"Do I know you?"

So many Berliners generally walking around with "Fresse," long faces, either distant and withdrawn or jaded and embittered. Some German some Turk or Arab, some old some young, some new-archaic Muslims some "new-left"-whatevers some klein-bürgerlisch-conservative. Encountering these, when I'm myself conscious of what I'm about, I smile as a matter of course, in my glance a warm greeting of simple fellowship as we pass each other by. There was a time when that amounted to a nice chat now and then with perfect "strangers."

Nowadays, whether the star-of-David is visible around my neck or just the cross I carry for the Iraqi Christian community, I get some of the most glowering looks in return. I mean, if I wore a "Free Palestine!" (from whom exactly, Hamas?) T-Shirt I'd be greeted more often with nods or some form of approval. But I'm satisfied with being glared at, because it is not to mindlessly provoke but to show a sovereign presence of conscious solidarity where it belongs – and that presence is in the love for my fellow Humankind with all its shortcomings, without regard for who's worshipping where (or at all). This is not the message you get from either the majority-seeking Muslims I tend to encounter nor likewise from the self-hating Germans nor others who have lost all faith in democracy. If you smile or are heard carrying a melody without MP3 earplugs shutting the world further out, and for no other reason than that it is your nature, you tend to get that look back of "do I know you?" or even "WTF?"

I'm soberly but joyfully prepared for the next time, regardless of my own circumstances, that someone asks me that:

- "Do I know you?"
- "No, but I know you. That is, the light I carry, and which carries me, knows you – and has known you all your life, even before you got here."
- ("WTF?")
- "And not only that: this same light loves you and always has, is loving you right now, and always will."

Well that is what I'm projecting anyway in my glance or in my smile, even if it never comes to spoken word. And frankly, sometimes it catches on.

You know...?

YOU KNOW WHEN SOMEONE just gets knocked down incessantly, from early on, and gets kept down and kept down and kept down?
When the sheer negativity and power issues of some just bar one's advancement, blocking that one, denying every dignity of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
You know how salt gets poured into wounds, calumny added to indignity and intimidation, murdering the inner child, deadening the native natural joy, warping the psyche?
Sometimes it's from one's own parents, or family structure, or an entire clan-culture.
Sometimes it's the schoolyard or later mobbing at the workplace.
Or it's one's partner or spouse, or neighbor.
Sometimes it's done in "God's name".
It might be small scale or large, individual and personal or massive and looming.

 Well, I'm at war with that.
And where there's indifference toward it, I guess I'm at war with that too.
I always was, though.

Dedication to the Iraqi Christian Population

I.  As of very recently Mosul, the second largest Iraqi city next to Baghdad, with a history rich with Christian culture and identity dating back nearly two millenia, has now been thoroughly ethnically cleansed of it's some 20 still remaining Iraqi-Jewish families and all Christians including all indications of their existence – this feat was accomplished in record time by the "Islamic State"; children were duly beheaded, men crucified, women killed or raped or sold into bondage, those not murdered and buried (dead or alive) in mass graves have been displaced and are now looking for a route to somewhere. These exemplary Muslims and Guardians of the Faith are the past-masters and mentors to the same Hamas which calculatedly places children and civilians in general right there where IDF rockets would obviously be aimed to take out Hamas tunneling and artillery. The Carrion of the Caliphate are now set to carry on in waves right there in Gaza. And the world is busy calling Israel barbaric.

II.  Now in the course of a remarkably short period: the laying waste of an entire national Culture reflecting Mesopotamian antiquity - and to still greater horror, a pathologically calculated genocide by the "Islamic State," sadistically carried out on the Armenian-speaking Christian Community which dates back nearly two millenia - has now been declared fait-accompli. Through the primitive act of mass beheadings and crucifixions, or enslavement, or forced and permanent exodus, the intended establishment of a New Mesopotamian Caliphate atop the smouldering ruins and corpses of an entire region stretching over Iraq into Syria - and now progressing further, promising to extend its grotesque reach throughout the Middle East - has among many other atrocities, realized its Final Solution to the Aramaic-Christian Question in our own time and under the noses of all world powers. They were well financed in this, and no one ever meant to stop them in their tracks. This 16 minute recorded message is my humble outreach to those exterminated Christians of Iraq, men women and children, and to whomever of their numbers have survived this far, to mourn with them, to embrace them, and - should even one single member or family of their Congregation sometime find this - to lend them some comfort of knowing they are not altogether forsaken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvCtDL1zSG8&feature=youtu.be

"...While Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis and Jews mutually could manage to live all together among one another, with some millions of members of Animist religions, coexisting in relative harmony – there was one religion which could make no compromise and stood apart from the rest: Islam."
(Mahatma Gandhi)

III.  It is sad for me to come to terms with the fact that Islam has within itself, in its very roots, it seems in its very core - contrary to the depth of light and joy which I still to this day experience through dhikr and through hadhrat, and through the whole tapestry of Sufism - that this very Islam, not contrary to its stated precepts but embodying and carrying them out: brings in its wake so much darkness. When the darkness of Nazism spread over Europe, one could not rightly address that darkness without naming it, one could not say "but the Germans are alright, the Nazis are a radical fringe," because ca. 80 million Germans said otherwise! Likewise was Stalin, was Mao, was Pol Pot, no voice of a "radical fringe" but of the entire people concerned - whether by agreement, by acceptance or by coercion is a moot point. Only the Resistance within a people, and be it small or without success, can say "not us, and not with our participation." No one else can say it. In Gaza there is not some "radical fringe" using children for protective shields when the inevitable response to rocket-fire comes in return fire - it is the population, goaded by Hamas, yes, but who'd voted Hamas in almost unanimously. Could have been otherwise, but wasn't. The Salafists who formed ISIS, now IS, are not some weird outsiders, they are not the geeks of Islam, they have awesome funding behind them and supplies from witting or unwitting supporters with clout, and a Muslim population participating - not necessarily with their hearts in it, but bound to participate nonetheless by what - a "radical fringe acting on its own"? - NO, by the Qur'an, the edicts of Islam and a long tradition of this (which peaks in violence annually most ironically during Ramadan). A Syrian-Orthodox nun who appears in a 30 minute video (in German) and tells of her efforts to come to the aid there in Syria, explains that blood from the beheadings is actually being collected in bottles and sent to Saudi Arabia for one, selling for say $100,000 so that buyers may wash their hands in the blood of slaughtered infidels - or are we now seeing something akin to ritualistic human sacrifice which even predates Islam?

IV.  This Arabic letter 'N' painted on a door by Islamic hands indicates the house or business of a "Nazarene" or Christian, targeting that family or that business or that whatever, for death in today's Iraq and Syria, for starters.This is the nun, in Arabic, and it's High Noon for the Salafistic IS, and in Doitch we say, "Nun, was nun, was machen wir?"

And just to get a perspective on how this was possible, who made it possible, who stands to profit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=oMjXbuj7BPI

I'll stand by any Kuffar.  Let that go on record.