Atheists are Running Scared
Atheists are running and hiding after David Barton won a million dollar judgement against them for slander and defamation.
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Jewish Myopia at Muslim Organized Solidarity Event in Oslo
“Fjordman” – the nom de guerre of ex-pat Norwegian counter jihadist, Peder Jensen, sent us a report by NRK about the Saturday night rally, February 21, 2015, organized by a 17 year old Norwegian Muslim girl, Hajrah Arshad. 1,300 people formed a Ring of Peace around the Oslo synagogue organized by Miss Arshad. Miss Arshad said:
Most of us Muslims stand up for Jews’ rights. I hope that other communities do like us and fight against radicalization. It is unfair to be set up against the wall for everything a Muslim terrorist does. We are not here today to say we are sorry on behalf of the Muslims that attacked people in Copenhagen. What we do here is to show everyone we stand with you. We feel the same fears as you, and we will bear the brunt together with you.
Rabbi Michael Melchior of the Oslo Synagogue was reported by NRK to have “told the masses outside his synagogue about his trip to the funeral of the man killed outside the synagogue in Copenhagen last weekend.”
Afterwards, I sat with the grieving parents. I told them about the initiative of young Muslims here in Oslo, and the father of Dan Uzan embraced me and began to cry.
He said to me “You must say to the young Muslims in Norway that they have given me hope. They have given me a reason to continue living. Maybe it was a meaning to my son’s death. Maybe it gives reason to life for the future.”
This message goes to the entire world, it is not just here in Norway, it is a universal message.
Ervin Kohn, a leader at the Oslo synagogue, spoke about this significant outpouring of support by Norwegian Muslims:
We must work against fear. It is much easier to work against fear when we are together. It is very nice that we are so many here today
Why has this “Peace Ring” gained so much attention? Because it is unique. I think we once again can say “Look to Norway” after what has happened here tonight. This event fills me with hope. Youngsters take back the power to define what a Muslim is. They will not let the extremists polarize society. We will continue this fight together.
There were strong appeals and rabbi shouted “Allahu akbar” – God is great – under his appeal.
It was great to see. Muslims and Jews have the same ancestor. We have the same God. It is more that gathers us than separates us.
Fjordman noted in his email exchange:
Kohn is also deputy director of the state-sponsored Norwegian Center against Racism, which has made combating Islamophobia a major priority.
Watch this You Tube interview with Korn.
Rabbi Melchior and Kohn exhibited myopia by their remarks. As we will see they are not alone among our co-religionists.
They didn’t heed the warnings by ancient Jewish Sage, Moses Maimonides, the Rambam, in his Epistle to the Jews of Yemen in 1172 C.E. about Islam and the Prophet Mohammed:
“After him [the biblical Esau] arose the Madman [ha-meshugga the Prophet Mohammed] who emulated his precursor since he paved the way for him. But he added the further objective of procuring rule and submission, and he invented his well known religion.”
“Remember, my co-religionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins, G-d has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us […] Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase and hate us as much as they. Therefore when David, of blessed memory, inspired by the holy spirit, envisaged the future tribulations of Israel, he bewailed and lamented their lot only in the Kingdom of Ishmael, and prayed in their behalf, for their deliverance, as is implied in the verse, “Woe is me that I sojourn with Meschech that I dwell beside the tents of Kedar.” (Psalms 120:5).
In October 2010 we sent an open letter published in The Iconoclast about a previous act of Jewish myopia by Chancellor Arnold Eisen of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan concerning the institution’s sponsorship of interfaith programs with Muslim Brotherhood front group, Islamic Society of North America. We noted the Rambam’s letter and his flight from Muslim Spain, Al Andaluz:
Maimonides fled his native Cordoba during the era of the fanatic Berber Almohads who stormed across the Straits of Gibraltar to take over Al Andaluz in Muslim occupied Spain. The Almohads perpetrated some of the more heinous pogroms of Spanish Jewry.
Rabbi Melchior was among the hundreds of Danes, including Prime Minister Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt who attended the funeral to render comfort to the bereaved family of 37-year old Dan Uzan, the Danish Jewish Economist and voluntary security guard at the Great Synagogue. He was killed by Danish Muslim terrorist, Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein. El-Hussein ,prior to his murder of Uzan at the Great Synagogue , had fired 40 rounds of automatic fire into a Free Speech event at the Krudttønden Café with Swedish Artist Lars Vilks and others present. He killed documentarian and filmmaker, 55 year old Finn Norgaard.
El-Hussein, the Danish-born son of Palestinian émigrés, was alleged to be a gang member, convicted of a stabbing, and spent time in a Copenhagen lockup, where it was alleged he was radicalized. Danish security police had listed him as a dangerous risk, but apparently somehow he slipped through the cracks. With the aid of like-minded Muslims who procured the weapons for el- Hussein he carried out his personal Jihad against Christian and Jewish infidels, last Sunday.
El-Hussein’s attitude is not uncommon in liberal Denmark given the evidence of rejectionist attitudes among young Danish Muslim criminals uncovered in the clinical work of Danish psychologist, Nicolai Sennels. We should not forget the eruption a decade ago in 2005 of global attacks throughout the Muslim Ummah. They were caused by a political cartoon of Mohammed in a bomb-like Turban drawn by Kurt Westergaard for Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Most mainstream media and at least one academic press at Yale University were loath to reproduce Westergaard’s and the other 11 cartoons published by the Jyllands Posten. Westergaard wasattacked in his home by a Somali émigré Muslim jihadist wielding an axe intent on doing bodily harm. Swedish artist Vilks, who drew sketches of Mohammed as a roundabout dog, was at the Kruttodonden free speech forum emerging unhurt. His home in Sweden was firebombed by émigré Muslim Jihadis.
One of the Danish Imams Ahmed Akkari who triggered the conflagrations and murders in the wake of the Danish Mohammed cartoons incident, was revealed by Lars Hedegaard in August 2013 as having rejected Islam during an introspective sojourn in Greenland. Akkari told a press conference that virtually all Mosques in Denmark were headed by extremists. Hedegaard, Danish and International Free Press Society co-founder, was a victim of a Jihadi attempt on his life in February 2013 by a Danish Lebanese Muslim émigré who fired a shot at him masquerading as a Danish postal worker delivering a package to his home. Hedegaard’s attacker subsequently fled to Turkey where his extradition request in 2014 was refused and subsequently he disappeared into Syria to presumably join up with ISIS.
Apparently the several hundred Muslim who participated in the interfaith Ring of Peace at the Oslo synagogue didn’t get the message preached by a Copenhagen Imam on the eve of last weekend’s deadly attacks. The Algemeiner reported a translated MEMRI video of Hajj Saeed, the Imam of the Al-Faruq Mosque in the city, on Friday February 13th rejecting interfaith dialogue with Jews. Imam Saeed is shown in the MEMRI video preaching against the backdrop of a black flag of international Muslim extremist group Hizb ut- Tahrir saying:
Interfaith dialogue is a “malignant idea,” and claimed that, “the people responsible for interfaith dialogue want to make all religions equal. [By doing so] they want to equate Truth with Falsehood. Between heresy and deception, between the religion of the Prophet Muhammad and man-made laws, legislated by these criminals in order to rule the world.”
Regarding Jews specifically, Saeed said that the Prophet Mohammad had Jewish neighbors in Medina, but instead of trying to call for reconciliation with them, “in the manner of…those who call to reconcile Truth with Falsehood,” he called them to accept Islam. And when they rejected his call to Islam, “he waged war against the Jews.”
Whether in Oslo, Copenhagen or in Washington, interfaith peace gatherings involving Muslims, Jews, Christians and others, should draw attention to murders of Jews, mass beheadings of Christians in Libya, burning of fellow Muslims in Syria and Iraq. Jews in Oslo who shout Allahu Akbar at such gatherings may be myopically hoping they share the same G-d. Maimonides told them early a millennium ago that Allah is not their G-D.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image was taken on Feb. 21, 2015 of more than 1,000 people forming a “ring of peace” around the Norwegian capital’s synagogue, an initiative taken by young Muslims in Norway after a series of attacks against Jews in Europe, in Oslo. (AP)
How to Win the Christian Baker/Same-Sex “Wedding” Cake Debate
A homosexual couple goes into a known Christian bakery and asks for a wedding cake for a same-sex “marriage,” is refused and then files a government complaint or sues. “Intolerance! Bigotry! Equal access!” is the cry. Many Americans have read of such stories in the news. Often the attempted purchase is a set-up, with activist-minded individuals targeting bakers whom they know will decline the request and then be vulnerable to state persecution by zealous bureaucrats.
