The 278-page report includes lists of crimes against Christians
“‘How is the life there in Iraq?’”
That’s what people ask, said Father Douglas al-Bazi, a priest at the Mar Elia refugee camp in Erbil, Iraq.
“Actually, the easy answer is, there are no life in Iraq.”
Al-Bazi, a former ISIS hostage, talked about his own treatment at the hands of ISIS. He said he saw his church and car blow up in front of him. He was shot by an AK-47 in his leg, he said, and his captors broke his teeth, nose, and back with a hammer.
“I still keep my shirt when they kidnapped me, and still I look to my blood every day and I remember, and this is what happen even to my people every day,” he said.
The government has admitted 605 Syrian refugees for resettlement in the United States since last November’s Paris terrorist attack, two of whom are Christians.
The rest are 589 Sunni Muslims, 10 Shia Muslims, three other Muslims, and one refugee identified in State Department Refugee Processing Center data as “other religion.”
At the same time, the proportion of Christians among the total cohort of Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. since the conflict began five years ago has now dropped below two percent.
Just 55 Christians (1.9 percent) are among the 2,769 Syrian refugees admitted since March 2011, while a large majority – 2,594 (93.6 percent) – has been Sunni Muslims.
Christians accounted for about 10 percent of Syria’s population when the civil war began and Sunni Muslims for an estimated 74 percent.
Christians and other non-Muslim minorities have been targeted specifically by ISIS and other radical groups, and monitoring group estimate that more than 700,000 Christians have fled Syria since then.
Other non-Muslims among the Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. since the war began include small numbers of Baha’i (2), Yazidis (1), Jehovah’s Witnesses (8), Zoroastrians (6), atheists (3) and Syrians who have self-identified as having no religion (7).
The administration has rejected calls by some Republican lawmakers, andsome GOP presidential candidates, for Syrian Christians to be prioritized in the refugee admission process.
The ISIS terrorist attack in Paris on November 13 fueled concerns that the terrorist group was exploiting the flow of refugees and migrants as cover to send jihadists into the West to carry out attacks.
French authorities said two of the attackers had been carrying fake Syrian passports and warned European Union partners that “some terrorists are trying to get into our countries and commit criminal acts by mixing in with the flow of migrants and refugees.”
Last Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper affirmed during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that ISIS has done so.
“Isn’t it already proven that Mr. Baghdadi is sending people with this flow of refugees that are terrorists that – in order to inflict further attacks on Europe and the United States?” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked him, referring to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“That’s correct,” Clapper replied. “That’s one technique they’ve used is taking advantage of the torrent of migrants to insert operatives into that flow.”
In addition, he continued, ISIS has become “pretty skilled at [producing] phony passports, so they can travel ostensibly as legitimate travelers as well.”
In December, House Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said the U.S. intelligence community “has identified already individuals tied to terrorist organizations in Syria that want to exploit and get into the United States through the refugee process.”
Democrat socialist Bernie Sanders’ campaign has evidently roused the satanic electorate.
In a highly popular pro-Sanders meme group created on Facebook, a post with an image stating, “Satanists for Bernie 2016,” has received over 1,100 likes and over 200 shares.
Several members of the Bernie Sanders’ Dark Meme Stash cautioned the image looks bad for the campaign and asked for it to be removed.
But many, many others embraced the supposed endorsement.
While the image’s creator is unknown, it is discussed in the comments that the Church of Satan, a central hub of satanic worship, has not officially endorsed any candidate for president.
Another group entitled the Satanic Communist Party, boasting over 2,000 members, also appears to lean pro-Bernie.
While supporters attempt to distance Sanders’ brand of socialism from Communism, revolutionaries instrumental in shaping the ideology, in particular Vladimir Lenin, have openly admitted, “The goal of socialism is Communism.”
In a 1986 book entitled Marx & Satan, author Richard Wumbrand, who was imprisoned for 14 years by the Communist government of Romania for espousing Christian beliefs, demonstrates through direct quotes that the man credited as the father of Communism crafted the ideology with inspiration from the powers of darkness and with the intent to destroy religion.
“The good of the workers was only a pretense. Where proletarians do not fight for Socialist ideals, Marxists will exploit racial differences or the so-called generation gap. The main thing is, religion must be destroyed,” wrote Wumbrand.
“Marx believed in hell. And his program, the driving force in his life, was to send men to hell.”
Practicing Christians are now a minority in Britain much like the persecuted Roman Catholic minority after the reformation, two senior clerics said yesterday.
The Anglican Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Cardinal Nichols, said their respective Churches must put aside their differences and recognise their “common agenda” as society becomes increasingly secularised.
The clerics were speaking after a historic meeting at Hampton Court Palace, home of Henry VIII, where the Chapel Royal celebrated Catholic Vespers for the first time in more than 450 years.
The service was designed to highlight the palace’s musical history as it approaches its 500th anniversary.
According to The Telegraph, Cardinal Nichols, who is de facto leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, said that after being severely persecuted in previous centuries, Catholics now contribute to British life as a “significant minority”, to which Bishop Chartres replied: “We are all minorities now.”
