Happy Talk: None of that depressing true stuff. There is nothing called Islamic Extremism. Just bad Christians.

I don't want to hear it.  I don't want to know.  Don't tell me.  You're wrong. 
I think this guy's creds are in order.

Exclusive — Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn: Obama, Hillary Ignored Intelligence They Did Not Like About Middle East, Only Wanted ‘Happy Talk’

by Matthew Boyle

 28 Aug 2016

 NEW YORK CITY, New York

NEW YORK CITY, New York — Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who served for more than two years as the director of President Barack Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), leveled explosive charges against the President and his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an exclusive hour-long interview with Breitbart News Daily on Friday.

Specifically, during an exclusive interview about his book The Field of Fight, Flynn said that Obama and Clinton were not interested in hearing intelligence that did not fit their “happy talk” narrative about the Middle East. In fact, he alleged the administration actively scrubbed training manuals and purged from the military ranks any thinking about the concept of radical Islamism. Flynn argued that this effort by Obama, Clinton and others to reduce the intelligence community to gathering only facts that the senior administration officials wanted to hear—rather than what they needed to hear—helped the enemy fester and grow, while weakening the United States on the world stage.

“The administration has basically denied the fact that we have this problem with ‘Radical Islamists,’” Flynn said during the interview. “And this is a very vicious, barbaric enemy and I recognize in the book that there is an alliance of countries that are dedicated basically against our way of life and they support different groups in the Islamic movement, principally the Islamic State and formerly Al Qaeda—although Al Qaeda still exists. The administration denied the fact that this even existed and then told those of us in the government to basically excise the phrase ‘radical Islamism’ out of our entire culture, out of our training manuals, everything. That was a big argument I had internally and I talked a little bit about it in the Senate testimony that I gave two years back.”

Later in the interview, Flynn was even more specific, calling out Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for not wanting to hear all the facts about what was happening in the Middle East—only some of them.

“There’s a narrative that the President and his team, including Hillary Clinton, wanted to hear—instead of having the tough news or the bad news if you will that they needed to hear,” Flynn said. “Now, there’s a big difference. And the one thing about intelligence is we should stand for truth to power—meaning we should always say what we believe, and lay the facts out, lay the tough right facts out and then you let the policymakers make the decisions that they have to make. What has happened in the last 10 years, frankly in the last 8 years, is we have seen a level of dishonesty coming out of both the policy and the decision making structure with the American people.”

Because of the President’s and the Secretary of State’s—among other officials in the Obama administration—unwillingness to hear all the facts, including ones they needed to but didn’t want to hear, Flynn says the President has presented a narrative to the American people about the war on terrorism and radical Islamism that is simply inaccurate.

“The President has said they’re jayvee, they’re on the run, they’re not that strong, what difference does it make what we call—that’s being totally dishonest with the American public,” Flynn said. “There’s one thing that Americans are, and we’re tough, resilient people but we have to be told the truth. I think what a lot of this is, in fact what I know a lot of it is. It’s a lot of happy talk from a President who did not meet the narrative of his political ideology or his political decision-making process to take our country in a completely different direction and frankly that’s why I’m sitting here talking to you here today, Matt. The intelligence process starts really at the ground level, but the priorities—the priorities, Matt, for an intelligence system and the intelligence community in our country and that’s the President of the United States.”

The Obama administration’s refusal to take these threats seriously and his, Flynn said, “has allowed an enemy that is using very smart, savvy means to impact our way of life.”

“That means infiltrating into refugee populations, that means conducting of smart information operations,” Flynn said. “Most people don’t know but these guys have very sophisticated information operations going on, with publications of magazines and websites. They have leaders in their groups that have thousands and thousands—I’m talking tens of thousands of followers on social media and Instagram and Twitter. So we are not even allowed to go after these kinds of things right now. This is the problem—it’s a big problem. In fact, if we don’t change this we’re going to see this strengthening in our homeland.”

Flynn also laid out how to defeat radical Islamism, a plan he has stated repeatedly that the Obama Administration has ignored.

“The very first thing is we have to clearly define the enemy and we have to get our own house in order, which this administration has not done,” Flynn said. “We have to figure out how are we going to organize ourselves. Then I call for in the book a new 21st century alliance. This is where we really come to how we take the Arab community to task on how they plan to fix this cancerous disease inside of their own body that has metastasized and grown exponentially over the last five or six years and certainly actually over the last eight to 10 years. So it’s one thing to go after the ideology, just like we went after Communism for 40 years, but I also say in the book we have to crush this enemy wherever they exist. We cannot allow them to have any safe haven. We are dancing around the sort of head of a pin, when we know these guys are in certain places around the world and our military is not allowed to go in there and get them. The ‘mother may I’ has to go all the way back up to the White House.”

He said the fight has to be very similar to how the United States, over decades, thoroughly degraded Communism on the world stage.

“There’s no enemy that’s unbeatable,” Flynn said. “We can beat any enemy. We put our minds to it, we decide to do that, we can beat any enemy. And there’s no ideology in the world that’s better than the American ideology. We should not allow, because they mask themselves behind the religion of Islam, we should not allow our ideology, our way of life, our system of principles, our values that are based on a Judeo-Christian set that comes right out of our Constitution—we should not fear that. In fact, we should fight those that try to impose a different way of life on us. That’s what we did against the Nazis, that’s what we did against the Communists for the better part of a half a century—in fact, more than half a century. Now we are dealing with another Ism, and that’s radical Islamism, and we’re going to have to fight it—and we’re going to be fighting it for some time. But tactically we can defeat this enemy quickly. Then what we have to do is we have to fight the ideology, and we can do that diplomatically, politically, informationally and we can do that in very, very smart ways much greater than we’re doing right now.”

Flynn is a lifelong Democrat, and again served in this senior Obama administration position for more than two years, but is now publicly supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump for president. He spoke at the Republican National Convention in support of Trump, and has been publicly speaking out in favor of the GOP nominee for some time now.

“My role as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency—that’s almost a 20,000 person organization in 140 plus countries around the world,” Flynn said. “I was also the senior military and intelligence officer not only for the Defense Department but for the country. So I mean I was basically told ‘hey, you know what, what you’re saying we don’t like. So you’re out.’ To Donald Trump, though, and I haven’t known him that long but I met him a year ago—in fact a year ago this month. The conversation that we had, which was an amazing conversation, I found a guy that like I to say, ‘he gets it.’ He gets it. He is a street savvy strategic leader type person who has a vision for this country, and he’s turned it into this phrase of ‘Make America Great Again.’”

Flynn said Trump’s campaign theme of wanting to “Make America Great Again”—along with his detailed policy speeches on foreign policy, economic policy, immigration policy and more—means that Trump is a “guy who sees our country like I see it.”

