Written by Johnnie Moore

It seems that every day is met with a new atrocity stemming from the Islamic State. We’ve lost track of the executions, the crimes against women and children are incalculable and unconscionable, and it seems that every drop of innocent blood feeds a thirst for more.

Their particular taste for Christian blood is most alarming to many of us who’ve watched from afar at their unrelenting advance on ancient Christian communities that have –until now- thrived in Iraq and Syria for nearly two thousand years.

ISIS has displaced tens-of-thousands and burned their churches, targeted their pastors, sold their children as slaves, and murdered countless among them. One particular account I’ve documented in my book Defying ISIS describes how the terror group arrived in one Christian town along the Nineveh Plain waving daggers and swords as they screamed, “shall we start beheading women and children or start with the old and the disabled? … we will behead all of you unless you convert.”

Christianity was born in the east, not the west, and we are witnessing a once-in-a-thousand-year attempt at destroying it in the place of its birth; so, how should we as Christians in the west respond to the threat of ISIS against Christians in the east?

Educate Ourselves

A global lack of concern isn’t for a lack of information. Nearly every major news organization in the United States, and abroad, has given significant coverage to the threat of ISIS against Christians and other religious minorities. It’s time we pay attention to the news, and pay particular attention to those outlets based in Europe (like France 24, BBC, and Sky News) and in the Middle East (like Al Jazeera, and Rudaw). Follow reporters like Jane Arraf on twitter who are covering the situation from within the region, and follow non-profit organizations that give particular attention to the threats against religious minorities (like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and The Institute for Global Engagement.).

When you know what’s happening, and know the stories of those in harm’s way, it gives you empathy, inspires you to action, and prepares you to rally others to the cause. It also helps prevent you from underestimating or oversimplifying this crisis. I wrote Defying ISIS precisely to serve as an introduction to the issue for those who want to know more. Thankfully, Harper Collins Christian Publishing made the remarkable decision to release the eBook early because of their own corporate concern for endangered Christians.

Read it and recommend it to others.

Churches and Christians Must Pray As Never Before

We are witnessing one of the most severe and unrelenting attempts at Christian persecution in church history. It’s happening in our time – in our modern era – and on our watch. This isn’t a time for churches to dedicate a Sunday a year to praying for the persecuted church, but a time when every single Christian church in every single place ought to be praying without pause for our brothers and sisters in Christ who sit in the path of ISIS. There should not be a single Sunday or a single church where this isn’t a topic of focused prayer every day. This type of crisis happens once in a millennium, and it demands that we pray as we never have before, and that we pray as we hope others would pray for us.

Churches must also do as the early church in Antioch did when the church in Judea was suffering through a famine. They generously gave to help their brothers and sisters survive. Churches in the west ought to be collecting tens of millions of dollars to help those in the east who’ve been displaced and who are under threat. The humanitarian crisis caused by ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been deemed the “worst of our time” by the United Nations.

Every act of love on behalf of those whom ISIS hates is a dagger in the heart of ISIS. If those who’ve fled ISIS die for lack of food, medicine or shelter then ISIS wins anyhow. We mustn’t allow this to happen.

There are many wonderful organizations who are working at preserving and rebuilding these broken lives, organizations like: The Cradle Fund, World Help, Open Doors, the Preemptive Love Coalition, The Assyrian Aid Society, Samaritan’s Purse, Focus on the Family, and the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East.

In a world of two billion Christians, surely we can do more good.

Let Us Be Known for Our Love

It has never been more important for the best of faith to shine brightly in the face of the worst of religion. There should not be a Muslim or mosque in any country in the world that hasn’t been subject to the exuberant, generous, and abundant love of the Christian community. They mustn’t know us by our religion or by our politics, by our prejudice or by our power. They must – as Jesus told us so clearly so long ago – “know us by our love.”

We ought to rush into the communities in our countries that have the potential to incubate extremism, and we must lavish them in Christian love and kindness. One of the great tragedies of our time is that despite living in an enormously diverse world, we rarely know the names, stories and beliefs of those who are different than us. This lack of relationship makes it easier to come to false and unhelpful conclusions about one another. It makes it easier for every Christian to think that every Muslim is a jihadist and for every Muslim to think that every Christian is a crusader. These are laughable conclusions, but the fact is that most Christians in the west haven’t a clue about Islam and they don’t know a single Muslim, and many Muslims in the west live their lives separate form the Christians in their communities.

Ironically, most of my own work in the Middle East on behalf of Christians started because kindhearted Muslims in the region invited me into their own concern about their persecuted, Christian neighbors.

Christians and Muslims must work together to defeat ISIS, and Christianity must be known around the world for our love, especially for Muslims.

We Must Not be Silent

This is not the time to sit idly by. This is a time to insist that people of influence and of affluence, people in politics and in places of power, feel unrelenting pressure to protect those who might be massacred and to utterly and thoroughly destroy ISIS as quickly as possible.

The fact is that the people who have the power to end this crisis often only react when they feel pressure from others. So, we must keep the pressure on.

Just the other morning, I received an email from deep within Syria just before the sun was rising in America. The email said that ISIS was moving towards another group of Assyrian, Christian villages along the Khabour River in Syria. Immediately, a small group of us who are involved in this issue started notifying congressmen, the press and the military. We insisted on a decisive response and a strong one. Within a few hours, we learned that coalition forces reacted with airstrikes, pushing ISIS back, and saving those Assyrian Christians who might have been kidnapped or killed.

We don’t know whether we made THE difference or not, but we do know that our voices mattered and we suspect that they applied the right pressure in the right places at the right time.

We must raise our voices every single day until this crisis ends. In so doing we will literally save lives.

Use #DefyingISIS when you do, and in turn we shall show the world that we care too much to quiet down. We will force leaders to act or shame them for their indifference.

Soon enough – if we do – I believe that “The God of peace will crush Satan under his feet” [Romans 1:16].

May it happen quickly, and may our brothers and sisters in Christ know they haven’t been forgotten.

Originally posted at ChristianPost.com.

Islam in America: A Christian Response

with Dr. Erwin Lutzer of Moody Church

May 7th, 2015

Medinah Baptist Church

More Information HERE

Yet another non-Muslim assures us that the Islamic State is not Islamic. And once again, his analysis is based on comforting falsehoods about Islam that will not convince even one young Muslim who is considering joining the Islamic State not to do so. In that case, what is the effect of articles like this one? To keep Americans from getting nervous about rising Muslim populations, and to keep them ignorant and complacent about the full nature and magnitude of the jihad threat.

More below.

“What our president should say about Islam,” by Mark Cunningham, New York Post, March 1, 2015 (thanks to Budd):

…Let us begin with the so-called “Islamic State.” I’ve heard a few complaints about my saying the IS is not Islamic; let me clarify.

What the Islamic State is, is a cheap and horrible fake — a con job.

Consider: The IS claims to be restoring the “pure Islam” of a past era, either of the time of the Prophet and the early caliphs, or of the later, medieval caliphates.

Yet, what — beyond its snuff videos — is the IS most known for? For slaughtering Christians, Yezidis and other non-Muslims, or expelling them from areas it controls.

Strange: These very same peoples survived and even thrived under Islamic rule for more than a thousand years, including under all the caliphs that IS cites as upholding “true Islam.”

What the IS tells other Muslims about its brand of Islam, in other words, is an outright lie.

Unfortunately not. The Islamic State actually slaughtered Christians, Yezidis and other non-Muslims, or expelled them from areas it controls, as part of its endeavor to reimpose Islamic laws over those years. This is true because these people “survived and even thrived under Islamic rule for more than a thousand years, including under all the caliphs that IS cites as upholding ‘true Islam,’” when they submitted to Islamic hegemony, paid the jizya, and lived as dhimmis, in accord with Qur’an 9:29 and the Sharia rules that were elaborated from that passage’s command that non-Muslims in the Islamic State must “pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” But the Ottoman Empire, the last caliphate, abolished the dhimma under Western pressure in 1856. After that Christians in the areas the Islamic State controls were no longer second-class except insofar as the laws governing dhimmis remained as a cultural hangover in the area. Under the relatively secular states of the Assads in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Christians and other non-Muslims had almost equal rights with Muslims.

