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On October 7, 2023, Hamas mounted a surprise attack against Israeli civilians. Hamas did not focus on military sites. Hamas embarked on a grand guignol torture tour. Elderly women, young women, babies, toddlers, men, the handicapped, a wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor, were stripped, raped, paraded, mutilated, decapitated, stepped on, spat on, taunted, and burned alive. Bodies of the dead were dramatically desecrated. Women were raped next to the corpses of their friends and then executed.
Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro compiled video and photographic records of these atrocities against defenseless civilians. He was able to do so because the Hamas torturers were very proud of their accomplishments, and they posted video on social media. The Face of Absolute Evil can be viewed on YouTube here. If YouTube removes the video, you can see it at the Daily Wire site or at Rumble.
Westerners inculcated in the Judeo-Christian tradition were confused. They found all these features confusing: Hamas war crimes, those crimes’ extensive documentation by Hamas criminals, and Hamas war criminals proudly sharing evidence of their atrocities via the worldwide web. Hamas’ audiences, around the world, cheered these atrocities. They ululated, the sound Arab women make when celebrating. They chanted “Allahu akbar,” roughly translated as “Allah is greater than other gods.”
All these behaviors struck Western observers, not just as disgusting and evil, but also as irrational and self-destructive. The entire October 7 attack defied logic. Hamas knew it would not claim territory or achieve its stated goal, the “obliteration” of Israel. Hamas knew that Israel would strike back, with American and international support. Hamas knew that hundreds, if not thousands of Arab Muslims would perish in Israeli counterstrikes. Hamas knew that it might be inviting a nuclear war that would take the lives of millions of innocents, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
Social media used the word “animals” to describe the Hamas attackers. In fact, of course, Hamas attackers are human beings, and all the war crimes they committed are acts that human beings commit. Non-human animals do not, typically, devote their time to torturing their fellows, and then bragging to others about that torture. Non-human animals have better things to do with their time.
I’m an American of Polish and Slovak descent. Americans have also committed war crimes, and I’m all too aware that a minority of Poles, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, became “szmalcownicy,” and, for financial gain, betrayed Jews to German occupiers. So, yes, alas, Hamas war criminals are human beings, and they committed crimes that members of all ethnicities and all religions have also committed.
There’s an important difference between Hamas war criminals and others, though. Americans or Poles who committed war crimes violated their national and religious ideals. These criminals are despised and denounced by their fellow nationals. They have often faced trials. We feel ashamed that members of our national or religious community committed disgusting crimes. We dedicate ourselves, through investigations, works of literature, conferences, school curricula, and religious rituals to understanding how people like us could commit atrocities. We strive to purge our community of any ideas that might support atrocity. We, as a society, attempt to compensate victims of crimes committed by our fellows.
When I watch the video evidence of recent Hamas atrocities in Israel, I cannot help but think of Nazis and Nazism. The Ivanhorod Einsatzgruppen photograph is a famous depiction of Nazi brutality. It depicts a Nazi soldier a few feet away from a young Jewish mother attempting to protect, with her maternal embrace, her toddler child. The uniformed soldier takes aim at her head and we know that shortly after this photo was taken, both the mother and child, like millions of others, were dead and buried in a mass grave. Someone attempted to mail this 1942 photograph to Nazi Germany. It never arrived. The Polish underground intercepted it and kept it as documentary proof of Nazi war crimes.
Many found Nazi crimes difficult to understand. Civilized young men are socialized to feel protective and respectful around mothers and children. Germany was one of the most civilized countries in the world. Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, Albert Einstein and Max Planck, Erich Maria Remarque and Thomas Mann were world leaders in culture and science. How could any human beings, and how could people famous for their high level of civilization, commit such hideous crimes?
Nazism was a perverse break in Germany’s cultural trajectory. Nazism demanded adherence to ideas that defied previous values. Children were brainwashed and turned into killing machines. In the post-war era, America was not satisfied with a battlefield defeat of Nazi Germany. America, while embracing the best in Germany, insisted on de-Nazification. It wasn’t enough to win this or that military battle. It was vital to win the war of ideas. De-Nazification programs became less stringent with the onset of the Cold War, but Germans understood. No one who publicly declared himself a Nazi, who quoted Mein Kampf, or who goose-stepped in a Nazi uniform could win official acceptance on the world stage.
Hamas war criminals are human beings, not animals, in the same sense that you and I are human beings. They have committed atrocities that members of our own groups have committed. Here’s the difference, and it is the same difference that illuminates Nazi crimes. Hamas war criminals have been brainwashed by an ideology that glorifies atrocity. Again, those enculturated in the Judeo-Christian tradition and Western values observe the October 7 Hamas attack and find it not just disgusting and vile but also irrational. Hamas, we feel, has achieved no positive goal. We think that way because we have not been brainwashed into the ideology that inspires Hamas’ actions.
Torturing defenseless Jewish civilians, including women and children, and then disseminating documentation of those war crimes is the very point of the Hamas attack. In one video, a Hamas criminal repeatedly steps on the face of a dead Jew. In another video, a screaming Hamas criminal attempts to decapitate, with a shovel, a Jew who already appears dead. Hamas criminals drive around displaying the naked body of a woman who appears to be dead. Clearly, desecrating what appear to be dead bodies is not a rational act. Hamas criminals are achieving a different satisfaction through these disgusting rituals.
Hamas knew it would not gain territory or a negotiating advantage. That’s not what Hamas wanted or expected. Hamas is following a different ideology, an ideology in which raping women, killing them, desecrating their bodies, recording and disseminating that desecration is the end goal. These acts are their Academy Awards, their Nobel Prizes, their Olympic gold medals. Hamas is satisfied. Even if Israel finds every Hamas criminal and executes him, he will die happy. He got what he wanted. What he wanted, more than life itself, more than the safety and prosperity of his fellow Arab Muslims, was to violate, torture, and murder Jews. Stepping on a Jew’s face – he lived for that moment. He will relive it with relish till the day he dies. Audiences will experience libidinous titillation watching that image over and over. Millions of Hamas’ fans, worldwide, are satisfied. They are watching these videos and cheering. They got what they wanted. They got what their founder taught them to value.
