Istanbul hit by suicide bomb attack

Guardian, Istanbul hit by suicide bomb attack

Imam, cats and social media

Independent, i100, An Imam in Istanbul has opened up his mosque to the city's stray cats, 17 Jan 2016 "Efe is well known in the city for his "good humour and diligence", the Daily Sabah reports - but a video Efe took of a mother cat taking her kittens from the street into the safety of the mosque has given his everyday acts of compassion a global audience."

Eleven Turkish Muslims baptized into Orthodox Church

Their anonymity has been preserved for obvious reasons.

Mystagogy via Pravoslavie � July 17, 2015

Eleven Turkish citizens, among them a famous Turkish actor, were baptized in May 2015. The baptism was celebrated by the Metropolitan of Attica.

The [original] 13 muslim men and women (between the ages of 30 and 40) were impressed by the beauty of the Orthodox monuments of the island [of Chios], and on their return to Turkey, they decided to read and generally learn about Orthodox Christianity.

This led to them asking a priest to undertake their catechism with the intention of converting to the Orthodox religion.

The clergyman, with the blessing of the Metropolitan of Chios, invited a veteran priest from Attica with whom the muslims jointly received catechism. The thirteen Turks made frequent trips to Chios, where the priests always awaited them for their catechism. This beautiful spiritual relationship lasted about three years!

And at a certain point came the fullness of time. The catechists determined the catechumen Turkish citizens were ready to formally join as members of the Orthodox Church.

So a few days ago, according to news sources, a church in Attica scheduled them for the Mystery of Baptism. Of the thirteen, however, only eleven made it to the font (five men, six women), after two failed to get a visa.

Dozens of the faithful followed the Sacred Mystery, and respected the request of the Bishop and the newly-illumined to not capture the ceremony photographically.

The name of the Turkish actor was not made public.

New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke

Learning of and becoming inspired by the accounts of the neo-martyrs of the Orthodox Church is essential for our time, in which Muslim persecution of Christians is a truly global phenomenon, and in which pressure against traditional, orthodox Christians in the West generally and the United States in particular is mounting by fits and spasms.

by Fr. Alexey Young (Schema-Hieromonk Ambrose in monastic tonsure)

via Orthodox America, (The following article is condensed from a lecture delivered at the St. Herman Summer Pilgrimage, August, 1982)

Slain For Their Faith - Orthodox Christian

Martyrs Under Moslem Oppression

On May 29, 1453, the troops of the Moslem leader, Mohammed II , took the great city of Constantinople. For more than 1000 years Orthodox Christians had assumed that the Byzantine Christian Empire would stand until the Second Coming of Christ. They had always called their city the "God-protected City," and indeed, until now it had been protected by Heaven. But when their Emperor, Constantine XI , fell in battle, the holy city of Byzantium became the capital of a new empire, the Ottoman Empire, ruled by a pagan people, enemies of Christ and Christianity, the Moslems. It was a dark, dark time for Orthodox Christians in that part of the world.

In their violent hatred of Christianity, the Moslem Turks embarked on a course of persecution designed to effectively muzzle the flock of Christ. Their strategy was no less cruel than that of atheist communists in the Soviet Union today; the parallels are striking. 

Most of the churches of Constantinople (whose name was changed to Istanbul, just as years later Petersburg was changed to Leningrad) were converted to mosques. Their movable icons were destroyed and whole walls of inspiring and radiantly beautiful mosaics were covered with paint or plaster. Crosses were torn off domes and broken off the roofs of churches. 

The Moslems guaranteed Christians a definite place in Turkish society; but it was a place of guaranteed inferiority. Orthodox Christians were required to pay an annual head tax, like cattle. To the Turks they were unbelievers, and they had absolutely no rights of citizenship. They even had to wear distinctive dress. They could not marry Moslems, nor could they engage in missionary work of any kind; in fact, it was a crime, usually punishable by death, to convert a Moslem to the Christian Faith.

As if these measures were not enough, the Moslems actively undertook to control the Church itself. The Sultan ironically considered himself the "protector" of Orthodoxy, supposedly guaranteeing the existence of the Church, but actually keeping it in the vise of a terrible stranglehold. Under this system each Patriarch had to pay a stiff fee to the Sultan before he could be enthroned. Unable to raise the funds himself, the Patriarch was forced to exact a fee from each new bishop before installing him in his diocese, and this burden was eventually placed on the flocks. Taking advantage of this financially lucrative situation, the Turks forced re-elections of the Patriarch with undue rapidity. 

