RELIGION OF PEACE STRIKES AGAIN

IT'S NOT REALLY A MYSTERY, but I suppose it's time to trot out once again the fundamentals in this old discussion in the wake of the nation's most tragic jihad attack on American soil since September 11, eight years ago. Hear the excuses lobbed in like small stones wrapped in bullying threats—I'm sure he just misunderstands his religion. He's just a lone extremist. And what about the Christian right types who kill abortionists, and uh, did I mention the bloody Crusades?

The murder and attempted murder of over forty US military personnel at Fort Hood, TX, yesterday is just the latest in several attempts by jihadists to attack military personnel stateside. This most recent example of what Professor Daniel Pipes coined as sudden jihad syndrome, we should once again without equivocation point out to our cultural relativist friends that as long as Qur'an-stoked fanatics rule Islam right now, it doesn’t matter a damn if this man had been, or any other Islamic-leaning dunderhead dares claim to be among that indeterminate group called moderate Muslims…

But this was no spontaneous event. There are numerous reports that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan gave away all of his possessions and passed out the ignoble Qur'an before tackling the task he had set for himself. Neighbors described Hasan as a quiet man who began wearing "Arabic clothing" in recent weeks. Edward Windsor, a neighbor, never suspected Hasan was in the Army. Hasan's rank surprised Windsor who would never have imagined an officer with a rank of major would have lived in an apartment that rents for $350 and houses soldiers ranked as private first class....

His history speaks for itself. This particular jihadist was suspicious above and below the call of duty, and as usual to someone who takes the ROP seriously, considered himself more a devoted Islamic believer more than an American military officer. Are ALL Muslims jihadists in waiting? No. But how do we sort them out from those who wish to simply get on with life?

The majority of mid-century Germans weren’t goose-stepping Nazis. The common peoples of Communist China & gulag-infested Russia never wanted to kill nearly a hundred million of their own people, but the ruling forces did indeed. Peace loving and moderate Germans didn’t stop Hitler and his minions. Peaceful, decent Russian and Chinese people didn’t stop their communist tyrants, either. But legion were the appeasers, the apathetic, the cowards.

Clearly then, the peace loving Muslims of today don’t matter in the frenetic scheme of things. These folks, whoever they are, are irrelevant, helpless, cowed, camouflage, et cetera, brainwashed since childhood to despise the enemies of Islam, an idea reinforced with their daily devotions, and thus will never engage to stop the jihadists, but in fact are much more likely to circle the wagons to defend and praise the jihadists. Nothing mysterious. Human nature, actually.

So, it’s up to those of us who have studied both the battlefield and the combatant. We’re the only ones who have ascertained the depth of our enemy's resolve, and it is we who must stop this invasion. Stop Islamic immigration now!

The state-controlled, mainstream, limp-wristed liberal media absolutely despise Christianity, for what they erroneously believe to be puritanical, antiquated and traditional values. Obviously, if Christians don't subscribe to the wanton slaughter of defenseless babies resting comfortably inside a woman's womb, then they must not be progressive enough.

But if that's the case, as it most certainly is, then why aren't the media screaming for the defeat of ALL Muslim terrorists, who are clearly still under the wicked spell of the 7th century warlord they liken to a prophet? Instead, the media treats Islam as a favored son, to be coddled, protected and even exalted by those who should know better and do know better, but have succumbed to their own Marxist worldview and immediate fears.

In other news, the Hollywood cartel who produced the new film, "2012", takes a rip at Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and basically every religious people on earth EXCEPT that of the favored son, the loudest, the proudest, the most violent religious group ravaging the earth today—Islam. They refuse to acknowledge fundamentalist Muslim terrorists because of one reason, and that reason is mere cowardice. They fear the obligatory fatwa from these barbarians at the gate, so they simply continue to ridicule the Christians, since clearly, THESE PEOPLE will not retaliate with a bombing du jour.

Evil will triumph when good men do nothing.