Recent scholarship questions whether or not Muhammad ever existed. Robert Spencer’s 2012 book Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins surveys scholarship that indicates that Muhammad may very well not have existed. Rather, during the Arab Conquest, Arabs fought against two empires, Christian Rome and Zoroastrian Persia. Arabs felt the need for their own religion and prophet to serve as an ideological underpinning to their conquest. Muhammad and the Quran, both cooked up from an amalgamation of warlord needs, desires, and proclivities, and pre-existing Jewish, Christian, and Pagan material, filled the gap.
Whether Muhammad ever existed or not, Muslims believe he existed, and they believed his biography. According to canonical Muslim history, Asma Bint Marwan was a mother of several children, one of whom she was still breastfeeding. She criticized Muhammad. He ordered her death. One of Muhammad’s followers stabbed her through her stomach while she slept with her children. Umm Qirfa was an elderly Arab woman. Muhammad’s followers tied her to two camels and drove the camels in opposite directions till they tore her body in half. Muhammad awards Umm Qirfa’s daughter, “one of the prettiest girls in Arabia,” as a “prize” to one of his followers who is “fascinated” by her. Muhammad ordered the torture of Jewish Arab Kinana al-Rabi. After torturing and murdering her husband Kinana, and also after killing her brother and her father, Muhammad took the beautiful Jewish Arab woman Safiyah bint Huyayy as his sexual booty. In another incident, Muhammad ordered that some Bedouins had their eyes gouged out with hot iron, and their hands and feet cut off. They were abandoned to their slow deaths. Muslims today accept these behaviors from their prophet as exemplary. Mohammed Hijab, a present-day Muslim apologist based in the UK, has repeatedly threatened to rape the wives of those who criticize Islam. He insists that women welcome rape from Muslim jihadis (see here.)
Of course there are millions of lovely people who are also Muslims. Paul Kujawsky has been sharing heart-breaking posts like this one, this one and this one from Israelis who have lost family members in the Hamas attack. But even in his desolation, Paul shared this post that salutes a Bedouin who rescued Jews from the Hamas massacre.
How can such good people be Muslims? Many very good people who are also Muslims have been spoon-fed a Muhammad who is not reflected in canonical sources. Nabeel Qureshi was one such Muslim. Qureshi was the brilliant scion of a highly successful Muslim American family. Qureshi was raised to believe that Muhammad was al-Insan al-Kamil, the perfect man, worthy of emulation. In other words, whatever Muhammad did was something he himself should do. Qureshi was taught a fairy tale version of Muhammad. In college, Qureshi met David Wood, an ex-con from a family of poor West Virginians. Wood knew more about Islam than Muslim-American princeling Nabeel Qureshi. When Qureshi discovered from Wood that Muhammad was in fact a rapist who ordered his men to rape and impregnate war captives in front of their husbands (see here), Qureshi came close to a nervous breakdown. He eventually converted to Christianity.
I’ve had the joy and the honor of teaching Muslim students, over the course of forty years. My Muslim students have come from the United States, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt, the Middle East, Europe, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Malaysia. These locations span several thousand miles, all possible skin tones, cuisines, languages and cultures. I’ve loved these students and many have made warm and generous contributions to my life. One gave me a silk scarf and said I was like a “mother” to him. He was one of the best students I’ve ever had.
In spite of the wide diversity of cultures, many of my Muslim students shared a common trait. They harbored an intense, irrational hatred of Jews. They spoke of Jews as if they were speaking of a non-human, purely evil entity. Some of the sweetest young people I have ever met changed dramatically when the subject of Jews came up. Andrew Bostom’s 2008 book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History provides 766 pages of documentation of Jew-hatred in Islamic texts from across centuries and from around the Muslim world. Jew-hatred is in Islam’s foundational texts, the Quran, the hadith, and the daily prayers. Seventeen times daily, Muslims are required to repeat verses that accuse Jews of angering Allah. Muslim children in Canada have been required to practice decapitation of infidels; see here. Children were also trained in beheading in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; see here. These children are being indoctrinated in hate and violence no less than the Hitler Youth were indoctrinated.
We can’t take the same approach to Islam that we took to de-Nazification. Muslims are roughly a quarter of the world’s population. Americans, as part of de-Nazification, exercised so much power that they attempted to ban folktales by the Brothers Grimm in post-war Germany. We can’t ban anti-Semitism in the Muslim canon. We can, though, speak the truth, as do people like David Wood and Robert Spencer. When, on September 17, 2001, one week after 9-11, President George Bush appeared with CAIR’s Nihad Awad at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. and said, “Islam is peace,” President Bush, though he certainly meant well, was not doing anyone any favors. We can speak the truth about Islam to our Muslim brothers and sisters in a loving way. Pretending that Islam does not contain anti-Semitic material, and pretending that too many Muslims have not been misled by that material, is a fool’s errand. We need, simply, to speak the truth.
By the way, check out the Twitter feed of Nihad Awad, who stood behind President Bush as Bush spoke on 9/17. Awad condemned France for lighting the Eiffel Tower in the colors of the Israeli flag after the Hamas atrocities. Awad wrote, “No surprise! A colonial power supporting a settler colonial Apartheid state. .#GazaUnderAttack.” Clearly, Bush’s outreach to CAIR produced no worthy fruit.
We can also hold those we embrace and honor to higher standards. No one would invite to an official, presidential function a man wearing a swastika. Similarly, Nihad Awad has no place standing behind the president of the United States a week after 9-11.
