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All in good time, but people of faith are going to inherit the earth

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

Intrepid demographer Lyman Stone is at it again, breaching the bounds of political correctness with an astute, thought-provoking analysis, Religion and Fertility in Canada. His conclusion:

Canadian women who attend religious services at least monthly desire to have more children, spend more of their life married, and ultimately have more children than nominally religious or nonreligious Canadian women.

This is true throughout the world. People of faith believe in the transcendent. That shapes their priorities and life decisions. Pronatalism, though strongest in the Abrahamic faiths, is by no means confined to them.

Lamentably, religious faith is being displaced by consumerism and mammon worship. This is the globalist worldview that convenience, creature comforts, and material wealth are ends in themselves, a here-and-now ethos that throws family and children under the bus as a perfectly acceptable means to “prosperity.” Talk about priorities!

From what I know of Mr. Stone’s work, he seems to have tumbled to the same conclusion.

We are not replacing ourselves. His research finds lack of religious faith is a major cause. Not only that, it also explains the notion of “missing children” (fertility undershooting), something rarely mentioned in demographic statistics:

[E]ven among women who never attend religious services, fertility desires are far in excess of intended or actual fertility rates. Thus, fertility undershooting is a common experience for all groups of Canadian women, regardless of religiosity. About seventy percent of regularly attending [religious] women would ideally like to have more children, but across all religious groups, vastly more women undershoot their fertility desires than overshoot them.

Yes, families desire more children, but the social/financial turmoil of dysfunctional societies suppresses fertility.

A comprehensive effort

Religion and Fertility in Canada involved surveying a massive cross section of Canadian women (2700 respondents) to better understand fertility dynamics north of the border. Another finding: Religious folks form supportive communities around their faith:

They also experience less worry and anxiety about a host of individual and global issues… Indeed, even when religious and nonreligious women have identical financial circumstances, they report dramatically different degrees of financial worries, suggesting that religious women possess additional non-financial resources (such as community support or psychological strategies) for managing their situation.

Absolutely. Religious folks are not fixated on safe spaces, hurt feelings or bloviating about the latest hoked-up crisis. Pronoun usage doesn’t bother them. They have deeper, more meaningful concerns.

Remember when the left appropriated the “live and let live” mantra? Now they stand for anything but. By and large, religious folks don’t get in your face about your opinions. Yes, there are fanatics. But don’t confuse devout with fanatic. They’re miles-apart mutually exclusive concepts. Religious folks usually don’t think that cancelling or getting someone fired will help save the planet or improve our quality of life.

Other studies

Mr. Stone further points out that “Academics broadly agree that specific religious beliefs, practices, and socializing influence cause differences in fertility behaviour.” Here are some examples:

Religiosity and the realisation of fertility intentions: A comparative study of eight European countries (2021): “The results confirm that practising Christians generally intend and have more children than nominal Christians and non-affiliated persons.”

From the National Endowment for the Humanities, Religiosity and Fertility in the United States: The Role of Fertility Intentions (2009): “[W]e show that women who report that religion is ‘very important’ in their everyday life have both higher fertility and higher intended fertility than those saying religion is ‘somewhat important’ or ‘not important’.”

Then there’s Human fertility in relation to education, economy, religion, contraception, and family planning programs (2020): “In decreasing order of strength, fertility (TFR) correlates negatively with education, CPR, and GDP per capita, and positively with religiosity … Why is fertility associated with religiosity? Beside declarations from the Vatican and other religious leaders, possible reasons are belief in supernatural influence on things we desire, such as ‘good crops, protection, health and fertility’, and fatalistic views about fertility, such as children ‘are up to God’.”

Just last week Professor Michael Anton posted a blockbuster article “The Pessimistic Case for the Future:” “A moral and religious people is more likely to get and stay married; beget and rear children; hold jobs, even boring but necessary ones; participate in civic life; stay out of trouble; save money and build wealth (however modest); and do all the other things that make for long, happy, productive, fruitful, fulfilling, moral lives. Lack of religion tends to produce the opposite…”

That is self-evident. From religious belief flows family, children, morality and other positive influences. When I was coming up, calling someone a good Christian was the ultimate compliment. Still is here in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Yet the modern West wages an unceasing take-no-prisoners war on Christianity.

This is the climate in which Mr. Stone conducted his study. In Canada and the rest of the West, anti-Christian wokeism (cultural Marxism) prevails. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s regime freezes the bank accounts of dissenters and severely punishes peaceful protests against the ravages of globalism. To say the least, that is not a family-friendly situation. Yet believers persevere, much as they did under Communism.

Further findings

Mr. Stone’s research also found that women who identify as religious are more likely to be married, and married religious women have more children than married women who are not religious:

Religion’s influence on marriage and family in turn arises from three distinct sources. Religious women (especially those who attend religious services at least monthly) desire larger families, on average. Regularly attending women may also be exposed to doctrinal or belief-based values that offer a high social valuation of married parenthood in particular or that regulate the use of contraception and abortion. Finally, regularly attending women benefit from an extensive range of social supports that buffer against virtually every kind of family-planning worry we surveyed.

Religion and Fertility in Canada is a valuable and compelling confirmation of the importance of religious faith to family formation and continuity.

So believers, take heart. Our numbers are growing relative to the general population. That should eventually bring positive social change. Perhaps even freedom of religion will make a comeback.

AUTHOR

LOUIS MARCH

Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

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

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5 Biblical Reasons for Skepticism on UFO Testimony to Congress

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By Family Research Council

Scores of people lined up early to get a seat for today’s UFO hearing in the House Oversight Committee’s National Security Subcommittee. Lawmakers from both parties plied three former military officials, including whistleblower David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, on the nature of known UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena, the technical jargon for UFO) sightings and direction on how they could dig deeper. There was also bipartisan agreement on the “pressing demand for government transparency and accountability” regarding UAP reports.

The witnesses testified to seeing or hearing reports of colleagues seeing objects that appeared as a “dark gray or black cube inside a clear sphere,” with the cube’s corners touching the sphere, or red cubes the size of multiple football fields, which accelerated at uncanny rates. They alleged the military had conducted a multi-decade program for UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering, which was funded without Congress’s knowledge or authorization.

Unfortunately for the curious public, Grusch and the other witnesses often declined to present new evidence of their claims to lawmakers outside a secure and confidential setting. Grusch complained that he and others faced “administrative terrorism” for speaking up about the UAP sightings and said he feared for his life at times because of the “brutal” treatment, making him afraid to disclose classified information.

Some of the whistleblowers’ sensational claims could be true — some people already believe them — but many people won’t be persuaded until the long-promised evidence has actually been presented. Some people naturally prefer to stick to the facts, while others have adopted a more cautious attitude in light of the proliferation of brazen hoaxes. Some people will credit some of the claims (such as the military running a secret UFO investigation program) more than others (such as the military recovering the deceased remains of extraterrestrial lifeforms). And others will write the whole business off as a fiasco dreamed up by paranoid conspiracy theorists.

Now, I enjoy intergalactic science fiction as much (possibly more) than the next guy — “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “Doctor Who,” etc. Perhaps a part of me could even wish that Vulcans, lightsabers, and spatially anomalous phone booths were real.

But a biblical worldview cautions against making more of these daydreams than what they really are — fiction. Granted, the Bible nowhere explicitly states that there are not living, intelligent creatures on other worlds, nor does it state that life on other planets is insupportable.

Nevertheless, there are solid, biblical reasons to doubt the existence of extraterrestrial life (spiritual beings excluded), particularly life forms intelligent enough to build vessels for travel to earth. These biblical reasons can provide Christians with a useful context for evaluating claims about UFOs or UAPs, even when they are made under oath in a congressional hearing. Here are five:

1. The curse affects all creation.

In Genesis 3, God cursed the world for Adam’s sin, introducing suffering, pain, and death to human experience. In Romans 8:18-25, Paul states that this curse, the “sufferings of the present time,” has affected all creation. “We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22). One day, the sons of God will be revealed, and the curse will end, at which point “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption.”

It may seem puzzling that God would curse all creation for the sin of man alone. But there is a solution in Genesis 1:26, where God gives man “dominion … over all the earth” and all its inhabitant creatures. Thus, the curse for man’s sin affects the realm man was given to rule.

That solution would be absurd if God created other living beings on a separate world, which were outside man’s dominion and yet suffered for man’s sin. What is the logic in such a move? And why would a just God curse a world whose inhabitants had never sinned for a rebellion that occurred on another planet? But if a race of sinless creatures was exempted from the curse, then “the whole creation” would not be “groaning together” under its effects.

2. Salvation is for mankind.

Another problem with the hypothesizing a race of extraterrestrials is, if they had sinned, the gospel of salvation is not offered to them. Before his ascension, Jesus told his disciples, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). He did not say “beyond the earth” or “to the ends of the stars.”

Nor does the Bible say it is God’s will to save members of other races. The Scriptures say God “desires all people to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4) and the word translated “people” refers specifically to human beings.

3. Jesus died once for all sin.

Nor is it possible that the Son of God reenacted has salvific mission on multiple worlds, initiating a church on each. “Christ also suffered once for sins,” wrote Peter (1 Peter 3:18). This fact is vital to the sufficiency and permanence of his blood’s saving power. He offered a sacrifice for sins “once for all when he offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:27), and “he entered once for all into the holy places … by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12).

Clearest of all, Paul wrote, “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God” (Romans 6:9-10). His dying once and living again once is a model for us of baptism, forsaking sin, and our future hope of eternal life.

Beyond that, there would be the difficulty of the second person of the Trinity becoming incarnate through another virgin conception in another race. When he took on a human body, his divine nature was permanently united to his human flesh; he ascended in that same body, and he will never shed it. “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

Would Christ’s sacrificial atonement avail for sinners on another planet? It wouldn’t be for lack of power. But it’s hard to see how his death and resurrection on earth, as a human, could have the same significance for members of another race on another planet. They did not join in the conspiracy to kill him, as representatives of all mankind did (Acts 4:27). He would not be “made like [them] in every respect,” which is noted as essential to fulfilling the office of high priest on their behalf (Hebrews 2:17). If Jesus appeared to extraterrestrial creatures, the gospel would be so different as to be an entirely different gospel.

4. Man is made in God’s image.

Returning to Genesis 1, there we read that “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). This statement is foundational to the doctrine of man and is developed and fleshed out throughout Scripture.

Among other things, the image of God in man means that ensouled human beings are more precious than the living creatures over which man was given dominion — though those creatures, too, have value (see Proverbs 12:10, Jonah 4:11, Matthew 12:11-12).

But if there are extraterrestrial races capable of visiting earth, it raises all sorts of confusing questions for this doctrine. Do they have souls and moral agency? Do they too bear the image of God? If so, do they resemble humans? The questions could run on and on.

5. God created the heavens and the earth.

Lastly, the existence of life on other planets upends the biblical categories of heaven and earth. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). God gave man dominion over earth (Genesis 1:26), while he dwells in the heavens (1 Kings 8:30, etc.). These categories appear together hundreds of times throughout Scripture.

It is true that Scripture mentions various heavenly bodies. God created the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:14-19). And modern technology allows us to see the stunning variety and beauty God has created throughout the heavens. It is even true that man has managed to propel himself out of earth’s atmosphere and into the very nearest corner of the heavens. None of this fundamentally changes the categories of heavens (where God dwells) and earth (where man dwells).

But, if we ever discovered that another race dwelt on another planet somewhere else in the universe, there would be heavens and earths.

One might argue that the categories of heaven and earth were merely God stooping to describe his creation in a way that ancient readers, who had no concept of space travel, could understand. After all, the Bible never discusses other planets, as distinct from stars, but we now know God created them too. The problem with this theory is that the Bible also describes the fiery destruction (2 Peter 3:7) and recreation (Revelation 21:1) of heaven and earth, implying these categories still apply to our future.

By contrast, the existence of life on other planets is far more compatible with a secular-naturalist worldview: that the universe formed in a Big Bang, planets gradually and randomly took shape, and somehow life began on earth. In this interpretation, Planet Earth occupies no special role in the cosmos, and finding life anywhere else is just as plausible as finding it on earth. So, why not search for it? But this is not the biblical view.

Do these five reasons absolutely rule out life on other planets? The Renaissance-era controversy over a heliocentric model of the solar system stands as a caution against elevating one interpretation of the Bible over hard, scientific proof to the contrary. However, the existence of extraterrestrial life of any kind — particularly hyper-intelligent life forms capable of building vessels to traverse outer space — would pose significant challenges or complications to core Christian doctrines as they have stood for thousands of years.

For any Christian who believes these doctrines to be what God has communicated in Scripture, the choice should be clear. On one hand stands the infallible Word of God, who has proven himself faithful and true more times than we could imagine. On the other hand stand thus far unsubstantiated claims made by men, and men have been known to lie, be mistaken, and change their minds. Even if the evidence seems to tip in favor of extraterrestrial life (which it hasn’t yet come close to doing), it’s always safer to trust the Word of God rather than the shifting consensus of men.

Of course, dismissing extraterrestrial explanations does not make military sightings of UAPs less concerning or dangerous. It still points to (a possibly hostile) intelligence with technology beyond our own, or even beyond our ability to track. It just means we should look for an explanation to our geopolitical rivals on this planet rather than another.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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Islam Demands Unconditional Surrender

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By Amil Imani

What’s in a name? A great deal. Democracy, fascism, and communism represent different systems of government. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are also titles for other religious systems.

