Many Americans appear to be angry that Crosses are giving way to Crescents, as Muslims transform more and more American churches into mosques. But is their anger being directed at the root source of this development?
For examples of this trend, see these posts:
This video relates the strange hadith of the encounter between Muhammad and the "al-Zutt." Per the notes from the video posting:
"The earliest sources all depict al-Zutt as humans, meaning the night in question had nothing to do with the Jinn (demonic spirits), and therefore the testimony of Abdullah — a chief and trusted transmitter of hadith — remains valid. "
This leads to two important conclusions:
"First, the bizarre and unflattering accounts of Muhammad contained in the hadith contradict the idea that the hadith is a later forgery meant to give Islam a noble foundational story revolving around a pious and upright prophet...
"and much more importantly: Second, that the hadith, because it does capture the essence of Muhammad, remains the chief weapon against Islam."
Let's celebrate Columbus for defending the West against Islam:
More videos, articles and books by Raymond Ibrahim here.
In a witty and dynamic 5-minute intro, Islam scholar and critic, and respected political analyst, philosopher and raconteur, Raymond Ibrahim today announced the (re)launch of his YouTube channel.
Even while underscoring his background in writing about Islam, Raymond makes it clear that he will be covering a much wider range of topics than he is typically known for, including "philosophical, theological, and secular" ones, historically and in the here and now. He also hints at his new book which he is working on, which viewers will get to hear more about over time.
In my estimation, Raymond is one of the most solid Islam commentators out there. With this energetic announcement, he presents a compelling invitation for us to join him for conversations about some of the most important topics of our time.
"Perhaps the most disturbing trend is that, since the inception of the World Watch List, the persecution of Christians has nearly doubled..."
The Never Ending ‘Pandemic’: 360 Million Christians Persecuted Worldwide
by Raymond Ibrahim, 2/8/2023
originally published at Gatestone Institute
In 2022, 5,621 Christian around the world were “killed for faith related reasons.” Another 4,542 Christians were illegally detained or arrested, and 2,110 churches were attacked, many destroyed. Over all, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 360 million believers suffering high levels of discrimination and violence.
These are among some of the findings of the World Watch List-2023, which was recently published by the international humanitarian organization, Open Doors. Each year the report ranks the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted for their faith by using data from approximately 4,000 field workers and external experts to quantify and analyze persecution worldwide.
Crunching some numbers, the report finds that, on average, one in seven Christians (14%) are persecuted around the world. In Africa, that number grows to one in five (20%), while in Asia it is as much as two in five—meaning a whopping 40% of all Christians are persecuted there.
Christians suffer “extreme levels of persecution” in the top 11 of the 50 nations. This ranges from being assaulted, raped, imprisoned or slaughtered on being identified as a Christian or attending (usually underground) churches.
Those nations and their respective rankings are: 1) North Korea, 2) Somalia, 3) Yemen, 4) Eritrea, 5) Libya, 6) Nigeria, 7) Pakistan, 8) Iran, 9) Afghanistan, 10) Sudan, 11) India.
Coming in at #1, the absolute worst nation is North Korea, “with the highest levels of persecution ever seen,” says the report:
If discovered by the authorities, believers are either sent to labour camps as political prisoners where the conditions are atrocious, or killed on the spot—and their families will share their fate as well. Christians have absolutely no freedom…. A new ‘anti-reactionary thought law’ makes it amply clear that being a Christian or possessing a Bible is a serious crime and will be severely punished.
Most of the “extreme persecution” meted out to Christians in nine of the top 11 worst nations continues, however, to come either from Islamic oppression, or takes place in Muslim-majority nations. This means that approximately 80% of the absolute worst persecution around the globe takes place in the name of Islam.
Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If [Europeans]…had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated.
—Theodore Roosevelt
New Catholic title on Apologetics omits any consideration of Christian witness to Muslims, or the impact of Islam on Christians.
See No Islam, Hear No Islam
Presumably, [Catholic apologists] don’t want to be put in a position where they might have to contradict the notion that Islam is a fellow Abrahamic religion that reveres Jesus and embraces the same values that Christians do.
For the Christmas Season, and as we turn towards the New Year, it is time to review some recent posts to remind ourselves of 'inalienable truths' about Islam. First up, this sobering piece by Raymond Ibrahim:
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| Decapitated Santa — typical image disseminated by “extremists” around the Christmas season |
Christmas Time: When the West Appeases and Islam Slaughters
by Raymond Ibrahim, 12/20/22, originally posted at The Stream
One of the most odious aspects of the so-called War on Christmas is Western appeasement of Muslim sensibilities.
