Iranian-Born Christian Pastor Tortured in Tehran Prison

An Iranian-born pastor who is a U.S. citizen is undergoing physical and mental torture in a notoriously brutal Tehran prison while an international campaign for his release mounts, according to the American Center for Law and Justice.

Saeed Abedini was sentenced to eight years in prison for establishing a network of Christian house churches years ago and for “attempting to sway Iranian youth away from Islam.” Since his conviction Jan. 27, Abedini has not been allowed to communicate with his wife and two children who live in the United States.

Read more at Baptist Press. . .

Yes There Is A Difference Between Religions

Quoting Alistair Begg:

[T]he idea that there are really no substantive differences between religions needs to be held up to careful scrutiny and declared fraudulent. For example, Islam says that Jesus was not crucified. Christianity says He was. Only one of us can be right. Judaism says Jesus was not the Messiah. Christianity says He was. Only one of us can be right. Hinduism says God has often been incarnate. Christianity says God was incarnate only in Jesus. We cannot both be right. Buddhism says that the world’s miseries will end when we do what is right. Christianity says we cannot do what is right. The world’s miseries will end when we believe what is right. (Begg, Made For His Pleasure, 126)

Believing What Is Right

Quoting Alistair Begg:

“[T]he idea that there are really no substantive differences between religions needs to be held up to careful scrutiny and declared fraudulent. For example, Islam says that Jesus was not crucified. Christianity says He was. Only one of us can be right. Judaism says Jesus was not the Messiah. Christianity says He was. Only one of us can be right. Hinduism says God has often been incarnate. Christianity says God was incarnate only in Jesus. We cannot both be right. Buddhism says that the world’s miseries will end when we do what is right. Christianity says we cannot do what is right. The world’s miseries will end when we believe what is right.” (Made For His Pleasure, 126)

Truth Redefined

Kelly O’Connell is an author, attorney, and radio show host. In his article “Who Defines ‘Truth’ When Politicians Re-Write the Dictionary?” he points out three areas of American life – Education, Church, and Political Correctness – where the false has been declared true:

The very notion of truth itself has been tied, stretched out and crucified for political advantage in America. This is why we are in a dreary swamp, a national malaise. Our current struggles are all the more remarkable considering most result from wrong ideas. A simple attitude adjustment, ie a “reality check”—would eliminate most of our seemingly permanent issues fairly quickly. Our troubles occur because disreputable political doctrines are raised over common sense. For example, huge deficits undermine America’s ability to continue its military and humanitarian roles, home and abroad. And yet, the notion of serious spending cuts is regarded by liberals as more horrible than an offer to barbecue holy cows in downtown Bombay.

The problem in America today is our “official” national narrative is based upon a torrent of false, leftist ideas, directed by political theory towards relentless failure on every front. In other words, the elites uphold the tenets of Marxism. A key example is Political Correctness. This devilish doctrine claims no action is bad, in itself—as long as fostered by an ideologically acceptable group. . . .

Continue reading this article. . . .

Targeting Christians In Muslim Lands

As the world continues to grow smaller, the Muslim world’s indigenous Christians are being identified with free Christians in the West. Muslim perceptions of the West affect the treatment of Christians in Muslim lands. Race or geography is not important; shared religion makes them all liable for one another. This practice of actually attacking one set of Christians or non-Muslims in general, in response to another — has roots in Islamic law. The Pact of Omar, a foundational text for Islam’s treatment of Dhimmis (i.e., non-Muslims who refused to convert after their lands were seized by Islam) makes this clear. The consequences of breaking any conditions that Christians were made to accept in order to be granted a degree of security by the Muslim state were severe. A rule broken by a single individual Dhimmis could result in jihad being enacted against the whole community. Raymond Ibrahim, the associate director of the Middle East Forum and the author of The Al Qaeda Reader, puts this ancient practice into a modern perspective:

In 2006, when Pope Benedict quoted history deemed unflattering to Islam, Christians around the Muslim world paid the price: anti-Christian riots ensued, churches were burned, and a nun was murdered in Somalia. That was then. Days ago, when a Christian in Egypt was accused of dating a Muslim woman, twenty-two Christian homes were set ablaze, to cries of “Allah Akbar.” Countless other examples of one group of Christians in the Muslim world being “punished” in response to other Christians exist.