It’s a new front in the war on faith, legitimate freedom and private property rights. Many point out that it constitutes an unprecedented trampling of religious liberty, and this is true. It also violates the principle of freedom of association, which isn’t explicitly mentioned in the Constitution but should be upheld. But neither of these arguments should be the centerpiece of the fight against the tyranny in question. There is another, far more powerful argument:
Freedom of speech.
Usually missed in the commentary on this subject is that the bakers in question are not refusing service to a type of people — they are refusing to be party to a type of message. This is not debatable. When you put writing on a same-sex “wedding” cake, you’re crafting a message; if you place figurines (of two men, for instance) on that cake, you’re erecting symbols relating that message. Note here that the Supreme Court has already ruled that “Symbolic Speech” — a legal term in U.S. law — is protected under the First Amendment; examples of such rulings would be that pertaining to flag-burning and the Tinker v. Des Moines case.
And can we compel people to participate in the creation of a message? Forced speech is not free speech.
Some homosexuality activists have likened the bakers’ refusal to provide faux-wedding cakes to a denial of service to blacks. This is a false analogy. A race-specific refusal is denying service based on what a person is; in the wedding-cake incidents, denial was based on what message was being requested.
In point of fact, none of the targeted bakers had erected signs stating “No shoes, no shirt, no heterosexuality, no service.” Nor did they apply a sexuality test to customers. Homosexuals could patronize their establishments and purchase cookies, bread or any products anyone else could; they could even buy wedding cakes for normal weddings — as anyone else could. And, of course, probability would dictate that homosexuals did buy from those bakers at times.
What actually is analogous to the wedding-cake controversy is a black person asking a baker for a cake expressing a racial message such as “Black Power” or “Fight the Blue-eyed Devils.” Of course, it could also be a white person with a white-power message or a neo-Nazi asking a Jewish baker to craft an anti-Semitic one.
Some may now assert that while a faux-marriage message is positive (in their eyes, anyway), the above messages would be hateful. But the nature of a message doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a message. To drive the point home, should a liberal baker be compelled to craft the message, “Celebrate Gun Rights,” “Life Begins at Conception” or “Marriage is One Man, One Woman”?
Here’s another point: It has often been emphasized that unless the First Amendment protects even unpopular speech, it’s “protection” is a sham. After all, popular speech’s popularity is protection enough. Likewise, however, it’s also true that if the right to refuse to participate in speech doesn’t include the right to refuse to participate in popular speech, it is no right at all.
Note here that many commentators have made the “Nazi and Jewish baker” and “white supremacist and black baker” arguments, but they often take a freedom-of-association approach. This gives the other side the opportunity to counter with, “But Nazis and white supremacists aren’t ‘protected groups’; homosexuals are” (I reject the notion of “protected groups,” but the principle currently exists in law, and this is about crafting airtight legal arguments). Emphasizing the speech aspect presents the opposition with no such avenue of attack.
Some may now claim that messages vs. people in the baker controversies is a distinction without a difference, asking “Who else but homosexuals would request a faux-wedding cake?” First, there are many heterosexuals advancing the homosexual agenda, and it’s conceivable that such a person could order such a cake, for symbolic value, to serve at an activist gathering. This is in the same way a white person (N.Y.C.’s mayor Bolshevik Bill comes to mind) could order a cake with a black-power message. Or, a heterosexual wedding planner could attempt to order a faux-wedding cake. None of this matters, though. That a message may be characteristic of a certain group doesn’t change the fact that it’s a message. And forced speech isn’t free speech.
In the baker controversy, the free-speech argument should be superior in the courts of both law and of public opinion. While we ought to enjoy completely unfettered freedom of association, Americans long ago became inured to its trampling, and the courts universally accept the “public accommodation” rationalization. So it’s currently a non-starter. The religious-freedom argument is more effective, but it has two weaknesses relative to the free-speech strategy. First, there are many more limitations placed on religious practice than on speech; examples would be the outlawing of human sacrifice and polygamy. Thus, there’s more of a precedent for further limitations on religious practice. In the area of speech, not much is out of bounds aside from “yelling ‘fire!’ in a movie theater” and issuing threats.
This difference is evident in the burden placed on a person whose religious practice has been outlawed. As the Harvard Political Review points out, the “‘Sherbert Test’ requires that an individual must prove sincere religious beliefs and substantial burden through government action. If these are established, the law is unconstitutional unless the government proves a ‘compelling state interest’….” No such burden is placed on those exercising unpopular speech, however, and the government cannot prohibit it based on “compelling state interest.”
The second issue is that in these secular times, many Americans aren’t sympathetic to religious-freedom arguments. But freedom of speech enjoys much broader support, and the fear of its violation is far greater. Remember, only the religious engage in religious practice — but both the religious and non-religious engage in speech.
Of course, it should lastly be mentioned that the argument I’ve outlined would be applicable not just to bakeries, but anytime a message-oriented product or service is at issue.
It’s hard to imagine a sane court (which, unfortunately, leaves out a good portion of today’s judiciary) not finding in favor of the free-speech argument. It is airtight, and rationalizing it away would take far more complex intellectual contortions than the freedom-of-religion argument would require. Because, quite simply, forced speech is not free speech.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
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Are Most Christians in Denial?
U.S. Christianity could be like the lukewarm church of Laodicea that had a materialistic focus. We can’t bring ourselves to see impending changes that take us out of our comfort zone. We don’t see end-times impending nor hear Christ’s words that could ready us. We are poorly prepared in spite of warnings.
When Christ said that the end of the ages referenced in Matthew 24:3 is “as the days of Noah” or “like a man traveling to a far country,” the question is, How much “as” or “like.”
Of course we don’t expect it to be exactly like Noah’s Flood, but there are clues “here a little; there a little” that suggest more likeness that we may be thinking—maybe we need to stretch our imaginations!
This article focuses on a key example, the Exodus. Why the Exodus? In Revelation 14:3,4 there are a group of people who sing a song that no one else can learn, probably because the song is about their experience and no one else will have their experience.
We see more details in Revelation 15:3, it’s “the song of Moses and…the Lamb.” Moses was the key figure in the greatest event in the Old Testament—the deliverance of a million+ slaves who survived a wilderness experience. Could we be in for such an experience? Maybe we should try to imagine how.
Supposing the economy falls apart like dozens of economists are predicting from the Obama administration policy of spending more and printing more money. With people needing to line up for hours to get basic supplies, moving out of the cities and into the country is the best way to ensure chances for survival says strategic relocation expert Joel Skousen who warns that population density is the greatest threat.
Can we imagine a parallel to Egypt when calamity fell and God took His people to the wilderness? They ate unleavened bread [like crackers] for seven days–we don’t know what they ate afterwards until they had quail and manna several weeks later.
The point is that Christians living in cities are poorly prepared to obey Christ if martial law is invoked in the face of calamity which the Bible shows is part of end-times. It’s not a matter of if, but when…
“When you see the abomination [that early believers understood was military, so they fled when they saw the Roman army and were spared the siege by Titus)…flee to the mountains.” Matthew 24:15,16.
We are seeing a “militarization of police” [Google, 825,000 results] that should trigger some interest in those who are serious about their faith and obedience to Christ. It is easier to anticipate the need to go rural and take steps for readiness than to wait and rationalize that “God will help me” or “Jesus will save me” when we didn’t take His warnings.
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EDITORS NOTE: Dr. Richard Ruhling is a physician whose primary interest in retirement is Bible prophecy. His eBook, Exodus 2 is available and his website offers further information.
Is Allah the worst communicator ever?
A tragic tale of a stuttering, stammering, feeble deity. Another superb video by the great David Wood of Answering Muslims.
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“Scottish woman” may have helped recruit 3 missing UK teen Muslimas for the Islamic State
Austin, Texas: Bomb threats against mosque turn out to have come from a Muslim
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Why Jews Vote Leftist?
Ben Shapiro takes a clear-eyed look at why American Jews vote for the anti-Israel Left.
