Islam - Current Day - History Gearing Up to Repeat the Very Worst of Itself

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What a perverse and evil generation that allows history to repeat the worst of itself in less than a century. Antisemitism is rising rapidly in the world just 75 years after the Holocaust, and the Armenian genocide seems to be getting ready to prove again the real purpose of Islam is to destroy Christianity and Judaism, and the media are largely silent.

Armenian Churches Under Attack at the Hands of

Azerbaijan and Turkey

JAN 2, 2021 4:00 PM

BY UZAY BULUT

While many historic churches across Turkey are systematically used for sacrilegious purposes, churches in the Azerbaijani occupied-Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucuses) are bombed. Their statues, bell towers and other symbols are destroyed, bulldozed or vandalized by Azerbaijani forces.

Churches and other elements of Armenian cultural heritage in the parts of Artsakh that are now occupied by Azerbaijan have been attacked by Muslim Azeris. The Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi, also known as Holy Savior Cathedral, for instance, was severely damaged from two air raids conducted by the Azerbaijani military on October 8. Videos of the destruction reveal extensive external and internal ruin. This includes broken pews, scattered rubble and a partially collapsed ceiling, reported the Armenian Weekly.

From September 27 to November 10, Azerbaijan targeted Armenians in the Armenian Republic of Artsakh throughout its invasion campaign of the region with the support of Turkey and Al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters imported from Syria.

Through a deal brokered by Russia and imposed on Armenia on November 9, parts of Artsakh were granted to Azerbaijan. War crimes committed by the Azerbaijani government during that period – such as indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, beheadings of civilians and prisoners of war, and the destruction of Armenian graves – are widely documented.

For instance, some of the crimes committed against churches by Azeri forces from November 12 to 19 included:

One of the angel statues at Ghazanchetsots was destroyed and Ghazanchetsots was desecrated with graffiti. Garegin Njdeh statue and the cross on Mekhavan’s St. Zoravor Astvatsatsin church were also destroyed by Azerbaijani soldiers. The Statue of Vazgen Sargsyan was vandalized. Another statue in Artsakh was bulldozed and bell towers of Kanach Zham bell was destroyed.

Yet the international community has remained deaf and blind in the face of these blatant crimes and Azerbaijan remains a proud perpetrator. On December 23, the Armenian media reported:

All previous attempts to involve UNESCO in preservation of cultural heritage within the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have been thwarted by Azerbaijan, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Anna Naghdalyan said.

The comments come after the UNESCO Secretariat publicly announced that only Azerbaijan has not responded on sending an expert mission of UNESCO to the Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent areas, in fact, clearly highlighting Azerbaijan’s destructive approach.

“Let me remind that upon the request of the Armenian side regarding the barbaric destruction of the cross-stones (khachkars) in Old Jugha, UNESCO expressed readiness to visit the region, but it was rejected by Azerbaijan,” the Spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, violations against historic churches across Turkey are ongoing. The Surp Yerrortutyun Church in the Aksehir district of the province of Konya in Turkey has been converted into a “cultural center,” the weekly Armenian newspaper Agos reported on December 28. The church is known as one of the once largest Armenian churches in Anatolia.

The former church will be used as the “The Art House of Humor Masters of the World.” The official date of the opening has not yet been announced.

The Aksehir district no longer has an Armenian Christian population because of the 1914-23 Christian genocide by Ottoman Turkey, in which around 1.5 million Armenians perished. Around 1 million Greeks and Assyrians also lost their lives during the same genocide.

According to professor Raymond Kevorkian’s book Armenians in the Ottoman Empire Before 1915, an approximately 4,950 Armenians lived in Akşehir, Konya before the genocide. In addition to the Surp Yerortutyun Church (built in 1859) there were also four Armenian educational institutions in the district. Among these schools, the Surp Istepannos School was famous in all provinces for its “superior education quality.”

Despite being a small and oppressed community today, Armenians are among the most ancient peoples of Asia Minor. What is now Turkey was colonized by the Turkic peoples originally from Central Asia during the eleventh century after the Seljuk Turks arrived in Asia Minor and vanquished the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert. Historian Raymond Ibrahim refers to the invasion of Manzikert as “the first genocide of Christian Armenians at the hands of Muslim Turks.”

