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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; christianity</title>
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		<title>Raymond Ibrahim on Islam and the West&#8217;s Paralysis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/raymond-ibrahim-on-islam-and-the-wests-paralysis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=raymond-ibrahim-on-islam-and-the-wests-paralysis</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Dec 2014 05:05:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[aggression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Shillman Journalism Fellow discusses Islamic aggression and what the West must do about it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247983" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6-450x334.jpg" alt="140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6" width="350" height="260" /></a>Last week, Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim was interviewed on “Steel on Steel” by John Loeffler.  Topics include Russian moves to combat Islamism, Western projections on Islam, and the ongoing Christian genocide.  </span><a style="color: blue;" title="" href="http://www.jcis.net/~bgwireless/SOSPreview/so2014-1220.mp3" target="_blank" data-href="http://www.jcis.net/~bgwireless/SOSPreview/so2014-1220.mp3" data-type="1"><span class="zw-portion link">Click here to listen to the 20-minute interview</span></a><span class="zw-portion">.</span></p>
<p class="zw-paragraph" style="color: #000000;"><span class="zw-portion EOP"> </span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>ISIS Snuffs Out Ancient Christianity</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/isis-snuffs-out-ancient-christianity/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=isis-snuffs-out-ancient-christianity</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Nov 2014 05:30:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244402</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Churches burned, Christian “apostates” and “blasphemers” slaughtered.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/christians.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244404" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/christians-450x300.jpg" alt="christians" width="318" height="212" /></a><strong><em>Originally published by the </em></strong><a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4817/muslim-persecution-of-christians-june"><strong><em>Gatestone Institute</em></strong></a>.</p>
<p>During the Islamic State’s June invasion and consolidation of Mosul, Iraq–where Christians have been present since the first century—numerous atrocities against them were committed. Accordingly, the region is now reportedly empty of Christian presence.</p>
<p>Among other things, the Islamic State reinstituted the collection of jizya, the tribute conquered Christians (and Jews) were historically required to pay in order not to be killed in accordance with Koran 9:29. In one instance, three Islamic State members burst into the home of a Christian family, demanding the jizya-money. When the father of the house pleaded that he did not have the money, the intruders <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20140621123203.htm">raped his wife and daughter in front of him</a>. The man was reportedly so traumatized that he committed suicide. Four other Christian women were <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20140623185542.htm">killed for not wearing the Islamic veil</a>.</p>
<p>Soon after taking over Mosul, the Islamic State also announced that it would destroy all Christian places of worship. <a href="http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/71713.htm">Several churches were burned</a>, including the Armenian church near the Al Salam hospital and the Church of the Holy Spirit, which was first looted and desecrated. A large Virgin Mary statue disappeared.</p>
<p>Among the many Christians missing are two nuns from the Daughters of Mary Order, who managed an orphanage for girls in Mosul. <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20140630153011.htm">It is believed they have been kidnapped</a>.</p>
<p>The rest of June’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.</p>
<p><strong>Church Attacks and Slaughters </strong></p>
<p><strong>Indonesia</strong>: Another Catholic community was attacked in the world’s largest Muslim-population country. The Parish of the Sacred Heart in Pugeran, in the South of Yogyakarta, was targeted by three different groups of unknown assailants riding motorcycles during the first morning Mass. The incident coincided with the start of Ramadan, Islam’s holy month, which <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/ramadan-islams-holy-month-of-christian-oppression/">often sees a rise in hostility for religious minorities</a>. The attackers, who were dressed in black and covered their faces with masks, broke through the parish gates shouting “Allah is great,” Islam’s historic war-cry. They <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Yogyakarta,-to-cries-of-Allah-is-great-unknown-assailants-attack-Sacred-Heart-parish-31488.html">attacked some Christian objects and posters</a> placed by members of the local Catholic community. Weeks earlier, on May 30, “Islamic extremists attacked a group of Catholics gathered in prayer, beating up the community leader; a week later, Pastor Niko, leader of the Protestant Christian community, was targeted by extremists ‘accused’ of having set up an ‘illegal’ house of prayer without permission,” reports Asia News: “Indonesia is the most populous Muslim nation in the world. Increasingly however, it has become the scene of attacks or episodes of intolerance against minorities, whether they are Christians, Ahmadi Muslims or belong to other faiths.”</p>
<p><strong>Kenya</strong>:Approximately 50 militants from Somalia’s Islamic Al Shabaab (“the youth”) network attacked two hotels, a police station and other buildings in Mpeketoni, a predominantly Christian town on Kenya’s coast during the night of Sunday June 15. They chanted “Allahu Akbar” and <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2014/06/christians-targeted-in-massacre-by-al-shabaab-in-kenya/">killed whoever could not recite verses from the Koran</a>. The militants reportedly also went door-to-door asking residents their religion and killed them if they answered “Christian.”More than 57 people were killed. Among them were six children of church pastors.</p>
<p><strong>Nigeria</strong>:Suspected <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2014/06/scores-dead-from-attacks-on-church-christian-areas-in-northeast-nigeria/">Boko Haram jihadis killed nine Christians during June 1 Sunday church service</a>, hours before a bombing of a Christian area in neighboring Adamawa state resulted in nearly 50 deaths.At least 10 gunmen attacked the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria during worship in Attagara village. The jihadis killed nine Christian members who were volunteering as security for the rest of the congregation during service.Another <a href="http://www.agi.it/flash-news/articles/201406112012-cro-ren1069-nigeria_8_christians_killed_and_church_in_flames">Christian church in Central State Plateau was set ablaze</a> by armed men who also killed at least eight Christian worshippers. According to the Italian news agency, AGI, “The police made their statement, saying that for now they have not assigned the blame for the action, even though the MO and the aims of the attack lead to presuming it was the work by the Boko Haram Islamic Fundamentalists, who have killed thousands of people since 2009.” Speaking about the June 1 church attack, one area Christian leader said the attackers were a small part of 200 assailants who have invaded Attagara and other predominantly Christian villages around Gwoza the past two weeks, destroying homes and churches:“Our church in Attagara was attacked also on Sunday,” said Dr. Rebecca Dali. “There have been 24-hour-a-day attacks on Christian communities of Attagara, Hawul, and Gwoshe around the Gwoza mountains…. <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2014/06/scores-dead-from-attacks-on-church-christian-areas-in-northeast-nigeria/">The Boko Haram Islamists have destroyed 36 churches in Gwoza area</a>, including that of Attagara attacked on Sunday. We now have only two churches that have not been affected.”</p>
<p><strong>Sudan</strong>: Authorities in North Khartoum <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2014/06/sudanese-authorities-demolish-another-church-building/">demolished another church building</a>, that of the Sudanese Church of Christ. Bulldozers came and demolished the church just one day after authorities gave verbal notice of the decision during the congregation’s Sunday worship service the previous day.   Congregation members stood by watching their church razed to the ground. About 70 security personnel armed with guns and tear gas stood by threatening anyone who dared to interfere or protest.   “They wanted to beat us or throw tear gas on us,” said one congregation member. Authorities gave no clear reason why the church, which has stood since 1983 and which has all the legal paperwork, was being destroyed. According to Rev. Kwa Shamal, the church’s pastor who questioned the commissioner, “They did not want us to ask many questions on why they were demolishing our church.” Because the government refuses to grant the church any compensation, “We will have to pray in a makeshift tent next Sunday” along the road, said the pastor.</p>
<p><strong>Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy and Blasphemy</strong></p>
<p><strong>Afghanistan</strong>: The <em>New York Times</em> told the story of “Josef,” a Muslim convert to Christianity who is on the run from Afghani family members looking to slay him.   The apostate from Islam lives in a 10-by-10 dilapidated room, his few worldly possessions a tattered Bible and wooden cross with the Sermon on the Mount written on it: “Josef’s brother-in-law Ibrahim arrived in Kabul recently, leaving behind his family and business in Pakistan, to hunt down the apostate and kill him. Reached by telephone, Ibrahim, who uses only one name, offered a reporter for <em>The New York Times</em> $20,000 to tell him where Josef was hiding.‘If I find him, once we are done with him, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/world/asia/afghanistan-a-christian-convert-on-the-run.html?_r=1">I will kill his son as well</a>, because his son is a bastard,’ Ibrahim said, referring to Josef’s 3-year-old child. ‘He is not from a Muslim father.’” Earlier, when Ibrahim first discovered Josef’s conversion to Christianity, he and his family attacked the convert, tied his hands and feet and were going to slaughter him until the father intervened calling for time to investigate matters, which Josef used to escape. Having had a long spiritual journey and closely studying all religions, the Christian convert says that “Even if I get killed, I won’t convert back.”</p>
<p><strong>Egypt</strong>: Islamic vindication against Coptic Christians accused of “blasphemy” and “apostasy” was in the air all throughout the month of June in President Sisi’s not so “new” Egypt. First, Kerolos Shouky Attallah, a young Coptic Christian man accused of blaspheming Islam for simply “liking” an Arabic-language Facebook page administered by an anonymous group of Christian converts, was <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2014/06/copt-convicted-of-blasphemy-in-egypt-for-liking-facebook-page/">sentenced to six years in prison</a>.   According to Attallah’s attorney, the Copt did not make any comments on the site, share any of the postings or upload anything to it, and removed his name from the page once he realized that it might offend Muslims. In the hours preceding the sentencing, <a href="http://www.worthynews.com/14842-islamists-torch-christian-owned-shops-in-southern-egypt">a rioting mob burned down several Christian-owned shops</a> in the area near Luxor. Safwat Samaan, chairman of Nation Without Borders, a human rights and development group headquartered in Luxor, said “The sentence today was a shock not just to Kerolos but to everyone who uses Facebook in Egypt. Any person who uses Facebook in Egypt and presses ‘Like’ on any page … can be put into prison for six years.” Also, An Egyptian appeals court upheld a blasphemy conviction against Dimyana Abdel-Nour, a Coptic Christian teacher, and <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/christian-teacher-jailed-for-blasphemy-1.1712054#.VEafKfnF9qV">sentenced her to six months</a>, overturning an earlier ruling that only imposed a fine. The appellate court in Luxor ruled that the elementary school teacher had insulted Islam in front of her pupils. Last year, three 10-year-old Muslim children complained to their parents that the Coptic teacher showed disgust for Islam when discussing it in class.And Bishoy Armia Boulous—more notoriously known as Mohammed Hegazy, the first Egyptian ever to try legally to change his religious identity from Muslim to Christian on his official ID—<a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2014/06/noted-convert-in-egypt-formerly-known-as-hegazy-sentenced-to-five-years-in-prison/">was sentenced to five years in prison</a>. (Years earlier, when he first tried to change his ID, he was also imprisoned and tortured.) The judge cited “disturbing the peace by broadcasting false information” as the reason for sentencing the apostate, who in the weeks before was documenting political unrest in Egypt brought on by numerous Muslim extremist attacks on Christians. The exact section of the nation’s criminal code that Boulous allegedly violated was not released. According to Boulous’ lawyer, the real reason he was charged and sentenced is because he abandoned Islam and became a Christian: “The officer who arrested him, when he found that he hadn’t committed a crime, made up things to keep him in prison so he could be sentenced,” said the lawyer.</p>
<p><strong>Uganda</strong>: After Muslim family members tried to poison a relative who converted to Christianity, and failed, he was attacked again by <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2014/06/daughter-of-poisoned-christian-in-uganda-strangled-to-death/">Muslims who killed his young daughter</a>. On June 16, four men barged into the home of Hassan Muwanguzi—a former sheikh who converted to Christianity in 2003—with one shouting, “Today we shall kill you—you have been a trouble-maker and are not respecting our prophet’s religion.” He fled into a room, thinking they would not hurt his daughter, Grace Baruka. But then he heard the 12-year-old girl’s cries, as the Muslim invaders were strangling her. When he came out of the room they seized him: “They hit me with a blunt object, and I fell down. I just woke up and saw neighbors surrounding me while wailing, saying that my daughter is in critical condition.” Neighbors took Grace to a clinic but she was declared dead upon arrival. Muwanguzi has suffered greatly for embracing Christianity: first he lost his wife and job as a schoolteacher after his conversion; then an aunt tried to poison him by putting insecticide in his tea; and now his 12-year-old daughter has been killed. Lamented the former Muslim in tears to Morning Star News: “I am regretting why I survived the poisoning. God could have allowed me to die. My daughter has died, and I am now mourning for her death as well [as] have pain all over my body.”</p>
<p><strong>Dhimmitude</strong></p>
<p><strong>Lebanon</strong>: The Abra Municipality, a predominantly Christian suburb in the coastal city of Sidon, released a memo urging all citizens—the majority of whom are Christian—to respect observant Muslims during<a href="http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2014/Jun-18/260627-abra-requests-citizens-to-respect-fasting-muslims.ashx?#ixzz3GnyJKU2A"> Ramadan and abstain from eating in public.In his memo, Mayor Walid Nico</a>las al-Mchantaf stressed the importance of showing consideration during the holy month and refraining from dining at restaurants and cafes during the fasting period, which begins at sunrise and ends at sunset. A large Muslim community exists in the town and has been in the spotlight since last year’s violent clashes between Islamic gunmen and the Lebanese Army.</p>
<p><strong>Germany</strong>: Muslims were granted their own section at the cemetery in the Hessian town of Seligenstadt. And they have been allowed to conduct Islamic ceremonies, in which the corpse is wrapped in cloths and buried facing Mecca. Now these same Islamic communities, including Ahmadiyyas, are <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/06/germany-islamic-organisation-demands-crosses-be-covered-during-muslim-burials">demanding that Christian symbols and crosses in the cemetery be removed or covered</a> up during Islamic funerals.</p>
<p><strong>United Kingdom</strong>: The National Health Services <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10933206/NHS-worker-who-bullied-Muslim-by-praying-for-her.html">suspended a Christian health worker on full pay for nine months for praying with a Muslim colleague</a>. Victoria Wasteney, a senior occupational therapist, was also accused of “bullying” the colleague after giving her a book about a Muslim woman who converts to Christianity. According to Wasteney, her relationship with the Muslim woman was friendly and sometimes intimidate, as the Muslim female often came to her for support; the Christian health worker did not think that she was behaving coercively or disrespectfully.   Andrea Williams, the chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said the case demonstrated that “the NHS is increasingly dominated by a suffocating liberal agenda that chooses to bend over backwards to accommodate certain beliefs but punishes the Christian.”</p>
<p><strong>About this Series</strong></p>
<p>The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic.  Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:</p>
<p>1)    To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.</p>
<p>2)    To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.</p>
<p>Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam;  theft and plunder in lieu of <em>jizya</em> (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed <em>dhimmis</em>, or third-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.</p>
<p>Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.<strong><br />
</strong></p>
<p><strong>Previous Reports</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-may-2014/">May, 2014</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/raped-and-slaughtered-muslim-persecution-of-christians-april-2014/">April, 2014</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/obama-administration-suppresses-talk-of-muslim-persecution-of-christians-march-2014/">March, 2014</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/christians-most-persecuted-group-in-world-muslim-persecution-of-christians-february-2014/">February, 2014</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/becomes-chief-enabler-of-christian-persecution-muslim-persecution-of-christians-january-2014/">January, 2014</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/they-are-slaughtering-us-like-chickens-muslim-persecution-of-christians-december-2013/">December, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/u-s-chose-to-stay-silent-on-muslim-persecution-of-christians-november-2013/">November, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-october-2013/">October, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-october-2013/">September, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-august-2013/">August, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-july-2013/">July, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-june-2013/">June, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslim-persecution-of-christians-may-2013/">May, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslim-persecution-of-christians-april-2013/">April, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-march-2013/">March, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslim-persecution-of-christians-february-2013/">February, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-january-2013/">January, 2013</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-december-2012/">December, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-november-2012/">November, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-october-2012/">October, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-september-2012/">September, 2012 </a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-august-2012/">August, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/12215/muslim-persecution-of-christians-july-2012">July, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/12045/muslim-persecution-of-christians-june-2012">June, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11930/muslim-persecution-of-christians-may-2012">May, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11713/muslim-persecution-of-christians-april-2012">April, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11604/muslim-persecution-of-christians-march-2012">March, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11373/muslim-persecution-of-christians-february-2012">February, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11152/muslim-persecution-of-christians-january-2012">January, 2012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10989/muslim-persecution-of-christians-december-2011">December, 2011</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10922/muslim-persecution-of-christians-november-2011">November, 2011</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10724/muslim-persecution-of-christians-october-2011">October, 2011</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10504/muslim-persecution-of-christians-september-2011">September, 2011</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10247/muslim-persecution-of-christians-august-2011">August, 2011</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/muslim-persecution-of-christians-july-2011/">July, 2011</a></li>