The majority of the Sultans themselves were sick, demon-ridden men, whose irrational rule and unbridled power only heightened the already demoralizing effect of Turkish rule on the Church. It is not without reason that an Englishman living in Istanbul in the 17th century wrote these words: "Every good Christian ought with sadness to consider and with compassion to behold this once glorious Church tearing and rending out her bowels and giving them as food to vultures and ravens.

Witnesses for Christ: Orthodox Christian

Neomartyrs of the Ottoman Period, 1437-1860

The aim of Orthodoxy in the Ottoman Empire became, simply, one of survival. Little could they know, in 1453, that the heavy sword of Islam would weigh upon them not for a generation or two, but for five hundred years, five long centuries of darkness and difficulty. But even under such ruinous circumstances, God did not allow the light of Christianity to be extinguished. It was kept alive through the courageous confession of the New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke.

When speaking of New Martyrs today, one generally thinks of the recently glorified New Martyrs of Russia. But until just last year, the "New Martyrs" listed in the Orthodox calendar of saints referred to those men and women who suffered for the faith under the Turkish Yoke. Their lives are not very well known, and yet they are a rich catalogue of the diversity and generosity of the Holy Spirit acting in the lives of Orthodox believers in time of oppression and persecution. The following examples illustrate the image often used in their Lives which describes them "laboring like diligent bees, gathering the honey of virtue" as they moved through life towards martyrdom.

Guard the deposit; keep safe what has been entrusted to you. (I Tim. 6:20)

St. Cyprian the New, for instance, was a pious monk from Mount Athos. After fortifying himself with Holy Communion, he went forth and found a Pasha (the ruler of a province). Straight way he witnessed to him that Mohammed was a false prophet and the enemy of God. The Pasha only laughed, thinking he was crazy; he ordered his guards to beat him and cast him out, which they did. St. Cyprian then went to Constantinople, to the Grand Vizier whose position was like that of a prime minister. There he attempted to witness to the Grand Vizier by sending him a written message about the Gospel of salvation. The Vizier thought the saint must be drunk, or mad. But when at last he realized that the saint was quite sober and quite sane, he ordered that he be beheaded and, as his Life says, as he was being led to the place of execution, "his face shone with joy; it was as though he hurried not to execution, but to a wedding banquet.�

St. Timothy of Esphigmenou is an example of a Christian who betrayed Christ and then returned to suffer martyrdom for his Lord. He was married, but his beautiful wife was abducted by a Moslem who added her to his harem after forcibly converting her to Islam. In order to get his wife back through the process of Islamic law, St. Timothy himself converted to Islam. His wife was indeed returned and they both secretly repented of having converted to Islam and returned to Christianity. Finally his wife withdrew to a convent and he to Mount Athos, where he became a monk and prepared for the day when he could descend back into the Turkish world, there to 'witness for Christ and accept martyrdom, which in fact he eventually did.

Sometimes the family of a martyr begged him to embrace Islam rather than die. In the life of St. Zlata, a pious virgin-martyr of the 13th century, for example, the parents and sisters of the saint implored her to convert to Islam, saying, "O sweetest daughter, have pity on yourself and on us your parents and your sisters.... Deny Christ just for the sake of appearances." But she turned and said to them? "You who incite me to deny Christ, the true God, are no longer my parents and sisters.... But in your place I have my Lord Jesus Christ as a father, my Lady the Theotokos as a mother, and the saints as my brothers and sisters." She suffered a particularly horrible form of torture and martyrdom, including thrusting a red-hot skewer through one ear and out the other, so that smoke came forth from her nose and mouth. The writer of her life tells us that her sufferings were so terrible "that even the most stout-hearted of men would be humbled." This martyr, he says, "now dances and rejoices together with the prudent and prize-winning virgins in the heavenly bridal chambers, and stands at the right hand of her Bridegroom, Christ."

