RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17394/persecution-of-christians-april

In a video released on April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State in Sinai executed 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama, a Christian. Salama appears on his knees in the video, with three men holding rifles standing behind him….

“We should remember that Greece spent 400 years under Turkish Islamic rule and that the fight for freedom was bloody. With that in mind it is even more dramatic seeing these images of fighting age migrants desecrating Greek holy places and having no respect for the country they are allegedly seeking refuge in.” — Greek City Times, April 12, 2021.

“[H]e was kept in at least three different police stations and illegal torture cells, where he was mentally and physically tortured to confess to the baseless accusation [of blasphemy]… [P]olice repeatedly threatened to kill him…. The police investigators…also tortured him into naming other members of the Bible study circle…” — Aneeqa Maria, Salamat Masih’s attorney, Morning Star News, April 29, 2021, Pakistan.

The Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: In a video released on April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State in Sinai executed 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama, a Christian. Salama appears on his knees in the video, with three men holding rifles standing behind him. The one in the middle launches into a typical jihadi diatribe: “All praise to Allah, who ordered his slaves [Muslims] to fight and who assigned humiliation onto the infidels” —pointing contemptuously at the kneeling Christian before him — “until they pay the jizya while feeling utterly subdued.” The words are a paraphrasing of Koran 9:29, which commands Muslims to “fight the people of the book,” understood as meaning Christians and Jews, “until they pay the jizya (monetary tribute) with willing submissiveness and feel themselves utterly subdued.”

The middle speaker continued by threatening “all the crusaders of the world” — a reference to Christians in the West — while singling out the countrymen of the one about to be slain: “as for you Christians of Egypt, this is the price of your support for the Egyptian army.” The speaker then points his rifle at the back of the Christian’s head —as chants of “jihad! jihad! jihad!” blare out — and fires at point-blank range, killing him.

It is unclear when the video was made — Salama was abducted at gunpoint over five months earlier for helping to build the only church in the area. “He kept the faith till the moment he was killed,” the group Sinai Province said of the slain Copt in a statement. During the months of his captivity, several Egyptian activists accused the authorities of indifference in not being able to locate and secure the release of Salama, which they say could easily have been done. Ironically, the Egyptian government issued a statement the day after the video was released saying that they had located and killed the same three terrorists that had executed the Copt—without offering any specifics. The claim was met with skepticism.

In a separate incident, on April 3, in the streets of Minya, a Muslim man butchered a Christian woman and her toddler son with a machete—”as if he were slaughtering chickens,” said eyewitnesses. The murderer, a tuk-tuk driver, is Abu Muhammad al-Harami; his victims were Mary Sa’d and her six-year-old son, Karas. When their paths crossed in the streets, he had made threatening and derogatory comments to Mary. When she said she would report him to police, Abu Muhammad leapt on her with his machete, butchering her and her son. Although Egyptian media and authorities claimed, as they always do, that the man’s motives appear not to have been religious, the fact is every once in a while such “random” attacks on Egypt’s Christians occur.

In late December 2020, for instance, two Muslim brothers went on a stabbing spree against Christians, killing one and critically injuring two others. Authorities said the brothers were in mourning and upset because their mother had died earlier that day. But as a local Christian clergyman said, “what does the death [of the Muslims’ mother] and the Copts have to do with each other?” The same year, on January 12, 2020, a Muslim man crept up behind a Coptic woman walking home with groceries, pulled her head back with a hand full of hair, and slit her throat with a knife in his other hand. Catherine Ramzi was rushed to a nearby medical center, where her throat was sewn with 63 stitches; doctors told her she came within an inch of dying. It is believed that he may have identified her as a Christian for not wearing a hijab around her hair or for having a cross tattoo on her wrist.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17396/iran-election-candidates

With Iran arguably stuck in its deepest crisis in decades while economic meltdown, rampant corruption and Covid-19 chaos wreak havoc on an unprecedented scale, the Khomeinist regime is in dire need of reasserting its legitimacy.