Yet despite severe persecution and the second class “dhimmi” status, the presence of Armenians and other Christian peoples remained in the region during the Seljuk and later the Ottoman rule.

This situation dramatically changed when Armenians were targeted in massacres by Ottoman Turks and Kurds between 1894–96 and during the genocide of 1914-23. During these attacks, Armenian cultural heritage was also systematically violated. Author Raffi Bedrosyan writes in his 2011 article “Searching for Lost Armenian Churches and Schools in Turkey”:

Considering that every Armenian community invariably strove to build a school beside its church, how many Armenian schools were there in Turkey before 1915, and how many are there now? How many Armenian churches and schools are left standing now in Turkey is the easier part of the issue: There are only 34 churches and 18 schools left in Turkey today, mostly in Istanbul, with about less than 3,000 students in these schools. The challenging and frustrating issue is how many were there in the past.

Recent research pegs the number of Armenian churches in Turkey before 1915 at around 2,300. The number of schools before 1915 is estimated at nearly 700, with 82,000 students. These numbers are only for churches and schools under the jurisdiction of the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate and the Apostolic Church, and therefore do not include the numerous churches and schools belonging to the Protestant and Catholic Armenian parishes. The American colleges and missionary schools, mostly attended by Armenian youth, are also excluded from these numbers. The number of Armenian students attending Turkish schools or small schools at homes in the villages are unknown and not included. Finally, these numbers do not include the churches and schools in Kars and Ardahan provinces, which were not part of Turkey until 1920, and were part of Russia since 1878.

As researchers are striving to determine the exact number of lost or stolen Armenian schools and churches in their ancient lands in Turkey, Armenian lives and their churches are currently being targeted and destroyed in Artsakh.

Turkey and Azerbaijan, two historic perpetrators of crimes against Christians, are once again brutalizing Armenians in the indigenous Armenian lands before the eyes of the entire world.

What are the Christians in the West and the global human rights community doing today to stop these crimes and demand security and basic human rights for the Armenian people?

Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara.

How the Imprisonment of a Rabbi Two Centuries Ago Holds a Lesson for Today

By Batya Shevach 

“He loveth righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the lovingkindness of Hashem.” 

Psalms 33:5 (The Israel Bible™)

Illustrative (Photo: Shutterstock)

Two-hundred and nineteen years ago, the first rebbe – founder and leader – of the Chabad Hassidic movement in Russia was miraculously released from jail. He credited his liberation to the heavenly merit he earned through collecting charity to support  the poor, widows and orphans living in the Holy Land at that time through his organization Colel Chabad. The repercussions of Rebbe’s imprisonment and release continue to affect the world, and the wellbeing of Jews in Israel even today.

On May 8, 1798, a fabricated complaint against Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, known as the Alter Rebbe, claimed that the illustrious Torah scholar was in fact an anti-Russian revolutionary. He was accused of sending money to Turkish-controlled Palestine and engaging in subversive activities against the Russian government.

Rabbi Shneur Zalman (Wikimedia Commons)

An investigation of the Rebbe began in August 1798, and the Czar himself took a personal interest in the case. He knew that the Rebbe had over 100,000 followers, with many living in recently occupied Polish territory. If the Alter Rebbe was a true insurgent, he might lead a full blown revolt against the Russian regime.

During the week-long Sukkot holiday (Feast of Tabernacles) of 1798, an armed officer was sent to Liozna to arrest Rabbi Shneur Zalman. The Rebbe heard about the officer, and decided to follow Biblical advice, “Hide yourself for a brief moment.” (Isaiah 26:20). The officer returned to his commanders empty-handed. After contemplating his fate for several hours, the Rebbe decided that if the officer returned, he would surrender himself and leave peaceably.

The officer did come back in the evening of the last day of Sukkot, and the Rebbe was taken away in the “Black Mary” – a carriage reserved by the Czarist regime for transporting the worst criminals. The carriage had no windows and was covered with heavy, black metal panels. It instilled terror in anyone who saw it.

Rabbi Shneur Zalman was held in the fortress of Petropavlovsk, a well-guarded political prison. During the intensive investigation numerous documents were sent back and forth between high ranking government officials. The Rebbe testified orally and in writing about his personal activities and his Biblical teachings. His handwritten testimonies were translated from Hebrew to French, and then into Russian.

