The body of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was buried again today.The Archbishop was kidnapped on his way home from Mass on February 29th; the three aides who accompanied him were killed at the scene.
This snatching of Rahho was allegedly to use the priest as a hostage card to be played for money and the release of selected prisoners. However, it obviously went wrong somewhere along the line because the kidnappers called and told church authorities they could find his body by going to an empty lot in Mosul.
His body was found in a shallow grave, just as the terrorists had explained. Authorities say he had been dead at least five days, which puts his death on or around March 8th. There were no marks or bullet holes in Archbishop Rahho, so the cause of his death remains undetermined. Given that he was 67 and somewhat overweight, he may have suffered a fatal, stress-induced heart attack.
Backing up my intuition is this mention in Catholic World News:
Concerns about the welfare of the missing archbishop are intensified because of his uncertain physical health, the AsiaNews service reports. (Archbishop Rahho needs daily medication for a serious heart condition.) To complicate matters, the search for the kidnappers and their victim is hampered by the weak position of government forces in Mosul, a city dominated by insurgents and terrorists.
[Jihad Kidnapping, Lesson # 25. If you’re after money or jailbirds kidnap only the healthy young. Otherwise, your hostage’s body may come to control your actions. The decomposing remains of a man, even a beloved, saintly man, are not worth much, are they?]
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Thousands of mourners gathered in the Christian village of Kremlis, Iraq today to bury Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, whose body was discovered yesterday.
The funeral procession included a throng of thousands who cried and wailed as the archbishop’s coffin was carried on the shoulders of about ten men. Security was very tight with a large number of soldiers as well as armored vehicles patrolling the village center.
Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly, who is the head [made a Cardinal of the Chaldean Catholic Church by Benedict XVI last October] wept as he led the funeral Mass for the archbishop and called on Christians not to seek revenge for their shepherd’s death.
In the LA Times there in a blog section. “Babylon and Beyond” is featured there. In the header it announces Complete coverage of Iraq, Iran, Israel and the rest of the Mideast:
Iraq’s scared and dwindling Christian community has nothing to do with the sectarian or ethnic troubles afflicting the country. No Christian Iraqi took up arms against anybody, formed a militia, set roadside bombs, or even tried to block the formation of a government.
More than anyone else, Iraq’s Christians have been struggling just to survive against a torrent of troubles.
All of which makes the death of the 67-year-old Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho all the more tragic and troubling.
Do you think they chose the Archbishop because they thought the Roman Catholic Church would come up with the money?
Middle East Online has its version of the story:
“He worked day and night in the church,” Cardinal Delly told the mourners on Friday, many of them spilling into the street outside the overcrowded church.
“He was brave, deeply faithful to the service of the church. He spent his life serving the church honestly and peacefully. He was one of those who died and shed their blood for sake of duty.”
It is not yet known whether Rahho died from natural causes or was killed -- there were no bullet wounds to his body. But Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and others are treating the death as murder.
The website of Christian-sponsored Ishtar television said the kidnappers moved three times during the two weeks of captivity because the area where they were holding Rahho was raided twice.
The kidnappers had demanded that they be paid three million dollars for Rahho’s release.
Rahho was the latest in a line of Chaldean clerics to be abducted since the US-led invasion of Iraq five years ago.
Two priests were kidnapped in the city in October, and last June a priest and three deacons were attacked in front of their church.
[…]
A Christian, Joseph Iskander, said the aim of the kidnapping was to “make problems between communities. It is not about money.”
Another Christian, who asked not to be named, said: “All Christians in Baghdad and Mosul are mourning this disaster,” he said. “He was a good person, he liked to help everyone, Christians and Muslims. What did they gain from killing him? They are criminals who want to kill Muslims and Christians for the sake of money.”
Here is a website with locations of Chaldean churches all over the globe. It is obviously a church in exile. This is the news page.
Requiescat in Pace, Archbishop Rahho.
13 comments:
Christians like these are beneath contempt to be honest - brutally so.
Here we have YET ANOTHER barbaric murder committed by the moonbats and the ever-so-brave soldiers of Christ say "don't respond".
To hell with these cowards! When, please, please PLEASE tell me when the westerners INCLUDING CHRISTIANS are going to WAKE THE HELL UP?
We're being attacked, atrcoities are being carried out against our INNOCENT people and we say "Restraint - don't let them make you respond."
