WESTERN CIVILIZATION MUST RETURN TO THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH TO PREVENT GLOBAL JIHAD
18/07/07 19:49 Permalink
“[T]he jihadists constantly portray themselves as the true voice of Islam, and the moderates have never mounted an adequate comeback". “There is no true Islam, there is no pope of Islam, but the eight classical schools of Islam all teach warfare against unbelievers. We deceive ourselves if we think [violence] is just something that’s manufactured by the Wahhabis and not present in Islam in general. They teach it but they certainly didn’t invent it.”
As to the growth and spread of Islam in Europe he states:
“There will be civil war in Europe...The European citizenry, for the most part, are not ready to accept Islamic law and there will be armed conflicts. Across Europe there seems to be one opinion among the elite and one among the people; the mainstream political parties are going to have to start representing this, otherwise they’re going to be shunted aside by the neo-fascists.”
“Fascism lasted 25 years, Communism for 75; Islam is 1,400 years old, the imperative to make war against unbelievers is 1,400 years old and they believe they are fighting a 1,400-year-old struggle. And jihad will destroy us if we don’t do anything about it.”
“Above all, we shouldn’t fight among ourselves, but against global jihad. If we’re consumed with each other then we don’t stand a chance."
Yes--Christianity must once again speak with one voice against those that seek to destroy civilization. Unlike Islam, there exists in this world "true Christianity". Also unlike Islam, Christianity does have a pope given to us by Christ Himself--which permits the Church to speak with truth and authority. Islam has lasted 1,400 years, Catholicism 2,007 years, Protestantism approximately 500 years.
"The order of time shows that is divine and true which has been handed down from the beginning; that that is alien and false which has been added later. That is the prescription which disposes of all heresies started in later days--they can make no assured claim of the truth." Tertullian (3rd cent).
The divisions in Islam render it weaker than if it possessed a "pope" or a central authority. Likewise, the division present in Christianity will prevent us from victory over global jihad. We must not squander what God has given us --let us show Christianity's strength through centrality of authority and universality that is only present in His Church.
"The most holy church of Rome through Blessed Peter prince of the apostles holds the leadership over all the churches of the world." Letter from the Bishops of the Province of Arles to Pope Leo I (5th cent)
"Christ left to Peter not only the universal Church, but the whole world to govern." Pope Innocent III (13th cent)
Finally, "[t]he rejection of of the primacy of St Peter has driven men on to a slippery course, where all the steps are downwards". Lord Acton (19th cent)
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A RELIGION THAT HAS BEEN PERVERTED OR A PERVERTED
RELIGION?
03/07/07 18:03 Permalink
"Al Qaeda, in the last 18 months, has changed its recruiting strategy; it's now targeting highly educated and highly intelligent people, the intellectual capital of the Muslim world," Iraqi National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie told CBS News."
This is seen by many as a departure from the usual suspects who are believed by the media and western governments to be "vulnerable, "at risk", or unassimilated youths who are merely a product of the West's inequitable system that fails to integrate muslims. The fact that those who have been arrested do not fit the mold that suits the media's relativistic, multicultural bent is downright disconcerting and surprising to many.
But there are those who have more excuses for Islam up their sleeves--like Gordon Brown, the new British Prime Minister who stated: “We have got to separate those great moderate members of our community from a few extremists who wish to practice violence and inflict maximum loss of life in the interests of a perversion of their religion.”
A perversion of Islam? Are these devout muslims who are highly educated, white collar professionals perverting their religion, or is their religion perverted?
When will the West wake up to the fact that it is Islam that produces terrorists. It is not unhappy, unassimilated "youths" who are carrying out terrorists acts, rather it is devout Islamic fundamentalists who are acting in accordance with the dictates of their faith. It is Islam itself that was perverted from its very inception when it grew out of a heretical and twisted version of Christianity. Islam is not simply a religion it is a political movement that is bent on domination of individuals and nations.
We are experiencing in our world right now a return to the fundamentals in every religion. This return to the fundamentals of faith is precipitated by the domination of evil and downfall of morality and decency in our world. In response to the emptiness that one experiences from engaging in the sins of our day-- which are supposed to fulfill us and make us happy-- people turn to religion to assuage their emptiness and guilt. Liberal religions that compromise with the world and require only blind tolerance and false charity of their adherents are not only unattractive but fail to convert young people. It is the religions that reject the wordliness that is harmful to one's soul, and set one apart, that are gaining converts. Unfortunatly this rejection of the world can turn deadly in the hearts and minds of those who do not posses truth and solid Christian dogma.
Dorothy Sayers in Creed or Chaos states that in polite discussion and times of peace we can persuade ourselves that underlying dogma is immaterial.
"But if man goes on to translate his point of view into action, then, to our horror and surprise, the foundations of society are violently shaken, the crust of morality that looked so solid splits apart, and we see that it is only a thin bridge over an abyss in which two dogmas, incompatible as fire and water, are seathinig explosively together." Dorothy Sayers.
This is precisely what is happening in our world today. Tolerance, relativism, and multiculturalism seemed to work theoretically when contained in books and minds. But put into practice, we are beginning to see that bad dogma has consequences.
The perpetual growth by division in Protestantism due to self interpretation and rejection of authority has led us to a place where relativism reigns, absolute truths are subject to interpretation, and we must tolerate everything and condemn nothing. This dilution of Christian truth and authority leaves so many in the West sincerely confused about Islam and its jihadi motivations. Thus diluted Christian dogma leaves us unable to condemn bad and dangerous dogma.
Needless to say Islamic dogma put into action becomes jihad.
Thus "[t]he thing that is in danger is the whole structure of society, and it is necessary to persuade thinking men and women of the vital and intimate connection between the structure of society and the theological doctrines of Christianity." Dorothy Sayers
It is no accident that historically the Church has succeeded to civilize man. It is no accident that Christian martyrs are victims of religious intolerance and not victimizers. It is no accident that the founder of Christianity was a victim and not a victimizer. It is no accident that the Church seeks the conversion of souls through one's free will and not by the sword. It is not an accident, it is dogma.
"That you cannot have Christian principles without Christ is becoming increasingly clear, because their validity as principles depends on Christ's authority; and as we have seen, the totalitarian states, having ceased to believe in Christ's authority, are logically quite justified in repudiating Christian principles." Dorothy Sayers
ISLAMIC FOOT BATHS TO BE INSTALLED AT THE DEARBORN
CAMPUS OF UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
05/06/07 22:38 Permalink
From Clickon Detroit: University of Michigan Dearborn announced on Tuesday plans to renovate two bathrooms with foot baths. School officials said the project is estimated to cost $25,000. The renovation will accommodate the school's Muslim students.
Muslims ritually wash their hands, hair, and feet five times a day before prayer.
But some are opposed to the school's decision, saying it's too much money to spend for one group.
University officials said Metro Detroit is home to more than 200,000 Muslims, and must accommodate its students' religion.
Plans for the renovation are scheduled to begin later this year in August.
TEMPORARY MARRIAGE PROPOSED IN IRAN FOR LUSTFUL YOUTH
02/06/07 15:32 Permalink
Despite the cries to the contrary from feminists and historical revisionists, the female was elevated by Christianity, and harmony was promoted between the sexes. At every turn Islam demeans the woman, from the burka to the ease of divorce, and now the proposal of temporary marriage. This is what we can expect when bad dogma is translated into action. I am somewhat surprised that the secular left failed to introduce this as a "liberating" concept for women prior to Islam. As a woman--I fear the secularists and Islam equally.
