Benghazi

An interesting interview in the Jerusalem Post.  Excerpts:

...Emails from Benghazi have surfaced showing that Obama, the FBI, CIA, the State Department, the military, as well as other intelligence offices within the government knew within two hours, that the attack on the Benghazi consulate had been carried out by terrorists. 

A live feed of audio and video were being watched at the White House and now we find out from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that the request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate as well as the attack hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA command.

Two times the CIA operatives were told to “stand down” when they requested to go to the aid of the Ambassador and his team.

It has also come out that the 2 former SEALs who were murdered had gone against orders and rescued those who remained at the consulate along with the body of Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack...

GA: I have heard from 3 people and tell me if you are aware of this as well, that The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and our military monitored the battle in real time starting with the first phone calls directly from Benghazi.

CL: Yes.

Shahbaz Bhatti: "A Truly Brave Man And A Hero of The Faith"

He may not have been given anything approaching adequate protection. Excerpts:

It was a troubling phone call and it came late in the evening.

The man on the line had been told by security officials of a plot to kill him. He wanted more protection but wasn't getting it. He sounded anxious and alone, though he had a seat at the cabinet table.

The call was from Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan's Minister for Minority Affairs, the only Christian member of the Cabinet, now silenced forever by the Taliban. His killing was a death foretold by many, most of all Bhatti himself.

When he called that night, he was concerned about a warning from the security agencies.

"They say there's a terrorist plot to assassinate me," he said. "They've told me to be careful, but didn't tell me anything else. I haven't been given any extra security. It's just the same as it has been since I became a minister."

Though his voice sounded weary, the minister's commitment was unwavering. "I have struggled for a long time for justice and equality," he said.

"If I change my stance today, who will speak out? I am mindful that I can be assassinated any time, but I want to live in history as a courageous man."

After we ended our conversation, I could not escape the feeling that the minister had called to say goodbye...

The story includes some important background information on why the Pakistani blasphemy laws are a problem. The Catholic Herald comments:

...There are questions to be asked about all this. After all, Pakistan will soon be receiving more development aid from this country than any other country: and questions are more and more being asked about our relations with dodgy governments. Pakistan is supposed to be an ally. But is there not something dodgy in the extreme about a government which knows that one of its ministers is in great danger from terrorists and does nothing to protect him? Why was Shahbaz Bhatti refused extra security when he had asked for it? Why was there no security guard in the car with him? Why was he refused a bullet-proof car?...

Like many courageous Christians in Pakistan, Shahbaz Bhatti was a Catholic (most press reports simply describe him as a Christian). It must surely be said that he died for his faith, and that though his death is an event by which we are rightly horrified, it is also one by which we should be inspired. He died for opposing the persecution of all minorities, most of all for defending Asia Bibi, a Christian sentenced to death for blasphemy, as I recounted some time ago in this column, on the basis of false accusations. He was a truly brave man and a hero of the faith...

And the Pakistani Christian community knows it. Excerpts:

...There were emotional scenes as several thousand Christians buried their leader in his home village near Faisalabad.

Earlier, hundreds turned out for a church service in the capital.

...In the minister's native village of Khushpur nearby, black flags flew for the burial.

"The killers have snatched our hero," said Mr Bhatti's brother, Sikander, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

So large were the crowds that the burial was delayed by several hours, the BBC's M Ilyas Khan reports from Khushpur.

He says the thousands of mourners waited all day to pay their respects...

Ladies and gentlemen, behold a true Christian martyr.  (h/t Aggie Catholics).

Coren on Christians

in the Middle East.  Excerpts:

Last year I attended a dinner with the Toronto Pakistani Christian community to hear the country’s Minister for Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, give a speech. What struck me about him and about the people gathered there to listen to him was how gentle they were, how badly they had been treated, and how isolated and ignored they felt. Bhatti’s murder by Muslim terrorists this week came, frankly, as no surprise. His friends and supporters had expected an attack and he himself had sent a tape to the BBC in the case of his assassination. Remember, a senior governor in the country who was Muslim but merely argued that the nation’s blasphemy laws were repugnant and wrong was also slaughtered for his courage.

