Georgia City Removes, Then Replaces, Memorial Day Crosses After Complaint


Memorial Day display of 79 crosses erected on May 20 alongside a state highway in Hiram, Georgia, to honor the 79 Paulding County residents who died in America’s wars was temporarily removed following a complaint from a caller. However, following a hastily called city council meeting, the council voted unanimously to put the crosses back up. By May 25, they were again on display.
Almost as soon as the crosses (which had been hand painted by volunteers) were erected, Hiram City Manager Barry Atkinson’s office received a phone call asking whether or not the Christian display was appropriate and if all the fallen soldiers had been Christian. Atkinson said in an interview with WSBTV, a local ABC News affiliate: “They asked were all those fallen soldiers Christian, and the answer to that was no, they obviously weren’t.”
Atkinson said he did not believe the person who complained was angry about the crosses. “If Hiram was willing to do a permanent veterans memorial, they offered to make a cash contribution, so I wouldn’t say they were really mad,” he said.


Nevertheless, the conversation still impacted Atkinson’s decision making. “It opened our eyes that we missed something here, and we immediately took corrective action,” he told WSBTV.
That action was removing the crosses.
However, the removal of the crosses proved, if anything, to be more controversial than their erection. The Washington Times reported that on the night of May 24, during a city council meeting, many residents voiced their objections to the crosses’ removal and the council responded by voting unanimously to replace them.
Hiram’s mayor, Teresa Philyaw, told the media that the display of the crosses, which she had helped plan and approved, was never intended to be religious. She said in a statement quoted by the Inquisitr:

It was never about religion — it was just to honor them. I was devastated when it had to come down. We wanted to make sure that they weren’t forgotten. We also wanted their families to know that our hearts still bleed for them. At the time, it never, ever crossed my mind about the religious factor in it. The cross is a “rest in peace” symbol to me.

One resident said in an interview with WSBTV’s Ross Cavitt:

People who are non-Christian shouldn’t be offended by [the crosses] because [the soldiers] gave their lives for our country, and that’s the way I look at it.

Whether it’s a cross or any other kind of marking it’s in honor of Memorial Day. 

This incident in Hiram was one of many similar such controversies that have occurred across our land in recent years, as federal and local jurisdictions have misinterpreted the First Amendment’s language prohibiting Congress from legislating to respect “an establishment of religion.” Though it was originally understood that by passing that amendment, our Founders were referring to an established church (such as the Church of England) and that the prohibition applied only to Congress, two factors came into play. First, following the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, a series of Supreme Court decision started using the “due process” clause in the amendment to apply language in the Bill of Rights to the states that originally applied only to the federal government. Additionally, a number of courts ruled that the First Amendment’s prohibition of an establishment of religion applied not only to the establishment of a church, but to any expression of religious faith at any level of government, such as prayer in public schools or displays of the Ten Commandments in court houses.
Atheists and organizations such as the ACLU have seized on these rulings to file lawsuits against any such expressions of faith on public property. One such case involved a wooden cross erected at Sunrise Rock in the Mojave National Preserve by veterans of World War I. A long battle in the courts following a lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the cross’s placement caused the cross to be placed in storage for years, but it was finally restored on Veterans Day 2012 — 13 years after it had been removed because of the ACLU lawsuit.
In another case back in 2011, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a ruling by the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver, which had ordered the removal of crosses placed along Utah’s highways by the private Utah Highway Patrol Association in honor of fallen state troopers. The decision was the result of a lawsuit filed by the Texas-based American Atheists Inc. and three of its Utah members. In April 2011, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF, formerly Alliance Defense Fund) took up the case on behalf of Utah and the Highway Patrol Association, asking the Supreme Court to review the case. However, in an 8-1 ruling on October 31, the High Court declined to hear the appeal.
The lone dissenter in the case was Clarence Thomas, who wrote that his fellow justices had missed “an opportunity to provide clarity to an Establishment Clause jurisprudence in shambles.”
The idea that religious symbols or expressions should be prohibited on public property is proved to be baseless by some federal practices that indicate the opposite. For example, both houses of Congress retain a chaplain to open each session of their body with a prayer. The House cites the first half of Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution as giving it the authority to elect a chaplain: “The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers.”
The office of the Clerk of the House explains the legitimacy of appointing a chaplain: “The other officers have been created and their duties defined by the rules of the House, which also are made pursuant to the authority of the Constitution, hence one of the rules prescribes the duties of the Chaplain.”
The Senate also appoints a chaplain, by a majority vote of the members of the Senate. This practice follows a long tradition going back to the founding of our republic. Shortly after the Senate first convened in April 1789 in New York, one of its “first orders of business” was to convene a committee to recommend a chaplain, selecting the Right Reverend Samuel Provoost, Episcopal Bishop of New York.
Going back to the objections made to the display of crosses in Hiram, Georgia, it is interesting to consider that the Department of the Army, which runs Arlington National Cemetery, specifically lists 60 different religious symbols that may be inscribed on headstones there. The most common symbol is the Latin Cross, but other symbols commonly seen at Arlington are the Star of David (on Jewish graves), the Lutheran Cross, the Russian Orthodox Cross, the Cross and Crown (of the First Church of Christ, Scientist) and the Presbyterian Cross.
Those who have died in service to our country have often possessed a trio of loyalties for which they were wiling to lay down their lives — God, family, and country. It should be viewed as a disservice to their memory to deny the display of symbols reflecting any of these loyalties in their honor.