Then came the Islamic State, and it wanted to reassert Islamic law. So it demanded that Christians submit and pay the jizya. When they refused, they were exiled or killed, in accord with Muhammad’s words: “Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war…When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them….If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them.” (Sahih Muslim 4294)

I submit to you that, as a simple matter of fact, Islam itself has prospered most when it has embraced such tolerance — and that we can see this from the time of the Prophet and beyond, when Islam exploded in a matter of decades from a handful of men to half the civilized world.

For, in the centuries before Mohammad, the Christian rulers of the Eastern Roman Empire had ruthlessly and bloodily sought to stamp out Christian worship that did not conform to their Orthodox faith. These savage campaigns decimated whole populations.

And then the Prophet and his armies rode in, and said to these Christians, and also the Jews, “Accept our rule and you may worship as you will — you’ll just have to pay a tax.”

No, this wasn’t much like the religious tolerance now practiced in the West. But it was far greater tolerance than the Byzantine Christians offered.

Cunningham’s ignorance of Islamic history is embarrassing. Muhammad is supposed to have died in 632. The Arab conquest of Eastern Roman imperial holdings began after that. The closest Muhammad got, according to Islamic tradition, was his attempted attack on the Byzantine imperial garrison at Tabuk, but the Byzantines left before he got there.

Cunningham reflects another widely held falsehood when he suggests that the Christians and Jews had it better under the Muslims than under the Byzantines. Islamic tradition has the caliph Umar making a telling admission in a message to an underling: “Do you think,” he asked, “that these vast countries, Syria, Mesopotamia, Kufa, Basra, Misr [Egypt] do not have to be covered with troops who must be well paid?” Why did these areas have to be “covered” with troops, if the Muslim invaders were more tolerant than the Byzantines?

This principle of tolerance continued to bolster Islam and its culture for centuries. Maimonides, one of the greatest Jewish sages of all time, lived his entire life under Muslim rule — enriching not only Jewish understanding, but also laying the groundwork for thinkers of Islam’s Golden Age, such as Avicenna, Averroes and Al-Farabi.

Actually, Maimonides lived for a time in Muslim Spain and then fled that supposedly tolerant and pluralistic land, remarking, “You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us….No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have….We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear.”

But Mark Cunningham is able to publish this nonsense in the New York Post not just because he is an editor there, but because his soothing falsehoods coincide with what the Western world so desperately wants to believe. But that doesn’t make it any truer.

This article was originally posted at the JihadWatch.org website.

According to a recent poll from The O’Leary Report and WND that was conducted by Zogby Analytics, roughly two out of three registered voters in America are against the Obama administration providing taxpayer funds to Arab nations that are considered anti-Christian through their laws and treatment of believers.

Visiting the exact verbiage presented before the poll’s participants, they were asked, “Do you agree or disagree that the United States should help certain Arab countries financially and militarily if their countries’ constitutions or laws make being a Christian or atheist a crime punishable by jail or even execution?”

An overwhelming 62.6 percent of respondents disagreed, contending that such funds should be withheld from governments supporting the persecution of Christians. A small fraction (16 percent) agreed that such should continue, while 21 percent couldn’t decide.

My hard-earned money’s going to what?

On a yearly basis, the U.S. federal government sends billions of taxpayer dollars to nations that are hostile to Christianity and uphold Islamic law via constitutional provisions.

“It means that Bible Belt southerners and others who regularly attend church are being taxed to pay for the persecution of Christians in other parts of the world,” explains WND’s Bob Unruh. “And it appears the vast majority of those who write the checks to the IRS are opposed to the distribution of funds.”

O’Leary Report President Bradley S. O’Leary asserts that Americans have spoken and consider it not to be in the country’s best interest to fund nations that support and harbor militant Muslims.

“According to the poll results, Americans are more politically opposed to military and economic aid going to Arab countries that have religious bias,” reports O’Leary, who authored Shut Up, America!, The Audacity of Deceit andAmerica’s War on Christianity.“The future in the Middle East will come not just from opposing Muslim extremists, but also opposing an Arab rule of law that doesn’t guarantee religious freedom.”

Results show that men are slightly more against subsidizing nations that enforce anti-religious laws (64.3 percent) than women (61.2 percent). On the other hand, 18 percent of men agreed about funding them, compared to just 15.2 percent of women.

However, there was a much more pronounced dichotomy among partisan lines on the issue.

“Democrats were far more lenient to those who persecute Christians, with 51.1 percent opposing such subsidies and 21.9 percent approving — [a] large number, 26.6 percent, weren’t sure,” Unruh divulged from the poll. “Republicans and independents were nearly alike, with 69.5 percent opposing the aid and about 12 to 14 percent approving.”

The same goes for how American citizens view the funding when self-proclaiming themselves as adherents to particular political persuasions.

“One in four who self-identified as ‘liberal’ said they would send funds to nations where Christians are not allowed religious freedom, while only about 13 percent of ‘moderates’ would,” WNDs Unruh continued. “For those to identified as “conservative, that column included 14 percent. Of those who said they were conservative on social issues, only 3.5 percent said they would support sending such funds.”

Obama fueling the fire of terrorism?

On the average year, the U.S. provides foreign countries anywhere from $40─50 billion in aid, with numerous Arab anti-Christian governments on the receiving end.

An example of this was demonstrated in 2013, when it was reported that Obama was funding the government of Egypt while it was headed by the infamous Muslim group that has been internationally recognized as a terrorist organization.

This was covered in an article titled “Billion-Dollar Giveaway to the Muslim Brotherhood.” In it, the author pointed out how Obama’s described the “Arab Spring” as a “movement toward democracy,” calling his depiction nothing short of “ludicrous fiction.”

“Promising upwards of a billion dollars to such a regime is bad enough in its own context,” wrote Front Page Mag’s Arnold Ahlert. “That the Obama administration is seemingly oblivious to the timing of this announcement, as well as one regarding the Syrian giveaway, borders on surreal.”

Who’s saying what?

To the surprise of many, Christians weren’t the demographic group in the poll most opposed to subsidizing anti-Christian governments.

“Jewish respondents actually were more opposed to the funding than Christians,” WND reported. “Jewish respondents opposed such subsidies by a 71 to 3.8 percent margin while Protestants opposed it 69 to 13 percent and Catholics opposed it 58 to 21 percent.”

On the other end of the equation, Hispanics were the only demographic group who supported U.S. tax dollars going to nations enforcing anti-Christian laws and policies, with 42 percent agreeing to such funding and only 32 percent of them opposing the aid.

The poll separated the demographic results even further.

“There wasn’t major variation with regard to region or income levels … about two-thirds opposed the funding and one-fifth endorsed it, with the remaining not sure,” WND reported. “Rural residents were most emphatic with their opposition, with 74 percent taking that stance.”

Results also showed that the older the respondents, the more opposed they were to funding anti-Christian regimes.

“The poll found age had little to do with opposition to funding anti-Christian governments,” WND’s report informed. “Those 70 and older opposed it by an 88 to 4.8 percent margin. Those 44 to 69 opposed it 75 to 7.1 percent, and those 18 to 24 opposed it 71 to 12 percent.”

One small group out of the nearly 900 voters surveyed last month responded in a way not anticipated.

“Startlingly, there were dozens of people who responded to the poll who confirmed they had gone without food for 24 hours over the course of the past month ‘due to a lack of food or money,’” Unruh indicated. “Only 40 percent in that category would deprive Shariah nations of funding.”

From bargain shoppers to sharpshooters to Wall Street gurus, most Americans put a foot down to their tax dollars supporting pro-jihad nations.

