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Sunday, May 29, 2016

Major Weapons Seizures, Muslim Migrants, Terrorists Smuggled Into UK Through Small Ports | Pamela Geller

Major Weapons Seizures, Muslim Migrants, Terrorists Smuggled Into UK Through Small Ports | Pamela Geller

Major Weapons Seizures, Muslim Migrants, Terrorists Smuggled Into UK Through Small Ports

ByPAMELA GELLER on May 29, 2016
00 Comments
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Look at the weapons being brought in to the UK – this is not the preparation for a bank heist (the British Bobby doesn’t carry a sidearm), it is the build up for a war. “Automatic weapons worth £100,000 from the same European supplier as the guns used in the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in Paris were seized in Cuxton marina near Rochester, Kent.”
“REVEALED: The small ports where illegal immigrants and terrorists are slipping into the UK,” By Alix Culbertson, The Express, May 29, 2016:
SMALL British ports with “no border control” are being targeted by people smugglers and terrorists trying to enter the UK, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned
Border Force are almost non-existent in smaller ports such as Brighton marina
Hundreds of marinas and ports across the UK are putting the country at risk as they do not have the rigorous security checks the main border entrances have.
People smugglers trying to avoid getting caught at the Channel Tunnel or main entry points see the smaller ports as perfect alternatives to get into the country.
Border Force said it has little knowledge of the threats and risks associated with
Recent crimes at small ports show how vulnerable they are to criminals using them to smuggle people, drugs or weapons.
Hampshire Police’s marine unit accidentally found 17 Albanian illegal immigrants in Chichester Harbour this week on a catamaran which had sailed from France.
They had been looking for an unrelated missing person when they stopped the yacht.
A British man has been charged over the incident for facilitating illegal immigration.
Dover MarinaGoogle Maps
Boats can easily dock in sleepy Dover marina, just next door to the ferry port
Last year automatic weapons worth £100,000 from the same European supplier as the guns used in the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in Paris were seized in Cuxton marina near Rochester, Kent.
A British gang had brought in the weapons, which included 22 assault rifles, nine sub-machine guns and 1,500 rounds of ammunition.
An internal NCA report, said: “The investigation has confirmed the risk that general maritime offers crime groups access to the UK in what is generally an unpoliced area.
“There is no generic border control at small marinas around the UK coast.”
An NCA spokesman added: “Criminals will always try to circumvent perceived vulnerabilities in border security but we are working with law enforcement partners within the UK and internationally and we are having success.
“Crime around the coastline is no different to that taking place inland and the public have a role to play in tackling it.”
British marinas where illegal immigrants and weapons have been seized:
Chichester Marina – May 2016: 17 suspected Albanian illegal migrants arrested
Dover marina – September 2015: A tonne of cocaine worth £56m seized
Bushnells marina, Margrave – August 2015: Three men from Pakistan arrested
Cuxton marina, Kent – July 2015: Largest haul of illegal weapons ever seized by the NCA, same supplier as Charlie Hebdo terror attack guns
Sovereign Harbour, Eastbourne – November 2014: 15 illegal Albanian immigrants arrested, with man from Hurstpierpoint
Pwllheli marina, Wales – September 2014: £100m of cocaine seized from yachts from Venezuela
Brighton Marina – June 2009: Two Frenchmen arrested for smuggling 21 Asian women into the UK
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3 Christians Arrested in India and Accused of 'Forced Conversions' - Christian News Headlines

3 Christians Arrested in India and Accused of 'Forced Conversions' - Christian News Headlines

3 Christians Arrested in India and Accused of 'Forced Conversions'

Veronica Neffinger Editor, ChristianHeadlines.com | Wednesday, May 25, 2016
3 Christians Arrested in India and Accused of 'Forced Conversions'

Three evangelical Christians have been arrested in India and accused of “forced conversions” and blaspheming against Hinduism.
 
According to ChristianToday.com, the three Christians arrested, Rev. V. A. Anthony of Brethren Assembly Church in Satna, his wife Prabha, as well as another woman, were arrested after leading prayers in the town of Aber, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
 
Sajan K. George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, says that the three are innocent of the charges and were “detained based on false allegations of forced conversions.”
 
Three men filed a complaint against Anthony and the two women, stating that they had been pressured into converting to Christianity in order to obtain good jobs. Additionally, they accused Anthony and the two women of destroying an image of Hindu deities.
 