Arabs Using Christians to Fight Israel

• The Middle East has been inhabited by Jews and then Christians for nearly three thousand years; until the seventh century, Muslims did not even exist.
• Many Christians in Arab countries and in Palestinian Authority (PA), without a state or anyone else to support them, are still behaving as dhimmis, paying lip service to Muslim Arab "lords" in exchange for protection in their original homelands.
• The Palestinians plan activities, pay salaries and fund anti-Israeli Christian dhimmi organizations, in order to make Western Christians believe in the "Palestinian cause" -- by which they mean the establishment of another Arab-Islamic dictatorship state with no human rights in it.
• Coexistence is not the issue for Christians here, but rather fear for their own existence -- based on the ruthless lack of freedom under the PA, as in all Arab states.

Christians in Holy Land, Judea and Samaria -- what today is called the West Bank or the Palestinian Authority (PA) -- are, with the Jews and assorted Arabs, the indigenous people of the land. The region has been inhabited by Jews and then Christians for nearly three thousand years; until the seventh century, Muslims did not even exist.
After the conquest of Jerusalem by Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula in 637 AD, the Jews and early followers of Christianity were forced either to convert to Islam or accept the rule of sharia (Islamic religious law) under the Islamic Caliphate, with its dhimmi laws designed to remind you that you are inferior. In Islam, dhimmis are non-Muslims -- and therefore second-class, barely tolerated residents -- who live under separate, harsher, laws and have to pay protection money (a "tax" called the jizya) to safeguard their lives and property.
These laws are imposed by Muslim conquerors against all "infidels," both Christians and Jews, in all occupied areas, and are still valid under different guises today in Gaza and in the Palestinian Authority.
In Syria, ISIS recently sent out an Islamic decree ordering Christians in Al Raqqa to pay a tax of around half an ounce (14g) of pure gold as part of these dhimmi rules, the same as in the earlier Muslim conquest of the Middle East.
In Gaza, Christians are persecuted by Islamic groups and the Hamas government. Rami Ayyad, a local Christian who owned a bookshop, was assassinated for refusing to close it.

Rami Ayyad, a Christian bookseller in Gaza, was murdered by Islamic extremists because he refused to close his bookshop.

