A Message For Easter

Christ is risen from the tomb, conquering death by death- Old Russian Easter hymn.


Today is Easter Sunday, the day Christians the world over celebrate the Resurrection that is at the heart of their faith.  And I want to wish all of my Christian friends and readers a joyous and inspiring Easter.

This week has been a celebration of hope and freedom, with Passover starting last Monday night and continuing through the weekend until next Tuesday. Which of course also coincides with Holy Week which culminates this weekend with Easter Sunday. This linkage is entirely appropriate, since Jesus had come to Jerusalem for the Passover ceremonies and the famous Last Supper was a Passover Seder...the ritual meal where Jews all over the world retell the story of the Exodus, celebrate their G-d-given freedom and eat the unleavened bread, matzoh, to commemorate their ancestor's journey and deliverance from bondage and slavery. The bread Jesus spoke of as recorded in the Gospels was none other than the humble matzoh, the unleavened bread the Hebrews made because they were 'in haste to depart' from Egypt and had no time for it to rise.

 

The story of the Resurrection is a story of freedom too...freedom of the soul, and a promise of eternal life to believing Christians who understand what the rolling away of the stones means for them.

At this time, when religious freedom is under attack in ways and in places where we never supposed it ever would be, it is important to reflect on the message of Passover and Easter, and how that message can free us from bondage...especially the chains we forge ourselves, either by our own choices or by acquiescing to the evil choices of others.

Just over one year ago, last Easter, Muslims in Pakistan decided to celebrate the holiday in their own way. In Lahore, Pakistan, Gulshan-e-Iqbal park set aside a special area for Christian. Many of them took their children to the park for a special Easter treat.

At midday,when the park was crowded with families, a Taliban faction called Jamaat-ul-Ahrar set off a huge bomb in the parking area, right near the swings, the picnic area and the children's rides, with the exploding vehicles in the parking area adding to the carnage.

According to Senior police official Haider Ashraf, ball bearings were found all over the crowded park. That's a common tactic, one frequently used by the Arabs whom call themselves Palestinians against Israeli civilians in Arafat's Second Intifada. The blast force turns the ball bearings into high velocity anti-personnel weapons, rather like shrapnel.

As Jamaat-ul-Ahrar spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told the Associated Press in a phone call, "The target was Christians."

It was indeed. It was their way of saying 'Happy Easter, infidels.'

This year, it was the Copt's turn. On Palm Sunday, at least 45 victims were killed in an Islamic terrorist attack on two Coptic churches in Egypt and hundreds were injured. The first suicide bomber hit St George's Church in Tanta. The second struck northwest, at St Mark's Cathedral in Alexandria, formerly one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. COptic Pope Tawadros II had just left the cathedral after hearing about the Tanta attack. The jihadis came within minutes of killing the Coptic patriarch while he was at worship on Palm Sunday.

Jihad is doing its best to exterminate Christianity not just in the region that gave it birth, but worldwide.

So why do I mention these far away horrors in an article on Easter?

Partly because the horrors aren't so far away anymore. We've been importing them.

Our Department of Justice just arrested the first Muslim doctor in the U.S. multiple counts of female genital mutilation (FGM). Detroit emergency room Doctor Jumana Nagarwala is accused of performing illegal female genital mutilations (between 2005 and 2017. Her victims are minor girls, some as young as six years old.

According to the criminal complaint, Nagarwala performed these procedures in a "medical clinic" outside of the hospital. Girls as young as 6 or 7 from next door Minnesota (where there's a huge Somali community) were also brought by their parents to Nagarwala for FGM. They were reportedly told by their parents that they were being taken on a special "girls trip" and needed to go the doctor for a "stomach ache" and to "get the germs out."

The parents were also interviewed by the FBI and could face charges.

Like 'honor killings' this has been going on in America for quite some time. It's just that until now, no one in law enforcement was given support by our government to try and stop it. In the U.S. as well as other Western countries with large Muslim populations, aside from the local FGM doctors, a favorite tactic is to send the girls back to the old country where relatives will see to it that the children are mutilated for life.

And of course, there is a bevy of the usual attacks on the infidels...Stockholm, Jerusalem, St. Petersburg, ad nauseum. It's become the new normal. Meanwhile the current Pope and others like the Archbishop of Canterbury urge the west to import more of the same poison en masse. Indeed, in London itself, 500 churches have been closed while 423 mosques have been opened.

Christianity  and indeed the entire Judeo-Christian ethic that formed western society  is under attack, not just from Islamism but from the secular, anti Judeo-Christian Left.

Today is a day of  holiness and joy. But as you celebrate with your loved ones, remember that the freedom to do so is not a given, and must be fought for and won to be maintained. And take strength from the message of Easter, that there is light and hope even in the darkest times.