A Worthy Goal for the New Year

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Apparently fewer Americans are reading the Bible daily. A Barna study on behalf of the American Bible Society came out a few months ago (during the time of COVID-19) that showed a drop in the number of Americans who claim to read the Bible every day—from 14 percent to 9 percent.

That seems strange since you would think that during the pandemic, when we have been forced to spend more time indoors, more of us would have found time to read the Scriptures.

It should also be noted that we are talking about at least 30 million Americans who carve out time every day to read the Bible. There’s no other book that would rival that kind of readership.

I have found, as a Bible reader for about 45 years now, that reading the Scriptures is rewarding in and of itself. I was shocked, when I first started reading the Bible, how many daily words and phrases come right from its pages. “Turn the other cheek.” “Do unto others.” “Go the second mile.” “My brother’s keeper,” and so on. There are easily a couple hundred words and phrases used all the time—even in our highly secular age—that first came from the Bible.

Reading the Bible is vital because through it, God speaks to us. Because He speaks to us, His Word is inexhaustible. What I mean by that is that you can read and re-read the same passages and learn something new from it. No other book is like that. No other book warrants re-reading and re-studying like the Scriptures.

There are many in our world today who pay a high price just to read the Bible. Many of them don’t even have access to the Scriptures. Wendy Wright, the president of Christian Freedom International, a group that helps the persecuted church, notes that Christians at risk for persecution around the world today number about 260 million.

And many of them crave the Scriptures. Wendy gave me one example: “In North Korea, where citizens are indoctrinated to worship Kim Jong Un, 40 percent of the people are undernourished. Christians who escape desperately find ways to send food—and Bibles—to their countrymen. One man who miraculously escaped now risks his life to help others. He said, ‘Rice is important. But Bibles are even more important.’”

In our own country, we have a rich tradition of many presidents and leaders who were regular readers of the Bible.

Take, for example, the 6th president, John Quincy Adams. Here was a man who did so much to fight against slavery in this country. After his presidency, he became a congressman (the only former president to do so). He invested time into a young congressman from Illinois, who served only one term, training him on the fight against the evil practice of slavery. That man was Abraham Lincoln. Adams was called “The Hell-Hound of Slavery.”

Like William Wilberforce, who led the half-century crusade against slavery in England, and like Abraham Lincoln, Adams was a fervent reader of the Bible.

Adams wrote in his diary on September 26, 1810: “I have made it a practice for several years to read the Bible through in the course of every year. I usually devote to this reading the first hour after I rise every morning….my rule is to read five chapters every morning…Extraordinary pressure or business seldom interrupts more than one day’s reading at a time.”

If busy presidents could carve out time to read the Bible, why can’t we? If we’re too busy to read the Bible, then we’re too busy. Period.

For the Christian, reading the Bible is like eating. If you don’t eat, you starve. If you don’t spend time in God’s Word, you ultimately starve spiritually.

So this coming year, find some plan to spend time reading and studying God’s Word. It will drastically improve your walk with God.

I like a book from the 1940s from England, called Search the Scriptures. If you use it every day, over a three year period, you will have studied the entire Bible cover to cover. I’ve used that book many times. Walk Thru the Bible and other ministries have developed schedules whereby people can plug into a daily plan to read the Word of God, daily. Find a plan and stick with it.

I heard a man say recently that reading that calendar day’s chapter in Proverbs (with 31 chapters) every day turned his work life around, from failure to success.

Twenty years ago there was a national outdoor ad campaign on some 10,000 billboards with one-liners signed by “God.”  The stark white text on a simple black background were bold and thought-provoking. One of the billboard messages read: “Have you read my #1 best seller? (There will be a test.)  – God.”

©Jerry Newcombe. All rights reserved.

For NBC News, War Is Peace, and Trump’s Historic Peace Deals Are War

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Other presidents throughout American history have endured harsh criticism from the press. None of them, however, have faced anything like the relentless, organized hit job that is the establishment media’s coverage of President Trump, featuring not just criticism, but distortion, half-truths and outright lies, all designed to make the American people not just vote against him, but disrespect, despise, and even hate him. In pursuit of this goal, consistency goes out the window, and fairness is but a dim memory. Trump is excoriated for anything and everything he does, even when any remotely fair-minded person would see it as positive. NBC News showed this anew on Tuesday in a “Hot Take” it published about the Israel-Morocco peace agreement.

NBC’s “military writer” Sébastien Roblin tells us solemnly that “the U.S. ruptured decades of foreign policy in North Africa to forge the agreement, setting the stage for violence that could destabilize the region.”

Given conditions all across North Africa, with Libya still in the state of chaos and ruin that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton brought upon it, Egypt oppressing its Christians (as always), and Algeria and Morocco both upholding Sharia blasphemy laws that outrage the freedom of conscience, it seems strange to lament the passing of the status quo ante, but Roblin makes his agenda clear when he writes that “as is so often the case with Trump, his characterization bears little relationship with reality.”

This and more in his article makes it obvious that the “military writer” is not engaged in actual foreign policy analysis, but is just out to tar Trump in any way he can. For it is absolutely true that the Israel-Morocco peace agreement and U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara may indeed turn out to have ill effects, but NBC News readers, not known for being the sharpest knives in the drawer, may not realize that such speculation can be carried out in virtually any context, but during the Obama years, seldom (if ever) was.

For example, if Sébastien Roblin had been so inclined, he could have written about how the “Arab Spring” uprisings that the Obama administration supported so enthusiastically were really just Muslim Brotherhood initiatives designed to impose Sharia in various North African states, but back when that “Spring” was in full flower, NBC News and all its establishment colleagues were busy popping open the champagne and hailing the far-sightedness of their Nobel laureate president.

Even Fox, which was years away from switching sides back then, hailed the coming of “democracy” to Egypt and other North African states, and never once considered the possibility that the Great Leader Obama might have made a world-historical misstep that would take decades (or longer) to clear up. Nor was there any chorus of disapproval or dark warnings of negative consequences when Obama and Hillary Clinton destabilized Libya and offered up our consular staff in Benghazi in their efforts to save face.

But Trump makes a move for peace, and NBC hastens to tell us it will mean war. Sébastien Roblin is here carrying water for the failed foreign policy establishment that is licking its chops at the prospect of Obama’s dotty old puppet entering the Oval Office and getting the chance to implement its failed policies yet again. Trump, the non-politician, the genuine outsider, has shown them all up by concluding these peace deals. He has shown their analyses to be false and their recommendations to be wrongheaded.

And so he must be destroyed – not just turned out of office by hook or by crook (with a heavy emphasis on crook), but completely and utterly discredited. This endeavor is a cornerstone of the political elites’ effort to make sure that an uprising such as the one Trump represented will never happen and can never happen again. Not only was he stupid and corrupt, we are told, but even his successes were failures, and only the establishment’s failures are really successes. Understood properly by the self-anointed experts, Trump’s peace meant war, and only their multiply-failed proposals can set things right.

And so for Sébastien Roblin, war is peace and peace is war, George Orwell is reconfirmed as a prophet, and soon Trump’s successes will be consigned to the memory hole. Then everything will be all right. The powerful will have restored and further secured their power. As the world explodes with bloody new conflicts, they can sip their champagne and congratulate themselves over how they removed that warmonger Trump and restored peace to the world.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

CAIR’s 2021 Agenda Seeks to Undermine U.S. National Security at All Levels.

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The following selection taken from the Council on American-Islamic Relation’s 2021 promotional literature illustrates why Florida Family Association vigorously counters the organization’s Islamist crusade.

The Council on American-Islamic Relation’s December 22, 2020 news release states the following:

CAIR welcomes the incoming Biden-Harris administration’s pledge to end the Muslim Ban on day one, include Muslims at  every  level of his administration and address issues of racial and religious discrimination. CAIR plans to join other American Muslim leaders and organizations in ensuring that the new administration fulfills these promises.