Cardinal Nichols continued, adding that traditional Christian values that people “used to take for granted” are now widely questioned.
Last month, Breitbart London reported how attendance at Church of England services had dropped below one million per week for the first time ever, with only 1.4 per cent of the population now attending England’s established church.
The figures mark a two-thirds decrease since the 1960s, with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby warning that Britain is becoming increasingly anti-Christian:
“In some parts of the [Anglican] Communion decline in numbers has been a pattern for many years. In England our numbers have been falling at about one per cent every year since world war two…
“The culture [is] becoming anti-Christian, whether it is on matters of sexual morality, or the care for people at the beginning or the end of life. It is easy to paint a very gloomy picture.”
Christians, homosexuals and women are fleeing asylum centres in Germany in ever growing numbers due to acts of violence, intolerance and crime perpetrated by Muslim men.
According to German newspaper Die Welt, the violence toward ethnic minorities, religious minorities and women continues to skyrocket across German asylum centres. Muslim men tear up Bibles and assault Christians, sexually abuse women and children, and beat up homosexuals. The news has led to calls from human rights campaigners to say enough is enough.
In Stuttgart a case of abuse toward an Assyrian Christian by a Muslim roommate led to a petition for separate housing that was signed by over 17,000 people online. The petition, organised by the Central Oriental Christians, asked the City of Stuttgart to, “please accommodate the displaced Christians in Stuttgart-Neugereut and keep them from further distress and persecution to which they are exposed in a decentralised accommodation.”
The matter was brought to the city and a separate asylum centre for 30 Christians was approved by the council. Spokesman for Stuttgart Sven Matis told the paper that after speaking to the district assistant they would be able to approve accommodation for the 30 Christians in Neugereut by the end of April.
Martin Lessenthin, CEO of the International Society for Human Rights also commented on the systematic persecutions of Christians all across German asylum homes. He said it was common to see both Christians and Yazidis subject to torment and beatings and while it is not desirable to accommodate migrants separately, it may be inevitable for the safety of the minorities.
Separation of migrants has been a policy when it comes to extremely vulnerable minorities. Yazidi girls who were used as sex slaves by the Islamic State are housed in secret locations in Germany so as not to attract unwanted attention from migrants sympathetic to the Islamic State or Muslims who view them as nothing more than sexual objects. A purported 1,100 of these women live in various special shelters across Germany.
One victim of sexual abuse is said to have been only eight years old at the time of her abuse by ISIS. Another girl had to be treated by specialist burn victim doctors because the constant sexual torment drove her to try and light herself on fire in a failed attempt at suicide.
In Freibeurg, some 200 women live in secret. The head of the Baden-Wurttemberg state chancellery Klaus-Peter Murawski warns that ISIS militants may be actively monitoring the project in hopes of getting revenge against the women. This warning was proven accurate when an ISIS commander was found at an asylum home earlier this week.
Breitbart London has reported on migrant violence within asylum homes with cases of Christians, homosexuals and others being beaten in asylum centres across Germany,reports of asylum centres as breeding grounds for extremism, and even young children being brutally raped by fellow migrants.
In today’s Guardian newspaper, columnist Owen Jones blames the “far right” for instability across Europe, lumping thousands of criminal migrants sparking a crime wave across the continent with Jews who fled Nazi Germany. He writes: “And who is waiting, preparing and consolidating? Europe’s far right, already feeding off the despair of economic crisis and a backlash against refugees fleeing violence from the Middle East. Where once the principal target was Jews, now it’s Muslim”.
Federal authorities are accusing a Dearborn Heights man of supporting Islamic State extremists and planning to “shoot up” a Detroit church.
Khalil Abu-Rayyan, 21, hasn’t been charged with terrorism-related crimes but faces federal charges of illegally having a firearm while using a controlled substance.
But a complaint unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court reveals the FBI has been investigating him since May “regarding increasingly violent threats he has made to others about committing acts of terror and martyrdom — including brutal acts against police officers, churchgoers and others — on behalf of the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.”
Besides allegedly using Twitter to express support for the terror group — often referred to as ISIS or ISIL — Abu-Rayyan reportedly told an undercover FBI employee about a plot to target a church.
“I tried to shoot up a church one day,” Abu-Rayyan is quoted as saying in court records. “I don’t know the name of it, but it’s close to my job. It’s one of the biggest ones in Detroit. Ya, I had it planned out. I bought a bunch of bullets. I practiced a lot with it. I practiced reloading and unloading. But my dad searched my car one day, and he found everything. He found the gun and the bullets and a mask I was going to wear.”
Investigators didn’t name the church Abu-Rayyan allegedly eyed, but claim the property covers about two blocks less than half a mile from his work and can accommodate up to 6,000 members. He allegedly purchased a gun and told an undercover FBI employee that attacking a church would be “easy.”
“A lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church,” the affidavit quotes him as saying. “Plus it would make the news. Everybody would’ve heard. Honestly I regret not doing it. (If I) can’t go do jihad at the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here.”
Abu-Rayyan appeared in federal court Thursday and was detained pending a hearing on Monday, said Gina Balaya, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.
Court records show he was assigned a federal defender, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night. Messages left for those listed as his relatives were not returned.
