Justice Dept Official: Criticism of Islam Not Protected Free Speech

One of the most important means of protecting our Faith, our Freedoms and our Country against Islam is through quoting from Islam's own texts and traditions, and demonstrating through the historical record how Islam's core teachings have consistently resulted in warfare (jihad), destruction, slavery and oppression in every single country where Islam has spread.

As the below analysis shows, our freedom to report on and criticize Islam is in serious jeopardy. Thus all our freedoms are at stake.

There is a major Demonstration for Free Speech being coordinated to counter the Department of Justice  headlined event described below. This is taking place in Manchester, Tennessee, which is just off Interstate 24, almost midway between Nashville and Chattanooga. For more info, go here. If you live in Nashville, Chattanooga or Knoxville areas, I urge you to attend!

NEWS ANALYSIS:

Justice Dept Official: Criticism of Islam Not Protected Free Speech

Online postings that describe truthfully how teachings of Islam inspire violence may be considered violations of federal civil rights laws.

By Clare Lopez

Sun, June 2, 2013

The Clarion Project

The Department of Justice appears poised to move one step closer to enforcement of Islamic law on slander and blasphemy in America by threatening prosecution of citizens who exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech—if such speech dares to criticize Islam.

Bill Killian, a top Department of Justice (DOJ) official and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, is scheduled to headline an event [in Manchester TN] on June 4, 2013 entitled, “Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society” that’s sponsored by the American Muslim Advisory Council of Tennessee. The stated purpose of the meeting, according to the local Tullahoma News, is “increasing awareness and understanding that American Muslims are not the terrorists some have made them out to be in social media and other circles.”

Of course, the timing for the event would seem particularly ill-chosen in the wake of recent jihadist attacks and plots at the Boston Marathon (April 15, 2013), in the Iran-al-Qaeda plot against the Canadian Via Rail (April 2013) and the slaughter of British soldier, Lee Rigby, on a Woolwich, London street to the Islamic cry of, “Allahu Akbar!”   

Nonetheless, based on statements made by the DOJ’s Killian to the Tullahoma News, online postings that describe truthfully how authoritative texts and teachings of Islam inspire jihadis to acts of violence, may henceforth be considered violations of federal civil rights laws. If such statements, however truthful, or apparently even original Islamic scriptural texts, are considered “inflammatory” by the FBI’s Muslim advisors, Killian wants American citizens to know “what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are.”

This is a chilling and very direct threat to the First Amendment guarantee of the right to free speech. Even though the First Amendment also guarantees of freedom of religion, it does not limit critical discussion (“inflammatory” or otherwise) by private citizens of any ideological, legal, political or religious belief system, including Islam.

Killian and his FBI bosses ought to know that.  

The implied threat to Americans’ right to criticize Islam (or any other ideology) puts Killian and the U.S. Justice Department wittingly or unwittingly in lockstep with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) “10 Year Programme of Action,” whose explicitly stated objective is to achieve international criminalization of criticism of Islam.

The legalized stifling of all criticism of Islam in America would bring U.S. law into compliance with Islamic law (sharia), which decrees that “slander” is “anything concerning a [Muslim] person that he would dislike” (including criticism about his religion).

Obviously, according to this definition, the scope for causes of Muslim rage is virtually limitless. Worse yet, as this writer noted in a December 2011 essay, the current U.S. administration, and specifically the Department of State, have been working assiduously through the so-called “Istanbul Process” and the United Nations Human Rights Council with its Resolution 16/18 to bend U.S. law more closely to conformity with this sharia definition of “slander” than anything currently on the books in American criminal law.

Which brings up the role of the Nashville, TN-based American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC), whose less-than-transparent outreach and training activities for Tennessee law enforcement were highlighted in a February 15, 2012 article.

AMAC’s online website includes a mission statement dedicating the group to “[e]ngage and educate the law enforcement community and other agencies to better understand the Muslim community through an accurate understanding of religious and cultural traditions.”

Even more revealing, though, is its Home Page mission statement that commits the AMAC to serve “as a bridge between the Tennessee Muslim community and federal, state, and local law enforcement as well as other government and private agencies.”

Unfortunately for Tennesseans who prefer their liberty untrammeled by the bondage of Islamic law, AMAC knows what Killian does not: That, in the words of the Muslim Brotherhood’s senior theoretician, Sayyed Qutb, “The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah [the non-Islamic world] is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”

In other words, Islamic bridges like AMAC’s to U.S. law enforcement officers are meant for one purpose and one purpose only—to coax naïve FBI, police and sheriffs into implementing sharia in America all the while never even realizing they’re fulfilling the “civilization jihad” agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Western vanguard of the forces of jihad and sharia.

DOJ moves against free speech in Tennessee bring American citizens ever closer to the sort of OIC-sponsored “hate speech” standards already in effect in Europe, which has never had the kind of free speech guarantee Americans enjoy under the First Amendment.

