The Paris attacks: Why it's not racist to point out the obvious.

In the aftermath of the horrific ISIS terrorist attacks on Paris, I wrote the following on my Facebook page:

Everyone wants to know, "What can we do? What can we do?" That's a tough one, but there are some basic facts that we have to face: 

Europe is post-Christian. As Pope Benedict urged, it needs to get back to its Christian roots and live out those virtues and truths, unapologetically. If that doesn't happen, Europe will lose, because ultimately it's a numbers game -- Europeans really don't have babies any more. They've given that up. Muslims (radical or not) have oodles of babies. Demographics, people. There was blood this time, but in the end it will be a bloodless coup.

A friend of mine gently responded with: "Leila. This is racist."

But is it?

First, I myself am an Arab. My father is a full-blooded Arab man, a Palestinian born and raised in the Middle East. He is also a devout Catholic (yes, Catholic/Christian Arabs existed for centuries before Islam entered the scene). If I am a racist, then am I a self-hating Arab? I don't think so. I love my family, I love my heritage, I love the Arab people.

Second, Islam is (obviously) not a race, it's a religion. More accurately, radical Islam is an ideology, and an overtly political one. There is no arguing that, is there? Now it is true that we cannot paint all Muslims with the brush of "radical". However, we also cannot find and identify "true" Islam, because Islam has a "sola scriptura" problem: They have no pope, so to speak. Each branch of Islam is one particular interpretation of the Quran, but there is no final authority. So, the sects with the most power and influence are the ones who sort of "define" what we see as Islam, even if those beliefs are not held by all, or even most, Muslims.

But ultimately, can we really argue with the demographics? After all, the demographics are just facts, numbers, statistics, projections. There's nothing racist about noting the facts, noting where Europe is headed if nothing changes.

Europe was a Christian continent, to its very roots, to its deepest identity. Demographically, we know that Europe will one day be a Muslim continent unless it reestablishes its Christian roots. The French (and Germans, and Italians, and Spanish, etc.) do not have babies anymore. Muslims, and I can't knock them for it, have broods of children. This is a fact. If Europeans do not return to the practice of Christianity, if their abysmal rates of reproduction stay deathly low, you can extrapolate and predict the outcome. It's not rocket science.

Inexplicably, some people don't appreciate differences between Judeo-Christian values and Islam (including a radicalized form of Islam that appears to have more power than peaceful Islam), but the differences are vast, and the ascendency of Islam on a once-Christian continent will change the face of our world. Is it bigoted to point this out?

If we want to pretend that this is an issue of racism or bigotry rather than a clash of truth against error and, yes, a spiritual battle, perhaps we should take the terrorists at their own words. They proudly took responsibility for last night's heinous attacks, calling France "...the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe" and referring to Europeans as "Crusaders" no less than five times. The deceased victims themselves are referred to as "Crusaders".

It is not racist to assert that Europe's only hope is to return to its Christian roots.

Echoing Pope Benedict before him, Pope Francis recently said as much, including urging Europeans to have more children:

When there is an empty space, people try to fill it. If a country has no children, immigrants come in and take their place. I think of the birth-rate in Italy, Portugal and Spain. I believe it is close to 0%. So, if there are no children, there are empty spaces. And this not wanting to have children is, partly...due to a culture of comfort, isn’t it? In my own family I heard, a few years ago, my Italian cousins saying: “Children? No. We prefer to travel on our vacations, or buy a villa, or this and that”… And the elderly are more and more alone. I believe Europe’s greatest challenge is to go back to being a mother Europe….

Francis laments the mistake of Europe in discarding its Christian identity:

Europe made a mistake when it chose to speak of its identity without wanting to recognize the deepest level of its identity, its Christians roots. That was a mistake. But, well, we all make mistakes in life. It's time to recover its faith.

Pope Francis is not a racist for speaking these truths.

Let us pray for the souls of the dead, the consolation of their families, the healing of the wounded, and the restoration of Christ's Kingship in Europe.

Let us specifically ask the saints of France to pray for their homeland, which is often referred to as the "Eldest Daughter of the Church".


St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Irenaeus, St. Jean Vianney, St. Joan of Arc, St. Bernadette, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Louise de Marillac, St. Catherine Labouré, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for your countrymen, and for our world!

Why is the Left Ignoring Church Burnings and 'Near Genocide' of Christians?

