President Nixon, in his last official address, August 8, 1974, left a Middle East warning "... so that the cradle of civilization will not become its grave."
The "cradle of civilization" refers to the Mesopotamian Valley, also called "the fertile crescent."
The Fertile Crescent stretches from Mount Ararat, the traditional resting site of Noah's Ark, southeast along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and southwest through the Levant to Egypt.
This area became the lands of:
- Iraq,
- Iran,
- Israel,
- Turkey,
- Lebanon,
- Cyprus
- Jordan,
- Egypt,
- Syria, and
- Assyria.
Assyria is mentioned in the Book of Genesis, chapter 2, verse 4, describing the location of the Garden of Eden:
"And the name of the third river is Hiddekel - Tigris: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria."
The first documented language in Assyria was "Akkadian," written in Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform characters.
In this language was the world's first great works of literature, the Atra-Hasis, and The Epic of Gilgamesh, possibly as old as circa 2,500 B.C.
The Epic gives the account of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, going on a long journey to meet his ancient ancestor who built a large boat, covered it with tar, boarded it with his family and animals, and survived a global flood.
After the flood, in which all life on land drowned, the waters receded, and they left the boat and repopulated the world. Over a hundred ancient civilizations have historical accounts tracing back to a flood in the distant past.
Gilgamesh is credited with being the first to build a wall to defend a city.
Sargon of Akkad, possibly around 2,371 B.C., conquered a number of walled cities to create "the first empire." It was called Assyria.
The name "Assyria" is derived from "Asshur," its ancient capital city on the Tigris River, named after its founder, "Asshur," the second son of Shem, the son of Noah.
A pagan practice developed of considering deceased leaders as "deified," and Asshur was depicted as a feather-robed archer.
As explained by Peter BetBasoo, the Assyrian Empire under Sargon of Akkad absorbed the original Sumerian civilization of the Mesopotamian Valley.
In the 2nd millennium B.C., the world's major cities included:
- Akkad,
- Mari,
- Nimrud,
- Nineveh,
- Ur,
- Uruk,
- Susa,
- Sumer,
- Ebla,
- Babylon, and
- Memphis.
The ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in the Nineveh plains, near present-day Mosul, was a major religious and cultural center.
Being in a city afforded inhabitants protection and financial opportunities, but these benefits were received only in exchange for giving loyalty to the king of the city, who claimed to be appointed by the local deity. Kings ruled like glorified gang leaders, using fear to get people to submit.
Babylonian King Hammurabi lived around circa 1800 B.C. and exerted his rule over nearly half of Mesopotamia. He was known for his law code which had three classes for society:
- amelu - elite land owners,
- mushkenu - free men,
- and ardu - slaves.
His law gave particular attention to bizarre and gruesome punishments.
Babylonians and Assyrians laid down the fundamental basis of mathematics:
- the Pythagorean Theorem,
- the concept of zero,
- 360 degrees in a circle,
- parabolic domes and arches, and
- longitude and latitude in geography.
The Telegraph reported, August 24, 2017, of a recent archeological discovery:
"A 3,700-year-old clay tablet has proven that the Babylonians developed trigonometry 1,500 years before the Greeks and were using a sophisticated method of mathematics which could change how we calculate today ...
The tablet, which is thought to have come from the ancient Sumerian city of Larsa, has been dated to between 1822 and 1762 B.C. ...
However unlike today's trigonometry, Babylonian mathematics used a base 60, or sexagesimal system, rather than the 10 which is used today. Because 60 is far easier to divide by three, experts studying the tablet, found that the calculations are far more accurate."
ABRAHAM
Around the time of Hammurabi, Abram was called out from the city of Ur in southern Babylonia.
Departing with Abram was:
- his father Terah,
- his wife, Sarai,
- his brother, Nahor.
- Nahor's wife Milcah, and
- his nephew Lot, who was the son of Abram's deceased brother Haran.
They traveled north into western Assyria - present-day Turkey - to Paddan Aram. "Paddan" means "field" and Aram was a grandson of Noah by Shem.
Aram's descendants are called Arameans, who had migrated into the land of Assyria. Abram and his relatives settled in a place called Harran.
God then called Abram to go further west, with his wife Sarai. His nephew Lot accompanied them.
God changed Abram's name to Abraham and Sarai's name to Sarah.
His other relatives, including Nahor and his wife Milcah, with their sons, remained in Harran.