The agenda of the OIC (self-described representative of the Islamic ummah) is clear and leads in a straight line to the complete submission of Qur’anic verse 9:29:

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

Unbelievably, in the aftermath of the horrific Woolwich murder of a UK soldier by Islamic jihadis, British citizens were actually arrested for posting “offensive comments” about Islam on Twitter. Lest any think that couldn’t happen in America, listen carefully to what DOJ official Bill Killian says at the upcoming AMAC event in Tennessee. 

Clare Lopez is a senior fellow at the ClarionProject.org and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. Lopez served for 20 years as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Rapidly Re-Islamicizing Turkey Rewrites History

by Ralph Sidway
June 2, 2013
Originally published at RaymondIbrahim.com

There's an old saying about history: It's written by the winners.

Judging from the posturing and remarks of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, he must either believe they have already won, or are so close as to confidently begin rewriting history even before the United States and Europe formally surrender.

Here is the article to which I am referring:

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ERDOGAN CALLS CHRISTIAN BYZANTIUM "A DARK CHAPTER" IN HISTORYIstanbul, May 30, 2013Pravoslavie.ru
The prime minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called the time of Christian emperors in Byzantium "a dark chapter" in history. In Erdogan's view, in the fifteenth century, after invasion of Constantinople by Muslims, began "the time of enlightenment," reports Kath.net.
The speech of the conservative Turkish prime minister was made during the laying of the foundation of the new road bridge over the Bosphorus in Istanbul that took place on May 29--the anniversary of Ottoman invasion of the Byzantine empire 1453.
“We are continuing to write the history today," said Erdogan during the ceremony.
The Turkish authorities have celebrated the anniversary of the victory over Byzantium by a series of festivities.

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President Obama would likely be the last to disagree with Erdogan's declaration (they are great friends and allies, you know), but hardly any of the Western leaders seem to exhibit even the slightest curiosity about the Byzantine Roman Empire, let alone any historical awareness of this vibrant Christian empire which endured for over a thousand years. Nor do they seem inclined to look at Islam in terms of its historical continuity being extended into our own day.

If they did, they might be surprised to learn of the steady march of Christian martyrs under the Ottoman Muslim domination, including numerous Orthodox Christian patriarchs. They might also be surprised to learn how in every territory where Islam has conquered, the result has been consistently the same: institutionalized persecution and subjugation of non-Muslims.

What Erdogan proudly refers to as "the time of enlightenment" was actually a very dark chapter for millions of Christians, persecuted and downtrodden as second-class citizens through the dhimma system. (It was also not-so-enlightened for the Muslims themselves, with the Ottoman Empire of the nineteenth century earning from its contemporaries the apt title of “Sick Old Man of Europe.”)

In point of historical fact, Byzantium was the “enlightened” state, innovating (to take but a few examples) hospital-based medical care, philanthropic care for the poor, and a Church-inspired and led ethos of charity and social activism. The beloved Orthodox Christian Saint Basil the Great was an instrumental figure in this movement, as was the “golden-tongued” Archbishop John Chrysostom of Constantinople. Both (among many others) incarnated the Christian ideal of care for the sick and the poor, and spread that ideal to the wider Byzantine society.

All this was destroyed and swept away with the Turkish Muslim victory over Byzantium. 

In direct contrast, the Turkish Muslims instituted a brutal religious apartheid, imposing tyranny over the conquered Christians, under which all the classic forms of the seventh century Pact of Omar and the Dhimma contract were manifest: Christians had to wear drab, distinctive clothing, give way to Muslims on the street, could not build new churches nor repair existing ones. Crosses were broken off of the remaining churches which were not destroyed or turned into mosques. Their whole way of life was a perpetual state of humiliating decay and enforced subservience. The precept of “collective punishment” meant that if even one Christian disobeyed the terms of the dhimma contract, all would be held responsible, leading to frequent pogroms by the Muslims against the Greeks, often just on the basis of rumors (as seen today in Egypt and other Islamic countries).

Islamic law undergirds Islamic culture, and is thus directly responsible for what is commonly called the Armenian Genocide, which was not merely a single event in 1915 in which 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed by Turkish Muslims, but which spanned from the anti-Christian pogroms of 1894 to the destruction of the ancient Christian city of Smyrna in 1922, and reverberated up through the anti-Christian riots in Istanbul of 1955. During this whole period, an estimated 3.5 million Orthodox Christian Greeks, Armenians and Syrians were killed, or died of starvation and sickness during forced marches. The Christian population of Istanbul was nearly exterminated during the twentieth century, from over 100,000 in 1920 to approximately only 2,000 today. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, many of whose predecessors were put to death under Ottoman rule, bravely suffers and struggles on, in spite of the deplorable persecution which surrounds him on every side. 