In Bethlehem, in the West Bank, the Saint Charbel Monastery was set ablaze on October 8, 2015 and the car of the Jerusalem Latin Patriarch was attacked by Palestinian Islamic extremists last Christmas Eve. Luckily, we have Israeli soldiers at Rachel's Tomb who intervened to stop the Palestinian attackers.
Now, what was the role of the Jews in all these attacks? The answer is: nothing.
With that said, we did not hear the local Christian media speaking out against this persecution and discrimination. Muslim groups certainly did not condemn these attacks. We heard silence from the majority of Palestinian Islamic society.
On the other hand, we hear loud outrage in the local Christian when some fanatic Jews, who in no way represent Israeli Zionist values, and whom the Zionists subsequently arrest, damage a monastery.
Why didn't Christians react to both crimes equally?
Dhimmitude was once forced on both Jewish and Christian communities under Islamic sovereigns and states. The Jews now have their own strong democratic country, and feel safe. Many Christians in Arab countries and in Palestinian Authority (PA), however, without a state or anyone else to support them, are still behaving as dhimmis, and paying lip service in exchange for protection in their original homelands.
At a recent conference called "Christ at the Checkpoint," for example, we noticed Christian dhimmis, ruled by the Palestinian Authority, acting aggressively against the sole democratic state in the region, Israel, where the Christian community is actually thriving. The Christians at "Christ at the Checkpoint" tried falsely to rewrite history. Like good dhimmis, they denied any relation of Jesus to Jewish roots -- even though the Last Supper was a Jewish Passover Seder -- and thereby even to our own to Christian roots, and the purpose of God's appearance as a human on Earth, through the Jewish people, as written in the Bible.
Moreover, the conference's organizers, like its participants, ignored any current or historic persecution of Christians by Muslims. In fact, by their announcements, they even denied their own beliefs as mentioned in the holy Bible. The only concern that led them at each step, every second and every moment, was fawningly to satisfy the Islamic Arab majority in its fight against Jewish state.
Coexistence is not the issue for Christians here, but rather fears for their own existence and total lack of freedom under the Palestinian Authority, as in all Arab states. The PA and other Arab Islamic regimes are smart enough to smell this weakness. They plan activities, pay salaries and fund anti-Israeli Christian dhimmi organizations, in order to make Western Christians believe in the "Palestinian cause" -- by which they mean the establishment of another Arab-Islamic dictatorship state with no human rights in it.
Their method is to use Christians temporarily, pitting them against their Jewish brothers, with whom the Christians share the same roots and the same holy books. The Palestinian Authority constitution, in Article 4, states clearly: "The principles of Islamic Shari'a shall be the main source of legislation."
If this country is defined as Islamic, it assures Islamic superiority upon all other religions and prevents any person from ever leaving Islam. It is important for the West to understand that all matters relating to human rights and freedom of religion mentioned are irrelevant, and are there just to attract temporary Western support. The Western democratic world -- with all Christian churches worldwide -- should be aware of this tactic. They should also acknowledge, for their own survival, that Israel has democratically enshrined, and abides by, human rights laws for Christians and all its other citizens. The West should stop funding Palestinian Arabs so easily, and put pressure on Palestinian leaders to assure that they provide human rights, security, equality and freedom for their own people, as well as for the local Christian community. Israel is not the problem; Israel is the solution.

Sister Thunder honoring our falling hero

 

May 30, 2016 Monday “Memorial Day” at 5:00pm PST call-in if you want to be a part of show (347) 826-7353

 

Everyone celebrates Memorial Day with hotdogs and lounge chairs.

 

And it may not happen all the time, but the meaning of Memorial Day can sometimes get lost in making those long weekend travel plans.

 

But Memorial Day has a deeper meaning. It started at the end of the Civil War, when it was called Decoration Day, where the newly unified nation came together to honor and remember all of those who perished in the war. As the 20th Century rolled around, Decoration Day became Memorial Day and was dedicated to the remembrance of all those who fell during military service.

 

Tell us their story of sacrifice and remembrance, in their words.  So I will be reading letters and remembering the lost hero. And MY Letter to My hero..

 

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sisterthundershow/2016/05/31/sister-thunder-honoring-our-falling-hero

 

 

The West Must Say "Je Suis Asia Bibi"

• "I will not convert. I believe in my religion and Jesus Christ. And why should I be the one to convert and not you?" — Asia Bibi.
• It is the West's indolence and cupidity that has condemned Asia Bibi to death. No one in Europe has filled the streets to ask for the liberation of this courageous woman, or even to protest Pakistan's anti-Christian laws.
• Even Pope Francis stood silent. The emblem of his reticence is the 12 seconds of face-to-face time the Pope had with Bibi's husband and her daughter in St. Peter's Square. Francis barely touched the two. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, publicly called many times for her release.
• The mainline Protestant churches of America, too busy demonizing Israel, also stood silent. Meanwhile, Christianity is being erased from its own cradle.