“The elements of that, and the things that you hear him talking about—particularly recently with his foreign policy speech and his economic policy speech and his immigration policy speech,” Flynn said. “Some of the things he is saying, this is a guy who sees our country like I see it. I will tell you, and I lay this out in the book—you know, Matt, I can clearly see what it is that we are facing. It’s not just the rise of radical Islamism, it’s also the direction that China is going and it’s also the direction that I see Russia taking. We have an alliance of nations that are opposed to our way of life and we should not kid ourselves and think that we’re just going to be around forever because we’re the United States of America. Countries only last so long, and in order to last, you have to fight for that belief system that we have, and I like to say it’s American patriotism—that’s the Ism that I’m for—and that’s where Donald Trump steps in, because here’s a guy who when you look at what he did over the past year just slaying the Republican establishment and he’s facing a current adversary in Hillary Clinton whose criminal behavior and just dishonesty is just stunning. Yet there’s still people who are trying to, that are weighing in to bring her back into government? Oh my God, I mean, to me this is an easy choice. This is a choice about the direction of the United States of America going forward.”

Flynn noted that the impacts of the choices voters make in this upcoming presidential election will affect the United States for generations—perhaps centuries—to come.

“And Donald Trump is not doing this for Donald Trump,” Flynn said. “Donald Trump is not doing this for the next four years. Donald Trump is doing this for the next 40, or the next 400, years. I have children, I have grandchildren, I have a son who has served overseas in the combat zones three times. I have a couple of grandchildren. My God, I want those grandchildren to grow up in a country that is recognizable to those of us that are in this country today. Right now, it’s starting to become unrecognizable and if we continue down the path that this administration has set over the past eight years—and that includes the path that Hillary Clinton was part of setting—we are going to find ourselves waking up one day in America saying ‘this is not America anymore. This is not what we were founded upon.’ Frankly, in order to keep that belief system that we have, we have to sort of fight for it and we’re going to have to fight for it overseas, and we’re going to have to fight for it here in the homeland and the way we do it here in our country is we do it at the voting booth. People have got to get out and vote.”

Flynn bashed the so-called “Never Trump” Republicans who say they will never vote for Donald Trump in November as “part of the problem” in America, too. He said that based on his own conversations with Trump, he believes he is seriously interested in helping the United States win again on the world stage.

“All these sort of Republican establishment types who are having a very difficult time checking their egos at the door, well, check your egos at the door because you’re part of the problem,” Flynn said. “The establishment that we’ve had, all they do is whine, whine, whine. And they have no solutions—what I want to start seeing is solutions. That’s where Donald Trump comes in because this is a guy—in my conversations with him, he’s like ‘alright I’m done talking about the problems, what are we going to do to fix it?’ That’s what I like about him. He was very serious about those—that’s the conversations that I’ve had, multiple conversations, now about solutions and how do we get to those solutions? That to me is the sign of a leader, back to your use of Churchill and what I talk about in the book, people don’t recognize people for who they are. Donald Trump is not kidding—he’s not kidding. He wants to Make America Great Again, like many of us—and that’s why I’m with him.”

If the United States doesn’t elect Trump, and seriously start dealing with the enemy, Flynn believes the problem is only going to get worse—and continue spreading more into the United States.

“If we don’t deal with it, then we’re going to be fighting it for a long, long time—and frankly, as a military guy, I’m sick of just participating in conflict,” Flynn said. “I want to win.”

Flynn said that the FBI is currently working on cases in every U.S. state—all 50 of them—regarding people who are allegedly aiding the Islamic State.

“Our FBI director, our current FBI director, has stated that the FBI is working a thousand—one thousand—cases right here in the homeland of the Islamic State,” Flynn said. “And he’s working those cases in all 50 of our states. So there’s a problem at home, and we definitely have a problem overseas, and our current President and frankly this administration to include Hillary Clinton—they denied the existence of it. And they tried to say ‘this is a religion of peace.’ Islam is Islam. It is a political ideology.”

Pakistan: Religion and Law

Christian Girl’sBlasphemy Arrest Incites a Furor in Pakistan

New York Times

B.K. Bangash/Associated Press

By DECLAN WALSH and SALMAN MASOOD
Published: August 20, 2012

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The arrest and imprisonment of a Christian girl accused of violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws stoked a public furor on Monday, renewing international scrutiny of growing intolerance toward minorities in the country.

The police jailed the girl, Rimsha Masih, and her mother on Friday after hundreds of Muslim protesters surrounded the police station here where they were being held, demanding that Ms. Masih face charges under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. A local cleric had said Ms. Masih had burned pages of the Noorani Qaida, a religious textbook used to teach the Koran to children.

By Monday night, as Pakistani Muslims celebrated the feast of Id al-Fitr, Ms. Masih and her mother were being held in Adiala jail, a grim facility in nearby Rawalpindi, awaiting their fate. Meanwhile, a number of the girl’s Christian neighbors had fled their homes, fearing for their lives, human rights workers said.

Senior government and police officials agreed with Christian leaders that the accusations against Ms. Masih were baseless and predicted that the case would ultimately be dropped.

Still, the case has already grabbed global headlines and inspired a hail of Twitter posts, even though several details are in dispute.

Christian, and some Muslim, neighbors said Ms. Masih was 11 years old and had Down syndrome. Senior police officers dismissed those claims; one described her as 16 and “100 percent mentally fit.”

Whatever the truth, experts said Ms. Masih’s plight highlighted a wider problem. “This case exemplifies the absurdity and tragedy of the blasphemy law, which is an instrument of abuse against the most vulnerable in society,” said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch.

While non-Muslims have long been vulnerable to persecution in Pakistan, the state’s ability to protect them is diminishing. Last week, gunmen executed 25 Shiites after taking them off a bus near Mansehra, in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. On Saturday, Hindu leaders in Sindh called on the government to protect their community from forced conversions by Muslim extremists.

But it is the emotionally charged blasphemy issue that has most polarized society. Ever since the governor of Punjab Province, Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down by his own bodyguard in January 2011 for his support of blasphemy reforms, the space for public debate has narrowed in Pakistan.

Violent mobs led by clerics have framed the argument, as appears to have happened in Ms. Masih’s case.

Neighbors said the girl’s family were sweepers — work shunned by Muslims but common among poor Christians — and lived in a slum area in Islamabad.

Malik Amjad, landlord of the family’s rented house, said the controversy started early last week after his nephew saw Ms. Masih holding a burned copy of the Noorani Qaida. The nephew informed a local cleric, Khalid Jadoon, Mr. Amjad said.

Desecration of Muslim holy texts is illegal in Pakistan and punishable by death. But Mr. Amjad said the incident bothered few local residents initially and caught fire only at the instigation of the cleric and two conservative shopkeepers.

“He tried to shame people by saying, ‘What good are your prayers if the Koran is being burnt?’ ” Mr. Amjad said.

Mr. Amjad said he handed the girl over to the police for her own protection and criticized the cleric’s role. “He exaggerated the incident and provoked people,” he said.

It was not clear how, or even if, Ms. Masih had come across the burned religious book. One neighbor, Malik Shahid, said it might have simply become accidentally swept up in a trash pile she was collecting.

