Pakistani Christians Bombed--In NYC
You didn’t see these headlines last month, and neither did I. I did get an email from a retired heirarch of a church in Asia with the subject line: “Fire bombing of Bishop J____’s house,” and the news that a stolen car, evidently packed with cans of gasoline, exploded in back of a modest home with a small church in the front — I call it a Cathedral because it is the seat, however humble, of a bishop, however marginal. The rising fireball missed the bishop’s living quarters on the ground floor, but destroyed the third story apartment of a priest, his wife, daughters, and all that they owned. The priest had been born in Pakistan, and might have been believed to be a former Muslim, or at least of Muslim descent; local Muslims have long boasted of getting away with the clandestine execution of “apostates.” This is New York, where insulting graffiti on a Jewish tombstone are relentlessly publicized as an unforgivable hate crime, as they are, but Christians, especially Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, are considered undesirable elements unless they happen to be rich. The tiny Orthodox denomination whose mother church was attacked is keeping a low profile, perhaps in well founded fear that publicity will put their clergy in greater danger without any hope of effective police protection. Indeed, the police claimed that investigating fires is the Fire Department’s job; New York’s finest have better things to do than track down car thieves. The burned out car itself eventually disappeared, as cars, even wrecked cars, tend to do, without being examined.
Bishop J____ knows his second class status well. A convert from Anglicanism, he was baptized around the corner from my house in what was then the North American Mission of the Russian Church Abroad. By the time he had completed his seminary training upstate the cathedral was closed, together with St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church a block away, condemned by the State of New York along with the parishioners’ homes, to make way for luxury apartments, gargantuan eyesores of remarkably shabby construction. The neighborhood was left standing long enough to film the movie version of West Side Story to show just what sort of criminal elements were being packed off to New Jersey and the outer boroughs. The Orthodox relocated to one of the latter, I shall remain discreet about which one, and those few Catholics remaining West of Broadway in buildings like mine left standing, were integrated into Blessed Sacrament, the once fashionable parish of General Sherman and Dorothy Parker.
Ethnic cleansing? It has been called that, and so it might have been for the egregious Robert Moses. But, as Charles Coulombe reminded us not long ago, it was more a matter of an unscrupulous landlord, the State, embarking on a massive campaign of harassment and eviction with the prospect of charging more rent, that is, taxes, to a better class of tenants. For, as insurance agents were long trained to advise their prospects, you don’t really own your home, you only think you do. In fact you only rent it from the State, as the Supreme Court has recently made plain.
The developers had promised to replace the houses of worship they had destroyed, and so they did, and handsomely. The Lincoln Square Synagogue, serving a largely Israeli congregation, stands proudly over the site of the old Russian Church. On a Saturday afternoon I can hear these immigrants wax bitterly indignant that they must share the sidewalks of New York with people of color. “Look at that one. See how black he is? A real criminal!” (My high school German is still good for spoken Yiddish, though even after two trimesters of college Hebrew the alphabet defeats me.)
Encounters like that one are particularly painful for a philo-Semite like me. I remember very well indeed the remnants of the Gilded Ghetto the West Side used to be. Even before I moved down from Inwood I had dinner with the family of a college friend across the street from the rich folks’ projects. The father, a physician deeply nostalgic for the Vienna of the Habsburgs, would burst out into “Herr, lehere doch mich” from Brahms’ German requiem, and remembered Ludendorff’s declaration of unrestricted U-Boot warfare particularly well — because he and his schoolfellows were required to translate it into Greek. Fourth Century Attic Greek. I don’t think it was a particularly kosher meal, and I can’t imagine this magnificent patriarch submitting his suits to the Rabbi’s microscope to check for any forbidden miscegenation of animal with plant fiber, as posters in the local drycleaners now demand that we do. For me the Jews were the people fighting to save Carnegie Hall from the real estate interests, not the ones destroying family homes to build Lincoln Center. And, thanks to the heroic efforts of Isaac Stern among others, the Philharmonic is finally able to return to their historic home now that the acoustic disaster of their more recent venue can be admitted in public.
