Saturday, July 28, 2018

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE STANDS UP FOR THE FAITHFUL - "Persecution of the Christians in North Korea has no rival on earth"

Mike Pence: Persecution of Christians in North Korea ‘Has No Rival on the Earth’



U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks during the first-ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom July 26, 2018 at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo hosts 'government officials, representatives of international organizations, religious leaders, rights advocates, and members of civil society organizations from around …
Alex Wong/Getty Images

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence excoriated North Korea’s record of human rights violations Thursday, asserting that the nation’s persecution of Christians is the worst on the planet.

“North Korea’s persecution of Christians has no rival on the Earth,” Pence told leadersgathered in Washington, DC, for the State Department’s Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. “It is unforgiving, systematic, unyielding and often fatal.”
“The mere possession of a Christian Bible is a capital offense,” Pence noted, and “Christians are regularly executed or condemned with their families to North Korea’s gulags.”
Mr. Pence’s words echoed the findings of watchdog groups monitoring Christian persecution, which consistently place North Korea at the top of the list of nations where it is most dangerous to be a Christian.
This year, one such organization, Open Doors, which publishes an annual World Watch List (WWL) about Christian persecution, noted that North Korea has been considered “the worst place for Christians” for 16 consecutive years, since 2002.
In his address Thursday, the vice president said that while Americans all hope relations between the United States and North Korea will continue to improve, “there is no escaping the plain fact that North Korea’s leadership has exacted unparalleled privation and cruelty upon its people for decades,” a cruelty that has included “torture, mass starvation, public executions, murders, and even forced abortions, and industrial-scale slave labor.”
Appearing with Mr. Pence at the Ministerial was a North Korean Christian woman named Ji Hyeona, whom he met when in the region this year.
“Ji Hyeona was imprisoned and tortured simply for having a Bible that her mother had given her,” Pence said. “And after a failed escape attempt, the North Korean authorities forced her to abort her unborn child.”
“Hyeona was lucky enough to escape with her life, and we are honored to have you with us today.  Your faith and your courage inspire us all,” he said.
The vice president’s sharp criticisms of North Korea’s persecution of Christians was set against the broad backdrop of the state of religious freedom around the world and the commitment of the United States to work for its advancement.
Mr. Pence repeatedly referred to religious liberty as America’s “first freedom,” holding it up as the foundation of all other freedoms. Religious freedom “buttresses all other rights,” he said. “It provides a foundation on which a society can thrive.”
As our Founders knew, he added, “this precious liberty is endowed not by government, but by our Creator,” he said.
“The right to believe or not believe is the most fundamental of freedoms,” he stated. “When religious liberty is denied or destroyed, we know that other freedoms — freedom of speech, of press, assembly, and even democratic institutions themselves — are imperiled.”
Religious freedom is not just convenient, practical, or politically advantageous, he insisted, but goes to the heart of the dignity of people.
The United States of America “stands for religious freedom yesterday, today, and always,” Pence said, and we do this “because it is right.”
Nations that reject religious freedom “breed radicalism and resentment in their citizens,” he said. “They sow the seeds of violence within their borders — violence that often spills over into their neighbors and across the world.”
And yet, while religious freedom is always in danger under authoritarian regimes, “threats to religious minorities are not confined to autocracies or dictatorships,” he warned, but “arise in free societies, as well,” demanding vigilance to defend the first among freedoms.
As an example, Mr. Pence spoke of growing anti-Semitism in Europe, where “attacks on Jews, even on aging Holocaust survivors, are growing at an alarming rate.”
“Last year, hate crimes against Jews hit a record high in the United Kingdom,” he noted. “And in the same period of time, there were an average of nearly four attacks against Jews every day.”
The vice president announced the establishment of the Genocide Recovery and Persecution Response Program,  a new U.S. initiative to aid persecuted believers in the Middle East, as the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities runs rampant.
Under this new program, “the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development will closely partner with local faith and community leaders to rapidly deliver aid to persecuted communities, beginning with Iraq,” he said, which will also bring together a “vast network of American philanthropists and believers who share our desire to support our brothers-and-sisters-in-faith.”
In a powerful statement, the vice president assured his listeners that “America will always stand for religious freedom, and we will always speak out boldly wherever and whenever it’s threatened.”
“We will never lose sight of the true importance of religious freedom,” he promised. “It’s about beliefs, it’s about faith, and discovering truth, and the ability to live out that truth in one’s life.”
“It is, in a very real sense, the first freedom, the first freedom of everyone in the world,” he said.


PRAY FOR THE PERSECUTED CHRISTIAN!