"Iran's interior minister has faced criticism from women activists after advocating the practice of temporary marriage as a way to meet the needs of young people in the Islamic state, which bans extramarital sex.
"Is it possible that Islam is indifferent to a 15-year-old youth into whom God has put lust?" newspapers quoted Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who is also a cleric, as telling a religious seminar this week."
This, of course, is not altogether brand new for Islam...
"Temporary marriage, or sigha, is an agreement between a man and a women to get married for a specified time, even for just a few days. It has long been practised by Shi'ite Muslims, who are dominant in Iran, even though it is unclear how common it is.
Sunni Muslims say it is illegal and akin to prostitution, but some Shi'ites scholars say it reflects the reality of human nature and provides for the rights and responsibilities of both the man and the woman."
Both Sunni and Shi'ite scholars agree that the Prophet Mohammad did at certain times allow it. But Sunni scholars say the Prophet later banned it. Most Shi'ites say he didn't."
It also sounds like prostitution...
"A temporary marriage is easy to arrange. A couple will agree on how long they will get married - it's usually anywhere from a day to months - and on financial matters.
Couples often go to a Shi'ite cleric for approval of the contract. The practice is believed to have pre-dated Islam among the tribes of the Arabian peninsula.
"A great number of women who agree to have temporary marriage do it because of their problems and financial need," another women activist, Fatemeh Sadeghi, told ISNA."
The Ham Mihan daily quoted a receptionist at a hotel in Tehran as saying it accepted couples with documents showing they were temporarily married and that it had about 100 such guests per week. "Our clients are young men with older women," he said.
But a female former parliamentary deputy, Fatemeh Rakei, suggested that entering into a temporary marriage made it difficult for young women to later find permanent husbands and also expressed concern about the future of children from such marriages."
Excerpts taken from smh.com.au
MUSLIMS IN THE WEST--40 TO 60 PERCENT WANT TO LIVE
UNDER SHARIA LAW
31/05/07 09:58 Permalink
It is critical that the West understand the fundamental beliefs of Islam and its objectives. To fail to do so could lead to our own demise. Here is a recent question and answer with Mark Steyn the author of America Alone on the topic:
"[W]hat would you say to those who believe that majority Islam is not synonymous with fundamentalist Islam?
Mark Steyn: Fundamentalist is a term we use rather carelessly. Very few people take the trouble to become suicide bombers and that's good news, but the reality is that substantial numbers of Muslims agree with the aims of the Jihadists even if they don't choose to blow themselves up. When Muslims in the West are polled, 40 to 60 percent wish to live under Sharia and wish to reside in the United Kingdom and the United States as opposed to Saudi Arabia. They may disagree with the means but they entirely support the ends. The goal is an Islamic republic in the UK, the U.S. or the Netherlands, and that provides the radicals with a lot of cushion. Remember, the running of a community is mostly done by its most aggressive, extremist elements. The most difficult part of Islamic Law for most westerners to grasp is that there is no separation of church and state. The religion of Islam and the government are one. Islamic Law is controlled, ruled and regulated by the Islamic religion. The theocracy controls all public and private matters. Government, law and religion are one. There are varying degrees of this concept in many nations, but all law, government and civil authority rests upon it and it is a part of Islamic religion."
Islam cannot peacably coexist under a Western form of government. Those who think that it can are foolhardy. In Islam, sharia is the expression of the divine will, and constitutes a system of duties that are incumbent upon a "good" muslim by virtue of his religious belief. Yet to a muslim, sharia is not merely a codification of laws--it is the main pillar of Islamic theocracy. Muslims believe it is god's divine command to establish a global islamic state in order to apply sharia. Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (1903-1971) who is seen as a founding fathers of the global Islamic revivalist movements stated:
"The objective of Islamic 'jihad' is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of state rule. Islam does not intend to confine this revolution to a single state or a few countries; the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution.'"
PROMOTING ISLAM IN PRISON
09/05/07 08:05 Permalink
Do you recall the story of the Christian prison chaplain who distributed truthful literature about Islam and was fired by a New York jail. Well the story does not end there. Political correctness has overtaken and now an Imam will be hired by the jail for its inmates and religiously sensitive food will also be provided. The extent of political correctness and cultural self loathing knows no limits. Islam's growth in prisons is a very real problem in America, but instead of halting its spread we are promoting its growth, and in turn, creating future terrorists. Here is the story from Fox News:
NEW CITY, N.Y. — The county jail where a Christian minister handed out anti-Islamic cartoons announced it will hire an imam for its Muslim inmates.
The Rockland County Jail also said it will provide religiously appropriate food.
Rockland Undersheriff Thomas Guthrie said Tuesday that the imam will work one day a week, joining the jail's priest and rabbi.
The Christian chaplain, the Rev. Teresa Darden Clapp, was suspended with pay last month after inmates complained she was passing out anti-Islam booklets.
In the cartoon panel stories, a tract titled "Men of Peace?" said Islamic fundamentalists who commit terrorist acts are not "bad Muslims" but "very good Muslims" who act in accordance with their religion. Another tract, titled "Allah Has No Son," said Allah is not God, Muhammad was no prophet, and the Koran is not the word of God. Both stories end with people being convinced Islam is false. In one, a Muslim converts to Christianity.
Local Muslims have called for Clapp's dismissal, and the county requested an independent investigation.
Clapp has not commented public about the controversy and has not responded to messages seeking comment.
EUROPEAN DHIMMITUDE?
27/04/07 13:41 Permalink
Here is an interview with Bat Ye'or, an expert on dhimmitude--the institutionalized discrimination and harassment of non-Muslims under Islamic law. She is the author of eight books, including Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005). From Frontpage:
"FP: What has changed since the publication of Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis in America (January 2005)?
"Bat Ye'or: The situation has aggravated on every front. At the beginning of the war in Iraq, (in Spring 2003) there was some hope that a democratic government would take over and would bring justice and peace to its people. But the elimination of tyranny, thanks to the Coalition forces, only brought to the fore the worst evil and inhuman forces that consume Arab-Muslim societies. The war in Iraq exposed American's shortcomings, Western divisions and unreadiness to confront global jihad. The chaotic situation there and the nuclearisation of Iran have fortified the Islamists.
"Moreover, the lamentable response of the Olmert government against Hizbollah in Lebanon and the electoral triumph of Hamas in Gaza, comfort the impression in the Arab and Muslim world of an Israeli and a Western debacle. Britain was humbled and did not react firmly to the kidnapping of fifteen of its sailors by Iran. Instead, British journalists and academia turned with violent hatred against Israel to appease Muslim governments and particularly the Palestinians who had abducted for ransom a BBC journalist. Such behaviour is typical of dhimmitude: the Christian dhimmi being too afraid to attack his Muslim oppressor directs his impotent frustration against a weaker and innocent dhimmi victim, the Jew. Those triangular relationships are constant in the social and political fabric of dhimmitude for more than a millennium and till today.
"The hatred of America, the anti-Semitic culture, the cynic inversion of true, the support given to, and the siding with killers and abductors, express a humiliating feeling of impotency. Britain has become the barking dog of its protectors: both Islamists and Palestinians. This situation is not limited to Great-Britain, but maybe because it was one of the proudest and most powerful countries in Europe, one of the three major victors of World War II, that this wilful decline and abasement are so traumatic. Some Europeans, of course, oppose such policies but the EU directives tend to paralyse democratic rights within a web of totalitarian control of culture, media, and universities.
"Moreover, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Latino-Arab alliance encouraged by the Andalusian Zapatero isolates America even more. The tactic to divide the West in order to weaken it, is succeeding.