Whereas democracy is defined as the rule of the people, by the people, for the people, Islam is defined as the rule of Allah, by Allah and his emissaries, for the pleasure of Allah. And when people, out of concern for political correctness or ignorance, describe Islam as a religion of peace, they are, at the very least, guilty of misrepresenting it.

The word “Islam,” is derived from the Arabic “aslama,” or “Tasleem” which means ‘surrender.’ The word for peace is not “tasleem,” but it is “solh.” Hence, when radical Muslims behave violently barbarically, they only do so in obedience to the dictates of their creed. They are surrendering and sacrificing anything and everything in service to the will and pleasure of Allah, as they see it. In saying that Islam means peace, Islamic apologists are simply indulging in wordplay in order to put as positive a spin on things as they can. It is an attempt to argue that Islam promotes non-violence. In other words, they are lying.

Of course, not every Muslim surrenders entirely to the will of Allah. The great majority of Muslims are only partial Muslims. They may say their daily obligatory prayers, tithe some, and keep the fast occasionally. Yet, they may also have a few drinks now and then and do many things they are not supposed to do.

But Islam can be a “forgiving” religion, specifically for the male. If you neglect to say your prayers or don’t want to, you can hire someone, preferably an imam or a mullah, to pray on your behalf. Going to the Hajj is too onerous and takes you away from the pleasures and comforts of your life. You can deputize someone else to go in your stead. You have a few drinks of the forbidden brew, and it is time to say your prayer. Rinse your mouth and go ahead with praying. But, always remember the will of Allah and serve him. Do your duties to vanquish the unbelievers, promote the rule of the Shari’a, and make the earth Allah’s.

If only the masses of Muslims arise and carry out the orders of Allah, then we would have the promised paradise of Islam on earth as exemplified by such rules as that of the Taliban, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and of course, the Shiite nirvana of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In these model Islamic societies, freedom of expression, worship, and assembly are taken away. Women are treated as chattel. Young girls are subjected to barbaric genital mutilation, making them sex slaves and birth channels without the ability to enjoy intercourse. Minors are executed, adulterers are stoned to death, thieves have amputated limbs and much more. Isn’t that everyone’s idea of paradise?

This misogynist religion of Allah is custom-made for the savage male. A faithful follower of Allah is allowed to have as many as four permanent wives – and replace any of them at any time he wants- and an unlimited number of one-night or one-hour-standers that he can afford to rent. But, woe unto a woman if she even has a single love affair with another man. Nothing less than death by stoning is her just punishment.

The partial Muslims are seemingly harmless, may appear normal, and are under the radar. What gets our attention is the die-hard, the real Muslims, who are a small minority. Yet this virulent combative minority is campaigning simultaneously on two major fronts. It works to herd the partial-Muslim majority into its fold and vanquish all other non-believers by any means.

It is prudent to remember that all critical events in the history of humanity have been instigated by either an individual or a small group. These individuals or groups have been the sheepdogs that have directed the movements and activities of the masses, the sheep.

This is precisely what the real Muslims, the Islamists, do today. It is suicidal to dismiss the Islamists as a bunch of zealots without consequences or as a fringe group that will burn itself out. Sadly enough, the bulk of the Muslims that pundits portray as “peaceful” is either irrelevant or often serve as an instrument in the hands of the Islamists. A couple of examples from recent history conclusively prove the point that it is the fanatical minorities that launch and implement campaigns that inflict immense suffering on the larger society.

In the 1930s, very few Germans were Nazis, but many basked in the resurgence of German pride, and many others were too busy with their own lives to care. Thus, Germany presented a wide-open, unchallenged opportunity for the Nazis to push forward their agenda and gather power to the point that it was too late for any other force to stem their tide.

And we all know what suffering this gang of radical supremacists inflicted on millions before their demise.

The Khomeinism of Iran was started by a band of Shiite fanatics who rode the tide of opposition to the rule of the Shah and promised the masses Islamic nirvana—no sooner had the Khomeinists ascended to power than they made the entire nation captive by murdering tens of thousands of the complacent and the late-to-awaken opposition, imprisoning and torturing untold thousands more, and creating a state of Islamic menace that threatens the entire free world.

The fact is that too many die-hard Islamists continue leaving the failed Islamic states and settling in the lands of the Kafir. These new arrivals bring with them the deeply engrained hatred of the infidels and believe that they are indeed the rightful owner of the entire earth. All other non-Muslims are mere squatters who must be subjugated or eliminated altogether.

In this relentless campaign, the Islamists have a vast cadre of “experts,” “talking heads,” and for-purchase politicians who keep endlessly broadcasting the false mantra that Islam is a religion of peace. This latter bunch is criminally complicit in making the populace complacent and furthering the work of the Islamists.

Islam may be a religion of peace. It is the kind of peace embedded in its very name: Surrender. The Islamist savages shouldn’t be cow-free people and should take into account their accomplices who are shamelessly deceiving the public regarding the true nature of Islam. And what should we do? We should articulate a fair and fearless critique of Islam. We must expose Islam as it is and then identify moderate voices calling for a complete reformation.

Islam demands the unconditional surrender of all that free people cherish and hold sacred. Islam is a pathological doctrine and a vestige of long-ago barbarism that must surrender to the wholesome principles of freedom and free people.

©2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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Judgment of the Nations—Judgment Isn’t Coming, It’s Here

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By Bud Hancock

Discipline, punishment, judgment; do all three words mean the same thing? Or is there a difference between them? Let’s take a closer look to see just what these words mean and see how they can affect us, or may already be affecting us.

Discipline

Many parents believe they are “disciplining’ their children when they spank them, but that is not entirely correct. Spanking is more a form of punishment, either verbal or possibly physical intended to bring about a change in behavior for breaking parental rules and results from the judgment by a parent that the child is guilty of rule-breaking.

The root word of discipline is “disciple”, which is derived from the Latin word “discipulus”, which means “student”, or “one who studies”. The actual word discipline is from the Latin word, “disciplina” which means “instruction and training”. In a limited sense, it can also mean correction of certain actions meant to improve a person’s behavior through instruction and training.

Punishment

Per Merriam-Webster Dictionary, punishment is (a) suffering, pain, or loss that serves as retribution, (b) a penalty inflicted on an offender through judicial procedure, and (c) severe, rough, or disastrous treatment.

Punishment is usually inflicted upon one person by another person or by society, while discipline is usually a matter of one training oneself to adhere to certain standards, so it seems the main purpose of punishment is NOT the same as the main purpose of discipline. It can be easily seen from the above explanation that discipline is not to be, or should not be, considered primarily the same as punishment.

Judgment

From The Free Dictionary, judgment means “A decision by a court or other tribunal that resolves a controversy and determines the rights and obligations of the parties”.

From uslegal.com “A judgment is the final decision by a court in a lawsuit, criminal prosecution or appeal from a lower court’s judgment. It is the court’s final decision regarding the rights and obligations of the parties to a case. A judgment is also referred to as a decree.”

The judgment obviously is the action that occurs near the end of a trial when all evidence has been presented and arguments have been heard, and the judge then issues his decree, whether innocent or guilty on charges that were brought. Pending appeals, judgments are usually followed by the punishment decreed.

What are The Three Words Based On?

If discipline is studying, learning or being involved in instruction and training, in order to form or improve one’s behavior, then a “standard of behavior” must be used as the basis for it.

If punishment is involved as a result of actions deemed to be wrong, or illegal, a standard of behavior/form of law must be used as the basis for inflicting punishment upon a person.

If judgment occurs as the result of hearing or observing possibly incorrect or illegal behavior, there must be a finding that one or more of the applicable laws, part of the existing rule of law, must have been violated and that finding is to be used as the basis of the judgment.

Judges at various levels in human government are placed in positions of authority in hearing and deciding who receives a decree of judgment and who is set free.

All of the above are pertinent to the functioning of a valid, fair and honest system of justice in the governments of the World’s nations. In many cases, if not most where the systems of justice are not only invalid, having become so politicized as to be useless, they are run by corrupt people who care little about maintaining law and order or providing true justice for the citizens. In these cases, a lack of law enforcement at the highest levels denies justice and provides a perfect environment for the complete breakdown of society, a departure from law and order, and the endangerment of the very threads of civilization.

But this article is dealing with judgment on a much larger scale than that which affects individuals.

The Purpose of Judgment on Individuals

When a judgment is rendered as a result of a trial wherein a person has been accused of breaking a law, and that person is sentenced to serve time in a prison, or is possibly sentenced to death, what is actually happening to, or for, society? The person, or persons, accused and convicted are “removed from society” thereby cleansing, to some extent, society of some level of evil and danger FROM that evil.

Though it may sometimes seem harsh, or even cruel, to judge and inflict punishment on those found guilty of crimes, it is actually a great benefit to society and intelligent people should always look at judicial proceedings in that light. The purpose of laws is to establish a safe and peaceful environment wherein people may live their lives and raise their children. The continued presence of lawbreakers, who have little regard for peace and safety in a civilized area requires the process of law enforcement and judgments against those who have no respect for the law.

When evil people ignore laws that have been established to maintain that peace and safety, and if the acts of law-breaking are not addressed, chaos soon becomes the norm and peace and safety disappear altogether.

Judgment on Nations

Just as a court of law is the foundation of the judicial system wherein those charged with crimes are “tried”, so God’s Court of Law/Justice is the foundation for His actions in which He judges and punishes the nations for their evil actions.

Nations can be as evil as individual persons, possibly much more so since the leaders of nations tend to be those who will do and say anything to reach their positions of power and control over society. There have been many such nations and leaders throughout history, for example, the empires mentioned in the Book of Daniel and other places in the Bible.

Beginning with Nimrod, who tried to build a tower that would reach heaven, thereby establishing him as a god, tyrants have gained and maintained control over masses of people who merely wanted to live in peace, but tyrants have no regard for anything but their own pride and self-enrichment.

Their evil consisted then, as now, of doing everything imaginable to contradict God and His word, and assume control over that which was meant for individuals and God. Satan set the example of such evil when he tempted man and assumed power over the World, given to him by Adam’s sin. God had intended for mankind, with Adam as the first, to use His word (God’s Law) as a guide to establish God’s truth and purpose on this earth, which is to replenish the Earth and to reveal God to all mankind in His majesty, His wisdom and knowledge, His glory and His eternal love for all His creation, especially His man.

But sin and disobedience allowed Satan to disrupt that plan and caused God to bring judgment on all of sinful mankind.

God who (1) established the nations of the World and (2), instituted government in those nations, and (3) Who is the owner of the Earth and everything in it (Psalm 24:1), has the right to (4) charge every nation with breaking His law and (5), bring judgment on every nation, based on His Word (His Law).

Throughout human history, God has used various means of chastening the people of the world for their ant-God or anti-Christ actions. His purpose was always to bring them back into line with His established word. Sometimes His actions were verbal, while other times He allowed or caused serious problems to overtake the guilty nations.

The one time when He went far beyond chastening was during the time leading up to Noah’s Flood when the behavior of humanity was so evil that there was no hope of bringing them back from the brink. His decision to destroy all humanity and animal life, safe pairs of clean animals and eight human souls resulted in a new start for mankind and a new opportunity to display a voluntary obedience to His word.

The Charges Against the Nations

In his perfect timing, His charges and His judgment will be issued against every nation, to prove their guilt or innocence. The question is: What criteria will be used, based on His Word, to charge against the nations, to determine their guilt or innocence? What will those nations, if determined to be guilty as charged,  be found guilty of?

God issues His decree for the expected behavior of the World toward the offspring of the man He chose to be the father of many nations, as well as the one from whom Messiah would come. In Genesis 12:1-3, God promised to bless anyone, whether an individual person or a nation that would bless Abraham; He also pronounced and guaranteed a terrible sentence upon persons or nations that disrespected or cursed Abraham.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word “bless” as (1), to speak well of, (2) to confer prosperity or happiness upon. Speaking well of a person would be tantamount to respecting that person, while conferring prosperity upon would refer to aiding  and assisting that person in times of difficulty and trouble. I believe this is what God meant when He pronounced that policy regarding Abraham and his offspring to the World.

I need to say this at this point: “God is NOT a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent…” (Numbers 23:19). God does NOT change: “For I am the Lord, I change not…” (Malachi 3:6). God Who is righteous, indeed Who IS righteousness, cannot lie, because there is no evil in Him, and when He utters His word, He will not change it. His very existence, His majesty and His Righteousness is based on His Unchangeability.

When He spoke the words to Abraham, recorded in Genesis 12:1-3, they became Law and are eternal in nature and will not ever change, just as He will not ever change. They are as active and alive today as they were when He spoke them to Abraham. No matter who the individual, or the nation, that speaks evil of the Jewish people and curses them, they will all will face the judgment and wrath of Almighty God and He will carry out the sentence He has decreed upon such people and nations.

The judgment of individuals who have been found guilty in a court of law provides the benefit of cleansing society of evil people. In the same manner when Jesus returns and sets foot on the Earth again and judges the nations from His throne in Jerusalem, His judgment will provide the benefit of cleansing the Earth of all evil prior to The Lord’s Millennial Reign. Then He and Hos saints will all have a more pure environment to begin the work of restoring the ravaged Earth.

At this point in time, we are about to witness another move by God that will eliminate all evil from the world and provide a safe, peaceful and perfect environment for 1000 years on the earth.