The Pakistani police often are forced to register blasphemy cases against their wishes, human rights campaigners say, either to save the accused blasphemer or their own officers from attack.

In July, a large crowd, prompted by inflammatory statements from local mosques, swarmed a police station in Bahawalpur district in southern Punjab, searching for a blasphemy suspect who was being interrogated by police. The mob seized the man, beat him to death and burned his body outside the station.

A similar mob attack occurred in June in Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city, although in that case the police beat back the protesters.

The turmoil comes just days after Pakistanis marked the country’s 65th independence anniversary amid muted ceremonies and considerable soul-searching across the political spectrum.

“Desecrating graves, arresting 11 year old with Down syndrome, targeting of Shias — the list goes on. This is not what r religion is about,” Shireen Mazari, a staunch nationalist commentator, said on Twitter.

The adviser to the prime minister on national harmony, Dr. Paul Bhatti, said he hoped to defuse Ms. Masih’s situation through talks with moderate Muslim leaders. Dr. Bhatti is the brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, a minister for minorities who was gunned down outside his Islamabad home in early 2011, weeks after Mr. Taseer’s death.

Even if Ms. Masih avoids blasphemy charges, her family is unlikely to ever return home. Although nobody has been executed under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, even suspected blasphemers are in danger for the rest of their lives.

Several have been killed by vigilantes; others have been forced to flee Pakistan.

pakistan

Nigerian Attacks on Christian Villages

Deny all you want.  The reality is still the reality and while you may convince the UN you aren't raiding Christian villages, the truth is something the UN has never been particularly interested in.

8 July 2012 Last updated at 10:24 ET

Nigeria violence:Raids on Christian villages near Jos

Armed gangs attacked Christian villages in northern Nigeria on Saturday, sparking a day of violence in which 37 people died, the military says.

Dozens of men launched attacks on the villages near the city of Jos in the early hours of Saturday.

A military task force deployed and got the situation under control after hours of heavy fighting, officials said.

Muslim herdsmen were blamed for the raids, but their community leaders denied any wrongdoing.

The area around Jos has seen much ethnic violence as well as clashes between Christians and Muslims in recent years.

Mustapha Salisu, of the special task force, said "hundreds" of assailants had launched "sophisticated attacks".

"Some had [police] uniforms and some even had bulletproof vests," he said.

The dead included 14 civilians, 21 attackers and two policemen, Mr Salisu said.

He declined to lay blame for the attacks, but another military spokesman had earlier told Reuters news agency that Muslim Fulani herdsmen were the likely culprits.

Fulani community leaders denied their people had done anything wrong.

The Miyetti Allah cattle group dismissed the accounts as propaganda and said the military had attacked the herdsmen.

Jos is in Plateau state, which lies on the fault line between Nigeria's mainly Muslim north and Christian and animist south.

Islam

Protecting Christianity

·        3 Jul 2012

·        National Post - (National Edition)

·        BY RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

·        The Associated Press

Ransacking of timbuktu by ‘divine order’

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DAKAR , SENEGAL • Muslim extremists razed tombs and attacked the gate of a 600-yearold Timbuktu mosque on Monday, triggering an international outcry over the destruction of the ancient Malian city.

The International Criminal Court has described the demolition of the city’s patrimony as a possible war crime, while UNESCO’S committee on world heritage was holding a special session this week to address the pillaging of the site, one of the few cultural sites in sub-saharan Africa that is listed by the agency.

The Islamic faction, known as Ansar Dine, or “Protectors of the Faith,” seized control of Timbuktu last week after ousting the Tuareg rebel faction that had invaded northern Mali alongside Ansar Dine’s soldiers three months ago. Over the weekend, fighters screaming “Allah Akbar” descended on the cemeteries holding the remains of Timbuktu’s Sufi saints, and systematically began destroying the six most famous tombs.

Reached by telephone in an undisclosed location in northern Mali, a spokesman for the faction said they do not recognize either the United Nations or the world court. “The only tribunal we recognize is the divine court of Sharia,” said Ansar Dine spokesman Oumar Ould Hamaha.

“The destruction is a divine order,” he said. “It’s our Prophet who said that each time that someone builds something on top of a grave, it needs to be pulled back to the ground. We need to do this so that future generations don’t get confused, and start venerating the saints as if they are God.”

Among the tombs they destroyed is that of Sidi Mahmoudou, a saint who died in 955, according to the UNESCO website. In addition, on Monday they set upon one of the doors of the Sidi Yahya, a mosque built about 1400. Local legend held that the gate leading to the cemetery would only open on the final day at the end of time.

Local radio host Kader Kalil said the members of Ansar Dine arrived at the mosque with shovels and pickaxes and yanked off the door, revealing a wall behind it. Mr. Kalil said that they explained they were doing so in order to disabuse people of the local legend and to teach them to put their whole faith in the Koran.

“Since my childhood, I have never seen the door on the western side of the mosque open. And I was born in 1947,” said Mr. Kader, a longtime resident of the city. “When we were children, we were told that the door would only open at the end of time. These religious people want to go to the source, to show us that this is not true ... Of course our population is not happy. The women, especially, are crying a lot.”

Shamil Jeppie, who heads the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, says the destruction in Mali is analogous to the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddha in Afghanistan. The Wahabi interpretation of Islam that Ansar Dine — like the Taliban — espouses is a narrow version of the faith, and stands in contrast to what he says is the history of Islamic learning.

“Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning, a very significant centre — there is lots of internal and external evidence of this. But Ansar Dine is ignorant of this,” Mr. Jeppie said. “For them, there is only one book and it’s the Koran. All this other [Islamic] learning is inconsequential to them,” he said.

The UN cultural agency has called for an immediate halt to the destruction of the sacred tombs. Irina Bokova, who heads the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, reported in a statement issued Saturday that the centuries-old mausoleums of Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi Moctar and Alpha Moya had been destroyed. Meeting in St. Petersburg in Russia, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, last week placed the mausoleums on its list of sites in danger due to earlier attacks by the Islamists, said UNESCO spokesman Rony Amelan.

On Sunday during a stop in Senegal, Fatou Bensouda, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, said the destruction of the city’s patrimony constitutes “a possible war crime,” according to private radio station RFM. And on Monday, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the destruction, telling reporters in Washington that the United States calls on all groups to enter into a ceasefire.

For years before the north of Mali became a base for an offshoot of al-Qaeda, Timbuktu was a must-see for backpackers and package tour groups. Much of the city thrived on tourism.

Scholars held out hope that the Islamists would not also attack the city’s 20,000-catalogued manuscripts, some dating as far back as the 12th century. Beyond the tombs, the manuscripts are considered to be the real treasure of the region and library owners have succeeded in spiriting some of the manuscripts out of the city, or else buried them in secure locations.

“We’re talking about generations and generations of culture being destroyed,” said New York-based Michael Covitt, chairman of the Malian Manuscript Foundation . “It’s an outrage for the entire world.”