The problem here isn’t a Jewish problem, or even an Israeli problem. It is an immigration problem. Israelis born in the Soviet Union aren’t the only ones who despise America and Americans for our remarkable colorblindness, imperfect as it is. I recall an academic from India complaining that other Indians were boycotting his parties, because he had somehow found it natural to invite his black colleagues — and some of the offended were those United Nations types who so love to denounce us for our racism. I have no doubt that the arsonist who occasioned these reflections represents a school of Islam fairly new to America and still, thank God, fairly rare here. But multiculturalism is a deadly menace, and deadlier on a daily basis. We simply cannot continue to embrace with open arms those whose culture mandates racial contempt and religious hate. We must always be a refuge for those immigrants who want to be free to practice the Christian religion, or any other religion (within reason) or none — not for those who would murder them for it.
Violence against Christians, Catholics in particular, and Orthodox, whom many fail to distinguish from Catholics, has been a growing and unreported problem here and, I suspect, elsewhere. Five or ten years ago, in broad daylight, a priest was dragged from the altar of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on 60th Street while celebrating Mass and roughed up by some thugs who disapproved of the Church’s ministry to those struggling with homosexual inclinations. Video clips were shown on the early evening news, but by ten o’clock the story had been spiked. If a synagogue service were so profaned, the outrage would be massive and public, but the owners of the media and the authorities, civil and ecclesiastic, treated the incident as an embarrassment to be hushed up. Again, in the run-up to the current Iraq war, after the Pope had voiced his opposition to it, the sanctuary of St. Margaret’s church in heavily Jewish Riverdale was invaded and vandalized. The matter was kept off the air and out of the papers; I only heard because the husband of my Jewish boss was a parishioner there — she said it had to be black kids who did it. Maybe it was; we’ll never know. In New York the desecration of Christian houses of worship is almost never reported. Violent attacks on priests seem to make the news only when the motive is obviously robbery. It’s not Baghdad yet, or even Jerusalem, but it’s getting there.
Hate crime against traditional (liturgical) Christians is growing, and we need to take action now. First of all, we need to keep using the internet to break through the mainstream media blackout, as my Orthodox friend did in the present instance, and we must learn to use the new media even better. We must counter the blood libels of the Foxmans and Goldhagens which incite and justify violence against us here and against Christians in the Middle East and throughout the world. We must refute the constant propaganda barrage of less disreputable figures from the pseudo-scientist Dawkins to the stage magicians Penn and Teller claiming that we are mental defectives who should not be allowed to breed, much less to raise children or be entrusted with educational or cultural work. We need to carry on incessant and creative guerilla warfare on the cultural front, liberating a kaleidoscopic array of temporary autonomous zones where our values are permitted, however briefly, to show themselves. We need to exploit the magnificent opportunity the Pope has now give us to open windows of liturgical splendor into the Puritan meetinghouses of the Latin Rite, and we need to open the eyes of our hearts ever more to the richness of the Eastern Churches both in and out of communion with Rome.
Most of all, perhaps, the remnants of Christian America must give refuge to the remnants of the ancient Christian churches of the East as they are rendered homeless by the Islamic, Likudnik, and Bushite jihadists, though our rulers and pundits defame them as ragheaded “sand niggers” steeped in ludicrous superstition.
Comments
The Roman Catholic church is under besiege now; it probably does not want any more attention drawn to it.
Unfortunately anti(fill in the blank) sentiment is also a popularity contest. The christian contingent is on a downswing while the semitic one is on an ascendant. A priest being attacked is not as newsworthy as a rabbi in the same situation. Sad but true.
My prayers and good wishes go to everyone who is a victim of bigotry.
