💭 The Islamic State in Mozambique (ISM) has ordered Christians and Jews to pay a Jizya tax for infidels as a sign of their submission to an Islamic Caliphate, the Barnabas Fund reported Thursday.
Christians and Jews in the region have been threatened with death unless they either convert to Islam, vacate the area, or pay the tax.
“We will escalate the war against you until you submit to Islam,” states a handwritten message from ISM. “Our desire is to kill you or be killed, for we are martyrs before God, so submit or run from us.”
The letter, which menaces Christians and Jews with “endless war” if they do not submit to Islam or pay the tax, also threatens moderate Muslims with death if they do not join the Islamist cause.
The ISM publishes a weekly newsletter, which has also demanded that Jews and Christians either convert to Islam or pay the infidel tax.
In demanding the Jizya, which according to sharia law allows Jews and Christians to remain in the land as second-class “dhimmi,” the ISM is echoing the tactics applied by the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
In 2014, the Islamic State issued a statement demanding that Christians in Mosul either convert to Islam, pay the Jizya, leave the city, or be killed. This led every in the region to leave, ending 2,000 years of Assyrian Christian presence.
In 2015, the Islamic State launched a series of attacks on Christian towns along the Khabour River in northeast Syria, during which the jihadists abducted hundreds of Christian hostages, who were similarly told they must convert to Islam, pay the Jizya, or face death.
The imposition of the Jizya has repeatedly been employed as a means of emptying regions of Christians.
💭 Selected Comments:
☆ Islam is incompatible with human life.
☆ Islam has always used the edge of the sword to evangelize. Muslims do not assimilate. They always try to dominate. The West had better recognize this, or they will be the next Mozambique.
☆ Mozambique has a Christian majority at least 60% mostly from the Portuguese ,
and about 20% Muslim.
☆ Where is the UN? As always, selective response measures to radical Islam.
☆ The UN hates Jews and Christians.
☆ The UN is composed of a Muslim majority voting bloc. The OIC. The organization of Islamic cooperation. The rest are communist that side with them. The UN will do nothing but run interference and cover this up. And attack any that try to speak out about it.
☆ Yet we still give them foreign aid? That is ridiculous.
☆ God bless and protect these Christians in danger for their faith in our Lord and Savior , Jesus Christ.
🛑 Thermal drone video from our team in Eagle Pass, Texas shows a large group of migrants crossing illegally into private property early this morning. Per CBP source, there have been over 1,400 illegal crossings in the Del Rio sector in the last 24 hours & 69,000 since 10/1.
New thermal drone video shows a massive group of illegal aliens marching like soldiers illegally crossing into private property into Eagle Pass, Texas.
The illegals crossed into Eagle Pass Thursday morning one day after Schumer called for mass amnesty for illegals living in the US.
“Now more than ever, we’re short of workers, we have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to, the only way we’re gonna have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants! The DREAMers and all of them!” Schumer said.
😇 Today, according to the Ethiopian calendar it’s Saturday, August 14, 2014 – Saint Abuna Aregawi commemorated on this very Day.
💭 Ladies and gentlemen; I swear to you; If America does not stop supporting the evil fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia – and if it does not refrain from its diabolical plot to disintegrate, weaken and destroy the historical Christian-Zionist Ethiopia – then, mark my words, the state of Texas would become the first state to secede from the National Union of the United States of America very soon.
☆ TExas
☆ TEgray (Tigray)
☆ TEdros (Tigray Native)
☆ TEsla (Besides, Elon Musk owns Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH = Ethiopia)
👉 Elon Musk’s ranch and his SpaceX Starbase are located in Texas.
💭 Mysterious Vertical Red Light in Sky over Texas in US | በቴክሳስ ሰማይ ላይ ሚስጥራዊ አቀባዊ ቀይ ብርሃን
💭 Texas Tornadoes, Fires & Heavy Snow | STOP The #TigrayGenocide – And This Won’t Happen to You!
💭 If you were traveling through the verdant Ethiopian highlands, you might make a stop at the Abba Gärima monastery about three miles east of Adwa in the northernmost part of the country. If you were a man—and you’d have to be to gain entry into the Orthodox monastery—then you might be permitted to look at the Abba Gärima Gospel books. These exquisitely illuminated manuscripts are the earliest evidence of the art of the Christian Aksumite kingdom. Legend holds that God stopped the sun in the sky so the copyist could finish them. Leafing through a Gospel book you would come upon portraits of the four evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—the authors of the book’s contents. You might be surprised to find, however, that there is a fifth evangelist included there.