Of course when non-Muslims like myself address Islam’s flaws, we can be written off as uninformed outsiders. In fact, though, there are countless former and even current Muslims who have worked to expose Islam. These include Ridvan Aydemir, Nabeel Qureshi, Yasmine Mohammed, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, Armin Navabi, Maryam Namazie, Tawfik Hamid, Sarah Haider, The Christian Prince, Ibn Warraq, Mina Ahadi, Hamed Abdel-Samad, Al Fadi … and many, many others. One of the most remarkable ex-Muslims exposing Islam’s stumbling blocks and its anti-Semitism is Mosab Hassan Yousef.
The 2011 Tyndale Press book Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices is a fast-paced, sensational, heartbreaking read. Mosab Hassan Yousef’s story is unique and important, and he tells his story with frankness, tears, and outrage. He is the son of a founder of Hamas; he himself was once a little boy throwing stones at Israelis, a prisoner in an Israeli jail, an Israeli spy, and, eventually, a convert to Christianity. The book is an easy read; you can finish it in a couple of sittings. The book’s focus is on fast-paced espionage action.
The bulk of the book consists of journalistic accounts of this or that spy operation. Clever ways are devised for Yousef to meet with his Israeli handlers. Other clever ways are devised for Yousef to avoid being detected as a spy, even as he meets with top figures like the PLO’s Yasser Arafat. Yousef thwarts suicide bombings and tries to make sure that terrorists are imprisoned, rather than killed.
Yousef’s description of Hamas is scathing. The most memorable passages in the book describe Hamas members torturing other Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Yousef worked as the torturers’ scribe. He wrote their fastidious accounts of what the tortured inmate confessed to. These files read like pornography. Inmates confessed to unbelievable acts, acts that included cows and cameras. It was clear to Yousef that these victims were making up stories to satisfy their torturers’ twisted appetites, and to, thereby, make the torture stop.
The Hamas torturers focused on men who did not have outside protectors to avenge their torture. One poor soul, Akel, was targeted for torture because his only living relative outside prison was a sister who would not harm anyone in revenge for Hamas shoving needles under Akel’s fingernails. Too, Akel was a “simple farmer” “never accepted by the urban Hamas” who took advantage of him. Yousef describes a Palestinian prisoner throwing himself against a boundary of razor wire. An Israeli guard was about to shoot him. The man explained that he was not trying to escape the Israeli prison, but, rather, his fellow Palestinian inmates.
By chance, Yousef runs into some Christians and begins to discover Jesus in the pages of a gift Bible. Yousef left Islam and became a Christian. This made life completely impossible for him among his beloved home and family. He had to leave Israel for the US. Even that departure had to be orchestrated by Israeli intelligence.
The intense heartbreak Yousef has experienced in his life is suggested in this book, but never plumbed. I wonder if he’ll ever write a more probing, confessional book that will explore what must have been a very tough life. Yousef’s love for his father and his family is obvious. His family has disowned him; they have to. Islam mandates the death penalty for apostates. Yousef was born into an impossible situation for an ethical being. He loves his father; his father supports terror. He loves his family; his family must renounce him for leaving Islam. He loves his homeland and his people; too many of his people are committed to pointless violence and are rigid in their resistance to any alternative point of view. Many readers reading this book will be moved to pray for Yousef and his family. Readers will pray for his safety, of course, but also for peace for the many heartbreaks he has experienced, heartbreaks not of his own making.
Since publication of this book, Yousef has made memorable appearances, many of them available on YouTube. He is a fearless, blunt critique of Hamas, terrorism, and Islam. In a wide-ranging address here, Yousef acknowledges that American money poured into Arab Muslim coffers does no good whatsoever. It does not reach needy people. Rather, he says, it goes to what he calls a “political Mafia.” In a blistering critique here – you can see the shock on the faces of his Arab audience – Yousef insists that Arab leaders exploit Israel’s existence as a distraction to stir up their people while never meeting their people’s basic human needs. In this interview, Yousef is asked if he is a traitor. He replies that in the eyes of his father and his people, yes, he is a traitor. He goes on to say that when Israeli intelligence first recruited him, his goal was to be a double agent, that is, to pretend to work for Israel but to work for Hamas. When he was sent to prison and he witnessed Hamas’ “brutality” against Arab Muslims, when he saw Hamas torture the people it claimed to represent, his conversion began. The BBC interviewer attempts to force Yousef to say that Israelis are just as brutal as Hamas. Yousef refuses to do so. “Hamas drags Israel into war and uses innocent civilians as shields.”
“Islam is a religion of conquest and domination. It is a religion of war. All Muslim denominations agree in jihad by sword, killing by sword is justified,” Yousef says here. Allah is a “gangster,” he says here. “There are lots of tolerant Muslims but Islam is not a tolerant religion,” Yousef says here. In this video, Yousef compares Arab leaders to shepherds. The sheep think that the shepherd is their best friend; in fact he is leading them to slaughter. “As a child I was fed with hatred that Israel was our enemy and that Israel was the source of our suffering.” In fact, though, he explains, Arab leaders like Yasser Arafat were spending billions of dollars on themselves while they sent children to die. I was one of those children throwing stones at Israelis, Yousef says. “They used us. They sent us to the slaughterhouse. They wanted us to die. The shepherd thought, ‘How many sheep we will sacrifice today so maybe we get some more funds?’ … Hamas uses children and women as human shields in Gaza Strip.” CNN botches a heartbreaking interview with Yousef here. The interviewer appears to be incapable of exercising compassion toward a man feeling very understandable pain about his estrangement from his elderly mother.
Christians and Jews share belief in the concept of b’tzelem Elohim or imago dei. In Genesis we discover that humans are made in God’s image. The Hamas attackers were made in God’s image no less than their victims. Thus Christians and Jews recognize that human life is sacred and must be treated with respect. Islam, though it cribbed, and then distorted, much material from Christianity and Judaism, rejects the concept of imago dei. Hamas attackers had been brainwashed by an ideology that encourages them to regard those they violate as less than human.
