Pressure Grows to Declare War Against Christians a Genocide

"Christianity in the Middle East is shattered," Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska Republican, told the IDC [In Defense of Christians] conference on Sept. 9. "The ancient faith tradition lies beaten, broken and dying. Yet Christians in Iraq and Syria are hanging on in the face of the Islamic State's barbarous onslaught. This is genocide."

As I repeatedly strive to emphasize, "genocide" is a secular term, and while it is accurate in a forensic way, for us, as Orthodox Christians, we must school ourselves to speak of this as a "New Age of Martyrdom." 

Our brothers and sisters in Iraq, Syria and the Middle East � as well as in Egypt and throughout North and Central Africa, as well as in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia and throughout the entire Islamic world � are ascending a real Golgotha. Christianity is being crucified anew, and the evil is increasing in vast waves of persecution. Europe and North America are next. 

We must wake up, stand with our suffering brothers and sisters, pray for them, honor them as confessors and martyrs, and prepare ourselves for the trials to come through diligently living and practicing our most holy faith.

And, we must clearly state that this "New Age of Martyrdom," this "genocide," is the direct result of devout Muslims following the commands in the Qur'an, imitating Muhammad's example as extolled in the ahadith and the Sira, and applying the doctrines of Islamic jurisprudence. It is not just the Islamic State waging war against and persecuting Christians. It is also ordinary Muslims � neighbors of Christians � who are taking their religion more seriously and acting according to its commands. 

Islam itself is the direct cause of the first genocide of the 21st century, this "New Age of Martyrdom."

Pressure Grows to Declare War Against Christians a Genocide

by Douglas Burton, Washington Times via AINA, September 23, 2015:

Memorial to martyrs killed in 2010 church bombing; Baghdad, Iraq.

Human rights activists see it. Foreign leaders see it. And more than 80 members of the U.S. Congress see it. Together, they are pressuring the leader of the free world to declare there is a Christian genocide going on in the Middle East.

Their campaign -- which was discussed at a Capitol Hill conference earlier this month hosted by the two-year-old In Defense of Christians nonprofit -- has an influential ally on its side.

Pope Francis, making his first visit to the United States on Wednesday, has noted the number of Christians being martyred today exceeds the number martyred during the days of the Roman Empire.

In fact, the sheer numbers of Christians murdered and tortured every year in a dozen countries in the developing world is only getting worse, thanks to the relentless campaign of the ISIS and al-Qaeda terror groups.

For example, in 2014, 2,000 Christians were murdered in Iraq alone, which is the number cited by historian Edward Gibbon as the total number of Christian martyrs in the first three centuries of Christianity.

In Iraq, where Christian churches were planted 1,800 years ago, Christianity has been wiped out except for 200,000 refugees sheltering in Kurdistan and a few in Baghdad. Their language, Aramaic; their homeland, the Nineveh Plain; and their calamity are Biblical in scale. Hundreds have been publicly tortured and executed in Mosul while women and children have suffered severe levels of sexual violence since the Islamic State took control in 2014.

"Christianity in the Middle East is shattered," Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska Republican, told the IDC conference on Sept. 9. "The ancient faith tradition lies beaten, broken and dying. Yet Christians in Iraq and Syria are hanging on in the face of the Islamic State's barbarous onslaught. This is genocide."

A year after Congress authorized a special envoy to expedite the humanitarian relief of persecuted minorities in Iraq, the Obama administration has finally chosen a person to fill the spot. Knox Thames has been named the State Department's special adviser for religious minorities in the Near East (NEA) and South and Central Asia (SCA). His appointment was announced Sept. 16 by Ambassador David Saperstein, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. The Christian refugees in Irbil hope that Mr. Thames hits the ground running.

"The appointment represents a positive step toward strengthening the U.S. response to religious persecution in the Middle East," says Delia Kashat, who works for the Nineveh Council of America, a newly established office that raises awareness on the plight of threatened Iraqi minorities, including the Yazidis.

"History is repeating itself," she says of the latest crisis that reminds many refugees of the massacre of 3,000 Assyrian Christians in August 1933 and the Armenian genocide of 1915 that also claimed the lives of many Assyrian Christians.

"Having suffered multiple genocides over time, the true natives of Iraq and Syria serve as the equilibrium and peacemakers of the country," she says. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in all provinces have suffered kidnappings, torture and brutal attacks, and massive exodus has followed the ascendance of the Islamic State.

Ms. Kashat grew up in the Detroit metro area, home to around 150,000 Chaldean Christian immigrants, but her parents were born in the Nineveh Plain and fled Iraq in 1973. "They came to this country because this is where is they could freely live and practice their faith," she says.

Whether they call themselves Assyrian or Chaldean, Catholic or Orthodox, Iraqi Christians belong to a common ethnicity and claim descent from the ancient peoples who established Assyria 4,500 years ago.

Currently there are 14 Christian parties seeking seats in the Kurdish regional parliament, and each is tied to a particular church, according to Louay Mikhael, a Chaldean Christian rom Dohuk, who arrived in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and child only in April.

Mr. Mikhael represents the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council of the Kurdish Regional Government (CSA Popular Council), which will open its lobbying office in Washington in the coming weeks. Both Ms. Kashat and Mr. Mikhael are working in Washington to raise awareness on the issues affecting ethnic-religious minority populations.

After the surge of the Islamic State in the summer of 2014 approximately 130,000 people -- virtually the entire population of Christians remaining in the Nineveh Plain near Mosul -- have either fled the country or taken shelter in Kurdish cities.

"On Aug. 6 when ISIS attacked Qaroquosh, approximately 55 miles from Irbil, we had 60,000 people arriving in one day," said Rev. Douglas Bezi, the Chaldean Catholic priest who manages a refugee center in the Christian suburb of Ainkawa.

The city of Irbil and its suburbs have nearly 100,000 Chaldean Catholic refugees sheltering in rented apartments, unfinished buildings or steel shipping containers. "When they arrived, I divided them into two groups, those who wanted to return in one group and those who wanted to leave the country," Father Bezi said. "But after a year, no one wants to return to the Nineveh Plain. More than 60 percent of my people are traumatized, and wake up every day demoralized."

Iraqi Christian advocates are united in their priorities for the United States: They want direct humanitarian assistance and international condemnation of the abuses these vulnerable groups face.

A Congressional resolution introduced Sept. 9 by Mr. Fortenberry and Rep. Anna Eshoo, California Democrat, calls on signers of the United Nations' Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, signed in 1948, to be "reminded of their legal obligations" under the agreement.

It also says those who have forced the migration of religious communities from their ancestral homelands -- especially the Nineveh Plain, the historic home of Yazidis -- be "tracked, sanctioned, arrested, prosecuted and punished."

"Christianity is running the risk of becoming extinct in the region it was born. What is happening to the Christian community in Iraq will happen to all of Christianity in the Middle East if we don't take action," Ms. Kashat said.

Douglas Burton, a former U.S. State Department official in Kirkuk, Iraq, is a former opinion editor of Insight on the News.

Syriac Bishop Flavien-Michel Malk� Beatified on 100th Anniversary of His Martyrdom at the hands of the Muslim Turks

Glory be to God for this holy hierarch who laid down his life for his flock and earned his crown as a true witness for Christ. May we learn from him and all the martyrs to stand firm in our faith in Jesus Christ, preferring to die rather than to deny Him who laid down his life for us.