One of Nahor's sons was Bethuel, father of Laban and Rebekah.
Rebekah became the wife of Isaac, the son of Abraham. Isaac and Rebekah had sons Esau and Jacob.
Jacob married Laban's daughters Rachel and Leah.
Deuteronomy 26:5 instructed:
"Then you shall declare before the Lord your God:
'My father - Jacob - was a wandering Aramean (Syrian) and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous.'"(NIV)
NINEVEH
Assyria's capital city of Nineveh continued growing, and by the 8th century BC, it had become the largest city in the world.
The Old Testament Prophet Jonah preached there in 760 B.C. The city of Nineveh repented, and lasted another 150 years.
Jonah's tomb existed in Nineveh until July 24, 2014, when it was destroyed by ISIS - Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, after President Obama had withdrawn U.S. troops.
From 745 to 727 B.C., Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser the Third conquered most of the known world, his troops being feared for their cruel brutality.
His son, King Shalmaneser the Fifth, ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 727 to 721 B.C., being notorious for carrying away Israel's ten northern tribes into captivity.
Assyrian King Sennacherib, 705-681 B.C., is considered to have made Nineveh the most magnificent capital in the world.
The word "Arab" is actually the Assyrian word for "westerner," and was first used by King Sennacherib in telling his conquest of the "ma'rabayeh"-westerners.
ARAMAIC
By the 8th century BC, so many Arameans had immigrated into Mesopotamia that the Aramaic language became the lingua franca, the common trade language, for the entire region, replacing the older languages of the Akkadians and Assyro-Babylonians.
Aramaic was spoken through the time of Christ, and was still in use by Christians in the small Syrian village of Ma'loula till the city was overrun by fundamentalist Muslim fighters in September of 2013, following the U.S. troop withdrawal.
Beginning in 538 B.C., the following centuries saw Assyria invaded and ruled by other empires:
- Persian Achaemenid Empire - Cyrus the Great;
- Macedonian Empire - Alexander the Great;
- Seleucid Empire - Antiochus the Fourth Epiphanes, infamous oppressor of Jews;
- Parthian Arascid Empire - Roman General Crassus, of the famous Triumvirate with Crassus and Caesar, was killed at Battle of Carrhae in Parthia, battle famous for the "Parthian shot";
- Roman Empire - Roman General Pompey began to annex Syria in 64 B.C., following defeat of Armenian King Tigranes the Great;
- Sassanid Empire - arch rival the Byzantine-Roman Empire for 400 years, till defeated by the Muslim army.
Greeks had popularized using the shortened name "Syria" to refer to western Assyria.
CHRISTIANITY
With the arrival of Christianity, Saint Thomas, Saint Bartholemew and Saint Thaddeus founded the Assyrian Christian Church in 33 A.D.
A dialect of the Aramaic language called "Syriac" became the new lingua franca for in that part of the world.
The Apostle Paul was thrown off his horse and converted on his way to Damascus, Syria. The very name "Christian" was first given to followers of Jesus Christ in Antioch, Syria. Acts 11:23-26.
By the year 265 A.D., Syria was one of the first nations to be completely Christian.
In 269 A.D., Syrian Queen Zenobia led a famous revolt against the Romans.
In the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, Christian Assyrians began a systematic translation of famous Greeks works into the Syriac language, including philosophy - Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, medicine - Galen, science, and religion.
One of the greatest Christian Assyrian achievements of the 4th century was the founding of the first university in the world -- the School of Nisibis -- with departments in theology, philosophy and medicine. It was a center of intellectual development in the Middle East and the model for the first Italian university.
Assyrian Christians pioneered hospitals, with the Bakhteesho family having nine generations of physicians and founding the great medical school at Gundeshapur in present-day Iran.
The Assyrian Christian physician, Hunayn ibn-Ishaq, wrote a textbook on ophthalmology - anatomy of the eye - in 950 A.D. which remained the authoritative source until 1800 A.D.
Assyrian Christian philosopher Job of Edessa developed a physical theory of the universe rivaling Aristotle's.
NORTH AFRICA
Simeon, a teacher in the early church, was from Niger, West Africa, as recorded in Acts 13:1.
Mark, writer of the Gospel, preached in Egypt, founding Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church. He was martyred and buried in Alexandria in 68 AD.
Philip, one of seven deacons in the early church, baptized a cabinet member of Queen Candace of Ethiopia, and help evangelize Eastern Africa, as recorded in Acts 8:26–40.
