UK Authorities Crackdown on Free Speech in the Wake of Woolwich

Now, finally, the British authorities are determined to do something serious and decisive in relation to the Woolwich beheading.

They have warned, charged, arrested and released on bail several people for making inflammatory and anti-Muslim comments on Twitter and Facebook. Police say people should be careful about what they write on Twitter as the 'consequences could be serious'.

Now you're talking! Our authorities are not cowered into submission by a bunch of extremist, radical, dangerous and murderous Islamists, sorry, Islamophobes!

Two of the men arrested were trying to organise an anti-Muslim protest in Bristol and made racist and “anti-religious” remarks.

I like that "anti-religious". Would they have been arrested for insulting Christianity?

The two Bristol men were held under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred.

In the meantime, militant Muslims like Anjem Chourdary, who mentored and inspired Woolwich beheader Michael Adebolajo, are living free and on £25,000 a year of tax-payer-funded state benefits.

How the Media Solve a Problem Like the Woolwich Attack

The English vocabulary will soon be depleted of words, if everybody starts speaking like the mainstream media. In connection with the Woolwich killing, the media talked about "religious centres", not "mosques", a now obsolete word. Other archaic, disused terms are "Islam" and "Muslim": we just say "man", "woman" and as useful data we add their age.

A news flash on BBC Radio 5 Live delivered the information that, basically, a man had been killed in Woolwich by two men, and there were another man and a woman, both 29, involved. Of course it is that magic age, 29, that makes all the difference. There are plenty of men and women aged 29 who go around slaughtering and slaying, but thankfully none aged 28 or 30. How could anyone listening to that news flash be enlightened on the nature of the act by this kind of very general, non-specific "information"?

A TV news reporter, in a desperate attempt to exculpate Islam, said that there have been more Muslims than non-Muslims killed by Muslim attacks.

What does that mean? The first victims of Islam are Muslims themselves, that seems pretty obvious to me. The simplest way to realize that is to look at the Muslim-majority countries of the world and see in what terrible state they are. But this does not exonerate the doctrine of Islam and its violent nature.

The media commentaries seem to attach a lot of importance to finding out whether this was a "lone wolf" attack or had an organization behind it, the assumption probably being that lone wolves should provoke less concern, causing only a one-off incident.

If that is the assumption, it's far from correct. If we have not had another 7/7 in London and generally the UK, it is because a vast amount of money and resources from our cash-strapped government has had to be allocated to the police and intelligence services' task of keeping an eye on the "Muslim community".

When an attack is planned, it is easier for the security services to discover the plan and foil it. Yesterday's murder, on the surface, looks like it might have been one without much planning or organization: these killings will be practically impossible to be prevented, as the police said.

Therefore, some other Muslim "lone wolf" who has observed the success of this murder and the impossibility of thwarting it may be encouraged to repeat the enterprise. It is likely that we will see many more of these attacks, since the plots by organized groups are more vulnerable to preventative actions by security services.

This is also the prediction of radical Muslim Anjem Choudary, who led the ominous-sounding group Islam4UK, in its own words "working for the establishment of the Shariah - to make it dominate all other ways of life." The group is now banned, but not on YouTube.

Choudary prophesied: "We are a very politicised community. Some people are angered by draconian measures such as 'stop and search' and restrictions on free speech. There is a chance of more lone wolf attacks happening again due to these draconian measures".

A TV commentator said that the killer we saw on a video speaking to the camera is British and has an obvious London accent, but still feels closer to places, like Afghanistan and Iraq, that he's probably never even visited.

But shouldn't that ring an alarm bell? Oughtn't that to be an indication that place of birth and accent are irrelevant in this context? Of course he feels loyal to his "brothers" in Muslim countries. The nation-state is a European invention that followed the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. For Islam the nation is the Ummah, all the world's Muslims. This man does not feel British, he feels Muslim - and many other Muslims living in the UK will feel the same allegiance to the "Nation of Islam", as in the name of a black racist and Islamic supremacist organization in the USA.

The pathetic utterances about searches for "motives" behind the murder are also ridiculous. There is nothing to search: the jihadist on the video shown by TV stations the world over makes it very clear.

