Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS CONTINUES WORLDWIDE

One could fill blog post after blog post with stomach-turning accounts of persecution of Christians.  Gary Lane of CBN News reports:

Transcript:   [Bolding is mine]   . . . Two thousand years after Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, Christians face more danger than ever before. Around the world, each day 260-million Christians suffer for their faith and the persecution is steadily getting worse. 2,983 Christians died for faith-related reasons last year and nearly 9,500 churches were attacked.

North Korea topped the Open Doors Watch List of worst offending countries. 

There are 60,000 Christians in labor camps for owning a bible and many of them died there," said Open Doors USA President and CEO David Curry.

Beware the Women of ISIS: There Are Many, and They May Be More Dangerous Than the Men

This is an important study.  Click here.

EUROPEAN MUSLIM TERROR ATTACKS WHITEWASHED AS "PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS"

Daniel Greenfield castigates the spineless European governments and media for looking the other way or finding excuses for Muslim terrorist attacks.   Greenfield writes:

In a Dusseldorf train station, Fatmir, a Muslim refugee from Kosovo, went on the attack with an axe. His victims included several adults and a 13-year-old girl.

The authorities are blaming his attack on that familiar standby; drug and psychological problems.

There have been quite a few Muslims in Germany boarding the crazy train and trying to ride it all the way to the 72 virgins, dazzling white camels and musk mountains of Islamic paradise.

In July, a Muslim refugee took an axe and assaulted passengers on a train in Würzburg while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”.

Muhammad Riyad, the unaccompanied Afghan minor, had come seeking asylum. He concluded his stay in Germany by slashing and stabbing a family from Hong Kong. His motive was hotly debated.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann insisted that he wasn’t an ISIS Jihadist. He denied that ISIS had ordered the attack.  Then an ISIS flag was found in his room.

The Interior Minister vowed to follow every lead to determine his motive. To help him out, ISIS released a video of Muhammad brandishing a knife while vowing to “slaughter infidels”.  

"They will slaughter you in your own back yard and they will live in your houses and break your rules and take your land. We will target you in every village, every city and every airport Allah Willing,” he ranted.

That was a strongly worded hint. But German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere argued that the attack occupied “a grey area between a crazed rampage and a terrorist act.”

NINETH CIRCUIT JUDGES - A DANGER TO THE CONSTITUTION AND THE U.S.

The following analysis written by Matthew Vadum is one of the most comprehensive analyses available.  At the end I have offered additional links related to the Ninth Circuit's ruling.  Vadum writes:

Three unelected federal judges in San Francisco yesterday ordered the Trump administration to continue accepting visitors and would-be immigrants from seven dangerous countries that are incubators of Muslim terrorism.

When President Trump learned his temporary ban on the admission of aliens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen that was put on hold Feb. 3 by Seattle-based Judge James L. Robart would continue in abeyance, he got on Twitter immediately.

At 6:35 p.m. Eastern time he tweeted in all caps: “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”

The open-borders crowd doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on. That may be why at a press conference celebrating the outrageous ruling, a member of Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s (D) team deployed the phrase “social justice” to justify the decision. “Social justice” is a magical amulet that nullifies anything the Left doesn’t like, including the president’s executive order. Its very invocation is an admission that a cause is illegitimate and un-American.

The Ninth Circuit’s fairy dust-based decision is “an intellectually dishonest piece of work,” said retired Judge Andrew Napolitano.

QUICK TAKES

From the Drudge Report:

-- Millennials looking to fix overpiercing, remove tattoos...

-- Pakistan airline mocked for goat sacrifice...

-- Title IX is “bureaucratic sex creep” gone wild

-- Hopeless Afghan struggle to save boy sex slaves...

From other sorces:

-- New York Times staff less diverse than Trump’s cabinet

-- IN PICTURES: WHAT AN ISLAMIC SUICIDE BOMBING LOOKS LIKE

THE DEADLIEST CHURCH ATTACK IN EGYPT’S MODERN HISTORY

Raymond Ibrahim reports on the recent church bombing atrocity in Cairo calling it "the spectacular manifestation of a constantly simmering hate." Ibrahim, the author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians, is the premier reporter on Muslim hatred towards Christians.

The worst attack on Egypt’s Christian minority in recent years occurred yesterday, Sunday, December 11, 2016.    St. Peter Cathedral in Cairo, packed with worshippers celebrating Sunday mass, was bombed; at least 27 churchgoers, mostly women and children, were killed and 65 severely wounded. As many of the wounded are in critical condition, the death toll is expected to rise.

As usual, witnesses say that state security was not present and that police took an inordinate amount of time to arrive after the explosion.   Preliminary investigations point to a bomb placed inside an unattended lady’s purse on one of the rear pews of the women’s section, though more recent revelations indicate there was a male suicide bomber involved.

Mutilated bodies were strewn along the floor and pews of the cathedral.  “I found bodies, many of them women, lying on the pews. It was a horrible scene,” said one witness.

Ibrahim makes important points about what life is like for Christians in Egypt so I would encourage reading the whole piece.  (Bolding emphasis is my own)

ISLAM JUSTIFIES KILLING INFIDELS

Is terrorism caused by poverty and lack of education?  No.   The six jihadis who stormed the cafe in Bangladesh were wealthy and well-educated.  They studied in private schools and universities and not in seminaries or madrassas.  They turn to jihad because their prophet said jihad is the greatest thing in the world: Sahih Buckari 2785, 2787, 2795, 2796,  2797   Qur'an Sura 9, verse 111  "Believers kill others, and are killed."  Watch the video below.

 

Note: YouTube bans video on Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia, and Civilizational Jihad as "hate speech."  This is perfectly ridiculous.  Click through to find out more, or just keep reading.

CARTOON

ISIS WON IN ORLANDO

Quote of the day from David French.  Longer article here:

Incredibly, ISIS won not just in Orlando. It’s winning the aftermath. The American response to the attack has been beyond ineffective, veering decisively toward the counterproductive. We’re doing nothing more to deter or prevent terror attacks and everything to deceive our own people about the true nature of the threat. Rather than unite to fight a common enemy, we’re dissolving into partisan, polarizing stupidity. . . 

 

This is perhaps the most astounding aspect of the aftermath — leftist thought leaders are responding to the massacre by condemning Christians. In other words, rather than educating Americans about the truly vicious nature of jihadist theology and encouraging Americans to remain vigilant, the New York Times, CNN, and similar news outlets are training their fire on Republican governors and attorneys general. To the extent that ISIS follows domestic American debates, there have to be high-fives all around in Raqqa. A Muslim kills gay people and ISIS’s Christian enemies face blowback? They couldn’t conceive of a more complete propaganda coup.

And so proceeds the unraveling of a nation.

See also Dennis Prager, "What If the Orlando Murderer Had Been a Christian?"

 

QUOTES OF THE DAY

  Western powers have been fighting jihad for more than 1,300 years — but for the American trained in cultural relativism and silly university ideals of diversity, reality can be so shocking that it’s simply easier and more satisfying to deny its existence.  - David French

   Western elites remain constitutionally unable to acknowledge that there are greater forces of evil in the world than the West itself.  - Heather MacDonnald

   The sexual revolution. . .  is the centerpiece of a new orthodoxy and new morality that elevates pleasure and self-will to first principles. This has become, in effect, a rival religion.  - Mary Eberstadt

ANDREW McCARTHY - KILLING SODOMITES IS ENSHRINED IN ISLAMIC SHARIA LAW

Representative news reports of the Gay bar massacre in Orlando, Fl where 50 individuals were killed and 53 injured include the following:

-- Gunman pledged allegiance to ISIS before Florida gay club massacre

-- ISIS claims responsibility for America's most deadly mass shooting:

 ** In an important article titled "Killing Homosexuals is not ISIS law, it is Muslim law," Andrew C. McCarthy states what should be common knowledge but isn't because of the elite's protection of Islam.  The political class, he says, has concocted  “An Islam of Their Very Own."

