Sudan: Company takes over church property

Get the building back? Don't hold your breath!

"in the end, you will get the building back in better shape than it was before"
With the altar out of the way, none of that nasty representative glass and painting, all those crosses and chalices melted down and sold for scrap, and a nice sickly green dome over it all, Changing Rooms couldn't do you a better job.

I'm glad that Dr Carey has drawn attention to the case - I could not find anything about this one on the Barnabas Fund site or the Mothers Union site - but I doubt if he will have much success.

Shrugging off the complaint, the judge commented, “Yes, that is the order of the court. But it is up to me to decide what to do with the fact that the law has been broken.”

I suggest the good Christians drop the passive attitude, quit turning the other cheek and develope a close personal relationship with C4. They will never have their church back because the good judge is probably a ... well, you know.

If the Christians appear to have accepted their dhimmi status they will have to live with the consequences. What will magically occur by going to a Muslim judge? Justice? No, abbra ka-dabra, presto change-o -- a church morphs into a shiny new mosque disguised as a "community center .... psst, no dhimmis allowed!

10,000 African "Peacekeepers" are supposed to be sent to the Sudan. It would be far better to send 5,000 American marines, hold the south and Darfur, and simultaneously declare a no-fly zone for Sudanese aircraft which have been used to support the Janjaweed, and have strafed people in the time-honored manner of the Egyptian pilots who massacred Christian Ibo in villages all over southern Nigeria during the Biafra War. If the Kurdish areas of Iraq were provided with protection by making the Kurdish skies free of Arab planes and helicopters, can't the Americans do the same for the black Africans, Christians and animists, and non-Arab -- hence "inferior" --Muslims in Darfur?

Not possible? Too much going on in Iraq? But that is one more reason why we should be out of Iraq -- precisely so as not to be tied down, not to be spending hundreds of billions (and as Bin Laden and others keep noting, causing severe economic damage to the West, and misuse of resrouces, is the major component of the Jihad at this moment, along with demographic dominance and Da'wa, or appeals to the marginal within the West). The Sudan is the perfect place to rip away what the Arabs have taken over the past century (a century ago, the Sudan was only 20% Muslim; now Muslims are a majority, and control the lives of all non-Muslims in the country, and the oil wealth in the south). 5,000 Marines could buck up the spirits of Christian black Africans, and Christian Afro-Americans whose flocks are also being stolen by Muslim poachers (with a little help from the likes of idiots such as Mayor Menio of Boston, who plumped the Boston mosque down in the center of Roxbury, and even benignly smiled at the "deal" cut by which the Mosque members would conduct Da'wa at Roxbury Community College).

It has been two months since the great "election" in Iraq. There is still no Iraqi government. Iraqis are slightly better at fighting than they were (the Kurds forming the bulk of the forces that can be trusted, and trained, by the Americans). But there is still desertion, still theft of equipment, still the general sense that the Americans are there to be plucked, to be pickpocketed, to be asked to fight and die, and then at some point to be booted out.

The Iraqi venture, or adventure, has to end, not only because it is causing severe damage to the citizen-army (the Reserves and National Guard, the ranks of which are not being replenished), not only becuase another $200-300 billion would be best applied, to fight the Jihad (but it first must be understood that what is being fought is the Jihad, and not merely one instrument of it, "terror"), not only because it has taken our attention away from the islamization of Europe which demands immediate attention, but because in a place like the Sudan, tailor-made and heaven-sent, because the Sudan offers just one example of opportunities missed by an Administration that cannot deal with more than one or two Big Ideas at one time. Currently that Big Idea is bringing "democracy" to the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the defenders of constraints on Islma in Turkey are tied in knots by Erdogan, the secularist beneficiaries of Kemalism within Turkish society are insufficiently attentive, and Islam -- a permanent presence that has come back in a big way -- throws out its tentacles throughout Turkey and helps to explain much about Turkish lack of cooperation, Turkish denunications of Americans in Iraq as "worse than Nazis," and the ominous best-seller status in Turkey of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

And in Europe, two major political figures in Holland must live under armed guard, changing army cots every few days, while in England Blair's likely successor Gordon Brown hails Muslims for their splendid contributions to English life and the wonderfulness of Islam, and in France the government prepares to spend money on mosques that somehow will be the "religion of Islam without most of Islam" (a tip of the hat to Hazel Motes, yet again, and to Flannery O'Connor, whose birthday it is today).