In addition to these pledges, CAIR is calling on the new administration to implement — in its first 100 days — a progressive civil rights agenda that starts with the repeal of the Muslim Ban and then pushes forward to authorize and begin the process of carrying out the following civil rights reforms:

ENDING NATIONAL SECURITY OVERREACH

1. Fundamentally  reform the federal government’s unconstitutional Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), commonly referred to as the “terrorism watchlist.”

2. Dismantle   the   TSA’s  secretive   Quiet  Skies passenger  tracking   program,   its   international counterpart Silent Partner and other rules-based lists, that operate without Congressional oversight to single out   law-abiding   Muslim   travelers   for   official harassment and extrajudicial consequences without due process.

3. Oppose  and  defund  the U.S. Department of

Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) 2020 “Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention” (“TVTP”) grant program, the successor  of  DHS’s  previous   Countering   Violent Extremism (“CVE”) grant program.

4. End the FBI’s use of informants to spy on American Muslim communities.

5. Reject any new domestic terrorism statutes.

6. Close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba  and  ensure  those  detainees  already  cleared for release are repatriated, and those that remain in U.S. custody are provided due process and a day in court.

ENDING BIGOTED & DISCRIMINATORY IMMIGRATION POLICIES

7. Fulfill commitment to revoke the Muslim and Africa travel ban executive orders and related proclamations on day-one in office.

8. Work with Congress to adopt the NO BAN Act.

9. Repair the damage done by the Trump administration to the U.S. immigration system by reversing restrictions on the ability to travel and immigrate to the United States.

10. Work  with  Congress  to repeal the Visa Waiver Program (VWP)  Improvement  and Terrorist Travel Prevention  Act  of 2015,  re-evaluate  all   countries currently designated by the federal government under the VWP, and end all other discriminatory anti-Muslim “extreme vetting programs.”

11. Restore and enhance protections for asylum seekers and refugees, halt the detention of asylum seekers and other abusive practices, invest in refugee resettlement programs, and invest in humane alternatives to detention of asylum seekers and refugees.

CAIR’s 2021 agenda clearly threatens our national security and the Judeo-Christian liberties that millions of Americans cherish.

Florida Family Association will continue to counter CAIR’s Islamist crusade.

We hope that you will help Florida Family Association to be strong in countering CAIR by making a confidential donation.  To make your donation by credit card, debit card, checking account or Zelle please click here or mail your gift to Florida Family Association (FFA), PO Box 46547, Tampa, FL 33646-0105.

©Florida Family Association. All rights reserved.

The ‘intolerance and animosity’ that Muslims exhibit toward non-Muslims is not new — it’s 1,400 years old

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The Palestinian Christian Bishara Bahbah paints a grim picture of the lot of Christians in Hamas-ruled Gaza, but at the same time he misleadingly describes a pollyannish version of how Palestinian Christians live in the PA-ruled parts of the West Bank. In this version, Christians get along swimmingly with their Muslim “friends and neighbors.” The truth is very different.

As part of his attempt to whitewash the treatment of Christians in the PA, Bahbah refers to the Pact of Umar as having “guaranteed rights and spelled out obligations” of Christians in a Muslim-dominated land. He maintains that “the pact primarily represents the commitment of Muslims to respect and protect the religious and property rights of Christians and Jews.” Many scholars believe the Pact of Umar to be a later fabrication, but whatever the truth of when it was composed, and by whom, it is hardly a commitment by Muslims to “respect and protect” the religious and property rights of non-Muslims. It is, rather, an exhaustive list of what non-Muslims must do if they wish to remain alive and able to practice their faith, in a Muslim polity.

Here is the list:

  • Prohibition against building new churches, places of worship, monasteries, or a new cell. It was also forbidden to build new synagogues.
  • Prohibition against rebuilding destroyed churches by day or night, in their own neighborhoods or those situated in the quarters of the Muslims.
  • The worship places of non-Muslims must be lower in elevation than the lowest mosques in town.
  • The houses of non-Muslims must not be taller in elevation than the houses of Muslims.
  • Prohibition against hanging a cross on the Churches.
  • Muslims should be allowed to enter Churches (for shelter) in any time, both in day and night.
  • Obliging the call of prayer by a bell or a kind of Gong (Nakos) to be low in volume.
  • Prohibition of Christians and Jews against raising their voices at prayer times.
  • Prohibition against teaching non-Muslim children the Qur’an.
  • Christians were forbidden to show their religion in public, or to be seen with Christian books or symbols in public, on the roads or in the markets of the Muslims.
  • Palm Sundayand Easter parades were banned.
  • Funerals should be conducted quietly.
  • Prohibition against burying non-Muslim dead near Muslims.
  • Prohibition against raising a pig next to a Muslim neighbour.
  • Christians were forbidden to sell Muslims alcoholic beverages.
  • Christians were forbidden to provide cover or shelter for spies.
  • Prohibition against telling a lie about Muslims.
  • Obligation to show deference toward Muslims. If a Muslim wishes to sit, non-Muslims should rise from their seats and let the Muslim sit.
  • Prohibition against preaching to Muslims in an attempt to convert them from Islam.
  • Prohibition against preventing the conversion to Islam of some one who wants to convert.
  • The appearance of the non-Muslims has to be different from those of the Muslims: Prohibition againstwearing Qalansuwa (kind of dome that was used to wear by Bedouin), Bedouin turban (Amamh), Muslims shoes, and Sash to their waists. As to their heads, it was forbidden to comb the hair sidewise as is the Muslim custom, and they were forced to cut the hair in the front of the head. Non-Muslims shall not imitate the Arab-Muslim way of speech nor shall they adopt the kunyas (Arabic byname, such as “abu Khattib”).
  • Obligation to identify non-Muslims as such by clipping the heads’ forelocks and by always dressing in the same manner, wherever they go, with binding the zunnar (a kind of belt) around the waists. Christians to wear blue belts or turbans, Jews to wear yellow belts or turbans, Zoroastrians to wear black belts or turbans, and Samaritans to wear red belts or turbans.
  • Prohibition against riding animals in the Muslim custom, and prohibition against riding with a saddle
  • Prohibition against adopting a Muslim title of honour.
  • Prohibition against engraving Arabic inscriptions on signet seals.
  • Prohibition against any possession of weapons.
  • Non-Muslims must host a Muslim passerby for at least 3 days and feed him.
  • Non-Muslims prohibited from buying a Muslim prisoner.
  • Prohibition against taking slaves who have been allotted to Muslims.
  • Prohibition against non-Muslims to lead, govern or employ Muslims.
  • If a non-Muslim beats a Muslim, his Dhimmi protection is removed.
  • In return, the Muslim ruler will provide security for the Christian believers who follow the rules of the pact.

Who, reading this list, thinks that in today’s “Palestine” (i.e., Gaza and P.A. territories), the Pact of Umar “primarily represents the commitment of Muslims to respect and protect the religious and property rights of Christians and Jews”? It’s a list that puts the Christians firmly in their permanently inferior place, where they must strictly adhere to dozens of rules that stress their inferiority to Muslims, or if not, they lose their security, which can mean they may be killed. Of course, most of these restrictions are no longer imposed, but the atmospherics they created long ago – that is, an attitude of Muslim contempt for Christians that has lasted as long as Islam itself – remains, and explains why Christians in Muslim lands are never treated as equals, but subject still to a host of disabilities and threats. Think of how Christians in Pakistan, in Nigeria, in Egypt, in Iran all live in fear of Muslim neighbors. And how could Muslim attitudes be different, given that the Qur’an teaches them that they are “the best of peoples” (3:110) while non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings.”?

