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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Religion</title>
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		<title>John Kerry’s Paean to the Religion of Peace</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/john-kerrys-paean-to-the-religion-of-peace/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=john-kerrys-paean-to-the-religion-of-peace</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Sep 2014 04:35:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Human Rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240299</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The "real face of Islam" according to the Secretary of State. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/kerry-syria-chemical-attack.si_.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240304" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/kerry-syria-chemical-attack.si_-397x350.jpg" alt="kerry-syria-chemical-attack.si" width="276" height="243" /></a>Secretary of State John Kerry should have extended his Nantucket vacation.  That would have spared him and the nation from his embarrassing remarks praising Islam as a “peaceful religion based on the dignity of all human beings,” which he delivered just a day after ISIS released a video showing American journalist Steven Sotloff being beheaded.</p>
<p>Kerry was speaking at a ceremony honoring the State Department’s new special representative to Muslim communities, Shaarik Zafar. Rather than call on Muslim leaders around the world to publicly condemn ISIS in the strongest possible terms and do everything possible to counter ISIS’s recruitment campaign, ideology and financing, Kerry coddled them.</p>
<p>“I want to take advantage of this podium and of this moment to underscore as powerfully as I know how, that the face of Islam is not the butchers who killed Steven Sotloff. That’s ISIL,” Kerry said. He added that the real face of Islam is “one where Muslim communities are advocating for universal human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the most basic freedom to practice one’s faith openly and freely.”</p>
<p>Where exactly in Muslim-majority countries today is a non-Muslim free to practice his or her faith “openly and freely”?  Ten out of the sixteen countries deemed of particular concern regarding their abuses of religious freedom are Muslim nations, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2014 Annual Report. The governments of these countries engage in or tolerate particularly severe violations of religious freedom, the report states.</p>
<p>The Commission makes policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress. Evidently, Kerry has not read the Commission report’s findings regarding the state of religious freedom in Muslim-majority countries or did not take them seriously.  It also appears that Kerry has not read or understood the implications of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, based on Sharia law, which is diametrically opposed to the principles underlying the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.</p>
<p>The Universal Declaration’s organizing principle is that “[A]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”</p>
<p>The Universal Declaration promotes the ideal that self-governing human beings all have certain inalienable rights such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law. These universal rights apply to all human beings equally, whichever geographical location, country, race, culture or religion they belong to.</p>
<p>As the Islamic response to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) foreign ministers adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam in 1990.</p>
<p>The Cairo Declaration reaffirmed “the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation that has given mankind a universal and well-balanced civilization in which harmony is established between this life and the hereafter and knowledge is combined with faith.”  After reciting a litany of human rights that it pledged to protect, the Cairo Declaration subjected all of its protections to the requirements of Islamic law:</p>
<blockquote><p>Article 22 (a)</p>
<p>“Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.”</p>
<p>Article 24</p>
<p>“All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari&#8217;ah.”</p>
<p>Article 25</p>
<p>“The Islamic Shari&#8217;ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.”</p></blockquote>
<p>By making Islamic law the sole authority for defining the scope of human rights, the Cairo Declaration sanctioned limits on freedom of expression, discrimination against non-Muslims and women, and a prohibition against a Muslim’s conversion from Islam. Such restrictions are completely at odds with the fundamental human freedoms spelled out in the Universal Declaration.</p>
<p>“The reality,” Kerry said, “is that our faiths and our fates are inextricably linked.” He is right about that, but not for the reasons he suggests.  Jihadists with access to sophisticated weapons, money and willing recruits, including from the West, are seeking to determine our fates, which in their minds is a stark choice between subservience to Islam or death. The supremacism that permeates the Koran itself provides the jihadists with “moral” justification in their perverted world view. The sayings and actions of their Prophet Muhammad provide the jihadists with their roadmap. As an example, Islam’s prophet was quoted as saying, &#8220;Fight everyone in the way of Allah and kill those who disbelieve in Allah.&#8221; (Ibn Ishaq 992)</p>
<p>Secretary of State Kerry, perhaps suffering from a case of post-vacation sunstroke, used part of his remarks at the ceremony to connect what he called the “duty or responsibility” to confront climate change with the “scriptures, clearly, beginning in Genesis.” Then, remembering that he was speaking at a ceremony honoring his new special representative to Muslim communities, Kerry immediately tried to tie his elevation of climate change to Biblical heights with his concern for the fate of Muslims. He said that “Muslim-majority countries are among the most vulnerable.”  Right after that, he added: “Our response to this challenge ought to be rooted in a sense of stewardship of Earth. And for me and for many of us here today, that responsibility comes from God.”</p>
<p>The Koran quotes the Muslim supreme deity Allah as declaring:  “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.&#8221; (Koran 8:12) Is Allah the “God” whom Kerry looks to as the source of responsibility for our “stewardship of Earth”?</p>
<p>John Kerry takes his cue from President Obama. The president has focused his attention on the United States’ supposed failure to adequately protect Muslims’ human rights and recognize their sensibilities, instead of holding the Muslim world to account for its own problems. While ISIS’s barbarism does not represent the behavior of most Muslims, ISIS is not an isolated phenomenon as Obama and Kerry would try to have us believe. ISIS is an outgrowth of Islamic supremacism, which many so-called mainstream Muslim imams and teachers believe, preach and teach. They do so not only in Muslim-majority countries, but also in mosques and schools in the West. Until the United States leads the free world in directly confronting and defeating the ideological wellspring of jihad that feeds violent groups such as ISIS and stealth jihadists seeking to infiltrate our institutions from within, we will be deluding ourselves while playing whack-a-mole against the violent threat du jour.</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>
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		<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>
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		<item>
		<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>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[judaism]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secular]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236041</guid>
		<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>
<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>&#8216;Rebbe&#8217;: The Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/rebbe-the-most-influential-rabbi-in-modern-history/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rebbe-the-most-influential-rabbi-in-modern-history</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:10:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Menachem M. Schneerson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rabbi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rebbe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[School Prayer]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[One of the modern era's most important rabbis -- for Christians and Jews alike. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/rREL2718970.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-226688 alignleft" alt="rREL2718970" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/rREL2718970-247x350.jpg" width="173" height="245" /></a>A just released book, </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">“<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rebbe-Teachings-Menachem-Schneerson-Influential/dp/0062318985">Rebbe: The Life And Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson</a>, The Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History” </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">should be in the personal library of Americans of every faith. This multifaceted biography details the work and beliefs of the late Rabbi Schneerson, whose organization, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2011/10/29/secret-of-marketing-success-follow-chabad/">Chabad-Lubavitch</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, remains the largest Jewish organization in the world.  Schneerson, in a timeless manner, used authentic Jewish values to make the world a better place – and his disciples continue to work to make America and the world brighter and better.  America, which is often said to be built on </span><b style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;</b><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Judeo</span><b style="line-height: 1.5em;">-</b><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Christian</span><b style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;</b><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> values should encourage more student Bible Clubs, and prayer and references to God in the public sphere.</span></p>
<p>Rabbi Schneerson uniquely recognized how America was created as a nation of high ideals, a country which demands moral behavior from people, and that “In God We Trust” was amongst the bedrock principles of the special uniqueness of America. This biography shares many viewpoints on this tremendous man whose wisdom was personally imparted to politicians of all political parties – and Americans of all religious and political stripes – including world leaders Ronald Reagan, Robert F. Kennedy, Menachem Begin and others.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court has held, “[N]othing in the Constitution … prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during, or after the school day” – yet, despite this many school officials mistakenly believe that student prayer inside the public schoolhouse violates the  so-called “separation of church and state.” Rabbi Schneerson – affectionately known as the Rebbe &#8211; wisely noted that “a daily prayer in the public schools is for a vast number of boys and girls the only opportunity for cultivating…an awareness of God.” Indeed, whether a moment of silence, or a prayer, these values one must believe could only strengthen America, as this amazing personal biography reassures us.</p>
<p>Schneerson noted in a letter to an academic, “children in the public schools should be allowed to begin their day with the recitation of a nondenominational prayer, acknowledging the existence of a Creator and Master of the Universe, and our dependence upon him.” There must always remain a constitutionally guaranteed right of public school students to pray, and one hopes that when protecting freedom in America, one also protects religious liberties of public school students and their families</p>
<p>In 2014, a debate continues about the public placement of a Ten Commandments monument on Oklahoma&#8217;s Capitol lawn, which the American Civil Liberties Union&#8217;s local chapter has opposed. One sees Bibles being confiscated in schools, and religious symbols forbidden from court houses and government buildings- and that is simply wrong.</p>
<p>The Rebbe often spoke of how religion and its positive values brought “light” and good values. Schneerson wrote of religion in the public sphere that his emissaries should “go out into the courtyard into the public domain, and create light which illuminates the entire world.”  Prayer in school, public advocacy of a belief in God and the like have important spiritual and moral ramifications and benefits for Americans of all faiths.</p>
<p>As Telushkin’s book shares &#8212; which in today’s world of heroic athletes and reality stars is vital to note &#8212; “belief in a personal good before whom all people are accountable is exactly what the Rebbe believed was required.&#8221; What Jewish and non-Jewish children alike need – adults, too for that matter – is understanding that “the world in which they live is not a jungle, where brute force, cunning and unbridled passion rule supreme, but that it has a (Supreme Being) who… takes a ‘personal interest’ in the affairs of each and every individual, and to him everyone is accountable for his or her daily conduct.”</p>
<p>Personal responsibility is an important positive value, as is fear and respect for God. Self-empowerment and belief that there is something larger than us in this world are values which can only strengthen America.</p>
