THE BATTLE OF TOURS

The so-called religion of peace is on the move again...

"Had Charles Martel not been victorious," Hitler told his inner crowd in August 1942, ‘then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world."

DEAR WORLD

ENOUGH SAID. Consider this blog, Zionist friendly, and actually prefer all Arabs to remove themselves to Syria and Jordan, or drop this palestinian pretense and become civilized human beings (hope springeth eternal), although I welcome those who repeat the mantra that anti-zionism is not the same as anti-semitism to speak their peace at the Bellicose Augur. Speak plainly though. To suffer inarticulate joy riding fools is a waste of time, and encourages more of the same...

BESLAN REMEMBERED

LET US NOT FAIL TO RECALL, nor long forget Beslan either, as we seek to save the world from enemies that live among us, some that look like sheep, and some that look like the ravenging wolves that they are. Here's a tasteful link to the tragedy.

And here's a gem of writing by a poster over at Jihad Watch. Thanks to "dumbledoresarmy."

I have just got my copy of Andrew Bostom's "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism".

Part One, entitled 'Islamic Antisemitism: Jew-Hatred in Islam', which is the overview and distillation of all his research, makes for riveting—and terrifying—reading.

If every Christian priest or pastor, and every Jewish rabbi, had to read just that portion of Bostom's book, during their training, and show evidence of having understood it, before their ordination, we would be spared many of the more embarrassing displays of Useful Idiocy that we are forced to witness today from our spiritual leaders. The nonsense about 'three Abrahamic religions' that we hear so much about, would cease.

If our journalists and political leaders also read Bostom's damning report, and truly understood and believed it, much Western reporting and diplomacy vis a vis 'the Middle East situation' would be radically different.

If every Jewish member of the Knesset read, learned, marked and inwardly digested what Bostom has discovered, they would *know* the mind of the enemy that they face every day. They would *know* exactly where the hate is coming from. They would know that no concession, no negotiation, no bribe, no talks, no nothing, is going to achieve 'peace' with the Arab Muslims, or indeed, the entire Muslim world: only Jews all dead, or Jews reduced to a terrified, powerless, tormented and despised remnant of dhimmi near-slaves, will ever be enough for the Muslims.

Read part one of Bostom's latest book, David England. You wrote: "It is sometimes said that the radical islam of today is fascistic. What is not talked about is how it may have grown out of Nazi fascism directly".

No it didn't. I see Nazism and Islam more as cases of 'convergent evolution'. And they hopped into bed with each other so quickly, and borrowed ideas and strategies so eagerly, because they were kindred spirits before they ever met.

Muslim jihadist hatred of Jews is a good example. Bostom's book shows that Muslims did NOT need Nazis to teach them to hate Jews, they already did that quite thoroughly and comprehensively, all by their little selves.

Furthermore Ibn Warraq, when he identified a whole string of congruences between Islam and fascism was not talking about anything that modern Islam has *learned* or *copied* from European fascism: the Islam he had in mind was classical mainstream Islam, what Hugh [Fitzgerald] calls "'Islam, Islam, Islam", Islam of Qur'an-Sira-Hadith, Islam as it was expounded by Muslim jurists and theologians, and practised by Muslim despots and Muslim mobs, for over a millennium before European Fascism was ever a gleam in a philosopher's eye.

HITLER'S CAFÉ IN INDIA

MUMBAI, India—The international press reports that twenty-three year-old Puneet Sabhlok, a novice restaurateur, wanted a catchy café name to sell his $3 to $4 plates of crostii tonno, pear and ricotta salad and pannacotta. So he went with Hitler's Cross. He put a swastika in the logo. "Hitler is a catchy name. Everyone knows Hitler," he explained in an interview.

The café opened this week in a remote suburb of Mumbai. At first, business was brisk. But as word spread, revulsion followed. Before long, India's Jews, joined by diplomats from Israel and Germany and the Anti-Defamation League in New York, were working to shut the place down.

Abraham Foxman, the U.S. Anti-Defamation League's national director, issued a statement saying the restaurant "denigrates the memory of the victims and does a dangerous disservice to the Mumbai community by downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust."

Thursday, after meeting with a Jewish community leader here, Sabhlok agreed to rechristen the restaurant. The pannacotta will stay, the swastika will go. "I never wanted to promote Hitler," Sabhlok said. "I just wanted to promote my restaurant."

Indeed, the episode was treated in the local media as a cheap publicity stunt. But it seems also to reflect a curious and growing fascination with Hitler in a country whose pluralist traditions would appear to make it unlikely soil for Nazi ideas.

"This is part of a bigger problem," Daniel Zonshine, the Israeli consul general in Mumbai, said in a telephone interview.

"In India, it's a bit more than in other countries," he added. "India was far away from the Second World War. I don't think that many refugees from Europe came to India during the war. So the knowledge that people suffered is less here than in other countries. I definitely see it as part of my job to try to do something about that."

Mein Kampf is a hot seller at many Indian streetside book stalls. When a German writer, Georg Martin Oswald, came to India recently on an exchange program, he wrote in an online diary of being stunned at the book's popularity.

Newspaper surveys have found that significant numbers of Indian college students rate Hitler as an ideal model for an Indian leader. A 2002 survey by the Times of India, an English-language daily, noted that Hitler signified discipline, efficiency and nationalism to the students. Hitler also holds appeal for some Hindu nationalists who dream of a more assertive, conquering India cleansed of its Muslim population.

Read it all.

PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND SUICIDE BOMBERS

ON JULY 15, MSNBC's "Connected" program discussed the July 7 London attacks. One of the guests is Pierre Rehov, a French filmmaker who has filmed six documentaries on the intifada by going undercover in the Palestinian areas.

