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The Michael Knowles Show
Middle East's Horrifying Secret Exposed | Fr. Kiely With Michael Knowles
00:46:09
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- [00:00]
Michael Knowles
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Hershey's Narrator
Hershey's cookies and cream bar and I'm taken right back to college. Move in. Day I was a little overwhelmed by the newness of it all. Boxes were everywhere. I needed a break from unpacking. But just as I was able to take a breath and open my Hershey's cookies and cream bar, my new roommate Rachel walked in. I offered her a piece, but she said no. Then after a beat, she said, actually, those are my favorite ones. We left, the ice was broken and we've been friends ever since.
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Father Benedict Keeley
Hershey's. It's your happy place.
- [01:04]
Michael Knowles
My friend Father Benedict Keeley has traveled from the UK to the Holy Land to most recently Egypt, and now here to America. And it is entirely an open question as to where Christianity is most persecuted in the world. Father Keely, first of all, thank you for being here.
- [01:23]
Father Benedict Keeley
Thank you, Michael, for having me, as always.
- [01:25]
Michael Knowles
You're from a nominally Christian country. It seems to be, I don't know, the fastest growing Muslim country probably in the world. You've still got a little sand on your cassock, I think, from Egypt. Now you're in America, where the rights of Christians have been precarious for years. All I see on the Internet are conflicting claims about where and how Christians are most persecuted. There's no question that by the numbers, Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world. But we see the desecration by an IDF soldier of a crucifix in southern Lebanon. Then we see many more videos, I think, of Christians being beheaded by Muslims in Nigeria or Middle East. And then we see these incursions on religious rights even in the West. Where does the threat lie?
- [02:21]
Father Benedict Keeley
The threat's universal, as you said. It's worse in some places than others. We're not actually getting our heads chopped off yet in England, although, remember in France, just in 2015, Father Jacques Carmel, Catholic priest, martyred in his parish in Normandy by jihadists. So it's not. Not happening. The problem is it's a slow thing in Europe in terms of taking over public space. The. The praying in public, that's becoming quite evident. There's no need for it, praying in the streets, etc. In England, there are arrests, for example, of street preachers, Christian street preachers. No imams are arrested for preaching in the street, but Christians are being regularly arrested now because people find their words offensive. That's all you have to say. Now, a street preacher in England is saying, preaching the gospel and perhaps alluding to Christian teaching on sexuality. And someone in the crowd has to say, I find that offensive, and they can be arrested. However, the imam, who's also in fact, preaching almost the same thing, at least in terms of human sexuality, is never arrested. But yes, in Africa now, it's exponential. The killing of Christians. Nigeria, as we've mentioned, but also recently, in recent days now, jihadists are spreading across Mali, Burkina Faso that they've probably just about taken over Mali. The French left a few months ago, the Russians were there. They've actually had to surrender in the last few days, Jihadist expansion across Africa, which will also then feed into a very serious migration problem again for Europe that will probably make the last migration crisis in 2015 into almost nothing. That this is going to be millions of Africans being driven across into Europe. So things are going to heat up a little bit.
- [04:20]
Michael Knowles
You know, this is the point that I find very, very confusing, because to bring it to a very recent head, in terms of the headlines, I was as distressed as anybody to see the IDF soldier desecrate the crucifix. I was pleased to see to some degree the IDF take responsibility. But the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, came out and he said, we're going to prosecute this person and it's totally unacceptable. But I was distressed as anybody to see that. However, I've noticed that some people have reacted by seeming to go soft on Islam. And it's a disturbing trend I'm seeing on the right among Christians, where I think, folks, if your political analysis is leading you to go soft on Islam, which has been attempting to conquer the west since at least 732, and really even a little earlier than that, maybe something's gone wrong in one's calculation.