I recall when I was growing up in the Old City of Jerusalem, Ramadan was one of our favorite holidays. We shared food with our Muslim neighbors; we watched the best Arabic soap operas together; and we loved to hear the voice of the Mussaher, the person who goes around before sunrise to wake people up to have their meal before the fast begins. And I remember the good wishes of our Muslim friends and neighbors when we celebrated Christmas.

Bishara Bahbah may have fond childhood memories of growing up in a mixed neighborhood, where the Christians shared Ramadan meals with Muslims and Muslims offered “good wishes” at Christmas to their Christian friends, but he makes too much of this. Such anecdotal evidence proves only that some Muslims he knew were willing to violate the Qur’anic injunction against taking Christians as friends, and the rule that they not recognize – even in a greeting – the religious holidays of Infidels. But he surely knows there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who would not be so accommodating, and it is they, not those childhood “Muslim friends and neighbors” who offered good wishes at Christmas, who are islamically correct.

Hamas, to you I say, we Palestinian Christians have always been an integral part of Palestinian society. We are part and parcel of the fabric of the country. We love our land and nation more than you ever will. You serve a foreign power, Iran, smuggling in useless arms and firing them at your masters’ command.’’

Bishara is not wrong to link Hamas to Iran, which now provides it with missiles and rockets. But his repeated insistence that “Palestinian Christians have always been an integral part of Palestinian society” is wishful thinking. If they had always been an “integral part” of Palestinian society, they would not have been the objects of so many attacks on churches, pastors, Christian faithful. They would not be leaving the PA territories and Gaza in such numbers.

Your bigoted attitude toward Palestinian Christians disqualifies you as a legitimate political party in Palestinian politics. Your zealotry brought intolerance and animosity among our people. Come what may, we will liberate the people of Gaza – both Muslims and Christians – from your despotic clutches. Those who supported you shall be cast out as traitors and racist collaborators. You have lost all semblance of legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian people and the world. You represent no one but your pitiful selves.

It is a shame there is no land bridge between the West Bank and Gaza that would allow Palestinian security forces to march into Gaza and forcibly rid it of the cancer called Hamas. And those who support and finance you and those who train you and harbor your leaders are as guilty as you are.

Let it be a lesson to anyone who tries to insult, marginalize or belittle Palestinian Christians, whether from within or from outside: The day will come when Palestinians – Muslims and Christians and many people around the world – will rid Gaza from you and your tyranny.

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

It pleases Bishara Bahbah to believe that it is only Hamas in Gaza that has managed to spoil the warm relations between Palestinian Christians and Muslims. The “intolerance and animosity” that Muslims exhibit toward non-Muslims is not new — it’s 1,400 years old. His fantastical belief – assuming he really has convinced himself of this — that Palestinian Muslims and Christians have always gotten along swimmingly until Hamas came along to spoil, in Gaza, that historic harmony, is false. There are many facts that tell a different tale of Christian-Muslim relations.

Here are some of those facts:

Nablus was home to more than 3,000 Christians just 40 years ago; now there are only 700 left in the city.

Tulkarm had a community of 2,000 Christians 30 years ago; it now numbers 12 families. “We are preparing to move abroad to a place where we can live a better life as said Reverend Dahoud Dimitry, head of Tulkarm’s Saint George Greek Orthodox Church, which was burned to the ground in the September 2006 riots following the publications of the Muhammad cartoons in Danish newspapers.

The Christian population of Bethlehem has fallen to 14% of the population, from 85% in the1950s, to 40% in 1997, to 14% today.Christians in that city still have not forgotten the siege of the 1,400-year-old Church of the Nativity, the birthplace of Jesus, by 100 militiamen loyal to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat in 2002. The Muslim terrorists held dozens of Christians hostage, including priests and nuns, desecrated bibles, emptied the church coffers, and lit sections of the centuries-old church on fire. The former mayor of the city, Hanna Nasser, has bluntly predicted that “There is no future for Christians in Bethlehem.”

Reverend Tomey Dahoud, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Taubus, a city near Jenin, has said:. “The Islamic people want to kill us. That’s their principle and belief. They don’t want Christians in this country. They don’t want to hear our names; they don’t want to see us. That’s the reality.” His church was firebombed in the September 2006 riots.

Even in Ramallah, which is considered the most liberal city under Palestinian control, threats against Christians are commonplace. Pastor Isa Bajalia, an evangelical Arab-American pastor, who had been living in Ramallah since 1991 with his wife and son, was threatened repeatedly by a Fatah security official from the Tanzim militia. The official demanded $30,000 for protection. As a result of the threats, Bajalia was forced to flee to Jerusalem, where he lives safely under Israeli rule.

Relations between Palestinian Christians and Muslims – despite what Bishara Bahbah wants us to believe, have steadily deteriorated not just in Gaza, but also under PA rule.

Bahbah is correct in maintaining that the situation for Christians in Gaza has been especially precarious since Hamas took control in January 2006, with the imposition of shari’ah, or Islamic, law. Attacks against Christians have become commonplace. There have been several bomb attacks on churches and on the Zahwa Rosary School outside Gaza City. But he ought to have admitted as well that in the PA territories, and all over the Muslim world, the position of Christians is difficult, precarious, and in some places, intolerable.

Had Bishara Bahbah dared to tell the truth, he would have written something like this:

“I remember from my childhood getting on well with my Muslim neighbors in Jerusalem. Fortunately they were from tolerant families, that refused to follow the Qur’anic commands about not befriending Christians or Jews. I was lucky, for there certainly are many Muslims who are not so tolerant, as is evident from the threats and attacks on pastors, churches, and individual Christians all over the PA-ruled territories and, even more frequently, in Gaza. And in every single community where there are Christians – in Nablus, Tulkarm, Taubus, Ramallah, and especially, in Bethlehem, their numbers have steadily declined, irrefutable evidence of the harassment and persecution they have suffered.

“It is true, however, that if the conditions for Christians in the West Bank are bad, they are much worse in Hamas-ruled Gaza. 5,000 Christians in 2006 are down to 750 today. Shari’a has been imposed. Christian churches and at least one Christian school have been bombed. In a few years there will be no Christians left in Gaza, testimony to what they have had to endure and that led all of them, eventually, to flee. Some of them go abroad, to Canada or Australia. Some find refuge in Israel, which is the one place in the Middle East where Christians can freely practice their religion and have their safety guaranteed by the government.”

That’s what Bishara Bahbah ought to have written. But could he ever have allowed himself to deliver such truths? Don’t be silly.

COLUMN BY

HUGH FITZGERALD

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Wonder Woman 1984: ‘I didn’t pick up on the blatant Islamophobia during my initial viewing’

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Trailer WW84:

Maybe Farid-ul-Haq initially missed the “Islamophobia” in “Wonder Woman 1984” because one has to strain so hard to see it at all. What exactly constitutes “Islamophobia” is never defined in this article; it is taken for granted that everyone knows what it is, and it appears that Farid-ul-Haq thinks of it as an irrational prejudice against Muslims. He bases his case that “Wonder Woman 1984” (which I haven’t seen and have no intention of seeing) is “Islamophobic” on its “featuring a Muslim character as one of the bad guys” while not having “a single Muslim character playing the role of a good guy.”

Farid-ul-Haq thus takes for granted that Hollywood must never portray Muslims as “bad guys,” despite the existence of Islamic jihad terrorists all over the world, or at least must not do so without a balancing Muslim “good guy.” Why must Hollywood act as a PR service for Islam? Farid-ul-Haq would likely say that it is because Muslims are particular targets of “hate and discrimination in the real world,” but this is actually not true. The FBI listed 995 anti-Jewish “offenses” in 2019, and 219 anti-Muslim “offenses.” Even one is too many, but 219 offenses against Muslims in a year in a country of 330 million actually shows that such offenses are quite rare, as they should be. Would Farid-ul-Haq agree that Hollywood should show four and a half times more Jewish “good guys” than Muslim “good guys,” so as to combat “hate and discrimination” against Jews? Must Hollywood always balance portrayals of “bad guys” who really exist in the world with “good guys” from the same group? Would Farid-ul-Haq want every movie that features a neo-Nazi to feature also a good German for balance?