<li></li>
<li><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>. </strong></li>
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		<title>Islam: Victors Vanquishing Victims</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/terry-scambray/islam-victors-vanquishing-victims/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islam-victors-vanquishing-victims</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2014 04:35:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Terry Scambray]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Crucified Again]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243676</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim unmasks the brutal extermination of Christianity in the Middle East. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2014-10-23-at-7.32.32-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243677" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2014-10-23-at-7.32.32-PM-234x350.png" alt="Screen Shot 2014-10-23 at 7.32.32 PM" width="211" height="316" /></a>Editor&#8217;s note<span style="color: #222222;">: The following book review of Raymond Ibrahim&#8217;s </span><a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Crucified-Again-Exposing-Islam%C2%92s-Christians/dp/1621570258/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=1MK8BDYBRZ2205D7XN83" target="_blank">Crucified Again</a><span style="color: #222222;"> first appeared in the </span><a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1014-scambray" target="_blank">New Oxford Review</a><span style="color: #222222;"> (October, 2014 issue).</span></em></p>
<p>Throughout the Muslim world, from Morocco to Nigeria to Indonesia — and even occasionally in Western Europe and North America — Christians are being harassed, tortured, and murdered. Reuters reported in January 2012 that a hundred million Christians were being persecuted, while a few years earlier Britain’s Secret Service, M16, put the number closer to two hundred million. In November 2012 German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Christianity “the most persecuted religion worldwide,” a statement that elicited condemnation from many world leaders. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe estimates that a Christian is killed for his faith every five minutes.</p>
<p>What is the reason for such atrocity? By any measure, the persecution of Christians is one of the dramatic stories of our time. So why is it ignored? Raymond Ibrahim, a fluent speaker of Arabic and a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, answers these questions and explains both the sources of Islamic violence and the infirmities that cripple the West in his new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians.</p>
<p>History provides a large part of the answer. Islam, from its beginnings, in contrast to Christianity, promised its followers worldly success and prosperity. From Mohammed’s first raids, down through the centuries of conquests that followed, Islam has been a religion of victors vanquishing victims. Contemporary Muslim lands in the Middle East and Africa include what were once great centers of Christendom, such as Jerusalem, Alexandria, Damascus, Antioch, and Constantinople. Lest anyone forget, imperialism is not a Western invention.</p>
<p>Having conquered vast territory, Muslims then went on to dominate it by imposing the cruelties of Sharia law and dhimmitude, both of which reduce “infidels,” non-Muslims, to servile positions. Ibrahim provides examples of brutal conditions under Muslim rule during these early conquests when, “according to one medieval Muslim historian, over the two year course of a particularly ruthless Christian persecution campaign, some 30,000 churches were burned or pillaged in Egypt and Syria alone.” Under the Abbasid rule in A.D. 936, the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, believed to have been built atop the tomb of Christ, was burned down. Nearly a century later, Caliph Hakim bi-Amr Allah (996-1021) ordered the dismantling of what was left of the church, including the digging up of its foundations, in addition to the destruction of “Golgotha and the church of Saint Constantine as well as all the sacred grave stones. They even tried to dig up the graves and wipe out all traces of their existence.” Though apologists for Islam admit that Hakim was a madman, they coyly offer him as an aberration, implying that Christians suffered only under his rule. Not so, writes Ibrahim, for there is “no dearth of Muslim leaders throughout the whole of Islamic history that have persecuted Christians and their churches.”</p>
<p>Many of us in our youth read stories of medieval Europe in which “Mohammedans,” “Moors,” “Saracens,” and “Turks” were fearsome antagonists. When we got to high school and university, somehow that feature of European life played a less prominent role or was even absent from history courses. It seems, though, that our earliest stories were accurate, and Ibrahim provides a broad set of facts to support this.</p>
<p>In the first decades of its existence, Islam had conquered half the Christian lands in the world and appeared to be on such a roll that it would soon squash Europe into a single Islamic polity. “In fact,” Ibrahim writes, “Europe as we know it was forged in large measure by the Islamic conquests, which severed the Latin West from the Greek East, turning the once highly trafficked Mediterranean into a ‘Muslim Lake’ — so that, in the words of medieval Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun, ‘the Christians could no longer float a plank upon the sea.’” Belgian historian Henri Pirenne makes the same point when he writes, “The classic tradition was shattered because Islam had destroyed the ancient unity of the Mediterranean” (Mohammed and Charlemagne, 1959).</p>
<p>In 1798 Napoleon invaded and handily conquered Egypt, in the heart of the Muslim world. This conquest was followed in the nineteenth century by other European powers subjugating and colonizing Muslim territories. These invasions traumatized Muslims, for prior to this their centuries-long winning streak intensified the triumphalism inherent in their religion. Muslims’ loss of confidence fell further as they witnessed close-up the power and dynamism of Western ideas and technology. Ibrahim quotes the late Osama bin Laden to the effect that “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”</p>
<p>Muslims saw the West, synonymous for them with Christianity, as the strong horse, and they both feared and admired it. As Ibrahim writes with characteristic directness, “The reason for this admiration is simple: Islam, the quintessential religion of might makes right, teaches respect for power.” Some twentieth-century leaders like Mustafa Kemal Attaturk in Turkey, the Shah in Iran, and Gamal Nasser in Egypt attempted to emulate, at least in theory, Western ideas of nationalism, modernism, and secularization. During this time of Western confidence and hegemony, which extended to about 1950, Christians were tolerated in Muslim countries, and some even called this a “Golden Age for Christians” in the Islamic world.</p>
<p>Of course, some Muslims remained loyal to their old ways, but by the early twentieth century Western scholars saw Islam as “a spent force, an ideology on the wrong side of history.” That they would think this is understandable. After all, the much-extolled “secular city” had triumphed in the West, and it became difficult to imagine that the appetites for consumer items and sexual freedom it unleashed could abate.</p>
<p>But then the West began pulling up stakes in the Islamic world and elsewhere, while simultaneously adopting the religion of sentimentality as a replacement for Christianity. Soon, influential Westerners filled the air with mea culpas for their earlier imperialism and other alleged sins. Ibrahim shows in this book, as well as in his first book, The Al-Qaeda Reader, that the West’s orgy of self-criticism handed the Muslims all the propaganda weapons they required to rationalize the renewal of their attacks on the West. These rationalizations were so eagerly swallowed by our useful idiots that bin Laden poured it on even thicker by writing that the 9/11 attack was partly motivated by America’s failure to ratify the Kyoto treaty on climate change!</p>
<p>What few understood amid this confessional pose adopted by the West was that Islam sees imperialism as the normal exercise of power. So when Westerners began apologizing for what to Muslims were normal actions, Muslims’ respect for the West declined further. At the same time, they grabbed these propaganda clubs handed to them and proceeded to bash the infidels with their own words. Ibrahim argues further that this loss of respect spiraled downward into contempt when Islam saw “the new culture of sexual licentiousness, moral relativism, godlessness, and even the Western self-hatred that flooded Western societies in the late 1960s and 1970s, though they had roots going back decades earlier.” Sayyid Qutb, the twentieth century’s most renowned Islamic scholar and author of a thirty-volume commentary on the Koran, came to the U.S. in the 1940s. Though he had advocated that “Muslims should emulate Western science and technology,” visiting America radicalized him. Qutb insisted that, using Sharia law, Muslims must first clean up their own countries and then those of the rest of the world. Islamic supremacy and aggression, features of that old-time religion from the seventh century, were revived.</p>
<p>Nothing better exemplifies this revival than the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when Islam reasserted itself in the fiery leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini and various bearded and morose mullahs who inveighed against “the Great Satan.” Their exaltation of Islam and loathing of America led to the overthrow of the Shah and the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran — not only an act of war but also a repudiation of centuries-old international protocols. “Islam is back!” these actions screamed loudly, though many people saw them as isolated episodes, perhaps the last gasp of an antiquated ideology, rather than the harbinger of thirty-five years of terrorism. Still wallowing in ignorance, many Westerners dismiss Muslims’ ravaging and killing as merely an extended bad-hair day, a departure from Islam’s enlightened and peaceful past. But the truth is the reverse: The former period of tolerance toward Christians in Muslim lands is an exception, and the present attacks on Christians are the norm.</p>
<p>American and European opinion-makers in the universities, among the intelligentsia, and in the media began to demonize Western tradition in the 1970s and to favor “indigenous peoples” and any exotic “ethnic identity.” Thus came the growth of “multiculturalism” and “diversity,” categories implicitly justified as compensation for centuries of mistreatment. Unfortunately, many ethnic traditions include varieties of tribalism, sometimes expressed as racism or anti-Semitism. Via “noble savage” quackery, Western intellectuals broadened the pathway for once Westward-looking Muslims to return to their roots. History became a melodrama wherein the West is the villain and Islam the noble victim. Within these assigned roles, the true history of the relationship between the West and Islam reversed, with the West cast as greedy, violent crusaders who invaded peaceful, prosperous Muslim lands.</p>
<p>From such melodrama, Ibrahim reports, we get Robert Fisk, correspondent for The Independent, who follows this script of “spot the victim.” Fisk has criticized Christians for supporting status-quo candidates like Ahmed Shafiq in Egypt, not understanding that Christians are the victims and that jihadist alternatives to these regimes will kill Christians and burn their churches while imposing Sharia law. Former President Bill Clinton misreads the situation in much the same way when he relies on materialist explanations. “What’s fueling all this stuff,” he says, is “inequality and poverty.” When the Nigerian government uses force against the Boko Haram jihadist gang for killing Christians, Mr. Clinton preaches that such “violence” will not solve the problem. Violence, however, is the problem. From these ignominious examples, Ibrahim points to a pathetic irony: The Muslims presently persecuting Christians are themselves descendants of Christians who were persecuted by the same ideology and in the same terrible circumstances.</p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim was born in America of Coptic Christian parents and has traveled widely in the Middle East. He has appeared before the U.S. Congress and on national radio and television, and he writes regularly for major newspapers and scholarly journals. His comprehensive description of the persecution of Christians by Muslims is extensively documented. While Crucified Again might not provide much comfort, it is necessary reading for those who wish to understand the dynamic that propels the Islamic threat.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>An Islamic &#8216;Council of Nicea&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joe-herring-and-dr-mark-christian/an-islamic-council-of-nicea/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=an-islamic-council-of-nicea</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 04:25:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joe Herring and Dr. Mark Christian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[council of nicea]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242925</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Instead of apologizing for Islam, demand Islamic reform.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/conp.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-242961" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/conp.jpg" alt="conp" width="284" height="177" /></a>Christianity and Judaism have a great deal in common, not the least of which is compassion for their fellow man and the institutional capacity to take the steps required to express that compassion in daily life.</p>
<p>It is this reverence for the individual that led both traditions to reform themselves over the centuries, eliminating anachronistic practices while maintaining fidelity to their faith. It is an ongoing process, obviously, but it is a process to which both religions are fully committed – and have been for more than a thousand years.</p>
<p>Islam in this regard is an outlier. In the 1400-odd years of Islam, there has never been a “reformation.” The religion forbids it. It is no accident that the oft-touted contributions of Islam to the world mostly came before Islam demanded dominance in all things.</p>
<p>After the Mongol sacking of Baghdad, Islam reacted by retrenching inwardly. Science was no longer science, it was only Islamic science. Economics became Islamic economics, as rules proliferated for everything in order to demonstrate adherence to the faith and resistance to the <em>infidel</em>.</p>
<p>Truthfully, Islam was better off in practice in the 10<sup>th</sup> Century than it is today. It is clear that Islam, like cigarettes, stunts your growth.</p>
<p>Now, adherence to tradition is not a bad thing on its own. In fact, tradition is the repository of the world’s “institutional knowledge,” enabling successive generations to build on the work of their predecessors.</p>
<p>Sometimes, though, new information is discovered and it becomes necessary to revisit those traditions to re-evaluate their utility for present and future generations. The idea of self-government is one such example.</p>
<p>Tradition held that some people had the right to rule other people, and this tradition was accepted and enforced for millennia until the radical experiment of individual sovereignty, which found its greatest expression in our own United States.</p>
<p>So it is with religious tradition as well. Christianity is built upon Judaism &#8212; indeed it wouldn’t exist without it &#8212; but it isn’t opposed to Judaism for those who wish to practice it. Many centuries ago, the enmity between Jews and Christians began fading with the passing of each successive generation until today it exists only as an aberration to be ridiculed and denounced whenever it appears.</p>
<p>This illustrates the internal narrative of the Western psyche. Our minds operate in a manner consistent with liberty because our minds have been developed in the presence of liberty, both political and religious.</p>
<p>We are capable of reform, because we are always seeking the better mousetrap. We look at life as a challenge, not just to survive it, but to improve it. To leave it better than we found it.</p>
<p>A mind shaped by Islam generally finds such attitudes to be anathema. Islam is in continual conflict because Islam is possessed of an impossible idea – to preserve all of creation as it existed in 632 A.D., the year Mohammed died.</p>
<p>Given the changes that have wracked the earth since that date, is it any wonder Islam is “out of sorts&#8221;? Ask yourself, how difficult would it be to conduct your daily business if you had to reconcile your actions with the cultural norms of the early Middle-Ages?</p>
<p>In Christianity, the Church has held ecumenical councils, realigning Church doctrine with new information and greater understanding of both the natural world and the people who inhabit it. These councils also addressed heresies that had sprung up in the Church, definitively establishing what is canonical and what is apocryphal.</p>
<p>In Catholicism, the Council known as Vatican II was the most recent “re-founding” of the Church. Pope Paul VI described the need for the Council in this way –</p>
<blockquote><p>“…the problems of the 1960s stemmed from the Church holding to the best values which had come to maturity over the previous two centuries, despite the fact that <em>these values were born outside the Church</em>, yet they could find their place – after being purified and corrected – in the Church’s view on the world.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The Pope was referring to the Enlightenment philosophies of science and reason. In the previous two centuries, Man had slowly crawled out from the cave of mysticism to stand blinking in the sunlight of a world he previously had only seen through the stained-glass windows of the Church.</p>
<p>Reason would emerge as a complement to Scripture – and vice-versa – while the understanding of oneself and one’s role in the world evolved into an individual pursuit, rather than a purely collective one directed by religious tradition.</p>
<p>Faith made peace with reason and a careful balance was struck between secularism and religion, between the sovereignty of God over all, and the sovereignty of Man over himself. A difficult balance to be sure, but one that is essential to the survival of both Church and individual liberty.</p>
<p>There is no such mechanism for a similar introspection in Islam, and the resultant calcification of the religion has rendered it incapable of peaceful coexistence in the modern world.</p>
<p>Pope John XXII called this process of re-evaluation <em>aggiornamento</em> – the adjustment of religion according to the facts of the world in which it lives. This is not to be confused with secularizing the Gospel or the elevation of humanism above God as many opponents of Vatican II charged, but rather represented recognition that immutable truths can arrive from sources beyond the Church, and that God doesn’t restrict the delivery of His wisdom only to men in robes and sashes.</p>
<p>Throughout, Islam has held a fierce resistance to all things non-Islamic. Around the time of the Western Enlightenment, Muslims&#8217; brutal practices had rendered them largely unwelcome anywhere in Europe (certainly not in any significant numbers), and their incessant raiding necessitated their subjugation by the more developed and cosmopolitan powers of the earth.</p>
<p>Islam now appears to have reached a point in history where it has been behind for so long adherents can’t bring themselves to admit it. Sort of like the guy who trips over his own feet, then tries to pass it off by saying, “I meant to do that.”</p>
<p>Islam needs a Vatican II. Actually, Islam needs a Council of Nicea (the 4<sup>th</sup> Century meeting in what is now modern-day Turkey) that codified Christian doctrine. Islam has never convened anything like a Council of Nicea. Indeed, Muslims have never really admitted to having a problem, which we all know is the first step in finding a solution.</p>
<p>Whether the Islamists themselves or their mewling apologists among the liberal intelligentsia care to admit it, Islam must reform, or be subjugated yet again.</p>
<p>Instead of apologizing for Islam, it is time for our leaders to demand of Islam that which we ourselves have already done –<em> aggiornamento</em> – the adjustment of our religion according to the facts of the world in which it lives.</p>
<p><a href="http://globalfaithinstitute.org/about/dr-mark-christian/"><em>Dr. Mark Christian</em><em> MD</em><em> </em></a><em>was born and raised a devout Sunni Muslim, with strong ties to the Egyptian military and The Muslim Brotherhood, but later ditched Islam and followed Jesus Christ. He is the Co-founder of the </em><a href="http://globalfaithinstitute.org/"><em>Global Faith Institute.</em></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.abrahamstentradio.com/about-the-hosts/">Joe Herring</a> is a writer and analyst who frequently advises policy makers at all levels of government.  He is the Press/Public Relations Director for <em><a href="http://globalfaithinstitute.org/support-gfi/">Global Faith Institute</a> </em>and the host of <a href="http://www.abrahamstentradio.com/">Abraham&#8217;s Tent radio show</a>.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Dr. Mark Christian</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discuss </em><span id="eow-title" class="watch-title long-title " dir="ltr" title="The Glazov Gang-Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood in the American Heartland"><em><strong>Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood in the American Heartland</strong>:</em> </span></p>
