| Accept The site uses cookies to help show you the most up-to-date information. By continuing to use the site, you consent to the use of your Metadata and cookies. Cookie policy His Holiness Patriarch Kirill meets with a delegation of religious figures and scholars from Iran DECR Communication Service, 22.02.2023. On February 22, 2023, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia received in audience at the Patriarchal Residence in St. Daniel Monastery a delegation of religious figures and scholars from Iran who have come to Russia for the 12 th session of the Joint Russian-Iranian Commission for Orthodoxy-Islam Dialogue, which completed its first day of work on February 21, 2023. Participating in the meeting from the Russian Orthodox Church were Metropolitan Kirill of Kazan and Tatarstan, co-chair of the Commission’s ecclesial part; Archimandrite Alexander (Zarkeshev), rector of the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Teheran and the St. Phillip Church in Ash Shriqah, UAE; Rev. Dimitry Safonov, DECR secretary for interreligious relations; Hieromonk Gregory (Matrusov), chairman of the Patriarchal Experts Council for Cooperation with the Islamic World. There was also M.R. Baranov, deputy director of the Second Asia Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From the Iranian side, there were Hojjat ul-Islam Mohammad Mahdi Imanipour, chairman of the Organization for Islamic Culture and Communication in Iran, co-chair of the Commission from the Iranian side; Mr Kazem Jalali, Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Russian Federation; Hojjat ul-Islam Mehdi Bakhtawar, representative of the Iranian Spiritual Leader in Moscow; Prof Fatima Tabatabai, University of Teheran, head of the Scientific Association of Islamic Learning in Iran; Mr. Masoud Ahmadvand, head of the Cultural Representation of Iran in Russia; Mr Hamid Hadawi, President of the Ibn Sina Islamic Cultural Research Foundation; Ms Zahra Rashid-Beigi, leader of the Islam-Orthodoxy dialogue group of the Islamic Culture and Communication Organization in Iran; and Mr Hossein Jahangiri, councillor, Iranian Embassy in Russia. |
| Christians and Muslims in the World Met. Georges Khodr of Mount Lebanon. It is extremely difficult to talk about the relationship between these two communities in the world because of the confusion of the religious and political levels within them. Starting from this, religion and the world are always joined in the Islamic mind, according to what most religious scholars say. From this reality, Christianity in the eyes of Islam is the Christianity of the West that since the Crusader campaigns is always politicized. For a period of two hundred years there was combat between a West that was conscious of its own Christianity and the East. Then came colonialism, which in part targeted the Dar al-Islam. Since then the West is always in need of an enemy, it replaced enmity for Communism with enmity for the world of Islam and from that time the West was filled with scholarly studies about Islam, some of which are good and some of which are bad. The scene is that Europe has been more civilizationally advanced than the Dar al-Islam since the fourth century of the Hijra, while before this the Muslims were the ones with philosophy and science. The Arab East, the bearer of Islamic thought, began to retreat and went back to repeating itself and became civilizationally and materially impoverished. This is what partially explains its tumultuous uprising in terrorist groups supplied with weapons bought from America, which has become the heart of the West, or with weapons sent by America. In other words, the West is slaughtering itself with weapons it produces and whose sale and distribution is ostensibly not supervised. That it, the West itself feeds Islamophobia and ignores whether it will meet its consequences. In this picture, who is responsible for the massacre of Christians in an Iraqi church? This means that the encounter between Christians (who are always Westerners in the mind of Muslims) and Muslims is impossible because what is involved in reality is not Islam and Christianity but Muslim peoples and Western Christian peoples. |
| One of the world " s most ancient Christian communities is about to vanish forever Source: THEWEEK.COM Police to guard Mosul " s churches are long gone — and so are the Christians. (REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousuly) I've been reading the headlines from northern Iraq over the past two weeks with an intensifying sense of dread. It's a feeling very much like the one I have whenever I read about the disappearance of some huge ice sheet in the Antarctic or the extinction of yet another rare species of animal. It's the feeling that one more valuable ingredient of life on Earth is about to vanish, in all likelihood, forever. The takeover of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, by the jihadist troops of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is a catastrophe for the people of Iraq, who now face a revival of full-blown sectarian warfare, and a strategic and psychological nightmare for the United States, which sacrificed vast amounts of blood and treasure to topple Saddam Hussein and build a viable government — the latter, it would seem, in vain. But over the past few days I've found myself mourning a more specific disaster: the flight and dispersal of the last remnants of Iraq's once-proud community of Christians. Emil Shimoun Nona, the archbishop of the Chaldean Catholics of Mosul, has told news agencies that the few Christians remaining in the city