One of the men who accompanied authorities when they came to arrest the three Christians was Hindu nationalist Laxmi Yadav.
 
Yadav had filed a complaint earlier against another Christian, Rev. Sam Samuel. Yadav, along with members of a Hindu nationalist organization, had stopped a Christian wedding, claiming that the couple to be married had converted without notifying authorities.
 
George laments the fearful state in which Christians live in the state of Madhya Pradesh: "Pentecostal and Evangelical Christians live in an atmosphere of fear in Madhya Pradesh. Here, the anti-conversion law is used to harass and intimate. Ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the state is seriously jeopardising freedom of religion."
 
 
Publication date: May 25, 2016

UK Home Secretary Theresa May: Sharia Courts ‘Greatly Benefit’ Britain | Pamela Geller

UK Home Secretary Theresa May: Sharia Courts ‘Greatly Benefit’ Britain | Pamela Geller

UK Home Secretary Theresa May: Sharia Courts ‘Greatly Benefit’ Britain

ByPAMELA GELLER on May 29, 2016
UK 
24 Comments
uk sharia
What a submissive cow. Does anyone expect anything to come of May’s review into UK’s brutal sharia courts?
Mrs. May stated: “Many British people of different faiths follow religious codes and practices, and benefit a great deal from the guidance they offer.
“A number of women have reportedly been victims of what appear to be discriminatory decisions taken by Sharia councils, and that is a significant concern.
Sharia is discriminatory. But she won’t touch that, that’s for sure.
Teresa May: Sharia Courts ‘Greatly Benefit’ Britain,” By Virginia Hale, Breitbart, May 28, 2016:
Theresa May has claimed Muslims in Britain “benefit greatly” from Sharia law as she launched plans for an “independent inquiry,” headed by a Muslim and guided by two “leading imams,” into whether some of the controversial courts’ judgements are at odds with British gender equality laws.
The proposed review will investigate whether Sharia law is being “misused” and “exploited” to discriminate against women in Islamic courts in the UK, according to the Home Secretary.
A regular voice on Radio 4’s Thought For The Day, Professor Mona Siddiqui, billed on the slot as an expert in Islamic theology, will chair the inquiry looking into whether or not Sharia courts have broken British laws on gender equality, The Telegraph reported.
So as to reassure Muslims, unelected Home Office minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon issued a ministerial statement promising the review will in no way look into the legality of the courts, saying Sharia law is “a source of guidance” for Muslims in the UK.
The panel doing the review includes retired high court judge Sir Mark Hedley, specialist family lawyer Anne Marie Hutchinson and, in addition to Ms. Siddiqui, three other Muslims have been named in the line up. These are barrister Sam Momtaz and “leading imams” Sayed Ali Abbas Razawi and Qari Asim, who will advise the panel on religious and theological issues relating to aspects of Sharia law and how it is applied.
Mrs. May stated: “Many British people of different faiths follow religious codes and practices, and benefit a great deal from the guidance they offer.
“A number of women have reportedly been victims of what appear to be discriminatory decisions taken by Sharia councils, and that is a significant concern.
“There is only one rule of law in our country, which provides rights and security for every citizen.
“Professor Siddiqui, supported by a panel with a strong balance of academic, religious and legal expertise, will help us better understand whether and the extent to which Sharia law is being misused or exploited and make recommendations to the Government on how to address this.”
Critics took to social media to lambaste the inquiry for “legitimising” Sharia courts, the most prominent beings the National Secular Society who implied that as long as the courts exist in this country, Muslim women will be discriminated against.
Baroness Cox, a cross-bench peer who spearheaded a Parliamentary drive to rein in unofficial Sharia courts, said there was a danger the inquiry could be a “distraction” from the urgency of tackling discrimination. She said: “I think the Government may well say ‘let’s wait until the results of the investigation’ but we need action now.
“My reservation is that it won’t get to the root of the problem. A lot of Muslim women I know say that the men in their communities just laugh at this proposed investigation, that they will go underground so the investigation will have to be very robust.”
The peer also slammed Mrs. May’s insistence that discrimination against women is due to “misuse” of Sharia teaching rather than the teaching itself. Baroness Cox said she’s a supporter of religious freedoms and compared the Muslim period of fasting — Ramadan — to Lent (a period before Easter in which Christians either choose to go without things that are important to them, or fast), but condemned aspects of Islam related to its religious laws.
Ms. Cox said: “I believe in freedom of religion and I believe that there are aspects of Sharia law that are totally unproblematic.
“If Muslims want to fast, well Christians do that at Lent, if they want to pray five times a day, that’s more than I do.
“But the aspects which are causing such concerns — such as that a man can divorce his wife by saying ‘I divorce you’ three times — that is inherent, the right to ‘chastise’ women is inherent, polygamy is inherent.
“I don’t think those things are a distortion or Sharia law. These are aspects of Sharia law which are unacceptable.”
Family law specialist Kaleel Anwar said Sharia law is based on “total equality and fairness for all,” the Oxford Mail reported. The London-based lawyer added in a statement that “the issue here is not the law – the law has pretty much nothing to do with it”.
The Home Secretary and Mr. Anwar’s comments came at the same time as the Washington Post reported that the Council of Islamic Ideology, the constitutional body that makes religious rulings for the Pakistani government, ruled that husbands can “lightly” beat their wives.
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Obama Says World Leaders Are "Rattled" by Donald Trump [VIDEO]