- [05:22]
Father Benedict Keeley
It's a question of balance, and that's unbalanced, obviously, as simple as that. Yes, there are some. We lose a Number of members of the audience. The moment we start discussing Israel. Of course, in terms of balance, we have to be very fair and very accurate. I remember once a cardinal went to Iraq in the very early days when ISIS was beginning, in 2015, I think. And one of the things he said, which has always struck me, stayed with me, was he said, when you're talking about the persecution of Christians, you must talk with complete honesty and, and complete transparency. We must also, in a sense, talk about everything that way, with honesty and transparency. Are there problems for Christians in Israel? Some problems involving, for example, spitting at Christians in Jerusalem, perhaps some insults. There are serious problems with the settlers attacking some of the Christian villages and that must be vociferously condemned. However, it is a fact that is probably the safest place in the Middle east to be a Christian. They are equal citizens, obviously, in Israel, Palestinian Christians or all the kinds of Christians. But no, there's a curious marriage. The French call it Islamo gauchism, Islamist leftism. This peculiar marriage of the left and Islam, which is strong in France but also now very much in England. We have several Muslim MPs in England standing for a Muslim party, the Labour Party. The Labour government is playing very much to that audience. It's a very stupid marriage, a marriage made in hell and it will end very badly. It'll end in a very bad divorce because Islamists have one agenda and they will use as many useful idiots as they can. And they are useful to them and they are idiots. And in the end they will find out that they are. It's really also the, the subject of the French novelist Wilbeck in his novel Submission, Submission, about an imagined takeover of France by an Islamist government. But it's looking less like a science fiction novel or in the future, much more likely it's fear. Michael, once again, let's be brutally honest, Christians, maybe 500 years ago and the Crusades chopped a few heads off. We haven't been doing that for a long time, thanks be to God. But if you insult Islam, your life is in grave danger.
- [08:06]
Michael Knowles
Of course, you know the Islamo Ghoshism, I really like this phrase because we see it throughout the west and some people scratch their heads at it. They say, how on earth could the rainbow flag waving leftist team up with the Islamists? This doesn't make any sense. And I thought, well, it does make sense if you recognize they both have the same enemy, which is our civilization and the religion that animates our civilization. So I'm not really surprised. Obviously, once they vanquish us they'll have to deal with each other and that probably won't go anywhere.
- [08:36]
Father Benedict Keeley
It will be bloody.
- [08:36]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, it will be very bloody. It's sort of like the Iran Iraq war. You kind of just want them both to lose, but you understand that they have a common enemy. And then you see the right, which is obviously very, very afraid of it, and you see even right wing political parties, including in the uk, taking a little bit of a softer stance on Islam. And I suspect the reason they're doing it is they think that the demographic change is just insurmountable at this point. When you look at certain places in Europe, 40% of the births are to Muslims. And it seems to me they say, all right, our civilization's over. We're not having kids, we're not embracing the faith, we're not spreading the faith. And so we'll become a museum. And we'll hope that our new population aren't too tough on us, which is a politics of despair. And I don't think it's gonna work out.
- [09:27]
Father Benedict Keeley
We can't despair. We may be living through what Tolkien called, or we are living through what Tolkien called the long defeat. His idea that all of human history is, in a sense, the power of evil keeps fighting back, but we do win in the end. But there's a wonderful Anglo Saxon poem, I can't remember the name of it at the moment, but it's about a group of warriors, Anglo Saxon warriors, who are in a final batt, as it were, and they all know they're going to die. But there's some beautiful speeches of the men, the commanders, saying, you know, we know we're going to die, but we're going to fight to the death anyway. And I'm not using that sort of military language thinking we're all going to have to fight to the death, but we do in a sense have to have that spirit that if we give up on our civilization, which you're quite right, is the reason why there is that marriage. The Islamists hate our civilization and want their own civilization. The left, the greens, the goshies, whoever, also in a sense hate our civilization and imagine that Islam might be better. But we have to fight. Whether it's physical or spiritual, we must fight. If we have to die, then we go down fighting, but not giving up. That's not the Christian spirit.