North Africa was home of Tertullian, 155–220 A.D., and the Christian Montanist sect.
Saints Perpetua and Felicitas were martyred in Carthage, North Africa, in 203 A.D., when Roman Emperor Septimius Severus commanded that no imperial subjects could become Christians or Jews.
Cyprian, the Christian Bishop of Carthage, North Africa, was martyred in the persecution by Roman Emperor Valerian in 258 A.D.
In 297 A.D., Nobatae was the King of Lower Nubia’s Christian African Nobatia Kingdom.
Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian persecuted Christians in the 3rd and 4th centuries, forcing Bishops to hand over copies of the Holy Scriptures to be destroyed. Many Christians denied their faith in order not to be killed.
In 313 A.D., when Emperor Constantine granted toleration to Christians, a bitter controversy arose by a group called Donatists who did not want to admit back into the church those who had denied the faith during the persecution. This division went on for nearly a century.
In 328 A.D., Saint Frumentius of Abyssinia was sent to Ethiopia by Saint Athanasius after the Council of Nicea. Called “Abuna” or “the father” of Ethiopia, Frumentius was the first Bishop of Ethiopia.
In 330 A.D., Ezana ruled northeast Africa's Christian Aksumite Ethiopian Empire.
Saint Moses the Black from Egypt was an Ethiopian bandit taken in by monks who converted and became an apostle of non-violence, 330–407 A.D.
In the 5th century, nine Christian Syrian Monks translated Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac works into the Ethiopian language of Geez and organized Christian monastic orders and schools in Ethiopia, some of which are still in existence.
Saint Augustine of Hippo, born in 354 A.D., was from the present–day area of Algeria, North Africa. He died in 430 A.D. when the Vandals, who had become Arian Christians, invaded North Africa and attacked Catholic and Donatist Christians.
Vandals were defeated by Byzantine Christians in 533 A.D., but the divisions within Christianity in North Africa weakened its defenses against later Islamic invasions.
In 697 A.D., Merkurios ruled Africa’s Christian Nubian Makuria Kingdom.
The literary output of the Assyrians and Jews was vast. There are more ancient Christian writings in the language of Syriac than any other language, except for Greek and Latin.
Assyrian missionaries brought Syriac "Nestorian" Christianity into:
- Mesopotamia,
- Persian Sassanid Empire, including parts of Iran and Iraq;
- India,
- Central Asia,
- the Uyghurs,
- the Tang Dynasty of China,
- Korea,
- Japan, and
- the Philippines.
The first Mongolian system of writing used the Assyrian Aramaic and Syriac alphabet, with the name "Tora Bora" being an Assyrian phrase meaning "arid mountain."
Beginning in 634 A.D., Arab Muslims swept in a torrent through the Middle East. Chaldean and Babylonian astronomers were forcibly Islamized till they eventually disappeared.
In the 7th century, Syrian Christian scholars translated Greek works into the Arabic language.
The book, How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs, documented the work of 22 scholars, 20 of which were Christian Assyrians, with only one Persian and one Arab. These translations were later taken by Moors into Spain, where Europeans translated them into Latin, laying the groundwork for the Renaissance.
Saint John of Damascus in Syria, who died in 749 A.D., was the Patriarch of Jerusalem and was considered one of the greatest scholars in the 8th century.
He wrote “On the Heresy of the Ishmaelites” in his book, On Heresies (translated by Catholic University of America Press, The Fathers of the Church, Volume 37, 1958, page 153–160):
"There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the antichrist ...
From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy.
Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration."
As Muslims conquered trade routes to the east, they co-opted advances made by other civilizations, leading some to give them attribution. Eventually, the thousands of years of rich Assyrian civilization was expropriated into Arab culture.
In 638 A.D., Muslims easily conquered Byzantine Christian Jerusalem because it had not recovered from a recent devastating war with Persia, 614–629 A.D., that left every church in the Holy Land damaged, except one in Bethlehem as it had a mural of the Magi visiting baby Jesus.
Muslim besieged Jerusalem for four bloody months until the Byzantine Patriarch, Sophronius, agreed to surrender. Caliph Umar formally set the rights and obligations of the conquered citizens in the Pact or Covenant of Umar.
This became the foundation of the “dhimmi” or second-class status of Christians and Jews in Muslim dominated lands who had to ransom their lives once a year with the jizya tax.