As my friend Kendra Adams puts it:

Your snark doesn't offend. The dhimmified nihilist post modern left offends. And, you're right. You know, when we all opened our eyes (those of us who actually did, I mean), I thought that we would just tell the people who didn't know and that would be that-- we'd all get outraged at this and defeat it. I had NO iDEA that that is NOT what this is about. I had NO IDEA the level of anti-Americanism that existed. None. I thought the left was a bit idealistic, maybe. I didn't know they really didn't mind undermining our values.

Yes yes yes! Well, I thought even those who sympathized with communism realized that our system was better. I mean, I thought they were being idealistic, as I mentioned. So, when I'd press them, and when they realized I was unsympathetic, they easily agreed that capitalism was better. but, I think now they just didn't want to get into it with me because they weren't ready for a real discussion. I didn't know that they TRULY LIKED COMMUNISM! I thought it actually IMPOSSIBLE that someone would prefer a totalitarian society. I thought that the general consensus in the entire non-Islamic world was that totalitarianism was evil. I was very naive.

This much is true about Muslims. Take note ye apologists and appeasers, dhimmis of all stripes. This man could have chosen many paths in solving his "moral" dilemma. Afraid of deployment? Check. Afraid to strive against fellow believers. Check. When confronted with the very real decision of where one's loyalty lies, a decision that most American Muslims can defray their entire lives, this Muslim posing as an army major chooses to slay infidels.

He did NOT choose to slink off to Canada. He did not not claim any sort of conscientious objection, although he did offer we are told to buy his way out. It's been eight years since his grievance began, right after September 11; why the delay? Eight years without an opportunity to bail out seems even in these times a long uninterrupted enlistment. But let's face it, he could have easily but did not claim mental health problems. No. Alone with Allah, his choice was pre-ordained. His decision was to kill infidels.

This man, like so many others, chose to be a Muslim first.

Islam is a religion of violence which promotes lying to infidels and the murder of all of those who stand in Islam's way. When the media reports on a person being a "pious Muslim" this MUST start sending up red flags in the minds of all of us. Unlike a pious believer in Jesus Christ, who most likely would attempt to emulate Jesus' pacifistic, non-violent and charitable lifestyle, the "pious Muslim" seeks to emulate the life of Muhammad, a pedophile who married and raped 9-year old girls, a man who tortured and murdered anyone who disagreed with him, a man who employed genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Jews and infidels of Arabia in the 7th Century, and a man who sought to dominate and destroy every non-Islamic society and individual on Earth.

If we were to look at religion as a computer operating system, then we need to be extremely concerned whenever the Islamic mental operating system gets fired up in someone's mind because the first lines of code that get executed during boot-up are the destruction of democracy, the subordination of women, and the eventual destruction of all non-Muslims through one-on-one violence or global Islamic jihad. Yes, Nidal Malik Hasan is a pious Muslim, and by all accounts rapidly getting more pious.

And the ultimate consequence of his increasing Islamic piety? A mass assassination of non-Islamic Americans whom he viewed—as a pious Muslim—as the enemies of Allah.

PITH HELMET

From our friend Hershel Tsvi Yehuda in a pithy response to everything the pro-Palestinean activiists have to say on this very old, very bloody topic:

HISTORY SHOWS THAT THE CONFLICT here in Israel is not over land, but has to do with the inability of our Arabs/Muslim neighbors to recognize that Jews and Christians have any claim, religious or historical, to the land of Israel. Time and time again throughout the middle east, and even now in Asia, it becomes the goal of radical Muslims to destroy religious sites from other religions and build Mosques over them. From the destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan to the constant religious battles in India, and back to the middle east, this history repeats itself over and over again.

But while we are on the subject, let's dig that swimming pool a little deeper, shall we, again from the rife pen of Hershel Tsvi Yehuda:

The first thing to note is that the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the land of Israel predates the settlement movement that started in 1967, and even pre-dates Israel's re-establishment as an independent state in 1948. There were pogroms that included the sadistic rape, murder, dismemberment, and burning of thousands of Jews and their properties here going back to the middle of the 19th century. There was no Israeli state, no settlements, and there was no "occupation" of an Arab people called Palestinians.

