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Islamist Terror vs. the More Deadly Cancer of Islamisation

December 13, 2015

Islamist Terror vs. the More Deadly Cancer of Islamisation, Dan Miller’s Blog, December 13, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

The recent focus, to the extent that there has been one, has been on Islamist terrorists. Terrorists kill people; fortunately, they themselves often die in the process.

The cancer of Islamisation brings terrorists to western countries. Worse, it also destroys host civilizations from within. Terrorism is not a necessary component of that process and merely keeping terrorists out will not halt it. European supporters of the tumor have caused it to metastasize and thereby to weaken their civilizations. They are working hard to finish the job; if the process is not stopped, it will eventually kill those civilizations.

How about America? Will Europe show the way?

In this short Clarion Project video, a Sunni Muslim woman relates the levels of Muslim support for terror and for changing western law and culture to conform to Islamic (Sharia) law. Many Americans will find the numbers of Muslims involved to be surprisingly high. It’s very well worth watching.

A December 7, 2015 article by David French at National Review, titled Dispelling the ‘Few Extremists’ Myth – the Muslim World Is Overcome with Hate, reports very high levels of antisemitism in Muslim countries. It also reports that

In multiple Muslim nations, overwhelming majorities of Muslims support the death penalty for apostasy or blasphemy. Collectively, this means that hundreds of millions of men and women support capital punishment for the exercise of the basic human rights of freedom of expression and free exercise of religion:

Terrorism vs. the Islamisation Cancer

Few terrorists are needed to kill many people and to frighten more. Preventing the entry of additional Muslims into America would diminish the threat of terror but would not eliminate it: Muslim terrorists are often second or later generation citizens and the Muslim fertility rate is quite high.

Globally, Muslims have the highest fertility rate, an average of 3.1 children per woman – well above replacement level (2.1), the minimum typically needed to maintain a stable population. Christians are second, at 2.7 children per woman. Hindu fertility (2.4) is similar to the global average (2.5). Worldwide, Jewish fertility (2.3 children per woman) also is above replacement level.

To the extent that Muslim males impregnate multiple women, the male Muslim fertility rate is doubtless higher than for females. If each of three wives, made pregnant by the same husband, has three children that’s nine for that one man. Of course, not all Muslim men have three wives and some Muslim wives may use effective methods of birth control.

Compared to much of Europe, the Muslim population of the United States as a whole remains small and Islamisation has only begun. Preventing the entry of additional Muslims can significantly reduce the likelihood that our civilization will succumb to the cancer of Islamisation, but only if the threats are understood and acted upon. Otherwise, the cancer will metastasize, the pace will accelerate and a painful death will ensue.

Europe’s welcome to Muslims

Germany

It has been estimated that Germany’s Muslim population will quadruple within the next five years, rising to approximately twenty million. That estimate presumably takes into account the high Muslim fertility rate. The current population of Germany has been estimated at 82,544,395.

Here’s a video of a Green Party legislator who looks forward to the day when Germans will be a minority in their own cities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_Ys621qFPE

And here are some happy new arrivals, responding to the kindness Europe has shown them.

Germany is already experiencing significant problems brought by its increasing Muslim population. Here are a few examples taken from the linked articles.

An article titled Germany: Migrant Crime Wave, Police Capitulate notes that

Asylum seekers are driving a surge in violent crime in cities and towns across Germany. German authorities, however, are downplaying the lawlessness, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiment. [Emphasis added.]

A confidential police report leaked to a German newspaper reveals that a record-breaking 38,000 asylum seekers were accused of committing crimes in the country in 2014. Analysts believe this figure — which works out to more than 100 a day — is only the tip of the iceberg, as many crimes are either not resolved or not reported.

The current spike in crime — including rapes, sexual and physical assaults, stabbings, home invasions, robberies, burglaries and drug trafficking — comes amid a record-breaking influx of refugees from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Western Balkans.

According to a classified document obtained by the German newspaper, Bild, the government now estimates that Germany will receive as many as 1.5 million asylum seekers in 2015, including 920,000 in the last quarter of 2015 alone. This figure is nearly double the previous estimate, from August, which was 800,000 for all of 2015. By comparison, Germany received 202,000 asylum seekers in all of 2014.

The document warns that with family reunifications, the actual number of asylum seekers could swell to more than seven million, based on the assumption that individuals whose applications are approved will bring between four and eight additional family members to Germany.

Rape is among the more “popular” crimes. According to an article titled Germany: Migrants’ Rape Epidemic,

A growing number of women and young girls housed in refugee shelters in Germany are being raped, sexually assaulted and even forced into prostitution by male asylum seekers, according to German social work organizations with first-hand knowledge of the situation.

Many of the rapes are occurring in mixed-gender shelters, where, due to a lack of space, German authorities are forcing thousands of male and female migrants to share the same sleeping areas and restroom facilities.

Conditions for women and girls at some shelters are so perilous that females are being described as “wild game” fighting off Muslim male predators. But many victims, fearing reprisals, are keeping silent, social workers say.

At the same time, growing numbers of German women in towns and cities across the country are being raped by asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Many of the crimes are being downplayed by German authorities and the national media, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments. [Emphasis added.]

On August 18, a coalition of four social work organizations and women’s rights groups sent a two-page letter to the leaders of the political parties in the regional parliament in Hesse, a state in west-central Germany, warning them of the worsening situation for women and children in the refugee shelters.

[Please see a copy of the letter at the link]

After several blogs (here, here and here) drew attention to the letter, the LandesFrauenRat (LFR) Hessen, a women’s lobbying group that originally uploaded the politically incorrect document to its website, abruptly removed it on September 14, without explanation.

. . . .

Meanwhile, the raping of German women by asylum seekers is becoming commonplace. Following are a few select cases just from 2015:

[Please see the fifteen “select cases” at the link.]

. . . .

Meanwhile, parents are being warned to look after their daughters. Police in the Bavarian town of Mering, where a 16-year-old-girl was raped on September 11, have issued a warning to parents not to allow their children to go outside unaccompanied. They have also advised women not to walk to or from the train station alone because of its proximity to a refugee shelter.

In the Bavarian town of Pocking, administrators of the Wilhelm-Diess-Gymnasium have warned parents not to let their daughters wear revealing clothing in order to avoid “misunderstandings” with the 200 Muslim refugees housed in emergency accommodations in a building next to the school.

Aside from the letter which removed, where are the feminists? Have they no concerns or are they too self-centered or too afraid of being called “racists” or “Islamophobes” to speak?

An article titled Germany’s Appeasement of Radical Islam states,

As Muslim migration is being set to change German, and possibly European, demographics forever, Germany is gearing up for the new challenge — not by integrating and assimilating young Muslims in a free and democratic Western society, but by handing over the religious education of the next generation of German Muslims to Islamist radicals. [Emphasis added.]

Worse yet, German authorities see no problem in doing that. [Emphasis added.]

With Germany predicted to receive 800,000 migrants — mostly Muslims — this year alone, and millions more waiting to cross Europe’s unguarded borders, the Muslim population in Germany is seeing a historic rise from the current figure of nearly 6 million. Several German states including Bavaria, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia have introduced Islamic Studies in their public schools. 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.

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. [Emphasis added.]

