Category: Orthodox Church
Greek Archbishop Tells the Truth About Islam, Muslim Leaders Enraged
Noticing the obvious is forbidden.
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and all Greece touched off a firestorm in mid-January when he dared to note, according to the Orthodox Times, that “Islam was not a religion but a political party.” He added: “They are the people of war.” In response, Muslim leaders the world over have rained down condemnations upon the archbishop. He spoke inaccurately when he said that Islam was not a religion at all, but proof that he was wrong about Islam having a political aspect has not been forthcoming.
Muslims in Greece were outraged. The Western Thrace Turkish Minority Consultation Council (BTTADK) declared: “We condemn the statement of the Archbishop of Greece, Mr. Ieronimos….We hope a more peaceful language to be used instead of anti-Islamic discourse in such difficult times of pandemic.” The Xanthi Turkish Union added that Ieronymos’ words were an “Islamophobic attack” and even a “hate crime.” It thundered: “The fact that these statements, filled with insults, came from the number one name in the Greek church increases the gravity of the situation. We see this move as one of the typical examples of the rising Islamophobia and xenophobia in Greece in recent years.”
For its part, the Western Thrace Imam-hatip Schools Graduates and Members Association (BIHLIMDER) asserted that the archbishop was displaying “ambition and jealousy,” and stated: “We are leaving the examination of the psychological state of this person, who uses words that even the most ordinary people wouldn’t use, to the experts. We are condemning such a hostile attitude.” Ahmet Ibram, deputy head of the province of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, said fancifully: “One of Islam’s basic beliefs is to have life based on peace between religions. It can never be accepted to have grudge and hostility against other religions’ members.”
The Turkish Foreign Ministry also issued a statement: “These provocative expressions of Archbishop Ieronimos, which incite the society to hostility and violence against Islam, also show the frightening level Islamophobia has reached. Such malign ideas are also responsible for the increase of racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia in Europe.”
The fact that the Turkish Foreign Ministry would attack the Archbishop of Athens for abetting “the increase of racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia in Europe” confirms that the concept of “Islamophobia” is an illegitimate conflation of two distinct phenomena: crimes against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which is always necessary. Archbishop Ieronymos pointed out that Islam was political and expansionist, which its scripture, doctrine, and history show it to be.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry knows that Archbishop Ieronymos is right. In January 2018, as Turkish troops launched a military operation in Syria against the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), 90,000 mosques in Turkey prayed the Qur’an’s “Conquest” sura, sura 48, which calls upon Muslims to be “ruthless against unbelievers.” Why did they do that, unless they assumed that their military action had an Islamic aspect? And in November 2019, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “Our God commands us to be violent towards the kuffar (infidels). Who are we? The ummah [nation] of Mohammed. So [God] also commands us to be merciful to each other. So we will be merciful to each other. And we will be violent to the kuffar. Like in Syria.”
Archbishop Ieronymos said: “Islam, its people, is not a religion but a political party and are the people of war…They are the people who seek expansion, that is the characteristic of Islam.” Erdogan proved him right.
Nonetheless, all this led the unnerved Archdiocese of Athens to issue a clarification, claiming that Archbishop Ieronymos was “meaning nothing more than the distortion of the Muslim religion itself by a handful of extreme fundamentalists, who wreak death and destruction all over the world. These are exactly the people the Archbishop was referring to, that is, people who instrumentalize Islam and turn it into a deadly weapon against all those who have a different view from that of ‘unbelievers,’ even that of believers.”
It is understandable that the archdiocese would release this clarification in light of all these denunciations of the archbishop. The archdiocese doesn’t want any violence from Muslims who believe that perceived insults to their faith should be requited with violent attacks, after the pattern of the prophet of Islam himself. But that proves the archbishop’s point yet again.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Turkey: Last of the Byzantine Greeks facing extinction under Islamic hardliner Erdogan
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
“The Greeks who represent the last vestiges of Christian Byzantium and the Roman Empire are heading towards their final extinction in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, with their numbers dwindling to a mere handful” under his Islamic hardline government.
Erdogan has made his ambitions clear: he wants a revived Ottoman Empire, and his actions have shown its determination. Yet still, talking about Islam remains an uncomfortable subject, as “neither the interviewees, perhaps understandably, or their interviewer, perhaps less understandably, touched to any great extent on the reasons so many Greeks have fled their ancestral homeland in recent years.”