"We are witnessing an astonishing escalation in Christian persecution, like we have rarely seen since the first century," writes Johnnie Moore in his new book called The Martyr’s Oath: Living for the Jesus They’re Willing to Die. 


NPR Explains the New Democratic Left: Jesus Was a Socialist







circa 1900: A mosaic of Christ from the Cathedral in Il Salvatore, Cefalm, Sicily. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Hulton Archive/Getty
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Inside a bar in West Virginia, a group of socialists gathered toshare with the taxpayer-funded leftwing National Public Radio (NPR) what the new face of the Democratic Party looks like.

First up — apparently a rarity among Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — is the co-founder of the West Virginia chapter.
“I might be the only one in our little chapter that is a Christian, and it all just fits so perfectly together for me, things that I’ve always thought anyway along with my values morally and religiously,”  Kelley Rose said in the NPR article posted on its website.
“Possibly my mother would want to debate me on this, but if anyone was ever a socialist it was Jesus,” Rose said.
NPR found 13 socialists in West Virginia and penned a lengthy piece entitled “What You Need To Know About The Democratic Socialists of America.” 
The news outlet said the group in the bar is “a part of the DSA’s explosive growth nationwide. Membership has grown sevenfold since 2015, from around 6,000 then to 43,000 as of early July.”
That represents 43,000 of the more than 200 million registered voters in the United States.
NPR admits “socialism is still an idea with a lot of Cold War-era baggage for a lot of Americans” but goes on to praise the so-called movement and its new star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The NPR article lays out what these socialists believe, including abolishing capitalism.
“I think we just need to realize that the end goal is, ultimately, like social control of the means of production,” Joe Cernelli, a founding member of that West Virginia DSA chapter said. “You know we don’t just want to improve capitalism, we will ultimately want to get rid of it.”
“We see [capitalism] as fundamentally undemocratic,” DSA National Director Maria Svart told NPR and summed up what these socialists want.
“When it comes right down to it, we believe people need to be able to live a dignified life,” Svart said. “I mean there are certain things that should not be left up to the market.”
“Let’s say you were negotiating at a bargaining table with workers in a bakery, and the workers said, ‘Look, we want more than a quarter of the bread; we want half of the bread, or we want two-thirds of the bread,’ ” Svart said. “The socialist would say, ‘Actually, we want the bakery. We want to control it all, for all of our benefit.’ ”
NPR reported:
But beyond that, the group advocates for some pretty revolutionary changes to democracy, like abolishing the Senate. The DSA calls it “extremely unrepresentative” for the way it gives both tiny and huge states alike two senators each — the group would like to replace it with a more representative body.
The country — and the attitudes of most American voters — are pretty far from this vision, though, so the DSA is willing to pursue policies that fall short of its ultimate goals. Health care is one example — the group backs “Medicare for All” — where the government provides health insurance, but the private sector supplies the doctors and hospitals. But many DSA members would prefer a system where the government employs the doctors themselves.
And to Democratic Socialists, Bernie Sanders is not leftist enough.
“Svart says, the group sees Sanders as an ‘ally’ while also wanting to go further than he does on many areas,” NPR reported.
NPR notes that it has been 20 years since a member of DSA held a seat in Congress but predicts Cortez will change that. And it reports her call to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had caused more ordinary Democrats to fall in line, showing perhaps the “clout” these new radicals may have.
The NPR missive ends with Jonathan Williams, a teacher who showed up at the bar for the socialist gathering for the first time because he still isn’t over Hillary Clinton’s loss to President Donald Trump.
“That Clintonian view of politics I did find appealing for quite some time,” Williams told NPR. “It took seeing it crushed rather decisively and then all of those gains wiped away in the course of 18 months to realize that maybe that wasn’t working. And rather than telling myself that good things are impossible that it’s not doing any harm to swing for the fences.”
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THE MUSLIM: GOD’S MOST DESPISED!


"If good Muslim women are seen and treated as possessions, how are 

infidel women seen and treated?" RAYMOND IBRAHIM



"Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war." –Qur'an 9:5

Once a Muslim, ALWAYS a murderer!

Praise be to Allah the great fornicating dog!


"The Times also reported the story of one 13-year-old victim who was

collected from a children’s home, drugged with cocaine and mephedrone,

and raped by up to seven men at so-called “sessions”, or sex parties, held by

the groomers."


UNDERSTANDING THE MUSLIM BARBARIANS

…. They live to hate, kill, r ape, molest and mutilate according to their perverted s ex practices perpetrated on women.


