Biden’s Abortion Fig Leaves and Masks Are [Finally] Off

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Abortionist: Killing black babies is a “blessing”

Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas: It’s time for bishops to ban Joe Biden from Holy Communion in their dioceses in advance of his ever setting foot in their territory.

“My administration is deeply committed to the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade nearly five decades ago and will protect and defend that right.” With that presidential response to the Texas heartbeat law, the “devout” and rosary-clutching Joe Biden finally tore away the fig-leaf he had been wearing for decades. Not long after, Nancy Pelosi, another self-proclaimed “Catholic,” echoed his remarks.

Even worse, the advocate of the perpetual mask unmasked himself, going so far as to say that pro-lifers are “un-American.” Like all the pseudo-devout “Catholic” hypocrites before him – the Cuomo Clan, Geraldine Ferrara, Ted Kennedy, etc. – Old Joe once used to beguile his audiences with the sophism that he accepted Church teaching that human life begins at conception and so was “personally opposed” to abortion but couldn’t impose that on the country. Now, he says he doesn’t believe even that – “respects” those who do, but is quite willing to impose the abomination of abortion even on states seeking to reject it.

A little clarity is in order.

First of all, the Church does not teach that human life begins at conception; science does. You can read it in any textbook of embryology. Having lectured us ad nauseam for a year about the need to “follow the science,” if Biden were sincere he should take his own advice. Because the Church takes science seriously, she teaches that life in the womb is to be held sacred and inviolable.

Second, those same pro-abortion politicians have never hesitated to say that their Catholic convictions impel them to oppose capital punishment – and to seek to abolish it.

For years now, the hierarchy has been embroiled in a debate regarding the application of canon 915, which holds that those “who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin” are not to be admitted to Holy Communion. No one can doubt that a public official who professes to be Catholic and yet promotes the abortion agenda is living in a state of “grave sin.”

Some bishops, however, have tried to duck controversy with a fig leaf of their own by suggesting that withholding the Holy Sacrament would cause an even more serious problem, “weaponizing the Eucharist,” as they put it. The real story,  however, is that the manifestly unworthy politico is the one who is “weaponizing the Eucharist” by daring to approach the altar, thus ignoring Paul’s warning that those who “eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” (1 Corinthians 11:29)

Not a few of those same bishops have strenuously opposed the advancement of a document of the episcopal conference on “Eucharistic consistency.” Let’s hope those hierarchs now recognize their foolishness.

To be specific, we should take a look at Biden’s actual situation. Since Biden lives at the White House, the Archbishop of Washington could invoke canon 915. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, however, clearly stated that he has no intention of doing so. And in response to Biden’s recent remarks, Gregory could only mutter that the president is “not demonstrating Catholic teaching.”

Biden’s domicile in the Diocese of Wilmington (Delaware) offers another possibility. The recently installed Bishop William Koenig had a staunch pro-life reputation in the Diocese of Rockville Centre (from whence he hails). When questioned about his attitude toward his most famous parishioner, Bishop Koenig averred: “I certainly pray for him every day.”

Pressed further, he said: “I would certainly be open to having a conversation in the future with him.”

Pressed even further, he declared:  “As a bishop, I’m called to teach the fullness and the beauty of the Catholic faith.” It remains to be seen whether this Ordinary, unlike his predecessor, means business on this issue.

So, too, does Pious Joe’s pastor, Monsignor John Hopkins, at St. Joseph on the Brandywine. The parish bulletin regularly encourages parishioners to urge their Congressional representatives to preserve the Hyde Amendment. A brief – and strange – note emerged in the media after one presidential visit to St. Joseph’s: Biden emerged from the church after only  20 minutes.

Now, no matter how fast a priest speaks or how short his homily, no Sunday Mass with a Gloria and Credo can be completed in that time. Has Holy Joe already been told not to approach the altar and so leaves just before Communion?  Such conjecture should be pursued for confirmation.

And another line of investigation worth pursuing: rather than attending a public Mass in the District: Is he importing one of his Jesuit friends to celebrate a private Mass at the White House and at Camp David?

Privately, some bishops (and not a few other clerics and many pro-lifers) are calling for Biden’s excommunication.  Normally, this would fall to his proper Ordinary (in this case, the Bishop of Wilmington). However, the situation is complicated by the fact that Biden is a head of state, which means that only the pope could level that penalty. We know what that means.

So, where does that leave us?  I would suggest that a procession of bishops engage in a preemptive strike: Ban Biden from Holy Communion in their dioceses in advance of his ever setting foot in their territory. This would be a largely symbolic action, but symbols are important.

When this firestorm over double-talking Catholic pols first surfaced, Cardinal Francis Arinze, the indomitable Nigerian and former prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, happened to be on a U.S. lecture tour. He was approached by a reporter and asked his opinion about the fracas.

He responded, “Why are you asking me?”

“Because you are the head of Catholic worship for the whole world.”

“No, don’t ask me. If you have a parish school, go the second-graders preparing for their First Holy Communion.  Ask them if someone who wants to kill babies should receive Holy Communion. Ask them. They’ll tell you.”

Indeed, ask a second-grader.

You may also enjoy:

Robert Royal’s Our First Anti-Catholic Catholic President

Fr. Gerald E. Murray’s President Biden and Public Scandal 

COLUMN BY

Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas

Father Peter Stravinskas holds doctorates in school administration and theology. He is the founding editor of The Catholic Response and publisher of Newman House Press. Most recently, he launched a graduate program in Catholic school administration through Pontifex University.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. © 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

September 11, 2021: Twenty Years of Failure

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Why we’re losing. My latest in FrontPage:

On Friday, September 10, 2021, the Philadelphia chapter of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is presenting a panel discussion entitled “Remember Pearl Harbor to Never Forget 9/11: Teaching Japanese American and Muslim American Histories.” There in a nutshell is much of what has gone wrong in our nation’s response to the 9/11 jihad attacks, and why we are so drastically on the wrong path now.

The CAIR panel is as noteworthy for what it is not about than for what it is about. It is not about the victims of 9/11, the lives lost, the lives destroyed, the magnitude of human suffering that was inflicted. It is most certainly not about the ongoing global jihad: a useful panel could be held on groups that still exist around the world that hold to the same belief system, ideology and goals that the 9/11 plotters and hijackers held, and which are an ongoing threat to Americans and to all free people. Hamas-linked CAIR is never going to hold such a panel, and neither is anyone else.

Instead, CAIR, predictably enough, focuses on the people who hold the same beliefs as the jihad attackers of 9/11 and have, CAIR claims, been victimized and discriminated against in the United States as a result. Statistically speaking, such claims are wildly exaggerated. FBI hate crime statistics show that anti-Semitic hate crimes are far more common than attacks on Muslims, which actually dropped 42% in the last year. No hate crime is justified, but the idea that Muslims are living in fear of MAGA-hat-wearing redneck vigilantes in America is Leftist fantasy.

Nonetheless, that is not just the focus of this unsavory Hamas-linked group, but of the establishment media as well. The Los Angeles Times on Friday published a lengthy weeper entitled “Muslim youth in America: A generation shadowed by the aftermath of 9/11,” all about how some people say rude things to innocent Muslims just because some people did something way back two decades ago. The article begins: “On a rainy day during her sophomore year of high school, as Aissata Ba studied in the library, a photo popped into her phone. It showed a beheading by Islamic State militants, along with a caption in red letters: ‘Go back to your country.’” In the big bad, “Islamophobic” USA, the perpetrator of this horror got off scot-free: “Ba reported the incident. Administrators never tracked down the person who sent it.”

