People who reflexively blame the wrong party for criminal acts are either misinformed or disingenuous.
♦ The sad truth is that in the Palestinian territories, Christians are forced to live like dhimmis — second-class citizens who survive largely by the protection-money they are required to pay to buy their daily safety. These barely-tolerated citizens exist only at the whim and pleasure of the ruling Muslim majority. Muslim Arab discrimination against non-Muslims includes economic and socially prejudicial behavior that makes it difficult or impossible for Christian Arabs to run a profitable business or for their families to be fully integrated into society.
♦ It is also appropriate for Catholics to raise with Vatican authorities the issue of Father Twal’s continued representation of the Faith in the Holy Land: Who is he serving first, God or man?
♦ No one of good will, especially Catholics, wants to accuse a prominent member of his faith of being knowingly untruthful. The truth rarely is found in the Palestinian public narrative. But in case of the latest repetition of Father Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, falsely blaming Israel for the ongoing spate of Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians, it appears certain from his consistent record of non-nuanced criticism of Israel, that he is motivated by a political bias.
Twal proclaimed that Israel’s alleged “occupation” of “Arab Palestine” is the cause of the murderous violence visited on Israeli civilians by Arab attackers — apparently “forgetting” that the Jews have lived in the region for nearly 4000 years. He was also apparently forgetting that the leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) have been glorifying such “acts of resistance” since the autumn of 2014. How can Twal ignore the reality that Palestinian media has been glorifying these knife attacks as “glorious feats.” In Palestinian schools, in fact, the attackers are hailed as heroes.
Outright lies are also part of the PA and Hamas propaganda campaigns. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmud Abbas, for instance, has claimed that a Palestinian boy, who was hit by a car after stabbing an Israeli child, was executed by Israeli troops, when it was well known that the perpetrator was alive and being cared for in an Israeli hospital.
Twal’s position is one that appears driven by ideological loyalty to a political cause, rather than that of a shepherd who attends to the spiritual needs of his flock. Even if Twal were concerned merely with the physical needs of his faithful, one would think that his focus would be on the real primary concern of his Catholic communities in the Holy Land — which is security. Twal also “forgets” the basic reason for the accelerating departure of Christians from Palestinian areas: the principal cause for this negative pattern is Islamic intolerance of religious minorities, not the Israeli occupation of Arab Palestinian territory.
Twal will be hard pressed to find many Palestinian Christians ready to accuse Israel or the actions of Israel Defense Force (IDF) personnel as the reason for Christian emigration. Many have already have voted with their feet by settling in Israel, where they can practice their faith without restriction. Thousands of Catholics now work in Israel, where they enjoy complete religious liberty. One has only to see how difficult it is to find a seat in the crammed Catholic Churches at Sunday Masses in Tel Aviv.
The sad truth is that in the Palestinian territories, Christians are forced to live like dhimmis — second-class citizens who survive largely by the protection-money they are required to pay to buy their daily safety. These barely-tolerated citizens exist only at the whim and pleasure of the ruling Muslim majority.[1] Muslim Arab discrimination against non-Muslims includes economic and socially prejudicial behavior that makes it difficult or impossible for Christian Arabs to run a profitable business or for their families to be fully integrated into society. Why has not Twal, as President of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinances in the Holy Land, felt an obligation publicly to denounce this record of intolerance by political Islamic extremists? If Twal does not, it appears that he places in jeopardy his role as guardian of the rights of Catholic Christians in the Holy Land. Consequently, the Israeli government is likely to be more dismissive of his legitimate concerns such as the defacement of Church property by anti-Christian Jewish youth.
It is also appropriate for Catholics to raise with Vatican authorities the issue of Twal’s continued representation of the Faith in the Holy Land. The instances involve Twal himself, which may help Catholics to discern whom Twal serves first: God or man. There was no hint of gratitude from Twal after IDF personnel rescued him from a jeering mob of Muslim Palestinians who hurled rocks at his car on the way to Bethlehem last Christmas. And there is no acknowledgement from him that the only reason these Christian holy sites are safe for pilgrims to go to and worship in is that they are protected by the State of Israel, and not by the Palestinian Authority. All we have to do is to observe how Christian holy sites are being demolished throughout the Middle East, to realize that without the Israel protecting Jerusalem’s and Bethlehem’s Christian holy places, there would, at some point, be no Christian holy places, period.
Father Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem (right), consistently defames Israel, whose soldiers rescued him when he was attacked by rock-throwing Muslim Palestinians on the way to Bethlehem in December 2015. Pictured at left: Muslim Palestinians in the Bethlehem area, among them men dressed in Santa Claus costumes, hurl stones at Israeli soldiers while yelling “Allahu Akbar,” on Dec. 18, 2015.
There are many examples of why Christian leaders have a duty publicly to express gratitude to Israeli security personnel. For example, during the 2002 occupation of the Church of the Nativity by more than 200 armed Palestinian terrorists in the now-Muslim-dominated city of Bethlehem, Israel Defense Force (IDF) personnel conducted themselves with impressive restraint, rather than risk damaging a holy site sacred to Christians. After the 39-day occupation of this holy site, the Israeli government acceded to the Vatican’s desires, permitting the occupiers safe passage out of Bethlehem.[2] After the departure of the terrorist-occupiers from the vicinity and their hostages released, booby-trapped explosive devices were discovered in the Church. Further, altars, religious objects, and furniture were discovered fouled by urine, cigarette butts and human excrement.
Just last month, there were a series of incidents involving Palestinian terrorists just inside Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. After one such incident, on February 14, Israeli border guards killed two terrorists from Nablus who had infiltrated Jerusalem. The target of the terrorists was probably a group of affluent American Christian pilgrims enjoying “happy hour” as they milled about the lobby of the Notre Dame Pilgrim Complex, unaware of the danger just a short distance from them. These Christian pilgrims might well have been grateful to the thin line of Israelis that protected them.
♦ Christians in Israel, as well as all other minorities, understand today that serving in the Israeli military is essential. Many Christians and other minorities in Israel share the same fears: they understand that in this region, Israel is the only island of safety that allows them freedom and democratic rights.
♦ Christians and other minorities in Israel prosper and grow, while in other countries in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Authority, they suffer heavily from the Islamic movement and persecution — until forced to disappear.
♦ Contrary to propaganda, there is no “Apartheid” of any kind in Israel, and no roads on which only Jews may travel.
♦ In Israel, members of the Christian and Muslim minorities fill all types of high positions — just as any Jewish Israeli who wishes to have a successful career. There is the Maronite Christian Supreme Court Judge, Salim Jubran.
♦ Widely discussed in the region is how the Europeans secretly want Israel wiped out, too, and are hoping that their new laws, combined with old Arab violence, will do the trick.
Last year, Israel recognized the existence of a group of Christians — “Arameans” — within its borders; an act that no Arab or Muslim nation from the Middle East has ever done or would ever do. Israel recognized a distinct religious and ethnic group: the indigenous people of the ancient Fertile Crescent.
Their language, Aramaic, was the language spoken by Jesus centuries before Islam came to the region.
Israel not only supports and gives Christians and other minorities — Druze, Muslims, Baha’i, everyone — full civil rights, freedom and legal rights to exist peacefully and practice their faith as they wish, but also to develop themselves as a minority with all the implications of differences in culture. Arabs, for instance, are welcomed into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but are not, as opposed to Jews, required to serve. Israel’s founding Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, humanely did not want Arabs to feel as if they were obliged fight their “brothers.”