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		<title>Allah as Deceiver &#8212; on The Glazov Gang</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:00:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[allah]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The justification of lies in Islam -- in contrast to Christianity’s emphasis on truthfulness.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/taqiyya.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240155" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/taqiyya.jpg" alt="taqiyya" width="266" height="186" /></a><strong>[<a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf">Subscribe</a> to <em>The Glazov Gang</em> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang">LIKE</a> it on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang">Facebook.]</a></strong></p>
<p>This week&#8217;s <em>Glazov Gang</em> was guest-hosted by <strong>Nonie Darwish</strong> and joined by <strong>Dr. Jim Tolle, </strong>the Senior Pastor at El Camino Metro Church in Los Angeles.</p>
<p><strong>Pastor Tolle</strong> joined the show to discuss <strong>Allah as Deceiver</strong>, analyzing the justification of lies in Islam &#8212; in contrast to Christianity’s emphasis on truthfulness.</p>
<p>The discussion also focused on <strong>The Notion of “Sin” in Islam and Christianity</strong><em><strong>,</strong> </em>crystallizing how the stark contrast in two religions’ values fosters peace and forgiveness in one &#8212; and violence and killing in the other:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0dAUnRHOasU" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss this week&#8217;s second <em>Glazov Gang</em> episode with<strong> Samira Tamer,</strong> L.A. ACT Chapter Leader, who joined the show to discuss <strong>Hijab Rising on Santa Monica’s 3<sup>rd</sup>. Street Promenade, </strong>shedding a disturbing light on Islamic Supremacism’s totalitarian presence on the streets of L.A.:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YJwUROg0Si8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>To watch previous <em>Glazov Gang</em> episodes, </strong><a href="http://jamieglazov.com/"><strong>Click Here</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.glazov"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> Jamie Glazov’s </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.glazov"><strong>Fan Page</strong></a><strong> on Facebook.</strong></p>
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		<title>Nothing to Do with Islam, Part 2</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/nothing-to-do-with-islam-part-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=nothing-to-do-with-islam-part-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/nothing-to-do-with-islam-part-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2014 04:28:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extremism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239427</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The "Islamic State" speaks for no religion? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #272727;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/image_update_img.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239430" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/image_update_img.jpg" alt="image_update_img" width="299" height="254" /></a><strong>To read Part I, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/nothing-to-do-with-islam/">click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p style="color: #272727;">In his comments on the jihad being waged by the Islamic State in northern Iraq (ISIL), President Obama recycled yet again the shopworn false knowledge about Islam that continues to compromise our response to Muslim violence: “So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day.”</p>
<p><span style="color: #272727;">Over at the <i>New York Post</i>, a columnist rightly took the president to task by saying, “</span>You can’t divorce the Islamic State from religion.” Unfortunately, the column is full of numerous misstatements that perpetuate the illusion that there is some peaceful, tolerant version of Islam that has been distorted and twisted by “extremists” or “fundamentalists.”</p>
<p>According to the writer, adherents of any faith can misread sacred texts literally in order to justify violence: “The problem isn’t just literalist interpretations of the Koran: The New Testament, the Jewish Torah and many other religious books contain explicit calls for disproportionate punishments and killing of nonbelievers.” Forget the false assumption that we are supposed to read all sacred texts allegorically rather than literally. I’d like to see the verses from the New Testament that <i>explicitly</i> instruct Christians to kill non-believers rather than try to convert them. On the contrary, Jesus preached, “Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5.38), and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5.43).</p>
<p>Concerning other interactions with non-believers, Jesus instructed his disciples, “And if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town” (Matthew 10.14).  Because there are no <i>explicit</i> commands to kill non-believers in the New Testament, over the ages Christians who have justified violence with scripture have had to engage in tortuous interpretations and misreadings that over time have not been able to gain traction among all the faithful. That’s why despite widespread persecution across the world today, there is no major Christian terrorist movement.</p>
<p>Compare, in contrast, the Koran’s <i>explicit</i> calls to violence against non-believers, such as Koran 4.76: “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil: So fight ye against the friends of Satan.” This is consistent with the famous command in 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah.” If someone wants to argue that “fight” is intended metaphorically in these verses, and has been “twisted” by a “literal” reading to serve some fringe interpretation, consider 4.74: “Let those fight in the cause of Allah Who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To him who fights in the cause of Allah––whether he is slain or gets victory––Soon shall we give him a reward.” Obviously in this verse and numerous others “fight” means physical battle in which people are “slain.” Contrary to Christian scripture, in traditional Islamic doctrine non-believers who are invited to convert and refuse the call are not left alone, but killed or, if they are Jews or Christians, sometimes allowed to live in humiliating submission under a treaty that Muslims can break at any time for any reason.</p>
<p>As for the Torah, the list of verses allegedly commanding death for non-believers that crop up on anti-Biblical and atheist websites has nothing to do with gentiles. A favorite is Deuteronomy 17, which commands death for those who, “transgressing his covenant,” have “gone and served other gods and worshipped them.” But this is clearly a reference not to gentiles, but to Hebrews who have betrayed the covenant between God and the Jewish people by violating the first Commandment. So too with numerous other verses produced to prove that the Hebrew God ordered the Hebrews to kill gentiles. On the contrary, all these verses describe capital punishment for crimes committed by Jews, such as apostasy, witchcraft, adultery, fornication, and the like. Nowhere is there a verse commanding, like Koran 9.29, wholesale warfare against all gentiles who refuse to become Jews.</p>
<p>As for the orders given to Hebrew kings in the Old Testament to destroy another town or tribe, these are specific to that particular time, place, and people, and reflect the brutal warfare universal at that time. They are history, not theology. We may find such draconian punishments or collective violence distasteful, but they certainly do not comprise the sort of theology of violence against all non-believers that is found throughout the Koran and Islamic doctrine.</p>
<p>Obama is half-right that killing innocents, more specifically women and children, is forbidden in Islam. But there are conflicting traditions of interpretation about this prohibition going back centuries. The most famous Muslim philosopher, the 12<sup>th</sup> century Ibn Rushd, known in the west as Averroës, discusses this controversy in his treatise <i>Bidayat al-Mudjtahid</i>. In contrast to the prohibition against killing women and children, Averroës writes, some interpreters quote Mohammed’s famous statement, “I have been commanded to fight the people until they say, ‘There is no God but Allah,’” which is consistent with Koran 9.5: “Then when the sacred months have slipped away, slay the polytheists wherever you find them.” As Averroës summarizes the controversy, “the source of their controversy is to be found in their divergent views concerning the motive why the enemy may be slain. Those who think that this is because they are unbelieving do not make exception for any polytheist,” including women and children. But even those who take the contrary view that only those able to fight may be killed make an exception for women who fight or who aid the enemy in some way, such as speaking against Islam or spying on Muslim warriors.</p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">In short, many Muslims over the centuries have disagreed with Obama’s bald assertion that “</span>no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.” Modern jihadists like ISIL, al Qaeda, Hamas, Fatah, and the numerous other groups thus have a foundation for their actions in a long tradition of Islamic theology. They see the outsized power and influence of the West, and the people who support it economically or politically, as a mortal threat to Islam. Thus destroying them is acceptable as a defense of the faith, for they are not “innocent” of aggression against Islam.</p>
<p><span style="color: #272727;">Many other practices of the jihadists likewise have justifications found in Islamic tradition and history, even if there are disagreements among Muslims about their validity. The jihadists’ penchant for beheading has its precedent in Koran 8.12: “</span>I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.” We have acted as though the filmed beheading of reporter James Foley is some unprecedented act of savagery by a Manson-like cult. But as Ian Tuttle <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/385882/isis-butchers-beheading-cause-ian-tuttle"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reminds</span></a> us, early in his career Mohammed beheaded the some 700 Jews of the Banu Qurayzah. In the 11<sup>th</sup> century Yusuf ibn Tashfin beheaded 24,000 Spaniards and, in a primitive version of YouTube, sent the heads to cities in North Africa and Spain. In the 19<sup>th</sup> century the Mahdist jihadists in Sudan beheaded their enemies, including the British war hero Charles “Chinese” Gordon. And Saudi Arabia today continues to publicly behead malefactors, 23 so far this August. There are few better ways to “cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve” or, as Obama said of Foley’s beheading, “shock the conscience of the entire world.”</p>
<p>Similarly, the indiscriminate bombing of people including women and children, whether through rockets or highjacked airliners, is argued as licit based on the fact that Mohammed used mangonels, a type of catapult, at the siege of al-Taif, even though such bombardment endangered women and children. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has written an essay justifying al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks of 9/11 based on this tradition. So too with the prohibition against suicide, used by some apologists to argue that so-called “suicide-bombers” are contrary to Islamic doctrine. But in the Koran and hadith it is clear that killing oneself as an act of martyrdom while fighting for the faith is acceptable. For example, according to one hadith, Muhammad said, “I would love to be martyred in Allah’s Cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred.” That’s why for 14 centuries jihadists have said they love death the way infidels love life.</p>
<p>Groups like ISIL or al Qaeda do not embrace “extreme religious views,” or “twist the overall message of religious texts,” as the <i>New York Post </i>has it. They act on a venerable tradition within Islam, one based on writings some Muslims have construed differently because of inconsistencies among various texts. But that doesn’t change the fact that the jihadists have within the faith long-established precedents for their actions, a tradition with millions of Muslim adherents worldwide, including the leaders of Turkey and Qatar who finance the vicious terrorist group Hamas, and the Mullahcracy in Iran, the world’s foremost supporter of Islamic terrorism.</p>
<p>We in the West correctly find such views “extreme,” or “savage” and “barbaric,” but they are not “fringe” anomalies conjured out of textual misreadings by an extremist cult. They derive from the history and sacred texts of Islam, the clear meaning of which is illustrated on page after page of Muslim history. And they are being acted upon today across the Muslim world, as evidenced by the nearly 24,000 violent attacks perpetrated by Muslim terrorists since 9/11. Contrary to Obama, ISIL does speak for a religion. It’s called Islam.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Raymond Ibrahim Talks Islam &amp; Christian Persecution</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/raymond-ibrahim-talks-islam-christian-persecution/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=raymond-ibrahim-talks-islam-christian-persecution</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2014 04:10:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238554</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Shillman Journalism fellow explains the current conflict engulfing the Middle East. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/0.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238698" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/0.jpg" alt="0" width="279" height="234" /></a>Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center, recently did several interviews and presentations on a variety of topics dealing with Islam.  Some of these follow:</p>
<p>•Ibrahim chaired a panel discussion on the Western media at the annual Coptic Solidarity conference held in Capitol Hill, D.C. His segment appears <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAZ024pypZ4">here</a>, starting around the 13:15 mark. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BftXarF6X64">Click here</a> for the other panelists’ presentations, including Michael Coren, Erick Stakelbeck, Ryan Mauro, and Raymond Arroyo.)</p>
<p>•An interview on In the Market with Janet Parshall, in a segment titled “Islam’s Quest for Control.”  <a href="http://www.moodyradio.org/radioplayer.aspx?episode=138446&amp;hour=2">Click here to listen</a> (the 30 minute segment begins around the 21:30 mark).</p>
<p>•An interview on the “sex jihad” on Huffington Post’s “Huffpost Live,” with host Marc Lamont Hill. <a href="http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/isis-sexual-jihad-iraq/53a9b36578c90a10c20000be">Click here to view</a>.</p>
<p>•An interview on the “big picture” of Muslim persecution of Christians on the Steve Deace Show. <a href="http://stevedeace.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/deace_hour3_071614.mp3">Click here to listen</a>.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
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		<title>The West’s Prostration to Islam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/the-wests-prostration-to-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-wests-prostration-to-islam</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Aug 2014 04:20:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim enlightens the Poles about Islam.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/islam-will-dominate-the-world.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237933" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/islam-will-dominate-the-world-450x350.jpg" alt="islam-will-dominate-the-world" width="307" height="239" /></a>Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center, was recently interviewed by Fronda, a leading website in Poland.  The English-language version of the Polish interview, originally titled “</i><a href="http://www.fronda.pl/a/raymond-ibrahim-plaszczenie-sie-przed-islamem,39012.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Raymond Ibrahim: Prostration before Islam</i></span></a><i>,” follows:</i></p>
<p><strong>1. Who is Raymond Ibrahim? A scholar, a writer, an activist? What is his mission and the main goal?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: I am a little of all that and more.  Due to my background, academic and personal, I have had a long interest in the Middle East and Islam, especially the historic and contemporary interaction between Islam and Christianity.  After the strikes of September 11, 2001, I took an interest in the current events of the region vis-à-vis the West, and what immediately struck me was how, on the one hand, the conflict was almost identical to the historic conflict, one of continuity—at least that is how many Muslims were portraying it.</p>
<p>But on the other hand, in the West, the narrative was very different and based on a “new paradigm,” one that saw Islam and Muslims as perpetual victims of all sorts of outside and material pressures, mostly from the West.  Thus the analyses that were being disseminated through media and academia were to my mind immensely flawed and, while making perfect sense to people in the West—for they were articulated through Western, secular, materialistic paradigms—had little to do with reality as I saw and understood it.</p>
<p>That was one of the reasons I left academia and began writing for more popular audiences, to try to offer a corrective to these flawed narratives.  My first book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Qaeda-Reader-Essential-Terrorist-Organization/dp/076792262X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1407175739&amp;sr=1-2"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>The Al Qaeda Reader</i></span></a> (2007), was meant to do precisely this—to compare the words of al-Qaeda as delivered to the West and as delivered to fellow Muslims, and to show how when speaking to the West, al-Qaeda and other Islamists used Western arguments, claiming any number of grievances, political and otherwise, as being the source of their jihad.  Obviously such arguments, widely disseminated by Western mainstream media, made perfect sense to the West.</p>
<p>But al-Qaeda’s Arabic writings that I discovered when I was working at the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and which I translated for the book, made completely different arguments, basically saying that, irrespective of all grievances, Muslims must hate and wage jihad on all non-Muslim “infidels” until they come under Islamic authority, according to the worldview of Sharia, or Islamic law.</p>
<p>So in a way, you can say my mission since then has been to open Western eyes to the truths and reality of Islam—at least the reality of how it is understood and practiced by many Muslims—for Western eyes have been closed shut in recent times.</p>
<p><strong>2. You have a dual background. You were born and raised in the U.S. by parents who were born and raised in a Coptic community in Egypt. Are you the ‘clash of civilizations’ personified? What kind of advantages and disadvantages does such an identity and upbringing lead do?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: That’s an interesting way of putting it.  Along with obvious benefits—being bilingual (Arabic and English), for example—yes, I do believe my background gives me more subtle advantages.  Growing up cognizant of both worlds and cultures has, I believe, imparted a higher degree of objectivity to my thinking.  Most people’s worldviews are colored by whichever culture they are immersed in—hence exactly why so many Western people tend to project their own values on the Islamic world, convinced that any violence and intolerance that comes from that region must be a product of some sort of socio-political or economic “grievance”—some sort of material, not religious, factor.  While I understand, appreciate and participate in Western values and norms, because of my “dual” background, I also cannot project such values and norms on non-Western peoples (and vice-versa, of course).</p>
<p>This has caused my worldview to be, I believe, more neutral and objective, less colored by cultural values and references.  Conversely, I have, so far, not encountered any notable disadvantages from such a background—other than perhaps being overly objective and not always able to participate in the common.</p>
<p><strong>3. In addition to numerous articles in a variety of media, you are also the author of two books. The last one, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621570258/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1621570258&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=uhurnetw-20"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians</i></span></a> argues that martyrdom is not a thing from the past. It is not a book with a happy ending, is it?</strong></p>