prior to the ISIS invasion have abandoned the city. Since the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, he estimates, Mosul's Christian population dwindled from 35,000 to some 3,000. " Now there is no one left, " he said. Most of them have joined the estimated 500,000 refugees who have fled the ISIS advance; many of the Christians, including the archbishop, have opted for the relative security of Iraqi Kurdistan. (The photo above shows girls praying in the Church of the Virgin Mary in Bartala, a town to the east of Mosul.) The exodus has been triggered, above all, by the jihadists' reputation for bloodlust — a reputation that ISIS has consciously furthered through its own propaganda. A few days ago, the jihadists used social media to distribute photos supporting their claim that they had killed 1,700 Shiite prisoners taken during their rapid offensive. No sooner had ISIS entered Mosul than some of their fightersset fire to an Armenian church. This all seems consistent with the group's grim record during the civil war in Syria, where, among other things, it has revived medieval Islamic restrictions on Christian populations. (It's their fear of Islamist rebels that has tended to align the Syrian Christian community with the secular regime of Bashar al-Assad.) |
| Forced conversions hike Pakistan minorities " fears It was barely 4 a.m. when 19-year-old Rinkal Kumari disappeared from her home in a small village in Pakistan's southern Sindh province. When her parents awoke they found only her slippers and a scarf outside the door. A few hours later her father got a call telling him his daughter, a Hindu, had converted to Islam to marry a Muslim boy. Only days later, Seema Bibi, a Christian woman in the province of Punjab, was kidnapped along with her four children after her husband couldn't repay a loan to a large landlord. Within hours, her husband was told his wife had converted to Islam and wouldn't be coming home. Seema Bibi escaped, fled the village and has gone underground with her husband and children. In photo taken Sunday, March 11, 2012 A Pakistani Christian girl plays with a balloon next to a wall with biblical paintings at the Christian colony in the center of Islamabad, Pakistan. Roughly five percent of Pakistan " s 180 million people belong to minority religions, which include Hindu, Christian, Shiite Muslims and Ahmedis, according to the CIA World Factbook. (Anja Niedringhaus/AP) Hindu and Christian representatives say forced conversions to Islam have become the latest weapon of Islamic extremists in what they call a growing campaign against Pakistan's religious minorities, on top of assassinations and mob intimidation of houses of worship. The groups are increasingly wondering if they still have a place in Pakistan. " It is a conspiracy that Hindus and Christians and other minorities should leave Pakistan, " says Amar Lal, the lawyer representing Kumari in the Supreme Court. " As a minority, we feel more and more insecure. It is getting worse day by day. " In the last four months, Lal said, 51 Hindu girls have been forcibly converted to Islam in southern Sindh province, where most of Pakistan's minority Hindu population lives. After Kumari disappeared from her home on Feb. 24, Azra Fazal Pachuho, a lawmaker and the sister of Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, told Parliament that Hindus in southern Sindh were under attack by Islamic extremists. |
| Some Iranian Christians celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 and New Years’ on Jan. 1, while Armenians celebrate Christmas at the same time as the Epiphany on Jan. 6. Despite being a minority, Iran’s Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians are recognized as established religious minorities and are represented in parliament, and also enjoy freedom to practice their religions and perform their religious rituals. “You can’t celebrate Christmas in any Islamic country the way we do in Iran,” Rafi Moradians, an Iranian Armenian in Tehran, told Al-Monitor. Referring to the community’s exclusive sport and cultural club, Rafi said, “Authorities don’t impose any restrictions on us. We attend church services and there are also special celebrations at the Ararat Club.” The festive mood, however, is not just limited to the Christian neighborhoods of Tehran, as some shops, especially those in the northern parts of the city, dedicate at least some section of their shop windows to decorations such as candy canes, snow globes and Santa Claus figures. In recent years, municipal authorities have also put up banners celebrating the birth of Jesus on many main streets and at the St. Sarkis Armenian Church on Villa Avenue, where a service is held every year. Unlike other countries in the region where public celebration of Christmas is limited to hotels frequented by foreigners, there is no such restriction in Tehran. The sale of Christmas ornaments, which during the first years of the Islamic Revolution was limited to Christian districts, can now be seen around town. In fact, festive Christmas decoration and celebration take place throughout the country, specifically in major cities such as Esfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz and even religious cities such as Mashhad. Over the past decade, celebrating Christmas has become increasingly popular among young Iranians, regardless of their religion. Of course, the trend has a partly religious basis, as Muslims acknowledge the birth of Jesus Christ and recognize him as one of God’s holy messengers. But another reason for taking part in Christmas celebrations seems to be rooted in the Iranian youth’s desire to “keep up with the rest of the world.” |