Assyrian Christians Defending Their Homeland from Islamic State Genocide
In a “Crime Against Humanity” on January 8, 1914 a Jihad was declared by the Ottoman Empire against “all Christians”; it was a government ordered genocide against Greeks, Assyrian, and Armenian Christians, the genocide resulted in the brutal murders of over one million Christians over the next two years. For over the last 3 years, the world has been witnessing another “Crime Against Humanity”; today the same type Jihad that was perpetrated against Christians over 100 years ago by the Ottoman Turks, is being perpetrated by ISIL and Al Q’ieda in another bloody genocide against Syrian in Syria and against Assyrian Christians on the Plains of Ninveh in Iraq.
The Plain of Nineveh is the 2000+ year old ancient homeland of Aramaic speaking Assyrian Christians in what used to be Mesopotamia, but is called Iraq today. The Assyrian Christians pride themselves on being the oldest ethnic Christian community in continuous existence since Jesus Christ walked the face of the earth; they speak the same language Christ spoke, worship in churches the Christ’s Disciples founded, and since Roman times theses courageous Assyrian Christians have been persecuted and murdered for refusing to denounce their faith in Jesus Christ. The Pope called the Assyrian Church “The Martyr Church.” Hundreds of ancient Assyrian Christian Churches, some that go back as far as 1800 years are being burned to the ground, along with their ancient religious artifacts and historic bibles by ISIL and Al Q’ieda; the Tomb of Jonah has also been destroyed. For over 3 years particularly vulnerable Assyrian Christians have been fleeing their ancient ancestral homeland in the Nineveh Plain from the onslaught of ISIL and Al Q’ieda, seeking protection from the Kurdish Pershmerga Forces from the bloody genocide that has been underway for many years, as have thousands of peaceful Muslims who refuse to support the Jihad of Christians by Radical Islamic Terrorists.
For over 3 years the international media has reported that ISIL and Al Q’ieda has been insisting on mass conversion to Islam or death; hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Assyrian Christians, are being horrifically targeted for religious cleansing by Radical Islamic Terrorists. The terrorists are brutally torturing, crucifying, beheading, burying Christians alive, shooting them execution style, dowsing them in oil and burning them alive, cutting the young Assyrian Christian children in half, raping & murdering female children and women, conducting mass executions, and selling some of the Assyrian Christian women into white slavery (there are hundreds of photos of those atrocities on the worldwide net). The Greek Catholic Relief Agency has reported that 300,000 Syrian and Assyrian Christians refugees have been seeking resettlement in the US thru the UN Muslim Resettlement Program, but they have been rejected by the UN and by the Obama administration.
Leaders of the International Community have been raising their voices in opposition to the current “Crime Against Humanity.” The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Royal Family in England, the UK Prime Minister, the King of Jordan, the President of Egypt, the President of Kurdistan, the Prime Minister of Japan, the Prime Minister of Australian, President George W. Bush, Reverend Billy Graham, the Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Prime Ministers of NATO nations, the Prime Minister of Israel, Christian Religious Leaders of every denomination from throughout the world, and the Secretary General of the United Nations have all raised their voices in unison to demand that the bloody genocide of Christians in Syria and Iraq stop. The occupant of the Oval Office has not joined world leaders in their condemnation of the genocide of Christians by ISIL & Al Q’ieda in this latest “Crime Against Humanity”: Obama refuses to utter one word of condemnation, nor has he called on the Radical Islamic Terrorists to stop the bloody genocide of defenseless Christians—his silence for the last 3 years has been deafening. However, Obama did refer to Christians in a recent prayer breakfast, the same way Radical Islamic Terrorists refer to Christians, as “Crusaders.”
Less than 400,000 Assyrian Christians survivors of the 4,065,000 Assyrian Christians who once populated 70 Urmia villages in the Nineveh Plain remain in Iraq; many Assyrian Christians have fled the country and are among the 300,000 Christian refugees seeking entry into the US as refugees. For over 3 years, the 400,000 Assyrian Christians have been desperately seeking military weapons and logistic support from the Obama administration and the Iraqi government. Very little of the US military and logistic support, that is being sent to Iraq by the US, has been funneled by the Iranian controlled Iraq government to the Kurdish Pershmerga Forces.
For the last 3 years, the Iranian controlled Iraqi government has rejected distribution of any weapons and logistic support to the Assyrian Christians to save them from ethnic cleansing, or to the Sunni tribes who once allied themselves with US military forces in support of the “Surge” during the Iraqi War. The friendly Sunni tribes have been persecuted by the Iranian controlled Iraqi Shite Government ever since friendly US military forces were summarily pulled out of Iraq by Obama. US Forces were completely pulled out of Iraq at the end of the Iraqi War, despite warnings from US military general officers and US senior intelligence officials, who warned that removing a residual US military force would destabilize Iraq, and allow Al Q’ieda to grow once again. Future US military and logistic support from the US must to delivered directly to the Kurdish Pershmerga Forces, Assyrian Christians, and friendly Sunni tribes who once allied themselves with the US military during the “Surge.”
The Assyrian Christians in Iraq who make up the Assyrian Iraqi Democratic Movement (AIDM) have sought and obtained support from US Assyrian communities. The American Mesopotamian Organization (AMO) and other Assyrian organizations in the US; have jointly developed a project entitled “Restore Nineveh Now” with AIDM AMO is soliciting and collecting donated funds to equip and train 4000 Assyrian Christians volunteers in an newly developed Assyrian Militia, called “The Nineveh Plain Protection Units.” Currently 600 volunteers are being trained to lead and mobilize “The Nineveh Plain Protection Units” in two locations in eastern Iraq. The Nineveh Plain Protection Units will defend their fellow Assyrian Christians from being massacred in ISIL’s and Al Q’ieda’s Jihad (the below listed article provides specific details on the training that is underway).
The Combat Veterans For Congress support a coalition of 55 US Congressmen who have asked Obama to take immediate action to provide weapons and logistic support directly to the Assyrian Christian’s Nineveh Plains Protection Units and, after 3 years, to finally speak out against the bloody genocide being perpetrated by Radical Islamic Terrorists designed to annihilate the Ancient Faith Community of Assyrian Christians on the Plains of Ninveh. Kindly click on the below listed link to watch a video of a Congressional spokesman for the 55 US Congressmen that was provided to us by Foster Friess.
Watch this 3:45 minute video from U.S. Representative Trent Franks:
‘We Love This Land’: Iraqi Christian Men Fight to Keep ISIS Away From Homes
A battalion of Assyrian Christian men train at a former U.S. military facility outside the city of Kirkuk, Iraq. (Photo courtesy: Kaldo Oghanna)
Athra Kado had never shot a gun before, let alone seen a battlefield.
Until recently Kado, 25, spent his young career in a classroom, teaching high school students how to speak Syriac, his native language.
But Kado is one of hundreds of Assyrian Christian men—many with no military experience—taking up arms to protect their towns from ISIS terrorists who invaded this part of Iraq early last year.
“If we don’t have land to live, what’s the purpose of teaching a language?” Kado tells The Daily Signal in a Skype interview from a former U.S. military facility outside the city of Kirkuk, where he is finishing up a training camp with 500 or so amateur fighters.
Recruits to the new Christian militia, or battalion, say their villages and families were abandoned by Iraqi government and peshmerga forces last summer, letting the terrorists seize control.
Since then, some 30,000 Christians have fled the Nineveh plains—an area inhabited by minority groups such as Iraqi Christians, Yezidis and Shabaks.
Without official government support, and with minimal equipment primarily funded through donations, the young Christian men—most in their early to mid 20s—feel a responsibility to defend their own.
“We saw that nobody was doing anything for us,” says Kado, whose home town, Al Qosh, is the only Christian town in the Nineveh plains free of ISIS control. “We know that we don’t have another chance if we don’t fight for ourselves. No one is protecting us. We want to make a change.”
Last summer, Iraq’s most prominent Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic Movement, issued a call for volunteers from minority groups to form a local defense force to fight ISIS, the Sunni militant group also known the Islamic State or ISIL.
In late January, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s peshmerga—a leading force fighting ISIS that receives American support—offered up the Kirkuk training facility as the grounds for the Assyrian Christian battalion to learn military might.
“This is our right as human beings and as indigenous people: to protect our people and ourselves,” says Kaldo Oghanna, a party official from the Assyrian Democratic Movement who oversaw the training. “It is not logical for people south of north [of here] to secure this area.”
”This is our right as human beings and as indigenous people: to protect our people and ourselves,” says @KaldoRamzi.