It goes something like this: Islam is a religion of peace, period. End of discussion. “Violent extremist” outfits such as ISIS and al-Qaeda kill wantonly, with no real ideological motivation. ISIS and al-Qaeda are thus not Islamic, but actually anti-Islamic — and if they cite Islamic scripture to justify their atrocities, they are “hijacking” and “perverting” Islam. Because we must see these groups as “anti-Islam” rather than Islam, it is acceptable to call a mass-murder attack “terrorism” only if law-enforcement develops some plausible tie to these groups. Otherwise, if a Muslim is involved, stick with “workplace violence” and the like. Finally when an attack committed by a Muslim is too obviously terrorism to deny, call it “ISIS-inspired,” or “al-Qaeda-inspired,” or “Hamas political resistance,” etc. — but by all means do not, absolutely do not, ascribe it to Islam in any way shape or form.

McCarthy rightly says, This is idiocy. Will today’s event, the worst mass shooting in American history, help us see that?

He says further: The mandate that homosexuals be killed is not from ISIS or al-Qaeda. It is from sharia — which draws on Muslim scripture.  Read his whole article which authoritatively explains the injunction in Islam to kill homosexuals.

** National Review editorial: It's Time for a Long-Term Strategy to Utterly Crush Islamic Terrorism

Sunday morning’s horrifying attack on an Orlando gay club is not only the worst mass shooting in America’s history; it is the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. It should be treated as such. . . . 

The U.S. can no longer treat the Islamic State, a resurgent al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations as distant enemies. Islamic terrorists’ war on us has returned to American shores, and it will continue here as long as we refuse to exercise the tactics necessary to stamp it out.

ANDREW C. McCARTHY - POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND DOMESTIC TERROR

As I've stated before, I regard Andrew C. McCarthy as the sharpest and most reliable mind around when it comes to Islam and terrorism.  Here, in his recent address at Hillsdale College, he summarizes the facts as they exist and as they are ignored by the politically correct Obama administration.

 

Update 3/19/16 - Hillsdale College has published a slightly edited version of Andrew McCarthy's speech in its February 2016 Imprimus issue.  It is titled "Islam -- Facts or Dreams?" and begins by offering McCarthy's biography:

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute. A graduate of Columbia College, he received his J.D. at New York Law School. For 18 years, he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, and from 1993-95 he led the terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Following the 9/11 attacks, he supervised the Justice Department’s command post near Ground Zero. He has also served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and an adjunct professor at Fordham University’s School of Law and New York Law School. He writes widely for newspapers and journals including National Review, PJ Media, and The New Criterion, and is the author of several books, including Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad and Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotages America.

McCarthy begins his speech thusly:

In 1993 I was a seasoned federal prosecutor, but I only knew as much about Islam as the average American with a reasonably good education—which is to say, not much. Consequently, when I was assigned to lead the prosecution of a terrorist cell that had bombed the World Trade Center and was plotting an even more devastating strike—simultaneous attacks on the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the United Nations complex on the East River, and the FBI’s lower Manhattan headquarters—I had no trouble believing what our government was saying: that we should read nothing into the fact that all the men in this terrorist cell were Muslims; that their actions were not representative of any religion or belief system; and that to the extent they were explaining their atrocities by citing Islamic scripture, they were twisting and perverting one of the world’s great religions, a religion that encourages peace.

Unlike commentators and government press secretaries, I had to examine these claims. Prosecutors don’t get to base their cases on assertions. They have to prove things to commonsense Americans who must be satisfied about not only what happened but why it happened before they will convict people of serious crimes. And in examining the claims, I found them false. 

QUICK TAKES

    ** On Iraq - Historian Victor Davis Hanson on the Iraq war    The sort of serious analysis and reporting never seen found in mainstream writing (which incidentally throws Trump down from his pedestal)  UPDATE 3/15/16 -  Jay Nordinger's audio interview with Victor Davis Hanson

 

    ** Evangelical leaders on picking a Presidential nominee - Interesting "inside" stuff 

 

    ** Andrew C. McCarthy (the sharpest and most reliable mind around when it comes to Islam and terrorism) writes:  "Why Closing Gitmo is still a terrible idea."

 

    ** Charles Cooke - electing Trump would be "an unmitigated, unalloyed, potentially unsalvageable disaster"  Cooke says Trump must be stopped:  

 

The anti-Trump forces that still make up the majority of the Republican coalition must begin an expedited Manhattan Project, the sole aim of which is to bring down the front-runner piece by unpleasant piece. “If not us, who?” Ronald Reagan asked in the heat of the 1981 budget battle. “If not now, when?” Time to go nuclear, chaps.

ISLAM'S SWORD COMES FOR CHRISTIANS FROM U.S. TO UGANDA

The Western Press does a poor job keeping up with Muslim atrocities around the world.  Raymond Ibrahim reports on what happened in December.  

Islamic hostility for Christmas was on full display as documented here: on Christmas Day, Muslims in Bethlehem set a Christmas tree on fire and greeted the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem with a hail of stones;  Muslim “refugees” set fire to a public Christmas tree in Belgium; Muslim jihadis attacked churches during Christmas mass killing at least 16 in Nigeria; Muslim jihadis in the Philippines slaughtered 10 Christians on Christmas Eve to “make a statement”; three Muslim countries—Somalia, Tajikistan, and Brunei—formally  banned any Christmas celebrations; due to assassination attempts on pastors and death threats to Christians, churches skipped Christmas mass in Bangladesh and were on “high alert” in Indonesia, with 150,000 security personnel patrolling; in Iran, Christians celebrating Christmas in homes were arrested.   [ more . . . ]

JOEL ROSENBERG ON "RADICAL ISLAM" VS. "APOCALYPTIC ISLAM"

CBN's Pat Robertson interviewed Joel Rosenberg on his latest book, The First Hostage.  Rosenberg is famous for using novels to get across powerful perspectives that readers (including world political elites) need to know in order to understand what is going on in the Middle East and the Muslim world.   In the interview and resources below, Rosenberg distinguishes between "radical Islam" and "apocalyptic Islam," a distinction rarely noted.

 

• Read the first chapter of The First Hostage right now

• FACT SHEET: The Iranian leadership’s Apocalyptic Beliefs
• FACT SHEET: The Islamic State’s Apocalyptic Beliefs

Rosen published an important article in the Jerusalem Post a few days ago titled, "What the next U.S. president will need to know about Iran and Islamic State."   Rosenberg writes:

. . .  Above all, the next president of the United States must understand that the greatest challenge facing the Western alliance in the Middle East is not simply the threat of radical Islam, but that of apocalyptic Islam.

Unfortunately, most candidates and voters are still not adequately familiar with such distinctions. But they need to be.

Why? Because while adherents of radical Islam (such as al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hamas, etc.,) use violent acts hoping to drive the US, Israel and other “infidels” out of what they regard as their holy lands, adherents of apocalyptic Islam seek to use genocide to annihilate all infidels and establish a global Islamic kingdom known as the caliphate.

For the first time in human history, the leaders of two nation states are being driven by eschatology. The rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran are consumed by ancient Islamic prophecies that predict the end of the world as we know it. So are the rulers of Islamic State (IS). The former are Shi’ite. The latter are Sunni.

Yet both believe their messiah – known as the “Mahdi” (and to the Shi’tes as the “Twelfth Imam” or “Hidden Imam”) – will appear on Earth at any moment. Both believe he will usher in the End of Days.

Both are determined to hasten his coming. But each has very different strategies to get there.

QUICK TAKES

John McWhorter - English is weirder than pretty much any other language

Jim Geraghty - Bobby Jindal's amazing accomplishments in Louisiana.  Why didn't people pay attention?

Victor Davis Hanson - The Debacle that is the contemporary American university

Hillsdale College offering:  A free 9 week online lecture series on C.S. Lewis

The Atlantic - What ISIS really wants   

MICHAEL GOODWIN: "IT'S TIME FOR OBAMA TO MAKE A CHOICE: LEAD US OR RESIGN

Michael Goodwin writes appropriately in the New York Post: "IT'S TIME FOR OBAMA TO MAKE A CHOICE: LEAD US OR RESIGN  (HT: Drudge)

In an accident of timing that captures his cluelessness, the president actually declared on Friday morning that Islamic State had been “contained,” practically boasting in a TV interview that, “They have not gained ground in Iraq and in Syria.”

