A Kingdom Divided: Sunni-Shiite War Spills Over Onto The Streets Of Australia, ‘It’s Very Frightening, What Is Happening’

Prophecy unfolds as the Day of the Lord approaches …

Zechariah 14:13, “And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.”

Daniel 2:41, “Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay.”

By Rachel Olding, The Sydney Morning Herald – “It was not so much a death threat as a declaration of war.

‘You wanna go to war, you f—in’ Shia dogs?’ the phone message says. ‘We’re taking all of you to war, in Sydney and overseas!’

It was 8pm and Jamal Daoud, an aspiring politician from Auburn was having dinner with his wife and children. An outspoken critic of the Free Syrian Army, Daoud is accustomed to abuse but this call was more frightening than most.

‘You wanna kill our brothers and sisters overseas, we’re gonna kill you motherf—ers here,’ the caller says.

‘We know where [you] live. We’re coming past [your] house and shoot at [it], if there are people inside we don’t give a f—. You wanna spill blood, we’re gonna spill blood, you f—in’ dogs!’

After two years and an estimated 100,000 deaths, the civil war in Syria has spilled on to the streets of Sydney. Auburn, Lakemba and Bankstown are the new battle lines.

The Syrian conflict, which pits the Sunni-dominated rebellion against the Alawite regime of President Bashar al-Assad, has split the Middle East in two; the Sunni regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and large Sunni population in Lebanon on one side, Iran, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and the broader Shiite Muslim population, of which the Alawites are an offshoot, on the other.

In Sydney, it is splitting suburbs along the same sectarian lines.

‘It’s very frightening, what is happening,’ says Daoud, who was targeted after posting a disparaging message about the death of Mustapha al-Majzoub, a Sydney sheikh killed in Syria last year, while conducting humanitarian work his supporters say.” Read more.

Flashback: A Kingdom Divided: Could The Hatred Between Two Warring Islamic Ideologies In Syria Ignite World War 3? – “The crisis in Syria may appear to be no more or less than a civil war in a country many people would struggle to place on a map. But it’s much more than that: it is rapidly becoming a sectarian struggle for power that is bleeding across the Middle East, with the potential to engulf the entire region in a deadly power struggle between two bitterly opposed Muslim ideologies, Sunni and Shia. Already, the war inside Syria has resulted in 93,000 dead and 1.6 million refugees, with millions more displaced internally. And those figures are escalating rapidly amid reports of appalling atrocities on both sides.” Read more.

Flashback: ‘Prepare For War’: Iran Says Syrian Crisis Is A Prelude To The Coming Of Islamic Savior, The Mahdi – “A high Iranian politician believes the Syrian revolution could be the catalyst for sparking a worldwide conflagration that will usher in an era of Muslim domination of the world. ‘One can smell from the crisis in Syria the coming … of the end of times and the coming of the last Islamic messiah,’ said Ruhollah Hosseinian, a member of the Islamic regime’s parliament. Previously he was deputy of the Intelligence Ministry and a member of board of trustees of Islamic Revolution Document Center.” Read more.

Pakistan: Christian Woman On Death Row For ‘Blaspheming’ Mohammed Forced To Remain In Prison For At Least 2 More Years

Hebrews 13:3, “Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”

By Rana Tanveer, The Tribune – “Aasia Bibi, the Christian woman on death row whose blasphemy conviction was decried as unjust by slain former governor Salmaan Taseer, faces a wait of at least another two years behind bars before her appeal is likely to come up before the Lahore High Court.

Bibi, 45, has been jailed since June 19, 2009, when her neighbours in a village near Nankana Sahib accused her of making derogatory remarks about the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him). An additional district and sessions judge convicted and sentenced her to death in November 2010, pending confirmation of the decision by the LHC.

The case attracted the attention of then Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, who visited Bibi in jail and denounced her conviction as well as the blasphemy law. A couple of months later, Taseer – and any hope Aasia Bibi had of a quick release was killed in a hail of bullets fired by his own bodyguard.

Some two-and-a-half years later, Bibi is waiting for a date to be fixed for the hearing of her appeal. The court has a large backlog of cases and is currently hearing appeals filed at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009. Appeals filed at the end of 2010 are due to come up in 2015…

Aslam Pervez Sahotra, the chairman of the Human Liberation Commission Pakistan, a group that lobbies for greater awareness of human rights, said that he had sent a request to the chief justice of Pakistan that Bibi’s appeal be heard as soon as possible, but had received no response.

He said that Aasia Bibi faced threats from fellow inmates and her jailers at Sheikhupura Jail. She was reported to have been badly beaten by a jail staffer in October 2011. ‘For her safety, and because of the many lacunae in her conviction, her appeal should be heard immediately. We are hopeful she would be acquitted by the High Court,’ he said.” Read more.