<p>I prefer to think of it as a dire wake up call to the West.  The topic of Muslim persecution of Christians is a perfect example of what I’m talking about.  In <i>Crucified Again</i>, I look at the history of this phenomenon, the Islamic scriptures that support it, and the modern era.   And what I find and document is unwavering continuity.  According to Islamic teaching, Christians and other non-Muslims are “infidels,” and as such, they are seen as at best third class subjects in Islamic states.  They cannot build or renovate churches, display crosses or Bibles; they have to pay tribute with humility, according to Koran 9:29; they cannot speak well of Christianity or criticize Islam.  They are even required to give up their seats to a Muslim if he demands it, according to strict Islamic teaching (and as found in the “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/western-ignorance-of-the-conditions-of-omar/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Conditions of Omar</span></a>,” an important text that discusses how Christian minorities are to be treated under Islam).</p>
<p>Now if you look at history—as recorded by early Arabic/Islamic historians—you will see that that is exactly how Christians were treated under Islam for centuries; that is exactly how nations like Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and all of north Africa, went from being Christian majority to Muslim majority over the centuries: most Christians opted to convert to Islam rather than constantly suffer from third-class status as well as sporadic persecution.</p>
<p>And today, what we are seeing is simply the ongoing continuation of history, as Christians continue to be persecuted, continue to dwindle in numbers in lands that were Christian centuries before Western Europe embraced the faith.  Yet, according to Western analysts, etc., all of this is some sort of “misunderstanding” or because Muslims are angry about Israel—anything and everything but codified religious intolerance, even though the latter is so well documented, doctrinally, historically, and in current events.</p>
<p><strong>4. There are many initiatives aimed at bringing the ‘spirit of dialogue’ between the religions. In the Catholic Church we even celebrate a Day of Islam. What is your opinion on this kind of inter-faith outreach? Will it be successful in decreasing the persecution of Christians or helping individuals like Asia Bibi?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: No, it will exacerbate Christian persecution.  From my perspective, the more the West and/or Christianity kowtow to Islam—and that is what modern day “interfaith outreach” often amounts to—the more aggressive that religion becomes.</p>
<p>Here, again, is another example of Westerners projecting their norms onto others, namely, Muslims.  In the Western paradigm, itself an offshoot of Christianity, showing tolerance and forgiveness will supposedly cause some sort of reciprocation from the one being forgiven and tolerated—since everything is always supposedly a “misunderstanding.”  Yet in Islam, might has always made right, and “tolerance” has always been seen as sign of equivocation or weakness—a lack of conviction.  If Christians praise Islam, so many Muslims conclude, that is because they feel it is the truth—not because they are trying to find commonalities, a paradigm that is foreign to classical Islam, which sees the world in terms of right (Islam) and wrong (non-Islam).</p>
<p>Again, history sheds some light on this.  In the medieval era, there were Christians like Francis of Assisi who tried to have dialogue with Muslims—but in order to get to the truth, including by asking hard questions about Islam often in the context of Christian teaching.  Such dialogue is of course admirable because it is sincere.  But trying to have dialogue in order to find and parade some minor “commonalities”—while overlooking and ignoring the fundamental differences, which are much more immense and the true sources of conflict—is simply a game of wasting time.</p>
<p><strong>5. In your writings regarding the Muslim persecutions of Christians, two themes are constantly recurring. Firstly, you claim that it constitutes “an elephant in the room” and secondly you believe that liberal academia and media are biased “whitewashing Islam and blaming the West” for Islamic attacks against non-Muslims. Can you explain the reasons for such arguments?</strong></p>
<p>It’s the “elephant in the room” because few things show such remarkable continuity between the past and the present—while still being thoroughly ignored and treated as an aberration by academia, media, and government—as Muslim persecution of Christians.  If you look at the true history recorded by both Muslims and Christians during the Medieval era—one Muslim historian tells of how one caliph destroyed 30,000 churches—you will see that the persecution and subjugation of Christians is an ironclad fact of history.</p>
<p>Today, not only do we see Christians persecuted from one end of the Islamic world to the other, but we see the same exact patterns of persecution that Christians experienced centuries ago, including hostility for and restrictions on churches, hostility for the crucifix and other Christian symbols and icons, restrictions on Christian worship and freedom.  (I discuss this in more depth <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/western-ignorance-of-the-conditions-of-omar/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">here</span></a> and <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/the-existential-elephant-in-the-christian-persecution-room/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">here</span></a>.)  As for academia and media, they reject modern day persecution of Christians for a plethora of reasons—not least because they tend to be ideologically anti-Christian—but primarily because it contradicts their entire narrative, specifically the notion that, far from being persecuted, Christians themselves are the most intolerant groups, and that Muslims are “misunderstood others” who have been oppressed by the West.</p>
<p>These themes are today so predominant in the West that few can believe they are almost entirely fabricated—but so they are, according to both history and current events, both of which are naturally suppressed or distorted by academia and media in the interest of keeping their ideologically-charged narrative alive.</p>
<p><strong>6. In her book, <i>Tenth Parallel</i>, Eliza Griswold writes that religion becomes means of political emancipation, especially between the equator and the tenth parallel, where Christianity and Islam meet. So perhaps it is not about spirituality but power?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Again, one need only turn to history, followed by doctrine, to see that mainstream Islam has always been about power.  Its founder and prophet, Muhammad, was a warlord, who went on caravan raids and incited his followers to attack and plunder other tribes that rejected his “prophecy,” seizing their property and women and children—and all in the context of “God told me so.”  After his death, his followers did the same, giving people three choices: be part of their “team” by converting, or else keep their religious beliefs, but pay tribute and live as third class subjects, or else die.  In this context, and over the course of several centuries of jihadi conquest, the Islamic world was forged.</p>
<p>All this is well justified by the Koran and Islamic Sharia.  Compare and contrast this with Christianity’s founder, Jesus Christ: far from a warlord, he preached mercy, peace, and spirituality.  And that’s one of the problems: Westerners are so well acquainted with Christianity that they tend to project its approach to Islam—naively thinking that all religions must be the same, primarily spiritual, not concerned with the temporal.  But Islam is immensely concerned with the temporal—with power.</p>
<p><strong>7. You have written about conceptual failures dominating the Western discourse on Islam. What are the main fallacies and why are they dangerous?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Along with the aforementioned fallacy of projecting Christian/Western worldviews onto a distinctly different religion/civilization like Islam, secular Westerners almost always try to understand Islam through secular and materialistic paradigms—the only paradigms they themselves are familiar with.  Thus the mainstream interpretation in the West is that “radical Islam” is a byproduct of various sorts of material discontent (economic, political, social) and has little to do with the religion itself.</p>
<p>Westerners apparently think this way because the secular, Western experience has been such that people respond with violence primarily when they feel they are politically, economically, or socially oppressed. While true that many non-Western peoples fit into this paradigm, the fact is, the ideologies of Islam have the intrinsic capacity to prompt Muslims to violence and intolerance vis-à-vis the “other,” irrespective of grievances.</p>
<p>Conceptually, then, it must be first understood that many of the problematic ideologies associated with radical Islam trace directly back to Sharia, Islamic law. Jihad as offensive warfare to subjugate “infidels” (non-Muslims); mandated social discrimination against non-Muslim minorities living in Muslim nations (the regulations governing <i>ahl al-dhimma</i>); the obligation to hate non-Muslims—<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/muslim-husbands-must-hate-non-muslim-wives/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">even if a Muslim is married to one</span></a>—all of these are clearly defined aspects that have historically been part of Islam’s worldview and not “open to interpretation.”</p>
<p>For example, the obligation to wage expansionist jihad is as “open to interpretation” as the obligation to perform the Five Pillars of Islam, including praying and fasting. The same textual sources and methods of jurisprudence that have made it clear that prayer and fasting are obligatory, have also made it clear that jihad is also obligatory; the only difference is that, whereas prayer and fasting is an “individual” duty, jihad is understood to be a “communal” duty (a <i>fard kifaya</i>).  All these intricacies must be understood before Westerners can understand Islam on its own terms.</p>
<p><strong>8. One of the most popular views as to the reasons of Islamic terrorism is that it is based on political and economic grievances. The recipe to achieve the peaceful world would be then to remove the factors contributing to poverty or oppression and this way disarm the ‘relative deprivation’ bomb. Do you think it is feasible?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Again, as mentioned, political and economic grievances may be a reality; yet it is a distinct fact that, wherever Islam is—including in immensely rich nations like the Gulf nations—violence and intolerance of non-Muslims exist.  For example, Christian persecution around the world today is being committed at the hands of Muslims of all races, languages, cultures, and socio-political circumstances: Muslims from among America’s allies (Saudi Arabia) and its enemies (Iran); Muslims from economically rich nations (Qatar) and from poor nations (Somalia and Yemen); Muslims from “Islamic republic” nations (Afghanistan) and from “moderate” nations (Malaysia and Indonesia); Muslims from nations rescued by America (Kuwait) and Muslims claiming “grievances” against America.  Moreover, much of the underdeveloped world is suffering from economic, political, and social problems—and yet it is the Islamic world where terrorism in the name of God (Allah) is rampant.  One does not hear of, say, disenfranchised Cuban dissidents crashing explosive-laden vehicles into government buildings—while screaming Jesus is great.  Yet sceams of Allah is great in the context of terror attacks are ubiquitous.</p>
<p><strong>9. You have devoted one of your publications to the concept of <i>taqiyya</i>. Can you explain what <i>taqiyya</i> is and why is it important to know it in the West?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Although Muslims are exhorted to be truthful, <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war"><span style="color: #0433ff;">taqiyya</span></a> is an Islamic doctrine that permits them to deceive non-Muslims, who by nature are deemed enemies.  Some Western scholars and apologists for Islam insist that taqiyya is a very arcane teaching developed by Shi’a and to be used only when their lives are in danger.  In reality, however, taqiyya—as well as its sister teaching, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/tawriya-lying/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">tawriya</span></a>—is used by mainstream Islam (Sunnism) and gives Muslims great freedom to deceive infidels if the deception can be rationalized as a way to help empower Islam over non-Muslims.</p>
<p>Normative Islamic teaching is so that, almost anything can be rationalized as permissible—for example “martyrdom operations” (even though suicide is banned by Islam)—as long as they can be perceived as helping empower Islam.  Islamic prophet Muhammad himself permitted deceit, including to one’s wife.  One of the few Arabic language books devoted to the subject, <i>At-Taqiyya fi&#8217;l-Islam</i> (Dissimulation in Islam) makes it clear that <i>taqiyya</i> is hardly limited to Shi‘a dissimulating in fear of persecution. Written by Sami Mukaram, a former Islamic studies professor at the American University of Beirut and author of some twenty-five books on Islam, the opening sentences of the book clearly demonstrate the ubiquity and broad applicability of <i>taqiyya</i>: “<i>Taqiyya</i> is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it … We can go so far as to say that the practice of <i>taqiyya </i>is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream … <i>Taqiyya</i> is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.”</p>
<p><strong>10. Do you have any words of advice to countries like Poland where the influence of Islam is still relatively weak but increasing due to immigration and certain radicalization of indigenous Muslim groups (e.g. Polish Tatars stopped their traditional prayers for Poland which used to be their custom)?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: My advice is to take heed of what I call “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/islams-rule-of-numbers-and-the-london-beheading/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Islam’s Rule of Numbers</span></a>,” which is basically the unwavering, statistical fact that, the more Muslims grow in numbers (and thus strength), the more aggressive they become.  In the U.S., for example, where Muslims are <a href="http://religions.pewforum.org/reports"><span style="color: #0433ff;">less than 1% of the population</span></a>, acts of Islamic intolerance are relatively uncommon. Islamic assertiveness is limited to political activism dedicated to portraying Islam as a “religion of peace,” the painting of any and all critics as “Islamophobes,” and sporadic, but clandestine, acts of terror.</p>
<p>In some Western European nations, where Muslims make for much larger minorities—for example, the UK and France—open violence and religious intolerance is common. But because they are still a vulnerable minority, Islamic violence is always placed in the context of “grievances,” a word that, as we have seen, pacifies Westerners.</p>
<p>Where Muslim numbers reach 35-50% of a population, the full-blown jihad is often declared, as in Nigeria, which although is half Christian half Muslim is also one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a Christian.   In short, Islamic aggressiveness is very much a product of Islamic strength in numbers.  I discussed this at length <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/islams-rule-of-numbers-and-the-london-beheading/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">here</span></a>.</p>
<p><strong>11. Inevitably one stumbles upon the ‘so what?’ question. Nobody persecutes Christians in France and churches are not burnt in Germany. It is doubtful that Europe will be washed away with the waves of Islam. To the contrary, it looks like Europe wants to leave religions behind. Would you not say so?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Much of this view is based on selfishness, of the modern West’s egoistic and highly individualistic worldview.  What such people are really saying is that, by and large, if nothing changes and people remain indifferent, they themselves and their generation will go through life fine without much worry from the Islamic question.  But this position also shows absolute indifference to future generations and the world they will inherit.  In short, yes, most Europeans today may not personally suffer from Islam.  But they are opening the floodgates wide to the potential suffering of their descendants.</p>
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		<title>Why America Is in Jeopardy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dennis-prager/why-america-is-in-jeopardy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-america-is-in-jeopardy</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jul 2014 04:00:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Secularization and its consequences. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pic_giant_121713_SM_No-Ones-Watching-Prison-Rape-in-America.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236046" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pic_giant_121713_SM_No-Ones-Watching-Prison-Rape-in-America-450x262.jpg" alt="pic_giant_121713_SM_No-Ones-Watching-Prison-Rape-in-America" width="258" height="150" /></a>On page 563 of his latest biography, &#8220;John Quincy Adams: American Visionary,&#8221; author Fred Kaplan (biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Gore Vidal among others) cites this insight of the sixth president:</p>
<p>&#8220;Christianity had, all in all, he believed, been a civilizing force, &#8216;checking and controlling the anti-social passions of man.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>That insight is pretty much all an American needs to know in order to understand why the American Founders considered religion — specifically ethical monotheism rooted in the Hebrew Bible — indispensable to the American experiment, and why the America we have known since 1776 is in jeopardy.</p>
<p>It is easy to respect secular Americans who hold fast to the Constitution and to American values generally. And any one of us who believes in God can understand why some people, given all the unjust suffering in the world, just cannot believe that there is a Providential Being.</p>
<p>But one cannot respect the view that America can survive without the religious beliefs and values that shaped it. The argument that there are moral secularists and moral atheists is a non-sequitur. Of course there are moral Americans devoid of religion. So what? There were moral people who believed in Zeus. But an America governed by Roman religion would not be the America that has been the beacon of freedom and the greatest force for good in the world.</p>
<p>In order to understand why, one only need understand John Quincy Adams&#8217;s insight: How will we go about &#8220;checking and controlling the anti-social passions of man&#8221; without traditional American religious beliefs?</p>
<p>There are two possible responses:</p>
<p>One is that most Americans (or people generally, but we are talking about America here) do not have anti-social passions.</p>
<p>The other is that most Americans (again, like all other human beings) do have anti-social passions, but the vast majority of us can do a fine job checking and controlling them without religion as it has been practiced throughout American history.</p>
<p>These are the views with which virtually every American who attends secular high school or university is explicitly and implicitly indoctrinated.</p>
<p>Both are wrong. And not just wrong, but foolish — and lethal to the American experiment.</p>
<p>To deny that human beings are filled with anti-social passions betrays a denial of reality and a lack of self-awareness.</p>
<p>One has to be taught nonsense for a great many formative years to believe it.</p>
<p>If we weren&#8217;t born with anti-social passions — narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious — why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior?</p>
<p>The second objection is that even if we do have anti-social passions, we don&#8217;t need a God or religion in order to control them. Only moral primitives, the argument goes, need either a judging God or a religious set of rules. The Enlightened can do fine without them and need only to consult their faculty of reason and conscience to know how to behave.</p>
<p>Our prisons are filled with people whose consciences are quite at peace with their criminal behavior. As for reason, they used it well — to figure out how to get away with everything from murder to white-collar crime.</p>
<p>But our prisons are not filled with religious Jewish and Christian murderers. On the contrary, if all Americans attended church weekly, we would need far fewer prisons, and the ones we needed would have very few murderers in them.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the record of the godless and Christianity-less crowd is awful. I am not simply referring to the godless and secular Communist regimes of the 20th century that committed virtually every genocide of that century. I am referring to those Americans (and Europeans) who use reason to argue, among other foolish things: that good and evil are subjective societal or individual opinions; that gender is purely a social construct and therefore the male and female distinction is of no importance; that marriage isn&#8217;t important — it is just a piece of paper and it was invented by the religious to keep women down; that a human fetus, even when it has a beating heart, a formed human body, and a conscious brain, has less right to life than a cat; and that men, let alone fathers, aren&#8217;t necessary (see, for example, The Atlantic Are Fathers Necessary? and the New York Times Men, Who Needs Them?). And that is a short list.</p>
<p>For proof of the moral and intellectual consequences of the secularization of America, look at what has happened to the least religious institution in America, the university.</p>