When his friends and acquaintances urged him to withdraw from Gazireh to a safer location, he replied, �Even my blood I will shed for my sheep.� 

One of the bishop�s most striking phrases comes from when he was pressured to renounce the faith and to convert to Islam. Rather than giving in, the bishop replied, �I will defend my faith to the blood.�

Syriac Bishop Will Be Beatified on the 100th Anniversary of His Martyrdom

In 1915, Flavien-Michel Malk� said, �I will defend my faith to the blood.�

National Catholic Register, August 11, 2015

Bishop Flavien-Michel Malk� of the Syriac Diocese

of Gazireh, who was martyred Aug. 29, 1915,

and will be beatified Aug. 29, 2015.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey � On Saturday, Pope Francis approved a decree recognizing the martyrdom of Flavien-Michel Malk�, a Syriac Catholic bishop who was killed in 1915, amid the Ottoman Empire's genocide against its Christian minorities.

The decision was made during an Aug. 8 meeting between Pope Francis and Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Bishop Malk� will be beatified Aug. 29, the 100th anniversary of his martyrdom, during a liturgy celebrated by Ignatius Youssef III Younan, the Syriac patriarch of Antioch, at the convent of Our Lady of Deliverance in Lebanon. It is expected that thousands of Syrians and Iraqis displaced by the Islamic State will attend the beatification.

�In these painful times experienced by Christians, especially the Syriac communities in Iraq and Syria, the news of the beatification of one of their martyrs, will surely bring encouragement and consolation to face today's trials of appalling dimension,� read an Aug. 9 statement of the Syriac Patriarchate of Antioch.

�Blessed Martyr Michael, intercede for us, and protect especially the Christians in the Orient and all the world in these hard and painful days.�

Malk� was born in 1858 in the village of Kalaat Mara, a village of the Ottoman Empire in what is now Turkey, to a Syriac Orthodox family. He joined a monastery of that Church and was ordained a deacon, but then converted to the Syriac Catholic Church. (Both the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholics use the West-Syrian rite.)

After his conversion, he was ordained a priest in Aleppo in 1883. He was a member of the Fraternity of St. Ephrem and served parishes in southeastern Turkey, near his home.

Ottoman persecution of Christians began in earnest with the Hamidian massacres of 1894-1897. Malk�'s church and home were sacked and burned in 1895, and many of his parishioners were murdered, including his mother. In total, the massacres killed between 80,000 and 300,000 Christians.

He was selected to become a bishop in the 1890s, serving as a chorbishop and helping in the rebuilding of Christian villages. In 1913, he was consecrated bishop and appointed head of the Syriac Diocese of Gazireh (modern-day Cizre, 150 miles southeast of Diyarbakir).

A second round of persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire began in April 1915. Known as the Armenian Genocide, it targeted the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christian minorities in the empire. The Assyrian genocide (the portion of the mass killings directed against Syriac and Chaldean Christians) is also known as the Seyfo Massacre, from the Syriac word for sword.

Some 1.5 million Christians were killed, and millions more were displaced during the genocide.

During the summer when the genocide broke out, Bishop Malk� was in the Idil district, near Gazireh. In June 1915, hearing the Ottoman forces were preparing to massacre Gazireh's people, he returned.

According to the Syriac Patriarchate, when his friends and acquaintances urged him to withdraw from Gazireh to a safer location, he replied, �Even my blood I will shed for my sheep.�

Together with four of his priests and the Chaldean bishop of Gazireh, Philippe-Jacques Abraham, he was arrested and imprisoned for two months.

Bishop Malk� refused to convert to Islam, and on Aug. 29, 1915, he was martyred.

He was the last Syriac bishop of Gazireh; after his death, the diocese was suppressed, and, today, the Syriac Catholic Church has no presence in Turkey.

In an Aug. 8 interview with Vatican Radio, the postulator of Bishop Malk�s cause, Father Rami Al Kabalan, spoke of the bishop�s deep spiritual life as well as the relevance his martyrdom has today.

The bishop, he said, �played a fundamental role in encouraging people to defend their faith in the difficulties of the time, during the persecutions of the Ottoman Empire.�

Bishop Malk� lived a life of poverty, even selling his liturgical vestments in order to assist the poor and help fight poverty, Father Al Kabalan said.

In addition to his closeness with the poor, the priest said that Bishop Malk� was extremely zealous in his apostolate and visited all of the parishes within his diocese.

One of the bishop�s most striking phrases, his postulator said, comes from when he was pressured to renounce the faith and to convert to Islam. Rather than giving in, the bishop replied, �I will defend my faith to the blood.�

Exactly 100 years after his death, Bishop Malk�s serves as a prophetic witness because �we Christians of the East are undergoing the same persecutions, even if in a different way,� the priest said. �The image of this martyr gives us courage to defend our faith and to live our faith.�

�I personally think the beatification truly has a very strong ecclesial importance in the context of today. � We are attacked in Iraq, in Mosul, where by now the Christian community no longer exists; and in Aleppo; and now the situation of Al Qaryatain, the Diocese of Homs � we are truly the most wounded Church! We are undergoing persecution everywhere.�

Voicing his hopes for the future, Father Al Kabalan said he prays that the Lord would illuminate world leaders and those who hold power, �so that they make peace!�

Iraqi priest: �There�s no such thing as moderate Islam�ISIS represents Islam one hundred percent�

�Wake up! The cancer is at your door. They will destroy you. We, the Christians of the Middle East are the only group that has seen the face of evil: Islam... 

�Please, if there�s anyone who still thinks ISIS doesn�t represent Islam, know that they are wrong. ISIS represents Islam one hundred percent.�

� Fr. Douglas al-Bazi, Iraqi Catholic Priest and Confessor for Christ,

captured and tortured by Muslim jihadists in 2006.

Let us all try to do something � whatever we can � in the face of the tsunami of evil wiping away our Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East, Egypt and North Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia, throughout the entire Islamic world. Let us pray for them, even as we start to heed the warnings and cries of the new confessors and martyrs like Fr Douglas al-Bazi, who daily follow Christ to their Golgotha, bearing their unimaginable cross!

Speaking in 1980, Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) of Platina had this to say about Golgotha:

It is a law of the spiritual life that where there is Golgotha�if it is genuine suffering for Christ�there will be resurrection. This resurrection first of all occurs in human hearts, and we do not need to be too concerned what outward form it might take by God�s will... 

Our inward, spiritual resurrection is what we should be striving for, and the events in Russia give us hope that there will yet be a resurrection of true, suffering Christianity, not only in Russia, but wherever hearts have not become entirely frozen. But we must be ready for the suffering that must precede this...

Are we in the West ready for this? Golgotha does not mean the incidental sufferings we all go through in this life. It is something immense and deep, which cannot be relieved by taking an aspirin or going to a movie. It is what Russia has gone through and is now trying to communicate to us. Let us not be deaf to this message. By the prayers of all the New Martyrs, may God give us the strength to endure the trials coming upon us and to find in them the resurrection of our souls.

� Fr. Seraphim Rose, The Orthodox Revival in Russia as an Inspiration for American Orthodoxy, The Orthodox Word #138, 1988, p. 51. (From a talk given in 1980.)

  

Obviously, what Fr Seraphim was speaking of regarding the New Martyrs of Russia in the 20th century under Communism is equally true about the New Martyrs of the 21st century under Islam. Let us heed his prophetic voice and rouse ourselves to zeal and perseverance in following our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ!

��There�s No Such Thing as Moderate Islam�: An Iraqi Priest Describes the Christian Genocide,� by Matteo Matzuzzi, Il Foglio, August 26, 2015 (translated by Francesca Romana, Rorate Caeli), courtesy of Jihad Watch:

Rome. �Please, if there�s anyone who still thinks ISIS doesn�t represent Islam, know that they are wrong. ISIS represents Islam one hundred percent.� Father Douglas al Bazi, an Iraqi Catholic parish priest in Erbil, raised his voice during an intervention at the Meeting in Rimini, with a choice of words � in a provocative way and in hard tones � that few had ventured use so far.