Consider recent events in Sweden, where St. Lucia’s Day has been celebrated for centuries. According to Britannica:
Not anymore. At least one school in Sweden has compromised the celebration in order to appease its Muslim students. According to a Dec. 10, 2022 Swedish report (English translation here),St. Lucia’s Day [is a] festival of lights celebrated in Sweden, Norway, and the Swedish-speaking areas of Finland on December 13 in honour of St. Lucia (St. Lucy). …The festival begins with a procession led by the St. Lucia designee, who is followed by young girls dressed in white and wearing lighted wreaths on their heads and boys dressed in white pajama-like costume singing traditional songs. The festival marks the beginning of the Christmas season in Scandinavia, and it is meant to bring hope and light during the darkest time of the year.
Do you expect Santas, caroler and gingerbread men in the Lucia parade? Not at St Mary’s School (Mariehemsskolan) in Umeå. There it has been decided that the 40 or so children aged 7 to 10 who will take part in the Lucia procession will do so without the traditional elements of a Lucia celebration. The reason for this is Muslim children who dropped out of last year’s celebration because their parents were uncomfortable with the connection between the celebration and Christmas…. The children will also not sing the traditional Lucia songs. The choir director says that many children have been excluded over the years because Swedish schools focused so much on the Lucia festival and it was “so incredibly traditionally Christian.”
Note how the choir director makes it seem that Muslim children were “excluded,” when in fact they, or rather their parents, were the ones who chose exclusion.
Now rid of any distinctly Christmas/Christian trappings, St. Mary’s school posted a picture of one of its recent and highly “watered-down” Lucia rehearsals—boasting a very young Muslim girl dressed in full black hijab.
Such is Islam’s ongoing “contribution” to Sweden. Since that Scandinavian nation opened its door to multiculturalism and migration—the overwhelming majority of which has been Muslim—violent crimes have increased by 300% and rapes by 1,472%. (These figures are based on a 2015 report; as Muslim migration has continued to soar over the last nearly eight years, these stats have likely gotten worse.)
Aside from bringing an exponential rise in mayhem, the growing Muslim population is, as this recent development attests, also slowly but surely erasing—“canceling”—Sweden’s indigenous culture and former Christian heritage. In this case, however, their success is entirely predicated on Sweden’s willing cooperation.
Sweden, of course, is symbolic of the West in general. Expressions of Christmas, particularly the Nativity scene, are being suppressed all throughout the West to appease Muslims. A few examples come from the UK (here and here), Italy (here and here), Germany (here and here), and Belgium (here and here).
In New York City, beginning as far back as 2002, public schools were allowed to display the religious symbols of all religions—including the star and crescent of Islam—except for Christianity, with a particular emphasis on banning the Nativity scene.
New title by scholar and historian Raymond Ibrahim presents "vivid and dramatic profiles of eight extraordinary warriors—some saints, some sinners—who defended the Christian West against Islamic invasions."
I saw the announcement of this title (just published in late July) while traveling earlier this year, and have just now purchased the Kindle edition and begun to read it. The publisher's blurb and the solid but reserved Foreword by Victor Davis Hanson don't even begin to do it justice.
Ibrahim's Introduction positively crackles with intelligence and energy, and advances with a certain intensity — even ferocity — his warnings about Islam, as well as his warnings concerning the ever weakening postmodern, post-Christian West, which in spite of its superiority in force over the Islamic world, nevertheless is feeble in its belief in and defense of its own heritage, purpose and future. This is a major book with many lessons for us, won at great cost by valiant figures of our culture's past.
The below review by Mark Tapson frames this important new work in vigorous and appropriate terms.
Order Raymond Ibrahim’s Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam HERE.
Learn more about Raymond Ibrahim's writing and sign up for his regular posts HERE.
Defenders of the West
Raymond Ibrahim profiles eight heroes in the clash of civilizations.
by Mark Tapson, FrontPage Mag, July 28, 2022
Historiography has been dominated in recent decades almost exclusively by leftists determined to take a wrecking ball to the glorious edifice of Western civilization in the name of social justice and multiculturalism. New York Times propagandist Nikole Hannah-Jones of the widely-debunked but nonetheless influential 1619 Project comes to mind. The coordinated mission of such activists has been to pervert and subvert the grand narrative of our culture into a sordid tale of oppression, exploitation, and white supremacy, and to brand all our flawed heroes as racists and knock them off their pedestals, both figuratively and literally.
