A history of Arab Terrorism

I wrote this history in 2005, almost 8,000 words, so not a casual read. It recounts the rise of terrorism by Arab groups through its three stages of the 20th century: insurgency against Arab countries' secularist rulers; political terrorism against Israel; and finally Islamist terrorism against both insufficiently Islamic Arab rulers and the West, mainly the United States.

A terrorist of the PLO at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich,
where 11 Israeli hostages and five of the eight terrorists were killed. 

The Old is New AgainThe war that radical, violent Islamists are waging against the West springs from the fact that Islamism and Westernism are fundamentally incompatible. But both are too deeply embedded in both sides' culture, social systems, politics and religion to be very easily altered. Compared to this centuries-old struggle, the Cold War was a brief respite. Rather than the new millennium inaugurating a golden age of human progress and well-being, what was old is new again. History has returned.

Just click here.

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Hey, ya want ya some Medicare for All? Well, a self-described "left wing liberal" physician who worked for several years in one of the federally-funded test locations says to do this:

OK, actually, she wrote this in I Was a Physician at a Federally Qualified Health Center. Here's Why I No Longer Believe Government Health Care Can Work.:

So, I put my head down. I shut my mouth. I stopped suggesting improvements or changes that might make the system more efficient and improve patient care. I humbled myself before my managers and administrators, saying “yes, sir,” and “no, ma’am.”

This technique worked like a charm. No one screamed at me anymore. I even got a large raise.

But inside I seethed. My blood pressure spiked. My neck ached. I was anxious and depressed.

The day that my government contract expired was one of the happiest days of my life. I was free. Never again would I sell myself into indentured servitude—not to the government or any other agency.

Because doctors bail when they become serfs of the state. Why the UK Suddenly Is Suffering from a Physician Shortage -- If only someone had warned them.

The NHS is in a state of perpetual crisis characterized by doctor shortages, long wait times, and rationing. The UK lost 441 general practitioners last year and had 11,576 unfilled vacancies for doctors as of last June.

But in the last six years, 585 surgical practices have closed down, affecting 1.9 million patients. Last year alone, 138 surgery facilities closed their doors, up from 18 in 2013.

But it's okay, comrades, because fairness!

Speaking of socialism, what this country needs is to make pencil manufacturing great again! Elizabeth Warren's Pitch for 'Economic Patriotism' Is Full of Intellectual Dishonesty and Economic Fallacies

"There are a lot of giant companies who like to call themselves 'American,' but face it: they have no loyalty or allegiance to America," she says in the video.

As proof, Warren points to the "famous no. 2 pencil," which is mostly manufactured in Mexico and China. Her video doesn't make clear why pencils should have to be made in America—or why that lack of good, pencil-making jobs in America is a problem.

That Warren chose to use pencils to illustrate the supposed need for "economic patriotism" is darkly hilarious to anyone familiar with "I, Pencil," Leonard Read's 1958 parable about the merits of free markets and comparative advantage. Reed's lesson is that no one on the planet has the means or knowledge to make an item as mundane and ubiquitous as a simple pencil. A pencil requires wood, graphite, brass, and rubber, but each component part is the result of supply chains that might stretch around the world—from the forests of the Pacific Northwest to the mines of Mexico to the factories of Indonesia.

But what does that have to do with election sound biting? We need a pencil factory here, dang it! And Warren is going to build that!

First thing we do is keep all the poor people poor. If you were a national leader and decided to make sure that poor people stayed that way, what would you do? Well, this, of course: 7 Things I'd Do if I Wanted to Keep Poor People Poor

First on the list? Socialism, baby! Because remember:

Speaking of destruction of the nuclear American family, The tragic — and overlooked — fallout from the ’60s sexual revolution.

The fracturing of the post-1960s family and the flight to collective identities have not only been occurring at the same time. As the timeline and other evidence show, they cannot be understood apart from one another.

Identity politics is also a product of the revolution in another way. Whether one looks left or right, to politics or culture, the question, “Who am I?” has become the most frantic of our time. Traditionally, that question has been answered at least in part via primordial relations: I am a sister, a daughter, a cousin, a mother, a grandmother.

When answers that revert to family identity are more attenuated than ever before, “Who am I?” gets answered in a different way. 

White privilege check!

But s'okay because the Obamas Strike Blow for Economic Justice, Donate Millions in Exchange for Massive Beachfront Estate: Former president conquers ‘wealth anxiety.’ 

What a relief, because for awhile there I was afraid that America was too racist for the Obamas to move to Martha's Vineyard. But I was wrong!

What are the seven deadly sins of progressivism? PEWSLAG, of course.

Long ago, there was a mnemonic for the seven deadly sins, PEWSLAG. In order, it meant Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Lust, Avarice, and Gluttony.  So common have the elements of PEWSLAG become in our time that they can no longer be considered as ‘The 7 Deadly Sins,” but rather as the PPAF, The Progressive Platform for America’s Future.

Let’s review the PPAF in greater detail:

Explained in detailed by the inimitable Gerard Vanderleun, who was a founding member of the SDS at UC-Berkeley back on the 60s and so knows what he is talking about.

Finally, some Truth here by the late Nabeel Qureshi.

State and other persecution of religious people

In last Sunday's lectionary passage from the book of Acts, the apostles are arrested for preaching that Christ is risen. They are questioned before the Jewish priestly Sanhedrin. The high priest reminds them that they had been ordered to stop such preaching.

Peter, speaking for all the apostles, responds, "We must obey God rather than any human authority." Acts records that had not a Sanhedrin member named Gamaliel argued otherwise, the apostles would have been executed that day.

