archbishop kidnapped in Iraq!

[NathanSoc]

This didnt happen when saddam was in power. FAct Like it or Not

Gee, when Saddam was in power, we didn't have the Western Media grinding axes either. We, literally, would have no way of knowing if it happened then.

Er... Well we do know actually. At least, from those who live in Iraq - not from the experts in Middle-Eastern affairs at this site.

If anyone's actually interested, there's article at the Catholic World News site from 2004 titled Life after Saddam Hussein

Excerpt:

Do you find any sudden difference in the lives of Christians since the end of the Saddam Hussein regime?

Archbishop Basilios Georges Casmoussa: You know, I would not like to put it that way. It is not a question of before and after Saddam. Christians have been in Iraq—and they are here now—since the 1st century, even 650 years before Islam came to Iraq. We have lived together in this land in peace up until now.

We still face no oppression or official persecution. We are a minority and the [Muslim] majority controls the power and the laws. Yet we have not faced much of a problem. But now some fundamentalist groups have risen up. The political situation is very different with the coming of the Americans. We and all the people hope that there will be major changes soon. But the situation is going from bad to worse. We are now faced with new problems—bombings, explosions, kidnappings—and the political situation is not clear. These problems are the same for Christians and Muslim people.

 

Do you feel that Christians are suffering more?

 

Casmoussa: As a minority, in a sense we are suffering a bit more—but not as much as reported in the outside media. Churches and mosques have been bombed. Christian and Muslim homes and schools have been damaged.

[jovan66102]

What have the ecumenists to say about this? Rome tries to work with our Mohammedan "brothers" and they respond by persecuting the faithful, killing clergymen and kidnapping an Archbishop.

Peaceful Islam? It doesnt exist. Say what you will about the "true teachings" of Islam, but that is just a modern liberal version created by muslim immigrants in the West. History proves that Islam is a religion based on violence, a faith that preaches with the sword.

 

Bravo, Caesar, Bravo! Couldn't have said it better myself.

[diotima]

Peaceful Islam? It doesnt exist. Say what you will about the "true teachings" of Islam, but that is just a modern liberal version created by muslim immigrants in the West. History proves that Islam is a religion based on violence, a faith that preaches with the sword.

Yeah, you tell 'em. When it comes to faith that preaches with the sword,
facts speak for themselves, don't they.

BTW, could you remind me what religion George W Bush and Tony Blair  adhere to?

and Bush and Blair go out of their way to assure us, that islam is "the religion of peace" and that the mullahs get their way in iraq like they never had under Saddam - great way to "preach christianity" - DUH!

[jovan66102]

I was so saddened by Blair's 'conversion'. I had hoped he would at least repudiate his pro-abort, pro-cloning stands, but no. And the Church welcomed him with open arms! As I pointed out on another forum, it just gives the 'Catholic' enemies of the Church more ammunition. Anyone who says he's a 'good Catholic' is one, regardless of how many stances opposed to the Magisterium he takes. But, in the last analysis, it's a matter between him and God when he stands before the Judgement Seat. Pray for him and his 'Catholic' wife, who according to news reports I've read, dabbles in the occult.

[NathanSoc]

Peaceful Islam? It doesnt exist. Say what you will about the "true teachings" of Islam, but that is just a modern liberal version created by muslim immigrants in the West. History proves that Islam is a religion based on violence, a faith that preaches with the sword.

Yeah, you tell 'em. When it comes to faith that preaches with the sword,
facts speak for themselves, don't they.

BTW, could you remind me what religion George W Bush and Tony Blair  adhere to?

and Bush and Blair go out of their way to assure us, that islam is "the religion of peace" and that the mullahs get their way in iraq like they never had under Saddam - great way to "preach christianity" - DUH!

That's called Iraqi democracy. DUH!

[diotima]

Peaceful Islam? It doesnt exist. Say what you will about the "true teachings" of Islam, but that is just a modern liberal version created by muslim immigrants in the West. History proves that Islam is a religion based on violence, a faith that preaches with the sword.

Yeah, you tell 'em. When it comes to faith that preaches with the sword,
facts speak for themselves, don't they.

BTW, could you remind me what religion George W Bush and Tony Blair  adhere to?

and Bush and Blair go out of their way to assure us, that islam is "the religion of peace" and that the mullahs get their way in iraq like they never had under Saddam - great way to "preach christianity" - DUH!