The Times explained how Muslims are the true victims of the 9/11 attacks: “Asked when they thought such incidents became common, the Ba family didn’t hesitate. ‘It started with 9/11,’ said Ba’s mom, Zeinebou, who immigrated to Chicago in 1999. That day in 2001 caused a chain of tragedies — for the nearly 3,000 people who perished during the attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania; for the young men and women who died serving their country in the wars that followed; and for Muslims, and those perceived as Muslim, who became targets of hate.”

It would be much easier to sympathize with all this if not for the fact that since 9/11, CAIR and its allied groups, with eager help from the establishment media, have insisted that any honest investigation of the motivating ideology behind the attacks, and jihad terror in general, constituted “hate.” Then there are the numerous fake anti-Muslim hate crimes, fabricated apparently in order to buttress the claim that Muslims are uniquely harassed and victimized in the United States. The facts don’t bear out this claim.

There is more. Read the rest here.

RELATED VIDEO: Remembering 9/11/2001

RELATED ARTICLES:

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Pennsylvania: Muslim migrant couple gave money to Islamic State jihadis

EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Out of a Clear Blue Sky

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Brad Miner: At the New York Athletic Club are three memorials displaying the names of the fallen: from World War I, World War II, and September 11, 2001.

I am a New Yorker by choice, having lived in the NYC area since 1977. I expect to die here. And I still have vivid memories of September 11, 2001.

It was a beautiful morning. I’d dropped off my wife, Sydny, at the Pelham, NY train station at about 8:00, got home and sent my sons off to school (they were 14 and 12), after which I’d gone up to my home office to continue working on a book about chivalry.

At a little before 9:00, Syd called from her office in Rockefeller Center. She said: “Turn on the TV.”

On NBC, I see smoke rising from the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC).

Watching video of that broadcast twenty years later, as I did while writing this column, barely diminishes the shock. It’s why movies you know the ending of still put you on the edge of your seat. No one at 9 AM knew the crash of the first plane wasn’t an accident.

The hosts of TODAY on 9/11 are unaware that the smoke and flames are coming from the explosion of American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston. Matt Lauer rightly speculates that, if early rumors are true and this was an aircraft accident, it surely can’t have been a light plane that blasted so huge a hole in the great building, causing so much fire and smoke.

Still, Katie Couric says they’re hearing it was a small commuter plane. At this point in the video, the TODAY “crawl” reads: “9:02.”

As the fireman said:
Don’t book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.
As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won’t shut.
These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you’re climbing out of yourself.
If you’re going to smash into the sky.*

It’s 2021, and I’m trying to stay calm, objective, rational – but I want to scream. I’m looking at film from two decades past, and I want to scream. Scream what? A warning? To whom?

Then, at precisely 9:03:11, United Airlines Flight 175 (also out of Boston) hits the South Tower. An NBC producer wonders if there’s a problem with air traffic control. At around 9:05, Mr. Lauer says these crashes were intentional.

At just about that moment, Andy Card, with George W. Bush in a Florida schoolroom, leaned in to whisper to the President, “America is under attack.”

What I did next that day was call George Marlin, who was Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (1995-1997), which is to say: after the unsuccessful ’93 WTC bombing and before 9/11. I once met him in his office on a high floor at WTC, from which one bank of windows provided views across the Hudson River. George, an early riser, described how on some mornings at sunrise the light would illuminate low hanging clouds in gold, occasionally seeming to be angels racing west at light speed.

Many times I’ve gone past
the fifth floor,
cranking upward,
but only once
have I gone all the way up.
Sixtieth floor:
small plants and swans bending
into their grave.
Floor two hundred:
mountains with the patience of a cat,
silence wearing its sneakers.*

“You’ve seen what’s happening?” I called to ask George on 9/11.

“We don’t have a TV in the office,” he said, “but I’ve heard. Terrorists?”

“Has to be. Each of the hijacked planes was headed for the West Coast full of fuel.”

“Keep me updated, will you?”

I said I would.

Then a little before 10:15, George called back.

“The Pentagon and Pennsylvania too, right?”

“Yes, and the South Tower has fallen. It fell straight down, collapsing on itself.”

George sighed.

“Well, that’s what the architects told me would happen.”

Something about speaking to George made me want to pray, but it was complicated. I wanted to thank God that he had left the Port Authority four years before, but I realized his most recent successor may have died. (He did.) Still, I prayed. And I knew I wasn’t alone. I imagined what was certainly true – that across the nation, now unified, people in their millions were on their knees, and not in surrender.

Nearby St. Peter’s Church briefly became a morgue, when Fr. Mychal Judge’s body was laid there before the altar. Killed by falling debris in the North Tower after running into the building to minister to the dead, dying, and injured, he was labeled “Victim 0001,” the first person declared dead on 9/11.

My wife’s office was evacuated because Rock Center was considered a potential target. She tried calling me, but after 10:30 nobody could call in or out of the city. So, she walked about 20 blocks down to her sister’s apartment, and Syd and Wendy went out to get something to eat at a neighborhood deli and heard the endless sirens and then began to see dust-covered people silently walking up from lower Manhattan.

Schools closed early. There was much anxiety in our little suburban town because so many family and friends worked in Manhattan’s financial district, some in the Twin Towers.

My older son, Bobby, worried about his mom, called from school. I reassured him, after which he found his brother, Jon, and they walked home. Jon went to his room to read, but Bobby wanted to throw the football.

We’re in the backyard throwing and catching – my hands stinging from the force of his passes – when an F-15 fighter roared very low overhead. If the pilot had dipped his wing and turned his head down, we might have made eye contact.

If you live where I live, you know people who died on 9/11 – or you know their families. I’d had a blast at Tommy Hohlweck’s wedding in 1978. My friend, Debra Burlingame, lived around the corner: her brother, Charles “Chic” Burlingame, was the pilot of American 77, the Pentagon flight. I’d stood on the sidelines with Pat O’Shea only days before as we watched our sons playing football. And at one or another community gathering  I’d met his brother Danny and Monty Hoard too. We lost six Pelhan residents that day, including firefighter Joe Leavy, off duty that day, who rushed to Ground Zero and never returned.

I was a member of the New York Athletic Club until 2011, in the lobby of which are three memorials displaying the names of the fallen: World War I, World War II, and September 11, 2001.

As of today, the long war that followed 9/11 is declared ended. I pray that it is. I fear it’s not.

Floor five hundred:
messages and letters centuries old,
birds to drink,
a kitchen of clouds.
Floor six thousand:
the stars,
skeletons on fire,
their arms singing.
And a key,
a very large key,
that opens something —
some useful door —
somewhere —
up there.*

*This prophetic poem, “Riding an Elevator into the Sky” by Anne Sexton, was written in 1975. Syd puts it up on her Facebook page every 9/11.

You may also enjoy:

Brad’s In God’s Good Time

George Marlin’s Post-9/11 New York: A Secular City?

Brad Miner

Brad Miner is senior editor of The Catholic Thing, senior fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute, and a board member of Aid to the Church In Need USA. He is a former Literary Editor of National Review. His most recent book, Sons of St. Patrick, written with George J. Marlin, is now on sale. His The Compleat Gentleman is now available in a third, revised edition from Regnery Gateway and is also available in an Audible audio edition (read by Bob Souer).

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing Article is republished with permission. © 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

VIDEO: A Biblical Perspective on Climate Change

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Last week, President Joe Biden visited New York to survey the devastation from Hurricane Ida. During his press conference, the president referenced a recent U.N. report that tracks climate change. According to the report, “Global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over a least the last 2,000 years.” Not surprisingly, Biden used his remarks as an opportunity to advocate for expansive, big-government climate policies, claiming that worsening weather patterns merit a wide-ranging, government-led approach. Without a doubt, hurricanes, fires, and other extreme weather patterns are cause for concern. But how should Christians think about the climate? Yesterday, FRC President Tony Perkins addressed the topic on Washington Watch, offering his perspective on how Christians should approach debates over climate change.