Fast forward to today, and understand that there are still human authorities who will not countenance any resistance to their authority. China, for example, this month:


This was the destruction of one of the largest church buildings in the country. The Guardian reports,

Witnesses and overseas activists said the paramilitary People's Armed Police used dynamite and excavators to destroy the Golden Lampstand Church, which has a congregation of more than 50,000, in the city of Linfen in Shanxi province.

ChinaAid, a US-based Christian advocacy group, said local authorities planted explosives in an underground worship hall to demolish the building following, constructed with nearly $2.6m (£1.9m) in contributions from local worshippers in one of China's poorest regions.

The church had faced "repeated persecution" by the Chinese government, said ChinaAid. Hundreds of police and hired thugs smashed the building and seized Bibles in an earlier crackdown in 2009 that ended with the arrest of church leaders.

Those church leaders were given prison sentences of up to seven years for charges of illegally occupying farmland and disturbing traffic order, according to state media. 

And it is not just Christians. Muslims who have lived in China for centuries have suffered even worse: "Before-and-after photos show how China is destroying historical sites to monitor and intimidate its Muslim minority."

China is waging an unprecedented crackdown on a Muslim minority called the Uighurs, who live in the country's western frontier region, Xinjiang.

Muslims have for centuries settled in the region, sometimes referred to as East Turkestan. 

As part of its crackdown, which has seen the installation of facial-recognition cameras and seemingly arbitrary detentions, China's government has also destroyed traditional Uighur architecture including mosques and large parts of an ancient city called Kashgar.

Before-and-after images show the extent of some of the destruction of these historical locations.

When the state is the religion, it will always crush or suborn all others. Could never happen here, though, right? Oh, the ground is being tilled already. I give you Harvard University, April 25, 2019, and the keynote speaker of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences "Diversity Conference."

We are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Tim Wise, prominent anti-racism writer, educator, and activist. A moderated discussion with Tim will be led by Renee Graham, an associate editor and columnist at the Boston Globe.

This is the same Tim Wise who posted on his Facebook page in 2015:

This is America…people basing their beliefs on the fable of Noah and Ark, or their interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah…rather than science or logic…If you are basing your morality on a fairy tale written thousands of years ago, you deserve to be locked up…detained for your utter inability to deal with reality…NO, we are not obligated to indulge your irrationality in the name of your religious freedom…but we will provide you a very comfortable room, against which walls you may hurl yourself hourly if your choose. Knock yourself out….seriously, knock yourself out, completely, for weeks at a time…I’m sorta kidding but not by much…I don’t believe lunatics like this should be locked up, but I do think they have to be politically destroyed, utterly rendered helpless to the cause of pluralism and democracy …the world is not theirs. They have no right to impose their bullshit on others. They can either change, or shut the hell up, or practice their special brand of crazy in their homes…or go away. Their choice. And this argument applies to any fundamentalist religionist of any faith who thinks they have a right to impose their beliefs on a secular, pluralistic society. Go away.

That is not only no problem for Harvard, it is positively commendable. 

All that is bad enough. However, persecution of Jews in America (though thankfully, not by the government) is growing. Not only the violent kind, such as the anti-Trump, anti-Jew gunman, John Earnest, who killed one and shot two others in the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, California. Take for example, this cartoon published by The New York Times in its overseas pages this month:

Yes, that infamous propaganda rag of the alt-right, The  New York Times - oh, wait, you say, the NYT is not alt-right? Really? How can you tell?

No wonder that this week Serge Klarsfeld, France's most famous Nazi hunter, said, "There is no safe place on earth right now for Jews." In Washington to receive the Elie Wiesel Prize, the highest award given out by the United States Holocaust Museum, Klarsfeld told reporters,

... the cartoon was "insulting," for Trump as much as for Netanyahu who was "treated like a dog."

"It is an anti-Semitic cartoon, that is to say that Jews are guiding the world and that corresponds to a stereotype very common among the far right, which one also finds on the far left," he said.

Klarsfeld, who spent decades working to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, is worried about the future of Europe and called on centrists to mobilize ahead of the next European elections.

 "Never has a far-right or far-left regime made its people happy and prosperous, inevitably the extremes of power lead to misery and barbed wire."

In rhetoric, the far left and the far right differ only in whom they identify as class enemies. Religiously, the alt-right hates Muslims. The alt-left hates Christians. And they both hate Jews even more. So in practice, there is no distinction with a difference.

A Muslim wants to know, and so should we

Muslim writer Dr Rakib Ehsan:

Following the mosque massacres in Christchurch, political figures across the Western world did not hesitate in accurately describing what they were – white-supremacist terrorist attacks on Muslims in their places of worship during Friday prayers.

In the aftermath of Christchurch, Hillary Clinton expressed her solidarity with the global Muslim community – the Ummah – and said ‘we must continue to fight the perpetuation and normalisation of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms’. Former US president Barack Obama tweeted that himself and his wife Michelle were grieving with the people of New Zealand and the ‘Muslim community’. Our own prime minister, Theresa May, correctly labelled Christchurch as a ‘horrifying terrorist attack’.

Now, contrast this with the language used by the same three figures following the coordinated series of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. Affectionate expressions of solidarity with persecuted Christian communities have been missing. The Christians killed in their own churches have been referred to by Clinton and Obama as ‘Easter worshippers’. Despite the clearly sophisticated, well-planned nature of the terrorist attacks, which very much had the aim of killing a large number of Christians, the British PM – a vicar’s daughter – referred to them as ‘acts of violence’.