Apologies for my fury but BOLLOCKS to this cowardice. Enough of swallowing pride, enough of cowering in fear and ENOUGH OF BOWING BEFORE ISLAM.
What the hell is wrong with us - when do we start to fight? WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN? What the f*ck will it take>
I hate this bastard ideology of lunatics, of psychos, of evil OF ISLAM and I long for the day when those who have enough between their ears find enough between their legs and FIGHT THE HELL BACK.
Our cowardice is depsicable, our supplication is shameful and our abrogation of duty to those who follow us is quite frankly unforgivable.
FFS FIGHT.
I apologise to Baron and Dymphna for my anger but by God this has made my blood boil and I'm getting so pissed off with Islam and our attitude towards it. It is sickening, totally sickening and I'm past nicities now. Unless we fight and accept it's us or them we ae doomed.
Defiant Lion,
I agree with your sentiments. I do however have a few questions for you and your Brit/European colleagues:
1. Do you consider it justified to take up arms against the jihadists and their government enablers in the UK and the west?
2. If so, are you willing to dig up the arms you have buried in your garden for just such an eventuality?
3. What's that? You and your forbears surrendered the rights contained in Magna Carta and registered/surrendered those arms to the crown's government?
I suggest you google Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine while you await your turn to pass under the yoke of sharia.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!
defiant lion, since when are Arabs "our people"?
Defiant Lion:
You get an A+ for your testosterone level and a F- for your understanding of the Christian dilemma in Iraq.
The barbarians who crucify Christian Iraqi children for sport are just waiting for one of the cross-huggers to step out of line.
Chaldean and Assyrian Christians have more than enough to do trying to survive or leave. Taking on your suicidal machismo routine would mean obliteration of their centuries' old culture and religion.
Your chest-beating solution is not workable in every situation. It is in fact, "beneath contempt" to suggest it as a response to the Archbishop's death.
Such action would mean the genocide of the remaining 6,000 Christians -- men, women, children...and pets for that matter.
What is it? You eager to see a few hundred crucified children so you have an excuse to ramp up your rage?
I hope someone is taking you to anger management meetings. That kind of fuming frenzy is neither helpful nor smart.
Sorry, that should have been "their millennia-old culture and religion."
Being an American, I find it hard to take in such a span of time for a people to survive.
I think Defiant Lion has a point, although I'm not sure he intended it:
If there were to be organized resistance to Islamic ideology by Western civilization, what form would it take?
The above question is one I have thought about frequently. Do we, as a secular and ostensibly pluralistic society with respect to religion, choose Christianity as the rallying point? Shall we choose European heritage (i.e. race)? In my opinion neither are satisfactory. Just as we are witnessing fundamental differences between traditional Christianity and the African-American variety of Christianity to which Barack Obama ascribes, I fear we would witness similar differences between Westernized "traditional" Christianity and third world Christianity. And while European descent has undoubtedly yielded the highest level of industrial progress over the last 500 years, individuals like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq indicate that not all who are "Arab" or "African" deserve reproach.
This is the difficulty that presents us: defining the enemy. Clearly Islamism is the enemy. Clearly multiculturism and political correctness are even more evil. But at who do we direct our fury and with whom shall we find common cause?
If we took the 6,000 Chaldean and Assyrian Christians into the U.S. and made them citizens, would that satisfy everyone? Or would we still be concerned about ancient tribal grudges being imported into American streets?
I don't purport to have the answers, but I think we certainly must discuss and form some agreement against what we fight. Otherwise we will be fighting ghosts and shadows from now until Ragnarok.
Yeah, and the 10 remaining Christians in all of Iraq attended his funeral...
The west needs to ponder this, write some papers and give some speeches at the U.N.
re Sodra Djavul-
1. There are far more than 6,000 of these people in Iraq (at least 100x that number based on what I read).
2. You touch on precisely the right problem. More and more western people are against Islam, but in defense of what? ...In defense of McDonalds and Wal-Mart? Of "freedom" for degenerates to produce pornography? Of a country (USA) that will be one-third Hispanic and 49% white in 30 years' time, or [insert equally dismal projections for the E.U. here]? People on this side of the fence should fight for national revival(s) just as strongly, or else what are we doing but defending the rotten core of an apple from Islamic flies? ...
