What to do about Islamic Expansion in US?

The practice of living the life in Christ: fasting, vigil lamps, head-coverings, family life, icon corners, and other forms of Orthopraxy. All Forum Rules apply.


Locked
User avatar
George Australia
Sr Member
Posts: 671
Joined: Sat 17 January 2004 9:26 am
Location: Down Under (Australia, not Hades)

Post by George Australia »

viniamim wrote:

Your opinions, Brendan, are missing whole chunks of information and contain whole oceans of misinformation. You need to go back to the drawing board and do more research in places other than your current sources. Your brand of nationalism is what frequently gets this country into trouble. I listen to your reasonings and dispare of the future. Unfortunately, there is no reasoning with people like you. You are too set in your ways to see the light.

Dear in Christ, Ben,
You are addressing a white supremacist who has blasphemed the Holy Spirit by lying and saying publically in this forum that he is a 'chrisimated Orthodox Christian'. He is lost. Don't try reasoning with him. My advice is to just ignore him and he'll get bored and take his ravings elsewhere.
George

"As long as it depends on Monothelitism, then Miaphysitism is nothing but a variant of Monophysitism."

brendan

Post by brendan »

George Australia wrote:

Dear in Christ, Ben,
You are addressing a white supremacist who has blasphemed the Holy Spirit by lying and saying publically in this forum that he is a 'chrisimated Orthodox Christian'.

George, you're comments are abusive and slanderous. First off, I am not a white supremacist. I don't believe any race that produces so many people who relish its own destruction can be called supreme. I fear the white race may actually be inferior to other races that God created.

Second, you are hardly one to decide who is an Orthodox Christian and who isn't. The fact is I was Chrismated into the OCA and am currently an active member and trustee in good standing in my parish. What you choose to believe on this matter is of no consequence to me.

Lastly, I believe your criteria for your derogatory comments have far more to do with your liberal political ideology than the tenets of Orthodoxy. In all my readings, I have yet to come across any teaching of the Orthodox Church that commands national or racial suicide - if anything, God's plan for salvation requires just the opposite. Apparently, you believe destruction of the white race and western civilization is desirable, but considering that white people are obviously one of God's creations, I think its obviously YOU who needs some spiritual self-examination, not me.

User avatar
George Australia
Sr Member
Posts: 671
Joined: Sat 17 January 2004 9:26 am
Location: Down Under (Australia, not Hades)

Post by George Australia »

Statement of the Pan-Orthodox Synod of 1872:

"We renounce, censure and condemn racism, that is racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds and dissensions within the Church of Christ, as contrary to the teaching of the Gospel and the holy canons of our blessed fathers which "support the holy Church and the entire Christian world, embellish it and lead it to divine godliness."

"As long as it depends on Monothelitism, then Miaphysitism is nothing but a variant of Monophysitism."

brendan

Post by brendan »

George Australia wrote:

Statement of the Pan-Orthodox Synod of 1872:

"We renounce, censure and condemn racism, that is racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds and dissensions within the Church of Christ, as contrary to the teaching of the Gospel and the holy canons of our blessed fathers which "support the holy Church and the entire Christian world, embellish it and lead it to divine godliness."

What I support is that European-Americans (white people) should enjoy the same right as other racial/ethnic groups to organize for their interests, celebrate their heritage, and insure their own survival. I see no conflict with the statement you quoted. The only possible disagreement would be with people who think white people have no right to those things and that the only moral thing would be for us to become extinct.

So George, I would like to know whether you think white people have the same rights as other ethnic/racial groups? A yes or no answer would suffice.

User avatar
CGW
Member
Posts: 389
Joined: Tue 18 November 2003 4:30 pm

Sheesh

Post by CGW »

brendan wrote:

Here in America, multiculturalism basically means all racial groups are allied together against white people and operate openly in their respective self-interests to increase the power and influence of their group.

I don't know how you'ld know that. Here, close to DC, "multiculturalism" means that at lunch there's always a long line at the Peruvian chicken places and that there's a sushi stand in almost every new grocery store.

