Everyone knows the Taliban are just the Afghan version of the Pat Robertson’s of the world, right? Pat Robertson was asked on air by a concerned Christian named “Jenny” about a moral quandary she had relating to her roommate’s “Buddha statue.”
Jenny: My friend who is a Christian has a Buddha statue next to her Christian ones. Is this ok?
Pat Robertson, who always speaks Biblically gave a pretty unequivocal answer, “Destroy it.”
Pat Robertson: No its not. Take it away and break it. Break it! Destroy it.
So the message is Christian statues are OK but not Buddhist ones, oh and don’t respect the property of other peoples!
Here at WITWM, we frown upon all acts of religious desecration. When the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in March of 2001 it was not only unIslamic but immoral on many levels. Now Pat Robertson is calling for similar measures, can one imagine if a Muslim Imam had said something similar? As of now there is barely a peep about this. (h/t Critical Dragon)
This is supposed to be a positive picture of Tim Wildmon
American Family Association president Tim Wildmon says, “Islam does not teach charity.”
It is a blatant lie, since one of the five pillars of Islam is Zakat, or mandatory charitable giving. The Qur’an, if these right-wingers would ever read it is also filled with exhortations on nearly every page extolling the virtues of Sadaqah or voluntary charity.
American Family Association president Tim Wildmon today used his column praising the admirable works of Christian charitable organizations to criticize Muslims.
If there ever was a contrast in worldviews, it is with Christianity and Islam. One of the most striking differences is that Christianity teaches, practices, and encourages charity. Islam does not. It is the Christians from America who are doing the majority of the private charity and humanitarian work around the world. Just these past couple of weeks alone, I was reminded by several examples of this.
…
American Family Association/American Family Radio has been participating in this project with Gospel for Asia for several years. Why do we care about the outcast people of India? Because in the Bible, Jesus instructs us to do so.
There is no such comparable work being done around the world by Islamic groups or organizations — because the Koran does not teach such charity.
Religion, more than anything else, affects the values and morals of a culture, a society, a country.
In fact, charitable giving is one of the five pillars of Islam. Wildmon could have done a simple Google search to find the names of major Muslim charitable organizations like Islamic Relief, Red Crescent Societies and Muslim Aid, but seeing that the American Family Association is one of the most malicious purveyors of misinformation and bigotry in this country, it should come as no surprise that its leader can twist an article about the importance of charitable work into an attack on the Muslim people.
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is a regular guest on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program and is usually brought in to be the token Black man who comes on to legitimate and provide cover for Hannity’s “criticism” (i.e. thinly-veiled racism) of the Black community. Hannity also happens to sit on the board of Rev. Peterson’s organization, BOND. (h/t: Ali)
Rev. Peterson is quite the kook, and of course every religion has ‘em, but here he is bemoaning the progress women have made in the US, saying all of the social ills we have today are due to women:
So I guess Conservatives don’t just believe in the “Islamization” of society, but also the “womenization” of society?
As you can see he wants women to be stripped of the right to vote, taken out of positions of power and essentially returned to being obedient, child producing, housewives who obey and submit to men. He even ridicules his grandmother!
Can one imagine the reaction if an Imam had said something similar to what Rev. Peterson said? Wouldn’t Islam once again be cast as the uniquely and inherently “misogynistic” faith that is irreconcilable with modernity?
Will we hear similar attributions of misogyny and anti-women positions to Christianity now?
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, along with Robert Spencer also happen to be on the list of the Young America’s Foundation‘s (YAF) “Conservative speakers.”
Spencer has appeared as a guest on Rev. Peterson’s radio show, directly after Peterson’s anti-women screed. There goes Spencer and Geller’s so-called concern for the ‘human rights’ of women! They have no problem schmoozing with clerics who want to role back the right of women to vote but will gladly try to smear Muslims as honor-killing-pro-pedophilia-misogynists:
Frequent Fox News guest Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson drew sharp criticism for arguing that women should not have the right to vote in a sermon that was posted on YouTube in March. The minister argued that women are destroying American society and wield too much political power.
Fox News host Sean Hannity has invited Peterson to speak on his show several times, even after the offensive sermon was posted online.
Even News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch, corporate master of Fox, disagreed with Peterson’s sexist rant according to theDaily Mail. He tweeted in response, “When? Women voting is best thing in a hundred years.”
“I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote,” Peterson said in the sermon.
Peterson even went so far as to associate woman in politics with evil.
“We should’ve never turned this over to women,” he said. “It was a big mistake. … And these women are voting in the wrong people. They’re voting in people who are evil who agrees (sic) with them who’re going to take us down this pathway of destruction.”
“And this probably was the reason that they didn’t allow women to vote when men were men,” he continued. “Because men, in the good old days, understood the nature of the woman. They were not afraid to deal with it and they understood that if they let them take over, this is what would happen.”
This is not Peterson’s first controversial and offensive statement. He previously said “thank God for slavery” because it brought African people to the United States.
Peterson has also stated, “Barack Obama hates white people, especially white men.” He argued that men should be legally permitted to hit their wives and expressed a desire to take “all black people back to the South and put them on the plantation so they would understand the ethic of working.”
During his most recent offensive statement, the sermon titled “How most women are building a shameless society,” he said women are incapable of making good decisions because they get too emotional.
“You walk up to them with an issue, they freak out right away,” he said. “They go nuts. They get mad. They get upset, just like that. They have no patience because it’s not in their nature. They don’t have love.”
Peterson appeared on Fox News last week after being invited again by Sean Hannity, and was confronted by Democratic commentator Kirsten Power, who called the sermon “misogynistic.”
“I have a responsibility to tell the truth,” replied Peterson. “You’re on the side of lies. Why shouldn’t I be on the side of truth? And it’s the truth that’s going to make us free. Somebody gotta tell the truth, so I’m going to tell the truth.”
Peterson is the president and founder of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, a group pushing a conservative agenda among African Americans where Hannity sits on the board, and its allied BOND Action Inc. In the past he has hosted a radio talk show and a cable TV program. He is well known for fighting against affirmative action and is a member of Choose Black American, a black group fighting illegal immigration.
“Jesus was the first Palestinian martyr.” –Yasser Arafat
A few months back Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren penned an article titled, “Israel and the plight of Palestinian Christians,” in which he attempted to manipulate the reality of Christians in the Holy Land. Oren’s article came on the heels of an Islamophobic screed by Ayaan H. Ali in Newsweek titled, “The War on Christians.”
As the birthplace of Christianity, Palestine is home to the oldest Christian populations in the world. But after centuries of continuous presence in the Holy Land, the creation of modern-day Israel in 1948 precipitated a quiet exodus of native Christians.
Although Christian opinion on the Arab-Israeli conflict has always been mixed in Western countries, many evangelicals have been blind to the plight of Palestinians in favor of Israeli hardliners. Though their unconditional support for Israel can be attributed to many factors, the phenomenon of “Christian Zionism” can at least in part be traced to concerted outreach efforts on behalf of Israel–bolstered by negative portrayals of the Palestinian people, and an absence of their narrative.
Christian Palestinian groups like Sabeel Center and Al-Bushra have had an on-line presence for years, but they were not widely known outside the Middle East. Recently, Palestinian Christians reached out to the global community with the launch of the Kairos Palestine Document, modeled after the South African Kairos Document published in 1985 as part of a successful effort to abolish Apartheid:
This document is the Christian Palestinians’ word to the world about what is happening in Palestine. It is written at this time when we wanted to see the Glory of the grace of God in this land and in the sufferings of its people. In this spirit the document requests the international community to stand by the Palestinian people who have faced oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid for more than six decades. The suffering continues while the international community silently looks on at the occupying State, Israel. Our word is a cry of hope, with love, prayer and faith in God.
We address it first of all to ourselves and then to all the churches and Christians in the world, asking them to stand against injustice and apartheid, urging them to work for a just peace in our region, calling on them to revisit theologies that justify crimes perpetrated against our people and the dispossession of the land.
While Palestinian Christians have so far reached only a small minority of their Western counterparts, their apparent success has captured the attention of Israel’s increasingly worried supporters.
For most American Jews and Israelis, evangelical Christians are synonymous with zealous, biblically inspired support of the Jewish state—so zealous, in fact, that it makes some Jews uneasy. But the days when Israel could count on unconditional support from evangelicals may be coming to an end.
Last month, a conference convened in Bethlehem by Palestinian activists and Christian clergy long at odds with the Jewish state managed to bring a number of leading lights from the evangelical community in North America and Europe to the Holy Land. Many of the speeches at the conference touched on themes that one would commonly hear at a BDS teach-in, like blaming the entire Middle East conflict on Israel’s occupation and the settlements.
Indeed, the name of the conference, Christ at the Checkpoint, is indicative of the different direction this segment of the evangelical movement is heading toward. The idea is that evangelicals should rethink their support for a state that occupies another people and oppresses them. Once they get the full story, conference organizers hope, Western evangelicals may find they have more in common with the downtrodden Palestinians than with the Israelis.
To pro-Israel evangelicals and Zionists who were paying attention, Christ at the Checkpoint was a wake-up call. The larger trend, which for want of a better phrase might be called the pro-Palestinian evangelical movement and is indeed spearheaded by Palestinian Christians, is already changing minds. Giving them momentum are money raised in the United States, theology, and perhaps most important of all, a movie. The documentary film With God on Our Side is leaving many former pro-Israel evangelicals wondering why they never heard the Palestinian side of the story.
Many friends of Israel, as well as Israelis, have long been concerned that evangelical support is premised largely on self-interest of an especially macabre nature. Israel, in this reading, is ground zero for the apocalypse: Before Christ can return to Earth, the Jews must return to Israel and the Temple must be restored, ushering in first a time of tribulation and then a reign of peace.
Of course, the apocalypse and Christ’s return is not the only justification for Christian support of Israel. Indeed, this end-time scenario embarrasses some evangelicals whose support is premised on the idea that God keeps his promises, not only to Christians but also to Jews, to whom God pledged the land of Israel. This conviction is further buttressed by a sense of historical responsibility, specifically to stand with the Jews and atone for the failure of Christians during the Holocaust to save the nation that gave them their savior.
Though the vast majority of evangelicals still maintain that support, for the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948, there is an increasingly heated debate in the evangelical community that may augur a shift in the political winds. And if the Christ at the Checkpoint camp wins out, the pro-Israel Jewish community that once looked warily upon evangelical support may come to regard that movement with nostalgia.
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“The debate in the Jewish community should not be about whether or not to be comfortable with Christian support for Israel,” David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, told me last week. “Christians are going to be involved in the issue whether we are comfortable or not. The question is whether they’re going to be on Israel’s side or not.”
Christians United for Israel is the United States’ largest and best-known Christian Zionist organization. Founded in 2006 by John Hagee, pastor of the CornerStone Church in San Antonio, Texas, CUFI boasts over a million members. Hagee has found himself in the middle of political controversy in the past—most recently during John McCain’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign when his statements regarding the Holocaust were misinterpreted and McCain rejected his support. (Hagee declined to comment for this article.)
John Hagee
Hagee and other figures base support for the Jewish state on biblical foundations, specifically on Genesis 12:3, where God tells Abraham, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.” The message is clear: Those who support Israel will be rewarded by God. But pro-Israel evangelicals have sent their flock out into the field vulnerable—that is, without an account of the conflict that besets the citizens of the present-day homeland of the Jews. Armed only with a biblical defense of the Jewish state, evangelicals are unprepared to justify it on political grounds.
This gap has made room for people across the cultural and ideological spectrum—whose motivations run the gamut from genuine compassion for Palestinians to anti-Semitism—to fill the space with their own interpretations of contemporary Middle East history. Not surprisingly, many of these narratives tend to be drawn from precincts of the left, like the BDS movement, that are known for their hostility to the Jewish state. What is peculiar is that these accounts are being entertained and sometimes embraced in evangelical churches, Bible schools, and Christian colleges that are not typically known for their progressive politics.
It wasn’t difficult for these Christian critics of Israel to find a weak link in the Christian Zionist narrative—it’s the ethical morass inherent in the formulation of Genesis 12:3. The children of the Bible, Christians as well as Jews, believe that all people are created in God’s image and are therefore born with individual dignity. But if people of faith are supposed to bless Israel because they’ll be blessed in return, then they are treating others, Jews and Arabs, not as individuals but rather as instruments in their own spiritual drama.
You can’t treat people as chess pieces, says Porter Speakman Jr., the 40-year-old director of With God on Our Side. This 82-minute-long documentary, which premiered in 2010 and is now being shown at churches and college campuses, has had a major role in tilting evangelical opinion, especially among young people, against Israel. Speakman told me in a phone interview that isn’t aim isn’t to “delegitimize Israel, but to be critical of policies that are having an effect on real people’s lives.”
“I grew up in a Christian home in the south, where not to support Israel was to go against God,” Speakman told me. He said he made the film in order to explore a question that he thinks has been missing from the conversation in the evangelical community. That is: “What are the consequences of my beliefs and my theology for real people living on the ground?”
With God on Our Side follows the intellectual odyssey of Christopher Harrell, a twenty-something recent film-school graduate, who is trying to come to grips with the reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is a very different story from the Bible-based injunctions that formed his spiritual life as a child. The film’s narrative trajectory starts with Harrell’s parents, who he recalls once celebrated Passover—“I’m not sure why we did that. We’re not Jewish. We’re just this normal American Midwestern family”—and who support Israel because that’s “just what everyone did.” The film moves then to a series of interviews with figures in the evangelical community known for their animus toward Zionism, like Gary Burge and Stephen Sizer, and writers outside the evangelical milieu whose reputation rests on their hostility to Israel, like Ilan Pappé and Norman Finkelstein.
These interviews challenge the mainstream evangelical narrative with well-worn accusations typical of BDSers. For instance, the Israeli occupation, says one South African evangelical, is “apartheid on steroids.”
“Growing up,” Speakman said of his childhood, “there was never a choice, you were supposed to love and support Israel. That meant following Genesis 12 as well as a fulfillment of endtime prophecies. But does supporting Israel mean supporting all of Israel’s geopolitical decisions?”
Speakman, who lived in Israel with his wife from 1998 until 2003, said that he thinks the role of Christians is to support both Jews and Arabs in their search for a solution. But some critics of his documentary think that the film goes much further. They see it as making the case that evangelicals have taken the wrong side—favoring a nation inhabited by those who rejected Jesus as their savior rather than the Christian communities that have existed in the Holy Land since the time of Christ. The issue is that key segments of the Palestinian Christian community have a vested political interest in delegitimizing Zionism—a fact that Speakman and other Western activists in the evangelical community may or may not be aware of.
Among the Palestinian outfits leading the campaign critical of Israel is the Bethlehem Bible College, which organized Christ at the Checkpoint, for which Speakman served as a media coordinator. The most prominent and active organization is the Jerusalem-based Sabeel, headed by a Palestinian Anglican priest, Rev. Naim Ateek. Its American branch, Friends of Sabeel North America, is based in Portland, Ore., and raises money for its Jerusalem affiliate.
“Sabeel is nakedly hostile to Israel,” Dexter Van Zile, Christian media analyst for CAMERA, told me in an interview. In an article on Sabeel and Ateek published last week, Van Zile quotes the clergyman at length, including this peculiar admission: “From my perspective as a Palestinian Christian, Zionism is a step backward in the development of Judaism.”
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According to Randy Neal, Western Regional Coordinator of CUFI, the ideological foundations of the pro-Palestinian Christian movement are grounded in both liberation theology and replacement theology. The first is a politicized doctrine that requires a continual mindset of victimhood, in order to solicit political sympathy and action on behalf of the “oppressed” against the “oppressors.” The latter holds that the church has replaced Jews as God’s chosen and become the real Israel.
“It’s not just that church has replaced Israel,” said Neal, but for many of the Palestinian Christian clergy and their activist sympathizers, “the Palestinian church is the real church. Jesus, on this reading, was an underdog, who came to champion the underdog. He was oppressed by the Romans, so if you are Christ-like, you are also oppressed, like the Palestinians. This increasingly includes the idea that Jesus was a Palestinian. It’s an adopted narrative that is believed to have started with Yasser Arafat, but to some people it’s become a gospel fact.”
In other words, it’s a narrative that denies Jesus’ Jewish identity. “It is a very ugly expression of Christian anti-Semitism,” Neal said.
But Brog, Neal’s colleague, disagrees: “anti-Semitism is not the driving force.” Rather, he said, the impetus comes from a combination of two ideological streams. “There’s the anti-Israel perspective, which comes from the Palestinian Christians, who are using theology to preach a politically anti-Israel message. And then there are the Christians based in North America and Europe who are allowing liberal politics to trump Christian beliefs.”
The unpleasant reality is that Christian anti-Semitism has as much, if not more, theological justification as Christian support for Israel. Compared to two millennia of Christian anti-Semitism culminating with the Holocaust, one biblical verse is a pretty thin thread on which to hang support of the Jewish state.
Neal says that he believes Christian love of Israel is premised on Genesis 12:3 and on Joel 3:2: “I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will enter into judgement with them there for my people, my heritage Israel.”
“We are supposed to love what God loves,” Neal said. “We consider ourselves ambassadors of Christ. For centuries, Christians abused and abandoned the apple of God’s eye, and we are not going to let that happen again on our watch.”
But as CUFI pushes Genesis and Joel, the Christ at the Checkpoint crowd is focused exclusively on Palestinians’ distress and apparently ignoring history. CAMERA’s Van Zile, who attended last month’s conference, noted that nowhere in the pro-Palestinian evangelical narrative is there any account of Jewish persecution. “I’ve heard moving testimony about Palestinian suffering. But they don’t acknowledge Muslim anti-Semitism. They don’t talk about Palestinian leadership, or how it’s abused the Palestinian community. There’s no account of Hamas in their story about Israel.”
Terry Jones is a crackpot “Reverand” who gained infamy by publicly burning the Qur’an.
Last year Jones was denied a permit to protest on Good Friday in front of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, prompting howls of protest all across the looniverse. Anti-Muslim bigots accused the court of subverting the US Constitution and caving in to Sharia.
Dearborn is home to America’s largest Muslim community, and a model of interfaith tolerance. Jews, Christians, and Muslims responded to Jones’ hateful message by holding their own rally and carrying a banner that read:
“We, as caring neighbors in southeastern Michigan, stand together in condemning the actions of those who spew hate and fear, and who misuse and desecrate holy books of faith.”
Before and during the rally, hundreds of people signed a 50-foot-long banner that exhorted them to oppose Jones and remember the best parts of their faith. Jones was briefly jailed and banned from returning to the mosque for three years.
This year, a Michigan judge overturned the decision to ban Jones, and the “Reverend,” dressed in a dapper black leather ensemble and sporting a carefully trimmed fu manchu, delivered an impassioned speech about the grave danger Islam poses to America–to all 20 of his supporters.
Speaking today in front of the biggest mosque in Michigan, the Florida pastor known for burning the Quran blasted Islam and called upon Americans to take back their country.
“Islam has one goal — that is world domination,” said Terry Jones, wearing sunglasses, jeans and a faded black-leather jacket. “It’s time to stand up.”
Holding signs in English and Arabic that read “I Will Not Submit,” about 20 supporters cheered as Jones and his assistant spoke outside the Islamic Center of America, a Dearborn mosque that sits off Ford Road. Framed by the mosque’s minarets, Jones said he’s concerned that the growth of the Muslim population in metro Detroit and the U.S. will lead to the oppression of non-Muslims.
“Muslims, no matter they go around the world … they push their agenda on the society,” said Jones. “We must take back America.”
The mosque was placed on lockdown Saturday afternoon, with about 30 police cars from Detroit, Dearborn, Wayne County and Michigan surrounding the complex, which also includes several churches. Traffic in and out was prevented, disappointing some worshippers who were not aware of Jones’ rally and couldn’t access the mosque. During the anti-Muslim rally, an electronic billboard with the Islamic Center read: “Happy Easter.”
About 500 feet from Jones was a group of counter-protesters, some of whom were with an activist organization, By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). Police prevented them from approaching the grassy area in front of the mosque where Jones spoke. Muslim leaders had urged people not to attend the counter-protest. Unlike Jones’ last two visits to Dearborn, this one was uneventful with no arrests and no street clashes.
Jones said during his talk that he’s also concerned about the free speech rights of Americans. Over the past year, Jones has battled the City of Dearborn for the right to speak in front of the mosque. Last year, a Dearborn judge threw him briefly in jail and ordered him to stay away from the mosque for three years. That decision was later overturned by a Detroit judge.
Last month, the city asked Jones to sign a legal agreement before protesting. Jones then filed a lawsuit, prompting a Detroit federal judge to rule Thursday in his favor. Jones was represented for free in his battles with the city by the Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian group established by Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan.
During the talk, some supporters of Jones made derogatory remarks and jokes about Muslims. When Jones criticized Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson during his speech, one supporter blurted out: “Throw ‘em in the pit with the Muslims.”
After the rally, supporters of Jones posed for photos in front of the mosque.
A crew from Real Catholic TV, a media outlet based in Ferndale that’s owned by a member of Opus Dei, was at the rally. Its host, Michael Voris, said he supports Jones’ right to free speech and some of his views. Jones, who was a pastor in Germany, said Europe is increasingly under the sway of Islamic law.
“There are whole sections of London ruled by sharia law,” Voris said. “I think there’s the potential to happen in the U.S. what has happened — and is happening — in Europe.”
Tim Voss, 64, of Wayne, said he came Saturday to support Jones because “sharia law is the most dangerous thing. We can’t have it in this country.”
Down the road, counter-protester Laura Dennis, 38, of Detroit, held up a sign that read: “God Loves Us All.”
Speaking about Jones, Dennis said: “This guy’s just a hate monger, no different from the Klan or a Nazi.”
Thousands of Spanish mothers have similar stories of stolen children. (AFP/Getty Images) (ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images)
Where is the outrage and outcry from the hate peddlers?
Thousands of newborns have allegedly been stolen from their parents by Sister Maria Gómez Valbuena, obstensibly for good, wholesome “Christian” motivations, making a pretty penny in the process.
BARCELONA, Spain — “Where is my baby?” Luisa Torres wondered after waking up from general anesthesia on March 31, 1982.
“Your baby is dead,” Sister Maria Gómez Valbuena told her as she lay in bed at the Santa Cristina Maternity Hospital in Madrid. “You gave birth to nothing,” the nun said.
It was a lie, with consequences that would span almost three decades.
Torres alleges that her daughter was stolen at birth by a mafia of nuns, doctors and other officials who sold children for profit.
Thousands of Spanish mothers recount similar stories. Enrique Vila, a Barcelona lawyer who specializes in adoptions, estimates there might be as many as 300,000 cases, about 15 percent of total adoptions that took place in Spain between 1960 and 1989.
Since GlobalPost first wrote about the spate of stolen babies last year, the number of cases being handled by Spanish prosecutors has jumped from 900 to 1,500.
A trickle of complaints began decades ago, but turned into a flood two years ago. But the nun, now in her 80s and known as Sister Maria, is the first to be indicted in the scandal since complaints began to pour in two years ago. Her trial begins today, April 3.
About one-quarter of the cases have been dismissed due to a lack of documents or other evidence, which is often hard to provide when decades-old birth certificates have been forged, or when the parents and children haven’t yet found each other.
Torres and her daughter are just one of a dozen who have, and it is their reunion that has led to the first indictment.
‘Like a horror film’
Like hundreds of mothers who believe their babies had been stolen at Santa Cristina Maternity Hospital, Torres met Sister Maria, a social worker, in her fifth month of pregnancy after seeing an ad in a magazine offering help for expectant mothers in need.
“It said she had access to nurseries and foster homes, and that she would take care of the children until we had enough resources to take care of them by ourselves,” Torres recalled. “I went to see her with my mom and she was very nice — we didn’t suspect anything.” She said she was given a “special card” to show at the hospital when going into labor.
But it became “like a horror film,” she added.
After first saying that the baby girl was dead, Sister Maria changed her story, Torres said. The nun admitted that the child was alive, and told the 24-year-old woman that she would give the child up for adoption to a French family. She implied that Torres, who had given birth out of wedlock, would be an unfit mother.
And she told Torres, who wanted to name her child Sheila, that such a name was not “Christian,” and that the baby girl would be called Maria, “after herself.”
Torres said she became increasingly hysterical, and began cursing at the nun. She climbed from her bed and stumbled to the neo-natal unit. There, one girl lay in an incubator with a name tag on her crib: Maria.
“You saw nothing,” the nun told her. Sister Maria dragged Torres back to her room and threw her onto her bed, Torres said. “I will report you to the authorities as an adulteress and you will go to jail. Then I will also take away your 2-year-old daughter,” said Sister Maria, according to Torres.
Torres says she was terrified. Inés, her first child, was the result of a failed marriage. Separated from her husband, she started a new relationship, but that man left her once she became pregnant. In a country that was still waking up from a 40-year dictatorship and was extremely socially conservative, Torres didn’t know that anti-adultery laws had already been repealed in 1978.
Her new child had been born slightly premature, at eight months, and had some health problems. The infant was taken to another floor to receive special care, and Torres wasn’t allowed to visit her because she had never been officially identified as the child’s mother. She lost track of her baby, and was too afraid to approach Sister Maria again.
A devastated Torres left the hospital nine days later “with empty arms,” and the pacifier and baby blanket she had bought for her baby Sheila. She kept them for almost three decades, never losing hope that she could one day give them to her.
Obsessed for three decades
Months before Torres’ daughter was born, Alejandro Alcalde and his wife learned they could not have children and began considering adoption. But the adoption process was difficult. They had almost lost hope until they were told by Madrid’s regional council, which handled adoptions, to contact a woman named Sister Maria.
The adoptive parents paid 200,000 pesetas for Maria Pilar — the equivalent of about $6,600 today. The nun told them it was for hospital costs and for the mother to stay at a home after the birth. They arranged everything at a public hospital, which was why Alejandro Alcalde says they were never suspicious.
Maria Pilar Alcalde, now 30, recounts how she had looked for her biological mother since she was 15 years old, when her adoptive parents divorced.
“I spent nights crying, looking at my adoption documents over and over, trying to see a way to find my mother,” said Maria Pilar, who says she had a very “lonely childhood.” She described her adoptive mother as “a very dry woman” and said that her adoptive relatives never made her part of the family.
“I always missed that love in families,” she said. “When I was a teenager, I used to wonder: ‘How will my real family be?’”
After her parents’ divorce, Maria Pilar lived with her adoptive father, who helped her hunt for her mother. He spent a fortune on detectives and lawyers. Seven years ago, they appeared together on El Diario TV talk show, where they told Maria Pilar’s story. But it resulted in no leads.
“If my father thought he had been involved in anything illegal, he would have never helped so much in my search,” Maria Pilar said. Her adoptive mother, with whom she has a distant relationship, never liked the fact that Maria Pilar wanted to look for her biological parents.
At the beginning of their search, Maria Pilar and her father even went to see Sister Maria, who had kept in touch with the adoptive parents over the years. “I swore to God in front of your mother that I would never reveal her identity,” she told Maria Pilar. “She was probably a drug addict or a prostitute, it would only hurt you to find her.”
Ten miles away, Torres mourned her little girl.
“I was obsessed for 30 years…I used to stare at babies on the street when [my daughter] would still have been a baby, at young couples when she was still a teenager…sadness was always with me, especially on her birthdays,” Torres recalls, shaken at the memories.
Afraid that her other daughter would be taken away from her, Torres didn’t do much for years. She also didn’t know where to begin looking. According to Spanish privacy laws, parents who give their children up for adoption don’t have the right to get information about their whereabouts or new identities.
A year-and-a-half ago, when other “stolen babies” cases started appearing in the media, Torres says her determination to find her missing child was renewed. Her oldest daughter, Inés, eventually told the story to Spanish daily El Mundo.
Soon after the story appeared, a journalist at Antena 3 recalled the appearance of Alejandro and Maria Pilar on El Diario show seven years before, and realized that Maria Pilar and Torres’ stories matched. She dug into the matter. Eventually, she managed to contact both parties.
An “unbelievable” moment
On June 30, 2011, Torres, 54, and Maria Pilar, were brought on El Diario TV show after having had their DNA tested. They had been at the studio the entire day prior to the appearance, being interviewed separately, never crossing paths. They sat tense on the set until the TV host read out the result of their DNA test results on air: It was a match.
As they threw themselves at each other, Torres repeatedly murmured through tears, “I love you, forgive me.” Her daughter, sobbing, replied: “I have nothing to forgive.”
Many months later, they recall that pivotal moment as if it were yesterday.
“I almost fainted, my legs buckled. …It was a very beautiful and happy day, but too intense,” Torres said.
“I just threw myself in her arms,” said Maria Pilar. “I still cannot believe it.”
Still, settling into the reunion has taken time.
“I look at my mother and at the physical warmth she has with my sisters, and I wish it could be the same [closeness and naturalness] with me,” said Maria Pilar, who says it is still “strange” for them to be around each other.
Even so, she says she now has a “mom,” two “wonderful” half-sisters, two nephews and “a loving grandmother” she is getting to know and love.
Day of reckoning
Hundreds of women have named Sister Maria as the woman involved in the theft of their babies. The nun dealt with about 3,000 adoptions per year between 1967 and 1983, says Guillermo Peñas, the lawyer who represents Torres and Maria Pilar as well as 50 other families as plaintiffs.
Her name was first linked to the theft of babies in 1982, when investigative magazine Interviú uncovered several cases at another clinic in Madrid where Sister Maria used to work. Authorities closed the clinic down, but no one was prosecuted then.
The reunion of Torres and Maria Pilar offers the first mother-and-child pair who can accuse an alleged abductor, and have made it possible to indict the nun. She is currently charged with illegal detention, fraudulently faking another’s pregnancy, forgery of public and private documents, threatening behavior and coercion, according to Peñas.
So far, Sister Maria hasn’t responded to the prosecutor’s charges in court. GlobalPost’s attempts to reach Sister Maria for a comment were unsuccessful.
The public prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the case.
Torres and Maria Pilar will first appear in front of the judge on April 3.
“This is a very important step because it [is taking on the Church] – [Sister Maria] represents the Church, and that is sacred in Spain,” said Flor Diaz, one of the representatives of SOS Stolen Babies, a support organization that Torres also belongs to.
Both Maria Pilar and Torres say that no matter what happens in the courts, they will never be able to recover the 30 years they lost. “I want that nun to pay for all the pain she has caused,” said Torres.
But at her age, it is unlikely that Sister Maria will end up behind bars.
“There have to be many more people involved,” said Peñas. “It is a matter of common sense to realize that a social worker does not have enough legal authority to do whatever she wants — she had superiors and the hospital director had to authorize the adoptions in the end.”
“But Sister Maria is the only thread we have to untangle the tangled web,” he added.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s newly installed minister of justice, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, said last week that resolving these cases “will be a priority” for his department, although advocates in the case are skeptical.
“For the government, this is like holding a screaming child,” said Peñas. “If it is held that civil authorities were in the end responsible, the state will have to compensate [thousands of families], and these are not the best times for that.”
But most of these mothers and their children, like Maria Pilar and Torres, say they don’t want any money, just to find their loved ones and recover the lost time.
As they work on that, Maria Pilar keeps the still-new pacifier and the baby blanket on her bed. In the days that followed her first meeting with her mother, she says she would fall asleep “like a baby,” grabbing onto them.
While that phase has passed, Maria Pilar says she plans to get a tattoo with her mother’s name — her way to make sure that Torres is never far from her again.
Joel Richardson trying to make $$$ off of Islam and Muslims
Last time we checked in on the nutty Joel Richardson he was fear-mongering about the Muslamic “anti-Christ” alongside Zuhdi Jasser on Glenn Beck’s old TV show, looks like he is continuing such efforts:
As before, the prophetic tome will be published by Joseph Farah’s WND Books, and Richardson’s website lists a number of endorsements: Chuck Missler of Koinonia House, who praises Richardson’s “sharp sword of diligent scholarship”; Walter C. Kaiser of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, who tells us there is “much to commend this argument for a final Islamic Empire”; Daniel Juster, Founding President of Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations and Director of Tikkun International, who advises that “prophecy teachers would do well to ask if he his not giving us a new way to look at the prophecies of the last days”; Joshua Lingel, adjunct professor of Christian apologetics to Islam at Biola University, who judges that “Joel Richardson’s thesis cuts to the core of the issues at stake”; and, among others, Billy Humphrey, of the House of Prayer Atlanta Missions Base, who sees “a compelling argument for the Islamic Antichrist position”.
Missler is a veteran in the Bible “prophecy teacher” circuit, and he regularly takes partin events with WND‘s Jospeh Farah; Kaiser, by contrast, is an evangelical with a more scholarly reputation, and he has published in mainstream academic journals. Juster is a significant figure within Messianic Judaism; Lingel was featured on this blog recently when I discussed evangelical worries about “Chrislam”. The “House of Prayer Atlanta Missions Base” has a website here.
Richardson’s previous “Muslim Antichrist” books also come with blurbs; these are mostly by pastors and the owners of apocalyptic websites, along Phil Roberts, the then-president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (“this volume will immerse you in end times, Islamic style”). Both previous books were also graced with cover quotes from Robert Spencer. A number of endorsements are also listed on Richardson’s website, and include Walid Shoebat (blogged here) and Ergun Caner (blogged here).
However, Richardson is generous enough not to want the whole field to himself; he in turn recently endorsed a book by a certain Mark Davidson, entitled Hidden in Plain Sight: The Signposts of the Coming of the Antichrist Revealed.Davidson’s specialty appears to be the splicing together of Biblical symbolism with events of the past few years. Here’s a taste:
The First Signpost would certainly include the ending of the career of the rider on the white horse. That happened early on in America’s occupation of Iraq. Entering Iraq in March 2003 and toppling Saddam in April 2003, American forces finally captured him in December 2003.
Any end of the First Signpost would also include a withdrawal of the force used in Daniel 7 that made the lion stand on its hind legs and replaced its heart. Iraq, the former lion with wings, is now standing erect somewhat like a man, and indeed has a heart of a man, rather than that of a beast. That unnamed source of the force in Daniel 7 was the United States and its international coalition.
It should be noted, though, that not all Christian Right prophecy pundits are enthusiasts of the “Islamic Antichrist” theory – Hal Lindsey, who made his name by offering up a European Anti-Christ for 1970s evangelicals, reportedly complains that Richardson’s position is a “lie”. I suspect that 20 years from now Richardson will be pronouncing similar anathemas against prophecy books proving the existence of a Chinese Anti-Christ.
Christians helping Jewish settlers cultivate stolen land
Evangelical Christians are heeding the call to help Jewish settlers occupying Palestinian land harvest crops. They are doing so because the “Bible” says so.
So the Bible legitimates the confiscation of other people’s land, driving them out and then aiding the occupiers and initiators of violence in reaping the harvest from land that they stole?:
PSAGOT, WEST BANK — It is a typical, even stereotypical, West Bank settlement scene: bearded young men pruning vines while enthusing about the Chosen People’s God-given right to this region. But in this case it is Jesus, and not Jewish identity, that animates these tillers.
For years, Westerners have flocked to the Israeli-occupied West Bank to help Palestinians with their olive harvest, as part of left-wing activist groups like the International Solidarity Movement. Among other things, the activists seek to resist efforts by settlers to disrupt the Palestinians’ reaping.
Now, the settlers have international harvest help of their own. The young Christians working in the Psagot Winery’s vineyards near Ramallah in mid-March were members of HaYovel. Last year, this Tennessee-based evangelical ministry started a large-scale operation to bring volunteers to tend and harvest settler grapes. They attach epic importance to their work.
NATHAN JEFFAY
God’s Work: Volunteers come to the West Bank to further a Biblical mission.
“When you see prophecy taking place, you have the option to do nothing or become a vessel to it,” said volunteer pruner Blake Smith, a 20-year-old farmer from Virginia.
HaYovel preaches the old-school ideology of Religious Zionist settlers with one innovation: a sacred role for Christians.
The group’s members believe that the establishment of the State of Israel, its subsequent conquering of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and specifically the flourishing of agriculture in the occupied areas are fulfillments of biblical prophecies. Like many settlers, HaYovel cites a prophecy by Jeremiah that refers to the Samaria region of the West Bank: “Again you shall plant vines on the mountains of Samaria.” And like them, HaYovel believes that the settlement movement will help to bring the Messiah to Jerusalem — the only difference being that the volunteers anticipate a second coming.
But these Christians also focus on a prophecy rarely cited by settlers, who tend to place ideological value on using only avoda ivrit, or “Hebrew labor,” whenever possible. “And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and foreigners shall be your plowmen and your vine-dressers,” Isaiah prophesized to the Israelites.
Basing itself on this verse, HaYovel — which takes its name from the Bible’s twice-a-century agricultural jubilee — has made reverence of settlers into a central religious virtue.
“Being here, we just want to serve — and to bless the Jewish people in building up the land,” said Joshua Waller, a HaYovel ministry leader and one of the 11 children of Tommy Waller, the group’s founder and spiritual head. During a lunch break, a settler with yarmulke and sidelocks came to address volunteers. They keenly asked him to explain why the international community is wrong and the West Bank is not really occupied, and seemed prepared to accept what they were told. “We are not here to teach anything, just to learn,” Joshua Waller said shortly before the talk began.
To some of the volunteers, becoming settler laborers is a way of righting a historical Christian wrong. “This is a crazy time,” said Joe Trad Jr., a 23-year-old college dropout from Missouri. Over 2,000 years of contention, he said, “we saw Constantine and the Holocaust. Yet today, in this spot of the world, you have Christians and Jews for the first time with the same goal.”
The volunteers are a mix of people who, like Smith, had a mainstream Christian upbringing and were drawn to HaYovel out of curiosity; people from families that gave up the organized church to develop their own brand of religion, one they see as closer to Judaism, and some people who are emerging from personal crises.
Trad, a former alcoholic and cocaine addict, went through rehab and became a Christian two years ago. He described his volunteering as a way of giving thanks “for what the Lord has done for me in my life by freeing me from these addictions.”
Aaron Hood, a 21-year-old HaYovel staff employee, comes from a Tennessee family of 14 children that gave up on any organized church and started observing the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible according to its own understanding. The family observes Saturday, not Sunday, as a rest day.
The circus that is known as the GOP presidential primary is still undecided, and may likely remain that way up until the Republican convention. Rick Santorum has been one of the surprising success stories in this race, going from polling at 2% early on to now emerging as the greatest challenge to Mitt Romney.
This is shocking because many considered it a bygone conclusion that Santorum was an outlier, someone so far to the right that there was no way that he would have a chance with the mainstream in the Republican party.
Santorum’s problematic stances range from birth control and abortion to his interventionist position on Iran. When it comes to Muslims it is clear that he is a bigoted Islamophobe. He was featured as a regular speaker in David Horowitz’s “Islamofascism week” and also supports profiling Muslims.
Now here he is being introduced by Rev. Dennis Terry, delivering an unequivocal message that America is a Christian nation and implying that all who don’t agree with that can “get out.” For some reason I imagine Santorum, who believes the Church should have a role in the operation of the government, probably wholeheartedly supports such a proposition:
“I don’t care what the liberals say, I don’t care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation…There is only one God and his name is Jesus. I’m tired of people telling me that I can’t say those words.. Listen to me, If you don’t love America, If you don’t like the way we do things I have one thing to say – GET OUT. We don’t worship Buddha, we don’t worship Mohammad, we don’t worship Allah, we worship God, we worship God’s son Jesus Christ.”
Christians, according to Rev. Terry, are the conscience of the state and even the key to turning the economy around. The pastor offered some pointed words about abortion, gay marriage, and prayer in schools, shouting about ‘sexual perversion’ and putting God back in Washington, D.C., as Senator Santorum was seen clapping, if not cheering, in the background.
“I know what’s in his heart. It’s the fact that he’s a Christian,” said Vickie Raabe, a 69-year-old Baptist who told the Washington Post she would be voting for Santorum in 2012. Evangelicals have become Sen. Rick Santorum’s major source of support in the 2012 election as they turn out in record numbers for the Catholic candidate.
But as then Presidential hopefuls Senator Barack Obama, Gov. Sarah Palin, and Senator John McCain found out, endorsement from pastors can be a double edge sword.
At the end of the evening Rev. Terry prayed over the presidential hopeful asking for God’s will to be done in the upcoming election intoning: “God, have favor on Rick Santorum.”
On Friday March 9 a media team from the Christian Action Network came to London to conduct interviews with various Counterjihad activists about the spread of sharia and the Islamization of Europe. Below is their interview with Paul Weston, the Chairman of the British Freedom Party.
CAN previously interviewed English Defence League members in 2009, during a visit to the UK with Robert Spencer. CAN used the opportunity to invite EDL activists to a private dinner with Spencer and Douglas Murray, to the embarrassment of the two men; Murray’s Centre for Social Cohesion sent me a message asking me to clarify that “CAN asked Douglas to do an interview with them – upon seeing the presence of the EDL at the CAN discussion he refused to deal with them and left the venue.”
CAN was primarily known for anti-gay activism prior to taking an interest in Islam; CAN’s president, Martin Mawyer, has a history of virulent statements on the subject (in particular, in 1997 he denounced Ellen DeGeneres’ “FILTHY LESBIAN LIFESTYLE”), which Spencer initially dismissed in 2009 as “not jihad-related”. However, in 2010 Mawyer’s views were reported in Dutch media, prompting Geert Wilders to withdraw from the Los Angeles premiere of a CAN documentary entitled Islam Rising: Geert Wilders’ Warning to the West. The premiere, which had been organised by Pamela Geller and Spencer, was quickly cancelled, and Spencer affected to be shocked at the discovery of Mawyer’s “ugly, vitriolic… hysterical, self-righteous, abusive rhetoric”.
The British Freedom Party and the EDL now have several links with Christian Right activists. Weston and Stephen Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) are regular guests on Michael Coren’s Arena TV show; Coren is a member of the more intellectual end of the Catholic right, and, like Mawyer, he is particularly known for his objections to homosexuality. Weston and Lennon are also friendly with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition’s Andy Miller (the TFC was in the news recently after arranging for local police to be trained in Islam at an evangelical church in Murfreesboro; the group alsohas links with the British organisation Christian Concern).
Sabaditsch-Wolff, meanwhile, was recently invested as a Dame of “the Knights of Malta — The Ecumenical Order”, by Nicholas Papanicolaou and none other than Gen William “Jerry” Boykin; the two men are, respectively, the Order’s “Grand Master” and “Grand Chancellor”. Both men are close to the evangelist Rick Joyner, who is a “Deputy Member of the Supreme Council”. Joyner, who receives messages from God about how an earthquake will soon destroy the west coast of the USA, claims that he was introduced to the Order by an “Austrian baron”, and that his books were responsible for a “spiritual renewal” in the Order.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Mon, 03/12/2012 – 5:15pm (RightWingWatch)
It has been almost-comical to see how the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Erick Stakelbeck went from working as a sports reporter to a “terrorism analyst” heralded by Religious Right and anti-Muslim groups, which never seem to question his complete lack of credentials and expertise. But Stakelbeck knows how to please a crowd with his vehement diatribes against Muslims and progressives, warning that they are both have a “shared hatred for this country.”
Stakelbeck’s “expert analysis” even includes biblical prophecy, as he recently told Marcus and Joni Lamb on Celebration that he knows the Syrian civil war will end with the destruction of Damascus because the Bible tells him so in Isaiah 17:1. “I believe right now we are seeing the seeds laid for the eventual destruction of Damascus,” Stakelbeck says. “The Bible says it’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen.”
Stakelbeck went on to claim that Islamic terrorists had infiltrated cities all over the United States, including Dearborn, Michigan, which he referred to as a “radical Islamic enclave” and “Dearbornistan.” This may come as a surprise to Dearborn’s Catholic mayor, John O’Reilly, Jr., who called claims that Dearborn is beheld to Sharia law “absurd” and notes that only a minority of Dearborn’s population are Muslims, who have been in Dearborn for ninety years. Earlier this year, a 63 year old man was caught traveling with explosives with the intention of blowing up a mosque in Dearborn.
He later said that while he was in Israel God spoke to him and told him to defend Israel, saying, “I know why I’m here on this earth.”
MURFREESBORO — With an April 25 court hearing drawing near in the fight over mosque construction here, foes of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s plans are taking the battle regional.
But while the court issue next month will focus on whether Rutherford County provided ample public notice for the 2010 meeting in which county planners approved the mosque site plan, opponents remain focused on a religious conflict, sounding a warning about the perceived spread of Islam and the damage they believe it will do to American society.
“This is not a Muslim-bashing deal. I don’t have any problem with Muslims. It’s Islam that’s causing it,” Kingdom Ministries pastor Darrel Whaley told a crowd of about 70 people last Tuesday at the Cannon County Senior Citizen Center.
Whaley warned the group that Woodbury and Cannon County are part of the area the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro plans to cover, based on a 2010 posting on the ICM’s website. It’s one of several counties surrounding Rutherford where Whaley said he hopes to deliver the message.
The minister told the crowd he was glad some Muslims felt free enough to attend the event and noted that when he preaches each Sunday at his Walter Hill church, not everyone is going to agree. “They’ve got that right,” he said.
Yet when the former president of the ICM tried to address the crowd to refute “misconceptions” later in the event following presentations by attorneys Joe Brandon and Tom Smith, Whaley refused to let him speak.
“I came here to say open our hearts to each other,” Ahmed Elsayed said, turning to the audience and pleading for the opportunity to speak. “We want to have mutual respect.”
One man in the audience argued that he had served in the military to help maintain the right to free speech and that Elsayed should be allowed to speak.
Whaley’s presentation in Woodbury Tuesday quickly shifted into a Sunday sermon, in which he told the audience, “There are no other gods with the offer of heaven. It is his will that everyone be saved. God so loved the world that he gave his son – for Muslims … for atheists. To deny his truth is to be willfully ignorant or intellectually dishonest.”
But moments after saying, “God loves Muslims just as much as anyone in the room,” the minister outlined a seven-step plan by Islam to dominate the world, starting with the 9/11 attack, followed by the destabilization of secular Muslim governments, the toppling of moderate Muslim regimes, a pending confrontation with the West and a declaration of total domination by 2020. “Their goal is to turn our nation into an Islamic republic,” he said.
Evangelist Franklin Graham called President Barack Obama’s religious views into question on Tuesday, stating that he does not know for sure if Obama is a Christian.
Graham, who is the son of Billy Graham and the CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Obama “has said he’s a Christian, so I just have to assume that he is.”
“All I know is I’m a sinner, and God has forgiven me of my sins… you have to ask every person,” he said about whether he could say for sure that Obama is indeed of the Christian faith.
However, when asked about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s religion, Graham gave a much more concrete answer.
“I think so,” Graham said when asked if he believes Santorum is a Christian. “His values are so clear on moral issues. No question about it… I think he’s a man of faith.”
MSNBC’s panelists questioned the reverend’s double standard, but Graham continued to draw distinctions between the candidates on the issue of faith. On Mitt Romney, Graham was again evasive, stating that “most Christians would not recognize Mormonism as part of the Christian faith.”
But Graham was more willing to label Newt Gingrich’s faith. “Newt’s been married several times… but he could make a good candidate,” Graham said. “I think Newt is a Christian. At least he told me he is.”
Later in the segment, Graham also said he could not be sure that Obama was not a Muslim.
“All I know is under Obama, President Obama, the Muslims of the world, he seems to be more concerned about them than the Christians that are being murdered in the Muslim countries,” he said.
He continued, ”Islam sees him as a son of Islam… I can’t say categorically that [Obama is not Muslim] because Islam has gotten a free pass under Obama.”