"If good Muslim women are seen and treated as possessions, how are

infidel women seen and treated?" RAYMOND IBRAHIM

Genocide of Christians in Nigeria: An Insider Speaks Out


By JOHN ZMIRAK Published on July 17, 2018 • 4 Comments


The Stream has been one of the few publications reporting on the worsening genocide of Christians in Nigeria. Since mainstream media seem uninterested, it’s crucial that Christian publications shine a klieg light on those horrors. We were approached by a former intelligence operative with over 20 years on the ground experience in the Islamic world. He wanted to give us the inside story of what’s happening in Nigeria and why. He asked that we not use his name.
How bad is the persecution of Christians in Nigeria?
I conservatively estimate that 20,000, mostly Christians, have been killed since Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari took office in 2015. That number could be significantly higher. Specifically, we know there have been 3,000 victims of direct State violence. And 9,000 victims of police custody or captivity killings. Those people were systematically targeted based on religious and racial profiling. We’ve seen a complete and willful disregard for crime detection and protection of Nigeria’s most vulnerable groups. Especially abandoned were the Christians, largely from the Igbo ethnic group.
Who else is doing the killing?
There were approximately 5,000 victims of terrorist Fulani “herdsmen” death squads. And 3,000 victims of the Boko Haram terrorist group. Their leader, Abubaker Shekau, swore Boko Haram’s allegiance to ISIL. (Also known as the Islamic State or ISIS.) Boko Haram rebranded itself as Islamic State in West Africa. So now it’s a branch of the very group, ISIL or the Islamic State, that has been murdering, enslaving people, doing its best to destroy Syria and Iraq. Its goal is setting up a new Caliphate, or Islamic Empire, to brutally rule the world.

ISIS in Africa

What’s the relationship of the terrorists to the government?
When Boko Haram wanted to engage in political negotiations, Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari was at the top of their list. They wanted him to mediate and intercede on their behalf. And remember, this was when Boko Haram was receiving direct support from Al-Qaeda. (Specifically, the AQIM branch in that part of the world, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb).
But since March 2015 Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to and is an active branch of ISIL (ISIS). That’s the world’s most malevolent, destructive and effective terrorist group. Now Boko Haram has rebranded itself as Islamic State in West Africa. Now we have at least 6,000 victims of Boko Haram and Fulani “herdsmen.” The latter is a dangerous and disingenuous play on words by Nigeria’s President. In fact, they are an armed extremist group. They have engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide by international standards. They direct their death squads predominantly against Christians.
So President Buhari is friendly to the terrorist groups?
We should keep something critical in mind. President Buhari hails from the Fulani tribe. It disingenuously defies logic the claim that Buhari does not have the power to take the meager measures to put a stop to this. Is he playing a role in these atrocities by refusing to act? Or could he be directly involved in the command and control of this coordinated campaign? The Fulani herdsmen are not simple men fighting with sticks. (I believe that is how Buhari described the situation to President Trump.) They are attacking villages in a coordinated operational manner. They are annihilating Christians with heavy machine guns.

Remember Darfur

Is this the Sudanese genocide all over again?
Ethnic cleansing, genocide-like conditions are currently occurring in Nigeria. It looks like the blueprint that the Sudanese government used to perpetuate their genocide of the Christian Sudanese in the country’s south, Muslims and Christians in the Nuba Mountains, and Muslims in Darfur. The execution of the campaign currently underway looks terrifyingly similar to the genocidal escalation on the part of the Sudanese government. That government armed and funded Arab militias known as murahaleen in southern Sudan and the Janjaweed in Darfur.
The murahaleen systematically destroyed the predominately Christian south. They burned villages. They stripped the local Christian people of all economic resources. In fact, they polluted water sources. They murdered, raped, enslaved, and tortured civilians. Other government-backed extremist militias and the Sudanese government itself joined in. This malevolent, systematic campaign slaughtered two million people in South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains. It turned 5 million more into refugees. The campaign has also slaughtered half a million people in Darfur and displaced 3 million more.

Euphemisms for Murder Gangs

But we’ve been told Nigeria is just experiencing a tribal quarrel, between herdsmen and farmers….
President Buhari pretends that these armed extremists are simple, quaint Fulani herdsmen. That is the spin he uses with the U.S. and other Western nations. It veils what is actually happening. We’ve seen the same linguistic gymnastics before. The Sudanese government President Omar al-Bashir claimed that the Janjaweed militias were only Abbala (camel herders). Or Baggara (cow herders). In reality Janjaweed can be translated from Arabic as “an armed man on a horse.” Or more accurately, “Devils on Horseback.”
The Sudanese government was able to dupe the West for way too long with this simple parlor trick. I pray that we have wised up a bit. We must not be fooled. Or pretend to worship at the altar of “realist foreign policy.” Buhari’s shell game could cost countless innocent Christian lives.
I will forever be personally affected by the killings, destruction, mayhem and atrocities that these evil groups have inflicted. That they continue to inflict on thousands of good, innocent and vulnerable people.
What can you offer to back up this alarming report?
I am not in a position in which I can substantiate this with formal evidence. The reasons for that should be clear to some. But I have seen many events like this before. And my professional read of the dynamics pervading this tragedy is clear. There is an intersection between Buhari, the Fulani militias and Boko Haram, (now ISIL or ISIS) in western Africa.

