Category Archives: Islam

He is Risen Indeed (Hallelujah!), and this Terrorized World Needs His Return

Isaiah 5:20 by Vicki PriestAt the close of this year’s Easter, please enjoy this passage from Zechariah 12, prophesying Christ’s second coming.  With so many in the world calling evil good and good evil, which has allowed the growth of the murderous terrorists, we need His return.  Look for His return, and pray you are ready.

Zechariah 12:1-2, 9-11:

“A prophecy: The word of the Lord concerning Israel.  The Lord, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the human spirit within a person, declares: I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling . . . .  On that day I will set out to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem.  And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.  On that day the weeping in Jerusalem will be as great as the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo’.”

As Matthew Henry commented:

“It is a mourning grounded upon a sight of Christ:  They shall look on me whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for him.  Here, it is foretold that Christ should be pierced, and this scripture is quoted as that which was fulfilled when Christ’s side was pierced upon the cross; see John 19:37.  He is spoken of as one whom we have pierced; it is spoken primarily of the Jews, who persecuted him to death (and we find that those who pierced him are distinguished from the other kindreds of the earth that shall wail because of him, Rev. 1:7); yet it is true of us all as sinners, we have pierced Christ, inasmuch as our sins were the cause of his death, for he was wounded for our transgressions, and they are the grief of his soul . . .”

Tragic Times of Persecution

I don’t go looking for evil acts, but my son brought to my attention a couple of attacks carried out by Muslims recently, that is, after the Brussels bombing.  So I looked into them, and found some other things, too.

Today in Pakistan, 65 Easter celebrants were killed and about 300 injured.

A Muslim shopkeeper, a Mr. Shah, was murdered for wishing Christians and his country well at Easter time.  He was apparently a very kind and humanitarian man, who sought understanding and good relations between Muslims and Christians.  He therefore was killed.  I very much disagree, however, with someone who left a note saying “Mr Shah, [a] true Muslim, thank you, from a Christian brother.”  Christians follow Jesus Christ, who was nonviolent, taught against violence, and died after having performed healing miracles and leading a sinless life (including never having had sexual relations).

Muhammad, in contrast, killed many and had his men kill many (including those who had surrendered to his army and others who simply criticized him, even a woman poet); apparently this isn’t taught in schools.  He did not perform miracles and he was polygamous.  Muhammad represents Islam and therefore it’s reasonable that adherents would look to its founder and leader as the prime example in carrying out the faith.  That’s what Christians do (or are supposed to be doing), so a good Muslim would do what Muhammad did.  (And getting back to the Christian who called Mr. Shah “brother,” I wonder how John or Paul would react to calling a person “brother” who denied the resurrection and deity of Jesus?  Perhaps Mr. Shah was in fact saved [God knows], but Muslims do not believe in Jesus; it makes for a very huge difference between the faiths.  Brothers and sisters in the New Testament are fellow believers in Jesus Christ.)

Besides not seeming to know what Muhammad was like, the Muslims who are kind and caring don’t seem to know what the Koran and its important commentaries seem to say either.  It’s like the experience of the Boston Bombers.  The mother tells her older son that he needs to stop being so worldly and get into his faith more.  When he does, he sees what the Koran says and what Muhammad did, and acts accordingly.  The mother realizes her son is right and becomes “radicalized” too.   The Judeo-Christian scriptures aren’t corrupt as Muslims think–as Muhammad made out–but promote love for all humans and faith in the creator God, so anyone who comes along later with a different message is obviously not of God.  How much more bad fruit needs to fall for people to realize this?

Teacher Brutally Murdered by Afghan Migrant

Germany: Muslim Rape Crisis Worsens (from Gatestone Institute)

Where I’ve Been & the Christian Genocide Resolution

Port Huron, 1939 USGS section
Port Huron, from 1939 USGS quad map.

Hello and happy Tuesday!  I haven’t posted in a while (which isn’t terribly unusual, I know), and knowing full well that my mind has been elsewhere, I wanted to give a “why.”  As I’ve posted about before, we moved from Southern California back to my home state of Michigan, and more specifically, to Port Huron.  We decided on this location because of all the water (and we happily concur that the St. Clair area’s nick name of Blue Water is justified), because we could afford to buy a low-cost house, and because–on paper, at least–it looked like there were enough jobs to keep us going.

(We originally wanted to move to Grand Rapids, which is the only region in Michigan really recovered from the last “recession,” but couldn’t get help with buying a low-cost home at a distance . . . realtors have replaced the lowest place holder of the employed in my mind now, with lawyers bumped up one.)