“Wal-Mart shoppers oppose subsidies by significant numbers and those sympathetic to the tea party movement oppose the funding by a margin of 66.5 to 23.8 percent,” WND disclosed. “Sixty-one percent of gun owners said such subsidies were wrong, as did 65 percent of stock market investors.”

Written by Victor J. Hanson

Obama and European leaders are repeating the mistakes of their 1930s predecessors.

World War II was the most destructive war in history. What caused it?

The panic from the ongoing and worldwide Depression in the 1930s had empowered extremist movements the world over. Like-minded, violent dictators of otherwise quite different Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and the Communist Soviet Union all wanted to attack their neighbors.

Yet World War II could have been prevented had Western Europe united to deter Germany. Instead, France, Britain, and the smaller European democracies appeased Hitler.

The United States turned isolationist. The Soviet Union collaborated with the Third Reich. And Italy and Japan eventually joined it.

The 1930s saw rampant anti-Semitism. Jews were blamed in fascist countries for the economic downturn. They were scapegoated in democracies for stirring up the fascists. The only safe havens for Jews from Europe were Jewish-settled Palestine and the United States.

Does all this sound depressingly familiar?

The aftershocks of the global financial meltdown of 2008 still paralyze the European Union while prompting all sorts of popular extremist movements and opportunistic terrorists.

After the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, America has turned inward. The Depression and the lingering unhappiness over World War I did the same to Americans in the 1930s.

Premodern monsters are on the move. The Islamic State is carving up Syria and Iraq to fashion a fascist caliphate.

Vladimir Putin gobbles up his neighbors in Ossetia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine, in crude imitation of the way Germany once swallowed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

Theocratic Iran is turning Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon into a new Iranian version of Japan’s old Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Western response to all this? Likewise, similar to the 1930s.

The NATO allies are terrified that Putin will next attack the NATO-member Baltic states — and that their own paralysis will mean the embarrassing end of the once-noble alliance.

The United States has now fled from four Middle Eastern countries. It forfeited its post-surge victory in Iraq. It was chased out of Libya after the killings of Americans in Benghazi. American red lines quickly turned pink in Syria. U.S. Marines just laid down their weapons and flew out of the closed American embassy in Yemen.

America has convinced its European partners to drop tough sanctions against Iran. In the manner of the Allies in 1938 at Munich, they prefer instead to charm Iran, in hopes it will stop making a nuclear bomb.

The Islamic State has used almost a year of unchallenged aggression to remake the map of the Middle East. President Obama had variously dismissed it as a jayvee team or merely akin to the problems that big-city mayors face.

Europeans pay out millions to ransom their citizens from radical Islamic hostage-beheaders. Americans handed over terrorist kingpins to get back a likely Army deserter.

Then we come to the return of the Jewish question. Seventy years after the end of the Holocaust, Jews are once again leaving France. They have learned that weak governments either will not or cannot protect them from Islamic terrorists.

In France, radical Islamists recently targeted a kosher market. In Denmark, they went after a synagogue. In South Africa, students demanded the expulsion of Jewish students from a university. A Jewish prosecutor who was investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina was found mysteriously murdered.

Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being blamed for stoking Middle Eastern tensions. Who cares that he resides over the region’s only true democracy, one that is stable and protects human rights? Obama-administration aides have called him a coward and worse. President Obama has dismissed the radical Islamists’ targeting of Jews in France merely as “randomly shoot[ing] a bunch of folks in a deli.”

Putin, the Islamic State, and Iran at first glance have as little in common as did Germany, Italy, and Japan. But like the old Axis, they are all authoritarians that share a desire to attack their neighbors. And they all hate the West.

The grandchildren of those who appeased the dictators of the 1930s once again prefer in the short term to turn a blind eye to the current fascists. And the grandchildren of the survivors of the Holocaust once again get blamed.

The 1930s should have taught us that aggressive autocrats do not have to like each other to share hatred of the West.

The 1930s should have demonstrated to us that old-time American isolationism and the same old European appeasement will not prevent but only guarantee a war.

And the 1930s should have reminded us that Jews are usually among the first — but not the last — to be targeted by terrorists, thugs, and autocrats.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. Originally posted at NationalReview.com.

The Truth Project

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

Written by Ravi Zacharias

President Barack Obama’s address at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, 2015 has reverberated through the corridors of the world and provoked shock and dismay in numerous quarters. Even a professor at the University of London commented on his shallow understanding of the Crusades. I hesitated to write anything on the subject because it would drag me into politics or into a sobering critique of Islam. I am not sure that at a time like this either distraction would be wise, so let me keep it to the minimum.

For those who did not hear the talk, it is sufficient to say that it was the most ill-advised and poorly chosen reprimand ever given at a National Prayer Breakfast. I have been to several and have never, ever heard such absence of wisdom in a setting such as this. ‎I wasn’t at this one but have heard the speech often enough to marvel at the motivation for such thoughts. President Obama basically lectured Christians not to get on a moral high horse in their castigation of the ISIS atrocities by reminding them that the Crusades and slavery were also justified in the name of Christ.

Citing the Crusades, he used the single most inflammatory word he could have with which to feed the insatiable rage of the extremists. That is exactly what they want to hear to feed their lunacy.  ‎In the Middle East, history never dies and words carry the weight of revenge.

There is so much I would love to say in response but shall refrain. The President obviously does not understand the primary sources of either faith for him to make such a tendentious parallel. The predominant delight in his remarks would be in the Muslim world and the irreligious. The next day Geraldo Rivera, opining favorably, made the oft repeated lie that more people have been killed in the name of God than in any other cause.

Try telling that to the Chinese and the Russians and the Cambodians and the victims of the Holocaust! ‎Such intellectual ignorance gains the microphone with pitiable privilege. If a thinking person doesn’t know the difference between the logical outworkings of a philosophy and the illogical ones, to say nothing of the untruth perpetrated, then knowledge has been sacrificed at the altar of prejudice.

But let me get to the President’s final statement, after he had wandered off into erroneous territory. That final remark was true. He said, “It is sin that leads us to distort reality.” He was right. In fact he embodied it in his talk. But there is good news for the President. At least in the Christian message forgiveness is offered for sin. In Islam it isn’t. You must earn it. May I dare suggest that if Christians had been burning Muslims and be-heading them, he would have never dared to go to Saudi Arabia and tell them to get off their high horse. He unwittingly paid a compliment to those who preach grace and forgiveness. That is the dominant theme of the Gospel. That is why we sit in courtesy listening to the distortion of truth, the abuse of a privilege, and the wrong-headedness of a message.

I cannot recall when I have heard such inappropriate words at so important an occasion, in such a time of crisis. The world is burning with fear and apprehension. We need a message that will inspire and encourage and redeem. Ironically, two years ago when Dr. Ben Carson spoke and made some comments about our medical plan and the tax system, the White House demanded an apology from him for straying into controversial terrain, because it felt his comments showed disrespect for the President.

This year’s National Prayer Breakfast speech was a blunder in thought. But there was a silver lining. In the end, President Obama blundered into the truth. Sin distorts… and only Jesus Christ restores the truth. Christ will ever rise up to outlive His pallbearers. Even presidents will have to get off their high horses then and recognize the Lord of life and hope and peace. There will be no speech making then. Only a prayer of surrender… which is what the National Prayer Breakfast was meant to be in the first place.

Originally published at RZIM.org.

Written by Stan Guthrie

Confucius once said, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” When it comes to radical Islam, it’s clear that too many people have chosen foolishness over wisdom. The question is, in these dangerous times, are there enough of us willing to embrace wisdom?

Our answer will go a long way toward determining whether the West, founded upon Judeo-Christian principles, will prevail over radical Islam. For, as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said recently, “You cannot remedy a problem if you will not name it and define it.”