The differences in tone and nature between the condemnations of the Christchurch and Sri Lanka terrorist attacks are striking. After Christchurch, there was no hesitation about stating the religious backgrounds of the victims and directing emotion and affection towards Muslim communities. Politicians took no issue with categorising the events in Christchurch as terrorism.

In contrast, the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘Christianity’, along with their associated terms, have so far failed to feature in much of the reaction to the attacks in Sri Lanka. ...

The fact is that the persecution and victimisation of Christians continues to take place in many parts of the world, often at the hands of Islamists.

Would that we had such clarity from our own religious and political leaders.

Related: Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, writes in the Toronto Sun, "Why Islamic terrorists slaughtered Christians in Sri Lanka."

Almost no one dared to mention the word “Christian” let alone identify the terrorists as Muslim or Islamist or whatever safe word they could find in the politically correct dictionary that only the chattering classes employ. Using ordinary plain English to describe the atrocities would of course open one to be labelled “White Nationalist” or “Islamophobe.”

It’s no wonder the trio of America’s living liberal saints, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren all used the phrase, “Easter Worshippers,” instead of Christians. It was almost as if the C word was beneath them. ...

Here are the words of the suicide bomber Mohamed Zaharan from his YouTube channel where he declares: “It is a sin to live in Dar Al Kufr, (a country with a non-Muslim majority)” and “Even if a Kaffir (non-Muslim) does good things, I hate him, because he is a non-believer [in Islam].”

Such hate may not be a dominant trait among ordinary Muslims, but as one, I am aware where such hate is planted in our minds. Seventeen times a day, every Muslim child in every mosque, in every country, hears the Imam read a prayer where both Christians and Jews are referred with derision, yet no one dares to intervene.

Whereas Islam’s foundation is based on ‘Tawhid’ (invoked in the name of the Sri Lankan terrorist group), which means strict monotheism, its exact opposite is the concept of ‘Shirk’ (the Christian belief in the Trinity). No amount of inter-faith dialogue can bridge the zeal of the Muslim to answer the call to end ‘Shirk’ from the surface of earth.

Colombo is not the last city to be attacked. It’s just the latest in a long list that began with Constantinople.

This, too, by another Muslim writer: "When Christians Are Under Attack, Muslims and the Left Need to Defend Them."

To call these acts of violence heartless and barbaric would be an understatement. Nevertheless, they aren’t the first such Easter-related attacks on Christians. In Egypt, on Palm Sunday 2017, Islamic State suicide bombers murdered 45 people in two Coptic churches. In Pakistan, in 2016, a suicide bomber affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban targeted Christians celebrating Easter at a public park, killing 75 people. In Nigeria, on Easter Sunday 2012, a suicide bomber believed to be a member of Boko Haram targeted Christians outside a church, killing 38 people.

I am a Muslim, and I consider myself to be on the left, but I’m embarrassed to admit that in both Muslim and left circles, the issue of Christian persecution has been downplayed and even ignored for far too long.

The coming mosque of Notre Dame?

Bruce Bawer on the French government's response to  the fire of Notre Dame cathedral:

One thing that jumped out at me, as I watched Notre Dame burn in real time on BBC and Sky News, was the statement of some reporter or commentator or architectural expert that the cathedral could and would be rebuilt, although perhaps the new structure would be “more modern” than the old one. Later that evening, in his speech to the nation, President Macron vowed: “We will make the Cathedral of Notre Dame even more beautiful.”

More modern? More beautiful? My alarm bells went off, and they weren’t fire alarms. ...

 So it is that when one hears talk of a the construction of new Notre Dame that will be “more modern” or “more beautiful” than the original, it’s only natural – especially given that the cathedral, like all such structures in France, belongs not to the Catholic Church but to the French state –  to picture a building that, in the eyes of national and municipal officials, their interfaith advisors, and whatever cockamamie commission of postmodernism-loving architectural experts they end up putting together, ends up being some multipurpose multicultural monstrosity centered on a non-denominational worship area and/or containing different spaces for different faiths, with plenty of prayer rugs, wudu units, etc., for Muslims.

After all, in today’s Paris, Muslims already make up the majority of people who go to a house of worship at least once a week, n’est-ce pas? And given the way that these things work in most of Western Europe nowadays, it seems a foregone conclusion – barring some powerful, persuasive, and unprecedented movement to the contrary – that the voices that prevail as this project goes forward will be those arguing that the new Notre Dame must be a Notre Dame (although of course something needs to be done about that name) for the twenty-first century, for an increasingly non-Christian Paris, for an era of fundamental transformation in regard to matters spiritual. Why, after all, resurrect a cathedral that was already mainly a museum, a tourist mecca, a reminder of dead glories, when you can replace it with a spectacular mosque that will be a living place of worship for armies of believers, and will thereby serve as a dynamic, forward-looking symbol of the Paris, the France, the Europe of the twenty-first century and beyond, and hence affirm Paris’s place as the heart of a dramatically transformed Europe and – Allah willing – usher in a new Belle Époque?

Read the whole thing. I have maintained for double-digit years (though not on this blog) that Notre Dame cathedral will become a mosque during my lifetime. France's Muslim population is growing far more rapidly than ethnic French. In 2016, 8.8 percent of France's population were Muslim; in 2050 the figure will approach 20 percent.

Update: The question, "Why build it back the way it was?" is already being asked: How Should France Rebuild Notre Dame?

Much of the structure survived the blaze — but as rebuilding efforts move forward, the country will be left with a big question: What does the cathedral mean to 21st-century France?

And you better believe that a lot of answers are about to be offered.

Update: As the cathedral burned, there was jubilation from the strange alliance of Islamists and Leftists, because of what French philosopher " Bernard-Henri Lévy calls Islamo-Leftism, an 'anti-American religion' opposed to the existence of Western Civilization itself."

