Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
Syria was Christian under the Byzantines. Well into the Musulman occupation almost half of its population was Christian. Over time that was reduced to about 10% by 2010. Now less than 5% of the population is Christian. ISIS, Jihad Groups and Muslim 'militants' have targeted Christianity for eradication. Assad and his family-tribal empire has fallen. Now what? More death and persecution of Christians will be one reality.
Jihadist groups that are dominant in the Syrian opposition have been specifically targeting Christians nationwide — beginning with the abduction of Bishop Yohanna Ibrahim, head of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Aleppo, and Bishop Boulos Yaziji, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Syria, who were kidnapped during a humanitarian trip in April 2013.
“No one knows who abducted them, but suspicion fell on the Jabhat al-Nusra Front — who are now HTS — the group [that] just seized large parts of Aleppo,” Parsons, a former aid worker to Afghanistan and an expert on Islamic theology, noted.
“Both Islamic State and other jihadist groups massacred and abducted large numbers of Christians. Churches were systematically destroyed in an attempt to religiously cleanse whole areas of Syria of its non-Muslim population,” he told The Stream.
“Islamic State also reimplemented aspects of shari’a allowing the enslavement of non-Muslims — and produced a slave prince list with different values for different age Yazidi and Christian women.”
In August, the U.S. State Department released a statement marking the “10th Anniversary of ISIS’s Genocide Against Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims.”
While the U.S. government estimates that 10% of the Syrian population is Christian, of the 2.2 million Christians who lived in the country prior to the civil war, Open Doors USA estimates that only approximately 579,000 remain (2.8 % of the population).
Most Christians belong to Orthodox churches, like the Syriac Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic churches such as the Maronite Church, or the Assyrian Church of the East and other Nestorian churches.
There is an ongoing Christocide in Aleppo, one of Christianity's oldest communities.
“Many of the Christians in Aleppo are descendants of the victims of the Armenian and Assyrian genocides (1915-23) when up to three million Christians are estimated to have been killed,” the Lindisfarne Centre explained.
“During that time the Ottoman government forced Christians living in what is now Turkey on a ‘death march’ into the Syrian desert during which vast numbers died of starvation, murder, or rape at the hands of Kurdish militias,” it added.
The elite and media-academic communities always claim – without offering proof - that Islam is peace and that all Muslims are of course sophisticated moderates. Few of these people making such claims knows much of anything of Islamic imperialism, expansion, its 1400 year jihad, nor have many of them read the 3 foundational works of the Meccan moon cult – the Sira or biography of the illiterate adventurer Mohammed, the Hadiths the supposed sayings of Mohammed scribbled down years after his death, or the Koran a supposed holy book.
Take a look at the Koran for example. Read it. Analyse it. Study it. What will you find ? What per-cent of this so-called 'holy book' is actually preaching a code of ethics, the derivatives of the Golden Rule, and the embracing of tolerance, compassion, gratitude, morality and love ? Almost none of it. In fact as I will illustrate below it is less than 2 % of all the words written.
In my own experience in reading the Koran over a number of years a few times, I can testify that the actual contact made with anything that might resemble the Book of Matthew is so scarce, that it stands out in stark juxtaposition and shocks the reader. In my mind the Book of Matthew is the seminal document in the New Testament, the one book that everyone should read. Its ethical program based on the teachings of a itinerant Jew carpenter and preacher from Galilee is the mainspring of civilized social interaction. It also the cultural basis for much of the attitudes which have helped create the modern world.
It is also a distinctly Jewish ideal, built up over a 2000 year period of Hebrew history, philosophy, debates and Old Testament learning. The Book of Matthew has many similarities to Zen Buddhism and Hindu cultural attitudes and there is little doubt that at its core Christianity is a religion in the sense and purpose of what a religion should offer. The natural outcome of Christian preaching and idolization of faith is the following: equality; emancipation of the female; charity; welfare systems; hospitals and of course pacifism. Gibbon was wrong when he blamed the Fall of Rome on the pacific and un-military nature of Christianity – but the description of the Christians being against war is valid. It was always thus, until the Muslim attacks from 650 AD to 1000 AD by necessity turned the Christian state into a more militant entity. Survival changes everything.
