American Thinker

By Matthew Vadum

Was last week's massacre at Umpqua Community College in Oregon a failed attempt to assassinate a Christian American hero for thwarting a Muslim terrorist train attack this summer in France?

There may simply be a series of unlikely coincidences at play, or there may be circumstantial evidence suggesting that anti-jihadist hero Alek Skarlatos was an intended target of Chris Harper-Mercer, who put several Christians to death in an Umpqua classroom on Thursday, Oct. 1 for being Christian.

Read on and decide for yourself if Harper-Mercer may have wanted to make an example of Skarlatos for the world to see.

And although no evidence revealed thus far directly indicates Harper-Mercer was influenced by Islamic State, plenty of evidence suggests the shooter was acting in furtherance of the Islamic goal of global jihad. Maybe the massacre was intended as a kind of jihadist payback hit.

Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) apparently claimed responsibility on Twitter for the killings Harper-Mercer carried out at Umpqua. The tweet states, "Again #Oregon #USA #WashingtonDC #IslamicState #ISIS #USA[,]" and displays a graphic with the words “Slay Americans” in front of an image of a man in the process of being beheaded.

In August the very high-profile Skarlatos, a devout Christian, helped to disarm Ayoub El-Khazzani, a Moroccan with ties to radical Islam, on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris. The Islamist was armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, a Luger pistol, and a box cutter. Skarlatos and his two American friends traveling with him received France's highest honor, the Legion d'Honneur, from French President François Hollande. Last month they were feted at the White House and the Pentagon. Skarlatos received the U.S. Army's Soldier's Medal.

Skarlatos has publicly acknowledged that he is currently a student at Umpqua, near Roseburg, Ore., and that he was supposed to be attending classes there on Thursday when Harper-Mercer went on a bloody rampage.

More specifically, Skarlatos said he was supposed to be present that day in Snyder Hall, the same building where Harper-Mercer carried out his massacre.

As USA Today reports

In a taped interview with Ellen DeGeneres on Thursday, Skarlatos said he was supposed to be in the building where Thursday's shooting took place. "I had classes in Snyder Hall," said Skarlatos. "It's a fairly small community college, the town in general, everybody knows each other. So with that many deceased, I mean everybody's going to know at least one person." [...] "I would have been there today if I didn't agree to do this show," he said. "I had classes picked out and everything."

As a famous American and Christian who prevented what could have been a high-casualty terrorist attack in France — one of the few Western nations that over the objections of President Obama is actually trying to do something about the Islamist peril — Skarlatos would have been an attractive target for Islamists.

Because America and much of the world holds Skarlatos up as a symbol of heroic Western resolve to defeat Islamism, those who support Muslim expansionism view him as an enemy. There are very few people on the planet who would be a more valuable target than Skarlatos.

Islamists aren't exactly known for forgiving and forgetting. A British supporter of Islamic State reportedly published the name and address of the U.S. Navy SEAL soldier who is credited with killing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The Islamist identified the serviceman as "a number one target to eventually hunt down and kill."

Islamists view not only Skarlatos, but also his two childhood friends who helped to foil the train attack, as enemies. The three young men have been widely identified in news reports as fervent Christians. Skarlatos attended "an independent Christian middle school," the Sacramento Beereported.

Over the years the three friends have stayed in touch, united by longtime bonds and their shared religious faith, Alek's brother Peter Skarlatos said. “They’re all Christians. They’re all very religious.”

Which brings us to Harper-Mercer, 26 (his age was initially reported as 20) who killed 10 people and wounded seven at Umpqua Community College last Thursday before being killed by police. Witnesses said that Harper-Mercer wore body armor and entered a classroom where an English and writing class was being conducted. He demanded that those present say if they were Christian.

Those who said yes were fatally shot in the head. He reportedly said "because you're a Christian, you're going to see God in just about one second." Those who said no or refused to answer were shot in the legs. No news reports indicate anyone in Snyder Hall identified himself or herself as Muslim.

Singling out Christian hostages for death is the same modus operandi used by Islamic terrorist groups like al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab.

As Raymond Ibrahim reports at Jihad Watch, Al Shabaab did the same thing as Harper-Mercer did when it attacked a school in Kenya:

For the record, there is a precedent here: Whenever Islamic terrorists raid large centers where Muslims and Christians are intermingled, they routinely separate Muslims from Christians, before massacring the latter. For example, last April in Kenya, gunmen from the Somali Islamic group, Al Shabaab—“the youth”—stormed Garissa University, singled out Christian students, and murdered them, some beheaded.