He carries on his own body the scars of the torture he underwent nine years ago, when a band of Jihadists kidnapped him for nine days, keeping him in chains and blindfolds along with a broken nose from being kneed: �For the first four days they didn�t even give me anything to drink. They would walk past me saying �Father, do you want some water?� All day long they would listen to the reading of the Koran to let the neighbours hear what good believers they were.��

Father Douglas Al Bazi is in charge of two refugee shelters for Christians who survived the advance of the black horde � not far from Ankawa. After the marking of houses with the �n� of the Nazarene plus the Christians displaced on the Nineveh plain, a year ago, �from morning to night we receive thousands of refugees� and the exodus continues. �I�m proud to be an Iraqi, I love my country. But my country is not proud that I�m part of it. What is happening to my people is nothing other than genocide. I beg you: do not call it a conflict. It�s genocide�, said the priest, who doesn�t want to hear anything about �moderate Islam�: 

�When Islam lives amidst you, the situation might appear acceptable. But when one lives amidst Muslims, everything becomes impossible. I�m not here to instigate you to hate Islam. I was born amid Muslims and I have more friends among them than I have with Christians. But people change and if we go to my country, no-one will be able to distinguish the light from the darkness. There are those who say: 'but I have lots of Muslim friends who are very nice'. Yes, certainly! They are nice over here! Over there the situation is very different!�

A situation in which regard the vice-President of the French Conference for Imams also had some tough words to say. Hocine Drouiche, also the Imam of Nimes, intervened last July at the European Parliament: �In the world, Christians are being persecuted, hunted down, deprived of work, imprisoned, tortured and murdered. All means are being used to force them to deny their faith, including the ritual of collective rape, considered in some states a form of penal sanction. Owning a Bible has become a crime, religious worship is prohibited and there has been a return to the times of Masses in the caves and the first martyrs�. And the fault, Drouiche had added in a discourse which had not been highlighted very much by the European media�, is contemporary Islam�, which is much closer �to sectarianism rather than a universal, open religion�.

�I believe in the end they will destroy us�

Father al Bazi�s account is of one who runs the risk of being murdered on the street every day: We never know if coming out of the church we�ll be able to go into it again alive. In Baghdad they had the church explode right in front of me. They shot me on the legs with a AK-47, a type of Kalashnikov, and probably sooner or later they�ll kill me�. Yet his faith is solid: �When they put me in chains, during my kidnapping, they tightened a big padlock on my wrists. On the chain there were ten extra rings, which I used to recite the Rosary. I have never prayed it so earnestly as I did in that situation�. �I � added Father Douglas � don�t implore your help. I�m not frightened just as my people aren�t frightened either. I believe they�ll destroy us in the end. But I also believe that we will have the last word. Jesus told us that we need to carry our own crosses, and that is what we in the Middle East are doing. Yet the most important thing is not the carrying of the cross, but following it. And following it means accepting, challenging and committing oneself right to the very end�.

�We need to have patience and carry the cross each day, but we also must react�, said Father Ibrahim Alsabagh, parish priest in Aleppo, echoing him, and reported how the city is now �divided in tens of parts, each one of them in the hands of a different group of Jihadists. Our Church of St. Francis is sixty metres from the firing line. They have already hit many churches, we don�t know when it will be our turn�. Here is why Father Douglas, at the end of his intervention, launched a warning to the feeble West:

�Wake up! The cancer is at your door. They will destroy you. We, the Christians of the Middle East are the only group that has seen the face of evil: Islam��.

100 Years of Silence

Of the 2.6 million Greeks of Ottoman Turkey in 1914, over 700,000 additional Thracian and Anatolian Greeks were slaughtered, bringing the total Greek deaths to over one million.

Related: The Armenian Genocide

by Thea Halo, Author of Not Even My Name, and A Lid for Every Pot, painter, former WBAI news correspondent.
Huffington Post � May 20, 2015
h/t AINA

In the struggle between denial and silence, silence wins hands down. That is, silence wins out over denial if the genocide of a people is to be complete. For almost 100 years, Pontic Greeks have mourned the loss of the 353,000 fathers, mothers, grandparents, children, friends and community members who were slaughtered outright, or who died agonizing deaths on long death marches to expulsion from 1916 to 1923. My mother was among them. Of the 2.6 million Greeks of Ottoman Turkey in 1914, over 700,000 additional Thracian and Anatolian Greeks were slaughtered, bringing the total Greek deaths to over one million.

Although the Pontic Greeks had settled on the southern shores and in the mountains along the Black Sea since 875 B.C., and other Greeks had settled in Anatolia since 1200 B.C., over 2,000 years before the first Turkish tribes invaded, today it's difficult to find anyone who has heard of the Pontians or Anatolian Greeks, as if they never existed? Ditto for the Assyrians who had settlements in Asia minor dating back four thousand years before the genocide that took the lives of at least 275,000 Assyrians, more than half their population. As with the Pontic Greeks, until recently, it was rare to find anyone who knew Assyrians still existed in the modern world.


Armenian scholars rightfully criticize the Turkish government for the denial of the Armenian Genocide that took place 100 years ago. However, it's rarely mentioned that the first target of what, for many, has become know exclusively as The Armenian Genocide, began against the Greeks under Ottoman rule in Thrace in the spring of 1913, before the commencement of WWI, and then in the summer of 1914 against the Anatolian Greeks who lived along the western coast of Turkey. Boycotts against Greek shops and goods, massacres of Greeks in towns and villages -instigated by Young Turk propaganda - and conscription of Greek men into the dreaded labor battalions, where they were worked and starved to death, was responsible for hundreds of thousands of Greek deaths.

How did the Young Turks incite hatred against former neighbors? US Consul General George Horton, who was stationed at Smyrna from 1911 to 1917 and again from May 1919 to September 1922, reported that in the spring of 1914, the Aegean Coast Greeks were demonized to induce the Turkish population to destroy them. Horton wrote:

[V]iolent and inflammatory articles in the Turkish newspapers appeared unexpectedly and without any cause ... so evidently "inspired" by the authorities ... Cheap lithographs ... executed in the clumsiest and most primitive manner ... represented Greeks cutting up Turkish babies or ripping open pregnant Moslem women, and various purely imaginary scenes, founded on no actual events or even accusations elsewhere made. These were hung in the mosques and schools. ... and set the Turk to killing...

The sequence of events is noteworthy. U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau Sr., reported at the time that the Young Turks were so successful against the Greeks, that they decided to go after the other "races" as well... the Assyrians and Armenians. Just as Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany signaled the beginning of a full-blown genocide of the Jews, the pogroms against the Thracian and Anatolian Greeks signaled the beginning of a full-blown genocide of the Christians under Ottoman rule, Greeks, Assyrians, and Armenians.

In October 1914, the Assyrians were the next Christian people to be targeted through displacement, without care for their survival. In 1915, both Armenians and Assyrians were subjected to massacres and death marches to expulsion. In 1916, the Pontic Greeks along the Black Sea coast were targeted. Some Pontians were locked in churches and burned alive.

In June 1918, four months before the end of the Great War, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that at least 1,000,000 Greek men, women, and children had perished as a result of organized massacres and deportations by "the Turco-Teutons" in Asiatic Turkey. On October 30, 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed, officially bringing Ottoman participation in the war to an end, but the massacres, death marches, and labor camp conscriptions continued. A New York Times Article dated December 8, 1918, affirms that:

(...) the Turkish authorities, despite Turkey's defeat, are pursuing a brutal attitude towards the Christian populations of the empire and are inciting the Ottoman people to fanatical outrages against the non-Moslems. (...) Many signs of organizing among the Turks for new massacres of Christians, and particularly Greeks, are noted.

While it's true that denial of this crime is unconscionable, denial has at least kept the memory of the Armenians in the minds, and hopefully the hearts, of the general public. However, where news and diplomatic reports were numerous at the time, today there is usually silence. Silence surrounding the Christian Genocide by the Ottoman and Kemalist regimes between 1913 and 1923 have, until now, rendered the genocide of the Greeks and Assyrians complete. In fact, for the general public, silence over the last 100 years has effectively erased all memory of Pontic Greeks and Assyrians, co-victims of the Armenians, as if they never existed.