Meanwhile, Arab posts on an Israeli friend's Facebook page cheered Notre Dame's destruction: “This church was the HQ for the Templar Knights and was their operations room for carrying out attacks on Muslims wherever they were. We kneel (in prayer) thanking Allah and (hope) the same thing happens to the Vatican only this time the Pope is inside it.”

“God rain fire on it”.

“We’re all in solidarity with the fire. We are all the fire”.

Likewise, Social Justice Warriors posted taunts on Twitter:

“Notre-Dame burning is cosmic karma for all the historical sites and artifacts France destroyed and stole when being colonialist scum.”

"The most aesthetically pleasing visually (sic) I’ve ever seen.”

Which reminds me of destructors. "These persons simply must have an enemy, someone or some group who opposes them. For the 'my way' that destructors must get is inextricably linked to triumph over an opponent. That's why anyone who does not agree or assent to their demands is a target: the issue is not the demands, but the opposition."

Why Islam is winning in the West

Briton Jacob Williams explains why he wanted to become a Christian while a student at Oxford but rejected it and converted to Islam instead.

I had plenty of opportunities to engage with orthodox Christians, and I sincerely wanted Christianity to be true. It was clear to me that what the authorities in my world celebrated—the collapse of family life, the slaughter of the unborn, the deterioration of high culture—were, in truth, social evils that followed from the decline of the Church. Christianity seemed the natural alternative to secularity.

But when I entered the chapels and listened to the ministers, the regeneration I sought didn’t happen. Christian voices sounded all too agreeable and compromising. I wanted something stronger, something that didn’t ­bargain with secularism. I found it in Islam.

Read the whole thing. And weep.

Truth about the invasion of Europe

This is from "an interview with the German artist, activist for the rights of indigenous peoples, and UN advisor Rebecca Sommer, by the Polish website EuroIslam from January 18, 2018.

"Rebecca used to support Muslim 'refugees' in Germany, and describes how her experience made her gradually change her mind over core issues."

[A]fter looking back through the years of repetitive experiences and myself in my work environment as a volunteer, I had to admit to myself that when it comes to Muslim refugees, they have grown up with completely different values, into wich they have been brainwashed and are indoctrinated by Islam, and have no intention of adopting our values – worse, they look at us, unbelievers with superiority and arrogance. I call it “headscarf in the head”. And additionally, after their arrival here, many of them fall into the tentacles of fundamental Imams, political Islam (imported from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran etc.) who strengthen them in their fundamentalism, which prohibits them from mixing with us, infidels, and our way of life, prohibits the adoption of our perception of the world and our scientific achievements, which the German state unfortunately no longer has any control over. ...

For example, after a volunteer spent three months teaching German to a Syrian twice a week, she was convinced that everything was going well and that she was just trying to be kind and accepted the invitation for a meal together. She just thinks that he wants to thank her for help, and he thinks that the “whore” wants sexual encounter. These women do not realize that they are perceived by men from this cultural circle as infidel, immoral, and always sexually subordinate to the man, because at first the refugees seem very nice, polite and well-mannered – that is, they practice the aforementioned taqqiya. And then there was a very unpleasant surprise when a friendly – until now – immigrant dragged her by her hair into the bathroom at the moment when she wanted to say goodbye. And the reason for this is that he cannot understand that she wants to go now, because why did the “whore” come alone to his room?

Read the whole, eye-opening thing.

"There’s No Such Thing as Islamophobia"

The notion of Islamophobia is meant to give the religion of the Prophet a status of exemption denied to other spiritual systems. Thus, we have the reprehensible law enacted by the Canadian Parliament this March that prohibits criticism of Islam, while other confessions still can be denigrated without any problem. Such a law is a poisoned gift that risks producing the opposite of what it intends, since it can incite anger and resentment against the believers of the crescent. To regularize the presence of Islam in free societies means giving the faith exactly the same status as other confessions: neither moronic demonizing nor blind idealizing. Muslims in free societies must accept what Jews and Christians have accepted: that it is not a superior religion that should benefit from advantages refused to other confessions. We must beware when fanaticism borrows the language of human rights and dresses up as a victim in order better to impose its grip on power. There is an old saying: the devil also likes to quote scripture.

Read the whole thing at City Journal.

One of these Bernie Sanders is not like the other

One of the stories is straight news. The other two are fake news. Which is the true one?

1. Bernie Sanders Proposes Bill Forcing Christians Holding Public Office To Wear Scarlet Cross

2.

3. OMB Top Post Nominee ‘Berned’ at Stake for Christian Faith

Made your guess? Here are the answers:

1. Fake news

2. Fake news

3. Straight news

During a hearing of the Senate Committee on the budget this week, Sanders essentially told nominee Russell Vought that Christians are bigoted and, therefore, should not serve in public office.

After contentious and very hostile questioning of Mr. Vought, Sanders said,  “I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about,” Sanders said. “I will vote no.” The only reason Sanders gave was Vought's Christian faith.

Consider that Bernie Sanders was a credible candidate for the presidency. Read the whole article and this piece at National Review, Watch Bernie Sanders Attack a Christian Nominee and Impose an Unconstitutional Test for Public Office.

As The Atlantic's Emma Green observed of the Bernie-quisition, "As the demands for tolerance become greater, the bounds of acceptance can also become tighter."