The death sentence for Asia Bibi is like Chernobyl's nuclear cloud: it contaminates everything around it. After Asia's arrest, her husband, Masih, and her children went into hiding. They have moved house 15 times in five years. They could not even attend Asia's judicial hearings. It is too dangerous for them. Her husband was forced to quit his job.
Asia's "crime" was to use the same water glass as her Muslim co-workers. She was sentenced to death because she is Christian and she was thirsty. "You defiled our water," the Muslim women told her. "Convert to Islam to redeem yourself from your filthy religion."
Asia took a deep breath and replied: "I will not convert. I believe in my religion and Jesus Christ. And why should I be the one to convert and not you?"
On November 8, 2010, after just five minutes of deliberation, Asia Noreen Bibi, under Article 295 of the Pakistani Code, was sentenced to death by hanging. The crowd cheered the verdict. She was alone and burst into tears. Next to her there were two policemen, visibly satisfied. In the days after, 50,000 people in Karachi and 40,000 in Lahore took the streets to brandish an image of Asia Bibi with the rope around her neck. They say they will not rest until she is hanged or shot.

Asia Bibi and two of her five children, pictured prior to her imprisonment on death row in 2010 for "blasphemy."

Pakistani Islamists recently gathered to demand the immediate execution of this woman, who has been jailed for 2,500 days. Fears for the life of Bibi -- the first Christian woman sentenced to be hanged in Pakistan on spurious charges of "blasphemy" -- have grown after the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, the murderer of Punjab governor Salman Taseer, a brave Muslim reformer who paid with his life for expressing support for Asia Bibi. Lawyers defending people accused of blasphemy are sometimes murdered as well.
The late Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti also supported Asia Bibi, and ensured that she was placed another cell, where a camera now checks that she does not suffer any violence. It was a fatal decision for Bhatti. A terrorist blocked Bhatti's car as he left his mother's house and murdered him in broad daylight. Everyone knew that the death sentence would be carried out sooner or later. Rome's Trevi Fountain has just been illuminated red to remember Christian martyrs, such as Mr. Bhatti.
Street protests against Asia Bibi have continued since Qadri's execution on February 29, 2016. A senior Punjabi government official revealed that Bibi's security tightened was increased after intelligence reports surfaced that Islamist groups are conspiring to kill her inside the prison, to avenge the hanging of Qadri.
These threats are why human rights organizations have demanded that the appeal of Asia Bibi, which has been postponed so far, will be conducted in a prison cell, under tight security measures. Any transfer needs to remain secret because Islamists are ready to exploit any opportunity to target her.
To understand Asia's impending martyrdom, one has to read the book she wrote with the French journalist Anne Isabelle Tollet, entitled "Blasphemy".
Asia Bibi must prepare her food by herself to avoid being poisoned. Even the guards threaten her with death. She never leaves her prison cell, and no one is allowed to enter to clean it. She has to clean it by herself, and the prison does not provide any cleaning products. In the small cell, which measures three meters, next to the bed there is what the guards, to mock her, call the "bathroom." It is a water pipe from the wall and a hole in the ground. This has been her life in the last five years, as in the crypt of a cemetery.
Meanwhile, Islamists just raised the bounty on her head to 50 million rupees ($678,000). Her lawyer explained that many Christians accused of blasphemy are killed in their prison cells before they can even appear in court.
Asia Bibi never killed anyone. But in the so-called justice system of her country, she has done something much worse, the crime of crimes, the most absolute outrage: She -- allegedly -- offended the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. Criminals, murderers, and rapists are treated better than her.
It is the West's indolence and cupidity that has condemned Asia Bibi to death. For this courageous woman, no one in Europe has filled the streets to ask her liberation or to protest against Pakistan's anti-Christian laws. Even Pope Francis stood silent. The emblem of his reticence is the 12 seconds of face-to-face time the Pope had with Bibi's husband and her daughter in St. Peter's Square. Francis barely touched the two, while his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, publicly called many times for her release.
U.S. President Barack Obama, always full of rhetoric and ecumenical emotions, has never said a word about the persecution of Christians or asked his Pakistani allies to free Asia Bibi. And to quote the French newspaper Le Figaro, Europeans are usually "so eager" to have "mobilizations, petitions, demonstrations of every kind, but "in this case, nothing!"
For a long time, even the American mainstream press stood silent about the massacres of Christians, who are martyred every five minutes. This silence was broken by a brave dissident of Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who dedicated to this mass martyrdom a masterful essay in Newsweek. The mainline Protestant churches of America, too busy demonizing Israel, also stood silent. In France, it has been impossible even to sponsor an event in which the receipts would be given in favor of these Christians. The operator of the Paris' metro refused an ad in favor of these Christians, then lifted the ban after protests. All European secular NGOs such as Oxfam are also silent, leaving the defense of Christians to heroic non-governmental organizations such as the Barnabas Fund.
Westerners have been accustomed to think of those remote Christians as if they were leftover agents of colonialism, so that we are deaf to their pleas and even to their tragic stories. Meanwhile, Christianity is being erased from its own cradle. Distaste for our moral cowardice is balanced by the admiration for these Christians, such as Asia Bibi, who continue to witness their faith in a land that wants to expel them from history. But the Western cowardice will be punished.
The war against the "blasphemous" has in fact deep consequences in Europe, where dozens of journalists, cartoonists and writers are condemned to death for another version of the same "crime" as Asia Bibi: "Islamophobia." Catholic faithful such as Asia Bibi have been persecuted for the same reasons and by the same people who murdered Charlie Hebdo's impenitent secularists. And ISIS, which recently blew up Mosul's iconic clock church (donated by the wife of Napoleon III), would gladly blow up the Cathedral of Chartres, one of France's greatest treasures.
The liberation of this illiterate Pakistani mother of five children does not just affect some distant Christian community. It concerns all of us. Is it too much to ask Westerners for some moral clarity and to rally under the slogan, "Je Suis Asia Bibi"?