FP:
You have introduced a new concept: "Palestinianism."
What does it mean exactly?
Bat
Ye'or:
I think that it is, precisely, "Palestinianism" which
is at the root of Europe's decadence. It is an
ideology based on a replacement theology whereby
Palestine replaces Israel. As it has been conceived
and instigated together by European and Arab
intellectuals and politicians, it combines the worst
of both cultures. For the Arab and Muslim
world,
Palestinianism
embodies the ideology and aims of jihad against a
rebellious dhimmi people. It is therefore based on a
Muslim culture and theology that deny territorial
independence and sovereignty to any non-Muslim
people.
Palestinianism opposes Israel on two main points: 1)
Jews being a dhimmi people cannot rule Muslims ¨C
even less liberate and govern their country,
especially if it has been formerly conquered and
colonized by jihad -- such as Israel, Spain, the
Balkans, Hungary and parts of Europe. Jews must be
brought under the yoke of Islam. And this, of course,
applies to Christians as well; both must be reduced
to submission and dhimmitude. 2) Muslim doctrine
rejects the Bible, it does not accept that it is the
history of the people of Israel and the source of
Christianity. Muslims believe that the biblical
narrative, as it is transcribed in the Koran, is the
story of the Muslim people and of Muslim prophets.
For this reason, they deny the historical patrimony
and ancestry of Jews and Christians in the Holy Land.
For them, both Testaments have an Islamic source and
describe an Islamic history since the people in the
Bible and Jesus himself (Isa) were Muslims. Judaism
and Christianity are seen as falsification of Islam.
This is the inner core of the ideology -- even a
doctrine -- of Palestinianism and of its war against
Israel.
The European trend has added to it traditional
Christian antisemitism which condemns the Jews to
perpetual exile till they convert. The Palestinian
war against Israel, strongly encouraged by many in
Europe, came as a magnificent opportunity to continue
and maintain the culture of hate and denigration
against the Jews -- now the state of Israel -- and by
lending a moral and political support to a second
Holocaust. Europe has been the biggest supporter and
subsidizer for the Palestinians as well as their
ideological teachers.
FP:
Europe has been Palestinianized hasn't it? What have
the consequences been to Europe?
Bat
Ye'or:
The consequences for Europe are manifold, profound
and it seems irreversible. Palestinianism has been
the most effective tool to divide, weaken and destroy
the West. But this process could only happen because
an institutional apparatus, the European Community
(EC) -- which in 1993 became the European Union --
could impose Palestinianism over all its
member-states as a common foreign policy.
While in the Arab and Muslim world Palestinianism was
the jihadist tool to eradicate the independence and
freedom of the Jewish dhimmi people, in Europe it
assumes another signification. The EC unofficial
support for the Arab League jihad to destroy Israel
restores a culture of hate that is self-destructive
for Europe itself. Whatever Europeans may believe
today, their whole spiritual and humanistic culture
come from the biblical prophets, from the liberation
of the Hebrews from slavery, and the promotion of
human equality and dignity, from the salvific virtue
of humility, self-criticism and the asking of
forgiveness, from the praise of peace and the
separation of religion from the state, and so on¡and
on. All Christian feasts are Christianized Jewish
feasts; Jewish holy books are Christian holy books.
Joining the jihadist camp involves the suppression of
those links that structure and support Christianity,
thereby weakening it, and leaving it ready to fall
apart. And hate destroys its bearer more than its
victim. It means to adhere to the jihadist ideology
that seeks to impose a totalitarian Islamic rule over
the world, a view that does not conceive of human
plurality in equality, or accept criticism, or
freedom of expression and opinion. It means that
Christianity as much as Judaism, as religions and
civilizations, are denied and deserve to be
destroyed.
Palestinianism endeavors to suppress the links
between Christianity and Judaism because it professes
that Christianity was born from Islam, from a Jesus
who was a Muslim prophet -- the Koranic Isa -- and
very different from the Jewish Jesus described by the
four evangelists -- themselves nurtured by the First
Testament and not the Koran. In Europe, the
theological replacement of Judaism triggered by
Palestinianism, affects also politics. Except for
derogatory comments, the media avoids mentioning
Israel as if already it didn't exist, thus
suppressing it by a silent boycott. Another European
trend consists in imposing a strict historical
similarity and equivalence between Israel and the
Arabs and Palestinians, whereas there are none.
Since Palestinianism is now the foremost ideology of
Europe, it has determined European support for
jihadist tactics. And jihad is not like any war, it
represents a whole theological war corpus, with its
holy strategy and ritual tactics. Europe justified
the PLO aim to destroy Israel from the 1970s, its
abductions and killings of civilians, its air piracy,
kidnapping and terrorism, blaming the victims instead
of the perpetrators. In order to justify these crimes
that are so contrary to humanist values and moral,
Europe had to demonize Israel, to paint it as the
biggest enemy of peace and has therefore rejuvenated
its passionate love to hate Israel, vilifying it with
its own crimes.
That's not all. Most Europeans do not agree with such
policy. Many denounced it and fought against it.
Hence through a coordinate campaign monitored by the
networks of the European Union bodies, a system
linking politics to markets, culture, universities,
media and opinion makers, has spread its totalitarian
grip over the member-states in order to impose a
despicable culture of lies and denial that support
Europe's pro-Palestinian foreign policy.
FP:
This is all very depressing Bat Ye'or. Is there any
hope in the West's confrontation with militant Islam?
Is Europe lost for sure? What should those of us in
the free world do? What can we do?
Bat
Ye'or:
The only hope
for the West lies in its perception of the global
jihad's aim and dangers. This is not a military war
only, it is even more a spiritual, intellectual and
political debate. But the European Union is taking
the opposite direction by even imposing a
lexicon
that will censure from debate the word "jihad" and
its existence in history. The cowardly European
position discourages courageous Muslims who struggle
for a democratization and modernization of Islamic
thought and societies. Europeans are so well
conditioned by Palestinianism to hate America and
Israel that they are not only in denial but
anesthetized.
What we can do? First, in Europe and America
reclaiming our universities which have become
bastions of 'Saidism'. Rooted in Palestinianism, this
school named after the Egyptian Christian Edward
Said, replaced Orientalist scholarship with ignorance
and hate indoctrination against the West and Israel.
We must also put the discussion of ideas in the open
and bring it to the public without censorship,
boycott and threats. It is the only way to prevent a
racism based on frustration and impotency. But --
above all -- Europeans must decide on their values,
their future, and fight for their democratic
institutions and against the subversion of their
culture. They must recover the control of their own
security rather than beg for the protection of
jihadists and be ransomed.
IRAQ: SACRIFICING MENTALLY HANDICAPPED CHILDREN FOR
JIHAD
11/04/07 19:43 Permalink
The exploitation of the most vulnerable and innocent to carry out killings in the name of religion is no less than diabolical. From Rueters Alertnet:
BAGHDAD, 10 April 2007 (IRIN) The dreams 13-year-old Barak Muhammad (not his real name) had of leading a normal teenage life were dashed when his father sold him to al-Qaeda militants. Being mentally handicapped, he said he was considered a burden by his family and was told he would be better off sacrificing his life for his country.
"I don't have a mother and never went to school. I was dreaming of a day that I would go to school like my other brothers, but I was considered different. My father was always telling me that I was a mistake in his life, a boy that was just bringing expenses and problems," Barak said.
Barak's father sold him to al-Qaeda in Iraq for US $10,000 to support his remaining five children. Now, Barak is in training to fight US and Iraqi troops.