What gall. What folly.

Paris is the final straw. Obama’s exemption from reality has expired. He must either commit to leading the free world to victory, or step aside so someone else can.

There is no more time to avoid the truth of war. America must organize the combined forces of the civilized world before Islamic State makes good on its vow to “taste” more American blood.

In any time and place, war is fiendishly simple. It is the ultimate zero-sum contest — you win or you lose.

That eternal truth is so obvious that it should not need to be said. Yet even after the horrific slaughter in Paris, there remains a distressing doubt about whether America’s commander in chief gets it.

President Obama has spent the last seven years trying to avoid the world as it is. He has put his intellect and rhetorical skills into the dishonorable service of assigning blame and fudging failure. If nuances were bombs, Islamic State would have been destroyed years ago.

He refuses to say “Islamic terrorism,” as if that would offend the peaceful Muslims who make up the vast bulk of victims. He rejects the word “war,” even as jihadists carry out bloodthirsty attacks against Americans and innocent peoples around the world.

He shuns the mantle of global leadership that comes with the Oval Office, with an aide advancing the preposterous concept that Obama is “leading from behind.” He snubs important partners like Egypt, showers concessions on the apocalyptic mullahs of Iran, and called the Islamic State the “jayvee team” even as it was beginning to create a caliphate.

Having long ago identified American power as a problem, he continues to slash the military as the enemy expands its reach. In a globalized era, the Obama doctrine smacks of cowardly retreat and fanciful isolation.   [much more. . . ]

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: "WHY THE WEST SHOULD LISTEN TO HUNGARY ON MUSLIM REFUGEES

Ibrahim's politically incorrect (but historically astute) analysis follows:

Some central and east European countries are being criticized by more “progressive” Western nations for not wanting to take in Muslim refugees.

Chief among them is Hungary, specifically in the person of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.  Western media are characterizing him as “xenophobic,” “full of hate speech,” and Europe’s “creeping dictator.” Sounding like the mafia boss of the Left, the Guardian simply refers to him as a “problem” that needs to be “solved.”

Orbán’s crime is that he wants to secure his nation’s borders against Muslims and preserve its Christian identity. According to Hungary’s prime minister:

Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims.  This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity….  We don’t want to criticize France, Belgium, any other country, but we think all countries have a right to decide whether they want to have a large number of Muslims in their countries. If they want to live together with them, they can. We don’t want to and I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see….

The prime minister went on to invoke history—and not in the politically correct way, to condemn Christians and whitewash Muslims, but according to reality:

I have to say that when it comes to living together with Muslim communities, we are the only ones who have experience because we had the possibility to go through that experience for 150 years.

Orbán is referring to Islam’s conquest and occupation of Hungary from 1541 to 1699.  Then, Islamic jihad, terrorism, and Christian persecution were rampant.

ISIS UNDERGROUND HIGHWAY AT AMERICA'S DOORSTEP

What struck me in particular about the following report is how vulnerable the U.S. is to tunnels from Mexico that ISIS could use to penetrate and devastate the United States.  With half the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored in San Diego, the scenario is scary indeed.  Chris Mitchell, CBN Middle East Bureau Chief reports:   

Text of Chris Mitchell's report:

JERUSALEM, Israel -- During the war with Israel last summer, Hamas dug tunnels under the Israel's border to kill, kidnap, and terrorize Israelis. Now, a new thriller warns that ISIS could use those same tactics to strike America.

During the 50-day war, Hamas terrorists used an intricate series of tunnels to carry out sneak attacks. While IDF soldiers stopped those attacks, the tunnels shocked most Israelis to the core.

At the time, CBN News chronicled the scope and size of the underground maze.

A Real 'Day of the Dead'

The terror tunnels are designed to infiltrate Israeli communities close to the border with Gaza, which is about a mile away.

Some of the tunnels are more than a mile long and 60 feet deep, with multiple exits. Clearly Hamas has been planning the tactic for a long time.

The Israel Defense Forces destroyed many of the tunnels, but the frightening memory remains.

Dan Gordon, a veteran of six Israeli wars, talked about their effectiveness.

"I can't imagine anything more terrifying for the people who live there than suddenly the earth opens up. It's almost a scene out of a grade-B zombie movie, and the walking dead come out, except they're not dead," Gordon told CBN News.

"I've been a soldier now for 40 years, which is a long time, and the most terrifying thing that I've ever seen is the advent of the terrorist tunnel attacks that happened last summer," he said.

A Ripe Target

Now, a year later, Gordon, an Israeli-American, has written Day of the Dead, a thriller about those tunnels, which he says should be a wakeup call to America.

"The country that is most vulnerable to that attack is my other homeland, the United States of America -- far more vulnerable because there are terrorist tunnels that exist already," Gordon explained.

"They're called drug-smuggling tunnels, and they run from part of Mexico into California, to Arizona and to Texas," he said.

ISIS THREATENS TO KILL CHRISTIANS IN JERUSALEM AT END OF RAMADAN (JULY 18)

Elizabeth Kendal of Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin writes:

Arabic leaflets have appeared in Jerusalem, purportedly issued by an ISIS-aligned group, telling Christians they must flee Jerusalem by the end of Ramadan [18 July] -- otherwise they will be slaughtered. The threat comes as ISIS and Hamas engage in a struggle for the allegiance of Palestinian Muslims. Religious tensions are rising across Israel and Christians are being attacked by Jewish ultra-nationalists and radicalised Muslims, leaving some wondering if Christians have a future in Israel. The Israeli government has condemned the violence against Christians as 'an attack on us all' and affirmed Israel's commitment to religious liberty and rule of law. The ISIS threat against Christians could prove a serious challenge, especially if it extends to Gaza, with no Israeli security presence. Please pray for Israel and its Christians.

x

More details and photos . . . 

QUICK TAKES

Daniel Greenfield - The Internalized Racism of White Leftists

Walter Williams - Culture and Social Pathology

Cal Thomas - China's Big Hack Attack

Raymond Ibrahim - Islam's Jihad on Churches

David French - S.C. Suspect Caught and the Politicization begins  (* Especially important)

            Question - Was Dylann Storm Roof taking anti-depressant drugs?  Update: Apparently YES!

RIGHTEOUS HATRED AGAINST JIHAD SAVAGERY

David French writes passionately and persuasively:

The New York Times has peered into Pamela Geller’s heart — and found it full of hate. I’ll let others make the argument that it’s unseemly to so viciously attack the victim of an attempted murder just three days after the attack — to accuse her of intentionally provoking the attempt on her own life and the lives of her friends and supporters, no less. And Rich Lowry has offered a convincing argument that Geller was motivated not by hate, but rather “defiance.” Let me instead offer a defense of hatred. 

But first, a confession. I’m far more hateful than Pamela Geller. In fact, I’d argue there’s no way that she could hate jihad more than I do. I’ve seen jihad up-close, in an Iraqi province where jihadists raped women to shame them into becoming suicide bombers, where they put bombs in little boys’ backpacks then remotely detonated them at family gatherings, where they beheaded innocent civilians while cheering wildly like they were at a soccer match, and where they shot babies in the face to “send a message” to their parents. I’ve seen the despair in the eyes of the innocent victims of jihad, and — believe me — that despair is infinitely greater than the alleged “anguish” caused by a few cartoons. 

BOSCH FAWSTIN - THE HEROIC ANTI-JIHAD CARTOONIST

It's well worth becoming acquainted with Bosch Fawstin, the anti-Jihad cartoonist who won the Mohammad cartoon-creation contest held in Garland, Texas.  He submitted the following winning drawing.  Fawstin is the creator of the Pigman comic book series.

 In the video below Fawstin delivers a short speech in response to winning the prize.   After Fawstin finishes speaking, keep listening to what Robert Spenser and Pamela Geller have to say.

 

Interviews:

 Here's a short Greta Van Susteren interview with Fawstin:

  

"I understand the threat that we face and that's why I do what I do," Fawstin said. "I do it because we're being threatened. This has to be fought head-on."

"As artists, as writers, as thinkers, as Americans, as people who love freedom, and the entire West, we need to hit back. Not with violence, with the truth, with our art, with our writing," Fawstin said. "Once free speech goes, it's over."