Kado, the young fighter, said at least four Americans—volunteers with military experience—are helping train the men to use weapons such as automatic rifles, mortars, machine guns, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.
Fighters acquire skills fast, because they have to. They train from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day.
“When someone wants badly to do something, everything is easy for him,” Kado says.
“Me and my friends are getting this information so fast. We want to do that. We will go to our villages and towns and protect them so ISIS can’t come to our families.”
The training wraps up Thursday, when the civilian fighters are expected to be able to defend their turf.
“I know I am ready,” Kado says.
Some 500 amateur Assyrian Christian fighters learn how to be a disciplined fighting force. (Photo courtesy: Kaldo Oghanna)
Help Wanted
Oghanna says the training of Iraqi Christian fighters has occurred without financial support from the Iraqi, Kurdish or U.S. governments.
Donations, mostly from Assyrians abroad, fund everything from guns to bullets to food.
He hopes the United States steps forward—help that may be on the way.
The U.S. National Defense Authorization Act, approved in December, includes language to train and equip fighters against the Islamic State.
As part of the legislation, up to $1.6 billion should go toward support for units such as the Iraqi Army, Sunni tribal fighters, peshmerga and local forces protecting “vulnerable” minority groups in the Nineveh plains.
“The U.S. supports many groups [fighters], especially in Syria, where many of them convert to join ISIS,” Oghanna says. “We know it’s complex [to decide who to support], but we are for sure not going to convert to ISIS.”
‘My Land’
The Assyrian Christians, who consider themselves the indigenous people of Iraq, want to survive on their terms.
For Kado and the battalion fighters, that means staying in their villages, no matter that ISIS militants want to wipe Christianity out of Iraq.
Oghanna says there are currently less than 400,000 Christians living in Iraq, down from about 1.6 million in 2003. Most have fled.
Kado will not. His family’s roots in Al Qosh date back 400 years.
More than 400 families from other Christian villages have come to Al Qosh to seek shelter. So Kado stays.
“We don’t want to be refugees in another country,” Kado says.
Adds Oghanna, “It would be bitter for us to migrate to Europe and the U.S.”
Kado has great respect for America.
He listens to American music, and he learned English through the songs and lyrics of Whitney Houston.
Two of his brothers live in Detroit.
“I want to vacation in the U.S.,” Kado says, smiling sheepishly, listing Las Vegas as a spot he hopes to visit. “But I want to stay and live here.”
Kado is risking everything to stay—to be the guardian of his religion, his land.
“I have thought about dying,” Kado says. “But the most important thing I’ve learned in the camp is discipline. It’s not just Christianity. If it was just Christianity, I could be Christian in Europe. It’s a matter of … this is our land. We want to live on it. We love this land.”
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a battalion of Assyrian Christian men training at a former U.S. military facility outside the city of Kirkuk, Iraq. (Photo courtesy: Kaldo Oghanna)
Let’s review the summit on countering violent extremism: America, we’re screwed. [VIDEO]
If President Obama could hit the “reset button,” I think he’d rewind this week and try to get a mulligan – but then again, I could be totally wrong. If I am completely wrong, then our policy towards degrading, defeating, and destroying ISIS is non-existent.
In simple terms, America, we’re screwed.
And just so everyone out there understands, there were things the Bush administration stated regarding combating this Islamic terrorist enemy with which I did not agree. However, President George W. Bush showed resolve when all seemed against him, and we did indeed defeat al-Qaida in Iraq. A fragile stability was handed over to President Obama, who then felt a campaign promise was more vital than reality on the ground. No one can debate this simple fact: a vacuum was left in Iraq. That which was defeated has reconstituted — and we have no plan to re-defeat. Speeches and rhetoric, yes, but no vision.
Consider this last week if you will. ISIS beheads twenty-one Egyptian Coptic Christian men and sends a definitive threat towards “Rome.” There are reports of forty-five people burned alive in the town of al-Baghdadi, located just five miles away from 300 Marines at al-Asad Base. And what has been our response in this week?
We need to attend to the “grievances” of the Islamic terrorists. We need to provide jobs and opportunities for the Islamic terrorists. Do I need to remind you State Department spokesperson Marie Harf’s inane comments?
What has been the prevailing theme from President Obama and his administration? We have Islamic terrorists — of course they’re not defined as Islamic — because it is OUR fault. We haven’t done enough for THEM. I guess the mantra emanating from the progressive socialist left is exactly what Hillary Clinton stated: we need to empathize with our enemy.
Here are some highlights – or should I say low-lights – from our apologist-in-chief this week.
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland and the Forty Thieves
Lent is a 40 day season during which Christians prepare for Easter by fasting, repentance, moderation and spiritual discipline. The purpose is to set aside time for reflection on Jesus Christ, His suffering, sacrifice, life, death, burial and resurrection.
The connection between the Jewish Passover and Easter is well known but Rabbi Evan Moffic argues persuasively that the preparatory period of Lent derived from the ancient Jewish tradition of Passover preparation. He goes on to identify the 40 days of Lent with the 40 years of Wilderness wanderings.
Biblical Judaism provides the foundation for Christianity, it was the religion of Jesus.
Lent is the season during which we reflect on the mystery of the Glory of Israel, Jesus Christ, Who was made a Light for the Gentiles. We should remember that we Gentiles have no natural claim on Him, that He was and is the Glory of His people, Israel, and that He is our Saviour by grace. In gratitude for such a gift we should pray for the good of Israel and for the people whom Jesus called ‘my brethren’, the Jews. It was for them that He shed bitter tears when He last beheld Jerusalem and it is for their redemption that He will appear a second time.
Lent is supposed to be a beautiful time, a time of elevation.
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, a group seeking to work for unity in the Church, have prepared a Lent programme in which they invite people to focus, not on Jesus Christ, but to “walk and pray with the Christians of the Middle East.” The pity of it is that they haven’t been able to do this without misrepresenting the Jews of Israel in the process. It turns out to be just another opportunity to abuse the only country in the region in which Christians are safe as the programme devotes an entire 33% of its space on unsubstantiated accusations and innuendo directed against the Jews.
The plight of thousands of Christians in the Middle East is harrowing but the political bias within this program overshadows its object.
A few exerpts should illustrate this clearly. “The promise given to Abraham and Sarah is of a secured future where they will not be alone.” This is incorrect, the promise was that he would become a blessing to the entire world, not that he “will not be alone.” But this is stated in order to prepare us for what is to follow, namely, that the land belongs to Palestinian Arabs as well as to Jews and they will be forced to live together regardless of the fact that 80% of those Arabs think that murdering Jews is good.
The underlying message becomes clearer with this quote from Riah Abu El-Assal, the former Bishop of Jerusalem. “As a Christian I look to the Old and New Testaments for the origins of my faith. Muslim and Christian Arabs look on themselves as heirs to the original covenant through Abraham’s first born son, Ishmael…..for both Jews and Christians, the Bible is not only our spiritual guide, but a record of our history and proof of our roots in the land. We have always lived side by side….Is there really no room for me here?”
His reading of the Old Testament should have informed the Bishop that the covenant to which he referred was between God and Abraham, passed on to Isaac, not Ishmael. The Arabs have no part in this covenant, this is a Jewish covenant and includes possession of the land. Ishmael was indeed promised blessings and they consisted of the assurance that he would be “multiplied exceedingly” (fulfilled by a population nearly 50 times larger than that of the Jews of Israel) but, some years later, God Himself instructed Abraham to send Ishmael and his mother out of the land. If the Bishop wants to validate his claim on the Land of Israel then he must look elsewhere than the Old Testament. I suggest A Thousand and One Nights or Ali Baba.
The article says, “….holy sites….can be a cause of tension between religious communities…” The writers don’t inform us what holy sites they are referring to and we are left with the impression that all sides in the matter are equally to blame. But the facts are brutal. The Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs in Hebron, Judaism’s 2nd holiest site, has been desecrated by Muslim ‘worshippers.’ Likewise, Joseph’s Tomb. A Jew may not even pray on his holiest site, The Temple Mount, whilst the Arabs use unauthorised bulldozers in an effort to expunge any evidence of the two Jewish Temples.