And here is the opportunity that heaven-sent, presents itself: the Sudan. American marines surrounded by grateful, smiling faces of Africans they have rescued from Arab Muslim genocide -- 2 million already dead in the south over 20 years (and that so-called "Peace Agreement" will last only so long as the Khartoum regime is preoccupied with finishing its deadly job in Darfur, at which point it will, in the spirit of Al-Hudaibiyya, necessarily have to rip up the agreement and go to work on the southerners again -- this is not a matter of choice, but of Muslim duty -- ich kann nicht anders, as any Muslim who breaches his treaty with Infidels must believe.

If the Iraqis cannot form a government by April, or out of a country of 25 million, cannot manage to find 100,000 locals capable of defending "their own country," at what point can the absurd misallocation of resources -- and let it again be said the initial invasion and destruction of the regime was perfectly justified, and worthwhile -- but that does not make everything that follows, from then on, an intelligent application of power.

The misallocation of resources simply reflects the intelligence failure at this point: the failure to identify the Jihad and not terrorism as the problem, the failure to understand that it is not a question of Alaskan oil, or even of "energy independence" but of depriving Saudi Arabia and other Muslim states of the financial wherewithal to fund, through Da'wa (mosques and madrasas around the world) and through propaganda and weapons, the Jihad.

This understanding will not come if our rulers continue to believe in the filial-piety half-nonsense of "good Muslims" (Lt. Aboul-Enein's little report published by the Army War College), or of the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, a systems analyst who has learned about Islam from 1) his stay as the cosseted American ambassador in Jakarta, where everyone knew exactly what they thought an American ambassador, and a Jewish one at that, would want to hear and 2) his pillow talk, reported long ago in The Telegraph but just now hitting the American papers, with the Arab divorcee who, though born in Tunis, was raised in Saudi Arabia, and is a great believer in "democracy" in the MIdlde East and who, like Ahmed Chalabi and many others, managed to employ American power, and American money, and Americna lives, for the purposes of "reformers" who, alas and welladay, are unable to fully recognize the impoortance of de-islamizing these countries because, out of fear and filial piety, they simply can't face up to the problem of Islam. So they don't. And we listen to them, and we don't.

This folly is explicable. But it is not acceptable.

Sure nice of them to fix up that stodgey old Hagia Sophia (Saint Sophia) church and give it back, too.

While they're at it, can they give the name Constantinople back, as well?

"Istambul" sounds like the onomatopeia for a sneezing drunk falling down a short flight of steps.

The Temple Mount would be a nice addition to the "fixed it up and gave it back in even better condition" concept.

Let's promote this idea to the "moderate Muslims" quick.

Have them show that they are NOT in league with the 'holy warring madmen' whom they now claim that the jihadists are.

And let them adopt the motto of the rock group from Australia, Midnight Oil, who sang:

"Let's give it back!"

Islam- GIVE IT BACK!

Just flagrant.
These characters don't give a sh-t, and it is hard to imagine what force one can bring to bear, of they will likely get away with it.

My admiration and respect goes to anyone willing to identify as a Christian in a muslim country;
they deserve all the help we can give them.

You obviously give up your rights and standing in front of a court, and in front of the police, army and government, when you identify as a Christian in a muslim country.

Ooops, 'so they will likely get away with it'.