Flashback: Pakistan: Christian Mother Accused of ‘Blasphemy’ Tortured in Jail by Warden – “One would think that Aasia Bibi, the young Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy in a Nankana Sahib village in late 2010, had suffered quite enough… we now hear Aasia has been subjected to ‘torture’ within jail, by a female warden who claims she found ‘illicit’ items in her cell. Few details are available on this matter, but it seems other staffers did little to stop the violation of jail rules that occurred. The abuse or manhandling of a detainee is, of course, prohibited. The guilty warden has since been suspended — but even this action seems to have come rather late in the day, and perhaps many people will support what the warden did (just like how many support what Mumtaz Qadri has done). Torture, of course, is endemic in our jails; no one should suffer it — but the string of miseries imposed on Aasia Bibi seem never to end. ” Read more.

Flashback: US Based Christian Editor Receives Death Threats from Pakistan Islamists For Speaking Out For Aasia Bibi – “A Pakistani Christian editor has said he receives hate mails and death threats on a daily basis from Pakistan for carrying reports on the persecution of Christians in the South Asian country. Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, editor of the Pakistan Christian Post who doubles as founder of Pakistan Christian Congress, Thursday received one such email in whch Aasia Bibi, who is languishing in jail for alleged blasphemy, and former Punjab governor Salman Taseer and minorities affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti, who were assassinated last year for crusading to end the blasphemy law, were called harami or bastards.” Read more.

Arab Writer: Islam’s Uncivilized ‘Civilization’ Has Accomplished Nothing, ‘Philosophy And Logic Are Considered Heresy In Islam’

It’s good to see an Arab writer acknowledging what should otherwise be quite obvious. The lack of accomplishments from “Islamic civilization” is not because those who adhere to Islam and its laws are intellectually deficient. Rather, they are “intellectually deficient” because they adhere to Islam and its laws. And therein lies the impetus to change the times from those that are historically accurate, to those that are anything but …

Daniel 7:25a, “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws …”

By Ali Hassan, Annaqued via No Compulsion – “I can say with confidence that the only civilization attributed to religion is the so-called ‘Islamic civilization’. Other civilizations do not base themselves on religion. We do not hear about the ‘Christian civilization’, the ‘Jewish civilization’ or the ‘Buddhist civilization’.

When I was a student in the Arab schools, I studied a curriculum module or unit called ‘Islamic civilization’ which was taught by a Salafist Imam. His whole curriculum was a biography of the Salafists ‘Ahlu Sunna’ group; a group that wants to follow the works of Muhammad’s times and the early Muslims. All we studied was ‘so and so  said…‘ and ‘the Shari’a tells us to do such and such…’ the whole curricuum was designed for ‘Islamic brainwashing’. The instructor Imam never gave a smile in his lectures and taught topics that had no relation to civilization. For me, this class was ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ and that led me to go and finish my studies in the lands of the heathens.

The class that I took with this Imam was no more than an insult to my intellect. The course was filled with mumbo jumbo about Islam along with some inherited beliefs about the Jews and the Christians.

Who is the genius who came up with the term ‘Islamic civilization’?

But wait for a minute …!

Those who coined the term ‘Islamic civilization’ speak about (at most) the seven centuries before the Ottoman empire appeared on the world stage. We can’t speak about the ‘Turkish times’ since that is the Turkish time and not the time of the  Islamic civilization. I am talking about the seven centuries where the lands Muslims ruled were in their ‘golden age’.

Now, greater civilizations of the past left us witnesses to their accomplishments. The Romans did. So did the Greeks, the Mayas and the Chinese. The great Egyptian civilization of old left us the Pyramids – one of their witnesses to their accomplishments.

Where is the evidence for the Muslims civilization? Is it the Ummayyad Mosque in Damascus? This was no more than a Christian church that the Muslims took over and converted to a mosque, just to annoy the Christians and make their life as uncomfortable as possible.

The old civilizations had their greatest accomplishments in the proximity of their origins. For Muslims this is the Mecca and Medina areas. But there are no accomplishments there. All there is is a pre-Islamic black stone enclosed within a mud cube. There is nothing worth mentioning in Mecca or Medina. Even in other areas Muslims accomplished nothing. In the example of Spain, Muslims took over buildings by force from the original natives, and stayed there, unwelcome, until the natives had enough power to get rid of the Muslims. Had not the Muslims been kicked out of Spain, we would have today Kandahar instead of Marbella and Waziristan rather than Mallorca and Mogadesho instead of Barcelona.

Tajikistan: Convert To Christianity Severely Beaten In Public By Her Muslim Family

Muslims make up about 98% of Tajikistan’s population …

Luke 21:16-17, “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake.”

Christians in Crisis – “Nadia, a recent Christian convert in Tajikistan, is experiencing severe persecution at the hands of her Muslim family members. Nadia converted from Islam to Christianity in 2011 and was then baptized. After her mother found out, she beat Nadia, burned her Bible, and tore her clothing. Nadia tried to run away, but her brothers found her. They shaved her head, gave her a public beating, and then locked her in the house. When she ran away a second time, they unfortunately caught her again.