‎ RUSSIA PLEASE GIVE ASSYRIAN FEMALE FIGHTER FROM ‪‎SYRIA A NO FLY ZONE

 

 

 

Pakistan: "Blasphemy" for Ethnic Cleansing

• After the attack, some villagers gathered and started threatening other Christians, demanding they either convert to Islam or move out of the area. Then an Islamic religious decree was issued, to hand over Masih to the local Islamic clerics so that he could be burned alive for blasphemy.
• Why was only Masih (a Christian) accused of blasphemy, when Bilal (a Muslim) had obviously watched the video in question?
• The Christians who are left are searching to find an alternate place to live, and are now facing hatred in the guise of a boycott. No one is selling them food or any daily essentials.
• In Punjab, harassing Christians has become a norm; a way of getting rid of them. Every time Christians are threatened and forced to leave the area, the charge is always blasphemy.

It started as a normal day in the remote Pakistani village of Chak-44 for Imran Masih, a Christian man, and Bilal, his Muslim friend, in mid-April. Masih had revealed to Bilal that the woman he had fallen in love with was a Muslim.
According to media reports, Masih was called away urgently and left his phone with Bilal, who apparently came across a video that appeared in Masih's Facebook feed, which allegedly contained content against the Muslim Prophet Mohammad. Bilal's accusation that Masih had viewed that video became the reason to charge Masih with blasphemy.
You start asking questions, such as: Wait a minute, who has committed blasphemy?
No one will probably ever even know what was on that video or whether Masih even watched it. But even if Masih did watch it, he was not the only one: Bilal also watched it. However, in a country where might is right, Bilal, a Muslim with the support of fellow villagers, is always right.
In an instant, a friend had become not only a stranger, but a liar.
Bilal called in two other Muslims to help beat up his Christian friend. A doctor who appeared at the scene to save Masih from the angry men was apparently also a Muslim clergyman. He asked Imran for an apology.
After the attack, some villagers gathered and started threatening other Christians, demanding they either convert to Islam or move out of the area. Then an Islamic religious decree was issued, to hand over Masih to the local Islamic clerics so that he could be burned alive for blasphemy.
What had those Christian residents done to infuriate the local Muslims? They had merely lived in this remote region of Punjab.
Why was only Masih (a Christian) accused of blasphemy, when Bilal (a Muslim) had obviously watched the video in question?
The news reports also indicate that three quarters of the area's Christians have already abandoned their homes. The Christians who are left are searching to find an alternate place to live, and are now facing hatred in the guise of a boycott. No one is selling them food or any daily essentials.

