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Referring to the Boston Bombing, Pat Robertson Declares: “Don’t Talk To Me About ‘Religion Of Peace,’ No Way”

pat robertson 2

Right-wing Christian evangelist and famed Skeletor impersonator Pat Robertson is at it again, implying that the Boston Bombings were committed by Muslim terrorists. To be clear for the hundredth time, no one knows who committed this horrible act, or why. And it is completely disrespectful to both the victims of the tragedy, and to the nation’s and world’s Muslim communities to continue to declare that all terrorist actions are committed by Muslims, especially when there is absolutely no evidence to back up these claims. Watch the video here.

Pat Robertson On Boston Bombing: “Don’t Talk To Me About ‘Religion Of Peace,’ No Way”

From the April 16 edition of CBN’s The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: Our hearts go out to these people who were wounded and injured. On a joyous day, Patriots’ Day, in Boston and the Boston Marathon draws people in from all around the world, about 26 or 7 thousand participants about 17,000 I understand it finished — crossed the finish line before this bomb went off.

But to think that somebody would be so vicious, so evil as to want to kill little children, and maim families who were there rejoicing in a sporting contest on a beautiful day in Boston, it just makes you sick at your stomach. Don’t talk to me about religion of peace, no way.

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    • Hey, leave Skeletor alone. He doesn’t deserve to be compared to this thing, that won’t shut up..

    • golden izanagi

      oh man so much to avoid in order not to be demon possessed or not have my life destroyed lets see there are the various mario games, the elder scrolls series, final fantasy, ultima, castlevania, tomb raider, doom, quake (the first one considering magic is prevalent in that one) mortal kombat, dead or alive, ninja gaiden, warcraft, and the pokemon series (which not only has magic but other crazy things such as cubone who wears the skull of its mother as a helmet) http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Cubone_(Pok%C3%A9mon)

    • Heinz Catsup

      I’m afraid so :(. The Zelda franchise and Dragon Age: Origins are also great games which also have lots of magic, even if I’m not so much a fan of the latter but even so.

    • Tanveer Khan

      I actually think he was. I think the word religion was a typo and it was actually supposed to be government.

    • eslaporte

      Muslims are not responsible for the actions of individuals who have their own personal violent agendas. Muslims should not be apologizing after individuals take violent actions (aka “terrorism”) and claim to be Muslims.

      Pat Robertson claims to be a Christian. Anybody can claim to be a christian, but do you know what the Gospel means: Love your neighbor as yourself? Now, Jesus did not qualify that by saying “only Christians deserve your love.” I wonder of Pat Robertson is a closet Calvinist, who believes that that non-elect are always evil don’t deserve our love just as God does not love the non-elect.

      It’s Calvinism that is defiantly not a religion of peace!

    • golden izanagi

      so does that mean there is a good chance I shouldn’t be playing fire emblem awakening or any of the dragon quest games because of all the magic that the characters use in them?

    • mindy1

      I can only imagine…

    • mindy1

      I’d also call him a Christian impersonator also. He does not care about god, if he did, he would not try to take his place. How sad to use a tragedy to advance an agenda.

    • “But to think that somebody would be so vicious, so evil as to want to kill little children, and maim families”

      I almost thought he was talking about talking about Israeli occupation.

    • JD

      I think he got another message from god like the last one that told him Obama will loose the election on the Id of the person who did it days before the FBI CIA and anyone in Goverment could figure out who it was….

      senile dementia sucks. I hope i am long gone before it hits me so i dont make a complete a@@ out of my self

Nigerian Christian Group To Launch Terror Campaign Against Muslims in “Defense of Christianity”

Henry Okah

The Mend leader Henry Okah in court in Johannesburg. He was convicted of terrorism last month. Photograph: AP

Nigerian Christian group threatens retaliation over Islamist attacks

Guardian

Nigeria could face a battle between rival terrorist groups after Christian militants threatened to attack Muslim targets in response to bombings carried out by the Islamist group Boko Haram.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), the umbrella body of armed groups in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta, said it would launch a new terror campaign “in defence of Christianity”.

