A Catholic church on the outskirts of Toronto, Canada has been plagued by vandalism. The walls have been graffitied, books ripped up and now a statue of Jesus has been damaged and covered in black paint. The statue was also scrawled with an anti-Christian statement ‘There is no Jew God” and ‘Jewsus’.
A decade or so ago, this would have been seen as the work of a lone nutter, an unbalanced person carrying out this sort of attack because of their own twisted reasons. Now, unfortunately there are other more worrying reasons for such an attack on a religious building and chief among those reasons is Islam. Since Islam has been injected into lands where it is neither wanted nor needed the number of attacks and alleged attacks by Muslims against the people and property associated with other religions have grown. We’ve not just seen a massive rise in violent anti-Semitism coming from Muslims but we’ve also seen a growth in anti-Christian activity. It’s plain to see by the type of vandalism, the wording used and the nature of the person arrested that this attack on a Toronto church is not the work of a crazed anti-clericalist, that Islam was the driving force behind it.
Here’s what the Catholic Register website said (with this blog’s comments in plain text as usual) about this particular church desecration:
“ A 22-year-old Mississauga man has been charged in connection with alleged hate crimes committed at St. Catherine of Siena Church and its neighbouring elementary school over the past two months.
Plainly not the work of a one off drunken or deranged nutter and much more like the outcome of an organised plan to do damage.
Iqbal Hessan was reportedly arrested in the early hours of May 26 on the Mississauga school’s grounds, though police would not confirm this. Hessan faces five counts of mischief over $5,000, and break, enter and commit indictable offence. A bail hearing was held later that day.
Knock me down with a feather. I’m so surprised. The man arrested is a Muslim.
On May 20, the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue that stands in front of the church was covered in black paint and the fingers of its outstretched arms were broken off. Behind the church, graffiti with the words “There is no Jew God” was scrawled across the brick wall along with a drawing of a face labelled “Jewsus.”
The fact that this attack, despite it being against a Catholic Church, contained anti-Jewish wording makes it more and more likely that this is an Islamic attack.
It was the third time the church has been targeted. On April 9, surveillance footage caught a young man breaking into the church, ripping pages of the Sacramentary book on the altar and throwing them at the tabernacle. He is then seen stealing one of the church’s amplifier speakers.
On May 17, a drawing of a hand gesturing with the middle finger was found spray painted on the front steps of the church. And on May 25, graffiti was sprayed on the school walls.
Readers may recall that the raised finger gesture is a type of salute that we’ve seen quite often from the supporters of Islamism and Jihad. It means that there is no god but allah. It’s a gesture of arrogance and supremacism and I’m really not surprised to see it scrawled on a church.
But out of the vandalism has come a new sense of community. When news spread, the parish community and its neighbours began working together to get the church back to its original shape.
Good for them. However we now need to find new senses of national community wherever we are by countering the ideology of Islam.
Michelle Medeiros was driving down Hurontario Street on May 21 when she noticed the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue marked with black paint. She stopped, took photos of the damage and posted them on Facebook.
“We try to share it as much as we can so that people know we can’t be quiet about this,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a mosque. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Catholic church… It doesn’t matter anything. This is somebody else’s faith and we shouldn’t destroy it because it’s not right.”
The photo album has been shared more than 600 times on Facebook. Comments from community members have poured in.
On May 22, two days after she posted the photos, Medeiros launched a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe.com to help support the parish. The campaign’s target goal is $10,000 to replace the statue and install more lights around the front lawn. So far, the campaign has raised $750.
Whilst it is heartwarming that there has been this positive response to the attack and whilst I can see where Ms Medeiros is coming from by saying all religious buildings should be protected from attack, it must be said that Christians, Jews and others will always be at risk of attack wherever Islam either rules or is pandered to by foolish non-Muslims.
“A lot of angry people are pointing fingers right now,” said Medeiros. “Some people are very, very upset because it is their church… they just want for whoever it is to get caught. I’ve had a lot of people asking me for friend requests… just to connect with me, talk to me, if I had any more information.”
Medeiros is not a parishioner of St. Catherine of Siena. She goes to Cristo Rei Catholic Church, a nearby Portuguese parish. But because she drives around the area all the time, she had seen the vandalism and damage over the past two months.
“I’ve seen everything happening and no one’s been doing anything so I said enough is enough,” said Medeiros.
“We received many phone calls and support from parishioners,” said pastor Fr. Camillo Lando. “We pray that these evil actions be overcome with forgiveness and much love.”
Support has come from a number of different faith groups.
Although it’s good to see people pulling together and that people are angry about what has happened it is right to speculate whether or not such attacks would be less of a problem if Western nations like Canada had not imported Islam. Islam is not a religion of peace, neither is it a religion of spiritual tolerance and wherever Islam goes, so does intolerance and violence. Good luck with the ‘turning the other cheek’ bit. It may feel good, it may be what you feel you were commanded to do, but it will no more work in the face of Islam as it would have worked in the face of Nazism. When it comes to Islam, I along with many others, see ‘turning the other cheek’ as a suicidal action.
Local Muslim group Mississauga/Toronto/GTA Pakistanis Against Terrorism has launched a petition in solidarity with St. Catherine of Siena on Change.org. Accompanying the petition, the group published a letter calling the hate crimes toward St. Catherine of Siena Church “most deplorable and hateful” and that the group stands in solidarity with the community.
‘Pakistanis Against Terrorism’, ha ha, that’s a new one for me. They might be a small well-meaning organisation but set against the millions of Muslims who either actively commit acts of terror or turn a blind eye to them, they are completely insignificant.
This is just one example of a crime that looks very likely can be pinned on Muslims and that famed Islamic ‘tolerance’ that we keep getting told exists. Until Islam is treated as the foe that it really is, then attacks like this on a Catholic church will continue. The whole ideology of Islam brainwashes people into hatred for other groups and it is time for all of us, no matter what god we follow or even if we follow no god at all, to start to treat Islam with the disdain that sensible people treat Nazism and Stalinism. I predict that as Islam grows in the free world then we will see much more attacks like these. Islam cannot coexist peacefully with other religions and attacks like this make this all the more plain.
Link
Original Catholic Register story on church desecration.
though i completely agree with u , there has a lot of attacks on hindu temples in usa by neo nazis…to the point that hte christians themselves are hating the act.
I completely concur with you on that. However, although they are deplorable, the number of US neo-Nazis is very small in comparison with the number of Muslims worldwide who support jihad.
ya thats true