Obama Says World Leaders Are "Rattled" by Donald Trump [VIDEO]

Obama Says World Leaders Are “Rattled” by Donald Trump [VIDEO]

Why should American voters care if foreigners are rattled by Trump? He’s going to be our President, not theirs!

Watching this news video of Obama warning that foreign leaders are rattled by Trump, one can’t help remembering the President’s mantra: “Hope and change.” He never meant to bring any real change to the nation other than to increase immorality and government spending. Any sign of real change would have produced what these world leaders are feeling now: fear.
So, before Barack Obama even gets into office he is given the Nobel Peace Prize. How did that work out? The President ramped up drone killing way past anything that Bush had done. He made and implemented a kill list. He instituted the executive power of indefinite detention.
The American people are better off with other nations having fear and loathing of our next President. Maybe we’ll finally get real change. Maybe it is a sign we’ll be respected again.
Remember, most of these world leaders are basically U.S. welfare recipients in one way or another. They are afraid that Donald Trump might unshackle U.S. taxpayers from paying the defense costs of several nations and make other changes. In general, they are freaked out at the criticisms Trump has levelled at American foreign policy—policy that Barack Obama has basically preserved and extended.
But should the nations be “rattled”? Why shouldn’t they be rattled by a regime that destroyed Libya, transforming it from a bad secular dictatorship into a far worse jihadist hell? Why shouldn’t they be rattled by our support of terrorists in the Syrian “civil war” (really a proxy invasion) that is causing Europe to face a refugee crisis and terrorist nightmare?
If the leaders aren’t rattled by that, it is because they don’t care about their own countries. They are more servants of U.S. elites than they are representatives of their own people. Donald Trump represents an opportunity for these nations to get governments who serve them rather than follow dictates from our State Department.
Bobby Jindal gets it right (except that Trump has been far wiser than Jindal realized on Vladimir Putin).

‘Armageddon’ for Christian colleges

‘Armageddon’ for Christian colleges

 
 