Another striking example of faithfulness to Christ and His Church is found in the Life of Martyred Monk James and hi disciples. This Saint led a very pure life and was often vouchsafed to see angels during the Divine Liturgy. One day, while a guest in the home of a wealthy Turk, St. James declined the meat given at a banquet because it was the Apostles' Fast. This identified him immediately as a Christian. For such a holy one as this, the Moslems devised a particularly painful method of torture and death, which included wrapping bands of cloth around his head and twisting them gradually, crushing the skull

There were many rewards given to those Christians who would convert to the Moslem religion. Sometimes these enticements worked and Orthodox believers gave up the struggle for the true Faith.

St. John the Bulgarian was a young boy when he fell into the company of some Moslem youths and was led by peer pressure to renounce Christ and follow Mohammed. It was not long before he came to his senses and, overwhelmed with grief at having renounced Christ, he fled to Mt. Athos and gave himself up to a life of repentance. His conscience, however, would give him no rest until finally he set out for Constantinople in order to preach the Gospel. Dressing as a Turk � something forbidden to Christians � so as not to be detected, he entered a great mosque. There, in front of everyone, he made the sign of the cross and began to pray, witnessing to all that he had been a Christian and had fallen away, but that he had now been delivered from the error of Mohammed. Concluding with the ringing declaration, "Without Jesus Christ there is no salvation!" St. John was dragged out into the courtyard of the mosque and beheaded.

While many other Christians lived in daily fear and trembling, these noble warriors of Christ marched forth directly into the enemy's camp in order to boldly plant the cross of Christ like a battle banner. Penetrated by the very essence of Christianity, Christ Himself; they were able not only to endure the most frightful tortures-but also to be victorious. The victory of martyrs, however, is understood only from an otherworldly perspective, for they had deep in their hearts the words of Scripture:

What will it profit a man if he win the whole world and lose his sou1? What can a man give in exchange for his sou1?

To paraphrase the closing paragraph from the life of yet another confessor of the Turkish Yoke:

Where are those Moslems who once saddened and despised the New Martyrs? Where are the mighty of the earth? Where is the Ottoman lord? Where the fearsome guards and Tartars who bound them and beat them and martyred them? Where are their pampered bodies? O! They are dispelled as a morning mist. The tombstone of forgetfulness has covered them. And in Jerusalem on high, in the dwelling where are found the blessed souls of the saints who lived in privation in this world so that they might pass through the narrow and afflicted way that leadeth unto life, there rejoices also with them the spirits of these much-suffering martyrs whom we remember today. They reposed in the Lord and received the reward of the labors and toils and pains which they endured for Christ, Whom they loved more than all the fleeting things of this world. And now, wearing crowns in heaven, they rejoice with the choirs of the saints and behold in glory the Prize-bestower, our Lord Jesus Christ Him self. To Him be glory and dominion and worship unto the unending ages. Amen

Nine Muslim Women Who Have Ruled Nations

MUSLIM WOMEN RULERS | WORLD MUSLIM CONGRESS
http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2015/06/nine-muslim-women-who-have-ruled-nations.html 


Historically, Muslim women have been rulers as well like Razia Sultan in India, and others in Egypt and other place.


Courtesy - Egyptian Street 

DALIA GEBRIAL  

Dalia Gebrial is an Egyptian writer and journalist living in South-East London. Currently, she is particularly interested in raising awareness about the historical and current labour and feminist movements in the Arab world.

Here are the nine Muslim women who have ruled nations � how many have you heard of?

1. TANSU �ILLER, Prime Minister of Turkey, 1993-1996

Tansu �iller was the 30th Prime Minister of Turkey, and lead the conservative True Path Party (DYP). Her tenure as Prime Minister took place during intensified armed conflict between the Turkish Armed Forces and the Kurdish separatist PKK. As leader of the DYP, she went on to later serve as Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey and as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Born in Istanbul in 1946, �iller graduated from the School of Economics at Robert College in Turkey and received her PhD from the University of Connecticut.

2. MEGAWATI SUKARNOPUTRI, President of Indonesia, 2001-2004

Megawati Sukarnoputri is the current leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), one of Indonesia�s largest political parties, and served as President from 2001 to 2004. She is also the daughter of the Indonesia�s first President, Sukamo. She is widely considered to have stabilized the overall democratization process and relationship between legislative, executive and military institutions of the country.

3. MAME MADIOR BOYE, Prime Minister of Senegal, 2001-2002

Born in 1940 and educated, along with her three brothers, as a lawyer, Mame Madior Boye is known for her strong feminist ideals, having frequently raised women�s concerns in her time in government. Upon leaving politics, she was appointed as the special representative of the African Union for the protection of civilian populations in countries with armed conflict. She also founded and was president of the Association of Senegalese Lawyers from 1975 to 1990.