“The bombings of mosques, hajj camps, Islamic institutions, large congregations in Islamic events and assassinations of clerics that propagate doctrines of hate will form the core mission of this crusade,” the Mend spokesman Jomo Gbomo said in an emailed statement.

The group appears to be responding to the ongoing attacks against churches and Christian populations in northern Nigeria, which some estimate have killed more than 1,000 people, including Christians and Muslims, in recent years.

The threat of a new round of violence, which Mend said would be codenamed Operation Barbarossa, comes a week after the Christian group claimed responsibility for the ambush of a boat in Bayelsa state, southern Nigeria, in which 13 police officers were killed.

The statement prompted concern in Nigeria, although there were questions about whether Mend had the capacity to launch widespread attacks on Muslim targets.

“We are on the cusp of something imaginable happening – there is a likelihood that we are going to experience some kind of Christian retaliatory killings for what’s happening in the north,” said Tolu Ogunlesi, a journalist and witness to attacks on Muslims in southern Nigeria.

“I’m just not confident it will be Mend that will do it. Just like Boko Haram, it is not a single organisation but different faces and shadows all using the same name.”

Mend has appeared increasingly fragmented in recent months. The group behind the current threat against Muslims is believed to comprise disgruntled militants who have turned against the amnesty agreed between Mend and the Nigerian government in 2009.

“Mend no longer exists in the way it has done in the past,” said Ken Henshaw from the Niger Delta-based group Social Action. “They key characters from Mend who really had the capacity to unleash mayhem have all accepted amnesty and handed in their arms. I can’t think of anyone left who can carry out the same level of violence.

“But I don’t think this threat should be handled lightly. At the moment Nigeria is so volatile, things are getting out of control,” Henshaw added. “Here is a group threatening to kill other people, it must be taken seriously.”

There have been a series of attacks or threats against Muslims by Christians in Nigeria in recent years. In 2011 a group called Akhwat Akwop – which it claimed was the Christian equivalent of the name Boko Haram – began distributing leaflets in northern Nigeria threatening terrorist attacks against Muslims, claiming it would emancipate Christians in the north.

In January there were attacks against Muslims in Rivers state in the Niger Delta, although Mend did not claim responsibility for those attacks.

“There is some precedent for attacks against Muslims in southern Nigeria,” said Adunola Abiola, founder of Think Security Africa. “And although there are real questions about whether Mend have the capability and the networks to carry out the attacks they are threatening now, it’s worth remembering that this is not just a group confined to the Niger Delta – they have operated in Lagos and Abuja before.”

Last month the Mend leader Henry Okah was sentenced to 24 years in jail after a South African court convicted him of terrorism over twin car bombings in Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja, in 2010.

There was speculation that the threat from Mend was at attempt to coerce the government into negotiating for Okah’s release. “The timing of this sentence suggests to me that this might be intended as some sort of proxy conflict with the federal government,” said Abiola. “But at this point in time and given the unpredictable turn of events in Nigeria, that anything is possible and they shouldn’t be ignored.”

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    • mindy1

      Oh no, i hope this does portend another genocide ala Rwanda :'(

Stop Trying to Split Gays and Muslims

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Geller is attempting to pinkwash Islamophobia, but many in the LGBT and Muslim communities will not allow it to happen.

Chris D. Stedman, a humanist, who is also homosexual has been an outspoken fighter against anti-Muslim bigotry and takes on Geller and her cohorts’ claim that they have support from the gay community head on.

Homosexuality is a controversial topic in many Muslim American communities in which there is heated debate about the topic, but there appears to be a consensus that despite disagreements on homosexuality, respect and support for equal rights before the law, especially in the case of the marginalized has to be part and parcel of securing ones own rights.

