Posted tagged ‘Religion’

Confessions of a Climate Change ‘Denier’

March 21, 2017

Confessions of a Climate Change ‘Denier’, Spectator, Thomas W. Smith, March 17, 2017

It has always been worrisome to me that every so-called solution to global warming subverts rather than enhances human freedom and advances the power of the state to regulate energy, industrial activity, and individual behavior. That seems to me, a denier, or whatever term you want to use, a potentially greater threat to the future of human welfare than even climate change. Václav Klaus, the former president of the Czech Republic, made this same point when he declared: “What is at risk is not the climate but freedom.”

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A few days ago I had a conversation with a very smart university professor of history and somehow the climate change subject came up. Almost instantly he responded to my thoughts by saying: “You must be one of those deniers who rejects the science consensus.”

This is the new form of intellectual bullying and it’s intentionally designed is to stop the conversation not advance it. In the academies it is a technique to close off scientific inquiry.

When the liberals talk of ‎consensus, what consensus are they talking about?  Of whom? About what? Here is John Kay of the‎ Financial Times on the so-called consensus:

Science is a matter of evidence, not what a majority of scientists think…. The notion of a monolithic “science,” meaning what scientists say, is pernicious and the notion of “scientific consensus” actively so. The route to knowledge is transparency in disagreement and openness in debate. The route to truth is the pluralist expression of conflicting views in which, often not as quickly as we might like, good ideas drive out bad. There is no room in this process for any notion of “scientific consensus.”

Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, has noted that too many environmentalists “ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.”

Then he adds: “… there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition.… The consensus was reached before the research was even begun…”

Kay and Lindzen are not alone. In an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister, 60 scientists urged caution when it comes to any policy with regard to climate:

While the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups may provide for sensational headlines, they are no basis for mature policy formation.… There is no “consensus” among climate scientists about the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change.… “Climate change is real” is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural noise.

Patrick Moore, a Ph.D. in ecology, is a fallen-away founder of Greenpeace. The following is from his 2015 lecture, “Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide?”

There is no definite scientific proof, through real-world observation that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming in the global climate that has occurred during the past 300 years, since the peak of the Little Ice Age.… The contention that human emissions are now the dominant influence on climate is simply a hypothesis, rather than a universally accepted scientific theory. It is therefore correct, indeed verging on compulsory in a scientific tradition, to be skeptical of those who express certainty that “the science is settled” and “the debate is over.”

The world’s top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is hopelessly conflicted by its makeup and its mandate from the United Nations. It is required only to focus on “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the atmosphere, and which is in addition to natural climate variability.” So if the IPCC found that climate change was not being affected by human alteration of the atmosphere or that it is not “dangerous,” there would be no need for it to exist. It is virtually mandated to find on the side of apocalypse.

The IPCC states that it is “extremely likely” that human emissions have been the dominant cause of global warming “since the mid-20th century,” that is since 1950. It claims that “extremely” means 95% certain, even though the number 95 was simply plucked from the air like an act of magic. And “likely” is not a scientific word but rather indicative of a judgment, another word for opinion.

“Perpetual repetition.” “Unqualified environmental groups.” “Sensational headlines.” This is what mass movements are all about. From his book, The True Believer, here is Eric Hoffer on mass movements:

Hatred is the most assessable and comprehensive of all the unifying agents.… Mass movements can rise and spread without the belief in God but never without the belief in evil.

By the way, isn’t this what the left accuses the Trump movement to be all about?

Hoffer then goes on to cite the historian F.A. Voigt’s account of a Japanese mission to Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist Movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought. He replied, “It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.” This brought a bit of clarity as to why the mass movement, rather brilliantly, wants to label those of us who have questions as “deniers.”

There are two things necessary for a mass movement to succeed: true believers and a well-defined enemy. The enemy of the climate change mass movement is fossil fuels and the Industrial Age, with the “deniers” being the enablers of planetary destruction.

In the past, the term “denier” has been associated with that extreme group who denies the existence of the horrible, tragic historical fact, the Holocaust. Many climate change true believers want the public to put anyone who questions or disagrees with climate change projections in the same category as the Holocaust deniers. But one is a fact, the other a contested projection. Nevertheless, they have been quite successful.