Al Shabaab "has a long history of singling Christians out from among Muslims for slaughter," according to Ibrahim. He provides four other recent examples from Kenya:

June 15, 2014: Approximately 50 militants from Al Shabaab went on a killing spree in Mpeketoni, a predominantly Christian town on Kenya’s coast. They chanted “Allahu Akbar,” killed whoever could not recite verses from the Koran, and went door-to-door asking residents their religion, killing those who answered “Christian.” More than 57 people were killed, including six children of church pastors. August 24, 2014: Al Shabaab abducted a group of traders near the island of Lamu. The militants eventually released three of them, because they were Muslims, but beheaded the fourth, a Christian. November 22, 2014: Al Shabaab attacked a bus and massacred 28 of its Christian passengers. Again, Muslim passengers were separated and left unharmed. December 2, 2014: Al Shabaab gunmen launched an early morning raid on quarry workers sleeping in their worksite tents near the city of Mandera, along the Somali border. Christians and Muslims were separated before the Christians, thirty-six of them, were beheaded or shot dead.

Harper-Mercer has been identified in news reports as emotionally disturbed and as anti-organized religion or an atheist.

But unlike double-murderer Vester Lee Flanagan II (a.k.a. Bryce Williams), the gay, black, Black Lives Matter-supporting, and Obama-supporting registered Democrat who shot two white former TV colleagues to death on live television, Harper-Mercer didn't leave an elaborate social media trail behind. (Harper-Mercer did reportedly write online about Flanagan, building him up as a role model. "A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone ... Seems the more people you kill, the more your're [sic] in the limelight.)... Keep reading

FrontPage Magazine

The Orthodox Christian Church, which is reclaiming its traditional role in post-Soviet Russia, has just described its government’s fight against the Islamic State and other jihadi groups in Syria as a “holy war.”

According to Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Church’s Public Affairs Department,

The fight with terrorism is a holy battle and today our country is perhaps the most active force in the world fighting it. The Russian Federation has made a responsible decision on the use of armed forces to defend the People of Syria from the sorrows caused by the arbitrariness of terrorists. Christians are suffering in the region with the kidnapping of clerics and the destruction of churches. Muslims are suffering no less.

This is not a pretext to justify intervention in Syria. For years, Russia’s Orthodox leaders have been voicing their concern for persecuted Christians. Back in February 2012, the Russian church described to Vladimir Putin the horrific treatment Christians are experiencing around the world, especially under Islam:

The head of External Church Relations, Metropolitan Illarion, said that every five minutes one Christian was dying for his or her faith in some part of the world, specifying that he was talking about such countries as Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan and India. The cleric asked Putin to make the protection of Christians one of the foreign policy directions in future. “This is how it will be, have no doubt,” Putin answered.

Compare and contrast Putin’s terse response with U.S. President Obama, who denies the connection between Islamic teachings and violence; whose policies habitually empower Christian-persecuting Islamists; who prevents Christian representatives from testifying against their tormentors; and who even throws escaped Christian refugees back to the lions, while accepting tens of thousands of Muslim migrants.

Russian Patriarch Kirill once even wrote an impassioned letter to Obama, imploring him to stop empowering the murderers of Christians. That the patriarch said “I am deeply convinced that the countries which belong to the Christian civilization bear a special responsibility for the fate of Christians in the Middle East” must have only ensured that the letter ended up in the Oval Office’s trash can. After all, didn't Obama make clear that America is "no longer a Christian nation"?

Of course, Russian concerns for Christian minorities will be cynically dismissed by the usual brood of talking heads on both sides. While such dismissals once resonated with Americans, they are becoming less persuasive to those paying attention, as explained in “Putin’s Crusade—Is Russia the Last Defender of the Christian Faith?”

For those of us who grew up in America being told that the godless communist atheists in Russia were our enemies, the idea that America might give up on God and Christianity while Russia embraces religion might once have been difficult to accept. But by 2015, the everyday signs in America show a growing contempt for Christianity, under the first president whose very claims of being a Christian are questionable. The exact opposite trend is happening for Russia and its leaders—a return to Christian roots.

Indeed, growing numbers of Americans who have no special love for Russia or Orthodoxy—from billionaire capitalist Donald Trump to evangelical Christians—are being won over by Putin’s frank talk and actions.