The newly compiled Islamic curriculum for public schools in Hesse has come under great scrutiny. An independent report conducted by Abdel-Hakim Ourghi, who heads of the Faculty for Islamic Theology and Religious Studiesat the Freiburg University of Education, has sharply criticized the curriculum.

According to an article in Die Welt, Ourghi, a prominent Muslim scholar, has been raising concern about the activities of DITIB and other conservative Muslim organizations operating in Germany. “No one knows exactly what actually happens in Islamic classes in German primary schools,” he says. In his assessment, conservative Islam, the one dominant in Germany, is incapable of thinking critically about its past. [Emphasis added.]

According to Ourghi’s report, the textbooks fail to “confront the problematic verses of Koran.” The report also says that the curriculum fails in its most important purpose — integrating Muslims into the German society — as it fails to reconcile the “Islamic faith of the students with the reality of the western society” they are living in. [Emphasis added.]

Confronted with the damning report, Hesse’s Minister of Education and Culture, Alexander Lorz, dismissed the allegations and called the Hesse’s Islamic education a “success.”

Germany’s Salafist “Aid workers” Recruiting Refugees contends,

The number of radical Salafists in Germany has more than doubled over the past five years, according to a new estimate by German intelligence officials. [Emphasis added.]

Salafists disguised as aid workers are also canvassing German refugee shelters in search of new recruits from among the nearly one million asylum seekers who have arrived in Germany this year from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

. . . .

Salafists — who follow what they say was the original Islam practiced in the 7th and 8th centuries — openly state that they want to replace democracy in Germany (and the rest of the world) with an Islamic government based on Sharia law. [Emphasis added]

The Salafists are now Sharia police.

Muslim radicals have begun enforcing Islamic Sharia law on the streets of Wuppertal, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state with the largest Muslim population in Germany. [Emphasis added.]

In what government officials say is a blatant challenge to the rule of law and the democratic order in Germany, groups of young bearded Islamists — some wearing orange traffic safety vests emblazoned with the words “Sharia Police” — have declared parts of downtown Wuppertal to be a “Sharia Controlled Zone.”

The self-appointed guardians of public morals have been distributing yellow leaflets that explain the Islamist code of conduct in the city’s Sharia zones. They have urged both Muslim and non-Muslim passersby to listen to Salafist sermons and to refrain from alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, gambling, listening to music, pornography or prostitution.

A seven-minute propaganda video in German, entitled “Sharia Police: Coming Soon to Your City,” shows a group of men led by a German convert to Islam, Sven Lau, roaming the streets of Wuppertal at night and pressing wayward youth to embrace radical Islam. In some instances, the men physically attempted to prevent young people from entering bars, casinos and discotheques; those who resisted were pursued and intimidated.

Germany also has a health crisis.

The influx of more than one million asylum seekers from Africa,Asia and the Middle East is placing unprecedented strain on Germany’s healthcare system.

Hospitals, clinics and emergency rooms across Germany are being filled to capacity with migrants suffering maladies of all kinds, and medical personnel, including thousands of volunteers, are increasingly complaining of burnout.

Diseases are also reappearing that have not been seen in Germany for years. German public health officials are now on the lookout for Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever, diphtheria, Ebola, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, malaria, measles, meningitis, mumps, polio, scabies, tetanus, tuberculosis, typhus and whooping cough. As refugee shelters fill to overflowing, doctors are also on high alert for mass outbreaks of influenza and Norovirus.

Compounding the challenge, tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Germany — particularly migrant children — have not been immunized, and German doctors are finding that needed vaccines are not readily available due to a lack of supply. Some German parents are panicking that there are not enough vaccines to immunize their own children.

Many migrants are also suffering from a host of traumas and mental illnesses. According to the Chamber of German Psychotherapists (Bundespsychotherapeutenkammer), at least half of all migrants arriving in Germany have psychological problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, and roughly 40% have contemplated suicide.

German hospitals are also being forced to hire a virtual army of interpreters so that doctors can communicate with asylum seekers, who speak dozens of languages, dialects and variants.

At the same time, German hospitals are increasing security to protect doctors and nurses from violent attacks by migrants who are unhappy with the medical treatment they are receiving. [Emphasis added.]

Germany’s Sharia Refugee Shelters – “Bulk of Migrants Cannot Be Integrated,”

Muslim asylum seekers are enforcing Islamic Sharia law in German refugee shelters, according to police, who warn that Christians, Kurds and Yazidis in the shelters are being attacked by Muslims with increasing frequency and ferocity. [Emphasis added.]

Muslim migrants from different sects, clans, ethnicities and nationalities are also attacking each other. Violent brawls — sometimes involving hundreds of migrants — are now a daily occurrence.

Police say the shelters, where thousands of migrants are housed together in cramped spaces for months at a time, are seething cauldrons ready to explode. The police are urgently calling for migrants of different faiths to be housed in separate facilities.

Some politicians counter that such segregation would go against Germany’s multicultural values, while others say that separating hundreds of thousands of migrants by religion and nationality would be a logistical impossibility. [Enphasis added.]

As the consequences of unrestrained migration become apparent, the tide of public opinion is turning against the government’s open-door policy. Observers say that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the so-called most powerful woman in the world, may have met her Waterloo.

What about Christian migrants?

Christian migrants in German asylum centres are living under persistent threat, with many fearing for their lives as the hardline Sunni majority within the migrant population attempts to enforce Sharia law in their new host nation. The situation is so bad that Christians claim they live like “prisoners” in Germany, and some have even returned to Middle East. [Emphasis added.]

In the German state of Thuringia, Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, one of the multiculturalists driving and celebrating the migrant crisis, has been forced to initiate a policy of separating and segregating different cultures as soon as they arrive in Europe.

“In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards have arrested my brother in a house church. I fled the Iranian intelligence, because I thought in Germany I can finally live freely according to my religion,” says Said, a Christian who fled persecution in his native country.

“But I can not openly admit that I am a Christian in my home for asylum seekers. I will be threatened,” he told Germany language paper Die Welt.

This year Germany prepares to absorb a million people in just twelve months – one per cent of its entire population – from numerous, diverse and alien cultures.

“We must rid ourselves of the illusion that all those who arrive here are human rights activists,” says Max Klingberg of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), who has worked with refugees for 15 years. “Among the new arrivals is not a small amount of religious intensity, it is at least at the level of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.

Said is living in an asylum centre in southern Brandenburg, near the border with Saxony. “They wake me before dawn during Ramadan and say I should eat before the sun comes up. If I refuse, they say I’m a kuffar, an unbeliever. They spit at me… They treat me like an animal. And threaten to kill me.”

“… They are also all Muslims,” he adds.

But be of good cheer. Frau Merkel, a principal architect of Germany’s new wave of multiculturalism, was recently honored by Time Magazine as its person of the year.

In late summer, Merkel’s government threw open Germany’s doors to a pressing throng of refugees and migrants; a total of 1 million asylum seekers are expected in the country by the end of December. It was an audacious act that, in a single motion, threatened both to redeem Europe and endanger it, testing the resilience of an alliance formed to avoid repeating the kind of violence tearing asunder the Middle East by working together. That arrangement had worked well enough that it raised an existential question of its own, now being asked by the richest country in Europe: What does it mean to live well?

