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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:

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s God is the genuine reality

David Warren’s Regeneration

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

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

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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The Agenda of the Thief

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By Bud Hancock

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I, [Jesus Christ], have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” — John 10:10.

Satan’s priorities are stealing, killing and destruction. Let’s look a little closer at those priorities:

To Steal

First he steals, but what exactly does he steal? What is the most important thing humans have that Satan wants? There are many very wealthy persons on Earth, having extremely large amounts of money; is it their money Satan wants to steal? No, Satan is a spiritual being who has no human needs or desires, so it is unlikely that stealing money is his primary goal. Some of the wealthier people also possess large amounts of land; does Satan want to steal their land? No, land for Satan is a no brainer since he already has control over all the empires and kingdoms of the world (Matthew 4:8 and Luke 4:5-6).

Satan always tries to steal the most valuable thing we have, the most important gift God ever gave to us: HIS WORD. If he is successful in stealing the word from our hearts, he can easily influence our minds and turn us aside from our walk with God. In order to do so, he desperately needs to separate us from the Word of God. Everything we receive from God, including His word, we receive by faith.

To Kill

Secondly, because our faith comes from Jesus Christ, Who IS the word, Satan’s desire is to kill our faith. He knows, and every Christian should also know, that faith ONLY works by, and through, the word of God, making Satan’s first priority to steal the Word.

Faith is a spiritual substance which does not work through the flesh; but just as a physical muscle can be strengthened and made larger by proper diet, proper exercise and repetitious use, our spiritual substance of faith can be strengthened by proper diet (The word), proper exercise and repetitious use. And just as the physical muscles can also be weakened by neglect and sloth, so can faith be weakened, to the point of being useless.

Faith, when exercised, gains in strength and power or to put it in a simple term: It grows. Just as a man with large, well exercised muscles is usually a terror to a bully, so a man with growing faith is a terror to Satan. In fact, Satan’s greatest fear is of the Word, and because the Word is received by faith, he MUST steal the word from you in order to kill your faith. Yes, Satan fears the Word more than anything on this earth because Jesus (the Word) has already soundly defeated him and taken all his authority, using only His word.

One way Satan works to destroy our faith is by convincing us that we do not need to add anything to our faith for it to be productive. He would love to convince us that as long as we “have faith”, nothing more is required, but God’s word contradicts that premise. In the Book of James, we read: “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works (James 4:14-18)

So then, what is meant by works? Simply put, it means putting your God-given faith into action and doing the things that proves that God’s love lives within us. If Satan can get us to refuse to act in faith, he has already placed us in the dangerous position of having our faith weakened and easily killed.

To Destroy

Finally, Satan’s desire is to destroy. But what is it that he wants to destroy? Anything he can do to make us question the Word of God, or question God’s love for us or even to question our need for God to be active in our lives will give him the ammunition needed to begin his destructive work of damaging our relationship and fellowship with God.

Do you remember how he wormed his way into the mind and heart of man to begin with? He caused Eve to question what God had said to her and Adam after their creation. His words were, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden”? Had Eve been  ready with the Word, she would have told the snake: “It is written”, just as did Jesus when Satan tried to tempt Him to disobey God. I know the New Testament with those words of Jesus had not yet been written, but Eve had heard the words of God in His demand for obedience, and she also knew the words of God stating that man’s disobedience would bring death.

Satan is very clever and knows just which buttons to push in his effort to get you off the Word. He knows that our disobedience is the thing that brings separation from God, and if he can do get us into disobedience, our relationship with the Almighty is interrupted and in danger of being destroyed.

The destruction of our relationship with God is his highest priority and when we listen to his lies instead of using the Word as our defense against him, he has achieved his goal.

Our Defense Against Satan’s Agenda

Knowing now just what Satan’s priorities are and how he works to establish them in our lives, what can we do, what should we do, to stop him?

Feed Your Spirit

First, we must establish as OUR top priority building our lives on God’s Word. Reading and studying God’s word, immersing ourselves in it is like being in a starving condition and being invited to sit down to a gourmet feast. Just as a delicious and nutritious meal will build up our physical bodies and bring life-sustaining health to us, a feast on God’s word will strengthen and build up our spirits. Our bodies will store up some strength and endurance from the food we eat, but as we exercise and work, we need to feed our bodies daily in order to regain our strength and function normally. Our spirits also can store up some of our spiritual strength from God’s word but they also need to be fed on a regular basis in order to become strong, remain strong and able to endure Satan’s attacks.

When Satan comes to steal the word, if we have stored up enough of it, we can resist him and make him flee (James 4:7). Jesus always stayed in intimate contact with His Father and was aways full of His word. When Satan came to tempt Him, Jesus used that word to defeat him and send him running away (Matthew 4:3,7, 10-11). Humbling ourselves and being submitted to God is the only way to stay built up on and strengthened by the Word and THAT is the key to our successful resistance to Satan.

We are all in a marathon, an endurance race, and not a sprint. In such a race what matters most is our endurance, and that means being able to endure through every satanic attack. Only by doing so will we become true winners; Jesus stated such when He said, “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” Matthew 24:13.

Just as we do everything in our discipleship for Christ, our endurance is a test of our faith.

Use Your Faith

Your faith, the same faith that Jesus Christ had when He walked the Earth, is a powerful spiritual force, but it must be put into action in order to accomplish anything positive through it. This is what James meant when he spoke the words recorded in James 4. The spiritual force of faith constantly exercised is as potent a weapon against evil as a man’s well-exercised physical muscles are against a bully.

In Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38, we are told that the just shall live by faith. This primarily refers to receiving our righteousness from God BY FAITH, but it also applies to our daily lives as long as we live on this earth.

This may sound frivolous, but we are to use our God-given faith to take every breath, to have our daily food, our clothing and our shelter so that life can be sustained. I am as guilty as any other man in “assuming” that these things listed above are automatically ours as a right. The truth is that, as children of God, we are to be thankful for all these things and are to give thanks to Him, by faith, for all His blessings.

Using our faith for our very existence is a good way to remain strong in faith, keeping us prepared and ready for whatever evil might come our way.

Guard Your Relationship With God

Our relationship with God, as His children, is the most important possession we will ever have. Satan understands this, likely better than most Christians, so he works diligently to worm his way into that relationship by bringing doubt of God’s integrity and steadfastness.

It only takes one incident wherein we question God and begin to doubt His faithfulness to us for Satan to begin establishing  a stronghold in our lives. At the first sign of a deception or lie aimed at our relationship with God, we must remember the word of James: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” James 4:7).

There is no more satisfying feeling than to know that you have been obedient to God in having submitted everything you have to him, then resisting that old serpent and knowing that, even though you cannot see him in the flesh, he is scurrying away, in the spirit, with his dragon-tail between his legs.

However, he is a  persistent devil and will return when you are least expecting it to try his “steal, kill and destroy” agenda again. Do not allow him to succeed; God is ready with a large dose of wisdom and knowledge when you are ready to diligently seek Him and His word.

Maranatha

©2023. Bud Hancock. All rights reserved.

NEW YORK: Muslim migrant helped supply ‘thousands’ of recruits from Western countries to the Islamic State thumbnail

NEW YORK: Muslim migrant helped supply ‘thousands’ of recruits from Western countries to the Islamic State

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By Jihad Watch

Why did all these Western Muslims fall for the supposedly twisted and hijacked version of Islam that the Islamic State offers? Why didn’t the peaceful, benign Islam that they supposedly learned in their local mosques prevail?

U.S. Islamic State recruiter sentenced to life in New York court

 The New Arab, July 15, 2023 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

A Kosovo-born US man who helped supply “thousands” of recruits to the Islamic State group was sentenced to life in prison Friday for helping the extremist group, the Justice Department announced.

Mirsad Kandic, 40, was a high-ranking member of the jihadist group between 2013 and 2017, when it controlled large swathes of Iraq and Syria, the Justice Department said.

In 2013 he left his home in New York and traveled to Syria, where he joined IS, becoming a fighter in Haritan outside of Aleppo.

Then he was directed to move to Turkey to help smuggle foreign fighters and weapons for the group into Syria, it said.

He was also an emir for IS media, the department said, disseminating the group’s propaganda and recruitment messages online, including via more than 120 Twitter accounts.

As recruiter, “he sent thousands of radicalized ISIS volunteer fighters from Western countries into ISIS-controlled territories in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East,” the Justice Department said, using another acronym for IS….

