Youths challenge the French state

poin's response: .........................Now you're probably going to start name calling blah blah blah blah

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=413995&in_page_id=1770
Church calls for action over gruesome violence toward Christians in Iraq
by SIMON CALDWELL Last updated at 22:00pm on 1st November 2006
Soaring violence against Christians in Iraq – including the alleged crucifixion of a teenage boy in Basra - has prompted the Catholic Church to call for a safe haven to protect minority groups as the country slides toward civil war.

The American Catholic bishops have also asked US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to grant asylum to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians who have fled their homes to escape persecution.

They told her that they were deeply alarmed by the "rapidly deteriorating situation of Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq".

The report of the crucifixion was carried by the Catholic Assyrian International News Agency (AIN) and another agency covering religious affairs, Asia News, although neither had confirmed details.

The reports said a 14-year-old boy was crucified early last month in Basra. AIN also gave a graphic account of the execution of a priest, Father Paul Alexander which, it said, was in retaliation for Pope Benedict XVI recently quoting a 14th century Byzantine ruler who regarded Islam as 'evil and inhuman'.

Father Alexander was snatched from Mosul's Syriac Orthodox Catholic Church on October 9 by extremists who demanded that the Vatican should pay a £200,000 ransom and nail a written apology from the Pope to the priest's church door.

Father Alexander's body was found three days later. He had been disembowelled. His arms and legs were severed, then he was beheaded.

It is the most gruesome in a series of beheadings and other atrocities committed on Christians, including the brutal treatment of a group of nuns journeying from Baghdad to Jordan.

In a letter to Miss Rice which was made public, Thomas Wenski, the Bishop of Orlando and the chairman of the bishop’s committee on international policy, said: "We deplore the sectarian violence engulfing the Shia and Sunni communities in Iraq. We are especially and acutely aware of the deliberate violence perpetrated against Christians and other vulnerable minorities."

"The recent beheading of a Syriac Orthodox priest in Mosul, the crucifixion of a Christian teenager in Basra, the frequent kidnappings for ransom of Christians including four priests ... the rape of Christian women and teenage girls, and the bombings of churches are all indicators that the situation has reached a crisis point."

The bishops have asked Miss Rice to consider the creation of a new 'administrative region' in the northern Nineveh Plain area that would be governed by Baghdad but controlled by the Kurds, who they described as the 'key to stability' in the country.

"This could provide Christians and other minorities with greater safety and offer more opportunity to control their own affairs," Bishop Wenski wrote.

The concern of the bishops has been heightened by figures from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees which revealed that about 44 per cent of Iraqi refugees are Christian, even though they represent only about four per cent of the total population of Iraq.

Although Iraq is a predominantly Muslim country, Christians have lived in the region since the first century. The majority are Chaldean Roman Catholics who speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ.

They were tolerated under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein, who even made one of them, Tariq Aziz, his deputy.

But as the war has radicalised Islamic sensibilities, Christians have seen their total numbers slump from 1.2 million before the US-led invasion of March 2003 to about 600,000 today.

An exodus to the neighbouring countries of Syria, Jordan and Turkey has left behind closed parishes, seminaries and convents.

John Pontifex of the British branch of Aid to the Church in Need, a charity set up to help persecuted Christians, said he was aware of reports of the crucifixion of a Christian boy in Basra in October, but had not details.

He said he also agreed with the US bishops' assessment of the situation in Iraq. "What we are now witnessing in Iraq is a vicious attempt to wipe Christianity from the face of a country," he said yesterday.

"Beheadings, killings, arrests and torture, it is the stuff of nightmares, an era every bit as cruel as the persecution of Christians in Roman times."

Walt Grazer, policy advisor in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office of International Justice and Peace in Washington, said: "We have few details of the crucifixion because it is so difficult getting information out of Iraq.

"We are trying to find out more about this and all the other incidents. We have a long history working with the US State Department and I am sure Miss Rice will take this letter very seriously."

 

It probably Madeline and her unruley group of friends sneaking out on poor Miss Clavel .

 

Wow...and to think some people get bent out of shape just because Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell says something stupid -- not lead a beheading party.

 

Oh, they would if they could.

 

I doubt that completely. They may be in their own special brand of religious nutdom, but they aren't cold-blooded, sadistic killers. You just wish they were, so you would have one more reason to pile on Christianity.

 

And poin is wishin' for more of these articles to pile on Islam. He dosn't care about anyone who was affected by these attacks. Once in a while he'll bring out the "this is terrible" card, but everyone knows he's just playin' us. All he cares about is bringing Muslims down. I got 99 problems but the truth ain't one.

 

I spent 10 years in Catholic schools. I'm not exactly anti-Christian.

I do reserve unceasing contempt for a doctrine of institutionalized hatred and violence -- which is the Christianity of Robertson, Falwell, Dobson and your president.

 

10 years in Catholic school should be enough to turn anybody against Christianity in general and against Catholicism in particular.

 

Other than the asinine final sentence, I'd tend to agree. Those of us on the left cannot equate fundamentalist Christianity in this country with Islamism. It's intellectually unacceptable to do so. The percentage of John Salvis and Eric Rudolphs is infinitesmal, so don't go there, either.

You can stick a portrait of Christ in urine and display it in a museum in this country, and no one's going to kill you. Try that with a portrait of Muhammad in any number of nations, and kiss your head (and limbs ... and testicles probably) goodbye.

By all means, I want to see the religious right lose its political clout in this country. Hopefully, it'll happen beginning on Tuesday. Dobson, Robertson, Reed and the like are a scourge, and the restoration of separation between them and the government is critical. And the woe-is-me complex of some Christians (see Hondo's last sentence above) is as odious as it is disingenuous. But I'll take them over Wahhabists any day of the week.

 

If I could kiss my testicles, I'd never leave the house.