, where a record number of Americans, 92 million, have dropped out of the labor force. (See also " Gallup CEO: 5.6% unemployment is a Big Lie" and " Sunset for America: Obama's budget proposal forecasts long-term economic stagnation ")
#2: Rev. Franklin Graham
Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Rev. Billy Graham, asks America and the world what the outcry would be "if 21 Muslims had been beheaded by Christians" and "Where is the universal condemnation by Muslim leaders around the world?" (h/t Clash Daily ).
Note Rev. Graham's repeated allusions to Muslims .
#3: Pope Francis
On Monday, departing from his script during an address to members of the Church of Scotland, Pope Francis addressed the beheadings ():
The Coptic Christians' "only words were: 'Jesus, help me!' They were killed simply for the fact that they were Christians. The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out be heard. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians! The martyrs belong to all Christians."
Note how Francis omitted the word "Muslims" or "Islam," which makes me wonder if the 21 Coptic Christians had been beheaded by invisible phantoms. /sarc
But that shouldn't surprise us.
In his 2013 apostolic exhortation, ( The Joy of the Gospel), on "the church's primary mission of evangelization in the modern world," Pope Francis wrote:
Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence. (p. 253)
Does Pope Francis, with his retinue of Vatican scholars and researchers, not know that the Koran is replete with exhortations to violence?
As pointed out by Andrew Bieszad of the blog One Peter Five, Pope Francis' benign regard of Islam is a decided departure from the views of Catholic saints through the centuries. Below are examples of quotes by saints:
- "Whoever does not embrace the Catholic Christian faith is lost, like your false prophet Muhammad ." (d. 8th century), martyr from Gaza, when he was asked to convert to Islam by a group of Muslims.
- "There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist .... From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration." -St. John Damascene (d. 749), Syrian Arab Catholic monk and scholar.
- "We profess Christ to be truly God and your prophet to be a precursor of the Antichrist and other profane doctrine." -Sts. Habenitus, Jeremiah, Peter, Sabinian, Walabonsus, and Wistremundus (d. 851), martyrs of Cordoba, Spain, for refusing to convert to Islam.
- "Any cult which denies the divinity of Christ, does not profess the existence of the Holy Trinity, refutes baptism, defames Christians, and derogates the priesthood, we consider to be ." -Sts. Aurelius, Felix, George, Liliosa, and Natalia (d. 852), martyrs of Cordoba, Spain for refusing to convert to Islam.
- "the truths that he [Muhammed] taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity.... Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms -which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants." -St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), Theologian and Doctor of the Church.
- "Muhammed had neither supernatural miracles nor natural motives of reason to persuade those of his sect. As he lacked in everything, he took to bestial and barbaric means, which is the force of arms . Thus he introduced and promulgated his message with robberies, murders, and bloodshedding, destroying those who did not want to receive it, and with the same means his ministers conserve this today , until God placates his anger and destroys this pestilence from the earth. [...] (Mohammed) can also be figured for the dragon in the same Apocalypse which says that the dragon swept up a third of the stars and hurled down a third to earth. Although this line is more appropriately understood concerning the Antichrist, Mohammed was his precursor - the prophet of Satan [...] [Mohammed's new sect] remains an impious, blasphemous, vicious cult, an innovention of the devil , and the direct way into the fires of hell. It does not even merit the name of being called a religion." -St. Juan de Ribera (d.1611), Archbishop of Valencia, missionary to Spanish Muslims, and organizer of the Muslim expulsions of 1609 from Spain.
Andrew Bieszad further notes thatwhile:
popes are certainly free to have personal opinions. opinions, however, when shared with the public, carry more weight because of the authority of his office than would the opinions of another, lesser prelate. His words - particularly when expressed not an interview or sermon, but an official document - signal, at least implictly, that his opinion is in fact the belief of the Church. This has a real impact on the understanding of whatever issue is being touched upon, for both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Particularly in a modern context, where global news is instantaneously available, papal opinions spread far, and fast. Once an idea is out in the wild as something 'the pope said', it becomes difficult to ever take back. There is even a not entirely uncommon misconception that papal opinion, when it touches on any subject related to faith, rises to the level of infallibility.