"Today, I help some men who say they are from al-Qaeda group. They fight people who are occupying Iraq and they said that if I do my work well, God will protect me and make me be a healthy boy," Barak said, adding that fighters promised him that he would soon join his mother in heaven.
Carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle, Barak said he accompanies insurgents during night time raids and when needed acts as a decoy to divert the attention of US or Iraqi forces in the run-up to an attack.
Abu Ahmed, who claims to be a spokesman for al-Qaeda in Iraq and Barak's trainer, said they were giving him a better life.
"We're doing a favour to Barak. We're giving him the chance to be useful and not suffer daily beatings from his father. Here, with us, he gets Islamic lessons and is soon going to be a good fighter and maybe one day even become a suicide bomber in the name of God," Abu Ahmed said.
Suicide bombers and spies
Like Barak, dozens of other mentally handicapped children are being used by insurgents to fight US and Iraqi forces.
On 21 March, two children were used by al-Qaeda militants in a suicide attack on a market in Baghdad's Adhamiyah neighbourhood, according to government officials.
"They were put in the back of a car with another two adults in the front. The military let their car pass though the check point since it had children as passengers. When they reached the market, they [the adults] left the car with the children inside and detonated a bomb in the vehicle, killing the children and another five Iraqis," Khalid Sami, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said.
"Those children were later identified to have had mental problems and for sure they didn't know what they were doing there," Sami added.
Officials at a local NGO, who refused to be named for security reasons, said they had received many reports that mentally handicapped children were being used in insurgent attacks, especially in cities such as Diyala, Ramadi and Fallujah.
"Some children were given by their families but many others were kidnapped by insurgents when they knew that those children had mental problems. Some of them were even taken from the doors of their houses or schools," the NGO's spokesperson said. "We have registered many cases of the disappearance of children with mental problems. According to information we got from Anbar province, those children are working with insurgents."
The spokesperson added that some children, who had become orphans since the US-led invasion in 2003, had also been helping insurgents as spies.
"They are sent to make relationships with locals, to gather information and others are used to distract troops when insurgents are preparing to detonate bombs near them. At least 12 children have died in such operations when bombs exploded and they couldn't leave the area in time," he added.
Nine-year-old Saleh Ahmed (not his real name) said he was forced to help insurgents after they forced their way into his home and threatened to kill his mother and sisters if his father did not hand him over.
"They told me to say that I'm happy working with them but it's not true. I want to go back home and stay with my mother," Saleh told IRIN in privacy. When his trainer, Abu Ahmed, returned to the room, Saleh changed his tune and said he was happy to fight US forces and would die to save his country.
OLD CHURCH BECOMES MOSQUE IN UNEASY BRITAIN
02/04/07 15:03 Permalink
The battle
for the soul of the West has begun and is NOW. The
battle does not begin when the predicted demographics
crisis actually takes hold of the West. The battle
does not begin when the persecution of Christianity
is the norm throughout the West. The battle does not
begin when authentic Christianity has been eradicated
to such an extent that it has no voice of authority
to counter the lies of our age. We are the generation
that must do battle-- it does not begin for our
children or our grandchildren's generation. The
battle for the soul of the West is now.
Furthermore, this battle must first begin inside of our individual souls. There is no room for wishy-washy, lukewarm Catholicism, because as Fr. John Hardon stated: "ordinary Catholics will not survive". Especially during this Holy week we must seek to obtain the holiness and courage that can only come from the transforming power of Christ's literal and real Body and Blood. A people that have no life in them because they lack the Body and Blood of Jesus will eventually succumb to the illusions of this world. Crackers and juice and a mere "remembrance meal" cannot sustain the Christian faith in a nation, a denomination and most importantly in a soul.
If we seek holiness instead of worldliness, if we adhere to the wisdom of the Church instead of secular wisdom, and if we obey God's laws despite the cries of foolishness from the world, we may eventually stop hearing about churches becoming mosques. From the N.Y. Times
CLITHEROE, England — On a chilly night this winter, this pristine town in some of Britain’s most untouched countryside voted to allow a former Christian church to become a mosque.
The narrow vote by the municipal authorities marked the end of a bitter struggle by the tiny Muslim population to establish a place of worship, one that will put a mosque in an imposing stone Methodist church that had been used as a factory since its congregation dwindled away 40 years ago.
The battle underscored Britain’s unease with its Muslim minority, and particularly the infiltration of terrorist cells among the faithful, whose devotion has challenged an increasingly secular Britain’s sense of itself.
Britain may continue to regard itself as a Christian nation. But practicing Muslims are likely to outnumber church-attending Christians in several decades, according to a recent survey by Christian Research, a group that specializes in documenting the status of Christianity in Britain.
More conspicuous than ever in both the halls of power and in working-class neighborhoods, Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims, about 2.7 percent of the population, are at once alienated and increasingly assertive.
In Clitheroe, the tussle involved a passionate young professional of Pakistani descent coming up against the raw nerves of tradition-bound local residents.
“We’ve been trying to get a place of worship for 30 years,” said Sheraz Arshad, 31, the Muslim leader here, his voice rattling around the empty old Mount Zion Methodist Church that will house his mosque. “It’s fitting it is a church: it is visually symbolic, the coming together of religions.”
With a population of 14,500, a Norman castle and an Anglican church established in 1122, Clitheroe is tucked away in Lancashire County in the north. People here liked to think they represented a last barrier to the mosques that had become features in surrounding industrial towns. But Clitheroe had not bargained on the determination of Mr. Arshad, a project manager at British Aerospace. He is the British-born son of Mohamed Arshad, who came to Clitheroe from Rawalpindi in 1965 to work at the cement works on the town’s outskirts.
When his father died in 2000, leaving his efforts to establish a mosque for the approximately 300 Muslims unfulfilled, Mr. Arshad took up the challenge.
“I thought, why should I be treated any less well?” Mr. Arshad said. “One quarter of my salary goes in tax, too. I was driven to do the mosque.”
In all, Mr. Arshad and his father made eight applications for a mosque, and even proposed buying a modest terrace house on the edge of town to be used for worship. Mr. Arshad said he tried to buy land from the council but was rebuffed.
Often there was booing at council meetings, and, he said, cries of “Go home, Paki!”
The authorities’ official reasoning for the rejections was generally that a mosque would attract outsiders — a veiled reference to Muslims — to Clitheroe.
Letters to the local newspaper, The Clitheroe Advertiser and Times, warned that what had happened in Blackburn and Preston, two bigger nearby industrial towns with substantial Muslim populations, would happen to Clitheroe.
Mr. Arshad decided to get organized and demonstrate that he was a moderate Muslim who could take part in all the town’s affairs.
He formed an interfaith scout group — Beaver Scouts — that honored many religious occasions, including the Taoist and Jewish new years. He established the Medina Islamic Education Center as an interfaith group for adults, and persuaded the local council to allow the group to lead a key committee. He organized a series of lectures on global conflict that attracted important academics.
On Dec. 21, the night of the vote on the mosque, the council chambers overflowed with 150 people. The police were poised outside. The vote was 7 to 5 for the mosque; there was no violence.
“I went in resigned to the fact we would lose,” Mr. Arshad said. “In the end, it was very humbling.”
The church’s demarcation as a place of worship in the town’s planning records helped carry the day, said Geoffrey Jackson, chief executive of Trinity Partnership, a social welfare agency, and a Methodist who backed Mr. Arshad.