To this day, the Turkish government refuses to accept responsibility for its historically documented genocide against the Christians. And, as seen in Erdogan’s chest-thumping remarks, the Turkish Muslims remain obstinately proud of their brutal history, from the centuries of war against Constantinople until its fall in 1453, its centuries of cruel domination of native Christian populations, and its continuation of this supremacist mindset into the present day.

Erdogan and Turkey celebrate the Fall of Constantinople, and the West congratulates them.  “We are continuing to write history today," says Erdogan, and write it — or re-write it — they do, under the somnambulant gaze of craven Western leaders too ignorant, or too fearful, to challenge Islam’s claim to moral superiority, historical righteousness and eventual world domination. By their policies, posture and pronouncements, Western European nations, and the United States, are conceding the future to a rapidly re-Islamicizing Turkey, and are aiding in Islam’s stated goal of a new, global caliphate determined to conquer us, just as it conquered Constantinople 560 years ago.

Every Turkish celebration of 29 May 1453 is a gauntlet flung down in challenge to the West. Each such event which goes unanswered and unchallenged by the West is another nail in the coffin of Christian culture, human rights, and free people everywhere. There are thus many reasons to repudiate Erdogan’s historical revisionism. 

But the main reason is simple: it simply isn’t true. 

Canon Law Case filed against Georgetown University

This is a good sign, and reminds us Orthodox Christians to speak out when we see false or misleading teachings, and outright heresy, being taught or preached by Orthodox instructors, clerics, and even bishops if necessary. 

My book, Facing Islam, was written precisely to counter very soft and erroneous teachings being promulgated by certain Orthodox clergy, hierarchs and academics, affirming that Muslims worship the same God as proclaimed by Orthodox Christianity, and calling for “religious dialogue” with Muslims.  One American bishop has reportedly gone so far as to state that Islam and Orthodoxy are “90% the same.” 

But that’s a lengthy article all its own which I’ll save for another day. 

If you haven’t read Facing Islam yet, I encourage you to order it. It presents a clear, multi-faceted argument against the “Same God” heresy; it documents and warns against uncritical religious dialogue with Islam; it examines and exposes the claims of Muhammad to be a true prophet; and it presents a positive, uniquely Orthodox Christian, perspective and way forward during our difficult times.

William Peter Blatty deserves credit for standing up for the integrity of his faith. We should all be prepared to do the same. 

Two articles follow:

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'EXORCIST' SCRIBE PETITIONS CHURCH TO REMOVE GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY'S CATHOLIC STATUS

by John Nolte, Breitbart.com

William Peter Blatty, the Academy-Award winner who wrote 1973's "The Exorcist," graduated from Georgetown University in 1950 and has financially supported his alma mater for years. In May of last year, though, Blatty announced he was preparing a canon lawsuit against the school. On Friday, Blatty kept his promise.

The petition submitted to Cardinal Donald Weurl, is signed by 1200 individuals, including Georgetown  students and alumni. There are 198 pages from 124 witnesses that document over twenty years worth of incidents that Blatty claims prove Georgetown is only Catholic in name. With Blatty's petition is a 120 page document prepared by the Cardinal Newman Society summarizing Georgetown's violations of canon law.

This entire endeavor took over a year.

While most remember "The Exorcist" for its green vomit and crucifix masturbation, at heart, the blockbuster horror film (that has lost none of its power) remains one of the most pro-Christian/Catholic films ever made. It is a story where both God and the Devil are very real, and a priest who is losing his faith finds it in the evil possessing an innocent. After the power of Christ compels the demon to leave the child and possess the priest, reaffirmed in his faith, the priest sacrifices his own life to destroy the evil within him.

In an interview last year with Catholic Education Daily, Blatty was asked if he saw a parallel between "The Exorcist" and what he has witnessed happen over the last two decades to his beloved Georgetown. With the kind of moral relativism fresh in his mind that would see a Catholic university invite Kathleen Sebelius (a supporter of something as evil as partial birth abortion) as a commencement speaker, Blatty answered:

Yes, yes, there is a parallel. But imagine it a different way. Think of all the souls that were not saved; all the minds that were not awakened over these past two or three decades as Georgetown drifted. Think of the great disservice that we have all done by being silent, ineffectual and comfortable …and doing nothing while the other side organized and took Georgetown away from the Church.

In the Friday press release announcing the suit, Blatty includes a letter that shows just how serious he is. He asks alumni to cease any donations to Georgetown for a full year and makes clear that his petition asks for only one of two results: That Georgetown comply with canon law or be stripped of its right to call itself a Catholic and Jesuit institution.

Naturally, the outcome Blatty and all of us truly desire is to see the Catholic university become Catholic again. But if it won't, it simply must stop calling itself Catholic.

What could be a greater tool of the devil than a church or school that assures souls they are saved when they are not?

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Article from the Cardinal Newman Society's Catholic Education Daily newsletter:

Canon Law Case Against Georgetown Submitted to Cardinal Wuerl

A canon law petition asking Cardinal Donald Wuerl to rescue Georgetown University's Catholic identity or declare that it can no longer refer to itself as Catholic was delivered to the Archdiocese of Washington today, a group of Georgetown alumni, students, parents, faculty and others has announced.