3. Geopolitically speaking, this century will be defined by the multifaceted ethnoreligious struggle for supremacy in Europe and North America that we have already seen begin. [When Europe will enter the 'Balkanization' stage with lots of minor shooting wars between competing ethnoreligious militias/armies, is anyone's guess, the good money is on 2065 right now ;-) ...]. How this will turn out will depend a little on luck, but mostly on raising a resistance which knows what its goal is sooner than later. Its goal would be National Survival, a "radical" opposition that opposes being wiped out genetically. (Small such ethnonationalist already exist but are mostly demonized and marginalized in Europe). Simply put: If we lose, European people(s) will quietly exit history, "out with a whimper". Some of our genetics will survive, but swamped by alien genetics of the would-be new masters of our ancient lands. Whether these new masters are Islamic or Christian or Bahai, I could not care less.
Sodra Djavul said-
Shall we choose European heritage (i.e. race)?
I disagree with your equation. As an American, I consider our culture to be one of European descent, even though we are a hundred races here -- all the colors of the rainbow.
The rallying point is the root of Western ideas and ideals: the importance of the individual, that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the optimal way to arrange these "individuals" into a commonwealth.
Yes, the language is American Founding Fathers, but *they* went back to Locke, etc., to establish the framework of our government.
We also claimed that these rights were not "given" by any government; they inhere in the human individual...(Americans do fight about what constitutes the individual at both extremes of life, fetal or senile).
Therefore I choose my European heritage and I do not consider it racist to do so. I am an Irish-American, first generation born here (missed being Canadian by a month or so because my mother moved from Toronto)
I can do the whole hyphenated thing if necessary, but I notice the hyphenators are usually carrying some grievance or other.
Our country is no better nor worse than other republics, commonwealths, etc., that run on the consensus of the governed.
And Ayaan Hirsi Ali is of Western heritage, too. She chose it actively and at some risk.
So here we are, she and I, black and white (or black and freckled, if you insist) both liking the West's way of doing things and wanting to be a part of that.
How does that make us racist? Or, if it does, great: she'll be a standard bearer in our 'racist' fight for individual liberty.
BTW, there *are* about 6,000 Chaldeans and Assyrians LEFT in Iraq. It was originally 800,000.
Check the Chaldean website.
Dymphna, the "christiansofiraq" site linked to up there claims 200,000 are "left". [One should take that with a jar of salt. These groups play fast and loose with the facts and inflate/deflate for political purposes. Just ask a Kurdish nationalist how many Kurds there are in that region, or a Turkoman how many of his people are in Iraq.] Not sure where this 6,000 claim comes from.
Dymphna said...
The rallying point is the root of Western ideas and ideals: the importance of the individual, that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the optimal way to arrange these "individuals" into a commonwealth.
If this is what we are fighting for, then surely moderate assimilated muslims can join the party? The key word is assimilated. --> Even those pygmy tribes from the Congo can be good Westerners, if they agree to the set of ideals you mention?
I have a hard time coming to terms with this, it just seems bizarre and unnatural to declare nationhood based on whether a person agrees or disagrees with a set of principles. Can, e.g., a Swedish nationalist be 'non-Western' if he violently opposes the ideals you mention? But a woman from Africa who moves to Sweden *can* be Western if she declares her affinity for said ideals?
And Ayaan Hirsi Ali is of Western heritage, too. She chose it actively and at some risk.
Mrs Hirsi Ali may live in the West/Europe, but by definition she is NOT European/Western "heritage".
I'm trying to understand some things:
1.) The Iraqi Christians/ Chaldeans have been in Iraq since before the borders of the present day country were drawn up, (after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire during the Versailles treaty,) correct? They have been living as dhimmis under islam for at least 1300 years. What do THEY believe their options are? How do THEY think they can fight back against the islamist terrorists, without having their family slaughtered?
2.) They also believe that Christ told them to love your enemies, pray for those who curse you and to offer your other cheek when someone stikes you. Remeber?
3.) I agree that the fight is not religion against religion, but culture against culture. I happen to believe that even with all of the obvious flaws of Western Civilization, (of which I do NOT include Wal-Mart!) an open society that allows individuals to freely choose their belief system is precious in the sight of the Almighty. Worship that is forced is not true belief at all. Allowing individuals to exercise their Free Will as a matter of conscience is one of the most important hallmarks of Western civilization!!
I'm sorry if this screed doesn't make it any easier to identify the enemy, but I just think some things cannot be stated often enough, lest we forget what we are fighting FOR!
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