<p><em>Rebbe</em> is a book which discusses how empathy, wisdom, learning and knowledge are just some of the many aspects of what made Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson such a special and great man who left an amazing impact on the Jewish people, American culture and the world.</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>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>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<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>The Pentagon’s Bow to Islamic Extremism</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Feb 2014 05:45:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dress codes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hijab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentagon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218583</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the acceptance of Islamic dress codes may make the Pentagon more vulnerable. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Woman-wearing-Hijab.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218612" alt="Woman-wearing-Hijab" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Woman-wearing-Hijab-450x332.png" width="270" height="199" /></a></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“Caving to pressure from Muslim groups, the Pentagon has relaxed uniform rules to allow Islamic beards, turbans and hijabs. It’s a major win for political correctness and a big loss for military unit cohesion,” said a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/012914-688132-pentagon-allows-islamic-beards-worn-by-jihadists.htm">recent report</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This new relaxation of rules for Muslims comes at a time when the FBI is tracking more than 100 suspected jihadi-infiltrators of the U.S. military.  Just last month, Craig Benedict Baxam, a former Army soldier and convert to Islam, was sentenced to seven years in prison due to his al-Qaeda/jihadi activities.   Also last month, Mozaffar Khazaee, an Iranian-American working for the Defense Department, was arrested for sending secret documents to America’s enemy, Iran.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">According to a Pentagon spokesperson, the new religious accommodations—to allow Islamic beards, turbans, and hijabs—which took effect very recently, would “reduce both the instances and perception of discrimination among those whose religious expressions are less familiar to the command.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The report concludes that, “Making special accommodations for Islam will only attract more Muslims into the military at a time when two recent terror cases highlight the ongoing danger of Muslims in uniform.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But it’s worse than that; for not only will it attract “more Muslims,” it will attract precisely the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">wrong</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> kinds of Muslims, AKA, “Islamists,” “radicals,” etc.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is easily demonstrated by connecting the dots and understanding that Muslims who adhere to visible, non-problematic aspects of Islam—growing beards and donning hijabs—often indicate their adherence to non-visible, problematic aspects of Islam.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Consider it this way: Why do some Muslim men wear the prescribed beard and why do some Muslim women wear the prescribed hijab? Most Muslims would say they do so because Islam’s prophet Muhammad commanded them to (whether via the Koran or Hadith).</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Regarding the Muslim beard, Muhammad wanted his followers to </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/muslim/002.smt.html">look different</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> from “infidels,” namely Christians and Jews, so he ordered his followers to “trim closely the moustache and grow the beard.” Accordingly, all </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.islam.tc/beard/beard.html">Sunni schools of law</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> maintain that it is forbidden—a “</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://alfatihoun.edaama.org/Fatawas/English/Fatawas/V1/Fourteen.htm">major sin</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">”—for men to shave their beards (unless, of course, it is part of a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war">stratagem against the infidel</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, in which case it is permissible).</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The question begs itself: If such Muslims meticulously follow the minor, “outer” things of Islam simply because their prophet made some utterances concerning them in the Hadith, logically speaking, does that not indicate that they also follow, or at the very least accept as legitimate, the major, “inner” themes Muhammad constantly emphasized in both the Koran and Hadith—such as enmity for and deceit of the infidel, and, when capable, perpetual jihad?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Even in the Islamic world this connection between visible indicators of Islamic piety and jihadi tendencies are well known.  Back in 2011, when Islamists were dominating Egypt’s politics, secularist talk show host Amr Adib of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuJ8TwkscSk&amp;feature=player_embedded">Cairo Today</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> mocked the then calls for a “million man beard” march with his trademark sarcasm: “This is a great endeavor! After all, a man with a beard can never be a thug, can never rape a woman in the street, can never set a church on fire, can never fight and quarrel, can never steal, and can never be dishonest!”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">His sarcasm was not missed on his Egyptian viewership which knew quite well that it is precisely those Muslims who most closely follow the minutia of Muhammad—for example, by growing a beard—that are most prone to violence, deceit, and anti-infidel sentiments, all of which were also advocated by Islam’s prophet.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Speaking more seriously, Adib had added that this issue is not about growing a beard, but rather, “once you grow your beard, you give proof of your commitment and fealty to everything in Islam.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Similarly, after Egypt’s June 30 Revolution ousted the Muslim Brotherhood, “</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/22/beards-niqab-become-liability-in-egypt-after-crackdown/">overt signs of piety</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> [beards and hijabs] have become all it takes to attract suspicion from security forces at Cairo checkpoints and vigilantes looking to attack Islamists.”  Clubs and restaurants </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/egyptian-club-bans-beards-and-veils/">banned entrance</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to those wearing precisely these two “overt signs of piety.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While Egyptians instinctively understand how fealty to the Muslim beard evinces fealty, or at least acceptance, to all those </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">other</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> problematic things Muhammad commanded, even in fuzzy Western op-eds, the connection sometimes peeks out. Consider the following excerpt from a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/us/06beliefs.html?pagewanted=all"><i>New York Times</i></a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> piece titled “Behold the Mighty Beard, a Badge of Piety and Religious Belonging”:</span></p>
<blockquote><p> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">[A]ll over the Muslim world, the full beard has come to connote piety and spiritual fervor…. Of course, the beard is only a sign of righteousness. It is no guarantor, as Mr. Zulfiqar [a Muslim interviewee] reminds us: “I recall one gentleman who came back from a trip to Pakistan and remarked to me, </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">‘I learned one thing: the longer the beard, the bigger the crook.’ His anticipation was people with big beards would be really honest, but he kept meeting people lying to him.”</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The italicized portion speaks for itself. Whereas the Muslim beard ostensibly represents religious piety, some people, mostly Westerners, are shocked to find that those who wear it are often “crooks” and “liars.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In Islam, however, outer signs of religiosity on the one hand, and corruption and deceit on the other, are quite compatible. After all, the same source—Islam’s prophet Muhammad, as recorded in the Hadith—that tells Muslims to grow a beard </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">also</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/7343/islams-doctrines-of-deception">advocates deception</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, the plundering of infidels, the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/muslim-woman-seeks-to-revive-institution-of-sex-slavery/">keeping of sex slaves</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/islamic-adult-breastfeeding-fatwas-return/">adult “breast feeding,”</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and all sorts of other practices antithetical to Western notions of piety if not decency.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Incidentally, it’s the same with the hijab, or cloak that some Muslim women wear, also on Muhammad’s command. One reformed Islamic jihadi from Egypt </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/7334/inside-jihad">accurately observes</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that “the proliferation of the hijab is strongly correlated with increased terrorism…. Terrorism became much more frequent in such societies as Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, and the U.K. </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">after</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the hijab became prevalent among Muslim women living in those communities.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And so, at a time when the U.S. should at the very least be wary of those who openly wear their Islamic radicalism around their face and head—beards for males, hijabs for females—the U.S. Pentagon (of all places) is embracing them in “celebration of multiculturalism.” Where loyalty to the U.S. is most needed, the Pentagon embraces those who show that their loyalty is elsewhere (among other things, the beard and hijab are meant to separate “pure believers” from “impure infidels”).</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Of course, none of this is surprising considering that the Pentagon also considers Evangelical Christians and Catholics as </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/pentagon-classifies-evangelical-christians-catholics-as-extremists.html">“extremists” on a par with al-Qaeda</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><b style="line-height: 1.5em;">Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" 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 style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</b></span></p>
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		<title>Most Jews Wish You a Merry Christmas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dennis-prager/most-jews-wish-you-a-merry-christmas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=most-jews-wish-you-a-merry-christmas</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Dec 2013 05:10:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[American]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christmas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Holiday]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[judaism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Merry Christmas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213847</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why my Orthodox, pro-American family always celebrated the holiday.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/MNOL_HV_Ornaments_MerryChristmasPlaque-700x466.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213848" alt="MNOL_HV_Ornaments_MerryChristmasPlaque-700x466" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/MNOL_HV_Ornaments_MerryChristmasPlaque-700x466-450x325.jpg" width="252" height="182" /></a>As a Jew, and a religious one at that, I want to wish my fellow Americans a Merry Christmas.</p>
<p>Not &#8220;Happy Holidays.&#8221; Merry Christmas.</p>
<p>I write, &#8220;my fellow Americans&#8221; because, as reported by the Pew Research poll released just last Wednesday, nine in 10 Americans say they celebrate Christmas.</p>
<p>Apparently, many Americans have forgotten that Christmas is not only a Christian holy day, but also an American national holiday. Just as we wish one another a &#8220;Happy Thanksgiving&#8221; or a &#8220;Happy Fourth,&#8221; so, too, we should wish fellow Americans a &#8220;Merry Christmas.&#8221;</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t matter with which religion or ethnic group you identify; Christmas in America is as American as the proverbial apple pie. That is why some of the most famous and beloved Christmas songs were written by guess who? Jews.</p>
<p>&#8220;White Christmas&#8221; was written by Irving Berlin (birth name: Israel Isidore Baline).</p>
<p>&#8220;Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer&#8221; — Johnny Marks.</p>
<p>&#8220;Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!&#8221; — composed by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn.</p>
<p>&#8220;Silver Bells&#8221; — by Jay Livingston (Jacob Harold Levison) and Ray Evans (Raymond Bernard Evans).</p>
<p>&#8220;The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)&#8221; — Mel Torme and Robert Wells (Robert Levinson), both Jews.</p>
<p>&#8220;Sleigh Ride&#8221; — lyrics by Mitchell Parish (Michael Hyman Pashelinsky).</p>
<p>There are many others as well.</p>
<p>The notion that non-Christians are excluded is absurd.</p>
<p>Americans who feel &#8220;excluded&#8221; are not excluded. They have decided to feel excluded. Which is, of course, entirely their right to do; no one forces anyone to celebrate any American holiday. But attempts to remove Christmas from the public sphere are destructive to our society. It would be as if Jehovah&#8217;s Witnesses attempted to remove public celebrations and references to the Fourth of July because they don&#8217;t celebrate national holidays.</p>
<p>Why are these attempts destructive? Because the entire society — Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists as well as Christians — all benefit from the goodness and joy that the Christmas season engenders.</p>
<p>It never occurred to my Orthodox Jewish family not to enjoy this season. It was a tradition in our home to watch the Christmas Mass from the Vatican every Christmas Eve (unless it was a Friday evening, and therefore the Sabbath, when no television watching was allowed). Had you visited our home, you would have seen my mother — and my father, my brother and I all wearing our kippot (Jewish skullcaps) — watching Catholics celebrate Christmas.</p>
<p>Nor did it ever occur to my brother, Dr. Kenneth Prager, an Orthodox Jew, not to sing Christmas songs when he was a member of the Columbia University Glee Club. He happily sang not only secular Christmas songs, but religious Christ-centered Christmas songs as well.</p>
<p>So when and why did this pernicious nonsense of non-Christians being &#8220;excluded&#8221; by public celebration of Christmas develop?</p>
<p>It is nothing more than another destructive product of the 1960s and &#8217;70s when the left came to dominate much of the culture.</p>
<p>One way in which the left has done this has been through &#8220;multiculturalism,&#8221; the left&#8217;s way of dividing Americans by religion, ethnicity, race, and national origins.</p>
<p>The other way has been through its aim of secularizing America — which means, first and foremost, the removal of as many Christian references as possible.</p>
<p>The left regularly mocks the notion that there is a war against Christmas, a description that left-wing writers almost place within quotation marks, as if it is a manufactured falsehood.</p>
<p>The most obvious and ubiquitous example of this war is the substitution of &#8220;Happy Holidays&#8221; for &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221; almost throughout the culture. Employees in most retail operations are told not to say &#8220;Merry Christmas.&#8221; As a result, in much of America today, wishing a stranger &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221; is almost an act of courage.</p>
<p>And, of course, many, if not most, public schools have banned Christmas trees and the singing of any Christmas song that hints of Christianity. Last week, for example, the school choir at a Long Island school, the Ralph J. Osgood Intermediate School, sang &#8220;Silent Night&#8221; with the lyrics changed. &#8220;Holy infant,&#8221; &#8220;Christ the savior&#8221; and &#8220;Round yon virgin, mother and child&#8221; were all deleted.</p>
<p>Let me end where I began: speaking as a Jew.</p>
<p>Overwhelmingly, the Jews who are active in the removal of Christmas from society — such as Mikey Weinstein, the anti-Christian activist (with a soft spot for Islamists) who led the campaign to remove the manger scene from Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina — are not religious Jews. They are animated by one or both of two factors: One is leftism, which serves as a substitute religion for Judaism (and among many non-Jews for Christianity). The other is a psychological need to see Christianity suppressed; many people who have little or no religious identity resent those who do.</p>