Farid-ul-Haq is also enraged at “Wonder Woman 1984” because a character was depicted as “swatting away a pendant, inside a taxi, with the name Allah and Muhammad (P.B.U.H) written on it.” However, a commenter on his article states: “Thanks to this article, I’ve re-watched this scene over and over, and it looks to me that Steve is swatting the rear-view mirror to get it out of the way so he can climb out of the taxi after crashing it into the armored vehicle. Watching it frame-by-frame, it’s obvious he’s aiming for the mirror and not the pendant. The other issues brought up I can see, but I don’t see the pendant one.” Even if the character were swatting away the pendant, must Hollywood also abide by Sharia provisions mandating absolute reverence for Islamic religious objects? Has Hollywood ever shown similar deference toward Christianity, the cross, the Bible, the name of Jesus, etc.? Here again, why should Muslims and Islam be singled out for special consideration?

“Addressing the Islamophobia in ‘Wonder Woman 1984,’” by Farid-ul-Haq, The Geekiary, December 27, 2020:

Turns out, along with being problematic when it comes to consent, Wonder Woman 1984 also features Islamophobia. Sigh! At this point, if you’re out there supporting Wonder Woman 1984 while ignoring or excusing certain narrative issues, I don’t know what to say to you.

This piece contains minor spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984. Consider yourself warned. 

Full disclaimer, while I rolled my eyes at Wonder Woman 1984 featuring a Muslim character as one of the bad guys, I didn’t pick up on the blatant Islamophobia during my initial viewing. I got to know about the implications of the scene in question after I decided to head on over to the Muslim side of Twitter.

An action sequence during Wonder Woman 2 occurs in Cairo. Maxwell Lord goes to meet Emir Said Bin Abydos and take over his oil empire. The Muslim character’s wish is to construct a wall and regain control of his ancestral land.

During the final moments, the movie also had a character in mujahideen-looking garb wishing for nuclear weapons.

Yes, it felt weird this movie didn’t have a single Muslim character playing the role of a good guy, especially after the first Wonder Woman had a Muslim character be one of Diana’s friends. But it is what it is. I would like Hollywood to do better, of course.

Now, coming to the most problematic and Islamophobic scene that involved Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). I was surprised when I saw tweets about said scene and how blatantly Islamophobic it was to show Steve swatting away a pendant, inside a taxi, with the name Allah and Muhammad (P.B.U.H) written on it.

Turns out, my mind didn’t even register such a moment. Instead of realizing what had transpired onscreen, apparently, my brain did something and I thought Steve had quickly placed the pendant on the dashboard before crawling out of the taxi to help Diana.

I rewatched the scene and was quite disappointed to see the scene for it was. In my opinion, there was no reason for such a scene to exist. It served no narrative purpose other than Steve being shown throwing away the names of two beings held in high regard in the Muslim community.

Such artistic content uses fictional Muslim characters to challenge the “interpretations” of Islam that continue to be used to encourage hate and discrimination in the real world….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Hamas-Linked CAIR Demands Biden Dismantle Counterterror Operations

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The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) worked hard to get His Fraudulency President-select Joe Biden into the White House, and now it’s time for payback. On Tuesday, the sinister organization that the establishment media routinely presents as a benign human rights group released what it called “a detailed agenda detailing policy changes that the Biden-Harris administration should pursue within its first 100 days in office to restore the rights of Americans Muslims and advance justice for all.” “Restore the rights of American Muslims”? What rights have they been denied? If you said “none,” you’re correct, but CAIR’s wishlist emanates from the bizarro world of the group’s relentless efforts to secure coveted victimhood status for Muslims in the U.S.

The report is impressively detailed, identifying “33 new initiatives and policy reforms designed to protect and respect the rights of all U.S. citizens and residents, including Muslims, that the new administration can start to implement the first day in office.”

This is so much eyewash, as there is nothing among these 33 demands that is designed to protect and respect the rights of anyone but Muslims, but this sort of thing plays well with the media, and so it’s always worth throwing in. For example, one of the demands is “Support the free speech of all Americans and the right to boycott without government interference.” Another demands an “end the U.S. Department of Education’s attempts to suppress free speech on college campuses, including attempts to target Middle Eastern studies courses and punishing Palestinian student activists.”

These are not calls for the support of the freedom of speech as such. CAIR’s support for the freedom of speech here is stated only in connection to protesting Israel. When it comes to criticism of Islam, CAIR’s commitment to the freedom of speech suddenly weakens. It also demands the removal of “alt-right and Islamophobic online resources” from “existing vetting practices,” which is essentially a call for the removal of material that speaks honestly about the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism. All such material was removed years ago, so it’s unclear what CAIR spokesman Ibrahim “Honest Ibe” Hooper is in a lather about here. But free speech? Not really high on CAIR’s agenda at all.

“CAIR’s agenda,” CAIR notes proudly, “is being endorsed by the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, the largest coalition of several leading national, regional, and local Muslim organizations and institutions harnessing the collective strength of American Muslims for the greater good of all.” That makes it all the more disquieting that the list of demands includes these:

1. Fundamentally reform the federal government’s unconstitutional Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), commonly referred to as the “terrorism watchlist.”
2. Dismantle the TSA’s secretive Quiet Skies passenger tracking program, its international counterpart Silent Partner and other rules-based lists, that operate without Congressional oversight to single out law-abiding Muslim travelers for official harassment and extrajudicial consequences without due process.
3. Oppose and defund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) 2020 “Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention” (“TVTP”) grant program, the successor of DHS’s previous Countering Violent Extremism (“CVE”) grant program.
4. End the FBI’s use of informants to spy on American Muslim communities.
5. Reject any new domestic terrorism statutes.

Consider all these demands in light of the fact that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman, Omar Ahmad, as well as Hooper, have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.)

Even worse, CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager is an open supporter of Hamas.

This list of demands also features some of CAIR’s usual victimhood mongering: “Ensure American Muslims and other minorities, like all other Americans, have equal access to the COVID-19 vaccine and federal and state aid available to those impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.” Of course, there is no need for such a demand, as no one anywhere is contemplating denying Muslims or anyone else equal access to the vaccine.

The next demand makes the remedy for this alleged discrimination clear: “provide more funding to American Muslim clinics.” Ah yes, no problem is so big that a little cash won’t solve it.

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France: Five Muslims beat up another Muslim for Christmas dinner: ‘Celebrating Christmas is not Muslim’

UK: BBC mocks Christmas, but would it have dared to spoof anything Islamic?

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ISIS Calls for Christmas Jihad: ‘Coldly Kill Them With Hate And Rage’

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And so it was no surprise when International Christian Concern reported Wednesday that “security forces in Pakistan reportedly stopped a major terror attack planned to take place on Christmas Day in Peshawar. In a raid on a house in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Khyber district, four terrorists, including the leader of a banned militant outfit, were arrested.” Among those arrested was Zakir Afridi, the commander of the jihad terror group Lashkar-e-Islam.

“Along with the terrorists,” International Christian Concern reported, “security forces seized three suicide jackets and six improvised explosive devices.”

If this plot wasn’t inspired by a call from the Islamic State to murder Christians on Christmas Day, it certainly had the same goal in mind. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported that “on December 12, 2020, online supporters of the Islamic State (ISIS) distributed an audio clip of a new nasheed (Islamic religious chant) titled ‘Coldly Kill Them With Hate And Rage.’” The jolly folks who “released the song on Telegram included a poster featuring a Christmas tree with a bomb attached to it, and the caption: ‘Just Terror 2020. Here are their holidays at your doorsteps, and we are here too! And we are about to enter them with you!’ The post also includes the hashtag #MerryChristmas, suggesting it be used on social media to disseminate the song.”

