Christianophobia San Bernardino Massacre

It is becoming increasingly clear that those massacred in the recent California terrorist attack were Christians, and that the blood bath was religiously motivated: Islam against Christianity.

Here is the religious identification of nine of the fourteen murdered victims, including four members of an Assyrian-Chaldean Christian (Iranian-Americans). These murders were religious, not racially, motivated. They are completely consistent with their warrior Christian-killing "prophet" Mohammed in the ongoing millennial attempt of his religion to unite the world in ridding the world of Christianity and all of the major Islamist terrorist attacks of the past couple of decades. In that--in their Christianophobia--they are one with secular humanism which sees Christianity, and especially Catholicism, as an great evil to be eradicated in every way!

Bennetta Berbadal (46 who came as a Christian refugee from Iran when she was 18, escaping the religious persecution there) and her three children.

Thalasinos Nicholas, 52, was among Messianic Jews - group that is recognized as Christian while preserving its Jewish identity. He worked for the county

Wetzel Michael Raymond, 37, a Protestant, a member of the Church of the Woods,Lake Arrowhead (California)

Damian Meins, 58, a Catholic. County employee and volunteer at the St. Catherine of Alexandria School in Riverside (California)

Tin Nguyen, 31, a Catholic born in Vietnam. Engaged, she was to be married in the Catholic Church in 2017. She worked for the county

Harry Bowman, 46, a Catholic. He worked for the county.

Cf. L'Observatoire de la Christianophobie



N..B. Pope Benedict's Regensburg Address excerpt below on the Islam heritage of irrationality and violence.

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to some of the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".[4]

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.[5] The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.[7]

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.