Orthodox Reflections

By Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America

There are many media influencers, Deep State officials, hawkish politicians, military officers, and business leaders who are all-in for the U.S. fighting a Round 2 against Iran. The same group endorses continuing support of the Israeli genocide campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza. “Stopping Iran from getting a nuke” and “changing a radical Islamic regime” are two of the biggest reasons given for why America needs to go to war with Iran. We are also hearing a lot about, “supporting our strongest ally Israel.” There is one other reason, however, that also crops up frequently when the Middle East is discussed. Many wanna-be crusaders will pontificate on the need to “confront Islam,” “contain Islam,” “roll back Islam,” or some such as if it is 1683 A.D. and the Ottomans are at the gates of Vienna.

Things have changed a bit since the 11th – 17th Centuries. Try to keep up. 

There are three main reasons why the idea of a “new crusade” is utter LARPer fantasy. First of all, the U.S. and the West are in bed with some of the worst Islamic regimes in the world. For example, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates are absolutist Islamic monarchies. Their monarchs’ devotion to Islam is the traditional source of their legitimacy to rule. These massively rich Arab kingdoms are heavily embedded in Western economies. In addition to buying influence with Western governments, they use their fabulous wealth to sponsor the building of mosques and the spreading of fundamentalist Islam around the world.

Why do so many Westerners believe that the ruling elite which sold them out will lead them in a fight to reclaim their own national heritages?

The U.S. is also allied with the ISIS-led Syrian government (busy slaughtering Christians and other minorities), the repressive Egyptian regime (persecuting Christians and stealing Christian holy sites), Somalia (severe Christian persecution), Azerbaijan (steeped in Armenian blood), Turkey (one of history’s greatest purveyors of Christian persecution and murder), and Malaysia (rising levels of Christian persecution). The U.S. is not “fighting Islam” or “waging a crusade” nor is it going to. The power elite running the West is perfectly content with current arrangements of working closely with Islamic regimes, even selling out wholesale to those with money, while importing massive numbers of troublesome Muslims into Western societies. Thus further weakening any sense of national self that would be a brake on globalist ambitions.

The leaders who could organize a ‘crusade’ won’t, because it would not be in their interests. Remember this next time pro-Zionist influencers try to appeal to the need to ‘fight Islam’ as a rational for genocide in Gaza, stealing land in the West Bank, or bombing innocent civilians elsewhere.

Second, fortunately for everyone, no such crusade is even necessary. There is no Muslim force against which to actually fight one. The Muslim world is fractured into multiple, antagonistic: ethnicities, religious sects, nation states, tribes, linguistic groups, and ideologies. Muslim regimes are almost universally corrupt: bought by Western money (Egypt, Syria, Azerbaijan), dependent on Western military protection (Saudi Arabia, Gulf Emirates, Jordan), and frequently governed by elites with heavy financial investments in the West. This is why Muslim nations either, at best, sat back and watched the West pick off Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Palestine, and Syria. Or, at worst, actively assisted in the destruction. Building an effective transnational Muslim alliance is harder than herding cats. It is not going to happen.

Of all the Muslim states, Iran has provided the most meaningful and effective resistance to joint Israeli / Western aggression. Even so, despite its large size and ballistic missile resources, Iran is incapable of actually moving an army any distance outside its borders to take and occupy real territory. There is no 21st Century Ottoman Empire capable of moving an Army of Islam to the heart of Europe, let alone to the continental United States. Even Pakistan, with nukes, is of little consequence in the wider world, though it does make India nervous.

Muslim militias, or an invaded Iran with an actual military, can be tough to crush on their home territory. See the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the continued Houthi resistance in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon as examples. Such forces, however, cannot stand up to real armies in pitched battles. They win the way guerillas always win, by outlasting an occupying force that has the option to simply go home when the pain gets too much. Without massive assistance from advanced nations, such as ISIS had in Syria, Muslim forces cannot seize, and effectively defend, large swaths of territory outside their home bases. Expecting a Muslim militia to occupy Paris or Amsterdam in 2025 is no different than having expected the IRA to occupy London in 1979.