“A fifth evangelist?!” you say, and rightly so. This fifth portrait is that of Eusebius of Caesarea, the man who taught us how to read the Gospels. A new book, Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity, by Dr. Jeremiah Coogan, an assistant professor of New Testament at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University, sheds light on history’s lost “fifth evangelist” and explains the pervasive influence of the bishop who has, arguably, done more than anyone else to shape how we read the gospels.
Eusebius of Caesarea is not a very well-known name outside of scholarly circles. He was born in the last half of the third century in Caesarea Maritima, in what is today Israel. He became first a priest and then a bishop. He would later become a biographer of the emperor Constantine possibly even a wheeler-dealer in the ecclesiastical politics of the imperial court. Under the influence of the third-century theologian Origen, who spent a long period of his life in Caesarea, Eusebius became an accomplished textual scholar.
If you’ve heard Eusebius’s name before it’s probably because of his Church History, an account of Christianity’s origins from the Apostles to his own day. As influential as the Church History is—and it became the template for how people have written the history of Christianity ever since—it doesn’t compare to the impact of his less visible and least-known literary production, the canon tables (also known as the Eusebian Apparatus).
In Eusebius’ time the contents of the New Testament were not universally established. Though many agreed that there should be four Gospels, and even grounded this assumption in the natural order of the universe, they did not read the Gospels in parallel. At least part of the reason for this was that, practically speaking, this was hard to do. Even if you had a Gospel book that contained copies of the four canonical Gospels, identifying how the various stories related to one another involved familiarity with the text, deductive skills, and a real facility navigating the physical object itself. Gospel books were big and heavy; the text was usually written in a series of unbroken Greek letters; and there were no chapter, verse, or page numbers to help you find your way.
Enter Eusebius, the man whose invention made reading the Gospels in parallel possible. It is basically a carefully organized reference tool that allows you to navigate books. In a period before chapter and verse divisions, Eusebius and his team of literary assistants divided the canonical Gospels into numbered sections and produced a set of coordinating reference tables that allow readers to cross-reference versions of the same story in other Gospels. This was an important innovation in book technology in general. As Coogan put it “the Eusebian apparatus is the first system of cross-references ever invented—not just for the Gospels, but for any text.” Reference tables might not seem sexy, but by producing them Eusebius inaugurated a trend that would dominate how Christians ever since have read the Bible.
“While Eusebius was never formally denounced as a heretic, some of his opinions were pretty unorthodox.”
The enormity of his innovation is hard to see precisely because it has become ubiquitous. We thread the different sayings of Jesus from the Cross together into one story. We merge the infancy stories of Matthew and Luke together to produce a single shepherd and wise men-filled Nativity story. These decisions are relatively uncomplicated, but we should consider the amount of decision-making that went into the production of this reading scheme. First, the team had to decide on unit divisions: what is a unit, where does it begin, and where does it end? While today church services have designated readings, early Christians often read for as “long as time permitted.” In segmenting the Gospel, the Eusebian team was cementing preexisting yet informal distinctions about what constituted a particular story, episode, or section of the life of Jesus.
Once this was accomplished, each unit had to be correlated to the corresponding units in the other Gospels. Some decisions seem easy: Jesus feeds 5,000 people in all four Gospels, for example. But there is an additional story—relayed by Mark and Luke—in which he feeds 4,000 people. What should we do with them? What about chronological discrepancies? The incident in the Jerusalem Temple where Jesus gets into a physical dispute with moneychangers appears in the final week of his life in the Synoptics but kicks off his ministry in the Gospel of John. Are they the same story? Did Jesus cleanse the Temple twice? These were and indeed are live questions for Christian readers, but by drawing up his tables, Eusebius and his team provided answers by means of a simple chart. A great deal of interpretation and theological work happens in the construction of the chart, but the tables seem to be factual accounting. Instead of argumentation that makes itself open to disagreement, we see only beguilingly agent-less lines and numbering.