The terms “Russophile” and “Americanophile” may need to be explained. Neither means any actual sympathy for either Russian or American ways of life and political systems…. Both want to “export” revolution, destroy Israel, if possible, and impose hegemony on the Middle East. In short, both wear beards, though of different styles.

Russia isn’t a potential ideological rival because the “Russian way of life”, unknown to most Iranians, lacks any seductive power capable of challenging Khomeinism. In other words, the Khomeinist regime has a better chance of survival under Russian protection than it could have under American tutelage.

Within days the all-powerful Council of the Guardians of the Constitution is expected to publish the list of “approved candidates” for next month’s presidential election in the Islamic Republic in Iran.

According to official reports, a total of 592 men and one woman have filled in the forms for consideration as a candidate. The council, however, is expected to approve no more than seven to 10 applicants.

What is not clear is whether the council will assess the applicants on the basis of existing regulations or in accordance with new rules it published last month. The Interior Ministry, which has the charge of organizing the elections, says nothing outside the existing regulations should be at play. The council, however, says the ministry’s role does not include an assessment of applications.

The dispute may furnish some fuel to feed the low-burning fire of this bizarre election. Everyone knows that the final list will be established by the “Supreme Guide” who has the final word in the Khomeinist regime.

If previous elections are to be taken as a guide, this time, too, the “Supreme Guide”, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is likely to use the election as a multipurpose exercise.

The first objective is to ensure as large a turnout as possible.

Khamenei has described elections in the Islamic Republic as referenda on the regime itself. With Iran arguably stuck in its deepest crisis in decades while economic meltdown, rampant corruption and Covid-19 chaos wreak havoc on an unprecedented scale, the Khomeinist regime is in dire need of reasserting its legitimacy.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/another-us-ally-gets-bed-iran-kenneth-r-timmerman-0/

The answer is obvious: nothing good.

The Republic of Georgia lost 20 percent of its territory in 2008 to Russian invasion, and continues to struggle politically and economically from Russian interference in its domestic affairs.

The ruling Georgia Dream party, dominated by pro-Russian oligarch Bidzia (“Boris”) Ivanishvili, won parliamentary elections last October that the opposition declared were rigged. Since April 19, a new power sharing agreement hammered out by the European Union and the United States, seems have convinced the opposition to rejoin the parliament.

But Georgia’s northern neighbor and election irregularities are only part of the former Soviet republic’s problems. It also sits atop a key pipeline that transports oil from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Georgia to Turkey and Western Europe.

The Iranian regime has long sought to block the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, since it rivaled Iran’s own oil and gas exports to Turkey. Because of this, and because of a succession of weak governments in Georgia, the Iranians have established a powerful commercial and intelligence base inside Georgia that has influenced policies and infiltrated the Georgian security and judicial establishments.

Iran’s infiltration of Georgia and manipulation of Georgian state policy led the U.S. Department of Treasury to expose a network of Iranian sanctions-busting traders based in Tbilisi in 2014. As part of the 2015 Iran deal, U.S. sanctions against them were then lifted. By all accounts they continue to operate in Georgia today with the blessing of Georgian politicians and local banks.

The State Security Service has also established robust ties to its Iranian counterpart, the Ministry of Information and Security.

Under the control of then interior minister GeorgiGakharia, SSS-men raided an Iranian restaurant in Tbilisi in February 2018 and arrested its owner, claiming he was engaged in a dastardly plot to hire an assassin to murder other Iranians in Tbilisi.

The man they arrested, Alireza Soleimane-pak, also known as Hamid Reza Zakeri, was a defector from Iranian intelligence who became a witness in the 9/11 court case against the Iranian regime that ultimately led to a damage award in favor of the victims of over $16 billion. He was also a UN-registered political refugee.

I was involved in the 9/11 case, and have interviewed Mr. Soleimane-pak on many occasions over the past 18 years.Since learning of his arrest, I have traveled to Tbilisi twice to attend court hearings. 

The Republic of Georgia’s courts have struggled since the 2003 Rose Revolution to separate themselves from political interference.