Whenever modern Muslim armies, especially Arab ones, take to the field against Western militaries they lose. Badly. Over and over again. If you want a detailed analysis for why Arab armies are so hopeless, this is a good video on the subject.

The third reason a new crusade will not happen is that Islam is already dying. The West just needs to stop getting in the way of the process. The standard ‘scare’ narrative is that “Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion.” Muslim hordes are destined to swamp Europe, and possibly even parts of the U.S. These hordes of rapists and criminals are fanatical in their devotion to Muhammad, and will force the West to bend the knee to Sharia Law. Either we support murdering Palestinians and Iranians, or we are effectively surrendering our societies to religious lunatics.

But is that really the truth? Not hardly.

Recent research indicates that as many as 80% of all Muslim converts in the West will leave the Islamic faith. Muslim communities in the West, often financed by Gulf Countries, spend a lot of time and effort to get converts in the door. Immigration does swell their ranks, but to really take over, Islam has to become an option for native born Westerners. Unfortunately for the long-term success of “Dawah” (Muslim evangelism), Islam is such a horrible experience that very few of those “called to Islam” actually persist in the religion. Former converts often remark that, especially for women, all the rules, personal cruelty, racism, violence, and continuous community judgement are just exhausting.

It isn’t just converts leaving Islam, either. Additional research indicates that 24% of those born into the Muslim faith in the West no longer identify as Muslim. Keeping only 20% of new converts, while regularly losing 24% (possibly more) of your cradle Muslim population, is not a recipe for long-term societal transformation. In fact, before the latest round of uncontrolled immigration, Islam in the West was actually losing more people annually than it was gaining.

Nor is this trend away from Islam just in the West. Iran is often referred to as a Muslim Theocratic state. Shia Islam is very powerful at the governmental level. Among the Iranian population, not so much. In recent polls, only 32% of Iranians explicitly identified as Shia, while 5% identify as Sunni Muslim, and 3% Sufi Muslim. Another 9% say they are atheists, with 7% preferring to label themselves as “spiritual”. Surprisingly, 8%  of Iranians still identify as Zoroastrians (Persia’s ancient religion), and 1.5% claim to be Christian. The Christian percentage includes an estimated 1 million Iranians that have converted to various Christian denominations from Muslim backgrounds.

If you combine all self-identified Muslims in Iran, you get a number around 40% of the population, and dropping. An overwhelming majority of 90% of Iranians describe themselves as coming from practicing religious families. Yet 47% report losing their religion in their lifetime, and 6% said they have changed from one religious orientation to another. Younger people reported higher levels of irreligiosity and conversion to Christianity than older. Even among those who still identify as Muslim, actual practice of the religion is sporadic at best. Reports indicate a significant number of mosques in Iran have closed due to declining attendance, with estimates suggesting around 50,000 out of 75,000 Iranian mosques have already shut down. Iranian officials have called this trend “highly alarming.” Is it possible to run a Theocracy when no one believes in your god anymore? Iran may be about to find out.

An Iranian flag with a Christian cross over the casket of an Assyrian-Iranian soldier

Imagine the results that are possible if, in exchange for lifting sanctions and other benefits, the Iranian government was forced to allow Christian missionaries to operate freely in Iran? Now imagine such results all across the Middle East. Even without that freedom to share the Gospel, research indicates that the Christian populations are growing in practically every Muslim nation, even Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia’s rate of Christian growth is about 65% greater than the global average,” says Bruce Allen with FMI, citing statistics from Joshua Project, “Just because we hear that a government is closed to the gospel doesn’t mean the hearts of the people are.”

If an absolutist Islamic Monarchy can’t keep Christ out of the heartland of Islam, why are we panicking that we will permanently lose London? Where is our faith?