 Readers may not be familiar with Jamie Glaznov, author of United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror.  Here Glaznov interviews Fawstin.

 

And here Fawstin delivers a major speech and displays his drawings.

QUICK TAKES

Peter Stamford reports:  Are Smartphones Making our Children Mentally Ill?

Steve Wozniak - The Future of AI is Scary and Very Bad for People

V.S. Naipaul - Nobel winner says Isis is Now the Fourth Reich

Mark Levin - "We Don't Need a Governor as President"  (True)

ISLAMIC ITEMS

Update 2/19/15:

** Obama refuses to acknowledge "Muslim terrorists" at summit    (Imbecilic denial of reality!) 

** David Greenfield - "There Is No Modern Islam"  (Important reading!)

** Newt Gingrich - "We Are At War with Radical Islam"  (National Security Speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit  1/26/15 ) - C-Span Video

Original post:

**  A tale of Muslim violence that newspapers refused to call by its name.  

A Detroit man, a self-described Muslim, walked up to a group of individuals at a bus stop and asked them if they, too, observe the Islamic faith. When they replied that they did not, he stabbed them multiple times.  You've got t0 read how newspaper editors engage in verbal pretzel antics to avoid reporting those facts.  [Story . . .]

** Mona Charen - Islam as a Victim Civilization

He [Obama] seems to say to himself, “I don’t want my people to feel superior to the ‘other.’ After all, which civilization is the guiltiest on planet Earth? Ours! If the Muslims are committing some atrocities these days, it’s only because we drove them to it by the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition and colonialism and supporting dictatorships and creating the State of Israel.”

That is exactly the kind of reductive, ahistorical, shallow, tendentious drivel a student could easily imbibe at Columbia and Harvard unless he tried hard to avoid it. Obama sought it out, as he confirms in his (first) autobiography.   [Read the whole article]

** Atlantic Monthly - "The Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic"

Here we have a mainstream publication that finally publishes a lengthy account ["What Isis Really Wants"] that recognizes ISIS and Islam for what they are without doing verbal gymnastics to avoid the true and obvious.  As Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch says,

This is an extraordinary piece, as it represents one of the first, if not the first, mainstream media acknowledgment that what I have been saying all these years, and illustrated in detail in thirteen books, hundreds of articles, and tens of thousands of posts here, has been absolutely correct: that jihadis use the texts and teachings to justify their actions and make recruits, and make a case that obviously convinces many young Muslims, that they represent the truest and most authentic expression of Islam.  [my bolding]

Spencer continues [his bolding]:

Rev. Franklin Graham: ‘Imagine the Outcry if 21 Muslims Had Been Beheaded by Christians? … The Storm is Coming’

Michael W. Chapman, CNSNews.com reports:

The Islamic State beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians over the weekend, propping the severed heads on the victims’ backs, a barbaric slaughter that led Reverend Franklin Graham to ask, “Can you imagine the outcry if 21 Muslims had been beheaded by Christians?”

“Where is the universal condemnation by Muslim leaders around the world?” he asked.

The brutal killing of the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians, who had been abducted in Libya by members of the Islamic State, was videotaped and the entire death film was posted online on Sunday, Feb. 15. It is entitled, “A Message Signed With Blood, To The Nation of the Cross.”

In a Facebook post on Feb. 16, Rev. Graham, who heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said, “The militant Islamic terrorist group ISIS has released a video called A MESSAGE SIGNED WITH BLOOD TO THE NATION OF THE CROSS  showing the beheadings of the 21 Egyptian Christians who had been kidnapped in Libya.”

“Can you imagine the outcry if 21 Muslims had been beheaded by Christians?” said Rev. Graham. “Where is the universal condemnation by Muslim leaders around the world?”

“As we mourn with the families of those 21 martyrs, we’d better take this warning seriously as these acts of terror will only spread throughout Europe and the United States,” warned Rev. Graham.

“If this concerns you like it does me, share this,” he said. “The storm is coming.”

THE TRUE HISTORY OF ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY

Raymond Ibrahim - Historic Islamic Persecution of Christians 

This short article constitutes must reading.  The West's ignorance of the true history of Islam's persecution of Christians down through the centuries is not taught and consequently not known.  That failure is scandalous and could prove a deciding factor in the future of the West.

Ibrahim writes:

. . . A mere decade after the birth of Islam in the 7^th century, the jihad burst out of Arabia.  Leaving aside all the thousands of miles of ancient lands and civilizations that were permanently conquered—today casually called the “Islamic world,” including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and parts of India and China—much of Europe was also, at one time or another, conquered by the sword of Islam.

Among other nations and territories that were attacked and/or came under Muslim domination are (to give them their modern names in no particular order): Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Sicily, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Albania, Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, Crete, Cyprus, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Belarus, Malta, Sardinia, Moldova, Slovakia, and Montenegro.

In 846 Rome was sacked and the Vatican defiled by Muslim Arab raiders; some 600 years later, in 1453, Christendom’s other great basilica, Holy Wisdom (or Hagia Sophia) was conquered by Muslim Turks, permanently.  (Till this day, Turkish Muslims celebrate this day of great rapine and slaughter.) 

HOW YEMEN FITS IRAN PLANS FOR MIDEAST RULE, BEYOND

 

Erick Stakelbeck,  CBN News correspondent, reports:

WASHINGTON – The remaining Americans have been evacuated from the country of Yemen. The United States closed its embassy because of the violence after a radical Islamic rebellion in the country.

The news comes as Iran is expanding its influence in the Middle East while building a nuclear program that shows no signs of stopping.

Yemen is an important part of Iran's strategy.

When a radical Shiite Muslim group, called the Houthis, seized Yemen's capital city last year, it marked a dangerous phase for a country plagued by violent chaos.

Located on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen is already home to an al Qaeda branch that has attempted several attacks against the United States and Europe.

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.

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.

Boko Haram Leader Taunts Abducted Girls' Families

 

From CBN News:

The leader of the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram is taunting the families of the 200 schoolgirls the terrorist group kidnapped in Nigeria six months ago.

In a new video Abubakar Shekau laughs at the parents and tells them all the young girls have converted to Islam and have been married off.

"If you knew the state your daughters are in today, it might lead some of you...to die from grief," Shekau sneers.

Last month, the Nigerian government said they had reached a ceasefire agreement for Boko Haram to release the girls. Now those hopes have been completely dashed.

In the new video, Shekau wears a camouflage tunic and pants and the black and white flag of al Qaeda is by his side. He is flanked by masked and armed fighters standing in front of four military pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns.

Shekau denies in the video that he has agreed to any truce and says he is dedicated to fighting and dying as an Islamic martyr to guarantee him a place in paradise.

"You people should understand that we only obey Allah; we tread the path of the Prophet. We hope to die on this path ... Our goal is the garden of eternal bliss," he says.

In August, Shekau announced that Boko Haram was establishing an Islamic caliphate like the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Fleeing Nigerians have reported that hundreds of people are being detained under strict Islamic law, known as Shariah, established by Boko Haram in several towns and villages.

 

VIDEOS AND PHOTOS VINDICATE HOROWITZ AND OTHER CONSERVATIVES

 

Barbaric beheadings by ISIS should bring forth profuse apologies from liberals/letist who consistently turned their eyes away  from reality and accused alert, vocal conservaties of Islamophobia.   As David Horowitz writes:

Beheadings of innocent human beings are unspeakable acts reflecting the barbaric savagery of the Islamic “holy war” against the West — against us. Yet despite the intentions of their perpetrators, they have had an unexpected utility. Their gruesome images have entered the living rooms and consciousness of ordinary Americans and waked them up.

The barbarity of the Islamic movement for world domination has actually been evident for decades: in the suicide bombing of the Marine compound in Lebanon in 1982, in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, in the suicide attacks on Jews — men, women, and children — during the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000, in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, and in the beheadings perpetrated in Iraq by al-Qaeda’s Abu al-Zarqawi and the Salafist group known as Ansar al-Islam during the Iraq War.  