| UN anti-blasphemy measures have sinister goals, observers say United Nations, November 24, 2010 Islamic countries Monday (November 22) won United Nations backing for an anti-blasphemy measure Canada and other Western critics say risks being used to limit freedom of speech. Combating Defamation of Religions passed 85–50 with 42 abstentions in a key UN General Assembly committee, and will enter into the international record after an expected rubber stamp by the plenary later in the year. But while the draft’s sponsors say it and earlier similar measures are aimed at preventing violence against worshippers regardless of religion, religious tolerance advocates warn the resolutions are being accumulated for a more sinister goal. “It provides international cover for domestic anti-blasphemy laws, and there are a number of people who are in prison today because they have been accused of committing blasphemy,” said Bennett Graham, international program director with the Becket Fund, a think tank aimed at promoting religious liberty. “Those arrests are made legitimate by the UN body’s (effective) stamp of approval.” Passage of the resolution is part of a 10-year action plan the 57-state Organization of Islamic Conference launched in 2005 to ensure “renaissance” of the “Muslim Ummah” or community. While the current resolution is non-binding, Pakistan’s Ambassador Masood Khan reminded the UN’s Human Rights Council this year that the OIC ultimately seeks a “new instrument or convention” on the issue. Such a measure would impose its terms on signatory states. “Each time the resolution comes up, we get a measure of where the world is on this issue, and we see that the campaign has been ramped up,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch. While this year’s draft is less Islam-centric that resolutions of earlier years, analysts note it is more emphatic in linking religion defamation and incitement to violence. That “risks limiting a broad range of peaceful speech and expression,” Neuer argues. |
| Americans have understandably voiced grave concerns about allowing tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into the country, especially since the terrorists who perpetrated the mass murders in Paris claimed the Islamic religion and since ISIS says it is embedding terrorists among the refugees — and the refugees from Syria are mostly Muslims from the same area of the world as the terrorists. What is mystifying to many Americans is the clear bias that President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and most of the American Left show in favoring Syrian refugees who are Muslims over those who are Christians. “Islam is not our adversary,” Clinton declared recently. “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” While it is demonstrably true that only a minority of Muslims commit these terrorist acts, it is also undeniable that all the terrorists claim to be part of the religion begun by the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia in the seventh century. Not any of these terrorists are either Christians, Jews, Hindus, or Buddhists. Responding to those who have advocated for more Christian refugees, Obama was particularly indignant, calling such a suggestion “shameful,” and adding, “We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.” On the contrary, religion has long been an important criteria in determining refugee status, both by the U.S. State Department and the United Nations. A refugee is defined as “someone who has fled from his or her home country and cannot return because he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.” Certainly the case can be made that Middle-Eastern Christians, as a group, are targeted by ISIS and other hard-core Islamic terrorists more than any other group. (It is possible that Jews could also be particular targets, had they not largely abandoned the region years ago.) In Iraq, the ethnic Chaldeans and Assyrians (two groups that should be familiar to Bible students) have long been mostly Christian. Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda of Iraq told a press conference at the 2015 Knights of Columbus Convention in Philadelphia in August of the concerns of Christians. He was joined by a Syrian archbishop, Jean-Clement Jeanbart, and they quoted federal data which indicated that since October of last year, 906 Muslim refugees from Syria were granted U.S. visas, but only 28 of Syria’s estimated 700,000 Christian refugees obtained visas . |
| Between Building Churches and Mosques: The Culture of Relativism Contemporary Issues Last Updated: Feb 8th, 2011 - 05:50:02 Between Building Churches and Mosques: The Culture of Relativism Minas Monir Oct 5, 2010, 05:30 Discuss this article Printer friendly page The debate over building churches and mosques has escalated recently in several hot spots around the world. Yet this problem is actually as early as the emergence of Islam itself. Based on strict slamic shari’a laws, it is totally forbidden to build a church in “Jazeerat al Arab” which is the Arab peninsula, known today as Saudi Arabia. Any attempts to gather any Christian group to pray are criminalized by law. The difficulties extend throughout the Middle East. In Cairo, the capital of Egypt, there is strong law hindering the building of churches. To build or even restore a church in Egypt, it is required to have permission from the president of the republic or the governor, which is a very difficult procedure. Egyptian Christians who try to restore any small estate, or even simply