According to Tony, President Biden is correct to note that the climate is changing. Extreme weather patterns are becoming stronger and more frequent. But unlike many in the broader culture who have become gripped with fear about the weather, Christians should approach the topic with a perspective informed by Scripture. And while it may surprise those unfamiliar with the Bible, God’s Word offers insight into how we should think about extreme weather.

First, Christians ought to remember the Bible’s teaching about creation. Genesis 1-2 teaches that God created the heavens and earth. The material creation — including mountains, oceans, deserts, and prairies — were created “ex nihilo,” meaning they were created out of nothing. In short, God spoke, and creation appeared. The doctrine of creation reminds Christians that God is the creator and has control over His creation. Furthermore, Paul explains in Colossians 1: 16-17, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Christians understand that God is the creator and sustainer of the world. This understanding undergirds a Christian perspective on the climate. Ultimately, God is in control of everything that happens in the world, and nothing occurs without His knowledge and permission.

Second, in Matthew 24, Jesus tells His disciples about events and changes that will occur as the end of time draws near. Specifically, Jesus mentions great storms and natural disasters, noting, “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places” (Matthew 24:7). From Jesus’ explanation, we can draw an important conclusion, which is that while these changes are scary, we should not be alarmed. In fact, Jesus told His disciples that these events would occur so they would be sobered minded, not alarmist.

Third, it is important for Christians to recall that the Bible explains why natural disasters happen in the first place. In short, all evil and suffering can be traced to the fall of humanity into sin (Genesis 3). Man’s rebellion against God not only resulted in humanity’s spiritual and physical death but had implications for creation as well. As Romans 8:22 explains, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” Sin not only affects humanity, but the whole of creation, and sin is ultimately behind the evil that ravages our lives.

Considering the wide-ranging effects of sin, Tony made an important point, noting:

Man is responsible for the changing climate. Our sin has corrupted the environment. It began in the Garden of Eden with the fall of man and the climate as only gotten worse ever since. But the solution is not bigger government that will take more of your money and more of your freedoms and promise more things that they cannot deliver on.

Significantly, climate change, natural disasters, war, famine, poverty, and civil unrest are part of living in a fallen world. Christians should care about these issues and do whatever is in their power to push back against the corroding effects of sin — wherever they appear. But followers of Jesus should not expect the government to be able to provide all the solutions and hand over their freedoms for a false sense of security. In fact, Christians need to be wary of those who want to use issues like the changing climate to take away freedoms and impose policies that will have harmful and unintended consequences.

Christians should not forget that God is the one who calms the storms and is Lord over the elements. As Tony reminded Washington Watch listeners,

If you and I take the warning that Jesus has given us, not to scare us but to prepare us for what is unfolding in the times in which we live, we will be better prepared to face them and to minister through them so that others might come to know the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and be free from their sin and experience life abundantly.

Ultimately, Jesus warned us that things would get difficult in the final days. But even as circumstances and events become more challenging, believers have an opportunity to point others to the hope of the gospel. While maintaining a posture of trust toward God and refusing to panic or surrender our basic rights, Christians can encourage others and strengthen our faith as we trust in Christ who is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

COLUMN BY

David Closson

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Journalists Tell of BRUTAL BEATINGS by Biden’s ‘Peace Partners’ The Taliban

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No American press covering it. They’ll take a bullet for the party. Literally.

When one of the reporters asked why he was being beaten, he was told: “You are lucky you weren’t beheaded.”

Journalists tell of beatings by Taliban

By: BBC, September 9, 2021:

Journalists from the Etilaatroz newspaper, Nemat Naqdi, 28, a video journalist, left and Taqi Daryabi, 22, video editor undress to show their wounds sustained after Taliban fighters tortured and beat them while in custody after they were arrested for reporting on a women’s rights protest in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021

Journalists in Afghanistan say that they have been beaten, detained and flogged by the Taliban when attempting to cover protests.

Photos circulating online show two journalists from Etilaatroz newspaper with welts and bruises after their arrest in the capital Kabul.

One of them, Taqi Daryabi, told the BBC he had been taken to a district police station where he was kicked and beaten.

On Wednesday, the BBC’s team were also prevented from filming.

Mr Daryabi, alongside Etilaatroz’s photographer Nematullah Naqdi, had been covering a women’s protest in Kabul on Wednesday.

Afterwards, they were taken to a police station, where they say they were beaten with batons, electrical cables and whips. A few hours later, they were released by the Taliban, without explanation.

“They took me to another room and handcuffed my hands behind me,” he told the BBC’s Secunder Kermani in Kabul. “I decided not to defend myself because I thought they would just beat me even worse, so I lay down on floor in a position to protect the front of my body.

“Eight of them came and they started beating me… Using sticks, police sticks, rubber – whatever they had in their hands. The scar on my face is from shoes where they kicked me in face.

“I was unconscious after that so they stopped. They took me to another building where there were cells and left me.”

Mr Daryabi said he had fallen unconscious after the beating, and that after about two hours he had been released.

“I could barely walk but they were telling us to walk quickly. I was in very bad pain.”

Nematullah Naqdi said Taliban fighters had tried to take away his camera as soon as he started taking photographs of the protest.

“One of the Taliban put his foot on my head, crushed my face against the concrete. They kicked me in the head… I thought they were going to kill me,” Mr Naqdi told AFP news agency.

He asked why he was being beaten, only to be told: “You are lucky you weren’t beheaded.”

Afghanistan’s Tolo news agency reported that its cameraman had been arrested and held by the Taliban for nearly three hours.

The CPJ, an international non-governmental organisation, said at least 14 journalists had been detained and then released over the past two days.

“The Taliban is quickly proving that earlier promises to allow Afghanistan’s independent media to continue operating freely and safely are worthless,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia programme co-ordinator.

“We urge the Taliban to live up to those earlier promises, to stop beating and detaining reporters doing their job, and allow the media to work freely without fear of reprisal.”
Journalists from the Etilaatroz newspaper, Taqi Daryabi, 22, video editor, left, and Nemat Naqdi, 28, a video journalist, right grimace as they sit on their wounds sustained after Taliban fighters tortured and beat them while in custody after they were arrested for reporting on a women’s rights protest in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021image source, MARCUS YAM/LOS ANGELES TIMES/Shutterstock
image captionInjured journalists Taqi Daryabi, left, and Nematullah Naqdi Naqdi

Earlier this week, the Taliban, which seized control of Afghanistan in a sweeping offensive more than three weeks ago, announced the formation of an all-male interim government to rule the country.

Since then, they have effectively banned protests, declaring them illegal unless permission is sought from the ministry of justice.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Rosh Hashanah – Time to Remember Tradition

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This week begins the most holy time in the Jewish calendar. As a child I remember putting on my finest dress and going to Grandma and Poppy for Rosh Hashanah.  Oh the food. The table set with a long line of never ending delicacies.  I of course “helped” Grandma cook.  I remember the huge chopping bowls, the rounded chopping knives, the hand meat grinder I used to chop the liver and help make the gefilta fish.  I can even smell the matzoh ball soup cooking ever so slowly.  Sadly when I go back to recapture some of those recipes, the food never tastes the same. That is the down side of learning the dangers of cooking with chicken fat. We have replaced those cholesterol fill recipes with healthy cooking, replaced the chopping knives with a food processor, replaced the hand grinder with an electric one, and the slow cooker with a microwave. All done in the name of progress.