Clueless US Officials

Are American officials naïve about what’s happening in Nigeria?
You need to look at the evil and dirty world of extremists. At what really happens on the ground. Don’t listen to what a bureaucrat in Washington tells you. When he claims that such terrorist groups would never work together. One of the most naive and, even worse, sometimes intentional Washington canards? That Shi’a and Sunni militant groups never cooperate. These claims come largely from the mythology of bureaucratic dilettantes. Guys with manicured nail, in fancy suits breathing rarefied air in the safety of their offices in D.C.
The reality? I have seen almost every manifestation of extremist groups collude. Yes, even those with diametrically opposed final end-states and world-views. These groups work together on the ground for greater battlefield effectiveness. For operational expediency. Because of a common enemy. Because war can be extremely lucrative for sociopaths.

He Has Seen All This Before

What drove you to speak out on this?
I have seen this with my own eyes many times over. That is because I chose to live and work at the epicenter of this mass carnage and tectonic destruction. Not at a cubicle 6,000 or 7,000 miles away from the realities on the ground.
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So I have born witness to both ethnic and religious genocide. I will forever be personally affected by the killings, destruction, mayhem and atrocities that these evil groups have inflicted. That they continue to inflict on thousands of good, innocent and vulnerable people. Many of the victims are — or because they are no longer with us, were — my friends. You know what I have found over the years? That the motivations of these terrorists groups cannot be understood only through the myopia of the ideological lens. Yes, ideology can play a big role. Especially in organizing mass numbers of extremists to fight for “a higher cause.” But it is incumbent upon us to also comprehend this: These crimes are every bit as much about power, money and atavistic blood lust.
If nothing is done about this now, we could be looking at the same level of devastation in the future. But on a much greater scale. The Sudan has a GDP of 95 billion while Nigeria’s is 400 billion. Nigeria has the wealth and power of a petro-state. So it has the capability to do things at a scale at least four times greater than the Sudan. Let’s look at the devastation in the Sudan. Then think about what a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity could look like in Nigeria with 4 times the resources. Moreover, the Sudan’s population is 40 million while Nigeria’s is almost 200 million.


ISLAM: THE GODLESS CULT OF DEATH, HATE, MURDER and RAPE

THE BIBLE OF THE MUSLIM TERRORIST:

Koran 2:191 "slay the unbelievers wherever you find them"
Koran 3:21 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends"
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam"
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran"
Koran 8:60 " Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels"
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid, urge all Muslims to fight them"
Koran 9:5 "When the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them"
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood"
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies"
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels, behead them when you catch them".

THIS IS WHAT THE MUSLIMS HAVE 

DONE IN LONDON!











England Knife, Gun, Rape Attacks and Homicide Continue Rapid Rise



stop and search
Oli Scarff/Getty

“High-harm” violent offences involving weapons are soaring in England and Wales, as a crime wave continues, with knife and gun crime, as well as homicide, shooting up.

Meanwhile, police also recorded 31 percent more rapes, up to 53,977, and 21 percent more other sexual offences, rising to 96,755.
The revelations, from the latest official figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show offences involving knives or sharp instruments rising by 16 percent to 40,147 – the fourth consecutive increase in knife attacks revealed by the ONS.
The figures are police-recorded crimes for the year to March, and also show homicides rose 12 percent by 74 to 701 in the period, even with exceptional incidents with multiple victims such as the terror attacks in London and Manchester not included.
Gun crime also rose, but at a less dramatic rate than knife crime, with a two percent increase to 6,492 offences while the number of robberies soared by 30 percent to 77,103 in the 12-month period.
The figures cover the first three months of this year, when violent crime surged, particularly knife attacks in London, where the murder rate surpassed that of New York City and hospital surgeons compared condition to a “war zone“.