- [10:51]
Michael Knowles
So then what do conservatives, right wingers, Christians, what do we do to fight back? Because 10 years ago, at the beginning of the Trump era, we were all excited there was going to be this new Kind of populism. There was a resurgence of nationalism contrary to liberal globalism. You had this broad alliance that brought together kind of centrist liberals with traditionalists, nationalists, Christians, Catholics, Protestants, Jews. It seemed very hopeful. And now we're looking toward the end of the Trump era. I don't know, things seem at least a little more trepidatious, if not a little more pessimistic. So what does a coalition look like now for the ordinary Christian who sees all the numbers going in the wrong direction and wants to mount a Charles Martel like Lepanto esque final Stand? I mean, to use that example of these early battles that have pushed back the spread of Islam, the final great one is the Battle of Vienna, 1683. Jan Sobaevsky. Now there are calls to remove a statue of Jan Sobaevsky in Vienna that says that's not a good sign.
- [12:04]
Father Benedict Keeley
Would that we had a Charles Martel or a Don John of Lepanto. It doesn't seem like we've got anybody like that. We have to. We have to. A preacher greater than I once talked about building a house on a firm foundation. And if you'll recall, he said that a house built on sand will collapse when the wind and the rain come. There's really no foundation for Western civilization unless it's built on Christianity and robust Christianity, not wishy washy rainbow Christianity. So we need to be unafraid of our faith, strong in our faith. This is why perhaps the so called quiet revival is encouraging for us. But it's only a revival. When the young people who come to church find something solid, they find some meat with their potatoes. If they find all it's just potatoes, they'll leave. They don't want vegetarianism, they want something solid. So I think we need to be a lot more. Not triumphalistic, not arrogant. I always think of Pope Benedict XVI's motto, Caritas in veritati. Speak the truth in love, but speak the truth. We must speak the truth. And the Pope, in fact, Pope Leo recently gave a beautiful homily about the need, in terms of language, of using truth. In fact, he's the first Pope, I think, in history who used the phrase Orwellian. But more than that, he was talking about words meaning what they're meant to mean. Not as Humpty Dumpty said, words mean whatever I say. They mean neither more nor less. Humpty Dumpty said, we Christians must say what we mean and mean what we say.
- [13:57]
Michael Knowles
So you mentioned this quiet revival, which is encouraging. What will it look like you have 38% year over year increase in adult conversions to the Catholic Church in the US that was after the previous year, which also had just about the same number of increased conversions. You're seeing France reporting much, much higher levels of adult conversions. So it's all good. Very young people particularly drawn toward tradition, more traditional forms of the liturgy and flavors of Christianity, especially Catholicism. How does that translate into a political transformation? Look, I care about their souls, and obviously that's the most important thing. But from the basic level of preserving Christendom, which now we call the west, what is that going to look like? If anything?
- [14:50]
Father Benedict Keeley
It transfers, I think, into what we would call authentic conservatism, not necessarily a party called a conservative party, which certainly again in the United Kingdom has really abandoned all conservative principles. It transfers into, from Christian orthodoxy, Catholic Christian orthodoxy, into then political orthodoxy. In terms of marriage, the support of the family, marriage between a man and a woman, the support of the family, encouraging family life, birth rates. I mean, the subject is so huge, but it's simple stuff. I have a friend, in fact, you probably know him, but I have a friend who was. He was whining one day about the state of Europe and what was going on. And another friend, this other chap is not married. And another friend said to him, stop whining, get married and have kids. Begin, begin the domestic church, right? You have five, six, seven kids. It's small. Small is beautiful. I think the, the, the transfer will be because we can't sort of sit on our laurels in terms of this quiet revival. I think it's going to be more like Benedict XVI said when he was Father Ratzinger in the 1960s, when he talked about a smaller, purer church. Because apparently, if you look at statistics, more people are leaving the church than are joining. But that could be those generations, my generation and older and a little bit younger, who were never catechized. But the younger people who are coming in now are coming in, many of them non baptized. They know nothing about the faith and they want beauty, the old ways to God. They want beauty, truth and goodness. If they find it, this is going to be authentic. If they don't find it, as I said about the meat and potatoes, if the church thinks it's business as usual, then they're going to lose this quiet revival. It is not business as usual. Chesterton once said, people say you can't turn back the clock. He said, it's very easy. You just get the clock and turn it back. You can turn back the clock. So let's not be afraid in some ways of turning back the clock.