Consul General of Greece, George Iliopoulos said at this year's May 19th Pontian Commemoration Ceremony at Bowling Green in NYC, "an atrocity can be forgiven, but should not be forgotten. Remorse is painful and demonstrates spiritual superiority. Forgetting... shows an inability to comprehend and accept history's lessons and demonstrates disrespect for the victims. It is also a form of complicity. We need not allow the world or Turkey to forget."

Senator Leonidas Raptakis joined with other Rhode Island senators to declare May 19th a day of solemn remembrance of the Pontian Genocide, and reminded the gathering at Bowling Green, that "it is vital and proper to those who lost their lives in the Pontian Genocide, and it is paramount that people of all nations look at this horrific event in our world's not-so-distant history as a way to learn a valuable lesson, so that such atrocities are not tolerated and are never committed again."

We could start with a U.S. Resolution that recognizes the genocide, not only of the Armenians, but of the 3 million Christians under Ottoman and Kemalist rule, Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks who were slaughtered by various means between 1913 and 1923, which brought four millennia of Christian presence in Turkey to a cruel and bitter end in a matter of 10 short years.

In 2007 the international Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), consisting of hundreds of genocide scholars, affirmed the Greek, Assyrian, and Armenian Genocides (AINA 2007-12-15), as did Sweden (2010) and the Netherlands (2015). The IAGS Resolution reads as follows:

WHEREAS the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide,enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides;

WHEREAS the Ottoman genocide against minority populations during and following the First World War is usually depicted as a genocide against Armenians alone, with little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire;

BE IT RESOLVED that it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Association calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution.

For a personal account of the genocide of all three Christian peoples, see Not Even My Name.

Hereditary Martyrs: the Christian Victims of ISIS's Massacres

"At the news that her son was dead, Nana collapsed. Her cries filled the cold, desolate room. Nana's husband, a priest of the Ancient Assyrian Church, had been murdered the year before -- dragged behind his horse by Muslim neighbors. The following year, another family member would be shot by his Muslim servant..."

Read and share this powerful reflection by a descendant of survivors of the Assyrian Genocide.

Hereditary Martyrs: the Christian Victims of ISIS's Massacres

By Juliana Taimoorazy

AINA � May 18, 2015

Woody Allen once joked that sterility is hereditary: If you don't have any children, you won't have grandchildren either. In my family, we pass down a different condition: martyrdom.

My great-grandfather and my great-uncle both were murdered for their religion in 1915. Decades later, my own immediate family had to flee Islamist harassment in Iran. My colleagues' cousins even now are hiding from ISIS in isolated villages and on mountaintops. This is the heritage of all Assyrian Christians.

The butchery last month of Ethiopian Copts in Libya was not some new kind of atrocity. It's the latest incident in 100 years of Islamist religious and ethnic cleansing all across the Middle East.

The first genocide of the 20th century was launched by the Ottomans and the "Young Turks" against Assyrian Christians in Mesopotamia. The next victims were Armenians and Greeks. For nine long years the slaughter went on, ending only in 1923 after claiming 2.5 million victims. The Ottomans "cleansed" Turkey, and much of Iraq, of their Christians. In November 1916, the Atlantic Monthly reported:

"Within six months they [Young Turks] succeeded in doing what the Old Turks were unable to accomplish in six centuries .?.?. Thousands of Nestorians and Syrians [Assyrians] have vanished from the face of the earth."

For many years, my mother stayed silent about the genocide. But one cold night in Tehran, in 1985, as we huddled around the space heater, she finally opened up. She told me how Nana (her grandmother) was awakened in her little clay house by violent knocks. Nana's nephew George burst in. He threw himself down on her sickbed and wept for a solid minute. Then he reared up and whispered the news: "Nana, they killed Uncle Augustus. Those merciless animals cut his body into pieces and made me bring it home in a rice bag -- our ration bag."

"It was not only our family who gave martyrs for our faith in Jesus Christ. There are hundreds of thousands of families like us."

At the news that her son was dead, Nana collapsed. Her cries filled the cold, desolate room. Nana's husband, a priest of the Ancient Assyrian Church, had been murdered the year before -- dragged behind his horse by Muslim neighbors. The following year, another family member would be shot by his Muslim servant.

I breathed very slowly, committing to heart my mother's every word. She ended with this: "Juliana, you need to know stories like this. Someday, you must share them with your children. It was not only our family who gave martyrs for our faith in Jesus Christ. There are hundreds of thousands of families like us."

I wept in silence, and soon I was alone. She left me to reflect on what all this meant. In the cold, quiet room I made a solemn commitment: to spend my life fighting for the most vulnerable, giving witness for the persecuted, whoever they might be.

The victims of ISIS today are the children and grandchildren of those who were hunted in 1915. They too suffer from hereditary martyrdom.

Now 30 years later, I sit in a warm house in America, beside the same gentle woman, my mother. Now I am the one telling recent, appalling stories of religious persecution, but to an incredulous wider world.

The victims of ISIS today are the children and grandchildren of those who were hunted in 1915. They too suffer from hereditary martyrdom.

It would be too easy to despair. To write off that whole region of the world as possessed by a kind of madness, doomed to destroy itself in a cataclysm of religious and ethnic violence.

But Americans are better than that. We care, as a people, about religious freedom -- our nation was founded to ensure it.

We care about fair treatment for vulnerable minorities. And many of us have family members whose fate depends on peace and freedom: There are millions of Middle Eastern Christians in the United States whose cousins are in danger.

American Jews, whose families have suffered history's most appalling persecution, worry for the safety of Jews living in Israel.

We cannot surrender this vital part of the world to the butchers and the fanatics, to the men in black uniforms who terrorize women like Nana and murder their husbands and children.

While we fight the persecutors, we must aid the persecuted. Christian refugees in Iraq, and all the victims of ISIS, need your support -- your prayers, your actions, your gifts.

Juliana Taimoorazy is Founder of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council (victimsofisis.org), and a Philos Project Fellow.

May 19 � Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day

Records show a minimum of 350,000 Pontian Greeks were exterminated through systematic slaughter by the Turkish Muslims. The Pontian Greek Genocide is part of the wider Orthodox Christian Holocaust, which included the Armenian Genocide, and spanned from 1894 to 1923.

Stella Tsolakidou � May 2015 � Greek Reporter
Posted on OCP Media � May 19, 2015

In 1994, May 19 was selected by the Greek parliament as the day to commemorate the Pontian Greek Genocide by the Turks. The Pontic Genocide is one of the darkest moments in history not only for Greeks, but also for mankind. The Genocide vanished from its ancestral and historic homeland in Pontus a culturally vibrant and unique part of the Greek population that had been fighting for its survival for about 3,000 years.

Records show a minimum 350,000 Pontian Greeks exterminated through systematic slaughter by Turkish troops, deportations involving death marches, starvation in labor and concentration camps, rapes and individual killings. Entire villages and cities were devastated, while thousands were forced to flee to neighboring countries. The Ottoman government�s plan to annihilate the Christian populations living within Turkey, including Greeks, Syrians and Armenians, during World War I was set into force in 1914 with the decree that all Pontian men aged between 18 to 50 would have to report to the military. Those who refused to do so, were ordered to be shot immediately.

Among the causes for the Turkish campaign against the Greek population was a fear that the population would aid the Ottoman Empire�s enemies, and a belief among nationalist Turks that in order to form a modern nation state it was necessary to purge from the territories of the state those national groups who could threaten the integrity of a modern Turkish nation. With the guidance of German advisers the Turkish regime created the so called amele taburu (labor battalions) were the Pontian Greeks who did not enter the Ottoman army would have to work under inhuman conditions in mines, construction works and quarries.