“If the allegations are true, then they’re extremely troublesome,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter.
He said the group is urging caution “and encouraging the broader community to also reserve judgment regarding this matter.”
The court document claims Abu-Rayyan used Twitter for “retweeting, liking and commenting” on IS propaganda since late 2014. According to the affidavit, the posts included “video of a Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive, men being thrown from a high rise building to execute them, the beheading of Christians in Egypt and news of ISIL victories.”
In December, he communicated with an undercover FBI employee through social media; during conversations over several weeks, “Abu-Rayyan consistently expressed support for ISIL and repeatedly expressed his desire to commit a martyrdom operation,” the document read. He also said he had an AK-47 with a 40-round magazine like other extremist fighters.
The affidavit says Abu-Rayyan told the undercover FBI employee a firearm he bought in October wasn’t suitable “because it only held six shots and he would have to keep reloading.”
The next month, he “tweeted photos of himself firing an AK-47 type and AR-15 type rifles at a local firing range”; one was captioned “Sahwat hunting,” which authorities said “is a term for Iraqis who oppose ISIL.”
Federal officials said Abu-Rayyan bought a .22 caliber revolver in October from a Dearborn Heights sporting goods store but lacked a concealed pistol license. On Oct. 7, Detroit police pulled him over for speeding; inside the 2001 Buick Century, officers found marijuana. Arrested for toting the drug and carrying a concealed weapon, Abu-Rayyan was later released on bond.
On Nov. 15, the same day the pending case denied him the chance to buy another pistol, Abu-Rayyan rented a firearm at the firing range pictured on Twitter later that month, according to the affidavit.
Wayne County prosecutors charged him for the gun and marijuana; he pleaded guilty to the drug possession Jan. 15 and was scheduled for trial Feb. 16 on the weapon charge, authorities said.
Soon after he pleaded guilty, Abu-Rayyan told the undercover person he “wanted to kill the officer who arrested him.” Since the officer’s heart attack delayed a trial, Abu-Rayyan “wanted to do a martyrdom operation at the hospital, killing the police officer in the process,” according to court documents. The next day, he told the undercover FBI employee about carrying a “large knife or sword in his car” in case of a fight and said “it is my dream to behead someone,” documents allege.
The case coincides with Muslims in Michigan and nationwide facing tensions amid fears about rising extremism in the wake of the recent Paris and California attacks.
“We advise people not to jump to conclusions about what happened and wait for all of the facts to come in,” said Muzammil Ahmed, board chairman for the Michigan Muslim Community Council. “Our thoughts are with our Christian friends and congregation that were threatened. We think that isolated acts like this, if they are indeed true, are an anomaly in this area.”
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved GOP legislation that erected fresh hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the United States. Gov. Rick Snyder suspended efforts to open Michigan to Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war, joining other governors in asking the federal government to examine and toughen security screenings of refugee applicants.
Soon after the shootings in San Bernardino, California, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S. — a call that drew rebukes from many, yet found support among others.
CAIR’s national chapter noted that in his visit to a Baltimore-area mosque this week, President Barack Obama rejected “inexcusable political rhetoric” targeting Muslims.
But Obama allowed the word “Allah” to be widely displayed during his first speech at a US Islamic Center.
Barack Obama at Islamic Society of Baltimore
If there was one word which could describe President Obama’s Presidency (aside from failure, Progressive hell, and nightmare) it would be anti-Christian.
From declaring that the United States is no longer a Christian nation todenying Syrian Christians entry into the country President Obama’s distaste for the followers of Jesus are as obvious as the nose on your face. But with less than a year left in his Presidency Obama hasn’t given up on dissing Christians at every opportunity.
For example, President Obama gave a speech at a mosque in the Islamic Society of Baltimore on Wednesday. While standing in front of a glass wall where the word “Allah” was written 99 times in Arabic calligraphy, the President took a stab at Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump by stating there was “inexcusable anti-Islamic rhetoric in the political sphere.” The White House staff were even gifted Qurans at the event.
What makes this entire event a slap in the face to Christians is that while giving a speech at Georgetown University in 2012 the White House told the Catholic school to cover up all religious signs and symbols, including the small letters IHS displayed inside the triangular pediment directly behind and above where the President would stand since the 3 letters signify the name of Jesus Christ (pictured top left).
So it should now be obvious to everyone that President Obama does indeed have a double standard when it comes to religions. Because if you’re a Christian organization you better cover up anything referring to Christ, even if it’s just 3 small letters, if you want the President to give a speech. But if you’re of the Muslim faith it’s ok to have a word wall with “Allah” written 99 times in large Arabic symbols directly behind where President is speaking.
Editor's note: This post was updated Feb. 3, 2016, at 12:25 pm to include a statement from the Food and Drug Administration.
Would it be ethical for scientists to try to create babies that have genetic material from three different people? An influential panel of experts has concluded the answer could be yes.
The 12-member panel, assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released a 164-page report Wednesday outlining a plan for how scientists could ethically pursue the controversial research.
"The committee concludes that it is ethically permissible" to conduct such experiments, the report says, but then goes on to detail a long list of conditions that would have to be met first.