The charming ditty includes these lyrics: “They fought Islam day and night/Killed many Muslims all in one time/Vengeance fill the hearts and minds/Coldly kill them with hate and rage/Stab them, shoot them or a blast/Make their media cry and broadcast/The khilafah [caliphate].” Well, it ain’t exactly “The First Noel,” but at least they tried.

Meanwhile, OpIndia reported Monday that an old video from the renowned Islamic apologist Zakir Naik has gone viral this year. In it, Naik, who has been accused of ties to jihad terror activity, answers a young man’s question about whether or not it is permissible for Muslims to wish Christians a merry Christmas: “To reach your goals, you cannot use wrong means, brother. What is Haram [forbidden] to them is also Haram to you. When you are wishing Merry Christmas to them, you are agreeing that he is the son of God and that is Shirk [the grave sin of associating partners with Allah in worship]. Because they believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Irrespective of whether they are practising Christians or not, they celebrate the day because of His birthday…Is saying Merry Christmas wrong? I am telling you it is wrong. It is 100% wrong according to me….If you don’t know what Christmas stands for and happen to wish someone, Allah may forgive you. If you drink alcohol, mistaking it for Pepsi, Allah may forgive you. But if you are doing it to build a relationship after knowing what Christmas stands for, you are building your place in Jahannam (Hell). Therefore, for reaching good means, you never have to follow bad means. You have to follow the guidance of the Quran and the Sunnah (literature based on life and deeds of Prophet Muhammad).”

In a similar vein, the German-language site Philosophia Perennis reported Saturday that another old video has gone viral there, featuring a Muslim preacher, Abu Maher, declaring: “Christmas is an insult to Allah!” The video was published by the Deutschsprachige Muslimische Gemeinschaft e.V. (“German-speaking Muslim Community, DMG) which describes itself as “an association in Braunschweig that has existed for many years” and states that “we represent Islam according to the understanding of the first three generations after the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and want to convey Islam – based on the Qurân and Sunna (path of the Prophet) and its pure message – to our fellow human beings and society. It is important to us to enable all interested parties to get to know the values ​​and norms that Islam imposes on people.” The DMG adds: “As a Muslim community, we represent a part of the local society. We respect the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, but at the same time insist on our basic rights, such as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, and want like every citizen and let every citizen live and live in peace and mutual tolerance.”

In light, however, of its denunciation of Christmas, its call for peace and tolerance appears to be in reality a call for peace and tolerance on the basis of the submission of non-Muslims to Muslims.

None of this is new, or surprising, particularly ISIS’ call for violence. It’s just another Christmas in the age of jihad.

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Sweden: Interpreter tells migrant not to ‘tarnish Islam’

Somalia: Jihad terror group al-Shabaab collects $15 million a month in taxes, more than the Somali government

Sweden gives ISIS leader who returned from Syria a protected identity and welfare benefits

UK: Court orders gay asylum seeker who fled to Britain after family threatened to kill him to return to Algeria

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column  is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Omar, Tlaib and AOC demand Facebook remove 100% of ‘anti-Muslim content’

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Two of the most notorious bigots in the House of Representatives signed a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding that he “eradicate anti-Muslim bigotry from Facebook”.

The three-page letter signed by Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, as well as 28 other left-wing House members, spends a great deal of time demanding the removal of what it calls “anti-Muslim content” without ever specifically defining it. That’s convenient considering Omar and Tlaib’s own history of racism and antisemitism, and support for the sorts of Islamic bigotry and violence that groups like CAIR, which supports the letter, have become known for.

The letter spotlights one violent incident, but then goes on to call for a ban on “anti-Muslim content”, “anti-Muslim animus”, “anti-Muslim bigotry”, and finally, “anti-Muslim content and organizing” on the platform, without ever explaining what exactly they want to ban.

Considering the letter’s call for, “100 percent proactive detection and removal of anti-Muslim content”, the safe assumption would be that they want to ban everything critical of Islam.

That’s a disturbing attack on the First Amendment coming from 30 House members.

If House Democrats were serious about removing hate, they would have removed Rep. Omar.

Democrats have repeatedly pressured Facebook and other social media companies to remove speech they politically disapprove of, whether by President Trump or other conservatives, eroding the thin line between private companies acting on their own initiative and government officials conspiring to violate the First Amendment by banning certain kinds of political speech.

After multiple hearings, legal proposals, and legislative threats, it’s no longer possible to view Facebook’s censorship of political speech as anything other than government censorship. When enough pressure by government officials has been applied to a company to censor certain kinds of speech, the company’s decision to censor speech becomes government censorship.

30 House members would now like Facebook to censor criticism of Islam and political protests against Islamic terrorism. One of the few examples of anti-Muslim content in the House letter was a political protest against the Islamic Society of North America’s 2019 conference.

That was the conference which included an appearance by two Democrat presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Julian Castro, whose forum was moderated by Salam Al-Marayati, the head of MPAC, who had defended Hamas and Hezbollah. Also participating in a round table at the conference was Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing, who has defended the Islamic mandate to kill gay people.

This is the sort of information that AOC, Omar, and 28 other House Democrats, want banned.

House Democrats trying to shut down protests targeting their own candidates is a blatant violation of the First Amendment which was meant to prevent exactly that kind of thing.

And the party of social justice wants to stop Americans from protesting against an Imam who says things like, ”Brothers and sisters, you know what the punishment is, if a man is found with another man? The Prophet Mohammad said the one who does it and the one to whom it is done to, kill them both.”

What happens when ‘anti-Muslim content’ meets anti-gay content?

The 30 House Democrats don’t want to talk about any of this which is why their letter doesn’t.

Omar and Tlaib can’t quite openly call for blasphemy regulations for social media, but they conveniently leave terms like “anti-Muslim content” undefined and then demand that Facebook outsource the suppression protocols to “senior staff focused on anti-Muslim bigotry issues” backed by diversity training on “civil rights issues and common words, phrases, tropes or visuals used by hate actors to dehumanize and demonize Muslims”.

And if that’s not enough, there’s an independent third-party review of Facebook’s compliance.

CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood groups would be brought in to define what “anti-Muslim content” is and then senior staff, approved of by CAIR and its allies, would set moderation policies to suppress “tropes” used by “hate actors” words like Jihad, Sharia, Taqiyya, and terrorism.

Cartoons of Mohammed, mentions of blasphemy, hate, and terrorism would all be censored.

It’s not hard to spot what sort of content they’re after.

The House Democrat blasphemy and terror letter has been endorsed by CAIR and the Islamic Networks Group, but beyond these traditional Islamist groups, it has the backing of pro-terror groups like Code Pink and JVP, and assorted anti-war organizations. These groups are less concerned with blasphemy, but very focused on preventing America from fighting terrorists.

CAIR had demanded the removal of Mohammed’s image from the Supreme Court, and more recently compared magazines publishing cartoons of Mohammed to ISIS. A board member of the Muslim Brotherhood group had insisted that, “[t]he right to free speech is not absolute.”

The Founding Fathers and the Constitution disagreed.

The letter also cites a Muslim Advocates report which listed examples of “anti-Muslim content” that they wanted Facebook to censor that included President Trump’s call for a ban on migration from Islamic terror nations, and a Trump campaign ad which described AOC, Omar, Tlaib, and Pressley as socialists who had made “anti-Israel, anti-American, and pro-terrorist remarks”.

AOC, Omar, Tlaib, and other Democrats have signed a letter demanding that Facebook censor political speech critical of them. That’s a grotesque assault on the First Amendment.

Another example of “anti-Muslim content” from the Muslim Advocates report was an Israeli Facebook user who had written negatively about Omar, Trudeau, and Corbyn.