The Ottoman regime feared the Pontiac population not only because of their rapidly growing numbers that had reached 700,000 by the early 20th century, but also because of the cultural and economic growth of the minority. Cities like Samsous, Trapezous and Kerasous displayed a remarkable growth with dozens of schools, newspapers, theaters and other amenities. The rise of the Young Turks movement, however, would put a brutal end to the thriving Greek community of the area. While the Greek state was busy solving out the Crete problem and in no position to open new fronts with Turkey, the Pontians and many other Greeks across Asia Minor were dislocated and systematically exterminated.

The Pontians tried to fight back and resist the new politics, so they fled high to the mountains and organized themselves in small guerrilla groups. By 1921 historical records show that Pontian fighters numbered some 12,000, a force that was unwisely never deployed by the Greek army. The Greek politics of the time that failed to focus on the issue and the lost hopes of the establishment of a joint Ponto-Armenian country allowed Kemal Ataturk to proceed with the final phase of his plan.

The rise of the Bolsheviks in neighboring Russia deprived the Greek Pontians of the help they received against the Ottomans. The new Russian regime and Germany helped Turkey in all ways possible. While the Greek army was marching in the wilderness of Anatolia, Kemal kept the Greeks busy with guerrilla attacks and simultaneously carried on the massacres in Pontus. By the time of the Asia Minor catastrophe more than 300,000 Pontian Greeks had already lost their lives.

The survivors of the extended slaughters migrated to nearby Russian grounds or were included in the population exchanges that followed the end of the Greco-Turkish war (1919- 22). The Pontians that moved into Greece brought with them their surviving culture, language, customs and traditions, and enriched the social structures of the country by adding their own characteristic features.

Source:

Metropolitan Hilarion: Terrorism And Extremism in the Middle East Continue Growing And Spreading Like a Plague

An illuminating discussion of the deadly threat of Islam to Christians and the civilized world, without ever specifically mentioning Islam. 

Highlights include:

• "If the whole world now fails to unite against this new terrible epidemic, the consequences may be irretrievable..."
• "Each country should be concerned by it because sooner or later it will come to its borders too."
• "Russia is a country which will cope... But Western Europe is not at all ready for it. People are too well-off there, too relaxed."

Pravmir � May 16, 2015

On May 2, 2015, Metropolitan Hilarion as presenter of the Church and the World TV program had as his guest the chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society Sergey Stepashin.

Metropolitan Hilarion: Good afternoon, dear brothers and sisters. Christ is Risen! In these Paschal days, the mental eyes of many Orthodox faithful are directed to the Holy Land, the places where our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ lived on earth. Today we will speak about the Holy Land, the Middle East and Palestine with the chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society Sergey Stepashin. Good afternoon, Sergey Vadimovich.

S. Stepashin: Good afternoon, Your Eminence.

Metropolitan Hilarion: Christ is risen!

S. Stepashin: He is truly risen!

Among the main tasks of the Imperial Palestine Society is a serious, thorough and sometimes very dangerous work in the Middle East. I may start with Syria as the most problematic region today, as this country is very close to us in its Christian traditions. Today all the peoples in Syria are going through a very difficult period and Christians have proved to be in the most terrible situation.

Recently we have marked the centenary of the Armenian genocide. You know that the Armenian Church has canonized over a million citizens who were killed in the genocide. I believe today we have a full right to say that what is happening in the Middle East, too, is a Christian genocide.

The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society is doing everything possible for it to give humanitarian aid to all the victims of this terrible tragedy. We have already sent some 12 cargoes to Syria. It is free aid; we have collected it throughout our Russian world. People gave out whatever they could. I would like to thank the Emergency Ministry and the Syrian Airlines for the assistance they gave.

Another important point is that the world community has at last begun speaking about the problems of the Middle East. Especially important today are statements made at international forums including in the UN about the discrimination and persecution against Christians In spite of the fact that international organizations have different attitudes to Russia, we have been heard for the first time and not only on the Geneva and New York platforms. For the first time in the history of the UN Security Council it was on our initiative jointly with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov that the problem of the protection of Christianity and the situation of Christians in the Middle East was raised at a meeting of the UN Security Council.

Metropolitan Hilarion: We have been working together with you in this area for many years now. Only a few years ago when we spoke out loud on behalf of our Church about what was happening to Christians in the Middle East, the West preferred not to hear us. I remember speaking at a meeting of the UN Third Committee in New York in which about 150 countries were represented. I cited statistics and facts but got full silence in response and a very clear impression that the Western world did not wish to hear about the tragedy of Christians unfolding before our eyes.

Yes, something has begun really changing of late, and if before only Islamophobia and anti-Semitism were discussed and resolutions only this issue were adopted at international platforms, now the persecution against Christians is discussed for the first time. But it began only after in several Middle East countries the so-called �Arab Spring�, inspired not from within but from outside the Arab world, led in fact to the extermination of Christianity.

Only a little over ten years ago in Iraq there were about one million and a half Christians. Now nobody knows exactly how many of them are left there. Various estimates are given from one to four hundred thousand. Most of the Iraqi Christian were either killed or had to leave their homeland. There are almost no Christians left in Libya, where there used to be about one hundred thousand. Tragic events took place for several years in Egypt. Now we can see what has been going in Syria for already several years, where the so-called opposition (actually uncontrolled bands of militants) with the support of Western countries have systematically wiped out the Christian population and the Christian heritage.

All this is taking place before the eyes of the civilized world. And only after videos of mass executions appeared in the Internet, the persecution against Christians began to be voiced at last in Europe and generally in the West. By that time however, dozens and hundreds of people had been already killed and millions had become roofless. And we can no longer wait and limit ourselves only to talks, for resolute actions are needed here and now.

The humanitarian aid given by the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society in the Middle East to people who have found themselves in the situation of humanitarian disaster. And the 12 humanitarian convoys sent to Syria at the Society�s initiative have helped many people, not only Christians but Muslims as well.

S. Stepashin: There is still another task before us, which, to be frank, is seriously complicated by the war situation. You know that the decision was made to build a Russian school in Damascus, the first one after 1914. There is an agreement with the leaders of the country and there are resources, but we will see how the situation will develop.

I should say that last year the Syrian leaders decided (as was announced during a meeting with President Assad) to introduce the compulsory study of the Russian language for all the Syrian schoolchildren. I believe such support is very important too. Today we are engaged in broadening the possibilities for Syrian young people to study in our universities. Immediately upon my arrival from Syria, I had meetings with both the minister of education and leaders of major universities including the rector of Moscow University. I believe it is very important.

I would like to once again emphasize however that it is important that we are heard now. It is important that our voice should be increasingly heard at international arenas in the UN, Geneva, New York, Moscow and in the Middle East. In this respect, I would like to thank our Russian Orthodox Church, with which our Society is inseparable, and the Patriarch of Antioch, a courageous man whose brother was captured by bandits and whose fate is still unknown.

It is high time for us all, not only Orthodox people, not only Christians, but all who love their land, who love peace and respect people, to think over these problems.

Metropolitan Hilarion: A few years ago I was asked to receive a delegation of the so-called Syrian opposition, though it is not the Church�s business of course to interfere in political conflicts. I met with these people and had a talk with them. But for a whole hour I could not see who they actually represent and what they can influence. During a single talk I heard various names and the names of various organizations. Now they said they were not linked with the army in any way, now they were a political wing of the so-called Syrian Liberation Army. All in all, it was difficult to understand.

It seems to me that now in the West there is an understanding that it is too risky to stake on little-controllable people. Actually, what is the result of the support that was given to extremist forces in the Middle East? The result is that terrorism and extremist continue growing and spreading in the Middle East like a plague. And the Western world no longer knows what to do.