So in reading the Koran one must look for the Book of Matthew and the ethical program of the Sermon on the Mount. None of it of course exists. Mohammed was an illiterate – unlike Christ. He was a politician and warrior. He led 80 odd expeditions, murdered people, took and sold slaves, had sex with whomever he wanted, kept a score of sex slaves or concubines, enriched himself with booty, and was a dictator, who hated Jews and Christians. These are facts. He was most likely, like Hitler, rather insane. Why would one expect to find a gospel of religious compassion from such a founder ?
In the only scientific analysis of the Koran that I am aware of, scientist and theologian Bill Warner attempted to determine how much of the Koran was good to humanity as a whole. Most of the Koran is good to Muslims – especially male and Arab Muslims of course. But what about non-Muslims, what about people, what about the average person who is just a human living on earth ? As Warner relates:
“There are 4,108 words in the verses that seem to offer goodness to all of humanity (there are 153,207 words in the Koran, this varies upon which translation). Of course, this goodness is denied later in the chapter, but even at that, we have only 2.6% of the Koran that speaks well of humanity initially......
Even the 2.6% vanishes under the threatened violence if kaffirs don't accept Islam's offer of goodness. Violence and suffering are promised to 100% of those who do not believe in Mohammed...” (www.politicalislam.com/blog/the-good-in-the-koran/)
Warner's key point cannot be overstated. Even if the Koran says something nice about the non-Muslim it is usually conditional. Almost always a follow up sentence will contain, '..for Allah will bring them to account...' What the Koran is saying is two things. First, if you the Muslim are in an inferior position of power [for instance a minority in a Jew-Christian area], you can be nice to Jews and Christians since Allah will torture them in hell anyways, even though the infidels don't know it. But even these verses are quite few and far between. Second, and more often, you will read a verse in which the Muslim is instructed to be nice to the kaffir, only in the context of lying or deceiving the infidel to further the aims of Islam. This is called 'taqqiya' and deception to improve the position of Islam versus its enemies – which are all non-Muslims – is a fundamental doctrine of both Islam and Arab culture.
So Warner's appraisal that less than 3% of the Koran is kind to non-Muslims is optimistic. If one was to exclude Taqqiya, and the belief that when in a position of weakness you should show some considerations to the infidels since Allah will punish them anyways, it is valid to state that almost none of the Koran is kind to non-Muslims. This is in direct contrast to the Book of Matthew. No where in this book or in the New Testament can anyone find the same language, call to jihad, racism, supremacism or outright intolerance, one finds strewn on every page in the Koran.
This of course begs another question, never answered by the elite, the academics or the media drones. If the foundational text of Islam is irreligious and the opposite of what Christ taught, why then is Islam considered to be a religion ? Because people scream and yell that it is ? What rational intelligence accepts such a claim when the evidence of words, deeds and history spells out the opposite ? Isn't Islam just an Arabian political project, one designed to conquer the secular world in the name of the family moon cult deity of Mohammed, disguised as a 'faith'?
It is pretty clear from the Koran that Islam is not a theology of religion but an ideology of political power and control. That at least is what any sentient person reading the Koran and studying it would decide. Which is why one might suppose that the elitists in the educational systems, politics and media tell you the opposite. For these deniers of reality, Islam is part of the victimized non-Western world, and part of the travesty of Western imperialist history and slaughter. Therefore Islam is good because it is not Western. The ignorance of such a view is extreme in its absurdity, but sadly it is passed off as a cutlural fact embedded in the worship of the multi-cultural and relativist state.
Why do Muslims attack, murder, rape and exile Christians? Why have Muslims over 1400 years engaged in an endless Jihad of war and violence against Christians? Why have Christians gone from 20% of the Holy Land’s population in 1900 to 2% and falling today? Mein Koran might hold a clue for the clueless, a reason for the unreasonable, an answer for the confused.