Here is one of the definitions of “denier” found on the Internet: “a person who denies something, especially someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of the scientific or historical evidence: a prominent denier of global warming.”

Here is Hoffer’s warning on the role of the true believer: “where mass movements can either persuade or coerce, it usually chooses the latter.”

Something we are seeing in spades.

The last paragraph of Friedrich Hayek’s 1974 Nobel Prize address, The Pretense of Knowledge, puts the climate change mass movement and its true believers into frightening perspective:

There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, “dizzy with success,” to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will.

It has always been worrisome to me that every so-called solution to global warming subverts rather than enhances human freedom and advances the power of the state to regulate energy, industrial activity, and individual behavior. That seems to me, a denier, or whatever term you want to use, a potentially greater threat to the future of human welfare than even climate change. Václav Klaus, the former president of the Czech Republic, made this same point when he declared: “What is at risk is not the climate but freedom.”

Cartoons of the Day

December 6, 2016

via New York Times

Independent. Trusted. Real.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE TIMES

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

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double

 

just-in

 

via Hope n’ Change Cartoons

what-are-you-waiting-fir-1

 

 

Putin’s Puritan Piety: The Ideological War against the West

October 9, 2016

Putin’s Puritan Piety: The Ideological War against the West, Gatestone InstituteGiulio Meotti, October 9, 2016

Russia is one of the few countries in the Western world in which religion is becoming increasingly important and not less.

To establish his authority on the Russian society, President Vladimir Putin has shaped a doctrine mobilizing the entire Russian society against a perceived Western “decadence”. He has declared that Russian traditional family values are a bulwark against the West’s “so-called tolerance — genderless and infertile.”

The first Cold War was a clash between Western democracy and the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. The new Cold War is a one between Western liberalism and Russian conservatism.

During the Cold War, American conservatives used to label the Soviet Union “the godless nation” on the verge of collapse because it had purged religion from the Russian society. Two decades later, the Kremlin is occupied by a former officer of the KGB, secretly baptized, who launches the same accusation of atheism at the United States and the West.

Welcome to “Putin’s covert war on Western decadence“, as The Spectator defined it:

“Putin’s Russia is fast becoming a very puritan place. Ever since returning to the presidency in 2012, Putin has pursued an increasingly religious-conservative ideology both at home and abroad, defining Russia as a moral fortress against sexual licence and decadence, porn and gay rights”.

Recently, Russian officials censored porn websites. When the largest pornography site on the internet, PornHub, offered the Russia’s official communications and media watchdog a premium account in exchange for lifting the ban, Russian officials replied: “Sorry, we are not in the market and the demography is not a commodity.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ideological war against the West is getting cocky and self-confident. In a televised speech from a Kremlin hall, Putin declared that Russian traditional family values are a bulwark against the West’s “so-called tolerance — genderless and infertile.”

“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have abandoned their roots, including Christian values,” said Putin. The patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Kirill, echoed Putin by charging the West of being engaged in a “spiritual disarmament” of the Russian people, and by criticizing the European laws that prevent wearing religious symbols in public. “We have experienced an era of atheism and we know what it means to live without God”, Kirill said.

1931Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, May 24, 2015. (Image source: The Kremlin)

The first ten years of Putin’s dominance were devoid of any religious and cultural reference. Putin and his circle never mentioned any “values”, and did not try to teach any moral lessons to the West. The second Putin decade has been marked by a “conservative revolution” based on the revival of an isolated Russian Orthodox culture, separated for centuries from European civilization. “Putin wants to make Russia into the traditional values capital of the world,” saidMasha Gessen, author of a Putin biography, entitled The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. In the Russian media, Putin is now called “the savior of the decadent West.”

Putin is now focused on a church in the heart of Paris. The Sainte-Trinité Cathedral, often referred to as “Moscow on the Seine,” is under construction near the Eiffel Tower, in the Quai Branly, and will be the largest Orthodox cathedral in France. “This church is an outpost of the other Europe, conservative and anti-modern, in the heart of the country of libertinism and secularism”, said Michel Eltchaninoff, a French scholar and author of the book, Dans la tête de Vladimir Poutine (“Inside the Head of Vladimir Putin“), on the thoughts of the Russian president.