That's called Iraqi democracy. DUH!

So - Bush and Blair are "spreading christianity by the sword"... in that they let MOSLEMS decide they want MORE islam, right? VERY deft way of spreading christianity, indeed! Duh!

you don´t realise, how stupid and self-contradictory your claims are, do you?

[HMiS]

After so many generations living side by side, it makes me wonder if it is possible to livein peace with these people.

May St. Michael protect him.

Yes it is. The problem is however that in the past Iraqi Jews were notable bankers of the local Kings and tribal leaders, so they protected the Jews. Likewise the Christian merchants had good contacts to India (where East Syrian influenced Christians also lived) for trade, and they were ancient inhabitants and fierce fighters (as the Assyrians still are, despite decimation by Turkish-secular troops in the 1915 Assyrian Genocide).

Now situation has changed, after colonialism and Israel, and Christians are now the only relict of the "convivial" past and seen as agents of the West. Under Saddam all Iraqi Christians were still very safe and protected, Tariq Aziz - foreign minister of Saddam and leading member of Saddam's secular-Arab nationalist and Arab-socialist Ba'ath Party (secular, still in power in Syria now) was a Chaldean Rite Catholic himself and visited the pope to have him condemn Bush's war of aggression against the dictatorship and the Iraqi state.

Modern Islamism (not liberal Islam) is a mixture out of anti-Western, anti-Semitic and militaristic sentiments combined with the traditional aggressive nature of Islam itself. However historical aggressive Islam plundered monasteries, and in wars many Christians were killed, but once under Islamic rule, most Christians still had some freedom, although their children were pressed to become Muslems often by force of course - e.g. in formerly Christian Albania, but also in Greece and Serbia. The Bosniak Southern-Slavic Muslems of Bosnia and Hercegovina, are in fact just Islamized Serbs and Croats.

[diotima]

God, it really pains me, to read this hogwash about "liberal islam"! THAT IS  A MYTH! "islamism" IS the real islam! Read the koran, the ahadith and moslem history!

[NathanSoc]

Peaceful Islam? It doesnt exist. Say what you will about the "true teachings" of Islam, but that is just a modern liberal version created by muslim immigrants in the West. History proves that Islam is a religion based on violence, a faith that preaches with the sword.

Yeah, you tell 'em. When it comes to faith that preaches with the sword,
facts speak for themselves, don't they.

BTW, could you remind me what religion George W Bush and Tony Blair  adhere to?

and Bush and Blair go out of their way to assure us, that islam is "the religion of peace" and that the mullahs get their way in iraq like they never had under Saddam - great way to "preach christianity" - DUH!

That's called Iraqi democracy. DUH!

So - Bush and Blair are "spreading christianity by the sword"... in that they let MOSLEMS decide they want MORE islam, right? VERY deft way of spreading christianity, indeed! Duh!

you don´t realise, how stupid and self-contradictory your claims are, do you?

Not surprisingly you've missed the point by about a million miles.

Labelling everyone as MOSLEMS because they all read the Koran is about as smart as labelling everyone as CHRISTIANS because they all read the Bible.

Clearly there are different denominations in Christianity and they don't all agree on the same thing. For example, Catholics are not the same as Protestants.

And while some Christians (Bush and Blair for example) may believe they are doing God's Will by invading Iraq, other Christians, Popes JPII and BXVI for example, consider the invasion to be an unjust war, and therefore do not consider this to be God's Will.

So, as Catholics, it is hardly fair to tar us with a Protestant brush just because we are all labelled as CHRISTIANS. 

Islam also has denominations, like Shi'ite and Sunni muslims, who at the moment are killing each other in the streets of Baghdad. So clearly not all muslims are the same.

Not going too fast for you, I hope, because I really don't think I can make it any simpler...

[diotima]

It´s YOU missing the point by a galaxy, duh, since the argument was about Bush/Blair "converting by the sword".

and I am well aware of the various "denominations" in islam (more than you are probably, since I´ve been spending years with moslems, debating islam, in real life and online...) - they ALL believe in the koran, and the koran btw believes in fighting the kuffar, ie.e. you and me and every non-moslem.
but that´s neither here nor there, since the argument was about your self-contradictory and stupid claims re Bush/Blair.