German Cardinal wants to celebrate Mass in Saudi Arabia

Articles are cross posted from DW/JW 

Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Bishop of Mainz, wants to exercise a bit of reciprocity. Since there are now so many mosques all over Europe, he wants to celebrate Mass in Saudi Arabia. And why not? Because, of course, tolerance and respect for other religions is a one-way-street.

German-language article here from Spiegel Online

Meanwhile Bagdad’s Christians face extinction: 

Baghdad Christians have been in a heap of trouble for quite some time, and it is only getting worse. Now Al-Qaeda jihadists have issued them an ultimatum. “Insurgent group steps up its campaign against Baghdad’s Christians,” by Hannah Allam and Leila Fadel for McClatchy Newspapers:

BAGHDAD, Iraq –An al-Qaida-affiliated insurgent group is giving Christians in Baghdad a stark set of options: Convert to Islam, marry your daughters to our fighters, pay an Islamic tax or leave with only the clothes on your back.
A U.S. military official said American forces became aware of the threats only last month and now have erected barriers around the largest Christian enclave in Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood in an effort to protect its residents.

Christians in Baghdad refuse to discuss the threats for fear of retribution. But in Syria, where thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled, tales abound of families that were killed or driven from their homes because they either refused or couldn’t afford to pay the jizya, a tax usually levied on non-Muslim men of military age that’s been part of Islam for more than 1,000 years.

“Two or three months ago, we heard we were going to be forcibly removed from Dora,” said Rafah Elia Daoud, 53, who fled to Damascus, Syria’s capital, on May 24. “Not everyone got a paper with the threat, but we knew. The choice was to convert, pay the jizya or get out.”

“My brother was threatened; my sister was threatened. All of them had to pay the jizya,” added her husband, Jamal Antone Karoumy, 66. “One of my brothers got a note and a single bullet under his door. The note said, `If you don’t pay the jizya to the resistance, you’ll be killed.'”

According to classic Islamic law, these choices should be given to all who are not Muslim. No negotiations, no compromises.

Killers of Chaldean priest, deacons in Iraq wanted their conversion to Islam

No Compulsion in Religion Alert. “The killers of Fr. Ragheed and the three deacons wanted their conversion to Islam,” from AsiaNews:

Mosul (AsiaNews) – Before opening fire on Fr. Raghhed Gani and his three deacons, the killers demanded their conversion to Islam. These emerging details of the murder of the 4 Chaldeans have been posted by the Arab site Ankawa.com which in these last few days has been re-creating the ferocious nature of the Mosul attack through eye-witness accounts.
This information confirms the theory of a target murder, well planned and in step with the vast campaign of persecution against Christians currently underway in Iraq. So far there has been no claim of responsibility for the “senseless gesture”, as it was defined by Benedict XVI who [yesterday met] president George W. Bush in the Vatican.
In the interim a press statement released by Iraq’s highest authority for Sunni Islam, the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI) has condemned the murder of the Chaldean priest and his three sub-deacons, which took place June 3rd last following Sunday mass. The declaration attributes all blame for the deaths to the “occupation forces” and the “current Iraqi government”. The Sunni academics also denounce the fact that “what is happening on the ground in Iraq is pure terror, killing and destruction, due to a total deterioration in security”.

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