While the job front turned out to be less rosy than we anticipated, I have enjoyed getting back into my older career choice involving historical resources.  I used to work in cultural resources management–prehistory, then history–until consulting jobs became too far away from my family (as you might imagine, permanent employment in this field is rare and you have to be willing to move to wherever you can get it).

Now that we live in a place with obvious history and historic structures, my passion for investigating those things has been rekindled.   And finding that the city is a very mixed bag of preservation and anit-preservation sentiment (the state is having an anti-preservation infection now, too), which is reflected in how much a regular person can find out about it here, I decided to make a web page about it, with the hope that others would like it and benefit from it and a group would form.  I’ve spent a ton of my time getting up to speed on the history in Port Huron, catching up on preservation laws and such, and building the site:  Port Huron Area History & Preservation Association.

St Joseph Church, Port Huron
One of the historic churches in Port Huron, St. Joseph’s.

The city, being one of the older and busier ones in historic Michigan, has quite a few grand old churches, too.  And, I never ended up posting about something that we, as Christians, were excited to find here:  nativity scenes out in public areas at Christmas time.  How refreshing!  There weren’t a huge number of them, but they did pop up, and one felt that you might hear a “Merry Christmas!” come your way and not just a “happy holidays.”  I did run across an internet post somewhere by a lady who had lived here and moved to Tennessee, where there was even more openness and  joy displayed over Christmas, not just “the holidays.”  She was critical of Port Huron, but it is better here than where we used to live.

On a very different note, the US house of representatives voted 383-0 (!) in favor of calling what ISIS is doing to Christians in Iraq and Syria “genocide.”  Other countries in the world that seem to be less sympathetic towards Christians have already declared that Christian genocide has been happening.  Why is the US behind in doing so?  Obama and his administration, that’s why.  It’s strange how this administration can use the arguments of the persecutors to justify a “not genocide” stance when others know from either experience of research that the actions behind those arguments are covers for murderous intent, for the actual genocide going on.  Read about it at House Votes to Declare ISIS’s Actions ‘Genocide’: What’s Next? , House Passes Resolution Calling ISIS’ Mass Slaughter of Christians a ‘Genocide’, and at other online news outlets.

“The facts are well documented in our nearly 300-page report on this matter, and we must remember that for the State Department to issue declaration of genocide, the standard required is merely probable cause, which any prosecutor could find on any of ISIS’s Facebook pages.”  S. Smith, 03-15-16

 

Apple’s Taken the Power (for Criminals)

I’m not going over all the background of the iphone controversy, except to say that Apple refuses to cooperate in the investigation of one of the mass murderers in the December 2, 2015 shooting in San Bernardino, California.  14 people were killed and 22 gravely injured.  The radicalized Muslims, husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farook and Tahsfeen Malik, also planned to set a bomb off.  Normally, investigators can get a search warrant to look at suspects’ phone records.  This has been constitutional and normal practice, useful in a variety of ways, for criminal investigators.

Now, with ever more sophisticated hardware and software, criminals can hide their phone correspondence, and in the case of Apple iphones, they can permanently hide information from investigators that historically could not be hidden.  It is constitutional in our country to investigate crimes in this way, yet Apple is holding our legal system–backed by the constitution–hostage.

And yet TV commentator after commentator is acting as if this is all something new and a questionable invasion of privacy.  They say that the government is asking Apple to be a “lock pick” into someone’s private data, but since Apple made the lock in the first place (that is, a way for criminals to conceal information), this argument is silly and obnoxious.  They say if Apple is forced to do this, other countries will be able to use it against innocent people, like political dissidents and journalists.  Really?  (Really??)  There are ways around this, I’m pretty sure, but high-profit international companies wouldn’t want to go there (if you have a company that is strictly US based, can Iran make you do something?).  Maybe I’m giving the likes of Apple too much “benefit of the doubt” by even thinking this claim is a real possibility.  I’d like to hear from legal experts in this specific field, since I’m only hearing conjecture.