Merkel had her answer: “In many regions war and terror prevail. States disintegrate. For many years we have read about this. We have heard about it. We have seen it on TV. But we had not yet sufficiently understood that what happens in Aleppo and Mosul can affect Essen or Stuttgart. We have to face that now.” For her, the refugee decision was a galvanizing moment in a career that was until then defined by caution and avoidance of anything resembling drama. Analysts called it a jarring departure from form. But it may also have been inevitable, given how Angela Merkel feels about walls.

What was not inevitable but merely astounding was that the most generous, openhearted gesture of recent history blossomed from Germany, the country that within living memory (and beyond, as long as there’s a History Channel) blew apart the European continent, and then the world, by taking to gruesome extremes all the forces its Chancellor strives to hold in check: nationalism, nativism, self-righteousness, reversion to arms. No one in Europe has held office longer—or to greater effect—in a world defined by steadily receding barriers. That, after all, is the story of the E.U. and the story of globalization, both terms as colorless as the corridor of a Brussels office building. The worlds Merkel has mastered carry not a hint of the forces that have shaped Europe’s history, the primal sort a child senses, listening to a story, safe in bed. [Emphasis added.]

Sweden is doing about as well

Sweden is descending into anarchy.

Once upon a time, there was a safe welfare state called Sweden, where people rarely locked their doors.

Now, this country is a night-watchman state — each man is on his own. When the Minister of Justice, Morgan Johansson, encourages breaking the law, it means opening the gates to anarchy. Mr. and Mrs. Swede have every reason to be worried, with the influx of 190,000 unskilled and unemployed migrants expected this year — equivalent to 2% of Sweden’s current population. The number is as if 6.4 million penniless migrants who did not speak English arrived in U.S. in one year, or 1.3 million in Britain.

And the Swedes are preparing: demand for firearms licenses is increasing; more and more Swedes are joining shooting clubs and starting vigilante groups. After a slight dip in 2014, the number of new gun permits has gone up significantly again this year. According to police statistics, there are 1,901,325 licensed guns, owned by 567,733 people, in Sweden. Add to this an unknown number of illegal weapons. To get a gun permit in Sweden, you need to be at least 18 years old; law-abiding; well-behaved, and have a hunting license or be a member of an approved shooting club. In 2014, 11,000 people got a hunting license: 10% more than the year before. One out of five was a woman.

. . . .

Even before the massive influx of migrants in the fall of 2015, Swedes felt a need to protect themselves — and with good reason. Since the Parliament decided in 1975 that Sweden should be multicultural and not Swedish, crime has exploded. Violent crime has increased by more than 300%, and rapes have increased by an unbelievable 1,472%. [Emphasis added.]

The politicians, however, ignore the people’s fear completely. It is never discussed. Instead, the people who express concern about what kind of country Sweden has become are accused of xenophobia and racism. Most likely, that is the reason more and more people are taking matters into their own hands, and protecting themselves and their families to the best of their ability. [Emphasis added.]

Rape of Sweden:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uws9BlnJmjI

Swedes may well become a minority in their own country.

Sweden is fast approaching a complete collapse. More and more municipalities are raising the alarm that if the migrants keep coming at this pace, the government can no longer guarantee normal service to its citizens. In addition, ominous statements from government officials have left Swedes in fear of what tomorrow may bring. If the migrant wave keeps coming, in 10-15 years, Swedes will be a minority in their own country.

Britain

She is also becoming Islamised.

The Muslim population of Britain reached 3.4 million in 2014 to become around 5.3% of the overall population of 64 million, according to figures extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France and Germany. [Emphasis added.]

Islam and Islam-related issues were omnipresent in Britain during 2014, and can be categorized into four broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism and the security implications of British jihadists in Syria; 2) the continuing spread of Islamic Sharia law in Britain; 3) the sexual exploitation of British children by Muslim gangs; and 4) Muslim integration into British society.

The article linked above next provides “a chronological review of some of the main stories involving the rise of Islam in Britain during 2014.”

Living in a madhouse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgpgWYM28-M

Getting ready for Christmas?

Conclusions

Will Obama’s America be next? That would make Obama’s friends in Iran very happy.

In an article titled Paradigms lost: the U.S. Bruce Thornton remarks that the Europeanization of America must be reversed. We have the tools, but that is not enough. We need to use them.

We have to reject the failed paradigm of Brussels and restore the still vibrant paradigm of Philadelphia. Battered by a century of progressive assaults, the Constitution still gives us the means for turning back the erosion of [its] commitment to ordered liberty and citizen autonomy. The Bill of Rights, a federalism comprising sovereign state governments, a structure of divided and balanced government, and most important the regular federal elections in which we the people have the opportunity to hold our leaders and party accountable––all provide the mechanisms for changing course and initiate a revolution in the original sense of the word, a “rolling back” to the most consequential “paradigm shift” in political history––the Constitution. [Emphasis added.]

Finally, Geert Wilders’ November 15, 2014 address at the Heritage Foundation’s Restoration Weekend – a powerful close to this article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJmPpyNsQVE

Categories: Britain, Christianity, Death to America, Europe, European Union, Freedom, Geert Wilders, Germany, Hijrah, Hospitals in Germany, Islam, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islam and women, Islamic culture, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic invasion, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Islamism, Islamophobia, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Obama and Islam, Sharia law, Sweden
Tags: Britain, Christianity, Death to America, Europe, European Union, Freedom, Geert Wilders, Germany, Hijrah, Hospitals in Germany, Islam, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islam and women, Islamic culture, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic invasion, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Islamism, Islamophobia, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Obama and Islam, Sharia law, Sweden

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Why Has the Church Abandoned the Christians of the Middle East?

December 10, 2015

Why Has the Church Abandoned the Christians of the Middle East? The Gatestone Institute, Judith Bergman, December 10, 2015

(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.”

1383

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.

Categories: Archbishop of Canterbury, Christians, Climate change, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islamism, Islamophobia, Pope Francis
Tags: Archbishop of Canterbury, Christians, Climate Change, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islamism, Islamophobia, Pope Francis

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The logic of Islamic intolerance

December 2, 2015

The logic of Islamic intolerance, Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, December 2, 2015

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A sermon delivered by popular Saudi Sheikh Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid clearly demonstrates why Western secular relativists and multi culturalists—who currently dominate media, academia, and politics—are incapable of understanding, much less responding to, the logic of Islamic intolerance.

During his sermon, al-Munajjid said that “some [Muslim] hypocrites” wonder why it is that “we [Muslims] don’t permit them [Western people] to build churches, even though they allow mosques to be built.” The Saudi sheikh responded by saying that any Muslim who thinks this way is “ignorant” and

Wants to equate between right and wrong, between Islam and kufr [non-Islam], monotheism and shirk [polytheism], and gives to each side equal weight, and wants to compare this with that, and he asks: “Why don’t we build them churches like they build us mosques? So we allow them this in return for that?” Do you want another other than Allah to be worshiped? Do you equate between right and wrong? Are Zoroastrian fire temples, Jewish temples, Christian churches, monks’ monasteries, and Buddhist and Hindu temples, equal to you with the houses of Allah and mosques? So you compare this with that? And you equate this with that? Oh! Unbelievable, for he who equates between Islam and kufr [non-Islam], and Allah said: “Whoever desires a religion other than Islam, never will it be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers” (Koran 3:85). And Prophet Muhamad said: “By Him in whose hand is the life of Muhamad (By Allah) he who amongst the Jews or Christians hears about me, but does not affirm his belief in that which I have been sent, and dies in his state (of disbelief), he shall be of the residents of Hellfire.”