Muslim attacks Christian priest during wedding

Muslim Man Runs Into Christian Wedding in Spain, Attacks Priest

Last Saturday, a 22-year-old man interrupted a Catholic wedding in the San Pablo Church in Valladolid, Spain, when he ran inside, shouted "Allahu Akhbar," and attacked the priest. The shocked couple could do nothing but watch in sheer amazement at what was happening:

Witnesses for the groom were eventually able to chase the man off the altar and out of the church building after he tried to attack several people present at the wedding. He even tried to throw Catholic sacramental objects at the churchgoers.

Police were able to identify and arrest the attacker, who will now be prosecuted for causing public disorder, threatening others, and for insulting religious sensibilities. The priest who blessed the wedding explained afterward that a "group of young troublemakers" started making noise at the back of the church. Next, one of the "young people" shouted "Allahu Akhbar" and charged the altar. "A lot of people," the priest went on to explain, "including the bride's mother, were crying, and there were people who had already jumped out of the pews because we did not know whether this person came alone or not, or if he was armed.".

It's not exactly Muslim excommunication . . .

... but it's somewhat conceptually similar (except excommunication can be reversed): "130 British imams refuse to perform funerals for London, Manchester attackers."

Will not happen for London murderers.

Over 130 imams from across the United Kingdom have said they will refuse to perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer for the London and Manchester terror attackers. The ritual is normally carried out for every Muslim, regardless of their actions.

In what is a highly unusual move, Muslim religious leaders from different schools of Islam -- both Sunni and Shia -- issued a statement late Monday saying their pain at the suffering of the victims of Saturday's attacks had led to their decision, and they called on others imams to follow suit.

"We are deeply hurt that a spate of terror attacks have been committed in our country once more by murderers who seek to gain religious legitimacy for their actions. We seek to clarify that their reprehensible actions have neither legitimacy nor our sympathy," the statement put out by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), an umbrella body representing over 500 organizations, read.

"Consequently, and in light of other such ethical principles which are quintessential to Islam, we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer for the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege. This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam," the statement continued.

Notice that the imams did not say there would be no funeral. They said, "we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer" at the funeral. What is the significance of of the prayer and what does its omission mean?

In Arabic, the prayer is called the Janazah Prayer. Prayerinislam.com explains,

There is a consensus among scholars that Janazah (funeral) Prayer for a deceased person whether male or female is a communal duty (fard kifayah) as the Prophet commanded Muslims to offer it ... .

With regard to the reward of offering the funeral prayer, there are many authentic narrations that prove the excellence of this prayer. For example, the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “Whoever follows the funeral procession and offers the funeral prayer for it, will get a reward equal to one Qirat, and whoever attends it till burial, will get a reward equal to two Qirat.” It was asked, “What are two Qirat?” He replied, “Equal to two huge mountains.”

Islamreligion.com says,

A prayer service should be held for every dead Muslim, young or old, even infants who have lived who died before their birth.  Women are permitted to attend the funeral prayer just as they are permitted to perform other non obligatory prayers.  In order to keep the time between death and burial to a minimum this should be held in the same city or area in which the person died.  It is not necessary for the body to be sent to another country.

The funeral prayer should be performed in congregation, it is a rewarding act and believers should not hesitate to participate in any funeral prayer even those of people not known to them.  Prophet Muhammad encouraged this saying that whoever attended the funeral prayer until it was finished would earn rewards as hefty as a great mountain. 

Note that the deceased receives no benefit from the prayer. There is no such thing in Islam as intercessory prayer for the dead as there is in some Christian traditions. Instead, Muslims who recite the Janazah are committing a meritorious act for which Allah will reward them, not the dead person. Offering the Janazah even for deceased Muslims not known to the one praying counts as merit.

And that is the key point, because the Janazah may be rightfully offered only at funerals of Muslims, not for non-Muslims. It is not a generic funeral prayer, it is very specifically Islamic.

What the British imams have said is:

• that there is no merit before Allah for offering the prayer for the London terrorists because
• the terrorists were not Muslims when they committed their rampage.

The imams' announcement is not exactly the same as pronouncing the terrorists to be apostates, but it is not far.

This is a very positive development because, as I have explained before, Islam is what Muslims do, which is not my original insight, it is the stated position of leading Muslim scholars. So if Islam is ever truly to be a religion of peace, "excommunications" of terrorists from the Muslim fold - by Muslim clerics and scholars, not Western apologists - is the only place it can begin.

But there is a long, long way to go.

What is Jihad and why?

Katy Perry forces Middle East Peace!

More here.

Methodist terrorists

The Spectator blog sums up British media coverage of the massacre of children in Manchester at the end of an Ariana Grande performance in We must come together – and repeat the mantra ‘hope not hate’

We must all come together. Hope, not hate. Nothing to do with Islam. Nothing to do with Muslims. Just a rogue individual, possibly in the employ of some mysterious foreign agency. Just terrorism, bad people. Unaligned wickedness. Nothing to do with religion. We must all come together. And show love. And solidarity. Hope not hate.

Je Suis Ariana Grande. Already viciousness is being expressed on social media sites. People jumping to all sorts of conclusions. Horrible, horrible, people – no better than the murderer. Who might just as easily have been a Methodist. Remember Jo Cox? That wasn’t them, was it? There, you see.

So we should come together. Hope not hate. Nothing to do with immigration. Nothing to do with Islam. Nothing to do with Muslims. Just horridness of no discernible provenance. Hope not hate. [boldface added]

Let it be noted that the media in Britain are state controlled. Not state organs, mind, but Her Majesty's government has the authority under law to prohibit British media from covering stories or using angles of coverage that the government doesn't approve of. And so you get pablum like above. As British singer Morrisey tweeted,

The Queen receives absurd praise for her 'strong words' against the attack, yet she does not cancel today's garden party at Buckingham Palace - for which no criticism is allowed in the Britain of free press.