Next, it it important to point out that the Palestinian Arabs have been offered a state multiple times and rejected it outright, preferring to wage war on the Jews with the hopes of "throwing them into the sea." The entire land of the British mandate was designated as a Jewish state, and in contradiction to official British policy, 80% of the land was given to the Heshemite monarchy to establish the Kingdom of Jordan (which is now over 80% Palestinian.) Of the 20% of the land remaining, the United Nations (League of Nations at the time) offered partition, half to the Palestinian Arabs, half to the Jews. The Jews accepted the small and virtually indefensible borders and immediately established Israel. The Arabs rejected and sent 5 national armies and legions of Palestinian Arabs to destroy the new Jewish state. Thank G-d, the Jews won, and were happy to have a state even though it did not give them authority over it's most holy sites in Jerusalem.

From 1948 until 1967, after every Jew living in east Jerusalem, the West Bank, or Gaza Strip, (places Jewish families have lived consistently since temple times) had been murdered or exiled, Israel still suffered hundreds of murderous attacks from the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. From bus hijackings resulting in the murder of the passengers, to schools being raided by child murdering terrorists, shootings, bombings, kidnappings and more. All these attacks despite the fact that there was no occupation, no settlements, and the Arabs did not make a single attempt at establishing an independent state called Palestine.

In 1967, when the Arab countries called up their armies and pledged to throw Israel into the sea, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack destroying the Arab armies, and re-claiming the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Since then, Israel re-built Jewish towns (settlements) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reestablishing ancient Jewish communities from biblical places such as Hebron, Bet El, and Shilo, and Israel finally gained control over it's most holy site, the site of the ancient temple that Jews had been forbidden to visit since the Arabs controlled it in 1948. With Israeli control over all of Jerusalem, Christian and Jewish holy sites were restored and for the first time in many years, all religions had access to their holy sites.

Suddenly the Palestinian Arabs decided that the reason they are murdering Jews is because of the occupation. To reiterate, these attacks had been going on all along, before the West Bank and Gaza Strip were "occupied." Throughout this war of terror, Israel has repeatedly tried negotiating with the Palestinian Arabs. They have been offered a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip 2 times by Israeli leaders, most famously by Prime Minister Ehud Barak who against the security interests of Israel offered them 97% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a capital in east Jerusalem. The answer Israel received was a "no," and a wave of suicide bombings and shooting attacks that murdered and injured thousands of Israelis.

Read it all.

WHEN THE LAMB IS SILENT

SOMEONE FROM THE MIDDLE EAST told me once that Westerners play games, looking for win-win outcomes. Islamists play for win-lose outcomes. Liberals have a very difficult time dealing with the kind of triumphal attitudes inherent in Islamism. They think that everyone should be able to paint reality in subtle shades of gray. Islamic intolerance and barbarism is often excused as merely cultural expression.

Several years ago my family was involved in liberating a young Philippina girl who had been given as a wedding gift to a Saudi student attending our local university. When challenged about the enslavement of this young girl by one of his students, the university provost cautioned that we should be more sensitive, because in Saudi culture this sort of thing is acceptable.

Silence can only be construed as tacit consent of the Left. Two million Southern Sudanese were killed in the 20 years of terrible blood letting. This genocide was a direct consequence of the jihad instigated by the Islamic Front leaders in Khartoum. Religious conservatives were in the forefront of the movement to halt the slaughter and bring about a comprehensive peace. When that same Khartoum regime launched its jihad against Muslims in Darfur, religious conservatives again protested. This time they were joined by liberals in calling for an end to the violence. In fact, liberal organizations made it the cause de jour for a myriad of celebrities. All well and good, but where were they when Christians and animists were being murdered?

All that the Christians and other non-Muslims of the Middle East want from the Left is a little more consistency in compassion. The liberal press has occasionally been responsive to the plight of the Christians of Iraq, but one suspects that it is not because of an authentic sense of solidarity, but the fact that the issue provides one more opportunity to show the failure of the Bush administration.

