In Wake of ISIS Horror, Egyptian Christians Consecrate First-Ever Church in Sinai

"The Church in Egypt has been strengthened by the murder of our brothers in Libya." Such was the reaction by Coptic Catholic Bishop Youssef Aboul-Kheir of Sohag to the beheading of 21 Orthodox Coptic men in Libya by ISIS.

The guest workers in Libya "suffered a holy death with prayers on their lips. They went to their deaths just like the early Christians,” the bishop said in an interview with Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need.

www.zenit.org/…/in-wake-of-isis…

LikeShare

Leonard Wessell

Feb 22, 2015

I am leaving the subject matter, but cannot resist the temptation. Hitler reduced unemployment in the 1930s effectively using Keynesian methods of gov. employment, injection of massive amount of "invented" money (i.e., augmenting high gov. debt) and stimulating demand. For Keynsians digging and filling holes iseconomic "work". Stimulated work, not productive work is the key to demand-side economics. Well, Hitler's happy workers did not dig holes, rather they produced weapons of war which are non-consume goods just like holes in the ground. By 1939 Germany could no longer sell its bonds on the open market; and Hitler was faced with the fate of all pump-priming, i.e., inflation. I contend (and I am not alone) that Hitler was in part driven to war in 1939 (he originally wanted 1943) because of the inflation bind. What Hitler did was to balance the German budget by conquering other lands and robbing them of their wealth. (Today we do it in "democracy" by indebting future generations for our current consuption--in Americal about $18 trillion as of now for the future.) In economic theory, it all the same, a hole in the ground or a weapon of FDR's work programs. Indeed, the German population lived for much of the war far better than that of the USA and the miitary was paid notably more than the Americans---and without deficits, i.e., so long as others were forced to pay for German wealth consumption (often as slave labor--even Jews in Auschitz had to work before annihilation).

Pardon my lecture on economics, but I did touch upon the relationship between the so-called reduction of poverty and the motivation for radicalization. I just had to get it off my chest.

Leonard Wessell

Feb 21, 2015

Pardon my aging eyes. When seeking to debunk Obama's poverty thesis as to violent acts being just the "hijacking", viz., falsification of "true" Islam, I compared the radicalization of Germans under Nazi leadership in the 1930s. I mentioned the 6+ million unemployed in 1933 and forgot to note the exact reduction of unemployment realized b National Socialism (which has striking morophological analogies to FDR's New Dealism, i.e., managerial society, explaind by James Burnham in 1942 in his famous The Managerial Revolution). Under the managerial society of Hitler, the unemployment went from 6+ million to ca. 300,000 in the year 1939 (ca. 95% reduction of unemployment), the year a specific fanatical "-ism", leading a population not desirous of war, though greatly nazified, into the greatest world war of all times. The point, once again, is that the problem with Islam or, more accurately, of some Islamists is the religion of Islam itself which can be shown (as the Islamic State has done with scripture and haddiths, etc.) to justify, no, demand acts of subjugation of non-believers to Allah. The morphemic root of -slam- means basically in Arabic "subjugation/submission". Islam is neither a religion of peace nor of war, rather a religion of "supremacy", war and/or peace being derivative values to "supremacy". To deny true religiosity to acts carried out explicitly in the name of Allah that realize Allah's subjugating supremacy over others, particular of another belief, is to strip Christians (for that matter, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc) of their religious identity. That means that those Coptic Christians cannot be martyrs, just vitims of thugish violence due to lack of social justic. No islamic act of terror infliction is allowed, so much has the West fallen into dhemitude.

One more comment from Leonard Wessell

Leonard Wessell

Feb 21, 2015

I truly believe the report, making me both sad because of and yet proud of the "martyrs". But can I support cognitively my solidarity here because the Pres. of the USA, Obama denies categorically that Islam can do such things, claiming that the victims are just citizens of Egypt, that even Osama bin Laden is NO Muslim, just a killer who falsely perverts the islamic religion, that the Islamic State is NOT islamic, in short, that religion per se cannot and does not do violent acts (except of course, the Crusaders and the Inquisition [without distinguishing between the Roman or Spanish inquisitions nor noting the context of such insitutions]). The former Mayor of New York, Rudy Guilani is willling to accept (tentatively) the thesis that the Crusaders were barbaric if one, i.e., Obama accepts that islamic Jihadists were at the time equally so (never mentioned once by Obama). I add that Obama has criticized Christianity for slavery (lasted about 300 yrs. and was economically motivated) and did not ever mentioned the 1400 year history of slavery in Islam, still ongoing in parts of Islamland. Dr. Peter Hammond has detailed the difference in his Slavery, Terrorism and Islam. The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat, 2010.)

What is the point of my extended comment? The Christians can only be martyrs, not just unfortunate victims of the brutal force by thug-like people, if and only if their religion plays a role in the motivation of those who sacrifice them (and within islamic theology, such kiling is a sort of "sacrifice" of submission and subjugation to Allah). Take away the religious factor, specifically the function of Islam in the motivation of the executioners, then the event must be seen purely as an unfortunate and terrible act of violence, maybe even "terroristic", but NOT religious, particularly in terms of some form of Islam, if Islam per se, not to speak of religion per se (with the exception, of course, of Christians) cannot act lethally out of religious motivation. The proof of Obama's thesis lies in his recent conference on violence and the suggested remedy to acts by non-islamic Islamists.

The cure is to give these poor people jobs (as if the multimillionaire bin Laden were poor). David Goldman, an economist and Modern Jewsish thinker noted in a recent article that in 1933 there were over 6 million unemployed Germans and in 1939 (when that National Socialist began WW II). In other words, Germans were radicalized by a small group of leaders (the Nazi brass) in correlation to augmentation of jobs and as poverty declined. The Obama cure-thesis rests upon a vulgar materialism (one that denies human religiosity, for good and bad) and is refuted by the facts.

Aside: Since the beginning of his presidency, Obama has defended Islam, be it of the Imams of Iran or the the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Even in the case of a clearly lethal Islam such as the Islamic State or clearly islamic killers such as bin Laden, Obama denies that "true" Islam plays in role in such horrible thngs (and Muslim can do some wonderful thngs, I live in a semi-Muslim neighborhood).

Obama is not alone in the "materialistic" thesis. The theme is beginning to occur in the "left" press and in many countries. The modern secularized world will strip us of our suffering as religious, making us victims of the lack of social (job) justice or blaming Christian violence of the past or European colonialism--the only time when Islam has not be jidhadist expansionistic. I am suggesting, and no more at this point, that Christians are slowly being denied recognition of their religiosity as a source for violence against Christians. It is not our world any more.