More from the Religion of Peace via Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch. This time we see the deadly ministrations of the mouth-breathers of Boko Haram. I’m no shrink, but these guys clearly suffer from “Isis-envy”:
Nigeria: Islamic jihadists loot and vandalize Catholic parish
Remember: Christians in the West are not to speak of such things. To do so would harm the “dialogue”: “Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.” — Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, February 8, 2013.
“Boko Haram overruns Madagali, loots and vandalizes Catholic parish,” Vatican Radio, August 30, 2014:
The Diocese of Maiduguri covers the whole of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states in Northeast Nigeria. These three states are under Nigeria’s declared emergency rule for the region. Fr. Obasogie says that Madagali and Gwoza are now effectively under the brutal control of Boko Haram sects.
Christian Churches within Maiduguri Diocese have borne much of the brunt of the terrorist activities although some Moslems have also not been spared by Boko Haram extremists. According to Fr. Obasogie, all Christian churches on the major road linking Maiduguri and Adamawa state have been closed after several acts of terrorism at the hands of Boko Haram sects. St Timothy’s parish in Bama which has been attacked several times in the past has been abandoned and the parish priest, Fr. Timothy Cosmas was relocated to a different parish. Early this year, St. Peter’s parish in Pulka was brutally attacked by Boko Haram insurgents though fortunately, the parish priest, Fr. James John who seems to have been the main target, was not at the parish when the attack happened.
On 24 August, Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shakua, in a move that seems to mimic the Middle East terrorist group “Islamic State” declared a caliphate in Gwoza, North eastern Nigeria. [Again, they suffer from Isis-envy. And their Caliphate is clearly not as big as Isis’ Caliphate. They had better terrorize a little more to feel themselves bigger than they are.] The Islamic State formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) are a brutal Jihadist group that has declared a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq. They claim religious authority over all Moslems in the world. The militant group, Islamic State, is known for its chilling brutality and executions that seem to appeal to Boko Haram.
[…]
Read the rest there.
Loading ...
How long will we go on pretending that Islamic violence is an anomaly? This is a religion that was spread from the beginning by military conquest. It hasn’t changed.
Thank you for posting this. I read Jihad Watch regularly and am overwhelmed by the list of atrocities.
The world is in denial, or simply does not care that Catholics and other Christians are being slaughtered. We are, indeed, in the Age of the Martyrs.
I wish I could put my finger on it, but I can’t, I’ve had a nagging feeling of “Go to Mass!” as well as “Go To Confession!” in recent weeks. (And no, I don’t think it has too much to do with Fr. Z’s good advice of “Go to Confession”, it predates me commenting on this site.)
It’s like looking out at the horizon, and there’s dust being kicked up just beyond the horizon, whatever is kicking up that dust is getting closer, and you need to be ready for it.
Imagine: A little voice inside of you screaming to be heard over all the noise and clamor of life: Get right with Almighty God! But not using those words exactly, it’s “a feeling” not “a command”, that’s another way to describe the feeling. I wish I could describe it in more detail than that.
It feels like I need to be at another level of “seriousness” going forward in the future, and I’m actually acting like it (Attending a Latin Mass helps a lot.)
Imagine going through your day-to-day life, doing chores, etc. and then you drive by a Catholic Church, and you have an urge to park your car, go inside, kneel down, and spend a few minutes with the Blessed Sacrament, maybe recite a Psalm or two, or a recite a “Hail Mary”. And you do those thing just because you may never get another chance to do them ever again.
Again, I can’t put my finger on it, it’s just “a feeling”, but I wouldn’t be surprised if something big was on the horizon.
It is interesting to compare Robert Spencer’s quotation from Bishop McManus to this passage from James Delingpole’s 29 August Breitbart post, “Muslim Rape Gangs: The Disturbing Role of Britain’s Leading Child Welfare Charity”:
“Consider this statement by Barnardo’s then-Chief Executive Martin Narey in its 2011 report on child abuse Puppet On A String.