In fact, the recent carnage in Baghdad, wherein Islamists stormed a church during mass, killing over fifty Christian worshippers, was a “response” to Egypt’s Coptic Christian church, which Islamists accuse of kidnapping and torturing Muslim women to convert to Christianity. (Ironically, the well documented reality in Egypt is that Muslims regularly kidnap and force Christian women to convert to Islam: these accusations are part of a new trend whereby Islamists project their own crimes onto the Copts.) And the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists who perpetrated the Baghdad church massacre have further threatened Christians around the world. . . .

Continue reading. . . .

Rewarding Bad Behavior

Quoting Mark Steyn:

The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it. We now have a government offering trillion-dollar rewards for bad behavior to the financial system, to the housing market, to the auto unions, and to individual voters.

 

Mosque At Ground Zero An Insult

Rudy Giuliani

Quoting Rudy Giuliani:

(Building a mosque at Ground Zero) sends a particularly bad message, particularly (because) of the background of the Imam who is supporting this. This is an Imam who has supported radical causes, who has not been forthright in condemning Islamic (terrorism) and the worst instincts that that brings about. So it not only is exactly the wrong place, right at Ground Zero, but it’s a mosque supported by an Imam who has a record of support for causes that were sympathetic with terrorism. Come on! We’re gonna allow that at Ground Zero? This is a desecration. Nobody would allow something like that at Pearl Harbor. Let’s have some respect for who died there and why they died there. Let’s not put this off on some kind of politically correct theory. I mean, they died there because of Islamic extremist terrorism. They are our enemy, we can say that, the world will not end when we say that. And the reality is it will not and should not insult any decent Muslim because decent Muslims should be as opposed to Islamic extremism as you and I are.

The Slaughter Of Christians Ignored

Pamela Geller

Quoting columnist Pamela Geller:

“While we are constantly being schooled in how insensitive we are to Muslims and how we should be bowing to the idea of a Ground Zero mega-mosque, or are being admonished for not embracing the Sharia, the state of wartime siege continues unabated. The Muslim world is under no such mandate to reach out or reciprocate. They only have to demand, and the West apologizes. … We live in a constant state of low-grade war. And with each new Muslim attack, we lose a right. We lose a freedom. We have to adhere to some new restriction or loss of privacy. … The general silence from the mainstream media and our governing officials on last weekend’s wholesale slaughter of Christians praying in a Church is indicative of how decayed, empty, and morally inverted our leaders and media have become. The slaughter of the churchgoers in Baghdad was a crime against humanity. And there are thousands of stories of Islamic slaughter, but the lambs remain silent. Have we become so inured to Islamic jihad that human life is cheap to us as well?”

Continue reading. . . .

Why Are American Public School Students Learning To Pray To Allah?

Islamic Society of Boston

This video was taken inside the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center – Boston’s controversial Saudi-funded mega-mosque – during a middle school social studies trip to the mosque, ostensibly taken to learn about the history of Islam first-hand. Yet the video reveals that the students are being blatantly miseducated about Islam.

The Muslim Brotherhood And Its Supporters

Logo of Muslim Brotherhood

Robert Spencer calls the Muslim Brotherhood “the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda.” It is methodically seeking to convince U.S. Muslims to wage “a kind of grand Jihad to destroy Western civilization from within. The Brotherhood’s “grand jihad” is not a violent one involving bombings and shootings, but rather a stealth jihad aiming to impose Islamic law (Sharia) on America by incremental means. In an important secret document, the Brotherhood identified the 29 organizations with which it planned to collaborate on this goal. All 29 of those organizations are profiled in this article from Discover The Networks:

In July 2007, seven key leaders of an Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) went on trial for charges that they had: (a) provided “material support and resources” to a foreign terrorist organization (namely Hamas); (b) engaged in money laundering; and (c) breached the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which prohibits transactions that threaten American national security. Along with the seven named defendants, the U.S. government released a list of approximately 300 “unindicted co-conspirators” and “joint venturers.” During the course of the HLF trial, many incriminating documents were entered into evidence. Perhaps the most significant of these was “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” by the Muslim Brotherhood operative Mohamed Akram.