In any case, Apple has taken the power and not our investigators, as they’re trying to claim.  Various people and organizations (Google, Twitter), now even Amazon (boycott Amazon?), are backing Apple.  Why?  It makes no sense.  How paranoid does a person have to be that they’re worried that the FBI or whoever wants to take the time to listen to their phone?  And, I for one don’t want my choices made for me by hugely powerful companies like Google and Facebook; based on their current censorship and other actions, they are worse than our own government investigators.♦

This brought to my mind the issue that blacks have brought up in claiming racism in the justice system.  I agree with them on this one:  why are all the white folks who take drugs free (think of all those Hollywood types, even), while so many blacks are behind bars due to drug sentences?  So, are the whites simply worried that they’ll now be get caught buying cocaine?  It’s kind-of a rhetorical question, but I don’t know where the paranoia is coming from.  And I don’t get how Americans think it’s OK to protect the mass murderers in this case.  Criminals, it so often seems, have more rights than their victims.  And now that is more the truth than ever.  The criminals must laugh themselves to sleep at night.

Isaiah 5:20 by Vicki Priest♦ These companies know how dumb Americans are, I’m guessing, since internet users constantly give them access to private things like email contacts, people in private circles (a Google+ thing), allow them to make posts FOR them at Twitter, Facebook, etc., and allow these companies to follow new people without their permission, etc.  If you don’t think so, just try posting a comment at any number of online magazines/newspapers, etc., and read the conditions.  Yet, these same Americans complain loudly about investigators trying to look at one phone of a confirmed mass murderer . . .

The Absurdity Within: X-Files Episode 5, Season 10

X-Files Ep 5 Mulder's Trip
Mulder during his “shroom” (or placebo?) trip

The new X-Files season, a short one that renews the series after being off the air for 14 years, is a very mixed bag.  A very very mixed bag.  Episode 5 is practically one long platitude, while episode 3 is brilliant (literally, my favorite TV episode ever made, out of all I can remember, anyway).

X-Files Season 10

I’m going to make this section short.  X-Menesque mutants debut in episode 2, after in episode 1 Mulder talks of having the new revelation that men are using alien stuff to evolve humans and improve technology.  While critics ate this stuff up as a critical reflection of modern American politics, I thought it disappointingly silly, since I was pretty sure Mulder had already thought this (that is, his new revelation) from watching the previous shows.  It’s what I took away from the X-Files in the past, anyway, so it seemed cheap and confusing.  Most of the new episodes are quite gory, too (that is, gorier than before).

Continue reading The Absurdity Within: X-Files Episode 5, Season 10

Do Muslims Worship the same God as Christians?

Abraham and Isaac. Laurent de La Hire, 1650.
Abraham and Isaac. Laurent de La Hire, 1650.

That question, “Do Muslims worship the same God as Christians?” is not a new one, but has been in the Christian news (at least) recently over the controversial suspension of a black female professor at Wheaton College.  I haven’t written specifically on this topic, though I touched upon it in Does DA: Inquisition’s Imshael have anything to do with Ishmael and Islam?  In that article I point out how Islam rejects God’s plan for humanity, as provided by God in the Old Testament through Isaac, and openly celebrates this rejection through their holiday of Eid Al-Adha.  How can it be claimed that Muslims worship the same God when they reject biblical scriptures and even God’s plan for humanity?  As any bible student knows, God’s plan is interspersed throughout all of the Old and New Testaments, so to reject it and then claim you worship the same God makes no sense.  Yet the Wheaton professor, besides showing solidarity with the repression of women (which is not biblical), claims that Muslims worship the same God as Christians.

Continue reading Do Muslims Worship the same God as Christians?

Raping of Women and Children Now Allowed in the West; Why Not, Eh?

CS Lewis sun quote
Through God can we see good and beauty, as well as contrasting evil and malignancy, and seek to keep victims from the latter.

“Amnesty International reports that Sweden has the highest number of rapes in Europe and the lowest conviction rate. According to Swedish Public Radio, in Stockholm alone, over 1,000 Swedish women reported that a Muslim immigrant raped them; 300 were under age 15.”  “What the EU fails to acknowledge and each country is realizing is that Muslim immigrants have no intention of integrating. Eighty percent are on welfare, following Islamic teaching to take money from the non-Muslim “Kuffar.” Both Sharia4Belgium and Sharia4Holland advocate complete extinction of Jews.”  As Christianity Exits Europe, ‘Criminal Muslims’ Fill Void with Rabid Violence (Dec 2014).

A chronology of the violence (including honor killings – or are those just “misunderstandings”?) and non-integration Muslim immigrant issues, via linked news articles.

Continue reading Raping of Women and Children Now Allowed in the West; Why Not, Eh?

Goodbye Kiddy! The way of Taliban love

Instead of giving their kids comforting dolls, the Taliban give them bombs and tell them they won't get blown up along with their victims.
Instead of giving their kids comforting dolls, the Taliban give them bombs and tell them they won’t get blown up along with their victims.