4. ATIFETE JAHJAGA, President of Kosovo, 2011-present

Atifete Jahjaga is the fourth and current President of Kosovo, and is the youngest to ever be elected to the position. Born in 1975, she graduated from the faculty of law at the University of Prishtina in 2000. Before going into politics, she worked in the Kosovo police force, progressing her way up to the rank of Major General. During her presidency, Jahjaga has led many initiatives for the furthering of women�s empowerment, including hosting an international women�s summit in 2012 which was attended by 200 leaders from Europe, North America, Africa and the Middle East

5. ROZA OTUNBAYEVA, President of Kyrgyzstan, 2010-2011

Roza Otunbayeva was sworn in as President of Kyrgystan in 2010 after acting as interim leader following the 2010 April revolution that deposed President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Born in 1950, Otunbayeva graduated from the Philosophy faculty of Moscow State University in 1972, and went on to head the philosophy department at Kyrgyz State National University for six years. Her other political and diplomatic posts include being the first ambassador from the Krygyz Republic to the United States and Canada, and the first ambassador to the United Kingdom.

6. SHEIKH HASINA, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, 1996 � 2001; 2009 � Present

Sworn into office for the second time in 2009, Sheikh Hasina is the current Prime Minister of Bangladesh, having previously served in the role from 1996 to 2001. She is the eldest of five children of Shiekh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father and first President of Bangladesh. Her political career has spanned more than forty years, during which she has been both Prime Minister and leader of the opposition. She was arrested in 2007 on charges of extortion, however returned as Prime Minister in 2008 after a landslide victory.

7. BENAZIR BHUTTO, Prime Minister of Pakistan, 1988 � 1990; 1993 � 1996

In 1988, Benazir Bhutto � the daughter of former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto � became the first woman to be elected as the head of a Muslim state. At the young age of 29, she became the chairperson of the centre-left PPP, one of the major political parties in Pakistan, and was known for her charisma and intelligence. Her feminist legacy, however, is complicated. Whilst she often spoke for the empowerment of women, many criticize what is seen as limited action � for example, her inability to repeal the controversial Hudood Ordinance, which implemented a literal form of Shari�a that limited women�s freedoms. Nonetheless, despite her controversial tenures, she was globally mourned following her tragic assassination in 2007.

8. KHALEDA ZIA, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, 1991 � 1996; 2001 � 2006

Born in 1945, Khaleda Zia was the second woman in the Muslim world to become a head of state, after Benazir Bhutto. She was the First Lady of Bangladesh during the presidency of her husband Ziaur Rahman, and is currently the chairperson and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Her more than decade-long tenure makes her the longest serving Prime Minister of Bangladesh.

And finally, the most recent addition�.:

9. AMEENAH FAKIM, President of Mauritius, 2015 � Present

Sworn in on 5 June 2015, Ameenah Fakim is Mauritius� sixth President, and the first woman to ever run the Hindu-majority country. As well as her successes in politics, Fakim is a highly distinguished biodiversity scientist, having worked in the roles of Dean of Faculty and pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Mauritius. Despite having just started in the position, Fakim has already demonstrated a strong commitment to feminist principles, particularly advocating the importance of education for young girls. She has also expressed deep environmental concerns, pinpointing climate change and sustainable development as primary focuses of her incoming tenure as President.

Turks Glorify Historic Slaughter and Rape of Christians

The annual Muslim celebration of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Sultan Mehmet is "tantamount to their saying 'We are proud of our fellow Sunni Muslims of the Islamic State�who are currently slaughtering, beheading, enslaving, and raping people simply because they are Christian 'infidels'.�

by Raymond Ibrahim � June 8, 2015

Fall of Constantinople, 1453; artist, Theofilos

A recent news report unwittingly demonstrates how Turkey�once deemed the most �secularized� Muslim nation�is returning to its Islamic heritage, complete with animosity for the infidel West and dreams of the glory days of jihadi conquests:

A group of devout Muslims from across Turkey prayed before the city�s historic Hagia Sophia on the 562nd anniversary of the Turkish conquest of Istanbul [Constantinople], demanding that the site be turned back into a mosque. 