Distinguished Georgetown alumnus William Peter Blatty, an Academy Award winner and author of The Exorcist, announced in May 2012 the formation of the Father King Society and its plans to file a complaint under the Catholic Church's canon law.  The completed petition documents abuses of Catholic identity at Georgetown University and non-compliance with Church law for Catholic universities.  The group is seeking remedies "including, if made necessary, the removal or suspension of top-ranked Georgetown's right to call itself Catholic and Jesuit in its fundraising and representations to applicants," according to leaders.

The document is signed by more than 1200 individuals.  It includes 198 pages, 476 footnotes, 91 appendices and 124 witness statements documenting 23 years of "scandals and dissidence," the King Society reported.

Submitted with the petition is a 120-page dossier prepared by The Cardinal Newman Society at Blatty's request, summarizing Georgetown scandals documented by the Society over several years.  The Newman Society and canon law experts were consulted for advice by the King Society throughout the year-long process of preparing the brief.

Neither the canon law petition nor the Cardinal Newman Society dossier will be made public at this point in time.

"Ignoring the magnitude of what is at stake in losing a major university like Georgetown to the well-organized efforts that are fundamentally anti-Catholic, some well-meaning friends or earnest Jesuit might want to point to the liturgies, the chaplains, the Knights of Columbus chapter, and so on," Blatty told The Cardinal Newman Society.  "Georgetown administrators wish to assure us that they speak to the Archbishop and visit Rome regularly.  We know the litany all too well.  It describes a Potemkin village."

Over the past year, Blatty and his group rallied the support of the Georgetown community and others concerned for the University to join the canon law petition.  The King Society's website www.GUpetition.org includes a letter from Blatty and descriptions of Georgetown's historical ties to the Jesuits, the Washington Archdiocese and the Vatican.

Manuel A. Miranda, who serves as counsel to Blatty, said, "What is evident is that Georgetown University has been captured by the ideology of radical autonomy.  It pervades everything.  Academic freedom is now prisoner to intolerant new orthodoxies, and Catholic moral teaching has surrendered to the dictatorship of moral relativism."

After the King Society announced its intentions in 2012, The Cardinal Newman Society was granted an exclusive interview with Blatty about the petition, his motivations, and role as a Georgetown University alumnus.

The press release about today's delivery of the petition is available from the King Society here.

Paying Off Egypt's Persecutors

Robert Morrison of the Family Research Council surveys some recent territory and offers a clear assessment and suggestions for the way forward in this excellent essay.

The question raised in my mind after reading this article is this: Since the Obama administration is providing aid to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government (which is actively facilitating persecution of Christians), if we say or do nothing to protest, are we then implicitly culpable?

As an old legal saying goes, "Silence implies assent."  The Church fathers also had something to say about silence.

St Gregory the Theologian warned, "By your silence you can betray God."

And St John of Kronstadt lamented a century ago (imagine what he would say today!): “How many are silent when it is necessary to defend the glory of God and of His saints, which is blasphemed by the children of this world!”
 
As long as the blogosphere is still free, let's share with our family, friends and elected representatives our concerns and warnings.

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PAYING OFF EGYPT’S PERSECUTORS

by Robert Morrison
May 30, 2013

Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Secretary of State John Kerry had signed off on $250 million of a projected $1 billion aid package for the new Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt. As the late Sen. Everett Dirksen said, “a billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon, you’re talking real money.” So perhaps it’s time to take a look at what American taxpayers are getting for their money.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Coptic Christian, originally from Egypt. He reports on a world too often overlooked by our increasingly secular media—the world of Christian persecution. In Egypt, it is a world of hurt. Ibrahim documents this and much more in his new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians. Here are some of his findings:

In November 2012, an Egyptian court decreed that eight Christians living in America—seven native Egyptians, and one American, Pastor Terry Jones—be sent to Egypt and executed in connection with the 16-minute YouTube Muhammad video. The prosecution offered no real evidence against the Christians, most of whom deny any involvement, and instead relied on inciting Muslims against the accused by replaying the video in the courtroom. 

In September 2012, 27-year-old Copt Albert Saber was accused of posting clips of the Muhammad movie—which he had actually downloaded from a Muslim site, not YouTube. Muslims attacked and evicted him and his mother from their home; he was arrested and is currently awaiting a multi-year sentence. 

In March 2012, Makram Diab, a 49-year-old Christian, was sentenced in a 10-minute show trial to six years in prison for “insulting Muhammad.” He had gotten into a religious argument with a Muslim colleague, who went on to protest that Diab had offended the prophet. The judge doubled the sentence to appease an angry mob, 2,500 strong, which had surrounded the courtroom demanding Diab’s death.