Pierre's upcoming documentary film, "Suicide Killers," is based on interviews that he conducted with the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers in an attempt to find out why they do it. Pierre agreed to a request for a Q&A interview here about his work on the new film.

Q - What inspired you to produce "Suicide Killers," your seventh film?

A - I started working with victims of suicide attacks to make a film on PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) when I became fascinated with the personalities of those who had committed those crimes, as they were described again and again by their victims. Especially the fact that suicide bombers are all smiling one second before they blow themselves up.

Q - Why is this film especially important?

A - People don't understand the devastating culture behind this unbelievable phenomenon. My film is not politically correct because it addresses the real problem, showing the real face of Islam. It points the finger against a culture of hatred in which the uneducated are brainwashed to a level where their only solution in life becomes to kill themselves and kill others in the name of a God whose word, as transmitted by other men, has become their only certitude.

Q - What insights did you gain from making this film? What do you know that other experts do not know?

A - I came to the conclusion that we are facing a neurosis at the level of an entire civilization. Most neuroses have in common a dramatic event, generally linked to an unacceptable sexual behavior. In this case, we are talking of kids living all their lives in pure frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness or even understanding from the opposite sex. The separation between men and women in Islam is absolute. So is contempt toward women, who are totally dominated by men. This leads to a situation of pure anxiety, in which normal behavior is not possible. It is no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil.

Since Islam describes heaven as a place where everything on Earth will finally be allowed, and promises 72 virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution.

Q - What was it like to interview would-be suicide bombers, their families and survivors of suicide bombings?

A - It was a fascinating and a terrifying experience. You are dealing with seemingly normal people with very nice manners who have their own logic, which to a certain extent can make sense since they are so convinced that what they say is true. It is like dealing with pure craziness, like interviewing people in an asylum, since what they say, is for them, the absolute truth. I hear a mother saying "Thank God, my son is dead." Her son had became a shaheed, a martyr, which for her was a greater source of pride than if he had became an engineer, a doctor or a winner of the Nobel Prize.

This system of values works completely backwards since their interpretation of Islam worships death much more than life. You are facing people whose only dream, only achievement goal is to fulfill what they believe to be their destiny, namely to be a shaheed or the family of a shaheed.

They don't see the innocent being killed, they only see the impure that they have to destroy.

Q - Are suicide bombers principally motivated by religious convictions?

A - YES, IT IS THEIR ONLY CONVICTION. They don't act to gain a territory or to find freedom or even dignity. They only follow Allah, the supreme judge, and what He tells them to do.

Q - Describe the culture that manufactures suicide bombers.

A - Oppression, lack of freedom, brain washing, organized poverty, placing God in charge of daily life, total separation between men and women, forbidding sex, giving women no power whatsoever, and placing men in charge of family honor, which is mainly connected to their women's behavior.

Q - What socio-economic forces support the perpetuation of suicide bombings?

A - Muslim charity is usually a cover for supporting terrorist organizations. But one has also to look at countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are also supporting the same organizations through different networks. The ironic thing in the case of Palestinian suicide bombers is that most of the money comes through financial support from the Occidental world, donated to a culture that utterly hates and rejects the West (mainly symbolized by Israel).

Q - Is there a financial support network for the families of the suicide bombers? If so, who is paying them and how does that affect the decision?

A - There used to be a financial incentive in the days of Saddam Hussein ($25,000 per family) and Yasser Arafat (smaller amounts), but these days are gone. It is a mistake to believe that these families would sacrifice their children for money. Although, the children themselves who are very attached to their families, might find in this financial support another reason to become suicide bombers. It is like buying a life insurance policy and then committing suicide.

Q - You say that a suicide bomber is a 'stupid bomb and a smart bomb' simultaneously. Explain what you mean.

A - Unlike an electronic device, a suicide killer has until the last second the capacity to change his mind.
In reality, he is nothing but a platform representing interests which are not his, but he doesn't know it.

Q - How can we put an end to the madness of suicide bombings and terrorism in general?

A - Stop being politically correct and stop believing that this culture is a victim of ours. Radical Islamism today is nothing but a new form of Naziism.
Nobody was trying to justify or excuse Hitler in the 1930s. We had to defeat him in order to make peace one day with the German people.

Q - Are these men traveling outside their native areas in large numbers? Based on your research, would you predict that we are beginning to see a new wave of suicide bombings outside the Middle East?

A - Every successful terror attack is considered a victory by the radical Islamists. Everywhere Islam expands there is regional conflict. Right now, there are thousands of candidates for martyrdom lining up in training camps in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Inside Europe, hundreds of illegal mosques are preparing the next step of brain washing to lost young men who cannot find a satisfying identity in the Occidental world. Israel is much more prepared for this than the rest of the world will ever be. Yes, there will be more suicide killings in Europe and the U.S.

Sadly, this is only the beginning.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE: ISLAMO-NAZISM

CONSIDERING THE GOOD WAR CONCEPT

Let's talk World War II. The terrible and terrific war of the greatest generation, a generation that is almost gone from the face of the earth. The war that made America proud. Yes, THAT war. Two-time conservative presidential candidate and full-time political pundit Pat Buchanan has written an article discussing the nature of the so-called good or "Just War" as theorized by Thomas Aquinas. Buchanan wants to know how and to whom the war was good. The article is not Buchanan at his best. His point is vague. But basically, what he seems to be arguing is that war always brings unintended consequences, and war is never good for everybody, or even most people, were we to be honest with the mathematics and social conditions from which that particular mathematics is calculated.