And there is the slur against the Israeli Government, “…hidden…from foreign tourists….are pockets of significant poverty and exclusion….” The contemptible implication is, of course, that this is the Israeli Government’s fault, and, not only that, but this shameful situation is “hidden” from visitors. We are then perniciously informed that the victimised Palestinians have “higher rates of infant mortality compared to Jewish citizens.” The impression given is that it is the Jews’ oppression of the Palestinians that is the cause of their children dying. But the reality is quite contrary, for instance, the doors of Jewish Hospitals are open to provide free state-of-the-art medical treatment for Arabs and Israel is well-known for its worldwide emergency aid.
In the Middle East imagined by CTBI, the Arabs and Christians are placed together as fellow sufferers at the hands of the Jews. But we have every reason to believe that, without the presence of the Jews of Israel, the Church would cease to exist in the land. After all, it is being eliminated throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, in imitation of Mohammed. Only in Israel are Christians happy and safe, only there is the Church growing.
The writers say: “In the context of the present conflict in the Middle East, many are perplexed as to how to interpret the promise to the land.” This appears to be telling us that “many are perplexed” because the claim of the Arabs on Jewish land continues to rise in decibels. As though the louder they shout and the more innocent blood that they shed, the more credibility it gives to their claim. But they shout and kill precisely because they have no legal or moral right to the land. The Arab Muslims justify all their land-theft by their holy book and the example of Mohammed but Arab Christians are even worse because they re-write the very Scriptures that they claim to believe inspired. It has become evident that Arab hatred for Jews is capable of surviving conversion and we in the West are being manipulated by CTBI to sympathise with it.
The programme says: “The Christians of Palestine, who live under occupation…” Again, the picture is of an innocent victim crushed under the boot of an occupier. But the Jews have long desired to leave the so-called West Bank and allow the Arabs to rule themselves, however, the moment they turn their backs, rockets begin landing on their schools and hospitals. If there is any form of occupation at all then it is forced upon the Jews because of the intransigence and wickedness of the Arabs.
“…the Christians of Palestine whose origins can be traced back to the time of Christ.” This statement is utter nonsense and is made for the single reason of fortifying the Arabs claim on Jewish land. To begin with, there were no Palestinians in the time of Christ because there was no Palestine, the country was called Galilee and Judea. Furthermore, the 1st cent. Church was composed of Jewish believers, not an Arab in sight. In those days the forefathers of today’s Palestinians were marauding tribes scattered over the deserts of Arabia.
One is tempted to applaud the effort of CTBI to awaken the conscience of the Western Church regarding their suffering brethren elsewhere but Lent is not the season in which to do it and the Jews should not be scapegoated to enhance the message. If the Jews have made a remarkable success of their country in a mere 67 years and fought off every spurious claim on their Promised and hard-won land then they deserve our admiration not our censure, our praise, not blame.
This hopelessly biased view of reality finally reaches its goal with the claim that all the difficulties of life for the Palestinian Christian derive from “occupation, checkpoints, land seizures and sometimes even the denial of the most basic human rights.” The image of the grasping Jew comes once more into view and, far from helping the Western Christian to sympathise with his brethren in the Middle East, it will rather make him despise the Jew.
And all this during Lent, the season leading up to the remembrance of the crucifixion! The irony should not go unnoticed.
The Fallacy of the Innocent Muslim
There is no nice or politically correct way to write this article without offending Muslims, the media, liberals, Allah’s Muslim Terrorist, people who skim the article instead of reading it completely line by line, or our Sunni Muslim President Obama.
To put it as polite as humanly possible there are no innocent Muslims. Continue reading before you judge. Many readers are saying to themselves that they know good Muslims they work with, have as neighbors, or have met
at school. If they are indeed good people then they are not Pure Muslims.
Islam does not allow anyone to be a good person. Meaning, if you follow Islam as the Prophet Mohammed intended, you must have in your heart everything he demanded and represented. You must adhere to ALL aspects of Sharia law, good or bad. If a Muslim decides he/she does not want war with non believers, or does not want to educate his/her children that a Muslim must endorse physical Jihad against oppressors, Christians, or Jews, then this person is doing a good deed, but has become an apostate of Islam as mandated by the Islamic ideology. These are some of the good people Obama and the media (including FOX) falsely describe as innocent Muslims. Again they may be good people but they have turned their backs on the Islamic faith.
The people who are practicing Islam and are the type people Mohammed wanted describes as a good Muslim are the members of Allah’s Muslim terrorists such as, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and other acronyms. They are following Islam and Sharia exactly as Mohammed and the Quran demands.
Many people are led to believe the people who attend one of the 2300 mosques in America are for the most part innocent Muslims. This is false. I have been to hundreds of mosques. The people in the mosque are being taught from the same material as ISIS. Year after year they continue to attend the mosque that advocates violence and the hatred of non believers. These people are not innocent Muslims. These are people who desire to live their lives as the violent child rapist Mohammed. No easier way to put it. Just as Obama attended Jerimiah Wright’s church for 20 years, that on a regular basis preached the hatred for America, Obama is no more innocent than Wright is. The people who attend Wright’s church on a regular basis are not innocent Christians or Americans. These people are supporters of hate.
People need to compare Nazi’s to Pure Muslims. If a German citizen or others who followed to the letter Hitler’s ideology, they are not innocent Nazi’s. They are 100% Nazi. No in between. they are followers of a violent and dangerous ideology. The same is for people who practice Islam or are supporters of the Islamic ideology.
The son (Franklin) of Billy Graham tells it straight to the liberal conservatives of Fox News. There is no such thing as radical Islam. It is Islam pure and simple and should be referred to as Islamic terrorism and not radical terrorism.
The ONLY way to defeat Islamic terrorism is to defeat and demonize the ideology of Islam itself. Ponder that,my friends.
Living and Dying by the Sword of Jihad by Raymond Ibrahim
[PJ Media via RaymondIbrahim.com]
In a move reminiscent of “ancient history,” Saudi Arabia is building a 600-mile-long “Great Wall”—a combined fence and ditch—to separate itself from the Islamic State to the north in Iraq:
Plans for the 600-mile wall and ditch Saudi Arabia will build with Iraq in an effort to insulate itself from the chaos engulfing its neighbors.
Much of the area on the Iraqi side is now controlled by Isil [the Islamic State], which regards the ultimate capture of Saudi Arabia, home to the “Two Holy Mosques” of Mecca and Medina, as a key goal….
The irony here is that those Muslims that Saudi Arabia is trying to keep out are the very same Muslims most nurtured and influenced by a Saudi — or “Wahabbi,” or “Salafi” — worldview.
Put differently, Saudi Arabia is again appreciating how jihad is a volatile instrument of war that can easily backfire on those who support it. “Holy war” is hardly limited to fighting and subjugating “infidels” — whether the West in general, Israel in particular, or the millions of non-Muslim minorities under Islam — but also justifies fighting “apostates,” that is, Muslims accused of not being Islamic enough.
Indeed, the first grand jihad was against Muslim “apostates” — the Ridda [“apostasy”] Wars. After Muhammad died in 632, many Arab tribes were willing to remain Muslim but without paying zakat (“charity” or extortion) money to the first caliph, Abu Bakr. That was enough to declare jihad on them as apostates; tens of thousands of Arabs were burned, beheaded, dismembered, or crucified, according to Islamic history.
Accordingly, the Islamic State justifies burning people alive, such as the Jordanian pilot, precisely because the first caliph and his Muslim lieutenants burned apostates alive, and is even on record saying that “false Muslims” are its first target, then Israel.
This is the problem all Muslim nations and rulers risk: no one — not even Sharia-advocating Islamist leaders — are immune to the all-accusing sword tip of the jihad. If non-Muslims are, as “infidels,” de facto enemies, any Muslim can be accused of “apostasy,” instantly becoming an enemy of Allah and his prophet.
A saying attributed to the Muslim prophet Muhammad validates this perspective: “This umma [Islamic nation] of mine will split into seventy-three sects; one will be in paradise and seventy-two will be in hell.” When asked which sect was the true one, the prophet replied, “al–jama‘a,” that is, the group which most literally follows the example or “sunna” of Muhammad.
This saying perfectly sums up the history of Islam: to be deemed legitimate, authorities must uphold the teachings of Islam — including jihad; but it is never long before another claimant accuses existing leadership of not being “Islamic enough.”
Enter the Saudi/Islamic State relationship. From the start, the Arabian kingdom has been a supporter of the Islamic State. It was not long, however, before IS made clear that Saudi Arabia was one of its primary targets, calling on its allies and supporters in the kingdom to kill and drive out the Saud tribe.