 
gaymarriage
The California State Legislature is working on an “Armageddon” for Christian colleges and universities that would force them to embrace “transgender rights” or lose funding for students.
“If these bills are successful, Christian colleges, for instance, would have to allow a male student who perceives his gender as being ‘female’ to live in the women’s dorm to avoid the risk of a lawsuit or the loss of financial aid options for students,” contended the non-profit Advocates for Faith and Freedom.
The College Fix quotes critics saying the bills “purporting to prevent LGBTQ discrimination, are actually designed to cripple the state’s Christian colleges.”
One would disqualify Christian colleges from receiving state-funded student financial aid if they deny students on the basis of “sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression” or if they obtain waivers from those requirements from the Department of Education.
Another bill would order Christian schools to tell students their “institutions are discriminatory.”
The College Fix reported the the legislation “could mean that biological males that identify as females may end up rooming with biological females.”
ReligiousLiberty.TV said the California Catholic Conference “warns that the bill is vague and creates a state-level ‘civil cause of action for violation of the Equal Protection Clause and provisions of the Due Process’ clause even if an institution is in compliance with federal law.”
“According to the CCC, ‘this coercive mandate to waive federally protected statutory and constitutional rights is simply indefensible.'”
Advocates for Faith and Freedom said: “It is clear that the agenda of California’s progressive legislature, including the openly gay authors of these two bills, goes well beyond their original mantra of seeking equality. Their sights are now firmly set on destroying and dismantling all faith-based entities that disagree with their lifestyle.”
Earlier this month, WND reported the Department of Education launched a website critics say is dedicated to the “shaming” of Christian colleges that follow biblical principles rather than a leftist social agenda.
“It looks like the Department of Education got a new boss: the Human Rights Campaign,” wroteFamily Research Council President Tony Perkins in a Washington Update commentary this week.
Perkins, referring to the leading “gay”-rights group, was spotlighting what he called a “shame list” posted online by the Department of Education of colleges that have sought exemptions to Title IX requirements that provide special treatment to transgenders.
Responding to the California bills, Advocates for Faith and Freedom said California Christian colleges and universities “are the next target of state legislators who are systematically forcing the LGBT agenda on the public.”
“The latest attempt involves two bills that would essentially cripple colleges by forcing them to implement gay-friendly protections on campus or lose state and federal financial aid for students.”
The group said the “punitive laws would undermine federal protections that have long exempted religious colleges from adopting anti-discrimination laws that violate the tenets of their faith.”
“The consequences of these bills are so dire that one pro-family watchdog group has warned that their passage would usher in Armageddon for those seeking higher education from a biblical perspective.”
One bill, AB 1888, requires any institution attended by students who received Cal Grants, a state scholarship, to “certify” that the institution shall not “subject an applicant, student, or employee of the institution to discrimination on the bases of … sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
It also orders them not to get a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education.
The second is SB 1146, which requires schools that receive an exemption to inform the public with a sign displayed on campus
The minimum display would be “in a prominent location of the campus or school site” such as “the main administrative building or other area where notices regarding the institution’s rules, regulations, procedures and standards of conduct are posted.”
The Obama administration’s effort to promote the transgender agenda has accelerated the 2015 “same-sex marriage” decision.
Of late, a transgender veteran has sued a Christian barber over a haircut, a transgender has taken $60,000 from a school district for not being addressed by an acceptable pronoun and Obama has named a transgender to a key “faith” advisory position. Earlier this month, the president ordered public schools to open restrooms and changing facilities to students according to their “gender identity.”
WND columnist Cheryl Chumley explained the real goal.
“Look at this, from Riki Wilchins, who’s undergone sex-change surgery and who penned ‘We’ll Win the Bathroom Battle When the Binary Burns’ for gay-rights magazine The Advocate. Wilchins wrote, in part: ‘What really needs to be contested here is not just our right to use bathrooms with dignity (which would personally be very welcome), but the entire underlying hetero-binary structuring of the world queers must inhabit. This is the real struggle, and queer activists have been talking about it at least since the 1970s of Gay Liberation.’
“Wilchins then spoke of a 20-year-old transgender who explained to President Obama during a recent town hall meeting in London the proper reference to those undergoing a shift in sex is non-binary – not ‘he’ or ‘she’ but rather ‘hir’ and ‘ze.’
“‘Think about that,’ Wilchins continued. ‘[N]ot as a boi, or one of the girls, or as transmale or transfemale, but Off the Freakin’ Binary. … Gay and transgender rights advocates have been quietly dodging the issue of binary heteronormativity, but that sound you hear is the other shoe finally dropping … hard.'”
Continued Chumley, “Yes, think about that, as Wilchins advised – and then think about this: Selling the people on a lie about what constitutes gender is a dangerous step in the obliteration of God’s creations, both male and female, then marriage and family.
“And what happens after the lie is complete, after the once-obvious definition of male and female have been trashed and replaced with other, fuzzier definitions – ones that leave the interpretation open to the whims of society at-large? Society’s definition of humanity crumbles, and so, too the bulwarks of society, the family unit.”
She cited a description from Stella Morabito, a senior contributor to the Federalist.
“What we are really talking about [with transgender movement] is the abolition of sex. And it is sex that the trans project is serving to abolish legally, under the guise of something called the ‘gender binary.’ Its endgame is a society in which everyone is legally de-sexed. No longer legally male or female.”