Manchester mayor Andy Burnham says the attack is the work of an "extremist". An extreme what? An extreme rabbit?

At least US media are actually acknowledging that the Manchester bombing was carried out by person(s) who at least thought of themselves as Muslims (even though, you know, they weren't, not really). ABC News went straight to the point and expressed deep concern About Potential ‘Anti-Islamic Backlash’ After Manchester Terror Attack.

But why would there be a backlash against Muslims if the attack objectively had nothing to do with Islam? You may as well be worried about a backlash against Seventh Day Adventists or, well, Methodists.

Well, at least Methodists can be held partly responsible for the destruction of Rock Ridge:



And that is about the level of coverage of most media.

Europe has simply given up

Here is a chart by Eurostat showing European nations' birth rates by decade beginning at 1960 and by year 2012-2014. See a trend there? And do you see that Turkey is the only nation to show a steady, upward trend?

Demographers agree that a birth rate of 2.1 live births per woman is what it takes to maintain a level population level. When the rate falls below 1.8 it becomes increasingly difficult to reverse and below 1.5 it approaches near-impossibility. That's why rates that low are often called a "demographic death spiral."

And that is one reason why I have for many years advocated America's disentanglement from the military part of the NATO alliance. As I have said before, if NATO’s countries will not have enough children to preserve protect themselves, why should American women have children to protect them?

The chart:

Spain's government is so alarmed that it has literally set up an official office to address the problem and,

... has tasked demographic expert Edelmira Barreira with sorting out the problem. The move comes after the country reported a higher number of deaths than births for the first time in 2015.

Spanish women between 18-49 reportedly had an average of 1.3 children in 2015 - below the European Union’s (EU) figure of 1.58. Spain’s birthrate has fallen by 18 percent since 2008, according to figures from Eurostat.

And between 1977 and 2015, the number of childless couples tripled from 1.5 to 4.4 million... .

As a demographer, though, Senora Barreira cannot be optimistic since once a society's rate drops to 1.3, more than a marginal increase over the long term is almost impossible. And besides, Spanish couples "blamed long working hours and late nights for the decrease" - whatever that really means.

Long ago Europe's countries decided to build a welfare state instead of bear children. But as the birth rate correspondingly fell, who would provide the labor and wealth to pay for Europe's very generous retirement payouts and nationalized health care? They answered that question, too, but did not foresee or did not care the long-term outlook: "The Mohammed Retirement Plan Will Kill Europe."

Once again, European values are in conflict with European survival.

The European values that require Europe to commit suicide are about ideology, not language, culture or nationhood. But the incoming migrants don’t share that ideology. They have their own Islamic values.

Why should 23-year-old Mohammed work for four decades so that Hans or Fritz across the way can retire at 61 and lie on a beach in Mallorca? The idea that Mohammed would ever want to do such a thing out of love for Europe was a silly fantasy that European governments fed their worried citizens.

Then there is this informative little chart: "Muslims have an average 3 children per family (or woman? The data does not clarify this). Not hard to calculate how large the population will explode into within the next three decades."

This is one reason Europe's future decades will be decidedly non-European in ways that we recognize Europe now.

Update, March 1: The trend is also worldwide:

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world and will overtake Christianity as the most popular before the end of this century, according to an analysis of religious surveys published Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.

With 1.6 billion, Muslims made up 23 percent of the world’s population, according to a 2010 Pew estimate. That figure was still some way short of the 2.2 billion Christians which comprised 31 percent of the population.

However, by 2050 there could be near parity between the numbers of adherents of the two religions for the first time in history. The reasons for this rapid growth are thought to be the greater number of children Muslims have compared to other religious groups and the comparatively young age of Muslims.

Saudi Arabia's religious tolerance

Which is to say, there ain't none: Saudi Arabia Bans National Geographic Cover Featuring Pope Francis

Pope Francis has won praise around the world for advancing a more humble, tolerant version of Catholicism, but there’s one country that he evidently hasn’t won over. Saudi Arabia banned the August issue of the National Geographic’s Arabic edition, whose cover featured Francis standing in the Sistine Chapel, due to what the magazine said were “cultural reasons.”

“Dear readers in Saudi Arabia, we apologize that you did not receive August’s magazine,” read a statement published on National Geographic’s Arabic-language Twitter account, from the editor in chief, Alsaad Omar al-Menhaly. “According to the distribution company, the magazine was refused entry for cultural reasons.”

The very act of putting the Vicar of Christ on a magazine cover could have been controversial enough for senior officials from a country where mosque and state are closely intertwined. But Saudi censors might have also seen dangerous implications for the Wahhabi state in how National Geographic framed its coverage, as the cover referred to Francis leading a “quiet revolution” to reform the Catholic Church.

An editor’s note published in National Geographic’s Arabic edition in August lauded Pope Francis for moving to revitalize his church by making changes that “will dislodge some of the ingrained principles of the followers of the church.” Its argument, however, went beyond Catholicism: It made the case that religious institutions must adapt to a rapidly changing world. Religious pillars, the article argued, “are only tools aimed at preserving something, and if they are no longer capable of that, they must be altered.”

It’s not hard to see why that could be read as a challenge to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi religious authorities, who insist on a literal interpretation of the Quran. Wahhabis strive for a return to the practices of the first generations of Muslims from the seventh century; the notion that religion should be fluid and change with the times is precisely the idea that they are arrayed against.

And the House of Saud simply can't have any of its subjects, especially women, getting any bright ideas.

Islamic terrorists target mainly other Muslims

I have been saying since 2003 that Islamist terrorists' principal targets are other Muslims, whom al Qaeda, ISIS, et. al. consider Muslim heretics.