Every new nation that arrives in the USA is seen as a monolithic bloc and as a threat to the fabric of American life. Of course, the various Orthodox who came were seen as no less a threat, at least until the Greeks and Ethiopians opened restaurants and the Russians staffed the orchestras. The recent "ascendancy" of Orthodoxy represents the "triumph" of a foreign religion over the "native" Protestantism, and that Protestantism is in turn crippled by foreign theological influences.

Or so it can be spun. Another America is one in which the Old calendar and the Greek festival are charming exoticisms in the same vein as Our Lady of Vietnam Catholic Church or the Thai food at the county fair (next to the N.C. barbeque stand). The point is, as everyone knows, in the US we are Americans and immigrants at the same time. In a place like DC where immigrants tend to wash up early, multiculturalism just happens, and the principal tension is between the latest wave and the existing poor, when the latter resent the successes of the former.

The biggest threat to white (meaning American Protestant) culture has never been that it would be overwhelmed, but that it would self-destruct. Immigrants to the USA, after all, are here to get themselves a piece of that culture!

And as far as Islam is concerned, it wouldn't surprise me to see that in fifty years it's still a pretty small minority religion in the USA, and that cranky Arab immigrant parents are bemoaning how secularized their kids are and complaining about the cultural threat from Jineristani immigrants.

Hexapsalms
Jr Member
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu 16 September 2004 10:24 am

Hello, I'm new here.

Post by Hexapsalms »

This thread started out with some good questions, but it rapidly deteriorated. I think the subject is important and will become more important as the years go by. Brendan has some concerns that are legitimate and his fears have not been well addressed by anyone here, although I disagree with some of his solutions (see below).

I've read in numerous places that in less than 100 years the muslim population will overwhelm the native European population, whose birthrate has been rapidly falling since WWI, not to mention the fact that Europe has become so un-Christian 3rd world Christians are sending their missionaries there. African Christians are being overrun and no one's intervening to help them. Even Vatican head of the Justice and Peace commission came out yesterday to declare that the world is now in the midst of WWIV because of the islamofascist threat; which is signals a huge turn in their previous policy of ecumenical appeasement of the muslims since Vatican II. If they're worried then definitely something's afoot and it's time to pay attention, whatever you may think about Rome. What overran Byzantium can easily happen in the West; what's worse we are largely funding this mess through our insatiable appetite for oil and consumeristic culture full of plastics (made from oil). Here is where we've let a passion like desire rule us and now war and political tumult is the real price tag.

It's true nations and cultures rise and fall, and maybe this phenomenon is just another inevitable outworking of Darwin's theory. But if the muslims eventually take over Europe, what will happen to the art, scientific and literary treasures of Western Europe? What happened to the artwork in the Hagia Sophia? In Kosovo today Serbian Orthodox religious art and churches continue to be destroyed right under the noses of the UN peacekeepers who do nothing to stop it. Four years ago, a muslim group in Milan, Italy demanded that a medieval Christian mural showing Christians triumphing over the muslims be destroyed. Earlier this year the same demand was made in Spain. Look what the Taliban did to the Bamiyam Buddhas statues in Afghanistan, as well as all their ancient art treasures. Who will be allowed to do iconography in such an iconoclastic culture?

I don't agree that out-breeding the muslims is the answer. After all, a very small band of Communists overran Russia and nearly destroyed the Church there (whose membership had numbered in the millions). The same thing happened to the thousands of Christians and millions of Buddhists in Cambodia when the much smaller army of Khmer Rouge overran them. So sheer numbers offers no defence. But didn't God choose a small, insignificant nation, the Hebrews, to be the conduit of God's salvation through Christ? In the Old Testament, God made the point repeatedly that He chose the small, the weak, the foolish to overcome the strong and numerous and cunning. Is quantity better than quality? If quality is better, then how should this quality make itself manifest--how do we make our light to shine? No Christian church, whatever the denomination is burning their light very brightly at all--our culture is called post-Christian for a good reason. the light is nearly extinguished, and in some places entirely so. The muslims are merely stepping into a religious vacuum.