These comments are excerpted from an interview with Rev. Keith Roderick, a defender of religious prisoners of conscience since 1982 as the Director of the Society of St. Stephen and Co-Director of the International Taskforce on Soviet Jewery. After responding to the appeals of Coptic Christians in 1987, he began working for Christians and other minorities from predominantly Muslim countries. He organized the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights in 1993, the largest umbrella organization representing these minorities. Fr. Roderick also serves as the Washington Representative of Christian Solidarity International and is the Canon for Persecuted Christians for the Diocese of Quincy, the only Canon defending persecuted Christians in the Episcopal Church.

Actually, I must add my own two cents in the form of a question. Where is the outrage of the Right? Where is the howl from the righteous independents we hear so much about around US election time? Roderick is one voice, strong and on the money with regards to understanding the historically persistent threat from Islam to these communities, but he certainly is not loud enough, and is only one voice in this never-ending cacophony of globally active agitators on the prowl. Where are these televangelists who claim to know God's will? Where are the million strong marches coming from the so-called powerful right-wing lobby for anything but their own self-interests? May God help us all as Islam continues its bloody and suffocating reign across the lands of peace-loving peoples, while everyone else stands around, hands in pockets, making excuses for these ruthless totalitarians! The long predicted weeping and the gnashing is surely not far away, if this blindness continue unchallenged at every level of confrontation.

Read the entire interview here.

SCHEME TO CRIMINALIZE CHRISTIANS

DOZENS OF NATIONS dominated by Islam are pressing the United Nations to adopt an anti-"defamation" plan that would make Christians criminals under international law, according to a United States organization that has launched a campaign to defend freedom of religion worldwide.

"Around the world, Christians are being increasingly targeted, and even persecuted, for their religious beliefs. Now, one of the largest organizations in the United Nations is pushing to make a bad situation even worse by promoting anti-Christian bigotry," the American Center for Law & Justice said yesterday in announcing its petition drive.

The discrimination is "wrapped in the guise of a U.N. resolution called 'Combating Defamation of Religions,'" the announcement said. "We must put an immediate end to this most recent, dangerous attack on faith that attempts to criminalize Christianity."

"They're attempting to pass a sinister resolution that is nothing more than blatant religious bigotry," the ACLJ said in its promotion of its petition. "This is very important to understand. This radical proposal would outlaw Christianity … it would make the proclamation of your faith an international crime."

Around the globe events like these continue to happen:

Award-winning author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian Human Rights Commissions of vague allegations of "subject[ing] Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt" for comments in his book, "America Alone," the group said.

In Pakistan, 15 people were accused of blasphemy against Islam during the first four months of 2008, the organization said.

Another Pakistani man sentenced to life in prison for desecrating the Quran was jailed for six years before being acquitted of the charge.

In Saudi Arabia a teacher was sentenced to three years in prison plus 300 lashes "for expressing his views in a classroom."

In the United Kingdom, police announced plans to arrest a blogger for "anti-Muslim" statements.

In the United States, a plaintiff sued his Internet service provider for refusing "to prevent participants in an online chat room from posting or submitting harassing comments that blasphemed and defamed plaintiff's Islamic religion."

Read it all.

ISLAM ONLY BEFRIENDS ITSELF

IN JUST A FEW DAYS, Professor Hans Kung’s lecture on “Challenges to Islam, Christianity and Judaism” will be broadcast on Sky Arts. Kung is a leading Catholic theologian and the author of Islam: Past, Present and Future. He is President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic. He is also a touted professor of Ecumenical Theology at the University of Tubingen. He knows almost as much about God as St. Francis of Assisi and twice as much about structural steel as Bill Maher and Rosie O’Donnell combined and in his own field is just as controversial about the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and celibacy.

Thus strikes, like a bolt of lightning returning to the scene of its last evidence, the opening paragraph in which Denis Schulz introduces this formidable but enemy-appeasing lecturer. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, we, who dare point out these same rather self-evident distinctions between these two earlier Abrahamic cults that give the lie to the shameful treachery of Islam in a world that refuses to acknowledge them, are exasperated as the supposedly great learned ones betray us. One can only hope that the expected awakening from this nightmare of disinformation comes before it is too late. Read it all...