In the fuller version of the video published by Jihad Watch, at the beginning he mentions Surat at-Tawba, the ninth sura (chapter) of the Qur'an, which contains exhortations to kill infidels. He says:

The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers. And this British soldier is one. It is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. By Allah, we swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. So what if we want to live by the Shari'a in Muslim lands? Why does that mean you must follow us and chase us and call us extremists and kill us? Rather you lot are extreme. You are the ones that when you drop a bomb you think it hits one person? Or rather your bomb wipes out a whole family? This is the reality. By Allah if I saw your mother today with a buggy I would help her up the stairs. This is my nature. But we are forced by the Qur'an, in Sura At-Tawba, through many ayah in the Qu'ran, we must fight them as they fight us.

He also said that he wanted to "start a war in London tonight".

Could this be any clearer?

The only problem is that this is precisely the part that the mainstream media have cut out: it's not so much a search for motives that is needed, as refraining from covering them up.

It would appear that the jihadists were tired of media lies and wanted the public to know why they committed this atrocious beheading, in this day and age a quintessentially Islamic way of killing. The media won again, by depriving them (and more importantly us) of the benefit of telling (and hearing) the truth.

What a strange coincidence, having omitted just that highly explanatory bit!

The parents of at least one of the two perpetrators came from Nigeria, another interesting country where Muslims slaughter Christians like there's no tomorrow. Nigeria is in fact one of the worst countries in the world in this respect, called by International Christian Concern The deadliest place to be a Christian.

The Christianity Today blog has this information:

Nearly 1,000 Nigerian Christians were killed in 2012, and more than 100 have died in the first few months of 2013, according to Jubilee Campaign. Executive director Ann Buwalda says this accounts for “almost 70 percent of Christians killed globally” last year, making Nigeria “the most lethal country for Christians by a huge margin.”

But, in the West, who cares? And, further, who is informed by the media? After we've been ignoring what Nigerian Muslims do to people in their country, now they are carrying out the same job here. Will we still ignore it?

Another thing that may make you laugh or cry, depending on your temperament, is the recommendation not to wear uniform in public given by commanders to troops, which has led the soldiers to the opposite behaviour of posting pictures of themselves in uniform on social media.

What next? Clergy advised not to wear cassocks and dog collars? Oh that's already happened, after a number of Muslim attacks on priests in East London some years ago.

We have made so many concessions to Islam that one more or less doesn't make much difference. What's a uniform between friends?

This kind of advice is akin to trying to cure pneumonia with paracetamol. The real treatment would be a bit more radical (from "radix", the Latin word for "root"), going to the root of the problem, addressing the disease rather than the symptom: if there were no Muslims in Britain, there would hardly be any terror attacks.

British People No Longer Fooled by Appeasers of Islamic Supremacists

Paul Weston, the Chairman of Liberty GB, the UK's newly-formed counterjihad, truly conservative party, has this interesting article on the party's site commenting on the reactions by PM David Cameron, London Mayor Boris Johnson and assorted mainstream media voices to the Woolwich murder.

I agree with everything he says, except his mention of one perpetrator's Nigerian nationality as a lack of motive for opposing in such a violent manner the UK's military presence in a country which is not his, Afghanistan. For Muslims, European-invented nation-states don't mean as much as the Ummah, the "Nation of Islam", all Muslims of the world.

But he is good. Come and see him, Dr George Whale and Matthew Roberts, speaking at the first-ever public meeting of Liberty GB Saturday 25 May 6.30pm in Croydon (details here).

Here is Paul Weston's great article, "British Elites Wish Away Islamic Reality" (links in the original, emphases mine):

With the first jihadi murder of a British soldier on British soil, the nation awoke on Thursday morning to a new multicultural reality. Prime Minister David Cameron, notably absent from the political scene whilst thousands of young white girls were being raped and tortured by Muslim paedophiles, suddenly discovered his inner Churchill and stated the following:

"What happened yesterday in Woolwich has sickened us all. On our televisions last night and in our newspapers this morning we have all seen images that are deeply shocking. The people who did this were trying to divide us. They should know something like this will only bring us together and make us stronger ... this country will be absolutely resolute in its stand against violent extremism and terror. We will never give in to terror or terrorism.”