Hugh, which country do we occupy to get access to southern Sudan? The logistics of sustaining even very small footprint operations in Sudan are a tremendous challenge--the costs of operating in Iraq pale in comparison. What port shall we use? What C-5 or C-130 capable airfields? How will we protect them? And if Kenya, Somalia or Ethiopia deny overflight rights, then what shall we do? Come south over Libya? Build new base camps in Chad utterly dependent on air replenishment and overflight rights from fickle, North African muslim regimes? There are no roads in southern Sudan. Every bridge has been destroyed in the preceding decade and a half of warfare.

Yes, we can get 5,000 Marines in there, providing we're willing to risk losing all of them--not the most likely result, but a real one that has to be considered. Assuming the worst, we have the power to pull them out, which we'd have to do even in the best of circumstances--Marine forces aren't constructed to wage long, extended campaigns. And so we'd gain a lot of quick publicity, all those smiling black faces (provided we fly in the reporters), but when the inevitable withdrawal would come, can't you see the headlines--the paper tiger fleeing once again in the face of Muslim warriors on horseback?

Anyway, why should we expend US military power to save the black muslims from the white muslims, and not save brown muslims in Indonesia and Sri Lanka from natural disasters? Really, everywhere else you're encouraging us to just let them kill each other--so why not out there, 1,000 miles from anywhere? Just the place for no-fly zones, wearing out our aircrew and aircraft flying four hours to get to the zone, and four hours back, and goodness knows how we'll get the tanker support stretched out to keep them gassed up--all to intimidate what? And if one of those planes goes down out there in middle of Hell, then what? Rescue helicopters travel at what speed, how far, from where?

If you're determined that US forces be stretched to the limit across North Africa (stretched till the joints pop, given the tremendous size of the region), at least have the sense to propose leveling Khartoum, or something else militarily possible, and which may actually produce some useful results. Forget saving Southern Sudan. We wrote off operations there a long time ago for reasons that any military planner can easily understand.

"If you're determined that US forces be stretched to the limit across North Africa..." from a posting above.

Would a military intervention in the southern Sudan, which could also take in Darfur, of a few thousand men (I called them Marines, but if it is true that Marines go in and come out quickly, then let it be the Army)really cause "US forces to be stretched to the limt across North Africa..." I am confused -- I offered the Sudan as one place where military intervention could be undertaken with relative ease, not because of roads, but because of the Christian population of the southern Sudan (and of Ethiopia to the south).

Is it impossible to imagine such an intervention, accompanied by the rapid destruction of whatever helicopters and plains the Sudanese government possesses and that have been used to kill civilians in both the south and in Darfur? A base of operations could be either in northern Ethiopia (itself grateful for some dramatic expression of American protection from what it regards as islamization within, and Islamic threats from without) the main surrounding populaton would not consist of Muslims but of those non-Muslims(Christians and animists) in the southern Sudan; Darfur is not exactly quite as full of enthusiastic Muslims as it once was, one suspects, given the lessons that have been taught by the Janjaweed, clearly working under the supervision, and with the encouragement, of the Arab Muslims who run the Sudanese government.

Do you really think this would be a far more difficult and dangerous task than the taks of stayiing now in Iraq, through political stalemates and score-settling, and impossible demands, and a largely ungrateful, and necessarily ungrateful (because we remain Infidels) populace? Was not the absence of roads, and other infrastructure, supposed to make Afghanistan truly an impossible country to invade -- and the southern Sudan, at least, has a friendly, because non-Muslim, population.

Do you really think 5,000 soldiers (I won't continue to call them Marines), with some air support, would be incapable of handling what would be the equivalent of the Last Charge at Omdurman, where we have the gatling-gun, and they have not, and in a big way?

I would have thought this is the most modest of military ventures, not "adventures," and one that could be triggered by the slightest further sign that the Sudanese government is not scrupulously fulfilling every solemn undertaking in its agreement with the southern Sudanese -- and they will breach that undertaking just as soon as they finish up with Darfur, unchecked and uncheckable.