- [17:11]
Michael Knowles
Yes, the young people, anecdotally, but the plural of anecdote is data. The young people who are coming into the Church now and returning to the Church, they want Orthodoxy, they want tradition, they want smells and bells, they want what the fathers taught and the doctors of the Church taught. And they don't really care if some innovator in the 1970s thought he had a bright idea. You see this among the clergy, too. The clergy in terms of self identification as conservative or progressive. For the boomer priests, it's overwhelmingly progressive. Huge swathes of progressive clergy. For the young priests, they're all trads. They make me look like a democrat, you know, they're all slightly to the right of Genghis Khan. And so this is all very encouraging to me. This has led to a debate in recent weeks over whether the new Holy Father, Pope Leo, is a liberal. I keep seeing this. It was a bit of a spat between the Pope and the President. Really?
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Father Benedict Keeley
I must be. You might have missed that.
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Michael Knowles
Blink and you'll miss it. But I saw people contending that Pope Leo is a leftist, a hippie, a communist, and I thought, you know, I follow this relatively closely. That is not my understanding of Pope Leo. Am I misguided?
- [18:28]
Father Benedict Keeley
No, I think it may be fair to say because of his time in Latin America, et cetera. He may politically lean, perhaps a little bit more towards the left, but he's an authentic. I know it's a very low bar. He's an authentic believer. It is a low bar for the Pope, but he's an authentic believer and he's solid. He's taking things very slowly. I think he's seen, shall we say, some of the confusion of the previous decade or so, which caused a lot of problems for many, many people. It's not being disrespectful of the late
- [19:05]
Michael Knowles
Pope, but the Francis era was a little tough at times.
- [19:09]
Father Benedict Keeley
One of our mutual friends, priest friends, used to say that he shouldn't speak on the plane because, you know, oxygen doesn't reach the brain when you get to the high altitude. So I think all the papal press conferen should stop on the plane. Not just Pope Francis'. But no, I think that Leo was. There were some questions and I think, again, valid questions, which we once again have to be transparent and honest about, perhaps some little confusion in his language, in his little spat with the President about peace and war. And we need, once again, some clarity. This is the other thing I think young people want when they come to church is clarity, not confusion. There's enough confusion everywhere. Everything in their lives is confusing. You want to go to one place where it's clear, clear and clearly taught and clearly explained and logical and rational and intelligent. They don't want to be talked down to. And I don't think this pope talks down to anyone. But perhaps there could be a little bit more precision.
- [20:18]
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- [20:36]
Michael Knowles
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Michael Knowles
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Michael Knowles
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Michael Knowles
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- [21:31]
Michael Knowles
What does that mean for the other Protestant denominations? I hate to pick on your own country, but the Church of England has just appointed a lady as the Archbishopress of Canterbury. You have. King Charles is now the defender of faiths rather than the defender of the faith, which is supposed to be his job as the head of the Church of England ever since Henry VIII decided he didn't like Rome so much. And so what is the state of the rest of the flavors of Christianity, the establishment?
- [22:07]
Father Benedict Keeley
I've used the image of a sort of a facade or a stage set. If you visit England, as many Americans do, they come and see, apparently a Beautiful Christian country. They see the Westminster Abbey and the churches and the facade of the state, the coronation. But it is unfortunately now very much a stage that behind it there isn't much. I mean, Britain has passed abortion up to birth. Luckily they just defeated for the moment, a suicide bill right up to the last stage. Religion is weird. Christianity is weird. In England, Tony Blair's spin doctor famously said, we don't do God, which is an awful thing. Once again, I'd say, well, you're an idiot then. You're considered pretty weird still in England if you're a Christian. Although again, once. It's beginning to change because of this so called quiet revival. But it's not changing with that group of people who are the intelligentsia, the conoscenti, the controllers of the media and academia. And they're rather, I think, nonplussed by this, that these young people are sort of rejecting everything we stand for. Well, guess what, they're rebels. You know, they're rebels with a cause as opposed to without a cause. The 60s, the Soissons, Huitards, the 68ers were rebels without a cause, just pulling everything down. These are people who say it's a bit like. I may have used this analogy before. It's a bit like in the original Planet of the Apes, if you remember the original one with Charlton Heston, that final scene where they're in the desert and the sands blow and suddenly they see sort of bits of Times Square or something. I think a lot of young people are feeling like, well, here's our collapsed civilization. We're going to have to rebuild this somehow. So we're back in a sense to what you asked about, how that transfers into a political thing. It's real work. And we may, as Christians, Michael, not see the results, but that's a very Christian thing. Again, the men that built the cathedrals of Europe all died before they saw their work. Think of Notre Dame or Chartres or something. But they built something knowing it was for the future.