But what good is progress if we forget our roots, values and traditions along the way?

School texts now eliminate Christianity and Judaism and students are forced to pledge to Allah.  As a former teacher, I remember teaching classes called religion where we explored and discovered how religious beliefs are so interwoven that it makes trying to separate the underlying values difficult.  The purpose was to give an understanding to my students so when they grew up they would not demonize or continually misunderstand traditions. I felt it is important to know all religions. It is the lack of understanding of religious values keeps us separated.  If you do not understand heritage, it is almost impossible to understand motivations.

As we prayed in temple, I remember asking G-d for forgiveness of my sins but also thanking G-d that we lived in America where I would not have to suffer the atrocities bestowed upon the Jews of the past.  I felt safe at peace, at home.

Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the Jewish New Year,  5781 begins at sundown on Monday, Sept 5. Why 5781?  Because the Jewish calendar begins at the dawn of man, BC (Before Christ).

The Jewish HOLIDAYS are never the same days every year because the Jewish calendar is based on the LUNAR (moon) cycles with 13 months each 28 days.

Rosh Hashanah is a quieter holy day time celebrating the creation of the world, lasting 10 days and ending with Yom Kippur aka the day of Atonement. Yom Kippur is the holiest day whereby Jews all over the world fast, pray for forgiveness and ask G-d to be written in the book of life for another year.

During this week the Torah (Jewish holy scroll) is read and the passage tells of the time when Moses delivered to Jews to Canaan (later called Israel).  When Moses left to get the Ten Commandments, he did not return in a timely manner. No cell phones, so calling to say he will be late is out of the question.

The Jews fearful of Moses demise abandoned G-d and made false idols aka the golden calf and began worshiping the golden calf. When Moses returned with the Ten Commandments, G-d told Moses the people must pay for their sins of worshiping a false idol. So for forty more years the Jews were forced to roam the desert.

Moses replaced Ten Commandments but was never allowed into the promised land. Instead the people were told that they must choose. They must choose a life with G-d in the promised land or darkness by wandering in the desert. They choose G-d and Joshua led the Jews into Canaan.  The Shofar (Rams Horn) is played to begin Rosh Hashanah and to end Yom Kippur.

Today I feel we are back to the beginning. G-d is with us but only if we follow his path. Today I feel that we are being asked to choose.  Choose the path of life with morality and G-d or life with darkness worshiping man and government. I fear that the Afghanistan disaster was planned.   This plan is filled with lies and deceit will lead us down the path of darkness. Following the Regime to me is following the golden calf.  The good news is Americans are realizing the golden calf is hollow.

As we learned in history the road to freedom is never easy or fair.  But we are blessed.  We live in America and Americans will not give up their freedom with ease.  This week I will pray.  I will pray not only for myself and my family but for America.  I know we are strong and I know now is the time to face the uncertainty together.

“L’shana tovah”: is the way Jews greet each other on Rosh Hashanah with the Hebrew phrase “L’shana tovah,” which translates to “for a good year.” I wish you all “L’shana tovah” and may you all be written in the Book of Life..

©Karen Schoen.  All rights reserved.

Biden’s National Security Advisor Refuses to Call the Taliban an Enemy of the U.S.

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My latest in PJ Media:

On Tuesday, Old Joe Biden’s callow national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, sat down with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, who asked him: “What is the Taliban? Are they now our frenemy, are they our adversary, are they our enemy? Are they our — what are they?” Sullivan refused to be pinned down, saying: “Well, it’s hard to put a label on it, in part because we have yet to see what they are going to be now that they’re in control — physical control of Afghanistan.” Sure. Sullivan couldn’t very well call the Taliban an enemy when he himself has strongly intimated that Biden’s handlers are about to start showering American taxpayer dollars upon them. The Taliban, however, clearly don’t see the U.S. as anything but an enemy.

A Taliban spokesman made that clear back in 2014, telling NBC News that Barack Obama’s trade of five Taliban commanders for deserter Bowe Bergdahl was the first time the “enemy,” that is, the United States, had “officially recognized our status.” Before that, in 2012, the leader of the Taliban at that time, Mullah Mohammad Omar, urged “every brave Afghan in the ranks of the foreign forces and their Afghan hirelings…to strike them.” He stated that “jihadist activities inside the circle of the state militias are the most effective stratagem. Its dimension will see further expansion, organization and efficiency. Increase your efforts to expand the area of infiltration in the ranks of the enemy.”

Both of those Taliban statements came after none other than Joe Biden himself sat down in December 2011 with Leslie H. Gelb of Newsweek/The Daily Beast “to do what he loves best–talk about foreign policy,” and declared: “Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us. So there’s a dual track here: One, continue to keep the pressure on al Qaeda and continue to diminish them. Two, put the government in a position where they can be strong enough that they can negotiate with and not be overthrown by the Taliban. And at the same time try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al Qaeda or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies.”

None of that was accomplished, of course, and now Biden’s handlers are poised to start the gravy train for the Taliban. When George Stephanopoulos asked Sullivan about the possibility of giving aid to the Taliban, the crack national security expert was no more forthcoming than he was when he was asked if the Taliban was the enemy, but he made it clear that the Biden administration is strongly considering giving aid to the Taliban, as long as the jihadis agree to a fig leaf of adherence to various “commitments.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Media Isn’t Talking About The Americans Left Behind!

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“I watched the news all morning today, and I am horrified to see very little mention of the Americans who are still in Afghanistan. This week, the last flight took off and we have thousands of Americans stranded.”

Watch Brigitte in this incredible interview discussing private citizens attempting to rescue Americans left behind in Afghanistan and more. ACT NOW! and call on Congress to leave no Americans behind. Watch:

Read this important article by Dr. Stephen Kirby providing important facts we need to know about the Afghan refugees arriving in America.

Bringing in Afghan Refugees with All of Their ‘Luggage’

By Dr. Stephen M. Kirby

What’s not being talked about.

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and American forces are withdrawing.  As with such ventures, this has resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing their own country.  And as night follows day, this has also resulted in calls by many American individuals and organizations to bring in as many of those refugees as possible, because we “owe” it to the Afghans.

To hear such claims, one would think that these many thousands of refugees will immediately become part of America, sharing our values and ideas, and contributing to our communities.

What is not being talked about are the values, ideas, and culture those refugees are bringing with them.

In order to better understand the people many are calling to be brought in by the tens of thousands, let’s look at some considerations about the society from which these refugees are coming.

National Security

There are two national security issues that must be acknowledged.

First, a 2019 study found that 13% of Afghans had a lot of (4%) or a little (9%) sympathy for the Taliban.[1]  This means that for every 100,000 Afghan refugees brought into the United States, we could expect about 13,000 of them to have varying degrees of sympathy for the Taliban.

Then we need to take into consideration that 39% of Afghans think that “suicide bombing” in defense of Islam is often or sometimes justified.[2]  If we use the 4% number for those with a lot of sympathy for the Taliban, this means that out of every 100,000 Afghans we could have up to about 1,560 Afghans believing that “suicide bombing” could often be justified.[3]

Combining these two issues means we could be bringing in a potentially significant base of support for a jihadist group; and that base of support could include a large number willing to engage in jihadist attacks in the United States using explosives.

Read more! 

EDITORS NOTE: This ACT For America column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Video: Trump Warned in 2017 ‘Hasty’ Afghanistan Withdrawal ‘Would Create Vacuum That al Qaeda, ISIS Would Instantly Fill’

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Watch. How different the world would look right now if President Trump was still in charge. Ugh.