For example, scientists would have to perform extensive preliminary research in the laboratory and with animals to try make sure it is safe. And then researchers should initially try to make only male babies, because they would be incapable of passing their unusual amalgamation of DNA on to future generations.
"Minimizing risk to future children should be of highest priority," the committee writes.
The report was requested by the Food and Drug Administration in response to applications by two groups of scientists in New York and Oregon to conduct the experiments. Their goal is to help women have healthy babies even though they come from families plagued by genetic disorders.
A statement issued by the FDA immediately after the report's release raised questions about whether the FDA would permit the research to move forward.
The FDA email praised the "thoughtful work" of the panel and said the agency would be "reviewing" the recommendations. But it noted that federal law "prevents the FDA from using funds to review applications in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include" changes that could be passed down to future generations. As a result, the email says, any such research "cannot be performed in the United States."
"I think it's a great step in the right direction," Mark Sauer, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University who is a member of one of the teams, said of the National Academies report in an interview before the FDA issued its statement.
Sauer calls the report more of a "yellow light" than a "green light," because of the long list of caveats and cautions. But that is "better than a red light," he says.
"Most importantly to us is that it allows the work to continue to hopefully produce children without these disorders," Sauer says.
Critics, however, say the number of women who could benefit from the experiments are so small that it's not worth crossing a line that's long been considered off limits – making genetic changes that could be passed down for generations.
"The possibility of what you could call mission creep is very real," says Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a watchdog group based on Berkeley, Calif. "People are talking about going forward not just with this but with the kind of genetic engineering that will produce outright genetically modified human beings."
Once that happens, Darnovsky says, "I think you get into a situation of where some people are genetically enhanced and other people are the regular old variety of human being. And I don't think that's a world we want to live in."
The goal of the research to help women carrying diseases known as mitochondrial disorders, which are only passed down by women through defects in the genetic material in their eggs.
Specifically, the defects are in a type of genetic material known as mitochondrial DNA.
Unlike the DNA that most people are familiar with — the 23 pairs of human chromosomes that program most of our body processes and traits — mitochondrial DNA consists of just 37 genes inside mitochondria, which are structures inside cells that provide their energy.
Mitochondrial disorders range from mild to severe. In many cases there is no treatment, and the affected child dies early in life after suffering progressive, debilitating symptoms.
In the experiments, scientists would take eggs from women carrying defective mitochondrial DNA, remove all the genes except for the mitochondrial DNA, and then do the same thing to eggs that have been donated by women with healthy genes.
The DNA of the woman who wants to have the healthy child would be transferred into that egg, which would then be fertilized in the laboratory with sperm and implanted in her womb to develop.
The British government recently approved such experiments in that country.
But this remains controversial, not only due to the fact that the resulting children would have DNA from three people. Because the transplanted DNA could be passed down for generations, critics fear it could accidentally introduce errors into the human gene pool that could create new diseases.
They also worry it would set a precedent that could open the door to creating designer babies, in which parents can pick and chose the traits of their children.
Because of such concerns, making any change in DNA that could be passed down for generations has long been considered off limits.
The committee report acknowledged that making babies with DNA from three different people could create have "psychological and social effects" on the offspring, including issues about their "conception of identity."
In addition, the committee acknowledged the possibility that it could lead to attempts at genetic "enhancements."
Such work would raise thorny regulatory issues, the committee noted. For example, the federal government is prohibited from funding research that involves destroying human embryos. As a result, "even an agency request" for data from such research in support of FDA approval "could well be controversial," the report says.
Nevertheless, the committee says the potential benefits make the work worth pursuing with careful oversight.
Moreover, the FDA could at some point even consider letting experiments proceed to try to create female babies if certain criteria are met, the report said, including the production of "clear evidence of safety and efficacy from male" experiments and signs that it would be publicly acceptable.
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Could we soon be carrying all of our medical and financial information on a tattoo?
Software company Chaotic Moon has developed a “tech tattoo” that gets embedded into a person’s arm and can track a person’s financial and medical information.
Eric Schneider, the company’s hardware creative technologist, explained the tattoo can monitor if a person is about to get sick.
“Rather than going to the doctor once a year for your physical, this tech tattoo can be something you put on your body once a year and it monitors everything that they would do in a physical and it sends that to your doctor, and if there’s an issue they can call you,” Schneider said. “So the tech tattoos can really tie in everything into one package. It can look at early signs of fever, your vital signs, heart rate, everything it needs to look at to notify you that you’re getting sick or your child is getting sick.”
The tattoo will transmit this information wirelessly to a mobile app or computer being monitored by their health professionals.
Schneider also said that people would be able to carry their financial information through this tattoo.
“We carry wallets around and they are so vulnerable. With the tech tattoo you can carry all your information on your skin and when you want your credit card information or your ID, you can pull that up automatically through the system,” he said.
The tattoos are made with “electro conductive ink” that contain various sensors, and in some cases tiny microchips. The makers say they will last for up to a year.
Tim Moynihan of Wired Magazine thinks there could be a future with these tech tattoos.
“Twenty percent of Americans, I think, have tattoos so there is a potential market there.” Moynihan told CBS2.