In August 2012, Bishoy Kamil, a Copt in his 20s who worked as a teacher, was arrested and given six years in prison for posting cartoons deemed insulting to Islam and its prophet on Facebook. Like Diab, he was given more than double the maximum penalty to appease mob calls for his death. 

In April 2012, Gamal Abdu Massud, a teenage Christian student, was sentenced to three years on accusations that he had posted a Muhammad cartoon on his Facebook account, which had only some 135 friends.  Apparently the wrong “friend” saw it, for it was not long before local Muslims rioted, burning the Coptic teenager’s house as well as the homes of five other Christians. 

In June 2011, another Christian woman, Naima Wahib Habil, newly hired as director of a junior high school for girls, was sentenced to two years imprisonment on the accusation that she had torn a copy of the Koran in front of her students. The rumor inspired mob riots and calls for her death.

Note the dates of the legal persecutions and prosecutions of Christians in Egypt. Every one of them has occurred since the much-hailed “Arab Spring.”

President Obama’s own role in this pattern of persecution is by no means that of an innocent bystander. He went to Egypt’s Cairo University in June 2009, to deliver his “New Beginning” speech to what he then called “the Muslim world.” Right from the start, we knew there could be no place for Christians in that world he so designated.

President Obama referred to the Muslim scriptures as “the Holy Koran,” something no previous U.S. President had done there.  He also said that the Mideast was “the region where Islam was first revealed.” That was a theological term freighted with meaning. It must mean, at minimum, that Islam has superseded Christianity and Judaism.

In that seat of Muslim learning, in that hotbed of Muslim Brotherhood underground activity, the forces of upheaval took Mr. Obama’s words at face value: They would find a new friend in the White House.

They soon did. Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who had at least maintained a thirty-year “cold peace” with Israel and who had not given official sanction to the persecution of Egypt’s ten percent Christian minority, was soon swept away.

The “Arab Spring” would bring democracy and human rights to Egypt. The Obama administration welcomed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. And paid them generously out of money we must borrow from China.   John Brennan, the current Director of the CIA, referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as “largely secular.” That is true only if you discount its origins, its teachings, its history, and its practices.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt began almost at the same time as Germany’s National Socialists and shared with that “Nazi” movement a strong commitment to dominate all of society. They also shared with the Nazis a fanatical judenhass—hatred of the Jews. Like the Nazis, they use electoral politics to achieve their ends because they couple open appeals for votes with the threat of violence if they don’t get what they want.

Not all the reactions to Islamist persecution have been those of outraged Western critics, however. Even in the midst of violence and hatred by the jihadists, some Christians are speaking truth to power.

Abraham Kuruvilla is an American of Indian descent. He brings his gentle manner to bear in this thoughtful essay. Abraham is a graduate of University of Virginia and recently returned from a two-year course of study in Defence and National Security at the University of Madras. Abraham’s column—“Amidst Jihadist Hatred, Something New”— is well worth reading.

Still, we as American citizens and taxpayers can use our rights just as Paul did with the Roman rulers. We can speak out and protest our tax monies being used to fund such murderous mistreatment of our fellow Christians in Egypt. 

Source: Family Resource Council

Mark Steyn: The Road Europe is On

I happened to see this brief essay, and it is such a perfect follow-up to the photo story about the collapse of Christianity and the rise of Islam in London I posted earlier that I had to share it.

Unless dramatic changes come soon, Mark Steyn is ominously correct: there will be no future for Europe or England. We have a little more time and resources in the U.S.A., but will we wake up in time?

The Road Europe Is On

By  Mark Steyn

May 29, 2013

A man has been arrested for the stabbing of a French soldier last weekend. A native of France, Alexandre Dhaussy is a convert to Islam — like the two men who hacked Drummer Rigby to death in Woolwich, like the young wife of the Boston Marathon bomber, and the young Canadian jihadist the bomber hooked up with in Dagestan, and the Belgian teenagers who ran away from home to fight in Syria.

These young “reverts” (as Islam calls converts) have made a bet on where the future lies. These photographs from Cable Street in East London show how sound the bet is: Two churches each built to hold a thousand worshippers now have between them 32 graying parishioners; the mosque, meanwhile, overflows, so that each Friday the streets are full of the faithful on their knees pointed toward Mecca. I was in Spitalfields last year, and saw the scene for myself — and was almost overwhelmed by the sense of loss: In the nihilism of multiculturalism, the great imperial metropolis is now the colony.

Unless something changes, that last photograph is Europe’s future. And Europe’s past will be as abandoned as those churches. In the Nineties, in his famous and controversial book Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, V. S. Naipaul wrote of the eastern lands conquered by Islam that “converted peoples have to strip themselves of their past.” In the West, in the nation states that built the modern world, that process is well under way. And Islam is Europe’s future. Which is to say, for Europe, there is no future. 

