Story here:
The Church of England has been criticised for promoting a tribute tapestry that features fighters with banned terrorist groups.
Parts of a stitched fabric that lists the names of those killed in the Gaza conflict will go on display at Leeds Minster on Friday.
Material reviewed by The Times appears to show the names of at least 12 members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ] and one member of Hamas, both banned terrorist groups under UK legislation.
Social media posts by PIJ noting the death of “martyrs” and often showing the men in the uniform of the terror group match the names on the tapestry.
The organiser of the tapestry said after being contacted by The Times that the display at the minster would not include panels featuring the names of alleged members of the terror groups.
Mary Evers, of the Stitch Their Names project, said: “The complete body of work is too large to be accommodated in any single venue. Leeds Minster will therefore display only part of it.
“The absence of these names from the Leeds display is a consequence of those practical limitations; no deselection of individual names has taken place.”
Evers said the names on the panel were taken from the death register of the Gaza health ministry, which is controlled by Hamas.
Lovely.
The Stitch Their Names website describes the project as “a profound tribute to the innumerable lives wiped out in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, honouring each individual through the act of stitching their names into fabric.
“Stitched art, often marginalised in militaristic, patriarchal societies, is reclaimed here as a powerful tool of expression and resistance.”
God forbid they should stitch something in tribute to the Christians slaughtered by Islamists in Nigeria or the Congo. Or some tapestry-style memorial to the persecution of Christians and the ongoing death of Christianity across the Middle East.
[A]s Pew Research reports, “Places such as Iraq, Syria, the Palestinian Territories, and, to a lesser degree, Egypt and Lebanon have seen a continuation of the historic exodus of Christians during the past decade alone. The decline is especially significant when one considers that these communities are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. Amid all the modern political forms that have shaped the Middle Eastern geopolitical order, the Christian presence in the region pre-dates Islam, Zionism, Arab nationalism, European colonialism, Western Christianity, and the modern missions movement. It also gives us a unique perspective on geopolitical forces and persecution.”
Persecution continues to be an ever-increasing threat to communities of Christian believers in the Middle East. No doubt the most glaring example of such violence is the ongoing abuse and killing of Christians by the Islamic State, along with other ideologically and religiously hostile groups and organizations. Such violence has been formally recognized as an ongoing genocide by the United States, European Union, and United Kingdom.
However, despite their deeply rooted biblical history, Christians remain the most persecuted religious group in the Middle East. In fact, Christians in Iraq are “close to extinction,” Wikipedia recently reported. Meanwhile, according to U.S. State Department estimates, the number of Christians in Iraq has reportedly fallen from 1.2 million in 2011 to 120,000 in 2024, and the number in Syria from 1.5 million to 300,000 — diminishing numbers driven by persecution by terrorist groups and repression by authoritarian regimes.
But not a peep from the increasingly ridiculous Church of England – more concerned about the supposed “genocide” in Gaza.
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