Read more

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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

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Christian Voters Are Likely To Put Their Faith In Trump. Here’s Why

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By The Daily Caller

  • The Christian vote in the 2024 primaries is an important demographic for Republicans, and religious leaders that spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation indicated that only one candidate really stands out.
  • Recent polls show former President Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination spot by as much as 26%, while his chances against President Joe Biden still present a large question about whether or not a 2024 rematch would place Trump in the White House.
  • “[W]hen you look at how [Trump] performed as president in what he did in terms of advancing or restoring policies that respected faith and upheld a moral foundation, no one comes close,” Tony Perkins, the founder and president of the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy organization, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

As the presidential primaries approach, religious advocates believe that Donald Trump, of all Republican candidates, is likely to claim a large majority of the Christian vote.

Republican presidential candidates have been working overtime to impress religious Americans, with many attending the recent Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June and spending large amounts of time among religious voters in battleground states. Former President Donald Trump is leading the GOP contenders, and religious leaders that spoke to the DCNF believe his previous record on issues of faith, life and freedom will win him the Christian vote.

Evangelicals, particularly, are keen to see the former president back in office, according to Tony Perkins, the founder and president of the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy organization, that spoke to the DCNF.

“Donald Trump kind of raised the bar, which sounds a little odd on its face, because he certainly was not a candidate when given his background, and everything that evangelicals would have been drawn toward,” Perkins said. “But when you look at how he performed as president in what he did in terms of advancing or restoring policies that respected faith and upheld a moral foundation, no one comes close.”

Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels, his infamous, expletive-filled Twitter rants against various media, celebrity and political figures and his more recent trouble with the law might otherwise preclude him from gaining such strong support from religious circles; however, Trump’s policies and stances during his first term as president often resonated with those same voters who have often felt ignored by more mainstream Republicans, according to Perkins.

Trump made waves as the first sitting president to appear publicly at the March for Life, an annual pro-life march in D.C. that usually draws upwards of 10,000 people. In 2019, he announced that his administration was working on creating a new federal policy that allowed religious adoption facilitators, homeless shelters, health care clinics and other organizations to participate in grants from the Department of Health and Human Services.

In 2017, the former president issued an executive order to Attorney General Jeff Sessions to defend laws like the “Religious Liberty Accommodations Act,” which allows religious Americans to adhere to their faith on issues of same-sex marriage and gender identity and sexual orientation, that was passed in Missouri.

In 2020, Trump took 80% of white evangelical voters in 2016 and 76% in 2020, while a March poll found that in a head-to-head matchup, Trump is currently holding 51% of the evangelical vote over DeSantis’ 42%, according to Reuters.

“I think he’s the undisputed favorite,” Robert Jeffress, the pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, and host of the radio show Pathway To Victory, told the DCNF. “I made a prediction shortly after he announced his candidacy last November. I said that eventually, evangelicals would coalesce again around Trump, some of them might try to kick the tires of different candidates, but eventually, they would coalesce. What I didn’t realize was that ‘eventually’ would come sooner than anybody expected.”

The Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual conference this year hosted many of the top GOP contenders to give them a chance to speak to evangelical Christians and appeal for their support. Trump had a strong base of support among the attendees, with many booing fellow candidate Chris Christie during the conference for criticizing the former president, while other potential nominees avoided mentioning Trump entirely.

Trump is currently leading the pack in the Republican primaries by significant margins, according to Real Clear Politics. The most recent poll from the Economist/YouGov showed the former president winning the nomination spot by 26%.

Despite this, Trump has been trailing President Joe Biden in the polls. One poll from NBC News had Biden beating Trump at 49% to 45% but a new poll by the Morning Consult showed Trump closing the gap at 42% to Biden’s 43%.

Perkins told the DCNF that for Trump to keep up the momentum he will need to “cast a vision of the future” but said that regardless he felt Christians’ inclination was still to vote for the former president due to his previous record on religious issues.

While Trump appears to have a hold on Christian Americans, other candidates have chances at making inroads by focusing on issues like abortion, where the former president has struggled lately.

Tim Head, the executive director for the Faith and Freedom Coalition, an organization dedicated to “educating, equipping, and mobilizing people of faith,” agreed that Trump has a solid core percentage of the Christian vote, but cautioned that nothing is guaranteed since the election is still many months away.

Head explained that candidates like DeSantis could have an advantage over Trump in the pro-life arena after the former president went back and forth on a federal ban and criticized the governor for signing six-week abortion protections in May.

“Governor DeSantis has a lot of influence in this type of area, and he’s using that influence to deliver victories for religious voters on life, religious liberty [and] certainly on traditional family values,” Head told the DCNF.

Jeffress conceded that in the event that Trump does not become the nominee, he believed Mike Pence would be the one to receive the full support of Christian voters due to his commitment to his faith and his involvement in the Trump administration.

Bob Vander Plaats, the president and CEO of the Family Leader, a Christian advocacy organization in the key primary state of Iowa, told the New York Times that Vivek Ramaswamy, who is Hindu, impressed him despite the difference in faith because he was willing to answer the “deeper questions.”

The odds, however, are against any other candidate taking the nomination, according to Jeffress and Perkins.

“When you look at his four years as president and how he championed all of these issues, and look at how he continues to push back on the left,” Perkins told the DCNF. “He puts himself into a position that many who have been marginalized and attacked by the culture identify with. So I think he’s in a very strong position from this standpoint.”

Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy and Pence did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘You Can Boo All You Want’: Chris Christie Heckled At Evangelical Conference

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

How It All Smells thumbnail

How It All Smells

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By The Catholic Thing

Anthony Esolen: Gratifying work of Catholic restoration in art is going on in our midst, though Francis seems not to be aware of it, because he hangs around with people like Andres Serrano.

Shepherds should smell like the sheep, says Pope Francis.

I do not know what Andres Serrano smells like.  I can make a good guess as to his art.  He is the fellow who set a small crucifix in a bucket of his own urine (“Piss Christ”), and then took photographs of it.  The pope recently honored him with a commendation.

A couple of years ago, the bishop of the diocese where we have lived in the summer took it into his head to demand that parishes remove the steeples from their churches.  I believe he was concerned with the expense of upkeep.

The parishioners, those ordinary sheep, did not really want to oblige.  When it comes to art and architecture, the sheep don’t go in much for the awkward and ugly.

All my life, I have seen the same game play itself out.  Father wants the communion rail removed.  The sheep don’t see why that’s necessary, but they go along, grumbling.  The bishop wants the pews replaced, regardless of the carvings executed by those men of old who built the cathedral with their own hands.  The people don’t want it, but who are they to advise a bishop about what is beautiful?

The snobbery of the modernist is almost axiomatic, for what is modernism if not the rejection, usually with contempt, of traditional forms, or even of form itself?  But why should the prelates of the Church ever have gone along with modernism?  That is not hard to explain.  People in charge of things want very much to appear to be in the know, to be on the cutting edge, to be leading a charge.

They want, so to speak, to get invited to the right parties.  So, if the sheep do not warm up to a bucket of piss with the crucified Lord in it, if they consider it to be a blasphemy and a fraud, so much the worse for them.  We know better than they do.  We took a course on modern art at the university.  We understand the deep meaning of it – pause to roll the eyeballs inward while appearing to commune with the divine.

Well, after several generations of fields dusted with poison, most of those ordinary people no longer have any experience of excellence in sacred art, and their priests and bishops are very often in the same position, regardless of where they stand on the mostly nauseating issues of our time.

To smell like the sheep, then, is to try to understand how bare and thin our education has been, even while we have been led to believe that we are wiser and better than our forebears.

You have then the unprecedented opportunity to introduce people to folk traditions when they have been robbed of their own and of any secondary experience of anyone else’s traditions.  You can show them that the most glaring problem with Catholic “folk music” is that it is not folk music at all: it has the structure and the melodic characteristics of show tunes meant for soloists, and usually clumsy tunes at that.

We are not talking about Cole Porter, or Richard Rogers and Larry Hart.  “He’s gonna wash that sin right out of my soul” – if I had to sing a show tune, at least its verses ought to be clever.  But genuine sacred art is for everyone, and it is there, waiting to be noticed again, and to be cherished.

And I do believe that the people will respond.  Why not?  For the art, in its human and material sources, always did spring up from the deepest and most universal feelings of mankind.