If you live in a nation that has offended God with sin, disobedience and/or apostasy, now would be a good time to begin praying for God to bring a revival of the Church and a time of repentance of the people before God’s judgment OF the nations becomes His punishment ON the nations.

Once that judgment begins, it will be too late for repentance.

The judgment on the final nations of the world will be covered in the next article, “The Coming Separation Between Sheep Nations and Goat Nations”.

God chose one man, Abram, later named Abraham, to be the one through whom God’s only begotten Son would descend. Abraham was selected, set apart from every other man on Earth, and given the great responsibility of showing forth God’s love, mercy and grace to the entire race of man. Along with that responsibility came great and marvelous blessings. God promised that Abram would be “a great nation”, that “his name would be great” and that he would “be a blessing”, and He decreed that he would be a blessing to all nations (Genesis 12:2). Further, God declared that he would be the “Father of many nations” (Genesis 17:4),

The choice of Abraham was God’s, and His alone. For those who might question why God chose that particular man, you will need to discuss this with the Almighty. Personally, I have learned to accept, by faith, that which I find in God’s word that cannot be explained apart from faith.

It must be remembered that God is the ultimate planner and His plans are always perfect. His plan to introduce a savior, a man who would offer Himself as a sacrifice to redeem all mankind back to God, was made before He even created Adam (before the foundation of the world). In His perfect foreknowledge, He knew Abraham and for whatever reason, he was the man chosen to be the father of the people through whom the RIGHTEOUS man, Jesus, the Messiah, God’s only begotten Son, would come. In Genesis 18:19, we read, “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him”.

The lineage of Abraham, through his son Isaac, and thence through his grandson Jacob, was to remain pure and undefiled, separated from, and undefiled by, the other tribes of the world, which defilement would have made it easier for Satan to introduce false gods to them. The Israelites, the whole of the Jewish people, were to be the example of God’s love, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness to the entire Gentile world through their obedience to God.

Abraham, his children and all their descendants were to keep themselves free from idolatry and were to be totally dedicated to the God Who selected him from a world of fallen human beings who increasingly knew less and less of the God who created the universe. Because mankind was created to be worshippers of God, but were separated from Him by disobedience, people still wanted and needed something to worship, and therefore idolatry was rampant, and every nation, tribe and kingdom had its own plethora of idols and false gods.

Moses, the writer of the first five books of the Bible, recorded God’s commands and demands to the Israelites after He brought them out of Egyptian bondage.  In the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, He lists all the blessings that would “come on them” if they were obedient to the voice of God. In return for meeting His expectations, great and wonderful blessings were promised to the Jewish people. From verse 3-14, twelve verses in all, the blessings are detailed.

However, in verses 16-68, God then lists all the curses that would overtake them if they were disobedient, a total of fifty-three verses of cursing.

I suggest you read both the blessings and the cursings that God had decreed.

In return for meeting His expectations, great and wonderful blessings, including eternal life with Him in an unimaginable paradise, are provided, not only to the Jewish people, but  to all those Gentiles who accept God’s redemption through Jesus Christ and remain obedient to God’s word.

Throughout the Bible, you can read accounts of God dealing with men as both individuals and nations/kingdoms. He has clearly spelled out what He requires of all of us, and it basically involves obedience to His word.

God Creates the Nations

There are currently 195 individual nations in the World, with 193 being members of the United Nations and two that have “non-member observer status”. Some of these nations are young with only a short historical resume, while others have been in existence for thousands of years.

I recommend you read Genesis chapters 9-11 and see where the sons of Noah and their offspring were settled after the great Flood of Noah.  It will provide a great education on the beginnings of many of the earliest nations on Earth and especially the nations that became the worst persecutors of Israel.

Many of the nations were created as a result, either directly or indirectly, of decisions made by Almighty God, one of the greatest of which was the “dividing” of the peoples of the Earth who, up to that point, all spoke the same language and were a part of the kingdom of Nimrod who built the Tower of Babel.

When God saw the intent of Nimrod, who was a distinctly wicked person, He came down to Earth to see what man was doing and, as a result, he stopped Nimrod’s and all his people’s attempts to build a tower that would reach to the heavens and “make a name for themselves”. That desire to rise above all else and be like God sounds as though Satan had a hand in Nimrod’s work, eh?

God scattered all the peoples of Nimrod’s kingdom by confusing their language so that there was no longer one common language; the peoples who could understand each other separated from the ones they could NOT understand and traveled great distances to settle themselves in remote areas.

At some point after the flood, in the time of Peleg (Genesis 10:25), the land mass of Earth was separated into the various continents we see now. Looking at a map of the earth, or a world globe, it can easily be seen that the eastern outline of North and South America seems to fit perfectly with the western outline of Europe and Africa. Likewise, the outline of the Asian continent seem to fit together with Australia and the various Indian Ocean and South Pacific island chains.

Whether this separation of Earth’s land masses was instantaneous or occurred over a period of years, no one knows for certain, but so many want to try to explain such occurrences from their limited knowledge or as a “natural” geological occurrence, without ever considering that God told Job that God and He alone, had the wisdom and knowledge to lay the foundations of the Earth and measure its vastness. A God Who has such wisdom should never be put into a box by man and limited by the weakness and ignorance of man. He can do exactly as He pleases with the Earth because it all belongs to Him (Psalm 24:1-2).

The separated land masses were the plan of God to cause mankind to spread out over the Earth’s surface to replenish and cover the whole earth. As such, people groups were gathered together and separated from other peoples by their various languages.

The Jews and the Gentiles

Throughout history since the Flood of Noah, the descendants of Abraham, who sprang from Shem, the middle son of Noah, had been the focus of God’s work on Earth, up to the time of the rejection of Jesus as Messiah. Their rejection of God’s Son brought judgment and punishment in the form of themselves being ignored by God until the time of Daniel’s 70th week when God will, once again, deal with them as His disobedient children.

The Jewish people, the offspring of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were given a huge responsibility, that of taking the message of God’s love, His goodness, His compassion and His faithfulness, and His plan of redemption to the entire Gentile world.

All the nations of the world were to be offered God’s redemption plan that would eventually come through Abraham’s offspring. Through the centuries after God chose Abraham, the chosen Jewish prophets, along with other various Jewish individuals, were the ones most often sent to deliver God’s offer. Their responsibility was to live as examples of God’s love, and remain pure, holy, and separated from idolatry. Had they remained obedient to God’s word and commands to do so, their blessings would have been limitless.

The responsibility of the lost nations was to hear God’s word, receive it with joy and gladness and respect the Jews through whom it was delivered.

But, all too often, the Jewish people failed through their pride and arrogance and disobedience, wandering off after false gods. When those times occurred, God’s judgement was pronounced, and often, one or more of the Gentile nations were chosen by God to be the means of His judgment and punishment of the Jewish people. During these times, the Gentiles were to be obedient to God as His servants in bringing the Jews back into His fold.

There are biblical accounts of peoples and nations that received God’s message and responded with repentance and mourning; the story of Jonah being sent to Nineveh in Assyria was one such account.

However, all too often, the intended recipients of God’s mercy became more hostile toward the Jews and not only disrespected them, but captured them, enslaved them, and killed them.

It is true that God has used many nations to punish the Jews when they were disobedient and had strayed from His plan for them. God delivered them into the hands of their enemies, just as He said He would do in the list of the “cursings” that would befall them if they rebelled and disobeyed His voice. Even though God allowed the enemy nations to punish the Jews, usually by taking them into captivity, He was very displeased when those nations overstepped their bounds and carried His punishment too far.

Nations of Sheep – Nations of Goats

Even though we read of the separation of the sheep and goat nations in Matthew 25, when Jesus was answering the questions of His disciples concerning the signs of the end of the age, the actual time of that judgement occurs after the Tribulation Period, the 70th week of Daniel’s prophecy, or the final week of the 70 weeks of years (490 years). The seven years long Tribulation Period will be the final time period in this age for God to deal directly with the Jewish people, bring His final judgment on the offspring of Abraham and then confront all the nations of the World. The majority of the decisions made by the nations in their treatment of the Jews, determining which nations will be the sheep and which will be the goats were made long before the end of this age, but many are still occurring now.

The Judgment of the Nations, also called the Sheep and Goat Judgment, is the judgment of every nation on Earth which will be brought before King Jesus on His throne during the time between the end of the Tribulation Period and the beginning of Jesus’ Millennial Reign; He will place the sheep nations on His right hand and the goat nations on His left hand. But what will be the criteria Jesus uses to delineate between the sheep and the goats?

In Matthew 25, Jesus explains to His disciples, the sheep nations will go into the Millennial Reign with Him: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:  Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me” (Matthew 25:35-36).

When questioned by them as to when they did the deeds that Jesus said, He explained to them: “…. Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40).

In like manner, He said to the goat nations, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not (Matthew 25:42-43). And when they questioned them about their failure to do those deeds, Jesus answered, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me (Matthew 25:45).

Matthew 25 ends with this verse: “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal”.

“For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9).

When Jesus calls all the nations of Earth to appear before His throne and separates them into sheep and goat nations, the “trial” is already over, the decisions of judgment have been made by the Righteous judge and all that awaits is the announcement of the punishment to be given. The decision of which nations are sheep and which are goats does NOT occur mere minutes before Jesus calls those nations to appear before His throne. The records that God has always kept since He created man are flawless and complete; He misses nothing. The deeds done throughout history concerning the treatment of the Jewish people by the nations of the World are the basis of the Sheep and Goat Nation judgment. The decisions made by them in their dealings with the Jews, the Nation of Israel, has already determined their place before the throne of King Jesus, and His decision on their fate is one from which there is NO APPEAL; it will be final and eternal.

Blessings and Maranatha!

©2023. Bud Hancock. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Belief in God Reaches All-Time Low Among Americans

Gallup Polls Show Increase in Unbelief and Uncertainty, and It’s Not Surprising thumbnail

Gallup Polls Show Increase in Unbelief and Uncertainty, and It’s Not Surprising

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By Family Research Council

Since 2001, Gallup News has polled Americans on their belief in five prominent “religious entities” — God, angels, heaven, hell, and the devil. After their fifth poll, which took place in May of this year, Americans seem to be straying further from belief in religious entities, and thus, closer to uncertainty or even complete unbelief.

According to the poll, “74% believe in God, 69% angels, 67% heaven, 59% hell, [and] 58% the devil.” When comparing these results with the initial survey conducted in 2001, Gallup concluded that “belief in God and heaven is down the most (16 points each), while belief in hell has fallen 12 points, and the devil and angels are down 10 points each.” In addition to this information, a 2023 study done by George Barna at the Cultural Research Center of Arizona Christian University found that only 4% of Americans hold a biblical worldview, which has only recently dropped from the previous 6%.

Clearly, we are living in a time of depravity. Not in the sense of how humans are depraved on account of the fall in Genesis 3, but in the sense that Americans are deprived of truth while constantly being fed lies. Whether viewing these statistics from a biblical or secular worldview, the results shouldn’t be surprising.

From a biblical worldview, Christians see the enemy at work in the LGBT agenda, abortion industry, war on (biological) women, indoctrination of children, and many other aspects of society. In a short amount of time, these narratives crept their way to the surface of politics, education, and everyday life. Corrupt ideology is rampant among us, and it is difficult to escape from its gaping jaws without Scripture’s guidance.

But even from a secular worldview, the leftist agenda has been so loud that even those who were once neutral are now being swayed to adopt a distaste for religion. Again, not so surprising. Imagine straddling the fence of societal opinions when an army of “my truthers” come shouting their beliefs directly at you. The mere amplitude of their cries is enough to shove the indifferent onto the side of “inclusivity” and “acceptance,” even if solely out of fear of being hated or rejected.

“My body, my choice,” they scream.

“Gender and sexuality are subjective,” they proclaim.

“If you aren’t for us, then you’re against us and worthy of being canceled,” they threaten.

The list goes on for how these people tantalize those who disagree with them. They use the same tactics on the ones they see as vulnerable prey, just waiting to seize them with the bonds of worldly manipulation coordinated by Satan and his demons. To exasperate the matter, a sense of purposelessness plagues the unbeliever and often tempts the one who does believe. The 2023 Gallup poll only affirms this notion.

Regardless of what worldview one holds, it remains true that no human being enjoys feeling like they have no purpose. And yet, this is a common conundrum. If one does not find their purpose in Christ, Ecclesiastes makes it clear that all is vanity. For the one without God, purpose is impossible to find. So, when we see these statistics that say more Americans are committing to unbelief, or are trapped in uncertainty on what to believe, it is reasonable to attribute much of it to this desire of having purpose.

A biblical worldview comes with an agreed-upon objective of purpose found in Christ. Of course, the secular worldview has no objective truth, but rather a stream of various definitions of what purpose entails. David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, put it this way: “A fragmented worldview leads to confusion.” And this confusion is only becoming more prominent. As a result, we can expect the numbers of those who believe in spiritual entities to continue dropping as the heritage of biblical worldview becomes increasingly forgotten.

When discussing how Christians can respond to this reality, Closson noted two major obligations: to remember we live in a post-Christian world and to not take basic Christian doctrine for granted. “Even a lot of Christians probably don’t do well on these polls,” he said. “Why is that? Because people are not reading their Bibles and pastors are not giving theologically [rich] sermons.”

As Closson phrased it, Christians need to “re-double efforts in New Testament discipleship 101,” which he concluded is to preach the word, study the Bible, engage in Christian fellowship, and strive to strengthen our faith in and out of the church walls. Ultimately, if Christians don’t do what we know we are called to do according to Scripture, no one else will.

