MUSTAFA AKYOL
akyol@mustafaakyol.org – 7/12/13

I  have spent the past three days in the German capital, to attend an international conference organized by the Archons, a religious order whose main focus is to protect the rights of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. But the conference, aptly titled “Tearing down walls,” was focused not only on the Ecumenical Patriarchate or the tinyGreek Orthodox community in Turkey but also other religious minorities that suffer religious freedom violations.

For example, the patriarchate is not recognized by the Turkish state with its authentic and official title, “Ecumenical.” The term, which means “universal,” implies that the patriarchate of Constantinople has authority over all other Orthodox Christians of the world. But Turkish nationalism found this global authority unacceptable – merely out of an immature hubris – and rather defined the institution as the “Patriarchate of Phanar,” referring to the insignificant neighborhood in Istanbul in which the patriarchate is located.

A few years ago, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan eased the official obsession on this issue, saying that he had no problem with the title ecumenical “since the Ottomans did not have a problem with it, either.” Yet still, no official text recognizes the Ecumenical Patriarchate as it is.

But that is the least of the problems. A much bigger one is the status of the Halki Seminary, the only institution in which the patriarchate can train new clergy and thus sustain its tradition. The seminary is closed since 1971, when a military junta decided to shut down or “nationalize” all independent schools.

The AKP government has been promising to reopen the Halki Seminary for a decade, but with no result. Indeed it was expected that Erdoğan would take this much-expected step in his much-hailed “democratization package” of last September, but he did not. Word has it that the government decided to take the Halki Seminary out of the “package” at the last moment.

But why? As I explained in the conference, the AKP’s Ottoman references in fact do not create an ideological obstacle to the reopening of Halki Seminary or other Christian institutions or churches. (After all, Halki Seminary was opened in mid-19th century under Ottoman rule, and was closed down by secularist/nationalist generals in the more “modern” era.)

Yet there is still an obstacle: the “reciprocity” principle between Turkey and Greece. Accordingly, both sides see their Greek and Turkish minorities as people in the wrong countries, and do not take any step for them unless the other side does with regards to its own minority.

This was made clear recently by an AKP official, Metin Külünk. “Do not have a doubt,” he said, “Turkey will not take a step to re-open Halki Seminary until Greece, who did not hold up the promise it gave in Lausanne, opens the Fethiye Mosque in Athens.” Notably his audience was the Western Thrace Turks Solidarity Association, founded by ethnic Turks whose cultural and religious rights have often been violated in Greece.

I despise this “reciprocity” idea, and defend religious freedom everywhere regardless of the political context. It is a political reality, though. Therefore, perhaps calls for more religous freedom will be more productive if they try to see and fix the troubles on both sides of the Aegean. They are quite similar problems created by similarly nationalist mindsets, after all.

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His Holiness Karekin of the Greater House of Cilicia, surrounded by Spitak residents after he climbed a damaged Cathedral.

The Catholicoi of Armenia, His Holiness Vazken First and His Holiness Karekin of the Great House of Cilicia walking toward the Eternal Flame monument carrying their flowers.

 

Thousands of Armenians marching towards Dzidzernagapert on April 24, 1989 to the monument built in memory of the 1.5 million Armenians murdered by the Ottoman Turks during World War I.

 

7/12/13

It was around 7 a.m. on December 7th, 1988. Our telephone woke me up.

Our assignment editor at the Associated Press in New York was calling me.

He ordered me, “Get your travel bag, all your camera gear and rush to the office to get some cash. You are booked to fly out at 10 am.”

“Where am I going?” I inquired.

“Armenia,” he replied.

“I have no papers ready to leave the States as I just swore my allegiance to the United States,” I told him. “Forget it,” he grumbled and hung up.

At the AP headquarters office on 50 Rockefeller Plaza I read all about it. The earthquake had hit the northern region of Armenia, still part of the Soviet Union. Reports said the earthquake measured 6.8 on the surface and had a maximum intensity of X (Devastating) on the Medvedev scale.

The report claimed the region that the earthquake occurred was vulnerable to occasional large and destructive earthquakes. It added that the area was part of a larger active seismic belt that stretches from the Alps to the Himalayas.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev formally asked the United States for humanitarian help. Over 130 countries sent humanitarian aid in the form of rescue equipment and medical equipment. I know I missed all the best pictures I could have taken but just before Easter, Armenian organizations had several meetings in New York to arrange for financial assistance as well as medical help.

I covered these meetings with political and religious leaders and was assigned by the AP to visit the ruined country with His Holiness Catholicos Karekin of the Great House of Cilicia, assisted by the late Archbishop Mesrob Ashjian of the Eastern Prelacy and other clergy.

It was a very tiring flight but we made it safely. In Yerevan, meetings followed meetings and everyone visited as many places as they could, helping as many people as they could.

When His Holiness Karekin climbed over the crushed and broken cathedral in Spitak, I implored him to not risk injury in such a way and cautioned him that if he fell, he would be seriously hurt. His reply was simple: “I used to climb over mountains in Kessab where I was born and we are like gazelles, we do not fall.”

Non-governmental organizations had a large part in the international effort. One such effort was by a group of recording artists who united to produce several music-related contributions for the victims of the quake. A single produced by a duo of French composers with Armenian ties as well as a studio album were released by the British music industry featuring songs that were donated by mainstream rock bands and with the proceeds going to the rebuilding efforts in Armenia.

A group of French recording artists and actors came together with the French writer and composer Charles Aznavour to record the 1989 song “Pour toi Armenie”—For you Armenia. With Armenian composer Garvarentz, they formed a foundation called Aznavour for Armenia and composed the song as a call for help for the Armenians. Rock Aid Armenia, also known in earlier stages as Live Aid Armenia, was another humanitarian effort by the British music industry to raise money for the victims of the earthquake.