Not long ago a resolution was adopted concerning exactly the situation of Christians. It was initiated by Russia, the Vatican and Lebanon. It is a timely resolution but it is time to move from words to deeds. We cannot simply limit ourselves to resolutions and a statement of the fact that it is really a Christian genocide. It is one thing to reflect on centenary-old events and it is quite another thing to see a tragedy unfolding before our own eyes. It is difficult to believe that Western powers, who posses powerful arms and a powerful system of surveillance and intelligence, have not enough resources to stop this �black plague�.

S. Stepashin: An example from another plane. This year we mark the 70th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. Let us remember who it were who led Hitler to power � the same West, the same North American states. Until the Nazi infection had struck the whole Europe, the efforts to unite failed, but eventually they succeeded.

What is going on in Saudi Arabia and Yemen? I do not at all welcome their actions from the point of view of a possible result, but as soon a tight situation developed at the border they immediately united and now have the full support including financial from the USA.

You are quite right � we should work together, first of all, the European countries � France, Germany, Italy, who are the destination of an enormous number of refugees including from Ethiopia. The situation has already spread to it. The military component should be put in action at some time, for sure under a resolution of the UN Security Council, but the most important thing is to stop the support, as it is evident indeed where money, arms and military specialists come from. I have an experience of the first Chechen campaign. I fought in it, and we know who supported it � the same people who, later in 2001, hit the towers in New York.

I would like to stress once again that today we in our focus on Ukraine � our pain, our common disaster because ours are there too � should not ignore the terrible tragedy, the plague that can sweep over the whole world in the 21st century. It is really a satanic plague, I fully agree with you.

Metropolitan Hilarion: That is why the consolidated action of the whole civilized world is so important today.

S. Stepashin: Yes, you met with the Pope of Rome, and our Society�s leader made an official visit to Rome. The Pope supported us both officially and publicly. It is also a good precedent.

Metropolitan Hilarion: The stand taken by the Holy See on such international problems as Ukraine and the Middle East is very close to ours. And here we have no differences in essence.

We are well aware that if the whole world now fails to unite against this new terrible epidemic, the consequences may be irretrievable. First, no Christians may be left in the Middle East. And this will be a real civilizational geopolitical tragedy because the Middle East is the cradle of Christianity, the place where Christians have lived for two thousand years. Secondly, it will open a further access to the whole world for the forces which have already manifested their aggressiveness. I believe each country should be concerned by it because sooner or later it will come to its borders too.

S. Stepashin: Quite right. Perhaps some will disagree with me but Russia is a country which will cope. We are accustomed to cope. We have endured the Caucasus tragedy and held out. But Western Europe is not at all ready for it. People are too well-off there, too relaxed.

I think the awareness of it is coming. First of all in France, where there is now a fairly large number of people who have escaped from other countries, who live and work there and who hold views quite different from Christian ones � just civilized people. You are absolutely right.

We should always seek points of contact rather than division.

Metropolitan Hilarion: Quite right.

S. Stepashin: It is exactly what can bring us seriously together at this stage. It is not accidental that the theme of today�s program in these Paschal days is a serious problem in our world which should be resolved.

Metropolitan Hilarion: Thank you very much, Sergey Vadimovich, for all that you do in the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society to relieve the situation of those who have found themselves in a critical situation, in the situation of humanitarian disaster in the Middle East.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow concerned by Genocide against Christians, Spread of Islamic Extremism

"What bundle of negative energy will we have in these regions?... These are matters of global order, a global dimension, not only matters for the subject of a settlement of the political situation in the Middle East." �Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia

via Pope Francis and Patriarch of Moscow concerned about political changes in the world

Vestnik Kavkaza via Pravmir � May 6, 2015

Not long ago, Pope Francis called on Catholics to participate in politics, calling it �one of the highest forms of love, as its aim is taking care of the global welfare.� According to katolik.ru, the Pope also stressed that participation in politics was a kind of martyrdom, as it demanded faithfulness to the ideal of the global welfare and bearing a heavy cross of disappointments and sins. �Can a Catholic be involved in politics? Of course, he should do it. Should a Catholic interfere in politics? He should do it!� the Pope believes.

The Russian Orthodox Church is also concerned about politics. �The system of international relations formed after World War II is going through difficult times. And armed clashes, coups, political crises, and various revolutions are becoming a reality in many countries of the world and a change in the world order which was formed according to the results of World War II,� Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill says.

Today the Russian Orthodox Church is especially concerned about what is happening in North Africa, the Middle East and in some other countries of Asia and Africa where Christian minorities are exposed to direct persecutions. �The Arab Spring had the sources of the external impulses of its origin in relation to the Arab world. Under pretense of democratization it led to the collapse of the existing political regimes. But, as often happens, the aims of the revolution failed to be achieved.

"Every revolution is a process of replacing elites, as well as redivision of spheres of influence. It means that one elite is replaced by another. This is all right when some positive goals for the nation are achieved. But what if they are not achieved?

"In fact, the events that took place in North Africa and the Middle East are examples of a classic rebellion: destabilization of the situation in the Middle East and North Africa gave rise to violence. As I have already said, the expulsion of Christians from their native land. We are the most vulnerable before the terrible face of extremism and terrorism, that uses the name of Islam as a mask. 

[With respect to His Holiness, the Islamic State and the other jihadi groups are not "using the name of Islam as a mask," but are pure Islam to the core, backing their every move with Koranic citations and appeals to the example of Muhammad. The leader of the Islamic State is even a fiqh scholar, trained in Islamic jurisprudence and followed by growing legions of Muslims precisely for his learned adherence to pure, traditional Islam.]

"The terrorists commit awful, cruel actions, declaring their main aim to be the complete expulsion of Christians from their traditional places of residence. Those actions that are taking place in this region can be called a genocide of the Christian population,� the Patriarch believes.

He said that he used to visit Iraq at the end of the rule of the previous regime: 

�There were 45 Christian churches at that time. There are no churches now. It would be a different matter if we would shut down and make machine-tractor stations, as happened in other places. But they destroyed everything to the foundations, together with manuscripts, frescoes and works of art. 400 Christian churches in Syria have been damaged and destroyed. I ask: who will restore them? Who will give money? And will they? Will they pay any attention to the fact that 400 churches were destroyed? Without any reason, without anything, because someone does not like the fact that the territory of Syria is the historical homeland of the Christian community. The Middle East is the birthplace of Christianity. And all these terrible scenes of destruction of Copts, and then Ethiopians in Libya is a demonstration of force and intimidation, but actually it is a small part of the events that are happening. Because every day people are being killed for their beliefs.�

It seems to the Patriarch that �the large-scale persecutions of Christians from the Middle East region, together with the rapid spread of extremism and terrorism, are a long-term factor of destabilization in the Middle East. Indeed, the reduction of the Christian population breaks the balance and provokes Islamic extremism, because a multi-religious society, which got used to existing in such boundaries and in such dimensions for centuries, is becoming mono-religious, created on a wave of intolerance towards other religions.�

�What is awaiting these societies? What bundle of negative energy will we have in these regions? How will relations with the countries and communities that have been created on the wave of this terrible intolerance develop? These are matters of global order, a global dimension, not only matters for the subject of a settlement of the political situation in the Middle East.�

Summit calls for a police force to defend the Middle East�s Christians

Calls for the creation of �safe havens� for Christians in Iraq and Syria, as well as the creation of an international police force capable of identifying and apprehending the authors of terrorist acts, surfaced at a recent summit of leaders of all Christian churches in the Middle East along with politicians, diplomats, and activists.

by Ines San Martin, Pravmir � May 5, 2015

Syrian church destroyed by Muslims

(ROME) On behalf of the region�s suffering minority groups, those leaders say it�s time to �get past the alarm� caused by the rise in anti-Christian violence and start taking concrete measures, warning that a Middle East with few Christians, or none at all, would lose its identity.