It is unlikely this poll will be the last of its kind conducted by Gallup. And it is likely the numbers will continue to fall. But rather than allowing it to serve as a hindrance to the Christian calling, may it fuel our hearts to good works, bold faith, and godly witness.

Christ’s church is being built as we speak — don’t you dare pull back now.

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Winston Churchill and Islam—Part Five thumbnail

Winston Churchill and Islam—Part Five

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By Jihad Watch

“The extraordinary credulity of the people is hardly conceivable. Had the Mad Mullah called on them to follow him to attack Malakand and Chakdara they would have refused. Instead he worked miracles. He sat at his house, and all who came to visit him, brought him a small offering of food or money, in return for which he gave them a little rice. As his stores were continually replenished, he might claim to have fed thousands. He asserted that he was invisible at night. Looking into his room, they saw no one. At these things they marvelled. Finally he declared he would destroy the infidel. He wanted no help. No one should share the honours. The heavens would open and an army would descend. The more he protested he did not want them, the more exceedingly they came. Incidentally he mentioned that they would be invulnerable; other agents added arguments. I was shown a captured scroll, upon which the tomb of the Ghazi — he who has killed an infidel — is depicted in heaven, no fewer than seven degrees above the Caaba [Ka’aba, in Mecca] itself. Even after the fighting — when the tribesmen reeled back from the terrible army they had assailed, leaving a quarter of their number on the field — the faith of the survivors was unshaken. Only those who had doubted had perished, said the Mullah, and displayed a bruise which was, he informed them, the sole effect of a twelve-pound shrapnel shell on his sacred person.

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact. The rumours and reports which reached the Malakand of the agitation in Upper Swat and among the surrounding tribes were fully appreciated by the Pathan Sepoys[1] of the garrison. As July advanced, several commanding officers were warned by their men, that great events were impending. Major Deane, the political agent, watched with great anxiety the daily progress of the fanatical movement. No one desires to be thought an alarmist, least of all on the frontier where there is always danger. At length, however, he felt compelled to officially report the disquieting signs. Warnings were then issued to the officers in charge of the various posts, and the troops were practised in taking up alarm stations. By the 23rd of July all had been informed that the aspect of affairs was threatening, and ordered to observe every precaution. But to the last everybody doubted that there would be a rising, nor did any one imagine that even should one occur, it would lead to more than a skirmish. The natives were friendly and respectful. The valley smiled in fertile prosperity. It was not strange, that none could foresee the changes a week would bring, or guess that in a few days they would be fighting for their lives; that they would carry fire and sword through the peaceful landscape; that the polo ground would be the scene of a cavalry charge, or that the cheery barbarians among whom they had lived quietly for so many months would become maddened and ferocious savages….[2]

Thus the thrust of Churchill’s argument is that rationality and civilization are threatened by a wild religious fanaticism emanating from Islam. Thus on the one hand we had the British Empire, representing Civilization and Progress, and on the other, barbarism of the Muslim tribesmen, who were opposed to these forces. The Ghazis, “mad with fanaticism”[3], were sweeping down the valley exciting the credulous masses all manipulated by their religious class.

In a remarkable passage in The Story of the Malakand Field Force, Churchill reveals the depth of his reading by citing the Chinese pilgrim, Fa-hien[4], when he contrasts the degradation of early Christianity, which was “convulsed by the Arian controversy. That pure religion…was defiled with the blood of persecution and degraded by the fears of superstition” with the Buddhists who were “placid people, thriving, industrious and intelligent; devoting their lives to the attainment of that serene annihilation which the word nirvana expresses”.[5] Again, the enemy was religious fanaticism, whether in Medieval Christianity or modern-day Islam in late nineteenth century India.

AUTHOR

IBN WARRAQ

RELATED ARTICLES:

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

SOURCES:

[1] Sepoy: a word of Persian origin, sipahi meaning ‘soldier or horseman’. In early modern India sepoys belonged to infantry forces, riding on horses, and were serving under British or other European orders. Sepoys made up the vast majority of the British East India Company’s troops.

[2] MFF, pp.27-31.

[3] MFF, p.75.

[4] Now known as Faxian (法顯 [fà.ɕjɛ̀n]; 337 CE – c. 422 CE), also referred to as Fa-Hien, Fa-hsien and Sehi, was a Chinese Buddhist monk and translator who traveled by foot from China to India to acquire Buddhist texts. Starting his arduous journey about age 60, he visited sacred Buddhist sites in Central, South, and Southeast Asia between 399 and 412 CE, of which 10 years were spent in India.

See James Legge (1886, trans.), A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fâ-hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1886.

[5] MFF, p.93.

Winston Churchill and Islam—Part Six thumbnail

Winston Churchill and Islam—Part Six

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By Jihad Watch

“While the Mad Fakir was rousing Swat and Buner, this powerful priest incited the Mohmands”.[1] The Mohmand were also a Pashtun tribe, against whom the British had waged war on and off since 1851, but the main operations began between 1897–1898.

Though he was known to be a physical coward, his sanctity and the fact that he was their own particular holy man, not less than his eloquence, powerfully moved this savage tribe. A Jehad [Jihad] was proclaimed. How long should Islam be insulted? How long should its followers lurk in barren lands of the North? He urged them to rise and join in the destruction of the while invaders. Those who fell should become saints; those who lived would be rich, for these Kafirs [unbelievers, i.e. non-Muslims] had money and many other things besides, for which a true believer might find a use. The combined allurements of plunder and paradise proved irresistible.[2]

In his memoir, My Early Life, Churchill explains the military importance of the Malakand Pass:

For three years the British had held the summit of the Malakand Pass and thus had maintained the road from the Swat Valley and across the Swat River by many other valleys to Chitral. Chitral was then supposed to be of great military importance. It has always seemed to get along quite happily since, but no doubt it was very important then. The tribesmen of the Swat Valley, irritated by the presence of the troops in what they had for generations regarded as their own country, had suddenly burst out in a fury, attributed by the Government [of India] to religion, but easily explicable on quite ordinary grounds.[3]

The Government of India was correct that it was, at least partly, religion — Islam — that must be blamed. Islam demanded that once a land had passed into Muslim hands, it must forever remain Muslim. If invaded by non-Muslims, it must be at all costs be liberated in the name of Islam. 

Churchill rode out with Sir Bindon Blood’s Malakand Field Force on 5 September 1897. Blood’s force was made up of two brigades of British and Indian regiments, their aim was to tackle the unruly Mohmand tribes. Churchill, in his dispatch to The Daily Telegraph which was published on 7 October 1897, notes the courage of the Pashtuns, “Their swordsmanship, neglecting guards, concerns itself only with cuts and, careless of what injury they may receive, they devote themselves to the destruction of their opponents”. However, he is less charitable towards the mullahs, who were responsible for the instigating the violence in the first place, and is aghast by their habit of trading their women to buy their rifles, “Their religion [Islam] is the most miserable fanaticism, in which cruelty, credulity, and immorality are equally represented. Their holy men — the Mullahs — prize as their chief privilege a sort of droit de seigneur. It is impossible to imagine a lower type of beings or a more dreadful state of barbarism”.[4]

On 2 October 1897, Churchill wrote to his mother: “The danger & difficulty of attacking these active fierce hill men is extreme….It is a war without quarter. They kill and mutilate everyone they catch and we do not hesitate to finish their wounded off…”

In a dispatch to the Daily Telegraph that was published on 6 November 1897, Churchill said: “Civilisation is face to face with militant Mohammedanism [Islam].”[5] In another dispatch, published 9 November 1897, he stated: “Their intelligence only enables them to be more cruel, more dangerous, more destructive than the wild beasts. Their religion [Islam] — fanatic though they are — is only respected when it incites to bloodshed and murder.”

One incident must, however, be recorded. The line of march on the 22nd lay past the village Desemdullah or Bibot, in which the severe fighting of the night of the 16th had taken place. In company with several officers, I rode to look again at the ill-fated spot. It will be remembered that the bodies of Mohammedan native soldiers killed in the fighting had been buried there. The sight which was presented to our gaze was horrible and revolting. The remains had been disinterred and mutilated. Remembering that a morning journal is read to a large extent at the breakfast table, I do not intend to describe the condition in which these poor fragments of humanity were found.

I must, however, invite the reader to consider the degradation of mind and body which can alone inspire so foul an act. These tribesmen are among the most miserable and brutal creatures of the earth. Their intelligence only enables them to be more cruel, more dangerous, more destructive than the wild beasts. Their religion [Islam] — fanatic though they are — is only respected when it incites to bloodshed and murder. Their habits are filthy; their morals cannot be alluded to. With every feeling for respect for that wide sentiment of human sympathy which characterizes a Christian civilization, I find it impossible to come to any other conclusion than that, in proportion as these valleys are purged from the pernicious vermin that infest them, so will the happiness of humanity be increased, and the progress of mankind accelerated.”[6]

To be continued.

AUTHOR

IBN WARRAQ

RELATED ARTICLES:

Winston Churchill and Islam—Part Five

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

SOURCES:

[1] MFF, p.99.

[2]

[4] Ed. Frederick Woods, Young Winston’s Wars, The Original Despatches of Winston S. Churchill, London: Sphere Books, 1972, p. 42.

[5]   Ed. Frederick Woods, Young Winston’s Wars, The Original Despatches of Winston S. Churchill, p.67.

[6] Ed. Frederick Woods, Young Winston’s Wars, The Original Despatches of Winston S. Churchill, pp. 76-77.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL, The River War. An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan. Ed. Col. F. Rhodes, illustrated by Angus McNeill, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1899).

The unabridged edition in Two Volumes of the original version of 1899 (see above). Edited by James W. Muller, With a New Foreword by Churchill’s Daughter Mary Soames. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press in association with the International Churchill Society. 2020. Vol.1 pp.430. Vol.2 pp.844.

Contents of Volume 1: Foreword: Mary Soames; The Making of This Book; Abbreviations; Editor’s Introduction; New Bibliography; A Note on the Text; Half Title Page; By the Same Author; Frontispiece, Title Page; Inscription; Preface; List of Principal Works Consulted; Government Publications; Illustrations in the First Volume; Maps and Plans in the First Volume.

Contents of Volume 2: Half Title Page; Frontispiece; Title Page; Illustrations in the Second Volume; Maps and Plans in Second Volume; Epilogue: Churchill’s Introduction to the 1933 Edition; Appendices A, B, C, D, E. Appendices I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI. Index.

Other works by Churchill referred to in this survey are:

Winston S. Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898), referred to as MFF.

Winston S. Churchill, My African Journey (London: Hodder and Stroughton, 1908), referred to as MAJ. 

Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1930), referred to as MEL.

Ed. Frederick Woods, Young Winston’s Wars, The Original Despatches of Winston S. Churchill, London: Sphere Books, 1972.

Ed. David Lough, Foreword by Randolph Churchill, My Darling Winston, The Letters Between Winston Churchill and His Mother. London: Pegasus Books, 2018.

Other works referred to include:

Andrew Roberts. Churchill. Walking with Destiny. Penguin Books: Penguin Random House UK, 2019. Select Bibliography, Index; 1105 pages.

Andrew Roberts. Eminent Churchillians. Phoenix: London, 1995.

Con Coughlin, Churchill’s First War. Young Winston and the Fight Against the Taliban, London: Pan Macmillan, 2013.

Randolph S. Churchill, Official Biography: Vol. I: Winston S. Churchill: Youth 1874-1900 1966.

Sir Bindon Blood, Four Score Years and Ten. Sir Bindon Blood’s Reminiscences, London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd., 1933.

William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston-Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory, 1874-1932. New York: A Dell Trade paperback, 1983.

FARGO ‘AMBUSH’: Muslim Migrant Who Who Shot 4 Cops Was Planning a Jihad Massacre at Street Fair thumbnail

FARGO ‘AMBUSH’: Muslim Migrant Who Who Shot 4 Cops Was Planning a Jihad Massacre at Street Fair

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By The Geller Report

The story disappeared when it was revealed the mass murder was a Muslim.

Mohamed Barakat who shot and killed by a Fargo police officer Friday, was armed with explosives, guns, a homemade grenade and 1,800 rounds of ammunition.

He was a Syrian national who arrived in the U.S. on an asylum request.

Barakat searched online for area public events along with the terms “kill fast” and “mass shooting events” before he ambushed police responding to a car crash, firing nearly 40 rounds, killing one officer and seriously injuring two others and a civilian before he was killed.

Mohamed Barakat, the man shot and killed by a Fargo police officer Friday, was armed with explosives, guns, a homemade grenade and 1,800 rounds of ammunition.

Inside Barakat’s car, they found what Schneider described as an “absolute arsenal,” 1,800 rounds, multiple guns and a homemade hand grenade, along with gasoline containers and two propane tanks filled with explosive materials built in his home. The tanks were detonated by a bomb squad, and proved to be very powerful.

Attorney General Drew Wrigley just said if 37-year-old Mohamad Barakat was able to carry out his “murderous barrage” planned for the city of Fargo “there would not have been enough medical personnel in a three state area.”

Fargo Police officers were investigating routine traffic accident on 25th Street and 9th Avenue South when the suspect, 37-year-old Mohamed Barakat, started firing at officers. Three of the officers were shot, including Jake Wallin, Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes. Shots were also fired at firefighters responding to the crash and, fortunately, none of them were hit. Zibolski says a Fargo Fire truck was hit by gunfire during the shootout.

