Where Are the Gays?
While the Taliban prepares to execute gays, Western gay-rights groups focus on “gender-reassignment surgery.”
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Bruce Bawer is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In the last couple of days, as the Taliban consolidated its position in the Afghan capital, I had to go all the way to New Zealand to find an English-language gay news website which acknowledged that this lightning reconquista wasn’t exactly a great development for gay Afghans.
Under the headline “Taliban Plan to Crush Gay Men to Death as they Close in on Capturing Afghanistan,” the Gay Express reminded readers that during the years of Taliban rule (1996-2001), adulterers were executed, thieves subjected to amputation, girls over 10 denied schooling, movie theaters closed, Western TV and music banned, women forced into burkas, and men ordered to wear beards.
In what seems a strict violation of the unwritten rule of Western gay media - i.e. never to say anything positive about the U.S., and especially about Republican governments in the U.S. - the Kiwi website noted that “[w]hile homosexuality has always remained illegal in Afghanistan, laws making it punishable by death were repealed when the United States invaded in 2001.”
But that, warned the website, will surely be reversed, given Taliban judge Gul Rahim’s recent assurance, in an interview with Bild (Germany), that gays, under a new Taliban regime, would be “crushed to death by toppling walls.”
But that story was, as noted, an outlier in the gay Anglosphere. When I turned from the Gay Express to other sites, I found nary a word about the Taliban’s grim plans.
At Pink News (UK), the highlighted stories concerned the firing of a gay teacher by a Christian school in Sydney, Australia; a ban on Pride flags at another school in Newburg, Oregon; and the loss of a lawsuit by Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts-and-crafts stores, which had refused to let M-to-F transsexuals use its ladies’ rooms.
At the Advocate, the picture was much the same, with scream headlines about some C-list television actress who supposedly challenges stereotypes by being a lesbian Asian-American; about the teenage child of Enimem, who has come out as “genderfluid and bisexual”; and about a ruling by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that “gender affirmation surgery for legal minors” is “child abuse.” (Hurrah, by the way.)
Finally, at Gay Times (UK), the top news items were largely about celebrities you never heard of coming out as “queer” - which these days, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean gay. Or, for that matter, mean anything much at all. There was also a breaking story about allegations of lip-synching on a drag show on British TV.
Great journalism there, boys and girls.
Nor was there anything about gays in Afghanistan at the website of Human Rights Campaign, the nominal gay-rights organization - now basically a trans lobby - whose sleazy history of “whor[ing] itself out” to Clintons, Obamas, and other Democratic politicians was illuminatingly outlined by Daniel Greenfield in an article on August 12.
Of course all this silence on gays in Afghanistan is in perfect accord with the unwritten rules regarding crimethink in the year 2021. If somebody dares to suggest that, say, Rachel Levine, Biden’s transsexual assistant health secretary, isn’t the most womanly of women, it’s a story deserving of scare headlines about anti-queer bigotry in post-Trump America.
But if judges in Afghanistan are having walls constructed so that they can be dropped on gay men - well, that’s their culture.
These gay news websites are staffed by woke types who’ve taken courses in this or that kind of “studies.” They know what they’re supposed to think - and what they’re never, ever supposed to say. And they know the jargon.
So they know that it’s not “the job of the white man,” as the postmodern scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has instructed them all, apropos of Western efforts to alleviate gender oppression and sex slavery in the Third World, “to save the brown woman from the brown man” - or, by the same token, to save the terrified brown gay man from a whole bunch of violent brown straight men.
(Never mind that Spivak herself, who was born in Calcutta and has had high-profile professorships at Cornell, Cambridge, and Columbia, seems to have been saved by white university administrators from what would otherwise have been a very obscure academic career in India.)
Thanks to people like Spivak, properly educated gays in L.A. and New York and London know that to so much as voice concern about the impending massacre of gays in Afghanistan is racist, Islamophobic, and postcolonialist.
When Donald Trump was president, he put Ric Grenell, his acting director of intelligence, in charge of an exceedingly ambitious - and exceedingly estimable - effort to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. The queer media and queer activist establishment heaped scorn on the initiative.
How could they do otherwise? To support Grenell’s work would have been to support Trump, whom they’d worked so hard to depict as a gay-hater. (Or, rather, an LGBT-hater - the only real evidence for which was his unwillingness to cheer the idea of transsexuals in the military.)
Also, Grenell frankly admitted that the worst antigay laws are in Muslim countries - an inconvenient truth that belied the queer nomenklatura’s preposterous doctrine that gays and Muslims are allies in victimhood.
Raging about Trump’s border wall? Terrific. But criticizing Taliban judges who want to drop walls on gays? No way.
