Real religious oppression in Turkey, not Switzerland

There are no "cults of Abraham." Turkey has deliberately targeted, endangered its Jewish citizens, with its leader spouting racist filth. A synagogue was firebombed.

Period. And the responsibility rests, as always, with the perpetrators.

The secular Turkish gov't is very restrictive of the number and political inclination of Islamic learning institutions they allow to exist in the country. Likewise they put restrictions on new Christian buildings and Christians have no tax excempt status. Sounds like Turkey is ahead of the US in some ways.

The only way new money comes into Turkey for new construction of Christian edifices is from proselytizing evangelical groups in the US trying to put their foot into places it does not belong. Preselytizing by christians in a muslim country is only going to strengthen the fundamentalist muslim's position.
The problem in Turkey and Switzerland isn't so much state discrimination but the inability of the Cults of Abraham to stay the business of selling of religion and the operation of gov't.

But as for the Building Churches in any other Muslim country.

Search google images with this text "Church Masque" , There is not a single Christian majority country in world where both Masque and Churches are side by side, You will find hundreds of photos from Muslim majority countries where Churches and Masques are side by side. So that means when Christian are majority they don't allow masque near their Churches. but tolerant Muslims do.

You are talking about the country where Headscarf are banned in Government jobs even after being Muslim country. The prime minister of Turkey does not take his wife to any government function because she wears head scarf, So definitely there is persecution of Muslims and Christians in Turkey.

In a very short while, Yemen will be officially Judenrein. Coming under increasing attack from violent Islamist gangs, Yemen's 350 remaining Jews are under heavy guard, prior to departure. These Yemeni Jews practice a unique form of Judaism, which will soon be lost to our culture.

They, like all Middle Eastern Jews, have been in the Middle East since long before Mohamed set foot upon the earth. The Jewish presence in Yemen dates back to the Solomonic era--3,000 years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/24/AR2009112403898.html

I think that the plight of living human beings is a little more important than architecture. The murders of Jews in Yemen, however, is not of interest to OnFaith. WaPo bid them a hurried fairwell. Where is the outcry? The protests?

Synagogues have been firebombed in Florida, France, Sweden, etc., for months, and where is OnFaith.

Jews are unsafe in the streets of Europe. Will, it, too, soon be Judenrein like the MIddle East?

Where is the outcry from Muslims?

Consider the word "ideology." A certain discourse, or groups of discourses, develop to privilege this or that minority. These discourses, in our case, also serve fabulously powerful interests such as British Petroleum, which has gotten away with murder (literally) on US soil.

NONE of this is to say that we should not be concerned about discrimination against Muslims, of course. But a minaret is not a person. It is not the three hundred fifty Yemeni Jews facing exodus from a land in which they've dwelled for three thousand years.

How is it that we here nothing of these Yemeni Jews? And of the Turkish Jews and Christians? The Egyptian Christians? (Egypt is all but Juedenrein now.) The Iraqi Christians (Iraq is all but Judenrein now.)

The firebombings of synagogues in French, Turkish, Sweden, Holland, Venezuela?

And closer to home: the attacks in Chicago, Florida, Los Angeles, New York City?

Is the writer aware that an imam was killed by the FBI in Michigan recently? I could not agree more with his statement that the freedom to build houses of worship where people are not free to do so is no freedom at all. In one country it is Christians yet in another it is Muslimin and in still another a believer in something else. When are people going to stop measuring their outrage based on whether they are a member of the oppressed group or not and begin to measure whether the oppression is right or wrong in the first place? Moveover, when are people going to realize that anyone who is against the oppression that seems to drive everything in the world-a free market system that is devoid of any and all morality- is the real enemy of people.

My apologies for it posting multiple times.. Apparently issues over here with my connection!

Mea culpa!

If you're going to comment on Turkey not allowing churches and seminaries to be built - you should be fair and also note that Turkey doesn't like ANY religious houses of worship to be built, including mosques.. They let their own historical mosques fall into disrepair and refuse state money to be allocated to their care. Turkey (specifically the government) isn't against the Christians, they're against RELIGION IN GENERAL.

In their crusade for a 100% secular democracy, it could be argued that they're actually friendlier towards Christians and Jews than other Muslims who they see as a threat to their Kemalistic regime. Your article gives the illusion that they're pro-Islam and anti-Christian when in fact the Turkish government would prefer that their constituents acted as most Western Christians did. They even push Muslim religious holidays to be called 'Sugar Festival' (the equivalent of calling Christmas 'Santa Day'), encourage the use of Santa Claus (known there as 'Noel Baba') and 'New Years Trees', and prohibit observant Muslims from scheduling classes around Friday prayers or observant women from wearing head coverings to school.

If you want to write about the Turkish republic being unfair to Christians, please include how they are unfair to ANYONE worshiping God, including their own Muslim religious majority.

If you're going to comment on Turkey not allowing churches and seminaries to be built - you should be fair and also note that Turkey doesn't like ANY religious houses of worship to be built, including mosques.. They let their own historical mosques fall into disrepair and refuse state money to be allocated to their care. Turkey (specifically the government) isn't against the Christians, they're against RELIGION IN GENERAL.

In their crusade for a 100% secular democracy, it could be argued that they're actually friendlier towards Christians and Jews than other Muslims who they see as a threat to their Kemalistic regime. Your article gives the illusion that they're pro-Islam and anti-Christian when in fact the Turkish government would prefer that their constituents acted as most Western Christians did. They even push Muslim religious holidays to be called 'Sugar Festival' (the equivalent of calling Christmas 'Santa Day'), encourage the use of Santa Claus (known there as 'Noel Baba') and 'New Years Trees', and prohibit observant Muslims from taking scheduling around Friday prayers or observant women from wearing head coverings to school.

If you want to write about the Turkish republic being unfair to Christians, please include how they are unfair to ANYONE worshiping God, including their own Muslim religious majority.

John,

I was deeply saddened to learn about Fr. Sysoyev, by all accounts a thoroughly decent man. When I first read about it, all I could find out was that it may have been religiously motivated.

From what I understand the killer has not yet been caught. How can we know for sure that he was killed by a Muslim, motivated by anger at remarks Sysoyev made? Also, what, precisely, did he say or do that resulted in anger among Muslims? This, too, I saw nothing on.

""The titular leader of the world's millions of Orthodox Christians cannot build a seminary in Turkey.""

And Pagans in Greece risk arrest and imprisonment for worshiping their own Gods even in their own homes, on the insistence and influence of Greek Orthodox clergy in their own country.

Hindu people in Rome keep having their Diwali celebrations canceled under the influence of the Vatican, usually at the last minute, after they've put all the time and money into celebrations.

In Pennsylvania, Christian clergy tried to cancel a Pagan event by getting merchants to shut down the town while a Pagan festival was there.

In Africa, Pentecostals do terrible things to children in the name of 'witch-hunts' and then send their witch-hunters to America to scare everyone similarly at Sarah Palin's church.

This isn't about tit-for-tat. That never ends.

It's about the thing and what it means.

So? What happened to him? You never said.

You insist that Turkey is an european country. How have you came to that conclusion? Perhaps you refer to the tiny Bosforo area but that is only a 3% of the whole country. The rest is Asian.