Dhimmi Christians are pathetic creatures. Their leaders keep feeding the crocodile, while shamelessly watching their coreligionists being eaten until it comes to devour them.
Muslim-Majority Turkey Not ‘Hostile’ to Christians, Orthodox Leader Says
Muslim-majority Turkey is not “a hostile environment” for Christians even as their population has been drastically reduced over the past decades, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople said Friday.
The patriarch told AFP in an interview Christians have nothing to fear in the country.
“It is simplistic to see adversaries everywhere and to imagine the pope’s visit as taking sides in a hostile environment,” said Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians.
Bartholomew joins Leo for celebrations in Iznik on Friday around two hours from Istanbul, to mark 1,700 years since the First Council of Nicaea, a key early Church gathering that resulted in a statement of faith still central to Christianity, the AFP report notes.
After arriving in Ankara on Thursday and meeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom critics have accused of wanting to Islamise society, the pope described Turkey as a “crossroads of sensibilities” that was richer for its “internal diversity”.
Bartholomew said living in a Muslim country had its advantages.
“Living in a predominantly Muslim country is a blessing in disguise because it sustains and strengthens the essential feature of the Ecumenical Patriarchate… open and honest dialogue with all people in all places, irrespective of race and religion,” he said.
Turkey has a population of 86 million but only about 100,000 Christians.
Numbers were slashed by the bloody Armenian genocide during the Ottoman Empire and the population exchanges and pogroms since that saw many Greek Orthodox leave in the early 20th century.
Under Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish government has aggressively targeted its Christian minority community and attempted to erase Christian heritage in the country.
Erdogan’s most prominent attempt to erase the Christian history of Turkey occurred in 2020 when he converted the Hagia Sophia, one of Byzantine Christianity’s most important architectural facilities, into a mosque.
The conversion process involved removing or covering up priceless Christian art in the former basilica.
Dhimmi and Dhimmitude
After Mohammed had destroyed the three tribes of Jews in Medina, he attacked the Jews of Khaybar, a hundred miles away. After they surrendered, he made them dhimmis. A dhimmi was a non-Muslim who agreed to resist nothing about Islam in law, customs, art or any public writing. In short, the culture became Islamic and the Jews could be Jews only in their homes and in the synagogue.
So today, a dhimmi is a kafir (non-Muslim) who goes along with Islam and even defends Islam. Examples of dhimmitude are ministers and rabbis who attend multicultural meetings with imams and say they worship the same god. A dhimmi never reads any of Islam’s source texts. When schools fail to teach the history of 270,000,000 killed in jihad, the school is practicing dhimmitude.
Since ignorance causes dhimmitude, knowledge of the doctrine of political Islam will change a dhimmi into a kafir.
Here is one dhimmi treaty with Christians:
1. We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.
2. We shall keep our gates wide open for passersby and travelers. We shall give board and lodging to all Muslims who pass our way for three days.
3. We shall not give shelter in our churches or in our dwellings to any spy, nor hide him from the Muslims.
4. We shall not teach the Koran to our children.
5. We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it.
6. We shall show respect toward the Muslims, and we shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit.
7. We shall not seek to resemble the Muslims by imitating any of their garments.
8. We shall not mount on saddles, nor shall we gird swords nor bear any kind of arms nor carry them on our persons.
9. We shall not engrave Arabic inscriptions on our seals.
10. We shall not sell fermented drinks.
11. We shall clip the fronts of our heads. [An Arabic sign of shame, a beaten man]
12. We shall always dress in the same way wherever we may be, and we shall bind the zunar round our waists.
13. We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims. We shall use only clappers in our churches very softly. We shall not raise our voices when following our dead. We shall not take slaves who have been allotted to Muslims.
14. We shall not build houses higher than the houses of the Muslims.
Whoever strikes a Muslim with deliberate intent shall forfeit the protection of this pact.
(from Al-Turtushi, Siraj al-Muluk, pp. 229-230)