Mr Cameron seemed to sound very brave and statesmanlike, but by deliberately leaving out words such as Muslim, Islam or jihad, he rather negated his point about never giving in to terror or terrorism. He then went even further and made the following astonishing quote:

"This view is shared by every community in our country. This was not just an attack on Britain and the British way of life, it was a betrayal of Islam and the Muslim communities. There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act. Britain works with our international partners to make the world safe from terrorism. Terrorism that has taken more Muslim lives than any other religion. It is an utter perversion of the truth to pretend anything different."

London Mayor Boris Johnson also made his appeasing appearance when he claimed "it is completely wrong to blame this killing on Islam but also wrong to draw a link between this murder and British foreign policy." Sorry Boris, you are wrong on both counts. Islam is entirely to blame when it kills in the name of Islam, and if you are going to get involved in the invasion of Islamic countries it would be unduly optimistic if this did not upset home-grown British Muslims who make their loyalty to religion before country very plain indeed ...

But Cameron and Johnson know only too well they are reciting dhimmi appeasement. Robert Spencer at Jihadwatch duly lays out the verses from the Koran acted out by the Muslim murderers yesterday, including this quote from one of the murderers, which strangely was omitted by the mainstream media: "But we are forced by the Qur'an, in Sura At-Tawba, through many ayah in the Qu'ran, we must fight them as they fight us.”

The BBC weighed in with its usual 'apologist for Islam' propaganda. Their home affairs editor, one Dominic Casciani had this to say:

"The mindset of violent jihadists is influenced by many different factors – but one common factor among those who have been involved in acts of politically-motivated violence is the basic principle that they oppose a Western presence in the Islamic world.

"Sometimes when purely political Islamists refer to this presence, they mean cultural pollution – the arrival of influences that they don't particularly want to see. Think scantily-clad pop stars beamed around the world on satellite TV.

"But for jihadists, it really comes down to the presence of soldiers – and an entire framework of belief that sees those personnel, whatever role they have been given under international law, as the enemy of Islam. That argument is often backed up with graphic images online of the suffering of ordinary women and children."

Unfortunately for the BBC appeasement brigade, one of the two Muslim murderers was a Nigerian, and if memory serves me correctly I don't believe British forces are oppressing Nigerians in Nigeria at this moment in time. In point of fact, I believe Nigerian Muslims are extremely busy slaughtering Nigerian Christians, but we must not let such Islamic reality cloud the world-view of the left-liberal children within al-Beeb.

Some 'right-wing' newspapers, such as The Telegraph, allied themselves with Dave's appeasement policy. Their writer Jake Wallis Simons penned an odious column titled "Far-Right EDL Exploit Woolwich Terrorist Attack" which made no mention of the evil of Islam, preferring instead to dwell on the EDL presence in Woolwich, whose members "exist in a state of perpetual febrility, gunpowder waiting for a spark ... led by Tommy Robinson ... fighting the police in Woolwich".

Brave Jake switched off the comments section of course, because he knew his view was out of kilter with mainstream opinion. Another equally cowardly journalist, this time at The Spectator, also turned off the comments section linked to his article "Not In Our Name" which quoted any number of prominent Muslims tweeting their view that Islam had nothing to do with the murder.

One newspaper which did allow comments was the Daily Mail, which carried a story about the EDL presence in Woolwich, along with details of various anti-Islamic slogans sprayed on mosque doors and walls. The comments were interesting. The least popular, with minus 2,616 votes said: "EDL are scum! Violence only generates more violence." The top rated comment however, with 9,046 positive votes said: "Funny how the police managed to clamp down on the EDL immediately yet they took 30 minutes to get to the scene of the murder.”

The appeasing elites appear to be well out of line with popular opinion on this jihadist murder. But pretending it has nothing to do with Islam, whilst suggesting the EDL is just a bunch of opportunistic racist thugs, is clearly no longer being accepted as the truth by the British people. In other words, the left-liberal elites are in terrible trouble and know it.