What’s interesting about the sheikh’s zealous diatribe is that, although “intolerant” from a Western perspective, it is, in fact, quite logically consistent and reveals the wide gap between Islamic rationalism and Western fantasy (despite how oxymoronic this dichotomy might sound).

If, as Munajjid points out, a Muslim truly believes that Islam is the only true religion, and that Muhammad is its prophet, why would he allow that which is false (and thus corrupt, cancerous, misleading, etc.) to exist alongside it? Such gestures of “tolerance” would be tantamount to a Muslim who “wants to equate between right and wrong,” as the sheikh correctly deplores.

Indeed, not only does Islam, like traditional Christianity, assert that all other religions are wrong, but under Islamic law, Hindus, and Buddhists are so misguided that they must be warred against until they either accept the “truth,” that is, converting to Islam, or else being executed (Koran 9:5). As for the so-called “people of the book”—Jews and Christians—they may practice their religions, but only after being subdued (Koran 9:29) and barred from building or renovating churches and synagogues and a host of other debilitations that keep their (false) religious practices and symbols (Bibles, crosses, etc.) suppressed and out of sight.

From an Islamic paradigm—where Allah is the true god and Muhammad his final messenger—“intolerance” for other religions is logical and difficult to condemn.

The “altruistic” aspect of Islamic “intolerance” is especially important. If you truly believe that there is only one religion that leads to paradise and averts damnation, is it not altruistic to share it with humanity, rather than hypocritically maintaining that all religions lead to God and truth?

After blasting the concept of interfaith dialogue as beyond futile, since “what is false is false—even if a billion individuals agree to it; and truth is truth—even if only one who has submitted [a Muslim] holds on to it,” the late Osama bin Laden once wrote that “Battle, animosity, and hatred—directed from the Muslim to the infidel—is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them” (The Al Qaeda Reader, pgs. 42-43).

Note the altruistic justification: It is a “justice and kindness” to wage jihad on non-Muslims in the hopes that they convert to Islam. According to this logic, jihadis will always be as the “good guys”—meaning that terrorism, extortion, sex-jihad, etc., will continue to be rationalized away as ugly but necessary means to altruistic ends: the empowerment of, and eventual world conversion to, Islam.

All of this logic is alien to postmodern Western epistemology, which takes for granted that a) there are no objective “truths,” certainly not in the field of theology, and that b) religion’s ultimate purpose is to make this life as peaceful and pleasant as possible (hence why “interfaith dialogue” in the West is not about determining the truth—which doesn’t exist anyway—but finding and highlighting otherwise superficial commonalities between different religions so they can all get along in the now).

The net result of all this? On the one hand, Muslims, who believe in truth—that is, in the teachings of Islam—will continue attacking the “false,” that is, everything and everyone un-Islamic. And no matter how violent, Islamic jihad—terrorism—will always be exonerated in Muslim eyes as fundamentally “altruistic.” On the other hand, Western secularists and multiculturalists, who believe in nothing and deem all cultures and religions equal, will continue to respect Islam and empower Muslims, convinced that terrorism is an un-Islamic aberration destined to go away—that is, they will continue disbelieving their own eyes. Such is the offspring of that unholy union between Islamic logic and Western fallacy.

Categories: Islam and Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Multiculturalism, Saudi Arabia
Tags: Islam and Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Multiculturalism, Saudi Arabia

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Satire(?) | Obama declares Islamophobia a felony hate crime

November 23, 2015

Obama declares Islamophobia a felony hate crime, Dan Miller’s Blog, November 23, 2015

(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.

Categories: Asylum seekers, CAIR, Caliphate, Christians, Freedom of speech, Human rights, Iran scam, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamophobia, Israel, Multiculturalism, Obama and Islam, Obama and Israel, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Palestinians, Satire, U.S. Constitution
Tags: Asylum seekers, CAIR, Caliphate, Christians, freedom of speech, human rights, Iran Scam, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamophobia, Israel, Multulturalism, Obama and Islam, Obama and Israel, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Palestinians, Satire, U.S. Constitution

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The anatomy of denial

November 23, 2015

The anatomy of denial, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, November 23, 2015

boko_haram_main

Western secularism has rendered us incapable of understanding passionate religious beliefs. The banishment of faith from public life is nearly complete in Europe, and we Americans are on the same trajectory.

In contrast, most Muslims are intensely religious to a degree most Westerners can hardly imagine. Religion suffuses their lives, most noticeably in the muezzin’s daily five calls to prayer, and the commands of Allah and the words and deeds of Mohammed are a living presence in every aspect of a devout Muslim’s life. Nor is this religiosity a private affair kept away from the public square, and compartmentalized in people’s lives apart from politics, economics, or foreign policy.

************************

The murder of 27 hotel guests in Mali’s capital city by Boko Haram, now an al Qaeda franchisee, highlights yet again the delusional futility of asserting that, as Hillary Clinton put it in a tweet, “Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” Like Obama, Hillary also vigorously condemns the use of a phrase like “Islamist radicalism.”

These evasions are contrary to the history and doctrines of Islam consistent over 14 centuries, and contradict the professed motives for the continuing violence perpetrated across the globe––27,295 deadly attacks just since 9/11–– by Islamic terrorist groups who emulate the Prophet and take seriously his injunction to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in every ambush” (9.5), one of 109 verses––the direct commands of Allah–– that order war against infidels.

Moreover, that most Muslims do not engage directly in such violence, or may even condemn it, does not change the fundamental doctrines that justify it, no more than the millions of Catholic women who use birth control invalidate the church’s doctrine against contraception. The doctrine of jihad has been part of Islam from its beginning, enjoined by the Koran and Hadith, and confirmed and celebrated by the most eminent Islamic historians, jurisprudents, and theologians. One of the most famous, the late-14^th century writer Ibn Khaldun, wrote in the Muqaddimah, “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” When we see Muslims in the 21^st century killing and dying in service to this traditional religious imperative created in the 7^thcentury, it is perverse blindness to claim that there is no connection between Islam and Islamic terrorism.

The more important question is why anyone would assert something that would have struck our Western ancestors––for a thousand years the victims of Muslim invasion, occupation, enslavement, and slaughter–– as a dangerous fantasy. One rationale appeared in the months after 9/11, when George W. Bush distinguished al Qaeda from the larger Muslim community and engaged in outreach to the latter, inviting imams to the White House and proclaiming Islam the “religion of peace.” The idea was that alienating millions of Muslims would make it harder to fight the jihadists, and even aid in their recruitment. This tactic, of course, has been an obvious failure for over a decade, as there is no evidence that being nice to Muslims––for example, rescuing Afghan and Iraqi Muslims from murderous autocrats––changed traditional Muslim attitudes toward infidels, and predisposed them to turn on their fellow Muslims.