Lance Ulanoff of Mashable called it a “fascinating idea” that could potentially be used to help track missing children or checking up on soldiers in combat.
“Right now they wear suits to try and keep track of all their vitals, and if something goes wrong with the suit then maybe there’s a problem, but if it’s on your skin, they know all the time,” Ulanoff told CBS2.
Cosmetic company L’Oreal is also getting in on the action with a temporary tattoo that can track UV exposure and alert people if they’re in danger of burning.
The Manhattan business mogul made headlines throughout the course of the last week for his various interactions with fellow Christians. | Getty
Donald Trump's outreach to Christians is bearing fruit, if the results of the latest NBC News/Survey Monkey weekly online tracking poll out Tuesday are any indication.
Among white evangelical Republican voters, Trump earned the support of 37 percent, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father is a pastor and has played a key role in recruiting faith leaders to support his son, is at 20 percent. In the same survey conducted the previous week, Cruz registered nine points higher. Below the top two contenders, Ben Carson earned 11 percent among evangelicals, while Marco Rubio took 10 percent.
The Manhattan business mogul, who is Presbyterian, made headlines throughout the course of the last week for his various interactions with fellow Christians, including a stop at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, last Monday. Delivering the weekly convocation address, Trump caused a stir when he made reference to a Bible verse in "Two Corinthians," rather than the usual reference of "Second Corinthians." (Trump later claimed that it was written that way in his notes, and besides, his mother was Scottish and would have said it that way.)
Trump also attended a Presbyterian service in Muscatine, Iowa, on Sunday, where the pastor made reference to the ongoing immigration crisis, a central plank in the Republican's campaign, and humility, in general. "I don't know if that was aimed at me," Trump said later.
The poll's overall week-to-week standings show little shift, with Trump leading the field at 39 percent, Cruz at 17 percent and Rubio at 10 percent. No other candidate received double-digit support.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton's advantage remained in the double digits, at 51 percent to Bernie Sanders' 37 percent.
The poll was conducted online from Jan. 18-24, surveying a national sample of 9,690 adults, including 8,215 who indicated that they are registered to vote. Included in that sample are 2,327 Republicans and 2,780 Democrats, with margins of error of 2.8 percentage points and 2.2 percentage points, respectively.
Persecution in Turkey has forced many of the 45,000 Christians, who fled the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria, to hide their true identities and pretend to be Muslim.
The Armenians, Syriacs, and Chaldean Christians received residency in Turkey until 2023, but they have applied to go to the U.S., Canada, or Austria. Syriac and Armenian Patriarchates, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other human rights groups do as much as they can to support the families, but they need more.
Hürriyet Daily News spoke with Armenian Anonis Alis Salciyan and her family, who left Iraq over a year ago. They are a family who pretend to be Muslim in public, but worship privately at home. The children cannot attend school because they do not speak Turkish.
Linda and Vahan Markaryan fled Baghdad a year ago with their two children after the Islamic State raided their home.
“When ISIL militants raided our house in Baghdad last year, my daughter Nuşik was seven,” explained Linda. “She stopped talking on that day and has never spoken again since then. We are now living in Yozgat. We are working hard to provide her treatment, but she still won’t speak.”
She added, “We do not have a future here. Everything in our lives is uncertain. Our only wish is to provide a better future for our children in a place where they are safe and secure.”
Her husband cannot find a permanent job as an electrician; instead, he takes temporary jobs at construction sites. These jobs only pay him 25 Turkish liras ($8.28) a day.
Armenian Zadig Kucuk found his mother, Maritsa Kucuk, 85, dead in December 2012 in a large Armenian community in Istanbul. He claimed the murderer carved a cross into her chest.
That same month in the same community, attackers beat and choked an 87-year-old woman. The attack took her eye.
Attackers beheaded a 40-year-old teacher from an Armenian school in January 2013.
Turkey has prominence in Christian history since “the apostle Paul and Timothy were born there and the city of Antioch, now Antakya, was known as the ‘cradle of Christianity.'” Over 100 years ago, the Ottoman Empire committed the Armenian Genocide, killing over 1.5 Armenians, mostly Christians, as they forced the countrymen to leave Turkey.
My family was originally from [the southeastern Turkish province of] Van. My husband’s family came from [the southeastern province of] Gaziantep. My husband and I fled [Iraq] with our two children one year ago with around 20 other families. There was pressure on us in Iraq.
The Christian population of Turkey is evaporating rapidly. The nation, a NATO member since 1952, has experienced a reduction in its Christian population from 20 percent 100 years ago to only 0.2 percent today. That change came into stark relief at the Hagia Sophia during Easter holy week in April 2015.
“The historic Istanbul cathedral and museum, Hagia Sophia, witnessed its first Quran recitation under its roof after 85 years Saturday,” reported the Anadolu News Agency of Turkey. “The Religious Affairs Directorate launched the exhibition ‘Love of Prophet,’ as part of commemorations of the birth of Islamic Prophet Muhammad.”