In 2007 I wrote a two-part article called "Is European Civil War Inevitable by 2025" (see here and here in which I made the following point:

Somewhere between 2017 and 2030, during a period of heightened tension, Islamists in France, Holland or Britain will blow up one church, train or plane too many. Retaliation will begin and they, in turn will respond. So will the spiral begin. When the violence reaches a tipping point every person – be they moderate or extremist in their views – will be forced to take sides in this war. There will be no bystanders, and no civilians. Moderate Muslims will in all likelihood take the sides of the extremists. This war will resemble none of Europe's previous conflicts, with their standing armies massed along clearly delineated lines. In the coming conflagration, it will initially be civilians, armed not with tanks and machine guns, but with knives, bombs and terror, who will call out the dogs of war.

We are slowly getting closer to this inevitable point, no matter how much our quisling rulers strive to deny or wish away the logical consequences of their perverted, leftist, multicultural ideology.

We Are Not Safe in Broken-Borders UK

A very interesting article by Michael Copeland on the UK counterjihad party Liberty GB's website, on how allowing thousands and thousands of people from distant and alien cultures into Britain, many of whom are breaking the law even at the time of entry into the country, is leading us - or already has - to a situation where law is difficult to enforce due to the break of consensus on norms of behaviour.

This obviously follows yesterday's jihadist beheading of a British soldier in broad daylight on a high street of London.

It's got a clever title too, "The West Made Wild" (all emphases added):

Law and order, as we mostly assume, are achieved by legislation and law enforcement. It is not quite as simple as that, though. Observance of the law is not accomplished solely by those agencies: it is the product of consensus. We citizens are aware of the accepted norms and observe them by consensus for the sake of peaceful mutual coexistence. Most of our behaviour is governed by this understanding, by custom and practice, not by detailed knowledge of the law. It is this consensus, though, that has been destroyed – yes, not 'lost', but destroyed.

Governments in the West in recent years have encouraged and permitted the arrival of thousands and thousands and thousands of people from hugely different foreign cultures, including some cultures where carrying a weapon is normal. Some arrivals are of unknown criminal background, and most will, of course, be completely unfamiliar with our laws and customs. Quite a number speak no English. In addition considerable though unascertainable numbers of entrants have arrived unlawfully and are living 'under the radar'. By definition these are not law-abiding, nor are they citizens. As a result the consensus for observance of the law is eliminated. In effect governments in Europe have made the West into a sort of recreated Wild West. The level of law enforcement appropriate for the old consensus is not adequate for the new free-for-all.

We are less safe. Quality of life has been adversely affected. We know that. Perforce our response has been to adjust our behaviour to our own disadvantage, by reducing our expectations to a new lower standard. We do this and subconsciously adjust: the loss becomes normalised. Pensioners refrain from going out at night. Women are not safe on their own. Indigenous British refrain from setting foot in problem areas where they know they are likely to be assaulted. It is a loss of life quality.

When Enoch Powell made the speeches for which the Left have ever since continually vilified him the level of immigration giving him concern was 30,000. Later it grew. By 1978, when Mrs. Thatcher voiced her concern, it was half as much again and more. She said: "We must hold out the clear prospect of an end to immigration because at the moment it is about between 45,000 and 50,000 people coming in a year."

The clear prospect never came. The end never came. Instead, after Labour came to power in 1997 they sent immigration into overdrive. Powered behind the scenes by the EU, and quite possibly helped by petrodollars, this was Labour's social engineering for voter population replacement: the aim was to outnumber the Right and "rub their noses in diversity". The immigration figure for 2011 was 593,000. This is unsustainable. It is a surreal Mickey Mouse and the broomsticks.

This state of affairs has been inflicted on us, largely by the EU. We did not request it. We were never consulted. Our objections have not been heeded. The hideous irony is that we are paying for it, and paying dearly in numerous ways. We pay the government to govern and this is what we get. We pay into the EU but have no control over the unelected decision-drivers. We pay for these arrivals' welfare, housing, health, schooling, interpreters and social facilitators. We pay for bogus 'single mothers' who are, in fact, polygamous wives. We pay in the loss of whole neighbourhoods, whole towns even. We pay in crime. We pay police, expensive lawyers, judges, prisons, the whole apparatus. We are less safe, and, worse, we are bankrupt.

We need a halt to immigration. We need a referendum. There is more trouble ahead.