So did Mr. Arshad’s demeanor. “He’s a top lad, with a Lancashire accent, born and bred here, and educated at Clitheroe Grammar,” Mr. Jackson said.
But the fight is hardly over. Beneath the official vote lies a river of resentment among those who fear that the broader patterns in Britain will emerge here. In one sign of the tensions, some of the church’s windows have been smashed.
“There was so much opposition,” said Robert Kay, a hired driver. “The people who were for the mosque were those who were not going to end up with it on their doorstep.”
The Mount Zion Methodist Church became a factory for making scarves for export to the Middle East in the 1960s, when Christian church-going in Britain had already begun to decline.
Today, Britain has fewer than 500,000 practicing Methodists, and of its Christians, only about 6 percent are regulars at church, according to Peter Brierley, executive director of Christian Research. Though numbers for comparison are not known precisely, most agree that Britain’s Muslims are far more regular mosque attendants.
The symbolic encroachment of Islam at the pinnacles of British power is already clear. At Oxford University, town residents recently but unsuccessfully fought the building of a Center for Islamic Studies, and in the House of Lords the number of Muslim members has gone from none to seven during the decade of the Labor government.
In working-class neighborhoods, the differences are stark between white Britons and immigrant Muslim Asians, who began arriving in significant numbers from former British colonies in Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 1970s. The whites are less likely to marry, and they bear more children out of wedlock, trends many Muslims, who put stock in intact families, find disturbing.
The high rate of alcohol consumption among whites sets the groups apart, too. In Blackburn and Preston, increasing numbers of neighborhoods have become exclusively Muslim, and the growing influence of the conservative Wahhabi school of Islam is more and more apparent among women who wear black robes and cover all but their eyes.
In Blackburn, the constituency of Jack Straw, the leader of the House of Commons, there are 30,000 Muslims among a population of 80,000. But in a telltale sign for the future, the number of children 10 years and younger is evenly divided between Christian and Muslim.
It is those demographics, and the visibility of Blackburn’s 40 mosques alongside the ancient Christian church spires, that frightened the mosque opponents in Clitheroe.
As Mr. Arshad makes plans to renovate the church, Clitheroe’s Christians are taking stock.
At St. Mary Magdalene Church, where the first stone was laid in the 12th century, the congregation has dropped to about 90 people on Sunday, and the average age of congregants is 75, said the Anglican vicar, Philip Dearden. Christenings are now rare, and he has only seven weddings booked for the year.
“Lancashire is the last place to see secularization in Britain,” Mr. Dearden, 64, said. “We’re seeing it now quite drastically. People don’t have a conscience about religion; they don’t come anymore.”
In the nearby town of Kendal, an Anglican vicar, Alan Billings, has written a book, “Secular Lives, Sacred Hearts: The Role of the Church in a Time of No Religion.”
He says the growing opposition to new mosques among the white population reflects an anxiety in Britain that has become more exposed since the London suicide bombings in July 2005.
“Often it’s expressed as low objections, more cars, more people,” said Mr. Billings, who is also a frequent contributor to the BBC’s religious programs. “But it is really a deeper anxiety about what is happening in society. It is the fear of what will happen to the culture and feel of Britain.”
At a Saturday gathering of about 50 believers, almost all of them white-haired, Mr. Billings warned that the church was under pressure. Islam could now be seen as an alternative to Christianity, he said.
On a recent Sunday, only one child turned up to Sunday school classes. The story books, paper and pencils lay unused as an elderly teacher tutored the 6-year-old boy in an otherwise empty room.
In contrast, Shamim Ahmed Miah, 26, a British-born mufti of Pakistani origin in Accrington, a town next to Clitheroe, teaches 30 Arabic and Koranic students, ages 5 to 15, in three sessions daily.
Mr. Miah coaxed 10 primary school students, seated at desks in a brightly lighted community center, to recite the Arabic alphabet. He handed out sheets of paper to each student for them to draw some letters. “Be gentle, this is an art,” Mr. Miah said.
Mr. Arshad is considering inviting Mr. Miah to be the imam in Clitheroe. “He’s progressive,” he said.
As for the new mosque, there will be no obvious changes to the church’s exterior, though the cross at the top will come down.
Women will be welcome to pray in the main prayer hall, “not in a cubby hole in the corner,” Mr. Arshad said.
“We don’t want a dome,” he said. “That looks pretty in Egypt and Turkey, but in a market town in England it looks like a big onion. There will be no external call to prayer. What matters is what goes on inside.”
Furthermore, this battle must first begin inside of our individual souls. There is no room for wishy-washy, lukewarm Catholicism, because as Fr. John Hardon stated: "ordinary Catholics will not survive". Especially during this Holy week we must seek to obtain the holiness and courage that can only come from the transforming power of Christ's literal and real Body and Blood. A people that have no life in them because they lack the Body and Blood of Jesus will eventually succumb to the illusions of this world. Crackers and juice and a mere "remembrance meal" cannot sustain the Christian faith in a nation, a denomination and most importantly in a soul.
If we seek holiness instead of worldliness, if we adhere to the wisdom of the Church instead of secular wisdom, and if we obey God's laws despite the cries of foolishness from the world, we may eventually stop hearing about churches becoming mosques. From the N.Y. Times
CLITHEROE, England — On a chilly night this winter, this pristine town in some of Britain’s most untouched countryside voted to allow a former Christian church to become a mosque.
The narrow vote by the municipal authorities marked the end of a bitter struggle by the tiny Muslim population to establish a place of worship, one that will put a mosque in an imposing stone Methodist church that had been used as a factory since its congregation dwindled away 40 years ago.
The battle underscored Britain’s unease with its Muslim minority, and particularly the infiltration of terrorist cells among the faithful, whose devotion has challenged an increasingly secular Britain’s sense of itself.
Britain may continue to regard itself as a Christian nation. But practicing Muslims are likely to outnumber church-attending Christians in several decades, according to a recent survey by Christian Research, a group that specializes in documenting the status of Christianity in Britain.
More conspicuous than ever in both the halls of power and in working-class neighborhoods, Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims, about 2.7 percent of the population, are at once alienated and increasingly assertive.
In Clitheroe, the tussle involved a passionate young professional of Pakistani descent coming up against the raw nerves of tradition-bound local residents.
“We’ve been trying to get a place of worship for 30 years,” said Sheraz Arshad, 31, the Muslim leader here, his voice rattling around the empty old Mount Zion Methodist Church that will house his mosque. “It’s fitting it is a church: it is visually symbolic, the coming together of religions.”
With a population of 14,500, a Norman castle and an Anglican church established in 1122, Clitheroe is tucked away in Lancashire County in the north. People here liked to think they represented a last barrier to the mosques that had become features in surrounding industrial towns. But Clitheroe had not bargained on the determination of Mr. Arshad, a project manager at British Aerospace. He is the British-born son of Mohamed Arshad, who came to Clitheroe from Rawalpindi in 1965 to work at the cement works on the town’s outskirts.
When his father died in 2000, leaving his efforts to establish a mosque for the approximately 300 Muslims unfulfilled, Mr. Arshad took up the challenge.
“I thought, why should I be treated any less well?” Mr. Arshad said. “One quarter of my salary goes in tax, too. I was driven to do the mosque.”
In all, Mr. Arshad and his father made eight applications for a mosque, and even proposed buying a modest terrace house on the edge of town to be used for worship. Mr. Arshad said he tried to buy land from the council but was rebuffed.
Often there was booing at council meetings, and, he said, cries of “Go home, Paki!”