<p>According to Fox News, Weinstein&#8217;s Military Religious Freedom Foundation &#8220;said they were alerted by an undisclosed number of Airmen who said they were emotionally troubled by the sight of [the nativity scene].&#8221; That sentence should be reworded. Those who claim to be emotionally troubled by the sight of a nativity scene are not emotionally troubled by the sight of a nativity scene. They are emotionally troubled.</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>The Lies and Misrepresentations of Reza Aslan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/the-lies-and-misrepresentations-of-reza-aslan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-lies-and-misrepresentations-of-reza-aslan</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Aug 2013 04:15:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[misrepresentation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PhD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reza Aslan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sociology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=199374</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The self-described "professor of religions" should check his diploma. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Reza-Aslan-009.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-199375" alt="Reza Aslan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Reza-Aslan-009.jpg" width="258" height="193" /></a>Among the Islamists and supporters of Sharia law, there is one individual in particular who has been capable of making money by misrepresenting himself and his credentials: the tireless self-promoter, Reza Aslan. After 9/11, Reza Aslan found the environment ripe in the United States to make profits by exaggerating and fabricating his qualifications.</p>
<p>First of all, Reza Aslan has continuously presented himself as a professor of religion. This is done in an attempt to sell his few books, which lack academic and credible references. In one of his recent interviews, Aslan claims, “I am a scholar of religions with four degrees including one in the New Testament . . . I am an expert with a Ph.D. in the history of religions . . . I am a professor of religions, including the New Testament – that’s what I do for a living, actually . . . To be clear, I want to emphasize one more time, I am a historian, I am a Ph.D. in the history of religions.” Aslan also recently said on Twitter, “I have a BA, MA and PhD in the history of Western Religions so yes, again, I am an ACTUAL expert in Judaism.”</p>
<p>In actuality, Reza Aslan is not a “professor of religion,” and what he claims he does “for a living” is an outrageous inaccuracy. Reza Aslan is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside.  He teaches there based on his Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction from Iowa, his relevant academic credential.</p>
<p>In addition, Reza Aslan received his PhD in sociology – not “History of Religions” – from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2009.</p>
<p>I used to teach at the University of California at Santa Barbara and I am familiar with the prominent theologians, professors and academic scholars at the school. None of these individuals that I met considered Reza Aslan even remotely close to being a scholar in religion. After all, he received his PhD in sociology. At first, I did not know of Reza Aslan. But when his name was brought up, I asked a director of one the departments at the university – who prefers to remain anonymous – for more information. He stated simply that Reza Aslan is a hungry self-promoter who begs for media attention and appearances, and who repeatedly misrepresents his credentials. He added that it goes without saying that Reza Aslan is laughed at within scholarly circles, and that academics do not consider Reza Aslan even a minor religious scholar.</p>
<p>Secondly, the expertise – which Reza Aslan claims is based on his PhD – should be determined by the topic of the dissertation. Reza Aslan’s dissertation, titled “Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework” reveals that if he is an expert based on his PhD, he should be an expert on social movements in early twentieth-century Islam, not on Christianity or even modern Islam.</p>
<p>Third, although Reza Aslan calls himself a “historian,” he has never attainted a degree or had professional training in history, and has never even taken an elementary course in historiography for that matter. His dissertation focuses on the events and movements of the twentieth century and does not apply any historical methods or archival research. In addition, his dissertation is also an abnormally short one – approximately 130 pages double-spaced – which seems to have been written for publicity purposes for his book, <i>Beyond Fundamentalism</i>. Reza Aslan has been exploiting the situation in the United States after 9/11 to self-promote and make profits through these exaggerations and fabrications.</p>
<p>Fourth, Reza Aslan is a self-proclaimed “scholar,” yet his background is inconsistent with academic scholarly standards. Reza Aslan has barely published any papers or articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.</p>
<p>Fifth, Reza Aslan received his PhD in 2009. Yet, there are several interviews and events before 2009 where Reza Aslan sounds as if he is a professor with a PhD.</p>
<p>The work of “real” scholars of religions – not of creative writing – in the United States and across the world speaks for itself, without the need for the author to shamelessly self-promote, boast oneself as a “prominent thinker” and &#8220;scholar of religions,&#8221; and to beg hungrily for media appearances with insatiable greed. Regardless of the inaccuracy of his self-descriptions, respectable scholars never flaunt their degrees so arrogantly. There are countless scholars and academics that have more prestigious PhD degrees in actual “religion,” which they obtained at a younger age and have had for decades (again, Aslan received his in 2009 at the age of 37). However, these intellectuals seldom boast or even mention their degrees. This shows that the aforementioned author only obtained his degree for flaunting purposes. Finally, the author has found the environment after 9/11 extremely advantageous for himself to exploit, self-promote, and to make profit.</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>Islamizing the Public Schools</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/islamizing-the-public-schools/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamizing-the-public-schools</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:52:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CAIR]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prayer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Public Schools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[How Muslim Brotherhood front groups are driving out all religious expression -- except of Islam. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/545819_115655711905193_1324446356_n.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-193096" alt="545819_115655711905193_1324446356_n" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/545819_115655711905193_1324446356_n-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>The Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is pressuring public schools in this country to make special accommodations for Muslim students and to deny comparable accommodations for students of other faiths.</p>
<p>For example, CAIR&#8217;s instructional material for teachers entitled &#8220;An Educator&#8217;s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices&#8221; advises schools to permit Muslim students who wish to attend Friday congregational worship (known as Jum&#8217;ah) to &#8220;request a temporary release from school.&#8221;</p>
<p>In Michigan, CAIR went beyond dispensing general advice from its guidebook. In April, 2013, it pushed for public schools in Dearborn, Michigan to accommodate Muslim students who wish to comfortably pray on school grounds and to allow Muslim students to leave early on Fridays for Jumu&#8217;ah prayers.</p>
<p>The school superintendant caved, and CAIR got its wish.</p>
<p>Just a few months earlier, the same CAIR Michigan branch had complained that a Detroit area elementary school was being too accommodating to Christians when it allowed its teachers to distribute permission slips for  parents to sign so that their children could be released to attend <i>off-site</i> Bible studies classes.</p>
<p>In his letter to the school district, CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid wrote in part:</p>
<blockquote><p>School staff and teachers are not to serve as advocates for one particular religion or congregation within a religion by passing out slips inviting parents to give permission for their children to attend religious instruction. . . According to the United States Supreme Court, the First Amendment clearly requires that public school students and their parents are never given the impression that their school/school district prefers a specific religion over others or sanctions religion in general.</p></blockquote>
<p>CAIR&#8217;s sanctimonious, hypocritical letter worked.  It intimidated the school district into offering an apology.</p>
<p>In California, the Islamists have already won in their efforts to get special treatment for Islam in the public schools.</p>
<p>For example, several years ago seventh-graders at a San Francisco-area school were required to “become Muslims” for two full weeks as part of California&#8217;s world history curriculum. This included professing as “true” the Muslim belief that “The Holy Quran is God&#8217;s word,” reciting the Muslim profession of faith — “Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger” —and chanting “Praise be to Allah.”  Just imagine what would happen if a public school told Muslim students to become Jews for two weeks and recite the traditional Jewish prayer: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”</p>
<p>Yet, in 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California dismissed a case brought by outraged parents even though Supreme Court decisions have kept religion out of public schools for decades.  In a brief memorandum opinion, the appeals court concluded that the activities did not constitute “overt religious activities that raise Establishment Clause concerns.” The Supreme Court apparently forgot its own precedents when it refused to take an appeal from the 9th Circuit decision.</p>
<p>While allowing Islamist indoctrination in public schools, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld another public school’s ban on a student performance of an instrumental version of Ave Maria at their high school’s graduation, because the performance could be seen as endorsing religion. These judges saw no inconsistency in allowing Muslim prayers in the classroom, while upholding the banning of a one-time performance of a Christian-themed instrumental classic.</p>
<p>CAIR also sends its own lecturers into the public schools to indoctrinate impressionable students with Islamist propaganda and wants Muslim educators to have a say in textbook selection to spin the Islamist narrative in history and social studies texts.</p>
<p>On November 29, 2011, for example, Hassan Shibly, CAIR Florida Executive Director, taught more than 400 Steinbrenner High School students, whose world history teacher asked Shibly to specifically cover sharia law and the mission of CAIR itself.</p>
<p>We can be sure that Shibly left out of his biased presentation the part about sharia law&#8217;s call for violent jihad against the &#8220;infidels.&#8221; No doubt he also omitted CAIR&#8217;s connection to the Muslim Brotherhood or its alleged part in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist funding case.</p>
<p>While CAIR sends its own representatives into public schools to indoctrinate students with its Islamist spin, it uses the legal system to bully teachers who dare to bring up examples of terrorists committing violence in the name of Islam. For example, CAIR’s Washington state branch accused a well-respected Washington public school teacher of being &#8220;racist.&#8221; CAIR complained that the teacher, while instructing her students about the dangers of bullying last October, used the terrorist groups Taliban and Hamas as examples of organizations that employ violence to “bully people.” CAIR called for a federal investigation and demanded information “regarding curriculum, approved texts and materials, internal correspondence, and past complaints against the district.”</p>
<p>“Often one complaint is indicative of a larger pattern of biased education,” said CAIR-Washington’s civil rights coordinator, Jennifer Gist, in a statement. “We are requesting public records from the district to review their materials and past complaints, in an effort to analyze the quality of equal education it affords its students.”</p>
<p>So far, the Washington state school district has stood up for its teacher. Let&#8217;s hope it doesn&#8217;t end up bending to CAIR&#8217;s will and that more public schools in this country resist the Islamists&#8217; bullying, even if the Obama administration follows it usual course and supports the Islamists&#8217; position.</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>Extremist Muslim Moderates and Moderate Muslim Extremists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/extremist-muslim-moderates-and-moderate-muslim-extremists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=extremist-muslim-moderates-and-moderate-muslim-extremists</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 31 May 2013 04:24:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extremism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=191585</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The blurry line between terrorists and their tacit supporters. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/koran-peace.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-191588" alt="koran-peace" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/koran-peace.jpg" width="259" height="182" /></a>Like a band that only knows one song, politicians only know one response to Islamic terrorism. They wall off that vast majority of Muslims who did not actually come down to Woolwich and hack at a soldier with a machete and did not fly two planes into the World Trade Center from those who actually did. The hackers and pilots are extremists. The couch potatoes watching at home and cheering them on are moderates.</p>
<p>That might be fine if we were discussing a gas station robbery in Cleveland. But to Muslims, Jihad isn’t an act of violence; it’s an act of faith.</p>
<p>Islamic terrorism isn’t a crime. It’s a form of religious warfare that goes back all the way to its founding. Islam sanctifies crime and violence as acts of worship and that is why its acts of terror do not occur in isolation. It is never the act of a single madman, because its intents and ambitions are communal.</p>
<p>When a Muslim kills a Non-Muslim for the religious reasons of Jihad, whether he is a lone wolf or a member of a large cell, the act cannot be divorced from its goals for the larger Islamic community. No Muslim terrorist is an island. His terrorism is a communal activity that takes place within the context of an Islamic manifest destiny. He does not kill for himself. He takes the lives of others and offers his own life in the name of a historical idea of theocracy and supremacy.</p>
<p>The distinction between action and inaction is meaningless. It’s the distinctions between active support, passive support and direct opposition that matter. Those Muslims who support both the ends and the means of Muslim terrorism are active supporters. Those who support the ends of Islamic theocracy, but not the means of Islamic terrorism, can be labeled passive supporters. And the tiny minority of secular extremists who oppose both the ends and the means are the direct opposition.</p>
