After Middle East, Will Islamists Uproot Christians in Europe?
Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/June 04/17
About terrorism and Islamist violence, Christian leaders offer only words of relativism and moral equivalence. Is it possible that after two recent big massacres of Christians, Catholic leaders have not a single word of courage and honor, but only the same offer of the other cheek?
Our secular elites condemn proselytizing only when it is practiced by Christians, never when practiced by Muslims.
In Syria and Iraq, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of places of Christian worship that Islamic fundamentalists have demolished in the past three years. These images, along with the mass decapitations and the rape of the minorities, shock the public, it seems, for one day.
We do not yet know enough about the three terrorists who, saying “This is for Allah!”, killed and wounded so many in London on June 4, but consider these two recent scenes:
Scene one: Manchester, United Kingdom, the “free world”. A British-born Muslim terrorist prays in a former church. All around him, the Christian sites and congregations accepted being turned into Islamic sites. The day after, this terrorist goes on a rampage, murdering 22 concert-goers.
Scene two: Minya, Egypt, the “unfree world”. An Islamist terror group stops a bus full of Christian pilgrims. The terrorists demand that their victims recite the Islamic creed, the shahaada. The Christians refuse to abandon Christianity and become Muslims. The Islamists murder them, one by one.
What do these scenes tell us? Christians resist Islam more in the Middle East than in Europe.
Salman Abedi, the British terrorist who massacred 22 innocent men, women and children at the Manchester Arena, could, every day, enter what was once a beautiful Christian church, consecrated in 1883. It was desecrated in the 1960s, during a great wave of secularization. People still remember the Methodist Church that it was until it was bought by the local Syrian Muslim community to make it a place of Islamic worship, the Didsbury Mosque. One can still see the typical architecture of a church, from the bell tower to the windows. But inside, instead of an altar, Abedi would be headed to the mihrab, the niche in the mosque that indicates the direction of Mecca. The pulpit is still there, but it is no longer used by a Christian pastor. It is used by the imam for the Khutba, the Islamic prayer.
Outside the Didsbury Mosque there is a sign announcing: “Do you want to know more about Islam? Come and socialize”. Such a sign for Christianity would be unthinkable in any European city. Our secular elites condemn proselytizing only when it is practiced by Christians, never when practiced by Muslims. On YouTube, an Islamist organization celebrates “the church converted to a mosque”. Instead of the times for Mass, there is another sign: “Prayer Room for Men”.
A few days after the Manchester attack, Islamists again struck Christians; this time, pilgrims in Egypt. That attack took place after Pope Francis’s trip to Egypt, where he offered the local suffering Christians only a vague condemnation of “every form of hatred in the name of religion”. The head of the Catholic Church evidently did not have the courage to address the question of Islamic fundamentalism, as had his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, at Regensburg.
“Religions do not cause violence and terrorism”, assured the new head of Italian bishops, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, after the massacre in Manchester, adding: “Muslims, Jews and Christians believe in a single creator”. Unfortunately, the terrorists murdered the Christians in Minya because they believe Allah is superior to the Judeo-Christian religion, and gives them the right to take the lives of “disbelievers”.
About terrorism and Islamist violence, Christian leaders offer only words of relativism and moral equivalence. Is it possible that after two big massacres of Christians, Catholic leaders have not a single word of courage and honor, but only the same offer of the other cheek?
The most honest Catholic prelate was the Archbishop of Ferrara, Luigi Negri, who said:
“I hope that some of these gurus — cultural, political and religious — in this situation will hold back words and not invoke the usual speeches to say that ‘it is not a war of religion’. I hope there is a silent moment of respect”.
The gurus, unfortunately, did not hold back; they had words only of weakness and confusion.
These Islamic fighters, such as those who hit Manchester and Minya, are not “radicalized”; they follow an Islamic religious dictate according to a literal reading of the Koran. They attack Europeans because they believe that Islam is superior and stronger than Europe. They feel that Allah and history are on their side. They want to see the flag of Islam flying across Western capitals.
The jihadists might think they can do to Europe what they did to Christians in Niniveh, Iraq. The only way we can win is by defeating them; no compromise is possible. But Europe speaks of “inclusion” and “integration”, never of victory.