He writes further:

For more than a decade, a handful of conservatives, of whom I was one, tried to sound the alarm about the Islamist threat. For our efforts, we were ridiculed, smeared as bigots, and marginalized as Islamophobes. In 2004 I published a book called Unholy Alliance about the Islamist movement and the support it was receiving from the American Left. For my concern, Harvard professor and Islam expert Noah Feldman dismissed me as a “relic” in the New York Times Book Review. It was the last time the Times mentioned one of my books.

In 2006 and 2007, I organized nearly 200 “teach-ins” on American campuses, which I called “Islamo-Fascism Awareness” weeks. The idea was to legitimize the term “Islamo-fascist” as a description of the enemy confronting us. These demonstrations were attacked by the Muslim Students Association, which is a recruiting organization for the Muslim Brotherhood, and by Students for Justice in Palestine, a front for the terrorist party Hamas. They also inspired the contempt of the liberal Left. Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo devoted two YouTube videos to ridiculing me for holding the demonstrations. Campus leftists called the students who organized them racists, bigots, and Islamophobes.   

A MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA FROM A FORMER MUSLIM

Brother Rashid (below) articulates what everyone should know about Islam, including President Obama. It is well worth spending 8 1/2 minutes to hear this former Muslim's words, as he includes quotations from the Quran and the Hadith and speaks from personal experience.

 

Introduction:

Brother Rachid, the son of a Moroccan imam, and a convert to Christianity, explains in a “message” to president Obama that ISIL or ISIS, along with all terrorist organizations are products of Islam. There is something so straightforward and compelling in what he says, that you can’t help agreeing. This is a man who was in his words “brainwashed” to hate all non-Muslims and chose to leave that world because he believed that G-d represents love.

UNTANGLING THE FICTION THAT "MODERATE ISLAMISTS" EXIST

Few write more insightfully and authoritatively on Islam and Islamists than Andrew C. McCarthy, the man who led the 1995 terrorist prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others.  The  defendants were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and planning a series of attacks against  New York City landmarks.  [Wikipedia links]

Observers will note that the Obama administration has decided to create a fiction that there are "moderate Islamists," a falsehood examined and dissected by McCarthy in two recent articles, one published last week in "It's Not a Misnomer: The Islamic State has everything to do with Islam" and the second in a follow-up article published today, "In Search of the 'Moderate Islamist.'"

In addition to being in control of historical and contemporary facts (including Muslim theology) and the tricky use of language employed by Islamist apologists, McCarthy has the virtue of writing excellent, readable prose.  He is the author of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.  

WILLIAM FORSTCHEN DEPICTS ISIS TERROR ATTACK ON U.S. IN HIS NOVELLA "DAY OF WRATH"

History Professor William Forstchen is known by many as the author of One Second After, a novel depicting the mass terror and chaos resulting from an  Electric Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack by an enemy of the United States.  Now he has come out with a 144 page ebook, Day of Wrath, which imagines a low-tech ISIS attack at our most innocent and vulnerable -- our schools and highways. Forstchen's chilling scenario shows how easy it would be to inflict mass terror on the United States.  

One reviewer wrote:

The scenario laid out here - an ISIS terror attack on the U.S. - is frighteningly possible, even likely given our current state of readiness. When the ineptness (dare I say indifference?) of our civil leaders is combined with ISIS' utter disregard for 'infidel' life - especially 'infidel' children - and our culture of appeasement in the name of 'coexistence,' you get a story which travels to another level. A rather sobering, indeed terrifying level. . . .   This is a tome I emphatically recommend. Serving as both 'engaging story' and 'cautionary prediction,' "Day of Wrath" is not a mere wake-up call - it is a swift kick in the backside. It will scare you, yes, but it will also make you aware and keep you sharp; the fact it is a captivating tale is just a major bonus.

Forstchen testifies to a deeply-felt sense of responsibility and duty:

“I was afraid that if I did not write this book, and choose the ebook format so it was available quickly, what was intended as a warning, would quite simply, come too late.   I had to take a break when writing Day of Wrath several times, it was a deeply emotional experience for me as well. It was difficult to complete, but was too important of a project not to finish.” 

Me: I have read this book and recommend it.  It is not an easy, enjoyable read, but the world has taken a very scary turn.  This book makes us face that unpleasant fact and prepare for a possible (even likely) scenario.  Read it!

ISIS SWALLOWING IRAQ: "THEY'RE BEHEADING CHILDREN"

 CBN News provides a complete report including an interview with Ret. Gen. Paul Vallely who pulls no punches in stating what he would do if he were commanding operations.

 

ERBIL, Kurdistan -- Islamic terrorists in Iraq are beheading children and burying people alive, and it won't stop there. They have a message for America: "We're coming for you."

Over the past week, the army of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), also known as IS (Islamic State), swallowed up swaths of Iraq like a pervading darkness.

In just one day, tens of thousands of Christians fled from towns like Qaraqosh and Bartilla, about 25 miles away. Most came to the town of Erbil with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

"America is at a crossroad," says Retired Gen. Paul Vallely, who has more than 15 years of experiencce in special operations and other military ops. He shared his insight on the chaos in Iraq and how it will impact America, on The 700 Club, August 11.

"They take everything from the house, from the store, everything," one refugee told CBN News. "They hate Christian especially. We don't know why."

The choice was leave or die.

World Ignores Christian Exodus from Islamic World

Raymond Ibrahim has provided the best concise overview of recent persecution of Christians in the Middle East currently available.  He writes: (dated 8/8/2014)

While the world fixates on the conflict between Israel and Hamas—and while most mainstream media demonize Israel for trying to survive amid a sea of Arab-Islamic hostility—similar or worse tragedies continue to go virtually ignored.

One of the most ancient Christian communities in the world, that of Iraq—which already had been decimated over the last decade, by Islamic forces unleashed after the ousting of Saddam Hussein—has now been wiped out entirely by the new “caliphate,” the so-called Islamic State, formerly known by the acronym “ISIS.”

As Reuters reported:

Islamist insurgents have issued an ultimatum to northern Iraq’s dwindling Christian population to either convert to Islam, pay a religious levy or face death, according to a statement distributed in the militant-controlled city of Mosul….

It said Christians who wanted to remain in the “caliphate” that the Islamic State declared this month in parts of Iraq and Syria must agree to abide by terms of a “dhimma” contract—a historic practice under which non-Muslims were protected in Muslim lands in return for a special levy known as “jizya.”

“We offer them three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract—involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword,” the announcement said.

The amount of jizya-money demanded was $450 a month, an exorbitant sum for Iraq.

Hours after the demand for jizya was made, Islamists began painting the letter “n” on Christian homes in Mosul—in Arabic, Christians are known as “Nasara,” or “Nazarenes”—signaling them out for the slaughter to come.

Most Christians have since fled. A one-minute video in Arabic of their exodus appears here—women and children weeping as they flee their homes—a video that will not be shown by any Western mainstream media outlet, busy as they are depicting instead nonstop images of Palestinian women and children.

One of Iraq’s Most Ancient Christian Communities Now Has No Christians

Molly Wharton reports:

The Islamic State presented Christians in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, with a deadly ultimatum last Friday: Convert to Islam, pay a tax, leave, or face death. The order from the militants said they had until noon on Saturday to leave the city, and almost all of them appear to have left. 

The Islamic State, which controls parts of northern Iraq and eastern Syria, ordered Christians in Mosul a couple of weeks ago to pay a tax, known as “jizya,” in return for protection, according to the Blaze. Jihadi then started occupying churches and seizing the homes of Christians who had fled, and militants have now apparently removed the cross from one of Mosul’s cathedrals, replacing it with the black flag of al-Qaeda.

Christians living in Mosul make up one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, dating back 1,700 years. Their population has decreased dramatically since the U.S. invasion of the country in 2003, as it has in Iraq more broadly: The city’s Christian population dropped from 30,000 to just a few thousand, before the most recent jihadist offensive. In Iraq generally, there were about 1 million Christians before the U.S. invasion, a number that’s dropped to about 450,000 in the past decade.

According to a United Nations report released Friday, Christians are among several minority groups that are being systematically expelled or killed by Islamic State militants. Most of the Christians have reportedly fled to the areas of Iraq controlled by the Kurds, which are close to Mosul.