<p>The majority of Muslims can at best be described as moderate extremists, while a tiny minority can be complimented for being extremist moderates. And the existence of that minority is often as hard to verify as the presence of Bigfoot in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Some people claim to have seen one, but the sightings never amount to anything tangible.</p>
<p>While not all Muslims support every act of terror, nearly all Muslims support some acts of terror. They define acts that they disapprove of as terrorism and acts that they approve of as resistance which makes the formal condemnations of terrorism by Muslim groups completely meaningless. Each condemnation only applies to a specific case. And that’s even if you take the condemnations at face value.</p>
<p>After September 11, National Geographic <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/09/0927_imampart1.html">interviewed a</a> moderate “Islamic scholar” for his response to the attacks. “No religion would condone this,” he said, “Islam does not approve of this. There is no way that the people who did this could be Muslim, and if they claim to be Muslim, then they have perverted their religion.”</p>
<p>The scholar was Anwar Al-Awlaki, who had ties to the 9/11 hijackers and was an Al Qaeda leader.</p>
<p>Even if applying the term “moderate” to any mainstream Muslim leader ever made any sense, it became meaningless once the ranks of moderates grew to include the Muslim Brotherhood, Anwar Al-Awlaki and any Muslim who was not at the moment engaged in chopping off someone’s head. And once he was done sawing away and washed his hands of the blood, then he too could be considered a moderate.</p>
<p>Of the two Muslim countries most frequently presented as moderate examples, Turkey and Indonesia, both have committed genocide against non-Muslim minorities in the last hundred years.</p>
<p>Around the time of the Arab Spring, reporters began describing the Muslim Brotherhood, which had a long history of terrorism and whose writings call for genocide, as moderate. The Free Syrian Army, which is dominated by the Brotherhood, is constantly described as both “moderate” and “secular”. But Hamas, which is the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, is described as militant, rather than moderate.</p>
<p>There is no actual standard for what makes a Muslim group moderate. The sobriquet is a form of approval granted by Western elites to Muslim groups and figures that most people would conventionally associate with terrorism.</p>
<p>Muslims that might conceivably be described as moderate rarely are. It would be redundant to do so. It’s invariably Muslims with a long record of public statements in support of terrorism and associations with terrorist groups that are described that way.</p>
<p>When a Muslim figure is described as moderate, it’s meant to be an alibi. You might think him extreme, but the media has preemptively stepped in and labeled him a moderate. That’s how it worked for Anwar Al-Awlaki. That’s how it still works for the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Muslims describe acts of terror selectively as terrorism or resistance based on whether or not they support them. Similarly Western elites describe Muslim terrorist groups as moderates or extremists based on whether or not they support them.</p>
<p>When the New York Times and the Washington Post describe the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate, it’s no different than telling the police that your cousin was with you all night when he was actually carrying out a series of gruesome murders. It’s not a supportable claim; it’s an alibi that doesn’t hold up under even the slightest scrutiny.</p>
<p>Whether in Egypt or in London, there is no requirement that these moderate groups actually stop supporting acts of terror, only that they stop embarrassing the Western politicians and journalists providing them with an alibi by actually carrying them out. For Western elites, Islamic acts of terror are not an outrage, but an inconvenience, that upsets the public and makes it harder to push forward on the larger agenda of integrating the Muslim world into the modern world through immigration and democratization.</p>
<p>Anwar Al-Awlaki was considered moderate because he was willing to stand in front of the cameras and say the right things after September 11, even though he was involved in the attacks of September 11.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood is considered moderate because it’s willing to say the right things, even while its thugs burn down churches and terrorize the opposition.</p>
<p>The moderate Muslim prized by Western elites is not an opponent of violence. If that were the qualification then many of the Western elites, who support and supported leftist terrorists, wouldn’t qualify. It’s a willingness to maintain the illusion that a united world under international law is possible.</p>
<p>A month after September 11, the New York Times <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204138204576602984278140322.html">described Anwar Al-Awlaki</a> as “a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West”. That is the soulless calculation behind the moderate brand. It isn’t given to those Muslims who eschew violence, but to those Muslims who support the union of east and west. And they don’t look too closely at the fine print to determine whether this united world will run under international law or the manifest destiny of Islam.</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>Raymond Ibrahim and Erick Stakelbeck Expose Christian Persecution in Muslim Lands</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/raymond-ibrahim-and-erick-stakelbeck-expose-christian-persecution-in-muslim-lands/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=raymond-ibrahim-and-erick-stakelbeck-expose-christian-persecution-in-muslim-lands</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 28 May 2013 04:23:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The West's deafening silence continues in the face of a modern-day genocide. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim recently appeared on “Stakelbeck on Terror” to discuss the topic of his new 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: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians</i></a> with Erick Stakelbeck. Click <a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=Y2BKMV7DFZXY">here </a>to order this must-read.</span></b></p>
<p><iframe src="http://cbn.com/tv/embedplayer.aspx?bcid=2399502539001" height="300" width="400" 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>Why Islam Leads to Violence</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jack-kerwick/why-islam-leads-to-violence/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-islam-leads-to-violence</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 04:04:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack Kerwick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[A look at the philosophical precepts that make the "religion of peace" anything but. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/bookofdeath.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-189573" alt="bookofdeath" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/bookofdeath.jpg" width="300" height="213" /></a></p>
<p>On September 11, 2001, America became aware of Islam.</p>
<p>As Robert Spencer, Pamela Gellar, and others have shown, as far as Islam is concerned, neither this infamous attack nor others before and since are anomalous. Rather, from its origins in the seventh century to the present, from Muhammad to bin Laden, Islam has been animated by a violent impulse.</p>
<p>Authors defending this thesis invariably allude to the military conquests of the Prophet, the particularly harsh punitive measures by which Islamic societies deal with transgressors of Islamic law, and any number of passages from the Koran calling for the death of unbelievers.  And to be sure, all of this supports their case.</p>
<p>But while such writers may have shown <i>that </i>Islam sanctions violence and oppression, to my knowledge, no one has yet to question, much less explain, <i>why </i>this is so.</p>
<p>Yet when we consider that, historically, geographically, and, most importantly, theologically, Islam is remarkably continuous with both Judaism and Christianity, we should see that this is a question that must be raised.  After all, Jews, Christians, and Muslims are of one mind in affirming the divine origins of the Hebrew Scriptures, monotheism, the <i>personal </i>nature of God, God’s justice and compassion, the <i>creation </i>of the world, the orderliness and goodness of the world, and the irreducible individuality of the human person.</p>
<p>Despite these fundamental similarities, it is the followers of Islam alone that have never stopped slaughtering in the name of their God.  Why?</p>
<p>To answer this, I think that we must shift focus from the substance or content of Islamic theology and toward its form or style.</p>
<p>As some critics have plausibly argued, monotheism, being a sort of one size-fits-all concept, expresses a moral universalism that, like all such universalisms, can and has bred arrogance and intolerance in those who endorse it.  Judaism and Christianity, however, have tempered this vision.  Islam, though, has not.  In fact, it is precisely in the Muslim’s <i>objections </i>to Judaism and Christianity that this becomes most clear.</p>
<p>From the Muslim’s perspective, neither Judaism nor Christianity is truly monotheistic.  Judaism has always revolved around the <i>historically</i> and <i>culturally-specific</i> experiences of a <i>particular people</i>—i.e. “the Chosen People,” the Jews.  And Christianity, with its doctrines of the Blessed Trinity (God is Three Persons in One) and the Incarnation (God entered the flux of <i>history</i> by becoming <i>a man</i> in Christ), compromises monotheism even further.</p>
<p>Islam, on the other hand, steadfastly eschews the messiness of all of the contingencies of time and place with which Judaism and Christianity are ridden.  It refuses to trouble itself with “the earthiness” in which its predecessors are mired.  That this is true is further gathered by the glaring structural differences between the Koran and the Bible.</p>
<p>The Bible is a historical narrative.  It is this narrative framework that constrains the range of interpretations that the text lends.  It is the Bible’s sequential ordering of events, its meticulous attention to details, to <i>context, </i>that informs its message regarding the One, True God.</p>
<p>The Koran has no narrative.  Rather, it is essentially a collection of divinely issued moral precepts that, devoid as they are of context, are meant to pertain to all peoples—everywhere.  In ignoring the context of its emergence and development, Islam also neglects the contexts of those upon whom it seeks to impose itself.</p>
<p><i>This </i>explains why Islam has not, cannot, assimilate to any institutional arrangements that allow a separation of some sort or other between the eternal and temporal spheres.  It is this that accounts for why Islam appears incapable of co-existing for long with any and all potential competitors.</p>
<p>The robustness, indeed, the aggressiveness, of Islam’s universalism stems from the highly abstract character of its theology. That this is the case is borne out by considering that Islam’s disregard for context, for particularity, is shared by the least likely suspect: the modern Western secular ideology.</p>
<p>From at least the time of the eighteenth century to the present, the Western world has been besieged by one sort of utopian fantasy or another that has left blood in its wake.  In fact, it was precisely in response to the abstract ideology of the French revolutionaries that modern conservatism arose.  The great Edmund Burke credited “the armed doctrine” of “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality,” with fueling the Jacobin’s lust for “universal empire.”  Had he lived, Burke would have doubtless seen that all “doctrine” that is divorced from the nit and grit of everyday reality, whether that of the Jacobins, socialists, communists, or fascists, is potentially “armed.”</p>
<p>And he would have recognized that Islam, with <i>its </i>abstract ideology, and regardless of its focus on God, can only be armed to the teeth.</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>The Muslim World is a World Where The Bad Guy Won</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bosch-fawstin/the-muslim-world-is-a-world-where-the-bad-guy-won/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-muslim-world-is-a-world-where-the-bad-guy-won</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2013 04:49:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bosch Fawstin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=188241</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Muslims need to understand that their own religion is at war with them.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>“The Muslim world” is a world where the bad guy won. It spends most of its time telling itself it’s good while damning the civilized world as evil, with full faith and no reason. But the comparative standard is getting to be too much for Muslims to deal with in a world where it’s becoming increasingly clear that Islam is not only <i>our</i> problem, but <i>their</i> problem &#8212; their <i>greatest </i>problem as a matter of fact.</p>
<p>Islam has crippled whatever ability Muslims might have had to compete with the civilized world, and the fruits of Western civilization reminds them of it every single day. The only way Islam can have its evil recognized as the unchallenged good in the world is for Muslims to obliterate its enemies, obliterate any and all moral standards, so that only the moral negation that is Islam is left standing. That will never happen unless we allow it to happen. This enemy fancies itself our would-be destroyer, but they’re only parasites feeding off of a West that is morally weak at this moment in history. In the words of Ayn Rand:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels—and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The Muslim world is counting on us to remain as morally weak as we currently are, because they know that if we began to show any kind of strength towards them, if we began to show a willingness to say the things that must be said, then we would be preparing ourselves to do the things that must be done. And that would be the beginning of the end of this thousand-year reign of terror begun by the bad guy who turned an entire part of the world into hell.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/bad-guy.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-188244 aligncenter" alt="bad-guy" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/bad-guy.jpg" width="400" height="564" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <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">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>A Christian Looks At Horowitz&#8217;s &#8216;A Point in Time&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jim-fletcher/a-christian-looks-at-horowitzs-a-point-in-time/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-christian-looks-at-horowitzs-a-point-in-time</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Mar 2013 04:49:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jim Fletcher]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=181870</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A compelling examination of the most pressing questions that theists and atheists alike must confront. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/jim-fletcher/a-christian-looks-at-horowitzs-a-point-in-time/pointintime-6/" rel="attachment wp-att-181872"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-181872" title="pointintime" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/pointintime-226x350.jpg" alt="" width="226" height="350" /></a>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2011/11/370293/">World Net Daily</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>To order David Horowitz&#8217;s &#8216;A Point in Time,&#8217; click <a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=DBERMFBVMXYH">here</a>.</strong></p>