Stop trying to split gays and Muslims

Anti-Islam crusader Pam Geller’s effort to foment hate between the two groups is based on lies and doomed to fail

BY 

I have an earnest and sincere question for the LGBT community: Do you support Pamela Geller?

Geller, who is one of the most active proponents of anti-Muslim attitudes in the United States, rose to notoriety as one of the key instigators of the Park51 backlash, misrepresenting a proposed Islamic Community Center (think a YMCA or Jewish Community Center) by calling it the “Ground Zero mosque” and engaging in dishonest rhetoric and blatant fear-mongering. Her organization, Stop the Islamization of America, was identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, alongside extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis. And it’s earned that label — Geller and her allies have dedicated countless hours and millions upon millions of dollars to drum up hatred, fear and xenophobia toward Muslims.

Last week I learned that Geller and one of her biggest allies, Robert Spencer, are hosting a fundraiser for their anti-Muslim advertisements on the website Indiegogo. This disturbed me for a number of reasons, but particularly because Indiegogo’s terms explicitly prohibit “anything promoting hate.” (Despite reports from me and many others, Indiegogo has so far declined to remove the fundraiser; if so inclined, you can let them know what you think about that here.)

While I was looking into this, I discovered that Geller recently announced plans to run a series of anti-Muslim advertisements in San Francisco quoting Muslim individuals making anti-LGBT statements. Why? Because members of San Francisco’s LGBT community criticized other anti-Muslim ads she has run there.

I tweeted my appreciation that the LGBT community in San Francisco is standing up against her efforts to drive a wedge between LGBT folks and Muslims. Soon after, Geller retweeted me, claiming that she in fact has “huge support in Gay community.” Immediately, her supporters began to lob insults and even threats at me; Spencer himself suggested that I should be rewarded for supporting Muslims by someone “saw[ing] off [my] head.” (Meanwhile, though Geller, Spencer and their supporters kept tweeting at me that Muslims “hate gays” and want to kill me, many Muslim friends and strangers alike tweeted love and support for LGBT equality at me.)

As things settled down, I realized that Geller had stopped responding to me when I requested more information to back up her assertion that she has “huge support in Gay community,” after the only evidence she provided was a link to a Facebook group with 72 members. I’ve since asked her repeatedly for more information, but have not gotten a response.

I couldn’t think of a single LGBT person in my life that would support her work, but I didn’t want to go off of my own judgment alone. So I started asking around. It wasn’t hard to find prominent members of the LGBT community who do not share Geller’s views.

“The idea that the LGBT community should support Islamophobia is offensive and absurd,” said Joseph Ward III, director of Believe Out Loud, an organization that empowers Christians to work for LGBT equality. “[American Muslims] are our allies as we share a common struggle to overcome stereotypes and misconceptions in America.”

“Trying to drive a wedge between the LGBT community and other communities is old, tired and [it] doesn’t work,” said Ross Murray, director of News and Faith Initiatives for GLAAD. “Pitting two communities [like the Muslim and LGBT communities] against one another is an attempt to keep both oppressed. Wedge strategies are offensive and, in the long run, they do not work. Geller is not an LGBT ally — she’s posing as one because it is convenient to her [anti-Muslim] agenda.”

“As with any attempts at a wedge, these efforts seek to erase the real and powerful reality of LGBT Muslims and seek to create a false dichotomy: All the LGBT people are non-Muslim/Islamophobic and all the Muslims are straight and homophobic,” said Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, program director of the Institute for Welcoming Resources at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Particularly given the oppression, marginalization, hatred and violence visited upon the LGBTQ community, it is critically important that we use our spiritual, communal and political power to speak out against the victimization and vilification of any other community. As a Christian lesbian, I must stand against any attempts to victimize another because of their personhood.”