You see Michelangelo’s first Pietà, and though there are a hundred fascinating things that a specialist may say about it, you know immediately what you are looking at, and it overpowers you: she is the essential Mother, mourning over the loss of her son, who lies in her lap, his legs and arms slack, as if they will ever move again.

Or you hear Bach’s Passion According to Saint Matthew, and every time the choir comes in to sing a verse of the Passion Chorale, “O sacred head, surrounded,” you feel a chill of recognition, the stately and haunting melody touches strings in your soul, and you say, “Teach me more.”

Indeed, this gratifying work of restoration and reintroduction is going on in our midst, though Francis seems not to be aware of it, because he hangs around with people like Andres Serrano, and not with people like Duncan Stroik, the architect who builds churches that look like churches, like places that derive their form from the inspirations of divine worship, and not like nuclear power plants, warehouses, stone beetles, or call centers.

When you praise Serrano, you give a stiff arm to countless Catholic artists, composers, musicians, poets, novelists, and architects, whose main obstacles have come not from the sheep but from chancery bureaucrats.

Or from universities that boast of their “Catholic tradition” when they want to separate alumni from their children or their money but otherwise treat it as an old lunatic aunt they hide in the attic, and mass media that are united in nothing but the cheap, the tawdry, the mad, and the obscene.

Such Catholic artists don’t generally ask for much, just as hard-working priests who do smell of the sheep – that is, who really do get involved in the sewage-tide that passes for our culture, and who get to know its human victims – do not ask for much.  Recognition, a word of approval now and then, a trace of gratitude?  That would be beyond their expectations.  Mostly they would like to be left alone to do that hard and thankless work.

That means that they would like it if you did not subject their work to contempt; which is what you do when you give the nod to Andres Serrano; and when you smell of the halls of prestige and power.

You may also enjoy:

Michael Pakaluk’s Giving Others a Reason to Be Christian

Robert Royal’s Notre Dame, Restorations, et le Moi

AUTHOR

Anthony Esolen

Anthony Esolen is a lecturer, translator, and writer. Among his books are Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, and Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, and most recently The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord. He is a professor and writer in residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, in Warner, New Hampshire. Be sure to visit his new website, Word and Song.

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.

Florida: Muslim deported from Saudi Arabia for jihad activity aids ISIS, plots jihad massacre in Tampa Bay thumbnail

Florida: Muslim deported from Saudi Arabia for jihad activity aids ISIS, plots jihad massacre in Tampa Bay

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By Jihad Watch

“In 2018, Al-Azhari was released from prison in Saudi Arabia following a conviction and sentence for supporting terrorism in Syria, after which he was removed to the United States.”

“Removed to the United States.” The “Justice” Department doesn’t dare to say it straight out, but clearly he was deported from Saudi Arabia, and we happily took him in, secure in the knowledge that only greasy Islamophobes think that convicted terrorists might try to wage jihad terror again.

Judge Sentences Florida Man to 18 Years in Prison for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Department of Justice, July 13, 2023:

WASHINGTON – Muhammed Momtaz Al-Azhari, 26, of Tampa, Florida, was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

According to court documents, Al-Azhari pleaded guilty to the charge in February 2023. Al-Azhari is a United States citizen who spent most of his life abroad and came to embrace dogmatic, Islamist/Salafist beliefs. In 2018, Al-Azhari was released from prison in Saudi Arabia following a conviction and sentence for supporting terrorism in Syria, after which he was removed to the United States.

Upon Al-Azhari’s arrival to the United States in or around December 2018, the FBI began investigating him for potentially providing material support to ISIS, which, at all relevant times, was designated as a foreign terrorist organization under federal law. In or around April 2020, Al-Azhari began to plan to carry out an attack in support of ISIS. Around the same time, Al-Azhari began to acquire multiple firearms. Al-Azhari also researched and scouted potential locations for an attack in the Tampa Bay area. Since at least May 2019, Al-Azhari also consumed ISIS propaganda and spoke favorably about ISIS, to which he eventually pledged his allegiance through a bay’ah (an Islamic oath of allegiance). Furthermore, Al-Azhari spoke about avenging the United States’ imprisonment of Muslims, including ISIS fighters, and the United States’ military actions in the Middle East. In addition, Al-Azhari rehearsed parts of his plans, including practicing statements that he would make during or in connection with, his intention to support ISIS.

Al-Azhari had multiple, recorded interactions with an FBI undercover employee and a confidential human source (CHS) in April and May 2020. Al-Azhari was in the process of trying to buy guns from the undercover employee, including a fully automatic rifle, when he was arrested on state charges for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. After his release from state custody, Al-Azhari continued to try to buy firearms from the UCE. Al-Azhari also met with the CHS, attempted to “convert” the CHS to Islam, and Al-Azhari confided in the CHS about Al-Azhari’s affiliation with ISIS and his plans to provide material support to ISIS, as well as to send money to ISIS. Al-Azhari also recruited the CHS to help him in connection with his plans in support of ISIS, as well as robberies, and he asked the CHS to obtain a Glock pistol and an unregistered silencer. Agents arrested Al-Azhari when he took possession of the gun and silencer on May 24, 2020….

Read more.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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UK: Top Tory calls on Britons to take illegal migrants into their homes

RELATED VIDEO: This Week In Jihad with David Wood and Robert Spencer (Qur’an-Burning Rage Edition)

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

Is Islamic Fascism a Slur? thumbnail

Is Islamic Fascism a Slur?

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By Amil Imani

President George W. Bush used the term “Islamic Fascism” in a speech. In no time at all, the Bush-bashers, Islamic propaganda organizations, and the rabid left unleashed a campaign of assault on the President for insulting the Muslims and sullying the sanctified religion of Islam by linking its name with fascism. Opportunistic Democrats were just too happy to lead the attack on the President. An aspirant for the presidency, to the left of the [left] Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, Russ Feingold, was so indignant by this “horrific” slander of the President smearing the stainless name of Islam that he found it his solemn duty to write a letter to the President lecturing him on his unacceptable use of the terms. Did the President slander Islam, or are people like Feingold Bush-bashers who, for their reasons, would never miss an opportunity to berate President Bush and those who support him?

Let the facts decide. “Fascism is a radical political ideology that combines elements of corporatism, authoritarianism, nationalism, militarism, anti-anarchism, anti-communism, and anti-liberalism.” –Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Let us examine each characteristic of fascism, one at a time, and see if the President was justified or did he indeed misspeak.

Radical: Islam is so radical that even the term “radical” does not adequately depict its true character. The founder of Islam, Muhammad, behaved in extreme ways whenever he could. Early on, in Mecca, among his tribe of Quraysh, he was ridiculed as a Crazed Poet. Ordinary residents of Mecca scorned him in their habitual way of treating the mentally deranged. What did Muhammad do? He personified meekness itself. He faced extreme indignities, did not fight back, and suffered abuses. Time was on Muhammad’s side. Before long, he attracted followers, some of whom were men of power and influence, such as Omar, Osman, and Abu Bakr. Then the pendulum swung. The long-suffering meek became the tyrannical avenger. He ordered all the idols in the idolatry of Mecca destroyed, including the one called Allah. Yet, he selected the same name for a non-corporeal deity who commissioned him as his messenger. Then Allah’s messenger Muhammad set out to systematically exterminate people he perceived as his tormentors and enemies—Jews of Medina, among others. As for the teachings of Islam, “radical” is the most fitting term. The Quran is full of black and white, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. Men who didn’t convert to Islam were labeled infidels and slaughtered; their women and children were taken with all their belongings as booty. It was either Islam’s-way or the highway. This radicalism is very much in action today.

Political Ideology: Islam is and has always been political, in the form of Imamate, Caliphate, or by proxy, where Islam, through religious divines, controlled the state. Saudi Arabia, for instance, does not even have a constitution. The Quran is the constitution. The country has a king. Yet, the king is the supreme enforcer of the laws dictated by Islam. In another Islamic country, Iran, where the mullahs rule the mullahs, the constitution is squarely based on the Quran. Many regulations are strictly drawn from the Shariah. The mosque is the state, and no competing political ideology is permitted.

Authoritarianism: Islam is theocracy, the rule of the clerics. The dictatorship runs from the top to the bottom in a strict hierarchy, with Allah at the top, his Prophet, the Caliphs or the Imams, and the lesser men of cloth along the chain of command. No one is allowed to contest or dispute the word and actions of the authorities. Islam and democracy, therefore, are inherently irreconcilable. In some Islamic circles, Muslims speak of Islamic Democracy—an oxymoron.