The Sudanese cannnot easily receive Jihadist volunteers who will somehow appear, white-skinned Arabs among the Dinka and Nuer and other African tribes of the southern Sudan. You note the absence of roads, and therefore of cars; that means, to the extent (the very small extent) that American convoys would proceed not on roads, but making their own way, there would be no precise place for explosive devices -- should it even be possible to fabricate such things in the southern Sudan in any number -- to be laid. Why is the southern Sudan depicted as a difficult place to seize, when it would seem to be far easier than Iraq or Afghanistan, given the unhostile, and easily distinguishable, Christian and animist population, from the Arab Muslims of the north?

Few could deny, after nearly 2 million dead, that this would be primarily a humanitarian mission, designed to protect the southern Sudanese (and those in Darfur) from the Arab Muslim forces, which repeatedly have violeted every agreement, until a referendum on independence from the north could be held). The criticism above seems aimed at a different, much more rapid intervention, but remaining for a referendum could take a year or more, and if Independence were to be voted for, does anyone doubt that a new state carved out of the southern Sudan (are colonial borders sacrosanct?) might well invite the Americans to remain, by way of protection. Would not such a base be more secure than those contemplated, or now existing, in Musim countries? Is there a single Muslim country with which the United States has had a military alliance (beginning with CENTO -- Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan), or where it has had a base (beginning with Wheelus Air Base outside Tripoli) that it has not either lost, or not been allowed to use in the way such a base now needs to be used (Incirlik, in Turkey).

If the southern Sudanese, Christian and anmist, on the receiving end of Muslim hatred and aggression for two decades, would welcome the American intervention (which might have taken place ten years ago), what about black African Muslims in Darfur? Surely those quasi-Muslims have also had a little lesson in Arab supremacist ideology, and may be particularly open, as few Muslims are, to the idea that just perhpas Islam is not all it has been cracked up to be, and when they compare their treatment at the hands of the Janjaweed with the benevolence of American medics, their ardor for Islam may cool down.

You mention that mu suggestio nsomeohow implies an in-and-out intervention. But I did not mean that. That is what I would have wished for Iraq. In the southern (and western) Sudan, why not reamin for the stated purpose of protecting the people until a referendum on independence from the north can be held, without fear. That would take some time to arrange, and to hold. And what do you think the chances are that those Christians and animists in the southern Sudan, with American power, and American gewgaws, and the promise of future American protection, would vote for? And in Darfur? And what exactly would then happen to American troops -- would the locals demand that they leave, or beg them to stay, to protect them from the northern Arab Muslims, perhaps aided by Egypt or other members of the Arab League?

And as to that initial intervention -- who would or could object, and be listened to sympathetically? Who would object? The Arab League, which has uttered not a syllable of protest about the two decades of mass-murder in the southern Sudan, committed by Arab Muslims, and not a syllable of protest about the 300,000 black Africnas murdered by Arabs in Darfur? Would they be listened to? Or what about the E.U., which has also been impotent, and is in all matters affecting Islam has become the handmaid, in any case, of the Arab League? Will they argue that there is a divine right of the Muslim Arabs to continue killing Christians or non-Arab Muslims? Not exactly an attractive argument.

American troops and the American government would look good, and deservedly. Egypt, which even now is trying to figure out how to prevent Ethiopia from diverting some of the headwaters of the Nile for irrigation projectrs (the Egyptians seem to think the Nile is their exclusive property -- they should learn otherwise, and Ethiopia, repeatedly drought-stricken, Christin Ethiopia now having its own problem with a burgeoning Muslim population, deserves our full support, especially against Muslim Egypt. Anywhere a blow can be struck against dar al-islam is to be encouraged.