Video: Trump warned in 2017 ‘hasty’ Afghanistan withdrawal ‘would create vacuum that al Qaeda, ISIS would instantly fill’

By America Military News, August 29, 2021

In a 2017 speech to American troops, Former President Donald Trump warned that a “hasty” withdrawal from Afghanistan “would create a vacuum that terrorists…would instantly fill,” including ISIS and al Qaeda.

“First, our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives,” Trump said at the time. “The men and women who serve our nation in combat deserve a plan for victory.  They deserve the tools they need, and the trust they have earned, to fight and to win.”

“Second, the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable.  9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from Afghanistan because that country was ruled by a government that gave comfort and shelter to terrorists,” he continued. “A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al Qaeda, would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11th.”

“The vacuum we created by leaving too soon gave safe haven for ISIS to spread, to grow, recruit, and launch attacks,” Trump cautioned. “We cannot repeat in Afghanistan the mistake our leaders made in Iraq.”

Trump said the security threats in Afghanistan and the broader region are “immense,” noting that 20 U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations are active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, making it the highest regional concentration in the world.

“No one denies that we have inherited a challenging and troubling situation in Afghanistan and South Asia, but we do not have the luxury of going back in time and making different or better decisions,” Trump said, adding, “We must address the reality of the world as it exists right now — the threats we face, and the confronting of all of the problems of today, and extremely predictable consequences of a hasty withdrawal.”

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Jordan Peterson and the Search for a Meaningful Life [+Video]

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Christopher Kaczor: Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson’s profound thinking about life and suffering has brought him to the very vestibule of the Catholic Church.

Jordan Peterson’s work has not only provoked powerful reactions from defenders of woke orthodoxy, but also reconsiderations by atheists, agnostics, and religious “Nones” about the wisdom of Biblical stories. In our book Jordan Peterson, God, and Christianity: The Search for a Meaningful Life, Matthew Petrusek and I seek to show Peterson’s method of reading Scripture is in some ways found earlier – and in a richer form – in figures like Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. Moreover, we argue that the trajectories of many lines of Peterson’s thought find their completion in Catholicism. “Catholicism is as sane as people can get,” Jordan Peterson said in a recent podcast, and we agree.

Peterson brings insights from Jungian psychology, Russian literature, evolutionary theory, and the totalitarian tragedies of the 20th century to illuminate the Biblical text. This method echoes Augustine who taught in De doctrina christiana that all secular wisdom can be used to interpret Scripture because all truths, wherever they are found, ultimately come from God. For Peterson, unknowingly re-presenting the teaching of St. Gregory the Great, the Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament, the New Testament sheds light on the Old Testament. Like Aquinas, Peterson views the Bible as having a rich depth of meaning that goes far beyond what any single interpreter can fathom.

Within this framework, Peterson offers striking interpretations of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, and the call of Abraham. For Peterson, these stories are not simply about ancient figures in a forgotten world, but about human realities that remain as relevant today as they were when first written.

Part of the power of Peterson’s thought is his direct confrontation with the problem of pain, occasioned no doubt by the excruciating suffering that he and his family have endured. In 12 Rules for Life, he writes that, “Truth is the antidote to suffering.” In Beyond Order, he says the antidote to suffering is some good that constitutes, “the highest possible goal.” Elsewhere he writes, “We cannot live without some connection to the divine – and beauty is divine – because in its absence life is too short, too dismal, and too tragic.” We might summarize Peterson by saying that the antidote to suffering is the truth as courageously articulated, the good of the highest goal, and the beautiful as experienced.

In the Catholic tradition, God himself is the true, the good, and the beautiful. Echoing the thought of Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, Augustine teaches that God is “the supreme beauty.” In his Confessions, the African bishop laments, “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!”

Thomas Aquinas argued that God is the highest possible highest goal, the summum bonum, the perfect good that is sought by those who seek happiness. Unlike dualistic conceptions of ultimate reality, such as “the force” in Star Wars, which has a light side and a dark side, Thomas argued that God is not composed in any way, so cannot be partly good and partly bad.  Thomas reasons that God is the highest good, the perfect good, and a good without any evil whatsoever.

And what about the truth? Aquinas defined the truth as a correspondence of mind and reality. By contrast, Peterson has a pragmatic understanding of truth as “the useful,” inspired by figures like William James. That’s helpful, so far as it goes, but Peterson – at least for the moment – and others in the Jungian tradition pursue the benefits of truth without grounding it in the only place it can be fully grounded.

In the Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas provided reasons to believe that God’s mind and God’s reality not only correspond to each other but are actually identical. The Divine Mind is God’s Essence, and God’s Essence is the Divine Mind. Moreover, God is the First Truth because God is the First Cause of all physical and psychological realities that we know when we understand the truth. If the antidote to suffering is truth, goodness, and beauty, then God is the antidote to suffering.

The aphorism that “Truth is the antidote to suffering” is connected to the Catholic tradition in yet another way. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). This way of Jesus is not merely an intellectual grasp of the truth. This reality, explored so ably by Jesuit Fr. David Vincent Meconi in his wonderful new book Christ Alive in Me: Living as a Member of the Mystical Body, is called by different names such as divinization, theosis, and deification. The Christian claim is that we are invited not just to become eager pupils of an insightful teacher, but we are called to be adopted children in the Divine Family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

If there is a partial antidote to suffering in this life, it is found in union with Christ who (according to Aquinas) experienced the greatest possible suffering and who offers the greatest possible consolation. This happens not through just knowing the teaching of Jesus, but in sharing the life of Jesus offered to us as a gift.

But, in fact, there is no perfect antidote to suffering, at least in this life. Here below, there will always be pain both physical and psychological. Indeed, the greatest of the saints, those who lived in Christ most fully, often grievously suffered. But their suffering had a meaning because their lives had a purpose: to love God and to love neighbor. Love is a balm but not a perfect antidote to the inevitable difficulties of life here below. Christ’s suffering found no perfect antidote until he died and rose from the dead, and our suffering won’t either. Whether this resurrection is a merely pious dream or a well-grounded hope is yet another question that arises in Peterson’s provocative explorations.

You may also enjoy:

Father Bevil Bramwell’s Underrating Jesus Christ

Michael Pakaluk’s Wanted: A New Height of Vision

COLUMN BY

Christopher Kaczor

Christopher Kaczor is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and the co-author with Matthew Petrusek of Jordan Peterson, God, and Christianity: The Search for a Meaningful Life.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

The Question Isn’t if Biden Will Fund the Taliban, The Question is How Will He Fund the Taliban

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The question isn’t if Biden will fund the Taliban, the question is how will he fund the Taliban.

There’s a split on that with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan suggesting that US aid may go directly to the Taliban. (Whether it goes directly or indirectly, the Taliban will still unquestionably cash in.)

Sullivan also would not rule out giving the Taliban aid in the future. He said that the US will continue to provide humanitarian assistance “directly” to the Afghan people, which, he said, would not flow through the Taliban but through international institutions like the World Health Organization and other nongovernmental organizations.

But, going forward, aid to Afghanistan through the Taliban directly will be conditioned upon the Taliban’s behavior, including whether the remaining Americans are able to safely evacuate.

“That will be about the Taliban’s actions. It will be about whether they follow through on their commitments, their commitments to safe passage for Americans and Afghan allies, their commitment to not allow Afghanistan to be a base from which terrorists can attack the United States or any other country, their commitments with respect to upholding their international obligations. It’s going to be up to them. And we will wait and see by their actions how we end up responding in terms of the economic and development assistance,” he said.

Then it was Jen Psaki’s turn to insist that Sullivan hadn’t said what he had said.

Q    And then on — on the future aid to the Taliban that Jake Sullivan was talking about this morning.

MS. PSAKI:  Yeah.