But most of all, the whole enterprise was, in their view, a vulgar, verboten exercise in cultural condescension. How dare Trump and Grenell, after centuries of Western imperialism, imply that they held any moral high ground in relation to the Muslim world! How dare Don and Ric, as male members of the white race - “the cancer of human society,” as Susan Sontag once called it - presume to issue behavioral diktats to people of color?
No, deep down these shallow, self-centered professional gays in the Western world don’t care a whit about what happens to their “brothers” in Afghanistan or anywhere else that they themselves aren’t likely to visit. And they’re not impressed by campaigns to help them. What impresses them are empty, patronizing pro-gay gestures of the kind that the Obama administration - and now the Biden people - have specialized in: flying Pride flags at embassies, lighting the White House up in rainbow colors.
It’s sad. These well-connected gays could’ve followed up the same-sex marriage victory by looking abroad - looking, in short, beyond their own self-interest - and using their influence to help the poor sons of bitches in places like Afghanistan to win at least a fraction of the right to pursue happiness that they themselves enjoy.
But unlike Trump and Grenell, who are profoundly serious men, these are very silly people. In place of a moral compass, they have rainbow-flag Speedos and t-shirts bearing the Human Rights Campaign logo. And this summer, chances are that while they’re partying it up in Provincetown, Fire Island, and Miami Beach, walls will be falling - far, far away - on gay men in cities from Kabul to Kandahar.
The Real Lesson of Afghanistan
Muslim perseverance vs. Western myopia.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In an interview conducted back in 2005, al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri was asked about the statuses of Osama bin Laden, then leader of al-Qaeda, and Mullah Muhammad Omar, then leader of the Taliban—the two men most implicated for the September 11, 2001 terror strikes on the U.S. (bin Laden for masterminding it, Omar for providing him with logistical aid and sanctuary).
It had been four years since the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban, and sent jihadists of all stripes running; and there had not been a peep from either the leader of al-Qaeda or the leader of the Taliban for quite some time.
Al-Zawahiri’s response, which I translated for inclusion in The Al Qaeda Reader (2007), has always stayed with me. He said:
Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may Allah protect them from all evil—are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time (p.182, emphasis added).
Consider the applicability—if not the prophetic nature—of this response in light of recent developments: twenty years ago, the U.S.A.—the world’s only superpower—invaded Afghanistan, one of the world’s weakest and poorest nations; it made quick work of its enemies and set shop, nation building and importing “democracy”; and it eventually eliminated its archenemies, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
To any casual Western observer, it was an unqualified and resounding U.S. victory.
And yet…. and yet, two decades, trillions of U.S. dollars, and thousands of American servicemen’s lives later, not only does the U.S. not having anything to show for it, Afghanistan is set to become a much larger threat than ever before (not least as the Taliban—a “radical Muslim” group that has just founded the “Islamic emirate” of Afghanistan—seized billions’ worth of American weapons and equipment).
So what went wrong? Perhaps the following dichotomy—or rather dictum—may help: Whereas Muslims take a long, patient view of history, Westerners take a very short, myopic view; whereas Muslims maintain their ways and bide their time in moments of defeat (“we may be down but—so long as we’re not out—we’re still in the game”), Westerners allot too much significance to the temporal—to specific achievements or markers in time and space.
Take a concrete example—the wild euphoria that took the media by storm after the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Then, CNN security analyst Peter Bergen declared that “Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now.” Insisting that the “iconic nature of bin Laden’s persona” cannot be replaced, Bergen further counseled that “It’s time to move on.”
Another CNN analyst, Fareed Zakaria, assured us that “this is a huge, devastating blow to al-Qaeda, which had already been crippled by the Arab Spring. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the end of al-Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word.”
And yet … and yet, a full decade after bin Laden’s death, not only is his original safe haven, a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, back in action, but so too is al-Qaeda.
Why? Again, to quote that terrorist organization’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri: “Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden … are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time.”
Kill this or that jihadist; conquer this or that Muslim nation; prop up this or that government and import this or that Western ideology or style of governance—so long as Islam is alive and well, so too will the “journey of jihad” continue, even if as an imperceptible pulse under the surface, revealing itself only when the time is right.
That you can always bet on.
Biden’s Afghanistan Catastrophe Increases Terror Threat in US
Biden administration, meanwhile, focuses solely on "domestic extremists".
The twentieth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 is just a few weeks away.
Under the Biden-Harris Administration, DHS has increased the development, production, and dissemination of intelligence and other actionable information central to countering threats in the current environment. DHS has established a new, dedicated domestic terrorism branch within the Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). Further, DHS has established the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to help build local prevention frameworks to provide communities with the tools they need to counter terrorism and other targeted violence.In February, Secretary Mayorkas designated combating domestic violent extremism as a National Priority Area for the first time in FEMA grant programs. As a result, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments are required to spend at least 7.5 percent, or a minimum of $77 million, of their DHS grant awards toward combating this threat.These initiatives are taken in concert with the Biden-Harris Administration’s National Domestic Terrorism Strategy which highlights the whole-of-government approach being take to enhance the analysis and distribution of actionable intelligence to stakeholders; prevent domestic terrorism recruitment and the mobilization to violence; disrupt and deter domestic terrorism activity; and confront long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.