Graham drew the criticism of the White House last spring when he suggested in an interview with ABC that Obama had not been born in the United States.
During that same interview, Graham also questioned whether Obama’s actions and values matched up with his identification as a Christian.
“Now he has told me that he is a Christian. But the debate comes, what is a Christian?” Graham said of Obama. “For him, going to church means he’s a Christian. For me, the definition of a Christian is whether we have given our life to Christ and are following him in faith and we have trusted him as our lord and savior.”
Early last year American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer posted a column arguing that a “sensible and sane immigration policy” would model “ancient Israel” and require every immigrant to “convert to Christianity.” Muslim immigrants in particular would be required to “drop his Islam and his Qur’an at Ellis Island.” But in what has becoming a frequentoccurrence, Fischer later deleted both of the sentences, among other sentences, and altered the article to make it a tad less inflammatory.
But today on Focal Point, Fischer repeated his claim that Muslims should “convert to Christianity” in order to become American citizens, saying that immigrants must “got to embrace your God, they’ve got to embrace your faith.”
According to the Greek press, Greek Orthodox Bishop Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus appealed to the Council of State to withdraw a Greek bill that would allow the building of a mosque in the capital city, Athens.
Known for his far-right views, Seraphim described the bill as an anti-Christian move and a disrespect to Christian martyrs, although it is billed as democratic move.
In the previous years, there were talks of building a mosque in Athens. However, no steps were taken as the previous governments’ ministers were mainly right-wingers.
This year a bill which asked for an old building in the Votanikos region of Athens to be converted into a place of worship for Muslims passed through the Greek parliament.
If Pat Robertson’s CBN News wants to be treated as a credible news source, it probably should stop elevating the story of Kamal Saleem.
Saleem, who was also prominently featured in The Call: Detroit – where he urged other Muslims to convert to Christianity – and told rally attendees that he is the descended of the “Grand Wazir of Islam.” However, the title is not found anywhere in Islam. While preparing for The Call:Detroit, Saleem said that President Obama planned “to break down Article 6” of the Constitution in order to enforce “Islamic law,” warning “if he breaks this, the Sharia law will be supreme in America.”
An investigation by CNN found that Saleem is one of a handful of “fundamentalist Christians posing as ex-terrorists,” and a Middle East studies professor at the conservative Calvin College said his story “is not verifiable and without it he’s no different from other fundamentalist preachers.” Howard even wrote a review of Saleem’s book, which he called “obsessively, sadistically violent,” highlighting Saleem’s many contradictions in his backstory and his blatant and bizarre misrepresentations of Islam, saying, “Suffice it to say that if the subject were Jews, this book could not have been published.” Howard even points out that Focus on the Family, a former employer of Saleem, even had doubts about Saleem’s conversion story.
Haroon Moghul of Religion Dispatches also points out inconsistencies in his story of working for rival Palestinian secular and Islamist groups simultaneously and his claim that as a Muslim he was “allergic to Jesus,” even though Muslims consider Jesus the Messiah.
Why would CBN News bolster such a clear fabricator?
CNN notes that “Saleem, whose real name is Khodor Shami, worked for Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network for sixteen years.”
On Friday, CBN’s The 700 Club featured a story on Saleem where he discussed how he tried “to wage Cultural Jihad” in the Bible Belt:
Kamal was seven when his parents sent him to Muslim training camps to learn to use weapons and engage and kill the enemy. The boys were also taught another, more subtle form of warfare…
“We were training for what’s called, ‘Culture Jihad,’ which is shifting cultures. Culture Jihad is unlike the sword, unlike the rifle. It is the Jihad that will come into your world.”
By his 20s, Kamal was chosen to wage Cultural Jihad on America.
“In Islam, liberty, freedom, monarchy, all these are idols and must be brought down. So the liberty that you have in United States of America is anti-Islam, so America must be changed. So I moved to the ‘Bible Belt’ specifically. The Bible Belt was the strongest of the strongest. That’s where the stout Christians are, and I want to take on the best of the best, because I considered myself as the sword of Islam. I thought, ‘I’m anointed. I’m unique. I’m selected. I’m coming to a country and a culture to change it. I have the power of Allah with me.’”
This story reminds us here at “What If” of the Malaysian Fatwa against yoga and the Islamophobes who rallied against it. Robert Spencer’s writers proclaimed:
“Why should we look for other alternatives to exercise and search for peace? Yoga could cause (Muslims) to stray from their faith because its movements are according to the style and traditions of Hinduism.”
Will Spencer and his cronies repeat the same thing in a Christian context?
In his blog, Pastor Mark Driscoll from the Mars Hill Church in Seattle, says that “yoga is a religious philosophy that is in direct opposition to Christianity”. Because of this, he believes that “yoga cannot be simply received by any Christian in good conscious”.
Say what?
Not that this is the first time we’ve heard such rubbish about the conflicts between yoga and religion, but for the last time, can someone please tell these people that yoga is not a religion?
But even if we did tell him this (and other people have), the good Pastor refuses to believe it. In fact, he says yoga is downright demonic and he compares it to being as bad as adultery–which is nothing but a huge stretch (pun intended):
There is nothing wrong with stretching, exercising, or regulating one’s stress through breathing. But when the tenets of yoga are included, it’s by definition a worship act to spirit beings other than the God of the Bible. By way of analogy, there is nothing inherently wrong with intimacy, sex, and pleasure. But when the tenets of adultery are included, it’s a sinfully idolatrous worship act. A faithful Christian can no more say they are practicing yoga for Jesus than they can say they are committing adultery for Jesus.
Pastor Mark goes on to say that we just don’t understand what yoga really is. To which I say, do you, Pastor? Have you ever tried it? Have you experienced the true goodness that can come to your mind, body and spirit when you start flowing in some of the awesome poses and vinyasas? Doubtful, because he believes that we simply cannot get down on our mats while “ignoring the religious aspects of the practice of yoga”.
Yes, some people choose to incorporate spirituality into their practice, which is completely fine. To each yogi, her own. But since when does spirituality equal religion? Can’t we just open our hearts and our minds to the possibility that we can express gratitude and thanks and creativity and acceptance without a particular religious belief being a part of that? I, for one, have never had a yoga teacher quote from the Bible or any other religious readings during class, but even if I did, I’m pretty sure I’d be OK with that.
Yet Pastor Mark still rejects the idea that we can grow spiritually without church. In fact, he says the only real way to do so is through Christianity.
Sigh.
I say we all get down on our mats today and send some hearty “OMs” to the good Pastor.
Remember Terry Jones, the mustachioed clown of a pastor who created a furor over burning copies of the Quran? Mr. Jones has decided to throw his hat into the ring and run for President of the United States. He will be running as a Republican (surprise, surprise) and laid out a seven point plan, which includes deporting 20 million illegal aliens.
Many have scoffed at his announcement, but is he any less absurd a candidate than many other GOP contenders who are running on the anti-Muslim platform? The Republican party is full of candidates trying to use Islamophobic rhetoric to woo right-wing voters. These include hopefuls like Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain. This article by Sheila Musaji on The American Muslim, entitled The GOP Has Declared War on American Muslims, is worth reading.
Maybe Herman Cain can run Terry Jones as his vice president. Then, they can offer a great deal on burning Qurans: burn the first Quran for $9.99, next Quran is on us!
Certainly, Terry Jones’ seven point proposal is more reasonable than Herman Cain’s 9/9/9 pizza plan. In fact, one of Terry Jones’ seven points is to reduce military spending. Number three in his seven point plan is:
Reduce military spending: All military on foreign soil should be brought back immediately and all future involvement of military on foreign soil should not be engaged until our country has become economically strong again. The security of our nation must be reexamined and our military spending must be cut by several billion dollars.
Is it possible that a right-wing uber-Islamophobe just said something more reasonable about foreign policy than most of the rest of the candidates, including Barack Obama himself?
American Vision is a hard-line Christian Reconstruction organization whose current leader, Gary DeMar, has said that democracy should be replaced by a theocratic government run by Christians who will impose Old Testament prohibitions and the occasional executions of “sodomites” to drive gay people back into the closet. It’s no surprise, then, that American Vision has involved itself over the years with anti-gay and anti-abortion causes.
Lately, however, it has branched out and seems to be testing its message in the antigovernment and conspiracy-laden “Patriot” waters. Literally.
The group is co-sponsoring a January 2012 “Patriot Cruise” that will, according to a promotional webpage, transform participants’ abilities to defend their faith and the country’s foundations, and help them learn how to convert others who oppose “the truth by which we stand.”
During the weeklong cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s 1,020-foot Mariner of the Seas, participants will “explore what Americans really believe” in the learning environment of a “masters [sic] level teaching classroom and the energy of a Town Hall meeting.” Other sponsors include the Patriot Depot (which sells anti-Obama T-shirts and other “supplies for the conservative revolution”) and a Gary DeMar side project, Vision2America, which is working to “restore America to a Christian republic.”
“No conference on land,” American Vision claims, “will equip you for opposing the godless apologists of the liberal machine.”
So far, in addition to DeMar, there are four “On Board Leaders” (other speakers to be announced). The others are Alan Keyes, former presidential candidate and birther who works with the Declaration Alliance (which supported the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps); speaker and author Bill Federer of American Minute, who has appeared on conspiracy-monger Alex Jones’ show; and Tea Party activist Victoria Jackson, once known for her six seasons on Saturday Night Live but currently known for her anti-gay, anti-Muslim and anti-liberal slams; and birther Gary Kreep, a former national board member for Young Americans for Freedom. Kreep also lists himself as unpaid general counsel to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. The MCDC closed down in March 2010, though its website remains.
Can’t make the cruise and need a Patriot fix? The American Vision store carries the Patriot-friendly tract Gateway to Liberty: The Constitutional Power of the Tenth Amendment, as well as a 2011 Firearms Guide and another guide called Disaster Prep 101. You can also pick up some copies of the young adult novels The Drums of War, a series about the Revolutionary War.
American Vision is also tailoring its Christian Reconstructionist rhetoric to more Patriot and Tea Party-sounding calls to “restore America.” Its website currently posts a “County Rights” project, a series of articles by research director Joel McDurmon (soon to be available in video and book) that tell readers how to “restore freedom” by taking control of local (i.e. county) governments and establishing the kind of community that reflects their values.
In one article, titled “State’s Rights: How to Get Freedom Back,” McDurmon gives a shout-out (but is quick to claim it’s not an endorsement) to the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC), a driving force behind so-called “nullification” movements to undo or weaken federal laws that proponents don’t like. Though he claims not to endorse the TAC, he nevertheless lists 12 issues that the TAC is working on, including “Sheriffs First” laws against “unwarranted federal policing activities” and freedom from federal gun regulations. He calls the list “impressive” and proceeds to explain how nullification might be a strategy to undo Roe v. Wade at the state level.
An evangelical group known a The Call, headed by Lou Engle, is planning a prayer rally at Ford Field in Detroit in Nov. 11 with the goal of converting Muslims before they turn Michigan into an Islamic state.
In a Youtube video, Engle and another pastor, Rick Joyner, say that the event will use prayer to send dreams of Jesus to the Muslims and convert them:
Joyner: One of the things Detroit has become known for in our nation is the largest Muslim community in our nation, and Dearborn, it’s growing. Many havesaid there actually is an attempt to make Michigan our first Muslim state…. You cannot understand our modern world today without understanding Islam, and the Lord called them hypocrites who did not know the Signs of the Times. We need to know and understand this issue, we have to. And Islam is in our face, everywhere we return. And here, in America, this is the one place where it is most in our face, right now…
Engle: At 11-11-11 the Lord just clearly showed to us, you got to pray all night long because it’s when the Muslims sleep and all over the world right now Muslims in the night are having dreams of Jesus, we believe that God wants to invade with His love Dearborn with dreams of Jesus. We’re gathering together to say God, pour out your grace and revelations of Jesus all over Dearborn and the Muslim communities of North and South America.
Joyner and Engle were also two of the primary movers behind Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s prayer rally in Houston in early August.
Lansing — Terry Jones, the controversial Florida pastor, returned to Michigan on a rainy Wednesday night for a 30-minute speech on the steps of the Capitol where he railed about radical Islam.
The pastor’s speech was greeted by more police, media and protesters than supporters or curious onlookers.
About a dozen protesters started chanting “Say No to Hate” during Jones’ speech before police quieted them down.
“Terry Jones is not welcome here,” said protester David Mitchell, 30, of Lansing, who held a banner with others saying: “They shall not pass.”
Jones, wearing jeans and a Harley Davidson black bomber jacket, decried Islam as a not a peaceful religion and oppressive to women. The Islamic law, Sharia, should not be tolerated, he said.
“Islam is a religion that hates freedom of speech,” Jones said.
He was in Lansing to support a new organization, Operation Freedom’s Tree, founded by James Terpening. The political group denounces Islam as evil.
Jones supporter Eugene Connors, 40, of Lansing agrees. One sign he held said: “Stop Burning Christians.”
“People don’t realize the threat Islam poses to everyone,” he said.
Afterward, Jones said he doesn’t have a problem with Muslims, just the radical element and Sharia. Jones lamented the low turnout, including the no-show of state Rep. Dave Agema, R-Grandville, who authored legislation to ban foreign law.
“He chickened out,” Jones said.
Asked if he has plans to burn the Quran again, Jones said no.
Jones, who caused a hubbub for burning the Quran in March, also caused a stir with a visit to Dearborn during the Arab International Festival this summer.
With Representative Michele Bachmann’s victory in the Ames, Iowa straw poll, and Texas Governor Rick Perry’s triumphal entrance into the GOP presidential primary, there’s been a sudden spike of attention drawn to the extremist religious beliefs both candidates have been associated with – up to and including their belief in Christian dominionism. (In the Texas Observer, the New Yorker, and the Daily Beast, for example.) The responses of denial from both the religious right itself and from the centrist Beltway press have been so incongruous as to be laughable – if only the subject matter weren’t so deadly serious. Those responses need to be answered, but more importantly, we need to have the serious discussion they want to prevent.
For example, in an August 18 post, originally entitled, “Beware False Prophets who Fear Evangelicals”, Washington Post religion blogger Lisa Miller cited the three stories I just mentioned, and admitted, “The stories raise real concerns about the world views of two prospective Republican nominees”, then immediately reversed direction: “But their echo-chamber effect reignites old anxieties among liberals about evangelical Christians. Some on the left seem suspicious that a firm belief in Jesus equals a desire to take over the world.” Of course, she cited no examples to bolster this narrative-flipping claim. More importantly, she wrote not one more word about the real concerns she had just admitted.
Dominionism is not a myth
“What In Heaven’s Name Is A Dominionist?” Pat Robertson asked on his 700 Club TV show, one of several religious right figures to recently pretend there was nothing to the notion. Funny he should ask. In a 1984 speech in Dallas, Texas, he said:
“What do all of us do? We get ready to take dominion! We get ready to take dominion! It is all going to be ours – I’m talking about all of it. Everything that you would say is a good part of the secular world. Every means of communication, the news, the television, the radio, the cinema, the arts, the government, the finance – it’s going to be ours! God’s going to give it to His people. We should prepare to reign and rule with Jesus Christ.”
Furthermore, C Peter Wagner, the intellectual godfather of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), actually wrote a book called Dominion! in 2008. Chapter Three was entitled “Dominion Theology”. When pressed, Peter likes to pretend that his ideas are just garden-variety Christianity, based on Genesis 1:26, in which, before the fall, God gives Adam and Eve dominion over the natural world - a far cry from dominion over other people, who did not even exist at the time, as evangelical critics of this dominionist argument have repeatedly pointed out.
Dominionism is not new
Dominionist ideas have circulated throughout the religious right for decades prior to Robertson’s 1984 speech. A primary source was the small but influential sect known as Christian Reconstructionism, founded by R J Rushdoony in the 1960s, which advocates replacing American law with Old Testament codes. Centrists like Miller make the mistake of thinking that the small size of Rushdoony’s core of true believers is the full extent of his influence. But this is utterly mistaken. As Michelle Goldberg wrote in Daily Beast, “Rushdoony pioneered the Christian homeschooling movement, as well as the revisionist history, ubiquitous on the religious right, that paints the US as a Christian nation founded on biblical principles. He consistently defended Southern slavery and contrasted it with the greater evils of socialism.”
A second source traces back to the roots of the Latter Rain movement of the late 1940s, long rejected by orthodox evangelicals because they contradicted scripture and denied primary agency to God – which is why they insist that Christians must actively establish church dominance over all of society, because God can’t do it alone.
The Latter Rain was denounced by the Assemblies of God – the largest American Pentecostal church – in 1949, not solely for dominionist ideology, but for a variety of related beliefs and practices. When similar teachings and practices re-emerged in the guise of the New Apostolic Reformation 50 years later, the Assemblies of God denounced them again in 2000.
This time, however, many Assemblies of God congregations have increasingly accepted the NAR influence. Sarah Palin’s long-time church in Wasilla is one such congregation. The most clear-cut example of NAR dominionism is the so-called “Seven Mountains Mandate”, which holds that dominionist Christians should control the whole world by infiltrating and dominating the “Seven Mountains” of culture: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion.
Dominionism is not a left-wing fantasy
A number of authors made charges similar to or derived from Joe Carter, web editor of First Things, who wrote: “The term ["dominionism"] was coined in the 1980s by [sociologist Sara] Diamond and is never used outside liberal blogs and websites. No reputable scholars use the term for it is a meaningless neologism that Diamond concocted for her dissertation.”
However, at the same time Diamond was working on her dissertation – published as the book Spiritual Warfare in 1989 – evangelical writer/researcher Albert James Dager was taking similarly critical aim, though from a different direction. In 1986 and ’87, he published a multi-issue essay “Kingdom Theology” in the publication Media Spotlight. In that text he also used the terms “Kingdom Now” or “Dominion” Theology. In 1990, Dager, too, published a book, Vengeance Is Ours: The Church in Dominion.
While his main focus was doctrinal error and non-Christian practices and influences, Dager’s work traced dominionism back to the 1940s and even earlier. Many more have followed in his footsteps since then. If you Google the words “dominionism” and “heresy”, you’ll get more than half a million hits. It should be obvious to anyone that conventional conservative Christians have big problems with dominionism – if only the United States’ establishment media could figure out how to use Google.
Dominionism is not an imprecise catch-all term
Despite lingering definitional differences that are common with relatively new terminology, those who study dominionism and related phenomenon in a political framework have an increasingly common and precise terminology that most writers and researchers share. Researcher Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates provided a very useful guide, “The Christian Right, Dominionism, and Theocracy”, which addresses issues of terminology from several different perspectives – for example, between “generic dominionism” and specific dominion theologies.
Berlet also draws a distinction between “hard” and “soft” dominionists. “Soft Dominionists are Christian nationalists,” he writes. “They believe that Biblically-defined immorality and sin breed chaos and anarchy. They fear that America’s greatness as God’s chosen land has been undermined by liberal secular humanists, feminists, and homosexuals … Their vision has elements of theocracy, but they stop short of calling for supplanting the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” Hard Dominionists add something more to the mix: “They want the United States to be a Christian theocracy. For them the Constitution and Bill of Rights are merely addendums to Old Testament Biblical law.”
Rushdoony’s Christian Reconstructionists clearly fall into the hard dominionist camp. But the NAR seems to straddle the soft/hard division. On the one hand, they clearly do claim that conservative Christians are ordained to run the world, not just US society. Thus, the Seven Mountains Mandate. On the other hand, Wagner and others have argued that the Seven Mountains is compatible with democracy. The state of Hawaii shows how: Early in the 2010 election cycle, both the Republican and the Democratic frontrunners for governor were associated with the NAR. That changed when long-time Congressman Neil Abercrombie joined the race on the Democratic side, and eventually won the race handily. But for a while, the NAR came tantalisingly close to realising their dream, at least in one state – not just to win power, but to occupy all the possible paths to power.
What’s more, in a recent article at Talk2Action, Rachel Tabachnick draws attention to another hedge on Wagner’s part, quoting from Dominion! In a section entitled “Majority Rules”: “If a majority feels that heterosexual marriage is the best choice for a happy and prosperous society, those in the minority should agree to conform – not because they live in a theocracy, but because they live in a democracy. The most basic principle of democracy is that the majority, not the minority, rules and sets the ultimate norms for society.”
This, of course, is utterly false in a liberal democracy, such as the United States. Liberal democracies combine majority rule as a general governing principle with a framework of rights protecting individuals in political minorities from persecution, political repression, and the like. The fact that Wagner so utterly misunderstands the foundations of American democracy shows just how dangerous such “soft” dominionism can be. This same lesson can be drawn from Uganda as well, where several different strains of dominionist theology have combined to bring that nation to the verge of passing a law that will make homosexuality punishable by death. Such is the nature of illiberal dominionist “democracy”.
Europe’s bloody theocratic wars
This brings us, finally, to the serious discussions that dominionists and their enablers, like Miller, are trying to prevent. The first of those is about the very nature of American democracy. For nearly 200 years, Europe was torn apart by a series of religious wars and their bloody aftermath – the major reason that the United States was founded as a secular republic. We’re potentially on the verge of forgetting all that history and suffering through it again, just as we’re now suffering through forgetting the lessons of the Great Depression. Those centuries of war began with the German Peasants’ War of 1524-26, in which more than 100,000 died; continued through the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War on the European continent; and lasted until the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). This was the bloody European history of religious intolerance and strife that many, if not most, American colonialists were fleeing from when they came to the New World.
It was also this bloody history that gave rise to the development of classical liberalism, affirming the individual right to religious liberty and replacing the top-down theocratic justification of the state with Locke’s concept of the bottom-up social contract, based on the consent of the governed. The ideas that Locke perfected took generations to develop. Religious tolerance, for example, began as simply a matter of pragmatism: unless people stopped killing each other for differing religious beliefs, war in Europe would never end.
But gradually, the idea took hold that tolerance was a positive good, and key to this new perspective was the recognition that torturing someone to change their beliefs could not produce the desired result of a genuine heartfelt conversion. Thus, the moral rejection of torture – another feature of classical liberalism – had its roots in the evolution of the idea of religious liberty. The idea of utterly forgetting the prolonged bloody history that the United States was born out of is no laughing matter.
The same could be said of the myth that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, with laws based on the Bible. Of course most Americans were Christians at the time, but the leading intellects were decidedly less so, much more influenced by Enlightenment thought. There were many, such as Jefferson, who were better described as Deists, who believed that God had created a rational universe, but did not intervene supernaturally thereafter. They deliberately used terms like “the Creator” and “Nature’s God” to affirm their distinctive, non-Christian view.
Moreover, God was not mentioned at all in the Constitution, and religion was only mentioned to exclude its influence, stating that no religious test should be required for office. Finally, US law was based on British common law, not the Bible. The Supreme Court itself is a common law court, following common law precedents and practices. And British common law traces back to Roman law, which first came to England centuries before Rome adopted the Christian religion.
Of course the intolerant religious right wants us to forget this. How else could they ever gain power, except through massive forgetting of who and what the United States really is? Not to mention who and what they are: the most fundamental enemies of the United States, who would, if they could, return us to the centuries of blood before the US was born, the nightmare out of which the United States awakened.
Theocratic thinking threatens the US today
There are very immediate consequences that flow from the theocratic mindset. You’ll note, for example, that the “Seven Mountains” of culture do not include science. That’s not because dominionists intend to leave science alone, but rather because they see no need to dominate what they can simply cut off, ignore and deny. If science tells them that homosexuality is an inborn trait, why fight that in the realm of science when politics, the media, religion and education offer much, much better places to fight? After all, who says that education has to be based on facts? The same holds true for evolution and global warming as well, not to mention the workings of the economy.
One rightwing denier of dominionist influence, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, even framed his attack as “An unholy war on the Tea Party, while another denier complained that instead of describing the Tea Party as a movement united around concern about big government, many journalists seem to be trying to redefine the colour red by overlaying religious intent and purpose on the movement.
Yet the dominionist connection to the Tea Party goes far beyond just the two candidacies of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. Ron Paul, whose extreme anti-government positions helped to fuel the emergence of the Tea Party, has much deeper dominionist connections than either of the two new darlings. During his first term in Congress, one of his aides was Gary North, Rushdoony’s son-in-law, and a leading Reconstructionist in his own right, who has written extensively on so-called “Biblical Capitalism”, an ideology profoundly at odds with traditional Biblical-based teachings on economic justice.
While libertarians once traced their descent from John Locke, and more recently from the deeply anti-Christian Ayn Rand, Reconstructionism represents an increasingly important foundation for their views. A recently released sociology study, “Cultures of the Tea Party”, found that Tea Party supporters are characterised by four dispositions: “authoritarianism, ontological insecurity, libertarianism, and nativism”. Since traditional libertarianism was purportedly the opposite of authoritarianism, this highlights how radically libertarianism has changed – a conclusion that’s echoed by the 2011 Pew Reaserch Political Typology Poll, which found that religious and economic conservatives had completely merged into one single group since 2006 and all previous polling.
What this means in the long run is far from clear. But it strongly suggests a solidfying outlook with deep Reconstructionist sympathies that actually looks at government failure to deal with major issues, such as restoring the economy, as a positive good. If faith in American institutions collapses entirely, then who wouldn’t give Biblical law a shot? The more loudly such people proclaim themselves patriots, the more loudly they cheer for US collapse. It’s not just Obama they want to fail. It’s the very idea of America.
Paul Rosenberg is the Senior Editor of Random Lengths News, a bi-weekly alternative community newsletter.
A judge ordered a Wichita pastor to stay away from the Islamic Society of Wichita, as part of a sentence for loitering and disrupting business.
Sedgwick County District Judge Phil Journey this morning sentenced Mark Holick to serve 12 months unsupervised probation, pay $300 in fines and stay at least 1,000 feet from the Islamic Center, where he was arrested in August 2010.
Holick, pastor of Spirit One Christian Ministry, and more than a dozen followers had gone to the Islamic Center as members there were trying to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan. Holick said they were there to hand out Bibles. Police said he was causing a disturbance and blocking access to the center.
Police had said they asked Holick to move to a public sidewalk. In one instance, cited by Journey, Holick marched in place in response to police orders to move.
“The only reason you were the one arrested is because you were the only one who disobeyed the police orders,” Journey told Holick.
The case reached district court on an appeal from a conviction in Wichita Municipal Court. Holick asked for a a jury trial. Jurors found Holick guilty early last month on two counts of loitering and disrupting a local business.
Journey’s sentence followed the recommendations of Assistant City Attorney Michael Hoelscher.
During the hearing, Holick gave a 15-minute speech, quoting Bible verses and accusing the city of violating his First Amendment rights.
“Wichita is confused,” Holick said. “I am not your enemy. Islam is. The Lord said there will be no other gods before me.”
Journey told Holick that the First Amendment guaranteed his rights to express his religious beliefs but allowed laws to regulate how he practices his faith.
“I want you to think about this,” Journey said. “What if the shoe had been on the other foot and someone from the Islamic Center had come to your place and tried to convert your members and had blocked your driveway?”
Spirit One has been a street and online ministry since a month after his arrest, Holick said, when he sold his building in south Wichita to another church. First Freewill Baptist now resides at 1515 E. Harry.
The judge reminded Holick that the Constitution provides protection for people of all faiths, not just Holick’s.
“I hope you will reflect on the choices you made,” Journey said. “There’s nothing wrong the proselytizing or holding your beliefs. It’s the manner of how you carry them out that’s the problem.”
Holick could face a six-month jail term if he doesn’t follow the conditions of his probation.
Spencer told Robertson, who was upset that no one in the media was telling “the truth about this cult,” that the “hard left” media hate America and Christianity, and therefore “love” radical Islam. Later in the program, Robertson blasted the “anti-American” media for embracing “something out of the Eighth Century B.C.” (note: Muhammad was born in 570 AD) and denounced Islam for supposedly endorsing violence and restricting the rights of women (things Robertson has never, ever supported).
Robertson: Tell me what it is about the media today that seems to be in favor of radical Islam, why do they want to put down anybody who tells the truth about this cult?
Spencer: Well I tell you I think the unpleasant truth about it is, is that the media being hard left is essentially anti-American. And so anything that’s American, that’s Western, that’s Christian, that’s Judeo-Christian, they hate. And so they see Islam and it’s non-Western and non-Christian and they love it.
…
Robertson: ladies and gentlemen, it’s out there. You know, you ask the media in this country: What in name is wrong with you? Are you so anti-American, are you so opposed to this great nation and the freedoms you have that you want to embrace something out of the Eighth Century B.C. that restricts the role of women and causes hideous fighting, jihad, the killing of innocent civilians? Why do you embrace that? And you ask yourself, the media in America, why do you embrace that? You’re living in the freest, nicest, most beautiful nation on earth, what’s wrong with you? Wake up!
GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain has revealed himself to be, for various reasons, the biggest bigot and buffoon in the race. He kicked up a firestorm with his recent comments on Fox News Sunday in support of the “right” to ban American mosques. Apparently, Cain thinks that freedom of religion means freedom to ban religions:
CAIN: They could say that. Chris, lets go back to the fundamental issue that the people are basically saying they’re objecting to. They’re objecting to the fact Islam is both a religion and a set of laws, Sharia law. That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes. The people in the community know best, and I happen to side with the people in Murfreesboro.
WALLACE: You’re saying any community, if they want to ban a mosque?
CAIN: Yes. They have a right to do that. That’s not discriminating based upon religion.
Discriminating against Muslims is not discrimination because they’re Muslims! Kind of like the argument we hear from racists that discrimination against black people is not discrimination because black people are more likely to be criminals.
Many religious leaders took Cain to task for his comments, but not everyone. In fact, more than enough far right wingers are gleefully embracing his call to deny American Muslims their fundamental American rights.
Permits, in my judgment, should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America. This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.
Did you get that? Each Islamic mosque is “dedicated” not to the pillars of Islam (faith, prayer, charity, and fasting) but to the “overthrow of the American government.” As if all the Muslims of every denomination (Sunni, Shi’ite, Sufi, liberal, conservative, etc.) are acting with one will, one goal, like the Borg (resistance is futile, you will be assimilated). He must have read that somewhere in the Protocols of the Elders of Mecca.
Anyway, it is this last point that has Bryan Fischer super excited: he is no longer alone in his Bigotry now that a big shot GOP candidate has legitimated his effort to ban all mosques. On what grounds can they so brazenly defy the First Amendment? The bogus talking point about Islam being a political ideology, not a religion:
In point of fact, in Islam the church IS the state. And since Islam allows no room for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience and equal rights for women, it’s view of culture is so bizarrely un-American as to be dangerous and destructive to civilized society in all its forms.
This is quite ironic coming from a man whose goal in life is to impose his backward religious opinions on an unwilling society. Don’t mind our homegrown Christian fundamentalists who reject separation of church and state. They don’t count.
•Large majorities cite the equal importance of democracy and Islam to the quality of life and progress of the Muslim world. They see no contradiction between democratic values and religious principles.
•Political freedoms are among the things they admire most about the West.
•Substantial majorities in nearly all nations say that if drafting a new constitution, they would guarantee freedom of speech.
•Most want neither theocracy nor secular democracy but a third model in which religious principles and democratic values coexist. They want their own democratic model that draws on Islamic law as a source.
•Significant majorities say religious leaders should play no direct role in drafting a constitution, writing legislation, determining foreign policy, or deciding how women dress in public.
Egyptians… express little interest in recreating their country in the image of Iran, as has been the fear among some Western commentators. Less than 1% say the Islamic Republic should be Egypt’s political model, and most Egyptians think religious leaders should provide advice to government authorities, as opposed to having full authority for determining the nation’s laws. The majority of residents in the Arab world’s most populous nation desire a democracy informed by religious values, not a theocracy.
•Majorities in most countries believe that women should have the same legal rights as men: They should have the right to vote, to hold any job outside the home that they qualify for, and to hold leadership positions at the cabinet and national council levels
•Majorities of men in virtually every country (including 62 percent in Saudi Arabia, 73 percent in Iran, and 81 percent in Indonesia) agree that women should be able to work at any job they qualify for.
•In Saudi Arabia, where women cannot vote, 58 percent of men say women should be able to vote.
•While Muslim women favor gender parity, they do not endorse wholesale adoption of Western values.
So, while scientific polling of the Muslim world (not to mention American Muslims) reveals broad support for democratic principles, a rejection of theocracy, and support for women’s rights, that won’t stop the far right from parroting the thoroughly debunked but politically potent talking point that Islam is somehow uniquely anti-democratic, oppressive to women, and dangerous.
Bryan Fischer is the face of the grassroots prejudice to which Herman Cain is appealing and which will not likely be criticized by the rest of the GOP candidates. American right-wing politics has sunk to a new low. No longer is shredding the First Amendment considered fringe, crazy talk.
Fischer is not a lone anti-freedom bigot anymore. The GOP is right there with him.
This pastor is giving Christians a bad name. He thinks all terrorists are Muslims, wants a background check on all Muslims who are trying to set up a mosque in the small town of Carnegie.
The Rev. Keith Tucci preaches from a pulpit more than an hour from Carnegie, but he’s concerned about a different religious community’s plans to relocate there.
Tucci, pastor of the Living Hope Church in Latrobe, said he has “serious concerns” about members of a Muslim mosque who want to move to a former Presbyterian church in the heart of Carnegie’s business district. Tucci said he and members of his congregation will travel to Carnegie on Monday to pass out “informational packets” about the Muslim faith.
“I have questions: Who are these people? Are they American citizens? Has anyone done a background check on them?” said Tucci, whose church is part of a national network of Bible-based churches with headquarters in Reserve, La., according to its website. “I’m not saying all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. We need more information about these people before they are allowed to move in and ruin a community.”
Carnegie Councilman Rick D’Loss, president of the borough’s synagogue, Congregation Ahavath Achim, said some residents asked questions about the plan for the building but generally expressed support.
“In a town of 8,000 people, of course you’ll have some dissenting opinions, but Carnegie is a very inclusive place,” D’Loss said. “Muslims have rights just like anyone else, and they can pray as they choose. It’s a shame that we have to keep telling people that. I find it funny that a group is going to drive all the way from Westmoreland to tell us we shouldn’t allow the Muslims to be in our community.
“If we say no Muslims, then we have to say no Jews, too. Then what?”
The borough council on June 14 approved the Attawheed Islamic Center’s request to convert the 19,000-square-foot stone and brick building along East Main Street into a place for prayer and religious education. No residents expressed opposition at a public hearing about the mosque or during the council meeting that followed. The Muslim group rents space on Banksville Road.
Even with council approval, it’s unclear when the group would move into the building, which needs extensive repairs, including a roof. Al-Walid Mohsen, vice president and manager of the Attawheed Islamic Center, did not return calls for comment.
Police Chief Jeff Harbin, who is the part-time borough manager, said the Living Hope Church group has a right to come to Carnegie and pass out information and talk about concerns, as long as they do so peacefully.
“I grew up in Carnegie, and we tend to welcome everyone,” Harbin said. “We believe in the right of people to express their opinions, and we respect the First Amendment. People are free to disagree.”
Terry Jones, the Quran-burning pastor from Florida, is to lead a three-hour rally against Islam today at Dearborn City Hall followed by a 2-mile walk to the Arab International Festival, where he will further speak out. The three-day festival is the largest outdoor gathering of Arab Americans in the U.S. and is held in Dearborn, known for its sizable Muslim population.
Jones, who led a rally at City Hall in April, gained worldwide attention for his threats to burn the Quran last year on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He didn’t go through with it, but he led a Quran-burning in Florida in March. He tried to protest outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn in April, but a jury ruled he would likely breach the peace, thwarting his plans. Jones has appealed that decision, which was criticized by the ACLU and some constitutional law experts as an infringement of his free-speech rights.
Jones said the decision was an example of sharia, or Islamic law, coming to America, which he said is a growing threat. Today, Jones plans to speak out against sharia again as part of a five-point plan he said will help fight Islam. One point calls for the “monitoring of all mosques to assure that they are places of worship and not of Islamic propaganda.”
Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly Jr. has said repeatedly that the city has never implemented sharia.
In a letter sent this week to residents, O’Reilly said Jones and his supporters “are coming here to promote the concept that Islam is a false faith and that Muslims by teaching and nature are violent. We know that there is no substance to their message — their goal is to promote fear and hatred in others.”
Referring to Jones supporters, O’Reilly said he is urging the public to “ignore them and their empty words. Their goal is to bait and anger us so that they can then misrepresent who we are in order to serve their personal agenda.
“Debating them and confronting them at this event or in our city can produce no positive result for us.”
On the 700 Club today, Pat Robertson once again spoke out against American Muslims, singling out the construction of mosques and the purported threat of creeping Sharia law. Robertson likened critics of Muslims to opponents of Nazis and rejected claims that his opposition to rights for Muslims is bigotry, asking, “I wonder what were people who opposed the Nazis, were they bigots?”
“Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don’t want to live under Nazi Germany?” Robertson said. “But oh it’s bigoted if we speak out against a force that slowly but surely is trying to exercise domination over the world.”
Geert Wilders in Nashville at the Cornerstone Church
The Southern United States and the Midwest have been ravaged by violent forces of nature in the past few weeks; massive flooding has threatened to erase whole communities from Tennessee to Alabama, and over the past few days behemoth-like tornadoes, whipping in fury and frenzy swallowed and spit out whole towns.
The cataclysmic events of the Rapture predicted by Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping may not have come to pass but these tragedies have altered lives forever, and our thoughts and prayers should be with those affected. I encourage everyone to contribute in whatever way they can to relief and support efforts in those regions.
“Heartland USA” as this region is otherwise known is too often ignored, some forget that beyond the confines of our large urban cities there is a whole other America that is rural, conservative and vibrant.
It is here that another force has taken hold and is setting up the perfect storm of intolerance, bigotry, racism, xenophobia and hatred.
This force is a product of the wedding of Islamophobia across the Atlantic, between right-leaning populist politicians and Christian and Israeli/Jewish Zionists that has led to a feverous increase in anti-Democracy and anti-Muslim activity.
This is the real monster that should worry us, not some eight-headed dragon beast that might emerge from the sea and usher in the Second Coming of Christ.
Extremism on our Shores
On May 12, 2011 in Madison, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville, Geert Wilders readily accepted an invitation from the Tennessee Freedom Coalition to speak at Cornerstone Church, a mega church with regular attendance exceeding 3,900 weekly. LW received exclusive video from Rob, a fan of LoonWatch who attended the event and taped the speeches of Wilders, Lou Ann Zelenik and Andy Miller. He was so upset by what he saw that he immediately sent us the footage he captured.
Wilders speech was a diatribe against Islam and Muslims in which all the familiar talking points were rehashed but with a little extra venom, undoubtedly playing to the sentiments of the crowd.
LW Exclusive: Shocking Video of Geert Wilders Hate Speech on US Soil Part 1:
Geert Wilders: “Its Islam Stupid (raucous applause). We must stop the Islamization of our countries, more Islam means less freedom”…”And now, now Europe is looking slowly but gradually like Arabia”…”It was the land of our fathers, it is our land now, it is our values, our values are based on Christianity, Judaism and Humanism and not Islam, it is that simple (applause)”…”and I have a message for all those people who want to rob us from our freedoms, and my message is stay in your own country (loud applause)”…”we are not going to allow Islam to steal our country from us (applause)”…”if Jerusalem falls, Athens, Rome, Amsterdam and Nashville will fall therefore my point is we all are Israel (applause)”…”the only place where Christians are safe in the Middle East is that beautiful country called Israel (loud applause)”…”Make no mistake, please make no mistake, Islam is also coming to America, in fact Islam already is in America. America is facing a stealth jihad, the Islamic attempt to introduce Sharia’ law bit by bit”…”what we need my friends, what we need to turn the tide is a spirit of resistance, what we need I repeat it again is a spirit of resistance”…”we must repeat it over and over again, especially to our children, our Western values and culture based on Christianity and Judaism is better and superior to the Islamic culture (applause), and leaders who talk about immigration without mentioning Islam are blind (applause)”…”we must stop the immigration from non-Western countries and we must forbid the construction of new hate palaces called mosques (applause)”…”the press calls it an Arab spring, I call it unfortunately an Arab winter (applause), Islam and freedom, Islam and democracy are incompatible (applause)”…”the so called Prophet Muhammad was a terrorist worse than Bin Laden ever was (applause)”…”neutrality my friends, neutrality in the face of evil is evil itself (applause).”
Why is a mega-church, an institution that professes to follow the teachings of Christ hosting such a hate-mongerer in the heartland of the USA? What is the Tennessee Freedom Coalition and why is it paying an extremist foreign politician who undermines “freedom” to speak at a Church? What are the ramifications for the rest of the West, the USA in particular when such an extremist is given a platform to incite hate?
Cornerstone Church
This mega-church is a bit like a franchise corporation. It has two locations: one in Bowling Green, Kentucky and the other in Madison, Tennessee. It is led by Senior Pastor Maury Davis,
Pastor Maury Davis was arrested at age eighteen for the crime of first-degree murder. Following his trial and conviction, he served eight and one-half years in the Texas Department of Corrections. During his incarceration, Pastor Davis found his Savior in Jesus Christ and led a revival among his fellow prisoners.
Can anyone imagine what would happen if say Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf had a rap sheet similar to Pastor Davis? Pamela Geller would be doing back flips through Manhattan.
Aside from boasting about its large attendance, the Church also has a Starbucks-esque Coffee shop and other amenities for the Faith-full shopper. It successfully marries capitalism and religion and also adds an ultra-extra helping of Nationalism.
When nearing the Church, the first thing one notices is the strikingly gargantuan American flag in front of the Church:
Inside the Church the backdrop is red, white and blue and the colors surround a white modern looking Cross that reminds one more of the lapel pin worn by Captain Kirk on Star Trek than a cross. I guess they really want you to know they are patriots.
The Church’s philosophy is based on a literal belief in the Bible. They are certainly evangelical and reaffirm the theology of the “millennial reign of Christ,” i.e. the Rapture or the-floating-into-the-sky version of the End Times.
They believe that the Bible, “both the Old and New Testaments, are verbally inspired of God and are the revelation of God to man, the infallible, authoritative rule of faith and conduct (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Peter 1:21).”
Danios wrote in his “Understanding Jihad” series about how most American Christians believe the above, and it adds further credence to his recent article, “The ‘But that’s just the Old Testament’ Cop-out.”
Tennessee Freedom Coalition
The Tennessee Freedom Coalition, led by Lou Ann Zelenik and Andy Miller is a right-wing organization that can be considered a part of the Tea Party Movement, the base of the GOP. The addition of the TFC to the long list of GOP organizations can be considered one more dark stain in the history of the Tennessee GOP. It was not long ago that their members were making racist remarks about the president:
On top of the racism, homophobia isn’t far behind, the Republican governor of Tennessee has until June 1st to consider an “anti-Gay bill that would prohibit the passage of anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBT individuals.”
Tennessee also happens to be the state where we have seen a rise in hate against Muslims (in fact it is quickly becoming the center of anti-Muslim hate). Courts have been considering whether Islam is a religion, lawmakers are likely to pass a “Ban Sharia’ law” bill inspired by a documented racist and extremist Zionist named David Yerushalmi. It is scene to the Murfreesboro mosque struggle which made headlines this past summer. A year ago Pamela Geller was a headline speaker for the Tennessee Tea Party convention, talk about insane.
For its part the Tennessee Freedom Coalition was passing out this pamphlet at the Church:
How do you promote tolerance by “fighting” a religion? What they really mean to say in light of Wilders speech is, “Promote Religious Tolerance by Working to Stop the Growth of Islam,” which is like saying “promote tolerance by being intolerant.” Obviously this puts Muslims, you know, those who practice Islam in quite the bind.
LW Exclusive: Shocking Video of Geert Wilders Hate Speech on US Soil Part 2:
Conclusion
This is not the first time Geert Wilders has spoken at the pulpit, previously he spoke at Synagogues and at Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s SIOA 9/11 hate rally. However his presence amongst 3,000 admiring followers on US soil is not only reprehensible, it is a development that bodes ill for all of us.
It will only increase the radicalization of the anti-Muslim movement which seeks at its fundamental level to curtail freedom of religion and expression, first the rights of Muslims (soft target) and then anyone else they disagree with.
A word must also be said about Wilders obsessive citation of Israel. It is a country which he boasts about visiting over “forty times” and which he cites as a paragon of virtue, freedom, liberty, justice and light. He cites the security of Israel as one of the reasons that the West must fight Islam.
Lets forget the war crimes, human rights violations and apartheid policies in Israel for a second and really look at the hate that is emerging in its name. Individuals and organizations with deep connections to Israel, both network-wise and theologically are calling for the destruction of Islam which they regard as evil incarnate.
Aubrey Chernick (one of the leading funders of Islamophobia), Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders, David Horowitz, Brigitte Gabriel, Allen West, the BNP, EDL, SIOE, SIOA, BPE, JDL, large numbers of Christian and Jewish Zionists and others believe that as long as you are fervently pro-Israel you can be as anti-Islam/Muslim as you want without suffering any consequences. Such a position at the end of the day only harms Jewish moral interests, and this much has been expressed by brave voices such as Not in Our Name, Jews without Borders, Muzzlewatch, Richard Silverstein, Max Blumenthal, our very own loonwatcher Gefilte, Glenn Greenwald and others.
The spectacle of a racist, anti-Muslim Dutch politician arriving on our shores to warn us about Islam is quite ironic, but what is most disturbing is the reception he received from a large audience of Americans. It may seem far-fetched now but one day Geert Wilders or someone like him (Allen West?) may move on from addressing thousands of Church goers to addressing Congress–the question is will he receive as many applauses as Benjamin Netanyahu?
Robert Spencer co-religionist supports pedophilia. Will we be seeing this story on JihadWatch? Imagine if these priests were Muslim, Islam would be blamed instantly.
AMSTERDAM — The Dutch Catholic Church and the Salesian order are investigating revelations that a Salesian priest served on the board of a group that promotes pedophilia with the full knowledge of his boss.
The order’s top official in the Netherlands, Delegate Herman Spronck, confirmed in a statement that the priest – identified by RTL Nieuws as 73-year-old “Father Van B.” – served on the board of “Martijn,” a group that campaigns to end the Dutch ban on adult-child sex.
The group is widely reviled but not outlawed.
“Of course we reject this and distance ourselves from this personal initiative” on the part of the priest, Spronck said in a statement. “Membership in such organizations does not fit with the ethos of the Salesian order.”
However, Spronck’s own superior in Belgium said he will investigate both Spronck and Van B., after both men were quoted by RTL Nieuws as saying such relationships aren’t always harmful.
Superior Jos Claes told Belgian television on Saturday he “couldn’t imagine” that both men would not be disciplined, but said he must make sure of the facts first.
“Society thinks these relationships are harmful. I disagree,” RTL quoted Van B. as saying. He served on Martijn’s board from 2008 until 2010, when its founder was arrested for alleged possession of child pornography, a case that is ongoing.
Van B. told RTL he remains a member of Martijn and now lives in a retirement home in eastern Netherlands.
In a second interview, RTL quoted Spronck as saying he was aware of Van B.’s pedophilia and membership in Martijn, and even of two instances where the priest had been fined by police for exposing himself in public. But he said he didn’t think that was sufficient reason to ban him from the order.
Several thousand people rallied in the Bronx, New York yesterday against the impending push to legalize same-sex marriage. Organizers, including state Senator Reverend Ruben Diaz, several Spanish radio stations and churches, argued that marriage should be defined as a union between “one man and one woman” and urged the state government to abandon their effort or put the initiative up to a vote. “Let the people decide. If the people say yes, we’ll shut up,” Diaz said at the steps of the Bronx court house. “Bring it to the people, bring it to the people…look at the people!” he yelled to the crowd of several thousand Hispanic Americans.