In Sura 5 there are 120 verses in total. ‘Only 30’, or 25 % are Christianophobic. Surely a moderate sum. This Sura is composed of two parts. Much of it deals with Bronze and Iron age laws, many one would find in the historical records of Bronze Age Babylonia, or Iron-Age Judea. This primitive 'law giving' is suffused by long rants against Jews and Christians. The themes of the chapter can be summarized quite simply. There are 3 'virtues' of being a Moslem which are extolled in Sura.
First, don't take Christians as friends.
Second, follow blindly and accept completely whatever Muhammad says and does.
Third kill, execute or crucify the Jews and Christians.
005:051URL O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya' (friends, protectors, helpers, etc.), they are but Auliya' to one another. And if any amongst you takes them as Auliya', then surely he is one of them. Verily, Allah guides not those people who are the Zalimun (polytheists and wrongdoers and unjust).
005:033URL The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off on the opposite sides, or be exiled from the land. That is their disgrace in this world, and a great torment is theirs in the Hereafter.
Perhaps the above 2 verses might make an appearance in the mainstream media or in a quackademic program of learning.
Why the hate?
Islam has nothing whatsoever in common with Christianity. Allah is Hub'Al, 'The One', the main moon deity of Mecca, imitating other Hubal worshipping rites in the Middle East all dating from the pre-bronze age era. Some like Robert Spencer the Islamic scholar, believe the Al-Lah might be the Sun or some other celestial object. The evidence points to moon worship.
The Satanic verses make it clear that Muhammad sold his cult by professing that Hub'Al is the Al-Lah of many idols, with Allahu Akhbar meaning Allah is greatest, not God is great. Allah was just one idol out of many. He had a consort Al-Lat (the Sun), and daughters, Al-Uzza (Venus) and Al-Manat (Mars). All were venerated by the Arabs as gods, as they were by other cultures including the Babylonian, Greek and Roman.
The ’We’ in the Koran
Christians are linked to Judaism. Both have rejected the 'path'. 'We' in the Koran references Allah and Muhammad – an unmistakeable claim that Muhammad was created before Christ and any human. Muhammad negates Christ. Allah negates the Christian father. The Christian Trinity is a polytheist blasphemy according to Mein Koran.
Hence the hatred.
005:014URL And from those who call themselves Christians, We took their covenant, but they have abandoned a good part of the Message that was sent to them. So We planted amongst them enmity and hatred till the Day of Resurrection (when they discarded Allah's Book, disobeyed Allah's Messengers and His Orders and transgressed beyond bounds in Allah's disobedience), and Allah will inform them of what they used to do.
Christians have rejected Allah and his Messenger. This is a mortal sin in Islam. Mortal sins within Christianity centre on breaking the Ten Commandments. In Islam, the only true mortal sin is not to believe in everything Muhammad said and did, the Koran and in Allah. That is it. That is the crux of the cult.
005:015 URL O people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians)! Now has come to you Our Messenger (Muhammad SAW) explaining to you much of that which you used to hide from the Scripture and passing over (i.e. leaving out without explaining) much. Indeed, there has come to you from Allah a light (Prophet Muhammad SAW) and a plain Book (this Qur'an).
And
005:068 URL Say (O Muhammad SAW) "O people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians)! You have nothing (as regards guidance) till you act according to the Taurat (Torah), the Injeel (Gospel), and what has (now) been sent down to you from your Lord (the Qur'an)." Verily, that which has been sent down to you (Muhammad SAW) from your Lord increases in many of them their obstinate rebellion and disbelief. So be not sorrowful over the people who disbelieve.
Christians must reject the Trinity:
005:072 URL Surely, they have disbelieved who say: "Allah is the Messiah ['Iesa (Jesus)], son of Maryam (Mary)." But the Messiah ['Iesa (Jesus)] said: "O Children of Israel! Worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord." Verily, whosoever sets up partners in worship with Allah, then Allah has forbidden Paradise for him, and the Fire will be his abode. And for the Zalimun (polytheists and wrongdoers) there are no helpers.
005:073 URL Surely, disbelievers are those who said: "Allah is the third of the three (in a Trinity)." But there is no ilah (god) (none who has the right to be worshipped) but One Ilah (God -Allah). And if they cease not from what they say, verily, a painful torment will befall the disbelievers among them.