If We Don't Wake Up Now to the Dangers of Islam It May Become Too Late

A very good piece on the website of the new UK counterjihad party Liberty GB that should serve to make everybody think, Fanatical Minorities Control Peaceful Majorities.

Liberty GB says that its authorship is disputed and it has been around the internet for some time. Its website republishes it at this moment when what the article says rings a particularly true, tragic bell.

If we do not wake up in time, it may become too late:

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War II. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

"Very few people were true Nazis," he said, "but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."

We are told again and again by experts and talking heads that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder and execute honour killings. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the 'peaceful majority' is the silent majority, and it is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a war-mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across Southeast Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians – most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet. And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt; yet, for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because, like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians and many others, have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us, watching it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Jihadist Beheading of Woolwich Soldier in London, Shouting "Allahu Akbar"

After the beheading, one of the jihadists, with blood in his hands, holding a knife and a machete, talking to the camera, says: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", and swears by Allah: "We will never stop fighting you".

In the fuller version of the video at Jihad Watch, at the beginning he mentions Surat at-Tawba, the ninth sura (chapter) of the Qur'an, which contains exhortations to kill infidels.

I've summarized here the events as they developed and became known, from the BBC feed:

A witness claims two men in a car ran over another man walking along the street, then got out of the car and carried out an axe attack on him, killing him, the BBC's Matt Prodger reports.

It is claimed the victim was wearing a Help for Heroes charity T-shirt. He was a soldier, a young army cadet serving in the Woolwich Barracks, South-East London.

The police responded and then shot the two attackers in front of the public.

The two injured men were taken away from the scene, and London Ambulance Service says one is in a "serious" condition.

Police have removed a "substantial number of weapons" from the scene, including knives and at least one firearm.

One witness, identified only as James, said two men attacked another man, aged about 20, who was wearing a Help for Heroes T-shirt.

"These two guys were crazed. They were just animals. They dragged him from the pavement and dumped his body in the middle of the road and left his body there," he told LBC radio.

Another eyewitness wishing to remain anonymous said:

"I was walking my dog and heard some shouting about 50 yards from me. A man was running down the road and being chased by a car. The car then screeched to a halt and two men got out one had some kind of sword. They literally swung at the other guy's head. The armed police turned up and there were some shots. We were told to go home and now they won't let us out. We're in lockdown. There actually now seems more activity than there was before. I can hear helicopters and there are police officers with guns."

Witness Graham Wilders told the BBC he arrived on the scene to find a car crashed into a wall and a man on the ground.

"Two people were lying over him and I thought they were trying to resuscitate him," he said.

But Mr Wilders said he drove on to park his car, and when he returned another witness told him the two men were stabbing the man on the ground.

Senior Whitehall sources have told the BBC that the Woolwich attackers are thought to have tried to film their attack whilst shouting "Allahu Akbar" - God is Great, says political editor Nick Robinson.

The men were said to have been of Muslim appearance (surprise, surprise!).

The government is now treating this as a suspected terrorist attack, Mr Robinson says.

The Christian Genocide by Ottoman Muslims that Was Praised by Hitler

Interesting article on the website of Middle East and Islam scholar Raymond Ibrahim, written by Ralph H. Sidway, Orthodox Christian researcher and writer, author of the book Facing Islam: What the Ancient Church has to say about the Religion of Muhammad.

The piece is important because it examines, among other things, the Orthodox Church clergy's little-discussed role in the liberation of Greece from Ottoman rule, and because it may help to reduce the gap among the different Christian Churches and denominations that can be an obstacle to a unified Christian response to persecution and common enemies.

The article, alliteratively entitled Assassination Plot Points to Perilous Position of Patriarch, explores the history of the Christians of what is Turkey today under Muslim Ottoman rule and their dhimmi (subjugated) status, adding: "One aspect of the dhimma which is most terrifying is the concept of “collective punishment.” If one Christian violates the dhimma contract, Muslims may attack any or all Christians. The real world applications of this practice during the Ottoman era were severe indeed" (Emphasis mine).