<p>Is that the future we want for the whole country?</p>
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		<title>Presbyterian Divestment Stokes Ancient Fires</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/susan-warner/presbyterian-divestment-stokes-ancient-fires/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=presbyterian-divestment-stokes-ancient-fires</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jul 2014 04:10:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Susan Warner]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Presbyterian Church (USA) brings anti-Semitism into the mainstream. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/symbol-bluewhite.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235831" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/symbol-bluewhite-350x350.gif" alt="symbol-bluewhite" width="254" height="254" /></a>Many Christians were in shock recently when the 221<sup>st</sup>  General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (PC/USA), by a slim margin, <a href="http://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/oga/pdf/ga221-middle-east-faq.pdf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">voted to divest</span></a> from three major international companies that do business in Judea, Samaria and Israel (Hewlett Packard, Caterpillar and Motorola). Assembly leaders claim the fault lies in Israel’s “illegal occupation” of Judea and Samaria (also called the West Bank) and its oppression of Palestinian neighbors. But there is a much more sinister agenda behind this action.</p>
<p>While the PC (USA) asserts that they are not (at all) motivated by anti-Semitism and they take &#8220;no position&#8221; on Zionism, they nevertheless lay all problems in the area at Israel’s feet, blaming the so-called &#8220;illegal occupation.&#8221;  However, a recent article by <a href="http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article.php?id=4261"><span style="color: #0433ff;">NGO MONITOR</span></a> has found strong evidence of underlying anti-Semitism in the PC (USA) leadership.</p>
<p>Currently, the vicious battle against the Jewish people and Israel is being waged by international alliances of Christians, Muslims, the hard Left, the press, and academia for the express purpose of instigating Israel’s destruction.</p>
<p>Thousands of representatives of Christian organizations like the PC (USA) gather annually or bi-annually in national enclaves to discuss the business of their denomination as they have for centuries.  In some more liberal leaning activist denominations like PC (USA), the agenda includes Israel. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/us/methodists-to-sell-shares-as-a-protest-over-israel.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Methodists</span></a>, Presbyterians (USA), <a href="http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/news_and_events/news/archive/2013/the_inheritance_of_abraham_revised_report_released"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the Scottish Reformed Church</span></a> and the <a href="http://www.uccpalestineisraelnetwork.org/Action-Alerts.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">United Church of Christ</span></a>, <a href="http://www.exposingtheelca.com/on-israel.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the Evangelical Lutheran Church</span></a>, <a href="http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1478023/gs%201874b-palestine%20and%20israel%20pmm.pdf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the Church of England</span></a>, <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/united-church-of-canada-boycotts-israeli-companies/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">The United Church of Canada,</span></a> and the <a href="http://www.oikoumene.org/en/member-churches/middle-east/israel"><span style="color: #0433ff;">World Council of Churches</span></a> all seem to have a stake in proposing schemes to punish Israel.</p>
<p>The most vocal of Israel’s defamers are Christian pastors and leaders like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps-v2NkoNVg"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Stephen Sizer</span></a> (Anglican), <a href="http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/sabeel_and_naim_ateek_factsheet"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Naim Ateek</span></a> (Anglican), and <a href="http://www.meforum.org/3769/israel-evangelical-support"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Gary Burge</span></a> (Evangelical/Protestant).   They cloak their mission to undermine Israel under an aggressive &#8220;peace and justice&#8221; cover-up. They ask the question, “Does Israel really have a legitimate right to call the land its own (Zionism)?” to which their answer is a resounding “no.”</p>
<p>If you bother to read Steven Sizer’s recent book <a href="http://www.stephensizer.com/books/christian-zionism/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Christian Zionism The Road to Armageddon</span></a>, you will discover there that Christian Zionism is not simply Christians standing for the rights of Israel to live in the land. According to Sizer, Christian Zionism is a plot to undermine the USA and the world. Needless to say, Sizer affirms the decision of the PC (USA) to divest from the companies who do business in Judea and Samaria.  <a href="http://stephensizer.blogspot.com/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Steven Sizer speaks</span></a> around the Western and Islamic world against Christian Zionism and Israel’s right to continue to live in the land of its ancestors.</p>
<p>In order to justify this Anti-Zionism stance, PC (USA) and its allies need to do to the Jews the very same thing the church planned to do in the second century.  They need to invert the truth, demonize, and ridicule Israel in order to accomplish what until now has been their elusive goal of destroying Israel and the Jewish people.</p>
<p>Just like the Presbyterian (USA) Council last week, the church councils of centuries past turned their language against the Jews. Name calling couched in fancy theologies justified the persecution of Jews.  While the world is burning in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Africa, while Christians are slaughtered in those same lands, the daily headlines accuse Jews of blocking the progress of world peace by building apartments in Jerusalem or <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/scarlett-johanssons-defense-of-sodastream-factory-in-occupied-west-bank-fails-to-sway-critics/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;_r=0">manufacturing seltzer in Ma’ale Adumim.</a></span></p>
<p>At the root of the Christian animus towards Jews is a theological narrative which has stoked the ancient fires of hostility for two millennia.</p>
<p style="color: #0433ff;"><span style="color: #000000;">In her recent column<a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/jesus-was-a-palestinian-the-return-of-christian-anti-semitism/">, Melanie Phillips wrote,</a> </span></p>
<blockquote><p>Within the Protestant world, many churches are deeply hostile to the State of Israel &#8211;  What is less known is the more disturbing fact that this perverse animus is increasing fed not by the politics of the present moment but by theology.</p></blockquote>
<p>The theology that Ms. Phillips mentions is known by a variety of names but is undergirded by the concept of &#8220;Replacement Theology.&#8221;  This term grew out of the early Church where the Founding Fathers laid claim to the promises God made to Abraham and his offspring.  They accused Jews of being “<a href="http://jcpa.org/article/the-origins-of-christian-anti-semitism/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Christ killers”</span></a> and said that God had nullified His covenant with Abraham and transferred his &#8220;Covenant blessings&#8221; to the Church which they called &#8220;The Israel of God.&#8221;</p>
<p>Christianity, birthed from the womb of Judaism two thousand years ago, continues a mission to assassinate its very own Jewish parents. Ridicule, defamation, distortion, fire, and the sword, have all punctuated the Christian enterprise for two thousand years.  “God,” say many Christians, <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.christianzionism.org/BibleSays/Sizer03.pdf">“has replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people.”</a></span></p>
<p>The Emperor Constantine (In 325 CE,) laid the organizational groundwork  of a &#8220;Christianity&#8221; designed for Roman pagans and non-Jews. The Apostle Paul was the last vestige of the Jewish foundation of the original Church.  After he died (65 CE), it didn’t take the gentile Church Fathers long to muster up a case against the Jews.</p>
<p>Christians claimed that God’s &#8220;everlasting covenant&#8221; with the Jews through Abraham was defunct and claimed the covenant blessings. This Christian theology of “Replacement,” also called <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.theologicalstudies.org/resource-library/supersessionism/324-defining-supersessionism">“Supersessionism</a>,</span>” energized a paradigm of anti-Judaism that informs some of Western Christianity today.</p>
<p>This <i>Replacement</i> concept is the framework for the most virulent forms of  the anti-Zionism we currently see.  For PC (USA) or the Scottish Church or any of the others who demonize Israel to admit to anti-Semitism might bring world criticism. So they couch their concerns in words and actions that are subtle inversions of the truth like calling Judea and Samaria “illegally occupied.”  When Jordan actually did &#8220;illegally occupy&#8221; Judea and Samaria from 1948 to 1967, the world heard not a peep of opposition from these churches.</p>
<p>From roughly 165 CE through about 500 C.E., the &#8220;Fathers&#8221; tilled a garden of Jewish hatred.  To make everything official, the Emperor Constantine, who, it is said, had a personal epiphany of Jesus, called Bishops around the Empire to attend the First <a href="http://messianicfellowship.50webs.com/nicea.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Council of Nicea (325 CE). </span></a>  This Council, like the Council of PC (USA) last week, concocted its anti-Jewish, anti-Israel narrative which served to advance Church goals and bolster the Imperial Roman Empire at the same time.</p>
<p>The Nicean Council succeeded in manufacturing the first layer of this new &#8220;imperial religion.&#8221; Constantine dubbed Christianity the exclusive state religion. <a href="http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">John Chrysostom</span></a> (407C.E.) followed and honed the narrative against the Jews to a fine edge without any opposition. Later key theologians embarked on some far-flung theologies which are respected by some Christians today.</p>
<p>Soon, civil laws throughout the Empire followed suit, prohibiting Jews from holding public office or from eating with or marrying Christians. Forced conversions became commonplace. Demonizing, bullying, torture, and mass killings flourished throughout Catholicism and later Protestantism.</p>
<p>Today, much of Western Christianity occupies that very same anti-Jewish space with not even a grasp of its ancient foundations in Hebrew Scripture. Instead, its paradigm is as a stand-alone creature amputated from its root system.</p>
<p>The PC(USA) and their collaborators are clones of the Founding Fathers.  The theological paradigm is that Israel and the Jews of today are no longer under the covering of the original, eternal covenant with God. Today’s Jews, according to the narrative, are &#8220;different.&#8221;  And since God removed his blessings from them when they “killed the Christ.”  The church has replaced the Jews for all time.  This false theology of <a href="http://www.jewishvoice.org/media/publications/articles/supersessionism.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">supersessionism</span></a> is interwoven into the fabric of Catholicism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism and other branches of Calvinist and Reformed theologies.</p>
<p>Within Protestantism, Catholicism, and the Orthodox Churches today there are, of course, some denominations more extreme than others.  Protestant Evangelical groups (Bethlehem Bible College, Sabeel) for example, hold conferences, like <a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/bethlehems-christ-at-the-checkpoint-conference-a-personal-report/2014/03/18/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Christ at the Checkpoint</i>,</span></a> with the underlying purpose of nullifying Jewish claims to the Land of Israel and dubbing <a href="http://www.foi.org/free-resources/article/jesus-palestinian/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jesus a Palestinian.</span></a> Partnering together at the bi-annual Christ at the Checkpoint Conference are notables such as Sizer, Ateek, <a href="http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/24218/Default.aspx?article=related_stories"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Lynn Hybels</span></a> (Willow Creek Church) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXxR_C-6oOw"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Tony Campolo</span></a> (Eastern University) and other advocates of disabling Israel and replacing her with a one-state Palestinian solution.</p>
<p>Evangelical Christians, those who interpret the Bible literally, have been among Israel’s best and most loyal friends. But the winds are shifting yet again as more and more Christian Evangelicals are lured by a pro-Palestinian, pro-&#8221;peace and justice&#8221; narrative. Some Christian/Israel loyalists are concerned about this trend and are working to counter it. A few rays of light and hope peek through the cracks with groups like Christians United for Israel, Friends of Israel, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and Bridges for Peace among them.</p>
<p>The paradigm that grips many Christians with a theologically based hatred of Jews and Israel must be broken.  Israel’s survival is not guaranteed.</p>
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		<title>Video: Raymond Ibrahim Discusses &#8216;Islam&#8217;s Protestant Reformation&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/video-raymond-ibrahim-discusses-islams-protestant-reformation/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=video-raymond-ibrahim-discusses-islams-protestant-reformation</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2014 04:20:05 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Those hoping for an “Islamic reformation” need to look elsewhere…]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the Center, recently appeared on Sun News’ Byline with Brian Lilley discussing his recent article, &#8220;<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/islams-protestant-reformation/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Islam&#8217;s &#8216;Protestant Reformation</span></a>.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Raymond Ibrahim Discusses Christian Persecution with Ex-Muslim Woman</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/raymond-ibrahim-discusses-christian-persecution-with-ex-muslim-woman/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=raymond-ibrahim-discusses-christian-persecution-with-ex-muslim-woman</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 28 May 2014 04:10:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Crucified Again]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A woman who fled Turkey and an abusive Muslim husband helps gives context to "Crucified Again."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cr2.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-226412" alt="cr" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cr2.jpg" width="183" height="276" /></a>Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the Center, recently appeared on “Embracing New Life,” a satellite television show hosted by <a href="http://www.isikabla.com/index.php/en/about/isik-abla">Isik Abla</a>, a woman who fled Turkey and Islam and converted to Christianity.  Ibrahim’s book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621570258/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1621570258&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=uhurnetw-20"><i>Crucified Again</i></a>, and the phenomenon of Muslim persecution of Christians were the primary topics of discussion in the half-hour episode:</p>
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<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>‘The Point’ of an Honest Discussion of Race</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jack-kerwick/the-point-of-an-honest-discussion-of-race/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-point-of-an-honest-discussion-of-race</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 23 May 2014 04:20:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack Kerwick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why learn the true history of slavery? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/not-for-sale-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-226005" alt="not-for-sale-1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/not-for-sale-1-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>In reply to a recent article in which I disclosed some neglected facts concerning race and slavery, a reader inquired as to the point in unveiling them.  Before answering, let’s review some of the tidbits that I shared in the interest of that “honest discussion” of race that the Eric Holders of the world continually charge the rest of us with deferring: </span></p>
<p>(1) For centuries, <i>millions </i>of <i>white </i>European <i>Christians</i> were enslaved by <i>Asian </i>and <i>African Muslims</i>;</p>
<p>(2) The first <i>slaves </i>in Colonial America were <i>white;</i></p>
<p>(3) Blacks were in America <i>prior </i>to slavery;</p>
<p>(4) A significant portion of African blacks who eventually became slaves in America were <i>already </i>Christian;</p>
<p>(5) These black slaves had been converted by the <i>African blacks </i>who <i>sold them </i>into bondage;</p>
<p>(6) During the antebellum period, there existed several <i>thousand </i>slave <i>owners </i>who were <i>black;</i></p>
<p>(7) The <i>first</i> slave <i>master</i> in America<i> </i>was <i>a black man, </i>Anthony Johnson, an Angolan who had originally been sold into slavery by his fellow Africans to Arabs and who owned black <i>and white </i>servants.</p>
<p>There is still other historical “trivia” that defy the conventional narrative on race and slavery.</p>
<p>The civilized world, justly, expresses outrage over the abduction and enslavement of hundreds of young Nigerian schoolgirls at the hands of the African Islamic terrorist organization, Boko Haram.  But the stone-cold truth of the matter is that this sort of thing has been transpiring in Africa from time immemorial.  For millennia upon millennia, black Africans have seized upon and enslaved other black Africans.  And, as notes famed Islamic scholar, Bernard Lewis, among others, from the dawn of Islam, Muslims have abducted and enslaved non-Muslims—both black <i>and white</i>.</p>
<p>It is estimated that well over <i>100 million</i> black Africans died over the span of 14 centuries as they were marched across the scalding hot sands of the Sahara Desert by those Arab raiders and traders intent upon reducing them to a life of bondage in foreign lands.</p>
<p>In spite of the tremendous number of blacks transported to the Middle East, the latter consists of relatively few blacks today. Why?  For one, African <i>boys</i> were frequently forced to undergo <i>castration, </i>a practice so barbaric that but a tiny percentage survived it.  Those who did, however, fetched a purchasing price several times that of their peers who were not made into eunuchs.</p>
<p>Another consideration accounting for the miniscule black population in the contemporary Middle East is that African <i>girls </i>were sold as concubines and into sex slavery to Arab masters.  This reflected the Islamic belief—most recently articulated by the leader of Boko Haram but first stated in the Koran and practiced by Muhammad—that girls can and should become wives once they are <i>nine years of age</i>.  Upon begetting their masters’ offspring, many eventually became assimilated into their families.</p>
<p>But, thirdly, the tragic fact is that many slaves were simply worked to death.</p>
<p>What follows are some other fascinating truths that are a “must” for any truly honest discussion of race and slavery:</p>
<p>While whites were by no means unique in practicing slavery, they <i>were</i> indeed unique insofar as they were the first people in all of history to have developed a <i>moral</i> revulsion against this age-old institution.  No one <i>liked</i> being abducted and enslaved by others.  But many of these same unfortunates wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same to others if the opportunity had arisen.  Whites, more specifically, English white Christians, personified and led by the conservative William Wilberforce, succeeded in prevailing upon the British Empire—the most economically and militarily powerful presence on the planet at that time—to abolish slavery, not just in England or even within the Empire, but in every area of the globe over which Britain could hope to exercise any of its influence.</p>
<p>More scandalously, the British met with much <i>resistance</i> from Arabs, Asians, and Africans.  Bernard Lewis relays an exchange between a British Consul General in Morocco and the Sultan of that land that typifies precisely the challenges to its campaign against slavery that the English had to surmount.  When the Sultan was asked what he had done to relegate to the dustbin of history the trade in human flesh, he “replied, in a letter expressing evident astonishment, that ‘the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam…up to this day.’”  The Sultan added that slavery’s permissibility was “manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day.”</p>
