90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, April 20, 2015

400 Syrian Churches Destroyed, Christianity Nearing ‘Extinction’ in Mideast

Around mid-April, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia –who once wrote a letter to Barack
Obama beseeching the president to reconsider his foreign policies which enable the persecution of Christians in Syria — spoke again of the threat of Christian extinction in the Mideast during a meeting with Greek Defense Minister Panagiotis Kammenos. In the Russian Patriarch’s own words:

I regularly get reports of horrible crimes that are committed there against Christians, especially in northern Iraq. I have visited those places and I remember that there were many churches and monasteries there. The city of Mosul alone had 45 churches. Now there is not a single one. The buildings have been destroyed. Four hundred churches have been destroyed in Syria…

The presence of the Christian minority was a factor that, in a good sense, brought tolerance and good relations between Christians and Muslims…

Now Christianity is the most persecuted religion. The same is happening in...

A few years ago, Texas took a giant step by giving back the right to carry a weapon to its citizens after a terrible shooting in a Luby’s Cafeteria in which 23 people were killed and 150 were held hostage. Today, Texas is poised to become the largest state in the U.S. to allow citizens to openly carry handguns, a change long sought by gun-rights activists.

On Friday, The Texas House of Representatives voted 96-35 to allow residents with concealed-handgun licenses to openly carry their guns in public in holsters. A similar open-carry measure passed the Texas Senate last month; the two open-carry bills must be squared before being sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has indicated support for the idea.

In contrast to its reputation for being permissive on firearms, Texas is...