Some have noted that the great errors of the 17th and 18th century made the the two world wars inevitable. The Tyranny of Communism, Nazism and Facism all came from the same root—the burgeoning liberalism and Enlightenment that swept Europe in the 1700's. The Frensh Revolution merely was a foreshadowing of what was awaiting Europe and the world.

The ultimate thrust (not to be confused with the cause) for World War II, good or not, was the cowardice and appeasement that preceded it. Everyone knew that Hitler was a lunatic, not to be trusted, and that he had declared that he wanted to establish a whacky Germanic superman state. Social Darwinism was in vogue at it's worst! The Jews were the first to feel the insanity, but Hitler was an equal opportunity master of his own greed, and also felt that the Slavic peoples were inferior and good only for slavery.

The fact of the matter is, if the war had NOT been fought against Hitler and his minions, the world would now be a far worse place than it is presently is. This argument is not usually contested, but Buchanan puts a different spin of this adage, by suggesting that merely the names and the identity of the oppressors shifted. Japan cooled down, Mao's China heated up. Expansionist Germany was defeated, Communist Russia demanded a seat at the table of superpowers. Now, the Islamic states, drunk with oil revenues, are demanding not only a place at the table, but have been quite expressive in declaring that there is only one place for them, and that is at the head of the table.

Nor was it Hitler alone, historically, who was responsible for starting WWII; Neville Chamberlain and his "peace in our time" politics of appeasement was music to the ears of the aggressors-in-waiting. Peace in our time actually meant WE don't want to fight, we'll just leave it to our progeny and with any luck, by the time THEY have to fight we'll be gone anyway so we will have avoided the suffering. We can argue that it was precisely the pacifists, the predecessors of the flower children of the sixties, and the present day pacifists, for example, the Code Pinkers who represent the same pacifist thinking today, that was responsible for the outbreak of a war that could, and should, have been avoided.

Immediately prior to WWII, Joseph Kennedy, Sr., patriarch of the JFK generation, was the American ambassador to Great Britain. He was approached by the Jewish leaders who already knew (as did Kennedy) what was happening in Europe to the Jews. When they asked him to intervene, his terse response was that "they're getting what they deserve".

Another great "hero" Lindbergh, was strongly pro-Hitler, as was the lauded ex-king, who married an "inappropriate" woman, Wallis Simpson, and gave up the throne "for love", and who then went to Germany and gave the Nazi salute. Now, with the threats against the West today, not the least which is the Islamic threat, we have am enire culture of appeasement by the Hollywood Left and the leadership at large. And then, there is Prince Charles, who may suspect may have a secret plan to convert to Islam if he ever succeeds his Mother to the throne, if he has not already done so. Read more about turncoat Charles here and here.

All of these people, either pacifists or what might be called co-conspirators, were equally responsible for WWII. And, as now with Israel, the world stands by and does nothing! And when war finally breaks out, the our own generation's institutional players will wonder "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?"

While there may be no such thing as a good war, there are however, necessary wars. The alternative is to lose one's liberty, identity, and any self determination inherent in the global punchline. If pacifists had their way, we would all be slaves of the biggest baddest wolf on the planet. This leads us to the thought that since the United Nations has become nothing but a puppet of the most egregious nations now struggled for revolutionary status, the US needs to be more willing to smack down dangerous tyrants quickly and without waiting for the rest of the world to approve.

But we have lost our way. Our leadership has sold out our national heritage, We can no longer act as he global police. Our economy is iin shambles. Our people are fragmented and even polarized. Lawlessness abounds, and these issue require dire attention if this nation is to regain its strong footing of the past.

China, Russia, Iran and its satellites, Venezuela, North Korea, and let's not forget the slippery cutthroat Saudi Arabian financiers (pals with the Bush family) are all salivating at the chance to help personally accelerate fall of the West, and thus add to their own stature and cultural mytholgies. It stuns and disappoints me how many North Americans and Western Europeans don't even care, or worse, are actively pursuing the corruption of national strengths in the immediate sense by embracing the dark and ugly global totalitarianism agenda that will replace nationalism with an oppression far greater than the society of the spectacle illustrated by vigorous capitalism, and the lures of the commodity culture.

If there is, indeed, a "good" war, it is a war that is fought for freedom, liberty, and the rights of man (and woman!) and our friendly neighborhood pacifists are our and their own worst enemies.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Let me preface this by saying, I am speaking as a Jew and a bit of an amateur historian of sorts. One of the more interesting historical eras was the era of the Third Reich and how the great nations dealt with its rise.

We know, like much of Islam today, early into his reign Hitler was no match for England and France, much less the Soviet Union and America. Like Islam, Hitler needed time to acquire arms and to build his military machine. Then it was tanks, planes, rifles and other military equipment. Today it is weapons of mass destruction.

Hitler knew the powers in his day, particularly England and France, had weak, pusillanimous leaders like the Iranian president rightly pegs Mr. Bush. Don't fool yourself, Bush is a weak little man at the helm of a very powerful military, commercial and industial power. Only Bush is so compromised and so corrupted by his and his family's long standing relationship with the Saudi Royal Family jihadists, Bush is afraid to exercise American military power.

Like Hitler, Ahmadinejad is buying time and gaining legitimacy. With Hitler it was the 1936 Olympics in Germany and American hero, Charles Lindbergh's many visits. Ahmadinejad was just invited to a prestigious University.

Then there was the Munich appeasement, whereby England and France hoped to buy off the Furher by sacrificing tiny Czecholovakia to the Nazis. We know what that achieved, don't we Proud Infidel?