The better answer lies in several bad ideas spawned by modernity. Western secularism has rendered us incapable of understanding passionate religious beliefs. The banishment of faith from public life is nearly complete in Europe, and we Americans are on the same trajectory. What remains of religion is reduced to a private life-style choice, commercialized holiday traditions, and a vague comforting “spiritualism” that makes few demands on its adherents. Secularists relentlessly patrol the public square to attack any sign that religious belief is stepping outside its private ghetto. And any recognition that the Judeo-Christian tradition contributed to the foundational beliefs of the West––equality, unalienable rights, and freedom––is attacked as spiritual colonization and “fundamentalist” bigotry. Hence Obama calls “shameful” the suggestions that Christian Syrians, currently suffering a genocidal persecution, be prioritized over the mostly economic Syrian refugees.

In contrast, most Muslims are intensely religious to a degree most Westerners can hardly imagine. Religion suffuses their lives, most noticeably in the muezzin’s daily five calls to prayer, and the commands of Allah and the words and deeds of Mohammed are a living presence in every aspect of a devout Muslim’s life. Nor is this religiosity a private affair kept away from the public square, and compartmentalized in people’s lives apart from politics, economics, or foreign policy. As Bernard Lewis writes,

In most Islamic countries, religion remains a major political factor, for most Muslim countries are still profoundly Muslim in a way and in a sense that most Christian countries are no longer Christian . . . in no Christian country at the present time can religious leaders count on the degree of belief and participation that remains normal in the Muslim lands . . . Christian clergy do not exercise or even claim the kind of public authority that is still normal and acceptable in mot Muslim countries.

Lacking the constant public presence of spiritual reality in our own lives, we find it hard to accept that religious doctrines advocating violence against the unbeliever, or basing all social, economic, judicial, and political order on a code of law formulated over a thousand years ago, can be real enough to compel violence against innocents. This failure of imagination has been a powerful enabler of our feckless strategies.

So too has been our ignorance of history. Worse yet, what history we do rely on is false or ideologically warped. Few politicians in charge of our foreign policy seem to be aware of the long, violent assault of Islam against the West, the chronicle of massacre, slaving, kidnapping, occupation, and exploitation, all in service to the commands of Allah and the practices of Mohammed. At the same time, our president invents the mythic “golden age” of enlightenment and tolerance in Muslim Cordoba, harps on the Crusades and the Inquisition, excoriates Israel for defending itself against the progeny of invaders, colonizers, and immigrants to the ancient Jewish homeland of Judea and Samaria, and apologizes for imperialism and colonialism. Meanwhile Muslim Turkey is in its fifth decade of the occupation of northern Cyprus that followed an invasion accompanied by ethnic cleansing, population transfers from Turkey, and the destruction or vandalizing of 300 churches.

A good example of this bizarre historical ignorance is the demonic role assigned to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement. An ISIS billboard in Iraq reads, “We are the ones who determine our borders, not Sykes-Picot.” In this false history borrowed from self-loathing Westerners, the imperialist French and English divided up the Ottoman Empire in an act of stealth colonialism. This history is false, and strangely diminishes the region’s Muslims, making them the mere passive pawns of external manipulators. But as Efraim Karsh points out in his indispensable new book The Tail Wags the Dog, the region’s leaders “have been active and enterprising free agents doggedly pursuing their national interests and swaying the region pretty much in their desired direction, often in disregard of great-power wishes.” The true history of the region shows that the disorder today has two main sources: the doctrines of Islam that keep the region mired in a premodern, tribal mentality; and the disastrous decision of the Ottoman sultan to join the Central powers in World War I, against the advice of the British, who wanted not colonies, but an Arab empire to replace the Ottomans’.

Such distorted history, in which the West is to blame for dysfunctions created by Muslims themselves, justifies an apologetic tone like that of Obama’s Cairo speech, and rationalizes Muslim violence as an understandable reaction to historical injustice––just as John Kerry did in his despicable comments that the Charlie Hebdo murders had a “rationale that you could attach yourself to.”

Finally, multiculturalism, which is an expression of this false history that makes the West the global villains deserving of payback from the oppressed dark-skinned “other,” compromises a robust and muscular response to Islamic violence. The lexicon of political correctness, predicated on the commandment never to blame the victim “of color,” leads to the sort of duplicitous evasions mentioned earlier, in which traditional Islamic doctrine disappears as motivating force, and effort is wasted on pursuing remedies––economic development, flattering outreach, or democracy promotion––that will not solve the problem of metastasizing jihadism. Moreover, like the British sympathizers with Germany in the 20s and 30s, the charges of racism and neo-imperialist oppression thrown around by the multiculturalists foster a spirit of appeasement and accommodation, sapping our morale and inhibiting our response.

The denial of Islam’s sanctified violence, confessional intolerance, and global ambitions is the biggest impediment to our destroying the enemy. The solution is simple, and memorably expressed in the New Testament: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Categories: Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Caliphate, Christianity, Europe, Fantasy, Foreign policy, Human rights, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Judiasm, Muslim assimilation, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and Jews, Theocracy
Tags: Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Caliphate, Christianity, Europe, Fantasy, Foreign Policy, human rights, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Judiasm, Muslim assimilation, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and Jews, Theocracy

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Exposed: Obama’s Love for Jihadis and Hate for Christians

November 23, 2015

Exposed: Obama’s Love for Jihadis and Hate for Christians, American Thinker, Raymond Ibrahim, November 23, 2015

President Obama recently lashed out against the idea of giving preference to Christian refugees, describing it as “shameful.” “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” loftily added the American president.

Accordingly, the administration is still determined to accept 10,000 more Syrian refugees, almost all of whom will be Muslim, despite the fact that some are ISIS operatives, while many share the ISIS worldview (as explained below).

Yet right as Obama was grandstanding about “who we are,” statistics were released indicating that “the current [refugee] 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.”

Aside from the obvious – or, to use Obama’s own word, “shameful” – pro-Muslim, anti-Christian bias evident in these statistics, there are a number of other troubling factors.

For starters, the overwhelming majority of “refugees” being brought into the United States are not just Muslim, but Sunnis – the one Muslim sect that the Islamic State is not persecuting and displacing. After all, ISIS – and most Islamic terrorist groups (Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Hamas, et al.) – are all Sunnis. Even Obama was arguably raised a Sunni.

In this context, how are Sunnis “refugees”? Whom are they fleeing? Considering that the Obama administration defines refugees as people “persecuted by their government,” most of those coming into the U.S. either aided or at least sympathized with the jihad against Assad (even if they revealed their true colors only when the time was right).

Simply put, some 98% of all refugees belong to the same Islamic sect as ISIS does. And many of them, unsurprisingly, share the same vision – such as the “refugees” who recently murdered some 120 people in France, or the “refugees” who persecute Christian minorities in European camps and settlements. (Al Azhar – the Sunni world’s most prestigious university of Islamic law, which co-hosted U.S. President Obama’s 2009 “A New Beginning” speech – was just recently exposed as teaching and legitimizing all the atrocities that ISIS commits.)

As for those who are being raped, slaughtered, and enslaved based on their non-Sunni religious identity – not by Assad, but by so-called “rebel” forces (aka jihadis) – many of them are being denied refuge in America.