BRIGETTE GABRIEL EXHIBITS CLEAR THINKING IN WANTING TO THROW "POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" IN THE GARBAGE

Brigette Gabriel, on a panel discussing responses to threats from radical Islamists, replied to a Muslim questioner noting that it takes only a small handful of people to cause havoc for a whole nation and the world.  Below is the video followed by a  text of what Gabriel said with minimal commentary by Barbara Boland of CNSNews.

 

Brigette Gabriel as reported by Barbara Boland:

"We are not here to bash Muslims. You were the one who brought up the issue about 'most Muslims' - not us. But since you brought it up, allow me to elaborate with my answer.

"There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world today. Of course not all of them are radicals. The majority of them are peaceful people. The radicals are estimated to be between 15-25% according to all intelligence services around the world.

"That leaves 75% of [Muslims being] peaceful people. But when you look at 15-25% of the world's Muslim population, you're looking at 180 million to 300 million people dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization. That is as big as the United States," said Gabriel.

"So why should we worry about the radical 15-25%? Because it is the radicals that kill. Because it is the radicals that behead and massacre," Gabriel said.

"When you look throughout history, at the lessons of history, most Germans were peaceful. Yet the Nazis drove the agenda. And as a result, 60 million people died, almost 40 million in concentration camps. 6 million were Jews. The peaceful majority were irrelevant," Gabriel said.

"When you look at Russia, most Russians were peaceful as well. But the Russians were able to kill 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

"When you look at China for example, most Chinese were peaceful as well. Yet the Chinese were able to kill 70 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

"When you look at Japan prior to World War II, most Japanese were peaceful people too. Yet, Japan was able to butcher its way across Southeast Asia, killing 12 million people, mostly killed by bayonets and shovels. The peaceful majority were irrelevant," Gabriel said.

CHRISTIANS FLEEING FOR THEIR LIVES IN IRAQ

** Update: Al-Queda rebels take Tikrit; force 500,000 to flee Mosul

** Original post: Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom reports the terrible news:

The government of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, fell overnight to the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, also called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Mosul’s panic-stricken Christians, along with many others, are now fleeing en masse to the rural Nineveh Plain, according to the Vatican publicationFides. The border crossings into Kurdistan, too, are jammed with the cars of the estimated 150,000 desperate escapees.

The population, particularly its Christian community, has much to fear. The ruthlessness of ISIS, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, has been legendary. Its beheadings, crucifixions, and other atrocities against Christians and everyone else who fails to conform to its vision of a caliphate have been on full display earlier this year, in Syria.

As Corner readers will remember, in February, it was the militants of this rebel group that, in the northern Syrian state of Raqqa, compelled Christian leaders to sign a 7th-century dhimmi contract. The document sets forth specific terms denying the Christians the basic civil rights of equality and religious freedom and committing them to pay protection money in exchange for their lives and the ability to keep their Christian identity.

Since 2003, Iraq’s Christian community has suffered intense religious persecution on top of the effects of the conflict and, as a result, it’s shrunk by well over 50 percent. Mosul, the site of ancient Nineveh of the Assyrians, who converted to Christianity in the first century, has become the home of many Christians who remained. Considered by Christians the place of last resort inside Iraq, Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh Plain has been home to many Christian refugees driven out of Baghdad and Basra. Mosul has the only university, the best hospitals, and the largest markets serving the Christian towns and villages of the Nineveh Plain. The plain, itself, is now at grave risk of direct jihadi attacks and the possibility of being cut off from an essential city.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM - WHY "MODERATE ISLAM" IS AN OXYMORON

 

 Some excerpts from Ibrahim's article:  

 . . . just the other day, a Kenyan mosque leader said that the Westgate massacre, where Islamic gunmen slaughtered some 67 people, “was justified. As per the Koran, as per the religion of Islam, Westgate was 100 percent justified.” Then he said: “Radical Islam is a creation of people who do not believe in Islam. We don’t have radical Islam, we don’t have moderates, we don’t have extremists. Islam is one religion following the Koran and the Sunna” [emphasis added].

Note his point that “Radical Islam is a creation of people who do not believe in Islam,” a clear reference to the West which coined the phrase “radical Islam.” Ironically, the secular West, which relegates religious truths to the realm of “personal experience,” feels qualified to decide what is and is not “radical” about Islam.

Consider one example: Allah commands Muslims to “Fight those among the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth [i.e., Islam], until they pay the jizya [tribute] with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” [Koran 9:29].

How can one interpret this verse to mean anything other than what it plainly says? Wherein lies the ambiguity, the room for interpretation? Of course there are other teachings and allusions in the Koran that by necessity lend themselves over to the fine arts of interpretation, or ijtihad. But surely the commands of Koran 9:29 are completely straightforward?

In fact, Muhammad’s 7^th century followers literally acted on this and similar verses (e.g., 9:5), launching the first Muslim conquests, which saw the subjugation of millions of Christians, Jews, and others, and the creation of the “Muslim world.” Such jihadi expansion continued until Islam was beaten on the battlefield by a resurgent West some two or three centuries ago.

ANDREW E. HARROD - LGBT AND SHARIA AGENDAS DISPLAY SURPRISINGLY SIMILAR TOTALITARIAN TENDENCIES

Andrew E. Harrod has penned a column that brilliantly and compellingly spells out the similarities between the two aggressive movements - Islamic sharia and Gay Rights.  Both censor and silence opposition.  Harrod:  (HT: VirtueOnline)

. . .  Parallels between these two movements had occurred to me before while reporting on the Family Research Council’s (FRC) Values Voter Summit (VVS).  As discussed here, Christians along with others face violence from sharia-supporting Muslims and legal demands to support phenomena such as same-sex “marriage” (SSM) or abortion.  While some Muslims destroy churches abroad, LGBT advocates along with others destroy businesses at home in a two-front war against Christian faith and morals.

A similar duality exists in the world’s democracies with respect to campaigns against “homophobia” and “Islamophobia.”  As used by their various proponents, these terms define as a phobia or irrational fear any reservation to any beliefs and behaviors of LGBT and Muslim individuals respectively.  For these ideologues only public approval, not just private autonomy, will suffice.

This demand for public approval is perhaps most manifest in the censorship of criticism.  Americans, for example, recently received a graphic display of LGBT wrath in failed attempts to pressure the firing of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson.  Analyzing this latest of similar homosexual power plays, various conservatives spoke of “Homosexual jihadists” and a “‘Duck Dynasty’ jihad.”

Abroad, however, individuals have also faced legal repercussions for opposition to LGBT behavior.  Canada, for example, has witnessed a host of legal actions against opposition, sometimes merely spoken, to SSM since this became law in 2005.  Letters against homosexuality in the United Kingdom, meanwhile, have brought police visits and hate speech law warnings.  Swedish Pastor Åke Green also endured a 2004 hate speech conviction due to his pulpit denouncement of homosexuality before the Swedish Supreme Court overturned his sentence in 2005.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM - ATTACKS ON CHRISTIAN CHURCHES NEAR DAMASCUS

Today Kathryn Jean Lopez interviewed Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again.    He is the "go-to" guy for information on Islamic persecution of Christians in the Middle East.  On his website, Raymond Ibrahim, he posted a video of what appear to be Islamic extremists attacking Christian churches in Syria — St. Elias Church and St. Grace Church in the Christian village of Maaloula near Damascus – where villagers still speak Aramaic, the language Christ spoke.

Some excerpts from the interview:

KJL: . . . .  Do we have any idea how many churches have been attacked in Syria and Egypt recently?

IBRAHIM: In Egypt, in just the last few weeks, approximately 80 churches and monasteries and other Christian institutions were attacked, many set aflame and/or destroyed.  In Syria, I am not sure of the exact number, but nary a month goes by when I compile my monthly Muslim persecution of Christians series, that an attack on at least one Syrian church or monastery does not take place. A recent report says that a decade after the U.S. “liberated” neighboring Iraq, some 70 churches have been destroyed. That appears to be the fate of the ancient churches of Syria should the Obama administration get its way in Syria.  .  .