Nor is this the first time the Saudis see those whom they nurtured — ideologically and logistically — turn on them… Keep reading
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Jihad attacks in Denmark: Dateline Paris
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was on official business in Morocco when informed of the jihad attack against a free speech meeting in Copenhagen. He immediately flew to Denmark where he joined his personal friend François Zimeray, French ambassador to Denmark. Zimeray, who attended the “Art, Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech” event at the Krudttønden Café organized in reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, put it succinctly: “I went to the meeting by bicycle and left in an armored car.”
All- news channels BFM TV and I Télé went into Special Edition, reporting on the attack non-stop from Saturday afternoon to Sunday night, and then some. Frequent zaps to other available stations—CNN, SkyNews, BBC, France24—yielded low to negligible interest in the story…aside from the BBC recording of Inna Shevchenko’s speech. The Ukrainian Femen, commenting on the current state of press freedom in the West, asked “Why do we say we have freedom of speech, but…?” As she repeated for emphasis the “freedom but” her words were brutally punctuated by the sharp crackle of gunfire.
French-Danish solidarity goes back to Charlie Hebdo’s publication of the original Jyllands Posten Mohammed cartoons in 2005. Few imagined, even one month ago, that this solidarity would turn into a ping pong of posters, bouquets, and memorial candles. We suspect the ceremonies will eventually wear thin from repetition. But, unless you followed the story on French media, you wouldn’t know the extent of this fraternity: vigils and presidential visits at the Danish embassy in Paris, the Paris mayor in Copenhagen, the Chief Rabbi of France, the president of the CRIF, leaders of political parties, special correspondents here and there, countless media debates …
When the story broke Saturday afternoon (Valentine’s Day no less!) the gunman was already on the run, one man– misreported as a passerby—was dead and two policemen were wounded. Tight-lipped Danish authorities gave the media little to chew on. The hunger for images had to be satisfied with the café’s plate glass window pocked with bullet holes.
We, the gawkers, knew that the assailant had not been able to get inside. The suspense came later in a sort of playback when participants told how it felt in real time. They thought they were going to die. The gunman and the potential victims—there were 30 to 40 people in the room– were following the same Charlie Hebdo scenario. “Copycat,” surmised a few French commentators, proudly sporting the trendy English term. No, mes amis, it’s something worse than copycat.
And the something, this time, was immediately identified as jihad. Yes, the linguistic tricks are still fluttering like coquettish fans — Islamism, radical Islam, hijacked Islam—but there is no taboo against “jihadi” or “jihadist.” And there was no beating around the bush on BFM TV and I Télé last weekend. Journalists and invited commentators recognized another three-pronged attack against liberty, law enforcement, and Jews…by a jihadi.
Suddenly, there he was, the killer, described by police as looking “North African,” wearing dark clothes and a stylish bordeau ski mask, captured by CCTV in all his punknificence. A bit of a surprise for us here in France, where authorities are notoriously skittish about letting the public know who is out there armed to kill. This led to tragic consequences in the case of Ilan Halimi (see the Alexandre Arcady film 24 Days, available in DVD). The police withheld the identikit image of one of the young women who had been trolling for Jews to kidnap. Ilan was already dead when they finally released it, immediately leading to the arrest of Fofana and his accomplices.
Some of the more knowledgeable anchors were absent when the Copenhagen story broke at the start of a two-week winter break. Was Agence France Presse slow in processing information from Danish sources? For this and other newscast reasons, journalists weren’t reading heat & serve press releases. There was a lot of improvisation and, consequently, less double talk and more wide-eyed ignorance. It reminded me of earnest five year-olds discussing serious issues with a mixture of childish honesty and an immature world view.
But the story was big, bigger in France than anywhere else but Denmark itself. As the hours went by, commentators streamed in and out of TV studios. The usual Islam-apologists were not among them. Are their words no longer comforting or convincing? No imams to tell us this brutal act has nothing to do with Islam. A simple consensus emerged: the jihadis are at war with us, they want to destroy our society, deprive us of our liberty, make our lives desperately miserable… And we aren’t going to let them get away with it. We won’t go overboard like the Americans—the Patriot Act is poison to French ears—but we have to change our strategy and face this challenge squarely. We are at war, this war is global, and our response has to be global–increased security cooperation with our European neighbors, the United States and, for example, Turkey. Granted, no one had the courage to mention Israel as a light unto the nations when it comes to fighting enemies within, without, and all about. But secretly they know it’s true.
I went off screen Saturday night wondering why the policemen assigned to guard that obviously sensitive meeting were wounded, while the gunman was able to shoot up the façade, jump into his car, and ride off to an unknown destination. Why didn’t they shoot him? For wont of that notorious American police “brutality” a dangerous killer was on the loose. Isn’t this a big part of the European problem? The late Charb had bodyguards, Lars Vilks, prime target at the Copenhagen event, has one or several bodyguards, but they seem to be guarding against bows and arrows, not assault weapons, not jihadis.
First thing Sunday morning I switched on the TV to see if they had found him. Yes. He was already dead. But not before he had killed a Jew. Mission accomplie. 37 year-old Don Uzan was on duty, protecting a bat mitzvah party in the annex to the synagogue. Two policemen were slightly wounded, the Jewish man was killed, and the gunman was on the loose again until dawn when, in a now familiar confrontation with SWAT-type forces, he was shot dead.
Was it foolhardy to go ahead with a bat mitzvah party when a jihad killer was on the loose? Then again, isn’t that what we do? Live our lives. Go to our places. Show our faces. Charlie Hebdo brought out an issue two weeks after most of the staff had been brutally gunned down. The Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes is closed and deathly silent but Jews go to kosher delis, kosher restaurants, kosher synagogues. Policemen and policewomen direct traffic, answer domestic violence calls, arrest drug dealers. Dozens of jihadis have been detained this month in France.
A few days later the parents of the bat mitzvah girl, interviewed by the Algemeiner, say they felt safe under the protection of the late Dan Uzan. The rabbi wonders how the killer got through when the whole city was under police control. An unverifiable report claims the killer, now officially identified as Omar Hamid el-Hussein, got through the first line of police protection by pretending to be a drunken guest at the party, and reached the inner courtyard where he shot Uzan in the head.
If you remember, one of the Kouachi brothers left his ID card in the getaway car they abandoned shortly after killing 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo offices. Well, our Danish specimen abandoned his (stolen) getaway car and called a taxi! I repeat, he had just killed one man, wounded two policemen, shot up a café in an attempt to massacre a free speech meeting, and he calls a taxi and has the taxi drop him off at the door of a safe house…or maybe it was his home address. Add this to the profile of the soft-cheeked jihad killer of the Western world and you’ve earned your degree in criminology.
The taxi driver recognized Omar from the CCTV photo and notified the police but he was gone by the time they got there. Where did he spend the next five or six hours before executing a Jew? At the movies?
Documentary film maker Finn Noergaard–the man killed at the free speech event—had posted on Facebook last month the photo of a victim carried out on a stretcher from the Charlie Hebdo offices, with a comment on the horror of being killed for expressing oneself. Why was Noergaard in the line of fire when everyone else was behind closed doors? Had he arrived late for the meeting…stepped out of the room for a minute? What sealed his fate?
Special Editions on the second day focused on anti-Semitism without forgetting blasphemy. No journalist, no commentator, no invited guest, no public official underplayed or cast doubt on the Jew hatred that motivated the second attack. CRIF president Roger Cukierman took a slap at President Obama for tossing off the victims of the Hyper Cacher massacre as random targets.
It took fifteen years, but the lesson has been learned: anti-Semitism doesn’t only endanger Jews, it destroys a nation. Now there is a desperate last ditch effort to convince French Jews to stay. Sometimes it takes the form of perverse disdain for the Israeli prime minister’s outstretched hand. Repeating the welcome extended after last month’s jihad attacks in Paris, Netanyahu told European Jews that Israel is our home. And the invitation is still making waves and provoking pretzel dialogues. Jews in France and now in Copenhagen are asked if it was right for the PM to tell them to leave. Should European Jews move to Israel, will they really be better off, isn’t it more dangerous there, can they adapt to a “foreign” country …? Most often the sample Jew dragged into one of these baroque interrogations replies that one should make Aliyah for positive reasons… Jews shouldn’t flee in fear.