Are France, the United States and Ireland open to gay marriage? Putin’s Russia bans “gay propaganda“. Does Western Europe allow quick divorce? Putin’s Russia taxes divorce. Does the West legalize abortion on demand? Putin’s Russia is trying to restrict it. Russia’s leading clerics have just urged Putin to ban abortion. A new Russian law also targets “foreign religions.”

“Western values, from liberalism to the recognition of the rights of sexual minorities, from Protestantism to comfortable prisons for murderers, arouse in us suspicion, wonder and alienation”, said Yevgeny Bazhanov, one of Putin’s “intellectuals”. Putin has apparently even managed to win the support of the most renowned Russian musicians, such as the conductorValery Gergiev, superintendent at the St. Petersburg Marjinskij theater.

Even in foreign policy, Putin often justifies its decisions with references to Christianity. The New York Times explained that, in addition to strategic and economic interests, a major reason to explain Russian support for Assad’s regime in Syria is the uncompromising position of the Orthodox Church. The Russian Patriarch Kirill evoked, in fact, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, with its endless “carcasses of defiled churches.”

Before that, there was the historical role of Russia in defense of Armenian Christians against Turkish pro-Western Muslims, and Christian Serbs against Bosnian Muslims supported by the U.S. To try to justify the invasion of the Crimea, Putin said that is “our Temple Mount,” a reference to Judaism’s holiest site in Jerusalem.

Vladimir Putin has presided for years over the great revival of Orthodox Christianity. On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian church had 50,000 parishes and 60 schools. By 1941, Stalin had eliminated the church as a public institution. Every monastery and seminary had been closed. With the fall of communism in 1991, the church began to rebuild its devastated institutional life. Putin’s Russia is returning to the concept of Byzantine symphonia — an approach in which church and state work together.

The church apparently aspires to achieve the “re-Christianization of the Russian nation.” Although as much as 70% of Russians call themselves Orthodox and are baptized, only 4% take part in the liturgy. But Russia is also one of the few countries in the Western world in which religion is becoming increasingly important and not less.

To establish his authority over the Russian society, Putin has shaped a doctrine mobilizing the entire Russian society against a perceived Western “decadence.” The Kremlin has closely followed the opposition to gay marriage in France and tensions over migrants in the European Union. Putin then launched a conservative offensive aimed at both Russians and Europeans. As the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Putin Depicts Russia as a Bulwark Against European Decadence.”

Against a perceived Western amnesia about its own Christian past, moral relativism and political correctness, Putin affirmed the Christian roots of Russia, traditional family values, patriotism and obedience to hierarchy.

“According to him, in essence, Europe has entered a phase of decadence, while Russia is in an ascending phase of its history”, Michel Eltchaninoff says of Putin.

“He relies on the pseudo-scientific model of Konstantin Leontiev, one of whose most famous concepts Vladimir Putin is fond of quoting: that of ‘flourishing complexity’. According to the Russian philosopher, who took a fervently anti-European and anti-bourgeois position, any civilisation, after a period of original simplicity, reaches its apex in an era of flourishing complexity, before declining into a period of simplification and confusion. For Leontiev, ever since the Renaissance, Europe has ceased to give birth to saints and geniuses, and only engenders engineers, parliamentarians and ethics professors. It makes everything uniform, through its mode of development and its conformism. But it is also confused. Its inhabitants are lost, and no longer know how to give meaning to their lives. They show themselves to be incapable of perceiving an inspiring superior principle.”

The first Cold War was a clash between Western democracy and the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Western freedom crushed the Soviet gulags. The new Cold War is a one between Western liberalism and Russian conservatism.

As happened during the first Cold War, when the Soviets depicted capitalism as a Western fault, avaricious and amoral, the burden is presumably again on the West to prove it has better way of life and that its society is not just a “decadent” stereotype. Meanwhile, against the West’s visible lack of self-confidence and the deterioration of Europe’s élite, Putin’s geopolitical and ideological hegemony is getting stronger.