_______________________________________________________________

Of course, these people are not acting in an Islamic way, they are no different than cultish sorts in Christianity who burn Bibles and wave placards saying God loves dead fags.  of course.  Except with Christianity, they tend not to get violent and death engaged killing as they go.  Oh, yes, maybe 500 years ago, but Christianity has evolved.  That, and the fact Christians exclude the extreme and embrace toleration versus these individuals who run amok with no regulation killing and destroying in the name of their religion.

Imagine if the Pope said to destroy all Mosques. Imagine what Obama would say.

EDITORIAL: Destroy all churches

Obama silentwhile Saudi grand mufti targets Christianity

The Washington Times

Friday, March 16, 2012

If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.

On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region." The ruling came in response to a query from a Kuwaiti delegation over proposed legislation to prevent construction of churches in the emirate. The mufti based his decision on a story that on his deathbed, Muhammad declared, "There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula." This passage has long been used to justify intolerance in the kingdom. Churches have always been banned in Saudi Arabia, and until recently Jews were not even allowed in the country. Those wishing to worship in the manner of their choosing must do so hidden away in private, and even then the morality police have been known to show up unexpectedly and halt proceedings.

This is not a small-time radical imam trying to stir up his followers with fiery hate speech. This was a considered, deliberate and specific ruling from one of the most important leaders in the Muslim world. It does not just create a religious obligation for those over whom the mufti has direct authority; it is also a signal to others in the Muslim world that destroying churches is not only permitted but mandatory.

The Obama administration ignores these types of provocations at its peril. The White House has placed international outreach to Muslims at the center of its foreign policy in an effort to promote the image of the United States as an Islam-friendly nation. This cannot come at the expense of standing up for the human rights and religious liberties of minority groups in the Middle East. The region is a crucial crossroads. Islamist radicals are leading the rising political tide against the authoritarian, secularist old order. They are testing the waters in their relationship with the outside world, looking for signals of how far they can go in imposing their radical vision of a Shariah-based theocracy. Ignoring provocative statements like the mufti's sends a signal to these groups that they can engage in the same sort of bigotry and anti-Christian violence with no consequences.

Mr. Obama's outreach campaign to the Muslim world has failed to generate the good will that he expected. In part, this was because he felt it was better to pander to prejudice than to command respect. When members of the Islamic establishment call for the religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing, the leader of the free world must respond or risk legitimizing the oppression that follows. The United States should not bow to the extremist dictates of the grand mufti, no matter how desperate the White House is for him to like us.

saudi

Priests Brawling at Church of the Nativity (again)

Why?  Why do they do this every year (or it seems like every year)?  If religious priests cannot demonstrate the values taught by Christ, how ... how can they be allowed to remain in those positions.  Their actions bring disrespect upon Christianity.

Police storm Church of the Nativity to break up brawling priests

From Enas Muthaffar and Kevin Flower, CNN

December 28, 2011

Bethlehem, West Bank (CNN) - Clergy from two Christian sects came to blows in the Church of the Nativity on Wednesday morning, prompting police to storm the Bethlehem holy site.

Several dozen Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests were cleaning the interior of the church Wednesday morning when, according to witnesses, two of them began fighting.

The fight quickly escalated, and soon, 50 to 60 priests were exchanging blows with broomsticks.

Bethlehem police were sent in to quell the fighting, Palestinian police Maj. Ahed Hasayen said.

"This is an internal problem related to the Nativity church only. The Palestinian police had to interfere to stop the clashes as soon as possible to avoid devastating consequences," he said.

According to tour guide Ghassen Tos, the fight, while intense, was short in duration.

“This did not last for long as soon as the Palestinian police interfered and succeeded to halt the clashes immediately,” he said.

There were no reports of any serious injuries.

The Church of the Nativity is built in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on the site where Christian tradition holds Jesus Christ was born, and it is a major attraction for tourists coming to the Holy Land.

The interior of the church is traditionally cleaned by priests in between celebrations of Christmas on December 25 and the Orthodox celebration in the first week of January.

The church is administered jointly by the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian religious authorities, and tension between the sects is not uncommon.

In 2007, clergy from the same sects came to blows in a similar incident.

christianity

Iranian Islamic Intolerance

Iranian Authorities Pressuring Jailed Christian Pastor to Convert to Islam, Sources Say


By Lisa Daftari
November 04, 2011
FoxNews.com

Government officials in Iran are trying to convince a jailed pastor to return to Islam as he waits for the nation’s supreme leader to decide whether he should be executed for converting to Christianity, sources close to the case told FoxNews.com.

Iran’s secret service officials recently approached 34-year-old pastor Youcef Nadarkhani at his prison site in Rasht and presented him with a book on Islamic literature, telling him they would be back to discuss the material and hear his opinion, the sources said.

FoxNews.com obtained a digital copy of the book given to Nadarkhani, a 300-page compilation entitled "Beshaarat-eh Ahdein," meaning “Message of the Two Eras,” referring to the New and Old Testaments. Through various narratives, the book claims Christianity is a fabrication and attempts to establish the superiority of Islam.

“This isn’t the first time that we have seen this strategy used in the Iranian jail system,” said attorney Tiffany Barrans, the international legal director for the American Center for Law and Justice.

Barrans questioned whether this signaled the ayatollah's willingness to give Nadarkhani another chance, or rather "another way to trap him to allow the regime to continue to punish him or have documented evidence of blasphemy against Islam.”

Barrans, who said she has been in frequent contact with Nadarkhani’s attorneys, said he has been advised by family members, members of the church and lawyers to remain silent, out of fear that the Iranian government may try to use his statements against him, a strategy she said is commonly employed by the regime.

Nadarkhani remains in prison, awaiting a final verdict that has been drawn out and delayed amid heavy and targeted international attention to his case. Iran’s judiciary has been caught in a bind, fearing the ultimate decision will have far-reaching political implications.

If Nadarkhani is released, the judiciary risks appearing disrespectful of the tenets of Shariah law. But if he is executed, Iran will face increasing criticism from the international community, which continues to petition for the pastor’s release.

A few weeks ago, a letter on behalf of the judiciary was sent to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s highest authority in interpreting Shariah Law, asking him to make the final decision.

It is unusual for the supreme leader to be asked to weigh in on a case, but officials said this case is rare in nature and requires Khamenei’s stamp of approval in order to issue an execution.

Nadarkhani came under the regime’s radar in 2006 when he applied for his church to be registered with the state. According to sources, he was arrested at that time and then soon released.

In 2009, Nadarkhani went to local officials to complain about Islamic indoctrination in his school district, arguing that his children should not be forced to learn about Islam.

He was subsequently arrested and has been held since.

Barrans said there has been much confusion in the story, in part deliberately caused by the Iranian regime through its state-controlled media. She said that in an effort to distract the media, the Iranian government denied that the charge against Nadarkhani was apostasy, or leaving Islam, and instead alleged that he was being held for rape and extortion.

But according to details provided by Barrans and confirmed by FoxNews.com with sources close to the case in Iran, Nadarkhani was arrested in October 2009 and was tried and found guilty of apostasy by a lower court in Gilan, a province in Rasht. He was then given verbal notification of an impending death-by-hanging sentence.