” ‘ From our experience, we know that in some areas ethnicity is a factor, but in many other areas it isn’t… If you focus on one model of sexual exploitation, children who are being exploited in different circumstances won’t see that it’s an issue for them as well. Young people who need support won’t come forward because they don’t fit the model that’s being presented.’
“He elaborated on this point at the time in various interviews with the BBC and the Guardian, in response to claims by former Home Secretary Jack Straw that some Pakistani men saw white girls as ‘easy meat.’ Narey said: ‘I certainly don’t think this is a Pakistani thing. My staff would say that there is an over-representation of people from minority ethnic groups – Afghans, people from Arabic nations – but it’s not just one nation.’
“No doubt these statements were technically accurate. But they also served to muddy the waters a) by distracting from the fact that the vast majority of these crimes were perpetrated by Pakistanis b) by misrepresenting the problem as an issue of ethnicity rather than of religion and c) by implying that attempts to pin these crimes on specific groups were in any case a red herring.”
It is also interesting to contrast the unwillingness of Bishop McManus to discuss “extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally” unfavorably with the apparent emphatic willingness of Dr. Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria, to do so, as reported by Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo in his 29 August Barnabas Fund editorial, “The Two Faces of Islam”.
I think it’s important to remember, in conversations about Islam and violence, that the jihadists are not especially “religious.”
As reported at First Things:
Bishop McManus’ statement is jaw-droppingly wrong! Surely as well as love there must be justice? And justice starts when we speak the truth clearly. How dreadful to minimise the atrocities carried out on innocent victims (all too often children) for the sake of not offending certain people!
Iacobus M says:
31 August 2014 at 1:05 pm
How long will we go on pretending that Islamic violence is an anomaly? This is a religion that was spread from the beginning by military conquest. It hasn’t changed.
I totally agree. An excellent place to start understanding Islam is Hilaire Belloc’s “The Great Heresies” in which one chapter is given over to this subject. Belloc was a military historian by trade as well as being a faithful Catholic. His background sheds an interesting light on all this. It is clear after reading the chapter that he believes Islam will not go away until it has finished conquering the world, and not through voluntary conversions! He says quite clearly that it is a religion of military might. I am sure his view would not go down well with Bishop McManus!
bj says:
31 August 2014 at 7:43 pm
I think it’s important to remember, in conversations about Islam and violence, that the jihadists are not especially “religious.”
bj, I think this misses the point, and certainly Belloc’s point. The root of the question and the problem is not how committed or devoted certain parties in Islam are, but what the basis of their religion is. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that rather like the Freemasons, there is a soft underbelly presented to us through the press regarding Islam, all sweetness and light, yet the underlying principles are the opposite of this. For knowledge and clarity I would take Belloc every time over the modern view.
A miracle saved this man!
(Story of Indian convert from Islam)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjUXd4qW9mg
I see” The Guardian” mentioned a couple of times. I think that it needs pointing out that “The Guardian” is as left-wing a newspaper as can be found. The BBC is also left-wing and, I must also point out that our national broadcaster (The Australian Broadcasting Corporation) is not your ABC…about which I know nothing at all. Our ABC is as left-wing as The Guardian and the BBC and they all delight in promoting anti-Catholicism. Their bias is plain for all to see and they are very good at ignoring what is happening to christians in Pakistan, for example. Asia Bibi, that Pakistani christian woman who was sentenced to death for reportedly blaspheming the Koran, is still in prison in Pakistan and it is reported (not by The Guardian or the BBC or our ABC) that she is to face a fifth trial in about another month. She has been held in prison for the last 5 years I understand, even though everyone who is not a muslim, knows that she is guilty of nothing at all.
Rachel K,
Thank you for the Belloc reference. Crone and Cook have a chapter interesting in this context in Hagarism (Cambridge UP, 1977) comparing the expansions of Islam and Calvinism.