<p>Incidentally, England’s success was a long time coming, for in some parts of the non-European world, places like India and Saudi Arabia, slavery didn’t become illegal until the 1940s and 1960s, respectively.</p>
<p>My reader who inquired as to the “point” in raising these facts at no time denies any of them.  Thus, he confirms what some of us have long suspected: in their tireless promotion of the conventional orthodoxy on race and slavery in America, neither he nor his ilk has ever been in the least bit interested in history for its own sake.  Rather, there has always been a “point” to their campaign, the advancement of a political agenda involving fictions concerning perpetual black suffering, white oppression, and white guilt.</p>
<p>The facts to which I allude here frustrate that agenda.</p>
<p>And this, by the way, is “the point” of mentioning them.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Islam’s Religious War with Everyone</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/islams-religious-war-with-everyone/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islams-religious-war-with-everyone</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Apr 2014 04:55:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Separating the real religious oppressors from the oppressed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/islam1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223842" alt="islam" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/islam1-450x320.jpg" width="315" height="224" /></a>Few divides are as impossible to bridge as those of religion. You either believe or you don’t.</span></p>
<p>When it comes to Islam, non-Muslims are expected to take its goodwill on faith. If you believe your eyes and ears, Islam and violence go together like peanut butter and jelly. But if you believe Muslims and their spin doctors with academic degrees, Muslims are the victims of other religions.</p>
<p>If Muslims fighting Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists are the victims of non-Muslims, what are we to make of Muslims fighting other Muslims in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq? Religious civil wars make it hard to believe that Muslims are the victims of other religions instead of the authors of their own violence.</p>
<p>Religions have a long history of not getting along with one another, but there is only one religion that has never gotten along with any other religion, is engaging in a religious war with every religion that exists, with atheists who have no religion, and even with its own co-religionists.</p>
<p>Is all this violence someone else’s fault? Or is it Islam’s fault?</p>
<p>Muslim hostility to Christians and Jews is not a phenomenon that began with the modern State of Israel or American foreign policy.</p>
<p>Muslims have warred with Christians and Jews as minorities and persecuted them as majorities. Academic apologists claim that Muslim hostility toward Christians derived from an ongoing conflict, but at no time during the history of Islam until the twentieth century did the Jews have a functioning state.</p>
<p>Israel has conveniently become the focus and explanation for Muslim hostility toward Jews, but that fails to explain over a thousand years of Muslim hatred and persecution … long before Herzl or the IDF.</p>
<p>Why did Muslims persecute and kill Jews long before Zionism was even a word? For the same reason that they killed Christians.</p>
<p>Islam hated Judaism and Christianity from the start. The Koran urges Muslims not to befriend Jews or Christians (Koran 5:51) speaks of “enmity and hatred” with Christians (Koran 5:15) and the Jews (Koran 5:65) who are also to be cursed. The Jews are accused of “creating disorder” (Koran 5:65) and Christians are accused of worshiping their priests (Koran 9:31). The Jews and Christians believe in evil things (Koran 4:52) and Allah’s curse will be upon them (Koran 9:30).</p>
<p>Muslims don’t hate and kill Jews because of Israel. They hate Israel because it is Jewish.</p>
<p>September 11 was part of an ongoing war against Christians dating back over a thousand years.</p>
<p>The real reason why a Muslim carries out a terrorist attack in New York or Boston is the same reason why a church gets burned in Egypt or bombed in Syria. It’s the same reason why teenage British girls get raped and why the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303630904579417482632439814?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303630904579417482632439814.html">Christian population of the Middle East has shrunk</a> from a quarter to a tenth.</p>
<p>Everything else is just Muslim war propaganda that only fools and appeasers take at face value.</p>
<p>The Koran’s scriptural hatred encouraged Muslim warlords to spread Islam through the mass murder, enslavement and rape of Jews and Christians. The legacy of hatred began with the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians from what is today Saudi Arabia and the persecution of Middle Eastern Christians and Jews continues into the modern era.</p>
<p>It is this old hatred that is behind the terrorism against Israeli Jews and Egyptian Christians. It is not a new hatred, but an old one.</p>
<p>The religious basis for everything from Hamas’ war against Israel to Al Qaeda’s war on America derives from these and other verses in the Koran, from teachings in the Hadiths and later rulings of Islamic law.</p>
<p>Terrorism against Christians and Jews cannot be detached from Islam because it is Islam.</p>
<p>When Muslims chant the old genocidal battle cry, “Khybar khaybar ya yahoos,” at <a href="http://www.thejc.com/blogpost/itbah-al-yahud%E2%80%99-or-khaybar-ya-yahod%E2%80%99-%E2%80%93-what-was-actually-said-oxford-union">Oxford</a> or <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2012/05/jewish-and-israeli-students-attacked-by-muslim-thugs-at-toulouse-university-event.html/">Toulouse</a> University or when <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2173">University of California Professor Hatem Bazian</a> recites the Hadith that states, “The Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews”; the fiction that this is a new conflict dating back to 1948 unravels.</p>
<p>If Islam’s conflict were only with Christians and Jews, it might be dismissed as an old rivalry. But Islam, at least scripturally, hates Jews and Christians less than it hates every other religion out there.</p>
<p>While Jews and Christians have the provisional status of People of the Book, second class citizens, the rest of the world is treated as idolaters and polytheists and faces an even more unrelenting genocide.</p>
<p>If the Koran is nasty toward Christians and Jews, it’s even worse when it comes to everyone else. “Kill the idolaters wherever you find them” (Koran 9:5), “Kill them wherever you meet them” (Koran 2:192) and “When you meet in regular battle those who disbelieve, smite their necks” (Koran 47:5).</p>
<p>These are not mere words. The Muslim conquests of India led to the mass murder of as many as 80 million Hindus. The Hindu Kush mountain range commemorates a small part of the genocide that took place. Likewise the Buddhists were massacred in large numbers.</p>
<p>Islam does not win many religious debates. It achieves its victory through the Koranic command, “Fight those who believe not in Allah” (Koran 9:29).</p>
<p>This isn’t ancient history; it’s why Muslims continue to kill Hindus and Buddhists today.</p>
<p>Apologists will claim that it’s the Hindus and Buddhists, like the Christians and Jews, who are persecuting Muslims. But it’s hard to argue that Hindu and Buddhist minorities in Pakistan are persecuting Muslims.</p>
<p>Not even the most shameless apologist for Islam would attempt to claim that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/14/opinion/choksy-iran-zoroastrian/">Zoroastrians are being persecuted in Iran</a>… because that tiny oppressed minority is persecuting the Islamic majority. The persecution of the Bahai in Iran or <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6214794/Taliban-targets-descendants-of-Alexander-the-Great.html">the Kalash in Pakistan</a> show that Muslim religious intolerance exists even entirely divorced from foreign affairs or past history.</p>
<p>Islam is not intolerant as a response to intolerance. It is inherently intolerant.</p>
<p><a href="http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/5/feds-10-15-worst-countries-religious-intolerance-a/">Ten of the fifteen</a> most religiously intolerant countries in the world are Muslim. There is no way to square that with the claim that Muslims are the victims of religious intolerance, rather than its perpetrators.</p>
<p>Muslims engage in religious conflicts both as majorities and minorities. They engage in religious conflicts with both minorities and majorities. They persecute other religions regardless of whether they are old or new, even if there is no existing history of conflict. They are motivated by a relentless xenophobia.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter what you believe, so long as your belief differs from theirs. You can believe in nothing at all. You can even believe in another version of Islam.</p>
<p>When Muslims run out of non-Muslims to persecute, they attack other Muslims. In Libya and Tunisia, Salafists have targeted Sufis. Syria and Iraq are being torn apart by conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/adelaidebased-shiekh-sharif-hussein-free-to-preach-race-hate/story-fni6uo1m-1226882963689">In Australia, a Sheikh prays</a>, “Oh Allah, count the Buddhists and the Hindus one by one. Oh Allah, count them and kill them to the very last one.” <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3006.htm">On Al Jazeera</a>, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Spiritual Guide,Yusuf  al-Qaradawi prayed for the Jews, “O Allah, do not spare a single one of them. O Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.” A <a href="http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=3895">Gaza sermon demands</a>, “Strike the Jews… the Christians…  Allah count them and kill them to the last one.”</p>
<p>This is genocide. It’s also Islam. Not a tiny minority of it either.</p>
<p>Islam did not expand by treating minorities well. It grew through genocide, slavery and war. That is still how it is growing today.</p>
<p>Islamic terrorism is not a protest movement; it is a new wave of religious conquests, spreading fear and death into the lands to be conquered. Into the <a href="http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Dar_al-Harb">Dar-al-Harb</a>. The House of War. A Muslim bombing is not a cry for help by the oppressed, it is a demand that the bombed submit to their new Muslim oppressors.</p>
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		<title>Why Are Christians the World’s Most Persecuted Group?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/why-are-christians-the-worlds-most-persecuted-group/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-are-christians-the-worlds-most-persecuted-group</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Feb 2014 05:08:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219914</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The answers may surprise you.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/islam_2024369c.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-219917" alt="islam_2024369c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/islam_2024369c.jpg" width="347" height="284" /></a>Why are Christians, as a new Pew report documents, the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-boland/pew-study-christians-are-world-s-most-oppressed-religious-group">most persecuted religious group in the world</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">?  And why is their persecution </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/the-existential-elephant-in-the-christian-persecution-room/">occurring primarily throughout the Islamic world?</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">  (In the category on “Countries with Very High Government Restrictions on Religion,” Pew lists 24 countries—20 of which are Islamic and precisely where the overwhelming majority of “the world’s” Christians are actually being persecuted.) </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The reason for this ubiquitous phenomenon of Muslim persecution of  Christians is threefold:</span></p>
<p><i>Christianity is the largest religion in the world</i>.  There are Christians practically everywhere around the globe, including in much of the Muslim world.  Moreover, because much of the land that Islam seized was originally Christian—including the Middle East and North Africa, the region that is today known as the “Arab world”—Muslims everywhere are still confronted with vestiges of Christianity, for example, in Syria, where many ancient churches and monasteries are currently being destroyed by al-Qaeda linked, U.S. supported “freedom fighters.”  Similarly, in Egypt, where Alexandria was a major center of ancient Christianity before the 7<sup>th</sup> century Islamic invasions, there still remain at least 10 million Coptic Christians (though some put the number <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/twenty-three-million-coptic-christians-in-egypt-says-authority/">at much higher</a>). Due to sheer numbers alone, then, indigenous Christians are much more visible and exposed to attack by Muslims than other religious groups throughout the Arab world.   Yet as CNS News <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-boland/pew-study-christians-are-world-s-most-oppressed-religious-group">puts it</a>, “President Obama expressed hope that the ‘Arab Spring’ would give rise to greater religious freedom in North Africa and the Middle East, which has had the world’s highest level of hostility towards religion in every year since 2007, when Pew first began measuring it. However, the study finds that these regions actually experienced the largest increase in religious hostilities in 2012.”</p>
<p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Christianity is a proselytizing faith that seeks to win over converts</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.  No other major religion—including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism—except Islam itself has this missionary aspect (these faiths tend to be coterminous with their respective ethnicities: Buddhists, Asians; Judaism, Jews; Hinduism, Hindus).    Thus because Christianity is the only religion that is actively confronting Muslims with the truths of its own message, not only is it the primary religion to be accused of proselytizing but, by publicly uttering teachings that contradict Muhammad’s, Christians are accused of blaspheming as well.  Similarly, this proselytizing element is behind the fact that most Muslims who apostatize to other religions overwhelmingly convert to Christianity.  Finally, if indigenous Christians are many in the Middle East, because that is the cradle of Christianity, in other regions with large Muslim populations, such as sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, Christian missionaries have won over millions of converts to the faith—many of whom are now targeted and persecuted according to Islam’s anti-apostasy law, which often calls for the death penalty.</span></p>
<p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Christianity is the quintessential religion of martyrdom</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.  From its inception—beginning with Jesus followed by his disciples and the early Church—many Christians have accepted martyrdom rather than recant their faith, in ancient times </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/book-reviews/persecution-myth-how-the-present-explains-the-past/">at the hands of Romans, in Medieval and modern times at the hands of pious Muslims</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and others.  Few other religions encourage their adherents to embrace death rather than recant, as captured by Christ’s own words: “But whoever denies me before men, I will deny him before my Father in heaven” (Matt 10:33; see also Luke 14:33).”   Conversely, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/how-taqiyya-alters-islams-rules-of-war/">Islam teaches Muslims to openly renounce their faith (<i>taqiyya</i>)</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">—not just when their lives are threatened, but even as a stratagem of war—as long as they remain Muslim in their hearts.  Other religions and sects also approve of dissimulation to preserve their adherents’ lives.  Back in the 1800s, for instance, Samuel M. Zwemer, a Christian missionary, observed that in Iran “Bahaism enjoys taqiyya (concealment of faith) </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">as a duty, but Christianity demands public profession</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">; and hence in Persia it is far easier to become a Bahai than to become a Christian.”</span></p>
<p>To summarize, because of their sheer numbers around the globe, including the Muslim world, Christians are the most likely targets of Islamic intolerance; because sharing the Gospel, or “witnessing,” is a dominant element of Christianity, Christians are most likely to fall afoul of Islam’s blasphemy and proselytism laws, as even the barest pro-Christian talk is by necessity a challenge to the legitimacy of Islam; because most Muslims who apostatize to other religions convert to Christianity, it is as Christians that they suffer persecution; and because boldness in face of certain death—martyrdom, dying for the faith—is as old as Christianity itself, Christians are especially prone to defy Islam’s anti-freedom laws, whether by openly proclaiming Christianity or by refusing to recant it, and thus die for it.</p>
<p><em><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/">Raymond Ibrahim</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> is author of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621570258/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1621570258&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=uhurnetw-20">Crucified Again: Exposing Islam&#8217;s New War in Christians</a>.</em><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Confirmed: U.S. Chief Facilitator of Christian Persecution</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/confirmed-u-s-chief-facilitator-of-christian-persecution/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=confirmed-u-s-chief-facilitator-of-christian-persecution</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Jan 2014 05:05:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The human toll of the U.S.'s support for Islamist regimes. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/EGITTO_f_0114_-_Cristiani.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-216943" alt="EGITTO_(f)_0114_-_Cristiani" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/EGITTO_f_0114_-_Cristiani.jpg" width="267" height="218" /></a>Originally published by <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368796/us-and-christian-persecution-raymond-ibrahim">National Review Online</a>. </em></p>
<p>Prominent indicators confirm that the U.S. is the chief facilitator of the persecution of Christians around the world today.</p>
<p>According to the recently released <a href="http://www.worldwatchlist.us/?utm_source=opendoorsusa.org&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=wwl&amp;utm_content=homepage-banner">2014 World Watch List</a>, which ranks the 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted, Syria is the third worst nation in the world in which to be Christian, Iraq is fourth, Afghanistan fifth, and Libya 13th. All four countries receive the strongest designation, “extreme persecution” (other designations are “severe,” “moderate,” and “sparse” persecution).</p>
<p>Aside from being so closely and harshly ranked, these four nations have something else in common: heavy U.S. involvement. Three—Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya—were “liberated” thanks to U.S. forces, while in the fourth, Syria, the U.S. is actively sponsoring “freedom fighters” against the regime, many of whom would be better labeled “terrorists.”</p>
<p>The Syrian situation alone indicts U.S. foreign policy. According to <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/01/08/us-christianity-persecution-report-idUKBREA070PB20140108">Reuters</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Open Doors, a non-denominational group supporting persecuted Christians worldwide, said on Wednesday it had documented 2,123 “martyr” killings, compared with 1,201 in 2012. There were 1,213 such deaths in Syria alone last year, it said. “This is a very minimal count based on what has been reported in the media and we can confirm,” said Frans Veerman, head of research for Open Doors. Estimates by other Christian groups put the annual figure as high as 8,000.</p></blockquote>
<p>While most Americans are shielded from the true nature of the war by the U.S. media’s reluctance to report on it, Arabic media, websites, and activists daily report and document atrocity after atrocity—beheadings and bombed churches, Christians slaughtered for refusing to convert to Islam, and countless abducted for ransom or rape—at the hands of those whom the U.S. supports.</p>
<p>It’s enough to point out that “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/largest-massacre-of-christians-in-syria-ignored/">the largest massacre of Christians in Syria</a>,” to quote a top religious leader, was left wholly unreported by any major U.S. news network.</p>
<p>At any rate, the statistics speak for themselves: Syria, which used to be religiously tolerant, is now, in the context of the United States’ trying to bring “democracy” to it, the third worst country in the world in terms of “extreme persecution” of Christians.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/01/08/the-10-absolute-worst-places-in-the-world-to-be-a-christian/">Blaze</a> reports that Dr. David Curry, president of Open Doors,</p>