Left: Imran Masih's house in the village of Chak-44, Pakistan. Right: The Catholic Church in the village. (Images source: World Watch Monitor)

The history of Punjab brims with violence and the torching Christian homes. All these horrific incidents illustrate an intense hatred for Christians. Religion here is a force that could divide any friendship.
The government and human rights organizations are well aware of this hatred and violence. Here, harassing Christians has become a norm; a way of getting rid of them. Every time Christians are threatened and forced to leave the area, the charge is always blasphemy.
A few years ago, I covered the story of Rimsha Masih, an underage Christian girl charged with the blasphemy in the outskirts of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. As one talked to the shopkeepers and her neighbors, their eyes would fill with hate. "We want to get Christians out of here," the residents would say. Using a young Christian girl and getting her charged with blasphemy seemed like the perfect plan.
In Pakistan, under the guise of blasphemy laws, the Muslim citizens have been getting rid of the Christians for years

Europe: Allah Takes over Churches, Synagogues

• In the Dutch province of Friesland, 250 of 720 existing churches have been transformed or closed. The Fatih Camii Mosque in Amsterdam once was the Saint Ignatius Church. A synagogue in The Hague was turned into the Al Aqsa Mosque. In Flanders, in place of a famous church, a luxury hotel now stands. Catholic arches, columns and windows still soar between menus and tables for customers.
• "The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque." — Emile Cioran, author.
• Germany is literally selling its churches. Between 1990 and 2010, the German Evangelical Church closed 340 churches. Recently in Hamburg, a Lutheran church was purchased by the Muslim community.
• "History teaches us that these transformations are rarely innocent." — Bertrand Dutheil de La Rochère, assistant to Marine Le Pen.

Last year, at the famous Biennale artistic festival in Venice, Swiss artist Christian Büchel took the ancient Catholic Church of Santa Maria della Misericordia and converted it into a mosque. The church had not been used for Christian worship for more than forty years. Büchel decorated the baroque walls with Arabic writing, covered the floor with a prayer rug, and hid the crucifix behind a prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca, the holy city of Islam. It was a provocation.
But everywhere else in Europe, the practice of Islam really is outstripping Christianity, while Jews are leaving -- not only France but the old continent -- en masse.
In January, Zvi Ammar, the president of the Marseille Israelite Consistory, recommended that Jews that stop wearing a kippah (skullcap) when out in the street. Too many anti-Semitic incidents have cast fear into the hearts of Marseille's 70,000 Jews, who make up a tenth of the city's population. 500 Jews already left the city in 2015. A few days ago, Mr. Ammar announced another attempt at appeasement: the conversion of a historic synagogue into a mosque.
The synagogue Or Torah ["light of the Torah"] was bought by the Muslim organization Al Badr for 400,000 euros ($456,000). The synagogue was empty, due to rampant anti-Semitism in Marseille, while the nearby mosque, run by Al Badr, was unable to handle the overcrowding every Friday, with the faithful forced to pray in the street (a quarter of the inhabitants of Marseille are Muslim). Muslims in Marseille already have 73 mosques.
A year ago, the Muslim French leader Dalil Boubakeur suggested turning empty churches into mosques. It is the first time in France that something similar happened to a synagogue. "History teaches us that these transformations are rarely innocent," said Bertrand Dutheil de La Rochère, an assistant to Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front party. He appeared to be comparing the fate of the synagogue to that of the Hagia Sophia Basilica, which became a mosque in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453, after its capture by the Muslim Ottoman Turks.

The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was the grandest cathedral in the Christian world, until it was captured and converted to a mosque by the Muslim Ottoman Turks in 1453. The Middle East is full of churches and synagogues turned into Islamic sites. Today, every traveler in a modern European city can notice the new mosques being built alongside abandoned and secularized churches, some converted into museums. (Image source: Antoine Taveneaux/Wikimedia Commons)

"What should we do?" Zvi Ammar asked this author.

"Security concerns had already pushed the Jews out of the city's center. We could no longer live in a Muslim area, so the synagogue was empty. Thousands of synagogues in the Arab-Islamic world, from Libya to Morocco, from Iraq to Tunisia, have been converted into mosques. The only difference is that in France, Muslims cannot expropriate a synagogue; they have to pay for it."