a wall attached to a church building,, face violent attacks by people from the surrounding neighborhood. In an incident at Abu Fana Monastery in 2008, three monks were kidnapped and tortured and one Muslim was killed in clashes sparked by building an extension to the monastery wall. Meanwhile, building mosques in Egypt is very easy and doesn’t need any special licence. Actually, building a mosque will receive support from the ministry of Awqaf (Islamic endowments) by providing water and electricity for free,, on top of other incentives. offered to the builder. Consequently, Cairo which was called in history books, the city of the 1000 minarets, is now, the city of 100,000 minarets! In the United States, government officials killed the deals to relocate the only church destroyed in the 9/11 attacks. That is, St. Nicolas Greek Orthodox Church in Manhattan. The church was completely destroyed under the remains of one of the fallen World Trade Center buildings. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Constantinople, Patriarchate of JOHN A. MCGUCKIN The patriarch of Constantinople is today rooted in the ancient former capital city of the Roman Empire (not Rome, but after the 4th-century Christian ascent to power, “New Rome” or Constantine’s City, Konstantinopolis). The city retained the ancient name of Constantinople until the early decades of the 20th century when Ataturk, signaling new beginnings after the fall of the Ottoman sultans whose capital it had also been, changed the name to Istanbul (originally another Greek Christian shorthand for “To the City” – eis tin polin) and at the same time moved the capital of Turkey to Ankara. After the rise of Turkish nationalism, and the disastrous Greco-Turkish War of the early decades of the 20th century (reflected, for example, in Kazantzakis’ novel Christ Recrucified), Constantinople, which had always been a major hub of world affairs, and a massively cosmopolitan city, changed into becoming a monochromatic backwater. The many religious communities that had remained there even after its fall to Islam in the 15th century dwindled, until today, demographically, Orthodox church life in that once great metropolis is a sad shadow of what it once was. From the foundation of the city as a Christian hub of the Eastern Empire by Constantine in the early 4th century, the city was the center of a great and burgeoning Christian empire: the Christian style and culture of Byzantium made its presence felt all over the world, from the Saxons of England, to the Slavs of the cold North, to the southern plateaux of Ethiopia. The Great Imperial Church (once the cathedral church of the patriarchate, too) was Hagia Sophia. After the conquest of the city by Islamic forces in 1453, the last emperor was killed and Byzantine dynastic rule was ended, and the patriarchate took over (under the sultans) political and religious supervision of all the Christians of the large Ottoman dominion. Under Mehmet II and his successors, many churches in Constantinople were seized as mosques. It had lost the Great Church of Hagia Sophia at the time of the conquest, but was also later ousted from the large headquarters of St. Mary Pammakaristos. After many vicissitudes and sufferings, the patriarchate came in 1603 to be established in its present location in the very modest Church of St. George at the Phanar in Istanbul. |
| The Synod members also heard a report by the DECR chairman concerning the participation of the ROC delegation in the 7th Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions held in Kazakhstan on September 14-15, 2022. With the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church led by DECR chairman Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk took part in the Congress. The delegation included, among others, Metropolitan Kirill of Kazan and Tatarstan. Among the participants in the conference were other hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church as well, namely, Metropolitan Alexander of Astana and Kazakhstan, head of the Metropolitan area in the Republic of Kazakhstan; Metropolitan Veniamin of Minsk and Zaslavl, Patriarchal Exarch of All Belarus; and Bishop Savvaty of Bishkek and Kyrgyzstan. This year the Congress focused on the Role of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in the Spiritual and Social Development of Humanity in the Post-Pandemic Period. During the opening session, Metropolitan Anthony read out a message of greetings from His Holiness Patriarch Kirill. The DECR chairman also delivered an address during the opening session and spoke at the final session of the Congress. On September 13, upon the arrival of the delegation in Kazakhstan, Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk met with His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem to discuss a wide range of issues pertaining to the relationships between the two Churches. Besides, on the side-lines of the Congress, Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk and the delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church met with Pope Francis; President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev; the chairman of the Muslim Board of the Caucasus, Sheikh ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade; Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University Sheikh Ahmed El Tayeb; the head of Iran’s Islamic Culture and Communication Organization, Mohammad Mehdi Imanipour; and the Chairman of the Senate of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Maulen Ashimbayev. |
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