Well, Bush is doing much the same thing by sacrificing Israel to the jihadists. Some people believe Bush is a friend of Israel's. I believe he is an enemy of Israel's. To me as a Jew, Bush is a vicious enemy of the Jewish state. Now unlike Czech's Benes, Bush has his traitorous puppet prime minister in Jerusalem to do his bidding but don't think for a minute what Bush is doing is moral or right.

It is downright evil, contemptible and pusillanimous. Mark my word, should Bush and Rice be successful in Maryland [Mideast Talks] this November, it will only be a matter of time before there is a huge massacre in Israel by the Muslim jihadists. Bush will leave Israel defenseless strategically.

This is criminal I believe in the heavenly books (those up in heaven) Bush will go down in history as the criminal that betrayed Israel, our only ally in the Middle East.

—Monk

OF VIRGINS, RECALL THE TEN

The Parable of the Ten Virgins is a parable told by Jesus in the the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 25:1-13). In it, the five virgins who are prepared for the bridegroom's arrival are rewarded and the five who are not prepared are excluded. The parable has a clear apocalyptic theme: be prepared for the day of reckoning.

Despite all the warnings of the past forty years from a few voices from the wilderness such as Bat Ye'or, Oriana Fallaci and Robert Spencer, the cult of political correctness and its legions of leftist radicals conspiring to gut capitalism as just another fatted calf of the wicked West, modern history itself has a more foreboding tale to tell. During 1894-1923 the Ottoman Empire (Muslims) conducted a policy of Genocide of the Christian population living within its extensive territory. The Sultan, Abdul Hamid, first put forth an official governmental policy of genocide against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1894.

Systematic massacres took place in 1894-1896 when Abdul savagely killed 300,000 Armenians throughout the provinces. Massacres recurred, and in 1909 government troops killed, in the towns of Adana alone, over 20,000 Christian Armenians.
When WW1 broke out the The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the "Young Turk" dictatorship which allied itself with Germany. Turkish government decided to eliminate the whole of the Christian population of Greeks, Armenians, Syrians and Nestorians. The government slogan, "Turkey for the Turks", served to encourage Turkish Muslim civilians on a policy of ethnic cleansing.

The next step of the Armenian Genocide began on 24 April 1915, with the mass arrest, and ultimate murder, of religious, political and intellectual leaders in Constantinople and elsewhere in the empire.

Then, in every Armenian community, a carefully planned Genocide unfolded: Arrest of clergy and other prominent persons, disarmament of the population and Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army, segregation and public execution of leaders and able-bodied men, and the deportation to the deserts of the remaining Armenian women, children and elderly. Renowned historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that "the crime was concerted very systematically for there is evidence of identical procedure from over fifty places."

The Genocide started from the border districts and seacoasts, and worked inland to the most remote hamlets. Over 1.5 million Armenian Christians, including over 4,000 bishops and priests, were killed in this step of the Genocide. The Greek Christians, particularly in the Black Sea area known as Pontus, who had been suffering from Turkish-Muslim persecutions and murders all the while, saw the Turks turn more fiercely on them as WW1 came to a close.

The Allied Powers, at a peace conference in Paris in 1919, rewarded Greece for her support by inviting Prime Minister Venizelos to occupy the city of Smyrna with its rich hinterlands, and they placed the province under Greek control. This action greatly angered the Turks. The Greek occupation was a peaceful one but drew immediate fire from Turkish forces in the outlying areas. When the Greek army farmed out to protect its people, a full-fledged war broke out between Greece and Turkey (the Greco-Turkish war).

The Treaty of Sevres, signed in 1920 to end WW1 and which provided for an independent Armenia, was never ratified. The treaty's terms changed not long after the ink dried as England, France and Italy each began secretly bargaining with Mustafa Kemel (Ataturk) in order to gain the right to exploit oil fields in the Mozul (now Iraq). Betrayed by the Allied Powers, the Greek military front, after 40 long months of war, collapsed and retreated as the Turks began again to occupy Asia Minor.

September 1922 signaled the end of the Greek and Armenian presence in the city of Smyrna. On 9 September 1922, the Turks entered Smyrna; and after systematically murdering the Armenians in their own homes, the forces of Ataturk turned on the Greeks whose numbers had swelled, with the addition of refugees who had fled their villages in Turkey's interior, to upwards of 400,000 men, women and children.

The conquering Turk- Muslims went from house to house, looting, pillaging, raping and murdering the population. Finally, when the wind had turned so that it was blowing toward the sea so that the small Turkish quarter at the rear of the city was not in danger, Turkish forces, led by their officers, poured kerosene on the buildings and homes of the Greek and Armenian sectors and set them afire. Thus, any remaining live inhabitants of the city were flushed out to be caught between a wall of fire and the sea. The pier of Smyrna became a scene of final desperation as the approaching flames forced many thousands to jump to their death or to be consumed by fire.

The native population of Asia Minor traces its Christian roots to the early days of Christianity. the Armenians, an ancient people, trace their origins back 2500 years. In 301 AD. the Armenian King Dftad declared Christianity as the kingdom's official religion, making Armenia the first Christian political state in the world. The migration of Greek tribes to Asia Minor began just before 2,000 BC and the Greeks built dozens of cities such as Smyrna, Phocaea, Pergamon, Ephesus and Byzantium (Constantinople).

The native inhabitants of Asia Minor, among the first to accept the message of Christianity, were later to be persecuted and uprooted from their lands because of that same faith. Turkish-Muslim tribes plagued the region. Later another tribe, the Oyuz Turks who embraced Islam and ultimately produced the Ottoman Turks, conquered Persia, the Caliphate of Baghdad, and then the whole area presently occupied by Syria, Iraq and Palestine.