And now it appears that this kind of terrorist attack has come to Canada: Canada says Quebec City mosque attack that killed 6 is terrorism.

MONTREAL — Canada’s prime minister said early Monday that a shooting at a Quebec City mosque during evening prayers that killed six people and injured eight was an act of terrorism.

"We condemn this terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge," Justin Trudeau said in a statement. "It is heart-wrenching to see such senseless violence. Diversity is our strength, and religious tolerance is a value that we, as Canadians, hold dear."

The incident took place Sunday night. More than 50 people were in the mosque at the time of the assault. Police said two suspects were arrested and they don't believe there are further suspected perpetrators at large.

One suspect in Quebec attack is French-Canadian, one of Moroccan heritage:

One suspect was identified as Alexandre Bissonnette, a French-Canadian, the other as Mohamed Khadir, who is of Moroccan heritage although his nationality was not immediately known, according to the source.

And the killers apparently shot in Islamist terrorist manner:

One of two gunmen who shouted 'Allahu akbar!' as they opened fire at a mosque in Quebec City was of Moroccan origin, a witness and local media reported Monday, revealing the first details about the attackers in the massacre that killed six men. ...

 A witness who asked to remain anonymous told Radio Canada the two shooters were masked.

“It seemed to me that they had a Quebecois accent. They started to fire, and as they shot they yelled, 'Allahu akbar!' The bullets hit people that were praying. People who were praying lost their lives. A bullet passed right over my head,” the person said.

Let us pray that this attack is not a harbinger of more such acts to come.

Update: Well, maybe this counts as good news, although "good" is a hard word to use in connection with this atrocity: Mohamed Khadir, the Moroccan, has been cleared by police as a suspect. They say now that the only shooter was Bissonnette. Details.

Who says there's no Good News?

In Germany, some Muslim refugees convert to Christianity

Berlin (AFP) - Clad in white at a Berlin church, asylum seekers Saeed, Veronica, Farida and Matin were just about to become Christians on a recent Sunday.

"Do you believe from the bottom of your heart that Jesus Christ is your Lord and saviour, and will you follow him every day of your life?" Pastor Matthias Linke asked them. "If so, say yes."

All four replied with a frank "Ja", to the enthusiastic applause of the faithful at the Free Evangelical Church, and were plunged head-to-toe into a baptism basin.

"I am very, very happy, I feel... how to say?", said 20-year-old Iran native Matin right after his baptism, placing his hand on his chest.

Muslim refugees have recently been taking the same step throughout Germany, where nearly 900,000 asylum seekers arrived in 2015.

Church leaders have confirmed a notable, though not huge, trend upward, but have not provided statistics.

"In our diocese, there are several groups of refugees who are preparing for baptism, and there are more and more requests," said Felix Goldinger, a Catholic priest in Speyer, southwestern Germany.

Many come from Iran and Afghanistan, some from Syria or Eritrea, he said.

Under Islam's sharia law, for a Muslim to convert to any other religion is punishable by death. As the article points out, if any of these converts wind up being sent back to their country of origin, they will often be at risk of life.

Science and religion? No, science is a religion

Reposted from November 2006

The vital necessity of recovering scientific faith

So said Michael Polanyi, a Fellow of the Royal Society and former professor of physical chemistry at the University of Manchester in an article entitled, “Scientific Conventions and the Free Society,” linked to by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The article is based on a previous work of 1949. Polanyi writes,

Any account of science which does not explicitly describe it as something we believe in, is essentially incomplete and a false pretension. It amounts to a claim that science is essentially different from and superior to all human beliefs which are not scientific statements, and this is untrue. To show the falsity of this pretension, it should suffice to recall that originality is the mainspring of scientific discovery. Originality in science is the gift of a lonely belief in a line of experiments or of speculations, which at the time no one else had considered to be profitable. Good scientists spend all their time betting their lives, bit by bit, on one personal belief after another. The moment discovery is claimed, the lonely belief, now made public and the evidence produced in its favor, evokes a response among scientists which is another belief, a public belief, that can range over all grades of acceptance or rejection. … Let me show how this works or has worked in some instances. Take the reception accorded to two papers published by two authoritative scientists in Britain at about the same time, not quite two years ago. One of these was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in June, 1947, by Lord Rayleigh, a distinguished Fellow of the Society. It described some simple experiments which proved in the author’s opinion that a hydrogen atom impinging on a metal wire could transmit to it energies ranging up to one hundred electronvolts. Such an observation, if correct, would be of immense importance. It would be far more revolutionary, for example, than the discovery of atomic fission by Otto Hahn in 1939. Yet when this paper came out and I asked various physicists’ opinion about it, they only shrugged their shoulders. They could not explain the results stated; yet not one believed in it, nor thought it even worth while to repeat the experiment. They just ignored it. Since Lord Rayleigh has subsequently died, the matter seems to have been already forgotten.

Polanyi recounts the history of science’s treatment of hypnosis, beginning with the thorough discrediting in the late 18th century of “Friedrich Anton Mesmer, a Viennese medical practitioner, whose hypnotic cures had spread his fame all over Europe” and whose name is the source of “mesmerized”). Hypnosis, says Polanyi, had been practiced for centuries throughout the world but had been dismissed as part of the realm of superstition that science sought to overwhelm. Other scientists investigating the phenomenon were scornfully dismissed for 100 years by their peers, including a professor of medicine at the University of London who was so professionally persecuted that he resigned his position.

The hatred against the discoverers of a phenomenon which threatened to undo the cherished beliefs of science was as bitter and inexorable as that of the religious persecutors two centuries before. It was, in fact, of the same character.