The Obama administration’s verbal contortions over the nature of our self-avowed enemies would be comical if they weren’t so seriously misguided. After a recent atrocity by the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL), the president opined, “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.” Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean offered this: “I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.” These statements bring to mind the odd Bush administration mantra after 9/11: “Islam is a religion of peace.”

Then there’s the absurd statement by one of the current president’s spokesmen. He asserted that the Taliban—which murdered nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and which saw one of its affiliates slaughter 132 schoolchildren and nine staff in Pakistan—isn’t a terrorist group. No, it’s merely an “armed insurgency.” Cut from the same cloth is the refusal by Al Jazeera’s English service to use words such as “terrorist,” “jihad,” and “Islamist” when describing Al-Qaeda and ISIS. As one executive at the network said, “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”

Contrast this kind of politically correct denial with the growing realization in Europe that things must be called by their proper names. The massive march in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo massacres is one sign. Another is the willingness of growing numbers to speak up.

“Europe has tacitly accepted that from now on the freedom of satire is valid for everything but Islam,” writes Angelo Panebianco in Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. “Now [Islamists] are aiming for a more ambitious objective to strike at the religious heart of the West, forcing us to accept that not even the pope is free to reflect aloud on the specificity of Christianity or that which differs from Islam.”

Czech President Miloš Zeman warns that the world faces a challenge similar to the Nazis. “We have to ask ourselves if a repeat of the Holocaust could happen,” Zemen said in a recent speech in Prague marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. “This time it would not comprise 6 million Jews, but rather members of countless faiths as well as atheists—and even Muslims. Which is why I would like to welcome the fact that moderate Arab countries recently joined in the battle against Islamic State.”

Another president, Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, says it is time for a fresh start for Islam, which he avows is a tolerant religion. “The terrible terrorist attacks which we have seen and this terrible image of Muslims is what led us to think that we must stop and think and change the religious discourse,” he said, “and remove from it things that have led to violence and extremism. We need a new discourse that will be adapted to a new world and will remove some of the misconceptions.”

Removing those things won’t be easy. In an editorial, National Review acknowledges that most Muslims worldwide seek to live peacefully with their non-Muslim neighbors. But that does not end the discussion about whether Islam is a tolerant faith or ISIS killers are “true” Muslims.

The editorial notes “a large minority of Muslims—maybe hundreds of millions worldwide—who cleave to interpretations of their faith that enjoin murder, rape, torture, and cruelty as pious, even mandatory, acts. They take their diabolic faith seriously, and the result is what we saw in Paris. . . .

“Thus, there are in practical terms two Islams—a religion, if not of peace, then of peaceful accommodation, and a religion of death.”

That is so for several reasons that cannot be dismissed lightly. First, there appear to be two basic approaches to interpreting the Qur’an and how to make sense of verses that call for violence, side by side with those that call for peace and tolerance.

The older, classical school of interpretation, the one followed by the Islamists, endorses what is called the “law of abrogation.” This law, actually a hermeneutical principle, says that earlier verses in the career of Muhammad must be interpreted in light of later ones. If there is an apparent contradiction, they say the later ones must hold sway. Defending this approach, they point to verses such as 2:106: “When we cancel a message, or throw it into oblivion, we replace it with one better or one similar. Do you not know that God has power over all things?”

The problem for those who insist that “Islam is a religion of peace” is that the later verses reflect the more warlike stance of Muhammad and the Muslim community, when the movement was strong and aggressive. So the oft-cited verse, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256), has been abrogated in the minds of Islamists. They point to later verses, such as 9:5: “Kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush.” They say the later, more violent verses are controlling.

Of course, so-called “moderate Muslims,” such as El-Sissi, disagree. They point out that the law of abrogation implies that the Qur’an has errors, which they do not believe. It is an ongoing theological debate among Muslims worldwide.

There is a second reason we cannot dismiss the fact that there are at least two Islams around the globe. Simply put, there is no interpretative authority that all Muslims recognize. There is no “pope” or modern-day prophet to resolve all the theological disputes within Islam. Not only are there two main branches of Islam—Sunni and Shi’a—there are multiple religious leaders, each with varying levels of influence. While all Muslims revere the Qur’an and Muhammad and seek to follow the Five Pillars, they do not agree on all the particulars of the religion. Whatever you or I might think of the “true” DNA of Islam, if this global faith of 1.6 billion people is ever going to settle on a peaceful vision, it won’t be non-Muslims who talk them into it.

That’s why pronouncements from the White House or various media quarters about what constitutes “true Islam” are ludicrous. These self-appointed experts about Islam might as well declaim on whether all Christians must come under the authority of the pope.

Islam, in practical terms, is however Muslims themselves practice it—peacefully and violently. Let us pray for and encourage the former, knowing also that God is drawing many Muslims to Christ these days. But let’s also recognize that simply wishing for something doesn’t make it so.

We can start by calling things by their proper names.

This article was originally posted at the BreakPoint.org website.

 Islam in America
A Christian Response 
featuring Dr. Erwin Lutzer

May 7, 2015
CLICK HERE for Details

According to President Barack Obama, 99.9 percent of Muslims reject the terrorists’ understanding of Islam. That still leaves 1.3 million jihadis or jihad sympathizers, but never mind that for now — where is this 99.9 percent? Where are the Muslim organizations that are dedicated to working against the jihadists? Where are the Muslim marches and protests against al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and all the hijackers of Islam? We have seen many protests lately by Muslims against the latest Muhammad cartoons in Charlie Hebdo. Where are the Muslim protests against the killing of the cartoonists and in support of the freedom of speech? Why is this 99.9% so silent and passive in the face of this “hijacking” of their religion?

“Obama says terrorists not motivated by true Islam,” by Dave Boyer, The Washington Times, February 1, 2015:

Criticized for avoiding the phrase “Islamic extremism,” President Obama said he doesn’t want to alienate the majority of peace-loving Muslims as the U.S. fights to defeat terrorist networks around the world.

“I think that for us to be successful in fighting this scourge, it’s very important for us to align ourselves with the 99.9 percent of Muslims who are looking for the same thing we’re looking for: order, peace, prosperity,” Mr. Obama said on CNN. “And so I don’t quibble with labels.”

The president also said he doesn’t want to “overinflate” the importance of terrorist groups by sending U.S. troops to occupy countries in the Middle East or by “playing whack-a-mole” against terrorist leaders because it drains America’s financial strength….

“I think we all recognize that this is a particular problem that has roots in Muslim communities, and that the Middle East and South Asia are sort of ground zero for us needing to win back hearts and minds, particularly when it comes to young people,” Mr. Obama said. “But I think we do ourselves a disservice in this fight if we are not taking into account the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject this ideology. I reject a notion that somehow that creates a religious war, because the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject that interpretation of Islam.”…

This article was originally posted at the JihadWatch.org website.

The Leftist media and Islamic supremacist groups have been doing a victory dance ever since Saturday night, when Fox News issued an apology for statements made on the air by terror expert Steve Emerson and others about Muslim no-go zones in Britain and France. However, the apology doesn’t say what it has widely reported as saying – and there is considerable evidence that Muslim areas in both countries are a growing law enforcement and societal problem.

Fox Report host Julie Banderas stated:

Over the course of this last week we have made some regrettable errors on air regarding the Muslim population in Europe, particularly with regard to England and France. Now, this applies especially to discussions of so-called ‘no-go zones,’ areas where non-Muslims allegedly aren’t allowed in and police supposedly won’t go.

To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country and no credible information to support the assertion there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion.

There are certainly areas of high crime in Europe as there are in the United States and other countries — where police and visitors enter with caution. We deeply regret the errors and apologize to any and all who may have taken offense, including the people of France and England.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s joyous headline read: “Fox News admits ‘no-go zones’ are fantasy.” The far-Left Crooks and Liars blog exulted: “Fox Pundits Finally ‘Apologize’ After A Week Of Being Mocked For ‘No Go Zones’ Claim.” More restrained but still unmistakably gleeful was the New York Times: “Fox News Apologizes for False Claims of Muslim-Only Areas in England and France.” The Leftist media has seized on Fox’s apology to declare that there are aren’t any no-go zones in France or Britain – and by extension that there is no problem with Muslim populations in Europe. NewHounds’s summation was typical: “Fox News has become the laughingstock of Europe this week as first England and then France lampooned its ignorant, Islamophobic reporting.”