Written sometime in 1987 but not formally published until May 22, 1991, this 18-page document listed the Brotherhood’s 29 likeminded “organizations of our friends” that shared the common goal of dismantling American institutions and turning the U.S. into a Muslim nation. These “friends” were identified by Akram and the Brotherhood as groups that could help convince Muslims “that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands … so that … God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.”

Read more. . . .

All Must Submit To Islam

9/11

It is well documented that Iran was founded on the principles of Islamic Totalitarianism and is a full-fledged militant Islamic theocracy. Iran is also a leading supporter of the terrorist groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. The next leading state supporter of Islamic Totalitarianism is Saudi Arabia. It has spent more than seventy-five billion dollars to promote the Wahhabi sect of Islam. The Wahhabi sect inspires legions of Islamic Totalitarians, including Osama Bin Laden. What is the purpose of these disciples of Islamic Totalitarians? Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein write:

To conjure up the emotions we felt on 9/11, many intellectuals claim, is dangerous, because it promotes the “simplistic” desire for revenge and casts aside the “complexity” of the factors that led to the 9/11 attacks. But, in fact, the desire for overwhelming retaliation most Americans felt after 9/11—and feel rarely, if ever, now—was the result of an objective conviction: that a truly monstrous evil had been perpetrated, and that if the enemies responsible for the 9/11 attacks were not dealt with decisively, we would suffer the same fate (or worse) again.

After 9/11, our leaders—seemingly sharing our conviction in the necessity of decisive retaliation—promised to do everything possible to make America safe from terrorist attack. . . .

To fulfill the promise to defeat the terrorist enemy that struck on 9/11, our leaders would first have to identify who exactly that enemy is and then be willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat him. . . .

Who is the enemy that attacked on 9/11? It is not “terrorism”—just as our enemy in World War II was not kamikaze strikes or U-boat attacks. Terrorism is a tactic employed by a certain group for a certain cause. That group and, above all, the cause they fight for are our enemy.

The group that threatens us with terrorism—the group of which Al Qaeda is but one terrorist faction—is a militant, religious, ideological movement best designated as “Islamic Totalitarianism.” The Islamic Totalitarian movement, which enjoys widespread and growing support throughout the Arab–Islamic world, encompasses those who believe that all must live in total subjugation to the dogmas of Islam and who conclude that jihad (“holy war”) must be waged against those who refuse to do so. Islamic Totalitarians regard the freedom, prosperity, and pursuit of worldly happiness animating the West (and especially America and Israel) as the height of depravity. They seek to eradicate Western Culture, first in the Middle East and then in the West itself, with the ultimate aim of bringing about the worldwide triumph of Islam. This goal is achievable, adherents of the movement believe, because the West is a “paper tiger” that can be brought to its knees by sufficiently devoted Islamic warriors.

Read more here. . . .

Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Western civilization is not indestructible. It needs to be actively defended. While the Saudis have invested at least $2 billion a year over the last 30-years to spread their own radical fundamentalist Islam, The response of the US and western Europe has been to kow-tow to “multi-culturalism” rather than to suggest that western civilization has created a higher standard of living and has protected the rights of ordinary citizens to a degree unknown in other civilizations. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch parliament, says:

What do the controversies around the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban in France have in common? All four are framed in the Western media as issues of religious tolerance. But that is not their essence. Fundamentally, they are all symptoms of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the “Clash of Civilizations,” particularly the clash between Islam and the West.

Huntington’s argument is worth summarizing briefly for those who now only remember his striking title. The essential building block of the post-Cold War world, he wrote, are seven or eight historical civilizations of which the Western, the Muslim and the Confucian are the most important.

The balance of power among these civilizations, he argued, is shifting. The West is declining in relative power, Islam is exploding demographically, and Asian civilizations—especially China—are economically ascendant. . . .

Thus the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations.

Continue reading here. . . .

American Cartoonist Must Go Into Hiding After Death Threat

Anwar al-Awlaki

It is a sad commentary on life in the US when a citizen who exercises constitutionally free speech must then go into hiding because an Islamic cleric threatens her life. Gary Bauer writes:

A Seattle-based cartoonist has gone into hiding at the urging of the FBI. Why? Because an increasingly influential cleric of the “religion of peace” put her on a hit list.