Istanbul was once known as Constantinople, founded by Roman Emperor Constantine in 324. He made it the capital of Rome before it fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. They made it their capital until the empire collapsed after World War I. Modern day Turkey officially renamed it Istanbul in 1923.
Turkey changed the name, but current officials have clearly indicated a desire to return to the Islamist state established under the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Council of Ministers, for example, formed the Istanbul Conquest Society to help organize a yearly event to celebrate the conquest of Constantinople. As columnist Constantine Tzanos asks, “Why would anyone want to celebrate the conquest which not only by itself was a great human catastrophe, but it was also the precursor to many such catastrophes up to the very recent past?” The Ottomans terrorized the Balkans, killing anyone who did not convert to Islam. Historian H. Gandev believes “2,608 Bulgarian villages disappeared,” while the “rural population decreased by a total of 112,144 households (or approximately 560,000 people).” The post-Ottoman Turkish government repeated their predecessor’s history with the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides in Asia Minor, which led to the deaths of over three million people.
Turkey’s population is at least 97 percent Muslim, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Many have accused the president of being a radical Islamist, especially since he attempted to justify the execution of a Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia. He also condemns anyone who dares acknowledge the Armenian genocide.
Turkey became a mostly Muslim country due to a “population exchange” with Greece. In 1923, “more than a million Greeks were forced out of Turkey to Greece while 300,000 Muslims from Greece were relocated here,” writes Cengiz Aktar. The Greeks who stayed faced massive taxes and anti-Greek programs, which eventually forced them out.
“The ethnic cleansing of these non-Muslim minorities was a huge brain drain,” Aktar adds. “It also meant the disappearance of the bourgeoisie because not only were they wealthy but they were artisans. Istanbul lost its entire Christian and Jewish heritage.”
Pope Francis leaves at the end of the Vesper Prayer service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls on Monday in Rome. | AFP-JIJI
Pope Francis asked Protestants and other Christian Churches for forgiveness for past persecution by Catholics as the Vatican announced on Monday he would visit Sweden later in the year to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
Speaking at an annual vespers service in St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome attended by representatives of other religions, he asked “forgiveness for the un-gospel like behavior by Catholics towards Christians of other Churches.” He also asked Catholics to forgive those who had persecuted them.
The Vatican announced that on Oct. 31 Francis would go to the southern Swedish city of Lund, where the Lutheran World Federation was founded in 1947, for a joint service with Lutherans to launch Reformation commemorations that will continue throughout the world next year.
Martin Luther, a German, is credited with starting the Protestant Reformation in 1517 with writing 95 theses — said to have been nailed to a church door in Wittenberg — criticizing the Catholic Church for selling forgiveness from sins for money.
It led to a violent, often political schism throughout Europe and Christianity, prompting among other things the 30 Years’ War, the destruction of English monasteries, and the burning of numerous “heretics” on both sides.
Catholic traditionalists have accused Francis of making too many concessions to Lutherans, particularly in a “common prayer” that both religions will use during the 2017 commemorations.
They say the prayer, which will be used during the pope’s visit to Lund, excessively praises Luther, who was condemned as a heretic and excommunicated.
Francis, however, has made dialogue with other religions one of the hallmarks of his papacy.
He has already visited the Lutheran church of Rome, the Waldensian protestant community in northern Italy, and Rome’s synagogue. This year he is due to become the first pope to visit the Italian capital’s mosque.
While his predecessors have visited Protestant churches, Francis has come under criticism from traditionalists who accuse him of sending confusing signals about inter-faith relations.
They have also contested guidelines issued this month for the “common prayer.
“The Reformation and Martin Luther are repeatedly extolled, while the Counter-Reformation and the Popes and Saints of the 16th century are passed over in total silence,” the traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli said.
Theological dialogue between Roman Catholics and Lutherans began in the late 1960s after the Second Vatican Council. But Catholics and Lutherans are still officially not allowed to take communion at each other’s services.
When he visited Rome’s Lutheran church last year, traditionalists attacked Francis for suggesting in answer to a question that a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic man could decide for herself if she could take communion in her husband’s church.
Catholic clergy lamented the destruction of Iraq's oldest Christian monastery, St. Elijah, and urged the international community to do more to stop such assaults.
"I had the same emotional and perhaps spiritual experience as I did when I was standing over the bodies of fallen soldiers," Fr. Jeffrey Whorton told Catholic News Service after seeing pictures of the monastery's destruction.
Whorton served as a Catholic chaplain for the U.S. military in Iraq and holds the rank of major, was instrumental along with others in seeing a preservation initiative mounted on the 1,400-old structure. Whorton said he believed he was the last priest in 2009 to "offer Mass on that altar before it was destroyed."
The last recorded church service in recent years to take place inside the monastery's walls was the Easter Vigil in 2010, but that was held in the courtyard rather than the altar area.
Reading of the destruction "was that profound and surprisingly strong emotion because of my connection with the monastery," Whorton, who now works at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, told CNS by telephone. "It was a kind of a grief that was like a loss of life almost."
The Associated Press confirmed the news that the ancient monastery on the outskirts of Mosul had been turned into a field of rubble, with exclusive satellite images published early Jan. 20. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility.