 

KJL:  Are Syrian Christians better off if the U.S. does not strike against Assad?

IBRAHIM: Absolutely. That is not because Assad is a great guy, but because the alternatives — the same alternatives we saw in Libya and Egypt, that is, the Islamists and jihadis — are hostile to “infidel” Christians, a fact with ample doctrinal, historical, and current-affair proof. . .

KJL: How can the U.S. help? Specifically the Christians and minorities under fire?

IBRAHIM: It is sad to say, but the days when Mideast Christians called for U.S. help are gone.  Today, all that Copts, Christian Syrians, and others want from the U.S. is for it to not get involved — since apparently every time it does get involved it’s to help those who persecute Christians, Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and now al-Qaeda in Syria. Watching Mideast media, it’s clear that millions of Egyptians and Syrians — both Christians and moderate Muslims and others — want nothing more from the U.S. than for it to stop supporting terrorists, under the guise of “freedom” and “democracy.”  [more . . .]

EGYPTIAN MEDIA PORTRAY OBAMA AS SATAN

Raymond Ibrahim reports:  (HT: Drudge)

Popular and widely read Egyptian newspaper Al Wafd published the above picture today portraying U.S. President Barrack Hussein Obama as Satan himself. The unflattering picture has been making the rounds on Facebook in the Middle East and, according to Al Wafd, is representative of the hatred growing numbers of people in the region have for the American president, thanks to his staunch and unwavering support for Islamists and jihadiis — whether in Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, or Syria — even as they terrorize, murder, rape, and burn down Christian churches, that is, even as they engage in diabolical activities.

SYRIA: DESCENDING INTO HELL

Elizabeth Kendall of the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin describes the scene:

Historically one of the most hospitable places for Christians in the Middle East, Syria is descending into 'hell'. Hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis, the 'Arab Spring' has morphed into a Sunni Ascendency in which intolerant, fundamentalist Islam is subjugating and eliminating moderate and pluralist elements. The West is allied to the 'good' jihadists who are in turn allied to the 'bad' jihadists (al-Qaeda). Co-existence is being replaced with sectarian bloodletting. Secularism is being replaced with Islamisation. Jihadists are kidnapping, terrorising and killing Christians and destroying churches. Like most civilians caught in this civil war, Christians are suffering extreme hardship without medicines, doctors, heating, food and water. A Protestant pastor reports from Aleppo that starvation is now a greater concern than bombs. Please pray for the Church in Syria.

More details:

 

CBN SPECIAL REPORT: "GENERATION IDENTITY" WAGES WAR ON FRANCE ISLAMIZATION

This short news report on young French men and women rising up against the Islamization of their society is a MUST SEE.  

They say they are at war with "the 68'ers," the baby boomers who run France, for wrecking their future with multicultural policies that some fear are turning France into a Muslim nation. . .

Groups like "Generation Identitaire" are symptoms of a nation that is coming unglued. They are an unintended but a predictable by-product of a failed multiculturalism that, instead of creating a melting pot, has created ethnic tribalism and dangerous "no-go zones."

 The media has been covering up the seriousness of the situation in the name of political correctness.   (Watch the video and see the text below).  Is it too late to arrest Europe's cultural suicide?  I think maybe it is, especially if the government and media remain in cover-up mode. Text of the video:

PARIS - It was a political protest with shock value, the likes of which has never been seen on French TV news: a group of young people stormed a mosque in the city of Portiers, going to the roof and unfurling a banner calling for a national referendum on Muslim immigration.

The banner included the number 732, the year Charles Martel defeated the Islamic invasion in Portiers.

The group calls itself Generation Identitaire, or Generation Identity. They say they are at war with "the 68'ers," the baby boomers who run France, for wrecking their future with multicultural policies that some fear are turning France into a Muslim nation.

They released a video called "A Declaration of War."

In the video, members say, "We are Generation Identitaire. We are the generation of ethnic fracture, the total failure of coexistence, and the forced mixing of races. We have stopped believing in a 'Global Village' and the 'Family of Man.'"

Their rhetoric sounds racist, but they say they do not believe in racial superiority or racial stereotypes. Rather, they fear losing France to Muslim immigrants from Africa.

CBN News interviewed a leader of the group, Julien Langella, in the southern French city of Toulon.

"It's not about hate of other people," Langella insisted. "It's about heritage. It's about loving our people and our land. And we fight for this."

Groups like Generation Identitaire are symptoms of a nation that is coming unglued. They are an unintended but a predictable by-product of a failed multiculturalism that, instead of creating a melting pot, has created ethnic tribalism and dangerous "no-go zones."

"Assimilation is now impossible in France," Langella said. "It was possible when immigrants came from European countries because they are like us ethnically; they are like us culturally."

The Great Replacement

The French Republic, which is supposed to be strictly secular, has actively helped Muslims build mosques and spread Sharia law. Polls show most French are alarmed about it.

Renaud Camus, one of France's leading writers, said flatly that France is being colonized by Muslim immigrants with the help of the government and the media. He calls it "The Great Replacement."

"The Great Replacement is very simple," he explained. "You have one people, and in the space of a generation, you have a different people."

Camus accused the French media of covering up the situation in the name of political correctness, essentially telling the French that the Islamization they see happening with their own eyes is not happening.

"Television is saying every day and school is saying every day that what is happening is not happening, that it is all in your head, that it is an optical illusion," Camus told CBN News.

"Practically every day Catholic Churches are attacked, and people (are stoned) in a very old Muslim tradition. And if they can't deny that this has happened, they say that this is the result of racism," he said.

Boomer's Tarnished Legacy

Generation Identitaire is also upset that their future has been looted by the baby boomers' out-of-control welfare spending.

In their video, they say, "We are the generation doubly punished: condemned to pay into a social system so generous with strangers it becomes unsustainable for our own people. Our generation is the victims of the May '68'ers, who wanted to liberate themselves from tradition, from knowledge and authority in education."

Aurélie Lamacq, a member of Generation Identitaire, said she is angry with the baby boomers for leaving a mess for her generation "because they had everything."

"They had the cool job. It was easy at the time to buy a flat or house. Their children were secure, and they have taken everything from us," Lamacq charged.

She added that she too no longer believes in cultural assimilation between Christians and Arab immigrants.

"We can't live together because we are not the same ethnically," she said. "We don't have the same religion. We don't have the same way of life, the same values. We have nothing in common. Nothing."

Some believe France is on a trajectory toward more social conflict over immigration and perhaps, someday, civil war.

"The political elite has to understand that it's a fight to the death because it's a matter of survival," Langella said.

It seems likely that groups based on ethnic identity, like Generation Identitaire, will continue to attract more and more followers in France.

- - Related Stories:

French Media Ignores Protest against Radical Islam

'Islamization' of Paris a Warning to the West

NIGERIA: THE TERROR OF JIHAD

Elizabeth Kendal of the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin reports: 

As was reported in RLPB 187 (28 Nov), up to 20 Christians were killed and dozens wounded on Sunday 25 November in a twin suicide bombing at St Andrew's Protestant Church inside the Jaji military barracks in Kaduna. Investigations indicate that the bombers may have been residents of the barracks and might have built the bomb on site, which would explain why they were granted access to the church without being searched. This raises fears that other military establishments could be similarly targeted. That same week Boko Haram gunmen attacked the headquarters of the Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad in Abuja, freeing 30 detainees and killing two policemen. Guards were under strict orders not to shoot. But Nigeria is at war! In Boko Haram's own words (29 November), 'Jihad [holy war] started now, jihad started now, O enemies of Allah.' 

On Saturday night 1 December a band of jihadists attacked Kupwal, a remote village in Chibok Local Government Area (LGA). (That is about 160km south of the Boko Haram stronghold of Maiduguri in Borno, Nigeria's most north-eastern state.) They invaded the Christian district and according to survivors entered 'carefully selected' homes, slitting the throats of the occupants. They then set fire to homes and sacked the whole neighbourhood to chants of 'Allahu Akbar' (Allah is the greatest). [See Qur'an, Sura 7:4 ] At least 10 people were killed whilst dozens escaped with serious and life-threatening injuries. Observers believe Boko Haram was either responsible or at least complicit.