Q    He said, when it comes to economic and development assistance, the relationship with the Taliban will be about Taliban actions.  Should we understand that to mean that economic and development assistance could translate to taxpayer money eventually going to the Taliban at some point?  I know that’s different from the humanitarian aid we’ve been talking about — the World Food Programme and things like that — but these specific references that Sullivan made this morning.

MS. PSAKI:  Well, I would — I would just go back to kind of the earlier question on this.  There’s an enormous amount of money they have at the federal — in the Federal Reserve — I shouldn’t say “they” — the government of Afghanistan has in the Federal Reserve, which they don’t have access to right now.  That’s actually their money that’s being held there.  So that’s one of the questions here.

There are also sanctions that are in place on a number of leaders.  Obviously, that prevents them from doing business in various parts of the world.  I think that’s really what Jake Sullivan was referring to.

That’s not what Sullivan was referring to since he mentioned “economic and development assistance”.

But few in the media bother calling out Psaki on her constant stream of lies.

Psaki calls the money in the Federal Reserve, “their money”. As I reported in, “Biden Tried to Send Pallets of Cash to the Taliban as Kabul Fell”, that’s not really accurate.

Ahmady estimates that $7 billion of DAB’s assets are being held by the Federal Reserve which includes the gold, the bills and bonds, $300 million in cash, and another $2.4 billion in World Bank funds for aiding developing countries.

A whole lot of money came from us in the first place.

The question is whether Biden is bargaining with the Taliban using the money we already had been giving to Afghanistan or whether he’s playing with new taxpayer monies.

As I wrote…

The Taliban were hoping to get their hands on Afghanistan’s money, but much of it is in the United States. The most tangible part of Afghanistan’s assets, $1.3 billion in gold, is sitting in downtown Manhattan, a little bit south of Ground Zero, in the vaults of the Federal Reserve. If there were any justice, that money would be used to compensate the police officers, firefighters, and workers who died on that day or later on from ailments related to 9/11.

COLUMN BY

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Taliban Soldiers Going Door-to-Door Executing People

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Jihad Watch reported early on in the Taliban takeover that they were going door-to-door, forcibly marrying girls as young as 12, and forcing them into sex slavery.

According to a former Afghan special forces soldier, the brutality hasn’t stopped. He stated that “since the Taliban have come to power they haven’t stopped killing.” Nevertheless, many nations have held meetings with the Taliban, thus legitimizing them.

The lying words of the Taliban have been cunning. A Taliban spokesman “promised the Taliban is ‘committed to the rights of women within the framework of Sharia’ law, and even committed to a ‘free and independent media.’” There are no rights for women and disbelievers “within the framework of Sharia law,” no matter how extensive the lies of Sharia proponents are. Anywhere the Sharia is established, barbarism follows.

The door-to-door executions by the Taliban are an integral part of the establishment of strict Sharia in Afghanistan.

Taliban soldiers are reportedly going door-to-door and executing people – ‘They haven’t stopped killing,’”

by James Morris, Yahoo News UK, September 1, 2021:

After the Taliban seized Afghanistan last month, the militant group made a point of issuing conciliatory words.

On 17 August, spokesman Suhail Shaheen spoke of a “new chapter” in the country, and a desire to provide its people with “prosperous lives”.

Later that day, another Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed at a press conference that anyone who “fought against us” – as well as the interpreters and contractors who supported Allied efforts over the past 20 years – would be pardoned.

He promised the Taliban is “committed to the rights of women within the framework of Sharia” law, and even committed to a “free and independent media”.

Two weeks on, worrying reports are already emerging about the Taliban’s brutal rule in Afghanistan.

A former Afghan special forces soldier claimed to the BBC on Tuesday that 15 of his colleagues have already been killed, forcing him and his family into hiding.

“Since the Taliban have come to power they haven’t stopped killing,” he was quoted as saying….

The Daily Mail has reported that armed Taliban soldiers are going door-to-door in search of the “traitors” who helped the British….

The West’s departure from Afghanistan, confirmed last week when US president Joe Biden refused to extend his 31 August evacuation deadline, was put into stark perspective on Tuesday when Fox News reported a US official as saying the Taliban was carrying out door-to-door executions within hours of Biden’s withdrawal….

COLUMN BY

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

RELATED VIDEO: Copulating with Corpses: The Taliban Exposed.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Afghan Evacuees Bringing Their Child Brides Into The United States

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Child marriage has abundant attestation in Islamic tradition and law.

Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) said in January 2018 that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry.

“Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this” — Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria

“There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law.” — Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, Iraqi expert on Islamic law

There is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” — Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council

“Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.” — Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology

These authorities say these things because hadiths that Muslims consider authentic record that Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, was six when Muhammad wedded her and nine when he consummated the marriage:

“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).

Another tradition has Aisha herself recount the scene:

The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age. (Bukhari 5.58.234).

Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old.

Marrying young girls was not all that unusual for its time, but because in Islam Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is considered exemplary in this unto today. And so in April 2011, the Bangladesh Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage in that country were putting Muhammad in a bad light: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.” He added a threat: “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.” The Mufti said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives for any law restricting child marriage.

Likewise the influential website Islamonline.com in December 2010 justified child marriage by invoking not only Muhammad’s example, but the Qur’an as well:

The Noble Qur’an has also mentioned the waiting period [i.e. for a divorced wife to remarry] for the wife who has not yet menstruated, saying: “And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women, if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated” [Qur’an 65:4]. Since this is not negated later, we can take from this verse that it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl. The Qur’an is not like the books of jurisprudence which mention what the implications of things are, even if they are prohibited. It is true that the prophet entered into a marriage contract with A’isha when she was six years old, however he did not have sex with her until she was nine years old, according to al-Bukhari.

Other countries make Muhammad’s example the basis of their laws regarding the legal marriageable age for girls. Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”

According to Amir Taheri in The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (pp. 90-91), Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful to give their own daughters away accordingly: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.” When he took power in Iran, he lowered the legal marriageable age of girls to nine, in accord with Muhammad’s example.

Afghan evacuation raises concerns about child trafficking

by Matthew Lee, Associated Press, September 3, 2021:

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials are looking into reports that in the frantic evacuation of desperate Afghans from Kabul, older men were admitted together with young girls they claimed as “brides” or otherwise sexually abused.

U.S. officials at intake centers in the United Arab Emirates and in Wisconsin have identified numerous incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the “wives” of much older men. While child marriage is not uncommon in Afghanistan, the U.S. has strict policies against human trafficking that include prosecutions for offenders and sanctions for countries that don’t crack down on it.

One internal document seen by The Associated Press says the State Department has sought “urgent guidance” from other agencies after purported child brides were brought to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. Another document, described to the AP by officials familiar with it, says Afghan girls at a transit site in Abu Dhabi have alleged they have been raped by older men they were forced to marry in order to escape Afghanistan.

The State Department had no immediate comment on the documents or the veracity of the details in them. Officials say that they take all such allegations seriously but that many of them are anecdotal and difficult to prove, particularly amid the crush of Afghan evacuees at multiple locations in the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

An Aug. 27 situation report sent to all U.S. embassies and consulates abroad as well as military command centers in Florida points to potential issues involving young girls and older men, some of whom claim to have more than one wife at Fort McCoy, a sprawling 60,000-acre (243-square-kilometer) Army base in Wisconsin. Relevant portions of the document, titled “Afghanistan Task Force SitRep No. 63,” were obtained by the AP.

“Intake staff at Fort McCoy reported multiple cases of minor females who presented as ‘married’ to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families,” the document says. “Department of State has requested urgent guidance.”…

At the same time, U.S. officials in the United Arab Emirates have expressed similar concerns, sending a diplomatic cable to Washington warning that some young Afghan girls had been forced into marriages in order to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover….