- [24:33]
Michael Knowles
Yes, Gaudi is actually lucky to have died before the finishing Sagrada Familia.
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Father Benedict Keeley
Just about finished, isn't it?
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Michael Knowles
You mentioned suicide and there's two levels to this. There's the civilizational suicide, which a lot of us are feeling. The decline in birth rates, the notion that we used to be a proper country. It's a meme that goes around. You see videos From 20, 30 years ago, you say, much less 60, 70 years ago, you say we used to
- [24:56]
Preborn.com Representative
be a proper country.
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Michael Knowles
People kind of behaved, well dressed. Well, what happened to us. But then there's the personal level, which is that increasingly throughout this country, the uk, Canada, America's evil top hat, they keep spreading suicide bills. And I once sat with Peter Singer, who is the most amiable monster you've ever met in your life. A very charming.
- [25:16]
Father Benedict Keeley
I believe Reinhold Heydrich had great conversation and played the violin.
- [25:21]
Michael Knowles
Yes. He makes the argument not just for abortion, infanticide, philosophically basically consistent argument, but especially we were talking about euthanasia, so called good death, but it's the worst death, it's suicide. And I think his argument resonates with more people than the Christian argument. His argument is that when people are sick, very old, they're in a lot of pain, they know the end is near, that it's cruel to force them to continue and suffer. And really we ought to give them the mercy to kill themselves or to kill them ourselves, you know, with their consent, sometimes without their consent. And that's the merciful thing to do. And I obviously don't agree with that, but I do see it resonating and I do see these suicide bills spreading. How do we as Christians tell people that they're wrong not to want to see Granny suffer first?
- [26:17]
Father Benedict Keeley
There are very practical things. It's a bit like one of the cardinal said a number of years ago, you can't just condemn abortion. You've got to do something. I mean, provide homes for young women to have their babies and et cetera, et cetera. We need, for example, to strongly support palliative care. If I know having, I'm based still in the usa, palliative care isn't really a big thing. Hospices, they've come more in recent years.
- [26:48]
Michael Knowles
In the uk, you mean?
- [26:49]
Father Benedict Keeley
No, in the us.
- [26:50]
Michael Knowles
Oh, in the us.
- [26:51]
Father Benedict Keeley
In the UK there are a lot of hospices, but a lot of people don't have that experience. They think I'm going to die in terrible pain. And probably, unfortunately, in the hospital system they will. When you see good palliative care, the hospice system, no human needs to die in pain. It can be handled. So that's the first thing, a very practical response. But then we come back to the whole sense of what is a human being. We believe man and woman made in the image and likeness of God. And we must honor with the greatest honor that person, the person, body and soul. And it's that sense of autonomy. The reason why, I think suicide, one of the reasons why suicide is becoming in theory so popular is because obviously of the thought of autonomy. We create ourselves, we are, we don't decide when we're born, but in a sense, it's decided for us. But we certainly now will decide when we die. We decide what sex we're going to be, or even maybe we become an animal. We are God. And you see, suddenly, for us believers, we're back in the garden. We're back in the garden where someone is whispering to us. The deceiver is whispering. You don't have to believe any of this. You can be like God. You can decide. And all through human history, that's the voice. But that voice is now very powerful, and that voice is very accepted. So I think we have a very difficult task to help people who have no conception of the person and the person made in the image of God, of why this is wrong. But you can't just say it's wrong. You've also got to do a lot about it as well.