The authorities’ official reasoning for the rejections was generally that a mosque would attract outsiders — a veiled reference to Muslims — to Clitheroe.
Letters to the local newspaper, The Clitheroe Advertiser and Times, warned that what had happened in Blackburn and Preston, two bigger nearby industrial towns with substantial Muslim populations, would happen to Clitheroe.
Mr. Arshad decided to get organized and demonstrate that he was a moderate Muslim who could take part in all the town’s affairs.
He formed an interfaith scout group — Beaver Scouts — that honored many religious occasions, including the Taoist and Jewish new years. He established the Medina Islamic Education Center as an interfaith group for adults, and persuaded the local council to allow the group to lead a key committee. He organized a series of lectures on global conflict that attracted important academics.
On Dec. 21, the night of the vote on the mosque, the council chambers overflowed with 150 people. The police were poised outside. The vote was 7 to 5 for the mosque; there was no violence.
“I went in resigned to the fact we would lose,” Mr. Arshad said. “In the end, it was very humbling.”
The church’s demarcation as a place of worship in the town’s planning records helped carry the day, said Geoffrey Jackson, chief executive of Trinity Partnership, a social welfare agency, and a Methodist who backed Mr. Arshad.
So did Mr. Arshad’s demeanor. “He’s a top lad, with a Lancashire accent, born and bred here, and educated at Clitheroe Grammar,” Mr. Jackson said.
But the fight is hardly over. Beneath the official vote lies a river of resentment among those who fear that the broader patterns in Britain will emerge here. In one sign of the tensions, some of the church’s windows have been smashed.
“There was so much opposition,” said Robert Kay, a hired driver. “The people who were for the mosque were those who were not going to end up with it on their doorstep.”
The Mount Zion Methodist Church became a factory for making scarves for export to the Middle East in the 1960s, when Christian church-going in Britain had already begun to decline.
Today, Britain has fewer than 500,000 practicing Methodists, and of its Christians, only about 6 percent are regulars at church, according to Peter Brierley, executive director of Christian Research. Though numbers for comparison are not known precisely, most agree that Britain’s Muslims are far more regular mosque attendants.
The symbolic encroachment of Islam at the pinnacles of British power is already clear. At Oxford University, town residents recently but unsuccessfully fought the building of a Center for Islamic Studies, and in the House of Lords the number of Muslim members has gone from none to seven during the decade of the Labor government.
In working-class neighborhoods, the differences are stark between white Britons and immigrant Muslim Asians, who began arriving in significant numbers from former British colonies in Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 1970s. The whites are less likely to marry, and they bear more children out of wedlock, trends many Muslims, who put stock in intact families, find disturbing.
The high rate of alcohol consumption among whites sets the groups apart, too. In Blackburn and Preston, increasing numbers of neighborhoods have become exclusively Muslim, and the growing influence of the conservative Wahhabi school of Islam is more and more apparent among women who wear black robes and cover all but their eyes.
In Blackburn, the constituency of Jack Straw, the leader of the House of Commons, there are 30,000 Muslims among a population of 80,000. But in a telltale sign for the future, the number of children 10 years and younger is evenly divided between Christian and Muslim.
It is those demographics, and the visibility of Blackburn’s 40 mosques alongside the ancient Christian church spires, that frightened the mosque opponents in Clitheroe.
As Mr. Arshad makes plans to renovate the church, Clitheroe’s Christians are taking stock.
At St. Mary Magdalene Church, where the first stone was laid in the 12th century, the congregation has dropped to about 90 people on Sunday, and the average age of congregants is 75, said the Anglican vicar, Philip Dearden. Christenings are now rare, and he has only seven weddings booked for the year.
“Lancashire is the last place to see secularization in Britain,” Mr. Dearden, 64, said. “We’re seeing it now quite drastically. People don’t have a conscience about religion; they don’t come anymore.”
In the nearby town of Kendal, an Anglican vicar, Alan Billings, has written a book, “Secular Lives, Sacred Hearts: The Role of the Church in a Time of No Religion.”
He says the growing opposition to new mosques among the white population reflects an anxiety in Britain that has become more exposed since the London suicide bombings in July 2005.
“Often it’s expressed as low objections, more cars, more people,” said Mr. Billings, who is also a frequent contributor to the BBC’s religious programs. “But it is really a deeper anxiety about what is happening in society. It is the fear of what will happen to the culture and feel of Britain.”
At a Saturday gathering of about 50 believers, almost all of them white-haired, Mr. Billings warned that the church was under pressure. Islam could now be seen as an alternative to Christianity, he said.
On a recent Sunday, only one child turned up to Sunday school classes. The story books, paper and pencils lay unused as an elderly teacher tutored the 6-year-old boy in an otherwise empty room.
In contrast, Shamim Ahmed Miah, 26, a British-born mufti of Pakistani origin in Accrington, a town next to Clitheroe, teaches 30 Arabic and Koranic students, ages 5 to 15, in three sessions daily.
Mr. Miah coaxed 10 primary school students, seated at desks in a brightly lighted community center, to recite the Arabic alphabet. He handed out sheets of paper to each student for them to draw some letters. “Be gentle, this is an art,” Mr. Miah said.
Mr. Arshad is considering inviting Mr. Miah to be the imam in Clitheroe. “He’s progressive,” he said.
As for the new mosque, there will be no obvious changes to the church’s exterior, though the cross at the top will come down.
Women will be welcome to pray in the main prayer hall, “not in a cubby hole in the corner,” Mr. Arshad said.
“We don’t want a dome,” he said. “That looks pretty in Egypt and Turkey, but in a market town in England it looks like a big onion. There will be no external call to prayer. What matters is what goes on inside.”
CATHOLIC, MUSLIM TURF WARS OVER CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL IN
SPAIN
28/03/07 11:44 Permalink
Hilaire Belloc predicted the resurrection of Islam.
"In Islam there has been no such dissolution of ancestral doctrine --or, at any rate, nothing corresponding to the universal break-up of religion in Europe. The whole spiritual strength of Islam is still present in the masses of Syria and Anatolia, of the East Asian Mountains, of Arabia, Egypt or North Africa.
The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power may be delayed:- but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed."
Here we have a battle at ground zero. Excerpts from Los Angeles Times:
"The 1,200-year-old architectural wonder that is one of Spain's most renowned landmarks is at the center of a turf war over religious space, cultural recognition and rivalries that are both ancient and contemporary.
Known as La Mezquita in Spanish and the Great Mosque in English, its spectacular forest of striped arches and jasper-and-marble columns constitutes one of ancient Islam's most iconic legacies. But La Mezquita has served as a consecrated Catholic church for nearly 800 years — ever since Spain's Catholic monarchs ejected Islamic forces that had ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula for more than five centuries.
The scuffle over La Mezquita is echoed throughout Spain these days as members of each faith tests the other's tolerance in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country with a fast-growing Muslim minority. Tensions were further inflamed when Islamic militants blew up commuter trains in Madrid three years ago, killing nearly 200 people.
The dispute has special resonance in Cordoba, an Andalusian crossroads that beginning more than a millennium ago was the capital of Moorish Spain and one of the Western world's greatest centers of intellectual and artistic culture.
Escudero, a Spaniard who converted to Islam 28 years ago, has been fighting to gain prayer rights here for much of his life. He decided to try again, inspired by the journey to Istanbul last fall of Pope Benedict XVI, who stood alongside an imam in that Turkish city's famous Blue Mosque, faced Mecca and prayed.