“In the wake of Mohamed Barakat’s murderous, unprovoked attack. Officer Zach Robinson’s use of deadly force was reasonable. It was necessary. It was justified and in all ways it was lawful,” said Wrigley. “To our knowledge at this point, they were legally purchased. We don’t have other information. The investigation continues on. He was not a prohibited person.”

Barakat was shot by Officer Zach Robinson shortly after Barakat opened fire on three other Fargo police officers along S. 25th St.

Three blocks from where Mohamad Barakat opened fire on police officers and firefighters sits the Islamic Society of Fargo-Moorhead

Nearby is the Somali Community Development group which offers English and citizenship classes and the Al Hamdi Restauranthttps://t.co/CSS8BJTjX0

— Daniel Greenfield – “Hang Together or Separately” (@Sultanknish) July 19, 2023

Gunman shot by police had apparent plans for a mass shooting in Fargo

KVRR: “He absolutely ambushed them from inside that vehicle,” said Wrigley. “They had no way to know. He had access to the many weapons in the vehicle, all of which were loaded. He jumped out and went around. You can also see in that vehicle, some of the other contents. We’re going to talk in detail on Friday. There were explosives in there. There were canisters of gasoline in there.”

Wrigley said Robinson was “the last man standing,” and that his actions stopped what apparently was going to be a mass shooting in Fargo.

“He was literally the last man standing. The last man standing between what was coming next and see what this assailant was armed for.” said Wrigley.

Wrigley says Robinson shot Barakat after ordering him at least 16 times, “hands up hands up, put down the gun.”

“He had no choice but to end the threat and he did,” Wrigley said.

“He also shows great restraint,” said Fargo Police Chief David Zibolski. “Each phase, he gave this individual, multiple, multiple opportunities to surrender. This suspect was dead set on committing to fire, harm and shoot people.”

Twenty-three-year-old Officer Jake Wallin died. Officers Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes were hospitalized in critical condition.

Twenty-five-year-old Karlee Koswick, who recently moved to Fargo from Massachusetts, was also shot. She was hospitalized in fair condition.

Wrigley and Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney both called Barakat’s actions an “ambush.”

Read more.

A comment on the news article below states: “I live in Fargo. From the press conference that was held today, it is becoming apparent that the shooter was on his way to downtown Fargo where a large street fair was being held. The street that the shooting occurred on is a main route to downtown Fargo which would be about 4 to 5 minutes away. It seems that as he was driving to his intended target, he encountered the traffic accident and decided to start his rampage there.”

Authorities remain baffled as to Mohamad Barakat’s motive, because they deny the reality of Islamic jihad altogether.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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

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Is Catholicism “Inadequate”?

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By The Catholic Thing

Robert Royal: Cardinal Mueller has confirmed that, while he ran the Vatican doctrinal office, there was a file on Victor Manuel Fernández, soon to take over Mueller’s former post, and, on the basis of Fernández’s view of recent Catholic history, it’s no wonder. 

There’s an old philosophical distinction about conditions that are necessary, but not sufficient to make something true. You might assert, for example, that the Church is a “field hospital,” and therefore it’s necessary for Her to have the intention of caring for the wounded and dying. But without necessary medical knowledge as well – and in this scenario full and accurate understanding of what the battle is all about, and how and why casualties are occurring – you won’t have an adequate course of treatment.

This distinction came to mind reading a recent interview with Archbishop (soon to be Cardinal and head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith ) Víctor Manuel Fernández, who was asked directly what he thought about St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis splendor, “The Splendor of Truth.” As anyone who follows Catholic matters will know, that encyclical sought with great sophistication and force to show how the truths delivered to us via both reason and revelation undergird human freedom and moral acts. No solid truth, no true human dignity.

Archbishop Fernández’s response bears careful attention on several fronts since he will now run the Vatican’s doctrinal office:

Veritatis splendor is a great document, powerfully solid. Obviously, it denotes a particular concern – to set certain limits. For this reason it is not the most adequate text to encourage the development of theology. In fact, over the last decades, tell me how many theologians can we name with the stature of Rahner, Ratzinger, Congar or Von Balthasar? Not even that which they call “liberation theology” has theologians at the level of Gustavo Gutiérrez. Something has gone wrong. [Emphasis added.]

Except for the initial perfunctory bow to a great recent pope and saint, the rest of his comment is so wrong, obviously and deeply wrong in ways that would be apparent to any theology student – indeed, any competent reader of the text – that it’s hard to believe that the pope appointed a man with such a skewed perspective.

To begin with, as indicated above, the main concern of Veritatis splendor (henceforth VS) is not to set limits – a legitimate function, by the way – but to show the necessity of the fullness of truth to several crucial human things. Toward that end, it lays down principles. Otherwise, like the incoherence of our currently dominant cultural materialism, the Church will just make claims about human freedom and dignity without any basis for them.

And even before you take the deep dive into the philosophical, theological, and moral principles of VS, Fernández’s view of the recent history of theology is, to be charitable, “inadequate.” Is it really owing to the inadequacies of VS that no great theologians have arisen in recent decades?

The implication is that the “limits” set by VS have somehow intimidated otherwise daring theological minds. But how so? Theology departments in Catholic colleges and universities are not exactly noted for slavish orthodoxy, peer pressures to take a strict papal line, or succumbing to alleged threats from Rome. Indeed, organizations such as the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) are reliable promoters of “welcoming” LGBT+ people, women’s ordination, and the kind of power-sharing sought by Catholic progressives.

If you find this hard to believe, look at the “convention theme” – Social Salvation – for the next CTSA convention (here), which among a few nods to some traditional concepts focuses more particularly on this:

At present, an effective challenge to the social sin of our time – be it in the form of racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, anthropocentrism, colonialism, and on and on – requires an account of social salvation in keeping with God’s concern for the social order of the world. In this sense, social salvation addresses the ongoing human endeavor to recognize and resist social sin, in other words, to subvert structural evil in the interest of the ascendancy and visibility of the good.

If you had the will and time to waste, you could easily confirm that Veritatis splendor, God’s Rottweiler (Benedict XVI), and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith did little to “limit” this sort of thing for the past half-century. Indeed, the official theological guild has limited itself by embracing the usual tired litany of secular nostrums.

Cardinal Mueller has confirmed that, while he ran the CDF, there was a file on Fernández himself. And on the basis of the Argentine’s view of recent Catholic history, it’s no wonder.

Truths like those of Veritatis splendor helped defeat real-life monsters like the former USSR.

That’s the past. What of the future?

When asked about his – and Pope Francis’s – approach to morality, Fernández asserted:

1) The absolute primacy of grace and charity in Catholic moral theology.

2) The inalienable dignity of each human person, and the consequences of that.

3) The preferential option for the poor, the last, and those abandoned by society.

4) The individualistic, hedonistic and egocentric approaches to life that make the option for marriage, family and the common good difficult.

But we would be off to a bad start if we separated morality from theology.

There’s good here, properly understood, that VS itself would affirm. But we know that a lot of heterodox and “heterodox-adjacent” positions have found their way into the Church’s public stances under the aegis of charity and human dignity. And enabled the destructive public Catholicism of figures like the Bidens and Pelosis of the world.

As we’ve also seen in the run-up to the Synod on Synodality, “pastoral” applications of charity and human dignity are often being used to correct the “inadequacies” of earlier Catholicism on LGBTs and the whole panoply of progressive concerns.

And this suggests that we’re going to hear a lot more in coming days about how previous formulations of faith and morals are not so much wrong (a harsh word) as “inadequate.” That theological “development” (misusing St. John Henry Newman) requires outright reversals. That the Faith of the Ages is not, today, sufficient for us.

You may also enjoy:

Fr. Gerald E. Murray’s Pope Francis Must Stop the Madness

Stephen P. White’s Whose Synod, Which Synodality?

AUTHOR

Robert Royal

Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. © 2023 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.

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Winston Churchill and Islam—Part Four

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By Jihad Watch

The Mad Mullah was born Saidullah Khan [sometimes also known as Sadullah, or Mastun Mullah (Ecstasy Mullah), or the Sartor Fakir or Faqir (the Bare-headed Saint)] in the village of Rega Buner in the Buner Valley and was a member of a branch of the Yousafzai tribe, another Pashtun tribe. He may have had links with the extremist Wahhabi sect, whose origins lie in Saudi Arabia. (Osama bin Laden [1957-2011], born in Riyadh, S. Arabia had been a Wahhabi also). This sect had acquired an impressive following among India’s Muslims, especially in North India, where they were known as Hindustani Fanatics (they were, of course, all Muslims despite the confusing title, which refers to India as Hindustan). They had played an important role in the Indian Mutiny of 1857; after its suppression, thousands of Hindustani Fanatics were executed. But the extent of the Mad Mullah’s links with the latter group is unclear, though his views did reflect their Wahhabi agenda.

Great and widespread as the preparations were, they were not visible to the watchful diplomatic agents who maintained the relations of the Government with the tribesmen….

So extraordinary is the inversion of ideas and motives among those people that it may be said that those who know them best, know them least, and the more logical the mind of the student the less he is able to understand of the subject. In any case among these able men who diligently collected information and observed the state of feeling, there were none who realised the latent forces that were being accumulated on all sides. The strange treachery at Maizar[1] in June was a flash in the pan. Still no one saw the danger. It was not until the early days of July that it was noticed that there was a fanatical movement in Upper Swat. Even then its significance was disregarded and its importance underrated. That a Mad Fakir had arrived was known. His power was still a secret. It did not long remain so.[2]

Churchill’s encounter with religious fanaticism was to prove crucial in his later assessment of Hitler; as Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts put it, “His writing about Islamic fundamentalism prepared him for the fanaticism of the Nazis”[3]. This conclusion is not at all as absurd as it may sound. For Islamic fanaticism shared many features- “its sheer implacability, contempt for Christianity, opposition to liberal Western values, addiction to violence, demand for total allegiance”[4]– with the political zealotry of the Nazis, something successive British Prime Ministers had never encountered, and thus were not intellectually or politically capable of recognizing its true nature in the 1930s. Churchill, on the other hand, had fought it in the 1890s, and knew its true character from early on.

Churchill observed:

It is, thank heaven, difficult if not impossible for the modern European to fully appreciate the force which fanaticism exercises among an ignorant, warlike and Oriental population. Several generations have elapsed since the nations of the West have drawn the sword in religious controversy, and the evil memories of the gloomy past have soon faded in the strong, clear light of Rationalism and human sympathy. Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men’s passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccination. But the Mahommedan religion [Islam] increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis — as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism [Islam]. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war [Islam] is face to face with that of peace [Christianity]. Luckily the religion of peace is usually the better armed.

AUTHOR

IBN WARRAQ

RELATED ARTICLES:

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

SOURCES:

[1] Maizar: where British officers and Indian sepoys, though initially well-received, were killed in a surprise attack by Swat valley tribesmen.

[2] MFF, pp..27-29.

[3] Roberts, Churchill, p.968.

[4] Roberts, Churchill, p.53.

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The MEK: Controversies and Allegations Surrounding Iranian Opposition Group

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By Amil Imani

In Iranian politics, few groups have sparked as much controversy and animosity as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and its leader, Maryam Rajavi. With claims of terrorism, human rights abuses, and allegations of collaboration with foreign powers, the MEK and the Rajavis have become a subject of intense scrutiny and contention both within Iran and on the international stage. MEK also began a multiyear, multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to remove itself from the terrorist list, including possible financial rewards to American political figures like Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Howard Dean, MG Paul E. Vallely, John Bolton, and others.

The MEK: An Overview of Controversial Figures

The MEK, founded in the 1960s as a militant leftist organization, played a significant role in the Iranian Revolution. However, its ideology and tactics evolved, leading to its designation as a terrorist group by several countries, including the United States, until 2012. The MEK’s association with violence and its history of attacking both Iranian and Western targets have contributed to widespread condemnation.

The Rajavi Couple: Leaders and Controversial Figures

After the deceased of Masoud Rajavi, the founder of the MEK, his wife, Maryam Rajavi, they presumed a leadership position within the organization. Their hold over the MEK and its political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has been criticized and controversial. Critics argue that the Rajavis maintain tight control over the group, stifling dissent and suppressing internal power struggles.

Many former high-ranking US officials – who represent the entire political spectrum – have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak in support of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) or MEK. Ironically, these heavy-weight politicians never talk about MEK’s violent and anti-American history, but they refer to them as ‘freedom fighters’ with “values just like us,” as democrats-in-waiting ready to serve as a vanguard of regime change in Iran. Why?

But the MEK, led by Maryam Rajavi, has collected some influential American friends. They played an important role in lobbying the Obama administration to take the MEK off its list of terrorist organizations last year. Now, they are focused on the Camp Liberty massacre. It’s not an issue that can be wished away; it is one that enemies of the nuclear negotiations can exploit.

Allegations of Human Rights Abuses and Terrorist Activities

One of the most contentious aspects of the MEK and the Rajavis’ legacy is the alleged involvement in human rights abuses and acts of terrorism. Former members and critics have accused the MEK of employing cult-like tactics, including forced marriages, isolation, and torture. Additionally, claims of the group’s involvement in assassinations and bombings have persisted, further tarnishing its reputation.

Controversial International Connections and Collaborations

The MEK has garnered attention for its alleged collaborations with foreign entities, particularly the United States. While the U.S. officially removed the MEK from its list of designated terrorist organizations, critics argue that America’s association with it raises concerns about double standards in counterterrorism efforts. Claims of U.S. support for the MEK as a potential replacement for the Iranian government after Khamenei’s tenure add fuel to the fire, heightening tensions within Iran.