Muslims questioning Islam is not even a recent phenomenon. In the 1960’s and 70’s, rising education levels, more economic opportunities, greater urbanization, increased contact with the West, and the embrace of secular ideologies (liberalism, communism, nationalism) all led to massive declines in the influence of Islam on Middle Eastern societies. Muslim women wore mini-skirts on the streets of major Middle Eastern cities on their way to university classes. Very few people in the cities prayed 5 times a day, went to the Mosque on Friday, fasted during Ramadan, or studied the Koran.

Cairo University in 1970. At the time, mini skirts were fashionable among Egyptian women. No hijabs or burkas in sight. 

Back then, this was, to a large extent, a top-down revolution. Secular regimes, with heavy Western influence, wanted to rule over developed, successful, cosmopolitan societies. Islam was seen as backwards, getting in the way of successful economic and social development. Not everyone was on board, but enough were that it was not uncommon in the 70’s for academics to openly speak of a “post-Islamic” future for the Middle East. That did not happen for a variety of reasons (The West contributed greatly to the failure of secularism, we will discuss that more below), but how many Westerners realize that such a future was actually considered plausible by experts just a few decades ago?

If it happened once, why not again? So much for all Muslims being unthinking fanatics.

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All that liberalization and secularization was before the Internet, which has proven poisonous to Islamic belief. The more Muslims learn about Islam, the less they want to be Muslim. It takes very little research to discover that the Standard Islamic Narrative of history (Muhammad’s biography, the hadiths or sayings of Muhammad, the commentaries surrounding the Koran, and the histories surrounding Muhammad and the Koran) is complete fiction. A complete fiction that Muslim imams and scholars are no longer able to hide from the average Muslim through lies, intimidation, and restricting access to Islamic texts.

The Koran is taught by Islamic scholars to be the literal word of God (Allah), revealed to the Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. The Koran is said to be a perfect book, preserved without change throughout all ages. As most Muslims don’t read classical Arabic, historically they have had to take the imams’ word for all this. Imagine their reaction when they encounter readable translations online, only to discover that the Koran is a mess. It has been through multiple revisions. The book is boring, disorganized, and about 1/5th of the Koranic text is just plain incomprehensible. Koranic verses also contradict each other. Which one would expect as Islam began as a Christological heresy, but then needed to distance itself later in the history of the Arab Empire from the Christian faith of most of its subjects. To do otherwise risked assimilation. The Koran includes Pagan fables, superstition, and outright scientific inaccuracies. These are all things Islamic authorities have gone to great lengths historically to cover up, but the truth is now accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

Muslims online also end up coming face-to-face with the shortcomings of Muhammad, the so-called final prophet of God. Some modern scholars have amassed impressive evidence that Muhammed did not exist at all, most likely being a composite figure created during the early stages of the Arab Empire (with embellishments added during the Ottoman Empire) to legitimize the developing Islamic faith. Also to support whatever it was the rulers, at the times of the various Koranic revisions, wished to emphasize or suppress. Even if Muhammad did exist, what Muslims learn about Muhammad is absolutely shocking to them after exposure to Western, Christian-based moral codes. Marrying a six year old, committing mass murder, meeting naked men in the desert to be ‘mounted’ by them‘, incorporating pre-existing Arab pagan practices with almost no change into Islam, changing his ‘revelations’ for his own convenience (or the convenience of Muslim rulers revising the text), lying, cheating – these are all just a few of Muhammad’s immoral activities. The more Western-influenced Muslims know, the less piously Muslim they become.

More and more Muslims are learning that credible Islamic sources relate that Muhammad went into the desert to be sexually used all night long by a large group of men. What kind of prophet of what kind of a religion is this?

The Koran also has a massive Jesus problem. The Koran talks about Jesus. A lot. Jesus is referred to in over ninety verses in fifteen surahs. According to the Koran, Jesus was the Messiah sent to Israel to bring a new revelation (the Gospel). The Koran affirms Jesus was born of a virgin, and performed numerous miracles such as healing the blind and the leprous, raising the dead, and more. The Koran even contains a legendary account of Jesus (copied from 2nd Century Christian literature) fashioning a clay bird, breathing into it, and making it a real bird. The clear plagiarism of this story, supposedly told to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel, presents yet another challenge to the integrity of Koran. But even worse than that for Muslims, the Koran explicitly credits Jesus with miraculous deeds that have been performed by no other prophet in history. Ever. Including Muhammad.