Christians and Jews are challenged by the atrocities committed by Hamas attackers in a way that devout Muslims would not be challenged. Hamas attackers wanted to commit atrocities; they wanted the world to see those atrocities. Their supporters, worldwide, ululate and proclaim “Allahu akbar” when viewing those atrocities. The world will hold Israel to a different standard. Israel will be required to limit civilian casualties. Israel will hold itself to that standard.
I grew up among Muslims, in a New Jersey county with one of America’s highest Muslim populations. A school chum told me that when the time for jihad came, she would kill me if I didn’t convert to Islam. She was a lovely young woman, beautiful, quiet, and shy. Ideology brainwashed her. After 9-11, I hoped that the world would learn to tell the truth. I despaired when President Bush said “Islam is peace.” Former Muslims like Mosab Hassan Yousef have been telling the truth for quite a while. If one good thing comes out of the hell of the October 7 Hamas attack, perhaps it will be this. Perhaps we will finally begin, with charity, courage, and compassion for the souls lost to Islam, to tell the truth about jihad.
Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.
All religions when practiced seriously, fervently, consistently, in their pure unadulterated form have led to intolerance, violence, and war. Christianity is no exception. For centuries Christians waged war against other Christians, Catholic against Protestant, Protestant against Protestant. They persecuted the Jews for more than a millennium for being Jews, for rejecting Christianity. How many countless pogroms did the Christians engage in against the Jews? The Jews were put in ghettoes by Christians for being Jews. There were laws created by Christians to keep the Jews restricted to second class status.
Today’s modern Christianity is a diluted form of Christianity. A Christianity profoundly modified, secularized, tamed, and leashed by the Renaissance (the rebirth of reason) and the Age of Enlightenment.
If Islam had gone through the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment it too would have become profoundly modified, secularized, tamed, and leashed by the ascendancy of reason over faith. But it never did and so we still have puritan Islam, medieval Islam.
I’m not defending Islam if it were up to me I would drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca and another on Medina to destroy the true-believer’s conviction in the omnipotence of his Allah. But it is disingenuous whitewashing, deception, evasion, revisionism, to present Christianity as a religion of love, peace, and understanding when its history contradicts that.
You just can’t stop yourself from Christian bashing. So you throw in a sop about nuking Mecca and Medina to somehow get some “Tough Guy” bona fides.
Oh yeah she still won’t date you. Did she set up that Go Fund Me page yet so you could rationally and selfishly contribute money to her in exchange for a date?
How F.O.S. are you? Let me count the ways.
This is idiotic. Dr. Goska has frequently written critically about Christianity and its practitioners. She has never whitewashed Christianity.
Really? Where? Citations please.
Try her articles…….Mr. Unrequited Love
I not only have read Dr. Goska’s pieces here and elsewhere but I’ve been a FB friend for some years. No one who has actually read her work would say, at least honestly, that she “whitewashes” Christianity.
I am not a Christian and not likely to become one. If the Danusha Goskas of the world were the Jewish people’s biggest problem, we’d be the happiest people on the face of the earth.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, “THX.”
I’m Jewish, and I’ve read, I think, all of Goska’s published work. She’s never whitewashed crimes committed by Christians, NEVER.
Got that? NEVER.
Read her work before you sound off on it.
If we practiced Christianity zealously we would allow ourselves to be slaughtered while praying for those that slaughter us. In the real world, there are many who are willing to risk their immortal souls by killing our enemies for the benefit of our people. I say risk their souls because we do not know with certainty it is not a risk, but we certainly do hope the justness of the cause forgives the sin of murder.
You’re presumably alluding to biblical teaching. There is murder — a personal act of hatred — and then there is the state wielding the sword, which is one of the necessary functions of the state. The two are not synonymous.
Fighting in a war is not murder. Battling evil barbarism is a righteous cause. Do you think when Christ returns, he’ll come with balloons & kittens?! ReSd the bible, the Truth will set you free.
The only way to practice Christian altruism and self-sacrifice and to stay alive is to cheat on it, to not take it seriously, to not take it literally. To interpret “love your enemy”, “turn the other cheek”, “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, in the most rational way possible.
This of course turns a Christian into a hypocrite and induces guilt and from there the world concludes that no man can be morally perfect. Moral perfection is for Paradise and Heaven after we’re all dead. “Every man is a sinner”, “No man can hope to ever be morally perfect”, yeh well, if morality consists of self-immolation, of course every man who wants to live is a damned sinner!
Who in their right mind wants to be a Mother Teresa or a Kayla Mueller? Nobody. Nobody with a healthy self-esteem, healthy self-regard, a healthy sense of personal self-worth, a healthy sense of life. Nobody who wants to pursue and achieve their personal happiness.
Renunciation of the pursuit of happiness to wallow in poverty doesn’t get rid of poverty, only the selfish pursuit of personal happiness that Laissez-Faire Capitalism requires can get rid of poverty. It is not the Mother Teresas of the world that have raised the standard of living for humanity but capitalist, industrialist, giants like Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs who have.
“If everyone were Mother Teresa, we’d all inhabit a material and spiritual wasteland far worse than anything she faced while walking the streets of Calcutta all those years. And while she may have alleviated the suffering of a few, for a time, remember that she did nothing to lift that civilization out of poverty in any permanent, meaningful way. Only self-interested, profit-seeking, materialistic economic progress – the capitalism Pope Francis hates so much – can ever do that.
Mother Teresa didn’t produce much of anything. She just allows some of us to feel better about ourselves for applauding her. If we’re honest about it, her works spread guilt, not inspiration. Life is about more than the reduction of suffering and pain. It’s about growth, achievement and soaring to ever-new heights. That’s not Mother Teresa’s world. Yet it’s the world she and others like her count on to do what they do.
My idea of a saint? Someone who produces. Producers don’t do what they do for our sake; they do it for themselves, for their own profit, and out of their own desire to be productive. And that’s just fine with me.