Public Perception in Iran

The MEK is almost universally denounced by Iranians worldwide and is still regarded as a terrorist group. After aiding the Islamic Revolution in 1979, bloody street battles occurred against Iran’s eventual leadership. As a result, the MEK waged war against Iranians. The group took refuge in Ashraf, Iraq, where they aided Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam Hussein employed this special brigade in his deadly operations against Kurds and in repressing the Iraqi Shia.

The MEK and the Rajavis’ controversial legacy continues to divide opinions and generate intense debate. Accusations of terrorism, human rights abuses, and collaboration with foreign powers have contributed to their negative image, particularly within Iran. After Khamenei’s departure, the alleged aspirations of installing the MEK added further complexity to an already contentious situation. As the MEK’s influence and international connections persist, the controversy surrounding the group will likely endure, shaping Iran’s domestic politics and relations with the international community.

Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is known for its cultish Foreign Terrorist Organizations represent a critical threat to Iran’s indigenous democratic movement. Unlike Iran’s democratic opposition, which advances through nonviolence the principles of democracy and human rights, the MEK is an undemocratic organization that pursues its agenda through violence.

The Western world must realize that this group has almost zero popularity in Iran and stop wasting their money to propagate a cultish group that will never have a chance to be involved in Iranian politics.

©2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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Winston Churchill and Islam—Part Three

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By Jihad Watch

In the evenings one can imagine them recounting tales of the former glory days of Islam, continues Churchill,

[when] the Mullah will raise his voice and remind them of other days when the sons of the prophet drove the infidel from the plains of India, and ruled at Delhi, as wide an Empire as the Kafir holds to-day: when the true religion strode proudly through the earth and scorned to lie hidden and neglected among the hills: when mighty princes ruled in Bagdad, and all men knew that there was one God, and Mahomet was His prophet. And the young men hearing these things will grip their Martinis[1], and pray to Allah, that one day He will bring some Sahib—best prize of all—across their line of sight at seven hundred yards so that, at least, they may strike a blow for insulted and threatened Islam.[2]

Though Churchill admires the courage of the Ghazi[3], he abhors their “wild fanaticism”.[4]

Britain had put in place the Forward Policy, which reflected British concerns about the security of India against possible incursions by Russia, and was identified with a desire for influence on and control of strategic cities, and for the annexation of states and territories on the Indian border. Churchill explains the strategic importance of the town of Chitral.

During the two years that the British flag had floated over Chakdara and the Malakand the trade of the Swat Valley had nearly doubled. As the sun of civilisation rose above the hills, the fair flowers of commerce unfolded, and the streams of supply and demand, hitherto congealed by the frost of barbarism, were thawed….[5]

But a single class had viewed with quick intelligence and intense hostility the approach of the British power. The priesthood of the Afghan border instantly recognised the full meaning of the Chitral road. The cause of their antagonism is not hard to discern. Contact with civilisation assails the ignorance, and credulity, on which the wealth and influence of the Mullah depend. A general combination of the religious forces of India against that civilising, educating rule, which unconsciously saps the strength of superstition, is one of the dangers of the future. Here Mahommedanism [Islam] was threatened and resisted. A vast, but silent agitation was begun. Messengers passed to and fro among the tribes. Whispers of war, a holy war, were breathed to a race intensely passionate and fanatical. Vast and mysterious agencies, the force of which is incomprehensible to rational minds, were employed. More astute brains than the wild valleys of the North produce conducted the preparations. Secret encouragement came from the South—from India itself. Actual support and assistance was given from Cabul.

In that strange half light of ignorance and superstition, assailed by supernatural terrors and doubts, and lured by hopes of celestial glory, the tribes were taught to expect prodigious events. Something was coming. A great day for their race and faith was at hand. Presently the moment would arrive. They must watch and be ready. The mountains became as full of explosives as a magazine. Yet the spark was lacking.

At length the time came. A strange combination of circumstances operated to improve the opportunity. The victory of the Turks over the Greeks; the circulation of the Amir’s book on ‘Jehad [Jihad]’; his assumption of the position of a Caliph of Islam, and much indiscreet writing in the Anglo-Indian press, [Articles in Anglo-Indian papers on such subjects as The Recrudescence of Mahommedanism [Islam] produce more effect on the educated native mind than the most seditious frothings of the vernacular press] united to produce a ‘boom’ in Mahommedanism [Islam]].

The moment was propitious; nor was the man wanting. What Peter the Hermit was to the regular bishops and cardinals of the Church, the Mad Mullah was to the ordinary priesthood of the Afghan border. A wild enthusiast, convinced alike of his Divine mission and miraculous powers, preached a crusade, or Jehad [Jihad], against the infidel. The mine was fired. The flame ran along the ground. The explosions burst forth in all directions. The reverberations have not yet died away.[6]

AUTHOR

IBN WARRAQ

RELATED ARTICLES:

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

SOURCES:

[1] That is of course a reference to the rifle and not the cocktail: “The Martini–Henry is a breech-loading single-shot rifle with a lever action that was used by the British Army. It first entered service in 1871, eventually replacing the Snider–Enfield, a muzzle-loader converted to the cartridge system. Martini–Henry variants were used throughout the British Empire for 47 years.”

[2] MFF, p.8.

[3] The Ghazi was someone who has taken part in military expeditions to rid the land of infidels.

[4] MFF, p.9.

[5] MFF, p.27.

[6] MFF, pp.27-28

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THE ISLAMIZATION OF NORTH DAKOTA: The Islamic Attack in Fargo Shows the Impact of Refugee Settlement

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By Jihad Watch

Three blocks from where Mohamad Barakat opened fire on police officers and firefighters, the Islamic Society of Fargo-Moorhead squats across from a school bus company. Nearby are other elements of the new enclave like the Somali Community Development group which offers English and citizenship classes and the Al Hamdi Restaurant from whose vicinity an eyewitness reported hearing the shots that took the life of one police officer and wounded two others.

Officially authorities claim to be baffled by Mohamad’s decision to open fire on cops and firefighters, but the decision by the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the bomb squad to search Mohamad’s apartment suggests that they privately have an explosive motive in mind.

“The first thing we always want to know in a situation like this is, ‘Why?” Why would somebody do this?’” Chief David Zibolski wondered. Perhaps he should ask in Fargo’s own Little Mogadishu and inquire of the politicians who turned Fargo into a refugee camp.

If Mohamad acted in the name of Islam, it would not be the first terror attack from Fargo.

In 2016, Dahir Adan, a Somali refugee who penetrated the country along with a massive family that was tragically resettled in Fargo, went on a stabbing spree in a St. Cloud, MN mall. The Somali refugee had gone around the mall shouting “Allahu Akbar” dedicating the violence to his Islamic deity, and demanding to know if potential targets were Muslims before stabbing them.

ISIS claimed credit for the attack after Adam, like Mohamad, was fatally shot and killed, but not until after he stabbed 10 Americans. Fargo Muslims however quickly rushed to play the victim.

“Somali mall workers are afraid to go to their jobs today. I was even afraid to use public restrooms,” Hukun Abdullahi, a local nonprofit leader, had claimed.

Moorhead Mayor Del Rae Williams admitted that her biggest concern from the Muslim terrorist attack was that, “the more we make, you know, these kind of things an issue, the more people are abusive to (refugees) publicly.”

Police Chief David Todd denied, “I don’t have any indication that radicalization is occurring here in Fargo.” Seven years later, Officer Jake Wallin, who had survived Afghanistan and Iraq, was murdered by a Muslim attacker in Fargo. There’s never any indication until someone dies.

The violent attacks by Mohamad Barakat and Dahir Adan may surprise people who still think of Fargo, North Dakota as quintessentially American. Refugee resettlement has changed that.

8% of Fargo is foreign born. Much of that population comes from the Middle East and Islamic areas in Africa like Sudan and Somalia. Even much of the European refugee contingent is Bosnian. The massive influx of refugee resettlement allowed local politicians to boast that Fargo was growing much faster than the rest of the state or the country.

Fargo’s population shot up from 74,000 in 1990 to 90,000 in 2000 to 128,000 today. Somalis flooded Fargo, as did Iraqis, Bosnians and Bangladeshis. Amid the pure snows rose mosques, ethnic welfare nonprofits, Halal markets and other outposts of the new population.

By 2000, six hundred Somali families occupied Fargo, by 2004, Somalis outnumbered Hispanics in the Fargo public school system. Refugee resettlement, led by Lutheran Social Services, continued bombarding the state with foreign migrants, 70% of them embedded into the Fargo area.

“Millennials who are increasingly working in these jobs like to have a multicultural area that has differences in people,” Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney contended. “We really need a diverse population to be more like a normal American city.”

When Fargo City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn had warned that millions of taxpayer dollars were being spent on refugee resettlement and that the area was becoming more dangerous, Somalis launched a recall campaign. Piepkorn has since been stripped of Deputy Mayor status.

Little wonder that few elected officials have had the courage to speak out against what is being done to Fargo and North Dakota.

Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, its coffers swollen by dumping migrants from Islamic terror states on the area, suddenly faced a dieback under the Trump administration. The organization filed for bankruptcy and shut down in 2021, but rather than offering any relief, things actually got worse for Fargo and North Dakota.

Under Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, the former head of Lutheran Social Services, became the Executive Policy Director at the state’s Department of Human Services. Burgum, who is now running for president, announced that the state would take over refugee resettlement from Lutheran Social Services. Burgum had previously turned down an offer from the Trump administration to allow governors to end the practice of refugee dumping.

While Gov. Burgum claimed that the state would handle the invasion more responsibly than Lutheran Social Services had, bringing in the head of LSS put the lie to any such notion. Gov. Burgum had proclaimed that April would be Arab American Heritage Month, not to honor the Christian Lebanese, actual refugees who had first fled Islamic terror to move to North Dakota, but those Muslims who “built the first mosque in the United States of America.”

By 2022, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service North Dakota had taken over for the LSS and 78 Afghans, along with Syrians, Somalis and Iraqis were being resettled in the state.

That same year Rep. Hamida Dakane, who wears a hijab, became the first Somali legislator in the state House of Representatives from a district in Fargo. Dakane had found fame after an alleged vandalism incident at the Moorhead Fargo Islamic Center, holding up a “Hate Has No Home in Moorhead” sign as representatives of “Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian and Satanism” movements gathered to help. Then she joined Fargo’s Human Rights Commission.

“I am not representing a Muslim state,” Dakane, who entered this country on a student visa, noted. “There is a lot of things in Islam that doesn’t align with Democrats, but that doesn’t apply to the community.”

Mohamad Barakat may have had less patience waiting for North Dakota to become Islamic.

Fargo is slowly getting there. Somali restaurants, halal markets and ethnic associations are dotting the map. Especially around the area where Mohamad Barkat murdered a police officer. School districts are spending a fortune dealing with non-English speakers, primarily Somalis and Kurds, and a great deal of money goes to subsidize Headstart and food stamps.

Gangs proliferate trafficking in drugs and prostitution. And worse crimes appear and disappear.

Omar Mohamed Kalmio, a Somali refugee who shot and killed his American Sioux girlfriend, her mother, brother and another family member in nearby Minot, is still fighting his life sentence. Kalmio should have been in ICE custody after he and a group of Somalis had previously stabbed a man in the back with a knife.

In Grand Forks, Hawo Osman Ahmed, had allegedly threatened women with a knife. “Come over here I’m going to cut you,” she had warned, “I’m going to slice your neck.”

“I feel like I’m a Muslim woman who’s being attacked because I am a Muslim woman living in Grand Forks,” she later complained.

Authorities generally steer clear of such cases if they know what’s good for them. The prosecution of a sex trafficking ring by the Somali Outlaws gang across the country which allegedly involved girls as young as twelve was shut down by federal authorities, advocates and political pressure amid claims of racism, Islamophobia and cultural differences .

“We are heartbroken by this tragic loss,” Gov. Burgum said in response to the Somali act of violence that killed one police officer and wounded two others. “We also pray for the full recovery of the officers and civilian who were wounded in this horrible incident.”

‘Horrible incidents’ like these could be averted by ending refugee resettlement.

Gov. Burgum refused to end refugee resettlement when he had the opportunity to do so. The blood of the victims of refugee resettlement are on the hands of those who enable it.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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

Winston Churchill and Islam—Part Two thumbnail

Winston Churchill and Islam—Part Two

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By Jihad Watch

Churchill biographer Con Coughlin also describes their character in unflattering terms: “The Pashtuns invariably used violence to resolve their differences, which led to feuds between families lasting for generations. The Pashtun language even contains a specific word to define revenge between cousins. In many respects these frontiersmen were warriors in the Homeric sense, enjoying fighting for its own sake, often internecine, for the blood feud was central to their way of life. They took offence easily, were jealous of their personal honour and savagely cruel to any opponent no longer able to defend himself. They tortured, mutilated and killed without compunction.”[1] The modern-day “Taliban remains predominantly a Pashtun movement.”[2]

Churchill came to the same conclusion. Churchill begins his 1898 book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War, by giving us the physical and anthropological context of the expedition:

Every tribesman has a blood feud with his neighbor. Every man’s hand is against the other, and all against the stranger….Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence. The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherent in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigour. That religion [Islam], which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword—the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men—stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism. The love of plunder, always a characteristic of hill tribes, is fostered by the spectacle of opulence and luxury which, to their eyes, the cities and plains of the south display. A code of honour not less punctilious than that of old Spain, is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica.[3]

Churchill notes the Pathans’ (Pashtuns’) contradictory character, and, despite their chivalry, they treat their women as objects to be bought sold, or bartered.