The appeal came from a late April conference on Christians in the Middle East held in Bari, Italy, and organized by the Community of Sant�Egidio, a Catholic lay movement focused on ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue as well as conflict resolution. It brought together prelates from all the major Christian denominations in the region, as well as political and diplomatic figures and activists for minority rights.

Sant�Egidio�s founder, Italian Catholic historian and former government minister Andrea Riccardi, voiced hope that a �Bari roundtable� may become a standing forum for discussing the situation facing Christians in the Middle East.

In terms of concrete action, Riccardi recalled a proposal he launched three years ago to carve out a �Safe Haven� for Christians in the Nineveh Plains, a region of Iraq north and east of the city of Mosul.

It�s an area with a heavy concentration of Christians, and Riccardi has suggested that an international force could secure the area to ensure that it doesn�t become the next ISIS target.

Approximately 30,000 Christians reportedly have since fled the Nineveh Plains for fear of falling into the hands of radical Islamists. According to recent news reports, Iraqi Christians are currently forming their own defense force in the Nineveh Plains, with some 3,000 men having volunteered for training.

Marco Impagliazzo, the president of Sant�Egidio, floated a different idea: the creation of an international police force capable of intervening in emergency situations when minority groups such as Christians are under assault.

As a model, Impagliazzo mentioned UNIFIL, a peacekeeping force under the Italian flag and the United Nations that is currently working in Lebanon.

Also at the Bari gathering, Gregory III, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, called for �an ecumenical initiative of all Churches, able to work out a peace plan to bring to the common table of the great powers.�

Argentinian Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who heads the Vatican�s Congregation for Eastern Church, said the indifference and inaction regarding the �true and real dismantling� of the centuries-old coexistence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Middle East is �a scandal.�

Christians of the region �deserve our solidarity, our gratitude, and every possible support,� Sandri said.

Sandri�s comments came just ahead of a three-day visit to Iraq. Before leaving, he complained that �vested interests� and politics are being put before the lives of the people involved.

�We trust that from deep within their hearts each one of them, leaders and militants, can recognize their blindness � and commit to build rather than to destroy and annihilate,� he said.

British Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican�s foreign minister, was also among the participants in the summit in Bari. He said that a similar responsibility lies with religious leaders living outside of the region. He called on them to move their faithful to support persecuted minorities, both with prayer and concrete gestures of solidarity, because �Christians in the region feel alone or abandoned.�

Gallagher also called for mechanisms to encourage Muslim-majority countries to address the phenomenon of terrorism in a serious way, including reviewing the teaching delivered in their mosques and schools.

Echoing Pope Francis, Gallagher called for the promotion of peace through diplomacy and by stopping the arms trade.

�What has the path of violence produced other than further destruction, without solving the problems?� he asked.

Catholic cardinals and priests, Patriarchs of Orthodox and Ancient Oriental Churches, as well as politicians and several ambassadors to the Holy See, including the US, Russian, German and British top diplomats, were among those participating in the meeting.

The Christian population in both Iraq and Syria has been in freefall due to constant violence in recent years.

From an estimated 1.5 million Christians living in Iraq before the US invasion in 2003, today fewer than 400,000 remain, with an estimated 200,000 living as refugees in Erbil and Baghdad. The situation in Syria is similar. Before a civil war broke out four years ago, Syria�s 1.8 million Christians represented 10 percent of the total population. Today, at least 500,000 have fled.

Islamic State bombs Assyrian, Armenian churches in Syria

300 Assyrians captured in February attacks, entire villages emptied of Christians, expected never to return. Islam's endless war and genocide against Christians continues.

AINA, April 29, 2015

St. Odisho Assyrian Church in Tel Tal, Syria, after the ISIS bombing on April 28.

(AINA) � According to reports from Syria and also the Turkish press, ISIS has bombed two churches in Syria, the St. Odisho Assyrian Church in Tel Tal and the St. Rita Tilel Armenian Church in Aleppo. The churches were bombed yesterday.

Located on the Khabur river in the Hasaka province in Syria, Tel Tal is one of the 35 Assyrian villages that was attacked by ISIS on February 23. ISIS captured nearly 300 Assyrians in those attacks and subsequently released 23, all from the village of Tel Goran. The remaining Assyrians are still being held captive.

The entire Assyrian population of these villages, nearly 3,000, has left their homes and are expected never to return. Some have already emigrated to Lebanon. Most are living in Hasaka or Qamishli and are planning to leave Syria.

What is an Armenian Christian?

An introduction to the First Nation to adopt Christianity, in 301 A.D.

See also: 

• Armenian Genocide Resource Page
• What is an Assyrian Christian?

What is an Armenian Christian?

by Anton C. Vrame, Ph.D.

Director, Department of Religious Education

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

April 25, 2015

The Armenian Genocide Memorial and Museum

On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. They were sent to Chankri and Ayash (cities in central Anatolia), where they were later slain. For this reason, April 24 marks the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, where it is estimated between 1 and 1.5 million people were killed (http://www.armenian-genocide.org/). Many American cities, especially those with sizeable Armenian populations such as Boston, will be marking the 100th anniversary with prayer and vigil, but also the continued effort to have these mass killings recognized around the world as the first genocide of the 20^th century (http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/04/22/centennial-genocide-sharpens-grief-for-local-armenians/wDHsRDW0LPfGJco5vBBPiO/story.html). 

Today (April 24, 2015) in Yerevan, Armenia, the Armenian Church canonized the victims as saints.

The Ottomans also singled out other minority communities at this time, including the Greek Orthodox and Assyrian Christian. Many Greek Orthodox readers of this article may trace their roots to Anatolia and the population exchanges in the 1920s between Greece and Turkey.

Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity, in 301 AD, but Tradition holds that St. Thaddeus, one of the twelve Apostles of Christ, preached there in the first century. The Armenian Church did not accept the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon, 451, (the Fourth Ecumenical Council) and subsequent councils. This early schism in Christianity has yet to be reconciled, although great progress has been made in the last fifty years.

What do Armenian Christians believe? Space prohibits a detailed examination, but some brief statements (From Welcome to the Armenian Church, published by St. Vartan Press of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, Eastern), we find the following:

• The faith, doctrine, and dogma of the Armenian Church are based on the Apostolic teachings, Holy Tradition, and the written Word of God.

• The prime doctrinal dogma of the Holy Trinity defines God as One in three persons.

• The Nicene Creed is the main statement of faith.

• Only three church councils are accepted as ecumenical (Nicaea 325, Constantinople, 381, and Ephesus 431).

• There are seven sacraments: Baptism; Chrismation; Eucharist; Confession; Marriage; Holy Orders; and Anointing of the Sick.

• The Virgin Mary is venerated as the Mother of God.

• Armenian and non-Armenian saints are commemorated throughout the year.

• In the liturgical year, there are five major feasts: Nativity and Theophany (Jan 6), Easter, Transfiguration, Assumption of Mary, and Exaltation of the Holy Cross. These are the oldest of Christian liturgical feasts. For example, celebrating Nativity in December did not emerge in Christianity until the late fourth century in the Roman Empire. The Armenians, not being part of the Roman Empire, had no reason to adopt the holiday.

• In the Divine Liturgy (the Badarak), the Church believes that the bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of Christ. People receiving Holy Communion will fast before. The liturgy itself traces its origins to the 4^th century and is attributed to St. Gregory Nazianzus. 