Dr. Sookhdeo, in the editorial to which I referred, writes under the sub-heading ‘Many “Islams” ‘, “Even if these extreme forms were to cease to exist, the ideological underpinning that has produced movements such as these will continue so long as nations like Saudi Arabia, as well as countless individual Islamic clerics and Muslim leaders, continue to use a literalist interpretation of Islam’s source texts. This remains true whether or not Western governments recognise the theological basis of such movements.”
A large part of the problem, as Raymond Ibrahim has recently pointed out again, is that it is a sort of ‘liberalization of Islam’, rejecting various widespread agreements and restraints that have emerged historically, that now facilitates ‘radicals’ (which is not to say that traditional interpretations preclude militant expansionism, the conquered/prisoners of war as sex slaves, etc., etc.).
Dear Rachel K,
I’d think that other than Freemasonry, Islam does not even give the look of sweetness and light. It has the look of a a religion of fight not light, and in addition parts of the Koran are of a boringness and Philistine moralism you’d think impossible in the 7th century.
That said, as Michael O’Brien so interestingly observed about Hitler in his “Father Elijah”:
He looked like a wolf, spoke like a wolf, gave the impression of a wolf, his very nickname was “wolf” [addition by me], and in the end he was a wolf. Even so some at the time apparently did not see this.
’ He described wannabe jihadists as ‘bored, underemployed, overqualified and underwhelmed’ young men for whom ‘jihad is an egalitarian, equal-opportunity employer . . . thrilling, glorious and cool.’”:
bj, you seem to imply that jihad is merely a product of disaffected youth, somewhat like football hooliganism. If so, where are all the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist equivalents?
If something is enough to cause something, than that doesn’t mean that it will cause it of necessity – especially if the circumstances are different.
There certainly does seem a huge amount of disaffected youth in the jihadists.
As there certainly was a huge amount of disaffected intellectual youth in the communists; in fact, coming to think of it, the Red Army Faction does rather seem a Western equivalent. Interesting enough, Ulrike Meinhof had visited a Catholic school, Gudrun Ensslin was the daughter of a Protestant preacher, Andreas Baader (rather uniquely) had a classically criminal career; they had at least some connections to established Communist states (i. e. the GDR). Once they went abroad to take some military training. Where to? Palestine. No; I’m not making that up.
That said,
I can only take a person’s self-description to answer the question how religious she is. The jihadists say they are religious, nor is there any particular grounds for suspicion of hypocrisy. They are certainly rather willing to endure hardships for their belief and break bonds with their former life, which does mean “religiousness”, doesn’t it? They may be disaffected youth indeed, but who says that suchlike cannot be religious? In fact, religiousness, and yes also the True Religion, often and in itself legitimately have had a particular appeal to the poor (and disaffected) classes and recruited itself from amongst them.
I always suspect behind such assertions the Western thought “it is not religious or they would be more well-behaved”, but that’s a prejudice even with Christians (Luther was – heretical but – religious, and so was Caravaggio), and completely at odds with reality where faiths in general are concerned.
They’re religious; only their religion is false, and dangerous.
. . . where are all the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist equivalents?
Atheists, abetted by practitioners of perverted Western ideologies of “tolerance,” busy themselves for the nonce by diddling the legal system to stifle their opponents. Hindus of certain stripes periodically wreak havoc in India as they ever have. Buddhists don’t go there, and sufficiently fanatical Christian sects have mostly lacked either the numbers, the financing, or the utter disconnection from the Gospel that would be required to inflict truly headline-worthy damage.
All the same, it is Hell (literally) to lack the Eucharist and sanctifying grace, and young people who refuse — or are never given the chance — to satisfy their spiritual hunger with these gifts of Christ’s Church will not all be content to fill their spiritual void with the anodynes of 21st-century Western paganism. As history teaches us, in the perceived absence of satisfactory alternatives, any insidious and destructive message of sufficient shock value need not want for takers.