The National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin referred to above begins with this summary:
Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. HomelandThe Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a new National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin regarding the current heightened threat environment across the United States. The Homeland continues to face a diverse and challenging threat environment leading up to and following the 20th Anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks as well religious holidays we assess could serve as a catalyst for acts of targeted violence. These threats include those posed by domestic terrorists, individuals and groups engaged in grievance-based violence, and those inspired or motivated by foreign terrorists and other malign foreign influences. These actors are increasingly exploiting online forums to influence and spread violent extremist narratives and promote violent activity. Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions.
This bulletin articulated concerns about domestic extremists and their numerous possible motivations. When the bulletin did mention foreign terrorist organizations, the concern was limited as to how those terror groups could motivate domestic terrorists, presumably Americans, via the internet.
Consider these two excerpts:
Additionally, leading up to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula recently released its first English-language copy of Inspire magazine in over four years, which demonstrates that foreign terrorist organizations continue efforts to inspire U.S.-based individuals susceptible to violent extremist influences.Foreign and domestic threat actors, to include foreign intelligence services, international terrorist groups and domestic violent extremists, continue to introduce, amplify, and disseminate narratives online that promote violence, and have called for violence against elected officials, political representatives, government facilities, law enforcement, religious communities or commercial facilities, and perceived ideologically-opposed individuals. There are also continued, non-specific calls for violence on multiple online platforms associated with DVE ideologies or conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud and alleged reinstatement, and responses to anticipated restrictions relating to the increasing COVID cases.
Page 47 contained this excerpt:
Page 61 contained this passage:
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'They Were Given the Choice Between Death and Converting to Islam'
The persecution Christians experienced in just one month under Islam.
This report was first published by the Gatestone Institute. Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of June, 2021:
Pakistan
The Rape, Forced Conversion, and Child Marriage of Christians
A Muslim father-of-four abducted a 13-year-old Christian girl, forced her to convert to Islam, and then “married” her. According to the father of Nayab Gill, when the beauty school she was attending shut down due to the COVID-19 lockdown, Saddam Hayat, a local Muslim who ran his own beauty shop, “told me that rather than wasting time, Nayab should learn salon skills to help her in supporting the family financially. He even offered to pick her up from home and drop her off after work, assuring us that she was just like his daughter.” He had also promised to pay the girl Rs.10,000 (US$63) per month for her services, but stopped paying her after a couple of months. When the girl went missing on May 20, her frantic parents turned to Hayat, who claimed not to know where she was, and kindly offered to help them find her, including by instructing Nayab’s simple and trusting mother to fill out the missing person’s report in a way that did not implicate him.
“On May 26, we were informed by the police that Nayab was in the Darul Aman [women’s shelter] since May 21,” her father continues. “In an application submitted to a magistrate’s court, Nayab claimed she had willfully converted to Islam a month ago …” According to this application, Nayab also claimed to be 19-years-old, and an Islamic marriage certificate was registered on May 20 claiming she had married Hayat. That same day the family managed to meet with Nayab at the women’s shelter. She told her grandmother that she wanted to go home and was willing to sign anything to do so. At that point, her “husband” and the police—having been notified by a shelter staffer that Nayab was in direct contact with her family—barged in and forcibly separated them. On the following day, a visibly battered Nayab appeared before court and reaffirmed that she was 19-years-old and had converted to Islam of her own free will. “Our lawyer did not show up at the hearing, so my wife and I directly approached the judge and presented all official documents to prove that my daughter was born on Oct. 16, 2007, which makes her 13 years and seven months old,” her father explained.
We told the judge that she was lying about her age under duress. She had bruises on her face, and her eyes were also red, which should have caught the judge’s attention, but he ignored it…. [In the end] Judge Jameel relied solely on Nayab’s statements made under obvious threat, rather than official documents, and failed to order an ossification test to determine her age…. My mother [the girl’s grandmother] collapsed in the courtroom as soon as the judge gave his order, and while we were attending to her, the police quietly spirited Nayab away.
In a separate incident, a group of Muslims abducted a Christian teenager, drugged and held him captive for five days, and repeatedly raped and tortured him, before dumping him in a desolate region. Danish Masih, 17, vanished on June 6. Although his father immediately reported his son’s disappearance to police, they showed no interest and failed to act. Discussing this incident, a local human rights activist said, “As Christians we are a minority and we are alone. For us there is no justice and no equal rights.” No one has since been arrested. According to the report, “Danish’s is not an isolated case. Violence against Christians in Pakistan is commonplace,” and includes a “rising number of abductions, child sexual abuses, forced conversions and forced marriages.”