43 Republicans Join Democrats to Support Obama’s Transgender Agenda

"Liberal activist judges will do all they can to ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity policies will trump religious liberty protections ..."43 Republicans Join Democrats to Support Obama’s Transgender Agenda

43 Republicans Join Democrats to Support Obama’s Transgender Agenda

By Ryan T. Anderson | May 26, 2016 | 2:02 PM EDT
Congress (AP Photo)
On Wednesday night, 43 Republican members of Congress joined the Democrats to vote for President Barack Obama’s transgender agenda.
Whereas last week Congress voted to reject this proposal—known as theMaloney Amendment—last night they voted to ratify Obama’s 2014 executive order barring federal contractors from what it describes as “discrimination” on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity” in their private employment policies.
And, of course, “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity” can be something as simple as having a bathroom policy based on biological sex, not gender identity, as we learned last week from Obama’s transgender directives. And “discrimination” on the basis of “sexual orientation” can be something as reasonable as an adoption agency preferring married moms and dads for orphans, than other arrangements.
Indeed, in the past few weeks we’ve seen additional examples of what counts as “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity.”
  • A public school district in Oregon paid a teacher $60,000 because colleagues declined to use the pronoun “they” to describe the teacher. The teacher, Leo Soell, does “not identify as male or female but rather transmasculine and genderqueer, or androgynous.” As Volokh explains: “Soell wants people to call Soell ‘they,’ and submitted a complaint to the school district objecting (in part) that other schoolteachers engaged in ‘harassment’ by, among other things, ‘refusing to call me by my correct name and gender to me or among themselves’ (emphasis added).”
  • The 4th Circuit Court has said a Virginia school district must allow bathroom access based on “gender identity” not biology. The school district created a policy that says bathroom and locker room access is primarily based on biology, while also creating accommodations for transgender students: only biological girls can use the girls’ room, only biological boys can use the boys’ room, and any student can use one of the three single-occupancy bathrooms, which the school created specifically to accommodate transgender students. But the court said this commonsense policy was itself “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity.”
Congress should not be ratifying Obama’s radical transgender agenda and imposing these outcomes on private employers just because they contract with the government.
All Americans should be free to contract with the government without penalty because of their reasonable beliefs about contentious issues. The federal government should not use government contracting to reshape civil society about controversial issues that have nothing to do with the federal contract at stake.
Obama’s executive order and the Maloney Amendment treat conscientious judgments about behavior as if they were invidious acts of discrimination akin to racism or sexism.
But sexual orientation and gender identity are not like race. Indeed, sexual orientation and gender identity are unclear, ambiguous terms. They can refer to voluntary behaviors as well as thoughts and inclinations, and it is reasonable for employers to make distinctions based on actions.
By contrast, “race” and “sex” clearly refer to traits, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, these traits (unlike voluntary behaviors) do not affect fitness for any job.
Congress tried to minimize the damage of the Maloney Amendment with two provisions last night. One provision, introduced by Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., amended the Maloney Amendment to say that it couldn’t violate the U.S. Constitution. Another provision, the Byrne Amendment, attempted to attach existing religious liberty protections to the bill. Neither adequately protects against the damage of Maloney.
Liberal activist judges will do all they can to ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity policies will trump religious liberty protections.
Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., researches and writes about marriage and religious liberty as the William E. Simon senior research fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He also focuses on justice and moral principles in economic thought, health care and education, and has expertise in bioethics and natural law theory. He's the author of the just-released book, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty."
Editor's Note: This piece was originally published by The Daily Signal.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Has the Pope Abandoned Europe to Islam?

Has the Pope Abandoned Europe to Islam?

  • In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI said what no Pope had ever dared to say -- that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name and never mentions the word "Islam."
  • Pope Francis does not even try to re-evangelize or reconquer Europe. He seems deeply to believe that the future of Christianity is in the Philippines, in Brazil and in Africa. Probably for the same reason, the Pope is spending less time and effort in denouncing the terrible fate of Christians in the Middle East.
  • "Multiculturalism" in Europe is the mosque standing on the ruins of the church. It is not the synthesis requested by Pope Francis. It is the road to becoming extinct.
  • Asking Europe to be "multicultural" while it experiences a dramatic de-Christianization is extremely risky. In Germany, a new report found that "Germany has become demographically a multi-religious country." In the UK, a major inquiry recently declared that "Britain is no longer a Christian country." In France, Islam is also overtaking Christianity as the dominant religion.
To scroll the list of Pope Francis's apostolic trips -- Brazil, South Korea, Albania, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Cuba, United States, Mexico, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines -- one could say that Europe is not exactly at the top of his agenda.