Diaz stressed that he was not condemning gay people, telling a small group of protesters gathered across the court house that his granddaughter — who was taking part in the counter demonstration — was a lesbian. “We respect you and we love you. You’ve never heard from me a word of insult to you. You’ve never heard me say — you never seen me call for homophobia or violence,” Diaz said, as organizers and police brought Erica Diaz to the main podium to stand with Diaz. “This is my granddaughter,” he said, stressing that he had “respect” for her “decisions.” “She does what she wants,” Diaz told the crowd.
And while the march and rally focused on the Christian message of “love,” the event remained deeply homophobic, with speakers routinely condemning gay people as “sinners” and describing same-sex relations as something wholly unnatural or perverse. In fact, just minutes before Diaz took to the microphone to stress his respect for gay people, Rev. Ariel Torres Ortega of Radio Visión Cristiana said that the gay people are “worthy of death”:
Committing sexual acts between man and man. And receiving the retribution of the things that they have done from straying away. And because they did not take God in count. God gave them over to reprimand their mind to do things that are not right, being against all justice, fornication, perversity, aberrations, malignity…those who practice such things are worthy to death, not only do they do it, but those who also practice it. God bless this earth. That is the word of God.
Watch a compilation:
Demonstrators held signs that read “God’s Marriage = 1 man & 1 woman” and “Gay Marriage Is Against the Word of God.”
A group called ‘The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Prosperity’ (TFP) led off the march and provided the musical accompaniment. One member distributed hundreds of flyers to passerbys explaining “why homosexual ‘marriage’ is harmful and must be opposed.” The print-out describes same-sex marriage as “evil,” against “natural law” and argues that allowing gay people to marry would “obscure certain basic moral values, devalue traditional marriage, and weaken public morality.”
“If homosexual ‘marriage’ is universally accepted as the present step in sexual ‘freedom,’ what logical arguments can be used to stop the next steps of incest, pedophilia, bestiality, and other forms of unnatural behavior?” the flyer asks.
The only thing that will give us a shot at building a democracy in an Islamic land is a mass conversion of its people to biblical Christianity. So that means if we want to see freedom come to those darkened, benighted lands, we should be sending missionaries in right after we send in the Marines to neutralize whatever threat has been raised against the United States. So we say to them, look, if you don’t want our missionaries, fine, that’s your choice, we’ll take our missionaries and our Marines, we’ll take them home, but we’re gonna let you know we have no hesitation about returning with lethal force if the forces in your country threaten us again. This time it’s Marines and missionaries, next time it’ll be Marines and missiles.
Update: As’ad Abu Khalil mentions that the portion about the supposed death threat against Jones from Hizbollah is a fabrication:
Seeking fame and publicity, kooky pastor, Terry Jones said that Hizbullah put a bounty on his head. It is made up. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. But then again: you can say anything about Muslim and Arab organizations and you don’t need proof, especially if those organizations are opposed to Israel. Like if I say that Hamas stole my car here in California, the media would report that and would not even bother with asking me to provide evidence.
DEARBORN — Pastor Terry Jones preaches the Gospel for a living, but the second holiest day in Christianity just slipped his mind.
The Quran-burning provocateur, who is expected to protest in Dearborn next week, said he didn’t realize before he committed to coming here that the protest is planned for Good Friday.
“This might be hard to believe,” Jones said, “but honestly we didn’t realize (it was Good Friday) or that Sunday was Easter.”
Oversight now recognized, Jones said he still plans on coming and that he would be traveling with about five associates for the protest, which tentatively is planned for outside the Islamic Center of America. The location, he said, was chosen because of its symbolism as one of the largest mosques in North America.
The protest originally was organized by a Port Huron militia group known as “Order of the Dragon,” but has very much become the Terry Jones-show since he announced his intention to join.
Asked whether he thinks Dearborn’s Muslim community is jihadist or wants to institute Sharia – Islamic law similar to Christianity’s Canon law – Jones said he is uncertain.
“I don’t know Dearborn’s Muslims so I can’t say,” said Jones, who acknowledges never having read the Quran. “But when you see what’s happening in Europe in Muslim-dominated countries, it wouldn’t surprise (me).”
Jones has said in press statements about the protest that he has no problem with Muslims or Islam; rather the extremist interpretation terrorist groups have embraced. He does, however, say he disagrees with Sharia, saying, “it discriminates against women.”
Jones’ small Gainesville, Florida-based church, Dove World Outreach Center, gained notoriety last fall for widely condemned plans to burn Qurans on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Facing pressure to cancel the event coming from as high up as President Barack Obama, the plan was scrapped. But in late March Jones put the Quran “on trial.”
With his congregants as jury, the holiest book in Islam was found guilty and the sentence was burning.
While the media largely ignored the event, Jones and others released videos of the burning online. The imagery sparked widespread violence against Western forces in Afghanistan and numerous death threats against Jones, including a $2.4 million bounty issued by the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah, which is designated a terrorist organization by the United States government.
“We get the threats and we pass them along to the FBI,” he said.
As for the violence Jones’ stunt precipitated, he said he doesn’t bear responsibility.
“Yes, we were warned,” he said of the exhortations against burning the Quran for fear it might provoke violence.
“But there is no excuse for what happened in Afghanistan, and we do not believe we are responsible. People are responsible for their own actions. If anything this proves there is a radical element to Islam.”
Jones is aware his trip to Dearborn is being met mostly with opposition. Interfaith leaders from across Metropolitan Detroit have criticized his plans and at least six groups have formally requested permits for counterdemonstrations, Police Chief Ronald Haddad said.
“We know there will probably be a lot more people there against us than for us,” said Jones, who was unsure how many more people would join him aside from the group he is traveling with.
Also still unclear is whether the protest will even be granted the necessary permit. Haddad, who is responsible for determining whether a demonstration permit is granted or not, previously said he hoped to have a decision by Friday. But because of the numerous counter-protest permit requests and other new, undisclosed developments related to the event, Haddad said he now hopes to have his decision by early next week.
“There are some late developments that we need to take into consideration,” said Haddad. “My primary concern is security and making sure everyone is safe.”
Undoubtedly playing into Haddad’s decision is that Altar Road, where the Islamic Center is located, will be bustling with activity that day. In addition to the mosque, Altar Road is home to several Christian churches that will be holding Good Friday services.
J. Patrick Pepper covers public safety and politics in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights as well as Dearborn government affairs. He can be reached at (734) 246-2702 or at jpepper@heritage.com.
Senior Research Director Chris Rodda chronicles the proceedings of a Conservative conference, the Rediscover God in America conference, in which its belief is that America should be governed by “Biblical law”:
While most eyes were on the Conservative Principles Political Action Committee conference in Iowa on Saturday, many of us who follow the religious right were more interested in another conference, also held in Iowa, on Thursday and Friday. This other conference was the Rediscover God in America conference, where all the same potential 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls that appeared at the Saturday’s Conservative Principles PAC conference told us what they really think — that America should be governed by biblical law.
One of the principle proponents of this view is David Barton, a much-loved “historian” featured by Glenn Beck and other right-wingers. In fact, potential Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said at this conference that Americans should be forced, at gunpoint, to learn from David Barton. This statement, according to Rodda, was edited out of the webcast:
But the most outrageous statement by far came from Mike Huckabee, who expressed his admiration for Barton by saying that he “almost wished” that “all Americans would be forced — forced at gunpoint no less — to listen to every David Barton message.”
Now, I wasn’t watching the Rediscover God in America conference live on Thursday when Huckabee said this. I had planned on watching and recording the whole conference when it was webcast again on Saturday, so that’s when I saw Huckabee’s speech. I was quite surprised a few days later to come across a video clip from this conference on the People for the American Way (PFAW) Right Wing Watch blog with the headline “Huckabee: Americans Should Be Forced, At Gunpoint, To Learn From David Barton.” I had watched Huckabee’s speech. How on earth could I have missed a statement like that? Well, I didn’t. It had been edited out of the webcast that I had watched.
What if this was a Muslim? Would the Right, especially “Police Blotter Bob,” be silent? While lawmakers are in search of the “threat” from Sharia, there are Americans who are actively seeking to supplant our secular, Constitutional system with Biblical law, and Mike Huckabee thinks we Americans should be forced to learn about this under threat of death. Wow.
Most of us in America learned something about prejudice and stereotypes in school. We know it’s wrong to misrepresent whole groups of people by highlighting only the worst behavior amongst them. Anyone can easily “prove” their religion, ideology, or culture is the most supreme by cherry-picking the worst examples of their opponents and “comparing” it to their highest ideals. Stereotyping, quite frankly, is cheating in the discipline of comparative religion/ideology/culture. But for Robert Spencer, stereotyping isn’t a social evil to be resisted. It’s a career.
Earlier this month, Brent Girouex, 31, was arrested on 60 counts of suspicion of sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist, reported The Daily Nonpareil…
Court documents indicated Girouex told investigators the most sexual contact he had was with one teen over a four-year period, starting when the boy was 14 years old. Calling the contact “mutual,” he said it had occurred between “25 and 50 times” during that period…
“When they would ejaculate, they would be getting rid of the evil thoughts in their mind,” Girouex allegedly told detectives.
Truly a bizarre, counter-intuitive, and horribly disturbing account of a Christian leader exploiting his position of authority and trust to sexually gratify himself at the expense of innocent minors. This is certainly not the first time a priest or minister has abused children. If we were running an anti-Christian hate site (similar to Spencer’s anti-Muslim hate site), this incident would make a fine addition to our police blotter propaganda. We could make a strong case for the weak-minded that Christianity is a sex-with-boys religion. After all, Mr. Girouex appealed to Christian theology and scriptures to justify his misdeeds. This sort of thing happens all the time! What more evidence do you need? Case closed.
Or is it? We’re not running an anti-Christian hate site. We know the vast majority of Christians reject this kind of behavior. Neither does Mr. Girouex’s action agree with the spirit of Christianity. It’s common sense. Rather, we promote the American values of tolerance and pluralism. We have stated this repeatedly. Yet, if you’re Robert Spencer, whatever a Muslim does wrong, no matter how aberrant or outside the mainstream, it must have happened because of Islam and no other reason, even if the perpetrator is mentally ill.
So here’s my question, Mr. Spencer. Is it fair to label Christianity a religion of sexual perversion? Is it fair to blame Christian theology and texts for these crimes? Should we hold senate hearings to protect little boys from their Churches? Shouldn’t we stop being “politically correct”? Aren’t all Christians collectively guilty for not speaking out enough? Aren’t we justified if we gather together to shout obscenities outside the local church of the raping-boys religion?
Of course, Spencer won’t accept that any of these suggestions are fair, but when it comes to Islam there is a different standard. And this, as we learned in grade school, is the essence of stereotyping. Not only does Spencer consistently violate the Golden Rule (“do unto others what you would have done unto yourself”), in which he claims to believe, but also, as Senator Durbin recently said, his hateful rhetoric violates “the spirit of our Bill of Rights.”
Your Islamophobic House of Cards is falling, Bob. Keep working on that résumé.
There is no problem with anyone calling to their Faith, or trying to win converts, that is part of Freedom of Religion. Unfortunately both Rep. Arlon Linder and Pastor Campbell have crossed the boundaries of interfaith harmony and peace in to the territory of bigotry. Imagine if this were a Muslim Imam and Rep. Keith Ellison saying such words, you would never hear the end of it from Islamophobes. We would be inundated with threats that our Constitution was being desecrated and that the evil Mooslims were trying to take over and must be stopped.
The Associated Press reports that a Christian prayer on the Minnesota Senate floor on Monday made non-Christian members of that body uncomfortable. Pastor Dennis Campbell’s prayer was highly Christian, as opposed to the nonsectarian prayers that were commonplace under DFL control. It’s not Campbell’s first controversy; last summer he took out ads in the St. Cloud Times that were viewed as anti-Muslim.
“We pray, lord, that you help us show reverence to the Lord Jesus Christ,” Campbell prayed. “Jesus said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ our savior, we pray.”
The controversy mirrors that of one in 2000, when the Republicans last took over the Minnesota House. Previously, the DFL has allowed non-sectarian prayer in the House, but when Republicans took control, many of the chamber non-Christians protested the overtly Christian prayers.
Rep. Arlon Lindner, instead of acquiescing, instead attacked those members.
“You know, we’re told there’s one God and one mediator between God and man. That man is Jesus Christ. And most of us here are Christians. And we shouldn’t be left not able to pray in the name of our God… And if you don’t like it, you may have to like it. Or just don’t come. I don’t come sometimes for some prayers here… We have that privilege, and you need to exercise it. But don’t impose your irreligious left views on me.”
Following that statement, an ethics complaint was filed against Lindner, one of many in his career in the Minnesota Legislature.
Pastor Campbell came under fire for religious intolerance last summer when his church took out ads in the St. Cloud Times.
“What happens when Moslems take over a nation?” asks Campbell in the ad. “They will destroy the constitution and force the Moslem religion on the society, take freedom of religion away, and they will persecute all other religions.”
The ad also said, “Moslems seek to influence a nation by immigration, reproduction, education, the government, illegal drugs and by supporting the gay agenda.”
Crazy old Terry Jones went ahead with his Qur’an burning which he dubbed as an “International judge the Koran Day” after he said he wouldn’t “burn a Koran.” 30 people showed up and they burnt one Koran…and then…everyone went home.
GAINESVILLE, Florida — A controversial US evangelical preacher oversaw the burning of a copy of the Koran in a small Florida church after finding the Muslim holy book “guilty” of crimes.
The burning was carried out by pastor Wayne Sapp under the supervision of Terry Jones, who last September drew sweeping condemnation over his plan to ignite a pile of Korans on the anniversary of September 11, 2001 attacks.
Sunday’s event was presented as a trial of the book in which the Koran was found “guilty” and “executed.”
The jury deliberated for about eight minutes. The book, which had been soaking for an hour in kerosene, was put in a metal tray in the center of the church, and Sapp started the fire with a barbecue lighter.
The book burned for around 10 minutes while some onlookers posed for photos.
Jones had drawn trenchant condemnation from many people, including US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, over his plan to burn the Muslim holy book in September.
He did not carry out his plan then and vowed he never would, saying he had made his point.
But this time, he said he had been “trying to give the Muslim world an opportunity to defend their book,” but did not receive any answer.
He said he felt that he couldn’t have a real trial without a real punishment.
The event was open to the public, but fewer than 30 people attended.
Life in the normally quiet city of Gainesville is centered around the University of Florida. And while there were public protests against Jones’ 9/11 activities, this event was largely ignored.
Jadwiga Schatz, who came to show support for Jones, expressed concern that Islam was growing in Europe.
“These people, for me, are like monsters,” she said. “I hate these people.”
Jones said he considered this event a success.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he said.
A church pastor has been jailed for 11 and a half years after being found guilty of trafficking children into the UK for use as domestic “slaves” at her home in Barking, east London.
Lucy Adeniji brought two children and a 21-year-old woman to the UK from Africa illegally and used them as servants.
She was convicted of 17 different counts at Isleworth Crown Court.
The mother-of-five is the first person to be jailed for trafficking children into the UK for domestic servitude.
In a case that has been likened to modern-day slavery, Adeniji smuggled the three victims into Britain on false passports, and used them as servants at her home in Ray Gardens, Barking.
An illegal immigrant herself, Adeniji, 44 – originally from Nigeria – had told the victims’ parents they would have a better life in the UK, but instead viciously beat them if they failed to please her.
Benefits inquiry
The abuse only came to light when one of the victims escaped from Adeniji’s home after being beaten.
Adeniji was convicted last month of assault, child cruelty and facilitating illegal entry into the UK of a child.
She also admitted six counts of obtaining false passports for herself and her own children and two counts of facilitating illegal entry.
Adeniji faces a separate investigation into money she claimed in benefits for her own children.
Det Insp Gordon Valentine, of the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Paladin – which targets child trafficking – said the case could be the tip of the iceberg.
“The people who are using this form of slavery in their households know it is wrong,” he said.
“This case is very important because it shows victims that we can have successful prosecutions and that they can find justice.”
The case has echoes of the maltreatment of Victoria Climbié who died at the hands of her guardian, Marie Therese Kouao. She and her boyfriend Carl Manning were found guilty of Victoria’s murder in 2003.
We have been reporting on “Brigitte Gabriel” and her hate organization ACT! for America since we began our site a few years ago. It seems now people are speaking out more against her extremist hate due to recent flagrant Islamophobic events such as the one in Yorba Linda.
Brigitte Gabriel’s personal story is a crock, what she presents to her ignorant crowds is a crock, she presents a black and white world in which Muslims are the enemies of humanity, Christianity and Civilization.
FORT WORTH — Brigitte Gabriel bounced to the stage at a Tea Party convention last fall. She greeted the crowd with a loud Texas “Yee-HAW,” then launched into the same gripping personal story she has told in hundreds of churches, synagogues and conference rooms across the United States:
As a child growing up a Maronite Christian in war-torn southern Lebanon in the 1970s, Ms. Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after Muslims mercilessly bombed her village. She found refuge in Israel and then moved to the United States, only to find that the Islamic radicals who had terrorized her in Lebanon, she said, were now bent on taking over America.
“America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”
Through her books, media appearances and speeches, and her organization, ACT! for America, Ms. Gabriel has become one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders.
Representative Peter T. King, Republican of Long Island, will conduct hearings Thursday in Washington on a similar theme: that the United States is infiltrated by Muslim radicals. Mr. King was the first guest last month on a new cable television show that Ms. Gabriel co-hosts with Guy Rodgers, the executive director of ACT! and a Republican consultant who helped build the Christian Coalition, once the most potent political organization on the Christian right.
Ms. Gabriel, 46, who uses a pseudonym, casts her organization as a nonpartisan, nonreligious national security group. Yet the organization draws on three rather religious and partisan streams in American politics: evangelical Christian conservatives, hard-line defenders of Israel (both Jews and Christians) and Tea Party Republicans.
She presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion. She has found a receptive audience among Americans who are legitimately worried about the spread of terrorism.
But some of those who work in counterterrorism say that speakers like Ms. Gabriel are spreading distortion and fear, and are doing the country a disservice by failing to make distinctions between Muslims who are potentially dangerous and those who are not.
Brian Fishman, a research fellow at both the New America Foundation in Washington, and the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said, “When you’ve got folks who are looking for the worst in Islam and are promoting that as the entire religion of 1.5 or 1.6 billion people, then you only empower the real extremists.”
Ms. Gabriel is only one voice in a growing circuit that includes counter-Islam speakers like Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Walid Shoebat. What distinguishes Ms. Gabriel from her counterparts is that she has built a national grass-roots organization in the last three years that has already engaged in dozens of battles over the place of Islam in the United States. ACT! for America claims 155,000 members in 500 chapters across the country. To build her organization, Ms. Gabriel has enlisted Mr. Rodgers, who had worked behind the scenes for the Christian Coalition’s leaders, Ralph Reed and the television evangelist Pat Robertson. (Ms. Gabriel herself was once an anchor for Mr. Robertson’s Christian television network in the Middle East).
As national field director, Mr. Rodgers planted and tended Christian Coalition chapters across the country, and is now using some of the same strategies as executive director of ACT! Among those tactics is creating “nonpartisan voter guides” that rank candidates’ responses and votes on issues important to the group.
Just as with the Christian Coalition’s voter guides, the candidates whose positions most often align with ACT!’s are usually Republicans. Mr. Rodgers previously served as campaign manager for Patrick J. Buchanan’s presidential run in 1996, and as a consultant for John McCain in 2008.
Ms. Gabriel and Mr. Rodgers declined to be interviewed in person or over the telephone, but agreed to respond to questions by e-mail. They permitted interviews with only their national field director and two chapter leaders they selected, though half a dozen other interviews were conducted with chapter leaders before they were told not to talk.
Ms. Gabriel says she is motivated not by fear or hatred of Islam, but by her love for her adopted country.
“I lost Lebanon, my country of birth, to radical Islam,” she wrote. “I do not want to lose my adopted country America.”
She insists that she is singling out only “radical Islam” or Muslim “extremists” — not the vast majority of Muslims or their faith. And yet, in her speeches and her two books, she leaves the opposite impression. She puts it most simply in the 2008 introduction to her first book, “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.”
“In the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream,” she wrote. She said that there is a “cancer” infecting the world, and said: “The cancer is called Islamofacism. This ideology is coming out of one source: The Koran.”
In what ACT! is calling “Open a Koran” day this September, the group plans to put up 750 tables in front of post offices, libraries, churches and synagogues and hand out leaflets selectively highlighting verses that appear to advocate violence, slavery and subjugation of women.
In the last year, the group played a key role in passing a constitutional amendment in Oklahoma banning the use of Shariah, a body of Islamic law derived from the Koran and from the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s teachings, sayings and acts. Most Muslims draw selectively on its tenets — in the same way that people of other faiths pick and choose from their sacred texts.
But group members and their allies have succeeded in popularizing the notion that American Muslims are just biding their time until they gain the power to revoke the Constitution and impose Shariah law in the United States.
“We can’t let Shariah law take hold,” said Susan Watts, who leads a large chapter in Houston.
ACT! members are challenging high school textbooks and college courses that they deem too sympathetic to Islam. A group leader in Eugene, Ore., signed up to teach a community college course on Islam, but it was canceled when a Muslim group exposed his blog postings denouncing Islam and denying the scope of the Holocaust.
A chapter in Colorado recently featured a guest speaker on “How to minister to Muslims,” and “Conversion success stories.” Mr. Rodgers said in a written response that ACT! does not encourage such activities.
Ms. Gabriel’s approach and her power appear rooted in her childhood trauma in the civil war in southern Lebanon. The war was a chaotic stew in which ever-shifting alliances of clan-based militias made up of Christian, Shiite, Sunni, Palestinian and Druse made war on one other, often with the backing of other countries. But in the rendering Ms. Gabriel shares with her American audiences, it was black and white. As her father explained to her, “The Muslims bombed us because we are Christians. They want us dead because they hate us.” (The refrain became the title of her first book.)
She moved to Israel in her early 20s to work for Middle East Television. Ms. Gabriel often mentions in lectures that she was an anchor for the network, but does not reveal that Middle East Television was then run by Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network to spread his politically conservative, Pentecostal faith in the Middle East.
On air as a reporter, Ms. Gabriel used the name Nour Saman. She married an American co-worker and in 1989 moved to the United States. They started a film and television production company, which says it has produced programs on terrorism for “Good Morning America” and “Primetime.”
She said she uses a pseudonym, voted on by her organization’s board, because she has received death threats.
Ms. Gabriel has given hundreds of lectures, including to the Heritage Foundation and the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va. Her salary from two organizations she founded, American Congress for Truth and ACT! for America, was $178,411 in 2009. And the group’s combined income was $1.6 million.
In Fort Worth, Ms. Gabriel spent nearly an hour after her speech signing books and posing for pictures with gushing fans.
“She really opened up my eyes about Islam,” said Natalie Rix Cresson, a composer, clutching a signed copy of Ms. Gabriel’s book. “I didn’t realize it was so infiltrated in the schools, everywhere.”
While watching the unforgettably hideous (and now viral) footage of the recent anti-Muslim demonstration in Yorba Linda, California, I could not help but think of Elizabeth Eckford, the African-American student who was forced to walk through a phalanx of violent white racists chanting “Lynch her! Lynch her!” during the federal government’s first attempt to integrate Little Rock Central High School. This iconic image was immediately recalled by the video of Muslim-American children walking through a crowd of protesters calling them terrorists, threatening them, and chanting “Go home!” as they proceeded towards a local community center for a charity event. Eckford was badly scarred by her experience; the trauma affected her life for decades. I wonder how the children who had to be marched through the gauntlet of racists in Yorba Linda will remember their experience.
Billed as a “Patriotic Rally,” the anti-Muslim demonstration was organized by official hate group leader Pam Geller, Tea Party outfits including the North Orange County Conservative Coalition and We Surround Them OC 912; and Rabbi David Eliezrie of the Yorba Linda chapter of Chabad-Lubavitch, a messianic Orthodox Jewish group. Though Chabad does not make its political positions explicit, I have learned through first hand experience how extreme its leadership is, especially in Southern California.
In 2002, I took a Hebrew class with a rabbi (I wanted to improve my very poor reading at the time), who led the West L.A. Chabad chapter and was supposedly a renowned teacher of the Kabbalah. At some point, the rabbi invited me and some other students over for a shabbat dinner which, given Chabad’s mission to proselytize within the Jewish community, would eventually lead to some form of pressure to join the organization. The rabbi’s father, who was also a rabbi, led off dinner with a bold prediction: “Within five years, the Palestinians will be eliminated by nuclear energy!” I was shocked and did not know what to say. At first, I attempted to politely register my displeasure. But nothing would stop him. “Either we use nuclear energy or we transfer them all!” he said. No one at the table seemed to have any problem with these wishes for genocide. “So will you use cattle cars to transfer them?” I asked. “We can use camels. Whatever,” he responded. Several of the men at the table chuckled at this remark. I excused myself from dinner soon after and would never have contact with Chabad again.
Correction: This photo does not show Rabbi David Eliezrie, however, Eliezrie has admitted to participating in the rally
Chabad’s Rabbi Eliezrie appeared at the Yorba Linda hate rally with an Israeli flag in one hand and an American flag in the other. Other participants displayed the Israeli flag as well. In fact, the Israeli flag seemed to be peeking out from a cluster of American flags that formed the backdrop for speakers including Republican Rep’s Ed Royce and Gary Miller, who both railed against the Muslim presence in Orange County. At 4:06 in the video, the crowd can be seen hectoring a Muslim couple with the chant, “We support Israel!” As even Haaretz has noticed, the Israeli flag is becoming a key symbol for a trans-Atlantic neo-fascist axis that thrives on violent resentment towards Muslim and Arab immigrants. Given the ethnocratic basis of the Israeli state and the country’s settler-colonial ethos, the trend is not ironic or very surprising.
Back in 1957, in Little Rock Central High, an awkward, acne scarred boy sat behind Elizabeth Eckford every day in class, muttering in a low drone, “Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger.” Harassment from him and scores of white students would eventually drive Eckford to attempt suicide several times. Fifty years later, that awkward student, whose name is Charles Sawrie, expressed deep contrition for what he had done. “It was all kind of stupid,” he told journalist David Margolick. “I just wanted to get a name for myself. I don’t remember anything about her except she was black and my job was to make it as rough for the blacks as I could.”
Demonstrators celebrate their intimidation of Muslim families
On the Facebook page of the North Orange County Conservative Coalition, adults who behaved just as Sawrie did as a high school student in the Jim Crow South are overflowing with pride. “This was a great opportunity to speak out against an oppressive threat to us all. The speakers were GREAT as were the Patriots who joined us,” remarked someone named Gibbs Carol. Another protester named Desare Ferraro commented: “Americans are finally waking up to the dangers of multi-culturalism and putting out the “NOT WELCOME” sign to terrorist supporting fundraisers in our communities.” “What a great rally yesterday in Yorba Linda!” said Neil O’Brien.
Below are two videos. The first is of the Arab American Institute’s congressional briefing on Rep. Peter King’s upcoming hearings on radicalization in the Muslim community, which will essentially function as a congressional legitimization of the anti-Muslim crusade. I speak at about 32:00 and describe the trans-Atlantic Islamophobic axis:
The second video contains my appearance on Viewpoint with Jim Zogby, where I discuss the Islamophobic axis in further detail with Maya Berry:
We have done our fair share of coverage of the loony House representative from Florida, Allen West, but this guy is just amazing sometimes in the nonsense he spits out. West has made some seriously Islamophobic remarks in the past, arguing in point blank statements that Islam is not a religion, but an ideology:
“We already have a 5th column that is already infiltrating into our colleges, into our universities, into our high schools, into our religious aspect, our cultural aspect, our financial, our political systems in this country. And that enemy represents something called Islam and Islam is a totalitarian theocratic political ideology, it is not a religion. It has not been a religion since 622 AD, and we need to have individuals that stand up and say that.”
So said West back then, in the company of other right-wing loons, that “Islam is a totalitarian theocratic political ideology, it is not a religion.” It seems pretty clear to anyone with half a brain that he was not trying to say “radical Islam” is wrong, or that he is against “extremist” versions of Islam, or “Islamism” or anything else. He makes it very clear in that speech he is against Islam, period. He also makes it clear that he does not think Islam is a religion.
In early February 2011, West was contacted by religious leaders who became aware of West’s rhetoric against Rep. Keith Ellison, one of two Muslim Congressmen in the House of Representatives. West said that Ellison represented “the antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established”:
Several religious leaders told South Florida Congressman Allen West on Wednesday they have “deep concern” over his recent comments about a Muslim colleague in Congress and about “your tendency to offer intemperate comments about Islam.”
In contrast to the blunt comments about Islam he made during the right-wing program mentioned above, West changed his tune:
“It is the extremist, radical element that has hijacked Islam that presents a dangerous threat to both our country and our allies throughout the world,” West said in a return letter. “This radical jihadist movement has no place in the United States of America or anywhere on earth.”
So now it was the “extremist, radical element” that had “hijacked Islam” that West was concerned about. I would like to offer a more cogent and intellectual analysis of West’s statements, but let’s be real here folks. It isn’t required. He is changing his tune because he does not want to appear to be the bigot that he clearly is. West was speaking from his heart to his like minded loons last year at that right-wing program where he said that “Islam is a totalitarian theocratic political ideology.” But when respected religious leaders contacted him after his verbal attack on Rep. Ellison, West backtracked to save face. West, it could be argued, is practicing the definition of “taqiyya” that so many anti-Muslim loons claim that Muslims practice. West is hiding his true beliefs about Islam from civil society because he knows it can only serve to make him look like a bigot. Meanwhile, the Congressman ramps up the anti-Islam rhetoric once he’s in front of his fellow Muslim-bashing compatriots.
However, West’s true face was shown once again when he felt pushed into a corner about his views on Islam. On Monday, Feb. 21, West got into a heated exchange with the director of CAIR Florida, Nezar Hamze. Hamze had the audacity to question West’s knowledge about Islam. How dare he! It’s quite obvious that someone of West’s stature, being a Congressman and all, would have the requisite knowledge to speak about Islamic theology and history. I mean, don’t most U.S. Congressmen and Congresswomen know a whole lot about Islamic theology and history? Isn’t that why they are elected to Congress – because they know a lot about Islam?
Well, of course not. But, Hamze stood before the bigoted Congressman and asked West to point out where in the Qur’an it says to attack Americans or innocent people. This gave West the opportunity to show how prolific his knowledge of Islamic history was (and how big of a wise guy he is). West told the lowly Muslim that of course there’s no mention of attacking Americans in the Qur’an because America was not even around when the Qur’an was written.
Duh, you stupid Muslim!
West then made mention of certain battles in early Islamic history. LoonWatch is currently working on a lengthy response to West’s dubious claims, one that he and other Islamophobes constantly refer to in order to argue that Islam is violent. Stay tuned for that response – it will be posted soon. However, make no mistake that West’s alleged understanding of Islamic law and history is way off base, as is his understanding of the Muslim American community today.
In response to the question Hamze asked, West alleged that Maj. Nidal Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” when he killed those innocent people at Fort Hood and that the 9-11 hijackers also yelled “Allahu Akbar” when they flew planes into the Twin Towers, as if to show that these people represent Islam. Of course, West is attempting to link all Muslims to what Nidal Hasan and the 9-11 terrorists did through the use of common Islamic terms. Just because some extremists shouted out a religious term when committing acts of violence against innocent people does not mean that others who also use those religious terms share in the guilt of those atrocities or that Islam somehow would condone these actions because these murderers attempted to “Islamicize” these heinous actions. West is treading on a slippery slope. One that will make him fall on his face. Which brings us to his final statement at the town hall event that fateful evening.
Hamze told West that he was ashamed that West was attacking his religion, whereupon West burst out and yelled “You attacked us! You attacked us!”
Wow.
This is a United States Congressman? This is not only an absurd statement to make, because for one Hamze obviously had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks, but two, West is essentially laying guilt for 9-11 on every single Muslim American. By saying “You attacked us,” West is telling us what he truly believes. That Muslim Americans, like Nezar Hamze, are co-conspirators in the 9-11 attacks. That Muslim Americans are guilty people (sounds like West is applying Robert Spencer’s definition of dhimmi on Muslim Americans).
And you know what that means. It means West’s followers will associate every Muslim living in America with terrorism and make them worthy of ridicule, contempt, distrust, and then eventually this type of thinking will lead to violence against innocent Muslims in America. You can already see the type of vitriol that is being practiced against Muslim Americans when viewing the anti-Muslim protest in Orange County, CA.
This is disgusting behavior on the part of a U.S. Congressman. West is not clever. He’s not smart. He doesn’t know squat about Islam or Islamic history. He’s the worst of what America has to offer. He is a disgrace to his constituents and a danger to law-abiding Muslim Americans who simply want to live a normal life in America. He is simply an un-American fake tough guy who loses his temper when questioned about things he knows nothing about. The fact that this jerk is a U.S. Congressman speaks volumes about the state of Islamophobia in America today. He’s also clearly practicing “taqiyya” by saying one thing to his right-wing constituents about Islam and then saying another thing to religious leadership in order to hide his bigoted views of Islam and Muslims. But never fear, Loon Watch is here – to expose loony frauds like Allen West and put them in their rightful place of shame.
It looks the LRA, a Christian terrorist militia which is seeking to structure society based on the Ten Commandments is becoming more active in South Sudan. Imagine if they were Muslims? You can be assured that the Islamophobes would be covering this in depth.
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal group that has moved into southern Sudan after compiling a bloody record of human-rights abuses in northern Uganda, has murdered a 37-year-old nun, according to Bishop Edward Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio.
“Each day that goes by without a solution to the LRA problem is another day of terror and pain for those of us living under constant threat of renewed attacks,” the bishop told Aid to the Church in Need, as he discussed a recent rash of kidnappings and murders in recent weeks. “The threat of violence widening could stress any new government in South Sudan, ruining the resources of a young nation as it fights to protect its citizens and prevent others from being drawn into the struggle.”
Ryan J. Riley of TPMuckracker reported on two anti-Sharia’ protests being led by Islamophobes Terry Jones and Frank Gaffney in Washington D.C. The protests were supposed to be in response to a “pro-Sharia’” rally by goonish buffoon and well known media whore Anjem Choudary. Choudary canceled his rally, but the anti-Sharia advocated went ahead with their rally. Of course it turned into a bit of a joke with the usual anti-Islam and anti-Muslim message.
Rev. Terry Jones, the man who rose to national prominence last fall when he announced (but later backed off of) a plan to burn copies of the Koran, was clad in a beat-up black leather jacket when he showed up to a park across the street from the White House a few minutes before noon on Thursday.
His black sunglasses resting a few inches above his signature handlebar mustache, Jones hopped up on a bench in Lafayette Park and announced that his organization Stand Up America was holding a rally.
An aide to Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the American Center for Security Policy, didn’t take kindly to that and quickly told the National Park Service that Jones wasn’t a part of their group and didn’t have a permit for his rally. So Jones and his crowd, many of them decked out in biker gang gear, set up shop in the midst of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The common enemy of both groups was radical Muslim Anjem Choudary, a London-based preacher who has been dubbed a “media whore” and has already made the rounds on Fox News promoting his “Sharia4America” rally, which was postponed just a few hours before it was supposed to begin on Thursday.
Jones claimed credit for Choudary’s decision not to show up. But the Gaffney team apparently wasn’t eager to have their event usurped by the mustachioed pastor from Florida.
“I don’t know who they are. We were just going to stand there on the bench, seemed like a good place to speak, but I guess they had reserved that,” Jones told TPM. “Then I heard somebody jump up and say ‘they’re not associated with us!’ So I honestly don’t know who they are.”
Gaffney told TPM after his press conference that he “didn’t see any squabble” when Jones showed up to the park, but said Jones “is not associated with us” and “didn’t have a permit.”
“I have no association with him at all,” Gaffney said, adding that he “was not inclined to share” his view on Jones.
So despite their common enemy, there is a ideological and tactical divide between the Gaffney and Jones camps.
“It’s a difference of approach, and some of it is territorial,” said one member of team Gaffney who requested anonymity. “One is more comprehensive and professional — he’s got his whole group behind him — whereas Terry just has his biker crew. One is more intellectual, the other is more agitated. One is based on patriotism and constitutional law, the other is based on theology.”
The formal events had both ended but attendees were still hanging around by the time a Muslim man holding a Starbucks cup and wearing a bluish winter coat with writing on the back began chanting Arabic prayers in front of the White House. That’s when attendees of both rallies merged around the man soon breaking into chants of “U.S.A.” and “Jesus” and renditions of “Amazing Grace.” Those throwing tiny crosses at the man’s feet appeared to be from the Jones camp.
“Is he yelling U.S.A.?” asks one man in the crowd. “It doesn’t matter — he’s anti-women, he’s anti-freedom,” one woman said. “Take it back to your own country!” said another man. “No Sharia law!” shouted another.
As the man kept worshipping and the crowd thinned out, Jones ran into Randall Terry, the militant anti-abortion activist who has been churning out the type of media coverage Jones’ Koran burning stunt got for years.
“You should’a burned the Korans by the way, you blinked. You should’a burned them,” Terry said.
Thanks to a “International Judge the Koran” event Jones and his group have in the works for March 20, he may get a shot to do just that — provided that’s how the people vote on his website. If the people decide the Koran deserves to be burned, that’s just what they’ll do.
“We’ll definitely do it, yes,” Jones said.
I don’t know where this Muslim man came from, from the report below it seems he was not there for the Choudary rally but actually shows up every couple of days to pray near the White House. Why? I have no idea. He also has something written on his back which I can’t quite make out, but the video below shows him being subjected to something along the lines of what happened at Yorba Linda. He is peaceful and non-confrontational and the crowd levels heavy amounts of invective his way. Maybe he was trying to send a message of defiance, that “I don’t care what you think, and that this is a free country”?
Here is the report from Riley on the Muslim man who was praying:
A group of anti-Sharia protestors who planned to counter-protest the planned pro-Sharia rally by the radical provocateur Anjem Choudary in front of the White House on Thursday found themselves without an opponent to debate.
The counter rally planned by Frank Gaffney in response to Choudary’s pro-Sharia demonstration was left without a raison d’etre after Choudary failed to show up as he’d previously announced (and promoted on Fox News). That left Gaffney and his group preaching to the choir so to speak as they denounced Sharia law to their followers as well as media and curious onlookers.
But just as the rally was dying out, a Muslim man who showed up to pray in front of the White House. He was quickly surrounded by a large group of protestors who shouted an array of insults at him: mocking him for drinking Starbucks coffee, telling him to go back to his country and even throwing tiny crosses at his feet as he prayed. I captured the scene in the video below.
He’s still worshipping as I write this, but the anti-Sharia crowd is beginning to thin out. A police officer on the scene told me the man showed up to pray at the White House every couple days.
I’ll have more on the counter protest this afternoon.
A shocking and vitriolic display of hate against Muslims attending a charity event for battered women in Yorba Linda, California. They are abused with calls of “Go home,” and “terrorist,” little children are subjected to it as well. A Villa Park Councilwoman named Deborah Pauly echoes the rhetoric of Pamela Geller and even calls for the murder of participants (who she labels “Terrorists”) at the charity event. In an ironic moment she justified her statements by saying, “I don’t even care, I don’t even care if you think I’m crazy anymore.” Ummm, yeah…someone get her a straight jacket because she might not care but we do.
There was also somebody sounding a Shofar (Ram’s horn) which while being used for prayer was also used in Biblical Times to call to War, and in this context it seems quite clear that it is being used as a call to war and intimidation. Why the hell would someone bring a shofar to protest a Muslim charity event?
Do we need any clearer evidence that Islamophobia exists?:
These hatemongers are ACT! for America (we’ve been exposing them as a hate group for quite some time) and the ideological children of Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and David Horowitz.
We Need a Campaign to Expose These Politicians and Question Their Participation in this Hate-Fest:
Ask Congressman Gary Miller why he participated in this event, ask him to distance himself from these goons and condemn them,
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Ed Royce was also at the event espousing strong nativist sentiments and sounding very Geert Wilders-ish by decrying “multi-culturalism.” Message to Ed, “This isn’t Europe buddy.”
Glenn Beck recently has been harping on and on about the impending doom of Armageddon, and he has figured out who the Anti-Christ is, an “Islamic figure” known as the “12th Imam” or “Mahdi.” To help promote his pseudo-religio-apocalyptic propaganda he had Joel Richardson (fundamentalist Christian) and Zuhdi Jasser, token Muslim beloved by Neo-Cons and wacko Islamophobes.
Beck claims he has been studying this “issue” for nearly five or six years, which is hard to believe when he can’t distinguish between Shi’as and Sunnis:
This hysteria is quite revealing. The Christian right-wing has always scapegoated or somehow cast America’s perceived “enemies” at one time or another as the Anti-Christ. During the Cold War the Soviet Union and its Premieres were the Anti-Christ, during the Gulf War it was Saddam Hussein, at various points throughout history it has been the Pope, and Jerry Falwell thought it obvious that the Anti-Christ was a “male Jew.”
It would almost be an exercise in futility (since they are so obvious) to rebut the horrendous, blatant factual inaccuracies regarding Islamic Eschatology here, but a brief response is necessary.
In the first instance it must be noted that Islamic Eschatology is a debated topic with various theological opinions amongst scholars, and both Sunni Islam and Shia’ Islam have different views of the events and also place different levels of importance on these End Times characters/scenarios. For Shia’ Twelver Islam the Mahdi is a central figure of their Faith whereas amongst Sunnis he is not central to the Faith.
Before we approach this subject it must be made abundantly clear that Muslims believe that no one, not the Prophets, Saints nor the Angels know when the Last Day/End Times will begin. This knowledge belongs only to God because he is the one who has decided it:
“They ask you about the Hour (Day of Resurrection): ‘When will be its appointed time?’ Say: ‘The knowledge thereof is with my Lord (Alone). None can reveal its time but He. Heavy is its burden through the heavens and the earth. It shall not come upon you except all of a sudden.’ They ask you as if you have a good knowledge of it. Say: ‘The knowledge thereof is with God (Alone), but most of mankind know not.’”
[al-‘Araf 7:187]
2 – God says:
“People ask you concerning the Hour, say: ‘The knowledge of it is with God only. What do you know? It may be that the Hour is near!’”
[al-Ahzaab 33:63]
Ibn Katheer (3/527) said:
God tells His Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) that he has no knowledge of the Hour and that when the people ask him about that, he should refer the matter to God.
Al-Shanqeeti said (6/604):
It is known that the word innama (translated here as “only”) has the effect of limiting or restricting the meaning, so what the verse means is: No one knows when the Hour will come except God alone.
3 – God says:
“They ask you (O Muhammad) about the Hour — when will be its appointed time?
You have no knowledge to say anything about it.
To your Lord belongs (the knowledge of) the term thereof
You (O Muhammad) are only a warner for those who fear it”
[al-Naaz’iaat 79:42-45]
al-Sa’di said:
Because knowing the time of the Hour serves no spiritual or worldly purpose for people, rather their interests lie in it being concealed from them, the knowledge of that has been kept from all of creation and God has kept it to Himself. “To your Lord belongs (the knowledge of) the term thereof.” (via. IslamQA)
It also must be made abundantly clear that according to Islamic doctrine no one, I repeat no one has the ability to hasten the Last Day/End Times. The logic goes: How can one hasten something God has already decided? Nothing any Muslim or non-Muslim does or doesn’t do has one iota of an effect on hastening or bringing closer the End Times. This is completely and utterly in the power of God. To believe otherwise is considered disbelief and counter to Orthodox Islamic teaching amongst all Sunni groups and schools of thought, and I would venture to say most Shia’ groups and schools of thought as well (Shia’ readers feel free to add comments).
Furthermore, Islamic ‘Aqeeda, belief that Allah knows everything and all things happen through His power and Will is so profound and deeply ingrained that the idea of hastening the Last Days never occurred as a theological possibility, it was unimaginable! There is not much said about it over 1400 years of Islamic history precisely because it was inconceivable and absurd from an Islamic viewpoint.
In fact, throughout history individuals who have claimed to have been mahdis or messiahs have generally not had a very happy end: they have either been persuaded to repent, forced to repent, jailed, killed or castigated as false pretenders. (hat tip: Ahmed)
The cult of Juhayman al-Otaibi is a case in point. He is the famous mastermind behind the siege of the Grand Mosque of Mecca in 1979. He was forwarding the concept that his brother-in-law was the awaited Mahdi. To do so — amongst other things — he attempted to fulfill some of the “signs of the Last Hour” mentioned in Hadith. Juhayman and 67 of his followers were (after being captured) summarily executed.
What we are really seeing from Glenn Beck and the Christian Right crowd that he is pandering to with these insane antics is a classic case of PROJECTION. It is in fact many in the Christian Right who believe that the End Times, the Last Days can be hastened. They actually believe they have a role in bringing Jesus Christ back to Earth!
One of the violent consequences of this disastrous theology is that they believe the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque must be destroyed and the Third Jewish Temple be built for Jesus to return to earth. Imagine the repercussions if they are successful in this mad dash to instigate cataclysm?
The one piece of evidence that Islamophobes, Beck and his ilk use to try to instill fear in the populace is their de-contextualized recital of a hadith (saying of the Prophet Muhammad) and its variations that says, ‘the Last Day will not arrive until the Jews fight the Muslims and the Muslims defeat them.’
Beck and company want to pass off and interpret these ahadith as somehow calling for a hastening of the End Times. Not only is this interpretation antithetical to Islamic creed, not only is it an interpretation NEVER forwarded in the 1400 years of Islamic history by any of the hadith commentators (I have Fath al-Bari by Imam Ibn Hajar al-’Asqalani, Sharh Sahih Muslim by Imam Nawawi, and other commentaries open in front of me right now), but it exposes a profound and disgustingly immense historical amnesia.
Why wouldn’t Muslims over the course of 1400 years, at a time when Christian Europe was murdering and enslaving Jews under the doctrine of Perpetual Servitude have exterminated Jews if Beck and his cohorts are right? Why were Jews thriving in the Muslim world? Why were they being appointed as Viziers, Advisors, Diplomats, Physicians to the Caliphs, Sultans and Amirs? Why was the Golden Age of Jewish thought and culture, the revivification of Hebrew (a previously near dead language) in lands ruled by Muslims? (I am currently writing a book review for LW on The Oranament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal).
No doubt these ahadith have been used in a bellicose and bigoted manner over the past 80 or so odd years due to the political situation in the Middle East, i.e. the conflict between the creation of Israel and occupation and repression of Palestinians. But can the anti-Muslims who forward the claim that Muslims are using these ahadith to hasten the End Times bring one shred of evidence in which these ahadith have been used to instigate or incite pogroms or to usher in the Last Days over the last 1400 years? Maybe Bernard Lewis can help in this regard?
What Beck and co. are saying would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that it was so dangerous. Some nut or group of nuts is going to see his show and start arming himself against the evil Mooslims and think to himself that he has to get the Mooslims before they get him.
A Texas man who tried to organize the burning of a Quran last September 11th is running for mayor of Amarillo.
David Grisham, leader of “Repent Amarillo,” filed his papers Monday.
Grisham says he wants to lead the city in a new direction.
“If the government authorities are to be ministers of God, then ministers of God need to be running for the offices of the governing authorities, makes sense to me,” Grisham said.
Grisham also made news for calling for the boycott of the city of Houston because it elected a homosexual mayor.