The Case for Kurdish Statehood

July 11, 2016

The Case for Kurdish Statehood, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Noah Beck, July 11, 2016

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Why has the West been so supportive of Palestinian nationalism, yet so reluctant to support the Kurds, the largest nation in the world without a state?

The Kurds have been instrumental in fighting the Islamic State (ISIS); have generously accepted millions of refugees fleeing ISIS to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG); and embrace Western values such as gender equality, religious freedom, and human rights. They are also an ancient people with an ethnic and linguistic identity stretching back millennia and have faced decades of brutal oppression as a minority. Yet they cannot seem to get sufficient support from the West for their political aspirations.

The Palestinians, by contrast, claimed a distinct national identity relatively recently, are less than one-third fewer in number (in 2013, the global Palestinian population was estimated by the Palestinian Authority to reach 11.6 million), control land that is less than 1/15th the size of the KRG territory, and have not developed their civil society or economy with nearly as much success as the Kurds. Yet the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League, and other international bodies have all but ignored Kurdish statehood dreams while regularly prioritizing Palestinian ambitions over countless other global crises.

Indeed, in 2014 the UK and Sweden joined much of the rest of the world in recognizing a Palestinian state. There has been no similar global support for a Kurdish homeland. Moreover, Kurdish statehood has been hobbled by U.S. reluctance to see the Iraqi state dismantled and by regional powers like Turkey, which worries that a Kurdish state will stir up separatist feelings among Turkish Kurds.

With an estimated worldwide population of about 35 million (including about 28 million in the KRG or adjacent areas), the Kurds are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East (after the Arabs, Persians, and Turks), and have faced decades of persecution as a minority in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.

The 1988 “Anfal” attacks, which included the use of chemical weapons, destroyed about 2,000 villages and killed at least 50,000 Kurds, according to human rights groups (Kurds put the number at nearly 200,000). Several international bodies have recognized those atrocities as a genocide.

The Kurds in Turkey have also suffered oppression dating back to Ottoman times, when the Turkish army killed tens of thousands of Kurds in the Dersim and Zilan massacres. By the mid-1990s, more than 3,000 villages had been destroyed and 378,335 Kurdish villagers had been displaced and left homeless, according to Human Rights Watch.

The drive for Kurdish rights and separatism in Iran extends back to 1918, and – during its most violent chapter – cost the lives of over 30,000 Kurds, starting with the 1979 rebellion and the consequent KDPI insurgency.

A 2007 study notes that 300,000 Kurdish lives were lost just in the 1980s and 1990s. The same study states that 51,000 Jews and Arabs were killed in the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1950 until 2007 (and, because that total includes wars with Israel’s Arab neighbors, Palestinians are a small fraction of the Arab death toll).

Perhaps because of the Kurds’ own painful history, the KRG is exceptionally tolerant towards religious minorities and refugees. The KRG has embraced its tiny community of Jews, and in 2014, the Kurds rescued about 5,000 Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar after fleeing attempted genocide by ISIS. Last November, the Kurds recaptured the Sinjar area from ISIS, liberating hundreds more Yazidis from vicious oppression.

The KRG absorbed 1.8 million refugees as of December, representing a population increase of about 30 percent. The KRG reportedly needs $1.4 to 2.4 billion to stabilize the internally displaced people in its territory.

“Most of the refugees [in the KRG] are Arab Sunnis and Shia, Iranians, Christians, and others,” Nahro Zagros, Soran University vice president and adviser to the KRG’s Ministry of Higher Education, told the  IPT. “Yet there is no public backlash from the Kurds. And of course, we have been helping the Yazidi, who are fellow Kurds.”

The Kurdish commitment to gender equality is yet another reason that Kurdish statehood merits Western support. There is no gender discrimination in the Kurdish army: their women fight (and get beheaded) alongside the men. Last December, Kurdistan hosted the International Conference on Women and Human Rights.