Whorton said the chance to both worship and give informal tours of the monastery during his tour of duty in Iraq "was probably the highlight of my entire priesthood."
"I was able to offer Mass there three or four times on that altar. I was made very aware of the great cloud of witnesses," said Whorton, explaining his sense of those ancient Christians who had worshipped over the centuries at St. Elijah.
"In the forefront of my mind was the reality that in 1700s, 150 or so [monks] had been martyred there," the American priest said. "So I knew I was in a sacred place offering the holy sacrifice of the Mass. I felt extremely unworthy standing at the venerable altar. That, along with celebrating with the Holy Father, was the highlight of my entire priesthood."
People were forced to bend down physically to enter the monastery. It was a "humble acquiescence of bending low for this great space that you are entering," the priest said.
Whorton said another unusual feature was a piece of wood shaped like a yoke that stood above the entrance to the nave.
"For me, there was a kind of putting on the yoke of Christ and to bend low into that space where my fallen brothers and sisters had died [centuries ago]. It was extremely emotional and a spiritually palpable event for me," he said of his experience ministering in the ancient monastery.
"God became present once again on that ancient altar as he has done thousands and thousands of time throughout the 1,400 years of its existence. That's the weight of glory," Whorton said.
Many had voiced concern about the fate of the monastery after Islamic State militants swept into the area in June 2014 and had cut off most communication there. Hundreds of thousands of Christians were forced to flee rather than convert to Islam, pay a protection tax or be killed.
Whorton said the finality of ancient monastery's fate has weighed heavy on him.
"I did not realize until I saw the pictures of the destruction that I would be one of the ones to literally close the door on this ancient church," he said.
"I hope that I closed it with all the necessary decorum that is due to such a venerable place," he added.
Assyrian Fr. Emanuel Youkhana, who heads the Christian Aid Program Northern Iraq, CAPNI, denounced the attack as yet another assault once again on Christians and their heritage in their ancient homeland.
"Dozens and dozens of scientific, philosophic, historical and other books were written or translated in such monasteries. This is a memory of Iraq which has been cut off," he told CNS.
"When they damage my 2,000 years of Christianity and 5,000 years of Assyrian heritage as the indigenous people of this country, my question is this: If my history is being damaged, my present is being threatened, is there any future?" the cleric asked.
He cited examples of the Islamic State's bulldozing the Assyrian city of Nimrod, where the Tower of Babel is believed to have existed. The United Nations called its destruction cultural cleansing and a war crime.
Youkhana also drew attention to the destruction of archaeological sites in Ninevah along with the forced displacement of Christians and other religious minorities long present in Iraq from their historic area.
He renewed a call for the international community to do more to preserve the Christian presence in their ancient homeland, saying it pained him to see many Christians escaping for safety to the West.
"What will be the future of Oriental Christianity if we don't protect or give future chances for Christians to survive and to build a future," he said. "We have to keep this mosaic and diversity, not give up."
A former marketing executive for textbook publishing giant Pearson Education reveals the anti-American agenda behind Common Core and the Advanced Placement U.S. History framework in the third video of a series produced by Project Veritas and focused on the corporate cronyism behind the education reform known as Common Core.
Kim Koerber, a former Pearson executive who now works as a sales consultant for National Geographic – another Gates Foundation-funded Common Core publisher – tells the Project Veritas undercover journalist that “conservative voters are afraid of everything,” and proceeds to say why Common Core is important in her view.
She explains that those behind Common Core and the new AP U.S. History framework have attempted to minimize the Constitution and remove Christianity from the core concepts, while they also stress the importance of teaching about Islam:
“The dead white guys did not create this country,” Koerber says. “They [presumably conservatives] want to talk about those dead white guys.”
Koerber continues that Common Core is necessary because “it needs to be come cohesion between the states.” She expresses frustration, however, that “Texas keeps screwing it up over and over again.”
“People who say they want to teach the Constitution, only want to teach the part of the Constitution that they like,” she tells the journalist, who then asks her about the Second Amendment.
“But yet they don’t want to teach all of it,” she replies. “Damn the Second Amendment.”
The discussion continues:
Kim Koerber (KK): People that are not educated, Fox TV viewers think that Common Core comes from the educated liberal groups and that’s why they are against it. They don’t know anything about it. They think it’s liberal so they’re against it. That’s what I think it is. It’s a knee jerk reaction. My mother, oh my God, she’s a Fox person. If I could remove Fox from my television set, I would…
I did a big presentation yesterday for AP US History and the AP US History agenda was set, until Texas got upset about it and they wanted to have their founders – they wanted founders in it. And it’s like – come on. The dead white guys did not create this country. It was a whole bunch of different kinds of people. And yes there were women, and yes there were people of color, and yes…you need to talk about them too. But they want to talk about those dead white guys.