Men and women from across the country gathered before the Hagia Sophia museum early May 31, as part of an event organized by the Anatolian Youth Association (AGD) with the motto �Break the chains, Open Hagia Sophia,� and prayed the morning prayer with a call for the reconversion of the museum into a mosque.

In fact, this is an annual ritual.  Thousands of Turks surround Hagia Sophia every May and call for it to become a mosque�often to Islam�s war-cry, �Allahu Akbar!�

This is not about a �minority of radicals.�  In a survey conducted with 401 Turks, more than 97 percent wanted Hagia Sophia to be turned into a functioning mosque.   Nor is this about Muslims needing a place to pray.  As of 2010, there were 3,000 active mosques in Istanbul alone.

Rather, this is about Muslims wanting to revel in the glory days of Islamic jihad and conquest.

Unlike historically-challenged Westerners, Muslims fully understand the significance of Hagia Sophia.  Hagia Sophia�Greek for �Holy Wisdom��was, in fact, Christendom�s greatest cathedral for almost one thousand years.  Built in Constantinople, the heart of the ancient Christian empire, it was also a stalwart symbol of defiance against an ever encroaching Islam from the east.

After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts, Constantinople was finally sacked by the Turks under Sultan Mehmet II on May 29, 1453.  Its crosses desecrated and icons defaced, Hagia Sophia�as well as thousands of other churches�was converted into a victory mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph.

Reading the primary historic texts from the period is not unlike reading current headlines concerning Islamic State atrocities�the massacres, beheadings, rapes, enslavement of Christian �infidels� and the defilement of their churches.  Writes an eyewitness to the 1453 Turkish conquest of Constantinople:

The enraged Turkish soldiers . . . gave no quarter. When they had massacred and there was no longer any resistance, they were intent on pillage and roamed through the town stealing, disrobing, pillaging, killing, raping, taking captive men, women, children, old men, young men, monks, priests, people of all sorts and conditions�  

There were virgins who awoke from troubled sleep to find those brigands standing over them with bloody hands and faces full of abject fury�  [The Turkish jihadis] dragged them, tore them, forced them, dishonored them, raped them at the cross-roads and made them submit to the most terrible outrages� 

Tender children were brutally snatched from their mothers� breasts and girls were pitilessly given up to strange and horrible unions, and a thousand other terrible things happened. . . 

Temples [including Hagia Sophia] were desecrated, ransacked and pillaged . . . sacred objects were scornfully flung aside, the holy icons and the holy vessels were desecrated�.  Immense numbers of sacred and profane books were flung on the fire or torn up and trampled under foot.

This is what Turkey�s Muslims are proud of.  Salih Turhan, head of the Anatolian Youth Association, the group that annually organizes mass demonstrations around Hagia Sophia, boasts that, �As the grandchildren of Mehmet the Conqueror, seeking the re-opening Hagia Sophia as a mosque is our legitimate right.�

Turks know full well that Mehmet was the scourge of European Christendom; that his hordes seized and ravished Constantinople, forcibly turning it into Islamic Istanbul; that he had the fallen corpse of the Christian emperor, Constantine, who refused to forsake his besieged city, beheaded, mutilated, and mocked. Openly idolizing Mehmet and other sultans, as many Turks do, is tantamount to their saying, �We are proud of our ancestors who slaughtered, beheaded, enslaved and raped people and stole their lands simply because they were Christian �infidels.��

More contemporarily, it�s tantamount to their saying �We are proud of our fellow Sunni Muslims of the Islamic State�who are currently slaughtering, beheading, enslaving, and raping people simply because they are Christian �infidels.�

Such pride in Islamic atrocities goes all the way to the top in Turkey, to President Erdogan, who claims that the jihadi conquest of Constantinople was the true �time of enlightenment.�

Still, none of this stops Turks from claiming victim status.  The Anatolian Youth Association still manages to blame the West: �Keeping Hagia Sophia Mosque closed is an insult to our mostly Muslim population of 75 million. It symbolizes our ill-treatment by the West.�

So keeping a historically Christian/Western building�that was stolen by bloody jihad�as a museum is seen as �ill-treatment by the West.�

Similarly, last April, after Pope Francis accurately referred to the mass slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as �the first genocide of the 20th century,� Ankara�s highest Islamic authority responded by saying that the Pope�s remarks �will only accelerate the process for Hagia Sophia to be re-opened for [Muslim] worship.�

Such is the Islamic world�s double standards: when Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories, such as Constantinople and its churches�through fire and steel, with all the attendant human suffering and misery�the descendants of those conquered are not to expect any apologies or concessions�not even a building.