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Taliban follows Iran’s model, appoints Supreme Leader of Afghanistan

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ISRAEL SHOWCASED! – An entertaining look at a small country with a big heart!

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Watch these “man-on-the-street” interviews…listen carefully….AHHHH! Interviews from Delray Beach, Florida.

ISRAEL SHOWCASED! SMALL COUNTRY – BIG IMPACT.

EDITORS NOTE: This The United West video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

13 YEARS IS A LONG, LONG TIME. . . .

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In Judaism, 13 is a blessed number, as it is the age of accountability for boys to spiritually and ritually become men, taking on the responsibilities of an adult. 13 is momentous mindfulness, the beginning of a new life cycle.

After 13 years of antisemitic persecution in South Florida’s Manatee County, our family was evicted from my Dad’s beloved modest condominium for the sake of Judenrein at Heritage Village West Condominiums (HVW) – the absence of Jews, as a former Board Officer had expressly vowed to drive out the Jews.

The perfect storm of antisemitism in Florida’s capital of antisemitism, scenic Manatee County, involves willing lawyers, organizations, neighbors, community leaders, judges, and clergy, none of whom will object to or protest against decades of grotesque discrimination against Jews. It is the perfect storm amidst the ravages of the COVID pandemic, when life stopped for awhile but not hate.

Like the viral pandemic, Jew-hatred is a highly-contagious disease, passing easily from person to person, group to group, neighbor to neighbor, congregant to fellow worshipper, community to nearby community, state to state, and nation to nation. Like the corona pandemic, it must be eradicated. In Manatee County in 13 years of persecution, not a single official spoke or demonstrated against the repeated vandalism of our property on and near to Jewish Holy Days, deflating and slitting of our car tires, theft of our personal possessions, threats against us, years of extortionate demands upon us for scores of thousands of dollars, intimidation, mocking of us in court, and illegal eviction of us on July 14, 2021, by orders of Judges Edward Nicholas and Charles Sniffen.

Amongst the written threats to us were: “Be warned, I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”; “The last thing you want to do is make an enemy of me.”; “By the way, you make yourselves look foolish with this [Holocaust] survivor crap.”

By order of the Florida Court of Appeal, Judge Nicholas was officially removed due to his bias and prejudice against us from the eviction case that HVW had filed against my husband, Lawrence Newman, and me pursuant to Florida’s rent diversion statute (F.S. 718.116(11)) that expressly requires four criteria to be met for eviction of a family by a condominium association. While it was undisputed that our family never met the criteria of “rent”-paying “tenants” under contract with our Dad for less than one year, and our family never refused to divert said alleged “rent” from HVW condo owner, Al Katz (who never charged us rent), to HVW, the lawsuit filed by attorney Scott K. Petersen falsely claimed that Lawrence and Beverly Newman refused to divert their “rent” from Al Katz to HVW in December 2015 and January 2016 – 5 1/2 years after our Dad had moved to Heaven and could not receive “rent” from anyone.

In the course of years of perjurious litigation against us, Judge Edward Nicholas ordered me to produce all of my confidential intimate medical records, including gynecological exams, from the time of my birth, for HVW’s lawyers to inspect and for the Judge to personally review himself, purportedly to confirm that I have asthma. Illegal subpoenas were sent by HVW to my physicians in New Mexico and Ohio, threatening them with contempt of court although the court had no jurisdiction over them. Judge Nicholas refused to sanction the lawyers for overt intimidation of my physicians.

In the course of years of eviction litigation, Judge Nicholas variously referred to our Jewish family in classic antisemitic accusations, which would not even be hurled at habitual criminals: “deliberate callousness”; “gross indifference”; “bizarre”; “egregiousness”; “vindictive”; “abject contempt”; “gross indifference”; “abuse”; “egregious and inappropriate indifference”; “contumacious disregard.”

Far from habitual criminals, I am an author of children’s books and nationally-published articles, a Holocaust educator, and Director of the Al Katz Center for Holocaust Survivors & Jewish Learning with my husband, who is also a Holocaust educator. My Dad, Al Katz, was a slave for the Nazis for seven years in concentration camps across Europe. He was also a guardianship Ward of the State of Florida, due, in large measure, to the direct involvement of HVW Officers and Board Members, who refused to evict the four convicted criminals exploiting and abusing him at HVW, namely, Randall Scribner, Sara Scribner, Peter Klimek, and Fred Carreras, whose collective felonies include: child molesting, narcotics drug dealing, aggravated assault on an officer, grand theft, spouse abuse, car thefts, armed robbery, escape, aggravated battery, resisting arrest, burglary, forgery, DUI, violations of probation, receiving stolen property, prowling, disorderly intoxication, and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Nonetheless, HVW fought relentlessly to evict its only remaining Jewish family through years of perjurious filings and classic antisemitic accusations that we were “dishonest and “not credible.” Since our fraudulent eviction, we cannot rent anywhere due to our “eviction history.” Our lives and work are utterly severed, and we have had to start a new life in our old age.

During the perfect storm of antisemitism amidst the perfect pandemic, The Creator has blessed us with fortitude and inspiration to persevere. We have no more deflated and slit tires, no more angry false accusations by neighbors; but we also have the majority of our worldly possessions left behind in the haste of our eviction in the condominium that our Dad worked and paid for as we were given only 24-hours notice to vacate.

Eviction is a major, major life cycle event, which can be life-threatening even in healthy circumstances. During a deadly pandemic, eviction is inherently dangerous, and hordes of precautions must be taken to protect one’s health. These factors were discarded and disregarded by two Manatee County judges, HVW Officers, and a plethora of HVW attorneys with no respect for Jewish lives, beginning with the life of an 89-year-old Holocaust Survivor who had suffered skull fractures, extreme facial and head wounds, and intracranial hemorrhaging at the hands of the violent criminals whom HVW refused to evict.

This is the perfect storm of antisemitism that threatens the entire society and world just as it did in the Holocaust, costing 60 million lives globally. Yet, here we sit watching the same reruns and not knowing the ending. Here we sit silent, voiceless, thoughtlessly waiting for another sequel to our own destruction by Jew-haters in tailored suits and honored professions.

©Beverly Newman.  All rights reserved.

ARIZONA: Muslim Family Tries to Kidnap Woman With Non-Muslim Boyfriend for Honor Killing

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My latest in PJ Media:

Amid all the discussion about the resettlement of Afghan refugees in the United States, few are focusing on the question of the compatibility of their societal mores with American culture. At this late date, we all know that such inquiries are “Islamophobic.” However, a recent incident in Arizona suggests some of the difficulties that could arise among the new arrivals. Fox 10 Phoenix reported Saturday that “police arrested six members of a Phoenix-area family they say targeted a 20-year-old relative and tried to kidnap her because they disapprove of her boyfriend, who doesn’t share their Muslim faith.” This family is Iraqi, but the Afghan refugees share the same religion, and many have the same ideas about women, marriage, and the permissibility of honor killing.

Fox reported that “the woman, who is 20 weeks pregnant, told police she was afraid her relatives will kill her because they believe she has brought dishonor to the family.” Arizona police “believe the family wanted to send the victim back to Iraq,” where she would face almost certain death. Court records “describe accusations of threats and assaults, most recently at a medical building in Avondale last week. Police said the relatives took the woman’s cell phone and purse, along with her boyfriend’s gun, during a ‘violent assault.’ The woman grabbed onto a responding officer, pleading ‘please, don’t let them take me.’”