Omar responded to this by ranting that “foreign interference – whether by individuals or governments – is still a grave threat to our democracy” and that “malicious actors operating in a foreign country, Israel”, were “spreading misinformation and hate speech to influence elections in the United States.” Even though there’s no evidence that elections were actually influenced.

But, once again, the kind of “anti-Muslim content” that Omar and her political allies seem to want to ban involves criticism of her and of them. The “grave threat” here is coming from Rep. Omar.

The letter claims that its signers also want Facebook to remove “any hate content directed at a religious or ethnic group”, but Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of the letter’s signers, has been the House’s worst offender, tweeting antisemitic content, including her infamous “Benjamins” tweet.

If House Democrats were serious about removing hate, they would have removed Rep. Omar.

Facebook already engages in extensive monitoring and censorship. This isn’t about taking down bigotry, but about removing political speech and content that Islamists consider blasphemous. It’s also about suppressing the political organizations that combat Islamist hate and violence.

It has the backing of pro-terror groups like Code Pink and JVP, and assorted anti-war organizations. These groups are less concerned with blasphemy, but very focused on preventing America from fighting terrorists.

It’s no coincidence that the type of political speech that Omar, Tlaib, Carson, and other House members want to censor casts a negative light on their own political alliances with Islamists, their bigotry, and their ugly views. And they would like Facebook to do the censoring for them.

The more Democrat officials lay out the kind of censorship they would like internet platforms to perform, the more the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech becomes a dead letter. And this letter, signed by 30 House Democrats, is a new threat to our freedom of speech.

America does not have blasphemy laws. And politicians are not allowed to ban speech they don’t like. The letter to Facebook makes it more urgent than ever that our elected officials find ways to protect the marketplace of ideas from political censorship by Democrats and Facebook.

COLUMN BY

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U..S. Sanctions Iran’s International Network of Islamic Seminaries, Accuses them of Jihad Recruitment

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As the West continues to be duped by Muslim Brotherhood-linked lobbies, pushing the “Islamophobia” subterfuge which serves as a cover to advance the jihad, Iran continues to expand its operations worldwide via its proxies, and is eager for a Biden administration to further facilitate its ambitions.

Some background about Al-Mustafa International University:

In February 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini and a group of clergymen attached to him, seized the power in Iran. From the onset, Khomeini’s regime utilized all the means and tools in its disposal to establish and fortify its brand of fundamentalism in Iran and export it throughout the Islamic world….Al Mustafa international university founded in 2007 is one of the most important among these organizations.”

Aside from Islamic indoctrination at the university, thousands of “high value individuals” from Pakistan and Afghanistan were courted by the regime’s elite Quds Force to be recruited as jihadists, and “multiple students from the university have been killed fighting in Syria.” In a characteristic deception, the university earlier in December claimed that “it promoted “peace, friendship, and brotherhood among nations” and “slammed the U.S. decision as ‘hegemonic.’”

“U.S. Sanctions Put Spotlight On Iran’s International Network Of Religious Seminaries,” by Frud Bezhan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,December 22, 2020 (thanks to Henry):

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran’s clerical establishment has used religious organizations to expand its clout abroad.

Key among them is the Al-Mustafa International University, a network of religious seminaries based in the Shi’ite holy city of Qom that has branches in some 50 countries.

The university claims to teach Shi’ite Muslim theology, Islamic science, and Iran’s national language, Persian, to tens of thousands of foreign students across Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America.

But Tehran’s adversaries say the university has been involved in espionage and recruited foreign fighters for Iran’s proxy war in Syria.

For years, experts have documented the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) recruitment, training, and deployment of thousands of Shi’ite fighters to Syria to defend the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, Tehran’s key ally in the brutal civil war that erupted in 2011.

‘Recruitment Platform’

The United States imposed sanctions on the massive university network on December 8, alleging that it was involved in the recruitment of Afghan and Pakistani students to fight in the Syrian conflict.

The U.S. Treasury Department said Iran’s elite Quds Force, the overseas operations arm of the IRGC, used the university’s foreign branches as a “recruitment platform” for “intelligence collection and operations,” including recruitment for pro-Iranian militias.

The Treasury Department alleged that the Quds Force used the Al-Mustafa International University as a “cover” to recruit Afghans for the blacklisted Fatemiyoun Brigade, a pro-Iranian militia that fought in Syria.

Moreover, Treasury said the Quds Force also used Al-Mustafa’s campus in Qom “as a recruitment ground” for Pakistani students to join the blacklisted Zeynabiyoun Brigade, a militia that consisted of Pakistani Shi’a.

Treasury added that “multiple students from the university have been killed fighting in Syria.”

In a statement on December 9, the university said it promoted “peace, friendship, and brotherhood among nations” and slammed the U.S. decision as “hegemonic.”

‘High-Value Individuals’

Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington who has closely monitored IRGC activity in Syria, said that, according to his database from January 2012 to December 2020, 3,059 Iranian and allied foreign fighters were killed in combat in Syria.

Alfoneh says of those, only three were students or graduates of the Al-Mustafa International University — known as Jamiat al-Mostafa University in Iran.

“This indicates that Jamiat al-Mostafa has never served as the primary recruitment ground for the IRGC’s war effort in Syria,” he says.

The IRGC recruited thousands of Afghan migrants and refugees within its own borders and covertly drafted hundreds of Shi’a inside Afghanistan. The same strategy was used to recruit Pakistanis.

Alfoneh says the “three individuals identified appear to have been in command, intelligence, or political-ideological indoctrination positions.”

That means, he said, that the IRGC perceived the graduates or students of the Al-Mustafa International University as “high-value individuals.”…

COLUMN BY

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Merry Christmas from Conservative Commandos 2020

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Merry Christmas to all from the Conservative Commandoes Radio Show.

©Conservative Commandoes Radio. All rights reserved.

I Saw Mommy Beheading Santa Claus: Another Precarious Christmas in the Age of Jihad

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Another Christmas is upon us, and it’s the same old story: in Muslim lands, Christians are oppressed and in constant danger of violent jihad attacks. And in the lands once known as Christendom, jihadis threaten new jihad massacres.

And so it was no surprise when International Christian Concern reported Wednesday that “security forces in Pakistan reportedly stopped a major terror attack planned to take place on Christmas Day in Peshawar. In a raid on a house in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Khyber district, four terrorists, including the leader of a banned militant outfit, were arrested.” Among those arrested was Zakir Afridi, the commander of the jihad terror group Lashkar-e-Islam.

“Along with the terrorists,” International Christian Concern reported, “security forces seized three suicide jackets and six improvised explosive devices.”

If this plot wasn’t inspired by a call from the Islamic State to murder Christians on Christmas Day, it certainly had the same goal in mind. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported that “on December 12, 2020, online supporters of the Islamic State (ISIS) distributed an audio clip of a new nasheed (Islamic religious chant) titled ‘Coldly Kill Them With Hate And Rage.’” The jolly folks who “released the song on Telegram included a poster featuring a Christmas tree with a bomb attached to it, and the caption: ‘Just Terror 2020. Here are their holidays at your doorsteps, and we are here too! And we are about to enter them with you!’ The post also includes the hashtag #MerryChristmas, suggesting it be used on social media to disseminate the song.”

The charming ditty includes these lyrics: “They fought Islam day and night/Killed many Muslims all in one time/Vengeance fill the hearts and minds/Coldly kill them with hate and rage/Stab them, shoot them or a blast/Make their media cry and broadcast/The khilafah [caliphate].” Well, it ain’t exactly “The First Noel,” but at least they tried.