Update:  In early January, 2015, the anti-Western, anti-secular Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram used a 10 year old girl to kill shoppers at a market in Nigeria.  The girl was blown up, 16 killed, and 27 injured.  The group has killed thousands since 2002, and kidnapped more than 200 girls in April, 2014; the girls were never rescued or freed.  June 2015 Update:  The practice continues: Boko Haram uses Young Girls as Suicide Bombers in Terror Campaign.

As reported in January (2014), a young girl who was supposed to detonate a suicide vest to kill checkpoint police turned herself in after being beaten by her father for not carrying out the deed.  Though the Taliban denied that young Spozhmai was sent on a suicide mission, the Afghan police believed her.  Spozhmai was lucky – though beaten, she didn’t get blown to bits.

According to one source, in the first part of 2011, four children aged 8 to 14 were not so fortunate and died along with several victims when their suicide vests detonated.  Other children that year had also been deployed as suicide bombers, but were stopped prior to anyone getting hurt.  The Taliban, despite its denials, has been training and deploying children suicide bombers since at least 2010.

The Taliban’s use of children as suicide bombers is not only sickening, but it makes a mockery of Mullah Omar’s claim to protect children and civilians. Any political movement or army that manipulates or coerces children into becoming human bombs has lost touch with basic humanity.  Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch

Another source, from 2012, gave a more detailed and disturbing account of children suicide bombers used by the Taliban in Afghanistan in the whole of 2011 (this also happens in Pakistan and can be read about here):

A senior Afghan intelligence official estimated that more than 100 had been intercepted in the past 12 months, including 20 from the Kandahar area in the south. 

The largely illiterate boys are fed a diet of anti-Western and anti-Afghan government propaganda until they are prepared to kill, he said. But the boys are also assured that they will miraculously survive the devastation they cause.

“The worst part is that these children don’t think that they are killing themselves,” said the official. “They are often given an amulet containing Koranic verses. Mullahs tell them, ‘When this explodes you will survive and God will help you survive the fire. Only the infidels will be killed, you will be saved and your parents will go to paradise’.”

Moving back to the very recent past, just a day or two after Spozhmai told her story to Afghan police, a 14 year old boy stopped a child suicide bomber in his school.  The teen, Aitzaz Hasan, tackled a suspicious teen at his school and the other teen’s bomb went off, killing Hasan and himself.  Violence has only increased in Afghanistan and the regular populace is sick of it, and sick of their government not doing anything about it.  Attacks on schools have increased and school attendance has, not surprisingly, decreased.

No doubt your thoughts are to pray for peace in Afghanistan, and for no more children, in particular, to be prey to the satanic tactics of the Taliban.  We should pray about this and for the oppressed people there (and bless you for doing so), but it doesn’t hurt to know how our government (and the Western press) is handling issues like this, and the related issue – in my mind – of ignoring all the Christians being killed and displaced out of the Middle East and other Muslim countries.

It doesn’t hurt to also know what lying hypocrites groups like the Taliban are.  The Taliban continue to deny they use children bombers, even though there is a great deal of irrefutable evidence against their denials.  The Taliban has codes they claim to go by, and using children in this way defies their own code.   It goes against the Quran as well.  Yet, they are still very willing to have Muslim children killed for their cause.

The Palestinians have also done this in the past, and today train children to be suicide bombers.  Yet, somehow, Israel is to blame for all the ills of the Palestinians and many Western countries are not only boycotting Israel but are increasingly antisemitic.  And, our government seals its lips when it could educate, not only about the tactics of Islamists, but the post-WWII history and legitimacy of Israel as a nation and why the UN did not also grant statehood to Palestine at that time or in the years afterwards.

Our country wrings it hands and vacillates regarding Syria.  It ignores the persecution and killing of Christians in Egypt.  The issues are very many and a future post will outline the extermination and the apparent coming extinction of Christians from Muslim countries.  Jews are already missing from the Middle East, except in Israel, and they are increasingly unwelcome elsewhere.  It is now happening to Christians, too.  And The West stands by, warming up to the idea.  It’s now pretty easy to imagine the biblical scenario of God’s two witnesses during the end days (Revelation 11:8-10):

Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city . . .  For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.