Last time we checked in on the Washington Post’s “On Faith,” a silly group religion blog run by the reliably embarrassing Sally Quinn, it had just run a piece arguing that Barack Obama had only himself to blame for the fact that many old white people think he’s a Muslim. That post, along with blatantly bigoted entries from other contributors, led me to believe that “On Faith” would run any old nonsense. But apparently not!
According to Pajamas Media, the Post spiked an “On Faith” contribution from Baptist minister Willis E. Elliott. The post, which Pajamas Media runs in full,makes the argument that Christianity is good and Islam is bad. Because that’s a really useful and important thing for grown-ups to argue about in newspapers. Islam sucks! (I have some great pitches for the Post. America: Better than France! “Washington Post’s ‘On Race’ blog: White people are better than Asians.”)
Elliott makes his case in listicle form, like Martin Luther, or Cracked.com. Item one: Christians are quiet and respectful but Muslims are mean and violent:
Blasphemy (irreverent speech or action against a deity or religious person/belief/object) is currently in the news only when Muslims become violent, or threaten violence, when they feel offended: when we Christians feel offended, almost never do we become violent, and almost always we suffer the disrespect in silence.
Tell it to the Westboro Baptist Church, or the monster who assassinated George Tiller! Wait, sorry, it’s unfair to tarnish all Christians by blaming their religion for the extremism of kooks. It is only fair to do that to Muslims.
There are a lot of jaw-dropping assertions in this awful piece (“Muslims don’t know how to behave when they are not in power,” “Muslims are now more aggressive blasphemers against Christianity,” etc.) but my favorite bit is this little story:
Americans don’t have to go to Muslim lands to hear our religion blasphemed by Muslims. In a Christian church in Portland, OR, I heard an imam (an immigrant from Yemen) say to the post-worship assemblage, “God has no son.” (Not, “We Muslims believe that God has no son.”) When I yelled, “Blasphemy!” the assemblage was shocked to silence and he was so unnerved that he initiated a handshake with me seven times before he left the church.
What a really awesome minister this guy is, bravely screaming “blasphemy” at a Muslim, then writing about it for the Washington Post.
The Post probably rejected this piece because it was so stupid and insulting — which made it the perfect amount of stupid and insulting for conservative blogs — but then it ran a new submission from Elliott the day after Pajamas Media published this spiked diatribe. The new one is about how America is better than China, and it is also presented in list form.
Allen West is on a crusade, no doubt about it. The video for his interview with Shalom TV is insane, it seems as though he puts Israel first even ahead of America.
Freshman Tea Party-backed Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) recently got personal in an attack on one of the House’s two Muslim representatives, declaring that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) represents “the antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established.”
During an interview with “The Shalom Show,” West also said that he plans to “defeat” Ellison, an outspoken Democrat who “supports Islam,” according to host Richard Peritz, “intellectually in debate and discourse.”
As ThinkProgress notes, West has repeatedly sought to connect Islamic religious beliefs to supposedly anti-American views.
At a town hall meeting during his campaign, West claimed that people who display the popular “Coexist” bumper stickers, which use various religious symbols as font, are those who would “give away our country” and “our rights and freedoms and liberties because they are afraid to stand up and confront that which is the antithesis, anathema of who we are.”
If the connection between the bumper sticker and Islam wasn’t made clear by that statement, West went on to drive home his claim that Islam is a “very vile and very vicious enemy that we have allowed to come in this country because we ride around with bumper stickers that say ‘coexist.’”
For more on West’s controversial views of Islam, check out ThinkProgress’s report here.
David Horowitz’s NewRealBlog is (like FrontPageMag) a lightning rod for people who want to justify their preconceived prejudices about Islam and Muslims. Today, we find an article by Paul Cooper, a pastor, which allegedly purports to expose the reality of women under Sharia law. Of course, we’ve come to expect the usual dose of anti-Muslim bias from David Horowitz’s cash for hate scheme which regularly dehumanizes Palestinians and inspires right-wing terrorists.
Mr. Cooper exposes the “left-leaning” (what most call mainstream moderate) journalists who refuse to describe Sharia law in terms of pure evil:
Every week new articles come out from left-leaning journalists about how great Sharia law is and how we have nothing to fear. Yet we at NewsReal have written on many sad cases of how children are treated under Sharia all over the world. You don’t hear the whole story of the dangers of Islamic law unless you see how it affects women. This past week in Pakistan, for example, two women were falsely accused of blasphemy and almost beaten to death.
Cooper follows classic far right-wing tactics by using Islam as a political wedge issue; that is, to divide Americans according to their position on Islam. I’ve written before about right-wing activists using Islam as a stick to bash the Left. One wonders if his primary target is his political enemies (Democrats), not necessarily Muslims themselves.
Historically, Muslims had done away with harsh blasphemy laws in 1839 during the Reformation of the Ottoman Empire, specifically by a decree known as the Noble Edict of the Rose Chamber. For Mr. Cooper, though, a small troublesome detail like that need not prevent him from claiming that such severe laws are essential Islamic traditions practiced all over the Muslim world.
Admittedly, there are problems with Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law. But Muslims have been voicing their criticism of the Pakistani government’s heavy hand for quite some time. Yursil Kidwai, in an excellent piece for the Huffington Post, describes how so-called Sharia laws are actually tactics used by corrupt governments to distract people from their endemic corruption:
It seems more than coincidental that these ‘Sharia’ incidents occur in states that are run by atheistic/communist dictators (i.e. Saddam Hussein) or ridiculously corrupt ‘Islamo-democratic’ governments.
In Pakistan’s case, the International Crisis Group provided a report last year stating:
“Decades of mismanagement, political manipulation and corruption have rendered Pakistan’s civil service incapable of providing effective governance and basic public services. In public perceptions, the country’s 2.4 million civil servants are widely seen as unresponsive and corrupt, and bureaucratic procedures cumbersome and exploitative. Bureaucratic dysfunction and low capacity undermine governance, providing opportunities to the military to subvert the democratic transition and to extremists to destabilize the state.”
Ridiculous distractions such as modern ‘Islamic’ states opinions on blasphemy, adultery, and theft allow Islamophobes to target their favorite religion, while allowing corruption and real problems to go under the radar. These laws today serve a purpose that they never had in what was the most authentic Islamic state (now only a memory): a means to prove a government’s religiosity in a midst of lies, deceit, money and total corruption which make up most of its actual administration.
Yursil is correct that the misguided policies of unelected dictators to enforce only the most harsh Sharia laws are nothing more than superficial attempts to legitimate illegitimate governments. Islamophobes like to focus on these irregular examples as a typical day of Sharia law. However, this belies the sophisticated Ottoman legal system which, using Sharia’s own internal mechanisms (such as ijtihad and istihsan), had done away with severe punishments like stoning and blasphemy. Yursil continues:
Islamic laws which reward charity, promote honesty, promote tolerance have been forgotten in these states, while a handful of ‘Shariah’ punishments were mixed in with brand-new torturous and oppressive policies and procedures.
Interestingly enough, these selected ‘Sharia’ punishments were frowned upon under the centuries of Ottoman rule and by its end had become completely unpracticed. In Ottoman lands where Sharia was the be-all, end-all official state law, these laws were unenforced as a matter of practice. This was not through denouncing or revising Islamic Law, but by putting into practice the complete and holistic set of checks and balances built into Islamic Sharia.
Of course, most Muslim law makers are following precedents similar to the Ottoman reforms. Yet, all this history and context is simply too much information to consider before David Horowitz and company declare Sharia law a threat to all women. After recounting in detail a single anecdote from Pakistan, Cooper concludes that such events are representative of the entire Muslim world (over 1 billion people):
Sadly such stories are common in many Islamic regions. Yet news agency [sic], women’s groups, and human rights organizations continue to turn a deaf ear. Despite their indifference, some of us are listening and committed to getting the word out on the true dangers of Sharia law.
We are left to believe that women everywhere in the Muslim world, without exception, are suffering every day under Sharia law. I am curious to see how Mr. Cooper explains the fact that Pakistan, allegedly under misogynist Sharia law, has twice elected a woman Prime Minister. But what do you expect from someone who links his article to Nonie Darwish, among others, as his “resource” for Sharia?
Mr. Cooper, perhaps those “news agencies, women’s groups, and human rights organizations continue to turn a deaf ear” because they don’t pay attention to exaggerated politically self-serving claims about women and Sharia law from non-experts like yourself.
Speaking on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the very church where Dr. King once pastored, new Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley gave a speech in which he said that those who have not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior are not his “brothers.”
Bentley spoke at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery just minutes after taking the oath of office on Monday. The new governor, who has been a deacon at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, first said that though he ran as a Republican, once he took office he “became the governor of all the people.”
“I am color blind,” Bentley said, according toThe Birmingham News.
But Bentley then said that only those who are Christians and “saved” like he is are his brothers and sisters.
“There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley said. ”But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”
Bentley stopped just short of calling for non-Christians to accept Jesus Christ.
”Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters,” he said. “So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”
Asked by The Birmingham News afterwords if his words where meant to insult other faiths, Bentley said, ”We’re not trying to insult anybody.”
”He is the governor of all the people, Christians, non-Christians alike,” Rebekah Caldwell Mason, Bentley’s communications director, told the News.
Dr. King was pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church from 1954 to 1960. Early Civil Rights activity, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was directed by King from his office in the church. The church was designated a national historic landmark in 1974, and, in 1978, its name was changed to Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.
TPM’s initial attempt to contact Bentley was unsuccessful.
A blast from the past. Around Christmas time 2008 a doll was being sold by Fisher Price that cooed and gaga’d but through the power of suggestion some started to believe that the doll was saying, “Islam is the light,” but if you listen closely you could make it out to say anything:
Spencer and other Islamophobes jumped on this at the time and put it forward as another instance of the insidious creeping Jihad. One of Texas’s finest, Pastor David Grice extrapolated that the doll was a sign of “us” being “under attack religiously,” strangely he also saw a foreign Chinese conspiracy involved as well:
The Gainesville pastor who ignited international outrage after announcing plans to burn the Quran now says he wants to put the holy book on trial.
Pastor Terry Jones wants to hold an event inside his Gainesville church and judge the Islamic holy book.
“My first reaction was, ‘Here we go again,’” said Imam Muhammad Musri, from the Islamic Society of Central Florida.
Musri played a big role in trying to help diffuse the dynamite Jones lit in September after announcing his plans for “International Burn a Quran Day.”
“What Terry Jones has done in the past, and is attempting to do again, is to incite violence,” said Musri.
It’s potential violence the Gainesville Police Department wants to be ready for, should the need arise.
A Gainesville police representative told News 13 they are “very aware” of Pastor Jones’ newest plans, and have sent officers to speak with him.
“He’s trying to stir a pot,” said Musri.
“The issue became a very political issue,” said Lawrence Walters, a First Amendment lawyer. “The media spotlight shined very brightly on Pastor Jones and his church.”
The media attention, according to Imam Musri, is what Jones wants the most.
Walters said it has perpetuated Jones’ actions.
“It’s caused a lot more people to pay attention to his speech, and has resulted in consequences and actions to the speech that otherwise would have never happened if the statements were not given the attention that the media provided,” he said.
“I think the media should deny him that attention, because there’s nothing good he’s trying to say,” said Musri. “He’s trying to create controversy.”
Musri said Jones’ freedom of speech comes with a high price: It hurts the U.S. image across the world.
In the News 13 newsroom, we have been engaged in extensive discussions on how to best cover Pastor Jones as we move forward.
As a media organization, we are certainly not in the business of censorship. But we are in the business of doing what’s responsible.
Ignoring what could become another event in Central Florida that ignites international outrage would not be responsible of us.
However, giving an open microphone to a religious leader whose views and actions advocate intolerance would not be responsible of us, either.
The halal food hysteria continues to whip up irrational anxiety on the extreme right. You may remember the last debacle concerning Pam Geller’s embarrassing crusade against Campbell’s halal soups. This time Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network is continuing the fight with its latest smear attack on the Muslim community.
The headline begins by asking a leading question, “Muslim Halal food sales supporting terrorism?”
Muslim halal food is creeping into the food chain not only in France, but worldwide, including the United States.
CBN News visited a butcher shop in a Muslim area of Paris. But it was no ordinary butcher shop. Our camera operator was warned to stop taping.
Why would a butcher shop care if it was being photographed? One reason, according to an Islamic expert we consulted, may have been that our camera operator, who is not a Muslim, was unclean and this was a halal butcher shop.
Notice the use of the trademark Islamophobic phrase “creeping” sharia. We are given the ominous imaginary picture of a dark-skinned, hostile Arab shuffling the CBN camera crew out because, our anonymous Islamic expert tells us, Muslims (maybe) view all non-Muslims as “unclean.” This little anecdote nobody saw is enough to lead some readers to think that somehow Halal butchershops are threatening, menacing. In reality, it is far more likely that the Muslim shop owner didn’t want the camera crew of an anti-Muslim loon causing trouble in his shop. I guess we’ll just have to take CBN and their anonymous Islamic expert’s word for it. The article continues:
Leading the fight against Quick’s sale of halal food is Charles Aslangul, a 21-year old city councilman, college student, and president of the Republican Order.
“Islam is introducing sharia into our society and that’s not clear for people,” Alain Wagner, a French activist with the Alliance Against Sharia, said. “When you see halal food in shops you think, ‘Oh, it’s just a kind of food.’ No. it’s sharia.”
According to some experts, a portion of the proceeds from halal food sales in France go to groups tied to terrorism.
When a French consumer buys Halal food, part of the price paid goes as a fee to Halal Islamic experts. Some of those experts are certified by the UOIF, the Union of the Islamic Organizations in France, which the Simon Wiesenthal Center reports has strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational political organization that supports terrorism.
When French journalist and author Alexandre del Valle began investigating how the Muslims Brotherhood was attempting a mafia-style takeover of France’s Halal food industry, his life was threatened.
“Nearly 60 percent of halal food is controlled by organizations belonging to the Muslim brotherhood,” he explained.
Again, relying on dubious “experts” we are told that most Halal food sales are controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood supports terrorism, therefore Halal food supports terrorism. Nevermind that absolutely no concrete evidence at all is presented to substantiate the claim that these Halal food organizations have “strong ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood. But even if this completely made up figure of “nearly 60%” were true, that does not in any way mean these sales are supporting terrorism. The Brotherhood’s public position on political terrorist violence is well-known. The CFR website states:
At various times in its history, the group has used or supported violence and has been repeatedly banned in Egypt for attempting to overthrow Cairo’s secular government. Since the 1970s, however, the Egyptian Brotherhood has disavowed violence and sought to participate in Egyptian politics. The U.S. State Department does not include the group on its list of terrorist organizations. The Brotherhood denounced the April 7 bombing in Cairo by a previously unknown militant group, the Al-Ezz Islamic Brigades, calling it a “cowardly act,” The Associated Press reported.
Nevertheless, baseless speculation and smear by cynical innuendo seems to be the preferred CBN method of journalism instead of actually taking the time to research these things. The CBN article continues:
Journalist Del Valle said Halal food has been a brilliant political and business strategy for the Muslim Brotherhood.
“The food was two victories in one. We split people. We divide two societies inside a society. And we make money,” he said.
Some say halal food is no different than Kosher, but Wagner disagrees.
“No, it’s not like kosher food. Kosher-eating people are not preaching for the destruction of democracy. Halal is sharia. And we need to ban any sharia-related thing in our society,” he said.
This passage takes for granted the ignorance of CBN’s readership. The whole basis of fearing Halal soup has been its nefarious connection to the allegedly omnipresent terrorist-supporting Muslim Brotherhood. However, in this passage, we are also told to associate “Halal” and “Sharia” with “destruction of democracy.” Yet, the Muslim Brotherhood has long been pushing for fairer and freer elections in Egypt. In contrast, it has been the U.S. allied ruling Mubarak regime that has suppressed the democratic opposition, not the Brotherhood. But again, CBN appears to rely on unidentified Islamic “experts” (who are they? where did they study Islam?) rather than mainstream sources. The truth is that those who say Halal is no different than Kosher are correct:
This day good foods have been made lawful, and the food of those who were given the Scripture (Jews and Christians) is lawful for you and your food is lawful for them. (Quran 5:5)
This verse of the Quran allows Muslims, Christians, and Jews to eat each other’s food because of their common belief in the same God (i.e. the God of Abraham). Instead of spreading unfounded fears about Halal food, perhaps the Christian Broadcasting Network should encourage their viewers to get to know their Muslim neighbors by sharing a meal.
Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2)
Robert Spencer was all on this issue before, painting it in a simplified form directly taking the side of ultra right-wing Coptic apologists who hate Islam with a passion. Don’t expect any retractions from Spencer on this one.
CAIRO, Egypt • The wives of two Egyptian Coptic priests, forbidden by the church from divorcing their abusive husbands, desperately sought another way out by converting to Islam. When their intentions were discovered, police handed them over to the church, and their whereabouts since have been unknown.
The cases caused a furor at home that spilled over the borders and turned deadly when al-Qaida in Iraq cited the women as the reason behind the worst attack ever on Christians in Iraq — a siege of a church in October that left 68 people dead.
It was a stark example of the schism between Christians and Muslims that runs through the Middle East and periodically erupts into violence.
“Amid the current sectarian discord, the timing is perfect for al-Qaida to show it is defending Islam and to exploit the situation to rally extremists against the churches,” said Ammar Ali Hassan, an expert in Islamic movements.
Both Wafaa Constantine, 53, and Camilla Shehata, 25, lived in remote rural towns and enjoyed prestige as devoted and pious wives of conservative Coptic priests. But behind that veneer, a lawyer and a church official said, the women were trapped in abusive relationships.
Both tried to seek a divorce through church channels but hit a dead end because the Coptic Orthodox Church forbids divorce — a rule enforced even more strictly against the wives of priests. And they decided to rebel, not only against their husbands but against the whole religion.
They sought to convert to Islam, something viewed as a disgrace in their community. The Coptic Church considers those who convert to other religions dead, making the marriage contract invalid.
Though Egyptian religious authorities say the women never succeeded in converting, the controversy in both cases escalated with protests by Egyptian Christians, who accused Muslims of abducting the women and forcing them to convert.
That riled Muslim extremists in Egypt who protested and accused the church of holding them against their will and forcing them to convert back to Christianity.
Al-Qaida in Iraq turned it into a cause celebre when it cited the women as the reason behind the Baghdad church siege. The group followed with more threats against Iraq’s Christian minority, generating such fear that most Christmas celebrations in the country were canceled.
The attorney representing residents suing Rutherford County over a proposed mosque solicited the public Friday for help — and money — while pledging to continue the court fight.
“The plaintiffs fully intend to continue to gather facts and evidence and proceed to a final hearing,” Murfreesboro lawyer Joe M. Brandon Jr. states in a “response” sent to media. “It is anticipated that the final hearing will occur after the full completion of discovery. This should be some time over the course of the next year.”
Brandon is representing plaintiffs Kevin Fisher, Lisa Moore and Henry Golczynski who filed suit after the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro acquired site plan approval May 24 from the county’s Regional Planning Commission to build a 52,960-square-foot community center with a mosque on Veals Road off Bradyville Pike southeast of Murfreesboro’s city limits.
The lawsuit challenges whether the county provided sufficient notice to the public about the agenda item and also questions whether Islam is a religion and should be afforded land use rights as with other churches.
Chancellor Robert Corlew Jr. concluded after several days of testimony spread over three months this fall that “Islam is in fact a religion” and found no grounds to issue a temporary restraining order to halt the mosque’s construction.
Brandon, though, notes in his letter that at the conclusion of the temporary hearing, the trial court ruled, ” … we are startled to find that the case advocated by the Defendants as the authoritative holding that Islam is a religion was actually a case wherein the Supreme Court held that display of a Christmas tree with an angel proclaiming ‘Glory to God in the highest’ on the stairway of a county courthouse had the effect of endorsing a Christian message.”
The trial court went on to state, “[w]e stress in our holding that there is a distinction between a legal finding that Islam is a religion compared with a religious finding that Islam is a religion. The religious scholars may debate for a lengthy period of time whether Islam meets their definition of a religion.”
Brandon argued repeatedly during the hearing that the Islamic Center poses a threat to the community based on the tenants of Shariah Law, and therefore should not be deemed a religion. It’s a point that Brandon says he will continue to challenge at the full hearing in the case.
The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, meanwhile, has been charging ahead with its building plans on 15 acres. The congregation hopes to submit more detailed plans to obtain a building permit by March or April, said Saleh Sbenaty, a planning committee member for the Muslim congregation.
“We’re just finishing up the grading,” Sbenaty said during a Friday night phone interview. “The grading is taking more time because of the weather. After the grading is done, we will send the whole package for the building permit.”
Phase I of the building plans will be in the 10,000- to 11,000-square-foot range and include a reception hall that will also serve as a prayer area, an office for the imam (religious leader) and a small meeting room that can also serve as a nursery.
If enough money is available in Phase I, the ICM will also seek to build two outdoor pavilions and a playground between the two, added Sbenaty, an 18-year MTSU professor who teaches courses in electronics and computers for the Engineering Technology Department.
Long-term plans include a formal mosque area for worship, classrooms for weekend religious study, a gym, indoor pool, more offices, a multipurpose sports field, a basketball/tennis court and a private cemetery for ICM members.
Brandon, in addition to vowing to continue efforts to halt the project, implored anyone with information relevant to the case to forward it to his office.
“Additionally, should anyone feel led to make a donation toward attorney’s fees or other mandatory related costs, please give me a call, wherein, these matters can be discussed in depth,” Brandon states.
Home secretary Theresa May is under intense pressure to ban controversial anti-Muslim preacher Terry Jones from Britain after far-right activists said he had agreed to address them at a demonstration about “the evils of Islam“.
The English Defence League (EDL) said it was “proud to announce” that the US pastor, who caused outrage with plans to burn the Qur’an on this year’s anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, would be attending the event in Luton in early February. Jones confirmed that he would be arriving in the UK. The pastor’s website said he intended to visit the EDL’s “biggest demonstration to date” in February. The website stated: “During the protest, Dr Terry Jones will speak against the evils and destructiveness of Islam in support of the continued fight against the Islamification of England and Europe.”
President Barack Obama warned in September that Jones’s planned Qur’an burnings would be a “recruitment bonanza” for al-Qaida and the US state department said it would put the country’s citizens at risk across the world.
Tonight the British anti-extremist campaign, Hope Not Hate, launched its own petition urging May to ban Jones from Britain, while MPs demanded immediate action from the home secretary. Hope Not Hate’s campaign co-ordinator, Nick Lowles, said: “Pastor Jones’s presence in Luton will be incendiary and highly dangerous. He will attract and encourage thousands of English Defence League supporters to take to the streets of Luton.
“Like the EDL, Pastor Jones indiscriminately targets all Muslims and their actions can only lead to increased tensions and racism in our communities. His appearance will rightly cause concern and fear among Muslims across the country.”
Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, said he would table an urgent parliamentary motion tomorrow demanding that the pastor be banned from coming into the country.
“We have seen how Pastor Jones, with a very small congregation in Florida, created a firestorm by urging the Qur’an to be burned,” Cruddas said. “We should not allow racial hatred to be whipped up in this manner in our country.”
The EDL announced Jones’s planned visit on its Facebook site today, saying he would attend “our biggest demo to date” and describing it as “the big one”. There are fears that copies of the Qur’an could be burned by extremists.
The last time the EDL marched in Luton, 250 of their supporters went on the rampage through an Asian area of the town. Shop windows were smashed, cars overturned and a number of people were attacked. Thirty-five people were arrested as a result of the violence. Eleven people were arrested yesterday as 500 EDL supporters marched in Peterborough.
“The EDL march in February has the potential to be far worse,” Lowles said. “Only extremists will benefit from his visit and, as we know, extremism breeds hatred and hatred breeds violence. Pastor Jones, a preacher of hate, must be stopped from entering the UK.”
The home secretary has the power to exclude or deport an individual if she thinks their presence in the UK could threaten national security, public order or the safety of citizens. She can also do so if she believes their views glorify terrorism, promote violence or encourage other serious crime.
May has been keen to show that she is tough on extremism. Five weeks after the coalition government came into power, she banned a radical preacher who claimed that “every Muslim should be a terrorist” from entering Britain. Zakir Naik had been due to give a series of lectures at Wembley Arena and in Sheffield in June.
However, visitors from other countries cannot be banned just for having opinions that other people would find offensive. In the past, May has said the powers can only be used in “very serious” cases. She has already acted against the EDL, banning a march in Leicester in November.
News of Jones’s planned visit comes as the head of the police intelligence unit on domestic extremism reveals that the EDL and related splinter groups have become his biggest concern.
Adrian Tudway, the national co-ordinator for domestic extremism, told the Observer: “We look at the extreme right and left, but currently our biggest single area of business are the various groups which call themselves defence leagues. These defence leagues can be found across England.”
The unit is monitoring a “number of individuals” connected to extreme rightwing groups, details of which are disseminated to local police forces.
At the height of the controversy over Jones’s threat to burn the Qur’an, effigies of the pastor were burned in Afghanistan and there was widespread condemnation across the Muslim world. Jones is a Pentecostalist who bases his theology on the literal text of the Bible. He runs the Florida-based Dove World Outreach Centre, which objects to Islam because it “teaches that Jesus is not the son of God, therefore taking away the saving power of Jesus and leading people straight to Hell”.
The SPLC has put the “Dove World” organization on their hate groups list. We are still waiting for the SPLC to put Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA) on the hate list.
Published: Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 9:11 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 9:11 p.m.
Dove World Outreach Center, the Gainesville church behind the “Islam is of the devil” signs and plans to burn the Quran, will be listed next year as a hate group, joining the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, the Southern Poverty Law Center announced this week.
“It wasn’t a very hard call to be honest with you,” said Mark Potok, who tracks extremism for the Montgomery, Ala.-based civil rights organization and serves as editor of its magazine. “Essentially (Dove World Pastor Terry Jones) is completely over the top with his hatred of gay people and of Muslims.”
In the latest issue of the SPLC publication, the church was featured with 17 other small groups around the country that “pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities.”
SPLC noted Dove World’s anti-gay stances, including its “No homo Mayor” signs during the city’s spring elections and its joining with the controversial Westboro Baptist Church — a small Kansas church that protests military funerals and other denominations — when that church was in town in April.
“I don’t know of any other group at all that has demonstrated alongside the Westboro Baptist Church,” Potok said.
Dove World will become the third Gainesville-based hate group on the SPLC’s list, joining an Imperial Klans of America chapter and a skinhead group called The Hated. Others listed include the Nation of Islam, the Jewish Defense League and Westboro.
Jamal Alshaer, the former interim director of the Islamic Center of Gainesville, said Dove World qualifies for the list.
Bradlee Dean of the religious ministry You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International believes Rep. Keith Ellison’s support for LGBT rights is part of his strategy to bring Sharia law to the United States. On his radio show Saturday, Dean said that members of the LGBT community are fools for supporting Ellison and that the Minnesota Democrat is “adamant about overthrowing the United States Constitution.”
Sharia law is the sacred law of Islam and derives its condemnation of homosexuality from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, as do fellow Abrahamic traditions Christianity and Judaism. As with Christian and Jewish approaches to LGBT issues, Muslim interpretations of Sharia laws on homosexuality vary widely, ranging from full support to prescribing a death sentence for it.
“I said time and time again that there is a correlation between the Muslims and the homosexual agenda, and we have a couple of fools in the state of Minnesota that are putting a rope around their neck and they just don’t realize it,” said Dean . “Here, let me give it to you this way: Keith Ellison is a Muslim.”
Dean said that Ellison’s support for protections for LGBT people from hate crimes and for same-sex marriage is part of an attempt to overthrow the U.S. Constitution and implement Sharia law.
“Why is he so adamant about overthrowing the Constitution as it is right now? Because if you pay attention to the plow he’s planting the seed,” Dean said. “He’s trying to come through with Sharee [sic] law.”
Raising his voice, he urged his listeners, “Does somebody want to talk to the homosexual community in the state of Minnesota and tell them what he is doing? Go online, folks! You love the homosexuals so much then why don’t you tell them who they’ve appointed as their chairperson? He’s a Muslim!”
He continued, “Hello? Why is he after it? Because he wants to bring in Sharee [sic] law through the homosexual agenda!”
“They are using the homosexuals as a political battering ram to bring forth what? Sharee [sic] law.”
LGBT leaders in the United States are “ignorant,” Dean said, for allowing Ellison to serve as co-chair of the House LGBT Caucus.
“What is Keith up to? I think we have to ask the question, Keith,” said Dean. “I’m just asking the gay communities what’s up with Keith Ellison because they are so foolish, blind and stupid not to figure out that their vice chair is a Muslim. This is no hidden secret, folks. This is in America. Who is this guy working for?”
“Why is this guy advocating the overthrow of the United States Constitution in the state of Minnesota?”
Dean then played an audio clip of an unidentified Muslim who said that Sharia law calls for the execution of homosexuals.
“I would say to the homosexuals: You better keep your eyes peeled. You are playing the fools. I knew there was a correlation. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. And the homosexuals are using the Muslims to do it, and the Muslims are using the homosexuals to do it. The homosexuals are playing the fool to the Muslims.”
He continued, “That’s how foolish these homosexuals are in Minnesota. God is not mocked. You can’t spit against heaven and not expect to fall upon your own back. And that’s exactly what’s happening to those that want to play the devil’s advocate.”
To Ellison, Dean said, “Keith you can call me any time. Let’s see how much of an American you really are.” He added the Ellison’s office has not returned his calls. Ellison’s office has not yet responded to the Minnesota Independent’s query about whether Dean has called or to offer comment on Dean’s statements.
Ellison has been forthright about his beliefs about Islam and homosexuality, and he has repeatedly said that Islam has taught him the importance of civil rights and social justice.
Earlier this year, Ellison addressed the Unitarian Universalist National Convention in a speech that covered themes of faith, love and abundance. “There’s enough for the straight and the gay,” he said. “There’s enough for the people who were born in America and the new immigrants. There’s enough for the blacks, there’s enough for the whites, there’s enough for the Latinos, there’s enough for the Asians, there’s enough for the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews, the Buddhists, the Hindus! There’s enough, everybody!”
And in an interview with the Muslim Peace Fellowship he stated unequivocally that he opposes violence and discrimination against LGBT people.
“I’m not asking people to embrace homosexuality,” he said. “I’m saying it’s wrong and immoral to kill them, beat them or exclude them from working. You don’t have to like them. Leave ‘em alone. Let them live their lives and let God decide if He will judge them, as He will judge us all. That’s all I’m saying.”
The Minnesota Independent emailed You Can Run But You Cannot Hide for clarification on Dean’s statements about Ellison and whether the group believed Ellison would try to implement Sharia law that would call for the execution of homosexuals.
“Due to the fact that the Muslims are the ones who would enforce Sharia Law and execute homosexuals, and being that Keith Ellison is a Muslim, you should be asking him that question,” a spokesperson replied. “That is our point.”
“I think the problem here is that Bradlee is trying to warn you of your sin before God for your good, and time and time again, you treat Bradlee like he is your enemy for doing so,” the email continued. “He has stuck his neck out for you many times. Bradlee’s heart is out of a sincere and real love to turn all men from sin to God.”
“You should be writing an article about what the Muslims are saying, since they are the ones who want to execute homosexuals. We are here merely to look out for you in that sense. Why do you turn on those who warn you?”
But Dean seemed to applaud Muslims that call for such executions. On his May 15 radio show, Dean said:
“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America. This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”
Dean and his ministry have close ties to the Republican Party and GOP elected officials and candidates including gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Secretary of State and current state Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, and state Rep. Dan Severson. Rep. Michele Bachmann has fundraised for the group extensively in recent years as well.
Spain was largely free of the high-profile child sex abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in many European countries and the United States… until now. Even more men of the cloth are found to be involved in sexual child abuse. A Spanish Catholic priest was arrested with 21,000 images of child porn on computersin his church.
To be fair, it should be obvious that hoarding pornography of any sorts, especially children, is against the formal teachings of the Catholic Church. “If the accusation is true, this is something that hurts us deeply, that we sincerely regret and that we reject unreservedly,” the diocese said. Just because some criminals belong to a faith does not mean that faith endorses criminal behavior. Reasonably open-minded people can understand that.
But what if he were Muslim?
Expect no fairness from the anti-Muslim conflict-o-sphere. Child porn is a tenet of Islam, we’d be told. We’d see another repeat of the whole child bride fiasco, echoing again and again the tired “Muhammad is a pedophile” smear.
But was Muhammad’s marriage to the young but post-pubescent Aisha unusual for 7th century Arabia? Nope. As Colin Turner of the University of Durham Middle East Studies department points out:
A marriage between an older man and a young girl was customary among the Bedouins, as it still is in many societies across the world today. It was not unheard of in Muhammad’s time for boys and girls to be promised to each other in marriage almost as soon as they were born, particularly if the union was of direct political significance to the families concerned. However, such marriages were almost certainly not consummated until both parties had entered adulthood, which Arabs in the 7th century tended to reach at an earlier age than Westerners today. It is highly unlikely that Muhammad would not have taken Aisha into his bed until she was at least in her early teens, which was wholly in keeping with the customs of the day, and in context not in the least improper.
[Turner, C. (2006). The messenger. Islam: the basics(pp. 34-35). London: Routledge.]
But wasn’t Muhammad some sexual pervert that couldn’t control his libido? False. As Aisha herself testified:
Narrated Aisha: “The Prophet used to kiss and embrace his wives while he was fasting, and he had more power to control his desires than any of you.”
[Sahih Bukhari, Volume 3 Book 31 Number 149]
But wasn’t Muhammad a violent misogynist who beat women and children all day? Wrong again. As Aisha again testifies:
Narrated Aisha: “The Messenger of Allah never struck a servant or a woman.”
[Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 41 Number 4786]
عَنْ عَائِشَةَ، عَلَيْهَا السَّلاَمُ قَالَتْ مَا ضَرَبَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم خَادِمًا وَلاَ امْرَأَةً قَطُّ
Now, do these same anti-Muslim bloggers know (or care) that Christian sources record that Joseph married the Virgin Mary when he was 90 and she was 12? Probably not.
A year after his wife’s death, as the priests announced through Judea that they wished to find in the tribe of Juda a respectable man to espouse Mary, then twelve to fourteen years of age. Joseph, who was at the time ninety years old, went up to Jerusalem among the candidates…
[Catholic Encyclopedia, St. Joseph]
Will these same anti-Muslim keyboard warriors accuse Joseph of being a pedophile and Christianity of being a religion of pedophilia? Not likely. So what is at play here? As George Readings observed, “This attempt to aggressively apply a modern British definition of pedophilia to seventh century Arabia strikes me as a sign of severe anthropological illiteracy…”
Note: This article is part of our “What if they were Muslim?” series. In this series, we examine the double standards used by anti-Muslim activists when discussing religious extremism in Islam as compared to other religions. We reject using extremists of any religion to justify prejudice, stereotypes, and hostility towards all members of that religion. Period.
The federal judge presiding over the sharia ban case in Oklahoma has decided to extend the TRO on a new Constitutional amendment banning Sharia in Oklahoma
(CN) – A federal judge in Oklahoma said she needed another week to decide if the state’s new constitutional amendment barring courts from recognizing Shariah, or Islamic law, discriminates against Muslims.
U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange extended her Nov. 9 temporary restraining order blocking the results of the Nov. 2 referendum, in which 70 percent of voters passed the anti-Shariah amendment.
The amendment directs courts to “rely on federal and state law when deciding cases” and bars them “from considering or using Shariah law.
Muneer Awad, the executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), had asked the judge for an order barring state officials from certifying the elections results.
He called the amendment “ridiculous” and a “gross transgression of the Establishment Clause,” as it could void his will and other legal contracts between Muslims, though courts are allowed to consider the traditions of other religions. He noted that no other state constitution “attaches special burdens on a religious tradition.”
“Indeed, the only interest consistent with both the language and operation of the Shariah Ban is an interest in harming an unpopular minority,” he argued in hismotion for a preliminary injunction.
“The goal was to stigmatize Islam by establishing in the public’s mind that Islam is something foreign and to be feared,” he said.
In issuing the temporary restraining order, Judge Miles-LaGrange said Awad “has made a preliminary showing” that the amendment “is not facially neutral, discriminates against a specific religious belief, and prohibits conduct because it is undertaken for religious reasons.”
On Monday, she extended her order to Nov. 29.
Mano Bakh has personal reasons for opposing a mosque planned in Temecula.
The 73-year-old from Murrieta said he barely escaped with his life when revolutionaries toppled Iran’s monarchy in 1979 and established an Islamic republic.
His self-published book, “Escaping Islam,” describes being arrested and interrogated. Now he fears his new home is treading down Iran’s path.
Bakh is one of the most vocal critics of the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley’s plan to build a roughly 25,000-square-foot mosque in northeast Temecula. The Temecula Planning Commission will discuss the mosque Dec. 1.
Bakh, who said he went into hiding for his safety, insists he does not hate Muslims. The former Muslim said an expansionist Islamic ideology supports terrorism and seeks to repress liberty through religious-based Shariah law.
Center supporters, including a coalition of religious leaders, say Bakh and those like him are misguided at best and bigoted at worst. They say the majority of American Muslims are law-abiding.
“I can understand (Bakh’s) personal pain. My family suffered the same persecution,” said Salam Al-Marayati, an Iraqi and president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. “But that’s not a reason to prevent people from worshiping freely in the United States …”
‘revolutionary network’
A married father of two and grandfather of four, Bakh said he grew up in Iran and studied overseas while rising through his country’s navy. He described the Iran of his youth as a moderate country.
“Prior to 1979, there were miniskirts on our women, the latest styles from Paris in our shops, frivolity among our people, and Western music in the air,” reads an online book excerpt.
Iran was ruled by Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had close ties to the West. While credited with modernizing Iran, the shah also cracked down on political dissent.
Protesters eventually demanded the shah’s ouster, and he fled Iran in 1979. Islamic revolutionaries took over and established a theocracy.
In the years before the revolution, Bakh said he noticed more mosques being built. He wasn’t concerned at first because the mosques kept kids off the street.
“Later, we learned the mosques were nodes in the revolutionary network,” he said.
During the revolution, Bakh said he was arrested, searched, blindfolded, interrogated and accused of helping the U.S. Navy build a spyhouse in Iran.
He said he was allowed to return home, where he had less than an hour to pack before he and his family fled for Great Britain and ultimately settled in the U.S.
‘Deep Penetration’
Bakh sees Islam not as a religion, but a political movement seeking to take over the world.
He said there are signs of “deep penetration in all segments of society to implement the Islamic radicalization.”
As examples, he points to the incident last year at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 Army soldiers were killed — the suspect is a Muslim — and Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric once based in San Diego described as a spiritual adviser and attack planner for terrorists.
Bakh speaks about Islam to churches and Republican assemblies across Southern California and is a member of Concerned American Citizens, which opposes the mosque.
The City Council will decide the mosque’s fate if the commission’s decision is appealed.
‘who is he …?’
Bakh wants Islamic center Imam Mahmoud Harmoush to disclose the mosque’s funding sources, denounce the militant Palestinian group Hamas and sign a “pledge of friendship” in which the imam would vow to denounce Shariah law and uphold the Constitution.
Harmoush said he shouldn’t have to answer to him.
“Who is he to ask me any of those questions?” Harmoush said, adding the center has been raising funds for the mosque for a decade and shouldn’t have to open its books. Harmoush has said there is only enough money to build a 4,000-square-foot first phase.
As for Hamas, Harmoush, who has publicly condemned violence and terror, said Middle East politics have nothing to do with his center.
Bakh was at the July 30 protest outside the Islamic center’s current building. He said he did not approve of protesters who brought dogs, a move decried as harassment by the center supporters.
‘i lost one country’
Besides Harmoush, Bakh said he’s concerned with the center’s backers, including Al-Marayati, whom Bakh said won’t denounce Islamic terrorists.
Al-Marayati said his group works with law enforcement to fight terrorism. Bakh “just parrots what he hears” on the Internet, Al-Marayati said, adding, “When you’re a critic of U.S. policy in the Middle East, then immediately opponents want to portray you as supporting terrorism.”
Al-Marayati tried to dispel what he calls false notions about Islam at a forum hosted by the Interfaith Council of Murrieta and Temecula Valley. He said the true ideals of Islamic law closely mirror the Constitution and that for Muslims, the Pledge of Allegiance is as sacred as a pledge to God.
Bakh said he’s resigned to never returning to his homeland.
“I lost one country,” he said. “I don’t want to lose a second one.”
Fischer says inflicting “massive casualites” is Christian. He cites massacres in the Old Testament as his proof. Does this mean Christianity is a violent religion that supports massacres? Imagine if a Muslim had said what Fisher said.
Bryan Fischer responds to the latest outrage he has provoked with his recent blog post decrying “the feminization of the Medal of Honor.”
As he typically does in these situations, Fischer reacts by accusing everyone else of intentionally misrepresenting his point and then proceeds to “clarify” it by reiterating his position in such a way that it makes the extent of his extremism all the more obvious, as if the problem was that somehow people just misunderstood him the first time.
And so we end up with posts like this in which he explains that all he was saying was that we as a nation need to start honoring soldiers who kill lots of people because such actions are greatly pleasing to God:
The Scriptures certainly know nothing of such squeamishness. Remember what drove King Saul into a jealous rage was when the women of Israel commemorated David’s exploits in song:
“Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7).
And this was not the last of David’s exploits in just wars. He went down to the town of Keilah where he “fought with the Philistines and brought away their livestock and struck them with a great blow” (1 Samuel 23:5).
Then he went after the Amalekites, and we are told that “David struck them down from twilight until the evening of the next day, and not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men who mounted camels and fled” (1 Samuel 30:17).
Again, “David did as the LORD commanded him, and struck down the Philistines from Geba to Gezer” (2 Samuel 5:25).
Further we read in 2 Samuel 8, “David defeated the Philistines and subdued them…he defeated Moab…David also defeated Hadadezer the son of Rehob, king of Zobah…David struck down 22,000 men of the Syrians…and the LORD gave victory to David everywhere he went…and David made a name for himself when he returned from striking down 18,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt…and the LORD gave victory to David wherever he went” (vv. 1,2,3,5,6,13,14).
And this, remember, was “the man after (God’s) heart” (1 Samuel 13:14).
Christianity is not a religion of pacifism. Remember that John the Baptist did not tell the soldiers who came to him to lay down their arms, even when they asked him directly, “what shall we do?” (Luke 3:14).
War is certainly a terrible thing, and should only be waged for the highest and most just of causes. But if the cause is just, then there is great honor in achieving military success, success which should be celebrated and rewarded.
The bottom line here is that the God of the Bible clearly honors those who show valor and gallantry in waging aggressive war in a just cause against the enemies of freedom, even while inflicting massive casualties in the process. What I’m saying is that it’s time we started imitating God’s example again.
I guess you could say that Fischer is more of a Psalm 137 Christian than a Matthew 5 Christian.
Under the headline, “Calls Rise to Probe Capitol Hill Muslim Prayer Sessions” yesterday, Pat Robertson’s news channel, CBN News, was able to offer only one organization that has called for a probe of the Congressional Muslim Staff Association: Robertson’s own American Center for Law and Justice.
As I’ve reported here and here, after Fox News ran a report claiming that speakers with terrorist ties spoke at Congressional prayer meetings, the ACLJ called for a Justice Department investigation of the CMSA. Suhail Khan, a Muslim Republican who has worked as a staffer for a Republican Congressman and as a political appointee in the Bush administration, and who currently serves on the board of the American Conservative Union,called the Fox report nothing but “anti-Muslim bigotry” and noted that Robertson is “notorious for anti-Islamic comments.”
On its Newswatch program, CBN attempted to create the impression that calls for law enforcement to intervene are somehow on the rise. Yet the only source for the story was Jordan Sekulow, the ACLJ’s Director of International Operations.
“The media didn’t want to report this,” Sekulow asserted, claiming they feared being called Islamophobes or bigots if they reported that the CMSA was hosting terrorist speakers. “When we started talking about this,” said Sekulow, “immediately the left and the kind of pro-Islamic world immediately cries bigot and says, why do you want to investigate? The reason you want to investigate is of course because we’re Muslims.” Sekulow went on to claim that individuals with terror ties were invited to prayer meetings, which, as Khan told me earlier this week, are not official CMSA functions, but are run under the auspices of the House Chaplain. (See theHouse Chaplain’s website for evidence of the prayer meetings being open to the public, like other religious meetings held under the Chaplain’s auspices.) What’s more, neither Fox nor ALCJ have produced evidence any of these individuals were invited by the CMSA; as Khan noted, the prayer meetings are open to the public.
Yet Sekulow went on, “Why we’re calling for an investigation — who was picking these people to speak is what we want to know.” He went on to claim — something already disputed by Khan — that the Council on American Islamic Relations chooses the speakers. “This group,” said Sekulow, referring to the CMSA, “meets under the United States Capitol dome, they actually meet at the United States Capitol, at taxpayer expense. If CAIR is running prayer meetings there, and bringing in known terrorists, the American people deserve to know about it.”
As the interview went on, it became clear that Sekulow’s goal is to end the Muslim prayers at the Capitol by portraying Muslim organizations as necessarily having ties to terrorists, a common smoke and mirrors routine used by the right. “We see now,” he said, “that when we scratch the surface of most Islamic organizations we find something that we don’t hope to find. we find that if you bring in speakers, they’re connected to terrorism.” He identified this as “a problem within Islam. As Christians, we can’t change what’s happening internally in Islam, but we cannot be afraid of exposing the truth of what is happening here in our US Capitol. Our hope is that the truth comes out, that people see the associations here, and that this group isn’t able to meet anymore.”
As I noted on Friday, the vice-president of the CMSA (which, as Khan pointed out, doesn’t organize the prayer meetings but there is overlap between its members and people attending the prayer meetings, obviously) is a staffer for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Sekulow is a prominent Republican activist — he was the National Youth Director for the Bush-Cheney in 2004, and was a consultant to Mitt Romney’s 2008 campaign, to which his father, Jay, the ACLJ’s Chief Counsel, also served as an advisor. Yet Sekulow is claiming that group for which a staffer for the ranking Senate Republican serves as an officer has ties to terrorists. McConnell’s office still has not responded to a request for comment.
LOWER MANHATTAN — The Florida pastor who threatened to burn Korans in protest of the Park51 Islamic center visited the center’s proposed site near Ground Zero for the first time Tuesday.
Pastor Terry Jones first spoke to reporters at the World Trade Center site about 11 a.m. Tuesday and then walked two blocks up to the future mosque and community center on Park Place.
“We feel the mosque should not be built there,” Jones told DNAinfo after the press conference. “I consider it in bad taste so close to Ground Zero. I also question the motivations behind it. Is it a victory mosque?”
Jones, 59, originally planned to visit lower Manhattan around this year’s 9/11 anniversary, but Police Commissioner Ray Kelly asked him not to for security reasons.
Jones said he decided to try a second time to come downtown because he wanted to pay his respects to the first responders killed on 9/11.
Jones also wanted to promote his new organization, Stand Up America, which he said would combat radical Islam worldwide.
“We will speak out about human rights issues,” Jones said, “especially in Muslim-dominated countries, where Christians are treated unfairly.”
During his trip, Jones admitted that many members of his congregation had left his church because of his crusade against Islam, the Daily News reported.
“People come to church and want to hear, ‘God loves you, you’re a good person,’” he said, according to the paper. “That’s true. God does love you. But there’s more we need to tell people, and they don’t want to hear it.”
Jones’s visit to Park51 Tuesday coincided with the celebration of Eid al-Adha, a major Muslim holiday. Park51 held Eid services at the site of their future center Tuesday morning, followed by a public feast.