Nationalism: To Islam, there is only one worldwide nation, the Islamic Ummah. To Islam, the earth is Allah’s, political boundaries are arbitrary, and there is only one legitimate nation—the nation of Islam. The idea of one world, one country, is not new to Islam. A number of secular rules, rulers, and movements had aimed for the same objective. Alexander the Great, for instance, strived toward this goal, and so did Communism, and the World Federalists still held the vision of world unification.

Militarism: Jihadists are the army of Allah. The use of violence as an instrument of policy has been and continues to be central to Islam. Muslims war under the firmly-believed and widely-cherished set of rabidly militaristic ideas. “No matter which side is killed, Islam is the victor,” and “You kill them, you go to paradise; you get killed, you go to paradise” are two examples of exhortation to jihadism and war.

Anti-anarchism: Islam does not even tolerate the basic rudiments of liberty. Anarchism can be considered as liberty gone amuck. So, Islam is anti-anarchist as a matter of course. Furthermore, the very name of Islam means “submission.” And anarchism is 180 degrees from submission—Islam is the absolute rule—anarchism is the rule of no rules.

Anti-communism: Islam is based on believing in a supreme being, Allah. This fundamental precept makes it incompatible with any materialistic philosophy, including communism. Islam, furthermore, places great importance on the rewards and punishment of the next life and denigrates the value of material existence—ideals disharmonious with the central tenets of materialistic Communism.

Anti-liberalism: Islam contends that it has the perfect divine prescription of life, brought to mankind as its eternal charter. Hence, human interventions and inventions are unacceptable and detrimental to implementing the ideal edicts. Liberal ideas trigger change. To Islam, any change from the perfect design of Allah necessarily is in error and must not be allowed. Islam fully meets each of the eight distinctive features of fascism. “If the shoe fits, wear it,” as the saying goes. Islam is fascist. Muslims and their apologists are guilty of denial and dishonesty. They have no grounds for objecting to the contention that Islam is fascism. President George W. Bush did not misspeak. If Muslims find fascism repugnant, then they should reconsider being Muslims.

©2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

MICHIGAN: A Muslim & Vice-Chair of the State’s GOP Board Rola Makki speaks out against ‘inappropriate books’ thumbnail

MICHIGAN: A Muslim & Vice-Chair of the State’s GOP Board Rola Makki speaks out against ‘inappropriate books’

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By Dr. Rich Swier

A reader sent us the following comments and the below video. Rola Makki, who is featured in the video, is a resident of Dearborn, Michigan. H/T JW.

This brief video of Rola Makki the Michigan GOP (MIGOP) outreach vice-chair is a Muslim acclaimed to be a wonderful speaker and a gift to the state party to fire up the Muslim vote.

Sodomy/homosexuality is antithetical to Sharia (Islamic law) and must be killed.

She is one of three Muslims on the MIGOP committee.

Islam dictates Muslims cannot follow man’s law i.e. the U.S. constitution, only sharia. When questioned she did not have an answer.

She also was unable to answer the constitutional question and will defer to an Imam.

Take a look.

WATCH: Public Comment Against Inappropriate Books – Rola Makki – Dearborn School Board (10-13-2022)

We have reported on Muslim outrage against teaching children about sodomy and having pornographic books in public school libraries and media centers.

Tom Perkins from The Guardian on June 17, 2023 reported:

In 2015, many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated as their city attracted international attention for becoming the first in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council.

They viewed the power shift and diversity as a symbolic but meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric that was a central theme of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.

This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.

Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing.

In a tense monologue before the vote, Councilmember Mohammed Hassan shouted his justification at LGBTQ+ supporters: “I’m working for the people, what the majority of the people like.”

While Hamtramck is still viewed as a bastion of multiculturalism, the difficulties of local governance and living among neighbors with different cultural values quickly set in following the 2015 election. Some leaders and residents are now bitter political enemies engaged in a series of often vicious battles over the city’s direction, and the Pride flag controversy represents a crescendo in tension.

“There’s a sense of betrayal,” said the former Hamtramck mayor Karen Majewski, who is Polish American. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.”…

The resolution, which also prohibits the display of flags with ethnic, racist and political views, comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under assault worldwide, and other US cities have passed similar bans, with the vast majority driven by often white politically conservative Americans. [Emphasis added]

©2023. Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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French President Blames ‘Video Games’ Instead of ‘Islam’ for Riots

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By Jihad Watch

“The video games that have intoxicated them” — Emmanuel Macron

While I don’t think modern digital entertainment is especially healthy, national leaders blaming movies and games instead of dealing Islamic violence is even less mentally healthy.

Here’s France’s President Macron trying hard not to talk about the thing you’re not supposed to address.

President Emmanuel Macron has mostly blamed social media for the devastation, but he has also claimed that video games have inspired copycat violence and vandalism.

“It sometimes feels like some of them are experiencing, on the streets, the video games that have intoxicated them,” Macron said in a press conference on July 1.

There were massive riots in France long before video games and while feedback cycles of simulated violence are probably not doing anything helpful for the minds of France’s youth, the bigger problem is that the youth increasingly consists of North African Muslims who have no investment in the country, a great deal of hostility to it and every reason to act out their version of the BLM riots.

Social media is playing a role here, but talking about the digital element ignores the real issue. Much like the arguments that video games caused school shootings, the vast majority of kids playing games don’t shoot up schools, and those who do have specific motives. Entertainment is rarely a motive, it may just occasionally suggest a means. Macron wants to talk about the adrenaline high rather than the underlying hatred.

Islam does not need video games to inspire violence in its followers and the clash of civilizations in France is not just a misfiring reptile brain. Everything else is a distraction from that simple reality.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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

California: Islamic scholar says ‘if the Quran says that the Earth is flat, then it has to be flat’ thumbnail

California: Islamic scholar says ‘if the Quran says that the Earth is flat, then it has to be flat’

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By Jihad Watch

“Until, when he reached the setting-place of the sun, he found it setting in a spring of muddy water, and found a people nearby.” (Qur’an 18:86)

The original video has been taken down from the Muslim Community Center – MCC East Bay YouTube page.

MEMRI, June 10, 2023:

Dr. Ali Ataie, who is an Islamic scholar and a professor at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, CA said at the Muslim Community Center in the San Francisco Bay Area that there is a “growing” flat-earther “movement” among the scientific community, and he said that footage that the footage of astronauts in space was visibly filmed in a pool. He questioned how there can be seas and oceans if the Earth is spherical, and he said that Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity is bogus, referring to him as a Freemason and an occultists. He also said that if the Quran says that the Earth is flat, it therefore must be flat. In addition, he claimed that nobody has ever seen the dark side of the moon because the moon is a light and not a spherical object, and he said that the overwhelming majority of astronauts are Freemasons. He also said that American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is a Freemason. The lecture was part of a series of lectures about “Quranic Science” and it was uploaded to the YouTube account of the Muslim Community Center – MCC East Bay on June 10, 2023.

Dr. Ali Ataie: “Geocentrism is that the earth is stationary and that the heavenly bodies are revolving around the Earth. Nowadays, if you even suggest something like that, you will be crucified, basically. Not only that… There is a growing movement nowadays – this is not just among Christians, this is in scientific community – [who say] that the Earth is actually a plane, that it is a flat plane, that it is not globular, and it is stationary. This is a very popular movement now.”

[…]

Audience member: “But all the astronauts, who have gone up to the space stations and all that, they say it is round.”

Ataie: “Oh yeah, that’s what they say, but we haven’t seen a picture. I mean, we have these images of astronauts working in the space stations, with the Earth in the background, but look at the Earth, there are no satellites, which there are supposed to be 20,000 satellites – you don’t see a single one. You don’t see a single plane anywhere. And every so often in one of their videos, you will see bubbles come up, which means they are in a pool, in front of a green screen, and you can find these videos.

“So how does water convex itself? So if the Earth is round, water can bend itself. Can I do that, can I conduct that experiment? I can certainly pour water into a container and the water will take the shape of the container, but I am not talking about that. I am talking about pouring water out and making it into a convex sculpture, without it… Because water always finds a level.”

Audience member: “But it is the gravity, which is keeping it…”

Ataie: “That’s the whole answer, it is the catch-all, it is gravity. It’s gravity, don’t worry about it, it’s gravity… So people in Australia are walking upside down, and trillions of tons of water are sticking to the Earth upside down, because of gravity, but a bird flying over the ocean… So gravity is strong enough that it holds all this water, but just weak enough that a bird can fly over the ocean or a fish to swim through that water. So it’s very strange. A fickle thing gravity is.