In another incident, a young Christian woman was beat and raped in her home for refusing to convert to Islam and marry her rapist. Neelam Masih shared her experiences in a June 7 report. She was home alone when Faisal Basra “entered my home at gunpoint.”
[He] dragged me to my bedroom and began to punch and kick me. He threw me on the bed and started to rape me. He demanded I marry him and convert to Islam. I refused. I am not willing to deny Jesus and he said that if I would not agree he would kill me. He hit me on the face with his pistol and I shouted and screamed and tried to escape but he kept pulling me back, dragging me by my hair.
Eventually Neelam’s neighbor, who is also her second cousin, heard her cries and came rushing to the house, at which point the rapist fled into the night. Neelam, who is studying for a Master of Philosophy degree, said that, as the only educated Christian woman in her village, she is committed to speaking out against oppression and abuse, despite “reports that friends and family” of the Muslim rapist “are trying to hunt her down and kill her for standing up to him.”
I want the world to know what happened to me… I am determined to struggle for my faith, my life and my community…. My family is very poor. My mother has two jobs as a sweeper and has done everything she can for my education and it is very important that I stand up for my community.
“Neelam is a very brave woman,” said her lawyer, adding that it is “very unusual” for rape victims to go public in Pakistan:
Struggling against this man has taken great courage…. Most girls feel ashamed and submit to the demands of the attacker. They don’t want to tell anyone. They are usually easily threatened. But Neelam remains faithful to Jesus and is determined to tell her story to bring an end to attacks on Christian girls and young women.
In yet another incident, a group of Muslim men led by one Muhammad Akbar—a man known to have kidnapped Christian women before—abducted a Christian mother of five. She spent over 20 days in captivity being drugged, raped, and beaten. Discussing her ordeal, her husband said during an interview in between tears,
We are poor and Christian therefore the police are not taking any action against the abductor, and because he has heavily bribed the police. But I want justice for my wife. I want all the kidnappers arrested and punished for their crimes so they can stop kidnapping more Christian women.
Finally, according to a June 24 report, a “Muslim doctor forcefully converted a 13-year-old Christian girl to Islam,” so she could “work in their family kitchen.” The doctor was initially looking to employ two girls in his house. An impoverished Christian family with eight children sent two of their daughters, aged 13 and 11, to work there. The agreement was that they would be paid Rs.10,000 per month (US$63); and although this was a live-in job, the girls’ family could visit them. At the end of the month, however, Dr. Altaf only paid them Rs.3,000 (US$19). The poor family had no choice but to accept it. But matters soon worsened. According to the report,
Neha and Sneha worked there for four years, during this time they started complaining about mistreatment by the family, who would swear at them and even physically assault them. The girls were being treated like slaves and were hardly allowed to meet their parents. They told the family that they wanted to go back home and live with their family, but Dr Altaf did not allow them to leave.
Both girls were missing their family. Sneha [aged 11] fell ill and wasn’t any help to Dr Altaf’s family therefore they agreed to send her back to her parents, but they were not willing to return Neha [aged 13].
Masih requested that Dr Altaf return his oldest daughter too as he was not willing to leave his daughter behind, but Dr Altaf told him that Neha had embraced Islam therefore she could not live with him.
It was a shocking revelation for Masih and [he] refused to accept it. Dr Altaf explained that since they were Muslims, it was not possible for them to allow any non-Muslim to enter the kitchen and touch their food items and kitchen utensils.
Dr Altaf dropped another bombshell on Masih, telling him they had mistakenly overpaid him, 275,000 (US$1,750) and until you pay it back, he won’t be able to get his daughter back.
“Perhaps Pakistan is the only country where such crimes are happening on a daily basis under the cover of Islam,” said one human rights activist while discussing this incident. “It cannot be justified at any cost that a young girl was converted to Islam against her will and without her parents’ knowledge and now she cannot be returned to her parents because her parents are Christians.”