Jones said the timing was “purely an accident.” He wanted to get the visit in before Thanksgiving, he said.
After Jones’s suggestion of an “International Koran Burning Day” created a national firestorm over the summer, he has since promised not to burn any Korans.
But that doesn’t mean he’s done criticizing the Muslim holy book.
“We are thinking about doing something similar,” Jones told DNAinfo Tuesday. “Maybe ‘Internationalal Judge the Koran Day’…to put that book on trial. But as far as actual burning, that’s not in our plans.”
Christians United for Israel’s (CUFI) fifth annual Washington Summit, held this past July 20-22, 2010, highlighted once again the persistence and institutionalization of CUFI as the American Christian Zionist organization. As with its previous Summits, it was repeatedly emphasized that t
he support and love that CUFI and its members have for Israel and the Jewish people – to be sure a very particular kind of support – was based on the Biblical mandate of Christians to do just that. Of course, this is not to be dismissed as afalse reason for its support. Indeed the proliferation and popularity of the “prosperity gospel” in contemporary conservative Protestantism has ensured that the repeated refrain of Genesis 12:3 (I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you) resonates among the (Christian) leaders of CUFI and its members. This is because it funnels the belief in personal “blessings” (which are almost always considered in financial terms) and national blessings (the furtherance of a conservative social agenda and American global dominance) into the ultimate investment: Israel.
This point was emphasized within the first hour of the opening night of the conference by Diana Hagee (wife of Rev. John Hagee) who pointed out that: “we need to spend more time praying for Israel and less time praying for our personal needs. Life is going to get a whole lot better for us, and trust me, all those other things (one’s personal desires) are going to be taken care of [if we bless Israel correctly].” While not false reasons for support (irrespective of how misguided they might be), it was evident that the repeated invocation also served a didactic function for those in attendance – many of whom, as in previous years, cited the importance of Israel in the end-times as reasons for their support – to let them know how they should be responding to questions regarding their support for Israel.
Despite this, the subtle invocations of symbolic eschatological language and logic were evident, not only in the words of the speakers, but also in the jubilant responses from the audience when such symbolism was used. And really, in the context of CUFI, symbolism is all that is needed to convey the eschatological underpinnings of its goals and their mission, despite the sustained refrain to the contrary. This is because the particular end-times message has been around long enough and is more comprehensively conveyed in other mediums that allusion is sufficient to engender the desired understanding from the audience, while not alienating those who don’t understand or share the same beliefs.
The use of symbolic language, in a particularly religious context was most evident in the opening session of prayer, in which attendees were instructed on how to effectively pray for Israel, and taught the purpose of their mission. Significantly, the opening prayer session was used as a moment to consecrate the conference and the role of attendees as God’s divine agents at a particular point in history (the history of the future), and that they would be blessed accordingly for serving God in this way. In Diana Hagee’s words: “God use me, ’til I draw my last breath or better yet till the trumpet sounds!” (That is, until the rapture occurs).
Diana Hagee further elaborated CUFI’s prophetic mission when she likened her husband to a modern day prophet:
Watchmen can see into the distance, and there have been three people in history with this prophetic power. Theodore Herzl – although being an unlikely candidate for God’s will (as a secular Jew) fulfilled it (and it was made clear that this was concomitant with the help of early Christian Zionists) by pushing for the creation of modern Israel. The second person was Ze’ev Jabotinsky for calling Jews out of Europe prior to the Holocaust. The third is John Hagee. Four years ago, John Hagee called together over 400 leaders to start CUFI and at the time things were good; we had a Christian who supported Israel in the White House and there was little trouble. But he said that in its fifth year we “will know why we are here.” And now we are in our fifth year and we know why we are here.
The implication of this – which was not lost on the audience – was that now, the Obama Administration is serving the cause of evil. It is applying further pressure on the Israeli administration to negotiate peace with its Palestinian neighbors, while also attempting to reach out to the Arab and Muslim world – two things which are themselves considered to be harbingers of the end-times because of the “false peace” brought about by the antichrist, and also the establishment of a one-world government, to which international cooperation and diplomacy are frequently portrayed as precursors.
The opening night of the conference coincided with the start of Tisha B’av, the Jewish commemoration and mourning of the destruction of the first and second Temples. It is difficult to discern whether or not Tisha B’av was taken into account prior to the organization of the conference. When asking whether attendees knew what it was, Diana Hagee claimed a willful ignorance, relating that when Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg used the words “Tisha B’av”, she didn’t know what it was and thought he could have just as easily been “ordering a sandwich.” Although the comment was meant to be light-hearted it seemed to betray a distinct lack of respect for Jewish tradition from an organization that emphatically portrays itself as an embodiment of modern philo-Semitism (admiration for Jews). Nevertheless, the customary reading of the Book of Lamentations proceeded to the delight of the Christian attendees. This commemoration of Tisha B’av at the conference seemed to perform another function: It further consecrated the event, as an historical one of the coming together of Christians and Jews, but more importantly it defined the Jewish speakers at the conference as “real Jews,” conferring to them a much greater sense of legitimacy and authority because of their religious devotion. Such adulation is in keeping with our report and reflections on the 2008 Summit (which can be found here.)
The religious and motivational significance of this opening night should not be underestimated. It set the tone for the rest of the conference, which was slowly emptied of overt theological reference to focus on politics and the more practical reasons that Christians need to be supporting Israel, instilling the belief that they have been brought up by God for a mission “at such a time as this.” It conveyed to the Christian attendees that they were “walking in the mantle of Esther” – a reference to Queen Esther who saved all the Jews from annihilation, as celebrated during the Jewish holiday of Purim. Importantly for today, the parallel is rendered even more effective due to the fact that the Book of Esther is set in ancient Persia – modern Iran – the current thorn in the side of neoconservatives and also a country with a prominent role in the eschatology of Christian Zionists. Therefore the neoconservative message they received at the various tutorials during the proceeding days became imbued with a sacred meaning despite the very worldly hegemonic goals of those espousing them.
Israel 101: The Basics of the Arab Israeli Conflict
At one of the educational breakout sessions entitled: Israel 101: The Basics of the Arab Israeli Conflict, Gary Bauer opened the session, highlighting the salience of fear and emotion used to garner support and to frame issues within a wider cosmic battle by using his time to speak explicitly about 9/11. The central thrust of Bauer’s argument, was that “the attackers on 9/11, thepeople causing havoc throughout the Middle East were not created by poverty or social injustice, they grew out of radical Islam.” Palestinians were further painted with a broad brush as extremists, while strains of thought that gave the Palestinians a sense of humanity were similarly disparaged when Bauer later noted that:
It is has become an accepted fact among America’s elites that the great majority of the Palestinian people want to live in peace, side by side with the Israeli people – I’m sorry, somebody needs to prove it to me… The reality, ladies and gentlemen is this: evil men, who worship death, they brag about. Evil men who worship death, at this very moment are planning for you and for me, and for Israelis and for free men and women all over the world, sorrows unimaginable to us.
He later went on to state that he does not believe “any peace process will work in the Middle East, until this evil philosophy has been defeated. And then – and only then – Israel will be secure, America will be secure, and we, thank God, will have avoided another dark age.” This statement furthered a theme that was evident throughout the conference, which began with the divine mandate given to CUFI by its leaders on the opening night: America and Israel are engaged in a cosmic battle between good and evil, the success of which must be ensured to continue to curry God’s favor for the West. Moreover, it subtly shows the continued hostility that CUFI has towards the peace process, preferring to focus on defeating “this evil philosophy”, which appeared to be code for an unabated continuity of the “war on terrorism.”
Bauer was followed by AIPAC’s Jeff Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn opened his speech using language that spoke directly to the eschatological hopes and dreams of many Christian Zionists, describing Israel as “not just a Jewish issue, it is [also] a Christian issue, it is an American issue, it is an issue of importance to the Western world – and I think ultimately, it is an issue of great importance to all of civilization.” That is to say, Mendelsohn was engaging Christian Zionists in their belief that Israel is the key to end-times prophecy and the place where God’s millennial kingdom will be established after the tribulation; it is the epicenter where civilization will continue after the current world has been rid of evil.
The Iranian Threat
As in previous years enmity towards Iran maintained a strong foothold throughout the conference. During the second breakout session, The Iranian Threat, self-described CUFI “repeat offender” and former Reagan official, Frank Gaffney, described Iran as being “probably within months of operationalizing” its “incipient nuclear capabilities.” Gaffney then told the audience that Iran could use one of these weapons against the United States in a “catastrophic attack that could literally destroy the country” through the use of electromagnetic pulse (EMP), a favorite line that John Hagee has also towed in his numerous books on prophecy. 9/11 was again intoned to remind attendees of the threat purportedly facing the United States and to link Iran to those events, whenGaffney described jihad as “the violent form of terror that we have all come to know particularly since 9/11 but that actually, arguably, was first waged against us back in 1979 by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
While reminding the audience of this ominous threat, Gaffney quickly altered his focus to the more subtle (and potentially more fear-inducing) threat of “stealth jihad” and the notion that Iran and the rest of the “Muslim world” were unequivocally bent on establishing a global theocracy that would rule over each one of us.
The idea that Iran and other more generic threats from Islam were “stealing a march on us” through this stealth jihad was discussed in terms of the availability of “Shariah compliant finance” as an insidious threat to our way of life: “It is afflicting freedom loving people not just in the Middle East, but Europe, Canada, Latin America, and yes here in the United States as well. We must do what we can to save our country, to save Israel, from these assorted threats. We need to be informed about this one most especially.”
The “Ground Zero Mosque” was highlighted as the most ominous characterization of this threat, and elicited the most emotional response from the audience. In Gaffney’s words:
Right now, there is a fight brewing over whether we will accede to the latest assertion of Shariah’s dominance of our ultimate, inevitable submission to this program, within what I like to call ‘spitting distance’ of what is arguably for most Americans today, the most sacred ground in this country. I’m talking about Ground Zero. There, in keeping with the traditions of Shariah…. adherents to Shariah, people who have made it absolutely explicit they intend to bring it to America, are now proposing to build within 600 feet within the World Trade Center site, a 13-story building, $100 million for Shariah…. It is part of this supremacist agenda of symbolically and for all time demonstrating the triumph of this Islamic program, on our most sacred soil. I say to you ladies and gentlemen, it is not about faith; Shariah is a totalitarian, political program. It is about conquest. It is about the destruction of freedom of religion, and indeed all civil liberties … those who adhere to it are our absolutely immutable enemies! They must be defeated!
Clifford May, president of the conservative “Foundation for the Defense of Democracies”, also appealed to the attendees’ belief in their divine mission, letting them know during the opening of his talk that they were “doing God’s work.” His talk, followed a similar line to Gaffney’s, warning the audience of the goals the Iranian Mullahs’ desires to bring the Western World under the control of an Islamic Caliphate. May further entrenched Gaffney’s point that “once shariah get its nose, its camel’s nose, in the tent, the beast will follow.” May then spent most of his talk, traversing quickly between statements by Iranian officials and other leaders in the Muslim world about their purportedly unified effort to bring down the West.
Controversial and incendiary comments about a pre-emptive strike on Iran – which many ChristianZionists see as a catalyst for an attack on Israel purportedly prophesied in Ezekiel 38-39 – that have been made by John Hagee at past conferences were notably absent from this year’s Summit. However, May was able to effectively promote the idea by putting the words into the mouth of the ambassador for the United Arab Emirates, as May paraphrased him:
We cannot live with a nuclear Iran. By we [the ambassador] apparently meant the more moderate countries of the Middle East. He went on to add that if sanctions failed to stop Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons military force will be the only option left, and it must not be ruled out.
In describing the Iranian threat of nuclear capabilities, Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also created a sense of urgency. Like the speakers before him, Satloff used some vague terms that are familiar to Christian Zionists regarding the end times, suggesting that the short time needed for Iran to achieve nuclear capability meant that it was “five minutes to midnight.” Anyone familiar with John Hagee’s book From Daniel to Doomsday or other literature on prophecy will know that certain prophetic events are often demarcated based on their length of time from midnight.
To Satloff’s credit he did speak on the importance of the Green movement in Iran and the reality that the country itself is divided, rather than portraying the country as a unified force where the enitre population seeks to destroy the West and Israel through any means necessary. However, this assertion was undercut by Gaffney later during the question and answer period when Gaffney argued that: “Time is running out to support the Greens. We had best be about the business of preparing for military action,” to which the crowd responded far more enthusiastically than they did to Satloff’s suggestion of the potential to reach out and help the Green movement.
Lobbying Congress
During the “Civics 101″ session CUFI’s Executive Director, David Brog took time to steer attendees down a particular path: appeal to American civil religion, but don’t reference your explicit beliefs. He instructed attendees to “tell your congressman that you are a Christian and you are here for onereason and one reason only: Israel…. It’s a Christian issue, and more importantly, it’s an American issue.” Something that again subtly speaks to the belief among Christian Zionists that their, and America’s, failure to support Israel in the way that CUFI defines support will result in divine punishment for America.
Intent on ensuring that an effective and professional group was representing CUFI to their congressmen and women, while also understanding the true issues that motivate CUFI members, Brog was even more specific:
Please stay on the issue of Israel…. If you care about the issue of life, that’s fantastic, but come another day. If you care about the issue of marriage, that’s important. Call them another day. We are here for one issue and one issue only. [tell them] ‘I’m your constituent, I’m a Christian, I’m here for Israel.’ Please don’t stray from the talking points…. When in Rome, do as the Romans do … it is important to speak to policy makers in a language that they understand, and that is the language of policy. Our faith informs and inspires our activism. We’re all here because of our faith. But with sadly limited exceptions, most of those guys on Capitol Hill, don’t speak the language of faith. With sadly limited exceptions, most of the guys on the Hill are driven by policy considerations, not considerations of faith. So, I ask you this quite seriously. When you go up to a congressman, and you start quoting the Bible, quoting the scripture, talking about a vision you had that’s been very important in your life … they just don’t speak that language, and they’re not going to be swayed by that language. So unless you know your member well, and you know he’s a man of God, we strongly and respectfully request you speak to them in a language that they will understand, the language of policy.”
While asking members not to express the specifics of their faith openly, Brog quickly emphasized that he understands and shares the views of the attendees, speaking inclusively, he stated: “We are here because of our faith, but we’re doing something important for God if we get these men of power to stand with Israel … let’s speak their language, that’s how we will best serve God tomorrow.”
Diana Hagee also made a brief appearance during the session as a way to remind attendees of their prophetic mission as a parallel to Brog’s more practical requests: “we are chosen for such a time as this to be watchmen on the wall. We’re all building our portion of the wall; we’re all doing a good work. We have a hammer in one hand and a sword in the other….”
Night To Honor Israel
While Brog emphasized the importance of speaking in the language of policy, rather than prophecy, to the elected officials,speakers at the culminating Night to Honor Israel reversed the trend and reinvoked the symbolic, eschatological language that opened the Summit.
As in previous years, Sentator Joseph Lieberman referred to John Hagee as a “man of God” just like Moses. Similarly, Gary Bauer, after again disparaging the catastrophic threats awaiting Israel and the West proclaimed, “It is for such a time as this, that John Hagee has become a watchman on the wall for Israel who never sleeps.”
During his speech John Hagee quickly divided the world into two groups: “those who support Israel, and those who don’t. There is no middle ground.” Hagee continued to claim, “The free world is at war with radical Islam. Without victory there is no survival. Not for America, not for Israel.”
Immediatly following Hagee’s speech, his wife Diana took the stage to put pressure on attendees for financial donations. “Our future does not depend on our economy,” stated Diana, “our future depends on our obedience to the living God. And if we give, and if we honor God, we can trust him to honor us. Our cause is Israel. Our cause is just. Our cause is right. Our cause is good, and our cause is holy.”
Critical Reflections on the 2010 Washington Summit
Throughout the conference a number of observations can be made. Firstly, now in its fifth year, CUFI has evolved and seems to have tightened it grip on some of the more stark language that can be easily attacked by its critics. Violent language calling for preemtive strikes on Iran were softened, and terms like “Islamofascism” – favorites of John Hagee in other mediums and previous Summits – were notably absent. Even Frank Gaffney who is openly hostile towards Islam corrected an attendee who referred to Islam as “Islamofascism” preferring to call it jihad. However, the emphasis on these issues and the preferred action to be taken against them remained the same as in previous years. There was also a strong sense that despite CUFI’s obvious purpose being the support of Israel, the interest among many of the Summit attendees was the salvation of America. Standing with Israel was always framed as an “American Issue.” Senator Joseph Lieberman, after once again comparing John Hagee to Moses, stated “Support of Israel is as American as apple pie and baseball.” It is this issue that helps confirm the eschatological worldview of participants and leaders as well. Their absolute belief in Genesis 12:3, combined with a belief in the imminence of divine judgement propels them to support Israel, ultimately it would seem for many, to ensure America survives.
John Snyder, a member of the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, a group that honors the “gun saint” brags that he is designated the “senior rights activist in Washington” by Shotgun News. Snyder recently published a news release on the Christian News Wire saying “we must be armed to fight the Islamists.”
Snyder attempts to argue for the use of handguns on the basis that we are under threat from terrorists. It is the same piggyback and fear-mongering argument used by radical Tea Partiers and scions of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller to propagate the conspiracy of Muslim menace and threat. The fact is you are more likely to be hit by lightning, killed in a car crash, drowning, fire, or murder than to be killed by a terrorist in America. From Reason Magazine,
But how afraid should Americans be of terrorist attacks? Not very, as some quick comparisons with other risks that we regularly run in our daily lives indicate…in 2003 about 45,000 Americans died in motor accidents out of population of 291,000,000. So, according to the National Safety Council this means your one-year odds of dying in a car accident is about one out of 6500. Therefore your lifetime probability (6500 ÷ 78 years life expectancy) of dying in a motor accident are about one in 83.
What about your chances of dying in an airplane crash? A one-year risk of one in 400,000 and one in 5,000 lifetime risk. What about walking across the street? A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625. Drowning? A one-year risk of one in 88,000 and a one in 1100 lifetime risk. In a fire? About the same risk as drowning. Murder? A one-year risk of one in 16,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 210. What about falling? Essentially the same as being murdered. And the proverbial being struck by lightning? A one-year risk of one in 6.2 million and a lifetime risk of one in 80,000. And what is the risk that you will die of a catastrophic asteroid strike? In 1994, astronomers calculated that the chance was one in 20,000. However, as they’ve gathered more data on the orbits of near earth objects, the lifetime risk has been reduced to one in 200,000 or more.
What are the odds of dying in a terrorist attack?
So how do these common risks compare to your risk of dying in a terrorist attack? To try to calculate those odds realistically, Michael Rothschild, a former business professor at the University of Wisconsin, worked out a couple of plausible scenarios. For example, he figured that if terrorists were to destroy entirely one of America’s 40,000 shopping malls per week, your chances of being there at the wrong time would be about one in one million or more. Rothschild also estimated that if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America’s 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000.
Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300. (300,000,000 ÷ 3,000 = 100,000 ÷ 78 years = 1282) In other words, your risk of dying in a plausible terrorist attack is much lower than your risk of dying in a car accident, by walking across the street, by drowning, in a fire, by falling, or by being murdered.
For Snyder and his ilk these facts obviously don’t matter. Why let facts get in the way when you need to drudge up support for liberal gun laws? Can we say that Snyder is motivated by religious sentiment and that he in fact feels that he is religiously obligated to own a gun?
Yes.
In his “news release” Snyder writes,
Snyder warned, “Those who work against this freedom in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere should beware. If it so happens that people are murdered because politically correct elitists spoke and worked successfully to prevent citizens from getting, carrying and using self-defense guns, the blood of the innocent will be on their hands.
“Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us that, ‘A man without a sword must sell his cloak and buy one,’ according to Luke (22:36). It’s time to take all of His words to heart.”
Ominous words from Snyder, but does this comport with Christian teaching? Is the old song, “Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition” on the mark? Imagine if a Muslim had said something similar about Muslim teaching requiring Muslims to own guns, there would be no doubt that individuals in the media and the usual anti-Muslim suspects would be saying that this is the correct interpretation of the religion and therefore Islam is a violent Faith.
More African Churches are dealing with the troubling problem of Christian pastors torturing and executing “witch children” in the name of their faith. Quite a disturbing phenomena to say the least. The Huffington Post reports (hat tip: Tomas):
The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.
His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him – Mount Zion Lighthouse.
A month later, he died.
Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria’s 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. Other practices include beating with sticks, sawing or driving a nail into children’s heads, burying or burning them alive, forcing them to eat cement, and other grizzly acts of merciless cruelty. (Note: burying children alive is specifically forbidden by the Qur’an, see verses 81:8-9). The parishioners take very literally and seriously the Biblical injunction:
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (Exodus 22:18)
Since these Christians quote scripture to justify their misdeeds, we must conclude that this is a mainstream “orthodox” Christian practice, right?
Wrong. It is definitely not a mainstream “orthodox” Christian practice, as the Post reports:
“It is an outrage what they are allowing to take place in the name of Christianity,” said Gary Foxcroft, head of nonprofit Stepping Stones Nigeria.
…
Bishop A.D. Ayakndue, the head of the church in Nigeria, said pastors were encouraged to pray about witchcraft, but not to abuse children.
“We pray over that problem (of witchcraft) very powerfully,” he said. “But we can never hurt a child.”
Reasonable people should be able to conclude that such practices are an aberration which goes against the well-known Biblical commandment to be merciful and love one’s neighbor.
But what if they were Muslim?
UWe’d expect the anti-Muslim blogosphere to erupt in self-righteous indignation, led by JihadWatch and AtlasShrugs, citing a few Islamic scriptures, maybe an archaic medieval Muslim law manual (all in ready-made English translations of course because, as we know, Spencer holds no degree in Arabic nor is he proficient in the language). From this handful of cherry-picked evidence, we’d be given the horribly stereotyped determination that such an aberrational practice is standard, normative, traditional, mainstream, “orthodox” Islam accepted by all interpretations of Islamic law. Of course, this would again conveniently ignore abundant evidence to the contrary. But when has Spencer ever played fair?
Christians rightly condemn the practice of murdering “witch children,” despite the citation and literal interpretation of Exodus, because as we know Christianity has a vibrant interpretive tradition. So it is clearly unfair to take any Christian religious nut at face value when they cite the Old Testament. If we used this incident to indict all of Christianity in all times and all places forever, Spencer and his company would cry foul by pointing to the Christian interpretive tradition.
Not so with Islam. In fact, Spencer’s entire million-dollar hate-blogging Muslim-bashing brainwashing industry critically depends on denying mainstream Islamic interpretive tradition. As Dr. Robert Crane rightly put it:
Spencer’s readers are carefully steered away from all contact with the Islamic interpretative tradition, which equals or exceeds that of any other religion, because any scholarly knowledge about Islam would expose all his extremist interpretations to ridicule.
Bottom line: it is unfair and deeply hypocritical to apply one mild standard to Christianity and another harsher standard to Islam. We don’t take these children murdering Christians at face value when they cite their scripture as justification, so why should we take Al-Qaeda at face value when they cite the Qur’an?
But what do I know. Aren’t I just a liberal-dhimmi/stealth-jihadist?
Temecula, California has been the scene of another mosque controversy. This is the place where mosque opponents called for protesters to bring dogs to their demonstration during Friday prayers. This time some vocal residents don’t want the mosque in Temecula for all the same reasons that we have heard repeated over and over throughout the country: Islam wants to take over, Muslims cannot be trusted, they want to impose Sharia’ law on us.
Now a group of Temecula residents opposed to the mosque want to separate Islam and Sharia’. Can you say Ignorance? Imagine if a group opposed a Synagogue being built and gave the reason as being their opposition to the Halacha? Imagine if they made it a condition for building a Synagogue that Judaism be stripped of its laws? That wouldn’t fly.
What these residents don’t realize and are being misinformed about is that Islam and Sharia’ are closely linked. When a Muslim prays, fasts, gives charity, goes on pilgrimage he or she is following Sharia. But try and explain that to Mano Bakh who thinks the five pillars have nothing to do with Sharia’. My favorite quote from Bakh,
“I lost Iran to Islam. I don’t want to lose my second country, ever,” he said.
How ridiculous! Islam has been present in Iran for over 1300 years. It has been a majority Muslim nation for an equally long time. His quote that he “lost Iran to Islam” is highly pretentious, he doesn’t own Iran, and unless he is over a thousand years old he hasn’t “lost” it either.
ANTI-MOSQUE LECTURE ATTENDED BY HUNDREDS OF AREA RESIDENTS
Members of a Southwest County group opposed to plans for a mosque in Temecula explained why they have concerns about the project during a lecture Monday night in Temecula’s community recreation center.
According to those who spoke, the religion of Islam is not the problem and they rejected the contention that they are religious bigots.
They said their primary concern is Sharia law, which they defined as a set of rules that govern the lives of Muslims and that require them to impose that law on non-Muslims.
The speakers view Sharia law as incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and the American way of life.
“Praying to Allah should be the only focus,” said Jacqueline Le Beau, a Murrieta author who said the group wants to separate Islam from Sharia, which, she said, was being “legitimized” under the cover of religion.
The other speakers at the lecture, attended by hundreds of residents, included local authors who have written books critical of Islam, a pastor from Simi Valley and a Temecula man, George Rombach, who is working to get a city ordinance passed that would prohibit an organization from calling itself a religion if it advocates terrorism, slavery, gender inequality and other beliefs that clash with the U.S. Constitution.
Rombach, during his time at the microphone, said the ordinance is not focused on any one religion or organization, noting that the Ku Klux Klan and the Branch Davidians attempted to hide behind religion.
The mosque project is being proposed by the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley, a group of Southwest County Muslims that says its been saving for years to build a house of worship.
For the last 10 years, the group has been meeting in a business park in western Temecula.
The plans for the mosque, slated for land in a rural community in the northeast part of the city, are scheduled to go before the Planning Commission in mid-November if a traffic study is completed on time.
The imam of the center, Mahmoud Harmoush, issued a statement about Monday’s lecture, saying that the group —- Concerned American Citizens —- does not represent the people of Murrieta and Temecula Valley.
“The out-of-town, anti-Islam group has demonstrated their heat and bigotry during the July 30, 2010, demonstration, and now they are demonstrating their ignorance of Islam,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Californian.
The demonstration, a rally in front of the center’s offices, was one of the first salvos against the mosque.
“It is clear that they do not represent the people of Murrieta and Temecula Valley, nor do they represent the religious community with such intolerant behavior,” he wrote.
The Simi Valley pastor, Kevin Dieckilman, said that before he became a member of the clergy, he was a home builder, in charge of checking foundations.
Weaving an analogy from his life experience, Dieckilman said the U.S. has a foundation influenced by Christian ideals.
In contrast, he said, Islam is built on a foundation of laws and ideals that spur people to “strap bombs on children” and go on “shooting rampages.”
“I have no problem with building a mosque in any city in America, but first, let’s check that foundation,” he said.
According to Dieckilman, there have been people in Southwest County who have said that if the center builds the mosque, they will try and convert the Muslims to Christianity.
“Do any of you raise chickens?” he asked. “Would you rather convert the fox outside or inside the hen house?”
Mano Bakh, a Wildomar man who has been one of the most active in the fight against the mosque, closed the lecture by noting that the five pillars of Islam, the core tenets of the religion, have nothing to do with Sharia law.
He used as examples the rules of women covering their faces with veils and cab drivers refusing to allow passengers carrying alcohol in their luggage.
He said those are examples of Sharia law, the rules that cover everything in the life of a Muslim and the rules, that he said, provide a sharp contrast with equal rights for women, human rights in general and freedom of religion, the core beliefs of the U.S.
Recalling his fight against Islam while he lived in Iran, Bakh appeared to get choked up.
“I lost Iran to Islam. I don’t want to lose my second country, ever,” he said.
Following the lecture, Don Parsley, a Murrieta resident, reflected on the message shared by the group, the idea that the religion of Islam could be separated from Sharia law.
“It’s a tough subject,” he said, adding that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 makes it legally difficult to stop a religious group from building a house of worship.
Last week, the city of Walnut was sued for allegedly violating that act by denying a Buddhist temple a land-use permit.
Call staff writer Aaron Claverie at 951-676-4315, ext. 2624.
Pastor Terry Jones’ face is becoming all too familiar these days. The Harley Davidson riding, handle bar mustachioed loon pastor has not only called for the Koran to be burned but also produced this highly bizarre video,
We know now that the currency that Pastor Jones thrives on and attempts to capitalize on is “shock” coupled with demagoguery. Does the white haired Jones really not understand why it is offensive for a White person to say the N-word?
He surely remembers the Civil Rights movement and the Jim Crow era, doesn’t he? He plays naive in the beginning of the video, playing off of the dictionary definition of the N-word but ignores or just plain fails to mention the historical import of the N-word, how it was employed by Whites to demean, subjugate, humiliate and scorn Blacks.
This video is particularly interesting when we came across this article at the Friendly Atheist site that questioned Jones on whether he has been treated unfairly in the media,
Have any of the media reports of this event portrayed you unfairly or inaccurately? Would you like to set the record straight on any particular issue?
We have been accused of being racist. We are not attacking a race. In other words, we are not attacking the Moslem. We love the Moslems and hope that they would come to true salvation. What we are attacking is Islam, the religion, and Sharia law, the political system.
Even those who used to debate whether Islamophobia exits or not probably have no leg to stand on, as it is evident with all the rhetoric and flashpoints across America, Islamophobia is on the rise.
Bryan Fischer a leader in the conservative American Family Association echoes Euro-supremacist Geert Wilders statements that Islam isn’t a religion. This line of attack is becoming more and more common.
One of the leaders of the conservative American Family Association has taken the debate over the Cordoba Mosque in lower Manhattan to a new level. Bryan Fischer, the group’s director of issue analysis, is calling on his blog and radio show for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of any mosque, anywhere. “Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero,” Fischer wrote on Tuesday. “This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.”
That’s an odd position for an ostensibly religious organization to have. But it’s especially odd because the American Family Association filed a federal lawsuit in 2003 accusing a county government in Georgia of violating federal law and the Constitution for refusing to grant a permit to build a church.
As we’ve mentioned previously, many of the groups who have endorsed the idea of using preservation laws to block the construction of the mosque have previously argued precisely the opposite when the imperiled project was a church. Indeed, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA) explicitly bars local governments from “implement[ing] a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of … a religious assembly or institution,” unless there’s a compelling government interest in doing so. Many of the groups that have come out against the mosque — and in favor of stopping it with land-use laws — have filed federal lawsuits under the act.
You can add the American Family Association to their number. In 2003, the AFA helped the Victory Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Henry County, Ga., file a federal lawsuit accusing the county of violating RLUIPA, as well as Victory’s constitutional rights to free exercise of religion, due process, and equal protection under the laws, for refusing to grant a building permit for a new church. The group prevailed, and celebrated the win in the AFA newsletter.
Now the AFA appears to be advocating the express violation of the very law that allowed for that victory, under the theory that mosques don’t count. A call to the AFA to clear up the inconsistency was not immediately returned.
UPDATE: Fischer returned our phone call. Turns out we weren’t too far off: Mosques don’t count! “I’m not a lawyer,” he told The Upshot, “but I have a layman’s understanding of the RLUIPA. And there’s a key difference between that case and mosques: Islam is not just a religion. It’s a subversive ideology. And as a subversive ideology, they can’t seek protection under the First Amendment.” Since Islam is really a political movement that advocates the imposition of sharia, he said, it doesn’t deserve the same sort of protections that the Victory Tabernacle Missionary Church gets. By the way: One of the bad things about sharia, according to Fischer, is “there is no such thing as religious liberty.” Sounds awful.
Fischer went on to say that “the First Amendment was designed to provide religious liberty for the Christian faith,” but that he is happy to let other religions enjoy its protections so long as they’re not “subversive.” Asked to identify any other subversive religions aside from Islam as a point of comparison, he came up empty. Not even Satanism? “Not that I’m aware of,” he said.
Finally, we asked Fischer why, if Islam is so dangerous, he’s stopping at a moratorium on new mosques. Why not shut down the ones that already exist? “We need to take things one step at a time here,” he said. “We need to turn off the hose first, and then we can figure out how to clean up the mess.”
Fischer said he was speaking as a talk-radio host (he hosts a show on the American Family Radio network), and not as a representative of the AFA, which “hasn’t taken a position on the building of mosques.”
I wonder if Connecticut is far enough away from Ground Zero for Muslims to build mosques and worship as they fit? In the tradition of Pamela Geller and her cronies here are some fine misunderstanders of Freedom of Religion.
BRIDGEPORT — About a dozen right-wing Christians, carrying placards and yelling “Islam is a lie,” angrily confronted worshippers outside a Fairfield Avenue mosque Friday.
“Jesus hates Muslims,” they screamed at worshippers arriving at the Masjid An-Noor mosque to prepare for the holy week of Ramadan. One protester shoved a placard at a group of young children leaving the mosque. “Murderers,” he shouted.
Police arrived on the scene to separate the groups, but said no arrests were made.
Flip Benham, of Dallas, Texas, organizer of the protest, was yelling at the worshipers with a bullhorn.
“This is a war in America and we are taking it to the mosques around the country,” he said.
Mustafa Salahuddin, an Ansonia police officer and parishioner at the mosque, calmly watched the protesters from the mosque’s parking area.
“This is unfortunate, but it’s a free country,” he commented on the protest. “But I believe Jesus would have been appalled by this. We revere Jesus the same way they do.”
After about an hour the protesters packed up their placards and fliers into a couple of vans and drove off.
On September 11, 2010, the extremist evangelical Dove World Church — whose pastor, Terry Jones, has written a book called “Islam Is Of The Devil” — plans to host “International Burn A Quran Day,” when it will burn Muslims’ sacred text and encourage others across the world to do so as well. Churchmember Wayne Sapp has even posted an instructional video that explains how and why to burn the Islamic text.
CNN host Rick Sanchez invited Jones on his show yesterday to ask him about the inflammatory action. When Sanchez pressed Jones about why he would try to anger the world’s Muslims by burning their sacred text, the evangelical pastor replied, “Well, for one thing, to us, the book is not sacred,” provoking laughter from the CNN host.
Jones later went on to explain, “What we are also doing by the burning of the Quran, we’re saying stop, stop to Islam, stop to Islamic law, stop to brutality. We have nothing against Muslims, they are welcome in our country.” When Sanchez asked him how he would feel if Muslims burned the Bible, Jones admitted he wouldn’t like it but emphasized that it was his “right” to burn the Islamic text because “we live in America”:
SANCHEZ: Do you know how many Muslims there are in the world?
JONES: I think there are 1.5 billion.
SANCHEZ: Yeah. I ask you that because that’s a very big number. Why would you want to do this to 1.5 billion people by burning their most sacred book? That’s crazy.
JONES: Well, for one thing, to us, the book is not sacred.
SANCHEZ: But it is to them, it’s sacred to them. [...]
JONES: What we’re also doing by the burning of the Quran on 9/11 is we’re saying stop. Stop to Islam. Stop to Islamic law. Stop to brutality. We have nothing against Muslims, they are welcome in our country. [...]
SANCHEZ: How would you feel if a Muslim said to you, what you just said to them? I have no problem with you Mr. Christian, you’re welcome in my country, but I’m burning your Bible.
JONES: I would not like it. But it’s our right. We live in America!
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the nation’s largest body of evangelicals, put out a statement yesterday condemning Dove World’s actions. Quoting Thessalonians, NAE President Leith Anderson invoked the Bible’s teachings that Christians should “always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.”
The Dove World Church has made a name for itself by engaging in a host of attention-seeking tactics to preach their hate. In the past, the congregation compelled children to wear t-shirts that bore the slogan “Islam is of the devil.” Earlier this year, they held an unsuccessful campaign to stop the election of Gainesville’s first openly gay mayor by posting a “No homo mayor” sign. Despite their failure to stop the mayor’s election, they plan to hold a protest on the steps of City Hall in August.
Mosque protests are springing up all over the United States. It seems as though disparate groups are taking up the rallying cry against Islam and Muslims. Is this anti-Muslim sentiment a blip on our screen or is it a reflection of the coalescing of disparate forces into one larger anti-Muslim movement?
Waving signs such as “Muslims Danced with Joy on 9/11,” about 20 protesters gathered outside a Temecula Islamic Center today to protest Islam, calling it a political movement that oppresses women and seeks to place the world under a brutal system of religious law.
A larger group of counter protesters wore white shirts in solidarity with the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley and carried signs such as “Leave These American Citizens Alone.” Police stood between some counter protesters who crossed Rio Nedo to confront the other side.
While both sides exchanged heated words, the midday protest ended peacefully and police reported no arrests.
The protest announced on a local and a national Tea Party website came in response to the Islamic center’s plan to build a 25,000-square-foot mosque on the other end of town. The mosque is scheduled to go before the Temecula Planning Commission in mid-November.
Some opponents said they see the mosque as part of a larger effort by Muslims to silence non-believers and destroy constitutional rights.
“Islam is a political movement and to have a mosque, you have to have Sharia law,” said Diane Seraphin of Murrieta.
“They’re infiltrating as much as they can,” said Lois Cowan of Hemet. “It’s a desire to take over.”
The executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who was at the protest, said the protesters were ignorant fear-mongers.
“We’re living Islam in America. That’s the greatest counter-argument to Al-Qaeda,” said Salam Al-Marayati. “We are Americans. We’ve made a pledge to this country and that is equal to a pledge to God.”
Joelle Budzynowski of Anza, who wore a white headscarf to support the Muslims, said she was welcomed warmly by Muslims while travelling in Egypt and other predominantly Islamic countries.
“I believe God is love and love is God,” she said. “We should tolerate other people.”
A couple protestors brought their dogs. A notice about the protest accused Muslims of killing dogs and encouraged protesters to bring canines. Muslim-American advocates said Muslims don’t hate dogs.
Plans to build a permanent mosque near two existing Temecula churches are expected to be the target of an organized protest next week.
The development plan that the Islamic Center of Temecula submitted to city planners about 1½ years ago has drawn muted concerns so far and triggered widespread media coverage that has included stories by the Associated Press and newspapers based in Los Angeles and Riverside.
If an announced July 30 protest materializes, it could mark an escalation of questions and criticism surrounding plans to develop a mosque at the city’s northeast corner. The facility that has served the region’s Muslims for about 12 years would move from an industrial park to Nicolas Road if the development plan comes to fruition.
City officials could be snared in a religion-tinged controversy as the project proceeds through the review process. It has been about seven years since a similar controversy began to unfold in the city that is now home to more than 100,000 residents.
“We are limited to looking at land use issues, not religious or political issues,” Patrick Richardson, the city’s director of planning and redevelopment, said in a Monday afternoon telephone interview. “Everybody has the right to practice their religion as they see fit.”
Richardson did not work for Temecula when a similar controversy surfaced over another proposed house of worship. He said he has since learned about the twists and turns that occurred when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints submitted a proposal nearly a decade ago to build a facility along Pauba Road.
The Mormon controversy contains parallels to the mosque proposal.
The Islamic Center has owned its Temecula site – which totals four acres at Nicolas Road and Calle Medusa – for about 10 years, Richardson said. The Islamic Center has operated in Temecula since 1998, and is based in an industrial park on the city’s west side.
The Islamic Center is proposing to build a 24,950-square-foot mosque. Its building size and acreage would roughly mirror that of two nearby churches – Calvary Baptist Church and Grace Presbyterian Church. The number of parking spaces proposed for the mosque exceeds the city’s requirements, Richardson said.
Because of traffic, noise and related concerns raised by a nearby pastor and others, the city has examined a range of issues as it has reviewed the development plan, he said.
Richardson said the review process has unfolded slowly in part because the Islamic Center, like many churches do when they build new facilities, has relied on some of its members to perform various planning- and development-related tasks.
“We’ve pretty much completed our review,” Richardson said. The site’s zoning designation allows the construction of a church at that location, he said.
A May 27 letter from the city to Hadi Nael, an Islamic Center representative, indicated that the mosque proposal might come before Temecula planning commissioners on July 7. On June 22, Richardson wrote a letter to Nael indicating that the hearing would likely be postponed until Aug. 18.
That’s still possible, Richardson said, although he noted in the interview that the hearing date is “somewhat of a moving target.” At the time of the interview, Richardson said he was unaware Advertisement
North County Cosmeticthat a loose-knit coalition of area residents is planning a demonstration at the Islamic Center’s existing facility along Rio Nedo west of Murrieta Creek.
An e-mail alert sent to area newspapers last week announced that a one-hour “singing – praying – patriotic rally” will begin at 12:30 p.m. July 30 at the Islamic Center’s existing facility. The advisory – sent by a leader of a conservative coalition that has been active with Republican and Tea Party functions – recommended participants “bring your Bibles, flags, signs, dogs and singing voices.”
“We will not be submissive,” the notice proclaimed. “Our voices are going to be heard!” The alert went on to question what its authors described as Islamic beliefs. It suggested that participants sing during the rally because Muslim “women are forbidden to sing.” It suggested that rally participants bring dogs because Muslims “hate dogs.”
The advisory asked rally participants to “please bring a pooper scooper” if they are accompanied by a canine companion. The advisory said residents of an unspecified Tennessee community were able to halt the construction of a mosque in that state.
Telephone messages left Monday and Tuesday at the Islamic Center seeking comment on the planned demonstration were not returned.
The center’s Internet site provides information the mosque plan. The center’s April newsletter said: “In the next two years, our new board will focus on the building project. We need a home! It is the dream of our community.”
It went on to say: “We as a Muslim believe that the Murrieta and Temecula Valley will be a better community by having the Islamic Center, place of worship, place of education and a place for interfaith. More than ten years ago, we were welcomed by many good friends in different churches; and for the last five years we were one of the founders of the Murrieta and Temecula Valley Interfaith Council. Thus we are working together with all our community religious groups to bring more understanding, tolerance and respect among people of faith in our valley. We hope that you can help in building our Center.”
An update in the center’s May newsletter asked members to “…pray that Allah Taala open the hearts and the mind of our city officials to help us to bring this project to life.”
The last major controversy to unfold in Temecula over a proposed house of worship centered on plans to open a Mormon church on a 4.7-acre parcel along Pauba Road near Linfield Christian School.
That controversy surfaced in March 2003 when neighbors of the proposed 24,287-square-foot facility began to cite a range of concerns. The residents complained that they were already besieged by traffic going to and from numerous existing churches and public and private schools in the area.
They also raised concerns that night and weekend activities at a Mormon church would harm their neighborhood’s quality of life.
About 130 people jammed a four-hour city Planning Commission hearing a year later, and about 35 of them alternately spoke for or against the development plan. A series of hotly debated hearings on the proposal ended when the City Council approved the 287-seat church in October 2004.
A Mormon church was subsequently built at that location.
Very interesting article from the website HispanicNashville on the parallels between the Murfreesboro Mosque and the first Catholic Church built in Murfreesboro.
The first Catholic person in the Americas to become a saint, Saint Rose of Lima, was born in the capital city of Peru. A church in nearby Murfreesboro bears her name. And like a local mosque that faces vocal opposition for a recently announced building project, the history of Saint Rose of Lima Catholic Church of Murfreesboro also reveals local opposition to one of its planned houses of worship, according to the Daily News-Journal:
A New York couple, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Hoffman, stopped in Murfreesboro on a train trip in 1925. During the layover, they searched in vain for a Catholic church and mass. “Some months later Bishop A. J. Smith in Nashville received a gift to build a chapel” in Murfreesboro. Mrs. Hoffman requested that the new place of worship be named for her patron saint, Saint Rose of Lima.
…
A lot on the northeast corner of University and Lytle was purchased for the new church from Helen C. Earthman on April 25, 1929, for $2,500.
…
This plan to construct the county’s first Catholic Church was the target of a local KKK protest march.
The Daily News-Journal article quotes 93-year-old Murfreesboro historian C.B. Arnette, 93, who witnessed the march protesting the new building for the Saint Rose of Lima congregation. Arnette said you could recognize marchers by their shoes: one marcher was a local physician, and another was a Church of Christ preacher.
What was the reason for the opposition to Catholics? The Tennessean points outthe history of the 20th century KKK as an organization created in opposition to (mostly Catholic) immigration, preaching “racism, anti-Catholicism, nativism (favoring of native inhabitants over immigrants) and anti-Semitism.” A commenter points out that Catholics were described as national security threats:
In the 1920s, Hiram Evans, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan rose to prominence with a populist, nativistic, and anti-intellectual message to the American public. Klan members identified the Irish and Italian members of Anarchists, IWW, and WFM organizations as national threats that sought to overthrow the government through force. The Klan’s job was to protect Americans from these corrosive elements. They labeled Individuals such as Carlo Tresca, Mother Jones, and Nicola Sacco as “bomb-throwing lunatics.” The Catholics also came under close scrutiny because the pope was a “monarchist” and the Catholics subverted the nation. The Catholic “monarchists” would never assimilate because their religious structure conflicted with the republican ideas of Protestants who had decentralized church hierarchies.
Construction of Saint Rose of Lima’s new building continued anyway, and the building was dedicated just six months after the property was purchased. The congregation of Saint Rose of Lima Catholic Church of Murfreesboro thrives to this day.
Modern parallels to Saint Rose of Lima history
In modern-day Murfreesboro, the announcement of the construction of a new mosque building, where Muslim faith would be practiced, has also faced opposition. As reported locally and nationally – including by ABC News - much of the opposition to the mosque has come from local Christians and been in general opposition to Islam:
“We have a duty to investigate anyone under the banner of Islam,” Allen Jackson, the pastor of World Outreach Church, said at the meeting.
Others were quoted by the Tennessean with similar remarks:
“Everybody knows they are trying to kill us.” -Karen Harrell
“Islam is a system of government. Islam is a system of justice. … “I’m afraid we’ll have a training facility in Rutherford County.” -George Erdel
“It’s an ideology. It’s not a religion.” -Bob Hayes
But some Christians and others, including Mike Williams of Smyrna (quoted in another Tennessean article), have gathered and spoken out in favor of the mosque’s construction project:
[Mike] Williams, who attends All Saints Episcopal Church in Smyrna, said he believes “very strongly that all of us are the children of a God.
“We are entitled to an equal inheritance. In America, our inheritance is freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the color of skin. In short, the Constitution of the United States belongs to all of us.”
Williams is one of a number of politicians who have sided with the Constitution on this controversy. Another is Ben Leming:
I made a stand to protect the rights of every American, not just those that form the majority. … Unfortunately, there are many people that disagree strongly with or don’t understand this basic American principle and how it should protect the rights of others. … Right now they are lining up to deny other Americans their Constitutional rights and discredit our mission to put the people of Middle Tennessee first in Washington.
Words of wisdom for Christians and Muslims alike, as quoted by the Tennessean, came from MTSU professor Rabbi Rami Shapiro:
“I think people should listen very carefully to their clergy and what they teach. If they teach violence and hatred (of other religions), I think it is incumbent upon the parishioner to get up and walk out.”
Later this year, on September 11, a Florida-based Church will conduct an “International Burn a Koran Day.” Why? According to the website:
In Islam, many actions that we consider to be crimes are encouraged, condoned or sheltered under Islamic teaching and practice, though. Another reason to burn a Koran.
The ceremony is intended to honor the victims of 9/11 (some of which were Muslims, incidentally) and to stand against Islam. The Church is famous for having signs and T-shirts saying, “Islam is of the Devil.” According to the Church:
We are a New Testament, Charismatic, Non-Denominational Church that believes in the whole Bible and that we are to act in response to the word of God in order to change the times we are living in. Those times have gotten further and futher away from God; full of deception like abortion and same sex marriages.