[…]

“Sir Isaac Newton – a knighted Freemason, occultist – sitting around, an apple falls on him, [saying]: ‘Oh there is gravity, what an epiphany!’ No, it is called relative density. Initially this sounds like a totally ridiculous notion, right? But those who make this argument are saying that there is scientific backing for it, and that the vast majority of opinions of human beings throughout history, is that the earth is geocentric.

[…]

“You believe in gravity, I believe in God.

[…]

“Because if we are definitive on things… And I think it is a great wisdom that Allah doesn’t give us definitive answers, because the scientific community keeps changing their minds. So if we believe that the Quran is correct, even if the Quran says that the Earth is flat, then it has to be flat. And for 2000 years people are ridiculing the Muslims, saying: ‘You guys are barbarians, you are crazy, it is not flat.’ Then in 2000 years later they say, ‘Oh yeah, it’s flat.’

[…]

“Also another thing about the moon is that you never see the dark side of the moon. You never see the backside of the moon. So if it is orbiting, why don’t we ever see the backside? All it does is go like this… It just rotates like that, it never turns… There is not backside, it is a light, it is translucent. You can’t land on something like that.”

Audience member: “But then you don’t believe they landed on the moon.”

Ataie: “How do you get through the Van Allen Radiation Belts? Even right now, if you talk to modern scientists, and say: ‘What is the biggest challenge with space travel?’ We can’t even get out of low Earth orbit, 200 miles away from Earth, and they have massive radiation belts, we have to figure that out. This is 50 years after six moon landings? They can’t go 200 miles off the Earth, but 50 years ago, they went 500,000 miles round-trip, six times. You know, $19 billion they fleeced from the American public.

[…]

“Five hundred and fifty or so astronauts have been up in space – [of them] 94% or something are Freemasons, the secret society. It’s a fact, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, the first men on the moon [are] 33rd degree Masons. This is a fact. And secret societies keep secrets.

“Do you know Neil deGrasse Tyson? Have you ever heard of this guy? Also a Mason, he is sort of the go-to-guy of the modern scientific world.

[…]

“That is just what they said, ‘we found 70 planets, and they’re just like Earth…’ Sure they did… I don’t think so…”

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

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Wagner Fighters Who Move To Belarus May Become Instructors In The Military, Secure Belarusian Interests In Africa

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By Middle East Media Research Institute

Russia | Special Dispatch No. 10700

On June 28, 2023, the Russian media outlet Vzglyad published an article titled “How To Manage The Legacy Of The Wagner Group” about the future of the Wagner Group mercenaries after the attempted mutiny that took place few days earlier.[1]

As many Wagner group fighter are preparing to move to Belarus,[2] Belarusian military expert Alexander Alesin told Vzglyad that these fighters may become instructors in the Belarus Army or may provide security for Belarusian workers in Africa.

Below are excerpts from the Vzglyad article:[3]

Central African Republic: If Wagner Troops Have To Leave The Country, Other Security Groups From Russia Are Welcome

“…The Wagner group enjoys quite a large ‘inheritance’ in Africa. As of today, the private company is present in many countries on the continent, including Mali, Central African Republic (CAR), and several other countries… [Wagner] simply keeps states from disintegrating and ensures the safety of civilians. For instance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the work of Wagner instructors in the CAR will continue.

“…In this regard, Lavrov emphasized that conjunctural issues shouldn’t influence Russia’s strategic relations with its African partners. According to him, ‘there is no panic on the ground,’ and no changes in Moscow’s relations with the countries of the African continent were recorded.

“In the CAR, by the way, the reaction to the [Wagner’s attempted] coup was calm. The authorities of the republic stated that in the event of the departure of the Wagner troops from the country, they would accept services of any other security group from Russia. ‘If Moscow decides to withdraw the Wagner PMC and send us the ‘Beethoven [Group]’ or ‘Mozart [Group]’ servicemen, and not the Wagner ones, we will welcome them,’ said Fidel Guanjika, adviser to the President of the CAR.

“…The leaderships of Russia and Belarus are facing a non-trivial task: on the one hand, it is necessary to preserve and multiply the invaluable experience of infantrymen and assault troops of the Wagner Group… On the other hand, it is important not to harm the ties and work patterns of this body in Africa and the Middle East.

“It is also important to consider the stances of the leaderships of Russia and Belarus regarding the future fate of the Wagner servicemen. As Russian President Vladimir Putin said: Wagner Group fighters have three options.[4] The first is to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry or other security agencies. The second is to return home to their loved ones. The third is to be transferred to Belarus.”

Belarusian Military Expert Alesin: The Wagner Group Will Be Able To Protect Belarus Workers In Africa

“…Belarusian military expert Alexander Alesin told Vzglyad: ‘I believe that the Wagner Group will not take root in Belarus in the form in which it existed before June 24 [when the attempted mutiny took place]. First, our legislation does not allow for the presence of such formations in the country. In fact, from a legal perspective, representatives of this unit are [considered] members of an illegal military organization. Second, the current system of power in Belarus and the nature of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko’s governance are ideologically at odds with the nature of the Wagner Group. After all, it is important for us to maintain the [principles of] central subordination of the troops and a unified structure of command. Nevertheless, Minsk will try to use the potential that Wagner has. I believe that the Belarusian Armed Forces will be able to turn Wagner Group fighters into instructors. They have colossal combat experience in dozens of conflicts around the world. Naturally, their skills can be of use in training new soldiers for our state.

“‘What’s more, the Wagner Group can be used for its main function, namely, to perform certain tasks outside of Belarus. I would like to draw the attention to Africa. We are gradually increasing our presence on this continent. Let’s recall Lukashenko’s visit to Zimbabwe: back then, the president openly declared that this country would become a hub for the gradual expansion of Minsk’s influence in this part of the world. We are currently discussing with various countries of the African continent plans to set up businesses in the agricultural or engineering sectors. Naturally, the situation in Africa is turbulent: to conduct such activities without turning to security services is almost impossible. I believe the Wagner Group will be able to meet the security needs of our workers [in Africa].

“‘In this regard, I would like to note that Minsk will not claim the achievements that the Wagner Group reached before 2023 in the interests of Russia. After all, we are allied states. To quarrel about Wagner achievement is pointless. Moscow’s position will certainly be considered, and the development of the African continent will largely be carried out jointly.’

‘Russian Africa’ Has A ‘Promising Future’

“Military expert Alexander Artamonov said: ‘At the moment there is no need to worry about Russia’s position in Africa. First, Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken about the importance of separating the rank-and-file soldiers of the Wagner Group from some of its leaders engaged in covert scheming and intrigues. Soldiers who served in CAR are not in danger. These guys have proved themselves to be excellent fighters, serving faithfully the interests of their Fatherland. To take any action against them would be foolish. I believe they will continue their deployment in Africa. Perhaps the name of their organization will be changed, or the government will come up with new forms of cooperation with them.

“‘Second, the Wagner Group was an important tool in terms of interacting with the continent in the field of security, but by no means the only one. For instance, now there is an active deliberation on the construction of a Russian military base in Sudan. I doubt that this would be done by representatives of a private organization. We must not forget that, until recently, the Wagner Group was not engaged in training most of its fighters. The company was employing soldiers, who had undergone years of training in other structures, such as the [Russian] Ministry of Defense.[5] In this regard, the reformatting of the Wagner Group will not cause much of a problem in terms of personnel policy.

“‘Third, our cooperation with Africa is not limited to security alone. A Russia-Africa summit will be held soon, where the leaders of the countries will certainly discuss energy and economic issues. The African continent needs geological exploration, the development of uranium mining, and other technologies. We can and are ready to help it in this task. Besides, France is currently leaving the region. A window of opportunity is opening, and it would be a crime not to take advantage of it. Moreover, China is gradually entering [Africa] and we will be able to work on serious joint projects. In general, the ‘Russian Africa’ has a promising and surprisingly interesting future.”

SOURCES:

[1] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10680, Russian Anti-Liberal Philosopher Dugin On Prigozhin’s Armed Insurrection: Putin’s Entourage Failed To Counter A Direct Challenge, Russia Needs A New ‘Ideologized Elite’, June 26, 2023.

[2] Reuters.com/world/europe/wagner-fighters-preparing-move-belarus-commander-cited-2023-07-08/, July 8, 2023.