In Israel, members of the Christian and Muslim minorities fill all types of high positions — just as any Jewish Israeli who wishes to have a successful career. There is the Maronite Christian Supreme Court Judge, Salim Jubran.
Contrary to propaganda, there is no “Apartheid” of any kind, and no roads on which only Jews may travel. Those roads are in Saudi Arabia, which has real Apartheid roads, since only Muslims may travel to Mecca.
Israel does this, moreover, in a neighborhood where most of its neighbors — often the most brutal enemies of humanity — wish Israel were wiped out and often do their utmost to make this wish come true. Sadly, many Europeans join in. Everyone has seen the recent vicious attempts by the European Union to snuff out Israel economically by labeling goods made in disputed territories. This requirement, made of no other country with a disputed border actually hinders any prospects for peace that working together is meant to bring about.
These Europeans are not fooling anyone. Their slyly sadistic, self-righteous “punishments” meant for Israel will only throw thousands of Palestinians out of well-paying, badly-needed work; these diktats also drive many newly out-of-work Palestinians to the employment bureau of last resort: Islamic extremism and terrorism. Ironically, these Europeans, to satisfy their wish to hurt Jews by pretending to help Palestinians, are actually seeding a new crop of terrorists who will later come to Europe and show them what they think of such hypocrites.
Widely discussed in the region is how the Europeans secretly want Israel wiped out, too, and are hoping that their new laws, combined with old Arab violence, will do the trick. That way, the Europeans can pretend to themselves that they had “nothing to do with it.” These Europeans need to know they are not fooling anyone.
Israel, meanwhile, despite having to deal with the European and American fronts as well as often genocidal Muslim threats, continues actively to strengthen its minority communities through a variety of state-sponsored programs. Among them is a five-year plan to develop Israeli Arab and other minority communities adopted by the government on December 30, 2015, at cost of 15 billion shekels [roughly $4 billion]. Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel, of the Likud Party is in charge of implementing the plan. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is unjustly demonized, has for the last several years operated the “Authority for the Economic Development of the Arab, Druze and Circassian Sectors.” It is headed by an Arab Muslim, Aiman Saif, who controls a sizeable budget of 7 billion shekels [roughly $1.8 billion], which has mostly gone to different Arab cities and villages to develop modern infrastructure, industrial zones, employment opportunities, education and other elements. The rest was allocated to helping Christian villages in the Galilee.
Arabs have their own section in the Ministry of Education, headed by an Arab Muslim, Abdalla Khateeb, who is also in charge of a sizeable budget of 900 million shekels [$230 million].
Christians, as well as all other minorities, understand today that serving in the Israeli military is essential for their integration in Israel. Many Christians and other minorities in Israel share the same fears: they increasingly understand that in this region, Israel is the only island of safety that allows them freedom and democratic rights. The Muslim Arab community in Israel, as well as the Christian and other Arabic-speaking communities, see the tragic destiny of their brothers in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and other Arab countries. Muslims killing Muslims; fanatical Muslim groups killing Christians, uprooting them, slitting their throats, burning them alive, drowning them in cages and of course crucifying them, even little children. Israel’s minorities are very aware of this. They also cannot understand why no one is demonizing those villains. They fear that this devastation will spread, first to the holy land of Israel, and then to Europe.
This fear is one of the reasons there have been increasing numbers of Christians applying to serve in the IDF: 30% recruitment on a voluntary basis; while in general Jewish society, the number stands for 57% on an obligatory basis. Today there are even more than 1000 Muslim Arabs serving in the IDF.
We all know the danger of these fanatic Islamic jihadist groups such as Hamas groups, and feel ever more committed to protect this lone pluralistic state.
The community to which this author belongs, Aramean Christians, is of Aramean-Phoenician ethnic roots and language, and was originally based in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Over the 1400 years following the Islamic conquest, Aramean Christians were forced to switch to speaking Arabic, and more recently to flee their homes in Syria and Iraq. They have no status in Arab and Islamic states, most ruled according to Islamic sharia law. Aramean Christians also have no status in the Palestinian Authority, which now rules Judea and Samaria.
We are aware of some Christian groups, such as Sabeel, Kairos Palestine and others under the thumb of the Palestinian Authority, who still feel the need to pay lip-service to the Muslim Arabian lords who have conquered them.
Jerusalem is open to everyone. But it has not always been, especially under the jurisdiction of Jordan, until 1967. Not only were Jews not allowed in, but 38,000 Jewish gravestones were taken from the Mount of Olives cemetery and used as building materials and flooring for Jordan’s latrines.
Muslim Arab members of Israel’s Knesset [parliament] reject the right of Christians to preserve their unique heritage. On February 5, 2014, Knesset member Haneen Zoabi of the United Arab List party threatened the Israeli Christian representatives who lobbied in the Knesset Employment Committee in favor of a law that would add Christian representatives to a committee on employment equality in the Economy Ministry. Zoabi rejected their declaration that they were a separate Aramean Christian ethnicity. She insisted on forcing upon them an Arab and Palestinian identity. This identification was of course, as false as if we Christians had insisted that Muslim Arabs call themselves Native Americans. The law passed despite the efforts of Zoabi and her colleagues, due to a coalition of Knesset members — with vast majority of Jewish MKs voting in favor of it.
This incident illustrates how some of Israel’s Muslim Arabs, while asking their Jewish neighbors for help in preserve their own Muslim-Arab heritage, prohibit other ethnic minorities these same rights.
Instead, they try to impose Arabization and Palestinization by threats and by force. In September 2014, for instance, an Aramean Christian woman, IDF Captain Areen Shaabi, was stalked by Arab Muslim activists in Nazareth. She was threatened with shouts of “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is Greater!”], and at night her car tires were slashed.
IDF Major Ehab Shlayan, an Aramean Christian in Nazareth and the founder of the Christian Recruitment Forum, awoke on the morning of August 2015 to find that a Palestinian flag had been put in front of his door during the night. On Christmas Eve, December 24, 2014, thirty Muslims throwing stones and glass bottles attacked a Christian soldier, 19-year-old Majd Rawashdi, and his home.
IDF Major Ehab Shlayan (far left), is an Aramean Christian from Nazareth and founder of the Christian Recruitment Forum, which encourages Israeli Aramean Christians to serve in the military. Muslim Arab Knesset member Haneen Zoabi (right) recently threatened Israeli Christian representatives, rejecting their declaration that they were a separate Aramean Christian ethnicity and insisting on forcing upon them an Arab and Palestinian identity.
All this is hypocrisy at the highest levels, mixed with racism.
In an official Christmas greeting to Israel’s Christians on December 24, 2012, Prime Minister Netanyahu said:
“Israel’s minorities, including over one million citizens who are Arabs, always have full civil rights. Israel’s government will never tolerate discrimination against women. Israel’s Christian population will always be free to practice their faith. This is the only place in the Middle East where Christians are fully free to practice their faith. They don’t have to fear; they don’t have to flee. At a time when Christians are under siege in so many places, in so many lands in the Middle East, I am proud that in Israel Christians are free to practice their faith, and that there is a thriving Christian community in Israel.”
Christians and other minorities in Israel prosper and grow, while in other countries in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Authority, they suffer heavily from the Islamic movement and persecution — until forced to disappear.
Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to announce Thursday morning that he believes the Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians and others in Iraq and Syria, according to the Associated Press.
Kerry was set to deliver remarks at 9 a.m. from the State Department.