The only problem with all the cork popping around Fox’s apology was that there is a problem with Muslim areas in Europe – and the Fox apology didn’t go so far as to say there wasn’t. To be sure, the controversy began with undeniably inaccurate statements from Emerson. He said on Fox on January 11 that “there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.” That is false, and Emerson has acknowledged that and apologized.

However, Emerson was not guilty of fabrication, just of overstatement. Some of the comments on a piece in the UK’s Daily Mail about his gaffe and British Prime Minister David Cameron’s reaction to it (he called Emerson a “complete idiot”) insisted that Emerson was at least partially right: “Just shows cameron doesn’t even know what is happening in this country , as the news presenter is totally correct , its a no go zone .” “There ARE some parts of Birmingham where you darent or shouldn’t go !” “Is he far off the truth? Maybe it’s not true for Birmingham as a whole but there are certain areas where it is true. Certainly it is true of certain other Towns in the UK. Bradford, Leicester, Luton spring to mind.”

Fox’s apology stated that,

“To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country and no credible information to support the assertion there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion.”

That says as much as it says, and no more. It says that neither the British nor the French government has designated any areas to be no-go zones where non-Muslims aren’t allowed in, and that there is no evidence that non-Muslims are not allowed into any areas in either country.

But this carefully worded statement does not actually say that there aren’t areas in Britain or France in which non-Muslims are menaced for not adhering to Islamic law. That is a real and abundantly documented problem. Emerson pointed to it when he said:

“In parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound, seriously, anyone who doesn’t dress according to Muslim, religious Muslim attire.”

While Emerson’s implication that this was an ongoing phenomenon was false, there were indeed such Sharia enforcers in London between 2011 and 2013. In July 2011, the UK’s Daily Mail reported:

“Islamic extremists have launched a poster campaign across the UK proclaiming areas where Sharia law enforcement zones have been set up. Communities have been bombarded with the posters, which read: ‘You are entering a Sharia-controlled zone – Islamic rules enforced.’”

In December 2013, members of one of these self-styled “Muslim patrols” were imprisoned; according to the Guardian, in London they

“harassed people, berating them with shouts of ‘this is a Muslim area!’ They forced men to dump their alcoholic drinks, instructed women on the appropriate way to dress, and yelled insults at those they perceived to be gay.”

They didn’t just berate people; as Emerson said, they beat them. In YouTube videos, they threatened to do so, saying: “We are coming to implement Islam upon your own necks.” In June 2013, Muslims attacked an American who was drinking on the street, grabbing the bottle out of his hands and smashing him in the eye with it, causing permanent injury. In August 2013, according to the Daily Mail, “two brothers in law who went on a sponsored walk wearing comedy mankinis had to be picked up by police – after they were pelted with stones and eggs by residents who told them ‘this is a Muslim area’ and demanded they leave.”

A “Muslim area” – maybe even a “no-go zone.” Not in the sense that non-Muslims are barred from entering, but in that, if they do enter, they have to adhere to Sharia restrictions.

The Fox apology is all the more curious in light of the fact that others, even on the Left, have noticed the no-go zones in France before some Fox commentators began talking about them in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. David Ignatius wrote in the New York Times in April 2002:

“Arab gangs regularly vandalize synagogues here, the North African suburbs have become no-go zones at night, and the French continue to shrug their shoulders.”

Newsweek, hardly a conservative organ, reported in November 2005 that

“according to research conducted by the government’s domestic intelligence network, the Renseignements Generaux, French police would not venture without major reinforcements into some 150 ‘no-go zones’ around the country–and that was before the recent wave of riots began on Oct. 27.”

The police wouldn’t venture into these areas without major reinforcements in 2005. Does anyone really think that the situation has improved in the intervening years?

And the day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre set off Fox’s discussions of no-go zones in France, the reliably Leftist New Republic wrote:

“The word banlieue (‘suburb’) now connotes a no-go zone of high-rise slums, drug-fueled crime, failing schools and poor, largely Muslim immigrants and their angry offspring.”

So something the New York Times noted in 2002 and Newsweek in 2005, and that the New Republic reported was still a problem in January 2015, is now something that Fox News has to apologize for discussing?

Clearly there is a problem in these areas. Two of the three Charlie Hebdo murderers were born and raised in France. Where did they get their ideas about killing blasphemers? Not from French schools. They learned them in the Muslim areas where they were born and raised. What’s more, France leads the West in the number of Muslims who have traveled from there to wage jihad for the Islamic State, with well over a thousand Muslims leaving France to join the caliphate. Where did they get their understanding of Islam?

In objecting to Fox’s coverage, the French government objected to claims that these areas were outside their control and subject to Sharia, but it is obvious that whatever control they do have over these areas is not enough to prevent the indoctrination of all too many young Muslims into the jihad ideology.

There needs to be a balanced, honest public discussion of these Muslim areas in Britain and France. The controversy over what has been said on Fox in recent weeks only obscures the need for that discussion. And Fox’s apology, however carefully worded, only plays into the hands of Leftists and Islamic supremacists who have a vested interest in rendering people ignorant and complacent about the reality of what is going on in these areas.

So now would be a good time for Fox to apologize for its apology – and to devote extended attention to the Muslim areas of Britain and France, and shed light on what is really going on in them. That would be to provide a service far greater than the usual surface-scratching of television news.

This article was originally posted at the Front Page Magazine website.

This is simple common sense. By going to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State’s jihad, these Muslims have joined an entity that has declared war against the United States. They have committed treason. They have forfeited the rights and privileges of citizenship. But it will be interesting to see who opposes this, and on what grounds.

“Cruz Files Bill to Ban American Islamic State Fighters from Returning to U.S.,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, January 23, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) will file legislation on Friday to ban American citizens who fight alongside the Islamic State (IS) and other terror groups from returning to the United States, where they pose a significant terror threat, according to sources in the senator’s office.

Cruz, who first proposed the legislation last year, seeks to strip those Americans who travel abroad to fight with IS (also known as ISIL or ISIS) of their U.S. citizenship rights and stop them from coming back stateside.

The bill, known as the Expatriate Terrorist Act (E.T.A.), tightens and updates existing regulations by which a U.S. citizen effectively renounces his or her citizenship.

Cruz said that he is filing the bill partly in response to President Obama’s Tuesday State of the Union address, which he described as “detached from reality” on the foreign policy front.

“President Obama’s approach to foreign policy refuses to acknowledge the threats our enemies pose to our national security—it is detached from reality and making the world a more dangerous place,” said Cruz, who also is releasing a new video that takes aim at Obama for misleading the nation about these threats in his annual address.

Cruz said stripping American IS fighters of their citizenship is a step toward securing the country and restoring the country’s image.

“We’ve seen the grave consequence of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy unravel with respect to Iran, Russia, and now Yemen,” Cruz said. “These consequences are not confined to faraway lands. They directly threaten America and our allies.”

“That is why this week, I am re-filing the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which prevents Americans who have fought abroad for designated terrorist groups from returning to the United States,” he said. “I look forward to working with senators on both sides of the aisle on this and additional measures to secure our nation and restore America’s leadership in the world.”…

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact Illinois’ U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk to ask them to support S. 247, known as the Expatriate Terrorist Act.  American citizens who take an oath to a foreign terrorist organization should have their citizenship revoked.

Written by Chad Groening

In the wake of Wednesday’s horrific murder of 12 people at a Paris newspaper office, liberals – including President Barack Obama – have once again refused to acknowledge that the attack was “Islamic terrorism.” Obama just referred to the attack as “terrorism” – which J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney, finds perplexing.