Raymond Ibrahim: Islam's 'Rule of Numbers' and the London Beheading

Raymond analyzes something here which is of immense importance: Muslim demographics, what he terms Islam's "Rule of Numbers," and what we can expect to see as Muslim populations continue to increase in the United States. I'm getting deeper into Raymond's new book, Crucified Again, and he makes his case there with undeniable certainty.

I had in mind to post this when I put up the photos and article earlier from the Daily Mail, showing the shocking collapse of Christianity and explosive growth of Islam in England.

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Islam's Rule of Numbers and the London Beheading  May 28, 2013 | Raymond Ibrahim Fox News Last week in London, two Muslim men shouting jihad’s ancient war-cry, “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a British soldier with a cleaver—in a busy intersection and in broad daylight.  They boasted in front of passersby and asked to be videotaped. With blood still on his hands, and his decapitated victim still on the street, the jihadi still managed to go into “grievance” mode in front of the camera. As surreal as this event may seem, Islamic beheadings are not uncommon in the West, including the U.S.  In 2011, a Pakistani-American who helped develop “Bridges TV”—a station “designed to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims”—beheaded his wife.  In Germany in 2012, another Muslim man beheaded his wife in front of their six children—again while hollering “Allahu Akbar.” Beheading non-Muslim “infidels” in the Islamic world is especially commonplace: in Yemen a “sorceress” was beheaded by the “Supporters of Sharia”; in Indonesia, three Christian girls on their way to school were beheaded; in Syria last Christmas, U.S.-supported rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to the dogs; in Africa—Somalia, Tanzania, Mali—Christians are regularly decapitated.  (For a comprehensive picture of Christian suffering under Islam, see my new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians.) Most recently, a disturbing video surfaced from “liberated” Libya of a machete-wielding masked man hacking at the head of a captive—again, to cries of “Allahu Akbar!” But the greater lesson of the London beheading concerns its audacity—done in broad daylight with the attackers boasting in front of cameras, as often happens in the Islamic world. It reflects what I call “Islam’s Rule of Numbers,” a rule that expresses itself with remarkable consistency:  The more Muslims grow in numbers, the more Islamic phenomena intrinsic to the Muslim world—in this case, brazen violence against “infidels”—appear. In the U.S., where Muslims are less than 1% of the population, London-style attacks are uncommon.  Islamic assertiveness is limited to political activism dedicated to portraying Islam as a “religion of peace,” and sporadic, but clandestine, acts of terror. In Europe, where Muslims make for much larger minorities, open violence is common.  But because they are still a vulnerable minority, Islamic violence is always placed in the context of “grievances,” a word that pacifies Westerners. With an approximate 10% Muslim population, London’s butcherers acted brazenly, yes, but they still invoked grievances.  Standing with bloodied hands, the murderer declared: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone…. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day.” Days later in Stockholm, which also has a large Muslim minority, masked rioters  destroyed 100 cars and property.  The grievance for this particular outbreak was that police earlier shot a(nother) machete-wielding “immigrant” in self-defense. Grievances disappear when Muslims become at least 35-40% of a nation and feel capable of waging an all-out jihad, as in Nigeria, where the Muslim-majority north has been terrorizing Christians—bombing hundreds of churches and beheading hundreds of infidels. Sudan was an earlier paradigm, when the Khartoum government slaughtered millions to cleanse Sudan of Christians and polytheists.  Historically Christian-majority Lebanon plunged into a deadly civil war as the Muslim population grew. Once Muslims become the majority, the violence ironically wanes, but that’s because there are fewer infidels to persecute.  And what infidels remain lead paranoid, low-key existences—as dhimmis—always careful to “know their place.” With an 85% Muslim majority, Egypt is increasingly representative of this paradigm.  Christian Copts are under attack, but not in an all-out jihad.  Rather, under the Muslim Brotherhood their oppression is becoming institutionalized, including through new “blasphemy” laws which have seen many Christians attacked and imprisoned. Attacks on infidels finally end when Muslims become 100% of the population, as in Saudi Arabia—where all its citizens are Muslim, and churches and other non-Islamic expressions are totally banned. Such is Islam’s Rule of Numbers. Thus as Muslim populations continue growing in Western nations, count on growing, and brazen, numbers of attacks on infidels—beheadings and such. Most recently in France, which holds Europe’s largest Muslim population, another European soldier was stabbed in the neck by a pious Muslim. The question is, how long will leftist media and politicians refuse to face reality, including by propagating the false “grievance” claim, which, once Muslims reach enough numbers—as is projected for Europe—will be discarded for the full-blown jihad? Source: RaymondIbrahim.com

Photos dramatize the Collapse of Christianity and the Rise of Islam in England

This is what happens when the Gospel is not preached — and not lived. This should be a jolting wake up call to us all, and stir us to fervent and zealous faith, lest our communities also be overtaken by a false desert pagan religion.

It would seem from the comments of the English clergy below, that the best they can offer is a line from the classic Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon:

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English Way;

The time has come, the song is over,

Thought I'd something more to say...