The Kurds are also the only credible ground force fighting ISIS, as has been clear since the ISIS threat first emerged in 2014. ISIS “would have totally controlled the Baji oil field and all of Kirkuk had the [Kurdish] Peshmerga not defended it,” said Jay Garner, a retired Army three-star general and former Army assistant vice chief of staff who served during “Operation Provide Comfort” in northern Iraq. “Losing Kirkuk would have changed the entire war [against ISIS], because there are billions of dollars [per] week in oil flowing through there. The Iraqi army abandoned their equipment [while the Kurds defended Kirkuk, which has historically been theirs].”

Masrour Barzani, who heads the KRG’s intelligence services, says that Kurdish independence would empower the Kurds to purchase the type of weapons they need without the delays that currently hobble their military effort against ISIS. Under the present arrangement, Kurdish weapons procurement must go through Iraq’s Shia-led central government, which is also under heavy Iranian influence.

Besides bolstering the fight against ISIS, there are other geopolitical reasons for the West to support Kurdish statehood: promoting a stable partition of Syria, containing Iran, balancing extremist forces in the Middle East, and giving the West another reliable ally in a volatile region.

Now that Syria is no longer a viable state, it could partition into more sustainable governing blocs along traditional ethnic/sectarian lines with Sunni Arabs in the heartland, Alawites in the northwest, Druze in the south, and Kurds in the northeast. KRG leader Masrour Barzani recently argued that political divisions within Iraq have become so deep that the country must transform into “either confederation or full separation.”

Southeast Turkey and northwest Iran also have sizeable Kurdish areas that are contiguous with the KRG, but those states are far from disintegrating, and would aggressively resist any attempts to connect their Kurdish areas to the future Kurdish state. However, the Kurdish areas of former Syria should be joined to Iraqi Kurdistan as a way to strengthen the fledgling Kurdish state and thereby weaken ISIS.

In a recent article, Ernie Audino, the only U.S. Army general to have previously served a year as a combat adviser embedded inside a Kurdish Peshmerga brigade in Iraq, notes that Iran currently controls the Iraqi government and Iran-backed fighters will eventually try to control Kurdistan. He also makes the point that Western support for the Kurdish opposition groups active in Iran would force the Iranian regime to concentrate more on domestic concerns, effectively weakening Iran’s ability to pursue terrorism, expansionism, and other destabilizing activities abroad.

Because the Kurds are religiously diverse moderates who prioritize their ethno-linguistic identity over religion, a Kurdish state would help to balance out the radical Mideast forces in both the Shiite and Sunni camps. The Kurds are already very pro-American, thanks to their Western-leaning values, the U.S.-backed-no-fly zone, and the 2003 toppling of Saddam Husssein that made the KRG possible.

A Kurdish state would also have excellent relations with Israel, another moderate, non-Arab, pro-Western democracy in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed Kurdish independence in 2014, and Syrian Kurds – after recently declaring their autonomy – expressed an interest in developing relations with Israel.

By contrast, the Palestinian Authority slanders Israel at every opportunity: Abbas recently claimed in front of the EU parliament that Israel’s rabbis are trying to poison Palestinian drinking water. The Authority raises Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews with endless anti-Israel incitement coming from schools, media, and mosques. Palestinians have also shown little economic progress in the territories that they do control, particularly in Gaza, where Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses that donors bought for them in 2006 and instead, have focused their resources on attacking Israel with tunnels and rockets.

By almost any measure, a Kurdish state deserves far more support from the West. After absorbing millions of Syrian refugees while fighting ISIS on shrinking oil revenue, the KRG is battling a deepening financial crisis. Aggravating the situation, Iraq’s central government has refused – since April 2015 – to send the KRG its share of Iraqi oil revenue. The economic crisis has cost the KRG an estimated $10 billion since 2014.

U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced House Resolution 1654 “to authorize the direct provision of defense articles, defense services, and related training to” the KRG. Fifteen months later, the bill is still stuck in Congress.

Helping the Kurds should be an even bigger priority for the European Union, which absorbs countless new refugees every day that ISIS is not defeated. If the EU were to fund the KRG’s refugee relief efforts and support their military operations against ISIS, far fewer refugees would end up on their shores.