SOURCES

Teenagers recruited, trained as suicide bombers (2011)

Afghanistan: Taliban Should Stop Using Children as Suicide Bombers (2011)

Afghan boy suicide bombers tell how they are brainwashed into believing they will survive (2012)

The Surprise Lesson on Palestinians, Jews and Suicide Bombings Found in a Tennessee High School Textbook (2013)

Violence and Context in Islamic Texts (2013)

A Short History of Suicide Bombing (2013)

Taliban denies ordering 10-year-old girl to carry out suicide bombing on Helmand checkpoint (2014)

Afghanistan: Ten-year-old girl ‘forced to wear suicide vest’ (2014)

Pakistani boy who stopped suicide bomber: another Malala Yousafzai? (2014)

Boko Haram Strapped Explosives to 10-year-old girl, Killed 16 (2015)

Taliban and Government Imperil Gains for Afghan Women, Advocates Say (2014; this article is more serious and disgusting than it sounds from the title)

Israel and Palestine: A Brief History – Part I (ongoing, with various links for all of history, biographies, etc.)

World Jews outraged by Christian murders, our own government isn’t

This is the crime against humanity of our time. It is the religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing. It is deliberate, it is brutal, and it is systematic. And I, as a Jew, want to say that I stand solidly with Christians throughout the world in protest against this crime. And I am appalled that the world is silent.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (2013 Erasmus Lecture)

. . . the Jews seem to be the ones most outraged by it. . . . It’s shades of the past that a world that is indifferent to such brutal actions becomes indifferent to anybody’s suffering.

The White House—the whole Western community—ought to be taking action, as we would against any country that engages in this kind of action. Look, overall the West is muted in their response to the killings of Christians by the thousands, from Indonesia to Nigeria to Tehran to Damascus. Where is the outcry? Christians and Copts [are being killed] in Egypt, other countries—and hardly any response to it. . . .  Where are the [United Nations] Security Council resolutions? Why aren’t the condemnations coming from them?

Malcolm Hoenlein, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

The above quotes are from the First Things article, “Jews and the Persecution of Christians” by Tom Wilson; the Hoenlein quotes were taken by Wilson from an interview of Hoenlein in The Time of Israel.

. . . the Middle East [was] once home to countless thriving Jewish communities, only for them to have been decimated in the mid-twentieth century. With the rise of hardline Islam and growing turmoil in many of these countries, Christians risk sharing a similar fate. . . .  A century ago, Christians constituted 20 percent of the population of the Middle East; today, that number stands at just 4 percent.

Jews care.  A lot of Jews get it.  What is with us?  Why does our own country, and the West, not care?  The western media is biased in its reporting when Christians are killed in countries like Sudan.  They seem to be ashamed that Christians even exist and that violent-minded Muslims are justified in doing evil.  But where is the Christian response, the Christian outrage?  If it doesn’t exist, then it can be surmised that Christians don’t really exist.  At least, our own government’s weak response against the atrocities can certainly be viewed as nothing but hot air.  But why should our government do anything about it or care, when we people of faith don’t even seem to??

Churches are our gathering places.  Why aren’t churches organizing anything to raise awareness about what is going on in the world?  If they don’t know . . . what excuse can be given?  Maybe some pastors are writing newspaper editorials and encouraging action by their flock–I don’t know.  Feel free to let me know of examples of such action in the comments below, or provide links there to Christians groups and organizations that are trying to do something about this (I don’t mean groups that report on it only).  Thanks.

Jihadists Kill at Least 68 Non-Muslims at Mall in Kenya

This isn’t a perfect article on the attack that happened yesterday, but it’s still very good.  The latest reports indicate that at least 100 more have been injured.

Attack on Nairobi Mall Shows Al-Shabaab’s Ominous Reach

Here is the start of the article, and more, but please click the link to read the rest.  This might be an eye-opener for many.

In a horrific mid-day attack on Saturday, September 21, 2013 in downtown Nairobi, Kenya, jihadist assailants invaded an upscale shopping mall, slaughtering and injuring dozens of terrified shoppers with grenades and automatic weapons.

As of early Sunday morning, even as the stand-off between the attackers and Kenyan security forces continued inside the mall, the death count stood at 59, a number sure to rise in coming hours.

According to reports, at least an additional 150 have been injured. People fleeing from the modern Westgate mall reported that the attackers had singled out non-Muslims to kill after telling Muslims to get out. . . .

Local mosques in U.S. areas with a heavy Somali immigrant population, such as Minnesota, play leading roles in recruiting young men, often born and raised in the U.S., to sign up for jihad in Somalia. . . .

[One of these is ] Al-Hammami, a 28-year-old from Alabama . . . The son of a Christian mother and a Syrian-born Muslim father, al-Hammami likely was recruited to jihad at the University of South Alabama, where he was president of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), the original and still one of the largest Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the U.S.