How did an apocryphal miracle story plagiarized from the 2nd Century Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not judged worthy of inclusion in the NT canon) end up in the Koran? But this story brings up an even bigger question than that. Who but God can literally create life?

The Koran also gives Jesus unique titles such as al-Masih (the Messiah), Kalimatullah (the Word of God), and Ruhullah (a Spirit from God). The widespread availability of Koranic translations, and Christian apologetics aimed at Muslims, mean that it is impossible for Islamic scholars to keep awareness of these titles, given to no other prophet, from the common people.

Further, the Koran teaches that Jesus ascended bodily to heaven without dying. Incorrect, of course, but nonetheless a feat not credited to the (possibly fictional) Muhammad, the so-called “Seal of the Prophets,” who is recorded to have died a natural death and was buried. In any case, the Koran got the ascension of Christ correct, even if it missed in the very important details preceding. Further, Muslims believe that Jesus will return again as a sign that the Day of Judgment is at hand.

The Koran does contain misinformation about Jesus, even as it seemingly affirms the validity of the written Gospels that contradict its errors. The Koran truly is a mess. Be that as it may, imagine the shock many Muslims feel upon comparing the miraculous, wondrous Jesus (as recorded in their own Koran) with the decidedly less impressive Muhammad (based largely on information drawn from sources written hundreds of years after his supposed life and death). In the age of the smart phone, Islamic scholars can’t hide these facts from ordinary Muslims. Also, many Muslims converting to Christianity mention seeing Christ in visions and/or dreams. You have to wonder, are the Koranic traditions concerning Jesus prepping them for real encounters with the Risen Christ?

In addition, even in their home countries, Muslims have now discovered all the negative information about the various Islamic Empires throughout history. Most Muslims are not actually Arabs, even in the Middle East. Their ancestors were largely the local peoples of the many conquered countries who converted to Islam, and eventually adopted some version of the Arabic language. Or, in Anatolia, the Turkish language. It doesn’t take much research for many Turks (a large minority of whom have Greek ancestry), Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, etc. to realize their ancestors did not convert to Islam because they fell in love with Allah and his prophet. Their non-Arab ancestors converted to avoid punishing taxes, permanent second class status, persecution, sexual slavery, and mass murder. Even with all the inducements to convert, it took hundreds of years for Egypt (for example) to become majority Muslim. All across the Middle East, large Christian communities, despite all the hardships, have held onto Christ through 1,400 years of harsh Muslim rule.

The video below is a good overview of the facts that are rattling Muslim belief all over the world.

The Internet is not going away, and neither is the accelerating crisis for Islam. We do not need some kind of global crusade to “defeat Islam,” which is really its own worst enemy. But there are some things we can do, and should do, in the West to help ease Islam into the grave for which it is already headed.

Stop Using Jihad as a Western Tool

As we covered before, Western nations have actually prolonged the agony of Islamic existence by funding Jihadi groups, empowering repressive governments such as in Saudi Arabia, and overthrowing secular governments ruling Muslim populations such as in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. This is a self-own that needs to stop.

There was never any legitimate justification for funding Jihadis as proxies in our various wars against secular regimes, and against other Muslims. Our use of Islamic proxies has been an absolute disaster going back to the 70’s. With massive U.S. assistance, the Mujahideen managed to expel Soviet forces from Afghanistan. By the time the Red Army had retreated, thousands of young Muslim men from all around the world had traveled to Afghanistan to train and fight, thus gaining credentials as successful defenders of Islam against the modern atheistic West (in this case the ‘West’ was represented by the Communist USSR). With their reputation bolstered by the successful war against the Soviets, foreign jihadis returned to their native countries establishing Islamist groups and further spreading radical ideas. All financed by U.S. tax payers, of course.