This is a densely-packed, five-page article worth the time of anyone interested in the relationship of science and religion. Now, what makes this more than an academic exercise is Polanyi’s demonstration of the cultural and political foundations of scientific belief. Scientific theory and practice under Marxism-Leninism took radically different directions in sveral important disciplines than it did in the West. Hitlerism denounced “Jewish science,” as degenerate. Mainstream Western scientists, by which I include those practicing anywhere whose methods are Western, may scoff that Soviet and Nazi researchers were not actually practicing science at all, but a political dogma that had co-opted scientific language. However,

The Marxists are quite near the truth in saying that in demanding freedom we merely seek to establish our own orthodoxy. The only valid objection to this is that our fundamental beliefs are not just one orthodoxy; they are true beliefs which we are prepared to uphold. This true vision also happens to open greater scope for freedom than other, false visions; that is so, but in any case, our commitments to what we believe to be true comes first.

Islamists are much more ferociously anti-science than even the most rabid creationists in America. Science in the Western tradition claims to investigate, discover and know the “really real.” Over the last century-plus, science has displaced religion as the arbiter of the ultimate, according to Carl Sagan (in Broca’s Brain). Sagan told the story of Napoleon’s complaint to the Marquis de Laplace about Laplace’s work, Mecanique celeste. “Napoleon complained to Laplace that he had found no mention of God in the text. Laplace’s response has been recorded: ‘Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis.’” The idea that God could be hypothetical is a product of modernity, says Sagan. People who ask him whether he believes in God, he says, are really asking for reassurance that their belief system “is consistent with modern scientific knowledge.”

And so, following Polanyi’s line, we have a culture that is scientistic as well as scientific. Scientism is faith in science. As the dominant world view of of the West, it is considered self-validating. Scientism makes two major claims, neither of which, however, are testable using the scientific method:

(1) only science reveals the Real and only science can discover truth;

(2) scientific knowledge of reality is exhaustive, not inherently limited, is holistic and sees reality as reality really is.

Early modernity’s mechanistic view of creation was originally proposed as a way to preserve God’s agency. This view was soon supplanted by the view that knowledge about the world beyond the self was limited to what could be known through sense-perception of material things. The materialism of the modern world view is its central feature. Thus, “the modern world view simply has no natural place for God in it,” as philospher of science Langdon Gilkey put it.

Modern science has had a much more difficult time being accepted in Muslim lands than elsewhere in the world. In an article, “The Religion of Modern Science: Roots of modern God-free thinking,” published in the western-based Islamic Journal, Muslim author Harun Yahya wrote of Western scientific absolutists who, 

… regard modern science as absolute and true religion, and want to impose this view to all humankind. . . . However, the question is not that whether Islam is in line with science or not, but whether science is in line with Islam. What needs to be approved is science, not Islam.

There are many points of contention and conflict between Arab Islam and the West, but the chief religious contention between Islamists and the West is not really between Islam and Christianity but between Islam and Western scientific-materialism.

Because of the supremacy of the sciences in western thought, Western culture has become caught in a cycle of ever-increasing changes. Western societies contend with an exponentially increasing pace of cultural changes. The pace and kinds of changes that we adapt to (with greater or lesser difficulty, to be sure) are exactly the changes that Islamists correctly believe would destroy basic structures of their society which they believe are the divinely-commanded.

In their view, certain social structures (such as the status and role of women) are absolutely essential, required by Allah’s command as revealed in the Quran. Without those structures, a society is wholly corrupted. We see them as hopeless religious fanatics; they see us as godless and degenerate.

The tension between Islam’s historic traditions and modern pressures of scientific modernity is found throughout the Muslim world. Many Arab intellectuals know that their countries have fallen behind most of the rest of the world. They want to gain the benefits of technological society, but without the cultural baggage that comes with it. They want to modernize their societies but not Westernize them. Their vision of modernization is mostly technological, such as communications, medical science, education, transportation, and consumer goods. They want our DVD players but not our DVDs. Even al Qaeda will accept the trappings of tecnology, they just reject the foundation.

The war between Islamists and the West is fundametally an inter-religious war. It does not spring from grievances that can be resolved to mutual satisfaction of all concerned. It is a dynamic struggle between two irreconcilable world views and understandings of reality.
Polanyi concludes,

We are entering in this century into a period requiring great readjustments. One of these is to learn once more to hold beliefs. Our own beliefs. The task is formidable, for we have been taught for centuries to hold as a belief only the residue which no doubt can conceivably assail. There is no such residue left today, and that is why the ability to believe with open eyes Must once more be systematically re-acquired.

Dare I say that what we must recover is not merely “belief,” but faith itself.

The coming European civil wars

Giles Kepel, one of the foremost scholars of Islam in the Western world, has said Europe better get ready for war:

According to German newspaper Die Welt, Kepel said the terror group’s [ISIS] aim is to incite hatred towards Muslims from the rest of the society which would eventually radicalise others to the point that Europe could enter into full-blown civil war.

Kepel, who is a specialist on Islamic and contemporary Arab world, added these ISIS fanatics not only want to destroy Europe, but to eliminate more moderate Islamic opposition.

“The terrorism is above all an expression of a war within Islam,” he explained. “The long-term goal of the Jihad Generation is to destroy Europe through civil war and then build an Islamic society from the ashes.

See also my 2005 series, "The Forever Jihad."

And from January, "Europe's coming civil war," in which Swiss

Lieutenant-General André Blattmann has issued a warning to the Swiss people that society is dangerously close to collapse and advised those not already armed as part of the Swiss Army reserve to take steps to arm themselves.