Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

AARON RODGERS SURPRISES KIDS WHO LOST PARENTS SERVING IN THE MILITARY

I love this.  (HT: ba)  I don't follow professional football much these days, but I'll now be watching the Super Bowl to see the Green Bay Packer's quarterback Aaron Rodgers play after seeing him with these kids who lost their dads in the military.

 

House GOP Flinches From Passing 20-Week Abortion Ban It Passed Last Congress

Update 2/2/15 - Joel Gehrke -  The Quarrel that Blew Up the GOP Abortion Bill

Original post:

Here's the story.  Mollie Hemingway is outraged and disgusted, as well she should be, and writes, "Why Everyone Should Be Terrified By the GOP's Abortion Bill Debacle."   Anyone with an inkling of hope that the Republican Party would stand up for concerns of the people who voted for them needs to realize they are dealing with a group of miniature tadpoles.  She points out,  (my emphases)

Sixty percent of voters said they would support it, while 33 percent said they were opposed. Even Democrats were evenly divided (46 percent to 47 percent) on the question. We’re one of just a small handful of countries, including notorious human rights violators North Korea and China, that allow late-term abortion.

And yet somehow the Republicans managed to make a disaster of passing the bill. Instead of passing the legislation and sending it to the Republican-controlled Senate, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act was pulled at the last minute and replaced with a bill that bans taxpayer funding of abortion.

What in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks just happened? It takes a special combination of incompetence and cowardice to miss an easy lay-up like this, but apparently the new Republican Congress has it in spades. . .

If Republicans can’t pass wildly popular legislation protecting innocent unborn children, what’s going to happen when they face difficult legislative battles? It’s best to view this as a very simple test for House Republicans. A test they failed miserably.

REV. FRANKLIN GRAHAM - TELLING IT LIKE IT IS

On Islamic terrorism:

When asked about Muslims who have condemned Islamic terrorism, Graham said, “First of all, you don’t have condemnation outside of this country. You’ll have clerics in this country who’ll condemn these acts. But these acts of terrorism are not condemned by the mullahs in Saudi Arabia or in Egypt, or Iraq or Syria.”

“The reason is,” he said, “is because the Quran teaches this and so, if they condemned it, they would be condemning the Quran, and they’re not going to condemn the Quran.”

“So, the teaching of the Quran permits slavery, it permits the killing of Jews, permits the killing of Christians, and it’s a very, very dangerous world in which we live and we need to be aware of the truth,” said the reverend.

MUSLIM CALL TO PRAYER TO BE CHANTED EVERY FRIDAY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY

Update:  Duke's Muslim call to prayer cancelled.  Franklin Graham is interviewed here.

Breitbart reports:  (HT: Drudge)

In a new initiative to promote religious pluralism, Duke University will broadcast the Muslim call to prayer every Friday on campus. The call to prayer—also known as “adhan”—will be chanted by the Duke Muslim Student Association.

The prayer itself is set to start this Friday at 1:00 p.m. and will be broadcast and amplified from the Chapel bell tower on campus.

As campuses continue to foster political correctness, they use it as a way to favor religions seemingly at war with Western Civilization and Judeo-Christian beliefs.

WHY DO THE MEDIA REFER TO "THE PROPHET MOHAMMED"?

Ian Tuttle has some thoughts.  So do I.  The media's practice of referring to Mohammed as "The Prophet" demonstrates singular deference, a dhimmitude stance, towards Islam.  While the supposedly "secular west" mocks and pillories Christians and Christianity, it tiptoes with exaggerated respect towards Islam no matter how violent and murderous its deeds.  Astonishingly, the media refuses to examine authoritative Muslim texts to examine the underpnnings of Muslim savagery.  See the expositions of Andrew C. McCArthy, or Muslim cleric Anjem Chaudary himself.

ISLAM AND FREE SPEECH

ANDREW McCARTHY - "DON'T BLAME THE CHARLIE HEBDO MASS MURDER ON ‘EXTREMISM"

2nd Update:  Islamic Radicals Are Not "Homegrown"

Being born in a Western country, or being resident in one at the time of “radicalization,” does not mean one’s terrorism is “homegrown.” What grows a terrorist in Paris – or New York, London, Madrid, Hamburg, etc. – is not his environs; it is Islamic supremacist ideology. That ideology is not Western; indeed, it is virulently hostile to the West. That it has been injected here does not make it of here. . .   

Update:  Jihadis Gloat Over French Cartoonist Massacre

Original post:

Andrew McCarthy nails it again for the umpteenth time.  The so-called "extremism" the West refers to in talking about Islamic atrocities, is in reality part and parcel of orthodox Islam.  McCarthy correctly subtitles his article on the French mass killlings, "Intolerance for free expression is rooted in classical Islam."

In my judgment, it's both unbelievable and unforgiveable that Western governments and Western media refuse to take seriously the Islamic documents that prove the case.  McCarthy writes:

There are now at least twelve confirmed dead in the terrorist attack carried out by at least three jihadist gunmen against the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo. While it practices equal-opportunity satire, lampooning Islam has proved lethal for the magazine, just as it has for so many others who dare to exercise the bedrock Western liberty of free expression. Charlie Hebdo’s offices were firebombed in 2011 over a caricature of Mohammed that depicted him saying, “100 lashes if you don’t die from laughter.”

The cartoon was obviously referring to sharia, Islam’s legal code and totalitarian framework. Don’t take my word for it. Just flip through Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, the authoritative sharia manual. You will find a number of offenses for which flagellation is the prescribed penalty.