<p>One of life’s greatest blessings is watching a leftist figure things out. When the person also elevates us all by sharing newfound wisdom, it’s even better.</p>
<p>That’s just one reason David Horowitz is one of my favorite writers/thinkers. His elegant-but-deadly destructions of leftist thought have now melded with thoughtfulness in later life and make him one of the most compelling commentators of our time. His new book is a true triumph.</p>
<p><a href="http://superstore.wnd.com/books/biography/A-Point-in-Time-The-Search-for-Redemption-in-This-Life-and-the-Next-Hardcover">“A Point in Time: The Search for Redemption in This Life and the Next”</a> is simply wonderful. It represents the musings of a man looking at his own mortality, wondering just what is the meaning of our existence.</p>
<p>Horowitz opens by describing the progressive thinking of his parents and his father’s atheism. His father seems to have believed in a hoped-for utopia of justice, but Horowitz remembers the irony of pulling a book from the family shelf and reading the realism of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. One can see that Horowitz was influenced by this, and presumably, after his formative years spent pursuing leftist policies and dreams, he came back to that realistic look at the sad old planet we inhabit.</p>
<p>It seems probable that Horowitz will not leave this life as his father did, still hopeful for a world that does not exist.</p>
<p>Some would say that this very slim volume by Horowitz is too dark, too morose. But I say that it is exhilarating. Listen to this: “Unlike my father, I do not look down my nose at the ancients but am impressed by their understanding of our case. How they were able to put a finger on the source of our distress: that alone among creatures we know our fate, and learn sooner or later that the world has no interest in it.”</p>
<p>Well. Although Horowitz’s new book will not meet with approval by all, particularly some conservative Christians, I ask that you give it a try.</p>
<p>For Horowitz’s ideological enemies today, I challenge you to give a nod to his courage in making himself vulnerable as he contemplates our lives as individuals. This is a man of great thought and feeling, and for one who has seen so much ideological savagery, he realizes what I believe to be basically a biblical truth: One day our arguments will not matter.</p>
<p>We learn halfway through the book that Horowitz has been forced to reflect on the meaning of life, due to his health concerns: diabetes and prostate cancer. But I don’t want to misrepresent the book. Horowitz does not share the hope many find in faith: “I wish I could place my trust in the hands of a Creator. I wish I could look on my life and the lives of my children and all I have loved and see them as preludes to a better world. But, try as I might, I cannot. And so I am left to ponder the pointlessness of our strivings on this earth and to ask impossible questions and receive no answers.”</p>
<p>Horowitz, you see, shares more in common with a man who has lost a daughter – because he has – than some of history’s figures he marvels at, men of faith like Mozart and Dostoevsky. He wants to believe in something greater than himself, but he struggles with the questions asked of all men since the species first appeared on the earth.</p>
<p>At the end of this wonderful book, Horowitz says: “My steps have slowed and my passions are dimmed.”</p>
<p>I hope not, because the world could use a thinker like David Horowitz. Interestingly, the last pages of <a href="http://superstore.wnd.com/books/biography/A-Point-in-Time-The-Search-for-Redemption-in-This-Life-and-the-Next-Hardcover">“A Point in Time,”</a> he points to a mystery that I think is a key to understanding everything, and I think the reader will pick up on what I mean. I hope Horowitz is able to pull that veil back enough to see that there is a world to come.</p>
<p>I dare say <a href="http://superstore.wnd.com/books/biography/A-Point-in-Time-The-Search-for-Redemption-in-This-Life-and-the-Next-Hardcover">“A Point in Time”</a> is a modern version of the book of Ecclesiastes, with observations that are particularly relevant for us in our time. You will not be disappointed if you dare to think deeply by reading this profound little book; I honestly believe <a href="http://superstore.wnd.com/books/biography/A-Point-in-Time-The-Search-for-Redemption-in-This-Life-and-the-Next-Hardcover">“A Point in Time”</a> will be good for you.</p>
<p>Let me end this review by saying something that a few of my friends might consider blasphemous: Horowitz has figured out a good bit of life, late in life – and he’s done it as well as Solomon.</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>Environmentalism and Human Sacrifice</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dennis-prager/environmentalism-and-human-sacrifice/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=environmentalism-and-human-sacrifice</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dennis-prager/environmentalism-and-human-sacrifice/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Feb 2013 04:20:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=179075</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Eco-fanatics cause tens of millions of Third World children to die due to their anti-human policies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dennis-prager/environmentalism-and-human-sacrifice/children-pines-384x265/" rel="attachment wp-att-179078"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-179078" title="children-pines-384x265" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/children-pines-384x265.jpg" alt="" width="274" height="228" /></a>Last week, Bjorn Lomborg, the widely published Danish professor and director of one of the world&#8217;s leading environmental think tanks, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, published an article about the Philippines&#8217; decision, after 12 years, to allow genetically modified (GM) rice &#8212; &#8220;golden rice&#8221; &#8212; to be grown and consumed in that country.</p>
<p>The reason for the delay was environmentalist opposition to GM rice; and the reason for the change in Philippine policy was that 4.4 million Filipino children suffer from vitamin A deficiency. That deficiency, Lomborg writes, &#8220;according to the World Health Organization, causes 250,000 to 500,000 children to go blind each year. Of these, half die within a year.&#8221;</p>
<p>During the 12-year delay, Lomborg continues, &#8220;About eight million children worldwide died from vitamin A deficiency.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Golden rice&#8221; contains vitamin A, making it by far the most effective and cheapest way to get vitamin A into Third World children.</p>
<p>So who would oppose something that could save millions of children&#8217;s lives and millions of other children from blindness?</p>
<p>The answer is people who are more devoted to nature than to human life.</p>
<p>And who might such people be?</p>
<p>They are called environmentalists.</p>
<p>These are the people who coerced nations worldwide into banning DDT. It is generally estimated this ban has led to the deaths of about 50 million human beings, overwhelmingly African children, from malaria. DDT kills the mosquito that spreads malaria to human beings.</p>
<p>US News and World Report writer Carrie Lukas reported in 2010, &#8220;Fortunately, in September 2006, the World Health Organization announced a change in policy: It now recommends DDT for indoor use to fight malaria. The organization&#8217;s Dr. Anarfi Asamoa-Baah explained, &#8216;The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes. IRS has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures and DDT presents no health risk when used properly.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>Though Lukas blames environmentalists for tens of millions of deaths, she nevertheless describes environmentalists as &#8220;undoubtedly well-intentioned.&#8221;</p>
<p>I offer two assessments of this judgment.</p>
<p>First, in life it is almost always irrelevant whether or not an individual or a movement is well intentioned.</p>
<p>It is difficult to name a movement that has committed great evil whose members woke up each day asking, &#8220;What evil can I commit today?&#8221; Nearly all of them think they&#8217;re well intentioned. Good intentions don&#8217;t mean a thing.</p>
<p>Second, while environmentalists believe they have good intentions, I do not believe their intentions are good.</p>
<p>Concern for the natural environment is certainly laudable and every normal person shares it. But the organized environmentalist movement &#8212; Lomborg specifically cites Greenpeace, Naomi Klein and the New York Times &#8212; is led by fanatics. The movement&#8217;s value system is morally askew. It places a pristine natural world above the well-being of human beings.</p>
<p>The environmentalist movement&#8217;s responsibility for the deaths of tens of millions of poor children in the Third World is the most egregious example. But there are less egregious examples of the movement&#8217;s lack of concern for people.</p>
<p>Take the Keystone XL pipeline, the pipeline the Canadian government wants built in the US in order to send Canadian crude to American refineries. It would be a 1,179-mile, 36-inch-diameter crude oil pipeline, beginning in Alberta, and ending in Nebraska. The pipeline will be able to transport about 830,000 barrels of oil per day to Gulf Coast and Midwest refineries, reducing American dependence on oil from Venezuela &#8212; Iran&#8217;s base in the Western Hemisphere &#8212; and the Middle East by up to 40 percent. It will also provide Americans with many thousands of well-paying jobs.</p>
<p>Approving this pipeline is a moral and economic necessity.</p>
<p>The American economy needs the pipeline &#8212; even big labor wants it; it vastly reduces American dependency on countries that wish to hurt us; it helps our ally and biggest trading partner, Canada; and if America doesn&#8217;t use that oil, China will.</p>
<p>But the Obama administration may (again) veto the Keystone XL pipeline &#8212; for one reason: environmentalist fanaticism.</p>
<p>The employment of thousands of Americans, the well-being of the American economy and American national security &#8211; all of these concerns are secondary to the environmentalist movement&#8217;s view of nature uber alles.</p>
<p>There are many fine people who are concerned with the environment. Indeed, we should all be. But the movement known as environmentalism is not only a false religion, it is one that allows human sacrifice.</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>The Freedom Cliff</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/the-freedom-cliff/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-freedom-cliff</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/the-freedom-cliff/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Dec 2012 04:39:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[due process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[First Amendment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fiscal cliff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Second Amendment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=171539</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new year brings a new term of tyranny under Obama. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/the-freedom-cliff/fiscalcliff/" rel="attachment wp-att-171541"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-171541" title="fiscalcliff" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/fiscalcliff.jpg" alt="" width="249" height="190" /></a>With all attention focused on the so-called fiscal cliff, President Obama is moving America ever closer towards tumbling over the freedom cliff. As a writer for Salon Magazine put it, &#8220;liberals let Obama get away with unconstitutional actions.&#8221; Here are just a few examples.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom of Speech</strong> &#8211; With the producer of the video &#8220;Innocence of Muslims&#8221; locked away in jail for a year on pretextual charges of probation violations, the Obama administration continues to keep the president&#8217;s promise to the Muslim world to &#8220;fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.&#8221; The First Amendment be damned.</p>
<p>The Obama administration&#8217;s trampling of the video producer&#8217;s First Amendment right of free expression is part of a larger pattern. In 2011, Obama&#8217;s State Department worked behind the scenes with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to pass United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, a tweaked version of the anti-blasphemy UN resolutions that the OIC has been pushing for years.  Terms like &#8220;denigration,&#8221; &#8220;derogatory stereotyping,&#8221; &#8220;advocacy of religious hatred,&#8221; and &#8220;discrimination&#8221; replaced &#8220;defamation of religions&#8221; in the resolution signed off by the U.S, but the end result is the same.  It criminalizes speech which incites a violent response from those whose religious beliefs and icons have, in their eyes, been denigrated.</p>
<p>Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout American Muslim and the founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, noted the duplicity behind the change of wording that brought the Obama administration over to the OIC&#8217;s side:</p>
<blockquote><p>Anyone who believes that Resolution 16’18 is some kind of a breakthrough is sadly being duped by the most obvious Islamist double discourse. The shift from &#8220;defamation&#8221; to &#8220;incitement&#8221; does nothing at all to change the basic paradigm where Islamist nations remain in the offense, continuing to put Western, free nations on the defense.</p></blockquote>
<p>By the way, Dr. Jasser himself has been accused of Islamophobia by the Obama administration&#8217;s close allies at the Center For American Progress.</p>
<p>Expect the Obama Justice Department to go after individuals whose &#8220;hate&#8221; speech the prosecutors claim is discriminatorily targeted at Muslims&#8217; religious sensibilities to the point that it incites their violent response.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom of Religion &#8211; </strong>Back in 2008, Barack Obama mocked those whom he said &#8220;cling&#8221; to religion (he also included guns in his rant). As president, Obama has elevated the right to free contraceptives over freedom of religion, even though only the latter is protected by the Constitution.</p>
<p>While indulging Muslims&#8217; feelings,<strong> </strong>the Obama administration is forcing Catholic charities, hospitals, and colleges as well as private employers to violate their core religious beliefs or face massive fines. The Obamacare mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services requires employers, on pain of substantial financial penalties, to provide and pay for an employee health plan that includes no co-pay coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization. It is a direct affront to the fundamental right to religious liberty of conscientiously objecting employers.</p>