In 639 A.D., Muslim General Amr ibn al-As began conquering Egypt, taking advantage of the dissension between Coptic Christians and Byzantine Christians.
Copts at first welcomed Muslim invaders, thinking they would help free them from Byzantine oppression, but soon they realized they were reduced to dhimmi status.
Muslim warriors swept through North Africa, annihilating over 250 Catholic dioceses.
Islamic invaders crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in 711 A.D., conquered Spain, and were finally stopped outside of Paris at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D.
Islamic conquest disrupted Mediterranean trade, including papyrus, which Europeans used to write on, was no longer shipped from Egypt’s Nile Delta, causing Europe to enter “the Dark Ages.”
Pyramids were plundered. Sultans cut out tongues of those caught speaking the “Coptic” language, rather than Arabic.
In 691 A.D., after seeing the magnificent Christian cathedral of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Caliph Abd al-Malik built a ornate mosque over the rock in Jerusalem, believed to be where Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac. Christian pilgrims were increasingly harassed, massacred and crucified.
In the 8th century, Christians were banned from giving religious instruction to their children and displays of the cross were banned in Jerusalem.
In 772 A.D., Caliph al Mansur ordered Jews and Christians to be branded on the hand.
In 710 A.D., the 17–year–old Governor of Persia, Muhammad bin Qasim, led an army to conquer the Sindh and Punjab regions of Pakistan. After each battle, Qasim executed every captured enemy soldier, an estimated 44,000, as Qasim wrote to his commander, Hajjaj:
"My ruling is given: Kill anyone belonging to the combatants - ahl-i-harb - arrest their sons and daughters for hostages and imprison them."
In 828 AD, St. Mark's remains in Egypt were packed under pork and smuggled to Venice where they were placed in St. Mark’s Basilica, because Mohammed said (Vol 2, Book 23, No. 414):
“Allah cursed the Jews and the Christians because they took the graves of their Prophets as places for praying,”
and
“Do not leave an image without obliterating it, or a high grave without leveling it.” Hadith Sahih Muslim, 2115.
END OF ISLAMIC GOLDEN AGE
During Islam's Golden Age, a famous Arab scholar and philosopher was Al Farad. He became an expert in Greek science and philosophy.
Another prominent scholar was the Persian Avicenna, who wrote 450 works on philosophy, medicine and math.
Another scholar during the Islamic Golden Age, was Averroes, a philosopher in Andalusia-Spain, who wrote on physics, music, geography, medicine and math.
They attempted to moderate Islam, even suggesting Paradise may not be a place of sensual gratification. An observer at this time may have speculated the Islamic world rather than Europe was about to experience the Renaissance.
All these efforts were abruptly ended by Ghazali, 1052-1111, a fundamentalist Muslim scholar, who was considered the single most influential Muslim after Mohammed.
Ghazali was a "mujaddid" or "renewer of the faith" in Baghdad, who condemned moderate influences, writing:
"One should restrain anyone who would immerse himself in these mathematical sciences ... for even though they do not pertain to the domain of religion, yet, since they are among the foundations of the philosophers' sciences, the student will be infected with the evil and corruption of the philosophers."
Where Al Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes failed to keeping the Islamic world open to philosophy and science, Saint Thomas Aquinas succeeded in the Christian West.
Aquinas' work aided the universities springing up in Catholic cities of Paris, Naples, Bologna, Toulouse, and Oxford, which helped in preparing Europe for the Renaissance.
Between 1001–1026, Afghan conqueror Mahmud al-Ghazni invaded 17 times through the Hindu Kush, which means Hindu Slaughter. His secretary documented one such raid in the Tarikh-i-Yamini:
"The blood of the infidels flowed so copiously - at the city of Thanesar - that the stream was discolored, notwithstanding its purity, and people were unable to drink it ... the infidels deserted the fort and tried to cross the foaming river ... but many of them were slain, taken or drowned ... Nearly fifty thousand men were killed."
In 1009, “Mad Caliph” Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem--the holiest site in Christianity. Pilgrims returning from the Holy Land shared reports of persecution and cruelty toward “dhimmi” Christians.
In response, there were nine major Crusades and numerous minor ones from 1095 till 1291.
Then the Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan amassed the largest contiguous empire in world history, from Korea, China, and Afghanistan to Russia and Eastern Europe, 1206-1227.