005:065URL And if only the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) had believed (in Muhammad SAW) and warded off evil (sin, ascribing partners to Allah) and had become Al-Muttaqun (the pious - see V.2:2) We would indeed have blotted out their sins and admitted them to Gardens of pleasure (in Paradise).
Jesus, Mary and the Gospels were Islamic and the powers of Christ were granted to him by the Al-Lah:
005:110 URL (Remember) when Allah will say (on the Day of Resurrection). "O 'Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary)! Remember My Favour to you and to your mother when I supported you with RuhulQudus [Jibrael (Gabriel)] so that you spoke to the people in the cradle and in maturity; and when I taught you writing, Al-Hikmah (the power of understanding), the Taurat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel); and when you made out of the clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, by My Permission, and you breathed into it, and it became a bird by My Permission, and you healed those born blind, and the lepers by My Permission, and when you brought forth the dead by My Permission; and when I restrained the Children of Israel from you (when they resolved to kill you) since you came unto them with clear proofs, and the disbelievers among them said: 'This is nothing but evident magic.' "
005:111 URL And when I (Allah) put in the hearts of Al-Hawarieen (the disciples) [of 'Iesa (Jesus)] to believe in Me and My Messenger, they said: "We believe. And bear witness that we are Muslims."
Apparently, Muhammad or the many scribes who wrote Mein Koran, did not know of Christ's crucifixion at the hands of the Sanhedrin [Jewish Temple leadership] and the Romans [5:110]. Muslims deny the risen Christ and the miracle of the resurrection. They also claim that Christ told his followers to worship his mother as a God, which is untrue, betraying a rather stark ignorance of what Christianity actually teaches.
005:116 URL And (remember) when Allah will say (on the Day of Resurrection): "O 'Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary)! Did you say unto men: 'Worship me and my mother as two gods besides Allah?' " He will say: "Glory be to You! It was not for me to say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, You would surely have known it. You know what is in my innerself though I do not know what is in Yours, truly, You, only You, are the AllKnower of all that is hidden and unseen.
Sura 5 lists the transgressions and evils of Christians. Given these sins, Christians can be killed, executed or crucified for spreading 'mischief'. Sure 5:32, often quoted by Moslemophiles references only Moslems killing one another. Moslems are forbidden to kill another Moslem. But they can certainly murder, destroy or crucify Christians [5:33]:
005:032 URL Because of that We ordained for the Children of Israel that if anyone killed a person not in retaliation of murder, or (and) to spread mischief in the land - it would be as if he killed all mankind, and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind. And indeed, there came to them Our Messengers with clear proofs, evidences, and signs, even then after that many of them continued to exceed the limits (e.g. by doing oppression unjustly and exceeding beyond the limits set by Allah by committing the major sins) in the land!.
005:033 URL The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off on the opposite sides, or be exiled from the land. That is their disgrace in this world, and a great torment is theirs in the Hereafter.
5:33 is rather clear – except to those who hold higher degrees in the soft 'sciences'.
Moslems must engage in fighting against the Christians, and all Christians are doomed to Hellfire:
005:036 URL Verily, those who disbelieve, if they had all that is in the earth, and as much again therewith to ransom themselves thereby from the torment on the Day of Resurrection, it would never be accepted of them, and theirs would be a painful torment.
005:037 URL They will long to get out of the Fire, but never will they get out therefrom, and theirs will be a lasting torment.
005:010 URL They who disbelieve and deny our Ayat (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.) are those who will be the dwellers of the Hellfire.
It is impossible to make the claim that Islam has a liturgy devoted to peace and good will. The opposite is true. It is vicious, ruthless, bloody, totalitarian, and totally intolerant. It advocates the killing of Christians and tries to marginalize all Christian belief including the Trinity, the virgin birth, the crucifixion of Christ and the Risen. It supplants Christ with Muhammad and the Christian Father with Allah. It demands that Moslems attack and murder Christians until they become good slaves of Allah. The Koran is presented as the only 'truth', one which supersedes the Gospels and which mandates blind devotion.
The above is why Muslims attack, kill, rape and annihilate Christians and their houses of worship.