Hans Kung is 80 years old. He’s been around a while. He says Islam is stuck in The Middle Ages. Could that be? Maybe mired would be a better word. How about frozen in time? If he means the 10th Century he could be crediting Islam with a 400-year advance that didn’t take place, an Islamic Transubstantiation from the Pleistocene Age to Richard the Lion-Hear without expunging the dinosaurs and jinni that ceaselessly prowled the Prophet’s mind searching for victims to feed his monumental ego and never-ending hatred of those who disagreed with him even as Salman Rushdie’s houris were coming to cart him away.

The challenge for Christianity and Judaism is how to survive the 21st Century; for Islam it is how to come to grips with an ongoing insanity. Christianity had the Protestant Reformation and Judaism had its own reform movement albeit on a smaller scale. Islam boasted the Andalusian Caliphate, a never-ending source of pride for all Muslims, a 10th Century beacon of enlightenment that pierced the haze of ignorance and superstition that befogged the rest of Europe.

Literature! Science! Technology! A Thousand and One Nights! Freedoms that had never been thought of! Everything but Disneyland! And this was 700 years before Jefferson and Adams! Seven hundred years before that silly Declaration of Independence! Surely, the millennium had been achieved!

Anyway that is the story the Imams and the Muslim professors and their dhimmi running dogs preach at the Cairo University and at Berkeley and Columbia and Oxford and at a thousand lesser schools of learning while students ill-equipped to determine fact from fiction sit and listen as if in the presence of Plato and Aristotle. But what is the truth? Was it the first casualty in the war of religions? There is much evidence that it was—enough to warrant a revision.

According to a legal opinion offered by Ibn Abdun in 1100 AD—from the greatest civilization that never was—the Andalusian Caliphate appears to be more of a mirage than Shangri-La or Duffy's Tavern. “No Jew or Christian,” said the opinion, “may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual, on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to (greet) them with the (expression) ‘Peace be upon you’ In effect, Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God’s warning…a distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace.”

This is the so-called dignity contemporary Islamic supremists and their western apologists insist was Islam's golden rule of mutual prosperity, the so-called era of peace! But these people were Jews and Christians—People of the Book! Yes, they were Jews and Christians but no one was to take them for friends! Could this have been the catalyst for the Inquisition which followed?

Other legal opinions forbade the selling of scientific books to non-Muslims because the non-Muslims—again Jews and Christians—would translate them into their own languages and take credit for them. The origins of these scientific books are debatable. Some of them predated Islam. In the 400 years since Mohammed had emerged from the desert Muslim invaders had looted and destroyed Christian and Jewish libraries. But day-to-day life in the Andalusian Caliphate was more than legal opinions. Jews were frequently massacred and Christians were regularly deported to Morocco. On that, the record appears to be clear.

The difference between what Nathan Bedford Forrest did at Fort Pillow and what Reinhard Heydrich did in Bohemia-Moravia and what went on in the Caliphate is minimal. Yet college professors throughout Europe and America accept the Wahhabi version and hanker for the days of Ibn Abdun when peace and tolerance were the order of the day.

“In the face of the deadly threat to all humankind,” says Kung, “instead of building new dams of hatred, revenge and enmity, we should tear down the walls of prejudice stone by stone and thus build bridges of dialogue, bridges particularly towards Islam.”

Yes, heaven forbid, anyone should have the temerity to ask Islam to build bridges towards democracy, human rights and religious freedom. What an embarrassment that would be! It might anger them—make them strike out! Neville Chamberlain built bridges toward Nazi Germany and it would have worked had it not been for the warmongers at home and a handful of obstreperous politicians in Poland.

James Buchanan built bridges towards the antebellum South and was much revered by Jefferson Davis and Wade Hampton. And then old Abe Lincoln came along and ruined Old Buck’s good work by opposing the extension of slavery into the Territories. He believed in gradual emancipation—in Colonization—and would not disturb the South’s ‘Peculiar Institution’ in the States where it already existed. But he would not establish it elsewhere.