However, once the same Muslims who would never concede an inch of Islam�s conquests are on the short end of the stick�Palestinians vis-�-vis Israel, for example�then they resort to the United Nations and the court of public opinion, demanding �justice,� �restitution,� �human rights,� and so forth.

It�s a testimony to the blindness and historic ignorance of the West that more people are not onto this old Muslim game yet.

The Last Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia � Constantinople

"They entered the Holy Church with reverence, making the sign of the cross. Father Lefteris said, quietly, with great emotion: 'I enter into your house; I worship towards your Holy Church in fear�'

"He quickly moved towards the Holy Sanctuary, where the Holy Table would have been. He found a small table and placed it within the Sanctuary. He had everything in a small bag; he took everything out, he put on his vestments and began:

�'Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, and to the ages of ages'.

�'Amen', replied the Major Liaromatis. The Divine Liturgy had begun in Hagia Sophia, for the first time since the 29 May 1453."

The Last Divine Liturgy in St. Sophia � Constantinople

Londinoupolis via OCP Media � May 29, 2015

Many, even Orthodox, even Greeks, believe that the last Divine Liturgy in St. Sophia, in Constantinople, was celebrated on the 29 May 1453. However, the last Liturgy took place in 1919. The priest who celebrated the Divine Liturgy was Fr. Lefteris Noufarakis, who was from Alones Rethymnou, Crete. He was an army priest in the Second Greek Army Division, one of the two army divisions which was part of the allied expeditionary body in Ukraine. This Army Division went to Ukraine via Constantinople, which then was under �allied sovereignty�, after the end of WW I.

A group of Greek Officers, led by the priest, General Frantzis, Major Liaromati, Captain Stamatiou and Lieutenant Nikolaou were observing the City and Hagia Sophia, keeping to themselves their secret, i.e. to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in St. Sophia � a decision taken primarily by the priest. The difficulty of this endeavour was the fact that during that period St. Sophia was a mosque, creating therefore some major issues. This could have created a diplomatic incident between Greece and Turkey. However, Fr. Lefteris had decided that he was going to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in St. Sophia, whatever difficulty came his way.

� If you do not come, I will go alone! I just need a chanter. You, Konstantine (Liaromati), will you be my chanter?

-Ok Father, he replied. He had agreed to go with him.

The other officers followed too. They all boarded a small boat, with a Greek rower from Constantinople. Kosmas, the local boater, took them through a shortcut to Hagia Sophia. The doors were open. The Turkish guard was about to stop them, but General Fratzis gave him an angry look, which left the guard speechless. They all entered the Holy Church with reverence, making the sign of the cross. Father Lefteris said, quietly, with great emotion: �I enter into your house; I worship towards your Holy Church in fear��

He quickly moved towards the Holy Sanctuary, where the Holy Table would have been. He found a small table and placed it within the Sanctuary. He had everything in a small bag; he took everything out, he put on his vestments and began:

�Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, and to the ages of ages�.

�Amen�, replied the Major Liaromatis. The Divine Liturgy had begun in Hagia Sophia, for the first time since the 29 May 1453. All of them wished one thing that they could finish the Divine Liturgy, without being interrupted. Everything had happened so quickly, they could not believe what was happening.

In the meantime the church was filling up with Turks; however, they remained silent, probably not understanding or not being able to believe what was actually happening. It was, in many respects, an unimaginable reality. During this time more and more people. Among them were also Greeks who lived in Constantinople, who happened to come to Hagia Sophia by chance. They were surprised and extremely moved by what was happening. During the Anaphora, all the Greeks bowed, listening to the chanter chant: �We praise you, we bless you, we give thanks to you, O Lord, and we pray to you, our God�. The time then came, where all of the Greeks went and received Holy Communion, after 466 years. After the Holy Communion they quickly finished the Liturgy. Fr. Lefteris told Lieutenant Nikolaou �quickly gather everything and place them in the bag�.