And that’s the problem. You’re getting pushback, because there’s a bunch of Republican people, conservatives that don’t like being told what to do by people they don’t agree with. For example, in AP U.S. History a long time ago, Texas wanted to have U.S. History books, right? Pearson made them. And it talked about the Wild West and how there were prostitutes, right. And Texas was really upset. They didn’t want to mention…I’m like…You’re too young to… Did you watch Gun Smoke? It was a TV show, and you had Marshall Dillon and Ms. Kitty was his friend. She owned a bar and she was a prostitute. They never mentioned it but that’s what she was. It’s like who was Ms. Kitty? Who were these people who went out and serviced these men that went out in the world? That was real. The Wild West was not a nice place. And our kids need to know that that’s what it was like, you know.
Project Veritas Journalist (PV): But these people in Texas are really upset that the Constitution is not being covered.
KK: It is being covered, but not the way they…cause they’re idiots and they don’t know what’s in it.
PV: Is it covered as much as it would have been?
KK: In 12th grade government it certainly is, and in 5th grade it is. Yes.
PV: “It’s not a necessity for the kids.”
KK: You should know a little bit about it, you shouldn’t have to memorize the thing.
Republicans want to get in there and talk about stuff and change things about school stuff because they want to, they want to influence what is being taught. Common core doesn’t put up with that.
PV: Yeah. And, so it’s not really being… A lot of these complaints about it are not so much about the content yeah…
KK: They’re misunderstanding; they are people that don’t really know what they are talking about.
I…I can’t stand it. If they talk to me one more time about…climate change not being real, I’m just gonna scream.
PV: I am really glad I’m here in California, whatever religious affiliation you want to take is fine, but in Texas they want to push the Christianity.
KK: Because they think it’s the only one.
PV: They do, and I see that.
KK: That’s why it’s so offensive to have these prayers in the school board.
PV: Christianity is totally out of the common core?
KK: Yes it is. Totally. It’s not a core concept at all.
PV: But then there is a mention of other religions like Islam.
KK: Yeah well you have to because …
PV: So how did Islam get worked in?
KK: Islam…they said you have to talk about Islam, you have to talk about Judaism and you have to talk about Christianity and they wanted to make it big about Christianity; no it’s like, everybody needs to know about everything else…
PV: Is that one of the complaints, that common core does have a liberal bias?
KK: Yes, they feel like we’d be educating their kids to the world which they don’t want to do that. They want their kids to only know this… It’s like birth control. They don’t want their kids to know about it, yet Chlamydia is huge in Texas. So it’s like, you know…In the schools that have kids that, because the kids don’t learn about anything about what they’re doing and they’re messing around and they get in trouble because they didn’t get educated. So, I think the progressive bias is the more educated you are, the better you are, and the conservative bias is the less they know the better they are going to be. Yeah.
PV: What is it that they don’t agree with?
KK: They don’t agree with Islam, so they don’t want their kids to be taught it. They don’t agree with birth control so they don’t want their kids to talk about it. They don’t agree with math because they don’t understand it. It’s not the same math they did in high school. So they don’t want their kids to know about it.
It’s conservative push back, that, they are afraid. So these conservative, these conservative voters are afraid of everything.
PV: I’m just wondering why Common Core specifically…before Common Core kids were learning about math and science.
KK: Because it’s the government telling me what to do.
People who say they want to teach the Constitution, only want to teach the part of the Constitution that they like.
PV: Second Amendment?
KK: But yet they don’t want to teach all of it. Damn the Second Amendment. I don’t think personal handguns need to be on anyone except the government, the police. What is the purpose of having a gun?
The separation of church and state they don’t understand.
They don’t like that. They don’t like equal rights between all groups. The voter suppression that is going on in the south is just unbelievably awful.
People who are not educated are easy flim flam. And that they react by fear instead of by knowledge.
The Project Veritas journalist asks Koerber about the profits for textbook publishers with the Common Core reform.
KK: Anytime anybody changes something in a textbook its profitable for the textbook companies. So the textbooks have to change and the school district has to adopt the new ones, that’s profitable.
PV: Say that again.
KK: Anytime a change happens that has to be put in a textbook suddenly the school district has to adopt new books.
The video also includes footage of Project Veritas president James O’Keefe at the South Carolina Tea Party convention, during which Republican 2016 frontrunner Donald Trump told his audience Common Core is a “disaster,” and that no candidate can win who is in favor of Common Core.
“We spend more than anybody else and to a large extent that’s Common Core, because these people in Washington – the bureaucrats – are making a fortune,” Trump said. “They don’t give a damn about your kids in South Carolina.”
O’Keefe asked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) about the corporate cronyism behind Common Core.
“I’ll tell you this, as President, I will instruct the Department of Education to end Common Core on day one,” Cruz said.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum also asserted, “I am very much against Common Core, against any kind of federal intervention into our schools. That’s the big problem.”
Asked about the major issues surrounding Common Core, Santorum replied:
The elites in our culture who want to indoctrinate our young people into a certain way to think, a certain belief structure, and it’s all spread out through Common Core. I believe the best and safest way to maintain our values in this country is to leave it up to the people at the grass roots level.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s corporate cronyism or liberal ideology, if you are slipping your agenda into our education system, we are going to expose you, one by one, until the whole rotten system is revealed,” O’Keefe tells Breitbart News about his project on Common Core and education. “Corporate cronyism and underhanded political deals have contributed to Common Core’s massive disruption and the unraveling of America’s educational fabric.