Caroline Youell, crime statistics and analysis at the ONS, said: “Most people don’t experience crime. Today’s figures show a fairly stable picture in England and Wales for most crime types. It is too early to say if this is a change to the long-term declining trend.
“There have been increases in some lower-volume ‘high-harm’ offences such as homicide and knife crime, consistent with rises over the past three years. However, the latest rise in gun crime is much smaller than previously seen.
“We have also seen continued increases in some theft offences such as vehicle-related theft and burglary, while computer viruses have fallen.”
Leftist London Mayor Sadiq Khan said earlier this year that he “can not solve knife crime by [him]self”, blaming Conservative government cuts and implying right-wing opponents are lying.
Before his election, he claimed police stop and search tactics unfairly targeted minority ethnic groups and promised to “do everything in my power to cut” the practice, before reversing his stance as crime began to surge.
In May, he insisted he has “done nothing wrong” in relation to violence and knife crime as London Mayor, arguing his tax hikes have helped the situation.



THE HISTORY OF JIHAD 

FROM MUHAMMAD TO ISIS

Robert Spencer's new must-read book.



Friend, this is what you need to do. Go to your favorite brick-and-mortar store, or your favorite online site, and purchase a copy of Robert Spencer's, "The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS." Producing this book was a tremendous act of courage by Spencer and Bombardier Books. The same opponents of Western Civilization who rioted over the Danish Muhammad cartoons, who slaughtered the team at French humor magazine Charlie Hebdo, who murdered 37 innocent Turks at the Sivas Massacre, and who stabbed and shot the Japanese and Italian translators, and the Norwegian publisher, of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" – those same dark forces want to riot and stab and bomb and slaughter over the words on these pages. Spencer and Bombardier deserve at the very least your investment in its full purchase price.
Jihad is a sword over your head. You may have been lulled into thinking that your odds are good. After all, there are seven billion people on earth. Compared to that number, the victims of terror attacks make up a negligible fraction. That calculation provides a false sense of security. Dr. Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard Kennedy School writes that, "on the current path, nuclear terrorism is inevitable … we would likely see terrorists succeed in their aspirations for an 'American Hiroshima.'"
Even if we are lucky enough to avoid nuclear war, jihad remains as a cultural, not merely a military, struggle. Jihad's victories are won not just on the battlefield, but in American textbooks. Indeed, as the South Park controversy demonstrated, jihad is victorious in deciding when Americans are allowed to laugh. Jihad is aimed even at your right to say the word "jihad," and, accurately, to define it. "While serving as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan declared, '…jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering men, women and children." Brennan's definition is BS. You deserve, you need, to know the truth. Jihad is a weapon aimed at you – at your freedoms, your sense of beauty, your relationships, your understanding of your own history and your intellectual honesty. "You" includes everybody. Yes, Muslims, I am talking to you. Jihad has been used, and is being used, as a tool for some Muslims to decide that other Muslims are not Muslim enough. Iran characterized the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war as a jihad. That war killed and injured hundreds of thousands of Muslims. More recently, ISIS justified its genocide of Shia Muslims as jihad.
The book's contents are grim, repugnant, and terrifying. I want you to finish, as well as begin this book, so I will be so bold as to offer advice. Read quickly. Power through. Don't pause. You won't remember the name of every killer, torturer, rapist and thief. That's okay. Get the general idea.
Here's the general idea. Islam emerged approximately 1,400 years ago. Its origins are obscure and disputed. One thing is certain. Arab conquerors, exploiting weaknesses in the aging and warring Roman and Persian Empires, burst out of the Arabian peninsula and, with unprecedented speed, conquered territories from Spain to India. They eventually claimed that their sacred texts, the Koran, hadith, and example of Muhammad, informed and sanctified their warfare. Their sacred texts told these warriors, in explicit terms, to brutalize non-Muslims. Brutalizing methods included decapitationdismemberment, and the placement of decapitated heads between the corpse's feet. These are all traditional methods of dehumanization and desecration. Sanctioned and modeled tactics also included rapesex slaverytorturetotalitarian rulecrucifixionethnic cleansing, and genocide. Muslims were ordered to make war in perpetuity until everyone on earth was a Muslim. Non-Muslims' rights were rigidly curtailed. Fighting and dying in battle was the very best thing that any Muslim could do, and it guaranteed the warrior bliss in paradise. Every good thing in life owed its existence to warfare. "Paradise lies under the shade of swords."