Escudero and the Islamic Council of Spain that he heads took the case straight to the Vatican, writing the pope to suggest that the site in Cordoba become a "singular and unique ecumenical space" in which both Christians and Muslims could pray.
The pope did not write back.
However, the bishop of Cordoba, Juan Jose Asenjo, was more than happy to respond. Far from fostering peace, he said, the sharing of places of worship would only "generate confusion" among the faithful.
In an interview afterward, Father Manuel Perez Moya said that because the building was consecrated as a cathedral, it is impossible to permit Muslim worship of any kind. Had it not been converted to a church, he added, the Great Mosque might have suffered the fate of other conquered property and been destroyed.
"It is thanks to this being a living cathedral that such a beautiful reality could be protected," he said.
Church leaders also note that, in a reflection of the centuries' cultural layering, a Visigoth basilica stood on the site before the mosque was built.
What really worries many priests, however, is the specter of Spain's Muslims wanting more than an occasional prayer.
"The problem is you let them pray, and then maybe they will try to take territory," Perez Moya said.
"Sure, let them — the day I can pray in a mosque," Luis Recio Mateo, 61, a self-described historian and tour guide dressed in a dapper gray suit, said as he left Mass. "If I go into a mosque in Morocco or Mauritania or Constantinople, they'll tell me I'm an infidel. Nor should Muslims pray in my cathedral."
Depending on who's counting, at least 1 million Muslims live in Spain (a country of 40 million people), and only about 1,000 Muslims live in Cordoba, a city of 320,000.
In numerous cities, local Catholic groups have protested and in some cases blocked plans to build mosques or expand Islamic cultural centers.
Escudero says that over the years, authorities in Cordoba occasionally allowed a visiting Muslim dignitary to pray in the Great Mosque — including Saddam Hussein in 1974. But in the last decade or so, church officials have been increasingly against the idea, he said, perhaps in reaction to the expanding Muslim presence in Spain.
Whereas Escudero thinks of the pope's appearance in the Blue Mosque, it's another Istanbul landmark that priests here might cite: the Hagia Sophia, a 6th century Byzantine church that was converted to a mosque by the Muslim Ottomans in the 15th century. In theory, it is today a museum and no one is allowed to pray there, although Muslims occasionally do.
When Escudero learned of the Cordoba bishop's rejection of his latest plea, he protested. On a gray morning, he stood outside the Great Mosque's Door of Pardon, spread a small carpet on the sidewalk, knelt and prostrated himself in prayer.
News photographers snapped many pictures. And police held a tiny group of yelling protesters at bay.
GERMAN JUDGE INVOKES QUR'AN TO DENY ABUSED WIFE A
DIVORCE
22/03/07 22:20 Permalink
Imagine a
Christian being denied a divorce based upon Jesus
clear words in Scripture -- it certainly would not
happen in the West. But a divorce can be denied in
"Eurabia" based upon the Koran. Guardian Unlimited
reports:
A German judge who refused a Moroccan woman a fast-track divorce on the grounds that domestic violence was acceptable according to the Qur'an has been removed from the case following a nationwide outcry.
The judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said the German woman of Moroccan descent would not be granted a divorce because she and her husband came from a "Moroccan cultural environment in which it is not uncommon for a man to exert a right of corporal punishment over his wife," according to a statement she wrote that was issued by a Frankfurt court. "That's what the claimant had to reckon with when she married the defendant."
The 26-year-old mother of two had been repeatedly beaten and threatened with death by her husband.
When the woman protested against the judge's decision, Ms Datz-Winter invoked the Qur'an to support her argument. In the court she read from verse 34 of Sura four of the Qur'an, An-Nisa (Women), in which men are told to hit their wives as a final stage in dealing with disobedience. The verse reads: "... as to those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them and leave them alone in the sleeping places and beat them".
The woman's lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk, protested, saying: "When Christians are arguing for a divorce they don't use the Bible."
Commentators, politicians and Muslim leaders criticised the judge's decision, saying that choosing sharia above civil law was a threat to jurisprudence. Wolfgang Bosbach, of the Christian Democratic Union, said: "One thing must be clear: in Germany only German law applies."
Irmingard Schewe-Gerigk, women's affairs spokeswoman for the Greens, agreed, saying: "This decision is in conflict with the basic law."
The woman applied for divorce before the statutory one-year separation after receiving death threats from her husband. Fast-track divorces can be granted under German law if it is deemed the woman is suffering hardship as a result of marital breakdown. Her husband continued to threaten her despite a restraining order.
Christa Stolle, of the women's rights organisation Terre des Femmes, called the decision "scandalous". She said: "In a democratic country like Germany religious law cannot be drawn on to justify abuse".
The leftwing Tageszeitung ran a headline on its front page "In the name of the people: beating allowed" above the relevant passage from the Qur'an, while the tabloid Bild led its front page with: "Where are we living?".
Germany's Central Council of Muslims was quick to criticise the ruling. In a statement, it said: "Violence and abuse of people are of course naturally reasons to warrant a divorce in Islam as well."
Another judge has already been appointed to the case.
A German judge who refused a Moroccan woman a fast-track divorce on the grounds that domestic violence was acceptable according to the Qur'an has been removed from the case following a nationwide outcry.
The judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said the German woman of Moroccan descent would not be granted a divorce because she and her husband came from a "Moroccan cultural environment in which it is not uncommon for a man to exert a right of corporal punishment over his wife," according to a statement she wrote that was issued by a Frankfurt court. "That's what the claimant had to reckon with when she married the defendant."
The 26-year-old mother of two had been repeatedly beaten and threatened with death by her husband.
When the woman protested against the judge's decision, Ms Datz-Winter invoked the Qur'an to support her argument. In the court she read from verse 34 of Sura four of the Qur'an, An-Nisa (Women), in which men are told to hit their wives as a final stage in dealing with disobedience. The verse reads: "... as to those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them and leave them alone in the sleeping places and beat them".
The woman's lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk, protested, saying: "When Christians are arguing for a divorce they don't use the Bible."
Commentators, politicians and Muslim leaders criticised the judge's decision, saying that choosing sharia above civil law was a threat to jurisprudence. Wolfgang Bosbach, of the Christian Democratic Union, said: "One thing must be clear: in Germany only German law applies."
Irmingard Schewe-Gerigk, women's affairs spokeswoman for the Greens, agreed, saying: "This decision is in conflict with the basic law."
The woman applied for divorce before the statutory one-year separation after receiving death threats from her husband. Fast-track divorces can be granted under German law if it is deemed the woman is suffering hardship as a result of marital breakdown. Her husband continued to threaten her despite a restraining order.
Christa Stolle, of the women's rights organisation Terre des Femmes, called the decision "scandalous". She said: "In a democratic country like Germany religious law cannot be drawn on to justify abuse".
The leftwing Tageszeitung ran a headline on its front page "In the name of the people: beating allowed" above the relevant passage from the Qur'an, while the tabloid Bild led its front page with: "Where are we living?".
Germany's Central Council of Muslims was quick to criticise the ruling. In a statement, it said: "Violence and abuse of people are of course naturally reasons to warrant a divorce in Islam as well."
Another judge has already been appointed to the case.
School Bus Terrorism
17/03/07 12:52 Permalink
I have never
been comfortable with the notion of putting my
children on a school bus, let alone handing
them over to the public school system. Many
would call me an extremist for homeschooling --is it
a coincidence that these are the same people who
can't see the threat that Islam poses to Western
civilization?
Here is another example of genuine extremism.