How can they not? After one of his speeches praising the West’s Christian heritage—a thing few American politicians dare do—Putin concluded with something that must surely resonate with millions of traditional Americans: “We must protect Russia from that which has destroyed American society”—a reference to the anti-Christian liberalism and licentiousness that has run amok in the West.

Even the Rev. Franklin Graham’s response to Russia’s military intervention in Syria seems uncharacteristically positive, coming as it is from the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which for decades spoke against the godless Soviets: “What Russia is doing may save the lives of Christians in the Middle East…. You understand that the Syrian government … have protected Christians, they have protected minorities from the Islamists.”

Should U.S supported jihadis (“rebels”) succeed in toppling the government of Syria, Graham correctly predicts that there will be “a bloodbath of Christians”:

There would be tens of thousands of Christians murdered and slaughtered and on top of that, you would have hundreds of thousands of more refugees pouring into Europe. So Russia right now, I see their presence as helping to save the lives of Christians.

Incidentally, it's an established fact that the “good rebels”—or “moderates”—are persecuting Christians no less than the Islamic State.

When asked why the Obama administration is so callous towards the plight of persecuted Christians, Graham, somewhat echoing Putin, said the American president was more invested in promoting the homosexual agenda than he is in protecting Christians:

I’m not here to bash the gays and lesbians and they certainly have rights and I understand all of that, but this administration has been more focused on that agenda than anything else. As a result, the Middle East is burning and you have more refugees moving today since World War II. It could have been prevented.

In reality, it's not Russian claims of waging a holy war to save Christians from the sword of jihad that deserves to be cynically dismissed, but rather every claim the Obama administration makes to justify its support for the opposition in Syria (most of which is not even Syrian).

There are no “moderate rebels,” only committed jihadis eager to install Islamic law, which is the antithesis of everything the West once held precious. If the “evil dictator” Assad kills people in the context of war, the “rebels” torture, maim, enslave, rape, behead, and crucify people solely because they are Christian.

How does that make them preferable to Assad?

Moreover, based on established precedent—look to Iraq and Libya, the other countries U.S. leadership helped “liberate”—the outcome of ousting the secular strongman of Syria will be more atrocities, more Christian persecution, more rapes and enslavement, and more bombed churches and destroyed antiquities, despite John Kerry’s absurd assurances of a “pluralistic” Syria once Assad is gone. It will also mean more terrorism for the West.

Once again, then, the U.S. finds itself on the side of Islamic terrorists, who always reserve their best for America. The Saudis—the head of the Jihadi Snake which U.S. presidents are wont to kiss and bow to—are already screaming bloody murder and calling for an increased jihad in Syria in response to Russia’s holy war.

Will Obama and the MSM comply, including through an increased propaganda campaign? Top Islamic clerics like Yusuf al-Qaradawi—who once slipped on live television by calling on the Obama administration to wage “jihad for Allah” against Assad—seem to think so. Already the U.S. “welcomes” the new cruel joke that Saudi Arabia, one of the absolute worst human rights violators, will head a U.N. human rights panel.

At day’s end and all Realpolitik aside, there is no denying reality: what the United States and its Western allies have wrought in the Middle East—culminating with the rise of a bloodthirsty caliphate and the worst atrocities of the 21st century—is as unholy as Russia’s resolve to fight it is holy.

Coptic Solidarity

Turkey’s Muslims recently invaded with violent intent a number of Armenian (Christian) neighborhoods in Istanbul.

“These districts must be turned into Armenian and Kurdish cemeteries,” chanted the angry Turks who support the Erdogan government.

This came in response to ongoing clashes between Turkish authorities and the Kurdish Worker’s Party in the east and southeast of the nation—though it is unclear how Armenians are to blame, except in the spirit of the “collective punishment” of inferiors.

The Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople released a statement saying that it prays for an end to the chaos threatening the unity of Turkey. It also expressed disquiet over the intentional targeting of and incitement against the Armenian community in Turkish media:

From time to time expressions of some writers targeting our community and identifying it with that terrorist group deeply insult the Armenian citizens who have always been committed to this country and possess civic consciousness. Using unjust expressions referring to the Armenian citizens considering themselves a part of Turkey is an attitude not fitting in the frames of goodness. We are convinced that the majority of our nation does not agree to these alienating expressions.