Uganda: Death and Destruction for Christians
On June 11, a Muslim imam slaughtered a 70-year-old Christian pastor. Pentecostal bishop, Francis Obo, was killed after a group of Muslims dressed in Islamic garb stopped him and his wife as they were returning home in the evening after grocery shopping. The slain’s wife, Christine, said the men accused Francis of being an “infidel” who causes Muslims to leave Islam and that, accordingly, “Today Allah has judged you.” One of the assailants told her to go away because “Today, it is a day for your husband,” she said. “As I moved a few meters in a hurry trying to save my life, I heard a little noise and wailing from my husband and realized that his life was in danger.” She ran home, “trembling and unable to speak, and her children took her to a hospital where she was treated for shock” On regaining consciousness in the early morning, she told her eldest son what had happened; he and some other siblings went to search for their father where she last saw him. “Reaching there, they were shocked and fearful as they found a big number of Christians and relatives gathered around the dead body mourning their bishop after being murdered by Muslims,” she said. Police arrested suspect Imam Uthman Olingha, for having blood splattered on his clothes, and another Muslim. An officer later told the family that “Olingha openly confessed that he can’t regret that he killed the bishop because he did it in the cause of Allah’s word to kill all infidels who mislead Muslims.” The murderer added that “Allah will be with him in jail, but the kafiri [infidels] deserved the killing.” Bishop Francis is survived by his wife Christine and 13 children. He oversaw 17 churches in the area and was active is spreading the Gospel among Muslims—hence why he was targeted.
In a separate but similar incident, the Muslim employer of Fred Isiko, a Christian evangelist, had him killed by assassins. Earlier, Fred had recorded his boss, Ashirafu Kasenyi, a Muslim sheikh, pressuring him to convert: “You need to convert to Islam if you are to remain as my employee,” Kasenyi says in a May 7 recording. Fred replies, “I am not going to leave Jesus Christ; better to resign than leave Christianity.” On the day he was killed, Kasenyi had sent Fred to fetch supplies from the local market. Fred had a Christian friend with him, Francis, who explains what happened next:
As we were about to reach the trading center, three people stopped us. They said that they have some information for Fred. So I moved at a distance, and immediately one of them removed a long knife and cut his neck as I fled for my life and reported the incident at Kagumu police post.
Police later confirmed that their suspect confessed that the Muslim employer had hired him for the killing.
Finally, the Muslim relatives of a recent convert to Christianity burned his family home down. After Louis Levi Baula, 46, had taken his 3-year-old son, who suffered from seizures and other symptoms, to the local imam several times, and paid him for prayers of healing, nothing changed. So he took him to a nearby Christian church where the prayers, Louis and his wife say, healed their son. “We went back home but did not tell anyone, except I shared with my mother-in-law about the prayers in church that made my child well, and that we were planning to go back to the church the following Sunday,” Louis said. “She kept quiet.” The next Sunday the family attended the worship service and thanked the church for the prayers that healed their son. When they returned home, more than 20 Muslim relatives were gathered outside their home. They began questioning them. One got very animated and began crying “Allahu Akbar.” “We thought that they were going to kill us,” the mother continues, “but they only warned us not to attend the church, and the meeting ended.” They initially stopped going to church, but then went again. On returning home that Sunday, they found three of their goats missing. “A [Muslim] relative named Hamisi told me that Allah had taken the goats,” Louis said. “I was scared by that statement and came back and told my wife.” She insisted they and their three children, ages 3, 6, and 10, must relocate.
As we were thinking of where to go, at around 9 p.m. we heard hens making a lot of noise in the kitchen, and when I came out, I saw smoke and flames going up the roof, and I went back and told my wife that we are dying. We picked up our children and went out very fast, and within a short period my brothers, sisters and Muslim neighbors together with an imam arrived. The imam recited the Koran, and then later told my brothers to start destroying the house.
They watched helplessly as their Muslim relatives and the fire destroyed their home, property, and livestock. “The imam told us,” Louis continues, “that from today we were no longer one of the family members, that we were kafir [infidels] and that we should leave the homestead immediately to go and look for other infidels. He added that had it not been the law of our state, we would face death, but ‘go out of here since you have disobeyed Allah and his messenger.’”
The family fled with nothing but the clothes on their back and since last reported took refuge in another Christian’s home.
More Christian Slaughter in Africa
Mozambique: As the southeast African nation continues to fight off the Islamic State and other terrorists—nearly a million people have been displaced since 2017 and thousands slaughtered—in a June 28 report, Todd Nettleton of The Voice of the Martyrs USA explained how the terrorists mostly target Christians:
They say their goal is to set up a caliphate similar to ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And they are in some cases, literally going door to door. They ask, ‘Are you a Christian? Or are you a Muslim?’ If you’re a Christian, you’re killed. If you’re a Muslim, then you get the opportunity to quote some Quranic verses. And if you can quote them sufficiently, you save your life. Otherwise, you also get killed [including by crucifixion].
In another report on Mozambique from June 23, Amy Lamb of Open Doors said,
Because of [the rise in Christianity], we’re seeing jihadist groups including those who are affiliated with the Islamic state, with al Shabab, with Boko Haram, al Qaeda…. [They are] organizing together in order to expand their territories throughout the African continent, and their goal is really to eradicate Christianity from this territory and, unfortunately, in some ways, it’s working. Even specifically from this northern part of Mozambique, an estimated 800,000 people have fled the region, and those who remain, including women, children, families, are facing starvation even if they’re spared from … violence.