In December, his lawyers appealed the decision, and the case was sent to Iran’s Supreme Court, which by June stated that it upheld the lower court’s decision of execution, provided it could be proven that he had been a practicing Muslim from the age of adulthood, 15 in Islamic law, to age 19, the time when he converted.

In September, the lower court ruled that Nadarkhani had not practiced Islam during his adult life but still upheld the apostasy charge because he was born into a Muslim family. The court then gave Nadarkhani the opportunity to recant, as the law requires a man to be given three chances to recant his beliefs and return to Islam.

Nadarkhani refused.

Experts credit international support of Nadarkhani in keeping him alive. Christian advocacy groups and human rights organizations have mounted numerous global campaigns and petitions against the Iranian government.

“For me, as a husband and a father of two, the first thing I think about is being in his situation,” said the Rev. Jason DeMars, founder of Present Truth Ministries, a support group for persecuted church communities in the Middle East.

DeMars has been linked to the network of churches in Iran to which Nadarkhani belonged, providing these communities with materials, mission coordination and international support.

“Politically, Iran wants to spread its influence and revolution throughout the Middle East. If we don’t raise our voices now, this persecution is going to affect Christians in other countries as well,” he said.

Apostasy is punishable by death in Shariah law. Article 225 of the Iranian penal code states, "Punishment for an Innate Apostate is death," and "Punishment for a Parental Apostate is death.”

Under this law, a Muslim who converts to Christian is called a mortad, meaning one who leaves Islam. If the convert attempts to convert others, he is called a mortad harbi, or a convert who is waging war against Islam. Death sentences for such individuals are prescribed both by fatwas, or legal decrees, and reinforced by Iran’s penal code.

All religious minorities in Iran, including Bahais, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians, have faced various forms of persecution and political and social marginalization throughout the regime’s 30-year reign. But the government saves its harshest retribution for those who have abandoned Islam.

Khamenei is not expected to announce a public decision on the case; he traditionally has influenced cases behind closed doors. Should he decline, the lower court will be responsible for making final judgment.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
iRAN

Crucifixion Nails Discovered, Says Filmmaker

Just weird.  I don't even want to consider the merits - simply the claim:  nails that are 2,000 years old, and someone would keep them versus throw them away.  If he kept the nails wouldn't he have kept the crown of thorns, maybe even the cross itself.  Now, assume Jesus was, who Christians believe Him to be - the apostles who followed the Son of God, did not collect trinkets, and they were the ones who knew the who He was with certainty (or near certainty), yet someone who was not certain beyond any doubt opted for the nails and not the cross. in fact why would anyone have collected trinkets - Mary the Mother of God, did not collect bits and pieces, neither did Magdalene.  Peter, the rock - he didn't keep even a locket of His hair ... but this guy thought he should keep nails.

Makes sense.

Crucifixion Nails Discovered, Says Filmmaker

By Alex Johnston
Epoch Times Staff
Apr 14, 2011



Crucifixion nails found at a burial cave in Jerusalem could be connected to the crucifixion of Jesus 2,000 years ago, an Israeli-born Canadian documentary maker said on Wednesday, according to media reports.

The nails were shown to reporters this week at the premiere of a History Channel documentary series.

Simcha Jacobovici, the filmmaker making the claim, said the nails were found at the burial spot of the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who turned Jesus over to the Romans, according to the New Testament.

“Two iron nails were found inside that tomb," he said, according to AFP. “Somebody went to his grave with that nail among his bones and nobody reported it.”

His documentary, The Nails of the Cross, will examine the question of the nails’ origin and use. The nails were discovered in the burial site around 20 years ago but disappeared.

According to the London Telegraph, Jacobovici said he was able to track them down.

“If you look at the whole story, historical, textual, archaeological, they all seem to point at these two nails being involved in a crucifixion,” he said, according to the Telegraph. "And since Caiaphas is only associated with Jesus's crucifixion, you put two and two together and they seem to imply that these are the nails.”

However, he admitted that he is not 100 percent sure if the nails were used for that purpose.

The Israel Antiquities Authority dismissed Jacobovici’s suggestion and said that there is no conclusive evidence that those were the nails used in the crucifixion, reported the newspaper.

“There is no proof that the nails are connected to any bones or any bone residue attached to the nails and no proof from textual data that Caiaphas had the nails for the crucifixion with him after the crucifixion took place and after Jesus was taken down from the cross,” Gaby Barkay, an archeologist at Bar Ilan University, told the Telegraph.









 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Christ

Egypt: Extremists Surround Church, Threaten to Kill Priest

I know I hate it when Christian mobs rampage across the countryside threatening Jews and Muslims and Buddhists.  Absolutely no difference.  I run when I see Christians coming, they are bound to skin me alive and stone me to death.   Unlike the religion of peace.




Egypt: Muslim extremists 'surround church and threaten to kill priest'




June 24, 18:13
adnkronos.com
Greece



Minya, 24 June (AKI) - Hundreds of Muslim extremists surrounded a church in central Egypt and threatened to kill the local priest, the Assyrian International News Agency reported. The extremists began targeting the church in a village 7 kilometres south of the city of Minya in March after renovation work began, threatening to demolish the church.

AINA Friday cited eyewitnesses as saying that the Muslim mob, dressed in white robes and long beards, chanted: "We will kill the priest, we will kill him and no one will prevent us."

One of their leaders was cited as saying they would "…cut him to pieces," AINA reported.

The priest Father George Thabet, who was holding morning mass and was locked in the church with several parishioners. Security forces arrived five hours later and escorted the priest away in a police car to the Coptic Diocese in Minya.

Coptic youths who were attending mass remained inside St George's church to defend it from Muslim attacks.

No police or security of any kind was present during the standoff, according to reports.

The archdiocese of Minya issued a statement deploring the incident and the "return of the Salafists to besiege St. George's church again, some carrying weapons, threatening to kill the priest unless he leaves the village."

The statement called on government officials and security authorities uphold rule of law and maintaining security in the country.

On 23 March, hardline Muslims had surrounded the 100-year old church, which was granted a renovation licence, and ordered the church officials to stop construction immediately and undo what they had completed, threatening to demolish the church if their demands were not met.

The extremists also ordered church authorities removed Thabet from Beni Ahmad village and gave him and his family a time limit of 35 days, later extended to 50 days, to leave.

The Muslims accused him of making extensions to the church and of causing sectarian strife.

The Coptic Christians account for about 10 percent of Egypt's population and have been repeatedly targeted by Muslim extremists.

Twenty-four people were killed and around 100 injured in a New Year's Eve bombing of a Coptic church in the northern Egyptian port city of Alexandria .

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
islam

Malaysia: Religion of Peace and some questions

I have to wonder if this is a planned effort or whether they wake up and decide to act individually.  Given my diminished respect for independent thought and creativity, I do not suspect individual brilliance.