The scourge of Turkey’s oppression against disbelievers is not felt only by its own Christian population, but increasingly regionally. Turkey is a growing threat to its rival Iran. America under Trump has observed the growing strength of Turkey’s commitment to Islam and the increasing threat it presents, and Trump therefore imposed sanctions. By contrast, the UK has just signed a multi-billion dollar trade deal that will serve to strengthen Turkey.
Meanwhile, the Western world promotes “diversity” at any cost, along with the “Islamophobia” subterfuge, and remains willfully blind as to the violent and expansionary foundations of Islam that have been clear for 1400 years.
“Last Byzantine Greeks Facing Extinction in Islamist-Led Turkey,” by Jack Montgomery, Breitbart, December 27, 2020:
The Greeks who represent the last vestiges of Christian Byzantium and the Roman Empire are heading towards their final extinction in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, with their numbers dwindling to a mere handful under his Islamist government.
What is now Turkey only began to be colonised in by the Turkic peoples in earnest from around 1071, after their Seljuk ancestors had arrived from Central Asia and vanquished the Greek-speaking Christian ruler Romanos IV Diogenes’s forces at the Battle of Manzikert.
The last vestiges of the Byzantine state where finally snuffed out with the brutal conquest of Constantinople, widely regarded as the greatest Christian city in the world, in 1453, or arguably with the fall of the citadel of Salmeniko Castle in modern-day Greece in 1461, following a brave but doomed resistance by its commander, Konstantinos Graitzas Palaiologos.
Despite widespread massacres and enslavement during the Turkish conquests, however, the region’s Greeks survived and were allowed something of a cultural life, albeit as second-class citizens, for centuries — not least because they served as cash cows for their Muslim rulers through the imposition of the jizya tax.
But Greeks in Istanbul, as Constantinople is now called, have now tumbled from 200,000 as recently as 1914 to, officially, a mere 3,000 — and a Times correspondent who visited the city to interview some of the survivors, known as the Rum, reports that the true figure may be nearer to just one thousand.
The Times correspondents’ interview subjects did not describe a life as hard as that endured by some of their forebears, such as in 1821, when many of the city’s Greeks were massacred and the Patriarch of Constantinople hanged from the gate of his cathedral, or in 1955, when the security services organised violent pogroms against them in what POLITICO dubbed a “Turkish Kristallnacht”.
“Everyone is gone now,” said Lazari Kozmaoglu, the 75-year-old owner of a rare pork butcher’s shop….
Neither the interviewees, perhaps understandably, or their interviewer, perhaps less understandably, touched to any great extent on the reasons so many Greeks have fled their ancestral homeland in recent years — and, indeed, decades — but the mood against such minorities in the once strongly secular but now Islamist-led republic is souring.
The authorities have made it increasingly difficult for Orthodox Christians to receive a religious education for example, and some historic churches and monasteries have been demolished or repurposed as mosques, sometimes with little warning….
RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH SPOKESMAN: CONVERSION OF HAGIA SOPHIA TO ISLAMIC MOSQUE “A SLAP IN THE FACE TO THE ENTIRE WORLD OF CHRISTIANITY”
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
That is in part what it is intended to be. As I explain here, the conversion of Hagia Sophia to a mosque is an integral part of Erdogan’s aspiration to restore the Ottoman caliphate, which would involve the subjugation under Sharia of Christians within his domains.
“Metropolitan Hilarion: Conversion of Hagia Sophia into Mosque is a ‘Slap in the Face to all Christianity,'” Pravmir.com, July 11, 2020:
Metropolitan Hilarion, Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, told TASS that the conversion of Hagia Sophia into mosque in Istanbul is “a slap in the face to the entire world Christianity”.
“One can differently assess the domestic political situation in Turkey and the factors that prompted the Turkish leadership to such a decision. But the spiritual and cultural heritage of the whole world should not become a hostage to the current political situation. It is a pity that political conditions prevail over respect for other religious traditions. The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque is a slap in the face that the Turkish leadership gave the Orthodox Church and the whole world Christianity,” the source said….
Metropolitan Hilarion noted that such a decision by the Turkish government is disappointing. “Hagia Sophia was built as a temple dedicated to Jesus Christ, and we Orthodox Christians cannot perceive it otherwise. From 1934 to this day, Hagia Sophia had the status of a museum, which made it possible for Christians, Muslims, and representatives of other religions to visit it freely<…> For Orthodox Christians, Hagia Sophia is the same as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is for Catholics. This is a symbolic temple and one of the greatest Christian shrines,” added the metropolitan, emphasizing that Christians cannot and will not perceive it in any other way.