The world desperately needs more producers. Charity is perfectly fine. But don’t kid yourself that charity lifts millions out of poverty and disease. Only economic progress does that. And progress arises not from a Mother Teresa-like compulsion to sacrifice. It arises from the best within us: Our desire to live for our own sakes, most of all.” – Michael J. Hurd
“Thank God We’re Not All Mother Teresa”
Christianity does not reject self-defense.
Another great article, Ms. DANUSKA. I really enjoy your thoughtful writing.
There are many contradictory moral edicts in the New Testament, nevertheless, the central, fundamental, definitive, moral code of Jesus Christ is self-sacrificial, self-immolating, self-denying, altruism for others.
Dying on a cross for undeserving others, strangers, neighbors, sinners.
At the heart of serious and consistent Christianity there is self-sacrificial altruism and renunciation of life on earth. Renunciation of the personal pursuit of happiness on earth for the Kingdom of Christ when you’re dead.
Jesus was not a rich entrepreneur, businessman, capitalist, telling his followers to do the same. Telling his followers that the moral purpose of their lives was to grow rich and happy on earth, but just the opposite. Renunciation and self-sacrifice for God and neighbor is the very core of Jesus’ teachings.
Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar are NOT serious Christians but Mother Teresa and Kayla Mueller were.
“Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” – Matthew 19
Agreed
The age of treason is upon us
The difference between Christianity and Islam? Christianity’s founder, Jesus Christ, and His Apostles, did not demand the butchering of non-believers.
When the Church stopped being the Bride of Christ and became the Whore of Kings, infected by men seeking power and wealth, it became a worldly institution that used brutal and worldly methods to keep its wealth and power.
Islam, on the other hand, is only doing what its founder, Mohammed, did. And while Christian bashers will always bring up the Church’s past, they ignore and make excuses for Islam’s long, uninterrupted line of butchery.
Bad logic to generalize.
It presumes knowledge not in reality.
It is arrogant to argue thus.
It is simply NOT true that all religions, when practiced fervently, lead to violence.
All religions when believed in seriously and practiced consistently have resulted in their own brutal and bloody religious, theocratic, dark age. Even Buddhism, considered so peaceful and pacifist, had its brutal, theocratic, dark age.
What causes this is the very nature of religion, the essence of religion, which is faith in the supernatural. Which means in practice self-sacrifice and obedience to a higher power. “Recognition on the part of man of some higher unseen power as having control of his destiny, and as being entitled to obedience, reverence and worship.” – Oxford English Dictionary, If a God created you, then you are his property, you are not your own sovereign, independent being. If God created you then it is your duty to obey him and be his servant.
“All rights rest on the ethics of egoism. Rights are an individual’s SELFISH possessions — his title to HIS life, his liberty, his property, the pursuit of his own happiness. Only a being who is an end in himself can claim a moral sanction to independent action. If man existed to serve an entity beyond himself, whether God or society, then he would not have rights, but only the duties of a servant…
The individual, says the intrinsicist who accepts rights, is God’s creation and therefore His property, not the collective’s. Such an approach implies the denial of rights: it means that only God is morally sovereign. in practice, this leads to the conclusion that man on earth may be used and disposed of by God’s representatives on earth.
No religious society has ever cherished or protected individual freedom, which is a purely secular value and achievement. Rights, contrary to a formulation common during the Enlightenment, do not derive from man’s source or “creator”. They derive from the fact of man’s existence and the requirements of his survival, however he came into being.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”
THXC, why do you ignore the first 1,000 years of Christian History, wherein Christians fought NO ONE?
Christians didn’t start fighting until more than two CENTURIES worth of muslim atrocities were waged against them. By that time, THX, Christians had been mass-slaughtered and driven out of not just the middle east, but all of Asia Minor and North Africa.
They retreated into Europe. And what happened NEXT?
The muslims invaded into Europe to try and murder all the Christians they HADN’T already murdered!
I cannot make excuses for what supposed Christian rulers did to other Christians many centuries later. These rulers were in TOTAL disobedience to EVERY WORD of New Testament teachings.
Perhaps (haha) they weren’t really Christian at all, inside their hearts, where it mattered?
I added the haha because modern Christians KNOW none of those murderous kings could have been sincere Christians. They were liars, born into a Christian culture, unable to admit they WERE NOT Christians, because they would have been rejected by their societies. So they simply pretended to be Christian while governing exactly like pagans.
Liars happen, THX. You know that,
I still feel, in my spirit you yourself would make a most excellent Christian. It’s why you devote so much time and effort into railing against it! Your as-yet unredeemed spirit is furious, raging within you, knowing (or at least suspecting) you will wind up accepting the truth of the reality we are ALL born into: a reality where God does indeed exist, and is nothing at all like your poor Ayn Rand thought He was.
I wish you could speak to her right now. She is till alive, you know. Moreso than she ever was on Earth! She is alive, she knows and understands the truth about God, and if she could speak to you, she would urge you to stop mindlessly rebelling against Him. He is not your enemy. He is your Creator. He loves you in spite of your obnoxious behavior towards Him.
“All religions when practiced seriously, fervently, consistently, in their pure unadulterated form have led to intolerance, violence, and war.”
OTOH the Atheists of the USSR, North Korea, China et al. have murdered and oppressed more innocent people in one century than all religions combined. No god for you to blame.
It is riveting to learn that all of Ms. Goska’s sweet Muslim students from
all over the world shared a common trait of an intense, irrational hatred
of Jews. Otherwise, they were the nicest people you’d ever want to
meet. As for myself, I always keep Tacquiya in mind on the rare
occasions I happen to meet a Muslim. I’ll bet the students felt pretty
much the same about Christians too.
Thank you for the reference to medical doctor and Islam expert
Andrew Bostom – and his book “The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism”
documenting Jew-hatred in Islamic texts across the centuries and
around the Muslim world. He is always great and I wish we could
see his articles on FPM.