Nigeria: Among several other lethal attacks on Christians, which claimed at least 17 Christian lives in the preceding days, Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot to death Precious Emeka Chinedu, a Christian doctor, on June 17 in Niger State. Five Muslims entered the hospital he worked in, seized and left with him, and then killed him and left his body in the bush. Discussing this incident, the doctor’s colleague, Baridueh Badon, said:
His killers, who are herdsmen, came to the hospital, specifically asked for him, didn’t harm anybody, collected his money, took him away, and killed him without asking for ransom. What did he do wrong? Your blood will keep crying until justice is done…. Everyone loved him, always smiling, and he was one of the most hard-working persons I have ever known. His hospital boomed because he was saving lives. If you had any problems, Emeka would be there to help.
Attacks on Churches
Democratic Republic of Congo: On Sunday, June 27, a makeshift bomb placed in the first row behind the altar exploded inside a Catholic church in Beni, leaving at least two injured. “I had just entered the church, I hadn’t even managed to sit down, I heard ‘Boom’… Blood started flowing from my mouth. I lost four teeth and was injured in the arms,” one of the injured women, Antoinette Kavira, explained from her hospital bed. The blast occurred shortly before the start of a confirmation ceremony. “They were targeting a large crowd because the ceremony would bring together children, their parents and the faithful,” said a church official. The Allied Democratic Forces, a terrorist group connected to the Islamic State, is believed to be responsible for the attack. While discussing this latest attack, local Bishop Paluku shed light on the devastation committed by the Islamic terrorists:
Armed groups are destroying schools and hospitals. Teachers and pupils are being killed. They are even killing the sick as they lie in their hospital beds. Not a day goes by without people being killed… We need centers where people can go for therapy. Many people are traumatized… A large-scale project is underway to Islamize or expel the indigenous populations. Anyone who has been kidnapped by these terrorist groups and managed to escape from them alive has told the same story. They were given the choice between death and converting to Islam.
Indonesia: In the early morning hours of Sunday, June 27, a Protestant church was vandalized and then set aflame in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. The fire was put out before doing extensive damage. Although evidence indicates that the arsonist acted purposefully—he first broke the church’s windows, vandalized the interior, and then torched the exterior, all under the helpful cover of darkness—police concluded that the suspect is mentally disabled, prompting some critics to say that the incident is being “played down.”
Separately, police arrested “11 suspected Islamic militants accused of plotting attacks at several Christian churches in easternmost Papua province,” says a May 31 report:
The arrests led police to another suspect who was detained Sunday, and led them to seize items from various locations including chemicals for explosives, modified air guns able to fire real bullets, jihadist books and documents on planned attacks.
Those arrested are members of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and carried out a series of suicide bombings in Indonesia, including the bombing of a cathedral during Palm Sunday mass in March 2021 in Makassar, in which 20 were seriously wounded.
Finally, on June 19, ten Muslim schoolchildren, between the ages of 5 and 12, vandalized and desecrated a Christian cemetery, including by breaking the crosses off a dozen gravestones. After inspecting the damage done, the mayor of Solo laid the blame on the Islamic madrasa the children attend, and its teachers, “because they are teaching intolerance to their students.” He even urged police to prosecute the teachers and punish the students despite them being children. “Their actions were a gross act of intolerance.”
Pakistan: According to a June 22 report, a group of armed Muslim men attacked Harvest Church in the Punjab province. They broke in, shooting their guns in the air and severely beating the watchman present; several other Christians, men and women who were participating in evening prayers, were also hurt and hospitalized.
Egypt: Authorities recently barged onto and seized land belonging to an ancient Coptic monastery that was originally founded in the year 360—that is, nearly 300 years before Islam invaded and subsequently conquered Egypt in the seventh century. On May 30, authorities arrived with bulldozers and police at the Monastery of Saint Macarius in the deserts of Wadi al-Rayan in Fayum. They demolished a fence of the annex-farm and other structures—including a church—that had been erected by the monks living there. Several monks who protested or tried to prevent this state sanctioned destruction were arrested but shortly released. The reason for this takeover is that the monastery has been unable to pay the exorbitant levies that the government imposed on it a few years ago, in large measure due to the many government enforced COVID-19 restrictions, including on tourism, which would have helped keep the ancient monastery afloat. Commenting on this, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights organization, said:
Whilst we recognise the right of the government to collect the agreed taxes, we also recognise that this monastery has been on this site for centuries and that the rental levies are a relatively recent expense in its historic existence. We encourage … a just settlement in this matter, including a reappraisal of the rent that the monastery is required to pay, which is a considerable financial burden even outside the unusual circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has negatively impacted livelihoods in Egypt and across the world.