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As an Israeli, I can tell you that preudice against Christians by seculariest is at an all time high in the West. It is so bad that they look the other way when violent Muslims do their terrible work. They prefer them to the followers of the One who told us to not take up the sword. However, the prejudice against Jews is very real as well. English College Unions vote to boycott Israeli academics who are mostly in the peace camp! Wow. Yet where is their protest against the countries that sponsor violent Islam and women’s oppression I guess that is not important. The moral compass of the West is really in sad shape.
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As a true Christian I believe in Christ and Christmas. Forever! No hate from “Hate Incorporated” can change that! This year by the way is 2007 AD. And Sunday is the first day of the week! Do you seriously think Americans will abandon Christianity? “I don’t mean Calvinism on spec!!!. free with ONE T”
HA! HA! HA! Try your luck pal!
Christian forever. (and we’re best hope for Jews, don’t you think?)
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Justin, Israel.
No one’s listening, ANY MORE, to your stuff.
Justin. Your 6 Day War was 40 years ago! Who’s oppressing Islamic women? Why don’t you like pregnant women and innocent children? Pity you don’t understand this.
Who do you really want in your post-European settlement: Yenrik Yagoda (see White Sea Canal)??? Aw! Sad!
America is a democracy! Aw! Are we stupid? Do you really like Christopher Hitchens etc??? Aw! Sad! Bye! Bye!
Happy Christmas 2007!
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Good to see you here, Dan, and good to know that the Israeli academic community is in general for peace. But the boycott is motivated by a reasonable fear that many Israeli academics coming to the West will be Mossad agents with a mission to spy on scholars and students and report those who disagree with the Likud line to the Thought Police. They would only add to the atmosphere of intimidation that even now prevents candid discussion of the situation in the Middle East, at least in some major American universities and in the mass media,
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Well, what can you say about a country that
has gagged the Church?
The Church in America has been forbidden from
engaging in “political” speech. Pastor’s cannot
discuss politics from the podium lest they risk
invasion from the IRS (and many other topics as well.)
Is that freedom of Religion? Nyet.
In America, the Church’s greatest enemy is the
state itself, not factions of deranged individuals.
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Sad how the different religious tribes mark off their territories. More like dogs than like men with souls.
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It’s about time we soft USA Christians start getting a tast of what our brothers and sisters around the world are experiencing. Maybe now we will toughen up and start being more relevent to our culture. But fear not all, “There shall be no end to the increase of His government and of His peace.”
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@ the guy who wrote, “and we’re best hope for Jews, don’t you think?”
No. Isn’t Jesus supposed to be the best hope for the Jews? You can say that about him, and about his Church, but watch out before you identify yourself personally with the Body of Christ, as only the Church has that authority.
Karen Blixen wrote, in “Out of Africa”, a little story she imagined about the second coming of Christ. All palm leaves and shouts of “Hosanna” were prohibited (because we know what happened to Jesus the LAST time he was greeted with Hosannas), and then when all was quiet, Jesus asked Peter to come on a walk with him alone, on the road up the hill to Calvary.
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Did anyone catch Tucker yesterday?
He had Denis Kucinic, who had been in Syria, and after
praising him for talking about the Syrian Christians
went on a tangent for “aiding and abetting” Syrian
dictator when Kucinic talked about the Iraqui refugees
that Syria has taken on. Did Tucker want any mention
that too many of those refugees were Christian?
You got to hand it to Denis, to try to provide a voice
to the victims of our folly.
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“for our remarkable colorblindness, imperfect as it is.”
America, or at least its establishment, isn’t colorblind, it’s viciously, virulently, and genocidally anti-white. “Colorblindness” is a lie, and the author knows it.
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Well now, I’m not exactly a member of any (anti-white) “establishment,” so my reference to “our” (imperfect) colorblindness is not quite the big lie Mr. Smith (yeah, right, pants on fire yourself) accuses me of telling. (Silly me, all these years I thought of the establishment as white!)
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@ John Smith,
Eric Cartman (of South Park), is that you?
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Frank, you stated, “I have no doubt that the arsonist who occasioned these reflections represents a school of Islam fairly new to America…. .” Did the local police identify any suspects? Was anyone charged or arrested?