“The perpetrators say they’re doing it in the name of Islam,” Adams points out. “So you have to confront the Islamic component one way or another because the murderers themselves are saying that it is Islam and they’re muttering Islamic prayers as they’re doing the murders.

“So let’s figure out why Islam seems to be the trademark for so many murderers around the world.”

Adams, who now serves as legal editor for PJ Media, also finds it ridiculous that former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean said the Paris terrorist killers were not Muslim, but members of some kind of cult.

“Folks like Howard Dean and the president have a seriously difficult time identifying evil. I think they’re actually uncomfortable with the entire notion,” he suggests. “It’s [the terrorists themselves] who are saying I’m doing this in the name of Islam – it’s not conservatives accusing them of that. They’re confessing as they do these things, so obviously there’s a problem. How it gets resolved remains to be seen.”

Adams says the barbarians who believe they are acting consistent with Islamic teaching are a threat to civilization now and in the foreseeable future.

European backlash against ‘Islamisation’

In the days before the attack in France, rallies were taking place in neighboring Germany by thousands of citizens frustrated with the way the Islamic influence has been allowed to grow in the country. While Chancellor Angela Merkel denounced the protests in her own country as “racist,” she described the Paris attack as “an attack against the values we all hold dear, values by which we stand, values of freedom of the press, freedom in general, and the dignity of man.”

National defense analyst Robert Maginnis believes the terrorist attack in Paris is just the latest example of why there is a growing backlash against the Islamisation of Europe. The senior fellow for national security at the Family Research Council points to a major undercurrent throughout Western Europe against the failure of the Muslim populations to integrate into the culture.

“So as a result you get these Islamic ghettos that are all over Western Europe that don’t allow the policemen [to come in], don’t use the language, don’t allow the culture – and there is a backlash,” he tells OneNewsNow. “It’s been brewing for the last two decades, and I think it’s intensifying even now.”

Maginnis admits he’s worried about the Islamic problem growing worse in the United States with Barack Obama in the White House for two more years.

“We’re at the mercy of Mr. Obama and his appointees, who have purposely turned a blind eye to the threat that is growing within our borders due to certain immigrants [as well as] the threat that is outside our borders – [specifically] his tepid response to ISIL in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he states.

This article was originally posted at the OneNewsNow.com website.

Islam in America:
A Christian Response

featuring Dr. Erwin Lutzer
May 7, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

With the dozen Muslim killings fresh on the news, the self-proclaimed liberal addressed the massacre to the audience for what he believes it truly was: a jihadist attack by merciless Islamic terrorists on infidels for dishonoring their religion’s founder and prophet.

“It’s not a presume [sic] — no, no it’s Muslim terrorists,” Maher told Kimmel and his studio audience on ABC. “This happens way too frequently. It’s like … Groundhog Day, except the groundhog kept getting his head cut off.”

As a political commentator, TV host, writer, producer, actor and stand-up comedian, Maher showed his appreciation and admiration for the four French journalists boldly doing their jobs despite previous Muslim attacks on satirists. “Let’s also give some credit to this newspaper,” Maher pleaded with the crowd.

How is this not a Muslim attack?

While the three masked jihadists fired rounds from their AK-47 assault rifles at the Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters in Paris, France — yelling “Allahu Akbar” (meaning their god [Allah] is greater) and screaming that they are “avenging the prophet” (Mohammed) — 12 French were slain, including four of the publication’s top editors and two police officers. Their vengeance was aimed at paying the publication back for satirical cartoons it published depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed. After the incident, one of the three suspects turned himself in. The other two gunmen were killed earlier today when French police stormed a printing plant north of Paris where they were holding hostages.

Maher insists that no matter how offended Islamists might be by political cartoons, tolerating such heinous acts of revenge are despicable and unpardonable and should not be shielded under the veil of politically correct religious tolerance or marginalized as a random unorganized terrorist attack.

“For the crime of being satirists — for the crime of drawing cartoons — this has to stop, and unfortunately, a lot of the liberals, who are my tribe (I am a proud liberal) [are saying the attack was not Islamic in nature],” Maher proclaimed. “No, I’m not turning on them [liberals], I’m asking them to turn toward the truth as I have been for quite a while.”

So what kind of liberal denials is Maher talking about? Look no further than former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Howard Dean, who said the Charlie Hebdo assassins are not Muslim despite their Islamic chants.

“I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists,” Dean expressed on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” about the jihadist murderers of a dozen Parisians. “They’re about as Muslim as I am. I mean, they have no respect for anybody else’s life — that’s not what the Koran says. Europe has an enormous radical problem. I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.”

Such reasoning reflects the common montage frequently proclaimed by President Barack Obama, who has consistently insisted that ISIS (the Islamic State) “is not Islamic,” declaring Islam to be a “religion of peace.”

The liberal host could not see how his fellow leftists could rally behind a group in the name of cultural tolerance — one that stands against the very principles of freedom of speech and expression that liberalism champions.

“I’m the liberal in this debate … I’m for free speech,” Maher continued. “To be a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles. It’s not my fault that the part of the world that is against liberal principles is the Muslim part of the world.”

But Maher could not look past his leftist colleagues just not getting it, such as CNN commentator Sally Kohn, who recently made light of the Charlie Hebdo killings by turning the attack toward conservatives.

“Since 9/11, right-wing extremists (incl anti-abortion, anti-gov) have killed more Americans than Islamic extremists,” Kohn tweeted Wednesday.

Islam … really a religion of enlightenment and peace?

Maher pointed out the injustices and atrocities most of the world looks past out of so-called religious tolerance — or out fear of being avenged or being deemed as politically incorrect.

“There have been studies … We have facts on this, [such as Muslims’] treatment of women,” Maher asserted. “They studied 130 different countries. Seventeen of the bottom 20 were Muslim countries. In ten Muslim countries, you can get the death penalty just for being gay. They chop heads off in the square in Mecca. Well, Mecca is their Vatican City. If they were chopping the heads off of Catholic gay people, wouldn’t there be a bigger outcry among liberals?”

He maintains that zero tolerance should be afforded to a religious group that slaughters people in the democratic world for just doing their job — all because their religion, which most liberals call a “religion of peace,” calls for the execution of those who don’t submit to Allah or disrespect his prophet, Mohammed.

“So to bring it home to us, because we are satirists … and I deal with this subject particularly … it’s kind of scary that some people say you cannot make a joke,” Maher added. “That’s off-limits. We saw this with [North Korea’s] Kim Jong-Un.”

No excuse

Publicly proclaiming to be no lover of religion, Maher concedes that they’re not all the same and that he particularly detests some basic religious precepts much more than others.

“[I] know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this,” Maher expressed to Kimmel. “But here’s the important point — hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this. What they say is, we don’t approve of violence, but when you make fun of the prophet, all bets are off.”

And he insists that it is not just the supposed “extremist” Muslims who advocate blood for not honoring Mohammed.

“That is mainstream in the Muslim world … When you make fun of the prophet, all bets are off,” Maher contends. “It’s also mainstream that if you leave the religion, you get what’s coming to you — which is death. Not in every Muslim country, not in the majority, but this is a problem we have to stand up to.”

Maher notes a big difference between Muslims and some other people groups he champions as a liberal, making the distinction that Islamists are the oppressors wielding their unchecked tyranny.

“And again, I’m the liberal in this debate … I was brought up in a liberal family,” Maher concluded. “The reason we were liberals is because we were against depression. I was a little kid when my father told us We‘re with Kennedy and against the Southern governors who stand in the doorways and don’t let black kids go to school. And all my life I’ve been for people who have been the downtrodden, the oppressed, the minorities. I’ve been for blacks, gays, women, Mexicans, whoever it is.”

Islam in America:
A Christian Response

featuring Dr. Erwin Lutzer
May 7, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

This article was originally posted at the OneNewsNow.com website.