This is not the first time that the Egyptian government harasses the ancient Christian monasteries scattered in the deserts of Egypt—the one in question, St. Macarius, in particular. In 2015, the government initiated a project to build a road around Fayum. The proposed road would have crossed the territory around and threatened to destroy ancient heritage sites connected to the Monastery of St. Macarius.
In the end, the monks had no choice but to lay their bodies down before the path of the bulldozers, which arrived to the accompaniment of triumphant cries of “Allahu Akbar” from the company drivers and workers (pictures here). Then, the monks were again arrested, though later released, and the road construction started, against their will.
Have You or a Loved One Been Hurt or Injured by the Democrat Party?
"Have you or a loved one been hurt or injured by the Democrat Party?" That's the only question Republicans should run on radio and television ads from here on out. It's the same question civil litigators regularly use in late-night commercials when they're looking to add new members to class action lawsuits, but compared to asbestos poisoning, the side-effects of prescription medicines, or injuries from medical devices, the Democrats are the Grand Pooh-bahs of causing physical and emotional harm to everyday Americans.
Have you been living in a run-down American city plagued by crime, awful public schools, and economic deprivation? You're most likely living in a city that has been run by Democrats for over a century. Life does not have to be this way. Most of the country does not live this way. Vote out those who make life miserable.
Have you or a loved one experienced anti-Semitism or religious bigotry? You may be represented by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, or any of the many Democrats who choose Islamic terrorism over Israel's right to exist. End the madness. You deserve to be represented by people who don't sympathize with those who wish you dead.
Are you tired of endless medical lockdowns indistinguishable from house arrest; mask Nazis policing what you wear; and vaccination passports mandated by Democrats in return for the "privilege" of being allowed to walk around in public, shop, and eat in restaurants without being harassed? Does your child find it difficult to breathe when running around the playground with a covered face? Is your little one struggling emotionally and academically after missing over a year of school because Democrat-run public school unions refuse to teach? Government coercion and threats do not have to be endured. You do not have to elect those who work to muzzle you.
Have you or a loved one been injured by foreign nationals not legally in the country? Have you experienced depreciated wages because local businesses can hire illegal aliens for far less? Has your child been a victim of drugs or gang violence made possible by an open southern border and unenforced immigration laws? If so, stop voting for the same people who hurt your family by using tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration and crime.
Have you been denied school admission or employment because you happen to be an "over-achieving" Asian? Have you been told, "You ain't Black" because you questioned Democrat policies? Has your church or synagogue been closed by government authorities because your faith is demonized as "harmful" to public health while those same government authorities encourage Antifa domestic terrorists to run roughshod over the streets to intimidate citizens into political compliance? Have you been told you must support abortion even though it directly conflicts with your religion? Have you been pressured to support illegal immigration just because you are a legal immigrant relatively new to the United States? Are you tired of being told that the color of your skin is more important than what is going on in your brain or heart? Are you exhausted at being told you must "learn someone's pronouns" or risk punishment? If so, you do not have to elect people who divide Americans into small warring tribes based upon how they look. You do not have to choose a political party that sees everything in terms of race. You do not have to support officials who would be properly called bigots in another age. You do not have to keep voting for hate.
Now, to me, those questions are so obvious and so damning that you'd have to have been running the Republican Party for the last thirty years not to see their worth. That Republican officeholders and operatives have so spectacularly failed to highlight the social and economic destruction caused by Democrat policies stands as enduring proof of their own institutional mediocrity. Considering how many former party chairs and leaders have either officially joined the Democrat party in recent years or actively support that party by pushing policies despised by the Republican base, the Republicans' inability to expand their appeal until Donald Trump emerged in politics is hardly surprising.
Too many potential Republicans have never made the jump because too many people are rightly confused about whom Republicans actually represent. (Hint: There is nothing wrong with "populism" if that means doing what actual voters prefer rather than what corporate lobbyists demand.) Most of the corporate boards, Wall Street banks, and Silicon Valley tech behemoths stand solidly with Democrats, yet Republicans are still routinely demonized as the "party of the rich." Is that because Republican officeholders are so pathetically bad at politics, or because they too frequently vote for corporate welfare and investment firm bailouts, enact policies that encourage the outsourcing of working-class jobs overseas, and protect multinational conglomerates at the expense of American industries? Well, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham, and sixteen other Senate Republicans answered this question once again by joining Democrats in a one-and-a-half-trillion-dollar drunken spending binge filled with pork, crony insider enrichment, and a massive expansion of government power under the guise of "infrastructure" improvement. And while it sets the stage for the additional three-and-a-half-trillion-dollar Green New Deal takeover of the economy barreling our way, it does nothing to give Republicans even a patina of restraint or sensibility. It is difficult to explain to fence-sitters how the Democrat-corporate alliance is threatening Americans' freedoms when half the Republicans in office use their powers to strengthen Wall Street and weaken Main Street at every turn.