 

Ralph Peters blasts Obama on not identifying enemy of radical Islam: He never learns anything ever

June 13, 2016

Ralph Peters blasts Obama on not identifying enemy of radical Islam: He never learns anything ever, Fox News via Washington Free Beacon and YouTube, June 13, 2016

Political Islam Explained by Bill Warner (part 1 of 2)

June 10, 2016

Political Islam Explained by Bill Warner (part 1 of 2), Rubin Reports, via YouTube, June 6, 2016

90% of 13-Year-Olds at Italian School Would Convert to Islam if ISIS Came to their Home

April 25, 2016

90% of 13-Year-Olds at Italian School Would Convert to Islam if ISIS Came to their Home, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, April 25, 2016

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From the looks of this, the conquest and Islamization of Europe will be easy.

The German-language site Katholisches.info reports that “90 percent would convert to Islam without hesitation to save their own lives, the Islamic State (IS) should conquer the country. This ‘shock result’ (Il Giornale) came from a survey of 13-year-olds at an Italian secondary school. Only two of 25 students opposed conversion. Both students are from devout Catholic families.”

This “shock result” came during a class discussion on the Islamic State (ISIS): “The teacher gave them information. She told her students also that many fighters of the IS come from Europe. Young Muslims who are the second or third generation immigrants. They are well integrated, come from families with a certain level of prosperity, and several possess a university degree or have begun studies. One of the most infamous executioners of IS was previously a well-known DJ in Europe.”

The teacher reportedly did not sugarcoat the Islamic State’s hostility to Christians and Christianity: “The teacher told her students that the IS destroyed all Christian symbols and threatened everyone who was not willing to convert to Islam with death. She also did not conceal that many Christians were killed, exiled or enslaved because of their faith by IS.”

If the teacher intended this news to make the students resolute in the defense of their ancestral religion and culture, however, it had the opposite effect: all but the two devout Catholic students agreed that if the Islamic State confronted them, they would surrender rather than fight, and would convert to Islam.

Yes, it was just one classroom in one school. But there is no reason to assume that the answer would be significantly different in most schools all over continental Europe, as well as in Britain and even in the United States. Schools where students are taught to value their own cultural heritage, and to be ready to fight to defend it, are rare indeed – in publicly-funded schools all over the West, curricula that taught such a thing would be denounced as “racist” and “xenophobic,” and wouldn’t last long if they were implemented at all.

These children in this Italian classroom are the products of a relativistic, materialistic, hedonistic culture that has relentlessly indoctrinated them with the ideas that all belief systems and cultures are of equal value and are essentially interchangeable, and that it is wrong and “racist” to oppose even an authoritarian and violent ideology, and that defense of one’s homeland and culture is likewise “racist,” and that Judeo-Christian Western civilization is itself uniquely “racist” and responsible for the great majority of the evil in the world.

So what does anyone expect? Does anyone really think that these children and others like them all over the West will grow up to love their countries and their culture and be willing to fight to save them from hostile invaders who mean to conquer and subjugate them? It is much more likely that they will be glad to be subjugated, so as to assuage their guilt over being the children and heirs of the world’s colonialists and enslavers. They have never been taught, and will not be taught, that their new Muslim overlords are in fact the exponents of a culture that has been far more imperialist and more deeply involved in slavery than the West ever was.

As they get used to the dehumanization of women and institutionalized discrimination against non-Muslims, these young denizens of Islamizing Europe will console themselves with the lessons they learned in school about how Islam inspired a great and tolerant civilization in al-Andalus and led numerous people to glorious innovations in science, philosophy and more. It will likely never occur to them, since they have never been taught how to think critically, that the Islamic civilization that is asserting control over their homeland and all of Europe is nothing like what they were taught in school to expect, as it is not really either great or tolerant, and is quite hostile to intellectual endeavors that are deemed un-Islamic – which happens all too often.