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One country, two religions and three very telling pictures: The empty pews at churches just yards from an overcrowded mosque

• Two photos show Sunday morning services in churches in East London
• The third shows worshippers gathered for Friday midday prayers outside a nearby mosque 
• The difference in numbers could hardly be more dramatic

By GUY WALTERS

Daily Mail Online

Set aside the fact that our Queen is the Defender of the Christian Faith. Ignore the 26 Church of England bishops who sit in the House of Lords. 

Pay no attention to the 2011 Census that told us 33.2 million people in England and Wales describe themselves as Christians.

For if you want a more telling insight into religion in the United Kingdom today, just look at these photographs. The story they tell is more revealing than any survey.

Dwindling flock: St Mary's Cable Street in East London was built to hold

1,000 people. Today, the congregation numbers around 20.

What they show are three acts of worship performed in the East End of London within a few hundred yards of each other at the end of last month. 

Two of the photos show Sunday morning services in the churches of St George-in-the-East on Cannon Street Road, and St Mary’s on Cable Street.

The third shows worshippers gathered for Friday midday prayers outside the nearby mosque on the Brune Street Estate in Spitalfields.

The difference in numbers could hardly be more dramatic. At St George’s, some 12 people have congregated to celebrate Holy Communion.

Empty pews: 18th-century parishioners crowded into St George-in-the-East

to hear John Wesley. Only 12 people attended this service.

When the church was built in the early 18th century, it was designed to seat 1,230.

Numbers are similar at St Mary’s, opened in October 1849. Then, it could boast a congregation of 1,000. Today, as shown in the picture, the worshippers total just 20.

While the two churches are nearly empty, the Brune Street Estate mosque has a different problem — overcrowding. The mosque itself is little more than a small room rented in a  community centre, and it can hold only 100.

However, on Fridays, those numbers swell to three to four times the room’s capacity, so the worshippers spill out onto the street, where they take up around the same amount of space as the size of the near-empty St Mary’s down the road.

A study in devotion: The tiny mosque on the Brune Street Estate,

Spitalfields, holds only 100 people, so the local Bangladeshi

community throng the street for Friday midday prayers.

On Sunday October 1, 1738, St George’s was packed twice during the day to hear the great evangelist John Wesley, who then preached at the church for the following week explaining, as he put it, ‘the way of salvation to many who misunderstood what had been preached concerning it’.

Today, there are no John Wesleys to fill up the pews. The church does its best, offering, for example, a monthly ‘Hot Potato Sunday’, during which the few congregants can discuss the readings of the day over a baked potato.

Canon Michael Ainsworth of St George’s puts on a brave face when he says: ‘What we are saying now is it is not just a matter of numbers. It is about keeping faith with the city and hanging in there — being part of the community.’

At St Mary’s, meanwhile, Rev Peter McGeary cannot explain why the numbers are so low: ‘It’s impossible to say, there are so many variables.’ 

When he is asked if he tries to boost his congregations, he simply replies: ‘We are not a company, we are a church.’

In contrast, there seems a remarkable energy attached to the mosque on Brune Street, which has been described as the ‘Mecca of the City’.

Here, come rain or shine, members of the  Bangladeshi community perform the Friday prayer of Jumma under the open sky. It is a communal act which will surely only grow in popularity.

Sadly, that’s not something that can be said of the two nearby churches, and unless they can reinvigorate their congregations they may finally end up being deconsecrated.

When that happens, such large buildings will be attractive spaces for those who can fill them. 

One day, in a few decades, St George’s may well again be packed with worshippers — but they will not be Christians.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2332998/One-country-religions-telling-pictures-The-pews-churches-just-yards-overcrowded-mosque.html#ixzz2UtY19RrS 

Dr. Mark Durie: Opinions of Islam - Universalism and Relativism

Patient, deliberate exposition of the differing ways of "seeing" Islam. A long article, but a "must read."

Wilders in Australia and the "Islamic Problem" - Part II

Dr. Mark Durie

markdurie.com blog

This is the second in a four part series of posts written in response to Geert Wilders’ visit to Australia  in early 2013.

In a previous post I contrasted Geert Wilders’ view that ‘Islam is the problem’ with the claims of many Muslims who preach with equal conviction that ‘Islam is the solution’, and examined evidence of the negative characteristics associated with belief in Islam, including disadvantaged human development outcomes.  

These days many leaders in the West find it convenient to sweep the ‘problem’ of Islam under the carpet. Long gone are the days of Theodore Roosevelt, Wilders’ hero, who declared  in Fear God and take your own part that values such as freedom and equality only existed in Europe because it had the military capacity to ‘beat back the Moslem invader’.

However, given the negative outcomes associated with Islam, one of which is Geert Wilders’ need for constant armed guards (some others were enumerated in the previous post), the question whether Islam is the problem or the solution is not something to be just swept under the carpet.  