So like all commercial advertisements worried about legal liability for causing unknown future harm from defective products, perhaps any ads against Democrats should include some variation of the following boilerplate language:
Warning: Although Republican voters overwhelmingly believe in limited government; individual freedom; the Bill of Rights; constitutional separation of powers; and the God-given guarantee of every American to live, work, and own property without giving a fig what anybody in government thinks, RINO-ism may occur when too many Establishment Republicans directly or indirectly support Silicon Valley censorship of Americans; the growth and entrenched power of D.C.'s labyrinthine bureaucracy; the super-taxation of the working class by enacting policies that devalue the dollar; the destruction of American jobs in the name of "free trade"; the expansion of the nanny state in the name of "compassion"; the proliferation of the surveillance state in the name of "security"; and the routine demonization of the Republican base as "domestic terrorists," "extremists," "Neanderthals," "deplorables," and other vile slurs cooked up by Democrats and their media monopoly but which Republican elites fully embrace. RINO-ism may or may not occur after Establishment Republicans accept huge campaign contributions from corporate interests or lobbyists. Additionally, some Republicans have a tendency to stab voters in the back, allow elections to be stolen right from under them, and engage in forever-wars. Should their tumescent narcissism last longer than it takes Lord Fauci to flip-flop, chuck those useless idiots out of office, too.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Report: Taliban Abducting Girls to Turn into ‘Sex Slaves’ in Afghanistan
The Taliban terror group is allegedly “going door-to-door” in some regions of Afghanistan to select girls as young as 12 years old to become “sex slaves” for the group’s jihadi fighters, News Corp Australia’s News.com.au reported Thursday.
“An inside source suggests that Taliban leaders are attempting to kidnap and forcibly marry women,” the news site relayed, citing an earlier report by Bloomberg, published Monday.
“[T]he Taliban are going door-to-door in some areas, compiling lists of women and girls aged between 12 and 45 years for their fighters to forcibly marry,” Bloomberg reported on August 9.
“Taliban commanders, after capturing some of the provincial capitals, have ordered local Imams [Islamic leaders] to bring the lists of unmarried women aged from 12 to 45 for their soldiers to marry as they view them as ‘qhanimat or ‘spoils of war,’” OpIndia reported August 12, citing an August 11 report by the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
“The Taliban intends to ‘divide’ these kids among themselves as Jihadists consider them as a ‘prize,'” according to OpIndia, a conservative Indian news site.
“Taliban fighters are permitted to do this under their strict interpretation of Islam which views women as ‘kaniz’ or ‘commodities,'” Omar Sadr, a professor at the American University of Afghanistan, told the Daily Mail.
The Taliban reconquered large swaths of Afghanistan in recent months as U.S. and NATO-allied troops withdrew from the country to end a 20-year-long joint military operation based out of Kabul. The U.S. launched the War in Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001, by ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan’s government and will end the operation by August 31. The Taliban has swiftly regained control over at least 85 percent of the country in the wake of the nearly complete troop withdrawal. The Sunni terror group has ramped up its military campaign over the past week, retaking three northern provincial capitals in a single day on August 8.
Internally displaced Afghan women from northern provinces, who fled their home due to fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security personnel, receive medical care in a public park in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
The Taliban has reimposed sharia, or Islamic law, across most of the regions it reconquered in recent weeks. The group has ordered taxi drivers in the Afghan town of Balkh, a regional hub near the Uzbek border, “not to drive any woman into the town unless she’s fully veiled,” the BBC reported on August 11. The British broadcaster published its report after sending a group of reporters to Balkh to interview members of the Taliban.
“The day after we leave, reports emerge of a young woman being murdered because of her clothing,” the BBC revealed. “Haji Hekmat, though, rejects allegations Taliban members were responsible.”
The BBC identified Hekmat as a “local Taliban leader and our host in Balkh.”
“All the women we see … are wearing the all-encompassing burqa, covering both their hair and face,” the broadcaster wrote of its visit to Balkh’s main bazaar, or market.
Hekmat insisted to the BBC that no women were being “forced” to wear the full burka, claiming that “the Taliban are simply ‘preaching’ that this is how women should dress.”
“In our Sharia it’s clear, for those who have sex and are unmarried, whether it’s a girl or a boy, the punishment is 100 lashes in public,” a Taliban judge named Haji Badruddin told the BBC after the broadcaster visited “a Taliban court session” in Balkh.
“But for anyone who’s married, they have to be stoned to death … For those who steal: if it’s proved, then his hand should be cut off,” he said.
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