Even if that subversive thought does cross some of their minds, by then it will be far too late, as most of their classmates will indeed have converted and joined the religion of the overlords, and the rest are rapidly learning to make the necessary adjustments to get along. The Christian remnant in Egypt, and Syria, and Pakistan learned how to do that, adjusting to a precarious existence in which one’s life could be forfeit if one did not show the requisite “respect” to Muslims whenever and wherever and however that respect was demanded. The Christians and post-Christians of Europe will learn how to do so as well. And many will discover, to their surprise and relief, that it is actually quite easy to live as a slave. Once one accepts the fact that freedom is gone, one can savor that responsibility is as well. What could be sweeter?

Daniel Greenfield Moment – Islam’s American Identity Crisis

January 16, 2016

Daniel Greenfield Moment – Islam’s American Identity Crisis, The Glazov Gang via You Tube, January 15, 2016

(Please see also, How Islam in America Became a Privileged Religion. — DM)

 

U.S. ‘discriminates’ against Christian refugees, accepts 96% Muslims, 3% Christians

November 17, 2015

U.S. ‘discriminates’ against Christian refugees, accepts 96% Muslims, 3% Christians, Washington Times

Obama and FrancisPresident Obama reacts as he meets with Pope Francis during their exchange of gifts at the Vatican on March 27, 2014. (Associated Press) more >

Less than 3 percent of the Syrian refugees admitted to the United States so far are Christian and 96 percent are Muslim, the result of a referral system that Republican Sen. Tom Cotton says “unintentionally discriminates” against Christians.

State Department figures released Monday showed that the current system overwhelmingly favors Muslim refugees. Of the 2,184 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States so far, only 53 are Christians while 2,098 are Muslim, the Christian News Service reported.

Mr. Cotton and Sen. John Boozman, both Arkansas Republicans, called Monday for a moratorium on resettlements, a White House report on vetting procedures, and a re-evaluation of the refugee-referral process.

“[T]he United States’ reliance on the United Nations for referrals of Syrian refugees should also be re-evaluated,” said Mr. Cotton in a statement. “That reliance unintentionally discriminates against Syrian Christians and other religious minorities who are reluctant to register as refugees with the United Nations for fear of political and sectarian retribution.”

The current system relies on referrals from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Syria’s population in 2011 was 90 percent Muslim and 10 percent Christian, CNS said.

At a news conference Monday in Turkey, President Obama described as “shameful” the idea of giving religious preferences to refugees, apparently referring to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s suggestion that the United States should accept Christian refugees while Muslim refugees are sent to majority-Muslim countries.

“That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” Mr. Obama said.

Figures from the State Department Refugee Processing Center updated Monday showed that 96 percent of the Syrian refugees accepted so far are Muslim, while less than 3 percent are Christian. The other 33 identified as belonging to smaller religious faiths or said they had no religion.

Ben Rhodes, Obama deputy national security adviser, said Sunday that the White House still plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees despite last week’s deadly terrorist attack on Paris. Republicans have countered that it’s all but impossible to conduct background checks on those seeking refuge.

Mr. Cotton and Mr. Boozman called Monday for a temporary moratorium on resettlements and “a requirement that the President certify the integrity of the security vetting process as a condition of lifting the moratorium.”

“The American people have long demonstrated unmatched compassion for the world’s persecuted and endangered. But when bringing refugees to our shores, the U.S. government must put the security of Arkansans and all Americans first,” Mr. Cotton said. “No terrorist should be able to take advantage of the refugee process to threaten the United States.”

 

‘Islamophobia’ in America vs. murderous Christophobia in the Islamic world

November 5, 2015

‘Islamophobia’ in America vs. murderous Christophobia in the Islamic world, Front Page MagazineJack Kerwick, November 5, 2015

(‘Jewophobia’ appears to be at least as prevalent. — DM)

Cross

As organizations like CAIR and their allies wax indignant over “Islamophobia” in America, Muslims around the globe are visiting the worst sort of cruelty upon the Christian minorities in their midst.

For instance, over a span of four days, from October 19-23, the Indonesian government succumbed to the demand of Islamic “extremists” and demolished nine churches.  Six days earlier, on October 13, Muslims unleashed a torrent of violence that left a church burned to the ground and a person dead.

And in the course of this single day, 8,000 Christians found themselves displaced from their homes.

The government has deported them.