Imago dei. In God’s image. I really like that. The Judeo-Christian
belief that humans are made in God’s image. Something that Islam
adherents do not believe because they’re “taught that those they
violate are less than human”. Which would be any non-Muslim,
especially women.
Muslims will never come to understand that they must learn to
get out of their own way – to master their various emotions in relation
to other people as they go through life. To acquire spiritual wisdom
especially when wronged. And in that way learn To Love One Another.
Muslims only know “I will beat, rape, torture, enslave and kill you if
you don’t believe as I do. Especially if you’re a Christian or a Jew”.
Says it all about Hamas’ glee in exposing their monstrosities against
the Israeli Jews.
“The early Christians did contribute some good ideas to the world, ideas that proved important to the cause of future freedom. I must, so to speak, give the angels their due. In particular, the idea that man has a value as an individual — that the individual soul is precious — is essentially a Christian legacy to the West; its first appearance was in the form of the idea that every man, despite Original Sin, is made in the image of God (as against the pre-Christian notion that a certain group or nation has a monopoly on human value, while the rest of mankind are properly slaves or mere barbarians). But notice a crucial point: this Christian idea, by itself, was historically impotent. It did nothing to unshackle the serfs or stay the Inquisition or turn the Puritan elders into Thomas Jeffersons. Only when the religious approach lost its power — only when the idea of individual value was able to break free from its Christian context and become integrated into a rational, secular philosophy — only then did this kind of idea bear practical fruit.
What — or who — ended the Middle Ages? My answer is: Thomas Aquinas, who introduced Aristotle, and thereby reason, into medieval culture. In the thirteenth century, for the first time in a millennium, Aquinas reasserted in the West the basic pagan approach. Reason, he said in opposition to Augustine, does not rest on faith; it is a self-contained, natural faculty, which works on sense experience. Its essential task is not to clarify revelation, but rather, as Aristotle had said, to gain knowledge of this world. Men, Aquinas declared forthrightly, must use and obey reason; whatever one can prove by reason and logic, he said, is true. Aquinas himself thought he could prove the existence of God, and he thought that faith is valuable as a supplement to reason. But this did not alter the nature of his revolution. His was the charter of liberty, the moral and philosophical sanction, which the West had desperately needed. His message to mankind, after the long ordeal of faith, was in effect: “It’s all right. You don’t have to stifle your mind anymore. You can think.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Religion versus America”
TLDR
Thomas Aquinas? All by himself. Wow what a guy. I must say you have something in common with him.
You are singlehandedly ending the Objectivist Ages. Once again let me quote Greenfield from Sept 29:
*Daniel Greenfield says
September 29, 2023 at 9:14 pm
The idea that you and your particular belief system, for which you are an absolutely terrible representative, represent ‘reason’, is as much of a fallacy as the idea that Fauci represents science.
You are only as good as your arguments.*
And all you do is repeat those lame arguments.
Subjectivism or Objectivism. You can’t have both!
You cannot understand Christianity without actually studying it. Most people do not answer God’s call, as it is not at all easy. Within any Christian country, there will be many who profess to be Christians and few who actually follow. There will also be many who hold the church in contempt. Looking at the excesses of the church in European history will not teach you anything about the religion. It teaches you that human beings are prone to error. We are fallen. You just cannot understand it from the approach you are taking. You do mention it often, though. My guess is that underneath all that skepticism, you have the desire to know your creator. Try something new.
Tell the truth about jihad? Not bloody likely. Doing so might compel delusional and complacent Westerners to be judgemental and, worst of all, to resist. And we can’t have that.
Sadly, the world seems to be blaming Israel for the attack.
Facebook is blocking all references to the Hamas atrocities, sorry, censoring the atrocities.
Attacking Jews seems to be okay with half the world today.
Sorry to put a damper on your beautiful work Danusha.
Some good news from the UK, the Herring Gull with the broken wing is still alive and kicking.
I’m glad to hear about the gull. We have to keep speaking the truth in spite of everything.
Then speak the truth about the history of Christianity, stop the revisionism and the whitewashing.
When you speak the truth about Rand’s irrational idea that selfishness is a good thing.
Have you ever even read “The Virtue of Selfishness”? I’ll bet good money you haven’t and probably never will. and if you did you would do your best not to understand Rand’s argument even though it is straightforward and easy to understand.
Just as you insist that Howard Roark raped Dominique Francon and he was a terrorist for dynamiting Cortlandt Homes. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“If Howard Roark raped Dominique Francon he did so by engraved invitation” – Ayn Rand
You are right, I haven’t read it. I had four children and fostered another seven so I have practical experience rather than academic theories informing me.
As for Fountain Head being invited to rape, jeez that’s stretching the definition theoretically speaking.
Maybe when you stop your endless historical Christian revisionism. And stop giving us orders, as if we are somehow your subjects.
But I get it. You are mad at her now for rejecting your advances.
I would bet if I dug deep enough I would find some very unsavory stuff about your religion and it’s prophet. I just don’t have the time or the inclination. I actually have stuff to do other than comment board idiocracy. Objectivists are simply not at all important in the overall scheme of things.
Would that be your truth, your endless pile of historical revisionism that we get on a weekly basis? And stop giving us orders, as if this was your site and we are somehow your subjects.
Is it any wonder you pile up the downvotes faster than anyone else on this site, even that clown Mickorn.
I have known Danish Goska my entire life and never, ever has she misrepresented the history of Christianity. You should really do some more research and actually read what she has written about the subject before you criticize her.
One cannot deny that you are well read in many areas and many authors. And you speak well about those areas and those books. However, your ego leads you to talk on subjects that it is glaringly obvious that you are completely ignorant. A sign of wisdom is when one knows what they don’t know, and refrains from commenting in such conversations. I hope for your sake that at some point you realize this and either educate yourself in those areas or give up on making asinine posts which only serve to show your ignorance.