[3] Vz.ru/society/2023/6/28/1218561.html, June 28, 2023. The article was written by Evgeny Pozdnyakov.

[4] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10681, Russian President Putin: ‘The Majority Of Wagner Group Soldiers And Commanders Are Also Russian Patriots’, June 27, 2023.

[5] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10689, Russian President Vladimir Putin: ‘All Of The Funding The Wagner Group Received Came From The State’, June 30, 2023.

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

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Court Rejects Satanic Temple’s Abortion Petition

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By Family Research Council

A federal court is rejecting the Satanic Temple’s petition to protect abortion as a religious ritual. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas threw out a complaint earlier this week filed by the Satanic Temple back in 2021 and amended last year after Roe v. Wade was overturned. The complaint argued that pro-life laws in Texas infringed on the religious liberty of practicing Satanists, as abortions (especially first-trimester abortions) are a religious ritual in the Satanic Temple. The court determined that the Satanic Temple doesn’t have standing to file the complaint.

The Satanic Temple filed the initial complaint in 2021 in the wake of Texas’s heartbeat bill, citing a violation of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Satanic Temple amended its complaint, explicating Texas’ pro-life trigger laws prevent Satanists from practicing abortion “rituals.” Lawyers for the Satanic Temple cited the Temple’s “tenets,” one of which proclaims, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone,” a variation of the common, “My body, my choice” slogan often used by pro-abortion activists.

“The Satanic Temple considers it a victory when they can undermine sincerely held religious beliefs by pretending their legal complaints based on ‘religious freedom’ are legitimate and deserve the same consideration given to religions like Christianity,” Arielle Del Turco, director at Family Research Council’s Center for Religious Liberty, told The Washington Stand. “It’s good to see that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas rejected The Satanic Temple’s lawsuit. People know this is a stunt, and we shouldn’t get caught up in their game.”

The Satanic Temple has long been an advocate of abortion and also filed suits against pro-life laws in Missouri, Idaho, and Indiana. After Roe was overturned, the Temple announced it would open an abortion facility selling abortifacient drugs and named “Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic,” mockingly named after the Catholic Supreme Court Justice who wrote the opinion overturning Roe. On its website, the Satanic Temple states, “Consistent with our tenets that call for bodily autonomy and acting in accordance with best scientific evidence, The Satanic Temple religiously objects to many of the restrictions that states have enacted that interfere with abortion access.”

In 2020, a Satanic Temple spokesperson explained, “We’re objecting to the regulations that are not actually necessary for the abortion and do not offer better outcomes. [It] would be unconstitutional to require a waiting period before receiving Holy Communion. … So we expect the same rights as any other religious organization.” Perhaps somewhat ironically, the Catholic Church itself requires a sort of waiting period before receiving Holy Communion, demanding that Catholic confess their sins and receive absolution before presenting themselves to receive Communion.

Del Turco summarized the situation by noting, “[P]rogressive ideologues self-identifying as Satanists are literally going to court to defend abortion not on a scientific basis, but by claiming abortion is one of their religious ‘rituals.’ And while this is gross and shocking enough to make headlines, it just confirms what Christians have always known — that the religious fervor demonstrated by pro-abortion activists is not just political, it’s spiritual.”

No court judgment has yet been issued addressing the Satanic Temple’s lawsuits in Missouri, Idaho, and Indiana. The dismissal in Texas does not take into account the merits of the case, only the lack of standing of the plaintiff identified as “Jane Doe.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news 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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Iran’s Mullahs and Their Nuclear Game

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By Amil Imani

For four decades, the U.S. State Department has called the Islamic Republic of Iran the world’s “most active state sponsor of terrorism.” For forty years, U.S. officials claimed the Islamic Republic of Iran had continued funding, providing weapons, training terrorists, and giving sanctuary to several terrorist groups. And for years, the U.S. administration has been unable to outdo the Islamic Republic’s propaganda machine and clearly has been unable or perhaps unwilling to help the Iranian people to end the Islamic nightmares in Iran.

Former President George W. Bush, at his many annual State of the Union addresses, spoke numerous times about the plight of the Iranian people. He once said, “If the Iranian people stand for themselves, the United States will stand with them.” Throughout his presidency, the Iranians, of all people, hailed Bush as a courageous President and an angel of freedom. While his popularity surged in Iran, his approval rating at home declined. Finally, the Iranian people realized that Bush’s love affair was all about Tehran’s nuclear ambition, not their freedom and liberty for the Iranian people. Like his predecessors, it was “all hat, no cattle.”

As time went on, Bush vowed that the Islamic Republic would never be allowed to achieve its goal of developing nuclear bombs on his watch. He kept using all kinds of threats and promises to persuade the mullahs to drop the nuclear project, to no avail. When a belligerent end-of-the-worlder, Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad, became the Islamic Republic of Iran’s selected president, things started heating up significantly. The bellicose Ahmadinejad repeatedly kept vilifying the ‘Great Satan’ and its sidekick Israel for having the gall to demand Iran abandon its program. In contrast, his two main adversaries had their own nuclear weapons arsenal. Ahmadinejad informed the world that what the Islamic Republic does is within its own national rights.

He proved his credibility cleverly by dispatching endless series of negotiators to meetings with Europeans. He was successfully stalling for time while working around the clock to get to Surge Capacity.

Iran’s desire for peaceful nuclear technology dates to the 1950s, when the Shah of Iran received technical assistance under the U.S. Atoms for Peace program. While this assistance ended with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, under the late Shah, Iran launched a plan to achieve “Surge Capacity.” A code word for getting all the ingredients and procedures down pat for making the bomb quickly, short of actually making it; a clever power-play.

A saint and revered man of God, according to none other than Jimmy Carter (who considers himself another great man of God), the late Ayatollah Khomeini canceled the nuclear program with the same saintly and prompt edict that he canceled the life of thousands of Iranians for daring to disagree with his system of medieval Sharia rule. In no time, the vicious Mullahs gutted the Iranian armed forces and executed many of its most capable officers.

Saddam Hussein watched gleefully as the Iranian military disintegrated and found the opportunity to carry out his Pan-Arabism ambition by attacking Iran. Some eight years of barbaric butchery killed and maimed millions on both sides gutted the vibrant Iranian economy, and visited misery of all sorts upon the Iranian people. After Khomeini’s demise, another more crafty and ambitious mullah, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, became the president and secretly re-activated the program. At the same time, the IAEA watchdog snoozed contentedly on the job.

Years later, the MEK (Mujahadeen-e-Khalq) ‘whistle blower’ revealed Iran was cheating and had a secret nuclear weapons research program. Finally, the world witnessed first-hand proof positive that the mullahs were racing tirelessly with their scheme of getting the ultimate weapon.

This information greatly alarmed the United States of America and Israel. The revelation bothered no European nation, the Russians, or the Chinese. Somehow these nations figured that they would let the U.S. do all the worrying about the looming menace. At the same time, they focused on the lucrative business deals they had diligently worked out with the mullahs: something reminiscent of the cozy deal the French and the Russians had to go with the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein.

Fast Forward:

With Obama at the helm, Iran and six world powers known as the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) reached a nuclear deal on July 14, 2015, known as ‘Iran Nuclear Deal’ that intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program and enhanced monitoring in exchange for relief from nuclear sanctions. This appeared to benefit the Islamic Republic while secretly leaving the door open for Iran to continue its nuclear ambition.

On May 2018, President Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and restated a crippling sanction on Iran.

The best predictor of the future is the past. The Mullahs are proven vicious mass killers. The religious fanatic mullahs’ record is of deception, dissimulation, treachery, violence, and much more. These Quran-trained and directed agents of a wrathful Allah can never be trusted. They are master schemers. They have been in the business of scheming for centuries. They have perfected the art of deception, double talk, double-dealing, and treachery. Prudence demands better proofs, much better proofs. History will prove that President Trump did the right thing.

This raw, despicable regime represents the inevitable result of Islam, and its calling card of terrorism is now marching from the Iranian focal point to all parts of the globe. For the past forty years, people in the West, especially in the United States, have been on the receiving end of a very sophisticated and convoluted campaign of disinformation and propaganda dished out by the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and its lobbyist organizations in the U.S.  MOIS, (The Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic of Iran) learned its methodology directly from the Soviet KGB. Many Islamists who supported Khomeini were trained in the old Soviet Union.