The investigators found no incriminating evidence. Disguised as a simple clerk, the Czar visited the Rebbe in prison to see the infamous Jewish leader for himself. The Rebbe immediately stood up in a show of respect. The Czar asked the Rebbe why he stood. “For truly you must be the Czar!” answered the prisoner.

Paul 1 was Czar of Russia in 1798. He was the son of Catherine the Great and possibly her lover.

“Our sages teach us that ‘sovereignty on earth, is similar to the sovereignty of the Heavens.’ As the fear before God is great, so too did I feel an unusual awe when you entered. Such a feeling I never experienced with any of the officials that have come here. Therefore I conclude that you must be the Czar.”

The Czar saw through the lies spread about the Rebbe and decreed that he was certainly no traitor. On Tuesday, the 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev (November 16, 1798), 53 days after his arrest, Rabbi Shneur Zalman was cleared of all charges and set free. Furthermore, the Czar ordered the Governor of Lithuania to release the Rebbe’s followers, arrested at the same time.

In the Alter Rebbe’s first letter after his liberation, he attributed his freedom to his acts of sending charity to the poor in the Land of Israel. He wrote to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev: “Who am I, a lowly person as I am, that God has brought me this far and Heaven’s Name was sanctified through me…. But it was God who gave us this privilege by virtue of the Holy Land and its residents, and may He help us at all times to broaden our borders, and extricate us from dire straits.”

“For the poor shall never cease out of the land; therefore I command thee, saying:

‘Thou shalt surely open thy hand unto thy poor and needy brother, in thy land.”

Deuteronomy 15:11 (The Israel Bible™)

Just as the Alter Rebbe did over 200 years ago, Colel Chabad continues its mission to help the Holy Land’s poor and provide assistance to needy residents until today.   Ongoing immigration, difficulty earning a living, and the constant threats of war and terror still cause many in Israel to question where their next meal is coming from.

Rabbi Lipsker, administrator of Colel Chabad, commented, “After the Alter Rebbe’s demise in 1813, each subsequent Rebbe in the chain of the Chabad movement’s leaders diligently oversaw the Colel Chabad activities in Israel. The Alter Rebbe’s initiative ensured the survival of the Holy Land Jews before any other formal organizations cared for them.”

Colel Chabad is the oldest charity organization in Israel, with 24 soup kitchens around the country, holiday food packages for poor families and senior citizens, summer camps and afterschool programs for underprivileged children, wedding and bar mitzvah celebrations arranged for orphans, and special programs for hospitalized children. It’s work continues to be crucial even today.

To donate to Colel Chabad, please visit here.

Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. James 1:27

Centre-Right Presidential Candidate Plays Religious 'Threat' Card in France

OPINION

François Fillon recently took aim at Catholicism, 

Judaism to appeal to secular sentiments in the 

politically insecure country

By Michael Coren, for CBC News 

Alain Juppé, left, watches François Fillon after the conservative presidential primary in Paris on Nov. 27. Fillon won France's first-ever conservative presidential primary after promising drastic free-market reforms and a crackdown on immigration and Islamic extremism. 

(Christophe Ena/Associated Press)

If we've learned anything from the Brexit surprise and the Donald Trump-election jolt, it's that those who claim to know precisely what is going on in the political world are often over-zealous in their confidence. Or to put it another way, predicting political outcomes is a fool's – or a journalist's – game. With all of their money and skills, the CIA, for example, was stunned by the immediacy of the Soviet decay, and with all of their experience and finesse, British intelligence had no idea Iran would become so Islamist so quickly.

We assume that the French, being Western and democratic, are merely better-dressed North Americans and thus easy to understand. Not so. Gallic politics is far more exotic, polarized and volatile than anything the Anglo-Saxon world can offer and we have no authentic idea what will happen next spring. What we do know is that the presidential front-runners are François Fillon and Marine Le Pen. The former, once prime minister under the now discredited president Nicolas Sarkozy, is the candidate of the latest manifestation of the mainstream right. Marine Le Pen is the daughter of that rancid old Nazi darling Jean-Marie Le Pen and, while the underdog, is barking loud and long.

The left is unlikely to make much of a mark in the coming election, largely because French socialism has been in a state of confusion for a generation, but also due to the increasing connection between working-class voters and the hard right. And here is the issue. The battle will be a struggle between two shades of deep, deep blue.