Seems to me, in our current times, there are many powerful people who want to see Muslims and Christians at each other’s throat and hell bent on a course of mutual destruction. As part of this background, we are bombarded with stories of twisted, intolerant Muslims and ignorant, backward Christians. On close inspection, do Church burnings, Mosques explosions and even desecration of Synagogues have peculiar similarities? I am not sure. However, I do know that in a charged atmosphere, there are plenty of idiots, who can be convinced to throw a rock or start a fire. The next question is how do we respond.
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You make a good point, RichardM. The history of “hate crimes” shows that many have been provocations, false flag operations, re-labeling of what is in fact just ordinary crime, and even inventing crimes which were in fact never committed. Much of this is done just to push legislation or promote candidacies. Church burnings were so used by Bill Clinton among others. With respect to the subject of this article, it seems clear a crime was committed, but we have no idea who did it and why.
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Yes, it is a PC lie, though judging from your answer and the rambling nature of your original piece I now see that I may have erred in stating that you knew it. The fact that the establishment is overwhelmingly white is neither here nor there, it is their beliefs and/or what they do, from affirmative action to ignoring racist violence directed at whites to their immigration policies, that makes them anti-white.
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We will never know the facts of the matter, as the police do not investigate arson, and for some reason the Fire Department took no interest in the matter. I should probably point out that setting fire to abandoned cars is far from uncommon in this neck of the woods. I am not even entirely sure that anyone actually saw spare cans of gas in the vehicle, or merely inferred their presence from the way the thing went up. My point is that the whole thing was forgotten almost as soon as it happened.
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My Riverdale informant, via email:
“In the very same month that the St. Margaret’s was vandalized in Riverdale, the conservative synagogue Adath Israel was bombed. Some young muslims threw Molotov cocktails at the front door. Fortunately, no one was in the building at the time. You didn’t read about that one in the papers either.”
My response in part:
“Damn it, we should have! We all have to stop taking this sort of thing lying down. Silly words are criminalized as hate speech and real hate crimes are swept under the rug! I care less about not reading about these things in the papers than about the fact that the Queens case was not investigated at all; the car disappeared without being looked
at.”
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@Frank
Let me have a nasty thought about both bombings. They
were carried out by Muslims, in both cases, right?
So, why is there an attempt to silence crimes
committed by Muslims, as Muslims (as opposed to crimes
such as armed robbery, which are committed for the same
reasons that non-Muslims commit them, to get money).
Would it have to do with the constant trumpeting that
“Thanks to Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, and
the Vigilance of President Bush there have been no
more terrorist attacks in the US” If they start
carrying a tally of acts like you describe then there
may be the suspicion that instead of going after
spectacular targets like the World Trade Center,
terrorists are switching targets into small, unnoticiable
attacks that tear up communities from the inside.
It is easy to say that there are no more terrorist
attacks if you stop reporting them.
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I hope this guy’s all right: http://pakistaniat.com/2007/08/30/us-confederate-flag-in-pakistan/.
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My Riverdale informant, via email,.....the conservative synagogue Adath Israel was bombed. Some young muslims threw Molotov cocktails at the front door.”
Frank that’s twice in one commentary. Please provide the evidence to your statements. Is there a police report you can document? Are there witnesses to the bombing? Was anyone charged? Are you suggesting that the Riverdale Police consider fire bombing to be a minor crime.
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Note that there are no witnesses nor suspects in the church attack and only an unofficial source in the synagogue attack. Yet some commentators here are blaming both on Moslems. Is it asking too much to wait for evidence? A couple of days ago, the local mosque in the city of Corpus Christi was hit by a single bullet from a high caliber firearm. No one was in the building at the time and no one was hurt, but the police and FBI are investigating it as a “hate crime”. It may have been nothing more than a drunken Texas good ol’ boy on a tear, who may not even have realized what he was shooting at.
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