Thus, although Christians were approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population in 2011, only one percent has been granted refuge in America. This despite the fact that, from a strictly humanitarian point of view – and humanitarianism (Obama’s “compassion”) is the chief reason being cited in accepting refugees – Christians should receive priority simply because they are the most persecuted group in the Middle East.

At the hands of the Islamic State, which supposedly precipitated the migrant crisis, Christians have been repeatedly forced to renounce Christ or die; they have been enslaved and raped; and they have had more than 400 of their churches desecrated and destroyed.¹

ISIS has committed no such atrocities against fellow Sunnis, they who are being accepted into the U.S. in droves. Nor does Assad enslave, behead, or crucify people based on their religious identity (despite Jeb Bush’s recent, and absurd, assertions).

Obama should further prioritize Christian refugees simply because his own policies in the Middle East have directly exacerbated their plight. Christians and other religions minorities did not flee from Bashar Assad’s Syria, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or Moammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Their systematic persecution began only after the U.S. interfered in those nations in the name of “democracy,” succeeding only in uncorking the jihadi terrorists whom the dictators had long kept suppressed.

Incidentally, prioritizing Christian refugees would not merely be an altruistic gesture or the U.S. government’s way of righting its wrongs: rather, it brings many benefits to America’s security. (Unlike Muslims or even Yazidis, Christians are easily assimilated into Western nations due to the shared Christian heritage, and they bring trustworthy language and cultural skills that are beneficial to the “war on terror.”)

Finally, no one should be shocked by these recent revelations of the Obama administration’s pro-Muslim and anti-Christian policies. They fit a clear and established pattern of religious bias within his administration. For example:

While 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 to be enslaved, raped, or murdered.
When the Nigerian government waged a strong offensive against Boko Haram, killing some of its terrorists, Secretary of State John Kerry fumed and 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.
When the U.N. Security Council held a meeting to discuss the genocide against Christians and other minorities, although “many high level delegations from UN member states addressed the Security Council meeting, some at the Foreign Minister level, the United States failed to send … a high ranking member of the State Department.”

Most recently, as the White House works on releasing a statement accusing ISIS of committing genocide against religious minorities such as Yazidis – who are named and recognized in the statement – Obama officials are arguing that Christians “do not appear to meet the high bar set out in the genocide treaty” and thus likely will not be mentioned.

In short, and to use the president’s own words, it is the Obama administration’s own foreign and domestic policies that are “shameful,” that are “not American,” and that do not represent “who we are.”

Yet the question remains: will Americans take notice and do anything about their leader’s policies – which welcome Islamic jihadis while ignoring their victims – or will their indifference continue until they too become victims of the jihad, in a repeat of Paris or worse?

_______________________

¹ Even before the 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 Christians for hundreds of anecdotes before the rise of ISIS as well as the Muslim doctrines that create such hate and contempt for Christians who are especially deserving of refugee status.

Categories: Asylum seekers, Caliphate, Foreign policy, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Kerry, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam, Sunni Muslims
Tags: Asylum seekers, Caliphate, Foreign Policy, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Kerry, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam, Sunni Muslims

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Islam — Radical, Extremist and Mainstream

November 21, 2015

Islam — Radical, Extremist and Mainstream, Dan Miller’s Blog, November 21, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM

In largely secular western societies, Islam and its history are viewed by many non-Muslims as substantially irrelevant to how devout Muslims behave. Perhaps the view that religion is of little importance to devout Muslims is based on the role, minor if any, that religion and religious history play in their own secular lives. However, both Islamic teachings and history give devout Muslims their grounding in Islam and teach them that Islam is the religion of war, not peace: Islam must become the world’s only religion by extirpating all others.

Islam was founded by Mohamed ( c. 570 CE – 8 June 632 CE) in the sixth century. Mohamed

is considered, almost universally,^{[n 2]} by Muslims to have been the last prophet sent by God to mankind^[3]^{[n 3]} to restore Islam, which they believe to be the unaltered original monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets.^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7] [Emphasis added.]

Islam considers the words of Mohamed, as transcribed in the “Holy” Quran and Hadith, to be the words of Allah. “Restoring” other monotheistic religions means changing them to comport with Islam as dictated to Mohamed by Allah; unaltered, those other religions cannot continue to exist; it is the duty of Muslims to force them to change or to exterminate them.

Islam provides the basis for Sunni and Shiite (principal branches of Islam) efforts to govern world civilization according to Islamic principles as voiced by Allah through his prophet, Mohamed. Since Islamic principles tolerate no religious or political freedoms (let alone contemporary gender equality or homosexuality notions), such western ideas must be extirpated — as they have been in Saudi Arabia (now the head of the UN Human Rights Council) and Iran. Islamic principles are also manifested by the hopes and efforts of the Islamic State (Sunni, like Saudi Arabia) and the Islamic Republic of Iran (Shiite) to achieve their own caliphates.

Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr is a scholar of Islamic law and a graduate of Egypt’s Al Azhar University — regularly touted as the world’s most prestigious Islamic university. Al Azhar University co-hosted Obama’s 2009 “New Beginnings” address in Cairo, to which Obama insisted that at least ten members of the Muslim Brotherhood be invited. According to an article at Jihad Watch,

After being asked why Al Azhar, which is in the habit of denouncing secular thinkers as un-Islamic, refuses to denounce the Islamic State as un-Islamic, Sheikh Nasr said:

It can’t [condemn the Islamic State as un-Islamic]. The Islamic State is a byproduct of Al Azhar’s programs. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic? Al Azhar says there must be a caliphate and that it is an obligation for the Muslim world [to establish it]. Al Azhar teaches the law of apostasy and killing the apostate. Al Azhar is hostile towards religious minorities, and teaches things like not building churches, etc. Al Azhar upholds the institution of jizya [extracting tribute from religious minorities]. Al Azhar teaches stoning people. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic? [Emphasis added.]

Nasr joins a growing chorus of critics of Al Azhar. Last September, while discussing how the Islamic State burns some of its victims alive—most notoriously, a Jordanian pilot—Egyptian journalist Yusuf al-Husayni remarked on his satellite program that “The Islamic State is only doing what Al Azhar teaches… and the simplest example is Ibn Kathir’s Beginning and End.”

Since the world’s preeminent Islamic university teaches Islam as proclaimed by the Islamic State, how can non-Muslims claim that the Islamic State is not Islamic? Why do many, even conservatives, refer to the Islamic State and its allied Islamic terror groups as “radical” or “extremist?”

Martin Luther was “radical” and “extreme” because he tried to reform aspects of Roman Catholicism which he deemed malign.

He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God’s punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. His refusal to retract all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the Pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Emperor.

Unlike Martin Luther’s eventually successful efforts to reform aspects of Roman Catholicism, the efforts of Egyptian President Sisi and other moderate Muslims to reform Islam have thus far gained little traction. Obama appears to support President Sisi’s principal opponent in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Sisi and other moderates — rather than the Islamic State and Islamic nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia — should be characterized as “radical” or “extreme” because they dispute the teachings of Allah as relayed through his prophet, Mohamed. The proponents of Islam as it now exists are “mainstream,” and therefore neither “radical” nor “extreme.” We should support “radicals” like President Sisi.