Many of you are familiar with Lisa Graas and her work, both from her comments here and from my blog roll. She is an amazing lady, and the story of how we met 13 years ago (my first internet "friend"!) is a story in itself. We have quite a history together, and now we both have blogs, ha ha ha. Lisa, a convert to Catholicism and a disabled single mother of four, also writes for David Horowitz's NewsRealBlog. As you know, I don't post on politics too often (although I am a political animal at heart), but I asked Lisa to write this guest post for me because she is practically alone out there writing on this topic. 

Please, please, if anyone on the left can explain why the Left's dislike of Christianity is so strong, and yet their defense of Islamists so vocal (despite Islam's violent hatred toward liberal moral values), I would be so grateful. I have some ideas of why leftists cast their lots with Islam over Christianity, but I would love to hear it from someone here.

+++++++

From Lisa Graas....

On the Left, the end justifies the means. Abortion, which many acknowledge is not a good thing, is 'necessary' in order to protect the 'greater good' of 'choice'. Rationing of healthcare, which they also acknowledge is not a good thing, is set forth as a 'solution' to serve the 'greater good' of 'universal coverage'. Even our Catholic compatriots on the Left have become caught up in this erroneous thinking that 'the end justifies the means', having adopted the confused thinking that the 'greater good' is equivalent to the 'common good'. So it is that the vulnerable are trampled underfoot, even with assistance from within the Catholic community.

One of the most powerful leftists in history, Josef Stalin, killed millions to serve the 'good' of the state.*

Millions died as a result of Stalin's famine and purges which came about due to the leftist ethos that 'the end' (in this case, the goal of 'equality') always 'justifies the means'. What Stalin might have believed was the 'common good', in reality was a reflection of 'the greater good' being sought, no matter the means.

Is it this belief -- 'the end justifies the means' -- that accounts for the silence of leftists in America today as the Islamic Egyptian army attacked Christian monasteries? After all, this news would have spoiled their good feelings as they cheered the 'revolution' in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Is it this belief that 'the end justifies the means' that urges the Left to press continually for America to make a hasty withdrawal from Iraq even as the Christian community there faces 'near genocide'? (Have they even heard of Adam of Baghdad?)

I think it is...and the silence continues even now as the Left continues to be actively engaged in defending the 'good name' of Islam while refusing to raise so little as a whimper about the burning of 69 churches in Ethiopia with 10,000 Christians being now displaced as they flee Muslim wrath.

Obama's White House team and the mainstream media have turned a blind eye to the spilling of innocent Christian blood.

What 'crime' did these Christians commit to 'merit' the torching of 69 churches, a Bible school and an orphanage?

The violence erupted after a group of Muslims falsely accused Christians in the area of desecrating the Quran. 

Those on the far left would say, "These attacks were justified because a Christian probably really did desecrate the Qur'an."

Those who are just left of center will probably either look away or resign themselves to calling our mention of it "Islamophobic", which I have come to realize is the 21st century leftist version of 'Der ewige Jude'.

The wise understand that book burning leads to the burning of people, but truly....it takes a hardcore leftist to argue that in our quest to protect books from damage, we must sometimes burn Islamophobic churches and kill Islamophobic Christians.

Those on the Left, tell me where I'm wrong, because I desperately want to be wrong on this.






*To address the problems of hunger and poverty, in 1928 Stalin initiated the first of five "Five-Year Plans" that he would implement during his long reign as the leader of the USSR (the others would cover the periods 1933-37; 1938-42; 1946-50; and 1951-55).  This first Plan nationalized all aspects of Russian industry and commerce, with the goal of quickly industrializing the economy and collectivizing agriculture. Collectivization meant the confiscation of all private land and the organization of agricultural production by state-run "collective farms." The idea that drove this program was Marx's fantasy of social equality and social justice. In practice it meant that 25 million peasant farmers would not be paid any wages for their labor, but would instead produce their agricultural output entirely for the state, which would in turn allow them to keep a modest share for their own survival needs. Stalin's vision entailed the systematic replacement of small, unmechanized farms with large, mechanized alternatives that would theoretically produce food much more efficiently. In practice this meant that a nation which had once been Europe's breadbasket would experience famine and chronic agricultural scarcity for the next sixty years, until the system collapsed.

I rarely do this...

... but I am doing it now. I am writing a post that is really just a link to something else. I cannot get past what I have read.

This is Adam, and he was three years old when he was martyred last month in a Baghdad church, during Holy Mass:

His parents were murdered before him, along with many other Christian worshippers. 

It's what little Adam did during the killings that will live forever in my memory. 

My friend Lisa Graas wrote a piece on the incident over at NewsRealBlog.  Please go here and read it now. It's short. Be sure to read it to the very last sentence (on page 2) which says it all. 

May little Adam of Baghdad pray for us, and may God have mercy on us all.