Brighton has a large number of Coptic Orthodox Christians from Egypt and the Sudan, many of the them have the Cross tattooed on their wrist or on the side of their hand. Yesterday in Cairo surrounded by a huge number of police
many protested against the murder of their brethren recently chanting from the Liturgy, “With my blood and my soul I will defend the cross.”
For over a thousand years Christians have been a persecuted oppressed minority. Yesterday a Sudanese women came to ask for prayers for her asylum application which will be heard today, she went around the church before Mass holding copies of her application before the faces of the statues and before the High Altar: say a prayer for Esther.
12 comments:
Behold your future. Catholics in the west are about to get a very nasty wake up call.
I'm sure the tablistas have something up their sleeve, to defend Christianity against the rise of Islam in the West. You watch!. Seriously though, it is a huge wakeup call for many, but in a secular society, will it be noticed. Or will it be a further excuse, by the seculars to try and do away with any form of religion in the West. This being an example.
Amen to that! Many still seem to have no clue as to what we will probably end up facing.
I think it is importantant to remember most Muslims are not blood crazed killers, far from it.
Very true, Father, most Muslims are not blood-crazed killers. But consider this.
Those Muslims who are blood-crazed killers are able to point to verses in the Qur'an and to hadiths which Muslims generally believe are of divine origin, and which give them an arguable case in favour of the proposition that their acts of murder are commanded by God.
These people invoke the Name of God in favour of murder, and thereby break the Second Commandment to which an assurance of divine punishment is attached.
The entire Muslim community then passes under God's displeasure unless their leaders brand them as apostates and blasphemers.
I think it is importantant to remember most Muslims are not blood crazed killers, far from it.
Nobody says that all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists seeming plague Christians and once Christian lands are Muslim.
And their number is gaining because ultimately a false religion like Islam can only inspire these horrendous acts
Dear Father Blake. I follow your fine blog from GB and abroad.
The evidence we have seems to show that those Muslims who are not 'blood crazed killers' -- those non BCKs certainly spewed (police protected) hatred of a most awful sort at the Danish Embassy two years ago, etc. -- are intimidated by their local mosque imams (imported into) in the UK and no doubt elsewhere to speak out in any way against what is going on against Christians from Indonesia to the more reported hotspots. The photos from Alexandria. Let alone sharia, etc.
It is not clear to me that even without mosque intimidation that UK muslims -- how do we come to have so many?-- would wish to mingle with English people, by which I mean white and Windrush,
The unholy alliance between the left and the Muslims is of course a major worry.
It is troubling that many Catholic spokesmen do not seem to (wish to?) acknowledge that worry.
Keep up the good work. God bless you. And me.
I think it is importantant to remember most Muslims are not blood crazed killers, far from it.
Father,
Tell that to the poor Pakistani girl who is going to loose her life for blaspheming Allah!. Or the girl who was stoned to death for adultery. Or the girl who had her nose hacked off. Or those who had their hands hacked off for stealing, rather than just repenting. Any way you look at it, Islam is barbaric, and shouldn't even be considered a faith. The Islamic religion breeds nothing but violence, and hatred to those who don't believe in what they believe!. Look what they have done to the Buddhists in the past as well. Did the Buddhists retaliate, no!.
Robert,
"Did the Buddhists retaliate, no?
Are you not familiar with the Buddhist inspired attrocities in Sri Lanka?
Or those of Christian Serbians?
But if that does not happen, and if Muslim England adheres to the view expressed by Shabbir Akhtar in The Guardian (February 27th), the problem can not be denied without basic intellectual dishonesty:
“Many writers often condescendingly imply that Muslims should become as tolerant as modern Christians. After all, the Christian faith has not been undermined. But the truth is, of course, too obviously the other way. The continual blasphemies against the Christian faith have totally undermined it. Any faith which compromises its internal temper of militant wrath is destined for the dustbin for history, for it can no longer preserve its faithful heritage in the face of the corrosive influences.”
A decorative ruin
I am not a believer and I am not English. Thirty years ago I was ejected from a society which was then as full of belief as Iran is now. That society has since fallen into confusion because it was not nationally in command of its own belief, as Muslim societies are, but was in its inner life subject to the despotism of the Pope. A few years after I was ejected for scepticism, the Pope, at the Second Vatican Council, gave new marching orders to the souls of Catholics. And the Republic of Ireland became the subject of a change which was not a development because it resulted from external causes. This is not something which could happen in an Islamic society.
I have found it very pleasant to live in England amidst the ruins of Christian belief. And if England succeeds in reducing Islam to a decorative ruin, good on it. The world cannot exist without scenery.
England, having overthrown aristocracy, preserved the great houses in order to keep the countryside interesting. And it preserves the inessentials of belief as a sort of immunisation against the essentials.
I have not read The Satanic Verses. I become hopelessly lethargic when confronted with novels by Booker Prize winners. Shabbir Akhtar has read it twice, and he says that “it is an inferior piece of literature”. I have no doubt that it is. There are things which I am happy to take on faith. Especially since the literary quality of the book is beside the point.
The paragraph of literary appreciation is the only weakness in Shabbir Akhtar’s article. From the viewpoint of belief, blasphemy whose literary quality is excellent differs from blasphemy whose literary quality is poor only in being more effectively blasphemous. The literary eloquence of Tom Paine’s The Age of Reason was a black mark against it in the eyes of the faithful.
Shabbir Akhtar says that Islam makes space within its parameters for “the sceptical temper”, and that it includes a genuinely sceptical literature of much higher quality than The Satanic Verses. I take that to be true since the article has the signs of being written by a strong and honest mind. But again it is beside the point. A scepticism which is allowed for is not blasphemous.
The Satanic Verses may be poor blasphemous literature. Salman Rushdie may be a commercially minded sensation-monger who produced a pot-boiler designed to make himself richer through safe and profitable notoriety, never imagining that the pot could boil over and scald him. His half-baked apology certainly indicates that he is not a conscientious blasphemer like Tom Paine was. But, for all that, he has published what turns out to be a genuine work of blasphemy. And England, having subverted its own God, doesn’t quite know what to do about blasphemy against this alien God who has somehow acquired naturalisation.
Interesting pix of the tattoo. Many eastern Christians receive a wrist tattoo during a "haj" to Jerusalem.
Dear Father Blake,
Why are there a large number of Coptic Christians in Brighton? Was Brighton the destination of the first group of Coptic Christians and others followed? Is there any other UK town or city that has a sizeable group of Coptic Christians?
Anthony Bidgood
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