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Barbarism 2014: On Religious Cleansing by Islamists

By Webmaster on November 13, 2014 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: The Christian Post BY NINA SHEA , CP OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR In a brief, nationally televised announcement on August 7th regarding the Islamic State, which invaded the multicultural, northern Nineveh Province of Iraq this summer, President Obama observed “these terrorists have been especially barbaric towards religious minorities, including Christian and Yazidis.” The brutal persecution of Iraq’s non-Muslim religious groups is part of a human rights atrocity that is as grave as it is overlooked in American foreign policy. The president’s eight-and-a-half-minute speech hardly scratched the surface. In fact, what the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, is undertaking…

Regensburg Vindicated

By Webmaster on September 17, 2014 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: First Things by George Weigel On the evening of Sept. 12, 2006, my wife and I were dining in Cracow with Polish friends when an agitated Italian Vaticanista (pardon the redundancy in adjectives) called, demanding to know what I thought of “Zees crazee speech of zee pope about zee Muslims.” That was my first hint that the herd of independent minds in the world press was about to go ballistic on the subject of Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture: a “gaffe”-bone on which the media continued to gnaw until the end of Benedict’s pontificate. Eight years later, the Regensburg Lecture…

The Middle East’s Friendless Christians

By Webmaster on September 13, 2014 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: The New York Times by Ross Douthat WHEN the long, grim history of Christianity’s disappearance from the Middle East is written, Ted Cruz’s performance last week at a conference organized to highlight the persecution of his co-religionists will merit at most a footnote. But sometimes a footnote can help illuminate a tragedy’s unhappy whole. For decades, the Middle East’s increasingly beleaguered Christian communities have suffered from a fatal invisibility in the Western world. And their plight has been particularly invisible in the United States, which as a majority-Christian superpower might have been expected to provide particular support. There are…

Five Christian Patriarchs meet with President Obama at the White House

By Webmaster on September 11, 2014 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: Syriac International News Agency (SINA) by Hirutho WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — For the first time in history, five Christian Patriarchs representing Christian communities in the Middle East visited the White House to discuss the protection of Christians in theMiddle East with President Obama and National Security Advisor Susan Rice. In Defense of Christians President Toufic Baaklinisaid, “We want to thank President Obama at this critical moment in history for meeting with the representatives of these Christian communities from the Middle East who face suffering and hardship for professing their religious beliefs.” Attending the meeting with the President…

U.S. Congressman Frank Wolf

Pledge of Solidarity for Egyptian, Iraqi, and Syrian Christians and Other Small Religious Communities

By Webmaster on May 7, 2014 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories, Uncategorized

Source: Congressman Frank Wolf UPDATED MEDIA ADVISORY AMERICAN CHRISTIAN LEADERS “PLEDGE” TO STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH IMPERILED CHRISTIAN AND OTHER RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES IN EGYPT, SYRIA AND IRAQ Press Conference 11 a.m. Wednesday, May 7, 2014 234 Cannon House Office Building Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA), co-chairs of the bipartisan Religious Minorities in the Middle East Caucus, will host a press conference at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, May 7 on Capitol Hill featuring several prominent American Christian leaders who will be releasing a Pledge of Solidarity & Call to Action on behalf of Christians and other religious…

Ransom A Syrian Christian For $200K

By Webmaster on December 8, 2013 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories, Uncategorized

Source: The American Conservative By ROD DREHER NCR’s John Allen reports on the kidnapping of the Syrian Orthodox nuns by rebel forces: The monastery’s mother superior, Sr. Pelagia Sayyaf, and 11 other Orthodox nuns were taken away to the nearby rebel stronghold of Yabrud. Though some rebel sources insisted that the sisters had been evacuated for their own safety, most observers regard it as a kidnapping, something that’s become a sad fact of life for the country’s Christian minority. Last February, the website Ora pro Siria [1], operated by Italian missionaries in Syria, launched an emergency fundraising appeal it called “Ransom a Christian.”…