Imagine the following scenarios before going to the story:
- imagine if in the country of Doop, population 10 million, that 88% are Retro faith, 10% are Modernists and the remaining 2% are a mixture of other beliefs.  Imagine the laws of the country are written around the Retro faith, the government is a majority of Retro.  Imagine if the Modernists were unable to expand - could not build new schools or temples, could not preach their values.  The courts, police, laws, government are dominated by Retro ...   Modernists meet to discuss their future and what they can do to protect their future.   Retro citizens see this as a threat to their way of life and make accusations against the Modernists.  They call for investigations and arrests, they call for public denunciations and reaffirmations about the place of Retro life.  So in this case can Modernists be a threat in any serious way?


- imagine if in the country of Doop, population 10 million, that 88% are Retro faith, 10% are Modernists and the remaining 2% are a mixture of other beliefs.  Imagine the laws of the country are written around the Retro faith, the government is a majority of Retro.  Imagine if the Modernists were unable to expand - could not build new schools or temples, could not preach their values.  The courts, police, laws, government are dominated by Retro ...   Modernists meet to discuss their future and what they can do to protect their future.   Retro citizens see this as a threat to their way of life and make accusations against the Modernists.  They call for investigations and arrests, they call for public denunciations and reaffirmations about the place of Retro life.  So in this case can Modernists be a threat in any serious way?


- imagine if in the country of Doop, population 10 million, that 88% are Retro faith, 10% are Modernists and the remaining 2% are a mixture of other beliefs.  Imagine the laws of the country are written around the Retro faith, the government is a majority of Retro.  However imagine that the Modernists were able to contort the laws to ensure they have equal access to the courts, and that the laws are modified to comport with a newly developed view on freedom and rights.  That the majority will not rule, rather the minority will threaten or complain, until the majority revise the laws and social construction to assimilate the Modernists.  Except the modernists are not assimilating for their values become enshrined in Retro's laws and are protected.  Imagine Modernists pushing for separate laws, separate schools, a separate society within Retro that is not subject to all of the laws and social values imposed on the rest of Retro.  Imagine if the Retro could not build unless they had the agreement of all communities and for each new building built for Retro, 1 was built for Modernists.  Imagine if Modernists lobbied well in the courts and political system and new laws were created protecting the minority in real and imagined cases and each time Modernists complained, investigations and lawsuits followed until Retro citizens stopped trying to maintain their culture.  The minority groups championed this action as one that opens society up for all citizens, yet of all the minority groups, none were as interested in preserving and promoting culture as were the Modernists who seized the opportunity and expanded their reach - promoting their values everywhere.  Unlike the Retro and others who could not for fear of violating the hate laws or ethnocentric attacks ... Modernists continued their expansion into the political, religious - even asking Retro temples to let them use their temples when not used.   





Religious tensions brewing in Malaysia over claims Christians want to supplant Islam




By Sean Yoong, The Associated Press
The Canadian Press
May 8, 2011



KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Malaysia's government sought to defuse new religious tensions Monday following allegations that church leaders were conspiring to make Christianity the official religion in this Muslim-majority country.

Christian officials insist the accusation is a lie intended to create suspicion between ethnic Malay Muslims and religious minorities, but several Muslim activists have filed police complaints demanding an investigation into what they consider a threat to the position of Islam.

A string of religious disputes in recent years, often involving minority complaints of discrimination, has triggered persistent feelings of insecurity among both Malaysian Muslims and minorities about their religious rights in a country that prides itself on multiethnic peace.

The allegation by two anonymous political bloggers about a plot by Christian leaders received little attention until the country's leading Malay-language newspaper reported it on its front page Saturday under the headline "Malaysia a Christian nation?"

The Utusan Malaysia newspaper is owned by Prime Minister Najib Razak's Malay-dominated ruling party. It said dozens of pastors were believed to have pledged at a recent meeting to make Christianity the official religion of Malaysia and have a prime minister elected from the Christian community, which comprises about 10 per cent of Malaysia's 28 million people.

Najib said late Sunday authorities will investigate the claim, but stressed the issue should not be sensationalized.

"Calm down until we get the facts," Najib said. "If there is anyone who tries to jeopardize national peace, we will not allow it to happen because what is important is national harmony."

Christian groups acknowledge there was a meeting last week, but say it was meant to honour some Christian pastors and discuss regular religious issues, not politics.

The accusations are "insidious, provocative and malicious lies" that have "the effect of creating religious disharmony, inciting hatred and heaping odium on Christians," Archbishop Murphy Pakiam, who heads the Catholic Church in peninsular Malaysia, said in a statement.

Opposition politician Lim Guan Eng warned Monday that the government would have to "bear full responsibility for any undesirable consequences on the Christian community in Malaysia" because of Utusan's report.

Tensions surged briefly last January when 11 churches suffered firebomb attacks and vandalism amid anger among some Muslims over a court verdict allowing minorities to use "Allah" as a translation for God. Some Muslims say the use of "Allah" in Christian literature could be used to convert Muslims, who comprise nearly two-thirds of the population.


















islam

There will be no Christmas in Iraq

There is little to say.  The excuses given, the number of dead ...




Iraqi churches cancel Christmas festivities




By YAHYA BARZANJI and SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press
Wed Dec 22, 9:24 pm ET



.KIRKUK, Iraq – No decorations, no midnight Mass. Even an appearance by Santa Claus has been nixed after Iraq's Christian leaders called off Christmas celebrations amid new al-Qaida threats on the tiny community still terrified from a bloody siege on a Baghdad church.



Christians across Iraq have been living in fear since the assault on Our Lady of Salvation Church as its Catholic congregation was celebrating Sunday Mass. Sixty-eight people were killed. Days later Islamic insurgents bombed Christian homes and neighborhoods across the capital.



On Tuesday, al-Qaida insurgents threatened more attacks on Iraq's beleaguered Christians, many of whom have fled their homes or the country since the church attack. A council representing Christian denominations across Iraq advised its followers to cancel public celebrations of Christmas out of concern for their lives and as a show of mourning for the victims.



"Nobody can ignore the threats of al-Qaida against Iraqi Christians," said Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako in Kirkuk. "We cannot find a single source of joy that makes us celebrate. The situation of the Christians is bleak."



Church officials in Baghdad, as well as in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and the southern city of Basra, said they will not put up Christmas decorations or celebrate midnight Mass. They urged worshippers not to decorate their homes. Even an appearance by Santa Claus was called off.

"It's to avoid any attacks, but also to show that people are sad, not happy," said Younadim Kanna, a Christian lawmaker from Baghdad.

Even before the Oct. 31 church attack, thousands of Christians were fleeing Iraq. They make up more than a third of the 53,700 Iraqis resettled in the United States since 2007, according to State Department statistics.

Since the church attack, some 1,000 families have fled to Iraq's safer Kurdish-ruled north, according to the United Nations, which recently warned of a steady exodus of Iraqi Christians.

The latest threats were posted late Tuesday by the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, on a website frequented by Islamic extremists. The group said it wants the release of two women it claims are being held captive by Egypt's Coptic Church.