The two previous pontiffs both fought for the cradle of Christendom. Pope John Paul II took on Communism by toppling the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. Benedict XVI took on "the dictatorship of relativism" (the belief that truth is in the eye of the beholder) and bet everything on re-evangelizing the continent by traveling through it (he visited Spain three times) and in speeches such as the magnificent ones at Regensburg, where he spoke bluntly about the threat of Islam, and the German Bundestag, where he warned the gathered politicians against declining religiosity and "sacrificing their own ideals for the sake of power."

Pope Francis, on the contrary, simply ignores Europe, as if he already considers it lost. This former Argentinian Cardinal, a representative of the "global South" Christianity, made spectacular trips to the migrants' islands of Lampedusa (Italy) and Lesbos (Greece), but never to the heart of the old continent. Pope Francis has also made it difficult for Anglicans to enter into the Catholic Church, by downplaying the dialogue with them.

Most importantly, however, in his important May 6 speech for the Charlemagne Prize, the Pope, in front of European leaders, castigated Europe on migrants and asked its leaders to be more generous with them. He next introduced something revolutionary into the debate: "The identity of Europe is, and always has been, a multicultural identity," he said. This idea is questionable.

Multiculturalism is a specific policy formulated in the 1970s. and it was absent from the political vocabulary of Schuman and Adenauer, two of Europe's founding fathers. Now it has been invoked by the Pope, who spoke of the need for a new synthesis. What is this all about?

Today, Christianity appears marginal and irrelevant in Europe. The religion faces an Islamic demographic and ideological challenge, while the post-Auschwitz remnants of Jewish communities are fleeing from the new anti-Semitism. Under these conditions, a synthesis between the old continent and Islam would be a surrender of Europe's claim to the future.

"Multiculturalism" is the mosque standing on the ruins of the church. It is not the synthesis requested by the Pope. It is the road to becoming extinct.

Asking Europe to be "multicultural" while it is experiencing a dramatic de-Christianization is also extremely risky. In Germany, a new report just found that "Germany has become demographically a multi-religious country." In the UK, a major inquiry recently declared that "Britain is no longer a Christian country." In France, Islam is also overtaking Christianity as the dominant religion. You find the same trend everywhere, from Protestant Scandinavia to Catholic Belgium. That is why Pope Benedict was convinced that Europe needed to "re-evangelized." Pope Francis does not even try to re-evangelize or reconquer Europe. Instead, he seems deeply to believe that the future of Christianity is in the Philippines, Brazil and Africa.

Probably for the same reason, the Pope is spending less time denouncing the terrible fate of Christians in the Middle East. Sandro Magister, Italy's most important Vatican observer, sheds light on the Pope's silences:

"He remained silent on the hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram. He remained silent on the young Sudanese mother Meriam, sentenced to death solely for being Christian and finally liberated by the intervention of others. He remains silent on the Pakistani mother Asia Bibi, who has been on death row for five years, because she too is an 'infidel', and [He] does not even reply to the two heartrending letters she has written to him this year, before and after the reconfirmation of the sentence."
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensburg lecture, said what no Pope had ever dared to say -- that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name, and never mentions the word "Islam." Pope Francis also recently recognized the "State of Palestine," before it even exists -- a symbolic and unprecedented first. The Pope also might abandon the Church's long tradition of a "just war," one regarded as morally or theologically justifiable. Pope Francis always speaks of the "Europe of peoples," but never of the "Europe of Nations." He advocates welcoming migrants and washes their feet, while he ignores that these uncontrolled demographic waves are transforming Europe, bit by bit, into an Islamic state.



In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI (left) said what no Pope had ever dared to say -- that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis (right) never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name and never mentions the word "Islam." (Image source: Benedict: Flickr/Catholic Church of England | Francis: Wikimedia Commons/korea.net)


That is the meaning of Pope Francis' trips to the islands of Lampedusa, Italy, and Lesbos, Greece -- both symbols of a dramatic geographical and civilizational boundary. That is also the meaning of the Pope's speech for the Charlemagne Prize.

Has the head of Christianity given up on Europe as a Christian place?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.