Jeff Davis insisted upon the right of every Southerner to carry his ‘property’ into the territories held in common by all the states even as Islam insists on its right to extend its version of slavery into the dar al-Harb—a slavery more encompassing than that of Dixieland because it was chosen for them by Allah and where women are told to ‘stifle’ and can be beaten for ‘disobeying’ their husbands and where male chauvinism reigns uncontested.

There were more free blacks in the antebellum south in 1860 than there are free women in Islam in 2007. In 1899, after having viewed Islam up close, Winston Churchill wrote the following:

“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men…No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

Kung stresses what the three Abrahamic religions have in common—charity, respect for life, injunctions against murder. Most Muslims, he insists, do not hold extremist views. But what of the Qur’an—certainly more Muslims have read the Qur’an and believe what it says than Germans read Mein Kampf. What do the Muslim scriptures say?

Qur’an 2:191 “And kill them wherever you find and catch them. Drive the out from where they have driven you out for Al-Fitnah (polytheism, disbelief, oppression) is worse than slaughter.”

Tabari: IX:69 “Killing disbelievers is a small matter to us.”

Qur’an 33:26 “Allah made the Jews leave their homes by terrorizing them so that you killed some and made many captives. And He made you inherit their lands, their homes, and their wealth. He gave you a country you had not traversed before.” (Could that be Israel?)

These are not injunctions against murder. These are extremist views. There has been no rush by moderate Muslims to renounce these verses. They are no more willing to oppose Jihadism than the average German was to oppose Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s and less willing than many southerners had been to condemn slavery in the 1850s.

The Jihadists are relying on people like Kung and Robert Edgar to run interference for them, to mesmerize the dhimmis with endless proposals for Interfaith Dialogues while work on the new Caliphate continues apace. Kung sees little difference between the beheadings, car bombings and suicide attacks of the Jihadists and the air strikes, tank patrols and the 10,000 dead civilians in Iraq that he attributes to the United States. Little does he care or even understand that the vast majority of civilian casualties in Iraq are the result of the actions of al-Qaeda and the Shiite and Sunni militias.

Saddam Hussein killed more civilians—Kurds and Shiites—in an average year than are dying today in Iraq. More civilians are killed each year by Muslim terrorists than in the entire 350-year history of the institution that succeeded the Andalusian Caliphate in Spain—the ‘dreaded’ Inquisition!

Kung’s lecture will be aired on June 23.

VIOLENT MUSLIMS RIOTING IN NIGERIA

KANO, Nigeria – Hundreds of Muslims took to the streets of this northern Nigerian city on Sunday (4/20), attacking Christians and their shops and setting vehicles on fire on claims that a Christian had blasphemed Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Thousands of Christians were trapped in churches until police dispersed rioters. Fearing that Muslims may attack again, many Christians have relocated to army and police barracks in the city.

An as yet unidentified Christian was said to have written an inscription on a shop wall that disparaged the prophet of Islam. Muslims at a market in the Sabon Garia area of the city reportedly attacked the Christian, whom police rescued and took to the area police station. Muslims in large numbers soon trooped to the police station, threatening to set it ablaze unless officers released the Christian to be stoned to death in accordance with sharia (Islamic law), sources said. Police were able to disperse the mob.

“A Christian trader was accused of making some blasphemous inscriptions against Muhammad in his shop by his Muslim colleagues, who pounced on him,” Baba Mohammed, Kano police spokesman, said in a special radio broadcast.

He said the accused Christian escaped from being lynched and ran to the police station seeking protection, adding, “We had to move him to the police headquarters here in Kano for protection.”

Police have arrested some of the Muslim rioters, he said, adding that an investigation is underway.

“We have made several arrests of persons suspected of attempting to breach the peace while the suspect [accused Christian] is in our custody pending conclusion of the investigation,” Mohammed said. Nnamdi Ike, a Christian who witnessed the disturbances, told Compass in Kano that Muslim claims that a Christian painted an inscription insulting Muhammad were false.

“Christians have always been attacked on false claims of blasphemy,” Ike said. “No Christian wrote anything against Muhammad or Islam. It is all a lie. They just made this up to find a reason to attack us.”..