During a 2009 interview on France’s Canal+TV channel that is just now being reported widely, President Barack Obama claimed that Americans needed to be better educated on Islam and that, if we compute the total number of Muslims in America, we would be one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world.

In stark contrast, and with reference to a number of President Obama’s recent comments, Rev. Franklin Graham claimed that the president “was ‘fundamentally mistaken’ about radical Islam . . . and argued that Islam ‘is a false religion’ and that ‘it is impossible for a false religion to be a true religion of peace.’”

Who’s right?

Let’s start with some simple math.

Recent surveys indicate that the Muslim population in America is slightly under one percent, so, to be generous, let’s use one percent as the figure, which would mean that roughly three million Americans are Muslim. (Oddly enough, the MuslimPopulation.com website claims that 2.11 percent of Americans are Muslims, supporting this with a reference to a Wikipedia article that puts the figure at 0.8 percent!)

According to President Obama, this figure of three million Muslims would make us “one of the biggest Muslim nations.”

Was he accurate? Not by a mile. Not by many, many miles. In fact, he was embarrassingly wrong and inaccurate.

Here’s the list of the top 10 countries with more Muslims than America (as of 2012, with figures rounded off): 1). Indonesia 209 million; 2). India 177 million; 3). Pakistan 167 million; 4). Bangladesh 134 million; 5). Nigeria 77 million; 6). Egypt 77 million; 7). Iran 74 million; 8). Turkey 71 million; 9). Algeria 35 million; 10). Morocco 32 million.

How big is America’s Muslim population looking right now? How does 3 million compare with 209 million of 177 million?

Uzbekistan, number 15 on the list, has 27 million Muslims; little Yemen, number 17, has 24 million; China, number 18, has 23 million, and Russia, number 21, has 16 million, more than 5 times our national total.

What was the president thinking?

In terms of world Islamic populations, America is about 38th on the list, meaning that we have one of the smaller Muslim populations worldwide, despite the size of our country.

The president’s error, then, would be akin to a stating that the United States was one of the world’s oldest civilizations. Not quite!

Seeing, then, that Mr. Obama was so grossly wrong in his assessment of our Muslim population (again, a matter of simple math), can he be trusted in his assessment of Islam in general?

Rev. Graham said, “I . . . believe our president is completely and fundamentally mistaken about the intolerant and violent nature of hardened Islamic followers.”

So who is more accurate when it comes to the nature of Islam itself?

Without a doubt, there are tens of millions of peace-loving Muslims worldwide, including many American Muslims.

And without a doubt, there are Muslim theologians and political leaders who deplore the actions of groups like ISIS and Boko Haram.

This means that we make a serious mistake when we demonize all Muslims and treat them as if they were murderous terrorists.

In that respect, yes, we need to be better educated regarding Islam. Absolutely.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that large Islamic countries like Pakistan and Iran mistreat and persecute Christians (especially those who convert from Islam), sometimes to the point of death; that countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan allow no true religious freedom for other faiths; and that there are a multiplicity of substantial terrorist groups using the Koran for justification, in glaring contrast with Christianity worldwide.

More importantly, even if 80-90 percent of Muslims are not radicals, this means absolutely nothing in terms of our recognition of the very real dangers posed by radical Islam. After all, what percentage of Germans were Nazis? If the large numbers don’t prevent the small numbers from taking murderous action, why does that matter?

And should we snivel at a figure of, at the very least, 150 million radical Muslims worldwide?

What our president should be doing is recognizing the tremendous dangers posed by radical Islam and making every effort to ensure that our nation is addressing these dangers both here and abroad. (This includes not calling blatant Islamic terror attacks “workplace violence.”)

To paraphrase what I’ve said before, while here in the West we are putting our heads in the sand, in other parts of the world, the heads of the victims of radical Islam are rolling in the sand.

This article was originally posted at the Townhall.com website.

Written by Dennis Prager

President Barack Obama declared in his recent address to the nation that “ISIL is not Islamic.”

But how does he know? On what basis did the president of the United States declare that a group of Muslims that calls itself the “Islamic State” is “not Islamic?”

Has he studied Islam and Islamic history and concluded that ISIL, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Jamaat-e-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba (the group that slaughtered 166 people in Mumbai, most especially guests at the Taj Hotel, and that tortured to death a rabbi and his wife), the various Palestinian terrorist groups (all of which have been Muslim, even though there are many Christian Palestinians), and the Muslim terror groups in Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere are also all “not Islamic?”

Has he concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood, which won Egypt’s most open election ever, is “not Islamic?”

And what about Saudi Arabia? Is that country “not Islamic” too?

Oh, and what about Iran? Also “not Islamic?”

Isn’t that a lot of Muslims, Muslim groups, and even nations — all of whom claim Islam as their religion — to dismiss as “not Islamic?”

To be fair: These baseless generalizations about what is and what is not Islamic started with Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, who regularly announced that “Islam is a religion of peace.” And it is equally unlikely that his assertion came from a study of Islam and Islamic history.

The fact is that a study of Islamic history could not lead any fair-minded individual to conclude that all these Muslims and Islamic groups are “not Islamic.” Neither Islamic history, which, from its origins, offered vast numbers of people a choice between Islam and death, nor Islam as reflected in its greatest works would lead one to draw that conclusion.

Killing “unbelievers” has been part of — of course, not all of — Islam since its inception. Within ten years of Muhammad’s death, Muslims had conquered and violently converted whole peoples from Iran to Egypt and from Yemen to Syria. Muslims have offered conquered people death or conversion since that time.

The Hindu Kush, the vast, 500-mile-long, 150-mile-wide mountain range stretching from Afghanistan to Pakistan, was populated by Hindus until the Muslim invasions beginning around the year 1000. The Persian name Hindu Kush was proudly given by Muslims. It means “Hindu-killer.” At least 60 million Hindus were killed by Muslims during the thousand years of Muslim rule. Though virtually unknown, it may be the greatest mass murder in history next to Mao’s.

The groups named above are following some dictates of the Koran.

A few of many such examples:

“I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them” (8:12).

“When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful” (9:5).

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth” (9:29).

There is also a different admonition in the Koran: “In matters of faith there shall be no compulsion” (2:256).

So a Muslim can also cite the Koran if he wishes to allow non-Muslims to live in peace.

The problem is that Muslim theological tradition, affirmed by many scholars, holds that later revelation to Muhammad supersedes prior revelation (a doctrine known as “abrogation”). And the Koranic verses ordering Muslims to fight and slay non-believers came after those admonishing Muslims to live with non-believers in peace and without religious compulsion.

The problem is that Muslim history, in keeping with the doctrine of abrogation, has far more often practiced the violent admonitions.

The problem is that more than 600 years after Muhammad, Ibn Khaldun, the greatest Muslim writer who ever lived, explained why Islam is the superior religion in the most highly regarded Muslim work ever written, Muqaddimah, orIntroduction to History: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”

In other words, Ibn Khaldun boasts, whereas no other religion commands converting the world through force, Islam does. Was Ibn Khaldun also “not Islamic?” And so much for the president’s other claim that “no religion condones the killing of innocents.”

None of this justifies bigotry against Muslims. There are hundreds of millions of non-Islamist Muslims (an Islamist is a Muslim who seeks to impose sharia on others), including many “cultural” or secular Muslims. And individual Muslims are risking their lives every day to provide the intelligence needed to forestall terror attacks in America and elsewhere.

It is only a call to clarity amid the falsehoods coming from the president, the secretary of state, and especially the universities.

As the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born woman who leads a worldwide effort on behalf of Muslim women and for reforming Islam, asked in a speech at Yale University this month: If Islam is a religion of peace, why is there a sword on the Saudi flag?

If the president feels he has to obfuscate for the sake of gaining Muslim allies, so be it. But the rest of us don’t have to make believe what he said is true.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His most recent book is Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

This article was originally posted at the NationalReview.com website.