When asked why they put up such as sign, they reply:
To expose Islam for what it is. It is a violent and oppressive religion that is trying to mascarade itself as a religion of peace, seeking to deceive our society.
As of this writing, nearly 500 people have clicked “like” on the event’s webpage, which also features Photoshop images premised on the nuking of Iran and Mecca. One of these shows Mecca’s Grand Mosque full of pilgrims, with the simple tag: “Nuke It.”
At least some of the page’s supporters seem to have learned much of what they know about Islam from Fox News’ distortive hyping and conspiracy mongering regarding the case of a conservative mole at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). A person who identified herself as Fran Ingram, for example, posted a video of Fox News’ coverage of the CAIR story with the title, “No Moderate Muslims.”
This is the same church that has planned a “No Homo Mayor” protest on August 2. According to the Church’s website:
What is homosexuality? Detestable, indecent, wicked, offensive, perverted, shameful, unnatural, degrading, impure, futile, foolish, godless, dishonorable, a lie.
So, one really shouldn’t be surprised that such hate would come out of this church.
But…this planned “Burn a Koran” day is eerily reminiscent of another spate of book burnings…
It seems that this church is hell-bent on seeing Islam as its enemy, judging by the many parts of its website devoted to promoting Islam as being “part of the Devil.” Now, I don’t see Islam and Christianity as being enemies of one another, quite the contrary. But, this church does.
Yet, if this Church is, according to their website, a “New Testament, Charismatic, Non-Denominational Church that believes in the whole Bible and that we are to act in response to the word of God in order to change the times we are living in,” then I wonder why they have neglected this fundamental teaching of Jesus:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:43-45)
Or, is this passage not part of the “whole Bible” in which they believe? Are they really followers of Christ?
The proposed Murfreesboro Mosque has become a lightening rod political/legal/social issue in Tennessee. See the courageous supporters of the Mosque who are defending Freedom of Religion versus those who oppose the Mosque on grounds that seem less than sincere.
Also what do Israeli flags have to do with a Mosque in Tennessee? Looks like Christian Zionists acting wacky as usual.
Anti-mosque marchers proudly paraded their opposition for a mile along East Main Street to the Public Square on Murfreesboro Wednesday.
They carried flags of America and Israel, sang, “God Bless America,” and carried many signs, including: “Mosque leaders support killing converts. Tell it!”
While the crowd from both protesters and counter protesters appeared to number 500 to 600 at its peak — police estimated the crowd at 1,000, protest march organizer Kevin Fisher estimated that several hundred marched in his group alone from Central Magnet School to the County Courthouse.
There, they encountered hundreds more of counter protesters carrying signs with messages such as, “All you need is love” and “Freedom for all religion” and “Tolerance.”
“Ignore their hate,” Fisher told his participants as they turned the east corner of the Square on their way to the west side of the County Courthouse.
His grass-roots group plans to next present to the County Commission on Aug. 12 a petition in opposition to the county Regional Planning Commission’s site plan approval last May for a 52,960-square-foot community center and mosque for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro to build on Veals Road off Bradyville Pike southeast of the city.
“We have close to 20,000 petition signers,” Fisher said. “We gathered at least 700 (Wednesday).”
Fisher was one of about 20 speakers to carry his message to the commission last June. Hundreds packed all three floors of the Courthouse for that event.
On Wednesday, two protest groups almost seemed like rival student bodies chanting back and forth about who had the better team.
The marchers attempted to give speeches on the Courthouse steps, but the words offered by 82-year-old Gertrude Phillips and others were drowned out by the counter protesters.
In response, the marchers chanted, “U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!”
and “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” and sang, “Amazing Grace” and “The Star Spangled Banner.”
“When you are yelling during a prayer or when you are yelling when an 82-year-old woman speaks, you are being disrespectful,” Fisher said in an interview after the speeches were over.
March participant Jake Robinson was also offended by the counter protesters.
“They are a bunch of rabble-rousers,” said Robinson, a candidate in the Aug. 5 election running against County Commissioner Will Jordan, who’s also on the Regional Planning Commission. “They were bused in. They’re a rent-a-mob. As (U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy) Pelosi would say, they are Astroturf of the highest order.”
Although Phillips’ words to the mosque opponents were hard to hear, the La Vergne resident was glad to share why she was willing to push her walker for a portion of the march around the Square.
She’s concerned about Muslims not adhering to burial practices in America in particular.
“My husband is buried in a casket in the state of Kentucky,” said Phillips, adding that she’ll be buried by him in the same way. “If they come over here, they need to do our ways and abide by our law. If they can’t, go back to where they came from. God gave us America. We need to uphold America.”
The marchers included other people seeking public office, such as congressional candidates George Erdel, who calls himself ‘a tea party Democrat’, and Lou Ann Zelenik, a Republican. Many Zelenik supporters proudly displayed signs and T-shirts with her name on it.
Erdel also helped organize the march, using a bullhorn to give instructions before the parade began. He also handed the bullhorn to Dusty Ray, the pastor of Heartland Baptist Church at Walter Hill where Erdel attends.
Ray led the large group gathered on the Central Magnet School grounds in prayer about their march in opposition to the plans of local Muslims.
“They are about oppression,” Ray said in his prayer.
“Lord, we’re trying to stop a political movement,” Ray added before concluding his prayer, “In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Others of note in the march included Howard Wall, a local real estate developer and Republican Party supporter; and Dave Beardsley, a candidate challenging County Commissioner Gary Farley, who’s also a member of the Regional Planning Commission.
Beardsley carried a sign near the front of the march: “Commissioner Farley votes yes on Islamic Center.”
Farley in a recent interview said his vote was based on the center meeting all of the rules required by the county’s zoning resolution.
When the march and counter protesters were winding down and mostly left, two Muslim women in hijab outfits to cover their hair and bodies appeared before unfriendly mosque opponents.
Dressed in a black outfit, Tahira Ahmed told the protesters she’s an American of Cherokee and other Indian heritage whose family chose to convert to Islam.
“I have a right to wear a bikini, and I have a right to cover myself,” Ahmed told the crowd.
An obese man wearing tattered blue shorts and a brown T-shirt that expressed his love of barbecue challenged the Muslim women from where he stood about 15 feet away.
“Our Constitution doesn’t apply to you,” the man said.
Qamar Awale, who was wearing a blue hijab, disagreed.
“I have a right to live here,” she said. “And I have a right to worship, and I have a right to build.”
Prior to speaking before the marchers, the women said they came here from their Nashville homes with a goal to communicate with others about being Muslims rather than to have people influenced by propaganda expressed to the news media.
“We’re advocating for communication between neighbors,” said Ahmed, who’d like to see the proposed mosque built. “That’s what religious freedom is. We should respect each other’s rights in this country, and we should respect the rules of America. America doesn’t say if you’re a Muslim you can’t live here and worship.”
Awale agreed.
“If you live here, you have rights to worship anywhere,” she said. “We have right to worship. Freedom is supposed to be like a butterfly.”
In my last article I debunked the lies and disinformation in the first half of David Wood’s anti-Muslim/anti-Mosque diatribe. Since then we have received a lot of comments and tips regarding David Wood’s background. Apparently David Wood is a Teaching Fellow at Fordham University where he is pursuing his PhD in Philosophy. I wonder if the administration at Fordham would consider Wood’s anti-Muslim activities as being in line with its Jesuit traditions and values? Maybe we should start a campaign to let them know?
Paul Williams, of the Muslim Debate Initiative has also stated that David Wood told him during a debate, in front of an audience of a hundred or more, that he attempted to murder his father and that he was sent to a mental institution for the attack which left his father permanently disabled,
About a year ago I moderated a debate at Westbourne Park Baptist Church (my old church here in London), between Wood and a Muslim. In front of an audience of probably one hundred people, mostly Christians, Wood told the audience of some of the more disturbing aspects of his past including his unspeakable attack on his own father with a hammer. Happily his father did not die (though Wood says he really wanted to kill him). His father is permanently disabled however. Wood spent time in a mental institution.
Yahya Snow, an Islamic apologist who has been following David Wood’s work also commented that Wood told him that, “his blog is not about evangelising to Muslims but about ‘warning’ non-Muslims about Islam.” This would explain why he and his group were the sole Christian Evangelical group arrested at the Dearborn Arab Festival, slamming on its face the argument that they were being “persecuted” for preaching Christ.
In fact, a few Evangelical Christians who witnessed the event wrote on David Wood’s blog (via. MDI),
Spiffy the Basset said…
‘This is a complete and total lie and David and Nabeel should be ashamed of themselves. Tonight, just as last night, there were dozens of Christians and former muslims at the festival witnessing to muslims. None of them had problems with people. None of the other several dozen “Christian preachers” were arrested. Lies, lies, and more lies.
The same happened last night. I saw Nabeel and David showboating and trying to cause a scene and know they were not only expecting to be arrested, but to some degree, trying to get arrested.
They care more about their hatred for islam than their love for muslims. I have evangelized in many continents and in places far more hostile than the dearborn festival, but can say with experience that they did not at all suffer for the cross, they suffered for their egos.’
June 19, 2010 10:52 PM
All of this makes me wonder if I should waste time even debunking the rest of the anti-Mosque video. David Wood is an obvious huckster with real problems. Maybe a longer stay at the mental institution was in order?
Anyhow, someone has to drudge through the swamp and refute the lies, lies, lies.
Of Mosques and Men
Picking up from the 3:00 mark David says,
This is when I first realized that there were two forces at work within Western Muslims like Nabeel. On the one hand he was born and raised in the United States, his father was in the US military, he loved America, but on the other hand, even though he came from the most peaceful sect of Islam there was something in Nabeel that allowed him to smile when there were terrorist attacks. Now those of you who know personally, who know Muslims close enough to where they can tell you what they really think, you know that this is really quite common, good citizens in public, not so good citizens in private.
What words can describe the above verbal barf and pseudo-psychological sewage spewed by Wood? He uses Nabeel, a Christian apologist and leader in Wood’s organization, (who seems not to mind being used as his ex-Muslim-mascot-that-evidences-the innate-evil-of Muslims-example) to drive the point home that even if you are a “peaceful Muslim,” there is something hidden, something stealth about you.
If this doesn’t sound eerily similar to the anti-Semitic racism and sinister conspiracies about Jews that were propagated in the past then you need to read up on history. Wood’s entire monotone delivery has the timbre of a sleazy used car salesman combined with a soothsaying Nazi propagandist trying hard to sound like Captain Kirk.
The hypocrisy is also glaring, someone needs to tell David Wood that if he really wants to talk about “good citizens in public, not so good citizens in private” he should look towards his Christian brethren; to the likes of Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ted Haggard, not to mention those family value politicians who love to trumpet their Christian bona fides while fondling male pages at the same time. I think there was once a Jewish carpenter who summed it up best, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
Wood is not content to end the disinformation and pseudo-psychological babble about “dual-Muslim natures,”
Interestingly, this duel Muslim nature is advocated in the Quran. If you turn to Surah 3, verse 28, you will see that the Quran says, “Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers. Whoso doeth that hath no connection with Allah unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them, taking (as it were) security.” So if you’re a Muslim you are not supposed to be friends with unbelievers unless to protect yourself.
What this means is that if Muslims feel threatened by a stronger advisory, say the United States of America, they can pretend to be friendly in order to protect themselves, in order to guard themselves against these unbelievers. The greatest Islamic commentator of all time, Ibn Kathir comments on Surah 3:28, and he says, that when Muslims are outnumbered by a stronger advisory, “…believers are allowed to show friendship outwardly but never inwardly.”
He goes on to quote Muhammad’s companion, Abu Darda who said “we smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.”
Wood again propagates half-truths and lies to further mislead his audience into viewing Muslims as a sinister bunch not to be trusted even when they smile. He throws out context, history, theology and the polyvalent interpretations within Islamic canon. All with the aim of portraying Muslims as a deceiving group of untrustworthy criminals who telepathically communicate taqqiyah with each other like mindless ants as part of a plot to destroy the West.
THE FACTS:
The Literalist Ultra-Conservative interpretation:
The truth is there is a minority of Literalist ultra-Conservative Muslims who hold the opinion that Muslims should not be intimate friends with non-Muslims (I would venture to say 1% or less), because they fear Muslims will be put into a position of harm (physically and spiritually), will lose their religion, and take on the ways and mores of other religions.
However, even here there is a necessary caveat that must be made, this literalist minority while espousing the belief that one should not be close intimate friends with non-Muslims also states that one should deal justly and kindly with them, they say this based on the verse,
Allah does not forbid you to deal justly and kindly with those who fought not against you on account of religion nor drove you out of your homes. Verily, Allah loves those who deal with equity. (60:8)
As for the latter part of the verse, the interpretation and selective quotation from Ibn Kathir, (presumptuously labeled the “greatest Islamic commenter ever” by Wood when no such position or authority exists) does not support Wood’s theory. In fact, it is an intellectually deceptive attempt that leaves out the true import of the verse and is even a clumsy handling of the Ultra-Conservative interpretation.
The ellipses that Wood inserted is the key to understanding the context. No where does Ibn Kathir mention “when Muslim are outnumbered by a stronger advisory,” (David Wood made that up whole-cloth). What he actually writes is, ‘do not take disbelievers as friends in preference to Muslims,’ and the portion in question, unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them, is rendered as unless you indeed fear a danger from them. Ibn Kathir then interprets it as “meaning, except those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly.”
So clearly we see that the ellipses purposely inserted by Wood hides the true interpretation given by Ibn Kathir. Ibn Kathir was essentially saying that Muslims who fear for their lives may be friendly in order to guard themselves from harm.
Think for example of the Spanish Inquisition, that was a time and a place where Muslims (and Jews) might have put the above into practice. Fearing for your own and your families safety is cause enough to show a “dual nature.” In fact, many Jews and Muslims under intense persecution proclaimed outwardly to have converted to Catholicism, while inwardly they remained Muslims and Jews, these crypto-Muslims (Moriscos) and crypto-Jews (Marranos) were known as Conversos.
Can David Wood honestly find fault with a verse that gives a dispensation to Muslims to save their lives and protect their religion by hiding it or acquiescing to their enemy in the face of danger or persecution?
David Wood bastardizes the verse by attributing an interpretation to Muslims that does not exist. He does this by asserting half-truthfully the minority ultra-conservative literalist interpretation.
The lie comes in the second half of the verse, where he attempts to say that when Muslims are “outnumbered,” they can be friendly with non-Muslims but inwardly they must hate them until a time comes when they have the numbers to take over, a position that the ultra-conservatives don’t advance. We have demonstrated that the literalist ultra-conservatives are in fact referring to a situation of danger that Muslims may find themselves in and not a tactic of domination.
The Context:
When we analyze this verse and its surrounding verses in context we learn that the verse was directed at the “hypocrites” (Munafiqoon), a group who entered Islam in outward appearance only in an attempt to destroy it. They had allied themselves with the sworn enemies of Islam, the pagan Meccans and their allies.
The Prophet Muhammad was speaking to his community in Medina and prophesied to them that one day they would hold sovereignty over the lands of Persia and Byzantium. The hypocrites responded by saying, “How preposterous!”
In response to this, verses 3:26-29 were revealed,the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, written about 100 years after Ibn Kathir’s exegesis explains,
When the Prophet (s) promised his community sovereignty over the lands of Persia and Byzantium, the hypocrites said, ‘How preposterous!’, and so the following was revealed, “Say, ‘O Allah , Owner of Sovereignty, You give sovereignty to whom You will and You take sovereignty away from whom You will. You honor whom You will and You humble whom You will. In Your hand is [all] good. Indeed, You are over all things competent.’” (3:26)
“You cause the night to enter the day, and You cause the day to enter the night; and You bring the living out of the dead, and You bring the dead out of the living. And You give provision to whom You will without account.” (3:27)
…
Then we come to the verse in question, in it the word Awliya, which instead of being translated as “friends” is more accurately rendered in the context as “allies,”
Let not believers take disbelievers as allies rather than believers. And whoever [of you] does that has nothing with Allah , except when taking precaution against them in prudence. And Allah warns you of Himself, and to Allah is the [final] destination.(3:28)
The Tafsir Jalalayn explains,
Let not the believers take the disbelievers as patrons, rather than, that is, instead of, the believers — for whoever does that, that is, [whoever] takes them as patrons, does not belong to, the religion of, God in anyway — unless you protect yourselves against them, as a safeguard (tuqātan, ‘as a safeguard’, is the verbal noun from taqiyyatan), that is to say, [unless] you fear something, in which case you may show patronage to them through words, but not in your hearts… (emphasis added)
The hypocrites in particular and humanity in general is then told,
Say, “Whether you conceal what is in your breasts or reveal it, Allah knows it. And He knows that which is in the heavens and that which is on the earth. And Allah is over all things competent. (3:29)
Tafsir al-Jalalayn explains,
Say, to them: ‘Whether you hide what is in your breasts, in your hearts, of patronage to them, or disclose it, manifest it, God knows it and, He, knows what is in the heavens and what is in the earth; and God is Able to do all things, and this includes punishing those who patronise them.
The above is indicative of how the majority of Muslims explain these verses; revelation in a context of war and betrayal. Particularly in response to the hypocrites who claimed to be Muslims but concealed their alliance and patronage with enemies who wanted to annihilate the nascent Muslim community.
We also see that the dispensation referred to in verse 3:28 pertains to particular situations Muslims might find themselves in when they are in danger.
This becomes even more evident when we realize that at the time of the revelation of this verse there were Muslims who lived in pagan Mecca who concealed their religion and had to show patronage to the enemies of the Muslims due to fear of death or torture. Referring to them the Quran says, ‘you may outwardly show that you are allied with those who are at war with Muslims and may harm you for being Muslim, but inwardly you should feel differently.’
To drive the point home we look at one more verse that puts this subject into context,
For Allah loves those who are just. Allah only forbids you with regard to those who fight you for your faith, and drive you out of your homes and support others in driving you out, from turning to them for protection (or taking them as wali). Those who seek their protection they are indeed wrong- doers. (60:9)
Also, logically we have to question, if Islam doesn’t allow Muslims to befriend non-Muslims, why would it allow Muslim men to marry non-Muslims? Marriage is even more intimate than friendship, it is based on love and friendship.
Abu Darda’s statement: “We smile in the face of some…”:
David Wood then goes on to quote Muhammad’s companion, Abu Darda who said, “we smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.”
The above quote from Abu Darda, which Wood employs as a means to bash us into the belief that Muslims have a “dual nature” actually comes back to bite him in the butt.
Abu Darda’s (hadith) statement can be found in Saheeh Bukhari, under the chapter heading, Al-Mudaaraah ma3 An’Naas which means “Politeness/Gentleness with the People.” So rather than being something Taqqiyah or Jihad related, this statement actually pertains to polite manners and etiquette!
In explaining the statement, Imam Ibn Hajar Al-Asqalani, writer of one of the seminal explanations of Saheeh Bukhari wrote,
Ibn Battaal said: Politeness is part of the attitude of the believers, and it is lowering the wing of humility to people, speaking gently, and not speaking harshly to them, which are among the best means of creating harmony.
Ibn Muflih, an eminent 14th century scholar of the Hanbali school wrote concerning Abu Darda’s statement,
This attitude of Abu Darda does not mean approving of something haram (prohibited); rather it is politeness that may achieve some purpose.
Ibn Abd’ al-Barr, an eminent scholar and jurist who predates Ibn Kathir also quoted Abu Darda’s statement with regard to the virtues of good manners.
Abu Darda’s statement was intended to be a spiritual teaching, meant (in Islamic theological semantics) as a “heart softener” toward those who have “hard hearts.” The context given is that some individuals have brash and very rude manners, and the best way to deal with them, even though you dislike them in your heart is through politeness and good manners, because that may eventually lead to the rude individual reforming him or herself. It is the actualization of the Quranic verse, “Repel evil with that which is better,” i.e. respond to evil with goodness.
“Don’t trust those evil Mooslims, please!”:
Wood continues,
What’s my point you ask? Well, the Muslims who want to construct a massive mosque here, assure us that they are doing it to honor the victims of 9/11 and not to construct a symbol of Islamic supremacy. They assure us that they are going to build a beacon of understanding and harmony. A place where people of all faiths to gather and condemn extremism.
[Pause]
Do you believe that?
If so, I would like to sell you a bottle of Wood’s magical cure all, from the miracle springs of Poland for the low low price $870.
This mocking and very ineffectual attempt at a joke falls dead on delivery. In this instance David Wood may not be selling “magic” holy water like many of his televangelist preacher/prophet brethren are want to do, but he is selling something else — hate.
Wood is pitching the idea that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a supporter of American intervention in Afghanistan and a Sufi is in cahoots with Bin Laden. You see, David Wood tells us, Muslims are all the same at the end of the day, when they speak of harmony and peace, and when they condemn terrorism they are not to be trusted.
What makes this especially ironic is that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf knew people in the Twin Towers! Many of his congregants worked there, but in Wood’s world those facts just don’t matter because the “Muslim other” cannot be allowed to share in the tragedy and suffering of 9/11, that would humanize them, that you would make them Americans.
Of Churches and Men?:
Wood then attempts to prove his point,
My friends, what did Muslims do when they conquered Mecca? They went to the Ka’ba, the center of pagan worship and they claimed it for Islam, what did Muslims do when they took Jerusalem, where did they build their mosque, they built it on the Temple Mount, when Muslims conquered Damascus, where did they build their mosque? They demolished the Church of St. John the Baptist and replaced it with a mosque. Why?
Cordoba Mosque with the Cathedral in the Middle
While Muslims have had their share of taking over Churches or other places of worship and converting them into Mosques (Hagia Sophia), in that age and time that was the practice of most religions, including Christianity. The Spanish did it when they invaded Cordoba and transformed the famous Cordoba Mosque into a Catholic Church by plopping a Cathedral right in the middle of the Mosque.
As far as the capturing of Mecca goes, then the uniqueness of the circumstances and context must be elaborated. According to Arab tradition, the founder of the Ka’ba was Prophet Abraham who dedicated it to the One God. The Muslims, whether we view them as correct or not, believed essentially that they were only restoring the Ka’ba for its original purpose as the House of the One God, similar to the Temple created by Solomon in Jerusalem. They did not believe that by abolishing the practice of idolatry at the Ka’ba that they were supplanting the old and original religion with a new one.
As for Jerusalem, we must note that when Muslims gained sovereignty over the city, the Temple Mount was being used as a trash dump by the Christians. There was no Jewish Temple and it is highly likely there was no Church. In fact, it was only under Muslim rule that Jews were allowed to come back to Jerusalem to worship, having previously been banned by the Byzantine Christians.
As for the Church of St. John the Baptist or what is known as the Umayyad Mosque today, then we are about to give David Wood a history lesson. Damascus is one of the, if not the, oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The site of the Umayyad Mosque has an interesting and unique history of conquerors building religious structures devoted to their specific God(s) and cults,
It was 1000 BC at the latest when the Arameans built a temple here for Hadad, the god of storms and lightening. A basalt orthostat dating from this period, depicting a sphinx, has been discovered in the northeast corner of the mosque.
In the early first century AD, the Romans arrived and built a massive temple to Jupiter over the Aramean temple. The Roman temple stood upon a rectangular platform (temenos) that measured about 385 meters by 305 meters, with square towers at each corner. Parts of the outer walls of the temenos still survive, but virtually nothing remains of the temple itself.
In the late fourth century, the temple area became a Christian sacred site. The Temple of Jupiter was destroyed and a church dedicated to John the Baptist was built in its place. The church was (and is) believed to enshrine the head of the Baptist, and the site became an important pilgrimage destination in the Byzantine era.
Initially, the Muslim conquest of Damascus in 636 did not affect the church, as the building was shared by Muslim and Christian worshippers. It remained a church and continued to draw Christian pilgrims; the Muslims built a mud-brick structure against the southern wall where they could pray.
Under the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid, however, the church was demolished and the present mosque was built in its place between 706 and 715. An indemnity was paid to the Christians in compensation.
The Mosque still contains relics attributed to John the Baptist. It is a beacon of interfaith interaction and draws Christians (such as Pope John Paul II) and Manadeans. One notices also that the Church of St. John the Baptist itself was built after the destruction of a Roman Temple dedicated to Jupiter! Will David Wood say that act was a practice of Christian supremacy? Can we link that action with current projects by American Christian missionaries in Iraq and say that they are a sign of Christian supremacy?
In contrast to the Byzantines, the early Muslims who conquered Syria left the Christian Holy places untouched. If it was a practice of Muslims to convert the Holy places of non-Muslims into mosques to “show that they are in control,” surely the zealous companions of Muhammad would have immediately gone to the Church and made it into a mosque? However, it was 70 years later that the Mosque was built in its place, and quite out of pattern for conquerors, the Muslims actually paid an indemnity to the Christians as compensation for demolishing the Church.
The Conspiracy Theory Rears its Ugly Head:
Keep in mind, this was in the mind of Muslims all along, right after the September 11th attacks, Muslims were joking about filling the city with mosques and now they tell us that they are doing it to honor the victims of 9/11. Smiling in our faces while cursing us in their hearts. Come out of the cave America, it’s dark in there.
This brutally long and disgusting ode to disinformation, Islamophobia and bigotry finally comes to a close with one final outright and bold embrace of the conspiracy theory that has been the theme of this whole video: “keep in mind, this was in the mind of Muslims all along.”
Those crafty Muslims have been conspiring this whole time to take over our country and subjugate us to Islam! Somehow, in David Wood’s world the so called proposed Cultural Center and Mosque which he repeatedly and falsely refers to as “massive” was in the “mind of Muslims all along.” Bin Laden and his goons were working with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to build this Mosque. The plans announced by Cordoba Initiative that this is not a “massive mosque” but a center that will honor the victims (which by the way included 300 Muslims), contain a mosque, theater, gym, etc. cannot be believed because what Muslims say should never be trusted.
Why do I get the feeling that the only one who is truly smiling in our faces and cursing us in his heart is David Wood? A loon trying by any means possible to sow seeds of hate and suspicion. Such a person would benefit from the teaching of another famous Jew who was instructing his flock, “whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.”
COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) – A billboard along Interstate 26 is catching a lot of eyes, and viewers are calling our newsroom about it. Some think it’s offensive, and others just want to know what it means.
On a stretch of highway from Orangeburg to Columbia, one sees advertisement on billboards scattered along the side of the road. But this billboard stands out, reading “Islam Rising Be Warned.”
“I think it is exciting hate and fear,” said Jennifer Bynum. “You know there are terrorists out there, but they are not all out there amongst us.”
The Islamic Center of Columbia has been on Gervais Street for close to 30 years. Habeeb Abdullah has been a member since the beginning, and says there is nothing to fear over the sign.
“I am not going to judge what they meant, I’m just going to take it as-is,” said Abdullah. “They say Islam is on the rise — which is true, it is on the rise — but there is nothing to be afraid of from Islam.”
If you look closely at the sign, it sends you to a website paid for by the Christian Action Network. We emailed the group for a comment, and they requested we watch their video first.
The video shows protests of people holding signs reading “Be prepared for the real holocaust” and shows the deadly attacks of 9/11. It also shows a man saying “I have been ordered by Allah to fight against people until they testify there is no god but Allah.”
Abdullah maintains there is no correlation between his religion and the video or the billboard.
“If Islam is on the rise, I think American people are informed enough to know what is right and what is wrong,” Abdullah said. “So if they are accepting Islam, there has to be a reason.”
We emailed the Christian action network again after watching the video, per their request. Their response was, “If you still have questions after watching the trailer then you need to watch the full documentary.”
The billboard is owned by Revelation, which rents out billboards all over. The cost depends on size and location, and can run from $500 to $2,000.
David Wood is a Christian apologist who attempts to save Muslim souls through his organization Acts 17 Apologetics and www.answeringmuslims.com. In the past Wood and his entourage, including Nabeel Qureshi, have targeted the Dearborn Arab Festival in Michigan for proselytism.
At the 2009 Arab Festival, David Wood made a controversial, and some claim one sided video that received over a million hits on YouTube which showed them getting kicked out of the festival. They claim that they were just engaged in free speech, whereas security at the festival stated that they were insulting and harassing festival goers.
Other Evangelical Christians criticized Wood and his group as being agitators,
“The Rev. Haytham Abi Haydar, a Christian evangelical convert from Islam with Arabic Alliance Church in Dearborn, said that a Christian group called Acts 17 Apologetics caused the problems at this year’s Arab festival.
They put cameras in their faces and were very antagonistic,” Abi Haydar said of the group that produced the controversial video that has drawn almost 1.4 million views on YouTube.
Just recently at the 2010 Dearborn Arab Festival, David Wood, Nabeel Qureshi and two others were arrested for disorderly conduct. Obviously intending to make a scene in an attempt at more YouTube success by portraying themselves as being persecuted.
Now David Wood, whose “love of Muslims” seems to be akin to Pamela Geller’s (who he links to favorably a number of times) is joining arms with the anti-Muslim hate group SIOA in opposing the mosque and cultural center that is to be built a few blocks away from Ground Zero.
In the following video, filled with disinformation, falsehood and inaccuracies he expounds his reasons as to why he is against the mosque, and why he sees Muslims as a lurking evil attempting to take over the West. We expose it all in this series.
Of Mosques and Men
10 years later, two groups of Muslims, the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement are planning to build a Massive 13 story mosque right here behind me.
Right off the bat we see the disinformation at work, this isn’t a “13 story mosque,” (why would Muslims need 13 stories to pray in the middle of Manhattan?). The fact is this is a cultural center, that along side a space for a mosque will contain a theater, swimming pool, restaurant and other facilities with the expressed goals of promoting tolerance and mutual co-operation between people of different and varying backgrounds.
“Understandably, many people here in the West are concerned…”
WTF? Many people in the “West” are concerned? I highly doubt the masses of people in Europe or Canada really care about this particular Islamophobia-driven agitation, unless the “many people” he is referring to is the small hate group SIOE (Stop the Islamization of Europe and parent organization of SIOA) whose main campaigns revolve around opposing mosques and other anti-Muslim initiatives.
“…this isn’t an attempt to honor the victims of 9/11 instead, it may be an attempt to build a symbol of Islamic victory. Now, I have the same concern, but mine is slightly different, my concern is slightly different, it is based on a photograph I saw, while I was still in College.
While I was in College my best friend was a Muslim named Nabeel Qureshi. Nabeel showed me some photographs shortly after the September 11th attacks, and I found them quite surprising. Muslims were passing these photographs around and Nabeel thought they were absolutely hilarious. The first photograph was a picture of George W. Bush as a Muslim, and I have to admit that was actually pretty funny,
The second photograph wasn’t so funny, it was a photo shopped picture of the Statue of Liberty covered in a full veil.
Now, this one bothered me a little bit. The Statue of Liberty, the symbol of freedom and justice, covered by a full veil, a symbol of oppression and Shariah Law, now these two pictures actually worked their way around the internet and lots of people are familiar with them.
The third picture, is the one that disturbed me however, it was a photo shopped picture of New York City covered in mosques and minarets, in the bottom corner it said New York City 2006.
The idea was that the terrorist attacks had cleared the ground for the construction of new mosques.
David Wood makes some audacious claims that we are supposed to take as veritable truth upon his word. First, that the photographs he saw originated with Muslims. Second, that Muslims at his College were passing them around, (ostensibly in “celebration of 9/11″). Third, that a burka is a symbol of Shariah Law, and fourth, that the third picture was meant to convey the “idea that the terrorist attacks had cleared the ground for the construction of mosques.”
The truth is that all three of the photographs originate from a comedy website called “www.joe-ks.com,” (a fact conveniently hidden by David Wood in the video) which claims to be the “largest source of internet humor.” The site is definitely not Muslim or terrorist sympathetic, essentially it is a website that has jokes about everything, and a lot of the jokes lampoon terrorists and extremists, and some of them even lampoon whole countries such as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.
For example one of their posts is titled Afghan Humour:
Q: What do Kabul and Hiroshima have in common?
A: Nothing,…. yet.
Q: How do you play Taliban bingo?
A: B-52…F-16…B-1…
Q: What is the Taliban’s national bird?
A: Duck
Q: How is Bin Laden like Fred Flintstone?
A: Both may look out their windows and see Rubble.
Q: Why does the Afghanistan Navy have glass bottom boats?
A: So they can see their Air Force.
Q: What do Osama Bin Laden and General Custer have in common?
A: They both want to know where those Tomahawks are coming from.
Q: Why aren’t there any Wal-Marts in Afghanistan?
A. Because there’s a Target on every corner.
David Wood must have seen the original post on Joe-KS which would put the pictures above into their proper context instead of the deceptive context that he has created. The pictures weren’t created or disseminated by Muslims after 9/11 as a means of celebrating or “dealing with the tragedy through humor”, in fact the post that first contained the pictures was lampooning terrorists. The post published in October 2001 was titled, If the Taliban wins the War #1, #2,#3.
David Wood makes a claim that Muslims were passing these pictures around when the truth is they were created by and disseminated by non-Muslims who were making fun of terrorists and extremists. He doesn’t provide any evidence of Muslims passing these pictures out, instead we are supposed to take him at his word.
In reality it is a clever ploy that omits the fact that not only were Muslims also victims of 9/11 but all major American Muslim organizations condemned the attack in the strongest possible terms. However, he wants to caste Muslims in a dehumanized image: ‘they are not part of our suffering, in fact they are mocking our suffering and enjoy and support 9/11.’
His disingenuous claim that the third picture is meant by Muslims to convey the idea “that the terrorist attacks had cleared the ground for the construction of mosques” is a cynical attempt to link the humor piece deriding the Taliban to the current construction of the Cordoba Cultural Center.
He attempts to instill in the minds of his watchers the idea that this was the plan all along. In doing so he asserts the interesting, if off the wall conspiracy theory that Osama Bin Laden was somehow in cahoots with the founder of the Cordoba Initiative Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, (a Sufi Imam who has condemned Bin Laden and supported the War in Afghanistan).
You see, the plan all along to subvert and take over the West was that Bin Laden’s goons would fly planes into the Twin Towers, then ten years later Imam Abdul Rauf, (who has never spoken to or met Bin Laden) would telepathically (through secret Muslim Taqqiyah radar) communicate with Bin Laden to receive orders to stealthily build a gigantic 13 story Mosque a few blocks away from Ground Zero!
We have often heard about horror stories from Saudia Arabia where a woman is raped and along with her attacker is accused of committing fornication and then flogged or at least sentenced to be flogged. Some might think that this sort of thing could never happen anywhere else, but something equally egregious occurred here in the USA.
A Christian church found out that one of its parishioner raped a fellow parishioner twice, impregnating her. What did they do? They sheltered the rapist, made him apologize for raping the girl and made the girl apologize for becoming pregnant.
After being raped and impregnated by a fellow churchgoer more than twice her age, a 15-year-old Concord girl was forced by Trinity Baptist Church leaders to stand before the congregation to apologize before they helped whisk her out of state, according to the police.
While her pastor, Chuck Phelps, reported the alleged rape in 1997 to state youth officials, Concord police detectives were never able to find the victim. The victim said she was sent to another church member’s home in Colorado, where she was home-schooled and not allowed to have contact with others her age. It wasn’t until this past February that the victim, who is now 28, decided to come forward after reading about other similar cases, realizing for the first time it wasn’t her fault that she had been raped, she told the police.
The police arrested Ernest Willis, 51, of Gilford, last week in connection with the case, accusing him of raping the girl twice – once in the back seat of a car he was teaching her to drive in and again after showing up at her Concord home while her parents were away. He was charged with four felonies – two counts of rape and two counts of having sex with a minor, court records show.
In a statement to the police, the victim said Willis came to her home in the summer of 1997 without warning.
“He said he wanted to talk to me about something so I let him in the house,” she wrote. “He locked the door behind him and pushed me over to the couch. I had a dress on and he pulled it off. I pushed my hands against his shoulders and said ‘No,’ but he didn’t stop.”
At the time of the alleged rape, Phelps was in touch with the police, who told him to contact the Division for Children, Youth and Families.
But moving the girl out of state prevented the police from collecting evidence or a statement, the police said yesterday.
“Without a victim, it makes it very difficult to have a case,” said Lt. Keith Mitchell. “That basically made the investigation very difficult.”
At the time, Willis also refused to give a statement, police records show.
So for 13 years, a file on the case sat closed and marked “unresolved” at the Concord police station.
Police records do not show whether detectives asked church leaders to help them get in contact with the victim or if information was withheld.
“If somebody tried to cover this up or not cover this up, that’s a separate issue,” Mitchell said.
Phelps did not return a message seeking comment yesterday. He no longer works at the church.
“The leadership of Trinity Baptist Church reported this alleged crime within 24 hours of hearing the accusations on Oct. 8, 1997,” said spokesman Peter Flint from a prepared statement. “We continue in our commitment to cooperate with authorities so that justice is served.”
‘Completely in shock’
The victim said she came forward after getting in touch with Jocelyn Zichterman, who runs an online group for victims of church abuse.
In a seven-page statement to the police, the victim recounted the moments leading up to her departure from New Hampshire.
At 14, she began babysitting for Willis, a well-known member of the church. She told the police she would often stay the night if he got home late.
Just over a year later, he offered to give her driving lessons. While in the parking lot of a Concord business, Willis asked her to pull over to switch seats, she told the police.
But instead he pulled her into the backseat and raped her, according to a statement to the police.
In the summer of 1997, Willis raped her again, this time while at her home while her mother was out, according to police records.
“I was completely in shock, but too scared to go and tell anyone because I thought I would get blamed for what happened,” she said.
Over the next few months, the girl became suspicious she was pregnant. She called Willis, who brought over a pregnancy test that came up positive, she told the police.
“He asked me if I wanted him to take me to a neighboring state where underage abortions were legal . . . and he would pay for an abortion,” she told the police. “He then asked me if I wanted him to punch me in the stomach as hard as he could because that might cause a miscarriage.”
She declined both.
‘Church discipline’
The victim told her mother about the pregnancy. Soon after, Phelps was also alerted.
The victim said Phelps told her she would be put up for “church discipline,” where parishioners go before the congregation to apologize for their sins.
She asked why. “Pastor Phelps then said that (Willis) may have been 99 percent responsible, but I needed to confess my 1 percent guilt in the situation,” the victim told the police.
“He told me that I should be happy that I didn’t live in Old Testament times because I would have been stoned.”
Fran Earle, the church’s former clerk, witnessed the punishment session.
At a night meeting of the church’s fellowship in 1997, Phelps invited Willis to the front of the room. Willis apologized to the group for not being faithful to his wife, Earle said.
“I can remember saying to my husband, I don’t understand it’s any of our business why this is being brought up,” Earle said.
Phelps then told parishioners a second matter was at hand; he invited the victim to apologize for getting pregnant.
“I can still see the little girl standing up there with this smile on her face trying to get through this,” Earle said.
A day after the session, Earle called the pastor’s wife, who said the victim had decided not to press charges for statutory rape.
“You’ve got to understand, we trusted our pastor and his wife to be telling us the truth,” Earle said. “They told us it had been reported. He reported it as a consensual act between a man and a woman. Well, I didn’t know a 15-year-old was a woman.”
Earle, who left the church in 2001 after 19 years, said it was regular to see young girls who were pregnant called to the front of the congregation to be humiliated.
Rob Sims, another former member, said the discipline sessions were formulaic – Phelps would read Bible verses, give a limited overview of what happened and then each person would read a statement.
“(The) statement agreed that they had done wrong and why they ‘now believed’ that they had sinned,” he said. “Then Pastor Phelps would give a few closing remarks and then a vote would be taken to remove the guilty party from membership or to keep them in membership but under discipline, or something to that effect.”
The police said the victim’s family asked for her to be moved to Colorado.
“I think that she clearly did not want to go to Colorado, and I’m quite sure she expressed that to the church, her mother and the pastor,” said Concord police Detective Chris DeAngelis. “However, she was a juvenile. Her mom requests assistance and that was what they came up with.”
Mitchell said the police are looking at pressing other charges.
Willis was released on $100,000 personal recognizance bail. He faces an arraignment June 16 in Concord District Court.
Jerry Kane, a radical right-winger who belongs to the sovereign citizen movement gunned down two police officers and injured two others. Is this an instance of politics and race mixing with religion and ending in terrorism? Imagine if Kane had been a Muslim, this would be headline news across the nation, pundits and Islamophobes would be waying in on the “threat of homegrown terrorism” and we would all be frightened into hiding under our beds.
Here’s some more information on the far right “sovereign citizen” wingnut who murdered two police officers in West Memphis before being shot to death (along with his son). Included is a video clip in which Jerry Kane says:
I don’t want to have to kill anybody. But if they keep messin’ with me, that’s what it’s gonna have to come out. That’s what it’s gonna come down to, is I’m gonna haveto kill, and if I have to kill one, then I’m not gonna be able to stop.
If you ever wanted proof that the Christian right-wing is filled with opportunists and charlatans who will exploit the masses and smear others for their own diabolical ends look no further than Ergun “Mehmet” Caner. This guy jumped onto the bandwagon of anti-Muslim haters, created a powerful (and false) testimony about being an ex-terrorist and laughed all the way to the bank until all the lies caught up to him. (hat tip: iSherif)
Ergun Caner’s rise to the top of conservative evangelical celebrity — and to the presidency of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell — was fueled by how aggressively he capitalized on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to portray himself as a personal example of the power of Jesus to save even someone raised as a jihadist, which he claimed to be.
There’s only one problem with that part of Caner’s story: it appears not to be true.
In 2001, Caner was pastoring a church in Colorado. After 9/11, he became a hot commodity on the speaking circuit as someone who knew about the evils of Islam firsthand. Before the shock waves from the terror attacks had died down, he was lacing his sermons with his own tale of having been raised in Turkey as the son of a religious leader and trained in a madrassa to wage jihad against Americans.
He said he’d learned about America from TV shows — “Dukes of Hazzard” in some tellings, “Dallas” or “Andy Griffith” in others. He talked about learning English after moving to Brooklyn as a teenager. His personal testimony was used to sell books and videotapes. In one 2001 sermon, “From Jihad to Jesus,” he said he didn’t know much about Christians the first 17 years of his life because “there’s not that many of them in Turkey.” One CD was until recently marketed this way: “Do you believe God can change the heart of a hardened terrorist? Former Muslim Ergun Caner, who came to America to be a terrorist, shares his testimony of how he came to know Jesus Christ.”
All that made for great post-9/11 storytelling. And it helped Caner and his brother, Emir, sell a lot of books. (In 2002 they published and promoted Unveiling Islam: An Insider’s Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs, one of many books bearing the Caner name.) In 2005, Caner was appointed to his current post as president of Liberty University Theological Seminary.
In recent months, a group of Muslim and Christian bloggers have made an airtight case against many of Caner’s fabrications using the kind of documentation — videos, podcasts, recorded sermons — the digital age makes possible.
The Life Stories of Ergun Mehmet Caner
Here’s the basic outline of Ergun Caner’s actual life story, as told in some of his books and public appearances and pieced together from public records in recent months by bloggers. Ergun Caner was born in 1966 in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Turkish father. His parents settled in Ohio a few years later and were divorced when Caner was 8. Caner lived with his mother and spent time and religious holidays with his father.
His parents tussled over the terms of the divorce settlement and the degree to which his Muslim father would control his religious upbringing. As a teenager, Caner became a Christian. His father disowned him after his conversion, but his brothers, mother and grandmother also eventually became Christians. Caner earned undergraduate and graduate degrees (some of which he misstated until a recent bio revision on Liberty’s Web site), and entered the ministry.
Before 2001, he seems to have gone by Ergun Michael Caner or E. Michael Caner — or Butch Caner, which is what he says his wife calls him. Ergun Michael Caner is the name on his concealed carry gun permit, issued in 2009 by the Commonwealth of Virginia. But after 2001, Caner’s middle name, Michael, was replaced with the exotic-to-American-ears “Mehmet” on the covers of his books.
Ergun Caner is unquestionably a polished and entertaining performer. He stands out among conservative evangelicals with defiant rhetoric designed to elicit “did he really say that?” titters and a frisson of naughtiness from his audience. Part of Caner’s performing persona is his own brand of shock humor, which often relies on racial, ethnic and sexist humor. Speaking to one largely white audience, Caner joked about worship in black churches, where he said they pass the plate 12 times, women wear hats the size of satellite dishes and men wear blue suits that match their shoes and a handkerchief that matches their car. One black Baptist preacher asked for an apology.
At a conference in Seattle a few years ago, Caner joked about the Mexican students at Liberty this way:
“The Mexican students and I get along real well. They’re my boys. I always joke with ‘em, I say ‘Man, if I ever adopt, I want to adopt a Mexican because I need work done on my roof. [laughter], and, and uh, I got a big lawn….
At an Ohio men’s conference in 2007, he got the audience whooping and shouting with this gem:
“Dr. Caner, do you believe in women behind the pulpit? My answer is well, yeah, of course, how are they going to vacuum back there unless they get behind it….[laughter]…..and that’s going to be in half of your pulpits next Sunday. FEEL FREE!!! I LOVE THAT LINE!! But you know one line like that shuts it all up, ’cause they’re not going to talk about it, and they’re not going to talk to you for a while, which is good, which is good.
Sin and Redemption
The human story of sin and redemption is a fundamental theme in Christianity. When stars of the conservative evangelical movement have succumbed to the lure of sexual temptation, they have often won forgiveness on the force of a public confession. It has worked for politicians as well as preachers. So why is Ergun Caner, under fire for lying about the life story that catapulted him to evangelical stardom, refusing to repent and passing up the chance to earn redemption? And why is Liberty University supporting his stonewalling?
Since ascending to the helm of Liberty’s theological seminary, Caner has tripled student enrollment, due in no small part to his celebrity. That’s given him a prominent platform from which to speak and publish. It’s also given him some powerful allies with a strong incentive to protect his reputation. Rather than admitting that Caner lied about his upbringing in ways that made his “from jihad to Jesus” story (not to be confused with a book by that title by Jerry Rassamni) more compelling and marketable, Caner and Liberty University have hunkered down, portraying Caner as the victim of persecution and lashing out at his critics. At the same time, they’ve been working to strip some incriminating material from the Internet.
That’s going to keep the story boiling in the Baptist — and Muslim –blogosphere. And some think it’s a disastrous course for Caner, for Liberty, and for the religion and movement they represent.
It was a 20-something Muslim blogger, Mohammed Khan, who started bringing attention to problems with Caner’s public “testimony.” Khan believes Caner is out to give Muslims a bad name, and his Web site, fakeexmuslims.com, has used YouTube commentaries of Caner on video to challenge Caner’s expertise on Islam and to question whether Caner was, as he insists, a “devout” Muslim. (As this story was being prepared, many of those were taken down at least temporarily by a copyright claim.)
But that question hasn’t generated nearly as much interest among Christian bloggers as the easily verifiable discrepancies in Caner’s personal story. It’s especially troubling, they say, because that story is tied to the story he tells about the power of the gospel, the story that fueled his rise to a position of authority.
Here’s how Oklahoma pastor and blogger Wade Burleson summarized it, disputing Caner’s claims:
The myth Dr. Caner has created about himself seems now to be unraveling. He never came to America “via Beirut and Cairo.” He has never been trained as a fundamentalist Muslim. He has never had been a jihadist. He has never debated top Muslim scholars, in Nebraska or anywhere else. It is impossible for any of us to understand why someone would fabricate or embellish his past, but there’s a great deal of money to be made selling books and DVDs about Islam in post 9/11. Who’s a better expert on the subject than a radical jihadist who has converted to faith in Jesus Christ, right?