What a sad consolation.
Zvi Ammar, however, is right: not only is the Middle East full of synagogues turned into Islamic sites, but also of churches converted into mosques, such as the Umayyad in Damascus, the Ibn Tulun in Cairo and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. In Hebron and on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, Muslim conquerors built their sites atop the Jewish ones.
A few years ago, Niall Ferguson, the brilliant contemporary historian, wrote about Europe's future as "the creeping Islamicization of a decadent Christendom." It is easy to find images of the decay of Europe's Christianity and the growth of Islam in the heart of the old continent. Every traveler in any modern European city can notice the new mosques being built alongside abandoned and secularized churches, some converted into museums.
The most crucial moment in Michel Houellebecq's novel, Submission, is when the novel's protagonist, a Sorbonne professor searching for a conversion experience, visits a Christian shrine, only to find himself unmoved. This is a reality in France.
In the French region of Vierzon, the Church of Saint-Eloi has become a mosque. The diocese of Bourges had put the church on sale, and a Muslim organization made a most generous offer to buy the site. In the Quai Malakoff, in Nantes, the old Church of Saint Christopher became the Mosque of Forqane.
In the Dutch province of Friesland, 250 of 720 existing churches have been transformed or closed. The Fatih Camii Mosque in Amsterdam once was the Saint Ignatius Church. A synagogue in The Hague was turned into the Al Aqsa Mosque. The Church of St. Jacobus, one of the oldest of the city of Utrecht, was recently converted into a luxury residence. A library just opened in a former Dominican church in Maastricht.
The main mosque in Dublin is a former Presbyterian church. In England, the St. Marks Cathedral is now called the New Peckam Mosque, while in Manchester, the Mosque of Disbury was once a Methodist church. In Clitheroe, Lancashire, the authorities granted permission to have an Anglican church, Saint Peter's Church in Cobridge, transformed into the Madina Mosque. It is no longer taboo in the media to talk about "the end of British Christianity."
Belgium, once a cradle of European Catholicism, is closing dozens of its churches. The Church of St. Catherine, built in 1874, dominates the historic center of Brussels, the only religious building created in the city's "pentagon" at the end of Ancien Régime, and today one of the most protected in the EU's capital, especially after the terror attacks there on March 22, 2016. Brussels, however, wanted to convert the church into a fruit market. Only the mobilization of the faithful hindered the city's plan.
Last month, The Economist explained what is happening in Belgium, once famous for the Madonna of Bruges, one of Michelangelo's most famous paintings: "If anything holds Belgium together through its third century of existence, Catholicism will not be the glue," the magazine wrote. That, it noted, will be Islam. In Brussels, half the children in state schools choose classes in Islam; practicing Catholics amount to 12%, while 19% are practicing Muslims.
According to La Libre newspaper, dozens of Belgian churches are in imminent danger of conversion to other uses. The Church of Saint-Hubert in Watermael-Boitsfort is expected to accommodate apartments, while the Church of the Holy Family of Schaerbeek awaits an investor. In Malonne, the chapel of Piroy has been transformed into a restaurant. In Namur, the Saint-Jacques Church was transformed into a clothing store and the Church of Notre Dame, built in 1749 and deconsecrated in 2004, is now a "cultural space." The square will be redeveloped, with ticketing services and catering. Dozens of exhibitions, concerts and fashion shows have already been held in the church. In Tournai, the Church of St. Margherita has been transformed into apartments.
Eight centuries after its founding, the Church of the Blessed Sacrament at Binche, a majestic building in the heart of a medieval town close to Brussels, was put on sale for the symbolic sum of one euro. In Mechelen, Flanders, in place of a famous church, a luxury hotel has arisen. Catholic arches, columns and windows still soar between menus and tables for customers.
Despite the fact that the "Pope Emeritus," Joseph Ratzinger, comes from Germany, that Chancellor Angela Merkel is the daughter of a Lutheran minister and the current German president, Joachim Gauck, is a Protestant pastor, Germany is literally selling its churches. Between 1990 and 2010, the German Evangelical Church closed 340 churches. Recently, in Hamburg, a Lutheran church was purchased by the Muslim community. In Spandau, the church of St. Raphael is now a grocery store. In Karl Marx's town, Trier, some churches have been turned into gyms. In Cologne, a church is now a luxurious residence with a private pool.
The writer Emile Cioran once cast a sinister prophecy on Europe: "The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque." Five years ago, a French historian, Dominique Venner, shot himself on the altar of Notre Dame, Paris's most famous Cathedral. This suicide, which the mainstream media dismissed as the gesture of a Catholic crank, was a terrible warning to Europe. But no one was paying attention

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