The Divine Liturgy is finished. However, by the end of the Liturgy the church was packed with Turks, who began to get aggressive, understanding what just happened. Their lives were in danger. However, they do not hesitate. They joined together and walked out. The mob is ready to hit them. At that point a Turkish Officer told them to let them come through. He was also angry, but he understood that he had to let them go, for political reasons. It would have not looked good for Turkey to have killed five Greek officers in Hagia Sophia. Let us not forget that there were two Greek Divisions near the City, and Constantinople was under foreign occupation, under the winners of WWI. The Greek officers made it to the boat. However, a �giant� Turk followed them, he grabbed a large wooden branch and tried to hit the priest, understanding that it was him who initiated this event.

The priest crouched down, but the wood hit his shoulder. Major Liaromatis and Captain Stamatiou achieved to take the wood from the Turk, who was ready to hit the priest again. They eventually achieved to reach the Greek War Ship. However, this event did create a diplomatic incident, with the allies complaining to the Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, who eventually had to reprimand Fr. Lefteri. Nevertheless, he contacted him privately and congratulated him, for realising in Hagia Sophia the dream all Greeks have.

The unfortunate fact about this real story is the fact that not many people know about it. Even in his home town they are ignorant about it. However, he is the only one, who after 1453, gave life to Hagia Sophia, reminded it of its past glory, and showed its true colours. We, now, can only hope that in the near future, the Turkish Government will see the significance this Church has for the Christian world, and might allow for it to become a Church again. Maybe this is an ideal thought and wish. However, it cannot and should not return to its previous status, i.e. to become a mosque, as many Turks now wish to see it[1].

[1] For a more elaborate version, in Greek, please look at: Sp??d??�ata, ?e???? 11, ??s?a 2004, pp. 58-62

Source:

Thousands call for Hagia Sophia (Church) to be converted into mosque in Istanbul rally (VIDEO)

Pressure continues to build for converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque in rapidly re-Islamizing Turkey.

Related:

• Qur'an read inside Hagia Sophia for the first time in 85 years
• Muslim Prayers at Hagia Sophia: A Sign Calling Us to Repent
• More posts on 'Hagia Sophia'...

via Jihad Watch � May 25, 2015

Thousands call for Hagia Sophia (Church) to be converted into mosque in Istanbul rally

Well, they say hundreds: www.hurriyetdailynews.com

Hundreds of people demanded that the historic Istanbul Hagia Sophia museum be converted into a mosque during a rally in Istanbul on May 24.

People gathered outside Istanbul�s Hagia Sophia, in the historical Sultanahmet district, with some carrying signs that read: �Hagia Sophia needs to be reopened as a mosque,� and �Let our lives be sacrificed for Islam.�

The protest was led by many Turkish nongovernmental organizations, including the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH).

Designed as a Christian basilica in the sixth century by Anthemios of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, Hagia Sophia is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.


Hagia Sophia remained a center of Orthodox Christianity until 1453, when the city was conquered by Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mehmed II, known as the Conqueror of Istanbul. After 916 years of service as a church, he ordered Hagia Sophia to become a �victory mosque,� symbolizing the Muslim conquest. The mosaics of the church were covered with plaster and were successfully restored in the 20th century.

Hagia Sophia was used as a mosque for 482 years. Following the Ottoman Empire�s collapse, it was converted into a museum by republican officials in 1935.

I'd say 10s of thousands looking at the video:

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.

Armenian Muslims Living in Turkey are Returning to Christianity

�Descendants of the Armenians who were forcibly converted to the faith of Prophet Muhammad have started realizing the significance of their nation�s history, and now they are returning by the dozens to their ancestral faith in Christ the Savior.�

Pravoslavie � May 21, 2015

(Istanbul, May 19, 2015)   

Armenians living in Turkey � descendants of the Christians who embraced Islam � are returning to the faith of their fathers in great numbers, reports the Linga news portal.

According to the famous Agos Armenian weekly newspaper published in Istanbul, the cases of conversion of Armenian Muslims to Christianity, which are becoming more frequent, indicate that they (Armenians) have preserved their ancestors� faith deep in their memory.

Specifically, it has been reported that on Saturday, May 9, clergy of the Turkish Church of St. Stephen baptized twelve Dersim Armenians. The latter, having learned about their true origin, accepted the Gospel message at once. Also most of the newly-baptized who joined the Armenian Church have decided to bless their family life by the sacrament of a Church wedding.