“There’s no doubt that there’s a great deal of religion-based bigotry against LGBT people, although it’s hardly limited to Islam. The Hebrew Scriptures also prescribe the death penalty for some homosexual conduct, but you don’t typically see people using this to inflame anti-Semitic or anti-Christian sentiment,” said John Corvino, author of “What’s Wrong With Homosexuality?” and coauthor of “Debating Same-Sex Marriage.” “To single out Muslims in this way is both unhelpful and unfair.”

Despite her claim, the work of Geller and her colleagues has plenty of opposition in the LGBT community. Why?

For starters, it’s wrong.

As Junaid Jahangir writes in a recent piece at the Huffington Post, “[Geller’s] selective references provide a misguided view of the current Muslim position on queer rights issues.” He rightly notes that her advertisements lift up the views of a controversial Muslim cleric, but ignore the “over 2,500 Muslim intellectuals from 23 countries [that] not only called for an international treaty to counter such clerics, but also called for a tribunal set by the United Nations Security Council to put them on trial for inciting violence.” In his piece, which is a must-read, Jahangir goes on to quote many influential, pro-equality Muslim leaders. Pointing to the activism they are doing to support LGBT rights, he demonstrates that Geller is unfairly — and dangerously — presenting a skewed picture of Muslim views on LGBT people.

“There’s no question that homophobia is rampant among the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims — but that doesn’t negate the fact that there are huge groups of Muslims who have easily reconciled their faith and sexual orientation, like LGBT people in other faith communities,” said Reza Aslan, author of “No God but God” and “Beyond Fundamentalism,” in a recent phone interview. “For a woman who leads an organization that has been labeled a hate group to try to reach out to a community like the LGBT community, by trying to make a connection based on bigotry, is harmful and ridiculous. Bigotry is not a bridge.”

Of course, members of the LGBT community are right to be concerned about the dangers of religious extremism and totalitarianism — whether it is Christian, Muslim or any other expression. But demonizing another community won’t help reduce the influence of religious fundamentalism.

You can be honest about your disagreements without being hateful. I’m a queer atheist, and I believe that there are ideas and practices promoted by Muslims in the name of Islam that are not only false — they’re extremely harmful. But to rally against Muslims and Islam as if they and it are some monolithic bloc is counterproductive; it creates enemies where we need allies. There are many Muslims who oppose cruelty and violence done in the name of Islam and favor equality for all people, and they are positioned to create change. We should be working with them, not standing against all of Islam. Based on my own experiences, I know that this is a much more constructive approach. In my book “Faitheist,” I tell several stories about Muslim friends who are not only accepting of my sexual orientation, but are also fierce allies for LGBT equality.

That’s the problem with Geller’s advertisements, and with sweeping, generalizing statements about entire groups of people: They don’t account for the diversity of ideas and traditions that exist within any given community. Geller focuses on a ridiculously tiny minority of Muslim extremists in order to paint her picture of Islam, and in doing so she neglects to account for the rich and varied traditions of generosity, selflessness, social progress and forgiveness present within Islam. Not only that, but her efforts alienate key allies — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — who share her concerns about Muslim extremists, but who also recognize that her narrow approach is unfair and dishonest.

Instead of adopting Geller’s approach, LGBT people should focus on building relationships. After all, support for marriage equality more than doubles among people who know a gay person. The Pew Research Center reports that of the 14 percent of Americans who changed their mind and decided to support gay marriage in the last decade, 37 percent (the largest category) cited having “friends/family/acquaintances who are gay/lesbian” as the primary reason. The second largest group in this astounding shift, at 25 percent, said they became more tolerant, learned more and became more aware.

In 2011, I wrote an essay encouraging more cooperation and solidarity between the LGBT community and the Muslim community:

[In 2009], a Gallup poll demonstrated something the LGBTQ community has known for some time: People are significantly more inclined to oppose gay marriage if they do not know anyone who is gay. Similarly, Time Magazine cover story featured revealing numbers that speak volumes about the correlation between positive relationships and civic support. Per their survey, 46 percent of Americans think Islam is more violent than other faiths and 61 percent oppose Park51, but only 37 percent even know a Muslim American. Another survey, by Pew, reported that 55 percent of Americans know “not very much” or “nothing at all” about Islam. The disconnect is clear: When only 37 percent of Americans know a Muslim American, and 55 percent claim to know very little or nothing about Islam, the negative stereotypes about the Muslim community go unchallenged.

