New in PJ Media:
Azerbaijan is an excellent example of the influence Sharia can have in a majority-Muslim state, even one that is officially secular and whose society is not notably religious. Like its friend and ally Turkey, Azerbaijan has labored to rid itself of its Christians, and to diminish the domains of its Christian neighbor, Armenia — most notably Artsakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh, a formerly Christian Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan.
Christian Post reported Tuesday that Azerbaijan now “controls” Nagorno-Karabakh, and that “the ethnic Armenian government that existed there for decades is gone. More than 120,000 Armenians were forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland following months of blockade, severe deprivation, and Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive. Azerbaijan now possesses the towns where they lived, the cemeteries where they buried their dead, and the monasteries where Armenian Christians worshiped for centuries.”
Azerbaijan is not exactly taking care to guard the historic churches and monasteries in the territory it has seized, some of which are centuries old. Instead, after the fashion of Islamic jihadis from time immemorial, it is busy erasing the traces of the fact that there were ever any Armenians who lived in Nagorno-Karabakh.
This has been going on for quite some time. In May 2024, Azeri forces destroyed St. John the Baptist Church in the town of Shusi in Artsakh, as well as the entire village of Karintak. Azeris also began construction of a large mosque in Karintak to serve the spiritual needs of the Muslim Azeris who would be moving into the homes that the Armenians had been forced to vacate.
Ironically, according to International Christian Concern, “in 2021, an Azerbaijani legislator posted to Twitter/X a photo of Christian clerics praying at the St. John the Baptist Church in Shushi, citing ‘the national cultural diversity existing in Azerbaijan’ and ‘the atmosphere of ethnic and religious tolerance.’” That was, however, just for show. In reality, Azerbaijan’s “diversity,” like that of the entire Muslim world, was decidedly monochromatic.
ICC noted that the church had been there for over a century and a half: “The church in Shushi, built by Armenians in 1847, was known in Armenian as St. Hovhannes Mkrtich or Kanach Zham (the green chapel). Azerbaijan destroyed the church and several surrounding buildings during the winter of 2023-2024 according to satellite imagery published by Caucasus Heritage Watch, an investigative institution supported by Cornell University. An image dated from April 2024 shows the rubble where the church and surrounding buildings in Shushi once stood.”
The Azeris were just getting started. International Christian Concern reported in June 2024 that “in October and November 2023, Azerbaijan damaged the archeological remains of the 1838 Meghretsots Holy Mother of God Church, the Yerevan Gate Cemetery, and the Ghazanchetsots cemetery, according to satellite imagery published by Caucasus Heritage Watch, an investigative institution supported by Cornell University.”
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mgoldberg says
And no massive coverage in the media, in the NY Times, or Washington Post. None. but if a mosque anywhere is damaged, there’ll be hell to pay and calls for dialogue and the end to ‘islamophobia’.
WPM says
Those news sources are more concern with “far right political groups” in western Europe trying to slow or stop the Islamic invasion of Europe if those “far right people ” are elected by the native population of Europe .Why write about a Christion genocide in Africa or Asia ,or the near east when you write about an imaginary genocide in Gaza? Write about imaginary Islamophobia in NYC while in real life Moslems are attacking Jews in Manhattan and Brooklyn .