For the past 1,400 years, continuously, without pause, in every century and, eventually, reaching every inhabited continent, Muslims have obeyed these verses. Any given jihad might look something like this. Invaders arrived. They identified themselves as jihadis. They identified their victims, Muslims or not, as infidels. The invaders massacred civilians. They erected mountains of decapitated heads, or they used heads to terrorize their opponents, shooting them from catapults, for example. They took sex slaves. Slaves were so plentiful that slave prices plummeted. Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Hindu, houses of worship were ransacked of their jewels and precious metals. Booty was divided up lavishly among the suddenly enriched jihadis. The wrecked remains of the house of worship were pulverized and the rubble and dust was spread on the road leading to the mosque, so that Muslims could feel, with their every step, their superiority over the highest aspirations of those they humiliated.
Jews and Christians were taxed and forced to wear a distinguishing mark on their clothing, perhaps in the shape of a monkey or pig. They were denied the right to repair their houses of worship, or to ring bells, or to speak of their faith in public. Pagans, including Hindus, were simply massacred. Those who did not massacre enough Pagans were threatened and reminded that to live by their scripture and their prophet's example, they must kill as many as possible, as ruthlessly as possible. Conquerors insisted on sexual access to the prettiest princess, even if only to humiliate her, by, for example, forcing her to work as a household servant while naked. In other cases, the most handsome boy might be demanded for the conqueror's pleasure.
If there was a library, no matter how ancient and revered, it was despoiled. Legend depicts Caliph Omar justified his burning of the books, to heat bathwater, of the library of Alexandria. "The books will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." No one knows if Omar said this, but we do know that both Muslims and non-Muslims believed it, which suggests that enough jihadis behaved like this that it was plausible. Indeed, the same story is told, about the same caliph, regarding the destruction of Persian libraries. It is true that Saladin's son attempted to bring down Egypt's pyramids, because they are un-Islamic. And Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr did order the removal of the nose of the Sphynx. The remains of the Colossus of Rhodes, that had survived hundreds of years of Christianity, succumbed to Islamic invaders, who sold them as scrap metal. A Muslim ordered that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, site of Jesus' entombment, be razed to bedrock. Hagia Sophia, a millennia-old Christian church, was desecrated and used as a mosque. Countless Hindu temples faced the same fate. Ctesiphon, one of the largest cities in the world, with a mixed population of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, became a ghost town all but overnight. Muslim conquerors used its bricks to construct their edifices. Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan provided unimaginable booty to divinely sanctioned plunderers. The territory, as of the 21st century, has never come close to its former glory. Formerly wealthy Afghanistan and Pakistan are today among the countries whose own citizens most long to escape.
This process, or something very like this process, didn't happen once or twice. It didn't just happen during Islam's first hundred or two hundred years. Jihads like this happened over and over. Indeed, biographies of Muhammad describe him as a warrior and raider of caravans who massacred and tortured captives, took sex slaves, and ordered his men to rape captives even in front of their still-living husbands. Across the globe, in a multitude of tongues, jihadis cite the same Koran verses and hadith to sanctify their behavior. Tamerlane, "The Sword of Islam," who is estimated to have killed five percent of the world's population, cited jihad verses. As did the Barbary Pirates who enslaved Americans, and as did Osama bin Laden.
The cultural, as well as the biological, genocide aspect of jihad is also not of the distant past. In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini's right hand man, Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, wanted to bulldoze the tomb of Persian emperor Cyrus the Great, the tomb of Iran's national poet, Ferdowsi, and Persepolis, the 2,500 year old royal Persian city. In 2001, the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, the largest standing Buddha carvings in the world. In 2012 and 2013, jihadis from the Ansar Dine destroyed ancient Muslim shrines and library manuscripts in Timbuktu, Mali. In 2016, ISIS took time out from the murder, torture, and sexual enslavement of human beings to destroy culture, including two-millennia-old Roman structures at Palmyra. Again, these Pagan structures survived hundreds of years of a Christian Middle East. It took devout Muslims to bring them down.
Spencer's book will dispel pernicious, politically motivated canards, including the following: that there was a Golden Age when Islam was peaceful and tolerant and Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Sikhs, and Hindus lived happy, productive, free lives under its protection; that Islamic terror is a relatively recent innovation, born, in various versions, with the state of Israel, or with Western colonial incursion; that the primary translation of "jihad" should be "peaceful struggle for noble, personal goals;" that the Crusades were an offensive action, or that they started the conflict between Islam and the West, or that their goal was forced conversion of Muslims; that jihad can be "fixed" through actions by non-Muslims. "If only we had a Palestinian state … If only those Hindus were not so fanatical and nationalistic … If only American films did not depict terrorists as Muslims … If only American school children were forced to recite the shahada … If only Americans were not so xenophobic, white supremacist, Christian fascist … If only we keep Tommy Robinson in solitary confinement a bit longer." None of these will ever end jihad.