So why don't we brainstorm a bit and see what might be the best attitude we should take regarding this moment in history and any possible solution.
First--what kind of heart shall we bring to these troubling issues? Second--what is worth defending and how shall we defend it?
Third--how shall we shine our light among the muslims in our midst as well as our largely secularized population?

brendan

Re: Sheesh

Post by brendan »

CGW wrote:
brendan wrote:

And as far as Islam is concerned, it wouldn't surprise me to see that in fifty years it's still a pretty small minority religion in the USA, and that cranky Arab immigrant parents are bemoaning how secularized their kids are and complaining about the cultural threat from Jineristani immigrants.

I think you are enagaging in a lot of whichful thinking. But let me address a couple of issues about which I think I have some perspective. The area in which I live has a high number of Orthodox people per capita and and experienced a heavy concentration of Slavic immigration during the late 1800s/early 1900s. My wife is second generation immigrant stock. Her grandmother, who I knew, never learned English. My family is mostly of long established Anglo/Irish stock. The land on which I now live was obtained by my family back in the frontier days. The differences between the immigration of the past and what is happening now are significant.

For one thing, although Orthodoxy was somehwat different from the prevailing Protestantism that existed, both were Christians. I can recall no significant antagonisms between the vast majority of my older family members towards people who weren't Protestants. My grandmother was anti-Catholic, but I think that was more personal due to an unfortunate situation that occurred many years ago. The Slavic immigrants of the past were devoutly Christian, law-abiding, and went to lengths to be America even to the extent that many names were Anglicized and people were eager to learn English. They were of the same racial stock and could be easily assimilated. You could walk down the street and just by looking at people, one had no idea if they were Polish, Russian, German, or Italian ancestry. Also there was no fear, for example, for a Protestant American a hundred years ago to walk through an immigrant neighborhood.

Also the immigrants came here and worked. There was no choice. Nobody came here expecting to be taken care of, least of all, be given preferences over a native-born person.

Contrast that with the immigration now. First off, many immigrants who come are of radically different religions, often hostile or incompatible with Christianity. Eighty percent are of completely different racial stock and are conspicuous and much more difficult to assimilate. Also in many immigrant neighborhoods, it is dangerous for a white person to venture for fear of assualt, rape, or harrassment. I know this from personal experience from living in Texas and Florida.

I think another very important difference has to do with sheer numbers. America has never experienced such a long period of immigration at these levels. In the past, when we accepted large numbers of immigrants, it was only for a limited period and, if the immigration didn't end naturally, the government stepped in with laws to cut off immigration. Hence the country had a cooling-off period period lasting decades during which immigrants were assimilated. This was needed even with immigrants with who were much easily assimilated. Now, massive influx of very different immigrants is now almost assumed to be an on-going condition to go on forever and the forces of assimilation are much weaker.

In the past, the various Slavic immigrant groups formed many organizations, but these were of a different character than the ones today. The Slavic immigrant groups were very patriotic, almost super-patriotic. None were hostile to America, its founding ethnic people, or cultural traditions. Many Mexicans in this country, for example, are resentful that Mexico lost territory to the US in the Mexican War and many openly claim that the southwestern states and California actually belong to Mexico and they intend to take it back through occupation. The result is whenever Mexicans gain enough power, they start eradicating American cultural items and replacing them with Mexican: changing names of schools, removing historic statues, changing street names, altering school ciriculums to reflect a Mexican perspective, etc. Nothing like this happened with the immigrants of the past.

And then we get back to the Muslims about whom virtually all the criticism I made can be applied. But even worse, we have the Muslim model of infiltration and takeover as has been demonstrated in many countries. So its not some idle fear or irrational over-reaction. I've already seen predictions that Europe will be known in the near future as "Eurabia" once Muslims become the majority and Christianity is reduced to insignificance. Its true virtually everywhere that wherever Muslims take control, Christians are suppressed and their influence reduced to insignificance. What sane person wants that?

The white Christian world is in danger. Wishful thinking or avoidance of the fundamental forces will not change things.

Locked