The truth about Christianity, THX, is that–as the Bible says–“No one knows a man’s thoughts except the man’s spirit within him.”
Anyone can SAY they are a Christian. But BEHAVING like one–loving, forgiving–is the part that even most truly redeemed Christians struggle with somewhat.
Because it is often, even mostly, unrequited love.
The world does not love either Christians or Christianity. Any more than the world loves ANY religion!
Parts of the world may love this or that religion. Hindus have a pretty easy life in India. Buddhists throughout most of Asia get along just fine.
Christians have no homeland. We are in the same state now the Jews were from roughly 72 AD to 1948.
There is not one government on Earth which claims to be Christian. There are not even any truly Christian countries left. There are countries with a decent amount of Christians living in them, but their cultures are always at war with Christianity and Christian teachings.
We have no homeland on Earth. And we probably never will again, thanks to government monopolies on “education.” Every nation on Earth uses schools to try and produce only clones of YOU, THX.
You have lots of company these days.
Must be a good time to be an atheist, huh?
May G-d continue to bless you
I think it is a left/right issue, Mo. The left/globalists have been building this pro-Islam/anti-Israel narrative for years. They have some purpose in doing this. My guess is they seek to destroy Israel, just as they seek to destroy the US, the UK, Europe, etc. They do not want any remaining free and democratic societies left on earth.
I read everything Ms. Goska writes, if I can find it. Contra THX’s assertions, she does not whitewash Christianity. Would that be all had such a clear-sighted view on so many subjects.
Citations please.
Find your own citations. Why should others do your work for you? You’ve asserted — without “citations” — that Goska whitewashes Christianity. That works both ways.
Well written 😉
You seem like an intelligent person. You should have no problem finding this.information non your own.
Try her articles…….Mr. Unrequited Love. You made the assertion. Now prove it. No one is going to chores for you
And stop giving us orders, as if we are somehow your subjects.
But I get it. You are mad at her now for rejecting your advances.
I would bet if I dug deep enough I would find some very unsavory stuff about your religion and it’s prophetess. I just don’t have the time or the inclination. I actually have stuff to do other than comment board idiocracy. Objectivists are simply not at all important in the overall scheme of things.
Thank you, Professor..
If only this essay could be made required reading for, well, everyone.
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32
Islam is the religion of Domination, not of peace. This is the array of nations allied against Israel from every quarter.
Psalm 83 addresses the enemies of Israel. A psalm of Asaph
O God, do not keep silent, be not quiet, O god be not still, See how your enemies are astir, how your foes rear their heads.
With cunning they conspire against your people; they plot against those you cherish.
“Come” they say, let us destroy them as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more.
With one mind they plot together; they form an alliance aggainst you..,,,the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, of Moab and the Hagrites, Gebal, Ammon and Amalek, Philistia, with the people of Tyre.
Even Assyria has joined them to lend strength to the descendants of Lot. Selah
Do to them as you did to Midian, as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon, who perished at Endor and became like refuse on the ground. Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all. their princes of Zebah and Zalmunna, who said, “Let us take possession of the pasturelands of God.
Make them like tumbleweed, O my God, like chaff before the wind. As fire consumes the forest or a flame sets the mountains ablaze, so pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your storm.
Cover their faces with shame. so that men will seek your name, O Lord.
May they ever be ashamed and dismayed; may they perish in disgrace. Let them know that you, whose name is Lord…..that you alone are the Most High over all the earth.
“In one video, a Hamas criminal repeatedly steps on the face of a dead Jew. In another video, a screaming Hamas criminal attempts to decapitate, with a shovel, a Jew who already appears dead. Hamas criminals drive around displaying the naked body of . . . ”
I make a point of never watching videos like these, or indeed, any real depictions of death or servere wounding being inflicted on anyone, which is not to say such depictions should be hidden.
And it’s not because I’m an especially virtuous or moral person. Quite the opposite; films like these make me imagine how good it would feel to see such pain inflicted on their perpetrators.
I can handle written reports of such travesties, but that’s it.
Even in the early 2000’s millions of terrorist ‘death porn’ was sold on tape throughout markets in the Islamic world. Families would come together: grandma, the kiddies, everyone to watch and nod their heads and murmur ‘Allahu Akhbar’.
Just a very short time ago, Muslims in North Africa held their regular auction of Muslim slaves.
Did they stop? I thought this was ongoing.
hamas , the true face of islam . there is no moderate islam .
i studied German classic literature at the University in America and also in Germany. Take Faust, the greatest work by Germany’s greatest poet and author, Goethe. While it is surely a great work of literature, the ethics are not the best, Faust makes a deal with the devil that if he keeps on struggling and never says he is satisfied, he can go on living and getting full resources from the devil. His whole career consists in one adventure after another where he hurts innocent people. At the end of the play, he slips up and says he is satisfied. That means he has to go to Hell. But the heavenly hosts and his victims intercede and he is saved, because anyone who struggles without ceasing for a lifetime can surely not be damned. What sort of message does this send? One could even imagine Hitler and his SS men reciting the message. They struggled without ceasing up to the very end. They must surely be spared the wrath of heaven.
Most people are not cultural scholars, they rely on opinion leaders and what is published in the media or said by the leaders of their community. So, they are fed cherry picked fragments of their culture that seem to confirm the leaders in their goals. The same is going on in American schools where students are now taught that America and its founders are racist, anti-black, undemocratic and just plain evil. And what are children supposed to believe. They cannot simply seek out the good scholars to set them right. I think this is the problem. The scholar who taught Islam as something good and is amazed that Muslims could do these things should not be surprised. He probably always cherry picked Islamic scripture to find the good parts and ignored the bad things. And that way he achieved an idealized image of his religion. The jihadis cherry pick all the bad things, and they may actually be a greater share of the whole, so they have lots of scripture to rely on.