Critics will bash this necessary book, if they pay any attention to it at all, by insisting that Robert Spencer is an unreliable narrator. It's not Spencer's words that inevitably paint jihad as one of the most lurid, destructive, and grotesque forces in human history. It is Muslim chroniclers and conquerors themselves. Spencer quotes contemporaneous, canonical sources. Muslim chroniclers boast with pride of their string of unprecedented atrocities. "I bring you slaughter," Muhammad said. "I have been made victorious through terror … the treasures of the world were put in my hand," Muhammad bragged, distinguishing himself from previous Jewish and Christian prophets and saints who were, in Muhammad's estimation, longwinded, but not booty-rich warlords like him. Spencer also quotes non-Muslim eyewitnesses, and books published by the university presses of Princeton, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Georgetown, Fairleigh Dickinson, NYU, Crete, the Universities of Pennsylvania and California, and the State University of New York. Indeed, Spencer does not pretend that he is saying anything new or innovative. Rather, he is merely performing the excellent service of providing a reader-friendly outline of 1,400 years of jihad.
Another possible detraction. "Yes, but, if someone published a history of the colonization of the Americas, that would make for very tough reading." No doubt.
First, committing atrocities is a violation of, not obedience to, Biblical mandates. Conversion by force is almost unknown in Judaism, and there is no Old Testament verse that commands Jews to conquer the world or to force Gentiles to become Jews. As early as the fourth century, when, after three centuries of Pagan Roman persecution, Christianity was beginning to gain worldly power, Saint Augustine wrestled with the concept of "just war." Augustine asked, and attempted to answer, when and how is it consistent with Christian belief to take up arms.
When Christians do take up arms wrongly, they violate the example of Christianity's founder, Jesus Christ. Jesus did not make war; he practiced peace. Jesus did not rape captives; he uplifted women, including the most stigmatized: the ritually unclean woman with a hemorrhage, a woman who had been possessed, and the sinful woman taken in adultery. Jesus did not raid caravans and steal their contents; he said "Render unto Cesar what is Cesar's." Jesus did not torture anyone; Jesus healed. Jesus did not practice ethnic cleansing; he and his followers interacted respectfully with their fellow Jews, Roman Pagans, and Africans. Christian scriptures do not recommend murder, rape, theft, or war.
Indeed, Christianity, with lightning speed, with its emphasis on a loving God's relationship to each human, whom he made in his image, became a support for oppressed peoples. Our Lady of Guadalupe was one such support. She is said to have appeared to an Aztec and to have reassured him that Christ's love and promises extended to all people, not just conquistadors. Just so, the Abolitionist Movement was informed by the Biblical narrative of "let my people go."
Second, accounts of Western Christians' misdeeds are plentiful and well-known. These accounts first appear, invariably, at the same time as Western Christians' misdeeds. This is the case because the Judeo-Christian tradition demands self-examination and public confession when one has failed to live up to Biblical ideals. Witness Psalms 32 and 51. King David engineered the death of his rival, Uriah. David begs for forgiveness, and vows to change. God forgives David, but David suffers horribly as the result of his crime. Witness Bartolome de las Casas, a Dominican friar, who recorded, and acted on, crimes committed by conquistadors.
When Christians engage in destructive behaviors, they critique themselves or they are critiqued by others. Indeed, in "The History of Jihad," Robert Spencer himself is quite open about, and critical of, atrocities committed by Crusaders. There are Western scholars whose careers were founded on, or advanced by, their muckraking, exposing the dark side of Western Civilization. Adam Hochschild, the white, male son of a Jewish father and a Christian mother, won numerous awards for "King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa" about a previously little-discussed atrocity. Taylor Branch, a white man from Atlanta in the American South, won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Humanities Medal, and a MacArthur Genius Award. He wrote a massive, three-volume biography of Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Struggle. John Cornwell, a former Catholic seminarian, won fame with his controversial book, "Hitler's Pope." When Cornwell's many critics found inaccuracies in his work, they did not riot or kill; they wrote and published.
Where are the analogous practitioners of confession, redemption, and repair in the Muslim world? Where were they a thousand years ago? Bartolome de las Casas did not have a voice only. He also had ears willing to hear his words. Inspired by this one friar, Pope Paul III issued a papal bull, Sublimis Dei, insisting on the full humanity of the newly discovered Indians. Can anyone imagine a Muslim de las Casas having a chat with Muhammad, arguing for the full humanity of the kuffar?