<p><strong>Right To Keep and Bear Arms &#8211; </strong>Freed from having to worry about re-election, President Obama is preparing for a major fight to cut back on the Second Amendment&#8217;s protection of individuals&#8217; right to keep and bear arms. During an appearance on &#8220;Meet The Press&#8221; this past Sunday, Obama said that he would put his “full weight” behind passing new restrictions on firearms in 2013. “Something fundamental in America has to change,” the president said.</p>
<p>If Obama does not get his way in Congress for more gun control laws to his liking, expect the Obama administration to use an upcoming United Nations conference on the adoption of a global arms trade treaty as a back door means to enact further regulation of small arms and ammunition.</p>
<p><strong>Due Process &#8211; </strong>Obama made a big issue during his first presidential campaign about President George W. Bush&#8217;s alleged unconstitutional use of torture. It turns out that Obama had another idea in mind &#8211; his own personal kill lists of American citizens. This goes beyond the president&#8217;s exercise of his constitutional powers as commander-in-chief to target specific individuals engaged in armed combat with the United States, whom it is not feasible to capture, even if they are American citizens. For example, we need not lose any sleep over Obama&#8217;s decision to take out Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who went to Yemen, joined with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and used his base in Yemen to plan and help organize terrorist attacks against American civilians. However, Obama trampled on the Fifth Amendment&#8217;s protection of individuals against being deprived of life without due process of law when he arrogated to himself unlimited, unaccountable power to draw up secret kill lists of American citizens for summary execution.</p>
<p><strong>Separation of Powers &#8211; </strong>Under the guise of executive orders, President Obama has put into effect his own version of legislation that he could not get passed through Congress. Call it executive legislating, something the Founding Fathers sought to prevent through separation of powers and checks and balances.</p>
<p>When Obama was unable to push through the Dream Act, for example, he decided to simply issue his own directive to give what amounts to amnesty to young illegal immigrants who meet certain qualifications.</p>
<p>We have a president who does not like the Constitution which he is sworn to behold.  In his words, the Constitution is a &#8220;document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture.&#8221; It reflects, according to Obama, &#8220;the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.&#8221;</p>
<p>Five days before his election in 2008, Obama proclaimed that &#8220;we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.&#8221; On Sunday, he said that &#8220;Something fundamental in America has to change.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama appears poised to whittle away as much as possible the Constitution that he considers fundamentally flawed and replace it with his own notion of a fundamentally transformed America. He is approaching the edge of the freedom cliff. Unless we are vigilant, we will find in the deep chasm at the bottom of the cliff the freedoms we have long taken for granted.</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>Dennis Prager Explains Why America Is Still the Best Hope</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/tony-christensen/dennis-prager-explains-why-america-is-still-the-best-hope/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dennis-prager-explains-why-america-is-still-the-best-hope</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Dec 2012 04:18:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tony Christensen]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Best Hope]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[God]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170189</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An indispensable book for American patriots. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/tony-christensen/dennis-prager-explains-why-america-is-still-the-best-hope/stbh_audio_med/" rel="attachment wp-att-170241"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170241" title="STBH_audio_med" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/STBH_audio_med.jpg" alt="" width="207" height="191" /></a>Dennis Prager is a man on a mission. Arriving at home one evening and emptying his pocket change out on the table, he had an epiphany reading what was on the coins: the “American Trinity” of Liberty, E Pluribus Unum, and In God We Trust. This gave him his marching orders: to get down on paper what it means to be an American. It is certain that this book is one many Americans will have been waiting for: it is not only a meticulously researched, thorough, and informative account of the current world ideological scene, but in addition a memorable primer for like-minded citizens of what it actually means philosophically to be American. For Prager, the last two generations of Americans have not been taught exactly that, and he aims to remedy the situation: “a country that can’t remember what it’s about cannot survive.”</p>
<p>Prager is supremely confident, and as a result he can take apart opposing arguments with impressive power. He is fond of side-by-side comparisons, and each time they sum up the differences between rival ideologies nicely. His manner is reassuring, somewhat like a Greek tragedy that posits that, yes, there really is a moral order to the universe, and it will all come out for the good. No one escapes moral truth. Nevertheless there is a sober trepidation in the optimism, something unsettling. At one point he tells us that, “Evil is normal. America is not.” To explicate that, Prager points out that in the 21<sup>st</sup>century there are three chief ideological possibilities in global competition, and this unfolding situation has not yet produced an outcome. The three candidates are Islamism, Leftism, and Americanism. Prager wrote his book to inform us of what is going on, and to arm us with the principles we believe, expressed in clear, compelling form. He is adamant that we need to get as serious about winning the looming battle of ideas as our relentless adversaries. He adduces G.K. Chesterton’s observation that, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything.”</p>
<p>Therein is the crux of the problem – we are drifting away from the disciplined, grounded, founding values and virtues of America. We don’t even know how to explain what we believe – no wonder we are threatened with losing our place in the world against foes who know overwhelmingly what they are about. Whereas the global Left and Islamism are “poison,” the American Trinity is still the “last best hope of earth,” to adduce the notion of Abraham Lincoln, from which Prager takes his title. If we are to avoid a quasi or fully-fledged totalitarian dystopia, we need America to prevail.</p>
<p>Prager begins his Prologue with this arresting sentence: “I have written this book because I am convinced that there is a way to end most evil.” He has stated in the past (on Uncommon Knowledge), that ever since childhood, he has been riveted with the subject of fighting evil. This book is the product of a life’s work in that regard, and the way to end evil he’s referring to is of course Americanism. In an ironic twist, the American way of life can replace the god that failed, the discredited European system, which was itself designed to save us all from racism and nationalism. Trouble is never very far away, however, because America is “the last great holdout” for both the Left and for Islamism, which both see America as their most formidable adversary, and are thus allied in anti-Americanism. That alliance explains why “the Left around the world runs interference on behalf of Islamists.” If we do nothing, Prager sees another generation of Americans, the third in a row now, being educated by people who don’t believe in America. This failure to educate the young about our way of life is what has produced our eroding position.</p>
<p>This means, of course, that there are two Americas, one conservative and one liberal. One America believes in small government, Judeo-Christian moral values, and the melting pot identity, while the other America believes in the strict welfare state, secularism, and the all-inclusive “quilt,” the diversified, multi-cultural utopian identity. The former is patriotic, skeptical of the U.N., and believes in a strong military, spirituality, and the American Revolution. The latter promotes citizenship of the world, always turns to transnational organizations rather than to national institutions, clings to negotiations over force, embraces intellectualized reason, and looks to the French Revolution as the paradigmatic case of core values.</p>
<p>In sum, Prager concludes, the Left is more interested in fighting inequality of economic outcomes than in fighting tyranny or evil, and Americanism by contrast is focused on doing exactly what the Left doesn’t want to do, that is, vigorously standing up to evil and promoting equality of economic opportunity. For Prager, fighting evil is our national DNA, and it is thus incumbent on us to fight. We must preserve liberty abroad so that it is not taken from us at home, and secondly, with a “God-based liberty” given to us, we must contribute as a gesture of noblesse oblige. We are among the few nations that care, and we are certainly the most significant in the fight. In the global arena, the Left wants to engineer utopia, while Americanism wants simply to counter that and avoid dystopia. But where then are good and evil for the Left, if for the Left “equality trumps morality”? The answer is that good and evil are relative. They are just the arbitrary, selfish, and useful self-deceptions by which a country gets to its ends, and they have no objective, non-contingent status.</p>
<p>Contrast that to the God-based liberty Americanism cherishes, and we see quite a divide. In cases like these, Prager consistently demonstrates a ready ability to cut to the essence of things in a no-atheists-in-a-foxhole sort of way: for example, he points out that it was not peace activists, with their moral relativism and negotiations, that liberated the Nazi death camps, but on the contrary it was “people taught how to kill” who provided the liberation. But why have we gotten away from what it means to be American in the first place? Prager defers to Tocqueville for the answer: it is our religiousness that is our strength, and the attrition of that Christian religiousness that could be our downfall. Leftism is meant as a substitute religion while our most august universities have become seminaries, and all this was meant to fill the void that opened when “In God We Trust” went into partial dormancy. But Leftism isn’t up to the task of providing spiritual depth. The truth about Leftism is that it is “feelings-based,” for all its claims to Reason and Science, and it is decidedly not moral-values-based. If it were the latter, it would more eagerly fight evil, less eagerly stop those who were actually doing that fighting, and would not stand aloof in poseur umbrage at disparities in wealth.</p>
<p>Moreover, Prager offers a solid argument against those who would ask, “Why do they hate us?” Muslim terror is caused by Muslims, not by the Westerners against whom that violence has been leveled. The primary cause of terrorism is to be found within the behavior and morality of the perpetrators, and not within the behavior of the victims. But Islam can reject this causality because of the unconstrained view it entertains of the nature of Allah: for example, it is his will that directs the arrow to the bull’s eye, not the marksmanship of the archer. Allah is simply not subject to the laws of nature or reason or consistency as is the god of the Judeo-Christian tradition.</p>
<p>In sum, Prager’s book is certainly successful in its mission of explicating the core American values and what they are up against. This book is an eminently readable and important account of the moral regeneration and reconstruction necessary to preserve our unique liberties and American way of life. Prager has convincingly shown that American values are indeed “The last best hope of earth.” Hope is a good way to put it, too, since hopelessness is what ensues in the dystopian world of the Leftist and Islamist alliance. One might add that only Americanism is enlightened enough to assign consent of the governed as the central feature of government, while that feature is conspicuously absent in the totalitarian alliance. To believe utopia is possible without including consent of the governed is to believe what cannot ever be. But many believe just that, or don’t even know it’s being attempted, and that is why Prager’s book is right on target.</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>A Tale of Two Rowans</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/a-tale-of-two-rowans/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-tale-of-two-rowans</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Oct 2012 04:05:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[archbishop of canterbury]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[church of england]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free Speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rowan Atkinson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rowan williams]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Kingdom]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=149267</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One fights for free speech in Britain, the other seeks to destroy it.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/a-tale-of-two-rowans/picture-20-11/" rel="attachment wp-att-149298"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-149298" title="Picture-20" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Picture-20.gif" alt="" width="315" height="232" /></a>Both are British (one English, the other Welsh).  Both went to Oxford.  Both have parents who decided to name them Rowan.  And both have achieved worldwide fame.  But in pretty much every other way that matters, they couldn&#8217;t be more different from each other.</p>
<p>As Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams is the <em>primus inter pares </em>at the head of a worldwide religious community, the Anglican Communion.  But he is also senior primate of the Church of England, an institution whose other leading figure, carrying the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England, is Queen Elizabeth II (one of whose other subsidiary titles, dating back to Henry VIII, is of course “Defender of the Faith”).  By virtue of this role in what is not only a spiritual but a civic institution, Williams is a cornerstone of the British establishment.  Which is to say that, in addition to being a shepherd responsible to fellow Anglicans around the globe, he is also a holder of a public office and of a public trust, responsible to the British Crown and to every citizen of the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>If Rowan Williams is that most solemn of things, the Queen&#8217;s bishop, Rowan Atkinson is somewhere at the opposite end of the seriousness spectrum.  Famous for his characters Blackadder and Mr. Bean, Atkinson is not just a comic actor but one who almost invariably plays the fool.  Often, interestingly, these fools are clerics, such as the nervous vicar who, officiating at a marriage <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkT8_RGDYg">ceremony</a> in <em>Four Weddings and a Funeral, </em>inadvertently says “Holy Goat” instead of “Holy Ghost.”</p>