To take just a couple of examples, “the penalty for drinking is to be scourged forty stripes,” although the caliph (the Islamic ruler) is authorized to increase this to 80 stripes — although he must pay an indemnity if death results. . . . Pretty moderate, right? (Reliance, p. 617, sec. o16.3.) For adultery “the penalty consists of being scourged one hundred stripes” — and that’s if the adulterer “is not considered to have the capacity to remain chaste” (e.g., if she “is prepubescent at the time of marital intercourse.” “If the offender is someone with the capacity to remain chaste, then he or she is stoned to death.” (Reliance, p. 610, sec. o12.2.)

What Charlie Hebdo has satirized is a savage reality. That reality was visited on the magazine again today. As night follows day, progressive governments in Europe and the United States are already straining to pretend that this latest atrocity is the wanton work of “violent extremists,” utterly unrelated to Islam. You are to believe, then, that François Hollande, Barack Obama, David Cameron, and their cohort of non-Muslim Islamophiles are better versed in sharia than the Muslim scholars who’ve dedicated their lives to its study and have endorsed such scholarly works as Reliance.

Let me repeat what I have detailed here before: Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State did not make up sharia law. Islam did. We can keep our heads tucked snug in the sand, or we can recognize the source of the problem.

As I detailed in Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, the literalist construction of sharia that Islamic supremacists seek to enforce is “literal” precisely because it comes from Islamic scripture, not from some purportedly “extremist” fabrication of Islam. Moreover, this “classical sharia” is enthusiastically endorsed in principle by several of the most influential institutions in the Islamic Middle East, which explains why it is routinely put into practice when Islamists are given — or seize — the opportunity to rule over a territory.

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND CHRISTIAN FAITH

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh called attention to William Galston's Wall Street Journal article, "The Christian Heart of American Exceptionalism."  

RUSH: William Galston writing in the Wall Street Journal on December 30th: "The Christian Heart of American Exceptionalism." It's quite a piece.  If this piece had appeared outside the week between Christmas and New Year's, I think it would have gotten a lot more notice than it has.  His point is that we Americans are exceptional in our belief of Christianity and that we believe it more than anybody will tell you. 

"In this year-end holiday season, it is timely to reflect on American exceptionalism. Although this phrase is much abused in partisan polemics, it should not be discarded. The United States does continue to differ from most other developed democratic countries. And the heart of that difference is religion. The durability of American religious belief refutes the once-canonical thesis that modernization and secularization necessarily go hand in hand.

"This is all the more remarkable because our Founders drafted a deliberately secular constitution. In 20 quietly revolutionary words, Article VI declares that '[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.' Consistent with that prohibition, newly elected officials -- from the president on down -- may choose either to 'swear' (that is, to take a religious oath) or simply to 'affirm' their loyalty to the Constitution.

"In 1789, this secular national constitution perched uneasily atop a Christian population residing in states the majority of which had established an official religion. These establishments have disappeared. But despite the enormous growth in the nation’s diversity over the past 225 years, Christian conviction remains pervasive.

"If you doubt this, take a look at the survey the Pew Research Center released without much fanfare two weeks ago. Among its principal findings: 73% of U.S. adults believe that Jesus was born to a virgin; 81%, that the baby Jesus was laid in a manger; 75%, that wise men guided by a star brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh; and 74%, that an angel announced the birth of Jesus to shepherds. Fully 65% of Americans believe all four of these elements of the Christmas story, while only 14% believe none of them. Although Republicans are more likely to espouse these beliefs than are Democrats and Independents, each group endorses them by a two-thirds majority or more."

THE LIVING GOD IS A MISSIONARY GOD

Famed evangelical pastor/theologian, Dr. John Stott wrote:

There are the five parts of the Bible. The God of the Old Testament is a missionary God, calling one family in order to bless all the families of the earth. The Christ of the Gospels is a missionary Christ; he sent the church out to witness. The Spirit of the Acts is a missionary Spirit; he drove the church out from Jerusalem to Rome. The church of the epistles is a missionary church, a worldwide community with a worldwide vocation. The end of the Revelation is a missionary End, a countless throng from every nation. So I think we have to say the religion of the Bible is a missionary religion. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. Mission cannot be regarded as a regrettable lapse from tolerance or decency. Mission cannot be regarded as the hobby of a few fanatical eccentrics in the church. Mission lies at the heart of God and therefore at the very heart of the church. A church without mission is no longer a church. It is contradicting an essential part of its identity. The church is mission.                                                  -   John R.W. Stott, Authentic Christianity, pp. 315-316

 

LOUIS ZAMPERINI - "UNBROKEN" - THE REST OF THE STORY

From CBN News:

Unbroken hit the box office Christmas day and made $47.3 million during the opening weekend.

The film focuses on Louis Zamperini's life as an Olympic runner and his amazing tale of survival and perseverance during World War II while he was held captive in a Japanese prison camp.

The film leaves out Zamperini's conversion to Christianity.

But a new video just released by Universal Pictures details Zamperini's struggles after returning from the war and how his life changed when he found Christ.

 

 The Billy Graham association has put out a 28-minute TV-special "Captured by Grace" which goes into more detail and chronicles Louis Zamperini's life including his conversion at a 1949 Billy Graham Los Angeles campaign.  Zamperini's life was changed dramatically and permanently.  Inspiring.  Highly recommended!  You can watch it online here.