By Brian Muehlenberg

Every day we find the political ideology known as Islam wreaking havoc, chaos and bloodshed worldwide. The biggest threat to freedom and democracy today may well be coming from this archaic religion. Monitoring the various cases of creeping sharia and stealth jihad is now a full-time job.

Let me highlight three of the latest examples from around the globe. In Kenya another Islamist terror attack has taken place, this time with ten dead and many others wounded. The two explosions in Nairobi were not the first such attacks:

It was the deadliest terror attack since the Westgate Shopping Centre raid in September, when terrorists from al-Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia, al-Shabaab, killed 67 people. Friday’s attacks took place almost simultaneously in an area east of Nairobi’s central business district that serves as a major transport interchange for people heading to poorer suburban residential areas. One of the devices was detonated inside a public minibus taxi and the other beneath a clothes stall in the open-air market. “Many of the injured are bleeding profusely, we need a lot of blood,” said Simon Ithae, spokesman for the city’s largest hospital.

So many of these jihadist attacks have taken place of late that one website exists just to document all the carnage. Religionofpeace.com lists all the attacks which have occurred since the 9/11 horror: 22,959 attacks to be exact. Just the past month there have been 203 attacks in 23 countries, with 1571 people killed and 2452 critically wounded.

Another example of Islamic terror also comes from Africa, this time Sudan. It is a horrific but sadly all too common story of a Christian woman being targeted by Muslims for daring to exercise a bit of religious freedom. The shocking story goes like this:

A Sudanese judge sentenced a pregnant Christian woman to hang for apostasy after she refused to convert to Islam, despite appeals by Western embassies for compassion and respect for religious freedom. Born to a Muslim father, the woman was convicted under the Islamic sharia law that has been in force in Sudan since 1983 and outlaws conversions on pain of death.

Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, 27, is eight months pregnant and married to a Christian national of South Sudan, human rights activists say. South Sudan which separated from Sudan in 2011, “We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam.

I sentence you to be hanged,” Judge Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa told the woman, addressing her by her father’s Muslim name, Adraf Al-Hadi Mohammed Abdullah. Khalifa also sentenced Ishag to 100 lashes for “adultery.” Under Sudan’s interpretation of sharia, a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man and any such relationship is regarded as adulterous.

This is terrible, but it happens far too often in the Islamic world. And it is not just in Africa where we find creeping sharia. Consider the nation of France where it seems that Islam is well on the way to taking over the country. Plenty of other problems abound there:

More than 8,000,000 Muslims live in France, most of whom are French citizens, and the Muslim population in France continues to grow. France is now the main Muslim country in Europe. Successive French governments can decide to expel a Muslim preacher or a recruiter of jihadist fighters; they can deny visas, but they seem unable to do more.

Although the French government denies it, it seems clear that substantial ransoms were paid to Islamist groups for the release of French hostages: $28,000,000 to al Qaeda in Niger in October 2013 and $18,000,000 to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in Syria, on April 19.

And most folks there are very pessimistic about where this is all heading:

The number of Jews leaving France is steadily increasing. French people who have the financial means also leave the country. Most others expect the worst. Polls show that the French are now the most pessimistic people in Europe. They also show that more than 70% of the French are afraid of the rise of Islam in France: they expect that France will become a country under submission to Islam.

That is certainly a worry. So throughout the world, the fearful imprint of Islam is clearly being felt. Things certainly look rather bleak at the moment. Whether the West has the will to resist is just not at all certain. But it had better decide soon if it wants to continue to exist or not, before it is too late.

Orignally posted at Barbwire.com

They say that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Not true. It does if you stand high atop a cliff’s edge waving a lightning rod above your head during a thunderstorm. In fact, in the unlikely event you survive the first strike, it’ll keep right on striking until you climb down.

So-called “gun-free zones” are lightning rods for mass murder. It’s time we climbed down from the cliff’s edge.

America mourns yet another needless and preventable mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. When will gun-grabbing liberals learn?

In a blunt and provocatively titled, though well-reasoned post, submitted shortly after Wednesday’s shooting, Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft charged: “Obama Is Responsible for Latest Fort Hood Murders – Still a Gun-Free Zone.”

Wrote Hoft:

“In 2009 Islamist killer Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist, fatally shot 13 people and injured more than 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas. Fort Hood was a gun-free zone.

“Hasan reportedly screamed, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ as he committed his mass murder. …

“Barack Obama termed this Islamic terrorist attack ‘workplace violence.’ Complete lunacy.

“After the first mass killing nothing changed. Fort Hood is still a gun-free zone. President Bill Clinton’s gun-free policies are still in place.

“Today there was another mass shooting at Fort Hood. Soldiers were told to take cover and hide like cowards as a crazed gunman shot at least 14 Americans on base. The shooter, Ivan Lopez, then shot himself in the head.

“These deaths are the result of failed policies. These deaths are the result of a dangerous ‘gun free zone’ policy.

“The Obama administration is responsible for this mass shooting. They witnessed this before. They didn’t learn a thing. Gun-free zones are death zones,” concluded Hoft.

Of course, no one but Ivan Lopez is responsible for his own horrific crimes. Still, this Obama administration is likewise responsible for its own criminally horrific incompetence.

By maintaining his demonstrably failed “gun-free zone” policy at Fort Hood (and anywhere for that matter), Obama may as well have beckoned: “Hey, would-be mass murderers, we’ve still got some unarmed soldiers here. Come and finish ‘em off!”

This president is undeniably culpable. His reckless insistence upon preserving this obtuse, liberal – but I repeat myself – gun-grabbing policy rendered defenseless, once again, the fine servicemen and women of Fort Hood. It kept in place the same mass-murder-rich environment in which Nidal Malik Hasan committed the first Fort Hood “fish-in-a-barrel” soldier hunt.

And the only people surprised are you gun-control nutters.

Here’s the thing about liberalism, which is really cultural Marxism, euphemistically tagged “progressivism”: It’s never worked and it never will. It can’t. It’s a material impossibility. “Progressivism” can no more work than can one answer a nonsense question like, “How big is blue?” As with all similar such humanistic efforts to achieve a man-made earthly utopia, “progressivism” is a hopeless non-starter.

Why? Because “progressivism” is utterly detached from reality. There’s truth, and then there’s “progressivism.” Central to every single “progressive” policy, without exception, is the fatally flawed denial of the existence of sin – of man’s fallen nature. There’s also a stupidly stubborn refusal to acknowledge the reality of moral absolutes. “Progressivism” is built upon a utopian, relativist house of cards; and when that house comes crashing down, the results are often deadly.

This past Wednesday America witnessed liberalism’s deadly results first hand. A public policy that intentionally disarms American citizens – much less American soldiers – is a policy that creates a pond full of sitting ducks; this, whether we have a terrorist behind the trigger, or a government with designs on tyranny.

Notice a trend here? What do Sandy Hook Elementary, Aurora, Colorado’s Century 16 theater, Columbine High, Fort Hood No. 1 and Fort Hood No. 2 all have in common? They’re all “gun-free zones.”

Oh, if only, rather than “gun-free zone” signs, each of these terror Ground Zeros had had a sign reading: “Staff heavily armed and trained. Any attempts to harm those herein will be met with deadly force.”

Might some of those beautiful souls have still died before one or more well-armed good guys could take out the well-armed bad guys? Perhaps. But how many precious lives could have been saved?

Albert Einstein famously quipped that the definition of “insanity” is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In that sense, “progressives” are insane.

Or, if not exactly insane, they’re certainly no Einsteins.

I’ll admit that many “progressives” are generally well-meaning and decent people. I even have a handful of “progressive” friends who’ve yet to see the light. I love ‘em, but they still want what they can’t have, at least not until that glorious last trumpet sounds.

They want heaven on earth.

It’s not for lack of sincerity that “progressives” are destroying America and putting lives at risk.

It’s for failure to grasp reality.

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