Admirer of U.K. neo-conservatives

Fillon is on the right of the French Republican movement. He's an admirer of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, a close friend of the British neo-conservatives who were empowered in the 1980s and a man who is more than willing to listen politically and electorally when the Parisian sewers breathe. He's also unusual in that he's an Anglophile with a Welsh wife, and by no means unsympathetic to the Brexit culture.

French far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen is greeted by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen

in Lyon, France on Nov. 30. (Laurent Cipriani/Associated Press)

Le Pen is, well, a Le Pen. Her father was the personification of the old French far right with all of its ambivalence towards the Nazis, anti-Semitism and fear and hatred of the United States, which it saw as the big brother of perfidious Britain. Marine is different, however, and almost certainly sincere when she claims to be distinct from dad. She has certainly done a great deal to expunge the party's apparent Jew-hatred, homophobia and penchant for black leather jackets and violence. She's built up relationships with Sephardic Jews in particular, the gay community and – important this – organized labour. A soft fascist? Perhaps, and that's bad enough; but many in the party refuse to change, even after a series of expulsions of the nastiest of the nasty.

Concerns about religion versus civil laws

But right-wing parties are in the ascendancy in Europe, which is why the traditional conservative movement in France chose Fillon rather than a safe, gentle pragmatist. France has been victim to numerous terrorist attacks and lost almost 250 people in the past two years. That must not be dismissed. The natural ceiling of the hard right was usually around 15 per cent at best, but myriad blue collar, middle class and even high-income French voters are now deeply shaken by what they see as the religious threat to their beloved republic.

I say "religious threat" because France has long been aggressively secular, and Fillon recently made a point of criticizing both Roman Catholicism and Judaism for not always observing the civil laws of the civil state. Some in the Jewish community condemned him for that, but this intensely intelligent man knew exactly what he was doing and saying.

From the end of the 18th century, the Catholic Church was under siege. Protestants were seen as outsiders as soon as they mobilized in the mid-16th, Jews have always occupied a complex and nuanced place in French society and now Muslims are perceived as a danger — not just due to terrorism carried out by fringe fanatics — but due to Islam's sense of orthodoxy and adherence. For so many people who will be voting in April, it's just not French.

Remember: this is the nation of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, repeated revolutions, the Dreyfus affair, Vichy collaboration and Algerian atrocities. The divisions are severe: Paris and provinces, educated and not, ethnic and proudly Gallic. In spite of what it seems and boasts, France is and has always been politically insecure and even democratically unstable. The nation, and by extension the European continent, could change dramatically before we even know it.

Columnist and broadcaster Michael Coren is the best-selling author of 16 books, translated into more than a dozen languages. He is currently studying for a Masters in Divinity at Trinity College, University of Toronto.

How Old is the Earth, Really? Why Judaism Rejects Creationism

By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz

“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.” Psalms 90:2 (The Israel Bible™)


(Shutterstock)

After successfully debating Bill Nye, a celebrity scientist, Ken Ham built a $92 million theme park in Kentucky with a full-size replica of Noah’s Ark as a centerpiece to promote his belief in Biblical Creationism. People are flocking to the park, and its Biblical message of creation seems to be gaining popularity. This belief has not caught on in Judaism, but the reasons may surprise you.

A Pew poll in February showed that 34 percent of Americans choose creationism over evolution, and another 25 percent believe in evolution guided by a supreme being (intelligent design). The poll went into detail, showing that 57 percent of Evangelical Christians believe in creationism, with another 25 percent believing in natural processes guided by a supreme being, leaving only 11 percent who believe in evolution.

On the other hand, the Pew poll showed that 58 percent of Jews believed the world came about through natural processes, another 18 percent believed these processes were guided by a supreme being, and only 16 percent believed the world has always existed in its present form.


Noah’s Ark replica built by Ken Ham. (Twitter @ArkEcounter)

It may seem paradoxical that the People of the Book, who received the Torah directly from God, would reject a belief based on a literal reading of the Bible. But although many see creationism as a choice of belief and Bible over science and data, Jews have worked hard to live successfully in both worlds.

In its purest form, creationism understands the world as coming into existence, fully formed, in six calendar days of 24 hours each, with man created separately as the pinnacle of God’s work. It precludes evolutionary theory and theories about the origin of the universe, leading to a conflict on estimates of when the earth and the universe were created.