According to a local church activist, someone who self-identified only as “Rudy,” Islamic militants issued an ultimatum to the Indonesian government: Either raze these Christian churches to the ground or “the radicals will deploy around 7,000 people” to besiege this Christian community.

The organization Open Doors, a group dedicated to “serving persecuted Christians worldwide,” reports: “Church members wept as they watched in despair [as] civil police officers [began] hammering down their worship houses.” As of this juncture, over 1,000 “churchless believers are prohibited from raising temporary tents to hold Sunday worship services.”

The predominantly Islamic country of Bangladesh is a place where Christian women are regularly subjected to unspeakable violence.  Open Doors states that “two out of every three women in Bangladesh will experience gender-based violence in their lifetimes.” Furthermore, the United Nations’ “Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women” has found that “girls are regularly harassed and abused on their way to and from school,” a phenomenon that is the function of the fact that “sexual harassment is often seen as ‘part of the culture.’”

One young woman who has fallen victim to this culture is Susmita Chambugonj.  Back in May, the 20-year-old was assailed by five “youths” who dragged her into a microbus.  While inside, Susmita was raped by two of her abductors.

The current “refugee crisis” has hit Syrian and Iraqi Christians particularly hard. Open Doors informs us that Christians in these countries “have had their homes marked by ISIS,” and “some come from historically Christian towns that were obliterated.” Moreover, some Christians are discovering “that they are being discriminated against when it comes to receiving aid.”

In Africa, stories of Islamic-on-Christian oppression are even more grisly.  At the same time, these same stories supply us with proverbial textbook exhibitions of Christian heroism.

Earlier in the year Boko Haram paid Habila Adamu a visit at his home.  When the militants informed Habila that they were “looking for him” in order to end his life, he replied that he had been looking for them as well—but in order to share with them the Gospel of Christ.

The predators weren’t impressed.  When Habila refused to recant his faith, his persecutors shot him in the face and left him for dead.

Thankfully, Habila survived.

Joshua, however, did not.  Joshua was 18 years old.  A member of a family of farmers, he worked in a factory during the dry season.  One day, Islamic militants showed up at his place of employment and proceeded to separate those employees who were Muslims from those that were Christians.  Then, they wasted no time in murdering the Christians one by one.

Initially, Joshua was in another room with some other employees. They watched through a window as the mass murder unfolded.  When an Islamic woman and fellow employee of Joshua begged the latter to deny his Christianity, he refused. Joshua was blunt: “No,” he told her, for “I am a Christian and they are killing my brothers.”

Joshua continued: “I am also going out there. I am not going to stay here and pretend that I am a Muslim.”

Joshua was martyred along with nine young men.

Even as I write this, the Christian community in Turkey has become the object of a systematic, relentless campaign of death threats.  According to Open Doors, the targeted are being blasted for being “heretics” who have “chosen the path that denies Allah[.]”

In Pakistan this past July, Saddique Azam, a veteran school teacher, was promoted to the position of “headmaster” at an elementary school.  Azam is a Christian.  For months, he was repeatedly threatened by Muslims who believed that the office of headmaster should be held by a Muslim.  Azam refused to resign.

Then, on October 6, three of his Islamic colleagues who worked under him physically attacked Azam.

Azam recounted his experience: “Three Muslim teachers entered the school, went into my office and waited for me there.  When I entered the office, I was alarmed to see them.  I asked them the reason for the visit and they launched a tirade of warnings against me to withdraw and resign from teacher headship.”

From the beating, Azam sustained a severe injury to his left eye.  Things could’ve been worst had it not been for other staff that stopped the assault.

But witnesses reported that while they pummeled Azam, his Islamic assailants mocked him by referring to him as “choora,” an anti-Christian epithet used by Pakistani Muslims. “Choora” connotes the “sweeper” or “untouchable” caste.  “You are a ‘Christian Choora,’” his victimizers shouted. How, then, “can you be a headmaster and be given seniority over us?”

The next time that we hear about the “Islamophobia” that Muslims in America allegedly face, let’s recall the face of real religious persecution: the persecution that truly defenseless Christians suffer at the hands of Muslim aggressors throughout the Islamic world.