As noted in an article titled Beware of Islamic Terrorism,

All Islamic terrorists — not only the Islamic State group and al-Qaida — systematically and deliberately target civilians, stabbing their Muslim and “infidel” host countries in the back, abusing their hospitality to advance 14 centuries of megalomaniac aspirations to rule the globe in general, and to reclaim the “waqf” (Allah-ordained) regions of Europe in particular.

Emboldened by Western indifference, these destabilizing and terror-intensifying aspirations have been bolstered by the Islamic educational systems in Europe, the U.S. and other Western countries. These proclaim a supposedly irrevocable Islamic title over the eighth-century Islamic conquests of Lyon, Nice and much of France, as well as all of Spain; the ninth-century subjugation of parts of Italy; and the ninth- and 10th-century occupations of western Switzerland, including Geneva. [Emphasis added.]

Europe has underestimated the critical significance of this long anti-Western history in shaping contemporary Islamic education, culture, politics, peace, war, and the overall Islamic attitude toward Europe, North America, Australia, and other “arrogant infidels.” “Infidel” France has been the prime European target for Islamic terrorists, with 11 reported attacks in 2015, despite France’s systematic criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian Authority — dispelling conventional “wisdom” that Islamic terrorism is Israeli or Palestinian-driven.

Europe has ignored the significant impact the crucial milestones in the life of the Prophet Muhammad have had on contemporary Islamic geostrategy, such as his seventh-century Hijrah, when Muhammad, along with his loyalists, emigrated or fled from Mecca to Yathrib (Medina), not to be integrated and blend into Medina’s social, economic or political environment, but to advance and spread Islam through conversion, subversion and terrorism, if necessary. Asserting himself over his hosts and rivals in Medina, Muhammad gathered a critical mass of military might to conquer Mecca and launch Islam’s drive to dominate the world. [Emphasis added.]

According to a moderate Muslim, Maajid Nawaz, writing in an article at the Daily Beast titled ISIS Is Just One of a Full-Blown Global Jihadist Insurgency,

Our political leaders have been restricting the definition of this problem to whichever jihadist group is causing them the biggest headache at the present time, while ignoring the fact that they are all borne of the same Islamist ideology. Before ISIS emerged, the U.S. State Department strangely took to naming the problem “al Qaeda-inspired extremism,” even though it was not al Qaeda that inspired the radicalism. Rather, Islamist extremism inspired al Qaeda. And in turn, ISIS did not radicalize those 6,000 European Muslims who have traveled to join them, nor the thousands of supporters the French now say they are monitoring. [Emphasis added.]

This did not happened overnight and could not have emerged from a vacuum. ISIS propaganda is good, but not that good. No, decades of Islamist propaganda in communities had already primed these young Muslims to yearn for a theocratic caliphate. When surveyed, 33 percent of British Muslims expressed a desire to resurrect a caliphate. ISIS simply plucked the low-hanging fruit, which had been seeded long ago by various Islamist groups, and it will now require decades of community resilience to push back. But we cannot even begin to do so until we recognize the problem for what it is. Welcome to the full-blown global jihadist insurgency. [Emphasis added.]

The author of that article claims that Islamism (often referred to as “political Islam“) is not Islam:

I speak as a former Liberal Democrat candidate in the U.K.’s last general election and as someone who became a political prisoner in Egypt due to my former belief in Islamism. I speak, therefore, from a place of concern and familiarity, not enmity and hostility to Islam and Muslims. In a televised discussion with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on the issue, I have argued that of course ISIS is not Islam. Nor am I. Nor is anyone, really. Because Islam is what Muslims make it. But it is as disingenuous to argue that ISIS has “nothing to do with Islam” as it is to argue that “they are Islam.” ISIS has something to do with Islam. Not nothing, not everything, but something. . . . [Emphasis added.]

It is important to define here what I mean by Islamism: Islam is a religion, and like any other it is internally diverse. But Islamism is the desire to impose a very particular version of Islam on society. Hence, Islamism is Muslim theocracy. [Emphasis added.]

In another article, Mr. Nawaz acknowledges,

Islamism has been rising in the UK for decades. Over the years, in survey after survey, attitudes have reflected a worrying trend. A quarter of British Muslims sympathised with the Charlie Hebdo shootings. 0% have expressed tolerance for homosexuality. A third have claimed that killing for religion can be justified, while 36% have thought apostates should be killed. 40% have wanted the introduction of sharia as law in the UK and 33% have expressed a desire to see the return of a worldwide theocratic Caliphate. Is it any wonder then, that from this milieu up to 1,000 British Muslims have joined ISIS, which is more than joined the Army reserves.

I wish Mr. Nawaz well and hope that his efforts to change Islam succeed. However, in drawing distinctions between Islam and Islamism, he seems to have forgotten, or perhaps to have chosen to ignore, the teachings of Allah as relayed by his messenger and Islam’s founder, Mohamed, referenced at the beginning of this article. Mohamed (and presumably Allah himself) would be surprised by and even horrified at such notions as “Islam is what Muslims make it” and that Islam does not contemplate a Muslim theocracy. So, in all probability, would be many of the clerics at Egypt’s Al Azhar University.

Here are a few videos of Islamic clerics spreading their messages of Islamic peace, love and tolerance. The last of the bunch is about one of Obama’s favorite Muslims.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CQwU_QhrHE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNYZX6lt49k

To close on a somewhat lighter note, here are a few observations by Jonah Goldberg taken from his Goldberg file (November 20, 2015 e-mail),

If you Google “Christian terrorism,” you’re probably a jackass to begin with. But if you do — bidden not by your own drive to jackassery but by the natural curiosity inspired by this “news” letter — you’ll find lots of left-wing trollery about how the worst terrorist attacks on American soil have been committed by Christians. Much of it is tendentious, question-begging twaddle. But I really don’t want to waste a lot of time on whether Tim McVeigh was a Christian or not (he really wasn’t).

What I find interesting is that many of the same people who clutch their pearls at the mere suggestion that Islamic terrorism has anything to do with — oh, what’s the word again? — oh right: Islam, seem to have no problem making the case that “Christian terrorism” is like a real thing. Remember how so many liberals loved — loved — Obama’s sophomoric and insidious tirade about not getting on our “high horses” about ISIS’s atrocities in the here and now because medieval Christians did bad things a thousand years ago? They never seem to think that argument through. Leaving out the ass-aching stupidity of the comparison, it actually concedes the very point Obama never wants to concede. By laying the barbaric sins of Christians a thousand years ago at the feet of Christians today, he implicitly tags Muslims with the barbarism committed in their name today. [Emphasis added.]

Now, I see no need to wade too deeply into the theology here, but I think I am on very solid ground when I say that Islamic terrorism draws more easily and deeply from the Koran than Tim McVeigh drew from the Christian Bible. Of course, you’re free to disagree. In a free society, everybody has the right to be wrong in their opinions. (But don’t tell anyone at Yale that.)

. . . .

But it is simply a lie — an obvious, glaring, indisputable, trout-in-the-milk lie — that Muslims have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.