A branch of the Mongols under Berke Khan converted to Islam and spread that religion to large area of the empire and further west into the Holy Land. Gregory Bar-Hebraeus, 1226-1286, a Syrian Orthodox Church leader, wrote how initial tolerance changed:
"And having seen very much modesty and other habits of this kind among Christian people, certainly the Mongols loved them greatly at the beginning of their kingdom, a time ago somewhat short. But their love hath turned to such intense hatred that they cannot even see them with their eyes approvingly."
In 1268, Mamluk Sultan Baibars conquered Antioch, Syria, the very city where the name "Christian" was had been first used, as recorded in Acts 11:23-26.
Baibars described his conquest in a letter to Bohemond the Sixth, Prince of Antioch, May 1268:
"We took Antioch by the sword on ... the fourth day of Ramadan, and we destroyed all those you had chosen to guard the city ...
your knights trampled by our horses,
your houses looted ...
your women sold in the marketplace ...
your churches utterly destroyed, the crucifixes torn apart, the pages of the Gospels scattered, the tombs of the patriarchs trodden underfoot ... trampling down your altars ... cutting the throats of deacons, priests and bishops ...
the Church of St. Paul totally destroyed so that nothing is left ...
Seeing all this you would have said ... 'Would to God that I had never received the letter with these melancholy tidings.'"
In response to cries for help, France's King Louis the Ninth -"Saint Louis" - set sail from Aigues-Mortes in 1270 leading the 8th Crusade to come to the aid of Christian states in Syria. Tragically, King Louis was diverted to Tunis where he was defeated and died of dysentery.
In 1271, Edward the First, the future King of England, undertook a 9th Crusade to help in Syria.
Tripoli, in present-day Lebanon, fell to Mamluk Sultan Qalawun in 1289, and Acre fell to Mamluk Sultan as-Ashraf Khalil in a bloody siege in 1291, thus ending the last traces of Christian rule in Syria.
When Marco Polo traveled east in 1271 A.D., he noted Assyrian Christian missionaries had converted tens of thousands in India and China to Syrian "Nestorian" Christianity.
Even the influential mother of Kublai Khan, Sorghaghtani Beki, was a Nestorian Christian.
As during China's Tang Dynasty, there was a thriving Syrian Nestorian Christian community in China which existed through the Yuan Dynasty.
Nestorian Christianity declined in China when the Ming Dynasty forced out Mongolian and other foreign influences.
Nestorian Christianity was eradicated from Persia and Central Asia by the Muslim crusader Tamerlane, who massacred an estimated 17 million.
Tamerlane killed every man, woman, and child in the ancient city of Asshur, ending a city which had been continually occupied for nearly 4,000 years.
In 1399, Tamerlane invaded Syria, sacked Aleppo, and captured Damascus. He massacred the inhabitants and erected towers made out of skulls.
Northern Iraq had remained Assyrian Christian until Tamerlane systematically decimated the population.
Saint Takla Haimanot, the national Saint of Ethiopia who lived in the 13th century, was Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. He was instrumental in his country resisting Islamic invasion.
When Turks began imposing the Turkish language throughout the Ottoman Empire, the Syrian Christian scholars were credited for helping to preserve the Arabic language.
Venetian and Hungarian arms merchants provided advanced weapons helping Sultan Mehmet the Second conquer Constantinople in 1453.
For the next four and a half centuries, the Middle East was under Ottoman Muslim rule.
The King of Spain, Charles the Fifth made a treaty with the Persian Shan Tahmasp the First in 1524, so that whenever the Ottoman Empire attacked westward into Europe, Persia would attack the Ottoman Empire from the east.
With negotiations beginning in 1525, Frances the First, King of France, made a treaty with the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman against Spain, England and Russia.
In 1598, the English merchant brothers Anthony and Robert Sherley arrived in Persia seeking trade, initiating an Anglo–Persian Alliance, as Persia wanted military help against the Ottoman Empire, its main enemy to the west.
In the late 18th century, when the French military ordered a young artillery officer named Napoleon to teach them modern western artillery. Napoleon resigned in protest.
Napoleon later invaded Egypt in 1798 and marched into the Holy Land.
During the Crimean War, 1853-1856, Britain and France armed and fought alongside the Turks against Russia.
In 1867, Mark Twain visited Syria, writing in his book Innocents Abroad:
"Then we called at ... the mausoleum of the five thousand Christians who were massacred in Damascus in 1861 by the Turks.