As can be seen from these statements, there is a very close affinity between the Eastern (Greek, Russian, Antiochian, etc.) Orthodox and the Armenian Church (which is considered one of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, along with Coptic, Ethiopian and others). Since the 1960s, representatives of the two families of Orthodox Churches have been meeting regularly to heal the schism from the fifth century. In 1997, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said about this relationship, 

�So often, we have seen that we hold the greater part of the theological tradition of our two Churches in common. That which unites us, is greater than that which divides us. Indeed, those things that divide us can be said to be external historical and human factors, which have hindered the rapprochement of our Churches. Certainly, difference of faith over even one teaching makes union impossible, but we hope that the correct and true acceptance of all the teachings of the undivided Church will be one day established.�

Raymond Ibrahim: 'The Islamic Genocide of Christians: Past and Present'

"There is no denying that religion � or in this context, the age-old specter of Muslim persecution of Christian minorities � was fundamental to the genocide of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians... This is daily demonstrated throughout the Islamic world today, where Muslim governments, mobs, and jihadis persecute Christian minorities � minorities who share the same ethnicity, language, and culture as Muslims, but not religion."

by Raymond Ibrahim � April 26, 2015

Last Friday, April 24, we remembered how exactly 100 years ago the last historic Muslim caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, tried to cleanse its empire of Christian minorities � Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks � even as we stand by watching as the new caliphate, the Islamic State, resumes the genocide.

And in both cases, the atrocities were and are being committed in the name of Islam.

In November, 1914, during WWI, the Ottoman caliphate issued a fatwa, or Islamic decree, proclaiming it a �sacred duty� for all Muslims to �massacre� infidels � specifically naming the �Christian men� of the Triple Entente, �the enemies of Islam� � with promises of great rewards in the afterlife.

The same Koran verses that the Islamic State and other jihadi outfits regularly quote permeated the Ottoman fatwa, including:  �Slay the idolaters wherever you find them � seize them, besiege them, and be ready to ambush them� (9:5) and �O you who have believed! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are but friends of each other; and whoever among you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them� (5:51) � and several other verses that form the Islamic doctrine of Loyalty and Enmity.

Many Muslims still invoke this doctrine; it commands Muslims to befriend and aid fellow Muslims, while having enmity for all non-Muslims (one Islamic cleric even teaches that Muslim husbands must hate their non-Muslim wives, while enjoying them sexually).

As happens to this very day, the Muslims of the Ottoman caliphate, not able to reach or defeat the stronger infidel � the �Christian men� of Britain, France, and Russia � satiated their bloodlust on their Christian subjects.  And they justified the genocide by projecting the Islamic doctrine of Loyalty and Enmity onto Christians � saying that, because Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks were Christian, they were naturally aiding the other �Christian men� of the West.

As happens to this day under the new caliphate � the Islamic State � the Ottoman caliphate crucified, beheaded, tortured, mutilated, raped, enslaved, and otherwise massacred countless �infidel� Christians.  The official number of Armenians killed in the genocide is 1.5 million; hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Assyrians each were also systematically slaughtered (see this document for statistics).

[See also The Orthodox Christian Holocaust, 1894-Present, with data compiled by Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes.]

(Although people often speak of the �Armenian Genocide,� often forgotten is that Assyrians and Greeks were also targeted for cleansing by the Ottoman caliphate.   The only thing that distinguished Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek subjects of the caliphate from Turkish subjects was that the three former were Christian.  As one Armenian studies professor asks, �If it [the Armenian Genocide] was a feud between Turks and Armenians, what explains the genocide carried out by Turkey against the Christian Assyrians at the same time?�)

Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and personal witness of the atrocities, attested that �I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this.�   He added that what the Turks were doing was �a carefully planned scheme to thoroughly extinguish the Armenian race.�  In 1918, Morgenthau wrote in Red Cross Magazine:

Will the outrageous terrorizing, the cruel torturing, the driving of women into the harems, the debauchery of innocent girls, the sale of many of them at eighty cents each [today the Islamic State sells enslaved Christians and  Yazidis for as little as $43], the murdering of hundreds of thousands and the deportation to, and starvation in, the deserts of other hundreds of thousands, the destruction of hundreds of villages and cities, will the willful execution of this whole devilish scheme to annihilate the Armenian, Greek and Syrian [or Assyrian] Christians of Turkey  �  will all this go unpunished?

Because this genocide of Christians is usually articulated through a singularly secular paradigm � one that recognizes only those factors deemed intelligible from a modern Western point of view, one that never uses the words �Christian� and �Muslim� but rather �Armenian� and �Turk� � few are able to connect these events from a century ago to today.

War, of course, is another factor that clouds the true face of the genocide.  Because it occurred during WWI, so the argument goes, it is ultimately a reflection of just that � war, in all its chaos and destruction, and nothing more.  This has been the stance of all successive Turkish governments. Turkish President Erdogan, who staunchly denies that his ancestors committed genocide against Christians by arguing that they were just wartime casualties, also absurdly accused China of committing �genocide� in 2009, when less than 100 Muslim Uighurs were killed in clashes with Chinese security.

War was � and, as shall be seen, still is � a pretext to sate jihadi barbarity.  Winston Churchill, who described the genocide as an �administrative holocaust,� correctly observed that �the opportunity [of World War I] presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race.�  Talaat Pasha, one of the Ottoman Empire�s �dictatorial triumvirate� during WWI, pointed out that �Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.�

A century later, consider how Christian minorities today are still being systematically decapitated, crucified, tortured, raped, and enslaved � also under the pretext of war.  In every Arab nation the U.S. has helped oust (secular) autocrats � Iraq, Libya, Syria � indigenous Christian minorities have been massacred by the jihadi elements that were once contained by Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Bashar Assad (read here for details).

The Islamic State�s recent slaughter of some 30 Christian Ethiopians in Libya � and two months earlier, 21 Christian Egyptians � is merely the latest serving of Christian persecution in post �Arab Spring� Libya.

Nor is this limited to the Arab world.  In Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, Muslims, spearheaded by the Islamic organization Boko Haram, are waging a savage jihad on the Christian minorities in their midst.  Boko Haram�s stated goal is to cleanse northern Nigeria of all Christians � a goal that should be reminiscent by now.

But even in non-war-torn nations, from Indonesia in the east to Morocco in the west, from Central Asia in the north, to sub-Sahara Africa � in lands of different races, colors, languages, politics and economics, in lands that share only a Muslim majority � Christians are, to varying degrees, being eradicated.  Indeed, in Turkey today, even indigenous Turks who convert to Christianity are regularly persecuted and sometimes slaughtered in the name of Islam. See my book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam�s New War on Christians, for a comprehensive account of what may eventually culminate into the Genocide of the 21st century.

There is no denying that religion � or in this context, the age-old specter of Muslim persecution of Christian minorities � was fundamental to the genocide of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians.  Even the most cited factor, ethnic identity conflict, while legitimate, must be understood in light of the fact that, historically, religion sometimes accounted more for a person�s identity than language or heritage � certainly it did for Muslims, in context of Loyalty and Enmity.   This is daily demonstrated throughout the Islamic world today, where Muslim governments, mobs, and jihadis persecute Christian minorities � minorities who share the same ethnicity, language, and culture as Muslims, but not religion � often in retaliation to the West (just as the Ottomans, as seen, were also �retaliating� to the Triple Entente).

Finally, to understand how the Ottoman Genocide of Christians is representative of the modern-day plight of Christians under Islam in general, the Islamic State in particular, one need only read the following words written in 1918 by President Theodore Roosevelt � but read �Armenian� as �Christian� and �Turkish� as �Islamic�:

The Armenian [Christian] massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey [the Islamic world] is to condone it� the failure to deal radically with the Turkish [Islamic] horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.

Indeed, if we �fail to deal radically� with the �horror� currently being visited upon millions of Christians around the Islamic world � which in some areas has reached genocidal proportions according to the United Nations � we �condone it� and had better cease talking �mischievous nonsense� of a utopian world of peace and tolerance.

Put differently, silence is always the ally of those who would commit genocide.  In 1939, on the eve of World WWII, Hitler rationalized his genocidal plans against the Jews, when he reportedly asked: �Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?�

And who speaks today of the ongoing annihilation of Christians under Islam?