Here’s how Tom Chantry, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Milwaukee puts it:
Preachers are witnesses to the gospel of Christ, and like all witnesses, when they are compromised they weaken the case. Furthermore, no witness can do more damage to his own case than an expert witness….When a preacher allows himself to deceive in any way he invites the sinner to pounce upon his error and heap scorn upon the gospel. Embellishment from the pulpit is therefore a deadly error which may do inestimable damage to the immortal souls of our fellow men. What are we to think of any preacher who regularly and repeatedly tells stories which are not true and publishes facts which are not facts?
Baptist blogger Tom Rich recalls being in the pews at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, when Caner came to speak just six weeks after the 9/11 attacks. When he started reading about the Caner controversy recently, he went back and listened to that sermon, and it confirmed what he remembered: With people still reeling from the terror attacks, Caner portrayed himself as someone who had been trained to carry out that kind of attack on America. It made for a powerful testimony.
Now, Rich says, he believes Caner was simply being opportunistic:
Unbelievable. Standing in front of shell-shocked Christians after 9/11, and Caner betrays their confidence by lying about where he was raised, where he learned English, and when he came to America. That is deception. A man that is misusing the pulpit to purposely mislead people about who he is and where he is from has no business being in the pulpit.
But several of Caner’s most vocal critics have said they’re not trying to get him fired — they just want him to tell the truth and apologize to those he deceived. But Liberty University officials have apparently decided it’s more important to protect the Ergun Caner brand. Southern Baptists and Liberty University have invested a lot in Caner’s persona, and now, in the words of one blogger, he’s “too big to fail.”
Back in February, in an effort to brush the controversy aside, Caner put out a statement some of his defenders characterize as an admission or apology. Here’s a portion of what it said:
I have never intentionally misled anyone. I am sure I have made many mistakes in the pulpit in the past 20-plus years, and I am sure I will make some in the future. For those times where I misspoke, said it wrong, scrambled words, or was just outright confusing, I apologize and will strive to do better.
This statement satisfied some people who want the controversy to go away, but it only inflamed others. Trying to pass off his false claims as mistakes feels to some critics like compounding the original lies with equally and embarrassingly transparent new ones. Caner has since pulled that statement from his Web site, but it’s still online at a Southern Baptist news site.
The Persecution of Ergun Caner
The current controversy about Caner’s “embellishments” is not the first one the pugnacious Caner has found himself in. He’s been part of sometimes heated debate over Calvinist theology within the Southern Baptist Convention. He’s a critic of one evangelical strategy for proselytizing to Muslims, and in February he called the president of the denomination’s International Mission Board a liar, for which he has since apologized. His word for fellow Baptists who might complain about Glenn Beck, a Mormon, being asked to speak at Liberty’s graduation? “Haters.”
Caner and his backers have energetically played the religious persecution card and attacked the motives and even faith of his critics. Caner wrote in a memo to Liberty faculty that “I never thought I would see the day when alleged ‘Christians’ join with Muslims to attack converts.” Both Khan and Baptist bloggers who continue to call for Caner to come clean have been barraged with hostile commentary.
Pastor Wade Burleson says that when one of his congregants, blogger Debbie Kaufman, first asked him about the Caner controversy, he told her he wasn’t interested. She poked around on her own and wrote a post asking questions about some of the discrepancies in Caner’s record. The response from Caner and his supporters was swift.
Burleson says he got an urgent call from someone insisting he get Kaufman to take down her post, which the caller said was putting Caner’s life and family in jeopardy. Startled, Burleson read the post and was astonished to discover that Kaufman was only asking questions about Caner’s truthfulness. He said as much in a comment on her blog. But the pressure intensified; Burleson says Caner even called Burleson’s father to put pressure on him.
Liberty University pulled Caner’s disputed bio, and put up a stripped-down version that reportedly was personally approved by the chancellor. Other incriminating or embarrassing materials have been pulled offline after Caner critics called attention to them. Focus on the Family, for example, broadcast Caner’s 2001 “From Jesus to Jihad” sermon on its April 26, 2010 program. In that sermon, Caner said he didn’t know much about Christians the first 17 years of his life because “there’s not that many of them in Turkey or in Sweden.” But that broadcast has since disappeared from the online Focus archives.
Liberty University was silent until last week, when Elmer Towns, dean of the school of religion, told Christianity Today the university’s board was satisfied that Caner has done nothing “theologically inappropriate.” Said Towns, “It’s not an ethical issue, it’s not a moral issue. We give faculty a certain amount of theological leverage. The arguments of the bloggers would not stand up in court.” The Christianity Today headline framed the story as an attack on Caner: “Bloggers Target Seminary President.”
In response to the Christianity Today story, one of Caner’s critics wrote on his blog:
So Caner’s deception is not “ethical” or “moral.” If I were a lost person, this would be a huge step forward in my belief that Christianity itself is a lie, and Christian leaders are mostly hypocritical charlatans selling their spiritual elixirs, whose “ethical” and “moral” standards are much lower than the average non-Christian.
Some Baptist bloggers say Liberty is sending a message to its students that celebrity is more important than integrity. One of them, Oklahoma pastor Burleson, says he can no longer recommend Liberty to potential students.
‘Get out of our way’
Caner’s critics insist their goal is not his personal destruction. Several of the bloggers campaigning for truth-telling and apologies said they believe Caner is a powerful speaker and talented leader. They would support him keeping his job if only he would apologize. Tom Rich says that in one of Caner’s books, Why Churches Die, the besieged seminary president wrote that public sin requires public repentance. And what is more of a public sin, Rich asks, than standing in the pulpit at First Baptist Jacksonville and lying to thousands of people about having been trained to kill Americans the way the 9/11 hijackers did?
Asked why Caner and Liberty would refuse the path of public repentance in the face of such clear evidence, Burleson says he is “baffled,” and insists he is not Caner’s enemy. “He is my friend and my brother in Christ.” Burleson says he, like many others, is not above the temptation to embellish. He thinks that a public admission of wrongdoing and an apology would bring an end to the story. But the Liberty response — pretending it never happened, circling the wagon, making other people the problem — is “the height of dysfunction,” he says. And the longer such stonewalling persists, the worse it will be — for Caner and for Liberty.
It’s not clear how this will end. Some bloggers have circulated a draft resolution with the notion that they would bring it before the Southern Baptist Convention, but it’s extremely unlikely that convention officials would ever let it get to the floor. After the story broke out of the blogosphere last week into Christianity Today, the Associated Baptist Press did a more in-depth story. The increased attention to Caner’s well-documented deceptions may make it harder for Liberty University to make them go away.
Caner seems to hope his celebrity and his bluster will carry him through. His attitude toward his critics seems to mirror the attitude he expressed in his speech at last fall’s Values Voter Summit. He ended his talk with this message to Christians he said were not being outspoken enough on the issues of the day: “You need to preach, teach, and reach, or just shut up and get out of our way.”
NOTE: This article has been corrected. The quote from Elmer Towns, dean of Liberty University’s school of religion, contained an error in transcription in the original version.
Religious right leaders from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C., on Saturday for “May Day 2010: A Cry To God For A Nation In Distress.” Topics addressed from the podium ranged from decrying the evils of Dakota Fanning to praying for God to take over Hollywood. But then the prayer turned to Minnesota — and a state woman’s call for repentance after electing a Muslim to Congress, Rep. Keith Ellison.
The unidentified Minnesota woman took to the microphone to pray: “And father, we repent that we have not used godly wisdom when we have elected officials into elected positions in our state and nation, father, and that it has opened the door, that Minnesota holds the responsibility for placing the first Muslim in Congress, and, for that God, we repent.”
The organizers selected speakers for every state in the union to pray at the event. The event website, however, doesn’t list the name of speakers from Minnesota.
Is former 1/2-governor of Alaska and Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin trying to join the ranks of the Loons? On her Facebook page, Palin wrote:
My, have things changed. I was honored to have Rev. Franklin Graham speak at my Governor’s Prayer Breakfasts. His good work in Alaska’s Native villages and his charitable efforts all over the world stem from his servant’s heart. In my years of knowing him, I’ve never found his tempered and biblically-based comments to be offensive – in fact his words have been encouraging and full of real hope.
It’s truly a sad day when such a fine patriotic man, whose son is serving on his fourth deployment in Afghanistan to protect our freedom of speech and religion, is dis-invited from speaking at the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer service. His comments in 2001 were aimed at those who are so radical that they would kill innocent people and subjugate women in the name of religion.
Are we really so hyper-politically correct that we can’t abide a Christian minister who expresses his views on matters of faith? What a shame. Yes, things have changed.
Everybody join me now: Awwwwwwwwwww!
Apparently she was referring to the Army’s recent decision to rescind their invitation of Franklin Graham, son of the late Billy Graham, to their National Day of Prayer event. Army spokesman Col. Tom Collins said,
“Army leadership became aware of the issue and immediately recognized it was problematic. ” He added, “This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue.”
What I thought was truly hilarious was her saying, “His comments in 2001 were aimed at those who are so radical that they would kill innocent people and subjugate women in the name of religion.” Really? She MUST have missed the memo.
Here are his “tempered” and “biblically-based” comments about Islam:
In 2001, he said that Islam, not the radical version of Islam, but all of Islam “is is a very evil and wicked religion.” In 2001, he said:
We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion.
In 2006, he didn’t back down:
I know about Islam. I don’t need an education from Islam. If people think Islam is such a wonderful religion, just go to Saudi Arabia and make it your home. Just live there. If you think Islam is such a wonderful religion, I mean, go and live under the Taliban somewhere. I mean, you’re free to do that.
In a Wall Street Journal piece, Graham wrote: “the persecution or elimination of non-Muslims has been a cornerstone of Islamic conquests and rule for centuries. Graham said the Quran “provides ample evidence that Islam encourages violence in order to win converts and to reach the ultimate goal of an Islamic world.”So “tempered”and ”Biblically-based,” eh?
The Taliban are no more an example of Islam than the Hutaree are an example of Christianity. The terrorists of the Muslim flavor are no more representative of Islam than the pedophile Catholic priests are representative of Catholic Christianity. Please, Sarah, don’t comment about something which you clearly have little idea. Please, Sarah, keep watching Russia from your house and stay out of religion. Clearly, it is way, way, way above your pay grade.
Joseph Lieberman is a chameleon-like politician who has weathered many political storms throughout his career. From running as Vice President along with Al Gore to the recent health care reform efforts, he has been a controversial figure. His trajectory has been one of a politician who started out as a liberal progressive but has increasingly taken on the causes and issues of the right-wing.
He has embraced and aligned himself with controversial figures such as Pastor John Hagee, whose Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conferences he has spoken at and attended in the past. He even compared Hagee to Moses! Hagee believes in the Rapture and end times ideology which say Jesus will return to earth and lift all his followers into the clouds and all other human beings will eventually be destroyed in tumultuous chaos. It is an ideology that also states that all the Jews will be annihilated except for a few thousand who convert to Christianity. This is what Pastor John Hagee believes, isn’t it strange for Lieberman to compare him to Moses?
This brings us to our topic today in which John Lieberman casts himself as the spokesperson or analyst who knows the inner feelings of Muslims. Responding to news that President Barack Obama’s administration is no longer using the misnomer “Islamic terrorism,” Lieberman responded by saying “this is not the first time that Obama administration has tried to tiptoe around referring to Islam in its security documents and that it’s time to ‘blow the whistle’ on the trend. ”
Sen. Joe Lieberman slammed the Obama administration Sunday for stripping terms like “Islamic extremism” from a key national security document, calling the move dishonest, wrong-headed and disrespectful to the majority of Muslims who are not terrorists.
The Connecticut independent revealed that he wrote a letter Friday to top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan urging the administration to “identify accurately the ideological source” of the threat against the United States. He wrote that failing to identify “violent Islamist extremism” as the enemy is “offensive.”
The letter was written following reports that the administration was removing religious references from the U.S. National Security Strategy — the document that had described the “ideological conflict” of the early 21st century as “the struggle against militant Islamic radicalism.”
Lieberman told “Fox News Sunday” this isn’t the first time the Obama administration has tried to tiptoe around referring to Islam in its security documents and that it’s time to “blow the whistle” on the trend.
“This is not honest and, frankly, I think it’s hurtful in our relations with the Muslim world,” Lieberman said. “We’re not in a war against Islam. It’s a group of Islamist extremists who have taken the Muslim religion and made it into a political ideology, and I think if we’re not clear about that, we disrespect the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are not extremists.”
Lieberman, in his letter, noted that prior Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon documents also did not refer to “Islamist extremism.” He expressed dismay that the administration’s review of the Fort Hood shooting, in which alleged shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan was said to have had contact with a radical cleric beforehand, omitted the term.
“Unless we’re honest about that, we’re not going to be able to defeat this enemy,” Lieberman told “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s absolutely Orwellian and counterproductive to the fight that we’re fighting.” (emphasis mine)
Can you imagine the chutzpah involved in stating that “we disrespect the overwhelming majority of Muslims” by not using terms such as “Islamic extremism.” Hello Joe, Muslims feel disrespected when hypocritical politicians attempt to sully the name of their faith in a way that paints all Muslims as extremists. That is exactly what is done when offensive, wrong and illogical neologisms such as “Islamic extremism” are employed. They shed no light on the problem at hand, instead, it obfuscates the threat to America.
The disclaimer he gives about “we are not in a war against Islam” is an empty statement. It is stating the obvious, but when he then turns around and advocates usage of terms such as “Islamic extremism,” he contradicts himself because he falls into the trap of implying that extremism is intrinsic to Islam. A connection which is as absurd as comparing John Hagee to Moses.
Jason Linkins has this post in the Huffington Post on the American Family Association’s call for American Muslims to leave or be expatriated to other countries. (hat tip: Abdullah)
It seems like only a week ago that the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer (who is the AFA’s Director of Issues Analysis, perhaps because he has so many personal issues that need to be analyzed by professional psychopharmacologists), was saying that the Christian thing to do would be to round up all Muslim American citizens and deport them to Muslim countries, because surely that would solve a lot of problems? You know, by sending happy American citizens to other countries?
The most compassionate thing we can do for Muslims who have already immigrated here is to help repatriate them back to Muslim countries, where they can live in a culture which shares their values, a place where they can once again be at home, surrounded by people who cherish their deeply held ideals. Why force them to chafe against the freedom, liberty and civil rights we cherish in the West?
Well, naturally, such remarks call for a clarification, and, in keeping with the traditions of “clarifying,” Fischer basically swaps out one ridiculously abhorrent statement for another statement of equal ridiculous abhorrence, without really retracting the first.
Muslims who have become naturalized citizens, of course, would need to commit an act of treason to forfeit their citizenship and become eligible for repatriation. Based on the Constitution’s definition of treason in Article III Section 3 ["adhering to (the) Enemies (of the United States), (or) giving them Aid and Comfort"] treasonous acts are likely committed on virtually a weekly basis here in the U.S. in many mosques and Islamic organizations.[...]
Muslims continue to have as their objective the Islamization of the entire world, including the U.S., and are taught by their god to use force where necessary to accomplish the goal. The current objective of Muslim activists is to create a brand new Islamic state – meaning a state like New Jersey or Montana – out of existing jurisdictions and establish a virtual Islamic homeland in our midst.
[...]
Many Muslims are on our shores on student visas and such and have not yet become citizens. We must politely decline their request for naturalization (becoming an American citizen is a privilege, not a right) and use the money we would otherwise spend on their welfare, their education, their medical care and their incarceration to graciously assist them in returning to their countries of origin.
Those who are willing to convert to Christianity and renounce Islam, Allah, Mohammed and the Koran may be welcomed, for they can become not just good Christians but true Americans.
Meanwhile, I am reliably informed by the Constitution of the United States that one of the freedoms we cherish in America is the right to worship whatever faith we bloody well please, so maybe it’s Fischer who needs to sail away on a little sloop in search of a land more to his liking?
On 27 March a previously previously unknown group, Europe of the Future, held a protest against the proposal to build a new mosque in Warsaw (see here and here).
A reader from Poland has drawn our attention to the rather bizarre fact that a Buddhist organisation played a leading role in the protest. The organisation is called Diamond Way and is headed by a Dane named Ole Nydahl. Our correspondent tells us that “members of the Diamond Way organisation were prominent in TV coverage of the demonstration against the mosque”.
Indeed, the Polish journalist Robert Stefanicki reports that Europe of the Future is headed by the former president of of Nydahl’s organisation in Poland. Stefanicki adds: “Other supporters of Europe of the Future are Mlodziez Wszechpolska (All-Polish Youths) – ultra right group with hardly hidden fascist attraction, as well as other islamophobic right wingers. Weird coalition, isn’t it?”
Ole Nydahl is apparently notorious for his anti-Muslim rhetoric. In a 2008 interview he was asked: “In your view, is there a redeeming value within the Abrahamic religions?” To which he replied:
“The Abrahamic religions, the ones that follow our constitution, treat women well, don’t blow up people … Judaism and Christianity are fine. Islam, I warn against. I know the Koran, I know the life story of Mohammad and I think we cannot use that in our society today. People like the Sufis and Bahá’ís are different, right. They are usually being killed as soon as the mainline Muslims come in, they start killing the other guys.”
Our Polish correspondent says they attended a lecture by Nydahl in Warsaw: “I had heard some comments previously that suggested that Nydahl held Islamophobic views, but I was frankly shocked as to the depth of his anger and hatred against Islam and Muslims, and the way he uses his position to preach much misinformation and factual inaccuracies regarding Islam and Muslims and to incite hatred against Islam amongst his followers.”
Granite City Baptist Church raised some eyebrows this weekend when it bought an ad (pdf) in the St. Cloud Times that questioned whether Muslims are a “threat” to America. “How do Moslems seek to take control of a nation?” the ad, which features a photo of Pastor Dennis Campbell, asks. “Moslems seek to influence a nation by immigration, reproduction, education, the government, illegal drugs and by supporting the gay agenda.”
The ad is part of a string of incidents in St. Cloud that troubles human rights advocates. Within the last year, pornographic posters depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammed were put up on St. Cloud telephone polls, and Muslim students in St. Cloud area high schools have reported religious harassment.
Last week, MPR reported on several racist Facebook groups that were created by St. Cloud high school students. “I hate the Somalians at Tech High,” was one such group. Kyle Adams, a former student at St. Cloud Technical High School (he was kicked out for repeatedly using racial slurs) told MPR, “I was raised in believing that this country was founded upon a white Christian nation and the belief of racial separation.”
The Granite City Baptist Church ad seems to mirror some of that anti-Muslim sentiment. “What happens when Moslems take over a nation?” asks Campbell in the ad. “They will destroy the constitution and force the Moslem religion on the society, take freedom of religion away, and they will persecute all other religions.”
If the words “Christianity” were replaced with “Islam,” Robert Spencer would be saying how all of this is confirmed by the Quran, blah blah blah. However would he be brave enough to say that what this English priest is saying is confirmed by the Bible?
Just imagine if a Muslim Imam had said that?
A British pastor offended his parishioners by encouraging women to “be silent” and “submit” to their husbands, The Sun reported Saturday.
Church of England reverend Angus MacLeay issued a leaflet to churchgoers saying that women should not speak if questions could be answered by their husbands.
The leaflet, entitled The Role of Women in the Local Church, adds that wives should “submit to their husbands in everything.”
It continues, “Wives are to submit to their husbands in everything in recognition of the fact that husbands are head of the family as Christ is head of the church.
“This is the way God has ordered their relationships with each other and Christian marriage cannot function well without it.”
Dozens of women canceled their membership at St. Nicholas Church in Kent, England, where married MacLeay is rector after the leaflet was handed out.
Last Sunday, the curate at the same church delivered a medieval-style sermon called Marriage and Women, telling women to submit to their husbands to make marriage work.
Reverend Mark Oden, a married father-of-three, told the congregation, “We know marriage is not working.
“We only need to look at figures – one in four children has divorced parents. Wives, submit to your own husbands.”
During the sermon, Rev. Oden also blamed “modern woman” for the high divorce rates in the U.K.
One female member of the church said she was “disgusted” by the sermon and will no longer be attending that church, adding, “How can they talk that way in the 21st Century?
“No wonder the church is losing touch if this is the kind of gobbledegook they want us to believe in.”
Rabbi Nachum Shifren is a West Bank Settler, a teacher in the Los Angeles educational system and a surfer. The last time he came to the attention of the media was for his books on surfing and spirituality. He implied then that he wasn’t into politics, Denise Dowling of Salon.com wrote at the time,
The Surfing Rabbi will talk religion, but not politics. If pressed on his views, it’s evident how he earned the nickname “Shifty.” “My politics are not germane to what I’m doing,” he demurs. “All I’m about is surfing.”
Yet even then there were hints that he was deeply political and that his allegiance was to extreme right-wing Zionist ideology,
Yet he opted to reside in Kfar Tapuah, a West Bank settlement perched a half-hour from the “lousy” Mediterranean surf. Kfar Tapuah is considered an extremely militant, right-wing, anti-government stronghold. “I’d compare its residents to white militants in the United States,” says Hagit Yaari, an Israeli spokesperson for Americans for Peace.
Kfar Tapuah is the settlement where Israeli police recently arrested an remorseless extremist Jewish settler who was killing Palestinians. Now Rabbi Shifren is running to be a State Senator in California and what he is saying doesn’t reflect the peaceful rhythms of the Ocean but instead reflects a hateful ideologue filled with bigotry against Islam. I haven’t investigated his past statements thoroughly but there is no need to waste time to find his views, his most recent article sums it up quite directly.
Shifren writes on a recent student protest at UC Irvine where 11 students were arrested for protesting the visit of Israel’s Ambassador to America, Michael Oren on the grounds that he represents a government which perpetrates “war crimes, violates international law, and subjugates and oppresses Palestinians.” Shifren believes that they will get off too lightly and he wants them jailed and expelled from the university.
In an article he penned, Cal. Senatorial Candidate Responds to Muslim Hooliganism, Rabbi Shifren writes that the protesters weren’t just “rude, and disrespectful students” but they “are the front line of an army of Muslims that is waiting patiently to take over and subvert our country.”
The article doesn’t make a lot of sense a lot of the time but he goes on to repeat many of the stereotypical essentialist, paranoid, anti-Muslim statements that we are used to from Islamophobes,
For instance the canard that Muslims only respect strength,
The rule that we in the West refuse to acknowledge is simply that to the muslim, whoever is perceived as strong, will be feared and will survive; and whoever is seen as weak, irresolute, or wavering, will be despised and will be vanquished.
He also states that he believes we are at war with Islam,
This will be a hard bullet for America to bite, but we are at war with Islam! Those who deny this are quislings or fifth-columnists — and very often, university professors and chancellors. With strong leadership, there would be no notions of “academic freedom” for those who come here to subvert and destroy.
These students weren’t just protesters but according to Rabbi Shifren are “Muslim terrorists-in-training,” who are “breeding” like crazy on our university campuses,
Make no mistake: these students are the probing squads that are testing the waters to see what they can get away with, positioning themselves to ultimately shut down the entire campus when they please. These are among the first salvos in a war that, until now, has been only academic and ideological — at least in this country.
If you want to see where we are headed, if we don’t find the courage to stand up to and defeat these muslim terrorists-in-training, just look to France, Spain, England and other countries where muslims have been allowed to get a toe-hold. Or consider the carnage caused by just one insane muslim terrorist at Fort Hood, then multiply that many times over, as more muslim terrorists consolidate their power base in our country — and our state and their favorite breeding grounds, our campuses!
Hurry, the Mooslims are coming, the Mooslims are coming, in fact they are here!
Without strength of character in our leaders, and the courage of our people, we are poised to become just another chapter in history — right next to the debauched and pillaged societies of Greece and Rome. The muslim onslaught is at the gates; they are weary of our self-indulgence and they abhor our eroding social mores and valueless culture. They are sharpening the long knives, knowing that their time will come shortly.
Of course Rabbi Shifren thinks he has the “strength of character” to be a leader, but the reality seems to be he that he is not fit to be a teacher. Can one imagine him teaching a diverse classroom of students that includes Middle Easterners and Muslims? Can we trust him to to be respectful, even handed? In fact can we trust him to educate and open the minds of youth when the bigotry that he revels in indicates that his mind is narrow and constricted?
I urge readers to contact the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to lodge a formal complaint that due to the preponderance of bigoted and hate filled comments by Rabbi Nachum Shifren he is not fit to teach in the school system and should be disciplined.
LAUSD information:
Address: 333 S. Beaudry Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Phone: (213) 241-4131 (thanks Usman)
The Video from the Protest at UC Irvine of Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren:
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira has been arrested for allegedly firebombing a mosque. Rabbi Shapira published a book entitled The King’s Torah in which he claimed that it was permissible under Jewish law for a Jew to kill a non-Jewish civilian (including a child). He also advocated the expulsion or genocide of all male Palestinians above the age of thirteen.
One month ago, CNN reported:
Jerusalem (CNN) — Israeli police were questioning a relative of the late Jewish extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane in its probe of a Palestinian mosque firebombing in the West Bank earlier this month.
Today, BBC News reports:
Rabbi arrested, suspected in West Bank mosque arson
Israeli police have arrested a rabbi on suspicion of involvement in an arson attack on a mosque last month.
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the head of a Jewish seminary in the settlement of Yitzhar, was arrested after he refused to co-operate, police said.
Mr Shapira denies any involvement in the attack, his lawyer was quoted in the Israeli media as saying.
Attackers burned the mosque’s carpet and a shelf of Qurans, and wrote slogans in Hebrew on the floor.
Police arrested some students from the seminary, the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva earlier this month, saying they wanted to investigate whether they were involved in the mosque attack.
Security sources said Rabbi Shapira was “suspected of involvement in an attempt to set fire to a mosque”.
Rabbi Shapira’s lawyer told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahranot that his client “denies any connection to the event”.
He was not co-operating with his investigators “in light of the Israel police’s conduct and their treatment of rabbis recently,” he said.
Rabbi Shapira published a controversial book last year which includes discussion of interpretations of the circumstances under which Jewish law permits Jews to kill non-Jews.
There have been protests by seminary students and a right-wing member of the Knesset outside the police station where he is being held.
The article then talks about extremist Jews who are threatening to attack Palestinians unless the Israeli government acts in a certain way:
Some hard-line settlers say they will attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.
It is a policy they call the “price tag”.
All Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
The price tag for the settlements? Palestinian blood. (Sorry, VISA or Mastercard not accepted.) The goal is to make it too costly to restrict illegal Jewish settlements. That’s the textbook definition of terrorism:
(n) terrorism: (the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear
The earthquake in Haiti and its tragic aftermath has been consuming the airwaves and media at large with many rushing to aid Haiti in this time of dire need. Then there are those who are using this situation to mock Haiti and claim that this is just retribution.
In what can only be termed as a racist apology for colonialism and imperialism Pat Robertson essentially stated that the Haitians didn’t fight for their independence and freedom but instead “swore a pact with the devil” in which they would “serve him” if he gets rid of the French. This sounds like the narrative the defeated French would create to explain how they lost their colony to “blacks” and to soothe their hurt honor.
Rachel Maddow had the Haitian Ambassador on and he clarified what the Haitian Independence fight was all about and what it meant for the Americas:
Revd. Peter Mullen (pictured), Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate church in the City of London, offers a further sampling of his bigoted views on Muslims in a recent column in the Northern Echo.
Mullen, commenting on the attempted Detroit airplane bombing, writes:
‘…we are not fighting the murderous Islamic fundamentalists where they are at their strongest – and that is in Britain. We have not followed up the promises we made after the July 2005 London tube bombings.
‘For instance, the authorities still tolerate the informal operation of sharia law in Muslim areas. We support the Muslim Council of Great Britain which gives aid and comfort to Islamic extremism. The Government has refused to outlaw the Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation which preaches jihad. We have not prosecuted the fanatics in mosques and madrassas who advocate terrorism.
‘Our junk universities have allowed freedom of speech to the promoters of terrorism and provided sanctuary for Islamist students who shout the hate-filled slogans of al Qaida.’
Does the good Reverend not realize that voluntary Shari’ah councils in the UK are not an ‘informal operation’ but are mandated by the Arbitration Act, as are orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts?
And on what grounds does Mullen defend his assertion that ‘We support the Muslim Council of Great Britain which gives aid and comfort to Islamic extremism’?
He doesn’t substantiate the claim with any evidence, largely because nothing from the MCB would lead one to believe that it ‘gives aid and comfort to Islamic extremism’.
And had Mullen read the TaxPayers Alliances’ extensive study on the distribution of Prevent funds, or read Hansard for ministerial statements on allocation of various funds to Muslim organisations, he’d have known that the MCB is not financially supported by any body other than itself.
Mullen continues:
‘Effectually, our intelligence services are fighting this war with one hand tied behind their back. What is the use of their identifying extremist agitators and terrorists in the making if legislators do not allow them to take vigorous action against these enemies?’
What ‘vigorous action’ is Mullen proposing that legislators stand in the way of? Banning HT even though the Justice Secretary has acknowledged that there are no legal grounds for doing so? Torture, detention without trial, or the imposition of control orders? Or rendition perhaps?
‘All this official talk of young Muslims being “radicalised” – as if taking up terrorism were something passive – is particularly irritating.
‘As if these incipient mass-murderers were victims. They are not victims, but perpetrators of evil acts committed according to the dictates of their own perverted ideology.
‘They should be weeded out by all rational means; imprisonment or deportation. The so called educational institutions operating as schools for terrorism should be closed down’, he says.
It’s not the first time Mullen has courted controversy. ENGAGE had cause to write to the Bishop of London for comments Mullen made last year about Muslims on Hajj, to which we, sadly, got no reply. He wrote:
“They usually manage to stampede and slaughter quite a few hundred of their coreligionists. Just imagine for a moment what a field day the BBC and the leftwing press in England would have if anything even remotely as bad as that happened in Vatican Square at Christmas or Easter.”
In a different blog on Muslim prayer, Mullen wrote:
“[Muslims] certainly lend themselves to ridicule: sticking their arses in the air five times a day. How about a few little choruses, ‘Randy Muslims when they die/Find 70 virgins in the sky’?”
Last year he was forced to apologise for making derogatory, offensive comments about gays on one of his blogs yet, somehow, he managed to keep his column at the Northern Echo.
You can write to the editor of the Northern Echo, Peter Barron, (email: peter.barron[at]nne.co.uk) and ask why, despite these persistent displays of despicable bigotry and anti-Muslim sentiment, the Revd. Mullen continues to be offered a column in the paper to spout his venom?
Judith Townend on Journalism.co.uk remarks, ‘if you now search priest + sodomy, on Google most the results return articles about Peter Mullen. Ironic, that.’
Perhaps searches for ‘priest + bigot’ will return the same results.
Writing in the Times, Lord Carey explains why he he has signed up to a call for restrictions on immigration:
“The sheer numbers of migrants … threaten the very ethos or DNA of our nation…. Democratic institutions such as the monarchy, Parliament, the judiciary, the Church of England, our free press and the BBC … support the liberal democratic values of the nation. Some groups of migrants, however, are ambivalent about or even hostile to such institutions. The proposed antiwar Islamist march in Wootton Bassett is a clear example of the difficulties extremists pose to British society.
“Furthermore, the idea that Britain can continue to welcome with open arms immigrants who immediately establish their own tribunals to apply Sharia, rather than make use of British civil law, is deeply socially divisive.”
Conspiracy alert! Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk says “Muslims” are gradually conquering Europe. The comment from the Cardinal is fairly tame but and is directed more towards domestic consumption but still feeds into the narrative of conspiracy. (via Islamophobia-watch)
Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Archbishop of Prague, said Muslims were well placed to fill the spiritual void “created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives”.
“Europe will pay dear for having left its spiritual foundations and that this is the last period that will not continue for decades when it may still have a chance to do something about it,” he said.
“The Muslims definitely have many reasons to be heading here. They also have a religious one – to bring the spiritual values of faith in God to the pagan environment of Europe, to its atheistic style of life.
“Unless the Christians wake up, life may be Islamised and Christianity will not have the strength to imprint its character on the life of people, not to say society.”
The 77-year-old cardinal made his remarks in an interview to mark his retirement after spending 19 years as the leader of the Czech Church.
He said he did not blame Muslims for the crisis as Europeans had brought it upon themselves by exchanging their Christian culture for an aggressive secularism that embraced atheism.
“Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims, which is actually happening gradually,” he said.
“At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then.
“Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming.”
He called on Christians to respond to the threat of Islamisation by living their own religious faith more observantly.
Last year Cardinal Jose Policarpo, the Patriarch of Lisbon, warned Catholic women against marrying Muslims.
Italian Cardinal Giacomo Biffi also urged the Italian government to give priority to Catholic migrants over Muslims in order to protect his country’s religious identity.
The Vatican has also opposed Turkey joining the European Union partly because the Muslim country does not share the continent’s Christian heritage
It has now been revealed that the pastors of the Florida Church, Beverly and Blake Lorenz had knowledge of what they were doing before hand, and they also knew that they were breaking the law.
A former administrator at an Orlando church told investigators that the church’s pastors who took in a teenage runaway this summer knew that they were doing something unlawful.
In a sworn statement filed this week in Ohio, Brian Smith stated that “many lawyers” told pastor Blake Lorenz he was “breaking the law” by aiding the teen, Fathima Rifqa Bary.
Smith is a former administrator of Global Revolution Church, a church founded by husband and wife pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz.
Rifqa, then 16, ran away from her home outside Columbus, Ohio, in mid-July and hopped a Greyhound bus to Orlando.
She sought shelter with the Lorenzes, whom she met through an online prayer group.
Rifqa said she feared her Muslim family would harm her or kill her because she converted to Christianity. Her parents have denied the teen’s claim, and investigators found no proof of it.
According to the affidavit, Blake Lorenz told Smith that Lorenz and another church member went to the Orlando bus station and bought Rifqa a ticket under a false name. Before she arrived in Orlando, Lorenz also asked Smith for church money to pay some of her expenses, including the cost of a bed and a disposable cell phone.
Also in his affidavit, Smith said Blake Lorenz refused to call Florida’s Department of Children and Families when he was advised by police and others to report that Rifqa was living with them. Rifqa’s parents had reported her missing to Ohio authorities.
Prosecutors to make charging decision
Florida law says people cannot shelter an unmarried minor for more than 24 hours without the consent of their parent or guardian, or without notifying a law-enforcement officer of the child’s name.
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into the pastors’ role is complete, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Danny Banks said.
In upcoming weeks, FDLE will submit its case to the State Attorney’s Office, which will review the file and soon will make a charging decision, Banks said.
“I wish I could respond,” Blake Lorenz said Wednesday of Smith’s sworn statement. “The truth’s going to prevail. I’m not worried.”
He referred questions to lawyer Mat Staver, who was critical of Smith’s statement.
“There’s a lot of allegations in that affidavit that I know personally are not factual,” Staver said. “I’ve known the Lorenzes for 20 years. The last thing they would do is intentionally violate the law.”
Staver did not point to any specific charges that are incorrect but called Smith a disgruntled former employee.
Reached Wednesday, Smith said his sworn statement is truthful based on the information he had been told. And he said he “absolutely” is not a disgruntled former employee.
In an earlier interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Lorenz said he did call DCF.A DCF spokeswoman earlier confirmed the agency received four calls related to Rifqa’s case, but wouldn’t say who made those calls. The calls were received July 29, Aug. 6, and two on Aug. 7.
Rifqa’s story turned international
Rifqa stayed with the Lorenzes for more than two weeks before she was ordered into DCF custody by an Orange County judge.
Fearful that Rifqa would be sent back to her parents in Ohio, the Lorenzes in August alerted the Orlando media about a custody hearing.
Rifq’a story then turned into one of international intrigue with religious factions lining up against each other before and after custody hearings in Orlando.
Rifwa eventually was sent back to Ohio to live with a foster family.
The Lorenzes reorganized Global Revolution Church after their role in the Rifqa affair was disclosed. They now lead a congregation under another name.
In Smith’s sworn statement, he said he told Lorenz he was “very uncomfortable” with the Rifqa situation and spoke to his personal lawyer.
“My lawyer explained to me that they were in violation of several laws and to immediately hang up, call Blake and tell him to call DCF immediately,” Smith said in his statement. “She quoted several laws to me and the seriousness of them.”
“I called Blake and informed him of what the lawyer said. I implored him to call DCF immediately. He said he wouldn’t because they would just return her to her parents.”
Rene Stutzman of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Amy L. Edwards can be reached at aledwards@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5735.
[Zingel: "Tis the season to be hateful, fa la la la, la la la la! sing along kids!"]
It seems the attention mongers at Dove Outreach Ministries, you know that group that came up with “Islam is of the Devil” T-Shirts is at it again, this time they are trying to get their message out by transforming Christmas from a “Merry Holiday” into a “Hate Islam Holiday.”
This video, a compilation of Christmas lights displays from Gainesville, Florida, starts off like any other. You’ll see a nice selection of lights and houses decorated for the holidays. But the last display, from the controversial Dove World Outreach Center, is causing a bit of a stir in the neighborhood. It reads “Islam Is Of The Devil” and is clearly offensive to some residents.
Rod Parsley, a fundamentalist pastor who John McCain praised as a “spiritual guide” during the 2008 presidential campaign, is in big trouble—demonic trouble. Parsley has claimed that Islam is “the greatest religious enemy of our civilization and the world,” and argued that the historic mission of America is to see “this false religion destroyed.” (You can watch a video highlighting those comments here. After weeks of controversy, McCain finally repudiated Parsley in May 2008.) But it’s not Islam that’s causing Parsley problems these days. It’s Satan himself. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Parsley is saying his ministry is under a “demonically inspired financial attack.” Here’s the clip from his television program, “Breakthrough”:
The proximate cause of Parsley’s trouble, it seems, is a $3 million deficit for the fourth quarter and a $3.1 million legal settlement over a 2006 incident in which a two-year-old child in a Parsley-affiliated daycare center was spanked so hard that his “buttocks and legs were covered with welts and abrasions”:
The boy, then 2, said he was spanked with a “knife” by a substitute teacher. His parents, Michael and Lacey Faieta, believe it was a ruler…. The Faietas said Parsley refused to meet personally with them and that the church did not apologize or take accountability for the beating…. Mr. Faieta said he and his wife were “disgusted” and “saddened” by Parsley’s words.
Israel’s former Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef describes Islam as an “ugly” religion. (Hat tip: Ustadh) This is something that no American newspaper would report or discuss let alone Robert Spencer. Imagine if it had been Ali Gomaa the head Mufti of Egypt who said something like this about Christianity or Judaism. This also highlights a troubling trend from conservative Orthodox Rabbi’s disparaging and describing Islam and Muslims in hateful terms.
Israel’s top Rabbi, Shas party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, harshly criticized Islam as a religion and described it as an “ugly” faith during a speech he delivered on Saturday night for the occasion of Hanukah. The comments have left many in the Arab world questioning the role of religious leaders in the Jewish state. The Rabbi, according to a report by Egypt’s al-Youm al-Saba’a newspaper, who quoted the statements of the Rabbi from Israel’s Ma’arev daily newspaper, reportedly said, “Islam is the worst religion and a religion that disregards the rules of marriage and divorce among Muslims,”
Wafa Sultan, or as she is better known, Wafa Stalin eventually spoke at Ahavath Torah on December 3rd. Ahavath Torah, is the synagogue which is led by the “betraying” Rabbi Jonathan Hausman, an admirer of neo-Fascist Geert Wilders and all around sleaze ball.
Before Sultan’s speech at the synagogue, LoonWatch exposed the fact that she is a liar who is duping her audiences into believing her concocted biography, we also exposed her craven and insane desire to “nuke” and “crush” Muslims. She said at the time,
“I believe King Abdullah can change Islam overnight, but you need to put pressure on him to do it, and the same kind of pressure you put on Japan, you might need it“ at that moment someone from the audience interjects and asks, “atom bombs?” Wafa Sultan replies, “Yes. At some point the West will need to do it.” This statement is quite revealing considering how in 2007, at a right-wing David Horowitz funded conference called “Restoration Weekend,” Wafa Sultan said, “I will change 1.3 billion Muslims…they have to realize they have only two choices: to change or to be crushed.”
Yet, despite exposing her genocidal fantasies and calling on the synagogue and Rabbi Hausman to repudiate her they went ahead with the event, Hausman introduced Wafa as a “brave” woman and other similar cliches that we are used to hearing from Islamophobes when they are congratulating each other. In effect, they belligerently ignored and refused to address the facts that LoonWatch had uncovered about Wafa Stalin.
What was interesting about Wafa Sultan’s speech was that there seemed to be a veiled hint to LoonWatch in her opening remarks.
Special thanks to you Rabbi Hausman for your brave decision to invite me to speak for your congregation. I am certain it must be a great challenge for you to stand firm and defy the forces who easily surrender to ignorance, to political correctness and to intimidation.
How brave is it to invite a bigot and liar to your congregation to spout lies and hate? How much of a challenge was it for Rabbi Hausman to have Sultan speak at Ahavath Torah? Was there any resistance to the idea from congregants or administration at the synagogue? In reality what Sultan seems to be referencing is LoonWatch, as we called on Ahavath Torah and the Rabbi to repudiate her grisly comments and charlatan story.
Now that we are exercising our freedom of expression and exposing Wafa Sultan for the hate filled bigot that she is, she wants to cry that we are “intimidating,” that we are “politically correct,” that we are “ignorant.” Wafa, what is ignorant about exposing the fact that you lied about being subject to Shariah in secular Syria? What is politically correct about exposing the fact that you want to “nuke” and “crush” Muslims? What is “ignorant” about asking the quite logical question of how an atheist can still consider herself not just a Muslim, but a Muslim reformer? What is “intimidating” about asking a house of worship and a spiritual leader to repudiate such an obvious hate filled liar?
In the end, we are yet to hear Wafa Sultan answer the questions and points we have brought up, instead she has chosen to ignore them and fall back on her nauseating “victim” status.
Wafa Sultan, if you are brave enough please answer these questions:
-Isn’t it a contradiction in terms for one to be an atheist and at the same time to be a Muslim, let alone a Muslim reformer?
-Aren’t you lying when you say that you were subject to brutal shariah treatment during your thirty years in Syria, when for much of that time Syria was ruled by the Ba’athist secular dictator Hafez al-Assad who happens to come from the same sect as you?
-How could you witness the murder of your professor in your classroom in 1979 when no such murder is ever recorded to have taken place on campus, and a number of students and friends of yours have confirmed that such a thing never occured?
-Do you repudiate and apologize for your past comments, which we have recorded, in which you call for the “nuking” of Muslims, applying the same pressure to Muslims as you did to Japan in World War II, and saying that there are only two options for Muslims: to change or to be crushed?
A prominent evangelical pastor in Uganda, Martin Ssempa has proposed and received wide backing for a law which would jail homosexuals and murder “flagrant” homosexuals. He has received support for this from the president of Uganda and a large number of politicians. Ssempa, is connected to a number of American Evangelical organizations and politicians. What would happen if it were an Imam or a Muslim country proposing this legislation, you could be sure Spencer and company would be howling to the wind about it, but on this news story we hear not a peep from them.
KAMPALA – If Uganda?s recently tabled Anti-Homosexuality Bill becomes law, Frank Mugisha and other individuals found campaigning for gay rights will face the choice of going to jail or leaving the country.
Mugisha heads Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a leading sexual rights advocacy group that could soon be classed a criminal organization.
“I have never really considered moving out of Uganda. But if I cannot work within the country, then I will have to leave,” said Mugisha.
The bill has baffled legal experts who read it as the product of an over-zealous Evangelical community that is clueless about both Uganda?s constitution and international law.
But for the bill?s proponents, chief among them Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, who has repeatedly alleged that there exists an organized, western-backed plot to recruit people into homosexuality, the law is necessary to confront a national emergency.
Homosexuality is spreading, Buturo argues, and if people like Mugisha aren?t stopped they will continue to lure impressionable youths into their sinful lifestyle and thereby threaten the perpetuation of the Ugandan people.
“Who is going to occupy Uganda in 20 years if we all become homosexuals? We know that homosexuals don?t reproduce,” Buturo said last year when announcing plans to table the bill.
In one of its most curious provisions, the draft law calls on Uganda to nullify any international treaty or convention that is inconsistent with the spirit of anti-homosexuality.
“You cannot as a country say we will nullify all the treaties we have ratified in the past,” Sylvia Tamale of Kampala?s Makerere University Law School told AFP.
For Tamale, the bill?s composition reveals an absence of qualified legal input and an unhealthy amount of input from people like Martin Ssempa, a prominent Evangelical pastor and internationally known anti-gay crusader who has confirmed having contributed to the bill.
“It would be political suicide for any Ugandan politician to vote against this. Leaders will have to ask themselves, do I listen to my own people, or … to top down orders coming from New York and the UN,” he added.
Ssempa seems to relish the criticism hurled at him by western rights groups, but he is concerned the proposal will create a fissure within the Evangelical Church.
“The western church is going to find itself increasingly at odds with the African church and find itself in a situation where there is a split like in the Anglican Church,” he said.
Ssempa told AFP he was disappointed by a recent statement by American mega-Pastor Rick Warren, who delivered the convocation at US president Barack Obama?s Inauguration.
Warren did not mention the Anti-Homosexuality Bill specifically, but said he and his wife ended their relationship with Ssempa, “when we learned that his views and actions were in serious conflict with our own”.
Mugisha is an unlikely candidate to be at the centre of such politically charged debate.
From SMUG?s humble three-room office in a Kampala suburb he explained he never wanted to become a political advocate.
While in university, he volunteered as an undercover health researcher, finding out which clinics could treat certain conditions and where gay men could access the things necessary for safe sex.
He distributed the information on-line and through a small support group he founded.
When SMUG?s leadership learned about his work, they lobbied him to get involved.
At first reluctant, he eventually gave in, and was appointed chairperson of the group in 2007.
He smiled when recounting his earlier health work.
“These young boys, they didn?t know anything about being protected,” he said, half-laughing.
If the new bill had been in place at the time, Mugisha?s attempts to promote safe sex could have qualified as a crime. “Aiding and abetting homosexuality” attracts seven years in prison.
LGF has a post on a UK Jewish council that is urging Jews not to be fooled by fascists and Islamophobes. Interestingly, Pamela Geller and Rabbi Jon Hausman don’t seem to have gotten the memo, as both are open and belligerent supporters of Euro-Supremacists such as Geert Wilders and Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE).
British Jewish advocacy group CST appeals to Jews not to take part in an upcoming demonstration by far right Eurofascists: Don’t be fooled by Islamophobia.
A small Islamophobic group, called Stop Islamisation Of Europe (SIOE), has called for 1,000 Jews to attend its forthcoming demonstration at Harrow mosque; and for each Jew to bring an Israeli flag.
This is strikingly similar to appeals that have also been made in recent months by the English Defence League (EDL). It is also essentially the same as opportunistic attempts by British National Party leader Nick Griffin to ditch both his and his party’s antisemitic heritage, by stressing his supposed new-foundsupport for Israel and Jews.
SIOE’s appeal for Jewish participation sits alongside this grotesque Islamophobic image on its website:
If a Jew cannot understand why the image is racist, or hateful, or bigoted then they should try imagining it as a synagogue: with blood dripping from a Star of David; with blood dripping down the rabbi’s pulpit; and with blood dripping from the mouth of a skull that wears an Israeli army helmet. …
CST has raised awareness of the activities of extreme Islamist groups in the UK for many years. But to demonise an entire community, every Muslim and every mosque, in the way that SIOE does, shows exactly the kind of bigotry from which Jews have suffered so often in our history. For SIOE to appeal to Jews tosupport them shows a complete ignorance of the Jewish experience of being on the receiving end of exactly this type of politics. …
Hatred, division, cycles of inter-communal violence, intimidation and polarisation feed the extremists on every side. They encourage social division and leave all minorities vulnerable. Anti-Muslim bigotry is a vital recruiting sergeant for both the far right, and its Islamist extremist counterparts. It generates votes for the BNP and, at the furthest ends of this political spectrum, it even provides the fuel for terrorism. British Jews should have no part of it.