Meanwhile, OpIndia reported Monday that an old video from the renowned Islamic apologist Zakir Naik has gone viral this year. In it, Naik, who has been accused of ties to jihad terror activity, answers a young man’s question about whether or not it is permissible for Muslims to wish Christians a merry Christmas: “To reach your goals, you cannot use wrong means, brother. What is Haram [forbidden] to them is also Haram to you. When you are wishing Merry Christmas to them, you are agreeing that he is the son of God and that is Shirk [the grave sin of associating partners with Allah in worship]. Because they believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Irrespective of whether they are practising Christians or not, they celebrate the day because of His birthday…Is saying Merry Christmas wrong? I am telling you it is wrong. It is 100% wrong according to me….If you don’t know what Christmas stands for and happen to wish someone, Allah may forgive you. If you drink alcohol, mistaking it for Pepsi, Allah may forgive you. But if you are doing it to build a relationship after knowing what Christmas stands for, you are building your place in Jahannam (Hell). Therefore, for reaching good means, you never have to follow bad means. You have to follow the guidance of the Quran and the Sunnah (literature based on life and deeds of Prophet Muhammad).”

In a similar vein, the German-language site Philosophia Perennis site reported Saturday that another old video has gone viral there, featuring a Muslim preacher, Abu Maher, declaring: “Christmas is an insult to Allah!” The video was published by the Deutschsprachige Muslimische Gemeinschaft e.V. (“German-speaking Muslim Community, DMG) which describes itself as “an association in Braunschweig that has existed for many years” and states that “we represent Islam according to the understanding of the first three generations after the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and want to convey Islam – based on the Qurân and Sunna (path of the Prophet) and its pure message – to our fellow human beings and society. It is important to us to enable all interested parties to get to know the values ​​and norms that Islam imposes on people.” The DMG adds: “As a Muslim community, we represent a part of the local society. We respect the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, but at the same time insist on our basic rights, such as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, and want like every citizen and let every citizen live and live in peace and mutual tolerance.”

In light, however, of its denunciation of Christmas, its call for peace and tolerance appears to be in reality a call for peace and tolerance on the basis of the submission of non-Muslims to Muslims.

None of this is new, or surprising. It’s just another Christmas in the age of jihad.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Pro-Israel Christian Group Torches Radical Hater Warnock in New Ad

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A Radical’s Radical: Raphael Warnock is too radical for Georgia

Thank you, CUFI. Raphael Warnock is a dangerous and radical anti-Semite, and he must not be elected to the United States Senate.

Pro-Israel Christian Group Torches Warnock in New Ad

By Washington Free Beacon, December 23, 2020

The political arm of the largest pro-Israel membership group in the United States launched an ad campaign Wednesday targeting Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate for Senate in the Georgia runoff.

The 30-second spot from Christians United for Israel Action Fund takes aim at both Warnock’s record of statements critical of Israel and his recent attack on evangelical Christians, traditionally a staunchly pro-Israel denomination.

The ad calls him “Radical Raphael Warnock” and says he is “preaching a gospel of hate.” The voiceover says “Warnock demonized Christians who stand with Israel,” a reference to his sermon after the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem in 2018 in which he accused “mealy-mouthed evangelical preachers” of being “responsible for the mess that we found ourselves in … misquoting and misinterpreting the Scripture, talking about peace.”

A spokesperson for the group said the ad is backed by a six-figure digital and social media buy targeting pro-Israel voters in Georgia, where the organization has approximately 500,000 members, according to the spokesperson.

Last month, Pastor Jay Bailey, CUFI’s Georgia state director, published an op-ed criticizing Warnock’s “condemnations of Israel” as “disgusting.”

The organization announced this week it had reached 10 million members.

Warnock is locked in a tight race with incumbent senator Kelly Loeffler (R.). The runoff election will take place on Jan. 5.

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GA. Democrat Candidate Raphael Warnock’s Involvement in Child-Abuse Case at Church Camp Which Led to HIS Arrest

Video Leaks of U.S. Senate Candidate Warnock’s Encounter With Police After BEATING HIS WIFE

Georgia Democrat Senate Candidate Raphael Warnock Under Investigation

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Sensing Their Moment. The rise of the atheists.

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TRANSCRIPT

Church Militant (a 501(c)4 corporation) is responsible for the content of this commentary.

So a Catholic, a Jew and an atheist walk into a Congress. It has all the ingredients of a bad joke, but this is no laughing matter for the faithful. Three U.S. congressmen — the Catholic Jerry McNerney from California, the Jewish Jamie Raskin of Maryland and the atheist Jared Huffman of California — are intent on destroying all elements of religion in American public life.

And their plan may play out a lot smoother than many people think. They each belong to an organization called Secular Democrats of America, and they advocate for expunging religion from all aspects of the culture (except in the privacy of your own home, at least for now).

These three U.S. congressmen have submitted a 28-page proposal to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris asking them to eliminate religion from American public life by “re-educating Christians” in such a manner so that they keep their “religious dogma” to themselves and within their own homes.

First, you can certainly see that such a proposal would get a very friendly hearing in a Harris-Biden administration, if that comes to pass. After all, a Harris-Biden administration is essentially Obama 2.0 — with almost the entire anti-God gang back in place and ready to go at 10 minutes after noon on Jan. 20, less than a month away.

Of course, if that comes to pass, they will have cheated like Hell, literally, to get to that point. But, hey, what’s a little cheating to a man like Biden, who cheated his way through law school, plagiarizing a paper, which nearly got him kicked out? (Too bad it didn’t.) And, as a quick aside, this is what happens when someone is allowed to get away with stuff because they aren’t properly disciplined. Biden should have been expelled; now he’s on the verge of becoming president.

But back to the main issue — there are two things worth noting here: First, the welcome reception such a proposal would receive, and second, how these three anti-God freaks have things completely wrong. Recall that Obama was the most anti-God, anti-religion president ever, especially when it came to Christianity.

He proudly announced to the world that “America is no longer a Christian nation.” His entire administration, of course, was populated with staffers who hate religion and God and want it all swept away. Now, it appears those same people will be back, and this time with a venegence. When Trump won and they were all leaving their jobs, they had glum looks on their faces.

Well, they’re back, and since everybody now knows where everybody else stands, “Let the flood gates open” will be their mantra. The SDA (Secular Democrats of America) announce on their website that the future of America is with the irreligious — those who have no religion and want no religion. They even have pretty graphics trumpeting this, where they show (correctly) that 17% of Americans reject religion and 70% of those are Democrats — not exactly news there.

The SDA also lay out their goal in pretty clear terms — the bad guys always do, just for the record. Scroll down a little bit and there it is: “No one has the right to harm others in the name of religious belief.”

Now, while many Democrats in Congress and an incoming Biden administration may not be card-carrying, dues-paying members of SDA (although more than a dozen congressmen are), that agenda is embraced by a huge number of them. Recall that Kamala Harris just last year introduced a bill in the Senate saying the exact same thing. Of course, it got nowhere in the GOP-controlled Senate, but that’s not the point.

It will get traction in the executive branch when it comes to those vast powers, and if the Democrats win those Georgia Senate seats, look out. A political party that enjoys the support of 70% of those who reject religion and God having total control of the powers of the federal government? Say no more.

And don’t think you’d get a fair shake in the courts if you brought a case. “Fair” walked out the door in the aftermath of the election steal. Their refusal to pursue the vast fraud that this election was tells you everything you need to know. Most judges and justices on the high court have proven themselves to be nothing but go-along losers who find technicalities in the law or “judicial philosophy” to hide behind instead of stepping up and defending truth.

And even if they struck down some anti-religion agenda in some future hypothetical case, how long to do you think it would take the atheist, Party of Death to just pack the court to change the outcome down the road? Probably about 15 minutes.

The atheists (or, as they like to call themselves, “non-theists”) have long despised religion in general, but most especially Christianity — even theologically deficient Protestantism because even a somewhat dim understanding of Christ does not allow for their immoral agenda of child-slaughter, unbridled sex, sodomy, destruction of the family and so forth.

So of course, they want Christians driven back into their homes. If you all want to pray around your fireplace, fine. But leave all that Faith stuff at the door when when you step out into our new America. Faithful Catholics might wonder, as all this is taking shape, just where are the U.S. bishops in response.

