While Dearborn, Michigan is home to the largest Muslim population in the United States, Buffalo, New York, is fast becoming a serious contender for that title.
Why Buffalo, with its horrendous, inhospitable winter weather?
Wikipedia tells us that there has been a large influx of inhabitants to Buffalo of Arab descent, mainly from Yemen. This has caused the Muslim population of the city to skyrocket. Wikipedia also informs the reader that, “Since the 1950s and 1960s, the greater portion of the Jewish population has moved to the suburban areas outside of the city, or to the city’s upper West Side.”
Is the exodus of Jews a coincidence?
Why would so many Jews opt to leave Buffalo’s inner city just as the Muslim population there was exploding? Wikipedia, of course, doesn’t dare explain this. It just lays out the facts so that the reader can draw his/her own conclusions.
In 1997, The Buffalo News reported that the Muslim Community was growing in Western New York. In 2016, ‘Middle East Eye’ reported that “Muslim refugees in Buffalo defy stereotypes,” and quoted Democrat Mayor Byron Brown as saying that “Refugees are helping the city grow after decades of decline.”
In 1900, Buffalo was one of the wealthiest cities in the U.S. It was primarily known as a great railroad town, a center for steel and automotive manufacturing and its dominance in the flour milling industry. The 1950’s saw its population at a booming 589,000; by 2016, with all of the factories closed, the premier city of ‘The Rust Belt’ claimed 259,000 residents.
Buffalo’s political scene is so solidly Democrat that in 2021 there was only one candidate for mayor listed on the ballot: India Walton, a “Democratic Socialist.” Fellow Democrat Byron Brown, a loser in the primary, won reelection for a fifth term as a write-in candidate. There were no Republican candidates for mayor at all although Brown, during his campaign, criticized Walton for being a socialist while Walton said that Brown was supported by hidden Republican money.
But where do Republicans hide in Buffalo?
Last year, City Journal reported that Buffalo’s middle and high schools teach students that “American society was designed for the impoverishment of people of color and enrichment of white people,” that “the United States created a social system that had racist economic inequality built into its foundation,” and that “the wealth gap is the result of black slavery, which created unjust wealth for white people…”
Buffalo, in other words, is a perfect example of the kind of blue city you want to avoid at all costs.
And yet the liberal Brookings Institute called Buffalo the seventh most segregated city in the United States, with the liberal Institute claiming that the “Rust Belt” mindset intentionally separated blacks who migrated north during the Jim Crow-inspired Great Migration in the 1950s into the East Side section of the city divided by super highways (or makeshift Berlin Walls), an area plagued by (so called) under investment and over policing.
The Brookings report inspired a Washington Post report on how urban design “segregation markers” like highways affected how the two populations, black and white, suffered differently after the December 2022 blizzard.
The May 2022 mass shooting at the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue put Buffalo in the spotlight once again. The tragedy was encapsulated in a special New Yorker story entitled ‘American Racism and the Buffalo Shooting.’ The shooter, apparently, hated Jews as much (or even more) than he hated blacks.
The Tops shooting put Buffalo upfront and center in the extremist city category.
Yet another form of extremism hit the city back in 2002. That’s when the Buffalo area was put on an Islamic Watch terror list of sorts when the so-called Lackawanna Six were arrested for attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11. Lackawanna is just six miles from Buffalo.
The ‘training camp’ event caused The Middle East Eye to report (a little defensively) in 2016 that,
“….Visit a mid-size city like Buffalo, a chilly corner of upstate New York with a booming refugee population, and the reality is quite different. There are no anti-immigrant protests, no graffiti-daubed mosques. Muslim refugees do not wear suicide bomb vests under their goose-down winter wear.”
Check out any You Tube video on Muslim life in Buffalo and you’ll see multiple ‘community service day’ videos where Muslim volunteers can be seen staffing BBQ carnival events, free for any city resident, where the activities range from face painting, soccer, free blood pressure tests (with a real physician in attendance), and of course generous portions of BBQ food. “They have some good old corn,” as one happy lady told a roving reporter there.
But these events are about a lot more than food and “giving back” to the community.
Information about Islam is abundant at these open air markets where clothes, furniture, household items and industrial equipment are there for the taking.
“True Islam is true Christianity the way it is supposed to be,” a male devotee announces to one community day videographer as BBQ smoke rises behind him and then parts like fading ectoplasm, revealing a towering edifice once known as Saint Ann Catholic Church and Shrine, built in 1886 by German immigrants, and recently sold to the Muslim community for an even $250,000.
The purchase of the church, as well as a school and former convent, by the Downtown Islamic Center, was at first reported by the press and by the Diocese of Buffalo as a purchase by “a group of local business people and investors.”
This attempt to hide the buyer went bust when the sale was completed in November 2022. At that time it was announced that the buyer was Buffalo Crescent Holdings, a non-profit affiliated with the Downtown Islamic Center.