<blockquote><p>charged that the Obama administration has essentially declined to make the protection of religious minorities a priority . . . “There are many instances where the vacuum of leadership and spokesmanship has created a real problem,” said the human rights leader. “I would say that every significant data point on this year’s ‘2014 Watch List’ is worse—and I think a factor in it is a lack of leadership from Western governments including . . . the U.S. in terms of religious freedom.”</p></blockquote>
<p>But it’s worse than that. Far from taking any action or providing leadership—or simply ceasing to support the terrorists responsible—the Obama administration recently tried to go to war with Syria on behalf of the “freedom fighters,” amazingly, in the name of “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/other-matters/u-s-hypocrisy-for-syrian-human-rights/">human rights</a>” (Apparently the <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/putin-puts-obama-in-hot-seat-what-will-you-do-if-rebels-are-ones-using-chemical-weapons/">unsubstantiated rumor</a> that Assad massacred people is enough for the U.S. to go to war, but the ongoing and well-documented massacres of Christians and other civilians at the hands of the opposition is not enough for the U.S. to stop supporting them.)</p>
<p>What’s worse, even the most misinformed mainstream-media-watching American today knows that the so-called “Arab Spring,” which was hailed to justify U.S. support for “rebels” of all stripes—in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (which months ago destroyed some 80 churches); in Libya, al-Qaeda, which has turned Benghazi into a terror zone; and now the “freedom fighters” in Syria—is not what it was touted to be.</p>
<p>In other words, at this point, whenever the U.S. intervenes in an Islamic nation, Islamists come to power. This is well demonstrated by the other three nations to which the U.S. brought “democracy” and where Christian minorities suffer “extreme persecution”:</p>
<p><b>Afghanistan:</b> The supposedly “moderate” Karzai government installed by the U.S. upholds many of the draconian laws enforced by the Taliban—including the apostasy law, fiercely persecuting those who seek to convert to Christianity—and, in 2011, under U.S. auspices, <a href="http://www.charismanews.com/world/32161-christian-churches-officially-extinct-in-afghanistan">it destroyed Afghanistan’s last Christian church</a>.</p>
<p><b>Iraq:</b> After the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein, Christian minorities were savagely attacked and slaughtered, and dozens of their churches were bombed (see here for <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/in-the-media/graphic-images-of-christian-persecution-under-islam/">graphic images</a>). Christians have been <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/the-silent-extermination-of-iraqs-christian-dogs/">terrorized into near-extinction</a>, with well over half of them fleeing Iraq.</p>
<p><b>Libya:</b> Ever since U.S.-backed, al-Qaeda-linked terrorists overthrew Qaddafi, Christians—<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/three-american-teachers-slaughtered-for-christian-faith-in-muslim-world/">including Americans</a>—have indeed suffered extreme persecution. <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/hatred-of-christians-unleashed-in-libya/">Churches have been bombed</a>; Christians have been <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/mass-arrest-and-torture-of-christians-in-libya/">tortured</a> and killed (including <a href="http://morningstarnews.org/2013/09/two-egyptian-christians-slain-in-libya/">for refusing to convert</a>); and <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Islamists-chase-nuns-from-Libya,-people-pray-for-their-return-27021.html">nuns have been threatened</a>.</p>
<p>Surely a common theme emerges here: Where the U.S. works to oust secular autocrats, the quality of life for Christians and other minorities takes a major nosedive. Under Saddam, Qaddafi, and Assad, Christians and their churches were largely protected.</p>
<p>Moreover, while George W. Bush was responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq, the argument can be made that, back then (2001 and 2003), this pattern of Islamic radicalization that erupts once autocrats are gone was less well known than it is today. There weren’t many precedents.</p>
<p>Conversely, the Obama administration has had both Afghanistan and Iraq to learn from—and yet <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/obama-crosses-red-line-by-supporting-jihadi-terrorism-2/">still it supports Islamists and jihadis</a>. But by now, what happens once they assume power—<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/arab-spring-egypts-legal-persecution-of-christians/">religious persecution, terror, oppression</a>—is no longer a secret.</p>
<p>Incidentally, those who care little for the fate of Christians or other minorities in the Islamic world would do well to remember a simple truism: Wherever anti-Christian elements come to power, anti-American forces come to power. The two are synonymous.</p>
<p>Put differently, Muslim persecution of Christians is the litmus test of how radical an Islamic society has become. In all those Muslim nations that the U.S. has interfered in—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt (till the Egyptians revolted, to <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/john-mccain-proves-u-s-leadership-allied-to-muslim-brotherhood/">the chastisement of the U.S.</a>), and now Syria—the increase of religious intolerance is a reflection of the empowerment of forces hostile to Western civilization.</p>
<p>I am often asked, “How can we help persecuted Christians?” At this point, one must respond: “How about starting with getting the U.S. government to stop being the chief facilitator of Christian persecution?” Altruism aside, it would be in the interests of all who value freedom, religious or otherwise—and especially their descendants.</p>
<p><i>Raymond Ibrahim is the author of </i><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=%201621570258">Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians</a>.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Ibn Warraq Takes on Fact, Fiction, and Freedom</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/ibn-warraq-takes-on-fact-fiction-and-freedom/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ibn-warraq-takes-on-fact-fiction-and-freedom</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Jan 2014 05:30:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crusades]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[ibn warraq]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Sir Walter Scott]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A call for defending the West without apology. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/9780988477858_p0_v1_s260x420.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214272" alt="9780988477858_p0_v1_s260x420" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/9780988477858_p0_v1_s260x420-232x350.jpg" width="186" height="280" /></a>The world’s free peoples “risk losing all to Islamist thuggery,” the pseudonymous Islam scholar <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Warraq">Ibn Warraq</a> warns in his latest book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Walter-Scott-Crusades-Other-Fantasies/dp/0988477858/ref=sr_1_1"><i>Sir Walter Scott’s Crusades and Other Fantasies</i></a>, a collection of essays previously published online.  Analyzing past Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, the Muslim apostate Warraq insightfully separates historical fact from popular fiction before defending the freedom necessary to distinguish between the two.</p>
<p>The book’s first half analyzes the Crusades and their perception in light of Sir <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/529629/Sir-Walter-Scott-1st-Baronet">Walter Scott</a>’s writing.  Warraq’s first chapter examines the sympathetic treatment of Jews in Scott’s <a href="http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/novels/ivanhoe.html"><i>Ivanhoe</i></a>, a novel set in Crusader-era England.  <i>Ivanhoe</i> shows Scott’s “commitment to religious and racial tolerance, his Enlightenment abhorrence of superstition and fanaticism.”</p>
<p>The subsequent chapter, the book’s longest, compares the presentation of the Crusades in Scott’s novel <a href="http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/novels/talisman.html"><i>The Talisman</i></a> with various historical writings.  Contrary to a “characteristically shallow, sneering aside” in <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/516540/Edward-Said">Edward Said</a>’s <a href="http://ebookbrowsee.net/edward-said-orientalism-pdf-d64686549"><i>Orientalism</i></a>, <i>The Talisman</i>’s “overall and overwhelming impression” is of “bickering…barbaric…course…fanatical” Crusaders in a “futile enterprise.”  By contrast, the “Muslims were patient, forbearing, and tolerant of other religions, and simply defending their homelands” while Third Crusade Muslim leader <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/518809/Saladin">Saladin</a> appears “virtuous, calm, refined, and sagacious.”  This Saladin is “much given to uttering what Scott must take to be pearls of Eastern wisdom but which read more like those pseudo-Confucian proverbs to be found in Chinese cookies.”</p>
<p><i>The Talisman</i> reflected that Scott, like other intellectuals, was a “child of the Scottish Enlightenment” with its belief that “non-European civilizations were at least the equal of, and perhaps even superior to, Western civilization.”  Yet Islamophile sentiments extended beyond Scott to 20<sup>th</sup> century Islam scholar Sir <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Alexander_Rosskeen_Gibb">Hamilton Gibb</a> and his “biography—or rather hagiography” of Gibb’s “hero” Saladin.  For Warraq “startling,” Gibb recommended <i>The Talisman</i> to students as a “book from which they could learn much Middle Eastern history.”  Other historians developed a view that “Saladin, in his younger days, was essentially a shy retiring, unambitious youth who preferred a quiet seclusion to court intrigues, politics, and war.”</p>
<p>Yet <i>The Talisman</i> is “<i>wildly inaccurate</i>” as history.  The plot’s depiction of Saladin disguised as a doctor treating English king <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/richard_i_king.shtml">Richard I</a> (“the Lionheart”) is fanciful, given that the two Third Crusade opponents never met.  These two commanders pursued “grim warfare” and “politics all the way” such that “neither of them displayed any clemency if it did not suit them.”</p>
<p>Saladin’s historic “characteristic ruthlessness” is far less appealing, such as when his forces slaughtered 50,000 disarmed Sudanese soldiers in Cairo in 1169 in breach of a surrender agreement.  “Not bad for a shy retiring scholar who preferred the discourse of pious men,” Warraq scoffs.  Saladin likewise had Christian prisoners killed who rejected conversion to Islam, including Crusaders sent in 1183 to Mecca to be “ritually slaughtered by having their throats cut…in the place of goats or sheep.”  <a href="http://blog.templarhistory.com/">Templar</a> and <a href="http://theknightshospitallers.org/history">Hospitaller</a> Knights met a similar grisly end after the 1187 <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/256944/Battle-of-Hattin">Battle of Hattin</a> in a “cruel circus watched by a smiling Saladin.”  Other actions such as church destructions ordered by Saladin indicate that a “true Muslim is not tolerant” but rather pursues the “totalitarian nature of jihad” in world domination.  Yet despite Saladin’s image battling Crusaders, he spent 12 years during his reign as sultan from 1174 to 1193 fighting other Muslims and only five fighting Christians.</p>
<p>Crusaders “are always depicted as barbarians” in histories of the era, Warraq notes.  Nonetheless, the “Crusades were a reaction against over three hundred years of <i>jihad</i> when the Eastern Christians were persecuted, and hundreds of churches destroyed.”   This jihad, moreover, continued following the Crusades when Muslims went on “occupying far more territory in Europe than the Western settlers had ever held in Syria and Palestine.”  Crusades were “never a war of conversion, rather a rightful attempt to recover Christian territory which had been injuriously seized in the past.”  Contrary to modern Crusader colonialism theories, “most crusaders would have laughed at the prospect of material gain,” particularly considering the immense subsidies needed to maintain Crusader kingdoms.</p>
<p>“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Warraq adds concerning excuses for Islamic atrocities referencing crimes committed in Christianity’s name such as during the Crusades.  Moreover, “Islamic intolerance is presently a far more immediate danger to all, whereas Christian intolerance is a thing of the past.”  This real danger contrasts with a Muslim “false idea of a continuing western assault” since the Crusades.  In actuality, the “Crusades had almost passed out of mind” of Muslims, the Crusades’ “outright winners,” by the fourteenth century.  They “only began to take in an interest in the Crusades again in the 1890s” due to “Western imperialist rhetoric.”</p>
<p>After dealing with the Crusader fiction of Scott and others, Warraq turns his attention to the plight of Jews in the Crusader era.  Warraq counterbalances an analysis of the ravages visited upon European Jews by marauding Crusaders traveling to the Holy Land with discussion of Islamic anti-Semitism preceding the Crusades.  “All the persecutions of both Christians and Jews stem directly from the precepts and principles enshrined in the canonical texts of Islam,” Warraq qualifies.  A short book review of Paul Fenton and David Littman’s <a href="http://www.amazon.fr/LExil-Maghreb-condition-lIslam-1148-1912/dp/2840507250"><i>La Exile au Maghreb:  La Condition Juive sous l’Islam 1148-1912</i></a> indicates how this Islamic persecution of Jews continued after the Crusades.</p>
<p>Warraq’s penultimate chapter analyzes British Zionism while rebutting anti-Zionist accusation of European Jews displacing the Holy Land’s Arab population.  Said’s mischaracterizations of Zionism to this effect demonstrate how he as a “nominal, secular Christian…loved parading his internationalism, and yet endorsed an Arab nationalism which, in the end, never managed to break free from Islam.”  Warraq, in contrast, records how both European and Middle Eastern Jews sought security and self-determination in a neglected, largely uninhabited territory.</p>
<p>Distinguishing fact and fiction among Abrahamic faiths demands freedom, and with this Warraq’s fertile intellect concludes in an analysis of Islam and censorship.  Warraq begins his examination with the acquiescence to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/arts/television/23park.html?_r=0">violent demands</a> not to depict Islam’s prophet Muhammad by the cartoon comedy show <a href="http://www.southparkstudios.com/"><i>South Park</i></a>.  This submission occurred even though “Islam is not monolithic” with respect to the propriety of human images such as those of Muhammad or other matters.  “At the very least” Warraq identifies an “Islam 1” in the Quran and an “Islam 2” in “Islamic law and the teachings developed by theologians from the deeds and sayings” of Muhammad.  “Islam 3,” however, namely the “actual behavior of believing Muslims, the things that are actually said and done across Islamic civilization…has behaved quite differently than&#8230;prescribed by Islam 1 and Islam 2.”</p>
<p>Long before <i>South Park</i>, though, the Egyptian, Indonesian, and Pakistani ambassadors to the United States protested in 1955 to the State Department a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/weekinreview/12kifner.html">Muhammad figure on New York state appeals court building in Manhattan</a>.  The court complied with the removal of the Muhammad figure from among the ten historic lawgivers gracing the building despite the resulting architectural awkwardness.  “Muslims living even here temporarily had the temerity to dictate their values on a non-Islamic nation,” Warraq marveled.  They succeeded “despite the small number of Muslims in the USA” and a “minimum of effort or lobbying.”</p>
<p>The “West, in its unwillingness to pass judgments on other cultures,” Warraq laments, “is far too ready to accept as legitimate spokesmen for the entire world-wide Muslim community the most shrill and public-savvy on matters on Islamic doctrine.”  Concerning Islam and Western censorship today, despite individual “acts of courage, the overall picture remains bleak as institution after institution crumbles in the face of Islamic terrorism, real or implied.”  Furthermore, rather than “encouraging the liberals in the Islamic world,” this Western weakness causes them to “look with dismay at us each time we sacrifice one principle after another, in an orgy of self-doubt, cultural masochism, and self-censorship.”</p>
<p>In contrast, some “Muslims are ever ready to take offense, and in fact, Muslims seem to have invented a new right, the right not to be offended.”  As a result, among other things, “modern day Islam is singularly devoid of humor,” befitting the Ayatollah Khomeini’s pronouncement that “there are no jokes in Islam.”  Yet “[c]omedy is an indispensable ingredient in every culture,” particularly as a “form of self-criticism, a defining virtue of the West.”</p>
<p>Amidst such pusillanimity, Warraq sounds a clarion call.  While Islam’s “principles are from clear” concerning Muhammad images, “even if human representation were unequivocally forbidden in Islam, we should still as unequivocally defend our right to freedom of speech.”  “[W]e should unabashedly defend, and if necessary fight for our values without apologies.”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>How Historic Revisionism Justifies Islamic Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/how-historic-revisionism-justifies-islamic-terrorism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-historic-revisionism-justifies-islamic-terrorism</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Oct 2013 04:35:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Arab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209135</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Islam: the great "liberator" of the Middle East? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/koran-kalashnikov-500x332.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209168" alt="koran-kalashnikov-500x332" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/koran-kalashnikov-500x332.jpg" width="256" height="198" /></a>How important, really, is history to current affairs?  Do events from the 7<sup>th</sup> century—or, more importantly, how we understand them—have any influence on U.S. foreign policy today?</span></b></p>
<p>By way of answer, consider some parallels between academia’s portrayal of the historic Islamic jihads and the U.S. government’s and media’s portrayal of contemporary Islamic jihads.</p>
<p>While any objective appraisal of the 7<sup>th</sup> century Muslim conquests proves that they were just that—conquests, with all the bloodshed and rapine that that entails—the historical revisionism of modern academia, especially within Arab and Islamic studies departments, has led to some portrayals of the Muslim conquerors as “freedom-fighters” trying to “liberate” the Mideast from tyrants and autocrats. (Beginning to sound familiar?)</p>
<p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=WZdDbmxe_a4C&amp;pg=PA59&amp;lpg=PA59&amp;dq=muslim+liberated+egypt+from+byzantines&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=yb0e1LAGcv&amp;sig=1rwK4wI9IVz09E0CE7KFatTogqQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=DIRpUrCuEsWX2QX4poCYCA&amp;ved=0CFYQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&amp;q=muslim%20liberated%20egypt%20from%20byzantines&amp;f=false">Today’s approach</a> to teaching the history of the Muslim conquests of the 7<sup>th</sup> century is something as follows: Yes, the Mideast was Christian, but local Christians helped Arab Muslims invade and subjugate their countries in preference to Christian Byzantine rule, which was oppressive due to doctrinal disagreements over the nature of Christ.  Hence, the Muslim conquerors were actually “liberators.”</p>
<p>This perspective, as with many modern Western perspectives concerning Islam, is a product of modern day epistemic distortions, chief among them: 1) repackaged narratives of the “noble savage” myth—yes, 7<sup>th</sup> century Muslim invaders were coarse, but had elevated ideals, including a fierce love for freedom and religious tolerance in comparison to Christians of the time (not to mention now); and 2) entrenched political correction that seeks to <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/surreal-and-suicidal-modern-western-histories-of-islam/">whitewash the true history of Islam</a> followed by the uncritical acceptance of Islamic apologetics, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/were-conquered-christians-really-liberated-muslims/">some of which border on the absurd</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, before the Islamic “liberator” thesis had become mainstream, historians such as Alfred Butler, author of <i>The</i> <i>Arab Conquest of Egypt</i>, had this to say about it:</p>