If you ask me, this is no time to judge whether Jews should stay and tough it out, leave on a spiritual cloud, or run for their lives! And what about European non-Jews? Where will they go if this relentless attack on our lives and liberty continues unabated?
One thing is sure. For all the talk about backlash against Muslims we haven’t seen them fleeing Europe to enjoy a better life in a country that beckons them to come home.
Round about midnight that Sunday, BFM editorialist Christophe Hondelatte is getting down with Frédéric Encel. The political scientist explains that the Mohamed caricatures are a pretext. Hondelatte: So… even if we stopped doing them, it wouldn’t change anything? FE: Right. Encel sketches out the nature and scope of this murderous hatred aimed at us no matter what we do. Hondelatte follows the logic: an army could rise against us in the banlieue? FE: Right … so… Suddenly the light dims. The moment of truth falls into the sociological trap, something about how we better start doing what’s necessary to make them feel wanted, give them the chance to succeed…
Like they do in Denmark, my friends? Reporters visiting the tidy housing project where Omar el-Hussein reportedly lived off and on with his Jordanian Palestinian father, encounter like-minded buddies who say he was a great guy. His stint in prison for savagely stabbing a young man on an urban train obviously doesn’t faze them. Fellow students in adult education classes noted his passionate defense of the Palestinian cause. And, of course, it is generally admitted that he was “radicalized” in prison. Did he have to go that far to find fuel to stoke his rage?
The inimitable, invaluable MEMRI brings us a video of a sermon delivered in a Copenhagen mosque on the eve of Omar Hamid el-Hussein’s jihad performance. The message is implacable: shun the Christians, kill the Jews, keep to yourselves and your Muslim ways– the whole world must submit to the will of Allah.
How ironical it is to even think of accepting the myth of exquisite religious sensitivity that moves Muslims to kill when their prophet is not respected and should consequently move us to at least partially accommodate them on the grounds of “respect for religion.” These exquisitely sensitive Muslims, after they kill free speechers and shoot at police, kill Jews.
Monday morning, Prime Minister Valls named the enemy as Islamofascism.
The debate ebbs and flows. At its worst it paddles in the shallow waters of socio-economic determinism. Underprivileged youths suffering from unemployment and racism stumble into crime and then, misguidedly seeking elevation, grab at undigested Islamism to give meaning to their lives. What do they know about the noble religion of Islam that has nothing to do with their sleazy lives and abject crimes?
What does the foot soldier know about military strategy? Did he graduate from St. Cyr?
Denmark is–or was?– something of a model in the business of de-radicalization. According to the Daily Mail the approach includes, “dialogue with a mosque regarded as a hotbed of extremism, after authorities found 22 of the young radicals who went to Syria had worshipped there. But those who return are not expected to renounce their support for radical Islamic goals.”
Hundreds of bouquets in front of the Krudttønden café, hundreds at the synagogue, and more than enough at the spot where el-Hussein died. Le Figaro reports, citing Agence France Presse, that one bouquet was offered by an elderly Danish woman who said the boy didn’t realize what he was doing. But the accompanying video shows immigrant youths paying floral tribute to the Copenhagen shahid. Another layer of meaning is added after nightfall. A dozen guardians of the faith toss the bouquets in the garbage because it’s against Islam to lay flowers where someone died. One of the brothers declares, “He wasn’t a terrorist. The terrorists are Denmark, the United States, Israel.” And they march off with a defiant allahu akhbar.
Radicalized? Moderate? Or simple garden variety Danish youths?
RELATED ARTICLE: Just Who Has to Adjust in the Name of Tolerance? by Phyllis Chesler
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.
The Black Reagan
On February 15, 2013, I published a column titled “The Black Reagan,” in which I compared Dr. Benjamin Carson, former Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, in Baltimore, to Ronald Reagan, the most beloved president of the 20th century. Now, as we approach the 2016 presidential campaign, we find Dr. Carson launching his political career in much the same way that Reagan did on October 27, 1964. It was on that day that Reagan made a speech on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater that few conservatives, or liberals, will ever forget.
Dr. Carson’s February 7, 2013, speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, will also be remembered as a historical turning point. To put it bluntly, with Barack Obama seated within spitting distance, Dr. Carson proceeded to take Obama and all of his liberal friends out behind the woodshed for a long-overdue public ass-kicking.
Dr. Carson, is a black man who typifies exactly what any young man or woman… regardless of race, creed, or color… can achieve in the United States with a little bit of non-Benjamin Spock parenting, some good study habits, a solid work ethic, and some intelligent life choices. In fact, Dr. Carson is the exact polar opposite of the long-oppressed plantation slaves that liberals and Democrats want black men to be because the very existence of the Democratic Party depends on the continued belief among black Americans that they are the victims of white racism.
Dr. Carson is the product of a single parent home in Detroit. His mother, who dropped out of school in third grade and who married at age 13, worked two or three jobs in order to make ends meet. Yet, as her two sons were growing up, she was wise enough to limit the amount of time they spent watching TV each day. Instead, she required them to read two library books each week. And although she, herself, was unable to read, she required her sons to write book reports on each of the books they’d read.
After earning an undergraduate degree in psychology from Yale University, Carson attended the University of Michigan School of Medicine. Following med school he served his residency in neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, where he eventually became Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery. Finally, having proven himself to be the ideal role model for black children… far beyond what liberals and Democrats would ever expect or want a black man to achieve… he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush on June 19, 2008.
In his 1964 speech, Reagan reminded us that the Democrats were attempting to convince the people that the primary issues of that election were the “maintenance of peace and prosperity,” and that “we’ve never had it so good.” In response, Reagan said, “But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income.” He continued, “Today, 37 cents of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector’s share, and yet our government continues to spend $17 million a day more than we take in. We haven’t balanced our budget in 28 out of the last 34 years. We have raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times greater than the combined debt of all other nations in the world.” Multiply those 1964 statistics by a factor of ten and Dr. Carson could have used the same statistics in his 2013 prayer breakfast speech.
In his 1964 speech, Reagan ridiculed Senator Joseph Clark, (D-PA), who once described liberalism as “meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.” Reagan said, “This was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize… A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew (that), when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.”
Dr. Carson opened his remarks by quoting Proverbs 11:9, which King Solomon must have written with Barack Obama in mind. The proverb tells us, “An hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbour: but through knowledge shall the just be delivered.” Obama should have taken that as a hint that he was about to receive a major league tongue-lashing.
In a direct challenge to Obama’s idea of “fairness,” Dr. Carson said, “When I pick up my Bible, you know what I see? I see the fairest individual in the universe… God. He’s given us a system. It’s called (the) tithe. Now, we don’t necessarily have to do it, 10 percent, but it’s the principle. He didn’t say, if your crops fail, don’t give me any tithes. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithes. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality. You make $10 billion, you put in $1 billion. You make $10, you put in $1… but now some people say, that’s not ‘fair’ because it doesn’t hurt the guy who made $10 billion as much as the guy who made $10. Where does it say you have to hurt the guy? He’s just put a billion in the pot. We don’t need to hurt him.”
But the most interesting parallel to be drawn between the Reagan speech in 1964 and the Carson speech in 2013 is the way in which both speakers made the point that it is not liberals and Democrats… those who exist by taking money from those who have it and giving it to those who don’t… who are the most loving, caring, and compassionate.
In commenting on the cruel way in which Democrats attempted to demonize Goldwater in 1964, Reagan told his audience some things about Goldwater that few people were aware of. He told of how, before he entered politics, Goldwater instituted a profit-sharing plan in his business long before trade unions ever thought of it; how he provided health insurance for all of his employees; how he set aside 50% of his business profits, before taxes, in order to establish a retirement plan for his employees. And he told of how Goldwater sent a regular monthly check, for life, to a former employee who was ill and could not work, and how he provided daycare for the children of mothers who worked in his stores.
Reagan told the story of a returning serviceman, during the Korean War, who found himself stranded at the Los Angeles International Airport in the week before Christmas, trying to get home to Arizona. Many other returning GIs were having the same problem; there simply were no seats available on any of the commercial airlines. But then a voice came over the public address system saying, “Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such.” When they arrived at that location they found Sen. Goldwater waiting there in his plane. Then, in the days before Christmas, Goldwater spent every day, all day long, flying planeloads of Arizona servicemen from Los Angeles to their hometown airports in Arizona.
