This year on Easter Sunday, just as Christians of many denominations around the world began celebrations of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Sunni fighters from ISIS blew up the Church of the Virgin Mary in Tal Nasri village in Hasaka province, northeastern Syria. The destruction of the church was not unusual and apparently not newsworthy as most Western media sources did not report it. The murders of Christians because of their faith and the destruction of their property and churches has become a daily occurrence not worth reporting unless it is at the level of a massacre.
The destruction of this church, and hundreds like it, illustrates the misguided policies of American administrations for at least the past 40 years in consistently siding with Islamic nations and groups at the expense of ancient Christian communities of Africa and the Middle East. Fearing to be branded as “Crusaders” (as if the United States merited such an honorable title), former presidents as well as the current one have shunned the numerically and militarily weak Christian population. Instead, administration after administration, including both Bush administrations, have sought the approval, advice and friendship of the wealthy Islamic states, including the tyrants who rule Saudi Arabia.
The original reporting concerning the church mentioned came from the SANA news agency in Syria. Western media for the most part ignore the atrocities of Sunni fighters in Syria, including this one. The few outlets that did report the destruction of the church, such as the Daily Mail in London, introduced the story with the words “SANA claimed” despite the fact that the ISIS terrorists had placed a video of the blast online and bragged of the demolition of the church.
The Church of the Virgin Mary was built in 1934 – keep that date in mind – and is considered one of three main churches in Syria’s Tal Nasri village, which is located to the south of Tal Tamr, a town earlier overrun by ISIS.
The revolt against the secular government of Syria was originally financed by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which are Sunni dominated nations with strict Shariah law. Saudi Arabia uses the Quran as its Constitution, and as a result the ruling royal despots will not allow the construction of any churches.
There are NO churches in Saudi Arabia. None were built in 1934, none before 1934 and none since 1934. While the secular government of Syria, which the Saudis seek to overthrow, has allowed construction of churches and private Christian schools, even the act of mentioning Jesus Christ in private prayer in Saudi Arabia is an arrestable offense. Christian “guest workers” who have been caught praying together in private home meetings in Saudi Arabia have been arrested, tortured, imprisoned and then deported.
According to both Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, the monsters who rule Saudi Arabia are good friends and allies of the United States, while the secular governments of nations in the Middle East are enemies and must be overthrown. Sen. Rand Paul is the only elected official on Capitol Hill with the guts to call Saudi Arabia out for its vile treatment of women and religious minorities. He called for an actual boycott of Saudi Arabia, just the way the United States boycotted South Africa for not giving blacks rights equal to those of whites.
On April 7, Sen. Paul announced his run for president. I fully expect the entire media machine in the United States, which is influenced by Saudi money, to pound relentlessly on every word that comes from the senator’s mouth for the next 18 months. Forget the so-called “Jewish controlled media.” In the West today wealthy Saudi royals pull all media strings.
Meanwhile back in Syria, Sunni fighters supported by the United States fired mortar rounds into Christian neighborhoods of Damascus from Good Friday through Easter Sunday. In areas of Iraq and Syria controlled by ISIS (or ISIL), many more Christians were probably killed as well. More churches were destroyed and graves desecrated.
The aftermath of Easter is becoming even more of a nightmare for Christians in Africa and the Middle East as the Islamic State marched more Christians onto a beach and then beheaded them in Libya, a repeat performance for the same atrocity in February. This time the victims were captured Ethiopian Christians. The Sunni Muslim based Islamic State was originally birthed by Saudi Arabia to bring down the secular government of Syria. The Saudis now find themselves a target of the Sunni terror group they helped to bring into existence.
The Western media and government agencies look the other way as Saudi Arabia finances the teaching of Wahhabism, which is a radical version of Sunni Islam. All over the world, including in the United States, more than 90 percent of the textbooks in Islamic schools and mosques come from Saudi Arabia, and over 90 percent of mosques in the United States receive some type of funding or support from the radical Sunni royals who rule Saudi Arabia.
The teaching from Saudi textbooks used by Islamic schools in the United States is no different from what is taught in schools run by the Islamic State in areas it controls. In fact, for the most part ISIS is using textbooks that were published in Saudi Arabia.
Virtually all the Islamic terror groups of the Sunni variety are or were at one time financed at least in part by Saudi Arabia; that includes the Taliban, al-Nusra and, yes, the Islamic State.
Why are Western leaders silent about Saudi Arabian royals not only sponsored terror but spreading teaching of racial and religious hatred all over the world? The hard reality is that the Saudi royals just about own downtown London and have invested in most of the Western financial markets and major media outlets throughout the West with their ill-gotten oil profits, ever since World War II.
Currently, the Saudi royals are dumping oil onto the markets to bring down the price of crude and force oil companies to shut down wells and shale operations in the United States and Canada. Already there are layoffs in North Dakota because of the cheap oil being dumped onto the markets by the Saudi royals. The sole stated purpose of the Saudi campaign is to shut down North American energy exploration.
Sit back a minute and just imagine the outcry if Russia, which is the third-largest oil producer in the world, began to pump oil at the fastest rate it could and then dumped it onto the markets to shut down Western production. Senators would be calling for more sanctions and perhaps even military actions to stop the flow of oil from Russia.
America’s “friendship” with Saudi Arabia causes government officials and the media to ignore the physical and economic damage to the world caused by that despotic government. Rand Paul is right: The United States and Western powers should be boycotting the despots of Saudi Arabia. More than the recommendation of Sen. Paul, the Western powers should be working directly to overthrow this terror-supporting regime and replace it with a government that – gasp – honors human rights and treats women equally under the law.