His remarks are a quick turnaround from Wednesday, when the State Department said it would miss today’s deadline under federal law for determining whether the terror group’s actions should be deemed genocide.
♦ In 35 nations Islamic extremism “has risen to a level akin to ethnic cleansing” of Christians.
♦ Something else stands behind this rise of genocidal “Islamic extremism”: U.S. foreign policy. In every Muslim nation where the U.S. has intervened in the name of “freedom and democracy,” Christian life has exponentially worsened.
♦ For years the Obama administration has refused to list Boko Haram as a terrorist organization, and has argued that its violence had nothing to do with Islam and was a result of poverty and grievances. Instead, the U.S. pressured the Nigerian government to make concessions.
♦ The primary achievement of U.S. foreign policies, apart from wasted American blood and treasure — is the unprecedented rise in Muslim nations of Islamic forces outspokenly bent on destroying America.
2015 was the “worst year in modern history for Christian persecution,” according to Open Doors, a human rights organization that has been documenting the persecution of Christians since 1955.
According to its latest data, more than 7,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2015 — almost twice as many as in 2014. In addition, more than 2,400 churches were attacked, damaged or destroyed — again, more than double the number of the previous year.
In the words of Open Doors’ CEO, David Curry:
The 2016 World Watch List [which ranks the 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted] documents an unprecedented escalation of violence against Christians, making this past year the most violent and sustained attack on Christian faith in modern history. … This research has concluded that after the brutal persecution of Christians in 2014, 2015 proved to be even worse with the persecution continuing to increase, intensify and spread across the globe. … The level of exclusion, discrimination and violence against Christians is unprecedented, spreading and intensifying.
Who or what is behind these unprecedented levels of persecution? Some of it is related to the tendency of non-Western nations to associate Christianity with the “hated West.” Four are Communist nations — Vietnam (ranked #20), Laos (#29), China (#33), and North Korea (#1), where “Christianity is not only seen as ‘opium for the people,’ as is normal for all communist states, it is also seen as deeply Western and despicable,” notes the report. Three are reclaiming their religious heritage in contradistinction to what is portrayed as a depraved West — Hindu India (#17), Buddhist Bhutan (#38) and Myanmar (#23). And two — Mexico (#40) and Columbia (#46) — are fueled by organized crime and drug cartels.
“Islamic extremism” is cited as the source of persecution for the remaining 41 nations that make the list of 50 worst persecutors of Christians. North Korea aside, the rest of the eight nations where Christians experience the worst form of persecution (“extreme persecution”) are all Islamic. In 35 nations, Islamic extremism “has risen to a level akin to ethnic cleansing” of Christians.
A close examination of the report indicates that something else stands behind this rise of genocidal “Islamic extremism”: U.S. foreign policy. In every Muslim nation where the U.S. has intervened in the name of “freedom and democracy,” Christian life has exponentially worsened. Put differently, among those who most despise “freedom and democracy” — radical and jihadi Muslims — tend to be the ones most empowered by U.S. foreign policies.
Iraq today, according to the report, is the second worst nation in the world in which to be Christian. Afghanistan is fourth, Syria fifth, and Libya tenth. A decade ago, none of these countries even made the top 10 list. Syria and Libya — when they were ruled by secular autocrats who were eventually demonized by U.S. politicians and media, and then underwent U.S. intervention — did not even make the top 20.
In 2004, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was ranked 32 and scored only 35.5 (out of 100). After a decade’s worth of American lives and treasure were wasted, Iraq is now scores 90 and is the worst Muslim nation in which to be Christian. The situation is the same in those other Muslim nations that the U.S. government brought “freedom and democracy” to — and with Syria, which it continues trying to bring “freedom and democracy” to:
Syria: A decade ago it was ranked #47 and scored only 24.5. A nation must score at least 50 to count as containing “sparse persecution.” Today it is ranked #5 and scores 87 , or “extreme persecution.”
Libya: A decade ago it was ranked #22 and scored 41; today it ranks #10 and scores 79.
Afghanistan: A decade ago it ranked #11 and scored 53; today — a decade after the U.S. declared “victory” over al-Qaeda and the Taliban — it is ranked #4 and scores 88.
Even in nations where U.S. intervention is not obvious, Christian persecution has reached unprecedented levels. In Nigeria, Boko Haram — an Islamic group possibly more savage than ISIS — slaughtered more Christians in 2015 than any other terrorist group. Yet for years the Obama administration has refused to list Boko Haram as a terrorist organization, and has argued that its violence had nothing to do with Islam and was a result of poverty and grievances. Instead, the U.S. pressured the Nigerian government to make concessions, including by building more mosques — the very structures, as the Nigerian lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe said, where Muslims are radicalized and recruited for the jihad.
In May 2013, soon after Nigerian forces killed 30 Boko Haram members in a particularly strong offensive, Reuters reported that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “issued a strongly worded statement” to the Nigerian president: “We are … deeply concerned by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism” from Boko Haram.
Those many Americans indifferent to all this persecution “over there” would do well to connect the dots: Globally empowering forces hostile to Christians is synonymous with globally empowering forces hostile to America. Those Muslims who hate and persecute Christians alsohate, and seek to persecute, Americans for exactly the same reason: Westerners all are hated non-Muslim infidels.
In short, the primary achievement of U.S. foreign policies, apart from wasted American blood and treasure — is the unprecedented rise in Muslim nations of Islamic forces outspokenly bent on destroying America.
(The views expressed in this article are mine, and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Judeo-Christian civilization has nothing in common with, and nothing to gain from, Islamic civilization as it now exists. They have been clashing for centuries. Now, Islamic civilization appears to be winning in much of the European Union and, to a lesser degree, in America.
Can anything be done to slow and then to halt the spread of fundamentalist Islam? Ayan Hirsi Ali hopes there is and that Muslims will do it. I also hope they will, but am quite dubious that it will happen in the foreseeable future. We need to take other steps promptly.
Preliminary disclosure
As I wrote here in 2012, I am an Agnostic and have been for more than half a century. I do not believe that one or more Gods exist, nor do I believe that none exist. I simply do not know and have no way to know. However, Judeo-Christian society has given me what I love most, freedom to think and to speak as I choose. That freedom is now under severe attack and is withering away. Far too few Christians and Jews seem to have noticed or to care.
When I was in tenth grade, my parents and I decided that I would have a better chance of being admitted to and succeeding at a good college if I were to transfer from public high school to a private high school. We researched area private schools and settled upon St. Stephen’s School for Boys, an Episcopalian school. The headmaster was an Episcopalian priest. During my admissions interview, I volunteered that I was an Agnostic. It did not seem to bother him, but he told me that I would be required to attend a daily religious opening ceremony and, during my senior year, a weekly sacred studies class which he would lead. The first did not bother me and I looked forward to the second.
During the morning religious ceremonies, I stood when the other boys stood and sat when they sat. When they sang hymns and recited creeds and bible verses, I did not. Nobody seemed to notice. During the sacred studies class, I voiced my views, the other boys voiced theirs and the Headmaster voiced his. Our discussions were collegial, not contentious.
These experiences have colored my views of Judeo-Christian culture as it has evolved through today: with increasing exceptions, it remains a culture of freedom and kindness. Sometimes, as with outreach to Islamists, it goes too far. Christian outreach to fundamentalist Islam is like bone cells inviting cancer cells in to discuss how they can be friends and get along. In the end, they can’t and won’t. The cancer cells will thrive and the owner of the infested bones will die painfully.