My advice to the Biden administration is don’t let down your guard and make sure that no one lulls you into the deadly trap of complacency.

Yet, if the mullahs get their hands on the bomb, they will use it in numerous ways. They will use it for blackmail, they will use it in small packages through untraceable proxies, and they might even launch it with their missiles in a homicide-suicide fashion which is their trademark.

In short: the U.S. has, in secular Iranians, its best friends in the Islamic world. The U.S. must help these Iranians to dislodge the vicious doomsday Mullahs, not as an act of altruism but as a prudent measure of enlightened self-interest.

2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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Thousands Of U.S. United Methodist Congregations Split From Denomination Over LGBTQ Issues

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By The Daily Caller

The United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the nation, has granted permission to more than 6,000 congregations to split from the denomination over the past few years due to long-standing theological and LGBT-related issues, according to the Associated Press.

About 6,182 congregations, one-fifth of the U.S. total, have received approval to disassociate from the United Methodist Church since 2019, when the church endorsed an exit strategy for churches looking to leave the denomination because of disagreements over the church’s tolerance and/or endorsement of certain LGBT positions, according to the AP. Of the 6,182, some 4,172 have split from the denomination this year alone, according to the AP.

Many conservative churches have left as Methodist churches have routinely violated bans against the ordination or marriage of homosexuals.

Departures from the Protestant denomination have been focused in the South and Midwest, with states such as Texas, Alabama, Kentucky and Ohio each seeing hundreds of congregations disaffiliate, the AP reported.

The United Methodist Church has attempted to keep the congregations intact; however, many congregations have publicly said that same-sex marriage is incompatible with Christian teaching. A number of disaffiliated congregations have joined the Global Methodist Church, a new, more-conservative denomination founded in 2022 by people who left the United Methodist Church, while others resort to different denominations.

More left-wing Methodists have anticipated a proposal modifying the church law to permit same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBT individuals at the following General Conference in 2024 as a result of these departures, the AP reported.

“I don’t think any of us want to see any of our churches leave. We’re called to be the body of Christ, we’re called to be unified. There’s never been a time when the church has not been without conflict, but there’s been a way we’ve worked through that,” he said.

AUTHOR

IRELAND WALKER

Contributor

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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America: There Will Be Blood

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By Amil Imani

The Muslims’ killing campaign did not end with their defeat at the gates of Vienna. Jihadism never changes. The long history of violent Islam speaks for itself. It’s a significant reason that explains why Eastern European citizens do not accept mass immigration of Muslim societies with the same kind of “tolerance” demanded by the elitist governments of Western Europe. Their fury is slowly reaching a boiling point.

Their eviction from Spain was a temporary forced retreat. But now, in huge numbers, Muslims have penetrated the gates of every city and town in Europe and North America without even having to use their swords.

Worried by the Muslims’ trouble-making and killing sprees, civilized nations in Western Europe and Northern America are bending over backward to placate them to join the family of humanity by admitting hordes of immigrants and offering them all manners of hospitality and assistance. All these gestures remain in vain and to no avail. Many of the new arrivals, deeply infected by their Islamic indoctrination and ethos, find it impossible to assimilate in any host country. Instead, they strive to impose their defunct order, which is the cause of their own misery, backwardness, and inhumanity on the host nations.

The non-Muslim world is at its wits’ end. No accommodation or kindness seems to stem the tide of Islamic violence. Countless numbers of proposals have been advanced in dealing with this systemic Islamic disorder. Some feel that, in general, Muslims are law-abiding citizens of their adopted countries, and it is only a minority that is responsible for the violence and mayhem. Thinking along these lines has prompted people to say that the solution to Islamic violence rests with Islamic leaders. That is, Islamic leaders should speak up and condemn jihad and jihadists.

Western armchair theorizers and wishful thinkers need to take time and study Islamic history and its system of belief to avoid making demands on Muslim leaders–demands that will never be met because they are entirely unrealistic.

Islam presently has its stranglehold over a billion humans, posing an existential threat to all non-Muslims. When this billion and a half adhere to the pathological belief of Islam and use it as their marching orders of life, the rest of humanity ignores this threat at its peril.

Yet again, Islam has risen from the ashes and is on a campaign of conquest worldwide. Hordes of fanatical Islamic foot soldiers are striving to kill and get killed. They all want the opportunity to discharge their homicidal-suicidal impulses on their way to Allah’s promised glorious paradise. And in the background, granting the foot soldiers’ wishes, are their handlers, the puppeteers, who pull the strings and detonate these human bombs. Those who cherish life must recognize these emissaries of death — what makes them, what motivates them, and how best to defend against them.

With a long tradition of protecting religious freedom, America still clings to the “hands off” practice of leaving alone any doctrine or practice billed as religion. A thorny problem is deciding what constitutes a religion and who will make that call. There is a glimmer of hope that the American people are waking up to the deceit and the menace of the creed called Islam. Their opposition to the building of the mosque at Ground Zero and their numerous objection to building mosques reveals that the creeping Islamization of America is indeed something to stand against and prevent before it is too late.

As more and more Muslims arrive in America, as they reproduce with great fecundity, as they convert the disenchanted and minorities, and as petrodollar-flush Muslims and Muslim treasuries supply generous funds, they gather more power to undermine a severe challenge to the American system of governance—representative democracy. As for our Constitution, Muslims have no use for it at all. Muslims believe Allah’s rule must govern the world as a Caliphate—a theocracy. Making a mockery of the system of law, subverting its workings, and ignoring its provisions is a Muslim’s way of falsifying what he already believes to be a sinful and false system of governance invented by infidels.

Very few of us have been sounding the alarm for decades about the ever-increasing menace Islam poses to America and our way of life. Apathy, political correctness, and massive Islamic lobbying have successfully prevented the public from truly grasping the all-pervasive Islamic assault.

Time and again, we are told by the politically correct “experts” not to worry about Islam posing a threat to our way of life. We’re also told not to worry about the horrific things that are happening on the other side of the world! If Muslims act heinously toward non-Muslims, it is how things are in those countries and hardly any of our business. This is the same attitude that set the Islamization of Europe on a seemingly irreversible track. One European country, one after another, is rapidly buckling under the weight of Islamism.

With heavy assurances like this from so many know-it-all authoritative figures, we can relax and not worry. Yet, the Islam problem is very real and deadly. Neither the pronouncements of the experts nor any relaxation of the mind can make it go away. Islam will continue its bloody conquest.

Islam is a belief in blood. It lives and thrives on blood. It can be an animal, an enemy, or even its own blood. Unless our government sees the handwriting on the wall and deals with it accordingly, before very long, America will have to turn its deed over to the new Muslim invaders or rebel and fight block by block, city by city. That’s when There Will Be Blood.

©2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

France is Finished: Rioters Burn Down Largest Library in France, 1,000 Buildings Burnt, 5,600 Vehicles Destroyed thumbnail

France is Finished: Rioters Burn Down Largest Library in France, 1,000 Buildings Burnt, 5,600 Vehicles Destroyed

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By The Geller Report

No LOL. The Alcazar Library of France was deliberately badly damaged by a large fire which began on 30 June 2023.

At the time of its arson, the library was one of the biggest in France, containing nearly a million documents.

France Has Fallen: After 1,000 Buildings Burnt, 5,600 Vehicles Destroyed, 3,300 Arrests, Government Vows to Crack Down – On Free Speech

by Richard Abelson, TGP, July 4, 2023:

89% of Frenchmen condemn the violence committed against security forces, leaving left-wing riot apologists in the tiny minority. A man was killed by a flash-bang grenade in Marseille. The GoFundMe for the police officer involved in the deadly shooting of Nahel M. reached €1.6 M. The Macron government proposed cracking down on free speech instead of the rioters.

The situation in France calmed Tuesday night, on the 8th night of unrest since the officer-involved death of 17-year-old driver Nahel, with only 16 arrests, including 7 in the Paris region. There were 116 fires on public roads, 78 vehicles burned and 8 buildings set on fire. 1,243 people have been indicted since June 30. Bus and tram service was restored, which had been suspended since Friday. Police arrested three men with 300 kilos of fireworks in Paris.

There have been 1,000 buildings burnt, 5,600 vehicles destroyed, and 3,300 arrests since last week in France.