We see them in their squalid, loopholed hovels, amid dirt and ignorance, as degraded a race as any on the fringe of humanity: fierce as the tiger, but less cleanly; as dangerous, not so graceful. Those simple family virtues, which idealists usually ascribe to primitive peoples, are conspicuously absent. Their wives and their womenkind generally, have no position but that of animals. They are freely bought and sold, and are not infrequently bartered for rifles. Truth is unknown among them. A single typical incident displays the standpoint from which they regard an oath. In any dispute about a field boundary, it is customary for both claimants to walk round the boundary he claims, with a Koran in his hand, swearing that all the time he is walking on his own land. To meet the difficulty of a false oath, while he is walking over his neighbor’s land, he puts a little dust from his own field into his shoes. As both sides are acquainted with the trick, the dismal farce of swearing is usually soon abandoned, in favor of an appeal to force.[4]

All are held in the grip of miserable superstition. The power of the ziarat, or sacred tomb, is wonderful. Sick children are carried on the backs of buffaloes, sometimes sixty or seventy miles, to be deposited in front of such a shrine, after which they are carried back—if they survive the journey—in the same way. It is painful even to think of what the wretched child suffers in being thus jolted over the cattle tracks. But the tribesmen consider the treatment much more efficacious than any infidel prescription. To go to a ziarat and put a stick in the ground is sufficient to ensure the fulfillment of a wish. To sit swinging a stone or coloured glass ball, suspended by a string from a tree, and tied there by some fakir, is a sure method of securing a fine male heir. To make a cow give good milk, a little should be plastered on some favorite stone near the tomb of a holy man. These are but a few instances; but they may suffice to reveal a state of mental development at which civilization hardly knows whether to laugh or weep.”[5]

Thus they are all held in the grip of superstition, which leaves them open to chicaneries of their mullahs, the religious class:

Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous priesthood ‘Mullahs,’ ‘Sahibzadas,’ ‘Akhundzadas,’ ‘Fakirs,’—and a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms, [precursers of modern-day Taliban] who correspond with the theological students in Turkey, and live free at the expense of the people. More than this, they enjoy a sort of droit du seigneur, and no man’s wife or daughter is safe from them. Of some of their manners and morals it is impossible to write. As Macaulay has said of Wycherley’s plays, ‘they are protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters.’ They are ‘safe, because they are too filthy to handle, and too noisome even to approach.’[6]

AUTHOR

IBN WARRAQ

NOTE: Read Winston Churchill and Islam—Part One

[1] Con Coughlin, Churchill’s First War, p.127.

[2] Con Coughlin, Churchill’s First War, p.128.

[3] MFF, pp.3-4.

[4] MFF, Chapter 1, p.7.

[5] MFF, p.7

[6] MFF Chapter 1, pp.7-8.

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

Andrew Tate: ‘Britain will be fully Islamic soon’ thumbnail

Andrew Tate: ‘Britain will be fully Islamic soon’

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By Jihad Watch

Tate has a point. Britain (and other Western countries) are in free fall, with little or no efforts to preserve its own heritage and history. The core values of the Judeo-Christian ethic have largely been discarded. Biblical values are now deemed to be outdated and “white supremacist,” even though Christianity originated in the Middle East.

In large part due to the subversion of the Christian ethic in the West, particularly under the influence of Islam and wokeism, instability is on the rise. The rule of law, including the freedom of speech, is under attack. In such situations, the most zealous entities generally prevail. Islam and Communist China are now the most dominant forces worldwide. Unless there is a strong Judeo-Christian resurgence in the West, the West is finished. David Horowitz’ book Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America gave sufficient warning, not only for America but for all Western countries founded on the principles of Christianity.

Sir Roger Scruton also makes a powerful argument in defense of Western culture in his book, Culture Counts: Faith and Feeking in a World Besieged. Scruton indicates that “self knowledge and self-confidence are the gift of serious cultures.” The Western culture has lost both, and is embracing anything and everything goes except Christianity.

In a demonstration of the fallout of the West’s abandonment of its own culture, Andrew Tate states:

The only alternative to Islam for the Brits are pride flags as they no longer have any innate culture or patriotisim. Allah is the best of planners and I look forward to seeing The Islamic republic of Great Britistan in her final form.

Tate is referencing Quran 8:30: “But they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners.”

The silence of the Churches throughout Western society’s transformation and abandonment of the Biblical ethic that once supported a strong, free society has now ushered in a new era.  A vacuum has been created for whomever and whatever possesses enough zeal to dominate.

Tate was responding to news about “a Muslim billionaire winning rights to turn the Trocadero, one of London’s most famous landmarks, into a mosque.”

“Britain will be fully Islamic soon” – Andrew Tate shocks fans by openly calling for the Islamisation of Britain,” by Shivam Khatwani, Sportskeeda, July 18, 2023:

Controversial social media personality Andrew Tate has openly called for the Islamisation of Britain.

Responding to the news of a Muslim billionaire winning rights to turn the Trocadero, one of London’s most famous landmarks, into a mosque, Tate expressed his happiness and had this to say about Islamic culture:

“This building is literally dead centre in the middle of London’s historic centre. Amazing news. The only alternative to Islam for the brits are pride flags as they no longer have any innate culture or patriotisim. Allah is the best of planners and I look forward to seeing The Islamic republic of Great Britistan in her final form. Alhamdulillah Britain will be fully Islamic soon.”

As Andrew Tate looks forward to seeing the “Islamic Republic of Great Britain”, fans have been shocked by what he said. Take a look at some of the reactions below:

“Why islamic républic of great Britain ? cant muslims live with Christians , plus other religions without the « mission » to take over the country ?”…..

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

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

Kevin McCarthy Challenges Hakeem Jeffries to ‘Prove’ House Democrats Aren’t Antisemitic thumbnail

Kevin McCarthy Challenges Hakeem Jeffries to ‘Prove’ House Democrats Aren’t Antisemitic

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By Discover The Networks

At a press conference at the Capitol Monday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) challenged Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to prove certain members of his conference are not antisemitic after Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said that “Israel is a racist state” over the weekend.

“This isn’t the first person in the Democratic conference that has continued to make antisemitic comments,” McCarthy said . “We’ve watched what they have continually [sic] to do. There are a number of them over there.”

He then challenged Jeffries to “prove” certain members of his conference “are not antisemitic,” stating:

I think if the Democrats want to believe that they do not have conference that continues to make antisemitic remarks, they need to do something about it because they’ve defended these individuals time and again. The only time action has ever been taken is when we had to take the action. I think this is a role for the leader, Hakeem, to prove that, no, they’re not antisemitic, and they cannot allow their members to continue to say what they have said in the past.

Jayapal issued her remarks at a pro-Palestinian protest on Saturday in Chicago, telling the crowd:

I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us — that it doesn’t even feel possible.

She backtracked the next day:

At a conference, I attempted to defuse a tense situation during a panel where fellow members of Congress were being protested. Words do matter and so it is important that I clarify my statement. I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist.

She then went on to accuse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of running an “extreme right-wing government” that “has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies.”

Her comments came days before Israeli President Isaac Herzog is set to deliver an address to both Houses of Congress on the 75th anniversary of the creation of Israel.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Omar have refused to attend Herzog’s address, and Rep. Jamal Bowman (D-NY) has also said he “probably” would not attend.

McCarthy pointed to several other progressives who have engaged in anti-Israel comments or actions, including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MN), and Betty McCollum (D-MN).

“These are just multiple Democrats on multiple times consistently saying anti-Semitic remarks and it has got to stop,” he said.

Hakeem Jeffries

21 Known Connections

Close Ties to Professor Leonard Jeffries and His Anti-Semitic Rhetoric

Born on August 4, 1970 in Crown Heights, New York, Hakeem Sekou Jeffries is the nephew of the longtime CCNY Black Studies professor Leonard Jeffries.

Hakeem Jeffries earned a BS in political science at Binghamton University in 1992. During his senior year there, he served as an executive board member of the school’s Black Student Union (BSU), which invited his controversial uncle, Leonard Jeffries — well known for his highly charged expressions of contempt for whites and Jews — to speak on campus for an undisclosed fee.

After a Jewish student group exhorted Binghamton University’s BSU to cancel Leonard Jeffries’ scheduled speaking engagement, Hakeem Jeffries led a news conference defending his uncle and his right to speak on campus. “We have no intention of canceling a presentation that contains factual information, proven through scholarly documents and texts,” said Hakeem Jeffries. “The proper way to way to debate scholarship is with scholarship–not with high-tech lynchings, media assassinations, character desecrations and venomous attacks.”

In the Binghamton University student newspaper Pipe Dream, Hakeem Jeffries and his fellow BSU executive board members co-authored a 1992 editorial defending Leonard Jeffries and condemning those who had compared the professor’s anti-white racism, to the anti-black racism of the Ku Klux Klan.

Further, in a February 21, 1992 editorial which he personally authored for the BSU student newspaper The Vanguard, Hakeem Jeffries again defended his uncle as well as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Specifically, he claimed that “white media” and the “ruling elite” — in conjunction with black conservatives, whom he viewed a race traitors  — were unfairly targeting the two because they had dared to challenge the legitimacy of a racist America’s white power structure…

To learn more about Hakeem Jeffries, click here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Everything Solid Melts into Air thumbnail

Everything Solid Melts into Air

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By The Catholic Thing

Francis X. Maier: The tech revolution has undermined literacy, the supernatural, and sexuality, as it boosted consumer appetites and eroded habits of responsible ownership and mature political participation.

Print literacy and the ownership of property anchor human freedom.  Both can be abused, of course.  Printed lies can kill.  Owning things, and wanting more of them, can easily morph into greed.  But reasonable personal ownership of things like a home, tools, and land tutors us in maturity.  It enhances a person’s agency, and thus his dignity.  It grounds us in reality and gives us a stake in the world, because if we don’t maintain and protect what we have, we lose it, often at great personal cost. The printed word, meanwhile, feeds our interior life and strengthens our ability to reason.

Together they make people much harder to sucker and control than free-floating, human consumer units.  This is why the widespread ownership of property by individuals – or the lack of it – has big cultural and political implications, some of them distinctly unhappy.

I mention this because I’ve made my living with the printed word.  And it occurred to me (belatedly, in 2003) that while I own the ladder in my garage, the hammer and wrench in my storeroom drawer, and even the slab of dead metal hardware and electronics that I work on, I don’t own the software that runs it or enables me to write.  Microsoft or Apple does, depending on the laptop I use. . .and I just didn’t notice it while I was playing all those video games.

What finally grabbed my attention, exactly 20 years ago, was The dotCommunist Manifesto by Columbia University law professor Eben Moglen.  Here’s a slice of the content:

A Spectre is haunting multinational capitalism — the spectre of free information. All the powers of “globalism” have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcize the spectre: Microsoft and Disney, the World Trade Organization, the United States Congress and European Commission.

Where are the advocates of freedom in the new digital society who have not been decried as pirates, anarchists, communists?  Have we not seen that many of those hurling the epithets were merely thieves in power, whose talk of “intellectual property” [rights] was nothing more than an attempt to retain unjustifiable privileges in a society irrevocably changing. . . .

Throughout the world, the movement for free information announces the arrival of a new social structure, born of the transformation of bourgeois industrial society by the digital technology of its own invention. . . .[The] bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.  Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. . . .All that is solid melts into air.

And so on.  The rest of it is standard Marxist cant, adapted to the digital age.  But for me it was, and still is, compelling prose.  And this, despite the fact that the original Communist Manifesto led to murderous regimes and mass suffering, and the awkward fact that Prof. Moglen’s dream of abolishing “intellectual property” would wipe out my family’s source of income along with an entire class of more or less independent wordsmiths.

What Moglen did see though, earlier and more clearly than many other critics, was the dark side of the modern digital revolution.  Microsoft, Apple, Google, and similar corporations have created a vast array of marvelous tools for medicine, communications, education, and commerce.

I’m writing these words with one of those tools.  They’ve also sparked a culture-wide upheaval resulting in social fragmentation and bitter antagonisms.  Their ripple effect has undermined the humanities and print literacy, obscured the supernatural, confused our sexuality, hypercharged the porn industry, and fueled consumer appetites while simultaneously eroding habits of responsible ownership and mature political participation.

They promised a new age of individual expression and empowerment.  The reality they delivered, in the words of a constitutional scholar friend, is this:  “Once you go down the path of freedom, you need to restrain its excesses.  And that’s because too much freedom leads to fragmentation, and fragmentation inevitably leads to a centralization of power in the national government.  Which is why today, we the people really aren’t sovereign.  We now live in a sort of technocratic oligarchy, with the congealing of vast wealth in a very small group of people.”

Nothing about today’s tech revolution preaches “restraint.”

I’m a Catholic capitalist.  I’m also, despite the above, a technophile.  America’s economic system was very good to my immigrant grandparents.  It lifted my parents from poverty. It has allowed my family to experience good things unimaginable to my great-grandparents.  But I have no interest in making big corporations – increasingly hostile to Christian beliefs – even more obscenely profitable and powerful.