This situation worsened over the ages since the Fall of Constantinople to the Muslim armies in 1453 through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The birth of nationalist and liberal (not in the current, politically-correct sense, mind you, but in the opposite, freedom-loving, classical-liberalism sense) movements throughout Europe in the 19th century resulted in the 1821 uprising against the Ottoman Empire by Greeks in Turkey and Constantinople, who suffered terrible slaughter.

Sidway, quoting from historical sources, focuses on the position of the Orthodox Church during the Ottoman rule, "a terrible one, and it is impossible to describe all the suffering, humiliation, and outright persecution the Church was obliged to undergo in this age, which was dark indeed... many [patriarchs] were put to torture… Churches were defiled, relics cut to pieces, and the Holy Gifts profaned. Christian pogroms became more and more frequent".

Ecumenical Patriarchs, other clergy and even monastics were killed under the Muslim Turks, suffering martyric deaths, and "paved the way towards freedom for the Greek people". Links are in the original article:

Recently a man was arrested in Turkey in connection with a plot to assassinate Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. The alleged plot was set up to slay the Patriarch on the 560th anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople on May 29. You can read a couple of articles covering different aspects of the story at Huffington Post and at Today’s Zaman (a Turkish news website).

What I would like to draw attention to, so as to provide some context for this story, is the very real threat to Ecumenical Patriarchate (and indeed to all Christian clergy) over the past several hundred years...

But the amazing contribution of the “higher clergy,” the bishops, is very important. Again we turn to John Sanidopoulos, who translates an historical summary by political scientist Konstandinos Holevas:

Blood-Stained Cassocks and 1821

Without the Orthodox clergy the great national campaign of 1821 would not have succeeded. Some propagandists of outdated ideologies deny the role of the Bishops and speak only of the “lower clergy”. They are wrong both in terms of terminology and in their historical perspective.

In the Orthodox Church the higher clergy are the Bishops, the Presbyters (priests) and the Deacons. To the lower clergy belong the Subdeacon and the Reader, who are laymen. The French Consul François Pouqueville writes that 100 Patriarchs and Bishops were killed during the Turkish Occupation and the Struggle [of 1821]. Before 1821 there were 80 movements made by Greeks, and most were led by Bishops. Remember that from 1680 to 1700 Eastern Central Greece was free after two Bishops revolted, Hierotheos of Thebes and Philotheos of Salona.

1821 is stained with the blood of Patriarch Gregory V and Patriarch Cyril VI, from Andrionople. Besides Bishop Germanos of Patras, who blessed the banner at Holy Lavra Monastery and in Patras, Isaiah of Salona declared Revolution in Fokida and was sacrificed in Alamana. The Patmian Patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilos Pagkostas, went to Patmos and raised the banner of revolution. From then he never returned to his throne.

Most Bishops of Peloponnesos were imprisoned by the Pasha of Tripoli from the beginning of March 1821, and only two were found alive when the Greeks entered after 6.5 months. Let us not forget this sacrifice of the shepherds.

In Cyprus, Archbishop Kyprianos had joined the Filiki Etairia (Society of Friends). The Turks were informed and on 9 July 1821 there was a great slaughter in Nicosia. Kyprianos together with all the Bishops and Archimandrites were killed together with the elders.

Many other Bishops played a significant role in the Struggle, such as Anthimos of Elos, Theodoritos of Vresthena, Joseph of Androusa, and Neophytos of Talantio (Livadeia). And in the Grand Exodus of Messolonghi, Bishop Joseph of Rogon, aid to Metropolitan Porphyrios of Arta, was sacrificed while blowing the windmill.

All who lived at that time were confessors: Bishops, priests, simple monastics, all proclaimed their “presence”. Our [Greek] Freedom is owed primarily to the Blood-stained Cassocks.

Eventually, the Serbs and Bulgarians threw off the Muslim yoke as well.[3] It was this series of humiliating defeats during the nineteenth century, and losses in the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth century, which enraged the Turkish Muslims, who turned on the weakest elements of their Christian population, precipitating their infamous genocide against the Christians of Armenia, Greece, Pontus, and Syria, massacring over 3.6 million men women and children (some dying from starvation, disease and the forced deportations) from 1894 to 1922. Sporadic persecutions against remaining Christians extended well into the 1950s, perhaps the worst example being the Istanbul Pogroms of 1955, which dealt a crushing blow to the Orthodox Christian community in Turkey. The Greek population of Turkey had already been reduced to about 120,000 in 1927 (following the main period of the Orthodox Christian Genocide); by 1978 it had collapsed to only 7,000. According to the Human Rights Watch, by 2006 there were only 2500 Greeks in Turkey.