Fundamentalist Islam is a culture of compulsion and hate
Americans should learn far more than we have from the recent experiences of Sweden, Germany, England, France and other European Union countries in welcoming Muslims to Islamise their cultures. I posted a lengthy article on that on December 13th. If you haven’t read it yet, please do so now. It provides very helpful background for an understanding of the clash of Judeo-Christian and Islamic civilizations.
Here is a lengthy video by Walid Shoebat, once an Islamic jihadist and now a Roman Catholic opponent of Islam. Born in “Palestine,” he imbibed the Islamic culture of hate and compulsion as a youth, as did most of his acquaintances. Eventually, he changed from what he was to what he now is.
Here’s are Shoebat’s 2007 comments:
Most of Shoebat’s comments are consistent with my understanding of present-day Islam, which is largely fundamentalist, of “Palestine” and of its leaders. Here are videos of three who lead the “heroes of Palestine:”
Here’s are Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s 2015 comments on the possibility of an Islamic reformation, for which she argues in her recent book Heretic. (I just bought the Kindle version. After I have read it, I may post an article about it.) A former Muslim and now an Athiest, she is far more conciliatory than was Shoebat because she wants to promote change for the better within Islam. In her closing comments, she offers hope that someday Muslims will become as tolerant and peaceful as Christians and Jews. She does not expect that to happen during her life time, or for a long time thereafter. At seventy-four, I certainly don’t expect it during my remaining time on Earth.
Education today in Obama’s America
Obama’s America has become a multicultural, moral-equivalence based society dominated by political correctness. Many — including some nominal Christians and Jews — rail against Christianity and Judaism. Islam, on the other hand, has become a protected species: any suggestion that it is evil is condemned as “Islamophobic.”
At my alma mater, Yale (1959 – 63), freedom of speech and of thought now take back seats to politically correct condemnations of anything that anyone (except Christians and Jews) might find offensive.
I understand that the same sickness is spreading throughout the country. Maybe some fine day we will have an educational system like this:
Efforts to spread multicultural, moral-equivalence and hence Islamic values are not confined to our colleges. According to an article by The Clarion Project,
Controversy over the way public schools are presenting Islam has been making headlines in many school districts around the U.S. and worldwide:
♦ In Tennessee, a bill was introduced to prevent schools from teaching classes on “religious doctrine” before the 10th grade. The bill is in reaction to objections by parents to a three-week curriculum under the topic of world religion for middle-school students that covers the “Five Pillars of Islam” that obligated children to write assignments about Islamic principles of faith, such as “Allah is the only God.” Parents particularly objected because no other religion was taught at the same time and the amount of time spent on Islam was considerably more than that spent on any other religion.
♦ In Maryland, parents objected to the way Islam was taught in the school’s “World History” class, presenting Islam in an historically untrue way and listing all the “benefits” of Islam.
♦ After being threatened with a lawsuit, an Ohio school district agreed to remove a video about Islam from a seventh grade world-history curriculum that was challenged as falling under the category of proselytizing and favoring one religion over another (a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause). The video, titled 30 Days: Muslim and America, features a young Christian man who agrees to totally immerse himself in Islam for a month by living with a Muslim family in Dearborn, Michigan. It was shown to students as part of a course that requires students to “describe achievements by the Islamic civilization and how these achievements were introduced into Western Europe in the time period between 750 BC – 1600AD.”
♦ In Massachusetts, the Wellesley Middle School, another public school was caught in a controversy when a video (see below) of a student trip to the Roxbury megamosque was released. On the trip, students were taught propaganda – among other things, that Muslim women got the vote before women in the West – by the mosque staff. The boys can be seen prostrating themselves to Allah alongside Muslim men. The video was covered extensively on Boston TV and radio.
♦ In Massachusetts, the Newton public school system became enmeshed in a similar controversy about deceptive and anti-Semitic lessons concerning Muslim women being taught to their students. Even though the curriculum was removed, school administrators refused to tell the children the information was inaccurate (as was the case above with the Wellesley Middle School).
Here’s the referenced video of a 2010 high school trip to a mosque in Newton, Massachusetts:
Fethullah Gulen’s movement is just one more manifestation of what the Muslim Brotherhood has called civilization jihad, albeit a particularly sinister one with its large footprint, penetration of our educational system and well-established, sophisticated and successful influence operations. With this new monograph – the [eighth] in the Center for Security Policy’s Civilization Jihad Readers Series, we hope to sound an alarm about this multi-faceted and dangerous Islamic supremacist cult that – despite significant setbacks in its native Turkey – constitutes a true Trojan Horse in our midst. [Emphasis added.]
It must be noted that those setbacks [in Turkey] are being dealt the Gulen cult and its empire by a rival Islamic supremacist movement: the AK Party and government of Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan. Like erstwhile allies in organized criminal racketeering, these two Islamist mafia dons have had a toxic falling-out after they jointly took down the Ataturk legacy of secular governance in Turkey. Welcome as the rolling up of the Gulen empire and the extradition of its cult leader from the United States would be, nothing in this monograph should be seen as an endorsement of the no-less problematic Erdogan regime’s civilization jihadism and its ambitions to restore the Caliphate.
The state of Hesse has become the first in Germany to offer Islamic education in public schools, with religious instruction starting as early as the first grade.
Giving young children religious and moral instruction might sound like a good idea, if not for the content of the newly written Islamic curriculum and the influence of Islamist elements over the recruitment of teachers. [Emphasis added.]
The writing of textbooks is being overseen by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB). In an agreement reached between the State of Hesse and DITIB, the organization will play a key role in setting the curriculum, selecting the teachers and monitoring the Islamic religious instruction. The organization is apparently assuming a similar role in several other key German states. [Emphasis added.]
DITIB is the largest Muslim organization in Germany and controls several prominent mosques. The group depends heavily on the Turkish government for its funding, and maintains close ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist party, the AKP.
Our “great ally” Saudi Arabia is also spending lots of money to promote fundamentalist Islam.
[T]he Kingdom funded Western tax exempt Islamic organizations engaged in dawah (proselytization for Islam). Among them were networks of charitable organizations that provide financial aid to prisoners (including non-Muslims to lure them to Islam) in Western jails, lavishly funded academic chairs in Middle East Studies in universities around the world, student-exchange programs and spending many millions of dollars to increase Saudi political influence in the West — even contributing $100 million to coordinate and assist the United Nations international counterterrorism efforts.
. . . .
The public outrage and rejection of Saudi King Salman’s offer to fund 200 new mosques for more than 800,000 new Muslim refugees in Germany, and the Vice Chancellor’s statement: “We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over” point in the right direction. But don’t hold your breath. Germany, the United States and the rest of the West have been turning a blind eye to Saudi funding of thousands of mosques, madrassas and Islamic centers that have propagated radical Islamic ideology for decades and are unlikely to face reality anytime soon. [Emphasis added.]
Far from being limited to a number of elitist leaders and institutions, the Western empowerment of the jihad is the natural outcome of postmodern thinking—the real reason an innately weak Islam can be a source of repeated woes for a militarily and economically superior West. [Emphasis added.]
Remember, the reason people like French President Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are in power—three prominent Western leaders who insist that Islam is innocent of violence and who push for Muslim immigration—is because they embody a worldview that is normative in the West. [Emphasis added.]
In this context, the facilitation of jihadi terror is less a top down imposition and more a grass root product of decades of erroneous, but unquestioned, thinking. (Those who believe America’s problems begin and end with Obama would do well to remember that he did not come to power through a coup but that he was voted in—twice. This indicates that Obama and the majority of voting Americans have a shared, and erroneous, worldview. He may be cynically exploiting this worldview, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s because this warped worldview is mainstream that he can exploit it in the first place.) [Emphasis added.]
Western empowerment of the jihad is rooted in a number of philosophies that have metastasized into every corner of social life, becoming cornerstones of postmodern epistemology. These include the doctrines of relativism and multiculturalism on the one hand, and anti-Western, anti-Christian sentiment on the other. [Emphasis added.]
Taken together, these cornerstones of postmodern, post-Christian thinking hold that there are no absolute truths and thus all cultures are fundamentally equal and deserving of respect. If any Western person wants to criticize a civilization or religion, then let them look “inwardly” and acknowledge their European Christian heritage as the epitome of intolerance and imperialism. [Emphasis added.]
Add to these a number of sappy and silly ideals—truth can never be uttered because it might “hurt the feelings” of some (excluding white Christians who are free game), and if anything, the West should go out of its way to make up for its supposedly historic “sins” by appeasing Muslims until they “like us”—and you have a sure recipe for disaster, that is, the current state of affairs. [Emphasis added.]
Western people are bombarded with these aforementioned “truths” from the cradle to the grave—from kindergarten to university, from Hollywood to the news rooms, and now even in churches—so that they are unable to accept and act on a simple truism that their ancestors well knew: Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant creed that cannot coexist with non-Islam (except insincerely, in times of weakness). [Emphasis added.]
The essence of all this came out clearly when Obama, in order to rationalize away the inhuman atrocities of the Islamic State, counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that their Christian ancestors have been guilty of similar if not worse atrocities. That he had to go back almost a thousand years for examples by referencing the crusades and inquisition—both of which have been completely distorted by the warped postmodern worldview, including by portraying imperialist Muslims as victims—did not matter to America’s leader.
Worse, it did not matter to most Americans. The greater lesson was not that Obama whitewashed modern Islamic atrocities by misrepresenting and demonizing Christian history, but that he was merely reaffirming the mainstream narrative that Americans have been indoctrinated into believing. And thus, aside from the usual ephemeral and meaningless grumblings, his words—as with many of his pro-Islamic, anti-Christian comments and policies—passed along without consequence. [Emphasis added.]
Conclusions
Too many of “We the people” demand “safe spaces” (offense-free zones) where rote acceptance of politically correct pablum is cherished rather than contested or even questioned. I doubt that another massively successful effort on the scale of the September 11, 2001 attack by Islamic fundamentalists would awaken many of them. Rather than begin to awaken and see what Islam is, how many would angrily demand to know what America did this time to offend our brothers and sisters of the Religion of Peace, Truth and love?
We once had a great culture and a great nation.
It is now fading and is in danger of being displaced by something far different and evil. What will WE do?
Getting rid of Obama will not be nearly enough, regardless of whether He is a Muslim.
Listen again to Ayan Hirsi Ali’s hopes for the reformation of Islam and think about what we can do to help. Read about Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, who wants to make Muslims believe that much of fundamentalist Islam is not Islamic.
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser – a Navy vet and founder of the American Islamic Forum of Democracy – is one of those individuals taking the stand against Islamic organizations that support terrorism and claim to speak for the entire community. From Fox News:
“CAIR is a primary obstacle in the effort of many honest American Muslims who recognize our need to own up and lead long-overdue reforms against the root causes of radicalization: Islamism and its separatism,” said Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an ex-U.S. Navy officer who founded and heads the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.
and
“CAIR’s information is marketed and packaged so it seems that they speak for all of us, but they don’t speak for me and my group,” said Raheel Raza, president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow. “CAIR does not and has never represented the majority Muslim voices which are as diverse as Muslims in America.”
‘They don’t speak for me’: New Muslim groups reject CAIR representation http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/12/18/dont-speak-for-me-new-muslim-groups-reject-cair-representation.html
Dr. Jasser has assembled an alliance known as the “Muslim Reform Movement” consisting of about a dozen moderate Islamic groups in the US, Canada and Europe. This movement rebukes jihad and advocates the separation of “Mosque and state,” among other things. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that they reject the idea of an “Islamic State” and Sharia Law.
Although political correctness prevents Democrats and many Republicans from admitting it, it is already well established that CAIR has ties to terrorism.
CAIR, which masquerades as America’s largest Muslim civil rights group, is an outpost of international jihadism. It is an enemy propaganda organization whose longstanding ties to the terrorist underworld have been exhaustively documented at DiscoverTheNetworks and elsewhere. CAIR aims to influence America’s domestic and foreign policies. CAIR wants to make America safe for Sharia law by bullying Americans into not questioning Islam, a religion-centered ideology that has been generating a body count for 1,400 years. [Emphasis added.]
Accusing critics of so-called Islamophobia, a term invented by Islamists, is CAIR’s favorite method of silencing critics and opponents. It is part of a dangerous effort to discourage Americans from thinking freely and arriving at their own conclusions about Islam and mainstream the tenets of Islam in our society. The idea is to eventually make it as difficult and uncomfortable as possible to criticize the faith founded by Muhammad in the seventh century after the birth of Christ. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
CAIR was founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad, Omar Ahmad, and Rafeeq Jaber. The three men, reports DiscoverTheNetworks, “had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook and founded as Hamas’ public relations and recruitment arm in the United States.” CAIR opened an office in the nation’s capital with a $5,000 grant from the Marzook-founded Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a charity that the Bush administration shuttered in 2001 for collecting money “to support the Hamas terror organization.” CAIR called the action “unjust” and “disturbing.” In 2004 Marzook was indicted on racketeering charges related to his pro-Hamas activities. Ahmad was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial.
Ghassan Elashi, a co-founder of the Texas branch of CAIR, was convicted in 2005 of terrorism-related offenses and sentenced to 80 months in prison. CAIR civil rights director Randall Todd Royer was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment on federal weapons and explosives charges in 2004. Bassem Khafagi, a community affairs director at CAIR, was convicted in 2003 on bank and visa fraud charges and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Rabih Haddad, a fundraiser for CAIR’s chapter in Ann Arbor, Mich., was detained in 2001 after overstaying his tourist visa. Authorities found a firearm and boxes of ammunition in his home. He served 19 months in prison and was deported to Lebanon in 2003. CAIR board member Abdurahman Alamoudi was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment for funneling at least $1 million to al-Qaeda. CAIR was founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad, Omar Ahmad, and Rafeeq Jaber. The three men, reports DiscoverTheNetworks, “had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook and founded as Hamas’ public relations and recruitment arm in the United States.”
CAIR and related Islamist organizations have often participated in White House meetings; Dr. Jasser and his group have been excluded.
[F]or the past seven years, the Obama White House has opened its doors to the entire spectrum of radical Islamist groups, just like CAIR. These groups have rationalized the actions of Islamic terrorist groups that have killed Americans, warned American Muslims against cooperating with law enforcement, smeared genuine Muslim moderates like Zuhdi Jasser and Asra Nomani as traitors and accused anyone who dared to utter the term “radical Islam” as “Islamophobic.” These are the groups that the White House should have marginalized. The fact that Obama legitimized radical Islamist groups will be his real legacy.
Is Dr. Jasser’s version of Islam “fantasy Islam?” Historically and presently, it unfortunately is. It rejects aspects of Islamism with which very many Muslims agree.
But need that remain the case? Christianity has changed since the time of the Inquisition and perhaps Islam — which except technologically remains stuck in the middle ages — can eventually change as well — if and when Islamic nations encourage, rather than prohibit, free speech. I have seen few significant signs of that happening. Egyptian President Sisi — despised by Obama for opposing the Muslim Brotherhood — has tried and is trying. He may not be around much longer because of it.
Jasser’s hopes for the future generally parallel those of Ayan Hirsi Ali, who wants Islam to revert to relatively tolerant and peaceful Mecca Islam and to reject subsequent Medina Islam, the fruit of Mohamed’s greatly changed status in Medina to become a powerful warlord. I see little reason to expect that it will change in that direction even in the distant future, and less that it will do so soon. I hope that I am wrong.
In any event, Muslims will need to do most of the work themselves, and that will require that there be enough of them to do it. If and when that happens, perhaps we can help a little. The most important things that we can do will be to
1. Recognize that fundamentalist Islam is evil and shun rather than accept those who espouse it, such as CAIR and its affiliates and
2. Prevent the further invasion of the United States (it may well be too late for Obama’s America) by Muslims who adhere to fundamentalist Islam. Unfortunately, most of our current crop of Republicans seem quite unlikely even to try.
(Why have nations which, thus far, have majority Christian populations done the same? — DM)
Why is the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the symbolic head of 85 million Christians worldwide, expressing shock at yet another terrorist attack perpetrated by the Islamic State?
Had he paid more than just fleeting attention to his fellow Christians in Iraq and Syria, he would know that the Islamic State has been slaughtering Christians in the Middle East since 2006. How much more time did he need?
Without referring by name to the Islamic State, and speaking as if some invisible force of nature were at play here, Pope Francis I deplored “thousands of people, including many Christians, driven from their homes in a brutal manner; children dying of thirst and hunger in their flight; women kidnapped; people massacred; violence of every kind.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was interviewed recently about the Paris attacks and asked about his reaction. “Like everyone else – first shock and horror and then a profound sadness…” he replied. “Saturday morning, I was out and as I was walking I was praying and saying: ‘God, why — why is this happening?'”
Welby is the principal head of the Anglican Church and the symbolic head of the Anglican Communion, which stands at around 85 million members worldwide and is the third largest communion in the world — after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. This is a man with an extremely high public profile, and millions of Christians looking to him for spiritual guidance.
But why is a man who is the symbolic head of 85 million Christians worldwide expressing shock at yet another terrorist attack perpetrated by the Islamic State? Had the Archbishop of Canterbury paid more than just fleeting attention to his fellow Christians in Iraq and Syria, he would know that the Islamic State has been slaughtering Christians in the Middle East since 2006. Between 2004 and 2006, before the Islamic State evolved out of Al Qaeda in Iraq, it hardly showed less zeal to root out Christianity even then.
The Archbishop had eleven years to get used to the idea of people being made homeless, exiled, tortured, raped, enslaved, beheaded and murdered for not being Muslims. How much more time did he need?
The Archbishop of Canterbury had more wisdom to offer in the interview. “The perversion of faith is one of the most desperate aspects of our world today,” he said, explaining that Islamic State terrorists have distorted their faith to the extent that they believe they are glorifying their God. But it is unclear how he is as qualified an expert in Islam as Islamic State “Caliph ” Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who possesses a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Baghdad.
Christians, Yazidis and persecuted Muslims in the Middle East can probably point to aspects of the world more desperate than “the perversion of faith,” but then again, the Archbishop does not seem too preoccupied with the situation on the ground.
Fortunately, others are. In a piece for The Atlantic, “What ISIS Really Wants,” Graeme Wood spent time researching the Islamic State and its ideology in depth. He spoke to members of the Islamic State and Islamic State recruiters; his conclusions were the following:
“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.
“Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it.”
Members of the Islamic State are shown on the Libyan coast, preparing to behead a group of Ethiopian Christians. (From a video released in April 2015)
The West nevertheless continues to pretend that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam, and the Archbishop of Canterbury is apparently no different. It is noteworthy, however, that the Archbishop has no misgivings when it comes to Christians. “I cannot say that Christians who resort to violence are not Christians.,” he said to the Muslim Council of Wales two months ago. “At Srebrenica the perpetrators claimed Christian faith. I cannot deny their purported Christianity, but must acknowledge that event as yet another in the long history of Christian violence, and I must repudiate that what they did was in any way following the life and teaching of Jesus.”
During a debate in the House of Lords earlier this year, he also had no qualms in stating that “the church’s sporadic record of compelling obedience to its teachings through violence and coercion is a cause for humility and shame.”
If the Archbishop of Canterbury cannot deny the Christianity of Christian perpetrators who claim the Christian faith, how can he — not a Muslim scholar — deny the Islamic nature of Muslim perpetrators who claim the Muslim faith?
Just as mind-boggling is the refusal of Pope Francis I to speak the name of the perpetrators. In August 2014, when the Islamic State conquered the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar and began brutally to round up and murder Yazidis, and up to 100,000 Christians fled for their lives, Pope Francis could not make himself utter the name of the Islamic State. In his traditional Sunday blessing, he said the news from Iraq had left him “in dismay and disbelief.” As if every atrocity had happened for the first time! Christian Iraqis had at that point been persecuted by Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State for a full decade. Without referring by name to the Islamic State, and speaking as if some invisible force of nature were at play, the pope deplored “thousands of people, including many Christians, driven from their homes in a brutal manner; children dying of thirst and hunger in their flight; women kidnapped; people massacred; violence of every kind.”
A year later, in July 2015, he called the onslaught on Christians in the Middle East “a form of genocide,” but still without mentioning who exactly was committing it.
It is tragic that the Church has done so little to help its flock in the Middle East. Where, during the past decade, have the Archbishop of Canterbury and his colleagues from the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church been? Where now is their vocal and public outrage at the near extinction of this ancient Christian culture? Where are their forceful appeals to political leaders and military decision-makers to intervene on behalf of their suffering brethren?
The Pope, however, did find time last May to write a 180-page encyclical about climate change, and he has spoken passionately about the bizarre concept of the “rights of the environment.” In front of the UN and a joint session of the U.S. Congress, he again spoke of the persecution of Christians, as if it were a metaphysical event:
“He expressed deep concern for the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, where they and other religious groups, have been ‘forced to witness the destruction of their places of worship, their cultural and religious heritage’ and been forced to flee or face death or enslavement.”
Christians in the Middle East are suffering and dying, and the world hardly pays attention. The post-Christian West evidently has no moment of charity for the plight of people with whom it might feel at least a slight solidarity. But in 2016, Europe will be receiving another three million migrants, according to the European Union. So far, most of those who have arrived are Muslims, and there is little reason to expect that those who will arrive next year will be persecuted Christians. Most of the refugees come from refugee camps near Syria; Christians stay away from the refugee camps because they experience persecution in them too. It is no different with the Syrian refugees coming to the US.
The Christians in the Middle East are thus still left fending for themselves.
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Phobia is an abnormal, irrational fear. As now defined, however, Islamophobia is merely “prejudice against, hatred towards, or fear of the religion of Islam or Muslims.” Rational “Prejudice,” “hatred” and “fear” of Islam are, therefore, now Islamophobic.
Obama often proclaims that there is no reason to fear Islam — the religion of truth and love — and that He welcomes it in His America. It is permissible, indeed even patriotic, to fear and oppose the Non-Islamic Islamic State, but to fear and to oppose Islam runs counter to American values and is, therefore, worse than merely vile.
By virtue of His constitutional obligation under Article II to do whatever He damn well pleases, He has determined that anyone who criticises Islam is guilty of felony hate speech, which has long been recognized not to be entitled to protections under the First Amendment. To think Islamophobic thoughts leads to hate speech and must also be criminalised as hate thought.
Once again, Obama shows that He is a great leader — not a mere follower — in America’s quest finally to become a great nation of which He can finally be proud. An article by Jonathan Turley is titled Forty Percent of Millennials Favor Censorship of Offensive Speech By Government. Turley, a liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the word and among the few “liberals” to remain strong defenders of free speech, notes that
I have long argued that the West appears to have fallen out of love with free speech, which is more often viewed as a rising scourge rather than a defining value in some countries. A recent poll of the Pew Research Center shows just how many people we have lost to those calling for greater censorship and criminalization of speech. It is not surprisingly more prevalent with younger age groups, though Democrats are almost twice as likely favor censorship than Republicans. The largest (and most alarming) group is the millennials — 40% of whom favor government censorship of speech offensive to minority groups. [Emphasis added.]
Clearly, Obama is — as always — on the right side of history, leading from the front.
Here is the text of Obama’s address to the nation, to be delivered on Thanksgiving Day.
My fellow, blessedly multicultural, Americans, Thanksgiving is the day we all now understand was forced upon us to commemorate the vile treatment of Native Americans by settlers — just as Israeli settlers now abuse native Palestinians. To treat Muslims as we treated Native Americans, as Israel treats peaceful Palestinians — and indeed as Christian Crusaders just a short time ago treated peaceful Muslims — is the worst type of anti-American prejudice I can imagine. Therefore, under the powers vested in Me under the U.S. Constitution, I hereby decree that anyone — no matter who or where and even in the halls of Congress — criticises the Religion of Peace and Love shall be tried and summarily convicted of felony Hate speech.
Some may say — falsely — that this is a drastic and unwarranted measure. It is neither. Islamophobia is intensely harmful to Muslims fleeing persecution by Christians and Jews abroad. It may even deter Muslims from coming to My America to enjoy the benefits of liberty and freedom as ordaned under the Constitution. They all desire to be assimilated into America and to live here with peace and honour killings in accord with our traditions of freedom and justice; traditions which are envied by those fleeing persecution and which they yearn to enjoy in My America. To persecute innocent Muslims here, as they are persecuted abroad is a disgrace; as long as I am your President I shall not permit it.
The spectre of hate thought also now darkens America and leads to hate speech against Muslims everywhere — even those in The Islamic State Republic of Iran, with which I successfully negotiated an historic deal to eliminate the spectre of nuclear weapons in, and to bring peace to, most of the Middle East.
Just as I have decreed that hate speech against Muslims shall be punished, so must hate thought. Accordingly, all candidates for public office in My America will now be required to answer questions seeking to probe their deepest unspoken, but dreadful, anti-Islamic thoughts. The Council on Islamic-American Relations will prepare the questions and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation will ask them. Those found to harbour anti-Islamic — and therefore un-American — thoughts will be declared unfit for, and disqualified from holding, public office. The First Amendment, of course, provides no protection for freedom of thought; even if it did, it would provide no protection for hate thought. This is necessary if My America is, once again, to lead the free world.
(Wait for vigorous applause.)
Thank you. Now, for your Thanksgiving pleasure, here is a tribute to Me by my favorite vocal group, the Muslim Brotherhood Chorus.
On Monday, President Obama denounced Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, who suggested that the U.S. should admit Christian refugees fleeing persecution in Syria, but not Muslims from the same country. Obama called such a “religious test” “shameful” and “not American.” Today he doubled down, asserting that Republicans who object to resettling tens or hundreds of thousands of Islamic refugees from Syria in the U.S. are helping ISIS.
President Obama apparently is unaware of the controlling federal law, or maybe he just doesn’t care what the law says. It wouldn’t be the first time. Andy McCarthy tries to set Obama straight:
In his latest harangue against Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and other Americans opposed to his insistence on continuing to import thousands of Muslim refugees from Syria and other parts of the jihad-ravaged Middle East, Obama declaimed:
When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted … that’s shameful…. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.
Really? Under federal law, the executive branch is expressly required to take religion into account in determining who is granted asylum. Under the provision governing asylum (section 1158 of Title 8, U.S. Code), an alien applying for admission
must establish that … religion [among other things] … was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant.
Moreover, to qualify for asylum in the United States, the applicant must be a “refugee” as defined by federal law. That definition (set forth in Section 1101(a)(42)(A) of Title , U.S. Code) also requires the executive branch to take account of the alien’s religion:
The term “refugee” means (A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality … and who is unable or unwilling to return to … that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of … religion [among other things] …[.]
The law requires a “religious test.” And the reason for that is obvious. Asylum law is not a reflection of the incumbent president’s personal (and rather eccentric) sense of compassion. Asylum is a discretionary national act of compassion that is directed, by law not whim, to address persecution.
There is no right to emigrate to the United States. And the fact that one comes from a country or territory ravaged by war does not, by itself, make one an asylum candidate. …
In the case of this war, the Islamic State is undeniably persecuting Christians. It is doing so, moreover, as a matter of doctrine. Even those Christians the Islamic State does not kill, it otherwise persecutes as called for by its construction of sharia (observe, for example, the ongoing rape jihad and sexual slavery). To the contrary, the Islamic State seeks to rule Muslims, not kill or persecute them. …
And it is downright dishonest to claim that taking such religious distinctions into account is “not American,” let alone “shameful.” How can somethingAmerican law requires be “not American”?
There are strong practical as well as legal reasons for distinguishing between Islamic applicants for asylum and similar applications by Christians or others. We know that ISIS is trying to infiltrate terrorists into groups of migrants leaving Syria; there is some evidence that they have succeeded. As McCarthy says, no one has a right to emigrate to the U.S. The government’s first duty is to protect the American people, not to extend favors to foreigners. Moreover, Obama’s “compassion” argument falls flat. A recent Center for Immigration Studies report found that, for the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we could instead care for 12 refugees overseas. That is a much more cost-effective approach, and one that will not impose needless dislocation either on us, or on the refugees.
JOE adds: I have to say that by far the most disconcerting thing about Barack Obama as a man is–and this is a matter of objective observation, not of interpretation–that the only thing that really gets him emotionally fired up is his own conservative countrymen. The South China Sea, Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Iran, North Korea–nothing seems to faze this guy quite like Americans who read Burke.
In recent months, Mideast Christians have been forming militias to fight the Islamic State (IS) and other jihadi groups in both Iraq and Syria—even as the Obama administration, which arms the “opposition,” refuses to arm them.
In Iraq, some of the few remaining Assyrian Christians have formed militias under the name Dwekh Nawsha (literally meaning “self-sacrifice” in Christ’s native tongue of Aramaic). Most of these fighters are from among those Christians displaced from the Ninevah Plain due to the atrocities committed by IS and are on the frontlines fighting the jihadis.
They were formed soon after the U.S.-supported Kurdish Peshmerga, who are leading the fight against IS in the region, retreated from many Christian villages without a fight last summer, declining to protect them from the IS advance which led to the usual atrocities.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, “Christians have taken up arms because they want to protect their own land, and many no longer trust the Kurds to do it for them.” Indeed, the Kurds, including the Peshmerga, have been known to abuse and even persecute Christians. Like IS, Kurds are Sunni Muslims too.
“We will stay here, and Christians will protect Christians. Not Arabs or Kurds protecting us, but Christians,” said local commander Fouad Masaoud Gorgees.
In neighboring Syria, approximately 500 Syriac Christian fighters recently assembled and managed to prevent the Islamic State from entering the ancient Christian settlement of Sadad. But on October 30, IS captured a town less than five miles away, leaving Sadad vulnerable to continued assaults.
Even the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox church, Ignatius Aphrem II, traveled to Sadad to boost the morale of Christian defenders. Said Aphrem:
It was emotional but it was also very encouraging to see our young people determined to defend their land and stay in their homeland. To see them ready to fight and to sacrifice for their land, I think that’s what’s very meaningful, that made me very proud of them.
There’s a reason why Christians are frantically trying to save Sadad from the clutches of IS. As one Syriac Christian fighter put it, Sadad “is a symbolic place for us and we will not allow it to fall again.”
He is referring to the events of October 2013, when the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army—widely touted as moderate but in fact working with al-Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front—captured the town. They made a graphic video (with English subtitles) of those whom they killed, the “dogs of Assad”—“dog” being an ancient Islamic epithet for Christians—while shouting Islam’s victory-cry, “Allahu Akbar” (which John McCain equates to a Christian saying “thank God”) and praise for the Free Syrian Army.
During their one week occupation of Sadad, the moderate/radical coalition tortured, raped, and murdered 45 Christians; the bodies of six people from one family alone, ranging from ages 16 to 90, were found at the bottom of a well (an increasingly common fate for “subhuman” Christians).
At the time, Syriac Archbishop Selwanos Boutros called it Syria’s “largest massacre of Christians.” Even so, this massacre was wholly ignored by the Obama administration and so-called mainstream media in an effort to maintain the narrative that the Free Syrian Army was “moderate.”
Concerning the Sadad massacres, the archbishop had asked in 2013:
We have shouted aid to the world but no one has listened to us. Where is the Christian conscience? Where is human consciousness? Where are my brothers?
As persecuted Mideast Christians have well learned since, most Western governments—the Obama administration at their head—could care less about their fate. They care only about one thing: overthrowing Assad—at any cost, including by directly or indirectly arming the Islamic terrorists that persecute Christians in horrific ways, including slaughtering those who refuse to renounce Christ for Muhammad.
Yet truly “moderate” Christian militias fighting the Islamic State are denied arms from Washington: “Lobbyists in D.C. are blocking weapons and equipment from reaching Dwekh Nawsha, the Christian militia force that has been fighting ISIS in Iraq’s Assyrian Nineveh plains.”
Retired Lt. Col. Sargis Sangari, an Iraq war veteran who served 20 years in the army, says: “As much as you’re giving money to all these individuals who are killing each other [the “moderate” terrorists, Kurds, etc.], why don’t you try to give it to the Assyrians?”…. Currently, their [Christians’] lack of resources prevents them from launching an offensive.” U.S. funding, training, and equipment would allow these Christian militias to take the fight to IS, added Sangari.
Of course, all of this assumes that U.S. leadership actually wants the Islamic State and other “moderate” jihadis to be defeated in an offensive by anyone—a dubious assumption.
Still, persecuted Christian pleas have not totally fallen on deaf ears. A few Western Christians, mostly Americans, have traveled to the Middle East to help the indigenous Christians fight the jihadis.
Seeing their governments, which possess the military capability to annihilate the Islamic State, do next to nothing—not even help arm Christians—against IS, these Western Christians have decided to take it on themselves to fight the good fight on behalf of the weak and oppressed.
Brett Felton, a former American soldier who once served in Iraq, now sees himself as a “soldier of Christ” and has returned to help train Dwekh Nawsha against IS.
According to the 28-year-old, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But here we’re actually fighting for the freedom of the people … to be able to live without persecution, to keep the church bells ringing.”
U.S. vet Jordan Matson, who has the words “Christ is Lord” inscribed in his vest, said: “I decided that if our government wasn’t going to do anything about it, I would… We’re getting shot at [by IS/jihadis] on pretty much a daily basis…. We don’t have the technology that the United States military has to push our enemies away.”
First the Christians of Iraq and then Syria implored the West for help against the Islamic persecutors that the United States unleashed by overthrowing secular strongman Saddam Hussein and now against Bashar Assad.
Brutally persecuted Christians were totally ignored by both government and media.
Then they implored the Obama administration to simply stop arming their persecutors. When that too fell on deaf ears, vastly outnumbered and underequipped Christians gathered to fight the Islamic State head on, hoping the U.S., which showers the “opposition” with weapons, would help equip them against IS.
No such luck. As a result, a few Western Christians who believe in religious freedom are risking their personal lives to help their Mideast brothers against the scourge of “ISIS.”
In light of all this, to still fail to understand which “side” U.S. leadership is on—they currently claim to be on the side of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”—is to be beyond naïve.
President Obama reacts as he meets with Pope Francis during their exchange of gifts at the Vatican on March 27, 2014. (Associated Press) more >
Less than 3 percent of the Syrian refugees admitted to the United States so far are Christian and 96 percent are Muslim, the result of a referral system that Republican Sen. Tom Cotton says “unintentionally discriminates” against Christians.
State Department figures released Monday showed that the current system overwhelmingly favors Muslim refugees. Of the 2,184 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States so far, only 53 are Christians while 2,098 are Muslim, the Christian News Service reported.
Mr. Cotton and Sen. John Boozman, both Arkansas Republicans, called Monday for a moratorium on resettlements, a White House report on vetting procedures, and a re-evaluation of the refugee-referral process.
“[T]he United States’ reliance on the United Nations for referrals of Syrian refugees should also be re-evaluated,” said Mr. Cotton in a statement. “That reliance unintentionally discriminates against Syrian Christians and other religious minorities who are reluctant to register as refugees with the United Nations for fear of political and sectarian retribution.”
The current system relies on referrals from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Syria’s population in 2011 was 90 percent Muslim and 10 percent Christian, CNS said.
At a news conference Monday in Turkey, President Obama described as “shameful” the idea of giving religious preferences to refugees, apparently referring to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s suggestion that the United States should accept Christian refugees while Muslim refugees are sent to majority-Muslim countries.
“That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” Mr. Obama said.
Figures from the State Department Refugee Processing Center updated Monday showed that 96 percent of the Syrian refugees accepted so far are Muslim, while less than 3 percent are Christian. The other 33 identified as belonging to smaller religious faiths or said they had no religion.
Ben Rhodes, Obama deputy national security adviser, said Sunday that the White House still plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees despite last week’s deadly terrorist attack on Paris. Republicans have countered that it’s all but impossible to conduct background checks on those seeking refuge.
Mr. Cotton and Mr. Boozman called Monday for a temporary moratorium on resettlements and “a requirement that the President certify the integrity of the security vetting process as a condition of lifting the moratorium.”
“The American people have long demonstrated unmatched compassion for the world’s persecuted and endangered. But when bringing refugees to our shores, the U.S. government must put the security of Arkansans and all Americans first,” Mr. Cotton said. “No terrorist should be able to take advantage of the refugee process to threaten the United States.”
Father Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem (right), consistently defames Israel, whose soldiers rescued him when he was attacked by rock-throwing Muslim Palestinians on the way to Bethlehem in December 2015. Pictured at left: Muslim Palestinians in the Bethlehem area, among them men dressed in Santa Claus costumes, hurl stones at Israeli soldiers while yelling “Allahu Akbar,” on Dec. 18, 2015.
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