- [28:46]
Michael Knowles
There's a scandal aspect to it as well. I think it's the only thing that makes me feel a little sorry for Gavin Newsom. I have very little sympathy for Gavin Newsom.
- [28:55]
Father Benedict Keeley
Please help me. I can't find anything.
- [28:56]
Michael Knowles
Here it is. When he was younger, his mother decided she was gonna kill herself. And he's talked about this publicly. He got a call from her one day, said, all right, Gavin, if you want to see me, Tuesday's my last day, so you can come on over. And she basically roped her son into killing. And I've known people who have suicide in their family. It never goes away. Even when they tell you the pain goes away, it doesn't. It's a scandal that can persist for generations. And to rope someone else in on this is, I think, terribly callous to the rest of one's family. You know, we focus so much on the pressure that old and sick people feel to kill themselves, which is really horrifying. And in Canada now, if you stub your toe or you can't make your last Klarna payment, they offer you a little bit of poison. And so this would really be good for you. Yeah, but look, that's horrible. This story's coming out of the Netherlands of a woman fighting children, being euthanized. Oppression, yes, all horrifying, but it's also wrong for the family members who are then scandalized by this, who have to go on living with this. It's the worst thing you can do to any member of your family is to kill yourself. Which then leads us to a key Christian concept and an important political concept, which is the common good. For most of my upbringing, in politics, it was only the commies who talked about the common good. And if you talked about it, you were suspect of being a commie yourself. Then some conservatives started to bring this back in to re inject A very libertarian Ayn Rand infused politics with notions of the common good and classical political philosophy. Where do you think that project stands now?
- [30:37]
Father Benedict Keeley
But that, of course, is Catholic social teaching as well. This is the point. I know you were very enthused. I remember when you heard the name of the new pope, Leo, because of course, Leo XIII is his predecessor in name. That was his great project, Catholic Social teaching. And this is a gift that we can offer the world. This is very important that this is translated into language that people can understand. It's a gift that we have. But when you receive a gift sometimes, or you have a gift, sometimes, people put it in a closet and lock it away or don't even want the gift. We've got to have men and women who are able to articulate this political philosophy. And that was, I think, is encouraging that there are people, especially in the U.S. now, political figures, often Catholic political figures, who are really using this concept, Catholic social teaching, the common good, as the basis of their philosophy. It's less so in Europe and once again back in England, it's not there really at all. Which is why I think the conservative project, you might call it, in England is really struggling because there isn't a solid foundation. So I guess that's a very encouraging thing, the common good.
- [31:54]
Michael Knowles
Right. And if there's. That's a good point, I hadn't even considered that. But from the perspective of the uk, it does seem like there's a bit of a weak foundation there. You have archbishoprices and things like that. It's a little tricky to figure out what you're actually grounding your political project on, because I think it was Cardinal Manning who says all human conflict boils down to theology. It boils down to religion. So then zooming out a little bit past the west, bringing us back to the place where we started. Where are the hotspots for Christian persecution?
- [32:29]
Preborn.com Representative
You obviously run a very important organization,
- [32:31]
Michael Knowles
Nazarean.org, which I highly encourage everybody to go donate to and go support. Where should we focus? The President of the United States himself brought some attention to the plight of Christians in Nigeria, but there are too many places to count. Where should Christians put our focus and our money?
- [32:50]
Father Benedict Keeley
We have often not just compassion fatigue, but sort of action fatigue. We don't know what to do. So often good Christians Catholics. Christians hear of persecution and think, almost throw up our arms and say, well, what can I do? There are very practical things. Thank you. Charitable works, helping Christians stay, that's my charity. To stay in their countries where they've been from the beginning, but to stop migration as well. Advocacy in terms of speaking to legislators. Where are the hotspots still? The Middle east is hot. Obviously, we're in the middle of a war. So this is causing tremendous worries for the Christian population in Iraq, in Syria, et cetera, all over the Middle East. Africa, as I mentioned mentioned earlier, is a real burning hotspot. People talk about ISIS having been defeated. The Caliphate was defeated in Iraq and Syria, although ISIS is re emerging. But in Africa, it's not defeated at all. It's growing hugely. Mass persecution. But this is also not just a problem. You might say, oh, well, that's bad, that's tough. You know, poor Christians. This is a political problem. Do we want to lose that entire continent almost to Islam? An aggressive, dangerous Islam which will, as we said in the beginning, began with the sword and has continued with the sword. Islam is not a religion that is preached and then people convert listening to the preaching. It's a religion of the sword. That's not being Islamophobic. It's being realistic. It's never changed. So that's a real hotspot. The Far east in certain places, even places like the Philippines, it's really across the globe. It's an anti Christian phenomenon, predominantly Islamist in India, aggressive Hinduism. Even Buddhists in places like Burma or whatever you're meant to call it now.