<blockquote><p>Even in the most recent historians it will be found that the outline of the story [of the 7<sup>th</sup> century conquest of Egypt] is something as follows:… that the Copts generally hailed them [Muslims] as deliverers and rendered them every assistance; and that Alexandria after a long siege, full of romantic episodes, was captured by storm. Such is the received account. It may seem presumptuous to say that <i>it is untrue from beginning to end, but to me no other conclusion is possible</i>. (emphasis added; pgs. iv-v).</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, one of the major themes throughout Butler’s <i>Arab Conquest of Egypt</i>—which, published in 1902, is heavily based on primary sources, Arabic and Coptic, <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/52/islam-a-short-history">unlike more modern secondary works</a> that promote the Islamic “liberator” thesis—is that “there is not a word to show that any section of the Egyptian nation viewed the advent of the Muslims with any other feeling than terror” (p. 236).</p>
<p>Butler and other politically incorrect historians were and are aware of the savage and atrocity-laden nature of the Islamic conquests.  The Coptic chronicler, John of Nikiu, a contemporary of the Arab conquest of Egypt and possibly an eyewitness, wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>Then the Muslims arrived in Nikiu [along the Nile]…  seized the town and slaughtered everyone they met in the street and in the churches—men, women, and children, sparing nobody.  Then they went to other places, pillaged and killed all the inhabitants they found….  But let us say no more, for it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed…”</p></blockquote>
<p>Nonetheless, today’s accepted narratives do not come from antiquated historians or primary historical texts; they come from the <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=13551">Saudi-funded ivy league</a>— Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, etc.—all of which peddle pro-Islamic propaganda (I personally had direct experience at Georgetown), including the “freedom loving jihadis” vs. “oppressive tyrants” thesis.</p>
<p>Percolating out of liberal academia to liberal mass media, the effects of this well-entrenched but false narrative have taken their toll, ultimately helping to create a disastrous U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>Put differently, the Islamic terrorists waging jihad against autocratic (but secular, religiously tolerant) governments—most notably in Syria today—are easily portrayed in the West as “freedom fighters” against oppressive tyrants and thus deserving of U.S. support in great part because this motif has permeated the social consciousness of America—as molded by <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1408320/posts">Hollywood</a> and the <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2013/09/03/fox-news-asks-raymond-ibrahim-why-christians-persecute-muslims/">news rooms</a>—thanks to the academic distortion of events that took place nearly fourteen centuries ago.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Islamic “freedom fighters” are <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=528121740608901">slaughtering</a>, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/new-fatwa-permits-rape-of-non-sunni-women-in-syria/">raping</a>, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/syrias-graphic-beheading-videos/">beheading</a>, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/al-qaeda-promises-to-slaughter-christians-after-u-s-liberates-syria/">persecuting and plundering</a>—<i>just as they have been for </i><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/surreal-and-suicidal-modern-western-histories-of-islam/"><i>nearly fourteen centuries</i></a>.</p>
<p>That is the only unwavering constant in this sad story.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Jamie Glazov&#8217;s video interview with Raymond Ibrahim about how Obama enables Islam&#8217;s new war on Christians:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/i-UBjuUOBHw" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>How Soviet Intelligence Promoted Christian Marxism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/how-soviet-intelligence-promoted-christian-marxism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-soviet-intelligence-promoted-christian-marxism</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Oct 2013 04:20:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[And how the strategies are still in play today. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/dis.jpeg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-206156" alt="dis" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/dis-232x350.jpeg" width="232" height="350" /></a>When you can’t beat them, join them. That’s what the Soviet Union did to curtail Christianity’s anti-communist influence. In a new book titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604/"><i>Disinformation</i></a>, a covert campaign to discredit Pope Piux XII is revealed. In addition, the Soviets tried to influence the church with a Marxist-friendly version of Christianity.</p>
<p>The communists’ strategy against the church had three pillars: A propaganda offensive; the implanting of agents of influence and the promotion of Liberation Theology, an anti-Western spin on scripture.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604/"><i>Disinformation</i></a> is written by Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc defector and Ronald Rychlak, Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi. A related documentary has also been released, titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Secret-Strategy-Destroy-West/dp/B00DD5R8F4"><i>Disinformation: The Secret Strategy to Destroy the West</i></a><i>.</i> They disclose how a primary target of Soviet “active measures” was Pope Pius XII.</p>
<p>“The Soviets understood that Pius XII was a mortal threat to their ideology, despising communism as much as he did Nazism. They thus embarked on a crusade to destroy the pope and his reputation, to scandalize his flock, and to foment division among faiths,” Rychlak told me in an interview.</p>
<p>The claim that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope” originates in a 1945 broadcast from Radio Moscow or, in other words, the Soviet propaganda apparatus. Later, the Soviets reacted to his death in 1958 with a new disinformation campaign. It’s a lot easier to lie about someone when they can’t respond.</p>
<p>Pacepa, who was serving in Romanian intelligence at the time, says Soviet Premier Khrushchev approved the KGB-drawn plan in February 1960. It was code-named “Seat-12” and Pacepa says he was the Romanian representative for it. He is now <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/219739/moscows-assault-vatican/ion-mihai-pacepa">publicly detailing his involvement.</a></p>
<p>Revealing this operation against Pope Pius XII isn’t only important for historical analysis. It teaches us a sober lesson about the effectiveness of enemy influence operations that are undoubtedly ongoing.</p>
<p>“It tells us that disinformation experts can convince us of anything. They took a person widely regarded as a champion of the Jews and other victims—someone who was despised by Adolf Hitler—and convinced the world that he was a virtual collaborator,” Rychlak said.</p>
<p>The second leg of the KGB’s anti-church strategy was to influence those it could not destroy using East Bloc churches, particularly the Russian Orthodox Church.</p>
<p>KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin provided a secret 1961 directive to infiltrate the Russian Orthodox Church. The objective was to implant agents of influence that could then push out “reactionary” and “sectarian” church figures that were seen as threats to communism.</p>
<p>Mitrokhin disclosed a secret meeting of senior East Bloc intelligence officers in Budapest in July 1967. Two KGB officers gave instructions regarding “work against the Vatican; measures to discredit the Vatican and its backers; and measures to exacerbate differences within the Vatican and between the Vatican and capitalist countries.”</p>
<p>Pacepa <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/219739/moscows-assault-vatican/ion-mihai-pacepa">illustrates</a> the success of this operation with multiple examples. For example, in January 2007, the newly-appointed archbishop of Warsaw had to resign amidst revelations that he had been a secret collaborator with the Polish secret service during the Cold War.</p>
<p>Rychlak said that Soviet efforts to influence Protestants were also targeted. In 1944, the Soviets established the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists, now named the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists of Russia.</p>
<p>The president of the <a href="http://www.theird.org">Institute on Religion and Democracy</a>, Mark Tooley, has <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/world-council-of-churches-the-kgb-connection/">written about the communist use of the World Council of Churches</a>.  He notes that hundreds of Protest and Orthodox churches belonged to it as it towed the Soviet line and even went so far as to finance Marxist guerillas.</p>
<p>The third leg was promoting an anti-capitalist, anti-Western brand of Christianity. If the KGB could not eliminate Christianity, it reasoned it might as well manipulate it. Liberation Theology was born.</p>
<p>Pacepa <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35388">recalls</a> hearing Khrushchev say in 1959, “Religion is the opiate of the people, so let’s give them opium.” He flatly says that Liberation Theology is “KGB-invented.” He has first-hand knowledge of secret Romanian agents being dispatched to Latin America to spread it among the religious masses.</p>
<p>Pope John Paul II had a Vatican committee study Liberation Theology in 1984, Pacepa documents in a <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35388">2009 article for <i>FrontPage</i>.</a> It concluded that it was a mixture of “class struggle” and “violent Marxism.”</p>
<p>Robert. D. Chapman <a href="http://www.aei-ideas.org/2010/02/liberation-theology-and-the-kgb/">writes</a> in the <i>International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence</i>:</p>
<p>“Without doubt, the Theology of Liberation doctrine is one of the most enduring and powerful to emerge from the KGB’s headquarters. The doctrine asks the poor and downtrodden to revolt and form a Communist government, not in the name of Marx or Lenin, but in continuing the work of Jesus Christ, a revolutionary who opposed economic and social discrimination.”</p>
<p>In my interview with Rychlak, Pacepa’s co-author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604/"><i>Disinformation</i></a>, he remarked that the book was written today for a reason. These strategies are still in play.</p>
<p>“When Nazism was removed from Germany, we had de-Nazification panels…That never happened when the Soviet Union fell. The same people were left in charge,” Rychlak said.</p>
<p>He continued, “In fact, today Russia is run by a former KGB officer who has surrounded himself with his old associates. We are looking at the first superpower that is being run by intelligence officers.”</p>
<p>Pacepa is trying to wake the West up about how its enemies, including him in his past life, exploited its weaknesses. It isn’t easy to admit that one has been manipulated or beaten in some way but the West must, or it will happen again.</p>
<p><em>This article was sponsored by the </em><a href="http://www.theird.org"><em>Institute on Religion and Democracy.</em></a><b><a href="http://www.theird.org"><br />
</a></b></p>
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		<title>9/11: The End of Illusions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/911-the-atrocities-of-sudan-brought-to-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=911-the-atrocities-of-sudan-brought-to-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 04:10:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Faith J. H. McDonnell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[9/11]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[genocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Sudan]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The day the atrocities of Sudan were brought to America.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Sudan-Vigil-2002-650.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203774" alt="OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Sudan-Vigil-2002-650-447x350.jpg" width="313" height="245" /></a>Five days before the jihadists we came to call “9/11 terrorists” commandeered American airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, it was the same kind of beautiful, sunny day in Washington, DC that it was on that horrible day. On that sunny September 6, 2001, former U.S. Senator John Danforth became the first-ever U.S. Sudan Special Envoy, with the mandate of trying to bring peace to that war-torn region. For decades, the Islamist government of Sudan had been attempting forcibly to Islamize and Arabize all of Sudan, and waging genocidal jihad against those African Christians, Muslims, and followers of traditional religions from the South, the Nuba Mountains, and elsewhere that resisted. Sudan’s so-called civil war had already resulted in the death of over 2.5 million people, mostly civilians, and the displacement of over 5 million.</span></b></p>
<p>Danforth was sworn in by President George W. Bush in a White House Rose Garden ceremony to which dozens of Diaspora Sudanese and their American activist friends were invited. Excitement was palpable that day. Since taking office, President Bush had made Sudan a priority. He spoke out against what he called one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, acknowledged the complicity of the Sudanese government, attempted to circumvent the orchestrated starvation of their own people by changing USAID’s methods of food distribution, and agreed to appoint a special envoy that would be his personal representative on U.S. Sudan policy.</p>
<p>We were full of hope that the appointment of Jack Danforth could eventually lead to a peace agreement that would bring about an end to the bombing, starvation, slavery, and other methods of jihad being used by the Government of Sudan against its own citizens. There were no illusions that this would be easy or quick in coming. The real work was just beginning, as we tried to see a piece of legislation, the Sudan Peace Act, passed in Congress. But although everyone was united that day in the appointment of the Sudan Special Envoy, the State Department was opposed to the stringent measures in the legislation. They particularly disliked an amendment sponsored by U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) that had already been passed by the House of Representatives, to invoke <a href="http://bachus.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=559&amp;Itemid=116">capital market sanctions </a>against companies doing business with the Government of Sudan.</p>
<p>And so, in the days following the swearing in, as Special Envoy Danforth reviewed his portfolio and familiarized himself with the situation in Sudan, we worked in a <a href="http://www.jewishpost.com/archives/news/stop-genocide-support-the-sudan-peace-act.html">coalition </a>to strengthen <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjir/3.2.10_doane.html%20">U.S. Sudan policy </a>and pass the Sudan Peace Act with the sanctions intact. As Congressman Bachus himself told the late heroic journalist <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2001/jul/30/20010730-024518-5400r/">A. M. Rosenthal</a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>Expanding U.S. sanctions in the area of capital markets access specifically targets what is the most significant revenue the Sudanese government has to prosecute the war. Obviously, the United States must send a new message and we must make that message stick. Stop the killing, stop the murder and torture, end the terror, or we end the investment. Can’t have it both ways. It is immoral to finance a war machine you know is wrong. America has to walk the walk.</p></blockquote>
<p>In addition to opposing the immoral financing of a regime committing terrorism against its own people, we were convinced that the Sudanese regime was complicit in <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2002/06/14328/">global terrorism and jihad</a>. While some members of Congress also believed this and said so at House hearings, successive Administrations (Clinton, Bush, Obama) continued to prefer the fantasy that the Sudan regime was a “good faith” partner both in cooperating in the War on Terrorism, and in dialoguing with their own victims in South Sudan. Intelligence received from sources on the ground in Sudan pointing to the regime’s connections to terrorists around the world was constantly downplayed or denied. So our Sudan coalition planned to publicly endorse at a press conference the House version of the Sudan Peace Act over the more watered-down Senate version. We were convinced that it was needed to stop genocide in Sudan and to help stop global Islamic terrorism. The event was to be in the Rayburn House Office Building at 9:00 A.M. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.</p>
<p>In a cab, almost at the Rayburn Building, I heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. In those days, before we could conceive of the evil of which the Islamist agenda was capable, even I, familiar as I was with the atrocities taking place in South Sudan and with persecution of Christians in the Islamic world, assumed it was some horrible accident. Up in the Rayburn Building International Relations Committee hearing room, though, things became clear. All the other speakers and Sudan coalition members’ eyes were riveted on the television screen when I got there. News came that a second plane had crashed in New York. We, who so often reported on Russian Antonov cargo planes dropping bombs on starving South Sudanese civilians waiting for their food distribution, and women and children abducted and branded like cattle, had seen this level of monstrousness in Sudan, but never before in our own country.</p>
<p>Not long after that we heard that a plane was headed towards Washington, DC – probably targeting the White House or the U.S. Capitol. We were ushered quickly out of the room by Capitol Hill police. The congressional offices were all being evacuated and closed. No one knew what was happening. We surely couldn’t conceive that two more planes full of our fellow citizens would be used against us as weapons by the terrorists, or that the Americans on one of those planes, forcing a crash in a Shanksville, Pennsylvania field, would precede our valiant military troops in doing battle against Islamic jihad. In the midst of shock, my only continual thought was how clear it all was now – that <i>now </i>they would “get it.” Now they would understand what was really happening in Sudan.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I even knew what I meant by them “getting” it. I had not yet begun to articulate even to myself the problem that I saw with U.S. Sudan policy beyond the fact that it needed to be “strengthened.” It took 9/11 to make it clear that what was taking place in Sudan was being treated as a humanitarian issue by the U.S. government and that the root cause was never addressed. It was the same root cause that we saw in the suffocating smoke, burned flesh, incinerated body parts, collapsed towers, and obscene yawning chasms that indicated that we had crossed a line in history from which we could never return.</p>
<p>I think I hoped that the policymakers would now somehow understand that to deal with Sudan’s genocide as a humanitarian crisis was as absurd as to deal with 9/11 as merely a random criminal action. Even before we learned the magnitude of 9/11, we understood that this was a deliberate attack on us for who we were and what we represented. No less was this then, and still is, true in Sudan where the regime was attempting to eradicate the culture, identity, and very lives of all those who resisted the imposition of a pure Arabist Islamist identity. But U.S. Sudan policy did not reflect that reality.</p>
<p>It still doesn’t. Every success in U.S. Sudan policy &#8212; the passage of the Sudan Peace Act, the North/South peace process, the North/South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), and finally South Sudan’s referendum on secession leading to an independent nation of South Sudan &#8212; has happened in spite of the absurdity of negotiating in good faith with a regime that operates through denials and deception. Failure – to stop the still ongoing genocide in Darfur, to fully implement the CPA, to speak out for Sudan’s other marginalized African ethnic groups like the Beja of Eastern Sudan and the Nubian civilization in the far north, and particularly now to protect the people of the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State once again under active genocidal war – have occurred because the regime has never been held accountable for violating and dishonoring decades of agreements.</p>
<p>That September morning people flooded out of the city and then remained for hours without moving on every street and highway. I spent most of the day lying in the hatchback of a two-seater sports car, as four of us who had been at the press conference attempted to travel back to Virginia. Soon we had news of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. When we heard of the plane, headed for DC that went down in Pennsylvania, we knew that those brave passengers well may have saved our lives.</p>
<p>I will never forget September 11, 2001. It is with me always. Remembrances of more innocent times are marred by the knowledge that they were “before.”  I wish we could go back to a time when we were naïve. I wish we had not been rudely awakened to the kind of world that the people of South Sudan knew as reality, that the people of the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State are experiencing right now. But on 9/11 I understood the irrevocable nature of what had taken place, and even before U.S. troops set off for battle in Afghanistan and Iraq, I knew that nothing would ever be the same.</p>
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