By July 1989, about $500 million in donations had been delivered to the victims in Armenia from 113 countries.

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RAYMOND IBRAHIM, CP OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR – 7/12/13

Yet another phenomenon with a long paper trail in Islamic history has just taken place, even as the Western “mainstream”-little acquainted with true history or reality-dismisses it as an aberration. Asia News has the details:

Islamist rebels have kidnapped a group of nuns from the Greek Orthodox monastery of St Thecla (Mar Taqla) in Maaloula [an ancient Christian community where Christians were earlier forced to convert to Islam or die]… “Armed men burst in the monastery of St Thecla in Maaloula this afternoon [Dec. 2]. From there, they forcibly took 12 women religious,” Mgr Zenari said …. Neither the nuncio nor the Greek Orthodox Church know [the] reason behind the kidnapping.

The “reason behind the kidnapping”? Sexual abuse and rape certainly should not be discounted, as these have been the lot of thousands of women abducted by U.S.-sponsored “freedom fighters” in Syria. Indeed, a new report issued by the National Reconciliation Commission in Syria states that some 37,000 women have been raped since the war started.

To keep the jihad in Syria alive, pro-war Islamic clerics have issued any number of fatwas, or Islamic rulings, permitting sexually-frustrated, female-deprived rebels to rape women. Most of these are based on the simple fact that Islam permits jihadis, based on the example of their prophet, to copulate with any captured woman-or, in the words of the Koran, “what your right hands possess” (see “The Jihad on Christian Women: Abduction, Rape, and Forced Conversion,” pgs. 186-199 in Crucified Again for detailed information).

One cleric permitted the abduction and rape of any Syrian woman, provided she is not Sunni. Yet apparently because there are still not enough women for the jihadi hordes, many of whom are foreigners-one Christian child was recently raped by 15 men before being killed-Sunni Muslim women are also being targeted through sex jihad fatwas.

So would such jihadis and their clerics have any special respect for Christian nuns?

The fact is, raped nuns is a phenomenon that goes back centuries. According to Muslim historian Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi (1364-1442) during his raids on Egypt, Caliph Marwan II (r.744–50) “made captive a number of women from among the nuns of several convents. And he tried to seduce one of them.” The account describes how the enslaved nun tricked him into killing her, by claiming she had a magic oil that make skin impenetrable: “She then took some oil and anointed herself with it; then stretched out her neck, which he smote with the sword, and made her head fly. He then understood that she preferred death to defilement.”

Writing in the 10th century, the Coptic chronicler Severus ibn Muqaffa records that “the Arabs in the land of Egypt had ruined the country…. They burnt the fortresses and pillaged the provinces, and killed a multitude of the saintly monks who were in them [monasteries] and they violated a multitude of the virgin nuns and killed some of them with the sword.”

After the Islamic conquest of Constantinople in 1453, according to eyewitness accounts, “Monasteries and Convents were broken in. Their tenants were killed, nuns were raped, many, to avoid dishonor, killed themselves. Killing, raping, looting, burning, enslaving, went on and on according to tradition.”

Such is history-expunged as it is in the modern West, even as it repeats itself today. Thus, in August 2013, after torching a Franciscan school in Egypt, “Islamists,” in the words of the AP, “paraded three nuns on the streets like ‘prisoners of war’” and “Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob.”

Indeed, the rise in attacks on Christian nuns throughout the Islamic world further demonstrates that they are no more inviolable than other “infidel” women:

Somalia: In response to Pope Benedict’s historical quotes which, like so many other things-including teddy bears-so enraged the Islamic world, Muslims in Somalia shot Leonella Sgarbati-a 66-year-old nun who had devoted 30 years of her life working in Africa-in her back. Her last words before dying in hospital were: “I forgive; I forgive.”

Pakistan: In September 2012, gunmen on motorbikes dressed in green (Islam’s color) opened fire on the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Cathedral in Hyderabad, murdering at least 28 people. Their immediate target was a nun, Mother Christina.

Libya: In February 2013, after the fall of Col. Gaddafi, Islamic rebels threatened Christian nuns into fleeing the nation. They had been there since 1921, focused primarily on helping the sick and needy.

Philippines: In an article discussing a Christmas Day church bombing in a Muslim-majority region, we learn that the jihadi group responsible “has been blamed for several bomb attacks on the Roman Catholic cathedral in Jolo since the early 2000s and for kidnapping priests and nuns.”

Guinea: In June 2013, during a mob-led frenzy, Christians and their churches were savagely attacked in the Muslim-majority nation-with some 95 Christians slain and 130 wounded-including “the quarters of the nuns, [which] was looted before being torched.”

The above examples come from five countries that have little in common with one another-neither race, language, culture, nor economics-only Islam.

That alone should say something.

But no matter. Far from discussing Islamic history and doctrine, and how they tie to current events, the predominant Western mentality simply dismisses Muslim violence as the West’s fault, or, in the recent words of ex-nun Karen Armstrong, “We did this.” Armstrong-who quit the nunnery only to engage in pro-Islamic mummery-insists that what’s needed is for us to focus more on “Muslim pain, Muslim suffering.”

Such, according to the leftist mentality, are the “real” reasons why, wherever Muslim-majorities live near non-Muslim minorities, from the dawn of Islam till today, the latter are under attack.

 

Raymond Ibrahim, a Middle East and Islam specialist, is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013) and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). Ibrahim’s dual-background—born and raised in the U.S. by Coptic Egyptian parents born and raised in the Middle East—has provided him with unique advantages, from equal fluency in English and Arabic, to an equal understanding of the Western and Middle Eastern mindsets, positioning him to explain the latter to the former and making him a much sought after expert.Source:
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