Nadia called a Voice of the Martyrs contact on June 9th, sobbing, saying that her family had beaten her again, this time for hours, and forced her to say the Muslim statement of faith. The VOM contact has since been unable to reach Nadia by phone as her family most likely had it disconnected. (For other reports on persecution in Tajikistan, check www.persecution.net/tajikistan.htm.)” Source – Christians in Crisis.

Flashback: Tajikistan: Muslim Fanatics Shouting ‘Infidel’ Murder Man Dressed as Santa Claus – “An outrageous incident occurred in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, where a group of religious fanatics killed Santa Claus. Parvis Davlatbekov wore as Santa Claus to congratulate his friends for the New Year. However, a group of fanatics attacked and stabbed him by crying ‘infidel’ in the street. The young man died on Monday without coming into consciousness.” Read more.

Flashback: Churches Raided, Crosses Burnt, Fathers Arrested: ‘Arab Spring’ In The Caucasus And Central Asia Spelling Doom For Local Christians – “Mirroring what is happening in the world, there is an Islamic revival in the Caucasus and Central Asia, with all that it means for local Christians… The fall of dictatorship, in a pattern similar to that of post-war Iraq and the ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, seems to have ‘liberated’ the radical elements within the Muslim communities…Uzbekistan (just under 30 million people), Kazakhstan (16-17 million), Tajikistan (7-8 million), Kyrgyzstan (5-6 million), which is particularly topical now because it is where the family of the Boston bombings suspects lived for a time, and Turkmenistan (just over 5 million), for a total population of 64.7 million in 2012, the vast majority of whom are Muslim.” Read more.

‘A Public Health Nightmare’: Meet The ‘Aleppo Boil’, A Flesh-Eating Parasite Sweeping Across Syria

With reports like this I cannot help but to think of Revelation 16 and the bowls of the wrath of God …

Revelation 16:1-2, 11, “Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, ‘Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.’ So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image… They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds.”

Matthew 24:7, “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there will be famines, plagues, and earthquakes in various places.”

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By Erin Banco, Foreign Policy – “A crowd gathers at the center of Bab al-Salam, a refugee camp on the Turkey-Syria border that is home to some 13,500 internally displaced Syrians. Children sit at their mothers’ feet, playing with plastic toys in the melting mud. One boy’s cheeks are pocked with small red dots; a boy next to him, wearing nothing but a diaper, has a large crusted lesion on his leg — signs of an infectious skin disease that is spreading throughout Syria and the neighboring region.

Since war came to Syria a little more than two years ago, the country has been transformed into a public health nightmare. Gastroenteritis, which causes severe diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain, is ubiquitous among displaced populations — both inside and outside Syria — and a measles epidemic is currently sweeping the northern portion of the country. (At least 7,000 cases of the disease have been detected since 2011, according to Doctors Without Borders.) An outbreak of water-borne diseases such as hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery, meanwhile, is all but ‘inevitable,’ according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

But in camps like Bab al-Salam, it is a silent, flesh-eating parasite that is literally leaving its mark on the population. Cutaneous leishmaniasis, also known as the ‘Aleppo evil’ or the ‘Aleppo boil,’ is carried by sand flies and causes painful lesions that can become secondarily infected, often resulting in disfigurement. Another form of leishmaniasis — visceral — affects the spleen and liver, and it is the second-largest parasitic killer in the world after malaria. Mercifully, it is only the nonlethal parasite that is coursing through the Syrian countryside, where years of fighting has made seeking medical treatment extraordinarily difficult. Still, the parasite leaves its victims scarred for life.

According to the WHO, which has set up an early-warning system to monitor the disease in all 14 of Syria’s governorates, 1,047 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis were reported between April 14 and May 18 of this year. The majority of those cases occurred in Aleppo, where the disease was endemic prior to the crisis, but an increasing number have cropped up among internally displaced people in Syria’s Tartus governorate, where the disease was previously unreported. Thousands of additional cases have been reported in bordering countries in the last year.

Still, the WHO has yet to classify the increasing number of cases as an official outbreak, which would require a twofold increase in the number of reported cases among all age groups since last year. ‘Despite articles or videos circulating in the media talking about an ‘outbreak’ of cutaneous leishmaniasis, WHO has not received up to date any systematic epidemiological data to ascertain that,’ Jose Postigo, an expert on leishmaniasis at the WHO, told Foreign Policy in an email. ‘But the disease is highly endemic in parts of the country.'” Read more.

Flashback: Specialists: SARS-Like Virus With Extremely High Mortality Rate Plagues Middle East – “A new virus responsible for an outbreak of respiratory illness in the Middle East may be more deadly than SARS, according to a team of infectious disease specialists who recently investigated a set of cases in Saudi Arabia. Of 23 confirmed cases in April, 15 people died — an ‘extremely high’ fatality rate of 65 percent, according to Johns Hopkins senior epidemiologist Trish Perl, a member of the team that analyzed the spread of the virus through four Saudi hospitals. Saudi officials said that as of Wednesday, 49 people have contracted the disease and 32 have died.” Read more.