The Christians of Pakistan are persecuted, robbed, beaten, denied jobs and freedom, and killed. If the crop is bad, a church is destroyed. If anything goes wrong in Pakistan, Christians are attacked. An entire group of people are denied the basic rights of humanity and citizenship merely because they are Christian...

Don't ever let the modern martyrs be forgotten. Read works such as The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History and pray for their families and churches. Support Aid to the Church in Need and other such organizations.  Pray, people of God!

Middle Eastern Christianity

An analysis of Pope Benedict XVI's address to the Synod on the Middle East from last year.  Excerpts:

...The Pope first mentioned the fact that the Middle East has seen "ever since the days of Jesus until today, the continued presence of Christians."

The pope wants to emphasize the apostolic nature of the churches in the Middle East and the fact that churches are alive. The Church of Antioch, there where Christians for the first time receive this  name from others (Acts 11:26). The Church of Jerusalem, which experienced the historical fact of Jesus and knew the Apostles. The Church of Alexandria, where St. Mark the Evangelist was martyred. These churches did not receive the faith by missionaries sent from Rome, but from the Apostles themselves, and thus are witnesses to the original message. This, for our Churches, is an important spiritual force. If they disappear, it would be a loss for Christians everywhere...

At one point in his speech, the Pope speaks of the faithful of the diaspora, and this raises a problem within the Catholic Church, because bishops in Europe often want to have jurisdiction over the Eastern faithful immigrants. For example, there is a rule that prohibits the existence of married Eastern priests in the West. They can have them in the East but not in the Western Diocese. This decision was taken - it was said – so as not to scandalize the faithful. But all this must change.

Originally, the patriarchates were geographical, but now the fact of migration is raising several issues. Yesterday, the pope spoke of "all the faithful entrusted to their pastoral care (ie of the Patriarchs) in their own countries and also in the diaspora." It is a small point but an important one. This is also a problem for the Orthodox, the Church of Moscow. Who do the Orthodox of the diaspora depend on? Once it was the Ecumenical Patriarch who had responsibility beyond territorial boundaries, now they want to restrict it to Turkey...

All this is important for us in the Middle East. From the sociological point of view we feel unable to engage in mission to Muslims, who are the majority of our people, inviting them to discover the Gospel and the salvation that comes from the absolute Gospel, because the laws forbid it.

Yesterday, I saw the Bishop of Algiers, who told me that he spent two hours speaking with the Minister for Religious Affairs on this issue [anti-proselytizing laws that hamper the freedom to proclaim]. To the point that some bishops and many missionaries refuse to baptize Muslims who have been asking to be baptised for years, because they are afraid that by doing so they will lose elements of their culture!

From the theological point of view the pope's discourse corrects those theologies (some in India and many "theologies of religions" popular in the West) that preach that it is not necessary to switch to the Christ. A missionary once said to me, the Second Vatican Council established that everyone can be saved in their own religion, so why baptize them?

Our Churches in the East have lost their sense of mission because they are focused on their survival. But the body will not survival if I concentrate on the physical problem alone: it becomes a form of asphyxia. And this is what is happening to our Churches, we are so interested in saving our culture, our particularity, our survival, in the end we focus on little things, instead of seeing our world mission.

We are even dying in Europe because the missionary age, when from Italy and France we went out everywhere, is no more. Today we are so concerned about ourselves and our problems that we have lost the sense of mission. We must recapture that sense. We also tend to reduce mission to charity, commitment to development is not satisfactory...

There's a lot more, well worth a read. Go check out the whole thing, and maybe even read some of the documents from the Synod.

Pakistani Catholic Cabinet Minister Killed

for speaking out against Pakistan's blasphemy laws.  Excerpts follow:

Shahbaz Bhatti, a lay Catholic who served as Pakistan’s federal minister for religious minorities, was assassinated on March 2 while traveling to work. He was 42.