Where are the contemporary Muslim historians exposing the brutal history of jihad? Where are their prestigious prizes, university chairs and awards? Where are the passionate Muslim authors dedicating their lives to robbed, enslaved, raped, and murdered kuffars' long-since-evaporated tears? Where are the affirmative action programs for descendants of the Muslim slave trade? Where are the reparations for the Christians Slavs whose Muslims overlords kidnapped their daughters for sex slave markets, their sons for slave armies? Eastern Europe, historians say, is poorer than Western Europe to this day at least partly because Eastern Europe had to devote so much energy to fighting off jihad. Eastern Europeans provided a bulwark that allowed Western Europe to flourish. Where is Eastern Europe's apology? All of these acts of contrition on the part of Muslims exist in the same imaginary dimension where "jihad" means "befriending Christians."
Consider what happens even to the most circumspect of social critics in the Muslim world. Bassem Yousef is often dubbed "the Egyptian Jon Stewart." Youssef's audience and influence dwarfed Stewart's. Youssef's TV program made gentle fun of anti-democratic trends in the Middle East. The powers-that-be, with the participation of average Egyptians, destroyed him. He lives in exile in the US. Consider Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel-Prize-winning novelist in "modern, secular" Turkey. Pamuk merely mentioned the Armenian genocide. Pamuk was criminally charged. His countrymen burned his books. Consider the stabbings, hacking to death with machetes, and other murders of proponents of secular government in contemporary Bangladesh. Consider the fate of Raif Badawi, a Saudi man sentenced to ten years in prison and a thousand lashes because, in his blog, he dared to say things like this, "What increases my pain is the Islamist chauvinist arrogance which claims that innocent blood, shed by barbarian, brutal minds under the slogan 'Allahu Akbar,' means nothing."
In place of the self-examination and self-correction typical of Judeo-Christian cultures, too many apologists have tried not to confront jihad, but merely to redefine it. CAIR has money and power. It could put those resources to use exposing and rejecting violent jihad. Instead, CAIR made a tawdry attempt to pimp "jihad" as a synonym for "calisthenics" and "making friends with Christians." CAIR was topped by the BBC, who dubbed their TV show "My Jihad," "a tender and funny love story." I'm sure viewers can't wait to see the BBC romantic comedy, "My Holocaust."
One must remind those relativists who wish to relative-ize away 1,400 years of jihad, that, yes, all humans, regardless of ethnicity or religion, do destructive things. Motivations include mental illness, fear, and greed for resources, power, or glory. We can't eliminate greed, fear, or psychopathology, but we can tame them with civilized advances like the Geneva Convention, diplomacy, and forensic psychiatry. The concept of jihad adds to an already overburdened humanity another, completely unnecessary, and diabolically seductive reason to kill and destroy. Shahids, or those who die in jihad, are promised the highest paradise, multiple heavenly virgins, and the opportunity to intercede on behalf of, and be granted divine favors for, seventy relatives.
The final nail in the relativist coffin on jihad: the chroniclers Spencer quotes were themselves not sheltered innocents. These people had seen conflict. The Roman and Persian Empires waged war for seven hundred years, on the same territory jihadis first invaded. Both non-Muslim victims and Muslim chroniclers announce that jihadis fought ruthlessly, destroyed totally, and obeyed no previous military convention.
Thought police censors will claim, with zero evidence, that Spencer's book is anti-Muslim. Repeat this as many times as necessary: Muslims are themselves victims of jihad. Muslims are killed. Muslim culture is destroyed. This Muslim-on-Muslim death and destruction is not new. Spencer's book begins with the bloodbath that was proto-Islam. One Arab warlord after another decided that he had a monopoly on Islam, and decided that his neighboring tribe was deviant. Slaughter ensued, all in the name of jihad. The killing was shockingly intimate. Muawiyah, founder of the Umayyad dynasty, Muhammad's brother-in-law and distant cousin, murdered Aisha, Muhammad's widow. One of the oldest copies of the Koran is said to be stained with the blood of Uthman, the very caliph who first called for the Koran to be compiled. His blood was shed by his fellow Muslims.
Immediately upon Muhammad's death, Khalid ibn Al Walid waged war on anyone in Arabia who wasn't in line with emergent Islamic orthodoxy. He was called "the drawn sword of Allah," "the friend of death," and his motto was, "We love death more than you love life." Khalid betrayed and killed his fellow Muslim Malik, put his head in a cooking pot, and raped his wife Layla "like a donkey." "I love the battlefield more than I love my wedding night with a beautiful woman," he said. Khalid had had many "wives." Normal people love life more than they love death, and normal people enjoy making love more than they enjoy killing other human beings. Indeed, the Koran itself, in verse 2:216 says that though Islam "prescribes" fighting" "fighting is hateful" to Muslims. A book exposing jihad is a gift to Muslims as much as it is a gift to the rest of us.



Pence and Pompeo Say Religious Liberty Top US Priority

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pence-and-pompeo-say-religious-liberty-top-us-priority_2605355.html?utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=fa892ee130-Epoch+10+07-27-2018&ut
July 26, 2018 1:56 pm Last Updated: July 26, 2018 9:05 pm

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