- [34:54]
Michael Knowles
You always think of the Buddhists aside,
- [34:56]
Father Benedict Keeley
little fellows in orange outfits. No, they can be in places like that, can be persecuting. And they're persecuting Muslims, it has to be said. But if the west itself is not Christian, the people who say, oh, well, we need another crusade, well, you got to have crusaders to have a crusade. And unfortunately, and I do mean unfortunately, we don't have any crusaders really. We may have to have little enclaves, little Benedict options, whatever you want to call it. But as I said earlier on, it's back to the family. It's back to. And you have a lot of hope in the United States here. Good places, good communities, a lot of good young people getting married, having families, being supported by the church. These are all very hopeful signs. But we mustn't forget our brethren who are suffering because the church. I've said this before, the church, St. John Paul II, used to talk about the church breathing with two lungs. The lung of the east and the lung of the West. And we mustn't forget that the church began in the Middle East. Our faith is an Eastern religion. A lot of us in the west almost can't quite comprehend that, but we are an Eastern religion. You go to the Middle east, where I've been since 2015, they're singing in Aramaic, speaking in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, just in Egypt, where I was just now. The Copts have been there from the beginning, persecuted for 1400 years. Strong faith, believers in miracles. Miracles are normal. There priest was telling me about a man in a wheelchair who just got up during mass one day. They filmed it, it was only eight years ago. And he said to me, you know, for us cops, miracles are normal. This is our faith, this is where we come from. And we really lose something in the west if we are disconnected from our roots. So that's part of the reason that we support our brothers and sisters in the east, because they're our family and they're our roots.
- [37:13]
Michael Knowles
You mentioned the war in Iran, which was the cause or the circumstance of that little tiff between the spatial breast. A little spatial. How are Christians to think of the war in Iran? Or is there a single way to think about it?
- [37:27]
Father Benedict Keeley
I think you've hit the point. Simplistic solutions and punditry. I know it might be necessary for income for certain people, but simplistic solutions are not the answer. Deep thought is required. I remember when I first went to Iraq in 15, ISIS was just down the road and a lady said to me, who helped me at the beginning, an American lady, she said, when I got off the plane, she said, father, you've got to realize that everything you think you knew, you don't know. It's very complicated. And she was dead, right? I mean, that's a good little bit of humility to be told that and learn that. Because most of the people who comment have never been there, or if they've been there, they've been on one of those flying visits in one of those huge SUVs, and they come in for two days and leave. And it's extremely complicated. But the Christians always suffer in these conflicts because they are the minority. They're always in the middle and they're suffering in Iran. Remember, again, Christians have been in Iran since the beginning. This isn't a new church. There's a lot of talk about many people converting to Christianity in Iran, which is true, but Christians have been there from the beginning. Ancient churches in Iran, in Persia, weren't
- [38:52]
Michael Knowles
the Magi Zoroastrians from somewhere around there, probably.