According to a survey for BFMTV on Tuesday, July 4, 89% of respondents condemn the violence perpetrated against the police. Only 20% voiced understanding for the violence. 66% blamed parental negligence, 55% blamed lax law enforcement and 43% blamed drug trafficking in some cities.  French confidence in the police remains high (71%), while 76% criticized the government’s handling of the violence. 50 % saw right-wing leader Marine Le Pen strengthened by the riots, 31% said she would have handled the riots better.

Keep reading.

Policemen Set Upon by Muslim Mob: ‘Beaten On The Ground Like Dogs”

During the riots, a mob of 20 Arabs set upon two off-duty policemen, after one of them had been recognized as a policeman.

By: Hugh Fitzgerald, July 4, 2023:

More on this outrage — one among so many — can be found here: “French riots: 2 off-duty police officers ‘beaten like dogs’ by mob in brutal video,” by John Cody, Remix News, June 30, 2023:

Police sources have confirmed that the shocking viral video of a man laying unconscious on the ground after being beaten by Arab rioters was an off-duty French police officer. He was one of two off-duty officers severely wounded by the mob. The targeted beating took place on Thursday night, which marked the third night of rioting that has rocked France since the police shooting of 17-year-old French-Algerian Nahel M., who was well known to the police for his lengthy criminal history.

In the video, one man is heard saying to the unconscious off-duty officer: “You’re knocked out on the ground, huh? That’s it, the Arabs — they f**ked you up.”

According to French newspaper Le Figaro, another officer was also assaulted. The first officer suffered a fractured jaw and the second received several stab wounds. Although the riots began in Paris, they have spread to a variety of French cities, and Marseilles has been hit hard.

While returning to their car, the off-duty officers were blocked on the road by burning trash cans in the 1st arrondissement of the city. When one of them got out to clear the way, one of the rioters recognized him. At that point, approximately 20 individuals violently attacked them, according to a police source….

French President Emmanuel Macron’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, offered comment on the two officers, saying: “They were beaten on the ground like dogs, there are no other words.”…

Officers have been hit with Molotov cocktails and firework mortars, and subjected to physical assaults, with one French police union now threatening to mutiny unless they are given more resources, writing: “We are at war.”

In Marseilles, the city where the officers were beaten, the largest library in the city was also set on fire. The library contains priceless works of art and literature that date back to Medieval times.

The rioters have not only targeted police officers but also seemingly random white people who have been pulled from their vehicles and beaten by mobs.

More Than One Billion Euros In Damage From Muslim Riots

The rising cost of damages from the riots is discussed here: “French riots already cost €1 billion in damage,” by John Cody, Remix News, July 4, 2023:

France has suffered €1 billion in damage due to widespread rioting, said Geoffrey Roux de Bézieux, head of France’s largest employer federation, the Movement of the Enterprises of France (MEDEF), during an interview with French newspaper Le Parisien….

“It is too early to give a precise figure but we are at more than a billion euros, not counting the damage to tourism. The videos of the riots, which circulated around the world, damage the image of France. It’s always difficult to know if the impact will be lasting, but there will certainly be a drop in bookings this summer when the season was promising. Trips have already been canceled,” said Bézieux….

And given the scenes of mass destruction that have gone around the world, how many tourists who had planned to visit Paris in 2024 for the Olympics, will prefer to stay home and watch the games on television? Why take risks of being caught up in mob violence, set off by a “spark”?

The latest damage figures coming out of France must also be factored into the debate around immigration and arguments that Europe needs more foreigners to shore up public finances. Claims that the migrants will be needed to pay into the pension system of European countries have already been debunked numerous times, as they already cost countries like France and Germany tens of billions every single year for housing, education, and jobless benefits. If anything, these populations are burning a massive hole in the public finances of nations across the West.

Few Muslim migrants pay into the pension system, because few are gainfully employed. But as a collective, they take out more from the state than any other group – some tens of billions of euros are spent each year on their housing, medical care, education, family allowances, and jobless benefits.

However, when the financial damage of the French riots is also factored in, along with the significant resources dedicated to policing these migrant communities, arguments about the financial benefits of mass immigration appear to be, at least in France, quickly leading to a backlash amongst the public. In fact, the vast majority of French people — even before the riots — were saying that France had taken in too many migrants and that immigration had brought more disadvantages than advantages.

The videos of the riots show that the vast majority of rioters were urban youth with a foreign background; court cases are also confirming this to be the case.

CNews reporter Amaury Bucco posted a tweet pointing out that four rioters tried for the looting of stores in Paris and for receiving goods from these stores: three of them are migrants, including two illegal Algerians, one was under a deportation order (OQTF).

“Immediate appearances in Marseille: a 21-year-old man, son of a Malian diplomat, who came to demonstrate in tribute to Nahel, arrested during the night with four pairs of glasses and six pants. Again, clean record and again, the prosecution requests prison time,” wrote French journalist Clara Martot Bacry.

The son of a diplomat does not want for much. Still, what better way to offer a deeply-felt tribute to Nahel Merzouk than to join other Muslims, equally touched by his death, than by emptying out a clothing store and an optician’s office?

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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RELATED TWEETS:

The future of France!! Protest at Paris Square!!! pic.twitter.com/tI3yQ81MHe

— Sandy 🇮🇳(Sundeep) (@ssingapuri) July 5, 2023

Paris, Republic Square and a sea of Algerian people with Algerian flags.

France is no longer France. pic.twitter.com/DozoRFrOtm

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) July 5, 2023

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

‘We Haven’t Slept for Three Nights’: Jewish Resident of Marseille Describes Rioting thumbnail

‘We Haven’t Slept for Three Nights’: Jewish Resident of Marseille Describes Rioting

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By The Geller Report

Marseille has turned into Gaza.’

Waves of Antisemitism’ Rampant in French Riots

Muslims spray-painted “Police scum” on a monument in Nanterre commemorating the Holocaust and Jewish members of the French resistance to the Nazis.

Antisemitic chants have also been heard during riots and Jewish businesses have been ransacked.

‘We Haven’t Slept for Three Nights’: Jewish Resident of Marseille Describes Rioting

There isn’t a living soul on the street. Marseille has turned into Gaza.’

By United with Israel Staff and JNS

Dan Lilty, a resident of Marseille, described to Israel National News how the riots that have hit France are affecting the Jewish community.

“There’s a great pandemonium here,” he said, in an interview published Monday. “Three nights that we haven’t slept because of the explosions from the firecrackers of the young people who are rioting in the city and because of the police response.”

“We are not able to go to restaurants because everything is closed. There isn’t a living soul on the street since being in the city center feels dangerous.”

He added that Jews are not the only ones affected negatively by the riots. “The rioters only want to steal and riot on the streets without differentiating who stands before them.”

Lilty, who runs a store selling glasses, says he emptied the shelves for fear of looting. “We took everything home. There are no glasses or sunglasses in the store. I took everything before Shabbat started, and there are no goods in the store at all.”

He described how he feared his store was in trouble when he noticed his phone ringing repeatedly over Shabbat. Religiously observant Jews do not use the phone on Shabbat except for potentially life-threatening situations.

“I am religious and keep Shabbat; my cellphone rang four or five times. I walked 40 minutes on foot to my store because I feared there were problems near the store, and thank G-d, everything was fine.”

Lilty says police are not doing enough to stop the rioting.

I was born and raised in Marseille, and I love it. But the Marseille of today has turned into Gaza,” he said.

Mass chaos has engulfed France since the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M., of Algerian origin, in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday.

Rioters in areas with large Muslim populations have torched cars and looted shops, clashing with police and causing hundreds of injuries.

During the rioting, vandals spray-painted “Police scum” on a monument in Nanterre commemorating the Holocaust and Jewish members of the French resistance to the Nazis.

Antisemitic chants have also been heard during riots and Jewish businesses have been ransacked.

israel is closely monitoring and deeply concerned about “waves of antisemitism sweeping over France,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting.

“In recent days, we have witnessed criminal assaults against Jewish targets. We strongly condemn these attacks and support the French government in its fight against antisemitism,” he added.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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French President Macron Imposes Total Ban on Social Media Reporting of Events in France

WARNING GRAPHIC: Scenes From War Torn France, “APOCALYPTIC”, Mayor and His Family Escape Assassination

France: Muslim Rioters Threaten Jews with New Holocaust

FRANCE IS BURNING: The Leftist-Islamic Alliance Makes Its Move In France

Muslim rioters attack LGBT bar, ‘We burn the whores, by the Qur’an’

France: Muslims ransack church, smash windows, write ‘The last prophet is Mohamed’ on white board

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

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