Under the Ottoman Empire the Christians suffered a steady decline. Forced conversions to Islam, the abduction of children to serve in the fanatical Janissary corps, persecutions and oppression reduced the Christian population. Oppression intensified, leading to Genocide. Christian clergy were a constant target of Turkish persecution, particularly once the 1894 policy of Armenian genocide had been declared by sultan Abdul Hamid.

Victims of horrible torture, many Orthodox clergy were martyred for their faith. Among the first was Metropolitan Chrysostomos who was martyred, not just to kill a man but, to insult a sacred religion and an ancient and honorable people. Chrysostomos was enthroned as Metropolitan of Smyrna on 10 May 1910. Metropolitan Chrysostomos courageously opposed the anti-Christian rage of the Turks and sought to raise international pressure against the persecution of Turkish Christians. He wrote many letters to European leaders and to the western press in an effort to expose the genocide policies of the Turks. In 1922, in unprotected Smyrna, Chrysostomos said to those begging him to flee: "It is the tradition of the Greek Church and the duty of the priest to stay with his congregation."

On 9 September crowds were rushing into the cathedral for shelter when Chrysostomos, pale from fasting and lack of sleep, led his last prayer. The Divine Liturgy ended as Turkish police came to the church and led Chrysostomos away. The Turkish General Nouredin Pasha, known as the "butcher of Ionia", first spat on the Metropolitan and informed him that a tribunal in Angora (now Ankara) had already condemned him to death. A mob fell upon Chrysostomos and tore out his eyes.

Bleeding profusely, he was dragged through the streets by his beard. He was beaten and kicked and parts of his body were cut off. All the while Chrysostomos, his face covered with blood, prayed: "Holy Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Every now and then, when he had the strength, he would raise his hand and bless his persecutors; a Turk, realizing what the Metropolitan was doing, cut off his hand with a sword. Metropolitan Chrysostomos was then hacked to pieced by the angry mob.

Among the hundreds of Armenian clergy who were persecuted and murdered were Bishop Khosrov Behrigian and Very Reverend Father Mgrdich' Chghladian Bishop Behrigian (1869-1915) was born in Zara and became the primate for the Diocese of Caesarea/Kayseri in 1915. He was arrested by Turkish police upon his return from Etchmiadzin where he had just been consecrated bishop. Informed of his fate, the bishop asked for a bullet to the head. Deliberately ignoring his request, the police tied him to a "yataghan" where sheep were butchered an then proceeded to hack his body apart while he was still alive.

Father Chghladian was born in Tatvan. In May 1915, as part of the campaign of mass arrests, deportations and murders, the priest was tortured and displayed in a procession, led by sheiks and dervishes while accompanied by drums, through the streets of Dikranagerd. Once the procession returned to the mosque, in the presence of government officials, the sheiks poured oil over the priest and burned him alive.

Four of the martyred bishops who were murdered between 1921-1922 are today elevated to sainthood in the Greek Orthodox Church: They are, in addition to Metropolitan Chrysostomos, Bishops Efthimios, Gregorios and Ambrosios. Bishop Efthimios of Amasia was captured by the Turkish police and tortured daily for 41 days. In the last days of his life he chanted his own funeral memorial until finally dying in his cell on 29 May 1921. Three days later a written order for his execution arrived from Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk).

Metropolitan Gregorios of Kydonion remained with his church until the end, helping 20,000 of his 35,000 parishioners escape to Mytilene and other free parts of Greece. On 3 October 1922, the remaining 15,000 Orthodox Christians were executed; the Metropolitan was saved in order to be buried alive.

Metropolitan Ambrosios of Moshonesion, along with 12 priests and 6,000 Christians, were sent by the Turks on a forced deportation march to Central Asia Minor. All of them perished on the road, some slain by Turkish irregulars and civilians, the remainder left to die of starvation. Bishop Ambrosios died on 15 September 1922, when Turkish police nailed horseshoes to his feet and then cut his body into pieces.

And then, to sum up what is the arrogance of all despots:

"I have given orders to my Death Units to exterminate without mercy or pity, men, women, and children belonging to the Polish speaking race. It is only in this manner we can acquire the vital territory which we need. After all, who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?"

- Adolf Hitler, 22 August 1939

Religion of Peace? Or as some on the left say, poor oppressed Muslims?

Wake up world!

FJORDMAN: The Eurabia Code, Part 1

I decided to write this essay after a comment from a journalist, not a Leftist by my country's standards, who dismissed Eurabia as merely a conspiracy theory, one on a par with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I do not disagree with the fact that conspiracy theories exist, nor that they can be dangerous. After all, the Protocols and the Dolchstosslegende, or "stab in the back myth" - the idea that Germany didn't lose WW1 but was betrayed by Socialists, intellectuals and Jews - helped pave the way for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis before WW2.

However, what puzzles me is that it is a widely-held belief of many (not just in the Islamic world but in Europe and even in the United States) that the terror attacks that brought down the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001 were really a controlled demolition staged by the American government and then blamed on Muslims. I have seen this thesis talked about many times in Western media. While it is frequently (though not always) dismissed and mocked, it is least mentioned.

In contrast, Eurabia—which asserts that the Islamicization of Europe didn't happen merely by accident but with the active participation of European political leaders—is hardly ever referred to at all, despite the fact that it is easier to document. Does the notion of Eurabia hit too close to home? Perhaps it doesn't fit with the anti-American disposition of many journalists? Curiously enough, even those left-leaning journalists who are otherwise critical of the European Union because of its free market elements never write about Eurabia.