So, promptly after reading that Eben Moglen text two decades ago, I dumped my Microsoft and Apple operating systems.  I became a Free Software/Open Software zealot.  I even taught myself Linux, a free operating system with free software largely uncontaminated by Big Tech.

And that’s where I met the CLI: the “command line interface.”  Most computers today, even those running Linux, use a pleasing GUI, or graphical user interface.  It’s the attractive, easily accessible desktop that first greets you on the screen.  It’s also a friendly fraud, because the way machines operate and “think” is very, very different from the way humans imagine, feel, and reason.

In 2003, learning Linux typically involved the CLI: a tedious, line-by-line entry of commands to a precise, unforgiving, alien machine logic.  That same logic and its implications, masked by a sunny GUI, now come with every computer on the planet.

I guess I’m saying this:  You get what you pay for. And sometimes it’s more than, and different from, what you thought.  The tech revolution isn’t going away.  It’s just getting started.  And right on time, just as Marx and Moglen said, “all that is solid melts into air.”  Except God.  But of course, we need to think and act like we believe that.

You may also enjoy:

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AUTHOR

Francis X. Maier

Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with perm. © 2023 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.

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America: A Society in Crisis

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By Amil Imani

If one visualizes the establishment of the first (small) society, as Enlightenment thinkers did (circa 1690-1800), one must suspect that it was founded on the mutual agreement of—a social contract among—the first members. It seems unlikely that it could not have lasted very long if any society had been fashioned on disagreement. Given that agreement was at the foundation of the community, the only thing that could break the club apart would be the introduction of disagreers into its midst.

Of course, disagreers might have been expected to come from outside the society, if only because they could not have been party to the agreement in the social contract. But disagreers might also have been expected to come from inside the society if the children of the members needed to be schooled in the necessity to continue the agreement made by their parent, guardian, and ancestors. Such “schooling” arose at first within every family’s lodgings (and duties). As the generation succeeded generation, the survival of society depended upon the effectiveness of family schooling. Successful schooling and transmission of social commitment to the agreement eventually led to establishing a culture with rules, laws, and (sometimes) a constitution.

Anyway, somewhere along the line, in many (if not all) growing societies, these two types of problems arose. External problems arose as people from outside the club occasionally attempted (usually by engaging in armed conflict) to take over the community and impose a new and different agreement system. Thus, the threat of external attack by disagreers–aka enemies–made it necessary to devise an externally oriented (military) self-defense force.

(2) Internal problems arose, as people (parents) on the inside, for whatever reason, failed to properly school their children properly, opening the way for the rise of rebellious disagreers in the midst the society, who would attempt (usually by engaging in law-breaking behaviors) to take action against one or more (law-abiding) members of the community. The threat of internal attack by disagreers—a.k.a. criminals—made it necessary to devise an internally oriented (police) self-defense force. The problem faced by every society has been what to do with disagreers, especially with those who were actually citizens by birth but technically non-citizens by disagreement—non-citizens by rebellious choice–against the very social contract in which they had been nourished to adulthood.

For thousands of years, the accepted way to deal with external enemies was to defeat them on the field of battle, and the accepted way to deal with internal criminals was to capture and punish them with lashing, torture, incarceration, exile, and execution.

But, today, we style ourselves as having reached Kantian (enlightened) maturity, no longer (completely) accepting such methods, if only because we think those methods are inhumane. Furthermore, our (U.S.) system of government not only permits disagreement, it has come to encourage it. It has created a (tacitly legal, at least) second category of citizen disagreers who are not considered criminals.

This second category of citizens who disagree with the social contract has a variety of euphemistic labels: progressives, liberals, mainstream media, change agents, innovators, visionaries, special interest groups, etc. Hence society is destined to be in constant turmoil as waves of new children (encouraged to question authority and to think there isn’t even supposed to be a box) rush onto the agreement stage with ideas of how to change it from whatever it was before, even if it’s for no good reason at all.

Drug users and the drug industry want drugs legalized the same way alcohol was because there is a market for getting stoned. Thieves want robbery legalized because they are poor. Criminals wish to have prisons abolished because they are oppressed. Illegal immigrants want citizenship rights even if they are not citizens. Even if they displace American jobs, businesses want to have international business ties for labor. Snoops wish to increase surveillance capabilities and rights with less hostility from privacy advocates because they think they can save the nation. Technologists wish to have more customers with less work. Governments want more power with less disclosure. Employers wish to lower wages for more work. Employees expect to pay higher wages for less work. Bullies don’t like bullying criminalized. Stock brokers want insider trading legalized. Women’s liberation leaders want to end the biological definition of womanhood and erase it from social memory. The salacious want sexting legalized, just like “adult” literature.

Muslims want to build mosques legally like churches have been lawfully made. Atheists want all public evidence and acknowledgment of Christianity and all religion removed from the public square. The NRA wants to keep Second Amendment rights free of surveillance. The anti-gun advocates wish to have every gun and owner tracked in detail. Etc. All these things are pleas and petitions about the social contract.

No society can survive for long in such persistent bickering and turmoil. And when we overlay all this with the “fact” that there are terrorists behind every tree, under every rock, and in every social setting, who can be confident that anything they say or do will not mark them for some watch list? After all, everyone is watching everyone for signs of anti-social behavior. But what is anti-social behavior in this turmoil? Who is appropriately defending his human rights? Who is not entitled to display violence to make their point in a society drowning in messages of change? How else can the message gain precious national television and news media coverage?

I advocate for stopping the encouragement for change, if only because it affects the stability and future survival of this Great Nation that many of us have worked and died to establish. Not everything done or settled in the past is wrong and needs change, simply because the sweep hand passed the twelve on the clock and someone has succumbed to the media mantra for change. The fact is that every society must have a stable constitution, laws, and rules. And it is not much harder to adjust to the government to have no premarital sex than it is to accept the current calls for no sexual harassment.

Societies have adapted to the former quite well. It is time to think about establishing certain sections of the country where all those who disagree with the current constitution and laws are separated from those who accept them. Perhaps there should be sections of the country where all the gun advocates can live; areas of the country where all the free-sex people can live together; sections of the country where all the married men and women, who want to live happily with each other and raise their children together by the social contract, can live together; or sections of the country where all the disagreers with the social contract can sit around disagreeing all day long if they want to.

According to the United Nations, self-defense is legal and a human right. But, in my view, no one has the right to violence and destruction of property for a political cause contrary to the law, no matter how much the change might be desired. Violations of the law must (should) be met with policing force to end them and punish the offenders, lest more illegalities be encouraged the next time someone has a problem with authority. If one does the crime, one should do the time.

©2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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In the music video, Aldean calls out left-wing violence, specifically violence against law enforcement.

Apparently this is ‘controversial’ and hateful… pic.twitter.com/Jq9D678s6G

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 19, 2023

Winston Churchill and Islam—Part One thumbnail

Winston Churchill and Islam—Part One

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By Jihad Watch

n late 2001, I was sitting in the private library of the late David Littman, husband of the distinguished historian Bat Ye’or, in their beautiful villa overlooking Lake Geneva (Switzerland), when David received a phone call from his friend the official biographer of Sir Winston, Sir Martin Gilbert. Gilbert cited a memorable passage from The River War, about Islam and its votaries (which I shall quote later in this article). It was the first time I had heard this quotation. Since then, of course, it has circulated on the internet, and must be by now familiar to most readers of Jihad Watch. However, imagine my disappointment when I finally acquired a copy of The River War, I could not for the life of me find the oft-quoted passage. I suspect many readers of Jihad Watch had a similar experience. In fact, I had been desperately searching in what turned out to be the abridgment of The River War, first published in 1902 in London, also by Longmans, Green, and Co. There then followed other abridged editions, such as the ones in 1933, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, and New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, both carrying new forewords by Churchill. Even the ever-enterprising Gutenberg Project, which offers over 70,000 free eBooks, has only the 1902 edition of Churchill’s work.

It was only in 2020 that the original unabridged edition of 1899 was once again available, thanks to St. Augustine’s Press (South Bend: Indiana) and the combined efforts and enthusiasm of various scholars and institutions. I shall be quoting from this definitive edition.

St. Augustine’s Press advertised Churchill’s book several years ago, but each time I checked their online catalogue they kept delaying the date of publication, until I was convinced it would never be published, perhaps because of pressure from irate Muslim lobbies. But here it is at last. This edition is a tremendous work of scholarship, and is indeed likely to be the definitive edition, well worth the wait and price of $150.00 for the two volumes.

This edition highlights in red everything that Churchill cut out from all later editions, with the rest of the text printed in black. Some new appendices give the original wording of Churchill’s fifteen dispatches to the Morning Post on which he based “The River War.”

This re-edition of the original text of 1899 is much more than simple autobiography — Churchill himself participated in the historic charge of the 21st Lancers, last great cavalry charge of the British Empire — but is also a comprehensive military history of the whole of the Anglo-Egyptian campaign against the Sudanese Dervishes from 1885 to 1899.

As Churchill wrote in My Early Life, “I was a child of the Victorian era, when the structure of our country seemed firmly set, when its position in trade and on the seas was unrivalled, and when the realisation of the greatness of our Empire and of our duty to preserve it was ever growing stronger. In those days the dominant forces in Great Britain were very sure of themselves and their doctrines. They thought they could teach the world the art of government, and the science of economics.”[1]

Churchill entered Sandhurst, a leading military training academy, on 1 September 1893, and had graduated from it in December 1894. On 1 April 1895, Second Lieutenant Churchill was gazetted to the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, a regiment which had fought in the Peninsular War and taken part in the Charge of the Light Brigade. They were posted to Bangalore, India in September 1896.

Churchill learnt that a Pathan or Pashtun revolt had broken out on the North-West Frontier and had led to Sir Bindon Blood being given the command of a three-brigade Malakand Field Force [MFF], whose task it was to punish the Pathans or Pashtuns for their frequent raids on British-controlled areas.

Britain’s main worry in the 19th Century was to protect her colonial possession, India, from incursions from Afghanistan and ultimately from possible raids from Russia. The rugged, rocky mountains of the N.W. Frontier Province formed a natural barrier between Afghanistan and India, consequently any power that controlled the mountains controlled the gateway to India, Britain’s prize possession. But the Pashtun tribes of Afghanistan were, as the Imperial Gazetteer of India summarized, “full of resolution, their bearing proud and apt to be rough. Inured to bloodshed from childhood, they are familiar with death, audacious in attack, but easily discouraged by failure. They are treacherous and passionate in revenge …They are much under the influence of their Mullas, especially for evil.”[2]

AUTHOR

IBN WARRAQ

[1] Churchill, My Early Life, p.ix.

[2] Quoted by Con Coughlin, Churchill’s First War. Young Winston and the Fight against the Taliban. London: Macmillan, 2013, p.25.

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Michigan: Leftist calls CAIR top dog ‘hateful’ as all-Muslim council removes two commissioners who flew Pride flag thumbnail

Michigan: Leftist calls CAIR top dog ‘hateful’ as all-Muslim council removes two commissioners who flew Pride flag

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By Jihad Watch

The Leftist-Islamic alliance continues to break down over the Left’s insistence on pushing its fascination with sexual perversion and deviance upon everyone.

by Stephen M. Lepore, DailyMail.com, July 14, 2023:

A Michigan city with an all-Muslim council that made waves banning LGBTQ+ Pride flags on public buildings has removed two members of a city commission for breaking the new law.

Hamtramck, population 27,000, is an enclave surrounded by Detroit. More than 40 percent of residents were born in other countries, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and a significant share are of Yemeni or Bangladeshi descent.

On Tuesday, the council unanimously approved removing Russ Gordon and Cathy Stackpoole from the Hamtramck Human Rights Commission for flying the rainbow flag over a public sidewalk, with a member saying they ‘defied the rule of law.’

It became the first city in America to have a majority Muslim population in 2015 and in January 2022, became the first to have an all-Muslim city council and mayor in Amer Ghalib.

In mid-June, the council voted to ban LGBTQ+ flags from publicly owned flagpoles after a tense hourslong meeting that raised questions about discrimination, religion and the city’s reputation for welcoming newcomers.

They also unanimously approved a ban on the commission flying any flags on city property.

‘This Council believes in fairness, neutrality towards our residents, and the rule of law, amongst other things for this community. We passed a resolution recently to do just that, and two of our sworn commissioners outright defied it, and did what they wanted,’ Councilmember Khalil Refai told Fox News.

Gordon was the chair of the commission, who’s purpose is ‘to promote mutual understanding and respect for multiculturalism and diversity, advocate for peace and justice and encourage tolerance and constructive communication.’

‘You guys are welcome,’ council member Nayeem Choudhury said when the flag ban was voted on. ‘(But) why do you have to have the flag shown on government property to be represented? You´re already represented. We already know who you are.’

Some members of the all-Muslim council said the pride flag clashes with the beliefs of some members of their faith. Businesses and residents aren´t prohibited from displaying a pride flag on their own property.

‘We want to respect the religious rights of our citizens,’ Choudhury said….

Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan branch of the [Hamas-linked — RS] Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights advocacy group, said Hamtramck’s strict flag policy doesn’t discriminate against anyone.

‘If there was one group that was not being granted access to something while others were then we would have a problem,’ Walid said.

He said some Muslims who oppose an LGBTQ+ flag are no different than conservative members of other religions with similar views.

‘Flags carry symbolism. Those symbols carry social and political messages,’ Walid said.

‘It is clear that you are either ignorant, hateful and or spiteful,’ said a transgender speaker….

Read more.

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

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