Scientists generally agree the earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. Most scientists claim the Big Bang that brought the universe into existence occurred approximately 14 billion years ago. Young Earth creationists believe both events occurred simultaneously between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

As director of the Biblical Museum of Natural History, Rabbi Natan Slifkin embodies the ideal of a Biblical scientist. He doesn’t see any contradictions between the worlds of Bible and science. Judaism, he explains, has always been able to accommodate science and theology. He quoted the Rambam, a preeminent medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher.

“As Rambam said, accept the truth from wherever it comes,” he told Breaking Israel News.

“According to the rationalist approach, it is preferable to explain creation in scientific terms, because it is always preferable to see God working within nature and a system of law. “

Conflicts do arise between Torah and science. The Hebrew calendar, presently standing at 5776, is, in theory, based on the creation of the world. Rabbi Slifkin again quoted the Rambam’s Guide to the Perplexed, in which the rabbinical scholar wrote, “The account of creation is not all to be taken literally.”

The Rambam went on to explain that the Six Days represent a conceptual rather than historical account of creation. Rabbi Slifkin cited Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffman (1843-1921), a member of Agudath Israel’s Council of Torah Sages, who suggested that the Six Days of Creation were lengthy eras rather than 24-hour periods.

Evolution, the impetus for Ken Ham’s massive Biblical theme park, simply does not seem to be such a big deal for Jewish Biblical scholars.


Rabbi Natan Slifkin, General Director of the Biblical Museum of Natural History, in Beit Shemesh, on March 4, 2015. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

“God can work through meteorology, through medicine, through history, and through developmental biology. This is why it makes no difference if the neo-Darwinian explanation of the mechanism for evolution is true or not,” Rabbi Slifkin explained. “All these descriptions were interpreted literally by the Sages of old, and yet almost all recent Torah scholars interpret them non-literally.”

Torah Judaism also differs from Bible-based Christian creationism on the point of the nature of man. Creationism holds that man is distinct from animals, owing to the separate description of his being “formed”. It is partly for this reason that creationists reject evolutionary theory.

Then Hashem God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7

Genesis describes man’s creation twice, and Rabbi Slifkin emphasized the version in the first chapter of Genesis.

And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. Genesis 1:27

Professor Natan Aviezer
Bar Ilan University

“Classical Judaism has long maintained that man is not qualitatively different from animals in his physical aspects,” the rabbi noted. “Man’s unique identity is in his spiritual soul, not in his physical body and most certainly not in his physical origin.”

Professor Natan Aviezer of Bar Ilan University, a physicist and religious Jew, deals with this issue in his book Modern Science and Ancient Faith. He quotes Charles Darwin’s parting words in his manifesto on evolution, On the Origin of Species.

“There is a grandeur in this view of life, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one, and from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” Charles Darwin

Aviezer also cites Samson Raphael Hirsch, an influential German rabbi and contemporary of Darwin, bringing a Rabbinic concept of Olam Ke’Minhago Noheg (the universe goes its accustomed way). God did not simply create the world and step back. Aviezer explains that God works within nature.

“This important principle explains how God interacts with His world,” wrote Professor Aviezer in his book. “It follows from this principle that no scientific discovery can cast doubt on the existence of God.”

Britain's Catholic Schools Ban Islam From Religious Studies

Islamic leaders outraged

Paul Bois 

The Catholic Church in Britain now refuses to teach Islam as part of its GCSE religious studies curriculum, disappointing the country's Muslim leaders. 

Under the new rules based on last year's reforms to the GCSE exam, only Judaism will be taught in tandem with Catholicism, excluding Islam and every other faith.

The decision to drive out Islam stemmed from an incident known as the 'Trojan Horse' plot, in which Muslim schools in Birmingham were known to have teachers pushing fundamentalist Islamic teachings on the students. 

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, has called the decision "very disappointing" and urged British cleric Cardinal Nichols to rethink his position.

"This is not a good decision," complained Sacranie. "It does not reflect well on the messages that are coming out from the Church for greater tolerance of other faiths. This is a difficult time for religions and the last thing you would expect is a major faith making such a statement."

According to Paul Barber, the director at the Catholic Education Service, students being taught in the Jewish faith alongside Christianity complies with the bishops' edict that students be given a solid grounding in Christianity, considering Judaism's ancestral link to Christianity.