So why don’t “Westernized” Muslims reject Islam and the Quranic teachings in toto? I understand what apostasy can mean to a Muslim in a Muslim dominated country—death, but if a Muslim wants to live in the West, why won’t they REJECT Islam (Demon) and all its teachings?
Trying to pretend that Islam can be reformed (i.e., “de-Nazified”) and that there can be a kinder, gentler form of Islam is an impossible and unrealistic task. It also doesn’t allow for the criticism of Islam (aka, Islamophobia) thus Muslims can invade and take over Western Civilization w/o repercussion of the stigma of IslamoNazism.
I have the DVD version of ‘Son of Hamas’..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FclTE28oI3Y
Thank you for sharing this important piece with us. It is focused perfectly on the issue at hand: The West’s complete perceptual blind spot as regards Hamas. I think that people need to look and understand what they are up against. There is a scene in the 1977 movies Alien, where the android Ash is asked advice about what to do about the murderous intruder:
“You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.”
I am not saying the Hamas is the Alien, I am saying the West is as blind as the crew of the Nostromo to the threat. When I was 16, and traveled overseas to the Middle East, I listened to a State Department contractor tell us about what to expect. We were encouraged to read Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, as well as the writings of Bernard Lewis. These were not so much cultural indoctrinations as they were life saving clues. Never forget where we are, they kept hammering in to us over and over. The security consultant wanted us to be in the same mind frame as the condemned Colonel Konstantin Konstantinovich Yasevich in Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago:
“And the difference between us and him was that we were all astonished at what was happening to us, while nothing around him contradicted his expectations, and precisely for that reason he was absolutely alone in the cell.”
The West had better, as my father’s generation used to say, ‘Dial in” to the situation. Hamas wins if both Palestinians and Israelis are dead. That is the central fact that must be acknowledged. This is nothing less than a battle for the future of human civilization. And if you think that is hyperbole, consider that there are two competing view points, Judeo-Christian, and Islam. There are 1.8 billion followers of Islam, and 2.2 Billion followers of Judeo-Christiantianity. The former is a civilization framework that supports jihad, and the latter is one that supports justice and compassion for strangers. Not all Muslims jihad, and not all Judeo-Christians are believes in justice and compassion for strangers. The difference is that the Judeo-Christian framework works against our worst natures, while Islam supports the worst of our nature.
I hope that as many people as possible read this essay, and understand that this is as real as it gets. Thank you again for sharing these important words.
“And if you think that is hyperbole, consider that there are two competing view points, Judeo-Christian, and Islam.”
You seem to forget that the birthplace of Western Civilization is Ancient Greece and that Aristotle is the father of logic, the philosophical father of the American Constitution, and the father of science and capitalism.
The stagnation, poverty, misery, mysticism, brutality, and superstition of the Dark and Middle Ages were caused first and foremost by Christianity. Serious, consistent, complete, and undiluted Christianity leads to a theocracy of renunciation of life and the pursuit of happiness.
“Aristotle’s philosophy was the intellect’s Declaration of Independence. Aristotle, the father of logic, should be given the title of the world’s first intellectual, in the purest and noblest sense of that word. No matter what remnants of Platonism did exist in Aristotle’s system, his incomparable achievement lay in the fact that he defined the basic principles of a rational view of existence and of man’s consciousness: that there is only one reality, the one which man perceives—that it exists as an objective absolute (which means: independently of the consciousness, the wishes or the feelings of any perceiver)—that the task of man’s consciousness is to perceive, not to create, reality—that abstractions are man’s method of integrating his sensory material—that man’s mind is his only tool of knowledge—that A is A.
If we consider the fact that to this day everything that makes us civilized beings, every rational value that we possess—including the birth of science, the industrial revolution, the creation of the United States, even the structure of our language—is the result of Aristotle’s influence, of the degree to which, explicitly or implicitly, men accepted his epistemological principles, we would have to say: never have so many owed so much to one man.” – Ayn Rand
My last comment to you today:
America from roughly 1620-1960 showed you what a Christian country is like. America was the first time Christians EVER had their own country, and were free to each practice Christianity as they understood it.
There was no king or pope saying Christianity had to be done precisely like THIS, or only interpreted to mean THAT.
99.8% of the Founders generation in America were Christians, THX.
Our Constitution would not exist if the Christian populace had not both written it, and approved of it.
I tell you again: THAT era, was our first era ever as truly being allowed to govern and live as Christians.
Prior to that, we Christians were always TOLD by others how we must practice our faith.
If JFK had not teamed up with SCotUS to de-Christianize America by stripping away its teachings from our children’s schools, you would today see a vastly better, safer, cleaner, nicer, more free and inexpensive America.
We’re not your enemies, THX,
We have no power whatsoever today, other than as lip service paid to us by a handful of lickspittle GOP politicians, who themselves never do ANYTHING to promote, protect, or defend Christianity.
You need to look elsewhere to find the people screwing up all our lives. It isn’t from Christians. We have ZERO representation in government. Again, all we get are platitudes–lip service.
The politicians all listen only to the Godless, not us.
The Arab Mind, a book I got a lot from when I read it decades ago (it’s been a while so I don’t know if I’d like it as much today) and Bernard Lewis’ work are both on proscribed lists.
Edward Said, in Orientalism, criticized The Arab Mind.
here’s a quote from a critique of Bernard Lewis:
“He was instrumental in causing enormous suffering and much bloodshed in this world. He was a notorious Islamophobe who spent a long life studying Islam in order to demonise Muslims and mobilise the mighty military of what he called “the West” against them.
Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that.
He was the chief ideologue of post-9/11 politics of hate towards Islam and Muslims.”
Just a Thank You, Dr. Goska, for this great article amidst the sympathies shows to murderers and torturers.
Israel needs our support, if tgr only thing you can do is to speak up in the face of anti-semitism or write a comment,do it.