Fanaticism, Politics Threat To Middle East Orthodoxy

By Webmaster on October 31, 2013 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: The National Herald Amb. Patrick N. Theros Special to The National Herald The Greek Orthodox populations of the Middle East have survived where others have virtually disappeared. Leading up to the Islamic conquest in the 7th century, the Orthodox represented perhaps ten percent of the total population of the then Eastern Roman (now known as the Byzantine) Empire’s provinces of Syria and about two percent in Egypt. The rest were heterodox (i.e., heretical) Christians, including Assyrians, Nestorians, Arians and Copts among others who fought the Empire and whom we persecuted in return. The Orthodox Christians recovered from the Persian…

The silence of our friends – the extinction of Christianity in the Middle East

By Webmaster on September 23, 2013 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: The Spectator by Ed West The last month and a half has seen perhaps the worst anti-Christian violence in Egypt in seven centuries, with dozens of churches torched. Yet the western media has mainly focussed on army assaults on the Muslim Brotherhood, and no major political figure has said anything about the sectarian attacks. Last week at the National Liberal Club there was a discussion asking why the American and British press have ignored or under-reported this persecution, and (in some people’s minds) given a distorted narrative of what is happening. Among the four speakers was the frighteningly impressive Betsy Hiel of…

Palm Sunday: Is there a ray of hope for Christians in the Middle East?

By Webmaster on April 28, 2013 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: Albawaba Sunday is the Orthodox Palm Sunday, celebrating when Jesus returned to the city of Jerusalem. The day is known as Shaa’nineh in Arabic and is one of most important dates in the Orthodox religious calendar. The event enables families to come together celebrate mass, and the day is traditionally a familiar affair and an excuse to cook up a good feast and is well celebrated across the Levant nations of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and beyond. Palm Sunday also starts the Holy Week, the run up to Easter. The Middle East though, long associated with Muslims, has…

OCA Chaplains deployed to Middle East

By Webmaster on April 4, 2013 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: Orthodox Church in America SYOSSET, NY [OCA] – Two priests of the Orthodox Church in America recently were deployed to Afghanistan to provide ministry to members of the US Armed Forces. Priest Paul Rivers, US Army, Chaplain (CPT), in the active duty component in Germany, and Priest George Hill, US Army, Chaplain (MAJ), in the active duty component in Fort Bragg, NC, have been deployed to Afghanistan with their units. In addition, Priest David Alexander, LT, CHC, of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, will be deployed to Afghanistan for the remainder of the lenten and Paschal…

Wolf Issues Report Following Trip to Middle East

By Webmaster on March 13, 2013 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: Congressman Frank Wolf WOLF ISSUES REPORT FOLLOWING VISIT TO MIDDLE EAST DURING TUMULTUOUS TIME OF CHANGE IN THE REGION Renews Call for Special Envoy to Advocate for Beleaguered Minority Faith Communities, Which are Increasingly Under Assault Washington, D.C. (March 7, 2013) – Rep. Frank Wolf today made a series of policy recommendations – including his continued push for the creation of a Special Envoy for Religious Minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia – following a recent trip to Lebanon and Egypt, where he met with high-ranking government officials, religious leaders, humanitarian aid organizations and refugees who…

Sign a White House Petition to protect Christians in the Middle East

By Webmaster on December 15, 2012 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT EFFORT. PLEASE TAKE THE TIME AND REGISTER YOUR SUPPORT. Friends, Are there 25,000 Orthodox Christians in America who are ready to stand up for Orthodox Christians in the Middle East this holiday season? Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC) is launching a petition asking President Obama to respond to the fact that religious minorities need protection across the globe, and we need your help. In Turkey alone — which boasts a population of over 75 million — the number of Greek Orthodox Christians has plummeted to just 3,500 because the Turkish government refuses to grant the Greek…

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Browsing: Middle East