Because of this, I am going to test whether the Eurabia thesis is correct, or at least plausible. I have called this project The Eurabia Code, alluding to author Dan Brown's massive bestseller The Da Vinci Code. Brown's fictional account "documents" a conspiracy by the Church to cover up the truth about Jesus. I'm not sure my work will become equally popular, but I'm pretty sure it's closer to reality.

The next time Mr. Brown wants to write about massive conspiracies in Europe, he would be well-advised to set his eyes at Brussels rather than Rome. It would be a whole lot more interesting. What follows is a brief outline of the thesis put forward by writer Bat Ye'or in her book "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis." My information is based on her book (which should be read in full). In addition I have drawn from some of her articles and interviews. I republish the information with her blessing, but this summary is completely my own.

In an interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Bat Ye'or explained how French President Charles de Gaulle, disappointed by the loss of the French colonies in Africa and the Middle East as well as with France's waning influence in the international arena, decided in the 1960's to create a strategic alliance with the Arab and Muslim world to compete with the dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union.

"This is a matter of a total transformation of Europe, which is the result of an intentional policy," said Bat Ye'or. "We are now heading towards a total change in Europe, which will be more and more Islamicized and will become a political satellite of the Arab and Muslim world. The European leaders have decided on an alliance with the Arab world, through which they have committed to accept the Arab and Muslim approach toward the United States and Israel. This is not only with respect to foreign policy, but also on issues engaging European society from within, such as immigration, the integration of the immigrants and the idea that Islam is part of Europe."

"Europe is under a constant threat of terror. Terror is a way of applying pressure on the European countries to surrender constantly to the Arab representatives' demands. They demand, for example, that Europe always speak out for the Palestinians and against Israel."

Thus, the Eurabian project became an enlarged vision of the anti-American Gaullist policy dependent upon the formation of a Euro-Arab entity hostile to American influence. It facilitated European ambitions to maintain important spheres of influence in the former European colonies, while opening huge markets for European products in the Arab world, especially in oil-producing countries, in order to secure supplies of petroleum and natural gas to Europe. In addition, it would make the Mediterranean a Euro-Arab inland sea by favoring Muslim immigration and promoting "multiculturalism" with a strong Islamic presence in Europe.

The use of the term "Eurabia" was first introduced in the mid-1970s, as the title of a journal edited by the President of the Association for Franco-Arab Solidarity, Lucien Bitterlein, and published collaboratively by the Groupe d'Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva), France-Pays Arabes (Paris), and the Middle East International (London). Their articles called for common Euro-Arab positions at every level. These concrete proposals were not the musings of isolated theorists; instead they put forth concrete policy decisions conceived in conjunction with, and actualized by, European state leaders and European Parliamentarians.

During a November 27, 1967 press conference, Charles de Gaulle stated openly that French cooperation with the Arab world had become "the fundamental basis of our foreign policy." By January 1969, the Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples, held in Cairo, in its resolution 15, decided "…to form special parliamentary groups, where they did not exist, and to use the parliamentary platform support of the Arab people and the Palestinian resistance." Five years later in Paris, July 1974, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation was created, under the Euro-Arab Dialogue rubric.

Bat Ye'or has highlighted this shared Euro-Arab political agenda. The first step was the construction of a common foreign policy. France was the driving force in this unification, which had already been envisaged by General de Gaulle's inner circle and Arab politicians. The Arab states demanded from Europe access to Western science and technology, European political independence from the United States, European pressure on the United States to align with their Arab policy and demonization of Israel as a threat to world peace, as well as measures favorable to Arab immigration and dissemination of Islamic culture in Europe. This cooperation would also included recognition of the Palestinians as a distinct people and the PLO and its leader Arafat as their representative. Up to 1973 they had been known only as Arab refugees, even by other Arabs. The concept of a Palestinian "nation" simply did not exist.

During the 1973 oil crisis, the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries announced that, due to the ongoing Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbors Egypt and Syria, OPEC would no longer ship petroleum to Western nations that supported Israel. The sudden increase in oil prices was had lasting effects. Not only did it create a strong influx of petrodollars to countries such as Saudi Arabia, which permitted the Saudis to fund a worldwide Islamic resurgence, but it also had an impact in the West, especially in Europe.

However, Arab leaders had to sell their oil. Their people are very dependent on European economic and technological aid. The Americans made this point during the oil embargo in 1973. According to Bat Ye'or, although the oil factor certainly helped cement the Euro-Arab Dialogue, it was primarily a pretext to cover up a policy that emerged in France before that crisis occurred. The policy, conceived in the 1960s, had strong antecedents in the French 19th-century dream of governing an Arab empire.

This political agenda has been reinforced by the deliberate cultural transformation of Europe. Euro-Arab Dialogue Symposia conducted in Venice (1977) and Hamburg (1983) included recommendations that have been successfully implemented. These recommendations were accompanied by a deliberate, privileged influx of Arab and other Muslim immigrants into Europe in enormous numbers.

The recommendations included:

1. Coordination of the efforts made by the Arab countries to spread the Arabic language and culture in Europe,
2. Creation of joint Euro-Arab Cultural Centers in European capitals,
3. The necessity of supplying European institutions and universities with Arab teachers specialized in teaching Arabic to Europeans, and
4. The necessity of cooperation between European and Arab specialists in order to present a positive picture of Arab-Islamic civilization and contemporary Arab issues to the educated public in Europe.

These agreements could not be set forth in written documents and treaties due to their politically sensitive and fundamentally undemocratic nature. The European leaders thus carefully chose to call their ideas "dialogue." All meetings, committees and working groups included representatives from European Community nations and the European Council along with members from Arab countries and the Arab League. Proceedings and decisions took place in closed sessions. No official minutes were recorded.

The Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) is a political, economic and cultural institution designed to ensure perfect cohesion between Europeans and Arabs. Its structure was set up at conferences in Copenhagen (15 December 1973), and Paris (31 July 1974). The principal agent of this policy is the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, founded in 1974. The other principal organs of The Dialogue are the MEDEA Institute and the European Institute of Research on Mediterranean and Euro-Arab Cooperation, created in 1995 with the backing of the European Commission.

In an interview with Jamie Glazov of Frontpage Magazine, Bat Ye'or explained how "in domestic policy, the EAD established a close cooperation between the Arab and European media television, radio, journalists, publishing houses, academia, cultural centers, school textbooks, student and youth associations, tourism. Church interfaith dialogues were determinant in the development of this policy. Eurabia is therefore this strong Euro-Arab network of associations -- a comprehensive symbiosis with cooperation and partnership on policy, economy, demography and culture."

Eurabia's driving force, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, was created in Paris in 1974. It now has over six hundred members—from all major European political parties—active in their own national parliaments, as well as in the European parliament. France continues to be the key protagonist of this association.

A wide-ranging policy was sketched out. It entailed a symbiosis of Europe with the Muslim Arab countries that would endow Europe—and especially France, the project's prime mover – with a weight and a prestige to rival that of the United States. This policy was undertaken quite discreetly, and well outside of official treaties, using the innocent-sounding name of the Euro-Arab Dialogue. The organization functioned under the auspices of European government ministers, working in close association with their Arab counterparts, and with the representatives of the European Commission and the Arab League. The goal was the creation of a pan-Mediterranean entity, permitting the free circulation both of men and of goods.

On the cultural front there began a complete re-writing of history, which was first undertaken during the 1970s in European universities. This process was ratified by the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe in September 1991, at its meeting devoted to "The Contribution of the Islamic Civilisation to European culture." It was reaffirmed by French President Jacques Chirac in his address of April 8, 1996 in Cairo, and reinforced by Romano Prodi, president of the powerful European Commission, the EU's "government," and later Italian Prime Minister, through the creation of a Foundation on the Dialogue of Cultures and Civilizations. This foundation was to control everything said, written and taught about Islam in Europe.

Over the past three decades, the EEC and the EU's political and cultural organizations have invented a fantasy Islamic civilization and history. The historical record of violations of basic human rights for all non-Muslims and women under sharia (Islamic Law) is either ignored or dismissed. In this worldview the only dangers come from the United States and Israel. The creators of Eurabia have conducted a successful propaganda campaign against these two countries in the European media. This fabrication was made easier by pre-existing currents of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism in parts of Europe, although both sentiments have been greatly inflated by Eurabians and their collaborators.

On January 31, 2001, with the recrudescence of Palestinian terrorist jihad, European Foreign Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten declared to the European Parliament that Europe's foreign policy should give special attention to its southern flank (the Arab countries, in EU jargon), adding that he was delighted by the general agreement to give greater visibility to the Mediterranean Partnership.

Bat Ye'or thinks that "Our politicians are perfectly informed of Islamic history and current policies by their embassies, agents and specialists. There is no innocence there, but tremendous inflexibility in corruption, cynicism and the perversion of values."

In the preface to her book, she states that "This book describes Europe's evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post– Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers."

The new European civilization in the making can correctly be termed a ''civilization of dhimmitude.'' The word dhimmitude comes from the Islamic legal designation ''dhimmi.'' It refers to the subjugated, non-Muslim individuals who accept restrictive and humiliating subordination to Islamic power in order to avoid enslavement or death. The entire Muslim world as we know it today is a product of this 1,300 year-old jihad dynamic, whereby once thriving non-Muslim majority civilizations have been reduced to a state of dysfunction and dhimmitude. The dhimmis are inferior beings who endure humiliation and aggression in silence. This arrangement allows Muslims to enjoy an impunity that increases both their hatred and their feeling of superiority, under the protection of the law.

Eurabia is a novel new entity. It possesses political, economic, religious, cultural, and media components, which are imposed on Europe by powerful governmental lobbies. While Europeans live within Eurabia's constraints, outside of a somewhat confused awareness, few are really conscious of them on a daily basis.

This Eurabian policy, expressed in obscure wording, is conducted at the highest political levels and coordinated over the whole of the European Union. It spreads an anti-American and anti-Semitic Euro-Arab sub-culture into the fiber of every social, media and cultural sector. Dissidents are silenced or boycotted. Sometimes they are fired from their jobs, victims of a totalitarian "correctness" imposed mainly by the academic, media and political sectors.

According to Ye'or, France and the rest of Western Europe can no longer change their policy: "It is a project that was conceived, planned and pursued consistently through immigration policy, propaganda, church support, economic associations and aid, cultural, media and academic collaboration. Generations grew up within this political framework; they were educated and conditioned to support it and go along with it."

Are Bat Ye'or's claims correct, or even possible?

Bernard Lewis has pointed out that, by common consent among historians, "the modern history of the Middle East begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte—who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease."

In an unsuccessful effort to gain the support of the Egyptian populace, Napoleon issued proclamations praising Islam. "People of Egypt," he proclaimed upon his entry to Alexandria in 1798, "You will be told that I have come to destroy your religion; do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that more than the Mamluks, I respect God, his Prophet, and the Qur'an."

According to an eyewitness, Napoleon ended his proclamation with the phrase, "God is great and Muhammad is his prophet." To Muslim ears, this sounded like the shahada—the declaration of belief in the oneness of Allah and in Prophet Muhammad as his last messenger. Recitation of the shahadah, the first of the five pillars of Islam, is considered to mark one's conversion to Islam. Muslims could thus conclude that Napoleon had converted to Islam. In fact, one of his generals, Jacques Ménou, did convert to Islam.