Simply put, this is nonsense. . . . The jihadists say they are motivated by Islam. They shout “Allahu akbar!” whenever they kill people. “Moderate Muslims” in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have been funding Islamic radicals around the world for nearly a century. This morning in Mali, terrorist gunmen reportedly released those hostages who could quote the Koran. The leader of ISIS has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and openly talks about restoring the Caliphate. [Emphasis added.]

Despite all of this, don’t be distracted from the greatest threat to our security; or perhaps we should be:

Categories: Al Azhar University, Caliphate, Christianity, Egypt, Foreign policy, Iran, Islam, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Moderate Muslims, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State, Palestinian heroes, Political Islam, Radical Islam, Saudi Arabia
Tags: Al Azhar University, Caliphate, Christianity, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Iran, Islam, Islam - the religion of war, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Jews, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic invasion, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Moderate Muslims, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State, Palestinian heroes, Political Islam, radical Islam, Saudi Arabia

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Obama: Federal law is un-American!

November 19, 2015

Obama: Federal law is un-American! Power Line, Jonn Hinderaker, November 18, 2015

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.

Categories: Asylum seekers, Christians, Islam and Christianity, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Jews, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam
Tags: Asylum seekers, Christians, Islam and Christianity, Islamic invasion, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Jews, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam

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D.C. refuses to arm persecuted Christians fighting ISIS

November 18, 2015

D.C. refuses to arm persecuted Christians fighting ISIS, Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, November 18, 2015

(Please see also, U.S. ‘discriminates’ against Christian refugees, accepts 96% Muslims, 3% Christians. — DM)

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.

Categories: Christians, Combat troops, Islam and Christianity, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Middle East, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State
Tags: Christians, Combat troops, Islam and Christianity, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Middle East, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State

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The Indonesian Jihad on Christian Churches

November 11, 2015

The Indonesian Jihad on Christian Churches, The Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, November 11, 2015

“We will not stop hunting Christians and burning churches. Christians are Allah’s enemies!” – Islamic leaders, Aceh region.
In other parts of Indonesia, where Islamic law, or Sharia, is not enforced, churches, even fully registered ones, are also under attack
On Dec. 25, 2012, with all required paperwork in place, when the congregation assembled on empty land to celebrate Christmas, hundreds of Muslims threw rocks, rotten eggs, and bags filled with excrement at the Christians. Police stood by and watched.
For Indonesia, the country once hailed as the face of “moderate Islam,” the “extremist” behavior one would expect of ISIS has apparently become the norm.

In compliance with Islamic demands, Indonesian authorities in the Aceh region have started to tear down Christian churches. Their move comes after Muslim mobs rampaged and attacked churches. At least one person was killed; thousands of Christians were displaced.

On Friday, October 9, after being fired up during mosque sermons, hundreds of Muslims marched to the local authority’s office and demanded that all unregistered churches in Aceh be closed. Imams issued text messages spurring Muslims from other areas to rise up against churches and call for their demolition.

On Monday, October 12, authorities facilitated a meeting with Islamic leaders and agreed to demolish 10 unregistered churches over the course of two weeks.

Apparently this was not fast enough to meet Muslim demands for immediate action. On the following day, a mob of approximately 700 Muslims, some armed with axes and machetes, torched a local church, even though it was not on the list of churches agreed upon for demolition.

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The remains of a church in the Aceh region of Indonesia, still on fire, after hundreds of Muslims attacked it on October 13, 2015. (Image source: CCTV video screenshot)

The Muslim mob then moved on to a second church, an act that led to violent clashes. One person, believed to be a Christian, died after being shot in the head. Several were injured, as Christians tried to defend their church against the armed mob.

Approximately 8,000 Christians were displaced; many fled to bordering provinces. Their fears were justified: Islamic leaders continued issuing messages and text messages saying, “We will not stop hunting Christians and burning churches. Christians are Allah’s enemies!”

Instead of punishing those who incited violence and took the law into their own hands by torching and attacking churches, local authorities demolished three churches (a Catholic mission station and two Protestant churches) on October 19. In the coming days, seven more churches are set to be demolished; in the coming months and years, dozens more.

Authorities had originally requested of church leaders to demolish their own churches. “How can we do that?” asked Paima Berutu, one of the church leaders: “It is impossible [for us to take it down] … Some of us watched [the demolition] from afar, man and women. It was painful.”

The situation in Aceh remains tense: “Every church member is guarding his own church right now,” said another pastor

As for the displaced Christians, many remain destitute, waiting for “desperately needed clean water, food, clothes, baby food, blankets, and medicines.” As Muslim militants were reportedly guarding the border with an order to kill any Christians crossing the line, reaching the Christians is difficult.

Many Muslims and some media try to justify this destruction by pointing out that the churches were in the wrong for not being registered. In reality, however, thanks to Indonesia’s 2006 Joint Decree on Houses of Worship, it is effectively impossible to obtain a church permit. The decree made it illegal for churches to acquire permits unless they can get “signatures from 60 local households of a different faith,” presumably Muslims, as well as “a written recommendation from the regency or municipal religious affairs office” — that is, from the local sheikh and council of Muslim elders: the same people most likely to incite Muslims against Christians and churches during mosque gatherings. Christian activists say there are many mosques that are unregistered and built without permits, but the authorities ignore those infractions.

Others try to justify these recent attacks on churches by pointing out that they took place in Aceh, the only region in Indonesia where Islamic law, or Sharia, is officially authorized, and where, since 2006, more than 1,000 churches have been shut.

Yet in other parts of Indonesia, where Islamic law is not enforced, even fully registered churches are under attack. These include the Philadelphia Protestant Church in Bekasi — nearly 1,500 miles south of Sharia-compliant Aceh. Even though it had the necessary paperwork, it too was illegally shut down in response to violent Muslim protests. On December 25, 2012, when the congregation assembled on empty land to celebrate Christmas, hundreds of Muslims, including women and children, threw rotten eggs, rocks, and plastic bags filled with urine and feces at the Christians. Police stood by and watched.

A church spokesman stated, “We are constantly having to change our location because our existence appears to be unwanted, and we have to hide so that we are not intimidated by intolerant groups. … We had hoped for help from the police, but after many attacks on members of the congregation [including when they privately meet for worship at each other’s homes], we see that the police are also involved in this.”

Bogor is another area where Islamic law is supposedly not enforced. Yet the ongoing saga of the GKI Yasmin Church there illustrates how Islamic law takes precedence over Indonesian law. In 2008, when local Muslims began complaining about the existence of the church, even though it was fully registered, the authorities obligingly closed it. In December 2010, the Indonesian Supreme Court ordered the church to be reopened, but the mayor of Bogor, refusing to comply, kept it sealed off.

Since then, the congregation has been holding Sunday services at the homes of members, and occasionally on the street, to the usual jeers and attacks by Muslim mobs. On Sunday, September 27, the church held its 100th open-air service.

The Indonesian jihad is taking place in varying degrees all throughout the East Asian nation and is not limited to Sharia-compliant zones such as Aceh. For the country once hailed as the face of “moderate Islam,” the “extremist” behavior one would expect of the Islamic State (ISIS) — hating, attacking, and demolishing churches — has apparently become the norm.

Categories: Christianity, Indonesia, Islam and Christianity
Tags: Christianity, Indonesia, Islam and Christianity

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