... They say those narrow streets ran blood for several days, and that men, women and children were butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all through the Christian quarter; they say, further, that the stench was dreadful.
... All the Christians who could get away fled from the city, and the Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the 'infidel dogs.'
... The thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time 25,000 more Christians were massacred and their possessions laid waste ...
How they hate a Christian in Damascus! - and pretty much all over Turkeydom as well."
In 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany sold rifles to the Ottoman Sultan in exchange for oil.
The British needed oil, so they made similar treaties with Persia, forming the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, also called British Petroleum or B.P., in 1908.
In 1908, a Turkish Spring began. There was a brief euphoria when the Ottoman tyrant Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid was forced from power, but it quickly turned to horror.
Three Pashas, known as "The Young Turks" promoted the idea of "Ottomanization" - creating a homogeneous Turkey of one race, one language, and one religion - Islam.
Fundamentalist Turkish Muslims systematically expelled or exterminated hundreds of thousands of non-Muslims.
While the world focused on Germany, France and England during World War the First, Turkish Muslims massacred ethnic minorities.
Over 750,000 Assyrians, 1 million Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, Syrians, and Bulgarians, and over 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children were killed.
Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote:
"Turkish rule ... is now, oppressing or massacring, slaughtering or driving from their homes, the Christian population of Greek or Bulgarian stock ...
Armenia and Cilicia, and Syria, where within the last two years it has been destroying its Christian subjects ...
The Young Turkish gang who gained power when they had deposed Abd-ul-Hamid, have surpassed even that monster of cruelty in their slaughter."
After World War One, the Ottoman Empire fell, followed by Ataturk leading in founding the Republic of Turkey as a more western, secular state.
Britain took Iraq as a protectorate, allowing them independence 1932, but one of Iraq's first governmental acts was to massacre 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Simmele.
France took Lebanon and Syria as protectorates, allowing them independence in 1943 and 1946, respectively.
During World War Two, Hitler armed and trained fundamental Arab Legion, supported the Mufti of Jerusalem, and had an entire Bosnian-Muslim Panzer division.
Hitler stated August 28, 1942 (Hitler’s Table Talk 1941–1944, translated by N. Cameron and R.H. Stevens, Enigma Books, 1953):
"Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers ... then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so ...
The exhortation to fight courageously is also self-explanatory. Observe, by the way, that, as a corollary, the Moslem was promised a paradise peopled with sensual girls, where wine flowed in streams — a real earthly paradise.
The Christians, on the other hand, declare themselves satisfied if after their death they are allowed to sing hallelujahs"!
More recently, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter abandoned the pro-American Shah of Iran and allowed the Islamist Ayatollah to seize control of the country. Iran then helped form Hezbollah in Lebanon.
On October 23, 1983, fundamental Muslim terrorists blew up a U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. military personnel.
The United States responded to withdrawing troops, allowing Islamists to exert greater influence in the region.
During the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988, the U.S. supported Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein.
The Iran-Contra Affair, 1987, involved the U.S. selling missiles to Iran.
During the Afghan-Soviet War, the Islamist Taliban were armed and trained by the U.S. in one of C.I.A.'s most expensive covert operations.
As it was promoted by Congressman Wilson, it was portrayed in the movie Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.
It was also the subject of Sylvester Stallone's 1988 movie Rambo III, the most expensive movie produced to that date.
In 1986, a wealthy Saudi Arabian, Osama bin Laden, went to Pakistan and Afghanistan, to help the Taliban fight the Soviets. He received training from U.S. Special Forces commando Ali Mohammed.
Bin Laden then set up his al-Qaeda headquarters in the mountains and from there, planned terrorist attacks on American embassies, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In 1995, President Bill Clinton's Operation Deliberate Force smuggled U.S. weapons to Iran and radical Islamist groups for them to deliver to the Bosnian-Muslim forces fighting the Serbian Christian army.
The Guardian, April 21, 2002, published an article by Richard J Aldrich titled "America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims."
In 2005, President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the United Nations pressured Israel to surrender control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority.
With millions of dollars of international aid, Hamas was able to build a vast complex of tunnels under Gaza allowing them to stage attacks on Israel.
Though a republic, Syria experienced upheavals, coup d'etats, socialism, riots, and civil disorder.
During the period of the Obama-Biden administration, U.S. foreign policy allowed an "Arab Spring" to occur, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which removed moderate leaders and replaced them with those who wish to re-establish the caliphate -- a totalitarian Islamic State.