This is one reason why the new book Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, by historian Raymond Ibrahim... is such a refreshing, even thrilling read. As if the title alone weren’t guaranteed to inflame Progressive sensibilities, the book is unabashedly dedicated to “all the Past, Present, and Future Defenders of that which is Good, Right, and True.” Standing up for the Good, the Right, and the True (capitalized, no less) in our postmodern, post-Christian era? That’s a bold, increasingly rare position for any historian and publisher (Bombardier Books, in this case) to take today.
Defenders is a sort of follow-up to Ibrahim’s essential 2018 book Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. That book centered on decisive battles in the clash of civilizations, while the newer one zeroes in on the profiles of eight decisive men in that ongoing conflict, between the 11th and 15th centuries, from Spain’s El Cid and England’s Richard Lionheart to lesser-known but no less heroic figures such as France’s Saint Louis and the “Albanian Braveheart” Skanderbeg.
"Perhaps the most disturbing trend is that the amount of persecuted Christians continues to grow year after year."
"Renewal is in no way possible concerning those texts which are irrefutable in their certainty and stability."
- Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb
"The problem is that many of the worst teachings plaguing the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds are derived directly from those texts deemed entirely reliable."
- Raymond Ibrahim
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| Pope Francis greets Egypt's Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb at Abu Dhabi Conference in 2019 |
'The problem is that many of the worst teachings plaguing the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds are derived directly from those texts deemed entirely reliable.'
In Islam, Prophet Isa is expected to return, but to condemn the Christians’ misunderstanding of him as divine and to literally destroy Christianity and judge all non-Muslims; the Koran universally brands all unbelievers as “the vilest of creatures” (Sura 98:6).
The Prophet Isa will be a “good Muslim,” and will direct his followers to the Mahdi, the Muslim messiah, before taking a subservient position somewhat behind the Mahdi. Isa will “fight the people for the cause of Islam. He will break the cross, kill the swine and abolish jizya” and establish the rule of Allah throughout the world. (Hadith from Sunan Abu Dawud, Book of Battles, 37:4310)
Muhammad reportedly "had such a repugnance to the form of the cross that he broke everything brought into his house with its figure upon it."
Editor’s note: The National Association of Scholars invites scholars and members of the public to sign this petition in support of Raymond Ibrahim. Ibrahim was invited to speak at the United States Army War College (USAWC) as part of its 2019 Perspectives in Military History Lecture Series. USAWC, however, has “postponed” Ibrahim’s appearance indefinitely after the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) complained that he is “biased.” The “postponement” is, in fact, a disinvitation that reflects USAWC’s eagerness to appease a group that claims to represent Muslim-American sensitivities. Capitulating to CAIR by censoring Ibrahim is not in the educational interests of America’s present and future military leaders.
The USAWC has created a dangerous precedent for institutions of military education. The National Association of Scholars is petitioning the White House to call on the USAWC to reverse its decision, and to set up procedures to prevent such disinvitations in the future. In the letter below we lay out our reasoning and our resolutions. If you agree with these, we urge you to sign.
The whole spiritual strength of Islam is still present in the masses of Syria and Anatolia, of the East Asian mountains, of Arabia, Egypt and North Africa. The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power, may be delayed —but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed.
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| Hilaire Belloc, 1870-1953 |
Millions of modern people of the white civilization—that is, the civilization of Europe and America—have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past (from Belloc’s The Great Heresies, 1938, emphasis added).
His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has written of a “dialogue of loving truth” with Islam, and of Orthodoxy having for centuries “coexisted peacefully” with Islam, and projects the chimera of an “interfaith commitment... still felt and lived by Greeks [and] Turks” as an example for all to follow (Encountering the Mystery, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Doubleday, 2008, xxxvii, 196, 174).
Bartholomew has also called for the tearing down of “the wall of separation between East and West, between Muslims and Christians, between all religions of the world,” and has also asserted, “One who achieves the state of inner peace in relation to God is a true Muslim” (Encountering the Mystery, 205, 209).
Patriarch Parthenius of Alexandria, in the Orthodoxos Typos 854, May 1982, praised Islam and Muhammad thusly: "The Prophet Muhammad is an apostle, He is a man of God, who worked for the Kingdom of God... When I speak against Islam, then I am not found in agreement with God."
Metropolitan George Khodr of Lebanon has written: "I am completely sure that if you are a Christian and you know a lot about Islam and love what you know, your heart will embrace the Muslims around you and if you are educated, you will hold in esteem much from their religion and openly recognize the truth that is in their religion."
"What is euphemistically referred to as 'cultural interactions between different religious communities' is a reference to the near cultural annihilation of Coptic Christian civilization by Islam. "