<p>I said above that – names, fame, nationality, and Oxonian backgrounds aside – our two Rowans “couldn&#8217;t be more different.” That&#8217;s not quite correct.  Both, as it happens, have also made public pronouncements in recent years on certain highly controversial issues.  Only a few weeks after 9/11 – eager, apparently, to show his dhimmitude and prevent a jihadist attack on British soil, Home Secretary David Blunkett proposed a law that would criminalize religious hate speech.  The almost universal response to this ignominious move was a deafening silence – the most notable exception being a <a href="http://www.twoadverbs.com/rowan_atkinson.htm">letter</a> dated October 15, 2001, and published in the <em>Times </em>of London on October 17.  It was by Atkinson.  He wrote, in part:</p>
<blockquote><p>I hope that I am not the only person in the creative arts who feels great disquiet about the proposals outlined by the Home Secretary in the Commons today, to introduce legislation to outlaw what has been described as &#8216;incitement to religious hatred&#8217; &#8230;Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, in effect, be made illegal to imply ridicule of a religion or to lampoon religious figures&#8230;.For telling a good and incisive religious joke, you should be praised. For telling a bad one, you should be ridiculed and reviled. The idea that you could be prosecuted for the telling of either is quite fantastic.</p></blockquote>
<p>Alas, it appeared as if Atkinson might actually be “the only person in the creative arts” in Britain who didn&#8217;t like what Blunkett was up to.  Certainly none of his fellow British celebrities rushed in to second his motion in an equally high-profile manner.  In the wake of Blunkett&#8217;s proposal, Atkinson was conspicuous by his seemingly solitary opposition.</p>
<p>Although Blunkett&#8217;s bill ended up passing – in a somewhat milder version, thanks to the efforts of the House of Lords, and no thanks whatsoever to the dhimmi wimps in the House of Commons – the cringing and groveling didn&#8217;t go far enough for the other Rowan, who in January 2008, in a pompous, pretentious six-thousand-word <a href="http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1328/archbishops-lecture-religious-hatred-and-religious-offence">lecture</a> entitled “Religious Hatred and Religious Offence,” called for severer punishments for writers and artists who slander religion, his argument being (and I quote here not from the intolerably tortuous text itself but from a more straightforward, and apparently official, summary) that these givers of offense ignore “the hurt that their actions may cause,” that they refuse “to see people&#8217;s belief choices from any other perspective but their own,” and that permitting such speech “deprives society of the ability to have a sense of the value of humanity, beyond the most basic idea of human dignity.”</p>
<p>How curious that Rowan the clown, the professional jester, could have such a clear understanding of fundamental English values, while Rowan the priest – who is nothing less than an official, certified public symbol of those values – could get it all so wrong.</p>
<p>But, as some readers will recall, that was just the beginning.  A week after his call for a stricter law against giving religious offense, Williams delivered yet another six-thousand-word piece of <a href="http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1137/archbishops-lecture-civil-and-religious-law-in-england-a-religious-perspective">oratory</a>.  This time his subject was sharia law, which, he urged, should be allowed a greater role in British jurisprudence.  As I have written <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Surrender-Appeasing-Islam-Sacrificing-Freedom/dp/0767928377/ref=la_B000AQTGH2_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1350843377&amp;sr=1-4">elsewhere</a>, the speech was “a masterly&#8230;exercise in euphemism and circumlocution” in which Williams sought over and over to convey the idea that sharia isn&#8217;t as bad as it&#8217;s cracked up to be, all the while wriggling and slithering around the incontrovertible facts of the matter in a way reminiscent of the most slick, slimy, and slippery of used-car salesman.  Williams&#8217;s disquisition was a full-out disgrace: an expression of an obscene readiness to forfeit British liberty – and to sacrifice the truth itself – in the name of sham “tolerance” and bogus “respect” for Islam.</p>
<p>Williams, who has been Archbishop of Canterbury since 2003, is expected to step down in December. For some of us, his departure from Lambeth Palace can&#8217;t come too soon – though it is probably too much to hope that his successor (who has yet to be chosen) will be much better.  Meanwhile, Atkinson continues to wage his lonely, heroic struggle against the cynical and cowardly campaign to erode British freedom.  Last week, in reaction to what would appear to be a fresh wave of hate-speech arrests (the offenders include a teenager holding an anti-Scientology placard and members of a gay-rights group who protested the Muslim organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, “which was calling for the killing of gays, Jews and unchaste women”), Atkinson launched a <a href="http://reformsection5.org.uk/">drive</a> for the repeal of Section 5 of the Public Order Law, under which these arrests were made.  (This is, note well, <em>not </em>the same law he was challenging  back in 2001: as in some other supposedly free European countries, it&#8217;s hard to keep straight all the laws in Britain that place limits on freedom of expression.)  Atkinson <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219385/Rowan-Atkinson-attacks-new-rules-outlaw-insulting-words-behaviour.html">said</a> that the Public Order Law, which forbids “insults,” was having a “chilling effect on free expression and free protest,” and was part of what he described as a “new intolerance,” a “creeping culture of censoriousness.” It is high time, he <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gciegyiLYtY&amp;desktop_uri=/watch?v=gciegyiLYtY&amp;gl=GB">suggested</a>, to “rewind the culture of censoriousness” and stop appeasing what he called the “outrage industry – self-appointed arbiters of the public good encouraging media-stoked outrage to which the police feel under terrible pressure to react.”</p>
<p>It was cheering to see that Atkinson is still in there fighting – and cheering, too, to see that, in this latest battle, he actually has allies – ranging from the Christian Alliance to the National Secular Society, and including sixty-odd members of Parliament.  It would appear, however – unless I&#8217;ve missed something – that he is, yet again, “the only person in the creative arts” in the U.K., at least the only one with any degree of clout, who is willing to step up and associate his name with the now apparently controversial cause of individual liberty.  Certainly the list of <a href="http://reformsection5.org.uk/#?sl=4">supporters</a> at the website of his campaign, Reform Section 5, includes no famous British writer, artist, or performer of any kind – no Stephen Fry or Dame Judy Dench, no Daniel Day-Lewis or Hilary Mantel, no Martin Amis or Emma Thompson.  Have they not yet been asked to participate, or have they politely declined?</p>
<p>Meanwhile, there was no immediate word on whether the other Rowan had anything to say about this new crusade by his wiser and braver namesake.  But then, it can take a while to scribble out six thousand words – especially when you&#8217;re doing the Devil&#8217;s work, all the while trying, with every masterfully mendacious sentence, to appear to be on the side of the angels.</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>Freedom from Islam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/freedom-from-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=freedom-from-islam</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/freedom-from-islam/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Oct 2012 04:30:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blasphemy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[copts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Want]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=148452</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The new meaning of freedom in our time.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/freedom-from-islam/will-islam-dominate-america4/" rel="attachment wp-att-148505"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-148505" title="Will Islam dominate America[4]" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Will-Islam-dominate-America4.jpg" alt="" width="358" height="239" /></a>In 1941, FDR proposed his famous Four Freedoms. Some seventy years later it may be time to add a fifth freedom to that list. Freedom from Islam.</p>
<p>Freedom from Islam would have seemed like an unlikely candidate back in 1941 when the worry was over secular ideologies, but as the West and its ideologies have fallen into a soporific state of decline, the fascism that concerns us no longer wears a military uniform or any of the trappings of nationalism, but instead wraps itself in the turban of religion.</p>
<p>Of those four freedoms, three are directly endangered by Islam. We have seen Freedom of Speech being burned in effigy across the Muslim world, and even in the urban centers of Western nations. The Muslim bomb plots aimed at synagogues and the specter of America’s first, albeit unofficial, blasphemy trial, warns us that our Freedom of Worship is also under threat.</p>
<p>Coptic Christians, who for many centuries were forced to live in an atmosphere of terror, subject, like all Christians in the Muslim world, to blasphemy trials as tools of persecution, have found that their land of refuge here is not so different a place from their old homeland after all. As Coptic Christian churches are patrolled against the threat of Muslim violence and one of their own is on trial for offending Muslims, they cannot help but wonder what happened to the vaunted freedoms to worship and believe, to speak and be free, that first drew them to this country.</p>
<p>And third, Freedom from Fear, not a right but the outcome of a well-managed system of government, has been under attack by decades of Muslim terrorism whose purpose is to terrorize the non-Muslim into surrendering to its demands. Instead of freeing us from Muslim terror, government authorities have universalized it, spreading it about as much as possible to avoid offending Muslims by drawing attention to the motives and religion of their terrorists.</p>
<p>Finally, there is Freedom from Want, which like Freedom from Fear, was an example of positive rights being snuck into a national compact based on the negative rights of minimal government, and yet it is interesting to note how the liberal mega-state has failed to uphold even its own four freedoms.</p>
<p>Domestic drilling is banned, while the oil wells of Saudi Arabia and the other backward monarchies, that fund terrorists with one hand while slipping bribes to our officials with the other, go on pumping day and night. Gas prices in America keep climbing and the terrorists draw out those record profits to expand their sphere of terror.</p>
<p>Despite all this wealth, created by non-Muslims for Muslims, where Islam goes then poverty soon follows. Even with wealth, the Muslim world remains a place of great poverty where powerful families and organizations control access to the economy and women are kept out of the workplace. Muslim economic failure <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/islams-universal-economic-failure/">has been chronicled elsewhere</a> and yet it is worth noting that Muslim immigration fills up not only the prisons of the West, but also its social service centers.</p>
<p>When Islam has the freedom to undermine freedom of speech and freedom of religion then no freedom is safe. And when Muslim immigration is unleashed on the free world, then freedom from fear and even freedom from want also become distant memories.</p>
<p>Why discuss the Four Freedoms at all? Perhaps because they remind us that the freedoms inscribed into the Bill of Rights are meant to protect us against the abuses of government authority. And yet there is a more primal form of freedom that must first be defended if those freedoms are to have any meaning at all.</p>
<p>Before the American colonies were free of British rule, the Bill of Rights could have no function. The first freedom, before all freedoms from domestic government authority, is the freedom from rule by external oppressive forces. Only when a people are free of foreign dominance and alien rule and are able to lift their heads and make their own laws without fear of their oppressors, can there be true freedom.</p>
<p>The first freedom in the days of the American Revolution was freedom from British rule. The first freedom in 1941 was freedom from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The first freedom during the Cold War was freedom from Communism. The first freedom in our own time is freedom from Islam.</p>
<p>The freedoms of our Constitution express a relationship between us and our government. But when a third party invades this relationship and imposes its will on both parties then the relationship can only be rebuilt by banishing this external oppressive force. When that oppressive force is comprehensive enough, when like Nazism, Islamism or Communism it represents both a physical means of conquest as well as a political ideology with its own cult, then freedom comes to be defined in terms of being free of that external force.</p>
<p>Islam is not a subject for civil liberties debates. Those only address the relationship between a people and their government. It is not a constitutional issue because Islam already has its own Constitution, its own government and its own set of laws. It is a wartime matter.</p>
<p>There are two kinds of wars: wars of survival and wars of choice. The war of choice is optional; it may be fought or it may not be fought. There may be compelling moral, political or economic reasons why it should be fought, but if it is not fought then life for most people will still go on much as it has before. And then there are wars of survival. Those wars are no more optional than fighting off a shark circling you in the water is optional. A war of survival is a conflict where an external force is determined to conquer the United States and eliminate the rights, freedoms and identities of all Americans. And in a war of survival, freedom is defined by remaining unconquered.</p>
<p>Freedom from Islam is the fundamental freedom of our time. It is the freedom in whose shelter America can still be America.  It is the freedom on which all other freedoms depend.</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>Global Malarkey</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rael-jean-isaac/global-malarkey/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=global-malarkey</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Oct 2012 04:33:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rael Jean Isaac]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enironmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Solway]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=146816</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[David Solway's new book documents how environmentalism has become an anti-human religion.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/solway.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-146839 alignleft" title="solway" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/solway.jpg" alt="" width="335" height="500" /></a>In an interview with the <em>New Yorker</em>, President Obama said that in his second term the most important policy he could address was climate change.  Given the damage he has done to fossil fuels in his first term (and the vast sums he has squandered on the will o the wisps of sun and wind), one shudders to think what is in store for our energy supply if he turns full attention to the subject.  Senator John McCain, his defeated Republican rival, was also a true believer in the global warming apocalypse, the notion that man-made global warming, if unchecked, will destroy the planet. In fact, now that so many governments have clambered on board, global warming theory, if unchecked, is going to destroy the economies of the Western world.  Which underscores the importance of books like this one, compact, brief, easy to read, by a layman for a lay audience, that serve as antidotes to the prevalent hysteria.</p>