When President Obama reduced U.S. support of moderate leaders, and pulled the last U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2014, it left a power vacuum.
In exchange for Army defector Sergeant Bowe Berghdahl, the U.S. released five senior Afghan Taliban commanders capable, according to a 2008 Pentagon dossier, of leading Muslim fighters in the Middle East and in America.
They were: Mullah Mohammad Fazl, Mullah Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Mohammed Nabi Omari and Khairullah Khairkhwa.
The New York Post, August 16, 2021, mentioned Khairkhwa in an article titled "Taliban leader was freed from Guantanamo Bay in 2014 by Obama":
"Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there."
Under Obama-Biden Administration, the U.S. supported the Muslim Brotherhood's ousting of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, then supplied arms to fundamentalist Muslim fighters in ousting Muammar Gaddafi in Lybia.
The U.S. then supplied and trained Muslim fighters to oust Assad in Syria.
When Russia came to Assad's defense, these fighters took the name ISIS and invaded Syria and Iraq, killing, raping, and beheading tens of thousands.
Since 2012, over a quarter of a million have been killed in Syria and Iraq by fundamentalist Muslim ISIS fighters.
Retired General Wesley Clark reported on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," August 25, 2014, that ISIS is supported by U.S. allies of the Arab Gulf, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey.
Reuters reported July 14, 2014, the U.S. was selling to Qatar $11 billion of Apache attack helicopters and Patriot and Javelin air-defense systems.
Just as political organizer Saul Alinsky recommended constantly changing tactics to keep opponents off-balance, fundamentalist Muslims have employed the use of different names: Wahabi; al-Qaeda; Taliban; Muslim Brotherhood; ISIS; ISIL; Syrian rebels; etc.
Though using different names, they are united in the same ultimate goal of re-establishing the caliphate.
There was concern that any support the U.S. may send will find its way into the hands ISIS fighters operating under another name, and be used to remove Assad in the quest to re-establish the caliphate.
Gen. Thomas McInerney stated in a Fox News interview, September 4, 2014:
"We backed I believe in some cases, some of the wrong people and not in the right part of the Free Syrian Army and that's a little confusing to people, so I've always maintained ... that we were backing the wrong types ...
Some of those weapons from Benghazi ended up in the hands of ISIS - so we helped build ISIS. Now there is a danger there."
Senator Rand Paul told Erin Burnett in a CNN interview in May 9, 2013:
"I've actually always suspected that, although I have no evidence, that maybe we were facilitating arms leaving Libya going through Turkey into Syria ...
I have never quite understood the cover-up - if it was intentional or incompetence ... Were they trying to obscure that there was an arms operation going on at the CIA annex? ...
... I'm a little curious when employees of the State Department are told by government officials they shouldn't testify and then they are sort of sequestered and kept away from testimony, so I think there may be more to this."
In June of 2014, Reporter Aaron Klein of WND was told by Jordanian officials:
"Dozens of future ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria ... They were trained in 2012 by US instructors working at a secret base in Jordan ...
The Jordanian officials said ... ISIS members ... received US training to fight in Syria."
German journalist Manuel Ochsenreiter told RT.com, August 21, 2014, the U.S. is supporting ISIS through its allies:
"In order to fight against the Islamic State in a successful way the West needs to sanction and punish all those powers that are supporting the Islamic State, namely Turkey and the Gulf states ...
'We have to see the Islamic State terrorists as a Western-created monster ... The Islamic State would not exist without the fierce Western help and also the support by the Arabic Gulf States, as well as the support from Turkey ...
Nobody was talking about helping Christians in the region."
Christian and Yazidis minorities are given the choice to convert to Islam or die, or pay the exorbitant dhimmi jizyah tax.
Hundreds of thousands of Christians fled.
ISIS destroyed hundreds of Christian churches in Syria and Iraq, such as the ancient 1,800 year old church in Mosul.
Since the first invasion of Islam in 634 A.D., the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Maronite Church, and the Chaldean Catholic Church, quietly suffered 33 major genocides, averaging one every 40 years.
As reported by CNSnews.com, the Patriarch of Antioch, Gregory the Third, who oversees the 1.6 million members of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian territories and Sudan, stated:
"Who created this hell in which our people have been living for months? ...
Every day, Islamic extremists from all over the world are pouring into Syria with the sole intent to kill and not one country has done anything to stop them."