The Muslim and LGBTQ communities face common challenges that stem from the same problem—that diverse communities don’t have robust and durable civic ties. This is why the Muslim and LGBTQ communities ought to be strong allies.

I continue to believe this, and Geller’s work isn’t helping. Geller, Spencer, and their supporters are wrong to try to pit the queer community against Muslims. Their efforts to force a wedge between us and the Muslim community are little more than fear-mongering — a tactic that has long been used to keep the LGBT community marginalized and oppressed.

Read the rest…

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    • mindy1

      Hehehe

    • Razainc_aka_BigBoss

      I second that

    • Amago

      Chris Stedman has been doing a great job promoting interfaith dialog, tolerance and understanding, and he’s done a great job doing so once more.

    • Most likely yes. If Geller is your source assume its wrong until you come across compelling evidence to the country. She’s either someone who is being paid to lie, or she’s to irrational to be trusted.

  • mindy1

    If geller claims it’s true, it is not

Serbian Orthodox Priest raped, and forcefully baptized 16 year old Bosnian Muslim girl

Bosnia-religione-nazionalismo-e-pedofilia_large

A truly sickening report out of Serbia of torture, rape and forced conversion. But hey! These are the types of people Islamophobes like Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer apologize for when they conveniently deny the genocide that occurred in Bosnia. (h/t: Ali)

Bosnia: religion, nationalism and pedophilia

Rodolfo Toè | Sarajevo

4 April 2013

Revelations on the sexual abuses by the Tuzla bishop – Karadžić and Mladić’s spiritual guide – have dragged the Serbian Orthodox church through one of the major scandals of the latest years. The victims’ declarations, the reconstruction by the Bosnian reporter who was able to get a hold of the records of the witnesses’ depositions

In his letter from October 2012, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church decided to turn directly to the Prime Minister, Ivica Dačić. In his missive, Irinej expressed his concern over the “moral” ‘image’ of Belgrade and Serbia, “our centuries-long Christian culture and the dignity of our family, as the foundation block of humankind”. ‘I am writing to you all on behalf of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its followers – he added – Authorities must take immediate action to bring this scandal to a halt’.

Irinej, though, was not referring to the cases of pedophilia reported from the summer of 2012 and which were starting to worry the public opinion. On the contrary, his were shocked invectives pointing the finger at the Belgrade gay pride. It is hard to believe that Irinej ignored the news which, despite all attempts at a cover-up, would, in the months to come, be so momentous as to shake the whole ecclesiastic structure in Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina. Before a dedicated committee led by Nikšić’s bishop, Joanikije, monks, seminarians and other religious people started disclosing the sexual abuses carried on by the Tuzla and Zvornik bishop, Ljubomir Kačavenda. Those abuses lasted decades.

‘Kačavenda asked me to bring him 10-year old children’

The first to talk about what happened was Bojan Jovanović, a former pope that has serviced in Kačavenda’s episcopate before taking his distance, once and for all, from the ecclesiastic world.

The bishop of Tuzla is not a secondary character, among the Orthodox ecclesiastic authorities. He was harshly criticized in the past, also because of his behavior during the war. Born in 1938 in Sarajevo, Ljubomir Kačavenda was a spiritual guide for Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić. This can be seen in numerous videos, upon the fall of Srebrenica, while he wishes for the ethnic cleansing of the territory conquered by the Serbian militia. His persona did not come out totally immaculate from the war years: in 2009, the association Žena-Žrtva Rata (Women-victims of war) gathered the testimony of a 16-year old Muslim girl from Doboj who accused Kačavenda of raping her after forcing her to be baptized.