The gunman who ambushed Bhatti's car and shot down the government leader left a note saying that Bhatti was killed "for speaking out against the blasphemy law." The assassin claimed credit for the killing in the name of Tehrik-e-Taliban, a coalition of Islamic extremist groups.

The cabinet minister had received multiple death threats when he questioned the death sentence for blasphemy handed down in the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian housewife whose friends insist that she was convicted on false charges...

Three weeks before his assassination, Bhatti had predicted that his reappointment as cabinet minister would “create some protests and resentment by many Islamic extremists. But my struggle will continue, despite the difficulties and threats that I have received. My only aim is to defend fundamental rights, religious freedom and the life of Christians and other religious minorities. I am prepared for any sacrifice for this mission, which I carry out with the spirit of a servant of God.”

Bhatti is the second prominent Pakistani leader who has been killed after urging changes in the country's blasphemy law. Salman Taseer, the governor of the Punjad province, was murdered in January. Sherry Rehman, a member of parliament who suggested amending the law, withdrew her proposal after receiving death threats...

For some sense of why the Pakistani blasphemy laws are such a big deal:

...According to the National Commission on Justice and Peace (NCJP) of the Catholic Church, between 1986 and August 2009, at least 974 people have been charged for defiling the Qur’an or insulting the Prophet Muhammad. They include 479 Muslims, 340 Ahmadis, 119 Christians, 14 Hindus and 10 from other religions.

The blasphemy law has often been used as a pretext for personal attacks or vendettas as well as extra-judicial murders. Overall, 33 people have died this way at the hands of individuals or crazed mobs...

Remember the persecuted Church in your prayers. Organizations like Aid to the Church in Need and (no joke) the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre attempt to assist the Middle Eastern Church whenever possible.  Read up on those suffering and why in books like The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude : Seventh-Twentieth Century or The Dhimmi: Jews & Christians Under Islam, or see First Comes Saturday, Then Comes Sunday.

Hamas and the Nature of Jihad

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict constitutes a small but important part of a broader struggle (jihad) that has been waged for centuries. Indeed, Israel’s war for survival could never merely be viewed as an isolated regional struggle—the history of Israel and the Jews usually exists as a microcosm, fractally resembling macrocosmic realities—but must be understood in the wider context of the history of dhimmitude, the nature of the jihad instituted by Mohammed in the latter years of his life and expanded by the Righteous Caliphs coming after him, and the world scenario today. 

The Mumbai attacks made abundantly clear the international scope of the current conflict when Pakistani jihadists singled out Chabad House, perhaps the only institutional presence of Judaism in all of India, as a special target. Pakistani "militants", according to much of the news coverage, could have no special grievance against Jews--so what could possibly have caused such odd profiling? Islamic sources for centuries have viewed the Jews with special contempt for failing to live up to the revelation given them by God. Further, the Jews have had the temerity to take back from Islamic hands lands once gained by jihad. They refuse to accept the status of the dhimmi (protected) class, preferring instead to maintain control of their ancestral homeland and refusing to give way to sharia and Islamic rule. 

The purpose of jihad is the imposition of sharia. American history makes that clear. The American struggle against the Barbary pirates remains little remembered, but it helped give rise to the Constitutional Congress and our modern day system of government. These pirates were not merely out for plunder, though. In March of 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with the Tripolitan ambassador in Britain and asked him why the Barbary pirates attacked the U.S. His answer, as recorded by Jefferson and Adams in a letter to John Jay, deserves to be sent to every federal official, every leader and media representative as the best summary of jihadi warfare extant. The Ambassador replied:

…that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

This, of course, makes sense of the current warfare exploding around the globe. His answer rings true when compared to the Hamas Charter, to the Madrid train bombings, to 9/11, to the London Tube bombings, to any one or all of Islamist terror attacks in recent years. The non-Muslim world faces, once again, a determined effort to place us under Islamic rule in obedience to doctrines enshrined in the Islamic sources of orthodoxy by a certain set within Islam. It has been ever thus since the time of Mohammed.

For more on all this, see  The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, and The Dhimmi: Jews & Christians Under Islam, for starters.