This kind of schematization might seem to be the ancient equivalent of administrative or clerical work. Indeed, it drew upon technologies and practices from ancient administration, mathematics, astrology, medicine, magic, and culinary arts. The portraits from the Ethiopian Gärima Gospel, however, capture an often-hidden truth: Schematization is theological work. Segmenting the Bible and mapping its contents created theologically motivated juxtapositions and connections. For example, by connecting the story of divine creation from the prologue of the Gospel of John (“In the beginning was the word…”) to the genealogies of Matthew and Luke (the so-and-so begat so-and-so parts), the Eusebian team could underscore the divine and human origins of Jesus. Equally important, they instructed the reader to read the Gospels in a new way: a way that reoriented the original organization. If this shift seems unimportant or intuitive to us, it is only because we have so thoroughly absorbed it.
Take, say, the interweaving of Jesus’s finals words at the crucifixion. Mark’s version ends with Jesus in psychic and physical distress crying that God has abandoned him. It’s an uncomfortable scene and it is meant to be. Luke and John have more self-controlled conclusions: Jesus commends his spirit into the hands of his father (Luke) and authoritatively proclaims his life “finished” (John). Though Eusebius doesn’t reconcile these portraits himself, his apparatus allowed future generations to combine them in a way that neutralizes the discomfort we have when we read Mark.
While others had thought about reading the Gospels alongside one another, it was Eusebius and his team who came up with the tool to do it in a systematic way. From Eusebius onwards, Coogan told The Daily Beast, “most manuscripts of the Gospels included the Eusebian apparatus. When a reader encountered the Gospels on the page, they generally did so in a form shaped by Eusebius’ innovative project. While Eusebius prepared his Gospel edition in Greek, the apparatus had an impact in almost every language the Gospels were translated into. We find it in manuscripts in Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, Gothic, Georgian, Arabic, Caucasian Albanian, Nubian, Slavonic, Old English, Middle German, and Dutch. Thousands of Gospel manuscripts, from the fourth century to the twentieth, reflect Eusebius’ approach to reading the Gospels.” Even today when academics think about the relationships between the Gospels and print Gospels in parallel with one another, we are asking the same questions as Eusebius did. It might be said that Eusebius is still controlling how we think.
The truth is however that any kind of supplementary material (scholars call them paratexts) like an index or a table of contents creates new ways to read a text. Matthew or Mark may have wanted you to read their stories linearly from start to finish, but Eusebius and his team gave you a new way to read. You could hunt and peck between the bindings. Reading out of order can be powerful work, as Wil Gafney’s A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church is, because it creates new pathways through the text that disrupt the ways that the authors meant the texts to be read. Most authors don’t write narratives with the expectation that people will just use Google to search inside it.
While Eusebius was never formally denounced as a heretic, some of his opinions—including some of the judgments that inform his apparatus—were pretty unorthodox. Like Origen he was sympathetic to views about the nature of Christ that would later be condemned as heresy. It’s probably because of the ambiguities surrounding his theological views that Eusebius, one of the most influential figures in Christian history, never became a saint. But his story proves that it is sometimes invisible actors who are the most powerful of all.
🐌 Another Giant African Snail Sighting Forces Florida County into Quarantine
The reappearance of an invasive snail species forced state officials to enact a quarantine order last week for residents of Florida’s Pasco County, an area north of Tampa along the gulf coast.
Authorities took action after confirming that a notoriously destructive breed of mollusk, known as the giant African land snail, was identified by a community gardener in the city of Port Richey. A division of Florida’s department of agriculture that manages pest control began to survey the region for additional snail sightings once the quarantine mandate was in place, according to the agency. The control unit started to treat the land with baited pesticide on Tuesday.
Florida’s agriculture department has called the giant African snail “one of the most damaging” mollusk subtypes in the world. Its unusually large size and ability to procreate in vast quantities allows the creature to infiltrate surrounding areas quickly, posing threats to vegetation and infrastructure because of its appetite for at least 500 different plants as well as paint and stucco. At four months old, a single snail can lay thousands of eggs at a time and each can grow to be 8 inches long as an adult.
The snails are mobile — experts warn that they “cling to vehicles and machinery,” plus trash, to “move long distances” — and resilient, with the capacity to survive for a year while “inactive” and buried in soil to shield itself from unfavorable weather. They also present serious health risks to humans, as the snails carry a parasite called rat lungworm that can cause meningitis. People are advised to wear protective gear, like gloves, when handling them.
Giant African land snails have wreaked havoc on parts of Florida before. Although they are not native inhabitants of the state, officials have traced infestations dating back to the 1960s to escaped house pets and illegal importations by religious groups, the Tampa Bay Times reported. Owning and importing giant African land snails without a permit is against the law in the U.S. Any attempt to move the snails after a sighting is also illegal without proper documentation.
