Few hours are left till September 11. A dozen airplanes have vanished from Tripoli airport, which was seized, in the past days, by Islamic fundamentalists. In a video message broadcast in July, the self-proclaimed ISIS’s Caliph Al-Baghdadi made an explicit threat, by saying that “Rome will be conquered.”It seems that the script is ready and the puzzle is coming together, piece by piece.
Yet the Middle-Eastern question isn’t about some conflict circumscribed between two armies, or two adversaries. The blood map in the post-modern world is large and spares no-one:Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle-East. In Egypt, there is a popular uprising against the Government; in Mali the Islamic military is fighting with the Tuareg; and in Nigeria the Islam advance leaves behind a trail of blood, same as in Somalia and in Kenya; and then again in Afghanistan, in Pakistan and in the Philippines. There are clashes with Islamic hardliners in Chechenia and Dagestan too. Not to mention the civil war raging on in the Central African Republic, in Congo and in South Sudan. And the direct attacks against Christian representatives, such as the most recent horror of the three nuns slaughtered in Burundi.
In Ukraine, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic are trying to secede. Conflicts drag on in Syria and in Israel and the endless battle in the Gaza Strip, as UNICEF just reported the latest in the series of atrocities:at least 500 kids have been killed during the war with over 3374 wounded. Lastly, Iraq is experiencing the full blast of ISIS’s bloody forays:2,500 Yazidi women sold at $150 each as slaves in the marketplace in Mosul, and another 300 Yazidi women sold in the Syrian markets.These aren’t just estimates, but data contained in a report posted on the social media by Vian Dakhil, an ethnic Yazidi and Iraqi MP that shocked the entire world with her heartfelt appeal to the Iraqi Parliament.
Religiously-motivated violence has escalated during the past month, to judge from the number of unprecedented decapitations, massacres and bombings. With Christians being targeted by fundamentalists, the Mediterranean has become a ticking time bomb less than an hour of flight from Italy – or the Vatican, Rome and the Pope.The cradle of Christianity is located at the center of this area and can easily be reached from every direction – while being surrounded by growing brutality, due to conflicts raging on from Eastern Europe to Africa.
Seeing it on the map, one has the impression of pincers being squeezed around St. Peter’s. In that abode, lives the only person in the world that is trying to do something concrete and determined, in order to stop what he has defined as a “minced world war three”; and not just through prayer, but also via relentless efforts for bringing together and seating the leaders of opposing sides around the table. It’s an appeal for negotiations and a forceful interpretation of the people’s distress call:enough with the war!It is a voice that some would like to shut up, because it is too strong for not breaching through the global consciousness.This is why the physical elimination of the symbol of Christianity – be it a person or a place of worship – can be the fundamentalists’ target of choice.
Translation provided by ProLingua