Jovanović met Kačavenda for the first time in 1998. Everything seemed normal, at the beginning, even though he soon realized what kind of friends and business this ‘bunch of pedophiles and their leader’, as he described them, had. This former man of the church later admitted having attended the “banquets” organized by the bishop, along with many businessmen. In some cases, Kačavenda allegedly asked him to bring him new victims. According to the depositions, he particularly asked for 10-year old children.

After becoming one of the deacons at the bishop’s service, Jovanović revealed that he himself was raped repeatedly after arriving in Bijeljina and after being transferred to Kaona’s monastery, in Serbia. ‘I didn’t know what to do’, he admitted in 2011 to Radio Sarajevo. ‘I could not leave the monastery and go back home as if nothing had happened. But I could not go to the police, either: no one would have ever believed my accusations to be true’.

Bojan’s first charges were pressed 12 years ago: a young seminarian, Milić Blažanović, had just been found dead in unclear circumstances, in Paprać’s monastery, after having rejected Kačavenda’s advances. Those first accusations were withdrawn almost immediately: ‘They threatened to kill me’, Jovanović said. ‘They forced me to withdraw everything, with a letter where I declared that the accusations were just the fruit of my sick imagination’.

Things changed in 2010, when Dejan Nestorović, a famous Serbian male stripper, took a picture in the company of Kačavenda in the Bijeljina Episcopalian church. The picture went immediately public and created quite a stir and Nestorović admitted he had personal relations with the bishop. In exchange for his silence, the young man was given 50.000 Euros to attend a private university in Rome.

The Synod’s investigation, Kačavenda’s departure

At that point, the situation called for a break in silence and Bojan took advantage of it. ‘I met Bojan a few years ago’, Vuk Bačanović tells Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso. A reporter for the Sarajevo weekly Dani, for two years he has been trying to carry on the investigation on the scandals of the dioceses of Tuzla and Zvornik. ‘At the time, though, he was not ready to reveal everything he knew. Things have changed in the past two years: more and more people have started breaking the silence around cases of pedophilia and sexual abuses that concern them. Even Blažanović’ family, who had kept quiet for over ten years, decided to recourse to justice. Without a shadow of doubt, this is the most serious scandal in the history of the Serbian Orthodox church. The same Patriarch Irinej was aware of Kačavenda’s crimes and the rumors that went around on Tuzla and Zvornik’s dioceses. Indeed, usually the priests servicing there were never transferred. They feared that the same scandals could repeat elsewhere’.

In the summer of 2012, the Synod of the Orthodox church decided to start an official investigation, requesting Nikšić’s bishop Joanikije do the interrogations. Dani was able to get a hold of the records of the witnesses’ depositions and started publishing them weekly. ‘It is not easy to shed light on this matter’, Bačanović admits, ‘almost all witnesses fear for their life and must remain anonymous’.

Faced with what seemed a would-be landslide, the Synod decided to batten down the hatches with the most classic solution: have Kačavenda officially “retire” for “health reasons”. For Jusuf Trbić, a reporter and President of the Bijeljina Bosnian cultural community Preporod (Rebirth), this is encouraging, even though it is highly unlikely that harsher sanctions will be applied. ‘For us Bosniaks, bishop Kačavenda embodies all the rottenness from the past 20 years’, he told Deutsche Welle. ‘One way or another, all the terrible things that happened in this region during the war are connected to his name. Finally his behaviors are starting to be known by the public’. He concludes, ‘However, it is unacceptable to think that he will probably not be brought to justice for his crimes’.

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    • allie

      This is demonic and has NOTHING to do with God. These poor children…

    • Branko

      anti-Serb and anti- Christian-Orthodox propaganda

    • GaribaldiOfLoonwatch

      Sickening is all that can be said. The only bright note is that this is coming to light now.

  • Tanveer Khan

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