The southern Sudan might well be a place for a permanent airbase. Certainly every single time the Americans have invested in military facilities in a Muslim country, there have been either direct takeoovers -- as with the giant Wheeler Air Base outside Tripoli (lost in 1969 when Khaddafy took over in a coup, from King Idris), or the base in Morocco that had to be explained as just a place where MOroccans were "trained," or those airbases in Saudi Arabia, or even the bases in Turkey that were useful during the Cold War, but which are apparently not to be used against the very places that will, from here on out, be the main enemy -- that is, Muslim countries. What good is Incirlik if it cannot be used as a base from which to deal with Iraq, or Syria, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia?

Iraq is now a colossal misallocation of resources. But where the application of force can be smaller, with a truly approving population (which means: a non-Muslim population, or one that while nominally Muslim, has through experience become disaffected -- and that would apply to both the black African inhabitants of Darfur, and to most Iranians, who have had their fill of Islam during the last unhappy 25 years of the Islamic Republic).

In general, malign neglect of Muslim states, with no foreign aid and a minimum of contact with the Infidel world (less access to Western medicine, Western technology, Western education, Western weaponry, Western gewgaws, Western everything), is desirable. But that does not mean that nowhere should military force be employed. It should certainly be employed, from afar and from the sky, to deprive the Islamic Republic of Iran of any conceivable nuclear weaponry, coute que coute. It could, if the idea of protecting the southern Sudanese were to be understood to require such intervention, and that in turn, such intervention would promote not only military needs (a secure -- because in a Christian-populated area -- base), but also do something else: show black Africna Christians who have suffered from a sense of abandonment, beginning with the shameful refusal to support Biafra in its war of independence (why? because everyone neglected to understand that it was a religious war, a reaction against a "jihad" -- to use Colonel Ojukwu's own words in the Ahiara Declaration -- that had been waged by the northern Muslims, beginning with the forgotten pogroms against Ibos all over northern Nigeria.

For a relatively small investment of men, money, materiel, the return -- in the Sudan -- would be far greater than what is likely to be derived from continuing to stay, or even, good god, to continue to "rebuild," Iraq, a country that is not, pace those counting their chickens long before they have any possibility of hatching, full of people deeply grateful to America (a handful of nice intelligent pro-Western bloggers, The Mesopotamian et al., do not convince: they are about as representative of Iraq as Sakharov was of the Soviet Union, and naturally they want the Americans to say. Oh, all sorts of people want the Americans to stay -- including, I suspect, Bin Laden and his ilk. But we should neither stay, nor go, on the basis of who says to go or stay, but on a chilly analysis of where, at present, the allocation of those resources would do the most good in weakening the camp of Jihad -- that is, the camp of Islam.

A link to a description of the isolation of Southern Sudan (or New Sudan as the article mentions)
http://www.muwinchester.org.uk/kajo-kejidiocese.htm

I joined the Mothers Union after reading an article about a Sudanese MU officer placed under house arrest for daring to meet with other women. MU are currently running a language and literacy programme in the area.

Hugh, sorry, I wrote a longish reply earlier, but lost it, and now haven't the time to re-compose it.

Maintaining any sort of extended presence, even an airbase, would be tremendously expensive, and a tremendous burden on air logistics system that's sorely stretched--not so much by OIF, as by the Air Force's extreme reluctance to recognize that their most important mission is to support the Army. Everything, absolutely everything, including water and fuel to fly out with, has to be flown in from originations at least a thousand miles away. There is no electrical system, there is no road system--all of what we call Base Operational Support would be entirely dependent on the Air Force's limping fleet of 40-year old C-5s and C-130s, never mind where a runway might be that they could land on--we can't build the runway, it has to be there already.

I'm sympathetic with the goals you would wish to achieve, but they would be frighteningly little relative to the tremendous burden on budgets and machines that such an endeavor would create. Which is why I suggest that leveling Khartoum would have a salutory effect on the south, since the thugs would have to put their efforts into keeping themselves alive rather than persecuting other peoples.