In his Prayer Breakfast speech, Dr. Carson described how, some16 years earlier, he and his wife heard of an international study which showed that, in terms of their ability to solve math and science problems, American eighth graders ranked 21st out of the 22 countries surveyed. It was then that he and his wife created the Carson Scholars Fund.
Instead of receiving only sports trophies for victories on the playing fields, the Carsons saw to it that schools and students were also recognized for scholastic achievement. The Scholars Fund awarded scholarships to students from all backgrounds for superior academic performance… Those who demonstrated academic excellence received cash awards. As Dr. Carson explained, “The money would go into a Trust. They would get interest on it. When they would go to college they would get the money…”
According to Dr. Carson, “Many teachers have told us that when we put a Carson Scholar in their classroom, the GPA of the whole classroom goes up over the next year. It’s been very gratifying. We started 16 years ago with 25 scholarships in Maryland, now we’ve given out more than 5,000 and we are in all 50 states, but we’ve also put in Reading Rooms. These are fascinating places that no little kid could possibly pass up. And they get points for the amount of time they spend reading, and the number of books they read… In the beginning they do it for the prizes, but it doesn’t take long before their academic performance begins to improve.” It’s the sort of thing that conservatives regularly do. Liberals, on the other hand, are noted only for their generosity with other peoples’ money.
In his prayer breakfast remarks, Dr. Carson told the story of a very successful young businessman who loved to buy his mother exotic gifts for Mother’s Day. When he ran out of new ideas he came across some very expensive birds. The birds could dance, they could sing, and they could talk, but they cost $5,000 apiece. He was so excited, he bought two of them. And when he sent them to his mother he couldn’t wait to call her up on Mother’s Day. He said, “Mother, mother, what did you think of those birds?” To which she replied, “They was good.”
The young man was horrified. He said, “No, no, no, Mother! Surely you didn’t eat those birds. Those birds cost $5,000 apiece! They could dance, they could sing, they could talk!” To which the mother replied, “Well, they should have said something.”
Ronald Reagan said something very important in his 1964 speech and it was the launching pad that ultimately sent him to the White House. Dr. Ben Carson also said some very important things in his speech on February 7, 2013, and it will be interesting to see how far and to what heights it takes him. Like Ronald Reagan, Dr. Carson knows what he believes and does not have to pause to think about which political constituency he might offend before he speaks. His honesty and sincerity, like Ronald Reagan’s, is such that it appeals to nearly all Americans.
Conservatives have been hungering for a true conservative leader since the day that Ronald Reagan left the White House in January 1989. It is easy to see how Dr. Ben Carson, the “black Reagan,” could fill those very large shoes.
RELATED VIDEO: Dr. Carson’s comments at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast:
AUTHORS COMMENTS: In a spirit of full disclosure, I feel compelled to mention that, in the days following the writing of this column, I was contacted by the group that is actively promoting Dr. Ben Carson’s presidential campaign. As a result of that conversation I have agreed to join the organization’s editorial task force and to become a member of their think tank.
In recent months I have had the opportunity to offer what I think was some good advice to the Oklahoma coordinator for the Carson organization. When asked what they could be doing to help build a large grassroots organization, I replied, “Nothing. At this stage of the game the only thing Dr. Carson can do to promote his political ambitions is for him to continue doing exactly what he’s doing… which is to appear before as many large and influential audiences as possible. He has done that quite successfully and we find that, at events such as the Southern Republican Leadership Conference and the Iowa Freedom Summit, Dr. Carson has regularly come in second in the straw polls.
I would also predict that Dr. Carson will do quite well in the first Republican primary debate, but it will be the second and thirds debates that will be critically important. When he matches or exceeds expectations in the second and third debates he will quickly emerge as one of the front runners. However, being realistic, I think that Dr. Carson may very well end up in the second spot on the ticket, running with Gov. Scott Walker or another conservative with greater name recognition. I’m convinced that, if Dr. Carson can draw even 17% of the black vote… which is eminently doable… it will be nearly impossible for the Democrat candidate to win.
What should Christians ask of the GOP nominee?
If Republicans win all three branches of government in 2016, what legislation will get passed?
Economic growth, ending middle-class stagflation, reversing the debt divide in college students, repealing Obamacare. Into the policy mix, social conservatives have an important question to ask themselves: What is it we want for our country from a potentially historic GOP victory in 2016?
Russell Moore laid down an important marker in a recent Wall Street Journal article, which I would translate as God Talk Is Not Enough:
In recent years candidates have assumed that they can win over evangelicals by learning Christian slogans, by masking political rallies as prayer meetings, and by basically producing a long-form new birth certificate to prove they’ve been born again. This sort of identity politics is a luxury of a past era when evangelicals were part of a silent majority in the U.S., with our First Amendment freedoms assumed and guaranteed. That is not the present situation.
Indeed it is not. Let me speak for traditionalists of all religions for a moment.
A few months before the Supreme Court is likely to rule on gay marriage, the incidents causing concern about what gay marriage will mean for dissenters (especially traditional Christians, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims) multiply:
Gordon College students are banned from tutoring public-school students, because of the college’s embrace of standard orthodox Christian rules (no sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman); the request of its college president for a religious exemption from President Obama has now triggered a possible threat to its accreditation.
Meanwhile, Marquette University (a Jesuit institution) is attempting to strip Professor Scott McAdams of his tenure and his job because he blogged critically about the way a college instructor (and grad student) treated an anti-gay-marriage student.
Kelvin Cochran, whose rags-to-riches rise from Shreveport poverty to police chief of Atlanta is as inspiring as any, was fired for self-publishing for his Bible-study class a book that contains two paragraphs exhorting his fellow Christians to live by Biblical sexual values.
In Lafayette, Calif., parents of 14-year-old public-school students are suing because their children were asked in English class whether their parents would embrace them if they were gay — and then these Christian students were publicly shamed and humiliated when they supported their parents’ values.
A Ford Motor Company worker (contractor) was invited to comment on pro-gay-rights material circulated by the company — and then fired for leaving an anti-sodomy comment on the blog.
Note the similar strategies here: invite or force public comment and then discipline those who say the “wrong” thing.
Angela McCaskill was disciplined by her federally chartered university for simply signing her name to a petition putting same-sex marriage to a vote in Maryland.
A judge in Washington State was found guilty of an ethics violation for saying privately in chambers (in response to a staffer’s question) that he would not perform same-sex marriages.
The great god of gay equality demands a sacrifice of $150,000 from Oregon bakers Melissa and Aaron Klein for the sin of refusing to bake a gay-wedding cake.
More than 70,000 people signed their names to a petition saying Mozilla founder Brendan Eich must either publicly recant his opposition to gay marriage (evidenced solely by a relatively small donation to the Prop 8 campaign) or be fired.
This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it points to where I think the greatest threats lie: closing down educational and work opportunities to traditionalists who dare to speak.
If the GOP would like to leave a legacy that makes a difference, I would argue for generous anti-discrimination protections for those who favor or oppose gay marriage (unless they work for an organization whose substantial purpose is to favor or oppose gay marriage).
A new poll shows 57 percent of Americans believe small-business owners should not be forced to provide wedding-related services. It also shows 44 percent of Americans favor gay marriage, 39 percent oppose it, and a whopping 15 percent are unwilling to offer an opinion in the current environment. Threatening people with losing their jobs is a very effective way to silence and intimidate.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave a high-profile press conference offering to provide substantial new protections for gay people provided that robust religious-liberty protections are part of the deal. Live and let live is the offer on the table. So far the official voices of gay rights don’t like it: James Esseks, who directs the LGBT project of the American Civil Liberties Union, told ABC news that the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom “does not give any of us the right to harm others, and that’s what it sounds like the proposal from the Mormon church would do.”
One important marker will come out of Utah, where we will find out if it is possible to craft live-and-let-live legislation or whether gay-rights supporters value legislation primarily as a club to suppress dissent.
The report on the poll includes this comment from a respondent: “Why make an issue out of one florist when there are probably thousands of florists?” asked David Kenney, who’s 59. “The gay community wants people to understand their position, but at the same time, they don’t want to understand other people’s religious convictions. It’s a two-way street.”
Not yet. If social conservatives want to be taken seriously as a political force, we need to do what a handful of Common Core moms have just done: push our concerns into the presidential race.
And for me, if I were to prioritize, the right not to lose my job or my tax exemption because I publicly oppose (or support) gay marriage should be at the top.
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