CLOSING DOWN CHRISTMAS AT ITS SOURCE.
by Paul Merkley.
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I have been ordered to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Prophet, and offer prayers and give obligatory charity, so if they perform all that, then they save their lives and property. (From the “Sayings” (ahadith ) of Muhammad.)
The Muslim campaign to extirpate Christianity has been inaugurated at the place of the birth of Jesus– and no one seems to have noticed.
he Mayor of Bethlehem, has decreed that, in protest of President Trump’s recent declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, it is necessary for him to close down Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. The result has been catastrophic for Bethlehem’s Christmas trade. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/christmas-bethlehem-trumps-move-ruined-171220085815666.html
This is a cunning move. It seeks to link the campaign of contempt for Donald Trump that is irretrievably entrenched among opinion elites in our part of the world with the longer-standing campaign for the extirpation of Christianity which was imposed upon all Muslims by Prophet Muhammad.
The world’s response to this declaration has so far been … nothing.
Well, not quite… CBCNews has seized upon this Bethlehem story to diminish President Trump. It is something of a leap of logic: “Trump declaration on Jerusalem dampens Christmas cheer in ‘Bethlehem.’
If you ask residents of Bethlehem who is the Scrooge who has cast a pall over this year’s Christmas celebrations, the answer is nearly unanimous: U.S. President Donald Trump.
“I’m sorry, but this year Christmas, I think it will not be very happy,” said Khaled Khatib, an English teacher. “And that’s because of Trump.”
The example of the Mayor of Bethlehem has been followed by the Mayor of Nazareth, who has announced that his town “will cut back on its Christmas festivities… [since] U.S. President Donald Trump has leached all the joy out of the holiday after his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” This gives CBCNews opportunity to gloat that “Trump … has also spoiled the birth celebration of Jesus at his hometown of Nazareth, where approximately 69 percent of the Arab town’s 76,000 inhabitants are Muslims and 30 percent are Christians.”
Those few media outlets that have noticed the cancelations in Bethlehem and in Nazareth have packaged the story in the context of the damage that has been done to world peace by President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The CBC ‘s reporter, Derek Stoffel, has seized on the story as an opportunity for a good laugh. His story is about “the Grinch who stole Christmas.” But the Grinch is not, as you might have imagined, the Muslim Mayor, but he is – who else? — President Trump.
One little-visited site has noticed the value of this story:
This year, the town [Nazareth] has announced it will cut back on its Christmas festivities, claiming U.S. President Donald Trump has leached all the joy out of the holiday after his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The cancelation of the usual festivities, which feature a Christmas parade, market and several concerts, drew huge tens of thousands of pilgrims each year. The loss of many of these attractions is bound to cost the town dearly. (www.carbonated.tv/news.)
It is a considerable reach, linking the story out of Bethlehem and Nazareth to a larger story of the damage been done to international diplomacy by Donald Trump’s ignorance of the real issues in world affairs.
Both of the Mayors in our story are, of course Muslim. Both have simply assumed that their remit includes responsibility for allowing and/or not allowing Christian worship on his premises. This pre-eminence of religion over all other matters makes perfect sense to Muslims but it was put out of our own life a few centuries ago. Nonetheless, the world press has taken no note whatever of this matter.
I have had both of my web-serving legions out searching for some commentary on this event – without result. A Muslim municipal officer has reached out and extinguished Christian worship in his vicinity – shutting up proclamation of the birth of the Saviour of the Christians in the very place that Christians world-wide regard as His birthplace the placed where He was born — there has been not a peep anywhere. So far this interruption of Christian worship is nominally temporary. But the programme is still what the Prophet laid down: shutting down Christian faith.
Conveniently for the imams and the Muslim mayors of the world, all of our media outlets have taken the view that the interruption of Christian public worship in Bethlehem, a corner of the Palestine Authority – and in Nazareth, a corner of Israel, is Donald Trumps’ fault.
Here is Reuters’ version:
According to Reuters,
Trump’s decision [to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel] reversed decades of U.S. policy as a mediator and has jeopardized its peace efforts in the Middle East. The move has also upset the country’s Arab allies, especially when Trump said the United Sates Embassy in Israel would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as well. (Reuters, December 6, 2017.
“President Donald Trump may not know how to celebrate Christmas,” says one of our wiser men, “but he certainly knows how to ruin it for others. Not only has Trump succeeded in turning the White House into a scene from ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas,’ he has also spoiled the birth celebration of Jesus at his hometown of Nazareth.”
There is no hint of blame applied to the two Muslim Mayors who have closed down public Christian celebrations at places where they have gone on for nearly two millennia.
Reuters quotes a spokesman for the municipality of Nazareth:
Our identity and faith aren’t up for debate… The decision [by Trump about Jerusalem] has taken away the joy of the holiday, and we will thus cancel the festivities this year. We have decided to cancel the traditional Christmas singing and dancing because we are in a time of dispute, because of what Trump … a backstabbing wretch… has said about Jerusalem. Reuters, “Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus’ traditional birthplace in Bethlehem on Wednesday night in protest at U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.|
The “identity and faith” in question is Islam. Including Christianity under the jurisdiction of “our Muslim faith” makes perfect sense to Muslims. Nor does it seem to have bothered any of our journalists. But Christians have a solemn duty to make sure that these inroads on the rights of our faith should be resisted firmly.
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The Bayview Review 