Foolish leftists and Islamic apologists think that these 'touchy' masses of muslims leave that touchiness on the boat when they step on the western shores. They do not, they bring it with them. Coming to America is the environmental cure that does not work, because you have to bring yourself with you. They bring with them the Quran, hadith, Sharia, and all that means, and a high degree of touchiness if you don't like it. It's only a matter of time till the brazen feel brazen enough to express their touchiness here as well.

But, despite this obvious misanthropy, collective silence in the media and from our elected leaders continues to put our entire nation at risk. Mark Steyn wrote, "The Islamists open up a new front every day without even batting an eye."

Truth in a nutshell—these Islamic thugs are perpetually outraged and constantly seeking to fight against anything deemed un-Islamic. Morality is turned upside down. Contemplation is forbidden. Chanting is mandatory. Trying to understand their grievances is impossible because none are rational and they manifest at the slightest breeze no matter how much coddling the West provides in terms of money, friendship, and fresh starts.

Presidential hopeful, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, insists he is a Christian but has been remarkably silent about Muslim attacks on Christians in southern Sudan—he's had the past 20 years to notice that particular on-running mass-murder that began two decades before the Darfur killings, which also can be ascribed to the promptings, not of Islam, but of the Arab supremacism that is part of Islam. We should be concerned about the whole continent of Africa. Many countries there are potential takeover targets for the Islamofacists because there are so few stable governments in Africa.

In fact, all three of the candidates need to speak clearly about this issue. We don't care about Obama's particular tactical reasons to motivate his speaking out on Islam, Darfur, Biafra, "Palestine", restive southern Thailand, teddy-bear-jihad, and all the rest. We are not Obama supporters, but the whisper-campaign against him is not the way to have an intelligent debate about Islam and jihad.

None of them gets a free pass. Every one of the three remaining candidates must be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the podium and forced to say give us the depth of discussion about "Islam" that circumstances require. This silence is an elephant in the outhouse.

And our friend James Martel speaks out, "I would speculate that is was this very process that led to the defensive Christian crusades against Islam. Islam shows itself again and again that it is unable to live with and mutually honor the dignity of its neighbors. Consider the lynching comment. We are to Muslims as blacks are to the KKK. As long as we play the good uncle Tom, we are good little dhimmis. The first sign of interest in a Muslim woman, or of not liking Muslim rule, and WHAM, there is rioting, raping, looting, lynching and beheading."

Frankly, we need to take off the kid gloves. The more we learn about Islam, the more we believe its utter lack of respect for non-Muslim dignity is worthy of scorn, retribution, and total defeat.

ISLAM'S PUBLIC ENEMY #1

by Raymond Ibrahim

Coptic priest Zakaria Botros fights fire with fire. Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros—named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid—has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries—mostly Muslim converts—he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance—free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts—members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East—have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity—if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam—who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday—is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.

First, the new media—particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV)—have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world—even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned—call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.

Secondly, Botros’s broadcasts are in Arabic—the language of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature—much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations—and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.

A third reason for Botros’s success is that his polemical technique has proven irrefutable. Each of his episodes has a theme—from the pressing to the esoteric—often expressed as a question (e.g., “Is jihad an obligation for all Muslims?”; “Are women inferior to men in Islam?”; “Did Mohammed say that adulterous female monkeys should be stoned?” “Is drinking the urine of prophets salutary according to sharia?”). To answer the question, Botros meticulously quotes—always careful to give sources and reference numbers— from authoritative Islamic texts on the subject, starting from the Koran; then from the canonical sayings of the prophet—the Hadith; and finally from the words of prominent Muslim theologians past and present—the illustrious ulema.

Typically, Botros’s presentation of the Islamic material is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open—and humbly invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and show the error in his methodology. He does demand, however, that their response be based on “al-dalil we al-burhan,”—“evidence and proof,” one of his frequent refrains—not shout-downs or sophistry.

More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence—which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers. The ulema who have publicly addressed Botros’s conclusions often find themselves forced to agree with him—which has led to some amusing (and embarrassing) moments on live Arabic TV.

Read it all.