The Islamic Center announced that it had been looking for a worship space, as well as a 3,000 student school and college, a shopping plaza and a funeral home.
Built by German immigrants to seat 1,200, St. Ann’s is an architectural wonder with its stunning interior of painted plaster and woodwork.
The church was closed by the Diocese in 2012 because of structural damages. The Buffalo News reported that St. Ann’s “will be at least the third Catholic church in Buffalo to be converted into a masjid, or mosque, for Muslim worship.
“Darul Uloom Al Madania in 1994 bought the former Holy Mother of Rosary Polish National Catholic Cathedral on Sycamore and Sobieski streets. And in 2009, the former Queen of Peace Church on Genesee Street was purchased and transformed into Masjid Jami. “
“This was one of the most beautiful places in Buffalo,” former parishioner Lucy Ederer, a member of a group known as Save St. Ann’s Church & Shrine, told ‘The News.’
“We fought the good fight until the very end and there wasn’t any place else to go. We went to the Supreme Court of the Vatican.”
Yet Ederer mentioned that she was glad that the church building would still be used as a place of worship. Preservationists concurred, as if Islam were merely a benign branch of Unitarianism
The secular, liberal press refused to look into the deeper meanings of the sale.
They did not ask why the Buffalo Diocese refused to sell St. Ann’s to a group of Catholics who wanted to preserve it as a Catholic Church.
What they [Buffalo News] reported was that the deal was another indication of the steady growth of the Muslim population in Western New York, “mostly due to an influx of immigrants, especially from Bangladesh, a predominantly Muslim country, and of refugees from war-torn areas of the world.”
But conservative Catholics like Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute—an organization devoted to the memory of the overthrow of the Ottoman Turks in 1571 by Catholic forces—told Church Militant:
“Bishops aren’t supposed to be corporate CEOs. They’re the stewards of souls. So it’s absolutely damnable for the diocese to refuse to sell this church to faithful Catholics while practically giving it to the Muslims.”
Attorney Brody Hale, co-founder and president of the St. Stephen Protomartyr Project, which works to preserve Catholic churches for sacred use, told Church Militant that he had doubts whether the guidelines of the Dicastery for the Clergy of the Holy See (the department in the Vatican that oversees the sale of churches) were followed.
Those guidelines state that it must be proven that other sources of funding must be deemed not viable before “financial insufficiency is plead as a grave cause to justify the relegation of a church to profane but not sordid use.”
Hale, unlike the preservationists, says it irks him when he hears people say that a church is just a building.
“A church as defined by canon law is a sacred edifice,” he says. “Churches as sacred buildings have fundamentally more protections under canon law than parishes.”
The real question is: why are some Catholic bishops so eager to sell churches that have been closed?
In an interview I did with Hale in 2022, he told me,
“This is not what churches are supposed to be used for according to canon law. Churches are not poker chips a bishop can use to cash out when he’s in a bind.”
In the meantime, the Buffalo Muslim group is prepared to spend millions of dollars to transform the buildings that used to constitute St. Ann’s Church and Shrine.
“We’re looking to put several million dollars into this in the next year, in the church alone,” Talha Bakth, president of Downtown Islamic Center, said.
With over 150 Catholic churches and parishes still remaining in the City of Buffalo, this bodes well for the future of mosques in the Dearborn of New York.
There’s nothing new, or sinster, about a religious edifice undergoing a, shall we say, conversion, when the demographics of a neighborhood change. Anyone remember Robert Hayden’s poem, “The Rabbi?”: “But the synagogue became/ New Calvary./ The rabbi bore my friends off/ in his prayer shawl.”
Where did my posting go? i posted a quote from Robert Hayden’s poem, “The Rabbi:” “But the synagogue became/ New Calvary./ The rabbi bore my friends off/ in his prayer shawl.”
The US Catholic Church and the Catholic Church en toto is rife with money laundering, child sex trafficking, lawsuit payouts, etc. It needs cash, constantly. The last thing it cares about is it being Jesus’ Church (which it is.). Ever since it decided to accede to modernism with Vatican 2, it’s been overtaken by it. Evil entered the church, and people left. And here we are.
How do you think the Muslim religion functions and Pays it bill “Drugs/& human trafficking /” Legalized so call religious Mafia mentality. And they just love to shove it in your face (Minaret’s surround a Christian church etc, ( the orthodox patriarch church in Istanbul ) Surrounded By the call loud speaker calling to the Fanatic leader daily. Look at the destruction of Haga Sophia..
Muslims pay 10% of their salaries to their mosque and leave the same amount in their wills.
This seems to be how Islam works. They took over Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and converted its churches into mosques or warehouses or whatever. Now it is hard to find Christians in Turkey. The Muslims would do that to every church and synagogue in America if they could. And perhaps they will.
You’re exactly right.
And not just in Turkey.
The muslims do this EVERYWHERE they end up in large numbers.
India, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh and others in the past.
The UK, Ireland, the EU, and America in the present and future if we allow it.
Don’t we have enough “islamic republics?” Why do they need to come to the West? And who would you think they are coming to assimilate?
Once the Muslim population reaches critical mass they will be pushing for shariah law including blasphemy laws and legal child marriage. Or they might just rape a few million infidel girls and boys who are asking for it in their eyes.
You have described Britain perfectly.
That precisely describes the Catholic Church history !
So many of the current bishops are not truly “Catholic”. The Blessed Mother of Fatima warned the Church would be infiltrated by the enemies of GOD.
“The Blessed Mother of Fatima warned that the Church would be infiltrated by the enemies of God.” When and where did she say that?
And not peep g from the ACLU, Atheists and the Humanists screw ups
Just some local knowledge of the story…
My family lived in Buffalo since about the 1850s. They were the same type of German immigrants who built the beautiful church that is currently being defiled by the pedophilic cult of the Arabian moon god.
“…the liberal Institute claiming that the “Rust Belt” mindset intentionally separated blacks who migrated north during the Jim Crow-inspired Great Migration in the 1950s into the East Side section of the city divided by super highways (or makeshift Berlin Walls), an area plagued by (so called) under investment and over policing.”
The Eastside of Buffalo, where my grandparents and great grandparents grew up and lived until the 1960s, was a beautiful area with dozens of amazing churches like the one pictured, great neighbors, and great local businesses and shops. Southern blacks moved to this part of Buffalo precisely because it had great housing, infrastructure and schools. At least until the neighborhoods became majority black. The new residents started destroying the neighborhood and driving down property values due to the increasing crime and ridiculously high unemployment and welfare rates. The previous residents – mostly German and Polish IMMIGRANTS – obviously began to move out if they could afford it. Then the businesses left or closed due to the crime and lack of customers willing to enter such a terrible neighborhood.
Continued…
The claim that it was a terrible, under invested place BEFORE blacks moved in is preposterous. It was only after becoming a majority black neighborhood by driving out the previous residents that it turned into the shithole it is now. It wasnt “overpoliced” until it became filled with an overabundance of criminals and property destruction. It wasn’t “segregated” when it was mostly Germans and Poles who lived there.
By the way…it’s not over. I know many people in the suburbs that border the Eastside of Buffalo who say that the same thing that happened to the eastside is now happening there. The suburban high school is now about 75% black, with many being Eastside residents who lie about their address to get away from the horrible Eastside schools that they ruined. In turn they simply turn the suburban school into a copy of the schools they were supposedly fleeing. The Eastside is literally spilling over into the neighboring suburbs and destroying them just like they destroyed the Eastside decades ago. Throw some CRT and Islamism into the mix, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live anywhere near Buffalo again.
Same thing going on in S Buffalo.
As the black Reverend Jessie Peterson says “Whites build things; blacks destroy things.”
My grandparents immigrated to NY and settled in the Bronx via Italy. They were poor. Lived in a 2 bedroom apt with 5 sons. However, the neighborhood was clean and safe. Kids playing stick ball in the streets, mom and pop shops, the smell of Italian cooking throughout the community. Wonderful to grow up in as my parents did.
Then little by little the blacks started to move in. As the Italians became more educated and assimilated they started to move out to the suburbs.
My uncle took me for a ride through his old neighborhood about 40 yrs ago. It looked like a war zone. Abandoned buildings, graffiti everywhere, filthy. This is what blacks do. They destroy.
Muslims won’t destroy, but they will take over and run everyone out.
“The Blessed Mother of Fatima warned that the Church would be infiltrated by the enemies of God.” When and where did she say that?
See the Fatima prophecies. I think the third one discusses the infiltration and bastardization of Christianity.
This is Horrible! Our clergy is money Hungary! These churches they are selling are so beautiful, with the old stained glass windows why don’t they take them out an save them, so when a new church is built they can be used, we all know there are no new churches being built in the Northeast. ,So ship the stained glass windows to Texas or Florida ,Catholic Churches are being built through out Texas and the Southeast..
We do have the First Amendment to the US Constitution…It creates a Big Tent for many people from different Nations & Religious ideologies to live among one another without hostility.
Join us in acknowledging that the US Congress should refrain from violating the 1A and discontinue passing laws that support an establishment of religion…we can do this!
The US Congress needs to pass a law banning mosques in America. Islam is not a religion, but a violent political movement intent on enslaving the human race.
“I” would have bought it with you too… Mr Nichols
Nary a Word about ICONOClASTISM
We could have purchased that Church Building…but like the previous post $250K is Monk-ey Business.
If you build it, they will come..
Three Churches turn into a mosque in Buffalo means more and more people need a mosque…
islamism is the new nazism.
So much for the JDL and riding to the sound of the guns, or the call to prayer as it may happen.
The Knights of Columbus are not getting scot free either.