Muslim extremists in Egypt accuse the Coptic Church of detaining the women for allegedly converting to Islam, an accusation the church denies. The message posted Tuesday was addressed to Iraq's Christian community and said it was designed to "pressure" Egypt.

Few reliable statistics exist on the number of Christians remaining in this nation of 29 million. A recent State Department report says Christian leaders estimate there are 400,000 to 600,000, down from a prewar level of some 1.4 million.

For those who remain, Christmas will be a somber affair.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Sako said there will be no Christmas decorations outside churches and a traditional visit by Santa Claus has also been called off. Money usually used on celebrations or gifts will instead go to help Christian refugees.

Ashour Binyamin, a 55-year-old Christian from Kirkuk said he and his family would not go to church on Christmas and would celebrate at home.

At Baghdad's Our Lady of Salvation Church, where more than 120 parishioners were held hostage by gunmen during the four-hour siege, all Christmas Masses have been canceled. Only a modest manger display will mark the occasion.

"We have canceled all celebrations in the church," said Father Mukhlis. "We are still in deep sorrow over the innocent victims who fell during the evil attack."

In Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood, where many of the city's remaining Christians live, churches were guarded by security forces Wednesday and surrounded by razor wire. Shop owners said few people were buying the Christmas trees and Santa Claus toys on sale.

Ikhlas Bahnam, a Christian in the neighborhood, vowed to go to Mass on Christmas Day, despite what she called the government's failure to protect her small minority. But she won't be visiting friends during the holiday season because all of them have fled the city.

"We did not put any decorations inside or outside our house this year," Bahnam said. "We see no reason to celebrate."

In Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, the Rev. Faiz Wadee, a Syrian Orthodox priest, said there will be no public Christmas celebrations there.

And Christians in Iraq's second-largest city of Basra have also called off all celebrations, said Saad Matti, a Christian legislator on the Basra provincial council.

"There will be only a small Mass in one church in Basra without any signs of joy or decoration and under the protection of Iraqi security forces," he said. "We are fully aware of al-Qaida threats."

Matti said Christians were also toning down their celebrations out of respect for a Shiite holiday going on at the same time. The majority of Iraqis are Shiite Muslims, especially in the south.

Even among Iraqi Christians who've managed to escape the violence, the mood was subdued.

Maher Murqous, a Christian from Mosul who fled to neighboring Syria after being threatened by militants, said his relatives are still at risk in Iraq, and since they cannot celebrate, neither will he.

"We will pray for the sake of Iraq. That's all we can do," he said from his home in Damascus.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Islam

Palestinians = Just like us, or maybe more like Mexico

They are just like us.



Tourist's body found near Jerusalem



After overnight search, Christine Logan's body found in wooded area; Kaye Susan Wilson, who was found stabbed and bound on Saturday, regains consciousness and recounts terrifying incident. 'Arabs came to kill,' she says

Ynet reporters Latest Update: 12.19.10, 09:59 / Israel News



Israeli police said the body of a female tourist who they feared was kidnapped by Arab assailants while hiking with a friend outside Jerusalem was found Sunday morning.

The woman has been identified as Christine Logan. Her identity has been given alternatively as British and American. Ynet has learned that her body was found in a wooded area, between bushes, a few hundred meters from the road connecting Beit Shemesh and Moshav Mata. Police suspect she was carried to the bushes by the assailant or assailants.

Logan's friend, identified as Kaye Susan Wilson, a 46-year-old tour guide, was also found bound with her hands behind her back Saturday in a mountainous area outside Jerusalem, bleeding from multiple stab wounds. She was hospitalized in Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital critical condition. On Sunday hospital officials said she had regained consciousness and that her condition has stabilized.

Speaking to Ynet Sunday morning, Wilson, not yet aware of her friend's death, recounted the incident. "Christine and I walked down a path in order to climb a small hill. We sat there, and two Arabs passed by and asked 'Do you have any water?' I said, 'I wish.' I felt something was wrong. I turned to (Christine) in English and told her something doesn't feel right and that we should return to the path.

"I pulled out a small knife from my pocket – a women's knife – and we began heading back. I saw that they (Arabs) weren't around, and I told her, 'Wait a second, I'll check to see where we are.' Suddenly I heard a noise. It happened so quickly – they came and attacked us. One of them pulled out a very long knife – like a bread knife with a sharpened edge," Wilson added.

"I was very scared, but my friend became hysterical. I told her to be quiet, but she told them, 'Take the money, take everything,' and they took everything. One of them took the Star of David necklace off my neck like a gentleman, and then they stabbed me 12 times. They came to kill. Nobody walks around with a knife like that for no reason. He stabbed me, but I sensed the knife did not penetrate my heart. I pretended to be dead; I thought they were waiting for someone else to come so I waited a few minutes and then threw myself onto a slope, my hands tied behind my back, and there was something covering my mouth," Wilson recalled.

"I found myself between the bushes, and I didn’t know if they had left already. I just wanted to sleep and felt as though I were about to collapse, but I knew I could not fall asleep. I managed to walk away and made my way to a parking lot, where a strange thing happened. An Israeli vehicle arrived and parked 10 meters from me. (The driver) was looking straight at me, but I couldn't yell so he continued driving. I had to walk another 20 meters, then I saw children; I turned around so they would see that my hands were tied, and they called the police."

A massive manhunt for Logan was launched after Wilson was discovered. Hundreds of police officers and volunteers, accompanied by soldiers from special IDF units, searched every cave and pit in the area.

During the overnight search, a police official told Ynet, "It doesn't look good. The woman has been missing since 4:30 pm and is feared dead. If she were fine we would have found her by now."

During the search the army set up roadblocks and inspected vehicles travelling to the West Bank. Choppers and a number of drones also assisted in the search.

No arrests have been made as of yet. "So far we have searched a number of areas. The first was near the injured woman's car, where blood stains, hairs and signs of a struggle were found. Unfortunately, these signs could not lead us to the assailants' possible escape route," a senior Border Guard officer said.

"The woman (Wilson) was agitated and had trouble speaking, and refused to tell us anything beyond her first name," one eyewitness from the town of Mata, who summoned rescue forces, told Ynet.

"Her clothes were dirty and showed signs of a struggle."





 
 
 
 
 
 
palestinians

The Extinction of the Christians in Iraq

One way or another, for one reason or one method over another - the result is the same.





Iraqi Christians put to the sword


Worship in Iraq is now more dangerous than under Saddam's dictatorship as Islamists bomb churches in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.


Adrian Blomfield
The Telegraph
12 Nov 2010


Unless told what to look for, the casual visitor to the once glamorous Baghdad thoroughfare that hugs the east bank of the Tigris would almost certainly pass them by. The Stars of David carved into the stonework of the low-slung buildings that line the alleyways of Abu Nuwas Street are little more than a curiosity these days – a memento of a civilisation lost to the pages of history.