In the fourth and final post of this series we will consider Wilders’ policies for managing ‘the problem’.  The third post, the next after this, will review an on-going dispute between critics of Islam as to whether there can be a moderate, tolerable form of Islam. On one side stand those, like Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Robert Spencer, who consider Islam to be essentially irredeemable.  On the other side stand those, like Daniel Pipes and Barry Rubin, who argue that there are different Islams and the ‘solution’ to radical Islam is moderate Islam.

Of course there are many opinions about Islam.  In this, the second post in this series, we consider two widely-held secular – and positive – perspectives on Islam which have been influential in shaping the response of secular-minded westerners to Islam.  These are universalism and relativism.

Relativism holds that no one religion is true, but as different as they are, all religions are equally valid in their own way, and the differences deserve respect.

Universalism — in the sense used here — holds that the core of religions consists of a set of positive ethical values shared by all people and all faiths. 

For many western secular people, universalism and relativism are so deeply embedded in their world view that they have no choice but to process Islam through the grid of these belief systems. This means they pre-judge Islam by limting their understand only to what their frame permits them to see.  What they observe is not Islam as it really is, but as it appears through the window frame of their own beliefs. They see Islam as their world view tells them it must be.

As Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote

“One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing’s nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.” (Philosophical Investigations.) 

Business Insider: The Muslim Brotherhood Has Turned Cairo Into A Dystopia

This wholly secular analysis — which never mentions the murderous persecution of the Christian Copts by mobs of Muslims numbering in the tens of thousands, often aided and facilitated by Egyptian Police themselves — rips the mask off the Obama administration's glowing "Arab Spring" narrative. When a business journal starts reporting such an epic failure, you know it's bad.

Now if they would only report accurately of the escalating, genocidal persecution of the Christian minority by the Muslim mobs...

The Muslim Brotherhood Has Turned Cairo Into A Dystopia

Robert Johnson - Business Insider

When Egyptians took to the streets to overthrow an oppressive government in 2011, the world was on their side.

But in the two years that followed, as Arab Spring turned to Arab Winter, and Egyptians fell under the rule of the oppressive new government of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the world has looked away.

This is what Egyptians told us when we visited Cairo at the end of March 2013.

Many disillusioned Egyptians say things are worse than ever. Thugs often run the streets, crime rates have skyrocketed, and police feel they're outgunned, faced with the flood of weapons filling Cairo's streets.

Making matters worse, everything from utilities to gasoline is both more expensive and more difficult to acquire than it was before the Muslim Brotherhood.

(Well, yes. They're using the gas primarily to burn down Coptic churches and cathedrals.)

Photos available here: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-muslim-brotherhood-is-ruining-egypt-2013-5?op=1#ixzz2Umj2NMvj

Fr. Stephen Freeman: The One You Don't See

As you read Fr. Stephen's apophatic plea for the One God, keep in mind the Mathematical  Monotheism of Islam. Essays and explorations like this are enormously helpful in giving us words for the ineffable mystery of the Blessed Triune God, and the mystery of our salvation, which involves "being one" with Christ and the Father in the Holy Spirit, so that we may more fruitfully engage our Muslim interlocutors.

The One You Don't See
by Fr. Stephen Freeman
Glory to God for All Things blog

My recent post on the One God has shown me that there is much more to say on the subject. “We believe in One God…” but do we?

In a recent conversation, someone said to me that they had difficulty believing in “one supreme being who created everything…etc.” Christians don’t actually believe in one supreme being. If this startles you, then read further.

Christians do not believe in “one supreme being,” first because we do not believe in one of anything (or one of something). There is not a class called “supreme beings” to which the God who created everything belongs. There is no class of anything to which He belongs. The God of the Christians is in no way similar to the “gods” of the ancients. Indeed, Zeus, Hera, et al., are actually creatures – they each had a beginning – and the stories of their beginnings are important. They were considered powerful by those who worshiped them, but they were part of the creation itself, in some manner “similar” to all other created things.

The God of the Christians is uncreated. There is nothing to which He belongs.

The word “One,” when used in connection with the God of the Christians, has no mathematical meaning. He is not one in the sense that there could be two or more. He is not one such that He could be counted, multiplied, divided or subtracted. He is One in that He encompasses all that is, but is not defined by anything. He is One, in that He cannot be divided (and thus be two). He is One, in that to know the One is to know the Whole (though we cannot truly know the One).

One can neither discuss nor understand the One, the Superunknowable, the Transcendent, Goodness itself, that is, the Triadic Unity possessing the same divinity and the same goodness.

If you like paragraphs that say such things, then you would greatly enjoy reading St. Dionysius (Pseudo) the Areopagite, its author. Indeed, this is a fairly normal statement when reading in the Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries (as well as in many others). Though, for modern Christians, “One God,” means something they think that they understand. “I can understand ‘One God.’ It’s the Trinity that gives me trouble.” Not so.