Fox News reports:
FBI Puts Local Officials on Notice About Extremists Trying to Sign Up to Be School Bus Drivers
The FBI has issued an "informational bulletin" to state and local officials saying to watch out for people tied to extremist groups trying to earn licenses to drive school buses.
The Associated Press reports that members of the unnamed extremist groups have succeeded in gaining the drivers licenses, but a Department of Homeland Security official told FOX News that "at this time there is no evidence that any of these individuals have got these jobs, or got hold of school buses."
"There is no plot. There is no threat. And parents and children can feel perfectly safe," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told FOXNews.com.
The Department of Homeland Security official said the bulletin was sent to state and local law enforcement officials, and "some school districts have reported an increased number of foreign nationals seeking school bus driver positions and a number of other unusual events."
The official said that, out of an abundance of caution, FBI shared the information.
An unnamed counterterrorism official told The Associated Press that the bulletin — sent Friday to state and local law enforcement agencies — did not say how often foreign extremists attempted to get licenses or drive school buses, and did not specify where this might have happened.
The bulletin noted "recent suspicious activity" by foreigners who either drive school buses or are licensed to drive them, the official told The Associated Press.
Foreigners under recent investigation include "some with ties to extremist groups" who have been able to "purchase buses and acquire licenses," the bulletin says.
But the Homeland Security Department and the FBI "have no information indicating these individuals are involved in a terrorist plot against the homeland," it says. The memo also notes: "Most attempts by foreign nationals in the United States to acquire school bus licenses to drive them are legitimate."
It was not immediately clear whether the extremists intended to do with the school buses. One counterterror official, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said it was likely that the foreigners investigated were merely employed as bus drivers, and did not intend to use them as part of any terror plot.
"I hate to characterize this as a warning," Kolko said, calling it an "informational bulletin." He said this was part of routine information sent to local law enforcement agencies that they should use only as background information while doing their normal duties.
"This is just an awareness issue for local law enforcement. ... It just makes them smarter," he said.
Kolko said that if he knew which extremist groups were involved in the report, he would not identify them.
Here is another example of genuine extremism.
Fox News reports:
FBI Puts Local Officials on Notice About Extremists Trying to Sign Up to Be School Bus Drivers
The FBI has issued an "informational bulletin" to state and local officials saying to watch out for people tied to extremist groups trying to earn licenses to drive school buses.
The Associated Press reports that members of the unnamed extremist groups have succeeded in gaining the drivers licenses, but a Department of Homeland Security official told FOX News that "at this time there is no evidence that any of these individuals have got these jobs, or got hold of school buses."
"There is no plot. There is no threat. And parents and children can feel perfectly safe," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told FOXNews.com.
The Department of Homeland Security official said the bulletin was sent to state and local law enforcement officials, and "some school districts have reported an increased number of foreign nationals seeking school bus driver positions and a number of other unusual events."
The official said that, out of an abundance of caution, FBI shared the information.
An unnamed counterterrorism official told The Associated Press that the bulletin — sent Friday to state and local law enforcement agencies — did not say how often foreign extremists attempted to get licenses or drive school buses, and did not specify where this might have happened.
The bulletin noted "recent suspicious activity" by foreigners who either drive school buses or are licensed to drive them, the official told The Associated Press.
Foreigners under recent investigation include "some with ties to extremist groups" who have been able to "purchase buses and acquire licenses," the bulletin says.
But the Homeland Security Department and the FBI "have no information indicating these individuals are involved in a terrorist plot against the homeland," it says. The memo also notes: "Most attempts by foreign nationals in the United States to acquire school bus licenses to drive them are legitimate."
It was not immediately clear whether the extremists intended to do with the school buses. One counterterror official, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said it was likely that the foreigners investigated were merely employed as bus drivers, and did not intend to use them as part of any terror plot.
"I hate to characterize this as a warning," Kolko said, calling it an "informational bulletin." He said this was part of routine information sent to local law enforcement agencies that they should use only as background information while doing their normal duties.
"This is just an awareness issue for local law enforcement. ... It just makes them smarter," he said.
Kolko said that if he knew which extremist groups were involved in the report, he would not identify them.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE CONVERSION OF ISLAM
21/12/06 12:37 Permalink
"Islam is apparently unconvertable. The missionary efforts made by great Catholic orders which have been occupied in trying to turn Mohammedans into Christians for nearly 400 years have everywhere wholly failed. We have in some places driven the Mohammedan master out and freed his Christian subjects from Mohammedan control, but we have had hardly any effect in converting individual Mohammedans save perhaps to some small amount in Southern Spain 500 years ago; and even so, that was rather an example of political rather than religious change." Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies.
He is not the only modern day prophet that shares the viewpoint that Islam is near impossible to convert. Fr John Hardon S.J. also shared his analysis of Islam.
"Why are Muslims so hard to convert? (1) Conversion would have them accept the divinity of Jesus whom we accept as a living God who took on human form. (2) They see Christians as proccupied with the material world of space and time-- I think they got that right; (3) Christians are not giving an example of chaste living that their religion requires... Christian indifference fuels the spread of Islam." Fr John Hardon
It is in fact extremely difficult for Muslims to convert to Christianity. They believe that all revelations contained in the old and new testaments were merely the "building up" to the ultimate revelation received by Mohammed. They believe that Islam is the "accomplishment" of Judaism and Christianity. The acceptance of the Trinity and Jesus as divine would be tantamount to ascribing "partners to God" which is the worst crime in Islamic theology. Finally, the Koran teaches that any Muslim who converts to another faith must be killed. Thus those that do convert to Christianity do so at the risk of their lives.
Despite the historical difficulty of obtaining conversions of Muslims to Christianity we must not lose hope. The future of Western culture and civilization depends on the conversion of not only Islam to Christianity but also the reconversion of the West back to Christianity.
History is replete with the God of Christianity prevailing over paganism and Islam. But the followers of Jesus Christ must once again implore our heavenly King to open the eyes and hearts of Islam to the Son of God and the salvation that is only offered through His death on the cross. For noone comes to the Father except through the Son.
We must pray for the conversion of Islam with the same faith as the Blessed Virgin Mary demonstrated when she declared: "nothing is impossible for God". What appears to be impossible to man is always possible for God. At the Battle of Lepanto, the victory over the Islam was won by the faithful praying the rosary. The rosary was the weapon.
Prayer For the Conversion of Islam, Muslims
Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Most sweet Jesus, Redeemer of the human race, look down upon us humbly prostrate before Thine altar. We are Thine, and Thine we wish to be; but to be more surely united with Thee, behold, each one of us freely consecrates himself today to Thy most Sacred Heart.
Many indeed have never known Thee; many too, despising Thy precepts, have rejected Thee. Have mercy on them all, most merciful Jesus, and draw them to Thy Sacred Heart.
Be Thou King, O Lord, not only of the faithful who have never forsaken Thee, but also of the prodigal children who have abandoned Thee; grant that they may quickly return to their Father's house lest they die of wretchedness and hunger.
Be Thou King of those who are deceived by erroneous opinion, or whom discord keeps aloof, and call them back to the harbor of truth and the unity of faith, so that soon there may be but one flock and one Shepherd.
Be Thou King of all those who are still involved in the darkness of idolotry or of Islamism, and refuse not to draw them all into the light and kingdom of God.
Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once Thy chosen people. Of old, they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may It now descend upon them as a laver of redemption and of life.
Grant, O Lord, to Thy Church assurance of freedom and immunity from harm; give peace and order to all nations, and make the earth resound from pole to pole with one cry: Praise be to the Divine Heart that wrought our salvation; to It be glory and honor forever. Amen.