Thus we see, from the very beginning of Muslim occupation of former Byzantine Christian lands, persecution of not merely lay Christians, but of all the clergy, including the Patriarchs, was standard practice for the Muslim Turks. Brutal and prolonged persecution, pressure and institutionalized discrimination has almost exterminated the Orthodox Christian population from what was once a flourishing Christian civilization. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Muslim Turks mercilessly targeted the weakest of the weak, setting an example that Hitler extolled in his plans for his Third Reich.

When it comes to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Turks do not by any stretch of the imagination have a “rabble rouser” on their hands. Recently, yes, His All Holiness has taken a vocal stand against converting the great Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque.[4] He has also been persistent in asking for the Turkish government to return the Halki Seminary to the Patriarchate and allow it to reopen. The seminary, closed by the Turks in 1971, was the only indigenous Orthodox seminary in Turkey. Orthodox clergy since then must pursue theological studies overseas, yet bishops must meet ridiculously stringent requirements of Turkish citizenship in order to serve at the Phanar, the seat of the Patriarchate. +Bartholomew has also stood valiantly against suggestions by the Turks that the title “Ecumenical” be removed from his office.

And that’s not all. The ancient thread of crude and dangerous persecution from the Ottoman days is strong as ever in modern, moderate Turkey. As journalist Nicholas Gage pointedly observed back in 2008:

The Ecumenical Patriarchate, which was established in the fourth century and once possessed holdings as vast as those of the Vatican, has been reduced to a small, besieged enclave in a decaying corner of Istanbul called the Phanar, or Lighthouse. Almost all of its property has been seized by successive Turkish governments, its schools have been closed and its prelates are taunted by extremists who demonstrate almost daily outside the Patriarchate, calling for its ouster from Turkey.

The ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew I, is often jeered and threatened when he ventures outside his walled enclave. He is periodically burned in effigy by Turkish chauvinists and Muslim fanatics. Government bureaucrats take pleasure in harassing him, summoning him to their offices to question and berate him about irrelevant issues, blocking his efforts to make repairs in the few buildings still under his control, and issuing veiled threats about what he says and does when he travels abroad.

In my book, Facing Islam, I express my concerns over some of His Holiness’ statements, notably in his book, Encountering the Mystery, where he writes of a “dialogue of loving truth” with Islam, and of Orthodoxy having for centuries “coexisted peacefully” with Islam, and where he also projects the chimera of an “interfaith commitment… still felt and lived by Greeks [and] Turks”[5] as an example for all to follow.

Elsewhere in his book, he goes even further, calling for the tearing down of “the wall of separation between East and West, between Muslims and Christians, between all religions of the world,” and writing warmly, “One who achieves the state of inner peace in relation to God is a true Muslim.”[6]

Such unfortunate effusions obscure the Truth of Christianity, giving the impression that +Bartholomew leans towards some sort of syncretic, relativistic creed, embracing the equal validity of all religions and especially of Islam and Christianity.

Yet we must understand such assurances in context, as being carefully crafted to pacify both the hostile government under whose thumb His All Holiness struggles to lead his flock, as well as the sea of easily agitated Muslims who surround the tiny island of Orthodoxy in Istanbul. No doubt +Bartholomew’s concern is to avert Muslim aggression not so much against himself, but against the dwindling Christian population of Turkey, which has endured nearly six centuries of relentless persecution and pressure from their Islamic masters. Sounding a falsely irenic tone is too often a sad necessity for those oppressed under Islamic rule.

While we may be heartened by the brave resolve and serene faith of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in the face of such overwhelming odds, if Muslim history is any indication, he may yet earn his heavenly crown in a far more abrupt fashion than his longsuffering, patient endurance of trials. May it not be so, and may God grant His All Holiness many years! And may we even see the conversion of Hagia Sophia back into a Christian church! [All emphases added]