[link removed]

In this mailing:
* Giulio Meotti: Europe's Twilight: Christianity Declines, Islam Rises
* Amir Taheri: Tehran Debates the Bomb


** Europe's Twilight: Christianity Declines, Islam Rises ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------

by Giulio Meotti • August 28, 2022 at 5:30 am
[link removed] [link removed] [link removed] [link removed] [link removed]
l/offer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gatestoneinstitute.org%2F18786%2Feurope-christianity-islam&pubid=ra-52f7af5809191749&ct=1&title=Europe%27s+Twilight%3A+Christianity+Declines%2C+Islam+Rises [link removed]
* Comparing only the weekly frequency of Friday prayers in the mosque and Sunday Mass in the church, the future is clear: 65% of practicing Catholics [in France] are over 50 years old. By contrast, 73% of practicing Muslims are under the age of 50.
* In an essay on L'Incorrect Frédéric Saint Clair, political scientist and analyst, explains that "the milestone of 10,000 mosques, at the current rate, will be reached around 2100". Will we have 10,000 full mosques and 10,000 practically empty churches?
* "[A] mosque is erected every fortnight in France, while a Christian building is being destroyed at the same rate." — Edouard de Lamaze, president of the Observatory of Religious Heritage in Paris; Catholic News Agency, May 4, 2021.
* "During my first trips to the Middle East, in the early 1980s, I did not see veiled women and gradually the veil spread everywhere. It is the sign of the re-Islamization of Muslim societies and, in this sense, it takes on a political and geopolitical dimension. It is part of a conquest strategy. France is in a state of self-dhimmitude.... a legal and political status applicable to non-Muslim citizens in a state governed by Islam according to a prescription of the Koran (9:29). [Dhimmis] do not enjoy equal citizenship with the 'true believers,' who are Muslims." — Annie Laurent, essayist and scholar author of several books on Islam, Boulevard Voltaire, May 19, 2022.
* "...France, due to a colonial complex and a sense of guilt, anticipates a legal and political situation that is not (yet) imposed on it but which could be a day in which Islam it will be a majority and therefore able to govern our country.... [T]he situation is really worrying. Before it becomes dramatic, it is urgent to put an end to the concessions we are multiplying to Islamism by hiding behind our values. Because by doing so we erase our own civilization". — Annie Laurent, Boulevard Voltaire, May 19, 2022.
* Christianity in Germany "seems stable, but in reality it is on the verge of collapse. Pastors and bishops, but also many actively involved lay people, see landscapes in bloom where in reality there is nothing but the desert ". — Markus Günther, essayist, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 29, 2014.
* "Muslims, the winners of demographic change," headlined Die Welt. "US researchers predict that for the first time in history there will be more Muslims than Christians. Societies change. Even Germany's".
* In Trier, Germany, where Karl Marx was born, the diocese announced an unprecedented cut in the number of parishes which, in the next few years, will be reduced from 900 to 35.
* L'Echo, the main Belgian economic newspaper, says: "Brussels was at the forefront of secularization before confronting an active Muslim minority. The first religion in Brussels today is Islam".... Belgian anthropologist Olivier Servais confirmed a Muslim presence in Brussels at 33.5 percent, predicting a majority in 2030.

"A civilization is everything that gathers around a religion," said André Malraux. And when one religion declines, another takes its place. Comparing only the weekly frequency of Friday prayers in the mosque and Sunday Mass in the church, the future is clear: 65% of practicing Catholics in France are over 50 years old. By contrast, 73% of practicing Muslims are under the age of 50. Pictured: Fire consumes Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, on April 15, 2019. (Photo by Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)

French writer André Malraux said it: "A civilization is everything that gathers around a religion". And when one religion declines, another takes its place.

Sarcelles, Saint-Denis, Mulhouse, Nantes, Chambéry, Strasbourg, La Rochelle... The impressive images of stadiums full of Muslim faithful, who arrived from all over France for the feast of Eid Al Kabir, seventy days after the end of Ramadan. In Saint-Denis, the city where the kings of France rest; in Nantes, the city of the Dukes of Brittany; in Strasbourg, the city of the cathedral and seat of the European Parliament, in Mulhouse, in the heart of Alsace.

"In forty years, France has become the Western European nation where the population of Muslim origin is the most important," wrote Vatican Radio. "It is not difficult to hypothesize that we are now close to Islam overtaking Catholicism." What if the overtaking has already taken place?

Continue Reading Article ([link removed])


** Tehran Debates the Bomb ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------

by Amir Taheri • August 28, 2022 at 4:00 am
[link removed] [link removed] [link removed] [link removed] [link removed] http
s://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18840/tehran-debates-the-bomb#print
* Interestingly, none of the problems that nation-states might have with one another, problems such as border disputes, competition for sources of raw materials and markets, water-sharing disputes, irredentism, maltreatment of kith-and-kin, and bitter historic memories, exist between Iran and Israel.
* No Iranian leader, even under the present regime, could rationally explain why Israel should be regarded as Iran's enemy.
* The danger is that the mullahs might regard the bomb as a status symbol, using Biden's weakness as an opportunity to humiliate the "Great Satan."

The danger is that Iran's mullahs might regard a nuclear bomb as a status symbol, using Biden's weakness as an opportunity to humiliate the "Great Satan." (Image source: iStock)

After more than three decades, a debate that started during the Iran-Iraq war seems to be making a comeback in Tehran: Should the Islamic Republic take the final steps towards building a nuclear arsenal?

The original debate that took place behind the scenes was prompted by the revelation that, with French help, Iraq's Saddam Hussein had been trying to build a nuclear capacity around Osirak, a nuclear power station and research center which was wiped out in a surprise attack by the Israeli Air Force.

Those urging a quick revival of the Shah's nuclear program included Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a junior mullah but a senior adviser to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Mohsen Reza'i-Mirqaed a drop-out student who became commander of Khomeini's newly created parallel arm: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Khomeini, however, was loath to admit, even implicitly, that the Shah might have been right on any issue.

Continue Reading Article ([link removed])

============================================================
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Twitter ([link removed])
** RSS ([link removed])
** Donate ([link removed])
Copyright © Gatestone Institute, All rights reserved.

You are subscribed to this list as [email protected]

You can change how you receive these emails:
** Update your subscription preferences ([link removed])
or ** Unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])

** Gatestone Institute ([link removed])

14 East 60 St., Suite 705, New York, NY 10022