Judaism has a connection to Iraq that no other faith can match. The patriarch Abraham may well have been born there; the prophet Jonah reluctantly returned to foretell the destruction of Nineveh. Centuries later, the Bible tells us that the exiled Jewish people sat down by Babylon's rivers and wept for their homeland. Yet Jewish links to Iraq are far from ancient history.

In the 1920s, there were reckoned to have been 130,000 Jews in Baghdad, 40 per cent of the population. Today, after decades of persecution before and immediately after the creation of the state of Israel, there are no more than eight.

Iraqi Christians might not be able to boast such a heritage – though even if there is no way of proving their belief that the apostle Thomas brought the faith to Iraq in the first century AD, theirs is still one of the oldest Christian communities on earth. Yet after a series of attacks in the past month by Islamist extremists – whose creed is the parvenu of the monotheistic religions in the country – fears are mounting that Christianity in Iraq is doomed to follow Judaism into oblivion.

At the end of last month, in the most ferocious attack on the community yet, Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda burst into Baghdad's Our Lady of Salvation Church during evening mass and took the congregation hostage. The gunmen began executing clergymen and worshippers before tossing a grenade into a safe-room where 60 parishioners had huddled to hide. As Iraqi forces stormed the church, the assassins surrounded themselves with children and detonated explosives secreted in suicide vests.

By the time it was over, 52 Christians were dead. Blood smeared the walls of the church, body parts and scraps of seared flesh littered the pews. A policeman standing guard outside the church afterwards summed up the scene: "Blood, flesh and bones. You can't bear the smell."

A group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq, a self-acknowledged front for al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility and issued a chilling warning, telling Christians it would "open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood". Delivering on their promise, 11 car bombs aimed at Christian shops and homes in Baghdad exploded on Wednesday, killing another five members of the minority.

The US and British invasion of Iraq rid the country of Saddam Hussein and instituted a bloodily delivered democracy of sorts after decades of oppressive totalitarianism. And yesterday, eight months of political deadlock since elections in March were broken with a deal to form a new government. Nouri al-Maliki, a Shia, remains as prime minister, while Iyad Allawi, leader of the main Sunni faction al-Iraqiya, will lead a new council for national strategy.

The agreement may be taken by outsiders as a welcome sign of stability that ought to reassure Iraqi Christians, but it is a painful truth that they led a safer and more dignified existence under Saddam's brutal rule. However, in a sign of the coalition's fragility, the Iraqiya bloc last night walked out in protest before a vote on the presidency.

Earlier this week, Athanasius Dawood, the exiled archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church, one of the smaller Christian communities, gave a warning that the minority was facing extinction at the hands of a campaign of "pre-meditated ethnic cleansing". He said that the only hope of salvation for Iraq's Christians was if countries such as Britain gave them blanket political asylum.

Although most of the extremists attacking them are thought to be Sunni Arab, Christians are as fearful of the Shia-dominated government and the kind of rule they believe it will one day institute. Tellingly, Archbishop Dawood laid much of the blame for the Christians' plight on Mr Maliki's administration, calling it "weak, biased, if not extremist".

Statistics vary wildly, but according to the US State Department, there are between 550,000 and 800,000 Christians left in Iraq, compared with 1.4 million in 1987 when a census was taken. Those numbers may be an over-estimation, but it is generally agreed that the number has halved since Saddam's fall as members of the faith flee the pogroms. Iraqi Christians say they are in graver danger now than at any time in their history. As gruesome as last month's attack on the Our Lady of Salvation Church was, they have been living in terror since the first bombings of their places of worship in 2004.

In the northern city of Mosul, Christians have been routinely kidnapped and executed because of their faith. In the past two years, Islamist gunmen have frequently stopped young men and women on the street and asked for their identity cards. If they bore a Christian-sounding name, they were often shot dead where they stood.

To have any chance of survival, churches in Mosul have been forced to pay protection money to gangsters linked to al-Qaeda. Any doubts about the Islamists' ultimate intentions were laid to rest when a group calling itself the Secret Islamic Army delivered a letter to homes in the Christian enclaves of Dura, a district of Baghdad.

"To the Christian, we would like to inform you of the decision of the legal court of the Secret Islamic Army to notify you that this is your last and final threat," the letter read. "If you do not leave your home, your blood will be spilled. You and your family will be killed." With its chilling echoes of similar missives delivered to Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide, it is little wonder that Iraqi Christians fear extermination.

Some have fought back. Churches in parts of Kurdistan have formed militias to protect their congregations. "The only solution left for our people is to bear arms," Father Ayman Danna of the Church of St George in Bartella was quoted as saying. "We either live or die."

But the Church Guard, as the militia is known, has the benefit of being funded by a rich Christian in the Kurdish regional government. Christians elsewhere can find no such powerful patronage.

Iraq's Christians learnt the hard way that to survive they had to pledge unquestioning fealty to successive, Sunni-dominated governments. When British troops pulled out of Iraq in 1933, members of the Assyrian Church, now one of the smallest of Iraq's 12 Christian communities, began to agitate for independence. The army and Kurdish irregulars retaliated by massacring 3,000 of them. Ever since, Christians have known that their loyalty had to be beyond reproach, and under Saddam, they were largely left in peace to practise their faith.

Saddam espoused Ba'athism, an ideology founded by a Syrian Christian that promoted secularism while acknowledging the importance of Islam in Arabic culture. Christians were only represented at secondary levels in the army and government, with the notable exception of Tariq Aziz – born Michael Yuhanna – Saddam's former deputy prime minister. Despite the repression of the Saddam years, Christians believed that was preferable to a government dominated by the Shia majority whose leaders had close links with Iran.

Those fears were given added impetus in 1991 when, at the encouragement of the United States in the aftermath of the Gulf war, the Shia rose up in revolt. One of their first acts was to attack and desecrate churches in Basra. Mr Maliki is a particular target of suspicion because he spent eight years in Iran during the 1990s. Tehran was also intimately involved in attempting to end the eight-month political impasse to create a coalition government.

With Shia rule set to continue, Iraqi Christians believe that not only will they receive no protection against Sunni extremists, but also that Iranian-style intolerance towards religious minorities will grow more entrenched. A number of Shia leaders with popular backing espouse a greater role for Islamic Sharia in daily life and many also support a return to Dhimmi status for Christians, an old Ottoman construct that limited the rights of minorities in return for protection. That would represent a regression from the Ba'athist constitution of 1970 which acknowledged the "legitimate rights of all minorities" and gave formal recognition to the five main Christian communities.

As persecution of Christians grows across the Middle East, and numbers dwindle ever faster, it is a supreme irony for many Iraqi Christians that one of the safest places for their faith in an ever more dangerous region is Ba'athist Syria. As a member of the minority Allawi strain of Shia Islam, Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has recognised the need to protect other vulnerable faiths. As a result, Christian holidays are observed by the whole country and work does not start until 10am on Sundays to allow Christians to go to church.

Christians across the border in Iraq can only look wistfully at Syria – for all its imperfections – as a reminder of how things once were.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Iraq