The SIOE is trying to use British Jews for two purposes: 1) to give them cover and deflect accusations of fascism, and 2) to enrage any Islamists at Harrow mosque and try to provoke them to violence.
We reported recently that Ahavath Torah invited Wafa Sultan, a known bigot and loon to speak at their Synagogue. At the time we weren’t sure what the motivation was, whether it was done out of malice or ignorance, we wrote,
It seems the Synagogue is either unaware of Sultan or is not interested in harmony or critical dialogue and factual knowledge about its Muslim neighbors but instead seeks to plant the seeds of animosity and hate.
We now can confirm that the true intent of bringing Sultan was not to educate congregants about Islam or the threat of radicalism but to fan anti-Muslim Islamophobia. The spiritual leader of Ahavath Torah is one Rabbi Jon Hausman, we hate to give him more publicity than he deserves but a little background on him will clear this matter up sufficiently.
Rabbi Hausman is a friend and admirer of Geert Wilders, the neo-fascist Dutch politician who has called for the deportation of Muslim citizens, banning the construction of Mosques, the banning of religious freedom for Muslims, the banning of the Quran, a tax on hijabs and other similar nonsense. Rabbi Hausman invited Wilders to speak to his congregation where he spouted verbatim the above positions. Wilders, bestowed on the Rabbi the “honorific” title of “the Warrior Rabbi” which coming as it does from a fascist should send shivers down the spine of any sensible person who cares about Democratic values. That Hausman can revel in such praise from a vile cretin like Wilders exposes his moral bankruptcy and reveals how unfit and inept he is to lead a congregation. I posit another title for Hausman, instead of “the Warrior Rabbi” he may better be known as “the Betraying Rabbi” for his betrayal of Judaic values and “never again” for any people.
In our original article we asked concerned people of all faiths to contact Ahavath Torah and Rabbi Hausman and politely ask why they had invited Wafa Sultan and to reconsider their invitation. Rabbi Hausman responded to the polite emails by calling the people who sent them “nutjobs.”
On a right-wing website defending Rabbi Hausman’s decision, we learn that one of our readers, John sent him this email:
Forwarded Message: Regarding your invitation to Wafa Sultan on Dec 3rd
Regarding your invitation to Wafa Sultan on Dec 3rd
Thursday, November 26, 2009 3:53 AM
To: Rabbi Hausman
I am responding to an online campaign at loonwatch.com, which is asking your synagogue to review your decision to invite Wafa Sultan to the Ahavath Torah Congregation Thursday, Dec. 3, at 7:30 p.m.
Please see these news article at Loon Watch, and I am responding to their request to write a polite letter to your synagogue.
Why is Ahavath Torah Synagogue Inviting Wafa Sultan?
I would draw your attention the fact that Wafa Sultan is also on record as stating:-
“Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492 America was founded in 1776 approximately 300 years later. You cannot blame America– as a constitution, a regime, and state for killing the Indians.”
My own feelings regarding this are as follows:-
Sultan is a known bigot. Inviting such a person to a synogogue, does nothing for improving interfaith harmony. No less a distinguished figure than Judea Pearl, the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, walked out on of one her talks due to her bigotry. If a Jew whose son was killed by terrorists in Pakistan can see through a hate mongering opportunist, it does not behoove a synagogue to invite her. It will also do nothing for Muslim Jewish relations in Stoughton. I would say exactly the same thing to an Imam if his mosque invited Israel Shamir who claims to be an ex-Jew to speak on Jewish history.
I would appreciate it if you could read the reports above.
Kind Regards and Shalom.
John P Turner
How did the Rabbi respond?
Everyone,
Could it be that I’ve ruffled a few feathers?!? Could it be that these people want to stifle inquiry into the dark inner recesses of Islamic doctrine? Could it be that I don’t care what these nut jobs think and I won’t be intimidated? Most likely the second and third questions….
The Warrior Rabbi
Notice the very un-Jewish ego on the Rabbi. He signs his response with the “Warrior Rabbi.” Strange indeed for a spiritual leader. Instead of ad hominem attack why can’t the Rabbi respond to the substantive points in the email? Does he even have a response? No one is scared of you “Mr. Warrior Rabbi,” people are just wondering why you have invited a bigot to speak to your congregation? If it is because you hate Islam than at least have the guts to say so.
Jewish leader Marke Pelavin comes out against Pat Robertson’s anti-Muslim remarks. He should be commended for commenting on this issue and condemning Robertson. We wish Governor-elect of Virginia Bob McDonnell, who receives monetary support from Robertson, could be as principled.
Pelavin: Rev. Robertson’s opposition to the President’s message is more than a simple “disagreement.” Religious tolerance and diversity are central to the character of our nation.
WASHINGTON, November 15, 2002 – In response to Reverend Pat Robertson’s rejection of President Bush’s call for greater religious tolerance, Mark Pelavin, Associate Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and Director of the Commission on Interreligious Affairs of Reform Judaism, issued the following statement:
Rev. Robertson’s opposition to the President’s message is more than a simple “disagreement.” Religious tolerance and diversity are central to the character of our nation.
Immediately following the President’s recent denunciation of intolerant remarks about Islam, in a November 14th interview on The 700 Club (Christian Broadcasting Network), Rev. Pat Robertson once again voiced shrill, bigoted remarks, as he called on “Jewish friends in America …[to] read the Koran, and see what it says…and when you get through, do us a favor, and don’t criticize your friends, but see who your real enemies are.”
Rev. Robertson’s askew and narrow-minded interpretation of Islam is offensive, not only to the majority of peace-loving Muslims worldwide, but to all who cherish the fabric of cultural and religious diversity that defines our nation. In the current climate of xenophobia, responsible religious and political leaders must denounce such bigotry. There is a palpable need for the kind of interfaith dialogue that fosters tolerance and understanding across cultural differences, and, yes, which allows us to ardently challenge each other when we think a partner is wrong and has failed to squelch religious bigotry and intolerance.
In this spirit, we welcome President Bush’s recent remarks. Rev. Robertson’s opposition to the President’s message is more than a simple “disagreement.” Religious tolerance and diversity are central to the character of our nation. We call on Rev. Robertson – and all religious leaders who have engaged in similar hateful speech – to honor the words of President Bush with an immediate apology, for the sake of religious decency.
Right-wing spokesmen, including some elected officials, rushed to place Yaakov “Jack” Teitel in the fringe group alongside Yigal Amir, Eden Natan Zada, Eliran Golan, Asher Weisgan, Danny Tikman and a few other “political/ideological” murderers.
True, they acknowledge, there are among us several lunatic rabbis who agitate to violence. Really, just a handful; even a toddler could count them.
The more stringent will note that unlike the Hamas government, our government does not pay the salaries of rabbis who advocate the killing of babies.
Is that so? Not really.
For example, government ministries regularly transfer support and funding to a yeshiva whose rabbi determined that it is permissible to kill gentile babies “because their presence assists murder, and there is reason to harm children if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us … it is permissible to harm the children of a leader in order to stop him from acting evilly … we have seen in the Halakha that even babies of gentiles who do not violate the seven Noahide laws, there is cause to kill them because of the future threat that will be caused if they are raised to be wicked people like their parents.”
Lior Yavne, who oversees research at the Yesh Din human rights organization, checked and found that in 2006-2007, the Ministry of Education department of Torah institutions transferred over a million shekels to the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar.
The Ministry of Social Affairs has allocated over 150,000 shekels to the yeshiva since 2007, scholarships for students with financial difficulties studying there. And what can they learn with the help of public funding from the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira? According to selected items published last week in the media, the boys can learn that Teitel is not only innocent, but also a real saint.
Their spiritual leader stated in his book, “Torat Hamelekh” that “a national decision is not necessary in order to permit the shedding of blood of an evil kingdom. Even individuals from the afflicted kingdom can attack them.”
A brochure distributed in Judean and Samarian communities stated that “needless to say that nowhere in the book does it state that these remarks are aimed only at gentiles in ancient times.”
The commandments in the book do not suffice only with gentiles; you can also find in them approval to attack leftist professors: every citizen in the kingdom opposing us who encourages the fighters or expresses satisfaction with their actions is considered a pursuer and his killing is permissible,” wrote the rabbi and adds, “and also considered a pursuer is someone whose remarks weaken our kingdom or have a similar effect.”
Not long ago, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that he would ask European Union countries to halt their support for the Breaking the Silence organization because he was displeased with their publications.
The minister surely has reservations about the rabbi’s publications.
He is invited to approach his colleagues at the Ministry of Education and at the Ministry of Social Affairs.
Pat Robertson, continues his mantra of banal loonacy. Chock this up in the record book of his crazy comments.
Conservative commentators are ratcheting up anti-Muslim rhetoric in the wake of last week’s Fort Hood massacre, with televangelist Pat Robertson leading the way with a declaration that Islam is “not a religion,” but a “political system” bent on destroying all the world’s governments.
In a commentary on his show, The 700 Club, Robertson noted that the alleged shooter in the Fort Hood massacre, Nidal Malik Hasan, had come to the attention of authorities prior to the rampage by emailing a radical cleric and trying to contact Al Qaeda.
“Nobody wanted to go after him because of political correctness,” Robertson said on Monday. “We just don’t talk about somebody’s quote ‘religion,’ even if the religion involved beheading infidels and pouring boiling oil down their throats.”
Robertson said Islam should be treated like a fringe political movement.
An Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in the West Bank has written that it is permissible for Jews to kill Gentiles including children and babies who threaten Israel or break the commandments. This is a strange pronouncement not in line with what the majority of Jews believe but we must ask what if the Rabbi was an Imam, what would the reaction be?
Just weeks after the arrest of alleged Jewish terrorist, Yaakov Teitel, a West Bank rabbi on Monday released a book giving Jews permission to kill Gentiles who threaten Israel.
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book “The King’s Torah” that even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation.
Shapiro based the majority of his teachings on passages quoted from the Bible, to which he adds his opinions and beliefs.
“It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation,” he wrote, adding: “If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments – because we care about the commandments – there is nothing wrong with the murder.”
Several prominent rabbis, including Rabbi Yithak Ginzburg and Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, have recommended the book to their students and followers.
Why has Elie Wiesel, the renowned author of Night, a book which many consider to be part of the canon of 2oth century literature spoken at a CUFI (Christians United for Israel) conference? This is astounding considering that CUFI is an apocalyptic organization which holds some very strange, some would characterize Anti-Semitic views. It is also an organization that is virulently anti-Muslim and Islamophobic.
This is a letter that some concerned individuals in the Jewish Community sent to Mr. Wiesel in the hope that he would cancel his speech at CUFI.
Your years of tireless campaigning for human rights and against anti-Semitism have earned our deepest respect. For this reason we have written the following letter in hope that you will reconsider your support of events sponsored by John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. We realize that the outward show of support for Jews and Israel, on display at Hagee’s CUFI events, can be very enticing but there is another aspect of Christian Zionism which we believe runs strongly counter to Jewish and Israeli interests.
John Hagee teaches “theological racism,” the idea that the destiny of peoples is based on their biblical genealogy. Hagee claims Jewish souls are different from those of gentiles and that, according to divine plan, Jews have no right to live anywhere on Earth but in Israel. Hagee’s fellow Christian Zionists predict that a coming, divinely ordained paroxysm of anti-Semitic violence, a “second Holocaust,” will be necessary to force all Jews to make aliyah. From the pulpit, pastor Hagee and his fellow Christian Zionists preach their theological racism that risks provoking such a catastrophe.
When you attend CUFI events, you will receive a great deal of outward affection and participate in singing and celebration that looks and sounds Jewish. However, this is a manifestation of a volatile millennial cycle, an exuberant embrace of “Hebrew roots” founded on the expectation that this generation will bring about the fulfillment of “God’s plan for Israel.” There is some argument among Christian Zionists about the exact timing and details of this plan, but on one point they are absolutely consistent; the ingathering of Jews to Israel, and the elimination of Rabbinic Judaism as part of Israel’s “restoration,” are required for the 1000 year reign of Christ.
Our combined years of research have produced a substantial body of documentation on the anti-Semitic face of Christian Zionism. Last May, one small piece of that documentation was widely publicized through a video by Bruce Wilson that included a quote, from a sermon John Hagee gave in 2005, in which pastor Hagee stated “…then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter.” Amidst the ensuing publicity, presidential candidate John McCain rejected Hagee’s political endorsement.
John Hagee’s attacks on Judaism are well documented and have included calling Hillel an extremist whose followers incited both the killing of Jesus and centuries of anti-Semitism. From the pulpit Hagee has claimed that the anti-Christ is “partially Jewish, as was Adolf Hitler.”
Hagee also preaches that European-based Rothschilds control the US economy, through the Federal Reserve, and conspire to attack the American middle class by devaluing the dollar. According to the ADL, this class of Federal Reserve conspiracy theory, which names Rothschilds, is a “classic anti-Semitic myth.” ADL traces it to Christian Identity, one of the most overtly anti-Semitic sectors of American society but one which uses “Hebrew” symbols and Christianized version of Jewish holidays because, according to Identity theology, Christians, not Jews, are the “true Israelites.”
Christian Identity’s roots are based a millennial movement that was “philo-Semitic,” but which in the early 20th century rejected Jews as impostors descended from Esau and the Edomites. This narrative can still be seen throughout Identity media. In his 2006 book Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee promotes a similar theological claim, that a lineage of “half-breed Jews,” descended from Esau and which included Adolf Hitler, have persecuted full-blooded Jews throughout history. Hagee writes that God intends to exterminate that “half-breed Jew” line.
Christian Identity’s overt anti-Semitism has very limited appeal and reach. Cloaked in the guise of “love” for Jews and Israel, John Hagee’s conspiracy theories and theological racism can be consumed without guilt by listeners in the 190 nations Hagee claims to reach through Christian television and radio broadcast networks.
How can John Hagee so sincerely and convincingly claim to love Israel while introducing theological racism to a international audience?
The widely taught prophecy narrative of the “fishers and hunters” of Jeremiah 16 helps to explain this paradox. Christian Zionists see themselves as the “fishers” who must befriend and cajole Jews, through emotional and financial support, to fulfill their prophetic destiny. Meanwhile, the “hunters” are overt anti-Semites who will force the remaining Jews of the world to flee to Israel. In order for the Christian Zionist prophecy of the “restoration of Israel” to be fulfilled, there must be a future wave of violent anti-Semitism in which the world will turn on Jews and Israel.
The quote which our research team provided to the press from Hagee’s 2005 sermon series, “Jerusalem Countdown,” concerned Hitler’s role as a “hunter” in the “fishers and hunters” narrative. But Hitler did not succeed in forcing all Jews to flee to Israel, and even those Jews who have settled in today’s modern state of Israel have not met the prophetic requirement of “spiritual restoration,” which is acceptance of Jesus. In his 2005 sermon Hagee also stated, “they [the Jews] are physically alive but they’re not spiritually alive. Now how is God going to cause the Jewish people to come spiritually alive…”
Many Christian Zionist leaders describe their prophecy of the “time of Jacob’s trouble” as the second or final holocaust of the Jews. Tom Hess, in Let My People Go, pleads with Jews to leave the U.S. before it is too late, and Hess details his vision of trains all over the world taking Jews from major cities. In her best-selling fictional portrayal of the Jewish people, Israel My Beloved, Kay Arthur has portrayed the coming persecution to be “beyond the horrors of Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz.” Richard Booker’s Blow the Trumpet in Zion features a list, on the back cover, of the book’s topics, including “Why Christians Should Love Jews” and “The Jews’ Final Holocaust.” Booker explains that nothing less than this “final holocaust” can bring the Jews back to God, and Jesus can not be king of all the world until Jews accept him. Paradoxically, these Christian Zionists seek to “bless Israel” and show their “love” for Jews through fulfillment of a prophecy in which Judaism is eradicated.
All three of these Christian Zionist leaders have become involved in the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus, which is working to raise millennial expectations to a fevered pitch – with the endorsement of the Israeli government. Some may view their support as politically valuable, but Christian Zionists are helping to spread around the globe a dangerous obsession with Jews and Israel.
Mr. Wiesel, you have spent your life teaching the world about the dangers of anti-Semitism. Please do not provide legitimacy to John Hagee and other Christian Zionists who have spent their careers teaching that the elimination of Judaism is the will of God and the divine plan for Israel. Yes, the exuberant singing, dancing, and tears of Christian Zionists are indeed a celebration of their love for Israel – but that is a strange and terrible love, not too far from hate, which seeks a very different Israel than the one of Jewish hopes and a very different future for the world than the vision of peace and coexistence for which you have fought all of these years.
Sincerely,
Bruce Wilson
Rachel Tabachnick
Notes:
Elie Wiesel is scheduled to speak at John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church on Sunday, October 25 for a CUFI Night to Honor Israel event.
Bruce Wilson is the co-founder of Talk2action.org and produced the nationally televised video clip on Hagee’s 2005 sermon series, “Jerusalem: Countdown To Crisis”. (Despite Hagee’s comments, the quote came from a 2005 sermon in which Hagee later referred to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.)
Rachel Tabachnick also contributes to Talk2Action.org and is the author of “God’s Plan for Israel, The End Times Prophecy Narrative of Christian Zionism,” a free teaching resource on CD.
Fathima Rifqa Bary, has claimed that her parents are “radical Muslims,” yet the reality seems to be that it is actually she herself who has fallen into the ranks of radicals. We’re already very familiar with the extremist church she is involved with, theGlobal Revolution Church, which preaches that there is today an Armageddon between good (the Christians) and evil (the Muslims).
Now, let’s look into a different group she has associated herself with, namely The Call, another End of Times Armageddon invoking group. Here she is on a conference call with Lou Engle, the fanatical leader of the cult:
Up until about four minutes into the video she sounds fairly sane, but at about 4:20, suddenly she becomes possessed by what we can only assume is the Holy Spirit. She enters a trance-like state that to us normal human beings seems bizarre, to say the least. I’ve seen some preachers, Imams, and Rabbis have some crazy highs and lows in their speeches, but usually they build up to it. On the other hand, Fathima Rifqa just turned on the crazy from the very start; one second she’s talking like a normal human being and the next she starts yelling in a crazed delirium, reaffirming the view that she’s been brainwashed by fundamentalists.
By 5:44, she does her best Glenn Beck impression, i.e. fake crying. When the initial story broke, I saw some YouTube users claim that Fathima Rifqa was fake crying. I was skeptical, and gave her the benefit of doubt but when I saw the video of her talking to Lou Engle, I was really forced to reconsider my benevolence. It does seem that she can turn on the fake crying at will. It is therefore not so difficult to believe that she could also be faking this entire thing.
One other thing: in the Lou Engle conference call, pay close attention to the end of the video: they make it clear that Fathima Rifqa doesn’t care about her own safety; she will–as she says herself–go wherever God takes her. The reason for all of this–according to these people–is not to protect Fathima Rifqa Bary (since she is ready to be martyred) but to advertise Christianity to 50 million Muslims who need salvation. But wasn’t the entire court case about Fathima’s safety? I think the video really shows that it’s not about that at all; it’s about publicity.
For the last few days, I’ve been covering the right-wing effort to mobilize it own Christian forces to counter the “dark spiritual content” of the upcoming Muslim prayer rally. Tonight, activists gathered for a conference call/prayer rally hosted by the National Day of Prayer Task Force, headed by Shirely Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, Lou Engle of The Call, and featuring other activists like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Cindy Jacobs.
Tonight, this effort revealed itself to be part of the much larger Religious Right battle against Islam in America when the Religious Right’s latest cause célèbre, Rifqa Bary, joined the conference call.
At the beginning of the clip, Lou Engle is told by one of the other participants that “their little sister” is on the line, at which point Engle introduces Rifqa Bary to the conference call participants and asks her to share her story. Bary, sounding like a somewhat nervous but otherwise perfectly average teenager, recounts her conversion to Christianity and her decision to flee from the home of her Muslim parents in Ohio. Following that, Engle declared Bary to be “an Esther for such a time as this” and asks her to lead the call in prayer, which she agrees to do, at which point she becomes seemingly hysterical and rather incoherent while sobbing and praying, making it nearly impossible to understand what she is saying outside of her repeated cries to Jesus.
And then, just like that, she stops, seemingly catching the other participants off guard until Engle then chimes in with his own fervent prayers to God to “use Rifqa to be an Esther.” Soon Engle is joined by various others, all of whom pray for this modern day Esther who will lead Muslims out of Islam and into Christianity while asking God to spread Rifqa’s “so that the testimony of Jesus will go out to CNN, will go out to talk shows and use this little story so that all across America the Gospel will be preached” and to “expose the hidden darkness that is rolling into the nation through these ideologies.”
Eventually, Engle unmutes the conference call’s participants and asks them all to pray for Rifqa, at which point the call the descends into little more than chaos and static.
So this is all a publicity stunt to advertise Jesus. Here’s what I think happened: Fathima Rifqa was attracted to some fringe Christian groups due to their rhetoric. These Bible thumpers saw Fathima Rifqa as a tool they could use to boost their own publicity–a way to call the Muslim heathens to Jesus. They convinced a young and impressionable Fathima Rifqa that she wasn’t just some ordinary high school student but a prophet sent to the heathen nations.
Let’s investigate Lou Engle and The Call to see what kind of company Fathima Rifqa keeps. Engle is quite the loon. At first, I thought he had what psychiatrists would call akathisia, or the inability to sit still–a common side-effect of anti-psychotic medications. On closer examination though it seems that it’s malingering–part of his ploy to dupe impressionable young people that he speaks through the Holy Ghost. One mainstream Christian critic of his wrote:
As he spoke, Lou Engle constantly rocked back and forth, as apparently he almost always does now when preaching, under what he would claim to be the anointing of the Holy Spirit. His spiritual manifestations are supposed to be a sign that he speaks under the unction of the Holy Spirit and when the jerks, grunts, twiches and miscellaneous experiences and feelings get stronger, they supposedly bear witness to him and the audience that what he says is true and prophetic and the ‘glory’ and ‘anointing’ of the Lord is there testifying to it.
To see this conman bobbing and rocking, watch this here (it’s long so just watch a bit of it to see what I mean):
And here he is doing the same even when nobody is in the room except for the camera:
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a non-profit civil rights organization that tracks hate groups, cites Lou Engle as a prominent Joel’s Army pastor. Proponents of this theology (considered heretical by mainstream Christians) believe that the Christian youth will become a part of Joel’s Army that will physically “conquer the earth” and forcibly convert “the nations” to Christianity. Democracy will be overthrown and a literalistic Biblical law will reign supreme. Keep in mind that the Islamophobes like Robert Spencer and Pam Geller try to convince us that Muslims secretly want to conquer the entire world for Islam, overthrow democracy for a harsh understanding of Sharia, and convert the world to their religion.
Yet, here we have a girl (Fathima Rifqa Bary) associating with a man (Lou Engle) who is linked to a warlike theology that endorses the idea that Christian youth armies will conquer the entire world for Jesus, overthrow democracy, and forcibly convert non-believers to Christianity–and look at what side Spencer and Geller are on! On pp.226 of his book The Pathetically Incorrect Guide to Islam, Spencer demands that Muslims must “renounce sharia’s expansionist imperative,” yet I don’t see him demanding that radical Christian dominionists must renounce their desire to conquer by force the entire world for Christ. Well, it’s not surprising, since in his book, Spencer himself calls for a Crusade against Islam (Ibid., p.231), not unlike these Joel’s Army lunatics. So we’re coming full circle here. The nutters defending each other.
I urge you to read the article by SPLC, as well as this expose by another hate watch site known as the Box Turtle Bulletin. Here is an excerpt:
Lou Engle also echoes Brown’s embrace of martyrdom. Engle, whose own ministry is known as “The Call,” is closely aligned with a militant Christian Dominionist movement known as Joel’s Army.
Going back to the earlier article, Casey Sanchez (of the Southern Poverty Law Center) describes Engles as follows:
Joel’s Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian “dominion” on non-believers…
Joel’s Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they’re members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel’s Army…
“The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008,” writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity. “One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors.”
‘Snorting Religion’
Joel’s Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism…Joel’s Army followers believe that once democratic institutions are overthrown, their hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth, with one church per city…
The atmosphere is less charged with violence at “The Call,” a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths led by Joel’s Army pastor Lou Engle and held every summer in a major American city (this year’s event was scheduled for Washington, D.C. in August)…
As even his critics note, Engle is a sweet, humble and gentle man whose persona is difficult to reconcile with his belief in an end-time armyof invincible young Christian warriors. Yet while Engle is careful to avoid deploying explicit Joel’s Army rhetoric at high-profile events like The Call, when he’s speaking in smaller hyper-charismatic circles to avowed Joel’s Army followers, he can venture into bloodlust.
This March, at a “Passion for Jesus” conference…Engle called on his audience for vengeance.
“I believe we’re headed to an Elijah/Jezebel showdown on the Earth, not just in America but all over the globe, and the main warriors will be the prophets of Baal versus the prophets of God, and there will be no middle ground,” said Engle. He was referring to the Baal of the Old Testament, a pagan idol whose followers were slaughtered under orders from the prophet Elijah.
“There’s an Elijah generation that’s going to be the forerunners for the coming of Jesus, a generation marked not by their niceness but by the intensity of their passion,” Engle continued. “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. Such force demands an equal response, and Jesus is going to make war on everything that hinders love, with his eyes blazing fire.”
Although Joel’s Army theology is mainly directed at people in their teens and early 20s via events like The Call and ministries like IHOP, sometimes the target audience is even younger. In some of the most arresting images in “Jesus Camp,” a 2006 documentary about the Kids on Fire bible camp in North Dakota, grade school-aged kids dressed in army fatigues wield swords and conduct military field maneuvers. “A lot of people die for God and they’re not afraid,” one camper told ABC News reporters in a follow-up segment.
“We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” added another, “only in a funner way.”
Engle has a bunch of other views considered heretical by mainstream Christianity, such as the belief in “God men” and blood atonement. It is strange that so many Christians would want to place their trust in Fathima Rifqa Bary who has made her bed with such shady groups and people.
Her fascination with Lou Engle began long before. As Davi Baker of the SF Examiner notes, it was discovered that Lou Engle’s book entitled Digging the Wells of Revival was part of Fathima Rifqa’s reading material. Additionally, the group she found refuge in, the Global Revolution Church, has similar metanarratives. Baker writes:
On the pen drive found in her room was a reading list, and on that reading list was a book titled “Digging the Wells of Revival” by Lou Engle. The final chapter of that book is titled “The Hinge of History: Raising up the Nazirites.” …Some have teased that Rifqa’s writings indicate that she wants to be a prophet, but this is exactly what Lou Engle has in mind. Lou writes that God said to him, “America is receiving Her apostles, prophets, and evangelists, but She has not yet seen Her Nazirites!” Lou Engle has a long history of claiming direct communication with God, as well as prophetic dreams…
They seem to imagine some kind of army of super Christians who will appear in a moment of National crisis and win the day. What’s the crisis? Consider these statements from Lou’s homepage, TheCall.com. “There is a great spiritual conflict with a rising tide of Islamic boldness being manifested… we must have spiritual discernment as to the spiritual dark powers that are being invoked into our nation.” Compare that with similar statements from Blake Lorenz, the pastor of Global Revolution Church who housed Rifqa, “These are the last days, these are the end times, and this conflict between Islam and Christianity is going to grow greater. This conflict between good and evil is going to grow greater.”
The radical cult members and Fathima Rifqa are feeding off of each others’ delusions. As one astute blogger wrote:
These Evangelical Fundamentalists see signs and wonders everywhere while they look for the new prophets among this last generation the Elijahs and the Esthers who will lead others into the battle against the Devil. So as we have noted Lou Engle,Bill Johnson & other Evangelicals who adhere to these beliefs read into certain situations what may be more than what’s actually there.
So enter Rifqa Bary a convert from a Muslim American family who refers to herself as an Esther chosen to play a special role in the last days by God.She says she has had visions of angels and demons of God and Satan and hears God speaking to her directly . So to some she is a prophet to others possibly just a rather enthusiastic convert to Christianity and to others they wonder if she is either just delusional or whether the Evangelicals with whom she was in contact encouraged and fed her delusions. For instance like any true prophet she too must suffer and be ridiculed and harassed and victimized by non-believers so she may exaggerate all out of proportion certain events and encounters and the speech of others. In her case with the help of these anti-Islamic Evangelical Christians she has come to believe her parents want to kill her or that other Muslims are looking for her so they can kill her.
These “True Believers” latch onto her narrative and so believe that Rifqa is being persecuted by her family by Islam and by those who are in authority in part because they recognize who Rifqa is though they may not know this on a conscious level. So all facts surrounding her case are seen through this prism of signs and wonders and the persecution of the “Real Church” or “body of Christ” so they are not going to be easily convinced that they are wrong about Rifqa that she may just be another confused impressionable anxiety ridden teenager with a touch of meglomania.
I think Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Global Revolution Church, and The Call have used the psychological defense mechanism known as projection: they themselves are the radicals and extremists, but they project that onto Fathima Rifqa’s parents and the Mooslims in general. From what we can tell, Fathima Rifqa’s parents don’t seem too passionate, zealous, or dogmatic about their religion, not nearly as much as Fathima Rifqa and those she has joined. So the real question is: who is the real extremist here? Who is espousing the whole ‘holy war between Christianity and Islam’ ideology? Ironically, the group that Fathima Rifqa has associated herself with is linked to a theology that dictates that non-believers should be forced into the faith of Christianity.
We can draw some broader conclusions from this: those Islamophobes who have taken up the Fathima Rifqa case as their casus belli–including Robert Spencer and Pam Geller–are the real extremists, not the vast majority of Muslims whom they always point the finger at. It is after all Spencer, Geller, et al. who believe in a modern day Crusade, one they justify by fear mongering about the other. What peace loving people should ask–when confronted by their rantings–is: who are the real extremists here?
A Rabbi has been accused by Israeli officials of burning and cutting toddlers as part of a purification ritual. These stories are ugly and cast a dark shadow on adherents of faith, but one clearly notices how this case is being treated as a lone wolf acting out of a misguided direction. The case is rightly being cast as an aberration and does not impugn all of Judaism as the source of this Rabbi’s criminality. One has to ask though, that well worn question: “what if he were Muslim?”
A self-appointed rabbi accused by Israeli officials of burning and cutting toddlers as part of a purification ritual will be extradited from Brazil, an official said Thursday.
Elior Noam Chen will be picked up Oct. 27 in Brasilia by two Israeli agents, a Brazilian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the case.
An Israeli embassy official also confirmed that extradition was imminent for Chen.
Chen and several of his followers allegedly used knives, hammers and other instruments to abuse children as young as 3 and 4 years old in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit in February and March 2008.
Chen allegedly hit the children in the head and face and burned their hands. One child sustained permanent brain damage and is in a vegetative state, according to Israeli officials.
In Israel, Chen faces charges of child abuse, violence against minors and
conspiracy.
Brazilian police arrested Chen in Sao Paulo in June 2008 after a 45-day
manhunt. Police have not said how or when he and his family arrived in the South American country.
He fought extradition and his case was heard last May by Brazil’s Supreme
Court, which found there was cause for Chen to stand trial for allegedly
subjecting eight children to intense physical and mental suffering because they were supposedly possessed by the devil.
An appeal to the court was rejected last month.
His extradition had to be formalized by Brazil’s Justice and Foreign
Ministries, and final approval had to be given by Brazil’s President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva
This Aug. 18, 2009 photo shows children accused of witchcraft waiting for food at the Children's Rights and Rehabilitation Network in Eket, Nigeria.
In a grisly article, the LA Times reports via the AP that thousands of African children have been tortured and murdered in the name of Christianity because they were thought to be witches. The burning and murdering of “witches” is something that was thought to have died out in the 17th century with the Salem Witch Trials but it is all too real in some places around the world, especially in Africa where Evangelicalism has been on the rise.
Rest assured Robert Spencer won’t be reporting on this any time soon, nor will the mainstream media say (rightly so) “Christianity” is to blame for this because it is not; human beings are the cause. This highlights a double standard, the continuing saga of “what if they were Muslim?” If we replaced the word Christian here with Muslim and the word Churches with Mosques, we know very well that this would be plastered all over the internet in a second. The anti-Muslim blogosphere would be erupting in delirium and pundits would be pontificating on how Islam is the cause, Islam is barbaric, Islam is irreconcilable to modernity and must be stopped, etc.
EKET, Nigeria (AP) — The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.
His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.
A month later, he died.
Nwanaokwo Edet was one of an increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files.
Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
“It is an outrage what they are allowing to take place in the name of Christianity,” said Gary Foxcroft, head of nonprofit Stepping Stones Nigeria.
For their part, the families are often extremely poor, and sometimes even relieved to have one less mouth to feed. Poverty, conflict and poor education lay the foundation for accusations, which are then triggered by the death of a relative, the loss of a job or the denunciation of a pastor on the make, said Martin Dawes, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund.
“When communities come under pressure, they look for scapegoats,” he said. “It plays into traditional beliefs that someone is responsible for a negative change … and children are defenseless.”
____
The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria’s 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.
Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children’s Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.
Church signs sprout around every twist of the road snaking through the jungle between Uyo, the capital of the southern Akwa Ibom state where Nwanaokwo lay, and Eket, home to many more rejected “witch children.” Churches outnumber schools, clinics and banks put together. Many promise to solve parishioner’s material worries as well as spiritual ones — eight out of ten Nigerians struggle by on less than $2 a day.
“Poverty must catch fire,” insists the Born 2 Rule Crusade on one of Uyo’s main streets.
“Where little shots become big shots in a short time,” promises the Winner’s Chapel down the road.
“Pray your way to riches,” advises Embassy of Christ a few blocks away.
It’s hard for churches to carve out a congregation with so much competition. So some pastors establish their credentials by accusing children of witchcraft.
Nwanaokwo said he knew the pastor who accused him only as Pastor King. Mount Zion Lighthouse in Nigeria at first confirmed that a Pastor King worked for them, then denied that they knew any such person.
Bishop A.D. Ayakndue, the head of the church in Nigeria, said pastors were encouraged to pray about witchcraft, but not to abuse children.
“We pray over that problem (of witchcraft) very powerfully,” he said. “But we can never hurt a child.”
The Nigerian church is a branch of a Californian church by the same name. But the California church says it lost touch with its Nigerian offshoots several years ago.
“I had no idea,” said church elder Carrie King by phone from Tracy, Calif. “I knew people believed in witchcraft over there but we believe in the power of prayer, not physically harming people.”
The Mount Zion Lighthouse — also named by three other families as the accuser of their children — is part of the powerful Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. The Fellowship’s president, Ayo Oritsejafor, said the Fellowship was the fastest-growing religious group in Nigeria, with more than 30 million members.
“We have grown so much in the past few years we cannot keep an eye on everybody,” he explained.
But Foxcroft, the head of Stepping Stones, said if the organization was able to collect membership fees, it could also police its members better. He had already written to the organization twice to alert it to the abuse, he said. He suggested the fellowship ask members to sign forms denouncing abuse or hold meetings to educate pastors about the new child rights law in the state of Akwa Ibom, which makes it illegal to denounce children as witches. Similar laws and education were needed in other states, he said.
Sam Itauma of the Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation Network said it is the most vulnerable children — the orphaned, sick, disabled or poor — who are most often denounced. In Nwanaokwo’s case, his poor father and dead mother made him an easy target.
“Even churches who didn’t use to ‘find’ child witches are being forced into it by the competition,” said Itauma. “They are seen as spiritually powerful because they can detect witchcraft and the parents may even pay them money for an exorcism.”
That’s what Margaret Eyekang did when her 8-year-old daughter Abigail was accused by a “prophet” from the Apostolic Church, because the girl liked to sleep outside on hot nights — interpreted as meaning she might be flying off to join a coven. A series of exorcisms cost Eyekang eight months’ wages, or US$270. The payments bankrupted her.
Neighbors also attacked her daughter.
“They beat her with sticks and asked me why I was bringing them a witch child,” she said. A relative offered Eyekang floor space but Abigail was not welcome and had to sleep in the streets.
Members of two other families said pastors from the Apostolic Church had accused their children of witchcraft, but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
The Nigeria Apostolic Church refused repeated requests made by phone, e-mail and in person for comment.
___
At first glance, there’s nothing unusual about the laughing, grubby kids playing hopscotch or reading from a tattered Dick and Jane book by the graffiti-scrawled cinderblock house. But this is where children like Abigail end up after being labeled witches by churches and abandoned or tortured by their families.
There’s a scar above Jane’s shy smile: her mother tried to saw off the top of her skull after a pastor denounced her and repeated exorcisms costing a total of $60 didn’t cure her of witchcraft. Mary, 15, is just beginning to think about boys and how they will look at the scar tissue on her face caused when her mother doused her in caustic soda. Twelve-year-old Rachel dreamed of being a banker but instead was chained up by her pastor, starved and beaten with sticks repeatedly; her uncle paid him $60 for the exorcism.
Israel’s cousin tried to bury him alive, Nwaekwa’s father drove a nail through her head, and sweet-tempered Jerry — all knees, elbows and toothy grin — was beaten by his pastor, starved, made to eat cement and then set on fire by his father as his pastor’s wife cheered it on.
The children at the home run by Itauma’s organization have been mutilated as casually as the praying mantises they play with. Home officials asked for the children’s last names not to be used to protect them from retaliation.
The home was founded in 2003 with seven children; it now has 120 to 200 at any given time as children are reconciled with their families and new victims arrive.
Helen Ukpabio is one of the few evangelists publicly linked to the denunciation of child witches. She heads the enormous Liberty Gospel church in Calabar, where Nwanaokwo used to live. Ukpabio makes and distributes popular books and DVDs on witchcraft; in one film, a group of child witches pull out a man’s eyeballs. In another book, she advises that 60 percent of the inability to bear children is caused by witchcraft.
In an interview with the AP, Ukpabio is accompanied by her lawyer, church officials and personal film crew.
“Witchcraft is real,” Ukpabio insisted, before denouncing the physical abuse of children. Ukpabio says she performs non-abusive exorcisms for free and was not aware of or responsible for any misinterpretation of her materials.
“I don’t know about that,” she declared.
However, she then acknowledged that she had seen a pastor from the Apostolic Church break a girl’s jaw during an exorcism. Ukpabio said she prayed over her that night and cast out the demon. She did not respond to questions on whether she took the girl to hospital or complained about the injury to church authorities.
After activists publicly identified Liberty Gospel as denouncing “child witches,” armed police arrived at Itauma’s home accompanied by a church lawyer. Three children were injured in the fracas. Itauma asked that other churches identified by children not be named to protect their victims.
“We cannot afford to make enemies of all the churches around here,” he said. “But we know the vast majority of them are involved in the abuse even if their headquarters aren’t aware.”
Just mentioning the name of a church is enough to frighten a group of bubbly children at the home.
“Please stop the pastors who hurt us,” said Jerry quietly, touching the scars on his face. “I believe in God and God knows I am not a witch.”
The Christian Action Network (CAN) a group that attempted to spread rumours that Hillary Clinton was a lesbian has been banned from fundraising in Maine for sending an “inflammatory anti-Muslim message” in one of their official letters. CAN was set up by Martin Mawyer who just a few months ago was in Britain where he spent time with and interviewed members of the EDL.
At the same time that Mawyer was interviewing the EDL he was also working and hanging out with, you guessed it, Robert Spencer. Of course Spencer’s friends over at CAN are crying “bloody censorship” now that their hate has been exposed (a favorite tactic of anti-Muslims), and they have even gotten a lawyer from that Harvard of Christian Law Schools, Jerry Falwell’s “Liberty University” to sue the state.
Today the Christian Action Network (CAN) filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Maine for censoring a fundraising letter state officials claimed contained “an inflammatory anti-Muslim message.” Maine officials fined and banned CAN from mailing any future letters under the threat of criminal prosecution. Liberty Counsel represents CAN.
CAN was in good standing with a valid license for prior years in Maine, authorizing the group to mail letters in the state. CAN filed to renew its license in March 2009, prior to sending the letter, and the check for the annual license was deposited and cashed by the state. In April, CAN mailed a letter exposing how some public schools were promoting Islam by providing instruction on the Five Pillars of Islam and the Koran. The letter pointed out that some schools have provided a “prayer room” for Muslims and one textbook that told seventh grade students they “will become Muslim.” The letter listed Governor John Baldacci as a person who is over the public schools and someone to whom the recipients of the letter should voice their opinion.
CAN was informed in May 2009 that its application was now being denied, and a $4,000 fine was imposed for three reasons: (1) the state alleged CAN’s letter contained “an inflammatory anti-Muslim message;” (2) the letter used Gov. John Baldacci’s name without his approval; and (3) the registration was allegedly “incomplete.
Talk about having an agenda, in this case the shameless attempt to play on people’s fears to make a few bucks. It is only a hop-skip-and-a-jump from the next episode when TownHaller’s like Pamela Geller have their veiws of Obama being a Muslim parroted by Bill Keller.
We have been keeping track of the Fathima Rifqa Bary case which the anti-Muslim blogsphere has invested a lot in; attempting to further their agenda of demonizing Islam and Muslims. The fact that they don’t care much about this young girl or her family is obvious, they just want to score points in their tireless crusade against Muslims.
It seems slowly but surely the case is being resolved and more and more facts are coming out. The anti-Muslim blogsphere lead by the wacky Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have been casting the family as fanatical, abusive, wanting to kill their daughter. They have cast unsubstantiated allegations on the local Mosque in Columbus, Ohio saying it is a haven for terrorists, even when it has been proved a bastion of moderation.
Now Mike Kruse of the St. Petersburg Timesreports that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) have reported that there is “no evidence whatsoever of alleged abuse or threats of death made by the girl’s parents.”
ORLANDO — The attorney for the mother of Ohio religious runaway Rifqa Bary said in court here Thursday that results of a critical investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had come back “very favorable” and “with no evidence whatsoever” of alleged abuse or threats of death made by the girl’s parents.
Attorney Roger Weeden’s statement was the most contentious part of a hearing that was tense throughout. It came before the judge imposed gag orders in an attempt to restore some order to this controversial custody case turned culture war.
In addition to the gag order for the attorneys, Judge Daniel P. Dawson gave them 10 days to read the FDLE report — no more talking about that, either — and gave them 30 days to schedule the start of mediation for the Bary family.
“Let’s concentrate on getting this case resolved,” Dawson said. He set a pretrial hearing for Sept. 29.
Bary, 17, ran away last month from her family’s home near Columbus because she believes her Muslim parents have to kill her because of her conversion to Christianity. She traveled to Orlando by bus and stayed in the home of evangelical pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz of the Global Revolution Church for more than two weeks before authorities knew where she was.
She’s been living with a Christian foster family since Aug. 10. At a hearing Aug. 21, Dawson, the judge, decided to keep her in Florida as custody issues get settled.
She was in court Thursday, wearing a brown sweater, a white dress and dark red nail polish. She said nothing, but did blow an occasional kiss to people she knew in the courtroom when she wasn’t reading her Bible.
The FDLE report was finished late Thursday morning. It includes a two-hour, 45-minute interview with Bary. The results of the report, based on what Weeden said in court, mirror the results of a recently completed abuse investigation done by Franklin County Children Services in Ohio. The conclusion up there: “unsubstantiated.”
Thursday, the state Department of Children Families asked that Bary no longer be allowed to visit with Blake and Beverly Lorenz. The judge agreed, although he let her continue to visit with the Lorenzes’ three children, who are in their 20s, and whom Bary considers “dear friends and spiritual advisers,” according to John Stemberger, her attorney.
In court, Krista Bartholomew, Bary’s guardian ad litem, said this case was “not a holy war,” but that’s what this has become over the last month.
Before the hearing on Thursday, outside in front of the courthouse, Tom Trento held a news conference, as he did before the first hearing. He’s from the Florida Security Council, an organization with the slogan of “Securing Florida Against Terror.” This time, though, he brought a pastor from Ohio and a pair of anti-Islam bloggers.
Jamal Jivanjee, the Ohio pastor, compared Rifqa Bary to Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who was killed by Nazis in World War II and whose diary became what many consider one of the most important books of the 20th century.
Robert Spencer, who writes on a blog called Jihad Watch, told reporters Islam was here to take over America. Pam Geller of the Atlas Shrugs blog dismissed the results of the Franklin County investigation by saying things were “corrupt in Ohio.”
“Forget your political correctness!” she said.
Muslim businessman Mohammad Lutfi of Orlando yelled that Trento, Spencer and Geller were “conservative, right-wing militants” and “crusaders.”
Later, after the hearing, the attorneys made hasty exists, citing the new gag order. They hurried past the TV trucks, the reporters, the cameras, the shouting, red-faced, finger-pointing scrum.
Out in the busy, rain-slicked street in front of the courthouse, an appropriate metaphor for the day: a silver sedan screeched, skidded and slammed into the back of a navy blue Jeep.
Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.
One should thank Michael Kruse for his excellent reporting as well as accurately describing just who Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are; true agenda driven fanatics with an immeasurable amount of hate for Islam and Muslims.
Correction: This photo does not show Rabbi David Eliezrie, however, Eliezrie has admitted to participating in the rally
Demonstrators celebrate their intimidation of Muslim families
The use of symbolic language, in a particularly religious context was most evident in the opening session of prayer, in which attendees were instructed on how to effectively pray for Israel, and taught the purpose of their mission. Significantly, the opening prayer session was used as a moment to consecrate the conference and the role of attendees as God’s divine agents at a particular point in history (the history of the future), and that they would be blessed accordingly for serving God in this way. In Diana Hagee’s words: “God use me, ’til I draw my last breath or better yet till the trumpet sounds!” (That is, until the rapture occurs).
it seemed to betray a distinct lack of respect for Jewish tradition from an organization that emphatically portrays itself as an embodiment of modern philo-Semitism (admiration for Jews). Nevertheless, the customary reading of the Book of Lamentations proceeded to the delight of the Christian attendees. This commemoration of Tisha B’av at the conference seemed to perform another function: It further consecrated the event, as an historical one of the coming together of Christians and Jews, but more importantly it defined the Jewish speakers at the conference as “real Jews,” conferring to them a much greater sense of legitimacy and authority because of their religious devotion. Such adulation is in keeping with our report and reflections on the 2008 Summit (which can be found 
people causing havoc throughout the Middle East were not created by poverty or social injustice, they grew out of radical Islam.” Palestinians were further painted with a broad brush as extremists, while strains of thought that gave the Palestinians a sense of humanity were similarly disparaged when Bauer later noted that:
Gaffney described jihad as “the violent form of terror that we have all come to know particularly since 9/11 but that actually, arguably, was first waged against us back in 1979 by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Zionists see as a catalyst for an attack on Israel purportedly prophesied in Ezekiel 38-39 – that have been made by John Hagee at past conferences were notably absent from this year’s Summit. However, May was able to effectively promote the idea by putting the words into the mouth of the ambassador for the United Arab Emirates, as May paraphrased him:
reason and one reason only: Israel…. It’s a Christian issue, and more importantly, it’s an American issue.” Something that again subtly speaks to the belief among Christian Zionists that their, and America’s, failure to support Israel in the way that CUFI defines support will result in divine punishment for America.