This woman’s father, mother, three brothers and her sister, who are all “described as traditional Muslims,” were arrested. The entire family has “a history of harassment against the victim because of her relationship with a boyfriend, who is described as being of another religious faith.” Islamic law forbids Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men, although Muslim men may marry Jewish or Christian women; the idea is that the Islamic community is always growing at the expense of non-Muslim communities. For appearing to be on the path toward breaking this rule, the woman says that her family members tried to kill both her and her boyfriend.

The woman and her boyfriend moved away from the Phoenix area, but then the threatening phone calls began. One brother left this message: “This is Ali, her brother. If you don’t bring my sister back, I’m going to kidnap your sister. I’m not scared of your American laws.” Ali was relentless, declaring that “he would still find the victim even of he was in prison, and the victim was 80 years old.” It is not surprising in light of all this that the woman told police that she was afraid she was going to be killed because she had “dishonored the family.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Honor killing in Turkey? Muslim cleric murders his three daughters

Washington Post Knows What Will Make America Great Again: Afghan Refugees

Australia: Muslim targeted a cathedral and US embassy for jihad massacres, spoke of ‘conquering a small town’

Afghan interpreter: ‘Vast majority of Afghans always viewed Taliban as lesser of two evils’ compared to US

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

GOP-Controlled Florida Legislature Plans Pro-Life Bill After ‘Killing’ It Twice

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The RINOs in Senate and House especially the leadership twice killed this heartbeat bill in the past – maybe they’ve finally woken up that this is an important issue for true constitutional conservatives and pro-life voters.

GOP-Controlled Florida Legislature Plans to Consider Pro-Life Measures Similar to Texas After ‘Killing’ Bill Twice

The Republican-controlled Florida legislature plans to consider a pro-life bill similar to Texas’ heartbeat legislation after “killing” the initiative twice before, according to members of the state legislature.

“There is no question” the Florida legislature will take up the heartbeat bill, Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson (R) told WFLA NBC. “It’s something we’re already working on.”

Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R), however, has not committed to the plan, issuing a statement Thursday that only suggested “killing an innocent human being with a beating heart is wrong.”

“The Florida House will continue the fight,” he simply said.

Click here to read the full article.

©Royal A. Brown III. All rights reserved.

Harvard: From Promoting Christ to Promoting an Atheist Chaplain

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The Reverend John Harvard must be rolling over in his grave.

America’s oldest and most prestigious university, named in the Congregational minister’s honor, just promoted a “devout atheist” to be their head chaplain.

This is not surprising since Harvard jettisoned its Christian roots long ago. But it’s shocking nonetheless. What’s the point of a chaplain if he doesn’t even believe in God?

The DailyMail.com (UK, 8/26/2021) writes:

“Greg Epstein, 44, who was raised in a reformed Jewish household in Queens, New York, was named president of the chaplains for the religious community at the school after serving as Harvard’s ‘humanist chaplain’ since 2005.”

They add that Epstein will be overseeing “40 university chaplains, who lead the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious communities on campus.”

Epstein is the author of a book that has a dubious premise. It’s entitled, Good Without God. I say “dubious” because atheism by definition excludes divine accountability.

Even if an atheist happens to be a very nice person, he is tied into a worldview with no transcendent accountability. That means people can do what they want and not have to give an account to God for their actions (or so they delude themselves). To paraphrase Dostoyevsky: If there is no God, then all things are permissible.

In the 20th century, we repeatedly saw the deadly effect of that unbelief in Communist countries and under the National Socialists in Germany.

As the great British historian Paul Johnson notes in his book, The Quest for God, all the failed totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century were “godless constructs.”  Johnson says, “The death-camps and the slave-camps were products not of God but of anti-God.”

In 1999, Harvard University Press even published a big volume, called, The Black Book of Communism, which documents how in the 20th century the anti-Christian, atheistic philosophy of Karl Marx led to the deaths of at least 100 million human beings—usually by their own governments.

Meanwhile, it was not the atheism of the new head chaplain that created Harvard. It was Biblical Christianity.

The Puritans founded Boston in April, 1630, and their leader, Rev. John Winthrop, quoted Jesus when he said, “We shall be as a city upon a hill.” By September of the same year, they laid out plans for a school to train future ministers of the Gospel of Christ. This was the genesis of Harvard.

Even today at Harvard you can see chiseled in stone these words (in older English): “After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.”

Last time I visited there, I noticed they had planted a tree in front of this plaque. It used to be more visible.

The Puritan fathers began the college in 1636, and two years later, Congregational minister Rev, Harvard died of tuberculosis. In his will, he donated a large sum of money and his books for the school. They named the college in his honor.

Harvard was a Christian school for at least two centuries.

Walk around the campus, and you can still see the statue of Rev. John Harvard in his Puritan garb and with a large open Bible on his lap. Selfie-takers love to rub one of the statue’s shoes, perhaps for good luck.

The original motto of Harvard was (in Latin): “Truth for Christ and the Church.” Sometime in the 20th century—at least later than 1914—they cut off the last part of the motto and just stuck with “Truth” (Veritas). I mention that year because you can still see on the main library building the “Christo” and “Ecclesiae” part, and that building dates from 1914.

“Laws and Statutes for Students of Harvard College” of 1643 began by stating: “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3).”

The students at Harvard learned the Bible—not only in English, but in the original Hebrew and Greek. And on it goes with Harvard’s Christian origins.

But in the 19th century, compromises were made towards Unitarianism, which stands in contrast to the Trinitarian beliefs which created Harvard. This compromise led to other compromises, where eventually they cut Truth off from Christ and the Church. And now they’ve even hired an atheist as the head “chaplain.”

All I can say is, “O Lord, revive the work of Thy hands.”

©Jerry Newcombe. All rights reserved.

PODCAST: How Islam Defeated the Kafirs in Afghanistan

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Our political and military leaders refuse to learn the language and ideology of Islamic war doctrine. While Islam fights an enemy they know, we insist that Muslims are just like us, only culturally different, and we must respect those differences.

We believe that the normal relationship between nations is peaceful; Islam believes the natural state between Islam and Kafirs is war that will only end when all the world is ruled by Sharia.

Muslims have Allah on their side and jihad is fighting in Allah’s cause. The Sunna of Mohammed and the Koran lay out the perfect war doctrine.

And until we understand this war doctrine and know who our enemy is, we will always be defeated.

Political Islam · How Islam Defeated the Kafirs in Afghanistan

©Political Islam. All rights reserved.

Al-Qaida Back in Afghanistan – Just in Time for Biden’s 9/11 Anniversary

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https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1432746089669595141

Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It’s as if nothing changed. All that blood and treasure.

Amin-ul-Haq,  senior al-Qaida leader, and former aide to 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, now has  the confidence to travel and operate out in the open – in plain sight for the first time in a decade.

Terror is coming.

Al-Qaida Back in Afghanistan – Just in Time for 9/11 Anniversary

By Bill Hoffmann    |   Newsmax 01 September 2021

In a coincidence of timing as ironic as it was predictable, senior members of the al-Qaida terror group have returned to Afghanistan — just weeks before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that the group orchestrated from the Taliban-run safe haven.

The terror group’s reemergence on the world stage appeared to be confirmed by video purporting to show Amin-ul-Haq — a doctor, senior al-Qaida leader, and former aide to 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden — returning to his native Nangarhar province on Monday surrounded by gun-toting Taliban guards.

Read the rest…

RELATED ARTICLES:

International Union Of Muslims Scholars: The Taliban Are Paragons Of Steadfast Jihad

New Chinese Gvmt Media Cartoon of a “Defeated and Humiliated” Crying Biden

Taliban Gives US Tanks, Military Equipment to Iran Terror Regime

Taliban Threw A Military Parade Using United States Equipment Left Behind

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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