The Unfinished War against Christians
WASHINGTON, DC – During a rousing talk at the DuPont Circle Hotel, sponsored by the Woman’s National Democratic Club (WNDC), Joe David, author of The Infidels, took a sell-out crowd of WNDC members and their guests on a journey to the beginning of Christianity over two thousand years ago.
“With little more than a Bible, a cross and some bread,” David said, “the early Assyrian Christian missionaries followed the trade route (known generally as the Silk Route) to China and spread the gospel, according to Jesus to world. By the 12tth Century, The Assyrian Church of the East became the largest church in the world with over 80 million followers, larger than the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches combined.”
Unfortunately, these peaceful and cultured Assyrians who build the first Christian nation on the ruins of the ancient Assyrian empire faced a major threat in 630 AD, which reached a crisis in the 15th Century. “With the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453, Christianity in the Middle East was boldly reduced to ashes, leaving behind only a few sparks of life here and there. The cause: the rise of radical Islam which left its imprint on the area by brutally slaughtering millions of Christians.”
By revisiting the past, David identified the uninterrupted pattern of genocide, perpetrated by radical Muslims against Christians that began in the 7th Century. “I worry,” he said, “that if we don’t acknowledge the lessons taught to us by history and end today’s terrorism, we may soon see a holocaust like none before it.”
The Infidels is David’s sixth book. It is about one aspect of the often overlooked war in Middle East, when the Muslim Turks, with the blessings of the Germans, began to savagely massacre nearly two million Christians during a jihad, declared to cleanse the Ottoman Empire of racial impurities, exactly 100 years ago. The book is a novelization of his mother’s experience in Persia during World War I.
The Book Only London’s Thames River Press Was Brave Enough To Publish
The Infidels
by Joe David
A terrifying story about a religious war
Led by the Muslim Turks against the Christians
Joe David’s latest book is in the great tradition of novels like Forty Days of Musa Dagh and histories like the Rape of Nanking. It reveals the scars of brutality and inhumanity as history intersects with the ordinary lives of innocent people.
Editor George Thomas Kurian
The World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford University Press, 2001)
The Nelson New Christian Dictionary (Thomas Nelson, 2002)
I found Joe David’s version of a rarely discussed genocide, the plotted murder of the Assyrians by the Kurds and the Turks during World War I, to be thoroughly engrossing. In writing his novel, David not only demonstrates a significant knowledge of the customs and history of the times, but he also vividly brings to life the past in an exciting and meaningful way.
Anahit Khosroeva, PhD
Senior Researcher, Institute of History
National Academy of Sciences of Armenia
The Great War began with two shots: one aimed at the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg throne, and the other aimed at his wife, Sophie. What many thought would be just another Balkan squabble quickly escalated into a major war felt around the world.
As Europe burst into flames and millions of soldiers began battling the forces of nationalism, the Ottoman Turks joined arms with the Germans and extended the conflict to their longtime enemies, the Russians and the Christians. Incited by secular leaders in Constantinople, northwestern Persia became a warzone in which radical religious tribes invaded Christian villages and systematically martyred hundreds of thousands of ‘infidels” who dared to resist conversion.
On a small slice of ancient, isolated land owned by a wealthy Assyrian family, a young Christian girl awakens to the brutal massacre of her race in a war that she is too young to understand. Stripped of her privileged and comfortable existence, pursued by a Muslim governor – a symbol of the rising new world order – and surrounded by hostility and greed, deep-sated hatred and unspeakable horrors, she must somehow come to terms with the nightmare that her life has become.
Visit the past to grasp the present – and the terror facing us in the future
Author: Joe David’s first book, The Fire Within, because of its successful dramatization of important issues in education, made the reading list at two universities and received national public attention in the 1980s. For nearly nine years, he was a frequent radio and television talk show guest in major U.S. cities, where he candidly discussed issues in education.
Over the years, he has written for professional journals, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and books, including the Annenberg/CPB Math and Science Project, NPR Radio (The Best of Our Knowledge), The Forum (University of West Florida), U.S. Airways, Basic Education (Council for Basic Education), Christian Science Monitor, and much more. He is the author of six books.
Author Joe David’s national TV interview
with Connie Martinson can be viewed on YouTube.
For more information, contact:
jdavid@bfat.com
www.bfat.com
540 428-3175
Photo: Among those present at the Woman’s National Democratic Club (WNDC) luncheon, Thursday, February 26, 2015, in which Author Joe David discussed the historical events contributing to his book, The Infidels, was International Armenian Philanthropist Annie S. Totah, and Joe David’s two cousins, James and Judith David. James and Judith David are grandchildren of Reverend Jacob and Judith David who both courageously assisted the Christians during the Armenian-Assyrian massacre in 1915-18. Standing: Joe David and Annie Totah; seated: Judith and James David.
More Photos are available in high resolution.
The Past Revisited:
