Via The Jewish Press
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Posted tagged ‘Christians’
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June 21, 2016Humor |Phrases about Islamist Terrorism that won’t Offend Anyone Important
June 15, 2016Phrases about Islamist Terrorism that won’t Offend Anyone Important, Dan Miller’s Blog, June 15, 2016
(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Obama, His Department of Homeland Security, CAIR and His many other collaborators colleagues have tried really hard not to offend Islamists when talking about Islamist terror. Ditto the lamebrain mainstream media. They need more variety, so here are just a few politically correct suggestions for appropriate phrases guaranteed not to offend anyone important.
Church violence — for use when Islamists burn or otherwise attack a church.
Synagogue violence — as above, but when they burn or otherwise attack a synagogue.
Christian violence – broader than church violence, but otherwise about the same.
Jewish violence — Broader than synagogue violence, but otherwise about the same.
Homosexual violence — for use when Islamists kill homosexuals.
Gun violence — for use when Muslims use guns to attack homosexuals, Christians, Jews or other non-Muslims.
Knife violence — same as for gun violence, except it applies only when knives are used.
Violent rhetoric — applies only to whatever Donald Trump says.
Hate speech — applies to anything linking the Quran, the Hadith, Sharia Law, other Islamic texts, CAIR or other Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups to violence.
Great speech! –applies to anything about Islamism said by Obama, Hillary or a CAIR spokesperson.
Peaceful Muslims — applies to all Muslims who haven’t yet behaved violently toward non-Muslims personally.
Racist incitement — Any derogatory remarks about Islamists, even though Islam is not a race.
Racism — see Racist incitement.
Men of God — Imams.
Not Islamic — applies to any violent, criminal or otherwise antisocial act committed by a Muslim.
That’s just a sample. Any sane person could suggest more.
Now, for your further entertainment, here’s a beautiful vocal rendition by the Muslim Brotherhood Trio:
Ramadan Massacre in Orlando
June 13, 2016Ramadan Massacre in Orlando, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, June 13, 2016
(The Orlando massacre happened because of homophobic Christians and their horrid firearms. CAIR and Obama have told us so and it’s true. It had nothing to do with Islam and to claim that it did is Islamophobic. Muslims are the victims. Thus spake the left. When will they blame anthropomorphic climate change? — DM)
It was the worst mass shooting ever on American soil: Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire at the Pulse, an Orlando, Florida gay nightclub, on Saturday night. Mateen murdered at least fifty people and wounded another 53. The death count is almost certain to go higher, as many are quite gravely wounded. Mateen was a Muslim who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and mentioned the Boston Marathon jihad killers in a 911 call just before he started shooting. Thus in the wake of the jihad massacre, it was time for the Leftist political and media elites to do what they always do first and foremost after every jihad massacre: make sure that no one thought ill of Islam.
The FBI, to its credit, immediately declared the massacre a terror attack, but Barack Obama was circumspect about what kind: he declared that it was too early to know “the precise motivations of the killer.” This despite the fact that not only had Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and made reference to the Tsarnaev brothers, but also the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the FBI is investigating reports that Mateen recited Islamic prayers during the massacre. On top of all that, the attack took place during the Muslim month of Ramadan, during which the Islamic State has called for jihad attacks against Americans.
Nonetheless, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, along with many other Leftists, tried to turn the jihad attack into a commercial for rolling back Americans’ Second Amendment rights, tweeting: “We mourn with the people of Orlando and the LGBT community as a whole on the news that -once again- we have lost precious lives to the gun.” Who knew that guns could be so diabolical and anti-gay?
Leftist responses ranged from the ominous to the absurd. Ominously, Facebook and Reddit turned to censorship to try to prevent people from thinking ill of Islam. Facebook removed the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) page, which had been up for six years and had over 55,000 members, and Reddit began banning people who dared to mention that the killer was a Muslim.
On the absurd side, ACLU staff attorney Chase Strangio tweeted that the massacre was the fault of conservative Christians: “You know what is gross — your thoughts and prayers and Islamophobia after you created this anti-queer climate.” Does the illustrious Strangio actually believe that Omar Mateen was incited to commit mass murder in the gay nightclub in Orlando by an “anti-queer climate” created by Christian conservatives? He probably does, since, as a Leftist, he knows that non-Muslims are always and everywhere to blame for atrocities that Muslims commit.
Not only are non-Muslims to blame for Muslim atrocities, but Muslims are their victims, even when no Muslims are killed. AFP reported that “Florida officials also invited a local Islamic leader to address the media in a bid to preempt a possible backlash against the Muslim community.” Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida warned against“sensationalizing” the story.
In a similar vein, gay activist Steven W Thrasher wrote sanctimoniously in the Guardian: “Let us remember that we have never really blamed all Christians, Republicans or Democrats (many who have organized en masse to subject queer people to systematic violence and destruction at different points in American history) for the violence waged against us. We should remember that again today. We should remember not to blame all members of any other religion or political ideology for what one person does.” Right. The problem is that any examination of the motives and goals of people such as Omar Mateen, and any consideration of what can be done about them, is always met with the accusation that such examinations and considerations constitute blaming all Muslims for the actions of jihadis. It is so obviously fallacious that it is hard not to suspect that it is an intentional obfuscation.
In reality, the motivation for the jihad is quite clear, but Barack Obama doesn’t want to acknowledge that, because to do so would force him to confront the reality of Islamic teaching regarding gays. The Qur’an says: “If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-returning, Most Merciful.” (4:16) That seems rather mild, but there’s more. The Qur’an also depicts Allah raining down stones upon people for engaging in homosexual activity: “We also sent Lot. He said to his people: “Do you commit lewdness such as no people in creation committed before you? For you practise your lusts on men in preference to women: you are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds….And we rained down on them a shower of brimstone: Then see what was the end of those who indulged in sin and crime!” (7:80)
Muhammad makes clear that Muslims should be the executors of the wrath of Allah by killing gays. A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “If you find anyone doing as Lot’s people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done.” (Abu Dawud 38:4447) And: “Stone the upper and the lower, stone them both.” (Ibn Majah 3:20:2562)
Combine this with the fact that Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani recently called on Muslims to use this Ramadan to “get prepared, be ready … to make it a month of calamity everywhere for nonbelievers…especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America,” and Mateen’s pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State, and there is no doubt whatsoever what Omar Mateen was trying to do.
The Left has chosen to protect Islam at all costs, even at the expense of its other victim groups. When the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) several years ago ran ads highlighting the mistreatment of gays in Islamic law, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which is its city council, issued a resolution condemning not that mistreatment, but our ads. Gay advocates such as Theresa Sparks and Chris Stedman attacked us for daring to call attention to the institutionalized mistreatment of gays under Islamic law. Their gay advocacy doesn’t extend to standing up to Sharia oppression of gays, even though that oppression is far more virulent and violent than anything from “right-wing extremists” in the U.S.
And you can’t blame them: given the Leftist/jihadist alliance, it’s clear that if they spoke out against Sharia mistreatment of gays, they would no longer be invited to the best parties, and might even be branded as “right-wing.” Their moral cowardice and duplicity, however, are obvious, and monstrous in the light of what has just happened in Orlando. The Left’s continuing and now reflexive obfuscation and denial in the wake of every jihad massacre only ensures that there will be many, many more such massacres.
Obama’s Refugee Policy: Yes to Potential Terrorists, No to Victims of Genocide
June 5, 2016Obama’s Refugee Policy: Yes to Potential Terrorists, No to Victims of Genocide, Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, June 5, 2016
(Please see also, No Refuge for the Victims of Jihadist Genocide. — DM)
♦ “Without doubt, Syrians of all confessions are being victimized by this savage war and are facing unimaginable suffering. But only Christians and other religious minorities are the deliberate targets of systematic persecution and genocide.” — U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, March 17, 1016.
♦ Christians account for 10% of Syria’s total population — yet they account for less than 0.5% of the refugees received into America. Sunni Muslims are 74% of Syria’s population — yet 99% of those received into America. In other words, there should be 20 times more Christians and about one-quarter fewer Sunnis granted refugee status than there already have been.
♦ ISIS is “taking advantage of the torrent of migrants to insert operatives into that flow.” — James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence.
♦ Although the U.N. and U.S. know that Sunni refugees are terrorizing Christians in their camps, they abandon the true victims who deserve sanctuary in the West, while “humanitarianly” taking in their persecutors.
The Obama administration has been escalating a policy that both abandons Mideast Christians and exposes Americans to the jihad.
Late last year it was revealed that 97% of Syrian refugees accepted into the U.S. were Sunni Muslims — the same Islamic sect to which the Islamic State belongs— while fewer than half-a-percent were Christians.
This disparity has since gotten worse. From May 1 to May 23, 499 Syrian refugees — a number that exceeds the total number of refugees admitted during the last three years — were received into the United States. Zero Christians were among them; 99 percent were Sunni (the remaining one percent was simply listed as “Muslim”).
These numbers are troubling.
First, from a strictly humanitarian point of view — and humanitarian reasons are the chief reason being cited in accepting refugees — Christians should receive priority simply because currently they are among the most persecuted groups in the Middle East. Along with the Yazidis, Christians are experiencing genocide at the hands of ISIS, as the State Department recently determined. The Islamic State has repeatedly forced Christians to renounce Christ or die; has enslaved and raped them, and desecrated or destroyed more than 400 of their churches.
As Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) put it this March, “Without doubt, Syrians of all confessions are being victimized by this savage war and are facing unimaginable suffering. But only Christians and other religious minorities are the deliberate targets of systematic persecution and genocide.”
Sunni Muslims are not being slaughtered, beheaded, and raped for refusing to renounce their faith; they are not having their mosques burned, nor are they being jailed and killed for apostasy, blasphemy, or proselytization. On the contrary, non-ISIS affiliated Sunnis are responsible for committing dozens of such atrocities against Christian minorities every single month all throughout the Islamic world.[1]
Unsurprisingly, many Sunnis entering America and Europe — including the terrorists who killed 120 people in Paris, 32 people in Brussels, and 12 in California — share the same Sunni-sanctioned hate for and opposition to non-Muslim “infidels.” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admits that ISIS is “taking advantage of the torrent of migrants to insert operatives into that flow.”
Even if one were to operate under the assumption that refugee status must be made available to all Syrians, regardless of religion, the simple demographics of Syria expose the pro-Sunni, anti-Christian bias of the current Obama refugee policy: Christians account for 10% of Syria’s total population — yet they account for less than 0.5% of the refugees received into America. Sunni Muslims are 74% of Syria’s population — yet 99% of those received into America. In other words, there should be 20 times more Christians and about one-quarter fewer Sunnis granted refugee status than there already have been.
Finally, the excuse given by those who defend this disparity rings totally false: According to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, Christian and other minorities “fear that registration might bring retribution from other refugees.” So supposedly they do not register and are left out of the process. As ongoing reports reveal, however, the majority of those at refugee camps — Sunnis — are persecuting the Christians in their midst, sometimes killing them. During one Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Sicily, Muslim “refugees” shouted “Allahu Akbar!” [“Allah is the Greatest!”] as they hurled as many as 53 Christians overboard.
Migrants arrive by boat in Italy after crossing from Libya. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons/Vito Manzari)
Although the U.N. and U.S. know that Sunni refugees are terrorizing Christians in their camps, they abandon the true victims who deserve sanctuary in the West, while “humanitarianly” taking in their persecutors.
The Catholic Church and several mainline Protestant denominations are equally guilty. Most recently, “Christian refugees [were] ‘let down’ by Pope [Francis]: he promised to take them to Italy but then took only Muslims instead.”
Such hypocrisy has been on open display since recent the problem of the U.S. accepting refugees from the Middle East arose. Months ago, Barack Obama — who was raised a Sunni Muslim — described the proposal that preference should be given to Christian minorities as “shameful”: “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” he said loftily.
Today, however, it is clear from the statistics alone that there is a very clear bias[2] in the refugee program: it favors those most prone to committing acts of terror in America while ignoring those experiencing genocide. It is the Obama administration’s own refugee policies that are “shameful,” “not American,” and do not represent “who we are.”
___________________________
[1] Even before ISIS’ new “caliphate” was established, Christians were and continue to be targeted by Muslims— Muslim mobs, Muslim individuals, Muslim regimes, and Muslim terrorists, from Muslim countries of all races (Arab, African, Asian, etc.) — and for the same reason: Christians are infidel number one. See Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christiansf or hundreds of anecdotes before the rise of ISIS as well as the Muslim doctrines that create such hatred and contempt for Christians who are especially deserving of refugee status.
[2] These recent revelations of the Obama administration’s pro-Muslim and anti-Christian policies fit a clear and established pattern of religious bias within his administration. Examples follow:
- When inviting scores of Muslim representatives, the State Department is in the habit of denying visas to solitary Christian representatives.
- When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for several months and then sent back to the lion’s den.
- When the Nigerian government waged a strong offensive against Boko Haram, killing some of its jihadi terrorists, Secretary of State John Kerry called for the “human rights” of the jihadis, who regularly slaughter and rape Christians and burn their churches. More recently, Kerry “urged Tajikistan not to go overboard in its crackdown on Islam.”
- When persecuted Coptic Christians planned on joining Egypt’s anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution of 2013, the U.S. said no.
- When persecuted Iraqi and Syrian Christians asked for arms to join the opposition fighting ISIS, D.C. refused.
Trump: Unexpected and Unconventional but Suited for Our Times
May 11, 2016Trump: Unexpected and Unconventional but Suited for Our Times, American Thinker, Scott S. Powell, May 11, 2016
One of the most extraordinary things about Donald Trump’s primary victory in the Republican Party is that he received more votes from people identifying as Christian than his closest competitor Ted Cruz — the son of an evangelical pastor and one who profusely displayed his Christian identity in speech and temperament. In contrast, by standards that many believe to be the essence of Christian character as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, Donald Trump has been anything but meek, merciful, or peacemaking in his political rise. Some have likened him to a one-man wrecking ball. So what’s going on?
No one doubts that these are unusual times, with more forces pulling the United States down than at any other time in history. There is plenty of blame to go around for America’s spiraling state of decline, but at the top of the list are two things: First, we have had a culture captured and constrained by secular progressive political correctness. Second, we have an overbearing federal government that has corrupted both parties, the bureaucracies, and even the supposedly independent Federal Reserve.
At the grassroots, Republicans have tried to bring about a corrective, and they did succeed in getting many conservative reform candidates elected to congress in the last six years. Yet the stranglehold of political correctness and the corruption of Washington from special interests and lobbyists have proven insurmountable. Washington, DC — a metropolis producing very little with limited industry and almost no manufacturing — has become the richest city in the country, while driving the nation to the edge of financial ruin, as manifest in a national debt exceeding $19 trillion, 47 million people on food stamps, and a true unemployment rate that may be three times higher than the manipulated official rate released by the federal government.
Even as white Christians have diminished in their overall percentage of the population at large, according to the Pew Research Center, they still account for nearly seven in ten Americans who identify with, or lean toward, the Republican Party — about the same percentage as in the 1980s during the Reagan years. The problem is the GOP — despite its success in gaining majorities in both houses of Congress and controlling the power of the purse — has been ineffective as an opposition party during the Obama years.
The tipping point for many Christians came with a realization that the Republican Party was as incapable of protecting their rights and values at home as it was feckless in stopping an errant foreign policy that undermined trust with allies and emboldened enemies.
Two unnerving breaches of protection prompted many to recognize compelling qualities in Donald Trump over other candidates. First, he exuded an unapologetic toughness about building a wall and stopping the wave of illegal immigrants flooding over the Mexican border. Second, he was unequivocal about obliterating ISIS quickly and decisively — ending its wanton slaughter of Christians and other ethnic groups. And bridging both of these issues, in the aftermath of ISIS-inspired attacks in San Bernardino and Brussels, Trump unhesitatingly opposed Obama’s wish to take in undocumented Syrian refugees, “until we figure out what the hell is going on.” In that alone in the eyes of the majority, Trump demonstrated he was presidential, putting the protection of Americans as the top priority.
Political correctness and intolerance, which debilitates critical thinking, discourse and debate, has been shaping American culture for more than a generation. Throughout the seven plus years of the Obama administration, political correctness has driven domestic and foreign policy — with disastrous results. Obama has gone beyond anyone in recent memory in assaulting the First Amendment, undermining both speech and the exercise of Christian religion. We now see among liberals and secular progressives operating in the Democrat Party an Orwellian power structure that seeks to advance a statist, socialist and globalist transformation of the U.S. by silencing opposing views through the courts, misinformation, and distortion of the truth. Call it “newspeak” as Orwell did or the successor term “doublespeak,” its purpose is the same: to shape the masses thinking and obfuscate what is really going down.
Political correctness has not only prevented development of an effective strategy to deal with Islamist terrorism. It has turned U.S. relations in the Middle East upside down. The Obama administration celebrated the ouster and replacement of Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, a long-standing U.S. ally, with Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi. A similar glee was initially expressed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the news of Muammar Gaddafi being hunted down and killed, only to be followed by increased mayhem in Libya, leading to the tragedy and humiliation of the U.S. at the hands of terrorists in Benghazi.
But for many Christians, the bridge too far was Obama’s rebuke of Israel and his end run around the U.S. Congress, in forcing through a fundamentally flawed nuclear deal with Iran. Iran is both the top exporter of hate and the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism whose longstanding primary targets are the United States (often referred to as the “big Satan”), and Israel (the “little Satan”).
Everyone recognizes that Donald Trump is a flawed candidate. His Christian supporters certainly know this as well or better than his critics. But they also recognize that sinners are all that there are to choose from and that America’s precarious position at home and abroad requires an unconventional leader with unusual characteristics — some of which may not be aligned with a stereotypical Christian temperament.
One thing few could disagree with is that Trump deserves credit more than any conservative for fracturing the foundation of political correctness, upon which rests the entire liberal superstructure.
In fact, conventional conservatives may have reached a limit in expanding their audience. In contrast, it appears to be harvest time for Trump. His style of common sense plain talk has the potential to make huge inroads into both independent and liberal constituencies who are just now waking up to the absurdities of political correctness. While many still can’t see clearly, the fog is lifting, and the soul, spontaneity and humor of America is making an incipient revival, even in the midst of rancor.
If one can get past the braggadocio, narcissism and other negatives of Trump’s character, on the positive side he exudes confidence, ambition and a keenness to make good deals, get results and win. He is bold, direct and doesn’t shy away from confrontation. Mr. Trump is quite social and clearly likes to entertain, but he is also tough as nails, unrelenting and unpredictable with adversaries. He is unquestionably and refreshingly patriotic.
It turns out that some of these qualities are among those most vital to rebuilding relations with America’s allies and restoring respect — even fear — from adversaries. Mr. Trump’s irectness also suggests he is the best-suited presidential candidate to take on America’s greatest threat — insolvency. He could break the cycle of denial that completely engulfs the Democrat Party, and has hitherto prevented predecessors from doing much of anything regarding the nation’s out-of-control spending, deficits and unsustainable debt. Additionally, Trump’s toughness may be the key virtue needed to rule in a divided country and to successfully downsize and restructure federal agencies and get Washington out of the way of the American economy and its people.
Although the GOP believes it has a big tent, understandably many party members with well-established positions and values have great difficulty in accepting for the highest office in the land a newcomer candidate as fundamentally different as Donald Trump. To them I would say, unusual times with threats on every front at home and abroad call for an unconventional candidate. And it’s not so hard after all to recognize qualities in Donald Trump that make him in certain ways uniquely well-suited for our times.
Christians wither under Muslim rule
April 17, 2016Christians wither under Muslim rule, Israel Hayom, Yoram Ettinger, April 17, 2016
Bethlehem’s Christian Arab leaders lobbied Israel against transferring the city to the Palestinian Authority. Thus, in 1993, on the eve of signing the Oslo Accords, the Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, urged then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to annex Bethlehem to Greater Jerusalem, as it was under Ottoman, British and Jordanian rule of the area, predicting that “transferring Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority would relegate it to a town of many churches, but devoid of Christians.”
Before Oslo, the Christian mayor of Beit Jala — Bethlehem’s twin town — Farah al-Araj, told the late New York Times syndicated columnist William Safire: “The PLO will force a wave of Christian emigration, making Belize in Central America a home for more Beit Jala Christians then left in Beit Jala.” In 1967, shortly following the Six-Day War, then Mayor of Bethlehem Elias Bandak, a Christian, warned then Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan: “An Israeli failure to annex Bethlehem to Greater Jerusalem would doom the city’s Christian character.”
Since the 1993 establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the Christian majorities of Ramallah — Mahmoud Abbas’ headquarters — Bethlehem and Beit Jala have been transformed into insignificant minorities, due to physical, social, economic, legal and political intimidation. More Christian emigrants from these towns reside in Latin America than Christians remaining there.
The violent discrimination of Christians has been a systematic feature of Muslim Arab societies. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, Christians were murdered, expelled or converted until the 10th century. Currently, non-Muslims cannot become Saudi citizens and Christians working in — or visiting — Saudi Arabia are not allowed to worship, or display Christian items (Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, etc.), openly. While Egyptian President, General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has attempted to minimize the traditional intimidation of Egypt’s Coptic Christian (10%) minority — which possesses ancient Pharaonic roots — the abduction of Coptic women and girls has been routine and Copts face deep-seated discrimination in all walks of life. Moreover, conversion to Christianity is prohibited under Islam. While physical assaults on Coptic communities were a daily occurrence during the brief rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, it has become a monthly event under el-Sissi.
The persecution of Christians in Arab lands is based on the teachings of Muhammad, which dominates the social, political, cultural, judicial, military and educational aspects of the Muslim Middle East. Therefore, the political establishments in Muslim Arab countries are not secular in the Western sense. According to the Quran, Jews and Christians — “the people of the book” who rejected Islam — transgressed egregiously, were the enemies of God, were rejected by God, causing Judaism and Christianity to be replaced by — and subordinated to — Islam, the only legitimate and inherently supreme religion. Islam commands Muslims to pursue the domination of the “House of Islam” over the “House of the infidel,” which includes Christians. Hence, the centrality of jihad, the holy war.
A typical Quranic reference to Christians and other “infidels” appears in Surah 5:60 and 86: “God cursed and blustered those whom he transformed to apes [Jews] and pigs [Christians]. … The infidels shall inherit hell.”
The submission of Christians and other “infidels” to Islam was further institutionalized under the seventh-century Pact of Umar, which severely restrained and humiliated Christians — and later extended to other “infidels” — consistent with the Quran.
In fact, the legalized persecution and scapegoating of Christians are in accordance with the Muslim concept of “dhimmis,” who are the non-Muslim citizens in Muslim lands. As stipulated by the Islamic code of law (the Shariah), they are subordinated to and protected by Islam as long as they accept Islamic supremacy. The attitude towards the dhimmis is specified in the Quran 9:29: “Fight the people who received the book [Jews and Christians] — who do not adhere to the truthful religion [Islam] — until they pay the jizya [infidel tax], while they are humiliated.” Non-Muslim citizens are faced with three choices: conversion to Islam, accepting dhimmitude or death.
Since the 1683 defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna, Islam has declined dramatically, witnessing the rise to global domination by the “infidel, inferior and arrogant” Christian world, and alarmed by the penetration of “infidel” ideologies and values into the “abode of Islam.” This perceived humiliation has led to tectonic eruptions of Islamic rage and terrorism, aimed at regaining the, supposedly, inherently supreme, megalomaniacal status of Islam.
Also, the Islamic religious and political establishments consider the “infidel” Christian/Western modernity and civil liberties clear, present and lethal threats, which fuel endemic domestic instability. Furthermore, the recent erosion of the Western posture of deterrence, as well as Western appeasement and retreats, have provided a tailwind to the Islamic surge, fueling the anti-Christian/Western Islamic rage in spite of the generally pro-Arab Christian/Western policy (including the U.S. arms embargo during Israel’s War of Independence, while the British supplied arms to the Arabs; punishing Israel for destroying Iraq’s nuclear reactor; pressuring Israel to redivide Jerusalem; and President Barack Obama’s courting of Muslim regimes and condemnation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies).
While most of the Christian/Western world pressures Israel to accept Palestinian demands, a common battle cry in Palestinian Authority-inspired rallies is: “After Saturday comes Sunday,” which communicates a Muslim warning to Christian minorities throughout the Arab world: Muslims will do away with Christians after they have dealt with the Jews!
As befits the fate of dhimmis, churches, convents, monasteries, Christian cemeteries, schools, homes, land and Christian women in the Palestinian Authority are subject to desecration, destruction, burning, confiscation, intimidation, rape and harassment. For example, in April-May 2002, Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity — with its priests and nuns — was hijacked, looted and booby-trapped for 39 days by Palestinian terrorists.
The 1970-1982 Palestinian terror surge in Lebanon accelerated the flight of Lebanese Christians, reducing them from the ruling sector to a dwindling minority. Since 1993, the Palestinian Authority intimidation of Christians has intensified the flight of Christians. However, the Vatican and most Christian and Western governments have — knowingly — sacrificed the religious and civil liberties of Christian minorities — and their very existence — on the altar of wishful thinking, political correctness and appeasement.
Christian Self-Defense Forces Emerge in Iraq & Syria
April 12, 2016Christian Self-Defense Forces Emerge in Iraq & Syria, Clarion Project, Ryan Mauro, April 12, 2016
Members of the Christian Babylon Brigade in Iraq (Video: screenshot)
The Christians of Iraq and Syria have had a breathtaking commitment to passivity since being victimized by what we all now finally agree qualifies as a genocide.
Now, the Christians are increasingly organizing to defend themselves—and the West should stand by them instead of outsourcing our moral responsibility to the Iraqis and their Iranian partners and various groups with questionable track records.
A poll in December 2014 found that only one-third of Iraqis say they are concerned about the persecution of Christians in their country. About 67 percent said they are not concerned at all or only “somewhat” concerned.
It’s easy to say that the U.S. should pressure the Iraqi government to protect the Christians, but its track record and these poll results do not inspire hope that it’ll work. The pace of the genocide is such that the Christians and those who care for them simply cannot afford to spend time hoping for the best.
A Christian force known as the Babylon Brigade has been incorporated into the Popular Mobilization Units, an assortment of militias led by the Iraqi government and their partners from the Iranian regime and Hezbollah. The Babylon Brigades and their supporters boast of their nationalism, having battled the Islamic State in non-Christian areas like Ramadi and Tikrit.
However, it numbers only 500 to 1,000 The Iraqi government should be applauded for supporting a Christian unit, but don’t mistake this for an Iraqi commitment to a Christian self-defense force that enables the community to have a say over whether it goes extinct or not.
Current U.S. policy still gambles their survival on the chance that the Iraqi government tied to Iran will protect them, particularly when the U.N. says Christian persecution in Iran has reached unprecedented levels.
The Kurds are allies of the U.S. but, when it comes to protecting Christians, they have been far from ideal. The Iraqi and Syrian Christians have plenty of stories of mistreatment at the hands of the Kurds.
The growth of a number of Christian self-defense forces in Iraq and Syria show potential for what could happen if they receive outside support.
There’s the Nineveh Plain Protection Units in northern Iraq under the helm of the Assyrian Democratic Movement of Iraq, which has a branch in northeastern Syria named the Gozarto Protection Forces. They are backed by the Middle East Christian Committee. The secretary-general of the Assyrian Democratic Movement claims that proper support would quickly grow the NPU’s numbers to 5,000.
Another small force is called Dwekh Nawsha, which is linked to the Assyrian Patriotic Party and has gotten attention because of Westerners joining their ranks. One of their advisers warned in November, “All we’re saying is we’re done. We don’t have equipment. We don’t have the weapons. We don’t have the training,” as he pleaded for U.S. backing.
In Syria, there is the Syriac Military Council, estimated to be about 2,000-strong including a Christian female unit. It belongs to a Kurdish-majority coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. There is also a local Christian defense force near the Khabur River called the Khabur Guards.
Of course, any Christian force will have to be properly vetted. Hezbollah has set up a non-denominational force named Saraya al-Muqawama that includes Christians, Sunnis and non-religious Shiites.
A Christian police force that is favorable towards the Assad regime clashed with Kurdish forces in Qamishli, Syria. Sources close to the situation there emphasize that the Christians who embrace Assad are motivated by a fear of Islamist rebels, not because of any affinity for dictatorship or the regime’s brutality.
It would be a mistake to dismiss the viability of Christian self-defense forces because of their current sizes and capabilities. Unlike the Iraqi and Syrian militias and rebels, the Christians have had to rely only upon themselves for survival. They don’t have a state sponsor like Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Iran to build them up.
The U.S. has provided material support to Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, despite records of human rights abuses, Islamism and ties to terrorists and enemy regimes. The Christians are reliable foes of Islamic extremism who, despite all they have suffered, have never formed a sectarian militia to exact bloody revenge.
It’s time for the U.S. to ask itself: Why are Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds worthy of our direct material aid but the Christians are not? Why do they deserve a chance to stop the murder, raping and torturing of their people, but the Christians do not and are left facing extinction if trends continue?
Blasphemy Convictions Intensify in Sisi’s Egypt
April 7, 2016Blasphemy Convictions Intensify in Sisi’s Egypt, Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, April 7, 2017
(The author demands that President Sisi “do something,” but does not specify what he, as the president, is in a position to do legally. He does not control Al-Azhar University, nor can he require the courts to interpret or enforce the law as he wishes. He became Egypt’s president because millions of Egyptians were tired of his dictatorial predecessor. Would the author like to see Sisi emulate Morsi?
Egypt is an Islamic nation; Sisi can’t change that. At best, he can try to precipitate a gradual Islamic reformation.– DM)
Despite Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s many pluralistic words and gestures—which have won him much praise from the nation’s Christians and moderates—he appeases the Islamist agenda in one very clear way: by allowing the controversial defamation of religions law, colloquially known as the “blasphemy law,” to target Christians and moderates in ways arguably worse than under the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi.
Late last February, three Christian teenagers were jailed for five years for breaking the defamation of religions law. A fourth defendant, 15, was handed a juvenile detention for an indefinite period. Earlier they were detained for 45 days and subjected to “ill-treatment” said a human rights group.
Their crime is to have made a 20-second video on a mobile phone mocking the Islamic State—which has been interpreted as mocking Islam. In the video, the boys appear laughing and joking, as they pretend to be ISIS members praying and slitting throats. The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, an independent rights group, confirmed that the four teenagers were performing scenes “imitating slaughter carried out by terrorist groups.” Even so, according to their defense lawyer, Maher Naguib, the Christian youth “have been sentenced for contempt of Islam and inciting sectarian strife…. The judge didn’t show any mercy. He handed down the maximum punishment.”
Considering that even Al Azhar—the Islamic world’s most prestigious university located in Egypt—refuses to denounce the Islamic State as being un-Islamic, it is unsurprising that mockery of ISIS is being conflated with mockery of Islam.
The Christian youth made the brief video back in January 2015, when three of them were aged 17 and one 15. It is believed that the court kept delaying their case till the three 17-year-olds became 18, so they could receive the full penalty. Their teacher who also appeared in the video had earlier been sentenced to three years in jail.
Several other Christians have been prosecuted for insulting Islam and Muslims under Sisi’s tenure. One young Christian man was sentenced to six years for “liking” an Arabic-language Facebook page administered by Muslim converts to Christianity. A female Christian teacher was imprisoned for six months after Muslim parents accused her of insulting Islam and evangelizing. Bishoy Armia Boulous, a Muslim convert to Christianity, remains behind bars on, according to his lawyer, trumped up charges of blasphemy.
While Christian minorities are the most prone to being targeted by the blasphemy law, secular Muslim thinkers and writers are also on the hit list. Late last January, female Muslim writer Fatima Naoot was sentenced to three years in prison after she criticized the sadistic slaughter of animals that takes place during the Islamic festival, Eid al-Adha. The month before that, in December, television host Islam al-Behairy was sentenced to one year in prison for questioning the validity of some of the sayings (hadiths) attributed to Muslim prophet Muhammad.
Although Egypt’s constitution outlaws the “defamation of religions,” the plural indicates that, along with Islam, Judaism and Christianity are protected. In reality, however, the law is almost exclusively used to prosecute Christian minorities and secular Muslims. Despite the fact that there are many more Muslims than Christians in Egypt, rarely are Islamists arrested and prosecuted for defaming Christianity.
In this, Egypt is becoming more like Pakistan. Although that nation also prohibits the defamation of religions—which technically includes Christianity—only Christians and moderates are targeted and imprisoned; some, like Asia Bibi, a wife and mother, are on death row. Conversely, Muslims who openly defame Christianity—and they are many—are regularly let off one way or the other. A few weeks ago a Muslim broke into a church and proceeded to burn its Bibles. Although several Christians caught and handed him over to police, the latter claimed he was mentally unstable and could not stand trial. Earlier, a Muslim shopkeeper started selling shoes which depict the Christian cross on their soles. Christians demonstrated but police did nothing.
On January 26, soon after the sentencing of the writer Fatima Naoot, another moderate Muslim and television host in Egypt, Ibrahim Eissa, scathingly criticized the Sisi government, including by saying that “there have been more blasphemy cases and convictions during the Sisi era than during the Morsi era.” He continued:
There is no greater contradiction between what the [Egyptian] state says and claims about itself and the reality on the ground… The Egyptian state is schizophrenic because it says what it does not do…. It’s amazing and baffling to see a state who’s president regularly preaches about the need for religious discourse and renewal—and yet, during Sisi’s 18-19 month tenure, the nation has witnessed more reports, cases and convictions, and the imprisonment of writers, in the name of defamation religions than during the one year tenure of the Muslim Brotherhood president…. The [Sisi] revolution dropped the Brotherhood but kept the ideology unchanged.
Trump leaves the conservative establishment arrogant and unmoored
April 3, 2016Trump leaves the conservative establishment arrogant and unmoored, Washington Post, Joe Scarborough, April 2, 2016
When members of Manhattan’s media elite come to Mark Halperin’s home for dinner, Halperin likes to ask his guests whether they have spent more time in Paris or Staten Island. More often than not, his guests select the destination that does not offer regular ferry service from Battery Park.
Halperin’s dinner quiz provides a glimpse into what conservatives have long mocked as the cloistered existence of liberal elites who report on a nation they don’t understand. Republican critics have long complained that these media elites are schooled, spend their summers and live most of their lives in urbane enclaves that provide little insight into how the rest of America lives.
But in 2016, conservative commentators are sounding as cocooned from their own political party as any liberal writing social commentary for The New Yorker or providing political analysis for ABC News. Even after the passing of Antonin Scalia and the Paris and San Bernadino attacks, many right-leaning pundits are spending their days scolding readers and declaring that no true conservative or God-fearing Christian could support Donald Trump. This simmering rage has now risen to such a level that many conservative opinion shapers are spending their waking hours coping with a festering Zapruder-like obsession over video frames of the Corey Lewandowski-Michelle Fields confrontation while obsessing over the GOP frontrunner’s latest embarrassing gaffe.
Even as the Manhattan billionaire is enduring his most dreadful period of the campaign, attacks against Donald Trump have reached new heights, with commentators focusing their withering criticism on supporters, ignoring the fact that many of those same voters helped make Ronald Reagan president, Newt Gingrich Speaker of the House and Marco Rubio a United States senator.
But now these voters formerly called common-sense conservatives are now considered drug-addled losers who are too stupid to determine what is in their best interest. The left-wing’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” is now the GOP establishment’s “What The Hell’s Up With Upstate New York?
The March 28th edition of National Review ran a column that described Donald Trump as a “Father-Fuhrer” for poor white men raised without a strong male figure. “It is easy to imagine a generation of young men being raised without fathers and looking out the window like a kid waiting for Daddy to come home,” National Review’s Kevin Williamson wrote, “waiting for the Father-Fuhrer figure they have spent their lives imagining.”
Williamson concluded that white working class men victimized by globalization were not actually victims at all, but rather losers whose own poor choices have led them down a path of “welfare dependency, drug and alcohol addiction, and family anarchy.”
It is not quite as rosy a lens as what conservative writers once used to focus on these same Reagan Democrats. “The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles,” wrote Williamson.
“Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.”
Wow.
Imagine the reaction from William F. Buckley if such an article were written about the same voters who helped propel candidates like Reagan, Gingrich and Bush 43 to power.
Williamson, of whom I am an admirer, is not alone in launching such blistering broadsides against GOP voters. My friend Erick Erickson provided an equally rough assessment of white working-class Trump followers in an April 1, 2016 tweet.
A lot of Trump voters have failed at life and blame others for their own poor decisions. They’re using Trump as a vehicle for revenge.
Why Are Christians Leaving the Holy Land?
April 3, 2016Why Are Christians Leaving the Holy Land? Gatestone Institute, Lawrence A. Franklin, April 3, 2016
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.
How grateful are you, Father Twal?
________________
[1] Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, “The Beleaguered Christians of Palestinian-Controlled Areas” by David Raab, 1-15 January 2003. Also see “Why Are Christians Really Leaving Bethlehem?” by Julie Stahl, CBN News, 8 May 2012; and “Why are Palestinian Christians Fleeing?” by Robert Nicholson, Providence, 1 March 2016.
[2] PBS Frontline, “The Siege of Bethlehem“, 13 June 2013.
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