On Sunday morning 2 December, some 50 Islamic gunmen in cars and on motorbikes attacked a police station, immigration and customs offices and three churches in Gamboru Ngala, Ngala LGA. (That is 140km north of Maiduguri, Borno State, near the border with Cameroon.) Before launching their attack, the jihadists destroyed the mobile phone masts to prevent communication and so compound the crisis. With shouts of 'Allahu Akbar' they opened fire on police, killing five. The churches were torched and Christians living and doing business in the border town were targeted. About two weeks earlier, leaflets had been distributed in which the Islamists declared their intention to impose Taliban-style rule, e.g., women were told to wear the veil and cigarettes were banned. A tailor was subsequently shot for continuing to make clothing the Islamists deemed un-Islamic.

In a 30 November column, author and analyst Raymond Ibrahim explained why persecution such as that described above is 'Islam's Achilles' heel'. Persecution committed by dominant Muslims in Muslim communities -- i.e. Muslims who cannot claim to be 'oppressed' or 'aggrieved' -- against vulnerable minority Christians is simply impossible to justify. Such persecution exposes Islam as supremacist, totalitarian, intolerant and imperialistic; as a movement that will not rest until the 'other' is totally subjugated. 'And to Allah prostrates whoever is within the heavens and the earth, willingly or by compulsion, and their shadows [as well] in the mornings and the afternoons.' (Qur'an, Sura 13:15)

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY THAT GOD WILL --

* rise up on behalf of his traumatised and terrorised people and intervene to rout the enemy and deliver his Church.

'And he [King David] said, "The LORD has burst through my enemies [the Philistines] before me like a bursting flood." Therefore the name of that place is called Baal-perazim [the Lord  who bursts  through]' (2 Samuel 5:20b ESV).

* bring healing and comfort to his bleeding, broken and grieving people; may he provide all their needs and make his loving presence felt so as to sustain their sorely-tested faith, that they might be 'more than conquerors through him who loved us' (from Romans 8:31-39 ESV).

* give the Nigerian authorities divine wisdom and insight, strength and commitment that they might excel in their battle against the enemies of the state and the enemies of the LORD.

* re-assure the church in northern Nigeria of his protection who is their 'strong city' (Isaiah 26:1). May the church in the south, and indeed the rest of the world, join this battle by praying for the north (Romans 15:30; 2 Corinthians 1:11).

* bless every Nigerian missionary and every witnessing Nigerian with divine courage and power from the Holy Spirit, for this is first and foremost a spiritual struggle (Ephesians 6:12).


SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
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THE TERROR OF JIHAD IN NIGERIA

A full-blown Islamic jihad is raging in Nigeria and it is terrifying for the Christians of the north on the front-line. On Saturday evening 1 December jihadists attacked the Christian district of a remote village in Borno State. Entering 'carefully selected' homes, they murdered the occupants before sacking and burning the entire neighbourhood to shouts of 'Allahu Akbar' (Allah is the greatest). Ten were killed whilst dozens fled with serious and life-threatening injuries. On Sunday morning 2 December jihadists attacked another village in Borno close to the Cameroon border. With shouts of 'Allahu Akbar' they opened fire on police, killing five, before torching numerous government facilities and three churches. Only weeks earlier, Christians were threatened with violence if they did not leave the area. Please pray for Nigeria.

** This week I received an e-mail from Voice of the Martyrs which read:

The Voice of the Martyrs is standing with our persecuted Nigerian family this Christmas. We invite you to join us by sponsoring a CHRISTMAS CARE PACK or a VILLAGE OUTREACH PACK to bless our Nigerian brothers and sisters.

Each CHRISTMAS CARE PACK includes a backpack filled with gift items such as a children's Bible, school supplies, a toy and some basic toiletry items.

Each VILLAGE OUTREACH PACK includes a small library of materials that will help a pastor or evangelist further the gospel in Nigeria. These packs include a DVD player, a JESUS: He Lived Among Us DVD, a Bible and other Christian literature, a flashlight and rain boots. Many of these outreach packs will be used in the most dangerous parts of Nigeria.

Please CLICK HERE to sponsor one or more of these gifts and remind Nigerian Christians that they are not alone this Christmas season.

CLIFFORD MAY - ISLAMOLOGY 101

May writes what should be obvious, but is not, even (and especially) in the corridors of the Obama administration. 

ANDREW McCARTHY - MORSI LEADING EGYPT TO ADOPT SHARIA LAW

McCarthy has little respect for journalists [almost all in the West] who refuse to see the reality of Morsi's goals for Egypt.  McCarthy writes: 

[...] Nearly three months ago, in my e-book Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (which is about to be published in paperback), I explained that Morsi’s agglomeration of power — which was already underway only weeks after his election — was just a placeholder. He is an Islamic-supremacist hardliner whose ultimate goal has always been to impose sharia, the real dictatorship. . . 

 Naturally, secularists and religious minorities are grousing. This has the Western media, once again, in full spring-fever flush. For our intelligentsia, the Middle East is a wonderland where Islamists are imagined to be “moderate” (even “largely secular”!) and — to hedge their bets, on the off chance that the Islamists turn out to be, well, Islamists — the population is imagined to be teeming with freedom-loving Jamal al-Madisons who crave American-style civil rights. In reality, supremacist Islam is the predominant ideology of the region. The Muslim Brotherhood is strong because it is the avant-garde of the Islamic masses. Non-Islamist democrats are a decided minority.

Of course, in a place like Egypt, with its population of 80 million people, a decided minority can easily be masqueraded as the majority. The West’s progressive media is good at that — ignoring tea-party throngs while lavishing coverage on five-person Occupy protests as if they were a groundswell. But, you see, the hocus-pocus works here only because we’ve ceded all the leading institutions of opinion to progressives for a half-century. Conditioned to see what they’ve been told to believe, half of our population no longer sees through the smoke and mirrors.

In contrast, the Islamists control and otherwise intimidate Egyptian society’s influential institutions by vigorously enforcing sharia’s repression of discussion and dissent. The public knows the tune is called by the likes of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Brotherhood’s powerhouse jurist, not by Wael Ghonim and the young, tech-savvy progressives beloved of the New York Times. In Egypt, the conspiracy theories run against the progressives. The public won’t be snookered into seeing an Islamist uprising as a “democratic” upheaval. They’ll leave that to us.

The Times and the Brotherhood-smitten Obama administration won’t tell you, but Spring Fever will: The constitution was always the prize. That is why the Brothers pursued it with their signature mendacity. . . The Brothers are no fools. They realized that rapidly held elections would favor them, and if they won big, they’d have a hammerlock on the constituent assembly that would write the constitution. They also grasped the disdain in which the West, under progressive regimes, holds military governments. They’d watched how their Islamist ally, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had leveraged American and European pressure to beat down his military — the pro-Western opposition to his anti-Western Islamic supremacism. The Brotherhood knew the U.S. and the EU would be similarly — and self-destructively — supportive of a call for quick elections that would pressure Egypt’s reigning military junta to cede authority to a “democratic” civilian government.

Consequently, the Brothers insisted that parliamentary and presidential elections could proceed promptly if the public just approved a handful of amendments to the current constitution, with a new constitution to be drafted afterwards.

As is its wont, the Brotherhood was deceitful about its intentions. [more. . .]

Nigeria: Boko Haram Massacres Up To 30 Christian Students During Raid On College…

From Christian Post via Weasel Zippers:

Multiple sources have confirmed that about 25 to 30 Christian college students were massacred at a university in northeastern Nigeria late Monday night, causing Christians to pray for a “change of heart” among the extremist Islamist group Boko Haram to put a stop to the continued violence.

While there is speculation as to the motive of the massacre, sources close to the human rights watchdog Open Doors USA confirm that the massacre was performed by Boko Haram.

The killings reportedly occurred in the late night hours on Oct. 1, when masked gunmen went door-to-door in the off-campus housing section of Federal Polytechnic College in Mubi, a city in the remote Adamawa State in northeastern Nigeria.

Open Doors USA sources confirmed that the gunmen separated the Christian students from the Muslim students, addressed each victim by name, questioned them, and then proceeded to shoot them or slit their throat.  [more details here]