<p>In his new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Global-Warning-Trials-Unsettled-Science/dp/0981276784"><em>Global Warning: Trials of an Unsettled Science</em><em></em>,</a> author David Solway begins with a succinct review of the large body of scientific evidence throwing doubt on the claims of those who insist that global warming, as he puts it, is leading &#8220;to a latter day man-made global holocaust.&#8221; He makes the effort while acknowledging that evidence is a hard sell for believers invested in this apocalyptic faith. He quotes Jonathan Swift, &#8220;What a man has not been reasoned into, he cannot be reasoned out of.&#8221;</p>
<p>Indeed reasoned discussion is the last thing global warming zealots have in mind.  They are every bit as impassioned and out of control as the rabid Moslem defenders of Mohammed from every conceivable slight.  Solway cites (among others) Canadian global-warmer-in-chief David Suzuki telling a conference on sustainability at McGill &#8220;to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there&#8217;s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail&#8221; for their failure to act and British lawyer Polly Higgins who petitions the UN to prosecute &#8220;climate deniers&#8221; for &#8220;crimes against peace.&#8221;  My personal favorite is the obsessively anti-Israel English Labor party activist Clare Short who declares Israel, by distracting politicians from the weather, may cause the &#8220;end of the human race.&#8221;</p>
<p>Solway shows what we have here is an offshoot of liberal environmentalism that has become &#8220;the cutting edge of the movement for bureaucratized state control of both private life and free market economics.&#8221; Environmentalism has also become an anti-human religion. Solway has some telling quotes here.  A couple of samples: Paul Taylor in <em>Respect for Nature, A Theory of Environmental Ethics</em> postulates &#8220;Given the total, absolute disappearance of Homo sapiens, then not only would the Earth&#8217;s community of Life continue to exist, but in all probability, its well-being enhanced.&#8221; Or John Davis, editor of <em>Earth First:</em> &#8220;Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.&#8221; Or Paul Watson, Greenpeace co-founder, who described human beings as the &#8220;AIDS of the Earth.&#8221;</p>
<p>A couple of misstatements could be cleaned up in a later edition.  Fred Singer is not a Nobel laureate (although he probably deserves the prize) and the Rev. Moon, despite his attachment to the notion of &#8220;stewardship,&#8221; cannot readily be tied to support for global warming given that  his <em>Washington Times</em>  served consistently as one of the rare print media critics of global warming pretensions.</p>
<p>It is a pleasure to interview David Solway.</p>
<p><strong>Isaac:</strong> Barack Obama is a true believer in global warming and his anti fossil-fuel policies attest to that. But Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, from what I have seen, is a skeptic. Is this true and what effect have Harper&#8217;s views had an effect on Canadian policy in this area?</p>
<p><strong>Solway:</strong> Clearly, all politicians are compromised in one way or another—it goes with the territory. But there are both gradations and exceptions. Stephen Harper is one of the few political leaders in the West who has a demonstrable moral backbone and the qualities of a true statesman—consider his stalwart support for the state of Israel, his closing of our embassy in Iran and his expulsion of Iranian diplomats from Canada, and his refusal to waffle at the United Nations, as did his Liberal predecessors. With respect to the ideology of climate change, he obviously stands behind the policies and pronouncements of his Minister of the Environment, Peter Kent, who nixed the Kyoto Accord, which was not only a drop in a bucket with a hole in it, but would have led to economic disaster for Canada.</p>
<p>Admittedly, Kent has not gone far enough. In a recent statement to the House of Commons, Kent said: “the Kyoto Protocol did not represent the path forward for Canada. The Durban Platform is a way forward that builds on our work at Copenhagen and Cancun.”</p>
<p>Regrettably, this is abject nonsense. Copenhagen was a total bust and Cancun is an insipid joke. Anything that happens in Durban, as we should know by now, is fit for the cesspool. Is Kent just playing for time, trusting that the future will comply with his Kyoto-like suspicions and permit him to bury Durban without excessive fanfare, or does he really believe this baloney? Perhaps Harper was distracted by other business at the time, but I would certainly expect him to prove his mettle yet again and set his minister straight.</p>
<p><strong>Isaac:</strong> We are familiar with the so-far successful effort of environmentalists in this country to stop the Keystone Pipeline and with Canada&#8217;s unhappiness at the decision. You mention in your book suits in Canada to tie up economically productive pipelines in endless litigation which sounds like you have the same problem. Is litigation of this sort as protracted in Canada as it is here and what is the outcome of these cases?</p>
<p><strong>Solway:</strong> I can’t be sure about the relative demerits, let’s say, of environmental litigation in our two countries, but such litigation is a fact of Canadian political and economic life. In a talk at the National Archives in Ottawa on March 19, 2012, independent researcher Vivian Krause showed the vast and tentacular extent to which American NGOs have infiltrated the Canadian oil development industry with a view to tying up progress in the courts indefinitely. Do foundations like Moore, Hewlett, Packard, Tides and so on want to prevent the development and exportation of Canadian oil in order to keep America dependent on Saudi, Iranian and Venezuelan energy supplies? Is this part of the left-wing agenda against the prosperity and sovereignty of the United States? Sometimes it certainly seems that way.</p>
<p>If our government manages to suffocate such pestiferous litigation and Canadian oil ultimately finds its way to China, the U.S. will have deserved its come-uppance.</p>
<p><strong>Isaac:</strong> I noticed that when the Heartland Institute had its last conference bringing together global warming skeptics the only serious TV coverage was by Ezra Levant for a Canadian station. How balanced or imbalanced is Canadian media coverage of global warming? Do the skeptics get a hearing?</p>
<p><strong>Solway: </strong>Yes, the skeptics do get a hearing but it’s still what I call a sordine affair (and, given the opposition to debate on the part of the climate punditocracy, a sordid one, too). That is, the trumpet is muted. The only newspaper I know of that has tackled the grand imposture and swindle of AGW is the National Post, which features such first-rate writers as Peter Foster, Terence Corcoran, and Lawrence Solomon. Foster’s most recent column, for example, “Climate hype via Hogwarts Lab” (October 2), effectively takes apart that latest sensational and duplicitous climate warming report, the “Climate Vulnerability Monitor,” brimming over with untenable apocalyptic claims and sponsored by such countries as Bangladesh and the Maldives, whose “top priority is to get their hands on the annual US$ 100-billion slush fund.” But the National Post is a lone voice crying in the newspaper wilderness.</p>
<p>The only TV station that honestly and reliably confronts the Climatocracy is Sun Media, Canada’s sturdier version of Fox, where commentators like Ezra Levant and Michael Coren can be depended on to speak the truth. As for the rest, forgedaboudit. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), though Federally funded, is a franchise of the international left and in part a farm team for Al-Jazeera—both Avi Lewis, former host of a public affairs program (and the husband of leftist shill Naomi Klein) and Tony Burman, formerly editor in chief of CBC News, were recruited by Al-Jazeera. The Mother Corp’s Washington correspondent Neil Macdonald can be counted on to spout the usual load of anti-Republican and anti-Israeli claptrap, which he does with dinning regularity. CBC Radio’s As It Happens interview show has an indigestible pro-Islamic, pro-Democrat, pro-Liberal bias. That it emanates from Toronto rather than Moscow or Riyadh is an anomaly. The other major network, CTV, a division of Bell Media, is only marginally less rebarbative.</p>
<p><strong>Isaac:</strong> In this country cap and trade did not pass nationally (although there are state programs) and from Congressmen and Senators, with very few exceptions, being afraid to speak out, we have gone to a situation where quite a few Republicans are questioning global warming dogma openly. What is the situation in Canada in so far as your legislators are concerned? Do policies vary in different provinces as they do here in different states?</p>
<p><strong>Solway:</strong> Well, the Alberta government knows its solvency depends upon blunting the effect of wild and unscrupulous environmental dogma, but Quebec, with its socialist tendencies, has pretty well hopped aboard the environmental train to nowhere. Former Quebec premier Jean Charest earned his brevet at Copenhagen when he blasted Alberta as an unbridled polluter. The cynicism and disingenuousness of his politically correct stance was evident to anyone who understands how Canada works, for Quebec is a “have-not province” heavily reliant on transfer payments from the Federal government—which come largely from a wealthier, less corrupt and more productive Alberta. If Alberta shut down its tar sands, Quebec would have to shut down its subsidized daycares, its welfare programs, its so-called “embassies” abroad, and a significant portion of its bureaucratic feeding-troughs. Ontario, once a manufacturing powerhouse, is really no better off, also suckling at the Federal (aka Albertan) teat while careening toward Green bankruptcy.</p>
<p>As for our legislators, very few have the fortitude to publically oppose the reigning shibboleths of the day, whether AGW, the agenda of virulent feminists, runaway immigration and so on. But we do have a few brave souls, Rona Ambrose (Minister for the Status of Women), John Baird (Minister of Foreign Affairs) and Jason Kenney (Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism), who are for the most part willing to buck trends and to take principled positions. That they are all Conservative members of parliament is no accident. We can’t expect this sort of vertebral rectitude from the Liberals (now starry-eyed over the leadership prospects of the intellectual lightweight Justin Trudeau, trading on his famous father’s cachet) or the Green Party of American-born Elizabeth May with its strident and puerile disestablishmentarianism or the left-leaning NDP, currently the Official Opposition and, under the stewardship of Thomas Mulcair, prepared to drag the country over the same cliff that Barack Obama is leading the U.S. This is the same Mulcair who was once a staunch Federalist but who is now sympathetic to the Quebec separatist movement. This doesn’t appear to be a coincidence when one considers that 58 of the NDP’s 100 seats (at last count) hail from Quebec. The Conservatives are not above reproach, but the other parties seem to me beneath contempt.</p>
<p><strong>Isaac:</strong> One of the biggest problems here is in the indoctrination of children in schools into global warming dogma as &#8220;science.&#8221; It&#8217;s a rare student, for example, who hasn&#8217;t been exposed to Al Gore&#8217;s <em>An Inconvenient Truth</em> multiple times. What is the situation in Canada in so far as the educational establishment is concerned?</p>
<p><strong>Solway: </strong>Not appreciably better. You have Al Gore. We have David Suzuki. Who is the greater charlatan is a matter of conjecture. As I pointed out in my book, Suzuki has lectured by video feed to two hundred Canadian schools, praising China as a nation “committed to developing a green economy.” Can you believe it? Suzuki received a million dollar gift from Canada’s Power Corp, which operates in China, one of the world’s leading carbon emitters, which may explain this guru’s enthusiasm for a manifestly totalitarian polluter. Our kids are also being contaminated by climate doctrine.</p>
<p><strong>Isaac:</strong> You mention that green may be graying. What would it take for green to actually die? And is it possible to defeat global warming without taking on the broader environmental movement of which it is a part? Even legislators in this country willing to argue against the man-made global warming apocalypse blanch when it comes to confronting environmentalism.</p>
<p><strong>Solway: </strong>If you’re correct, and our legislators continue to blanch, then we’re not going from green to gray but from green to white. So yes, most of our legislators are indeed lily-livered—when they aren’t lining their pockets with failing but lucrative Solyndra-type deals in orgies of cronyism, the inevitable cost borne by the taxpayer. (Though this seems to be a more distinctly American phenomenon, especially under Obama.) I don’t know if green will ever die or if it will simply morph into something else, for it’s a symptom of the utopian prepossession that dominates the mindset of the left and of our intellectuals in general. You have written eloquently about this issue in your The Coercive Utopians: Social Deception by America’s Power Players, where you point out that “Intellectuals conjured up idyllic fantasies, making their pilgrimages not to observe, but to project their feelings upon the scenes they encountered.”</p>
<p>This is true not only of the intellectual-left’s love affair with communist and tyrannical regimes, but with grossly conceived ecumenical projects like the global warming scare, which enables them, as James Delingpole warned in Watermelons, to “advance a particular social and political agenda under the cloak of ecological righteousness and scientific authority.” What it comes down to is the entwining of “the ideology of the modern environmental movement and the ideology of the liberal-left,” both of which are political cartels of a collectivist bent that “believe in a bigger state” and lobby for “more of our decisions to be made on our behalf by politicians [and] technocrats.”</p>
<p>Again, as you write in your book, our utopians and left-intelligentsia—two sides of the same coin—are  enamored of “millenarian ideologies,” and though they cannot “inaugurate the perfect society of which they dream…it may be in their power to destroy the good society in which we live.” Other excellent writers have clarioned the danger of utopian liberalism—James Burnham’s <em>Suicide of the West</em>, Jamie Glazov’s <em>United in Hate</em>, Melanie Phillips’ <em>The World Turned Upside Down</em>, Bruce Bawer’s <em>Surrender</em>, to name just a few. It’s an uphill battle which can never be fully won for the lethal virus has implanted itself in the human soul. The “progressivist” and Aracdian malady will always be with us. It will never go away. All we can do—those of us who acknowledge our fallibility and have managed to resist the seduction of trying to create Heaven on Earth—is to recognize and continue to fight the Hydra-headed and protean incarnations of this pathology, of which what I’ve called Climatophrenia is only the latest exemplar.</p>
<p><strong>Isaac:</strong> Thank you for your excellent book, your great erudition, and your graciousness in answering these questions.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <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">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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