CHRISTIANS PERSECUTED IN IRAQ

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Stephen Crittenden: Welcome to The Religion Report. The plight of Christian minorities in the Islamic Middle East is one of the 20th century tragedies to which we pay least attention. From the Copts in Egypt, to the Maronites, the Melkites in Lebanon, Orthodox and Chaldeans, the Christian population of the Middle East is a fraction of what it was, and more vulnerable than ever. Nowhere is the situation worse at the moment than in Iraq. And few groups are more vulnerable than the ancient Assyrian Christian community. In fact, this week the Italian journalist Sandro Magister, has warned of the end of Christianity in Iraq.

In early May in a heavily Christian suburb of Baghdad, a Sunni extremist group began broadcasting a fatwah over the loudspeakers of the neighbourhood mosque: the Assyrian Christian community had to convert to Islam or leave, or die. Their Muslim neighbours were to seize their property. The men were told they had to pay the gizya—the protection money Jews and Christians traditionally had to pay to their Muslim overlords—and families were told they could only stay if they married one of their daughters to a Muslim.

More than 300 Assyrian families have fled, mostly to the north into the Kurdish region of Iraq where they are not welcome either They are sleeping in cemeteries, they have no food, more than 30 of their churches have been bombed, their children are being kidnapped and murdered.

Rosie Malek-Yonan is an Assyrian-American. She is a successful film and television actor who has appeared in many popular shows including Dynasty, Seinfeld, E.R. and Chicago Hope. Her novel, The Crimson Field, is a fictionalised account of the little-known Assyrian genocide that took place at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during World War One at the same time that the better-known Armenian genocide was taking place. She recently directed a documentary film on the same subject. And last year she was invited to give testimony before the US Congress about the plight of Assyrian Christians in Iraq. Rosie Malek-Yonan spoke to me from her home in California.

Rosie Malek-Yonan: The Assyrian people are the indigenous people actually of Mesopotamia, before it even was Iraq. All of that area was Mesopotamia and is the original homeland of the Assyrians. They date back to over 6,000 years and were always concentrated in that region.

Stephen Crittenden: And Christianity was accepted by Assyrians, well virtually in apostolic times, right at the very, very beginning?

Rosie Malek-Yonan: Right. Assyrians were actually the first nation to accept Christianity as an entire nation, not just individuals, but the entire nation, and we built the first church of the east.

Stephen Crittenden: And what about language? Aramaic for church, but what language does a typical Assyrian family in Baghdad speak at home?

Rosie Malek-Yonan: Well the language that we typically speak is the modern Assyrian, which comes from the ancient Aramaic, which is the language of Christ. The church liturgy still uses the ancient language, and we grew up learning it, and understanding it and knowing it, but it's not typically used at home. At home we generally will speak the more modern Assyrian dialect.

Stephen Crittenden: Now in early May, a fatwah was issued by a militant Sunni group in Baghdad, calling on the Christians in a particular suburb of Baghdad called Dora, to convert to Islam or die.

Rosie Malek-Yonan: Yes. Actually as we are speaking, I'm getting bombarded with emails, and one of them is a plea to help the Assyrians of Iraq. The women in particular—I'll just read you a little bit of this email—says the Virgin Mary put on a hijab (hijab is the covering) so why not all Christian women dress the same? They are asking all women to dress in that fashion.

Stephen Crittenden: I understand there's a lot of kidnapping and murdering of particularly of young kids?

Rosie Malek-Yonan: Absolutely. Our children are being murdered, they're being kidnapped for ransom, even when the ransom is paid they're still killed. Priests are being beheaded, nuns are being killed, and not just a beheading, they behead them, they cut also arms and legs, they hack them off and they return them in that manner. Little children, their heads are bashed with concrete blocks. This has been going on since the beginning of the Iraq War. This is isn't just an isolated incident here or there, this is an ongoing genocide.

NO EXCUSE FOR IGNORANCE

For those of you who fear Christians and or Jews, more than you do Muslims, I implore you to read this article by Daniel Pipes. You know who you are. My fine liberal American friends. Wake up, little sleepy heads. Put aside the distant past for a moment. Let's start understanding what's happening in your own lifetimes.