In the experts� view, this event is just one example of a large number of conversions of Turkish Armenians� descendants from Islam to Christianity: thus, Dr. Georgette Avakian in her interview with the portal noted that �descendants of the Armenians who were forcibly converted to the faith of Prophet Muhammad have started realizing the significance of their nation�s history, and now they are returning by the dozens to their ancestral faith in Christ the Savior�.

�There are many such examples. One case of particular resonance recently took place in Jerusalem, when a group of Turkish Muslims of Armenian origin came to the Holy Land in order to be baptized there in the Metropolis of the Armenian Apostolic Church. And that they fearlessly announced this in public is already extremely significant,� Avakian said in conclusion.

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:

Turkey offers to allow restoration of Halki Seminary in exchange for opening a Mosque in Thessaloniki

The Turkish Muslims are holding the shuttered Halki Seminary hostage in order to extort Greece to capitulate and enable the building of mosques in Athens and Thessaloniki. Allowing any mosques in either city would set a dire precedent, and would only bring strife, crime and open jihad to the already struggling Hellenic state.

For background on Turkey's efforts to establish a beachhead mosque in Greece, see Greek Parliament Surrenders to Islam, Orthodox Bishop and Citizens oppose mosque in Athens, as well as my posts here, here and here. 

For more on the historic Halki Seminary, see here, here and here.

The Greek Orthodox were conquered and enslaved by Muslims once already. Let's hope and pray they hold firm against this form of stealth jihad. For resources on resisting mosque expansions, see my post, Challenging Mosques: Tools for Education and Legal Resistance.

Turkey offers to allow restoration of Halki Seminary in exchange for opening a Mosque in Thessaloniki
Pravoslavie � May 12, 2015

(Ankara, May 11, 2015) The Orthodox seminary on the island of Halki (Turkey) may be restored in exchange for opening of a mosque in Thessaloniki, Greece. This condition was laid down by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

According to Blagovest-info, this information was spread by the H�rriyet Turkish newspaper with the reference to editor-in-chief of one history journal who had discussed the matter with Erdogan in person. The Turkish President said that he was ready to give his consent on reopening of the Orthodox seminary on Halki; however, he added, Greece was not intending to open mosques on its territory at all. Later Metin Kulunk, Member of the Erdogan�s Justice and Development Party, specified that the President meant the Fethiye Cami Mosque in Athens, and not a mosque in Thessaloniki.

Closure in 1971 of the Orthodox seminary on Halki (one of the Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmara near the coast of Istanbul) deprived the clergy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople of most of the theological preparation in Turkey. Lack of an Orthodox theological school on the territory of Turkey is worsening the position of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in general: according to the Turkish laws, only citizens of Turkey have a right to hold top posts in the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and now they can obtain a theological education only abroad.

The seminary on Halki was founded in 1844 by the Ecumenical Patriarch German IV. For the period between 1844 and 1971 the theological school issued 930 certificates of degrees. Although the majority of its students were members of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, there were also Orthodox Christians from other countries among them, as well as Catholics and Protestants who attended postgraduate courses.

In 1964 the authorities prohibited acceptance of foreign students to the seminary, and in 1971 the theological school was closed completely.

Turkey Renovates Byzantine Church Into Mosque

A 900-year-old Christian church in Turkey is to be renovated into a functioning mosque�despite former governmental assurances that it would likely be renovated into a museum.

Update on this story. which gives some historical background.

Related:

• Qur'an read inside Hagia Sophia for the first time in 85 years
• Ninth Hagia Sophia Church converted into mosque in Turkey
• Muslim Prayers at Hagia Sophia: A Sign Calling Us to Repent
• More posts on 'Hagia Sophia'...

by Raymond Ibrahim � May 11, 2015

Foundations General Director Adnan Ertem argues that the building was a �sanctuary that was consecrated as a mosque�.  It is a foundation that can be put into service in line with its foundational charter. Thus its function will be preserved.�

Enez�s Hagia Sophia, the name of the ancient church, is located inside the city of Ainos, along the border with Greece and stationed atop a hill, visible to all.

Another several-hundred-year-old church, Hagia Sophia in Trabzon along the Black Sea, although a museum for many years, was reopened in July 2013 as a mosque.

For many Muslims, the ultimate Islamic triumph will come when the primary Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (Constantinople), which is currently a museum, is transformed into a mosque�as Turkish leaders recently threatened when Pope Francis acknowledged the Armenian Genocide.