- [38:57]
Father Benedict Keeley
But, you know, the Armenian church has been there from the beginning, and other Christians, the Assyrian Church of the east, as it was called, was huge there. Right back in three something, four something. But yeah, in Iraq, the Christian community is suffering because the militias there are controlled by Iran. And so they're surrounding a lot of Christian towns. They've been being bombed. I was speaking to one of my friends, priest, in one of those towns, and I said, how are you doing? He said, well, the local Shia militia headquarters is 500 yards away and it's been bombed. So I said, how are people doing? He said, well, we're all just worried. We're worried because it keeps coming, keeps coming. They never have peace. But the Lord didn't promise us that from the beginning. A friend. I wouldn't call him a friend. That's presumptuous. But the great patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, great man, Patriarch Ephraim, very big, jolly fellow with a big beard. I remember him talking once and he said, there are. We always hear about the four marks of the Church. Any catechized Catholic would know what the four marks of the church are. One, holy, Catholic and apostolic. But Patriarch Ephraim said there are actually five marks of the Church.
- [40:19]
Michael Knowles
A big beard.
- [40:20]
Big beard.
- [40:20]
Preborn.com Representative
No.
- [40:21]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [40:21]
Father Benedict Keeley
No, that's jihadi as well. One holy, Catholic, apostolic. And he said, persecuted. Because the Church has been persecuted from the beginning and it will be persecuted until the end. That doesn't mean we don't do anything about it, but we have to be ready for it. If we're being an authentic Christian, it's quite likely in some way, shape or form we'll be persecuted even in the west, more so now. So our care, compassion and concern, maybe almost even selfish, I joke, in Iraq, in Syria, in Egypt, I say, so, you know, sometimes you may have to come in the future, you may have to come and help us. And sweetly they say, oh, we will, we will, you know. But a priest said to me one time when I went to Iraq, early on, he said, we will remember those who helped us. We will also remember those who did not. And that.
- [41:22]
Michael Knowles
That.
- [41:22]
Father Benedict Keeley
I've never forgotten it because it sent a chill down my spine. Because how many of us, some of us are trying in our own little way, but how many are indifferent?
- [41:32]
Michael Knowles
Right?
- [41:33]
Father Benedict Keeley
That's very, very dangerous. Indifference is more dangerous than anything else, Right?
- [41:39]
Michael Knowles
And just to plug your work a little bit further, it's very important one to help these people who, you know, we live fairly decadent lives in the West. Even today, you're yourself. Yeah, I live as. Look at, look at where I am in this. I can smoke cigars when I like. But Christians, where the faith began, do not get to live decadent lives. And so it's very important to help them. And on top of that, it's very important to be prudent to have an eye to the political, because we live in time and space in this suspended period of history between the Nativity and the second coming. And so it's very important what you're doing, which is helping Christians to stay where they are. This would appeal even to non Christian right wingers who say, stop the migrant crisis, but also to help them to defend their homes and to continue to practice the faith where the faith has been practiced for 2000 years.
- [42:33]
Father Benedict Keeley
Well, I'm very grateful to you, Michael. You've been very supportive from the beginning, personally, and by having me on the show, things like that. But, yes, it is. I was thinking about this funnily enough today, that when I started, the first thing I wanted to do was just, yeah, help them stay so they could have jobs, stay in their land. I'd never thought about migration. But then slowly it began to dawn on me as well that, yeah, this is the answer. You keep people in their own countries working, they don't want to leave. So in our own little way, now we're in our 10th anniversary year this year from starting in Iraq. Now we're in six countries. I can't even hold my hands up properly. But Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Armenia, just simply giving a small amount of money. We don't loan a small amount of money, comparatively speaking, to help someone start a family business or if they started a business, to help it to be secure and stay simple things. A coffee shop, a little farm, a taxi service, women run businesses. Almost anything you can think of as a startup, we help. And thanks be to God, over these 10 years, most of them, I think we have a success rate of almost 90%. People don't sell up because if you've got a job and you're looking after your family. When I was in Iraq in August, everyone, I was asking, why did you stay? Why did you stay? Why is this important that you stayed through our health? And they said, because this is where we're from. We've been here from the beginning and we don't want to leave. It's our land, we have a future now. But if there's no job, there's no future. They leave, they want to leave. So it's small but beautiful.
- [44:29]
Michael Knowles
So help them stay. Go to Nazarean.org and give what you can. Father Keely, wonderful as always to see you.
- [44:35]
Father Benedict Keeley
Thank you very much, Michael. Bless you. You.