Gregory the Third concluded his assessment of Syria:
"For the last two and a half years, Eastern and Western countries have not stopped sending weapons, money, military experts, secret service agents and Salafist fundamentalist armed gangs of thugs and criminals, who have fallen on Syria like a destructive new flood."
The Chaldean Catholic Church is comprised of an estimated 500,000 ethnic Assyrians in northeast Syria, northern Iraq, and areas bordering southeast Turkey and northwest Iran.
Chaldean Catholic Church Patriarch Louis Sako stated in September 2014 when asked by reporters at Beirut's airport of remarks attributed to him in the daily Ad-Diyar in which he accused the U.S. of supporting ISIS:
"The U.S. is indirectly responsible for what is going on in Iraq ... Our Muslim neighbors did not help us ... Issuing a fatwa preventing Muslims from killing fellow Muslims is not enough."
Patriarch Sako stated:
"For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians."
The New York Post, June 8, 2014, reported "How the Taliban got their hands on modern U.S. missiles," stating:
"The Obama administration isn’t only giving the Taliban back its commanders — it’s giving them weapons ...
... Military records and sources reveal that on July 25, 2012, Taliban fighters in Kunar province successfully targeted a US Army CH-47 helicopter with a new generation Stinger missile."
Eight years of the Obama-Biden Administration's Middle East foreign policy, the Syrian Christian population went from 2.5 million down to just a few hundred thousand.
Even Secretary of State John Kerry had to formally declare the exodus and deaths a "genocide," as reported by FoxNews, March 17, 2016; and CNN, March 18, 2016: "Kerry declares ISIS committing genocide against Christians, others."
The Los Angeles Times reported March 27, 2016: "In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA."
In 2016, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard introduced H.R. 608 Stop Arming Terrorist Act.
President Trump ended Obama's secret CIA program, as TIME Magazine reported July 28, 2017: "President Trump ends covert plan to arm Syrian rebels."
In October 2019, Turkey invaded Syria again, sparking an international outcry.
In August of 2021, President Biden abruptly withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Whether it was, using Senator Rand Paul's words, "intentional or incompetence ... an arms operation going on at the CIA," President Biden's withdrawal gave the Taliban 600,000 weapons, estimated at $85 billion, and returned the U.S. to the Obama-Biden era foreign policy of supporting Islamists and isolating Israel.
On October 7, 2023, Palestinian Hamas terrorists, affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, carried out a surprise attack from Gaza on southern Israel, killing an estimate 1,400, beginning the Israel-Hamas War. The Biden Administration response was to pledge more aid for Palestinians.
China may have military involvement in Iran and Pakistan, possibly wanting world attention focused on the Middle East to distract from their ambition to take Taiwan.
Such headlines are considered by many as major world powers fueling tensions in the Middle East for globalist ends.
Ronald Reagan warned in his autobiography, An American Life (Simon & Schuster, 1990, p. 409), of the danger of Islamists acquire nuclear weapons:
"Radical fundamentalist sects ... have institutionalized murder and terrorism in the name of God, promising followers instant entry into paradise if they die for their faith or kill an enemy who challenges it.
Twice in recent years, America has lost loyal allies in the Middle East, the shah of Iran and Anwar Sadat, at the hands of these fanatics.
I don't think you can overstate the importance that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism will have to the rest of the world in the century ahead -- especially if, as seems possible, its most fanatical elements get their hands on nuclear and chemical weapons and the means to deliver them against their enemies."
The words from President Richard Nixon's last public address, August 8, 1974, echo the warning to the present day:
"In the Middle East, 100 million people in the Arab countries, many of whom have considered us their enemy ... now look on us as their friends.
We must continue to build on that friendship so that ... the cradle of civilization will not become its grave."
-
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate.
Image Credits: Public Domain; Description: The "Fertile Crescent" as depicted by James Henry Breasted in 1916; Date: October 12, 2014, 10:39:10; Source: Breasted, James Henry (1916) Ancient times, a history of the early world: an introduction to the study of ancient history and the career of early man, Boston: Ginn, pp. 100–101 "The Ancient Oriental World" map is inserted between pages 100 and 101; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fertile_Crescent_concept_1916.png
De Federer,
It’s heartbreaking to see the Cradle of Civilisation fall prey to the genocidal cult of Islam. Wherever it goes, terrorism, poverty, crime, destruction of cultural traditions and mass rape follow. Europe needs to rise up before it falls like the Cradle did.