Our rallying cry in the West should be, “No more blowback!”

Stop Muslim Immigration to the West

Islam is less a religion than it is the most successful method of social control ever devised. Those wanting to leave Islam realize that Apostates can be severely punished via social ostracism, abuse, and possibly even death. The last few decades have proven that small Muslim communities in the West, isolated from fresh waves of immigration, tend to assimilate over time. The problem is the fresh, continuous flow of violent, lawless immigrants from Islamic countries. They enable the building and maintaining of insular Islamic communities which are capable of exerting the type of mental and physical control needed to keep people, even if just nominally, in the Islamic faith. Even when Muslims learn the truth, and are willing to leave Islam, ignorant, violent cousins newly arrived from back home can keep them locked in, while also wreaking havoc among the domestic population.

This has to stop. Deport as many Muslim refugees as possible to weaken the insular communities. Stop new ones from coming. Allow the Muslims who remain, usually because they have citizenship, to have a chance to assimilate properly. If we stop building multi-generational Muslim ghettoes, we will quickly see that Islam holds little attraction for those with a choice in the matter. Remember, even with our disastrous immigration policies, 24% of cradle-born Muslims in the West still apostatize from Islam. It isn’t the Muslims in our midst who have totally paralyzed our immigration policies and upended our political systems. They aren’t the fundamental problem, and arming against them won’t be the fundamental solution.

Shut Down Our Own Religious Extremists

Muslims who leave Islam often blame violent, irrational extremism for driving them away. Muslims often dehumanize others, even other Muslims who follow the wrong sect or who are insufficiently rigorous in their practice. Islam has a word for those dangerous to fellow Muslims called “takfiri”. A “takfiri” is an individual or group that practices excommunication of fellow Muslims by accusing them of apostasy or disbelief in Islam. This practice is often associated with groups like the Islamic State, which now runs Syria thanks to us, who declare other Muslims as “unbelievers”. These “unbelievers” are then often subjected to brutal violence in the name of religious purity. In addition to violent religious purists, within Islamic communities one can find ethnic supremacy, outright racism, and a pervading sense of violent anger. When given a choice to leave such an unhealthy environment, many choose to do just that.

However, Westerners often interfere with that choice. First by continuously importing new fanatics. But also by dehumanizing Muslims.

Westerners are constantly on guard for, and constantly reacting to, extremist rhetoric and actions within Islam. However, we seem to be completely blind to Western religious extremism that is just as bad, if not worse. It is a totally unexceptional statement, in the West, to say that the Jews are God’s chosen people, and are forever entitled to take land by force that rightfully belongs to others – Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, etc. Zionist Jews can kill innocent people, including children, to the thunderous applause of Christian Zionists all over the West. The lives of people opposing Israel, for any reason, are of absolutely no consequence to people who hypocritically claim to worship the eternal Prince of Peace. If you were a Muslim, would you want to join the religion of people who only seem to want you dead?

Zionist extremists, Christian and Jewish alike, are given major media platforms, appointments to high office, electoral victories, and mainstream acceptance. It is little wonder that Muslims can listen to discourse in the West and wonder, “Are these guys really any different from ISIS? If this is their religion, how is Jesus better than Muhammad?”

82% of Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza . Nearly 50% support killing all Palestinians in Gaza. How many Americans feel exactly the same way? 

American tax dollars go to support genocidal religious extremists. Americans are so accustomed to this, that they don’t even notice. But Muslims do. That level of hypocritical blindness harms Christian witness. 

This Palestinian boy still had the dismembered flesh of family members clinging to him after a savage Israeli attack. Few people will notice, even fewer will be bothered by it. Everyone knows it is because he is Palestinian, and most likely Muslim. 

We cannot convert people to Christ we do not love. Do we love Muslims, or is our love only reserved for Zionist Jews? Are Muslims made in the image of God and worthy of the sacrifice of His Son on the cross, or are they just so much sub human cannon fodder? The answers to those questions will decide how quickly we can reach Muslims who have discovered the truth for themselves. They need our help, our guidance, and our prayers to escape.

The Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Oriental Orthodox Churches provide a welcome antidote to immoral extremism. All of us from the historic churches must speak loudly enough to drown out the insanity.

Stop Trying to Dominate Muslim Countries

Remember how the wave of secularization in the Middle East ground to a halt? One reason, Herman De Ley suggests, is that history has led Muslims to associate secularism not with liberation, as Europeans usually do, but with foreign domination:

The dismissal nowadays of secularism, at least on the level of dominant Muslim discourse, has its historical roots in western colonialism and imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries: Muslims at that time were confronted with a political secularisation that was imposed by western powers.

 

In the European countries themselves secularisation … had clear emancipatory effects (liberating society and man’s mind from the ideological and institutional shackles of the Church). In the colonies or protectorates, on the contrary, secularisation was enforced as an ideological weapon – against Islam, that is – in order to suppress national or political aspirations of Muslim communities.

The nice young ladies wearing Western dresses on their way to Uni classes were not seen as heralding a new birth of personal freedom, but as ushering in a new wave of foreign domination. Islam, with all its attendant issues, was championed as a means of resisting continuing colonization. Not just by Muslims either, but also by Western Leftists who saw it much the same way. Even though, ironically, Islam stood diametrically opposed to their entire domestic agenda:

There is no doubting the violence, brutality and injustice of the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, which sparked the popular uprising that finally led to his overthrow in February 1979. However, it was clear, at least to many not on the Left, that the particular Islamic form of the revolutionary movement had deeply troubling aspects. Atoussa H, an Iranian feminist writing in Le Nouvel Observateur, for example, noted in November 1978 that the Western Left supposes that Islam is desirable – albeit most Left intellectuals themselves don’t want to live under Islam – whereas “many Iranians are like me, distressed and desperate about the thought of an “Islamic” government. We know what it is. Everywhere outside Iran, Islam serves as a cover for a feudal or pseudo revolutionary oppression… The Left should not let itself be seduced by a cure that is perhaps worse than the disease.”

Being “Left” means being perpetually wrong, but never being held to account for it. Of course, the so-called “Right” doesn’t help anything by constantly supporting massive destruction and destabilization in the Muslim world. In fact, the two wings of the same bird are working together on a deep level that leads to nothing but global chaos.

A pivotal moment in the decline of secularism was the humiliating defeat of Arab armies at the hands of Israel in 1967. As noted before, Islamically-based Arab Armies would not have fared any better in that or any other war, but world events quickly obfuscated that fact. First came the Iranian revolution, after which the new government defied the West in asserting its independence. Despite an Iraqi proxy war, crippling sanctions, and eventual joint Israeli-American attacks, an Islamic Government in Iran still manages to survive.

We noted the victory over the godless USSR earlier. In the 2000’s, Israel was forced to retreat from Lebanon, and the U.S. from both Iraq and Afghanistan. In Palestine, Islamist Hamas is still fighting, while the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has largely surrendered. The PA descends from the Palestinian groups that fought against Israel in the 60’s and 70’s, most of which were secular (Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command). Secular regimes in Iraq, Syria, and Libya have all been destroyed.

Thus, the myth has taken hold among many Muslims that the only effective resistance to the constant threat of Western domination is based on Islam. In such a situation, Muslims advocating for greater religious and cultural freedom can easily be painted as tools of the hated colonizers. Constant Western military and economic pressure have made an unwelcome retreat into Islamic religious identity an inevitability. Keeping with that military and economic pressure only forces people, who might otherwise wish to dissent, to toe the Islamic line.

The Western love affair with Saudi oil money hasn’t helped either. The legitimacy of the kleptocratic House of Saud has always rested on ‘traditional authority,’ a rather weak basis in the modern age. Using its immense wealth, the Saudi monarchy started to spread its particular Wahhabi brand of Islam as way to further legitimize its rule. It was almost as if the Saudis were saying to their people, “See, we may be robbing you all blind while allied to Western interests, but look at all the mosques we are building!”