“Day by day, the chances for in-depth investigations that could lead to criminal prosecutions are receding.”
💭 My Note: Are all parts trying to conceal the magnitude of these atrocities by continuing and spreading the war to other regions of Ethiopia? Alongside reducing the population of the young and Christian– to deflect attention away – and to buy more time? Why are TPLF start permitting “special envoys” like Mr. Obasanjo and British diplomats to enter Mekelle but not independent observers and investigators yet?
💭 What happened on a 24 hour killing spree in Tigray last year remains unclear.
On 28th November 2020 Eritrean soldiers went on the rampage in Axum, a holy city in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, whose main church is believed by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians to hold the Ark of Covenant. Over the course of 24 hours, they went door to door summarily shooting unarmed young men and boys.
Some of the victims were as young as 13. The Eritrean soldiers forbade residents from burying slain relatives and neighbours so the bodies lay rotting in the streets for days. Witnesses later described hearing hyenas come at night to feed on the dead.
Eritrean soldiers had shelled and then occupied Axum around a week earlier, having invaded Tigray in early November in support of an offensive by Ethiopia’s federal government against the region’s rebellious leaders. The killings were carried out in apparent retaliation for an attack by local Tigrayan militia and residents on Eritrean soldiers, who had been pillaging the town for days.
Amid a total communications blackout that plunged the region of 6 million into darkness, it took weeks for the news to seep to the outside world. On 9th December 2020, less than two weeks after the massacre, UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres told a New York press conference that Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, had personally assured him that Eritrean soldiers had not even entered Tigray. Abiy, who less than a year before the Axum massacre received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for reconciling with Eritrea, would not admit the presence of Eritrean troops until April.
The contrast to other recent conflicts is stark. When war erupted in Gaza earlier this year, for instance, the internet was quickly flooded with images of bomb damage and explosions. Viewers of Al Jazeera could watch live as the owner of a block housing the Associated Press and other media negotiated over the phone with the Israeli military, who were poised to blow the building up.
“It is incredible that – in this emblematic town – such horror could happen without the international community responding,” said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa Director at Human Rights Watch. “The reports only really started coming out three months later. Where else in the world can you have a massacre on this scale that is completely kept in darkness for that long?”
Barred from Ethiopia, researchers from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International resorted to piecing together what happened in Axum through phone calls and interviews with refugees who had fled over the border to Sudan. Between March and June international journalists were briefly allowed into Tigray, but checkpoints and fighting in the region meant few were able to reach the city.
The fighting also prevented a joint team from the United Nations and the state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHCR) from travelling there. When they released their much-anticipated report into human rights abuses committed in Tigray earlier this month it contained no testimony gathered in Axum. This was, remember, the site of one of the worst atrocities in a now year-long conflict that has been characterised by reports of summary executions, torture, starvation, gang rapes and rampant looting.
As a result, much of what happened there remains unclear. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International believe several hundred civilians were massacred, whereas the joint UN-EHRC investigation vaguely concluded that “more than 100” were killed. A senior Ethiopian diplomat dismissed initial reports of the massacre as “very, very crazy” but later the attorney general’s office concluded Eritrean troops had in fact killed civilians in reprisal shootings, giving the figure of 110.
These patterns of contestation run through the whole conflict in Northern Ethiopia. Meanwhile communities caught on both sides of the fighting are living with immense trauma. When I visited the eastern Tigray village of Dengelat in April, residents had buried dozens of loved ones in graves topped with stones and bloodstained pieces of clothing. They had been killed by Eritrean soldiers during a religious festival six months before, but people there had received little outside help, except for some food supplies from aid agencies. Investigators have still not visited the site, and the whole of Tigray has once again been cut off from the outside world.
Unlike Dengelat, researchers from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission did manage to visit Axum on a “fact-finding mission” in late February and early March, which was separate to the joint report with the UN, but they did not do a full investigation. Laetitia Bader from Human Rights Watch believes the story of what happened there during those 24 hours last year may never be fully uncovered: “Day by day, the chances for in-depth investigations that could lead to criminal prosecutions are receding.”
Sixty-four civil society organisations (CSOs) and personalities at the weekend asked the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Antonio Guterres to urgently take measures to prevent imminent genocide in Ethiopia.
“If Addis Ababa should come under threat of falling to TDF, the Tigrayan internees – wherever they are held – would, under current conditions, be liable to be exterminated.”
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 