The French were later defeated and forced to leave Egypt by the English admiral Lord Nelson. Although the French expedition to Egypt lasted only three years, it demonstrated that the West was now so superior to the Islamic world that Westerners could enter the Arab heartland, then still a part of the Ottoman Empire, at will. Only another Western power could force them to leave. The shock of this realization triggered the first attempts to reform Islam in the 19th century.

A positive result of Western conquest was the influx of French scientists into Egypt and the foundation of modern Egyptology. Most importantly, it led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which was later used by French philologist Jean-Francois Champollion to decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, the encounter also left a lasting impact in Europe, and above all in France.

The French invasion of Algeria in 1830 marked another chapter in this tale. Later, the French ruled Tunisia and Morocco. Finally, after the First World War, the French gained mandates over the former Turkish territories of the Ottoman Empire that make up what is now Syria and Lebanon. After the Second World War, French troops gradually left Arab lands, culminating with war and Algerian independence in 1962. However, their long relationship with Arabs resulted in France's belief that she had a special relationship with and an understanding of Arabs and Muslims. Along with French leadership in continental Europe, this would now provide the basis of a new foreign policy. President de Gaulle pushed for a France and a Europe independent of the two superpowers. In a speech, he stated that "Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the destiny of the world." In 1966, he withdrew France from the common NATO military command, but remained within the organization.

Following the Six Days War in 1967, de Gaulle's condemnation of the Israelis for their occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip marked a significant change in French foreign policy. Previously, France—as well as the rest of Western Europe—had been strongly pro-Israel, even going to war together with Israel as late as 1956 against Nasser's Egypt. From 1967 on, however, France embarked on a decidedly pro-Arab course.

It has been said that English foreign policy has remained the same since the 16th century. Its goal was to prevent any country, whether Spain, France, or later Germany, from dominating continental Europe to the extent that it represents a threat to England. On the other hand, one could argue that French foreign policy has also remained the same for several centuries; its goal is to champion French leadership over Europe and the Mediterranean region in order to contain Anglo-Saxon (and later Anglo-American) dominance. This picture was complicated by the unification of Germany in the late 19th century, but its outlines remain to this day.

Napoleon is the great hero of French PM de Villepin. Several prominent French leaders stated quite openly in 2005 that the proposed EU Constitution was basically an enlarged France. Justice Minister Dominique Perben said: "We have finally obtained this 'Europe à la française' that we have awaited for so long. This constitutional treaty is an enlarged France. It is a Europe written in French." From its inception, European integration has been a French-led enterprise. The fact that the French political elite have never renounced the maintenance of their leadership over Europe was amply demonstrated during the Iraq war.

President Chirac famously said in 2003 after Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic backed the US position "They missed a good opportunity to shut up," adding "These countries have been not very well behaved and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position."

Jean Monnet, French economist never elected to public office, is regarded by many as the architect of European integration. Monnet was a well-connected pragmatist who worked behind the scenes towards the gradual creation of European unity.

Richard North, publisher of the blog EU Referendum and co-author (with Christopher Booker) of The Great Deception: Can The European Union Survive, relates that for years—at least from the 1920s—Jean Monnet had dreamed of building a "United States of Europe." Although what Monnet really had in mind was the creation of a European entity with all the attributes of a state, an "anodyne phrasing was deliberately chosen with a view to making it difficult to dilute by converting it into just another intergovernmental body. It was also couched in this fashion so that it would not scare off national governments by emphasising that its purpose was to override their sovereignty."

In their analysis of the EU's history, the authors claim that the EU was not born out of WW2, as many people seem to think. It had been planned at least a generation before that.

The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950, widely presented as the beginning of the efforts towards a European Union and commemorated in "Europe Day," contains phrases which state that it is "a first step in the federation of Europe", and that "this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation." However, as critics of the EU have noted, these political objectives are usually omitted when the Declaration is referred to, and most people are unaware of their existence.

A federation is, of course, a State and "yet for decades now the champions of EC/EU integration have been swearing blind that they have no knowledge of any such plans. The EEC/EC/EU has steadily acquired ever more features of a supranational Federation: flag, anthem, Parliament, Supreme Court, currency, laws."

The EU founders "were careful only to show their citizens the benign features of their project. It had been designed to be implemented incrementally, as an ongoing process, so that no single phase of the project would arouse sufficient opposition as to stop or derail it." Booker and North call the European Union "a slow-motion coup d'état: the most spectacular coup d'état in history," designed to gradually and carefully sideline the democratic process and subdue the older nation states of Europe without saying so publicly.

The irony is that France is now held hostage by the very forces she herself set in motion. The Jihad riots by Muslim immigrants in France in 2005 demonstrated that Eurabia is no longer a matter of French foreign policy, it is now French domestic policy. France will burn unless she continues to appease Arabs and agree to their agenda.

The growth of the Islamic population is explosive. According to some, one out of three babies born in France is a Muslim. Hundreds of Muslim ghettos already de facto follow sharia, not French law. Some believe France will quietly become a Muslim country, while others are predicting a civil war in the near future.

Maybe there is some poetic justice in the fact that the country that initiated and has led the formation of Eurabia will now be destroyed by its own Frankenstein monster. However, gloating over France's dilemma won't help. The impending downfall of France is bad news for the rest of the West. What will happen to French financial resources? Above all, who will inherit hundreds of nuclear warheads? Will these weapons fall into the hands of Jihadist Muslims, too?