This export of Wahhabism, completely unopposed by allied Western powers, has lead to a global increase in radical Islam, and a rise in conservatism in some Muslim societies. One obvious example is the adoption of the niqab by growing numbers of women in places where it has never before been seen, such as India and South-East Asia. Not to be outdone, the other Gulf monarchies are also increasingly using their money to meddle abroad. How can the West champion women’s rights, democracy, government accountability, and religious freedom while being bosom buddies with absolutist Islamic monarchies?

Asian women adopting foreign, Middle Eastern clothing. Thanks, Saudi Arabia!

Saudi money alone will not save Islam over the long term, as has been noted. But it can complicate things in the short term, especially when Saudi-backed Islamism is cast as an effective response to perceived, or real, Western domination.

This is all actually a comfortable position for the globalists seeking domination of the oil rich and strategically positioned Middle East. (If you wish more confirmation of the oil-based nature of all this, please see the current aggressive moves on Venezuela, possessed of the largest proven oil reserves in the world, an estimated 303-304 billion barrels.)  The Globalist policies are a disaster for Muslims, and a disaster for citizens of Western nations. It is in the best interests of the Western peoples to stop supporting the theft of land from Middle Easterners (Christians and Muslims alike), to stop trying to militarily dominate Muslims for either oil and/or ‘stretching the Russians’, and to let them live in peace so they will not be motivated to migrate here. No Muslim nation, or potential alliance of Muslim nations, is a military threat to us, and many of their grievances against the West are grounded in undeniable truths of the last 120 years. It is also in our best interests to stop playing footsie with Islamic kleptocracies who use global Muslim evangelism to bolster their benighted rule. The sooner our policies stop strangling secularism, especially by giving Islamists an external threat to fixate on, the sooner Muslims will be free to really examine the many Islamically-based issues that are holding their civilizations back.

Islam can not survive such a moment of deep introspection any better than Soviet communism did.

Demand Protection for Christians Across the Board

It is especially damaging to our global witness for Christ that Israel is allowed to persecute, and even kill, Middle Eastern Christians with impunity. Israeli forces target Christian holy sites, such as Churches in Gaza. Christian Zionists treat that as absolutely normal. Christian Zionists urge Palestinian Christians, when they acknowledge their existence at all, to accept subservience to Jews as God’s will. Muslims look at all this and just shake their heads. All that supposed ‘Christian’ power, and yet among the biggest victims of Western and Zionist aggression are local, indigenous Christian populations. These Church communities survived 1,400 years of brutal Muslim rule, but probably won’t survive Zionism.

If a Jewish Israeli stubs his toe, millions of American Zionists cry out in sympathy. But whole Christian communities can be slaughtered with impunity by Israelis, by Jihadis in Syria funded with Western money as tools of Zionist expansion, or by angry Muslims in perceived revenge for Western military adventures – and no one says a word.

Orthodox Catholics and Roman Catholics need to become very, very vocal that Zionism is totally incompatible with Christianity. There are no ‘Christian Zionists.’ There are heretics, claiming to be Christian, who embrace Zionism – a modern Millennialist ideology with roots in Utopian Marxism. Zionist Jews, and the Christian Dispensationalists who worship them, are enemies of Jesus Christ and His Church. We cannot work with these people. The goal of Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians, in the West, must be to completely reject and discredit them. They are a treasonous cancer in our body politic, whose co-opting of the Gospel to support genocide harms Christian witness to everyone, but especially to Muslims.

The protection of Christian minorities throughout the world must be a top priority everywhere, or we look like weak, spineless cowards with no faith in the God we proclaim. Who wants to convert to a faith that turns a blind eye to the persecution of tens of millions of its own members? Western Christians have to reclaim their own faith, and treat that faith like it truly matters. Which means it is our responsibility to reign in our own governments, that seem totally invested in the continuation of the abominable Islamic religion.