According to Fox News, cartoonist Molly Norris of the Seattle Weekly decided to protest Comedy Central’s cancellation of a South Park show that mocked Muhammad by drawing a cartoon suggesting May 20th be declared “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!” For exercising her free speech rights, Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki declared that Norris “should be taken as a prime target of assassination.”

He also instructed Muslims in America to wage jihad, writing, “with the defamation of Muhammad reaching the shores of America, I wonder whether the patriotic American Muslim will still have the audacity to claim that he enjoys the right to be a Muslim in America? Does he understand that this right includes his duty to fight against those who blaspheme his Prophet?”

And by “fighting” al-Awlaki wasn’t speaking rhetorically. He wrote that “assassinations, bombings and acts of arson” were proper responses to blasphemy.

The FBI is taking al-Awlaki’s threat seriously. After all, this man of “peace” inspired Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, the plot to bomb Times Square and other acts of terror. Yesterday the Seattle Weekly printed this explanation for the absence of Molly Norris’ work:

“You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly. The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, ‘going ghost’: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program…”

British Muslims Plan To Take Over the UK!

British Muslim radicals want to take over the UK and turn Buckingham Palace into a mosque. There is no doubt about it that we need to be onguard against this evil. If Britain does not wake up very soon, they will become an Islamic state.

Cordoba House Or Park51? There Is A History Lesson To Be Found In The Ground Zero Mosque

The Ground Zero Mosque project’s name is now to be called Park51, but its initial name was “Cordoba House”. The nonprofit behind it is called the “Cordoba Initiative”. With all the speculation concerning the motives for building the Mosque in this particular location, it might be helpful to ask “What’s in a name?” Cordoba was the capital of the Islamic caliphate that controlled much of Spain during the Middle Ages. Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam who runs the Cordoba Initiative, named his project after the caliphate.

When the Moslems conquered this area of Spain, all the Christian churches in Cordoba were destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent. Under Islamic rule, Christians were not allowed to build new churches nor Jews new Synagogues. Nor could the structures be repaired or maintained. For several years the cathedral was undisturbed until the Christians were compelled to hand over half of the edifice to be used as a mosque. Some years later, Abd-er Rahman requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians turned over their cathedral.

Islamic law was very strict for the non-Moslems of Cordoba. Christians and Jews were required to wear patches of cloth called a “riqa”. This cloth patch had the emblem of an ape for a Jew, or a pig for a Christian. The patches represented religious purity concerns and served as a visible representation of social and political hierarchy.

The freedom of non-Moslems was constantly at risk. Non-payment of the non-Moslem head-tax could result in an infidel being sold into slavery or even put to death. Non-payment of the head-tax by one or several non-Moslems allowed the Islamic authority to put an end to the autonomy of the community to which the guilty party or parties belonged. On one day or the next, all the Christians or Jews in a community could lose their status as a protected people through the fault of just one of them. Non-payment of the legal tribute was not the only reason for abrogating the protected status of Christians and Jews; another was “public outrage against the Islamic faith”. This could be leaving exposed, for Moslems to see, a cross or wine or even pigs.

If a Christian or Jew converted to Islam, he would no longer have to be confined to a given district, or be the victim of discriminatory measures or suffer humiliations. Islamic law tended to favor conversions. The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was of tranquility. What of tolerance? Consider Barcelona which the Moslems destroyed by fire in 985. Nearly all of its Christian and Jewish citizens were massacred or deported. In 987, the Christian and Jewish residents of Coimbra and Leon were virtually all wiped out. 997 saw the Shrine of Santiago (Saint James) de Compostela pillaged and razed to the ground by the followers of Islam. In 1,000, they put Castile to fire and sword. The entire population was enslaved and deported. I suggest you consult the Jews of Granada who were massacred in 1066. Read accounts of the Christians who were deported to Morocco in 1126. Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch.

Therefore, the name of the Ground Zero Mosque project and its non-profit organization directing the plans for completion is an interesting selection. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf must certainly have had in mind the glory days of an Islamic caliphate that once imposed its will on western Christian and Jewish peoples – an “Islamic will” which tolerates nothing less than total political and religious domination.

Much of the information in this article is based upon the research of Andrew G. Bostom. Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus, 2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (Prometheus, November, 2008). Dr. Bostom is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School. He is also an author on Islam as well as a regular contributor to FrontPageMag.com and the American Thinker magazine.