Don’t get us wrong: Nothing would delight us more than to see the bishops stripped of the hundreds of millions of dollars they receive in federal money each year. They used that money over the decades to help create the social and political environment where atheists could actually come to power. So, good, take it all away.

Some of that money even went to groups who worked to get Biden illegitimately elected — money from the bishops, just to be clear. Remember, about a quarter of U.S. bishops, maybe more, are Democrats. Don’t forget that. They embraced the Democrat agenda because of the money they got and its support for homosexuality.

They hid all that under the disguise of “social justice,” of course, but any Catholic with two brain cells to rub together knows that was always a ruse. They care about “the poor” about as much as they care about the Faith, which is to say not at all.

My mother, God rest her soul, Mother Vortex had a name for such contemptible men: She called them “wastrels.” So just like the bishops hid their real agenda beneath a thin veneer of protecting the poor, the atheist Democrats are hiding their agenda beneath the veneer of protecting religion from government intrusion.

Sure they are. Sure their interest is in protecting Christians from government intrusion. Thanks, but no thanks. The God-haters are sensing their moment. Rightly or prematurely, they are sensing the wind is at their back and their moment has come.

Maybe they’re wrong. But ask yourself this: When it comes to believers versus atheists, who do you think has all the momentum? A sufficient number of people — believers —did not step up when they should have. So now, there will be a price to pay for that. The only remaining question is, “If people didn’t step up when the going was easy, how many will do so when it gets hard?”

©Church Militant. All rights reserved.

Is Going to Church “High Risk, Low Reward?”

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Some leftist government officials, in the name of trying to fight the spread of COVID-19, have come down hard on churches.

For example, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared (5/7/20),

“We’re looking at the science, epidemiology, looking again at frequency, duration, time, and looking at low risk-high reward, low risk-low reward.” [Emphasis added]

He has defined abortion clinics as essential. But churches were categorized as non-essential. Christian legal groups have had to fight with the governor to be able to practice religious freedom, which the Constitution guarantees. Newsom was not alone in his attempt to hamstring the churches.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam mandated that only ten people could attend church. But not to worry, said the Theologian-in-Chief of the Old Dominion state: “For me, God is wherever you are. You don’t have to sit in the church pew for God to hear your prayers.”

In November, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear ordered a halt of in-person worship services—even after having been hit with a federal judge’s restraining order earlier this year for doing the same.

All of this leads to an interesting question: What, if anything, do churches contribute to society? Are churches just “high risk, low reward”?

I spoke recently on the radio with Dr. Byron Johnson, Director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor.

Johnson told me, “Churches are phenomenally important to society. The bulk of volunteering in America is done by people that come from places like churches. Americans give more than a billion dollars a day to charities. A significant portion of that comes from people that sit in pews of congregations.”

What else does church do for society? Since 2001, Gallup polls have conducted annual “November Health and Healthcare Surveys.” The results of 2020 showed a drop in overall mental health for Americans. Not surprising, in light of the lockdown.

Disrn.com reports (12/13/20) that church-goers were one exception: “… frequent church attendees were the only group in the U.S. that did not experience a mental health decline in 2020….Forty-six percent of Americans who regularly attend religious services said their mental health is ‘excellent,’ an increase from last year’s 42 percent.”

The Journal of the American Medical Association-Psychiatry published an article (5/6/20) on the potential impact of church attendance decreasing the number of “deaths from despair.”

The researchers found that church attendance does indeed help lower the frequency of deaths from despair (including from drugs, alcohol, and suicide). They conclude: “…attendance at religious services at least once per week was associated with a 68% lower hazard of death from despair among women and a 33% lower hazard among men compared with never attendance.”

They add, “The findings suggest that frequent attendance at religious services is associated with lower subsequent risk of deaths from despair.” Go to church and you’re less likely to kill yourself. Or others, for that matter.

Of course, the church was founded by Jesus Christ, Whose birth we celebrate at this time. Christmas is a reminder that a manger in Bethlehem 2000 years ago once contained a baby that was fully God and fully man, who went on to live a perfect life and offer Himself as a sacrifice on behalf of sinners, so that those who believe in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

Being assured of heaven in the next life has a positive impact on how we live this life. Church-going involves offering gratitude and sacrifices of praise for the ultimate Christmas gift—the Savior Jesus Christ.

One man of note personally viewed attending church a high priority in his life, even if his schedule was hectic, and the roads were muddy, and getting there was a challenge.

George Washington, the father of our country, was a devout church-goer, back in a day when it was much more taxing to attend. He normally went to the Anglican/Episcopal Church. However, when the Commander-in-Chief was leading the rebellion against the head of that denomination, King George III, Washington became more ecumenical in his worship practices.

He visited Christian churches of all kinds, including Presbyterian ones. The Morristown Presbyterian Church in New Jersey has a stained glass window of Washington receiving communion at that church, an event that occurred during the War. After the War, until his death, he regularly attended church—making Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria his home church for the last decade of his life.

In Washington’s case, church attendance may have been “high risk” only in the sense of the difficulty of getting there and back. But as is often the case, it was “high reward.”

If only some of our modern political leaders would learn from George’s example. Contrary to the opinion of today’s secular leaders, church tends to be high reward for the attenders and society at large.

©Jerry Newcombe. All rights reserved.

Al-Azhar says Sharia forbids joining Muslim Brotherhood, accuses it of ‘immorality, aggression and terrorism’

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Entities all over the Muslim world has been cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood, all while the Brotherhood and its affiliates expand their influence throughout the West. The highly publicized Holy Land foundation trial – the largest terrorism financing trial in the history of the United States — exposed an extensive list of Brotherhood operatives in America, as well as offshoots in Canada. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Russia, Bahrain and Syria have all banned the Muslim Brotherhood and designated it a terrorist group. The U.S., Canada, and the EU need to do the same. Labeling groups which are connected to Hamas as “unindicted co-conspirators” isn’t enough. Take, for instance, the Canadian government of the former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It declared IRFAN-Canada (Islamic Relief) a terrorist entity for funding Hamas. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently reintroduced the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, and explained that he believes it will “advance America’s fight against radical Islamic terrorism.” He’s right.

Last week, in a telling move, Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the head of the UAE fatwa council, withdrew from the speaker list at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit mega-conference in Toronto because it featured MB-linked groups.

“Al-Azhar decrees prohibition of joining Muslim Brotherhood,” by Mohammed Abu Zaid, Arab News, December 21, 2020:

CAIRO: Al-Azhar Fatwa Global Center has said that joining the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups is forbidden according to Shariah and that God has forbidden division and disagreement.

The Egyptian newspaper Al-Watan quoted Al-Azhar as saying in its announcement that God forbids people from pursuing any path that distracts them from following the truth, explaining that keeping to the Qur’an and the Sunnah, in accordance with Shariah, was the only way to please God.

“It is clear to the public what these groups have done in distorting some texts, cutting them out of their context, and using them to achieve personal goals or interests and corrupting the land,” the center said in the fatwa.

“Membership in these extremist groups is considered forbidden by Shariah.”

“Joining the terrorist Brotherhood is forbidden by law [and is considered] cooperating in immorality and aggression, for that group violates the law of God and is involved in terrorism,” said Abdullah Al-Najjar, a member of the Islamic Research Academy.

Hussein Al-Qadi, a researcher in religious affairs and Islamic movements, said that the fatwa is the first of its kind in the history of Al-Azhar.

“This fatwa has never been issued from Al-Azhar before. Various statements were issued by Al-Azhar describing the Brotherhood as being outdated. In fact, Imam Muhammad Mustafa Al-Maraghi, reformer and rector of Al-Azhar, demanded the dissolution of the Brotherhood,” Al-Qadi said….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.